Neither Wahab nor the guards so much as blinked when the girl, now concealed inside a hut, began to scream in earnest, heartbreak incarnate. Again, Fulton thought, Poor little shit.
Though Wahab didn't blink, he likewise thought, Poor creature. Thanks to Allah my Alaso wasn't so treated when she was young. Of course, I can't say anything. Even if the mission we are on didn't require "cover," I am already so embarrassed in front of Buckwheat that I want to puke.
No more than had Wahab or the guards did the chief of the village seem to pay the slightest mind to the girl's voiced agony. The chief wore what amounted to a skirt, below, and in a sort of plaid, no less, with a bright blue shirt and a light, patterned shawl. On his head was perched the snug-fitting, rounded cap, called a "qofe." The chief looked to be truly ancient, from which appearance Buckwheat assumed they were about of an age.
The guards made the introductions while Wahab remained in the background.
"You are an American," the village chief, Zakariye, observed. It was not a question.
"Indeed, yes," Fulton agreed. "Is this a problem?"
"Not at all," said Zakariye. "Indeed, we hope someday to have closer relations with the United States, so says my eldest boy, Gutaale. That, however, is for the future . . . and is in God's hands."
"As are we all," Fulton agreed. While the chief's wives and daughters, modestly wrapped in accordance with their faith but not in the stifling burkas of more fundamentalist regions, served lunch, Wahab busied himself with taking pictures. Eventually, the girl being clitorectomized not so far away ceased her wailing and shrieking.
D-77, Rako-Dhuudo highway, Ophir
Wahab said exactly what Fulton was thinking, "We're so fucked!"
"Why fucked?" asked the guard manning the machine gun.
The reason for the exclamation was the column of dust-covered tanks-at this distance Fulton made them as being either Russian T-55s or the Chinese copy, the Type 59-passing across the road heading north to south. The tanks threw up a thick, linear cloud of dun-colored dust.
"He just worries whenever he sees soldiers he isn't one hundred percent sure are harmless," Fulton lied. "I thought you guys didn't have any tanks,"
"People you call ‘pirates' took them from ship," the guard explained. "Maybe . . . a month ago. Radio say we got . . . ummm . . . twenty-four. Me, I think the pirates didn't steal anything and there was a deal"-the guard winked- "under the table between our people and the Russians. But, hey, I'm just hired guard. What I know?"
"I do know," said another guard, "that there are black men training the crews. I never heard of no black Russians."
Fulton suppressed the chuckle that the line deserved, even if the speaker didn't know why it deserved it. Besides, having to face tanks, even T-55s, in armored cars is not a laughing matter. Shit.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The reasons for the current overestimation of
the importance of intelligence in warfare are twofold:
the first is the common confusion of espionage and
counter-espionage with operational intelligence proper;
the second is the intermingling of operational
intelligence with, and contamination by, subversion, the
attempt to win military advantage by covert means.
-John Keegan, Intelligence in War
D-75, Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil
"Shit," said Bridges when he saw the pictures Fulton had downloaded via satellite. He then added, "‘Dad, get me out of this'."
"What is it, Matt?" asked Lox.
Wordlessly, Bridges swiveled his laptop around to show his coworker.
"Shit," Lox agreed. He filled his lungs with air and called for Boxer.
Boxer came into the tent breathlessly, followed by Stauer and the operations officer, Ken Waggoner.
"What the fuck was that in aid of?" Boxer asked. Just as Bridges had, Lox answered nonverbally by pointing at the screen.
"Oh, shit," Stauer said, shaking his head slowly. "That I was not expecting. Oh, shit," he repeated, needlessly. "We should have asked the Israelis to mount their high velocity 60mm guns. Too late for that now. Shit."
"Tanks?" Waggoner mumbled. More loudly, he added, "I didn't plan on tanks, boss. Not real ones. Not a bunch of them. Nothing you or this Air Force reprobate told me said we'd have to deal with tanks. Jesus! How the fuck do we deal with tanks in those numbers?"
Boxer, less inclined to lose his head than most, asked, "Where were they spotted?"
"On the road to Objective One," Bridges answered. He took back control of the laptop and scrolled down untill he came to some verbiage. This he read. "Well, just off it, actually. They're based right near there . . . Buckwheat says they're just T-55's or Type 59's . . . probably depot rebuilds . . . maybe night vision equipped . . . but no thermals. No add-on armor, either. Annnddd . . . the crews are barely trained. What he saw was driver training . . . he thinks. That, or he says ‘ they need driver training.' He also says that there are probably two dozen of them."
"Why the hell didn't you see them?" Stauer asked of Boxer. "You're tapping all the NRO's shit!"
"I looked. A few weeks ago. They weren't there then." Boxer sounded quite apologetic. "And there was nothing on the news or in the intel channels to suggest otherwise."
Stauer suppressed an urge to unload on the intel type, but, No, sat recon is limited. And the press is not notably good about honest reporting in this part of the world. He did the best he could.
"Chilluns," said Stauer, "this is what we in the trade call a ‘bad thing.' And we need a solution." He considered for a moment, then added, "Send to Buckwheat that he's to stay on station." He shrugged, "In country, I mean, not right there with the tanks. I need to know a lot more about those T-55's. Everything there is to know, as a matter of fact." Turning to Waggoner, he said, "And you start working on a plan to take them out, without compromising the rest of the operations. If we have to take some risks, elsewhere, then that's what we'll do."
"Could we get some tanks of our own?" Waggoner asked.
Stauer shook his head. "Maybe, but if so, so what? They won't be M-1's or anything our armor crews are used to, so they'd need training and there wouldn't be time to train. Even if there were time to train, the gantry on the Merciful isn't up to forty to seventy tons of steel. Even if it were, the LCM's probably can't carry an M-1 or equivalent. And even if they could, we couldn't conceal them in a container. And if that weren't necessary it would still take too long getting ashore when we'd have to ferry them in one per boat at a time.
"No, we need to do something else."
D-75, 90mm Range (subcal), Assembly Area Alpha-Base Camp, Amazonia, Brazil
There was a steady pop-pop-pop, deeper than from a normal rifle, or even a normal .50 caliber. This was the sound of the modified spotting rifles being used for 90mm gunnery training.
When Reilly returned to the range from a short but intense meeting with Boxer and Stauer, all three gun-armed Elands were on line firing. Downrange, in three deep zigzag trenches the engineers had dug, three teams of three soldiers each-the other crews for half the Elands-manhandled silhouettes of generic armored vehicles while the gunners tried to perforate the moving targets.