Too Bright the Sun

Part 6

My briefing to the men was early. In conclusion, I pointed the laser to the nearest warehouse indicated on the map, projected on the front wall of the mess. “Our nearest five tanks are hidden in this warehouse. The other ten are here, in this warehouse and in a third here, five in each. Now we don’t know exactly what is going to happen but I can tell you personally that our intel is much better this time than any other. There will probably be twelve SU 401s, no more, and I would guess a few hundred IM grubs and grunts, no more; they cannot spare the troops and anyway any more would be too hard to conceal.” I heard a quiet ‘shit’ from one of the grunts sitting at the back. “Yes soldier? Your point?”

“Sir. Did you say twelve SUs? We will be slaughtered! How come our force is so small?”

“Good question. There are two points here. The first is that the USAC can’t spare any more troops, or armour either. The second, and most important for us, is that we know how the SUs are equipped and we will be concealed. Don’t worry. Now, my guess is that they won’t try the main entrance here, which is protected by our five tanks. They will try to tunnel down to the shallowest tunnel in the mine. Some of those old tunnels go all the way back across the slope to here. I pointed to a point nearly five miles closer to the IM front line. If they can get in here they have full access to the mine. But we will be listening for any seismic activity and I don’t need to remind you we have the very latest equipment. Concealment: you all are wondering what I have in mind here. Well the mine has been told to leave us a nice pile of slag near the entrance which we can use to cover the MCS. I know you will all want to volunteer to do that but don’t all rush at once.” I could see a lot of the faces which grinned back at me. “The slag, in case you didn’t know, is a bi-product of raw iron production and is strongly magnetic so the SU air-to-ground radar will miss us. Of course it may pick up the PODs but they like to take risks.” More jeers from the audience. “Finally; two points; of course ours is the lead MCS 2 and so we will be in overall control of the tanks. Their crews and commanders may well visit here at time for briefings and as usual, we offer a place for men to unwind on long missions. I don’t mind you fraternising, indeed I can’t stop you, but that doesn’t mean I want to hear about a lot of drug-induced comas while on duty. We will be on yellow alert from our zero hour, midnight tomorrow, and that means none of you do anything that stops you being ready for action in ten minutes. Understood?”

There was a discordant and disapproving chorus of “Yes sir,” from the men.

“Finally, I want all of you in your suits at all times from now. We don’t know when they are going to attack or how they are going to attack and there's no point taking risks. That’s all. Any questions?”

There was an even louder chorus of disapproval at the last point but no questions.

“Dismissed.” Two of the men sat down. “When I said ‘suits now,’ I meant now.” I said to them. Irritably, they started pulling their suits from their lockers which were set into the side of the mess, over the officers’ cabins.

“Osei and Khan; I need to speak to you both privately in the Office.” The ‘Office’ was the corridor beside the washroom on the starboard side that led to my own cabin. It was used for storage but was the only possibility for privacy on the ship beside my own cabin. The two lieutenants lounged on crates while I addressed them.

“In my briefing with Roanald I found out some other things which, in my opinion, it’s useful for you to know; all strictly confidential of course, and in fact, for now, secret. What we know is that recently the Mine Director, Choi was his name, was sacked when it was found out he’d been handing over information about the mine to the IM. Now unfortunately this is particularly relevant in this mine because only recently they discovered a rich seam of iron ore right underneath Anderstown suburbs and have dug a tunnel to reach it. The IM know this now and they know if they can get into the mine from any of those points not too far from their own front-line, they can quickly get right under Anderstown and, from what I have heard, it’s no great task to get into some of the old sewers from there. What I haven’t told the men is that we have to stop the IM at all costs, even if it means destroying the mine. For that reason charges have been placed on the IM side of the mine, close to the main access shafts, and also half way between the access shafts and Anderstown, in this new tunnel. It’s called Tunnel M and if this goes badly wrong and any one of us is left alive, it will be up to them to make sure these charges are blown. I’ll take you down there and show you them in more detail in the next twenty-four hours.”