The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2

Of course, the Hashemites didn't think there were any hostile eyes. They had stationed an outpost here to prevent the Sincanmos from using the Notch as a back door for attack, but the force was a nominal one of a few hundred indig troops with no leavening of mercenaries. The real defenses were the centrally controlled mines placed in an arc as much as a kilometer north of the Notch.

The outpost hadn't seen Task Force Kuykendall move into position in the dark hours this morning. In a few hours or days, when the main battle ground to a conclusion, they wouldstillbe ignorant of the enemy watching them from the north.

The troops of the outpost probably thanked their Lord that they were safely out of the action . . . and they were.

Des Grieux swore softly.

The outpost had a pair of heavy weapons, truck-mounted railguns capable of pecking a hole in tank armor in twenty seconds or so. Des Grieux wouldn'tgivethem twenty seconds, of course, but while he dealt with the railguns, the remainder of the Hashemites would loose a barrage of missiles at H271. And then there were the mines to cross . . . .

If the platoon's oilier three tanks were good for anything—if one of the crews was good for anything—it'd be possible to pick through the minefields with clearance charges, sonics, and ground-penetrating radar. Trustingthislot of newbies to provide covering fire would be like trusting another trooper with your girl and your bottle for the evening.

Kuykendall's platoon was of veterans, but she had orders to keep a low profile unless the enemy sallied out. Kuykendall took orders real good. She'd do fine with Colonel Bloody Broglie . . . .

Hashemites drank and played a game with dice and markers around fuel-oil campfires on the Notch. The sensor pack high on the mesa gave Des Grieux a beautiful view of the enemy, but they were beyond the line of-sight range of his guns.

A salvo of artillery ricocheting from the sandstone walls would grind the towel-heads to hamburger, but the shells would first have to get through the artillery defenses south of the Escarpment. Des Grieux remembered being told the first thing Broglie had done after taking command was to fit every armored vehicle in the Legion with a tribarrel capable of automatic artillery defense.

Guns muttered far to the south. When Des Grieux listened very carefully, he could distinguish the hiss-crackreports of big-bore powerguns. Tanks and tank destroyers were beginning to mix it—twenty kilometers away.