“Sure they do, Major. And someday, when Infantry Branch authorizes you to use multi-syllable words, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“I’m sure there’s a reason you came over here other than to harass me Bannon. Hopefully, it has to do with that shooting in the town you haven’t reported to me yet.”
“That was a small affair. Some hyped-up commie high school kid wanted to play Rambo. He wounded one of Sergeant Polgar’s men before he got his ass blown away. So far, that’s all we’ve come across. What I really came over here for is to find out when we’re going to get this circus moving again. If it’s going to be awhile, I want permission to move up onto the high ground to the northeast where we can get under some cover. I’m not thrilled about sitting out here lined up along this road trying to hide my tanks behind these damned bushes.”
“I expect we’ll be moving soon. The brigade commander just got off the radio with Colonel Reynolds. Colonel Brunn was all over the Old Man. Told him that if he couldn’t get the battalion moving, brigade was prepared to pass the 1st of the 4th through us to continue the attack.”
“Sir, pardon me if I seem like an underachiever, but, if the brigade commander wants to let the 1st of the 4th take the lead, that’s fine by me. I could use to playing second team real fast.”
Upon hearing this, Jordan sat up and leaned closer to Bannon. When he spoke, he did so in low, hushed tones. “This is not for general distribution,” he began as he scotched closer to Bannon. “Colonel Brunn was a hair’s breadth away from relieving Reynolds after the Hill 214 debacle. The only reason he didn’t was because there didn’t happen to be any spare lieutenant colonels laying around at the time. If the battalion screws the pooch on this operation, the Old Man is gone. The battalion has to succeed.”
“Well, sir, between you, me, and that dumb bush your track is using for concealment, even if what you say is true, I have no intention of taking any undue risks simply to save someone’s reputation. Colonel Reynolds is a fine officer and, under the right circumstances, a great guy, but his reputation isn’t worth a single unnecessary casualty in Team Yankee.”
“I don’t think we need to worry about that. The colonel is too much of a professional to do anything dumb simply to save face.”
“God, I hope you’re right, sir.”
Having no wish to dwell on that subject any longer, Jordan took to discussing the battalion’s next move. The air cavalry, he informed Bannon, had come across some trucks and reconnaissance vehicles as they roamed out to the front, scattering the trucks and destroying the recon vehicles as they went. Unfortunately, the cavalry scouts could not tell if they were Polish or belonged to someone else. A scout helicopter had tried to land near one of the destroyed vehicles to check this out, but had drawn fire from a concealed ZSU-23-4. Not being able to obtain this information, and confident that the front would be clear for a while, Major Jordan had requested that the air cav troop shift over to the east and cover the battalion’s right frank. The response from brigade was a “wait, out.”
When Jordan relayed Bannon’s request that he be allowed to move his Team, Reynolds, replied that he wanted Team Yankee to press on, but at a slower pace, adding that the rest of the battalion would be moving out momentarily and would be able to catch up, provided Team Yankee didn’t get carried away again. After acknowledging the order, Jordan looked at Bannon and grinned. As soon as the transmission ended, Jordan asked if Bannon had any questions. “That’s a negative.”
“Okay, move out when you’re ready. I’ll be right behind you.”
With that, Bannon made his way back to Alpha 66 and issued the Team its new orders over the Team net.
Orders to stop clearing the town came none too soon as far as Sergeant Polgar was concerned. The house-to-house search was getting old. He didn’t want to lose any more of his people to some runny-nosed commie who hadn’t even begun to shave yet. Besides, this kind of work was hard. When he had charged the stairs and thrown himself into the room in the house where the sniper had been, he had landed flat on his chest, forgetting there were still grenades hanging on his web gear. The force of the fall had knocked the wind out of him as the grenades and other assorted items attached to his web gear dug into his chest, leaving bruises he could feel.
As his tracks were pulling out of town, he decided that he was getting too old to be running around playing John Wayne. In the future, he was going to leave the gung-ho stuff to the young kids in his platoon. He also decided that in the next war, he was going to find himself a nice cushy staff job at the Pentagon, fixing coffee for the generals. His campaigning days were over. War, thought Polgar, belongs to the young, the strong, and the naive.
Avery had mixed feelings about moving again. While sitting in this semi-exposed position was dangerous, moving out into the open, this time in broad daylight with high ground to both sides of the Team, was downright unnerving. As before, his platoon deployed in echelon to the left of Alpha 66. With his own tank in the lead and the rest of the platoon trailing off to the left and behind him, he felt exposed and vulnerable. The presence of Alpha 66 to his immediate right at a distance of fifty meters, 3rd Platoon visible a little farther to the right, and the Mech Platoon bringing up the rear did little to alleviate his anxieties. The only thing his tank was missing, he mused, was a big red and white target pained on the left side of his turret.
Distracted by such concerns, Avery was finding it difficult to keep track of where they were on the map he had laid out before him, direct his driver, and keep one eye one his platoon, and the other on Alpha 66. Controlling 21, let alone the platoon, was proving to be a challenge he wasn’t quite up to yet. This need to multitask was made even more difficult by the way the tank kept bucking as it made its way across plowed fields against the furrows that were separated by drainage ditches. It seemed that every time he looked down at his map in an effort to figure out where they were, the driver would hit a ditch, catching the young lieutenant by surprise and sending him rattling around in the cupola. There had to be a way to manage all of this with some degree of efficiency, he told himself. Just how the Captain and Gerry Garger were able to manage this multitude of tasks was very much a mystery he’d yet to solve.
The pilot of the MI-24D Hind was taking his time as he slowly eased his attack helicopter into position just to the right of an old keep sitting atop a hill overlooking the valley below. With a little luck, their target would be just over the rise to their front. They were lucky to have made it this far. The lead Hind had barely avoided an enemy scout helicopter on their run in. Although the weapons operator had felt confident that they could have taken out the frail scout, tangling with enemy air reconnaissance units was not their responsibility. Someone else would deal with the bothersome scout. They were hunting tanks.
With well-practiced ease, the pair of Hinds positioned themselves on either side of the ancient Keep they were using as their rally point and for reference. If the reports were correct, when they popped up over the trees, there would be a town southeast of the Keep and a group of tanks sitting stationary east of it.
As soon as the pilot of the lead Hind signaled he was set, both attack helicopters slowly rose above the masking terrain they’d been using to hide behind until the weapons operator’s field of vision was clear. The pilot, seated behind and a little higher than the weapons operator, saw the town first. Once he had the town in sight, he began to search to the east of the town for the enemy tanks that were supposed to be deployed along a road. When he didn’t see any sign of them, he ordered the weapons operator to search the area with his sight.