Des Grieux fumbled within the hatch and brought up his water bottle. The refrigerated liquid washed dust from his mouth but left the sour taste of bile. He stared at the horizon. It rotated sideways as Pesco negotiated a switchback.
"Do you understand me, Slick?" Captain Broglie repeated.
"I understand," Des Grieux said.
"I'm glad to hear it," Broglie said.
Des Grieux felt the company commander step away from the turret and signal to the driver of his jeep. All Des Grieux could see was the red throb of the veins behind his own eyes.
Ten kilometers to the west, the Han and Hindi outpost lines slashed at one another in a crackling barely audible through the darkness.
"These are the calculated enemy positions,"said Captain Broglie. The portable projector spread a holographic panorama in red for Broglie and the three tank commanders of H Company, 2nd Platoon.
Ghosts of the coherent light glowed on the walls of the tent. The polarizing fabric gave the Slammers within privacy but allowed them to see and hear the world outside.
"And here's Baffin's Legion," Broglie continued.
A set of orange symbols appeared to the left, map west, of the red images. The Legion, a combined-arms force of battalion strength, made a relatively minor showing on the map, but none of the Slammers were deceived. Almost any mercenary unit was better than almost any local force; and Baffin's Legion was better than almost any other mercenaries. Almost.
"Remember,"Broglie warned,"Baffin can move just as fast as we can. In fifteen minutes, he could be driving straight through the friendly lines."
A battery of the Slammers' rocket howitzers was attached to the Strike Force. The hogs chose this moment to send a single round apiece into the night. The white glare of their simultaneous muzzle flashes vanished as suddenly as it occurred, but after image from the shells' sustainer motors flickered purple and yellow across the retinas of anyone without eye protection who had been looking in the direction of those brilliant streaks.
"Are they shelling Morobad?" asked Platoon Sergeant Peres.Peres had been in command of 2nd Platoon ever since the former platoon leader vanished in an explosion on New Aberdeen that left a fifty-foot crater where his tank had been. She gestured toward the built-up area just west of the major canal that the map displayed. Morobad was the only community in the region that was more than mud houses and a central street.
