Activity began at once. Men in barracks and camps were alerted for a three-hour move out. Army trucks and civilian buses were readied for the troops. Just after the three-hour deadline, troops began moving to the west toward Syria. By nightfall, there were more than a hundred thousand infantry soldiers and their support units on their way to spots near the Syrian border.
Everything it takes to support a modern army was soon on the move westward. Trucks, kitchens, hospitals, mail rooms, fuel, food by the trainloads, ammunition, telephones, radios, personnel records, tanks, fuel tankers, weapons carriers, small mobile homes to be used by top-ranking officers, artillery pieces, their caissons, ammunition trucks, a million and one things a strike force of over 120,000 fighting men would need when they drove hard and fast into Syria.
Colonel Jarash Hamdoon called for his car and drove quickly into Baghdad, where he cleared out his office, loaded everything into a small mobile home he had confiscated only last month, and made sure he was ready to move. He kept the telephone and three soldiers to handle the rest of the calls he needed to make. The airfields were alerted, with orders to be prepared to give close ground support and to hunt down Syrian tanks and artillery when the attack came.
This was an attack plan they had practiced for over a year in the desert between them and Syria. Each time they had announced it a day in advance, naming it Desert Preparedness Maneuvers. Syria had brought up some troops each time, and this time might again, but they would not react in force, all of the planners had assured him of that. It cost too much money to throw a hundred thousand men into a defensive line just to find out it was a training maneuver.
The same ruse would work this time.
Colonel Hamdoon had not used the motor home before. It had been taken from some tourists who were in trouble for bringing marijuana into Iraq. He sat on the bed and smiled. Yes, he would have an ideal headquarters. He ran an extension phone out the window and into the motor home and installed it on the small eating table. It would be his desk.
He checked the propane refrigerator. Yes. Four kinds of fruit juices, ice cream, and even ice cubes. Nothing was too good for Allah’s fighting warriors at the front.
The colonel sat down suddenly. Soon his men would be fighting and many of them dying on the field of battle. War. It had been described as man’s greatest adventure. Where else could a man find such challenges, so much emotion and purpose and the thrill of a good fight? Nothing could match the rush of battle, of pitting your men and machines against those of the enemy, no matter who he was. To fight, to live or die by your wits, by your own skill, by pure chance, or even perhaps by design.
Colonel Hamdoon had no death wish. He would be well in back of any battle. Enemy airpower and land mines would present his biggest danger.
He went over his master checklist. Each of his men right down to a company commander had a schedule tailored to his unit and his duties. The colonel would get no sleep tonight, a little tomorrow afternoon as his motor home moved toward the front. The army had 280 miles to cover to get into position. Some would be ten miles closer than that. Some right near the border. No unit would be closer than twenty miles when darkness closed in on the desert the next afternoon. After dark, the units would move in military precision, each to its own assigned location, ready to do its singular duty come the dawn.
He breathed deeply for a moment as a wave of emotion broke over him. “To let slip the dogs of war.” He thought of another quote: “Battle’s magnificently stern array.”
His phone rang.
Now it would start. The decisions, the problems, the worry. Now he would start earning his colonel’s pay. He picked up the phone and began solving problems.
Even as he did, thousands of men were reporting back to their units from leaves and passes, and preparing to go to war. Not even the midlevel officers knew that this was the real thing and not just an exercise. They would be told later that this was no drill.
The phone rang again, and he picked it up.
Murdock and DeWitt found Al Adams sitting up in his bed in sick bay. The doctor told them that he was still medicated and might not make a lot of sense yet when he talked. He would recognize them, though.
“Hey there, Adams, looks like you got it made down here with nothing to do but look at the nurses.”
Adams turned and looked at Murdock, but it took a time for his eyes to focus. At last he nodded. “Hi, Skipper. I fucked up.”
“Not so, Adams,” DeWitt said. “Hell, could have happened to any of us. We didn’t know what kind of mines they had planted along there.”
“I fucked up, JG. I’ll never be a damn SEAL again. Fucked myself right out of the Navy, too, I bet.”
“Hey, we don’t even know how well that wing is going to work,” DeWitt said. “Might be better than new, with chips and microcircuits. Hell, Adams, you could be the first bionic SEAL.”
A touch of a grin flickered across his face; then he shook his head. “No way, JG. Both know it. Won’t go to air ops or engineering. I’m a SEAL or I’m a damned civilian. No other way.”
“Just hold it there, Adams,” Murdock said. “You’re a SEAL as long as I say you are. Right now, your SEAL job is to do exactly what these medics tell you to do and get yourself fit for duty. I won’t tolerate any other attitude. You read me, sailor?”
Adams blinked, his eyes went wide, and he almost grinned. “Yes, sir, Commander, sir. Hoooorah.”
Murdock smiled. “Yes, SEAL, that’s more like it. Anything you want they won’t give you?”
“Yeah, Skip. I’d like some M&M’s peanut candy. One of them big bags.”
“You got it, SEAL,” DeWitt said. “You rest easy, and some of the guys will be down to see you.”
“Aye, aye, JG. Thanks for coming by.”
Murdock looked at Adams’s left arm. It was in a complicated brace made of aluminum rods and held rigidly in place. The sewn-together tubes and nerves and muscles and tendons had to have time to heal back together. It would be a long process.
The two officers left the room and found the doctor who attached the arm.
“Can’t tell yet how it will do. Most of the patch jobs should take and work fine. It’s the number of those that don’t that concern us. First, the arm has to have a good blood supply and return. That’s the biggest. Without that, there’s no way the arm attachment will work. Then comes the nerves and the ligaments and muscles. It’s always a chancy thing. Once we know the blood flow works, and the arm will stay alive, then we have a chance to work on the other problems as they arise.”
“When will you know about the blood, Doctor?” Murdock asked.
“If it doesn’t work right in three days, the arm will start to die from lack of blood. In three days we should know that score.”
They thanked the doctor and found out where Holt was. He was ready to be kicked out of his bed. He chuckled when he saw the two coming.
“Hey, no damn funeral arrangements yet for me, Skipper. I’m getting my walking papers out of here. I can see better than when I signed on in this man’s Navy.”
“For sure?” DeWitt asked.
“Fucking A right, JG. I’m fit for damned duty. What we got on the fire?”
“Glad to have you back, Holt. Now I won’t have to break in another radioman.” Murdock left DeWitt talking with Holt and located the eye man who had worked on Holt.