Free More Than Courage by Harold Coyle Page A

silhouetted by the flames that engulfed a freshly killed BRDM. Ignoring the stricken Syrian vehicle as fire consumed its crew and cooked off stored ammunition, Aveno looked at its sole victim, Kilo One.
    Suddenly it struck him. They had lost one of their humvees, perhaps the most valuable of the four, for Kilo One was the only
    °ne that could communicate with the AWACs. As he looked at the blazing remains of Kilo One, Aveno wondered if Ciszak and Jones had managed to call for an immediate air strike to cover the 62
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    team's withdrawal before their vehicle was destroyed. He wondered if either of them had been wounded or killed.
    The executive officer of Kilo was not being cold or unfeeling by the order in which he assessed the situation before him. He was a professional soldier and an officer, a person who had trained his mind and body for these sorts of situations. More often than most officers would admit to outsiders, success in battle often depended on an officer's ability to subordinate his personal feelings and concerns for the welfare of the men, and instead focus on accomplishing his assigned mission. The status of equipment, the availability and disposition of weapons, and the ability of those weapons to inflict the maximum damage upon their foe were what won battles. The soldiers under his command were the currency with which victory was purchased. It was cold. Inhuman.
    Perhaps it was even morally repugnant. But it was war, and war, as Sherman had pointed out, was hell.
    From where he was Aveno had no way of knowing how many Syrian vehicles were out there. What he was able to make out was the form of a man atop Kilo Two struggling to fit a large cylinder into the rear of the TOW launcher. It had to be Harris, Aveno thought. The team's weapons expert was in the process of reloading, meaning that there was another BRDM out there. Either that or Harris was expecting more.
    Only when he took the time to look around again did Aveno belatedly realized that his own Hummer, Kilo Three, which had been parked just beyond Kilo Two, was no longer there.
    Stunned, Aveno called out to Amcr. "Where the hell is Kilo Three?"
    Before he could answer a stream of green tracers emerged out of the darkness ahead and struck Kilo Two, causing Aveno to wonder what was really going on. Why wasn't Kilo Two moving while Harris reloaded? Why were they standing there giving the bastards an easy target? Then, belatedly remembering that he was linked to the other members of Kilo by radio, he added another, MORE THAN COURAGE
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    even more telling question to his litany of concerns. "Why the hell isn't anyone reporting?"
    At the moment the questions Avcno was posing to himself were less for information than they were expressions of his frustration at finding himself in a position from which he could neither exercise command nor control. Caught up in his own struggle for survival coupled with a futile effort to sort the situation that was playing out before him, it never dawned on Ken Aveno that he had not heard his commanding officer's voice for some time.
    A fresh spate of small-arms fire followed by a chorus of frenzied cries that sounded like orders brought Erik Burman's movement
    through the village to another abrupt halt. Throwing himself against the wall he had been moving along, he slowly slid to the ground. Hashmi, who was watching their rear while brushing up against the same wall with his shoulder as he backed up didn't see Burman stop. Before he realized what he was doing, his boot came down onto Burman's ankle.
    The sound of cracking bone indicated the seriousness of the damage. Yet despite the wave of pain, Burman somehow maintained silence as he jerked his injured leg from under Hashmi's foot. Already off balance, Hashmi fell to the ground, hitting it'
    hard and unwittingly crying out in pain. Between his wild gyrations to keep from falling and the sudden impact, his rifle flew out of his hands. Like his exclamation there