Chieftains

The captain's exaggerated Texan enthusiasm bordered on hysteria as he made a wild speech over the squadron net about pride, the need to sacrifice and the old-fashioned spunk of true-grit American fighting men when faced with some difficult, if not impossible, task. Harling intended it to make the men of his squadron forget they might be about to die – it had the opposite effect. Those who had not remade their wills in the past few days now regretted the omission; more than a couple of the nervous were reduced to mental wrecks of no fighting use whatsoever, and they needed long and real encouragement from their individual commanders to combat Harling's damage to their morale.

It had come only a short while after the end of a series of attacks on their positions, which November Squadron had successfully repulsed. The nerves of the survivors were already ragged; the earlier artillery bombardment had been fierce. The lull, when it came, had been welcome. Then the captain's lengthy bullshit pep-talk.

He had ended: 'I can't tell you not to think about KIA…but I tell you, men, when they do a body count out there, there are going to be one hell of a lot more Popskis than Johnstons.' That was great, mused Browning, one of the November drivers was a Mike Popski! 'We're going right back in. We held the head of their assault my, and beat 'em. Now we're going after them, into their flank.' Harling had suddenly remembered security and switched to code after a fit of coughing. 'H minus 1237 Shark Fin. You get…' The squadron network picked up a steady howling interference that drowned out Harling's voice. Browning didn't hurry to retune to a different wavelength. Shark Fin…counterattack…so that was what all the bull was about. H…that was the datum time, so H minus 1237 meant it would all begin to happen in around ten minutes.

'How come we held the head, and we're about to attack their flank?' began Podini, incredulously. 'The guy's a nut!'

The troop radio net interrupted him. 'Utah, Idaho, Oregon?' The troop lieutenant's voice, easy and relaxed. 'What you got left?' Will Browning heard the ammunition count and added his own. 'Thirty-nine rounds; mixed. Smoke unused. Machine gun ammo okay, out.'

'H minus 1233 we move, okay. They've got a bridgehead over the Ulster a kilometer north of Gunthers. Avoid the hundred meter strip near the river, it's heavily mined. There are some T-80s ahead of us, but according to information the captain's got, they're thin on the ground, and we believe they don't have much infantry support now. The rest of November will be on our right. We'll keep to the open ground to the west. Out.'

Six minutes? There were only five left now! Browning was trying to collect his memories of the past hours; the barrage spreading south until it had engulfed them and finally passed on. There had been no casualties then in the squadron, although the infantry and one of the artillery batteries had suffered. The squadron had moved forward a thousand meters to battle positions on lower ground, and fought the enemy massed on the shallow slopes on the far side of the river Ulster. It had been long-distance warfare at first, maximum range, indistinct targets hidden behind smoke as the Soviet assault force attempted to gain a foothold on the western bank. The river defences had been hard pressed, yet they had held…but not, it now seemed, everywhere. Browning had seen the temporary military bridges blown in the first few minutes of the initial attack, demolished by the charges of the US Division's Combat Engineers. There had been several attempts by the Soviet troops using BTR-50 amphibious troop carriers to cross the river, but these had all been foiled by the artillery on the western hill overlooking the valley, and steady mortaring and small-arms fire had wasted the enemy infantry. A renewed artillery barrage by Soviet long-range field artillery had again failed to displace the US Division, and full daylight provided the Army Air Corps' gunships and Thunderbolt Threes with a wealth of targets. The US Command's plans that their ground forces should always be able to fight under a canopy of air superiority was paying off in the sector. There had been no time so far, in the battle, when Browning and the men of November had found the sky clear of American aircraft of one type or another. It had been comforting.

Napalm had ignited much of the forest on the eastern side of the border territory, and the strengthening breeze from the south-east was sweeping the fires northwards across the Soviet supply routes, and forcing them continuously to move their close artillery support. The immediate effect had been to take the pressure off the northernmost flank of the American Armoured Division.

Mike Adams was gunning the motor like some twitchy racing driver at the start of a Grand Prix. Browning was about to tell him to cool it when he heard the lieutenant again. 'Okay Indians, let's roll.'