Free Side Show by Rick Shelley Page A

signature."
    "How much time over us do you have left?" Stossen asked.
    "Twenty minutes unless you're set up to replace our batteries here."
    "Hold on a second. Let me see if your vans are across yet."
    They were, only just.
    —|—
    Slee and Zel flew broad figure-eight patterns over the 13th while the other Wasps landed for fresh batteries. As soon as the others were back in the air, Blue one and Blue two landed.
    "Slummin', are you, sir?" Roo Vernon, crew chief for the first two Wasps of Blue Flight asked as soon as Slee was on the ground. The ground crew was already moving toward the two fighters.
    "Somebody's got to keep you out of trouble," Slee replied. As usual during land-and-lift maneuvers, neither Slee nor Zel bothered to get out of his cockpit or open his canopy. They spoke with Vernon over the radio.
    "You got any idea what this is all about?" Roo asked. The depleted batteries were out of both Wasps. The new ones were being inserted and connected.
    "Not a glimmer, Chief," Slee admitted. "Thought maybe you'd picked up the dirt by now."
    "Hell, they don't tell us nothin'," Roo complained. "Didn't even know you were around till they told us to unbutton to service four Wasps."
    "See you later, maybe," Slee said. The battery hatches were sealed. Slee and Zel restarted their engines, and they were off, back up into the rain.
    —|—
    "Half the Team's across, sir," Dezo reported. It was a little more than half, actually, since all of the headquarters and support personnel were across. But half of the recon platoons, line companies, and artillery were now on the northwest bank. And the four Wasps were all back in the air.
    "Move the lead recon units out," Stossen ordered. "I'll have the Wasps check the course we're taking."
    It was only ten minutes later that Slee Reston reported a strong enemy presence eighty kilometers away, blocking the route that the 13th was on.

CHAPTER SEVEN
    Everything that the sensors of Blue Flight saw was relayed directly to Bal Kenneck. Stossen gave the Wasps orders to do whatever they could to hurt the Heggies. "All out. They've got to think that we're heading straight for them with everything we've got."
    The last elements of the 13th were crossing the river. Stossen sent 1st and 3rd recon ahead with orders similar to those he had given the Wasps. Afghan Battery went with them.
    "Hold them down," Stossen told the unit commanders. "Make them think you're half the 13th and that the rest of us are right behind you."
    Stossen's staff members came to his APC for a face-to-face. The colonel had his mapboard open before they arrived.
    "This could be it," Stossen said. The others had been linked in for his orders to the Wasps and the lead ground units. "We've got to hold those Heggies where they are."
    "It looks like a reinforced regiment," Bal Kenneck said. "Two thousand men, minimum, perhaps twenty-five hundred. Two battalions of armor. I don't know where they came from. With that many assets, they must have air ready to come in when they're needed."
    Stossen shrugged.
    "There's not much chance that 120 mudders, 5 Havocs, and 4 Wasps can keep a regiment bottled up for long," Teu Ingels said. "What we need to worry about is that regiment swinging around behind us after we make the turn up into that valley. They could bottle us up without much trouble. If that happens, we'll play hell getting out. It certainly doesn't look as if there are any other routes, not that we can take vehicles over."
    "And any other routes would take us that much farther from the rest of our people," Dezo said. "The Heggies won't have to do much more than keep us occupied. We would be irrelevant to the fight."
    "As long as we do what we've been ordered to do, the rest doesn't matter," Stossen said.
    The four men did little but stare at one another for nearly a minute. The rest doesn't matter. That could only mean one thing. General Dacik had already counted them out of any further part in his plans for Jordan.
    "I think