More Than Courage Read Online Free PDF Page B

significance compared to those being executed by the soldiers of Recon Team Kilo. That he happened to be on the DA staff when America's war on terrorism was in full swing was little more than bad luck. Only keeping his mouth shut and soldiering on to the best of his abilities in his current assignment ensured that he would once more be assigned to a posting where he would be free to sally forth into battle and ply his stock-in-trade. Until that day arrived, all he could do was cope and hope.
    Reaching under his desk, Delmont pulled out his gym bag and made for the door, stopping to let the secretary know where he was going and when he would be back. The Department of Defense civilian employee nodded without taking her eyes off the letter she was working on.
    I

    Syria
    20:35 LOCAL (16:35 ZULU)
    Having served in southwest Asia as a junior officer during the First Gulf War Lieutenant Colonel Delmont's fertile imagination was capable of conjuring up sensations and images that were surprisingly close to those the commanding officer of RT Kilo was experiencing.
    The same could not be said of Burman's leadership. The methodology he followed while preparing his command for a foray, his planning, the manner in which he organized his command, and the way he actually led his men in the course of an operation bore no resemblance to the meticulous techniques Delmont thought of as necessary and universal. Burman was like so many young officers in the field. He saw little need to slavishly adhere to a set process time and time again. In his opinion his men were professionals, experienced soldiers who allowed him to dispense with those elements of the army's standard troop-leading procedures that he deemed unnecessary and a waste of time.
    The routine the drivers of Kilo's humvees had settled into was an example of why Burman was able to get away with issuing truncated orders. They knew their place in the order of march, the speed their tiny column should maintain during their movement to their assigned objective, and the necessity of maintaining a distance of one to two hundred meters between vehicles. Since none of these particulars had changed since they had crossed into Syria, Burman no longer mentioned them when he was issuing his operations order. He believed that to have done so time and time again would have been seen as an insult to Kilo's highly trained and well-seasoned professionals. The most the young Special 34
    HAROLDCOYLE
    Forces officer said concerning these particulars was a short, crisp,
    "You all know the drill." This allowed him to move right to the operational matters that were particular to that night's mission.
    "The drill," as run by Kilo, bore no resemblance to what a Hollywood version would look like. RT Kilo did not charge off into the trackless wastelands wily-nilly at high speed. That would have been dangerous and quite foolish since the real desert held many a pitfall and irregularity just waiting to snarl the unwary and stupid.
    The most hazardous obstacles to cross-country navigation were the wadis, dry streambeds cut into the desert floor by the runoff from infrequent but violent rains. Wadis came in all shapes and sizes. Some were little more than shallow drainage ditches. Others could be quite massive, barriers that required long detours and careful navigation. Though it is never dry, the Grand Canyon in the American southwestern desert is an extreme example of a wadi.
    At times the actual texture of the desert itself creates difficulties.
    In some areas the surface is as hard as concrete and flat as a pancake, while the sand in other locales is as soft as that which you would use in a child's sandbox and as bottomless as the ocean. In the first few weeks of Kilo's deployment, it was not at all unusual for the driver of Kilo's lead vehicle to find his vehicle suddenly slowing down even as he subconsciously applied more and more foot to the accelerator in an effort to maintain a steady speed. If neither he