“What’s the problem?” said Maxwell.
“I should be on the schedule for the air strike.”
“You’re still medically grounded.”
“The flight surgeon says I’m okay. I don’t have to be grounded.”
“The flight surgeon is not the commanding officer. I say you’re still grounded.”
B.J.’s face reddened. “Why?”
“Because you’ve been shot down once.” Maxwell kept his voice low. “What do you think they’ll do if you’re shot down again?”
Her eyes flashed. “You were shot down. What will they do to you?”
“I’m a man. It’s different.”
It was the wrong thing to say. B.J. turned livid. “So that’s it. I’m not flying this strike because I’m a woman?”
Maxwell looked like he was suffering a migraine. “This is not a gender thing. I need eight fully capable pilots for the strike, no more. You’re not one of them for a simple reason: You’ve been wounded.”
“It was you who wounded me!”
Maxwell’s headache was worsening. B.J. had the attention of everyone in the room.
He leaned close to her and said in a low voice, “Listen up, Lieutenant. I am the commanding officer. I have decided that you will not be on the schedule. Period. Knock off the bitching and do your job.”
B.J. started to protest again, then caught herself. “Yes, sir.” She gave Maxwell and Claire one last baleful look, then stomped back toward the duty officer’s desk.
Claire waited until she was out of range. “I think she’s angry.”
“She wants to fly.”
Claire shook her head, still watching B.J. at the far end of the room. “No. It’s more than that.”
Maxwell was giving her a wary look. “What are you talking about?”
“No wonder they call you Brick. It’s perfectly obvious,” she said. “The girl is in love with you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
BATTLE JOINED
Gritti listened to the sharp exchanges of automatic fire, trying to distinguish the staccato sound of M249 SAWs — Squad Automatic Weapons — from the intermittent crackle of the Kalashnikovs. The smoke blanket was drifting southward, still obscuring the hillside where his three fire teams had penetrated the Sherji positions.
He motioned to Master Sergeant Plunkett. “Who’s firing the SAWs?”
Plunkett knelt next to Gritti. “The first fire team. Corporal Ricci reports a clean hit, maybe twenty Sherji down.”
“Pull ’em back, set up again a hundred yards north. What’s going on with second and third?”
“Nothing. They’re still under the smoke, no enemy contact.”
Before Gritti could answer, he heard the muffled bark from the fifty-caliber Barrett sniper rifle. It meant the snipers were finding targets. If they could spread a little fear and confusion, the Sherji’s interest in overrunning the perimeter might be dampened. And if the fire teams were successful in ambushing the advancing enemy, the marines still had a chance of holding out until darkness.
He heard another rapid exchange of automatic fire, this time more AK-47 than SAW. That was a bad sign. The bastards were shooting back, probably at real targets. The advantage of surprise hadn’t lasted long.
From beneath the smoke blanket came a long burst of M249 fire. “That’s third fire team,” said Plunkett, listening to the brittle sound of the automatic gun. “Hitting the right flank of the main force.”
Gritti nodded and pointed with his hand toward the hillside. “The smoke’s drifting to the east.” They had only a few more minutes before the fire teams were exposed. “Advance the next three fire teams past the perimeter. We have to bottle them up while we’ve still got cover.”
It was a hell of a gamble. He would have half his available marines outside the perimeter, dispersed inside the enemy’s advancing troops. He was counting on the Sherji’s being unprepared for a counterattack.
Another long rattle of automatic fire came from the hillside, answered by a crackle of individual bursts.
“D team’s not answering, Colonel. A is under fire. B is pinned down, in the open now. They say the Sherji are moving up maybe a battalion-sized force, going straight for the perimeter.”
“Have we got more smoke?”
“No, sir. We used everything we had.”
“Okay, we’ll try to pincer them, put teams on either side.” He saw Plunkett’s dubious look. “Well? Damn it, Master Sergeant, speak up if you’ve got a better idea.”
“No better idea. I was wondering how long you think we can hold out before…” He left the thought unfinished.
“Before we run up the white flag?”
Plunkett nodded.
Gritti peered back out at the hillside. Long wisps of smoke were drifting eastward, leaving the terrain naked and exposed. He heard another sharp exchange of automatic fire. It wouldn’t take much, he thought. If he just had another company, he could chase these assholes right back to their hooches.
But he didn’t. So what was he trying to prove? Was he prepared to sacrifice fifty brave young men to demonstrate that they could die like marines?
He felt Plunkett looking at him. “When we can’t hold out any longer, Master Sergeant. Until then we fight.”
“Runner One-one,” came the voice of Guido Vitale. “You’re cleared to push.”
Maxwell acknowledged. He and his first flight of Hornets were cleared inbound to the target area.
“No joy from Boomer,” said Vitale. “We think it’s his batteries. Since you won’t have forward air control from the ground, the Cobras will mark targets.”
“Runner One-one copies.”
Without a forward air controller in position, spotting targets would be tough. The FAC was inbound to the target area, aboard one of the CH-53Es in the assault force. Until he was set up, they depended on what the Cobra pilot spotted. And on what they saw from their own cockpits.
The battle line ran roughly east to west. From the previous strike, Maxwell had already gotten a look at the marine perimeter. The toughest job was distinguishing the Sherji positions from the friendlies.
He had three divisions, four Hornets to a division. Each jet carried twelve M20 Rockeye canisters, as well as a standard load of AIM-9 and AIM-120 air-to-air missiles and a full load of twenty millimeter. They no longer had an altitude floor. They could come in as low as they needed.
He punched his elapsed timer and rolled the Hornet into a turn toward the target area. Thirty seconds behind him, his wingman, Pearly Gates, would push. Every thirty seconds, another Hornet would head for the target. A steady rain of cluster bombs was on its way to support the marines.
He hoped they were still there.
Armor.
Gritti felt a chill run through him. It was the news he feared most.
Plunkett confirmed it. “Yes, sir. Three light AVs. A team just reported contact. They’re coming out of cover and heading up the hill.”
Gritti ran his hand over the stubble on his jaw, feeling the fatigue, resisting the despair that hung over him. If the tanks reached the perimeter, it was all over. With armor running interference for the Sherji, they would roll over the marines’ position on the hill.
A fully equipped marine unit would have an antitank platoon with TOW missiles — tube launched, optically tracked, wire-guided weapons that could convert tanks to scrap metal. But he had come with a TRAP team whose single mission was the rescue of downed pilots. For that purpose they had grenades, M203 grenade launchers, and a handful of mortars. Useful weapons against infantry; damned near useless against tanks.