The Ten Thousand by Harold Coyle

our own good.” Then he looked at Cerro. “Let’s wait and see what’s happening before we get all excited and start altering the equation. Come on, let’s go. Break’s over, Hal. Back on your head.”

    The last of the three tanks of the advanced guard detachment had been destroyed by the time Kozak reached Ellerbee’s position. Pulling up next to his tank, Kozak had dismounted and climbed up on Ellerbee’s tank, where she listened to his report. When Ellerbee was finished, Kozak went over with him what she expected from her subordinates in the way of reports. Though she was composed by the time she got back into her Bradley, Sergeant Wolf knew that the red in her cheeks wasn’t all due to the cold and wind. Watching her as she put her combat crewman’s helmet on and stared blankly to her front, Wolf decided she needed a little humor. “Well, ma’am, I guess it’s true.”
    Caught up in her own thoughts, Kozak gave Wolf a quizzical look. “What are you talking about, Sergeant Wolf?”
    Wolf smiled. “You know, ma’am. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
    Kozak suppressed the urge to laugh. “Where in the devil. Wolf, did you hear that one?”

    “The first sergeant. That’s what Top always says when you go off and chew someone out after they’ve pissed all over your leg.”
    Though military etiquette frowned on sergeants talking to their commanders in such a manner, Kozak seldom corrected or restrained Wolf or any of the members of the crew of Charlie 60, her Bradley. She in fact encouraged open and free discussion as a means of both relieving the tensions that sometimes became unbearable in C60 during operations and as a way of finding out what the latest rumors and gossip in the company were. Still they had their limits. And vulgarity was, for her, pushing the limits of acceptability.
    “Sergeant Wolf, you are not the first sergeant. And I didn’t chew Lieutenant Ellerbee out. I merely ensured that he understood what I consider to be proper reporting procedures.”
    Wolf gave Kozak a knowing smile. “Okay, ma’am, I understand. Where to now? Back up the hill?”
    “No. Let’s head for the bridge and find Lieutenant Matto. We need to see how her engineers are doing. Those three T-80 tanks no doubt weren’t alone. I expect we’ll have some more company soon.”
    Serious now, Wolf keyed the intercom switch on his crew man’s helmet. “Yo, Terri. Crank it up and move on down to the bridge to where we were before.”
    Terri Tish, known by most of the company as Terri Toosh, responded by cranking up the Bradley.
    Despite the fact that she was small in stature, Wolf had known few drivers, including himself, who could make a Bradley perform like Terri. Though he still kidded her about women drivers, his comments, like those he made with Kozak, were lighthearted.
    At the northern approach of the bridge, Second Lieutenant Elizabeth Matto stood next to the ancient M-113 armored personnel carrier that served as her command post track and ammo carrier. While the ton-and-a-half trailer attached to the personnel carrier restricted its maneuverability, the extra demolitions and barrier material she could carry in the trailer made it too important to be left behind.
    In the distance she could see the sappers of her platoon going about their tasks. On the south end of the bridge, an M-9 armored combat engineer vehicle, called an ACE , was cutting a hasty anti-vehicle ditch on either side of the roadway leading up to the bridge, while a squad of her people finished emplacing a cratering charge on the roadway itself. On the bridge, another squad worked on placing demolition charges. She intended to drop two sets of the bridge’s supports as well as three sections of roadway in order to create a gap too large for the Ukrainians to bridge with an armored assault bridge.
    Though the work was taking longer than she had anticipated, it was progressing well and nearly completed when Matto heard the whine of