The Complete Hammer's Slammers: Volume 3 Read Online Free PDF Page A

was clear. Tijuca kept them ten meters out in the burned zone—comfortable, but by that amount the closest vehicle to the enemy if the guerrillas decided to start something.
    “Take us back across between the second and first trucks,” Margulies said. “I don’t believe in giving anybody long enough to compute the lead on a full-deflection shot.”
    “Your wish is my command,” Angel said. He goosed the fans, let the jeep settle into its new, higher speed, and angled the vehicle sideways across the line of heavy trucks. It was an expert job, as difficult as threading a needle blindfolded.
    “My command is your command,” Margulies grumbled. Her commo helmet slapped nose filters in place automatically, but she tasted the chalky dust on her tongue.
    She wished that a battery of Frisian howitzers rather than Brigantian artillery was providing call fire for the run. Brigantian artillery was reasonably accurate, but Margulies didn’t trust the indigs to react as fast as Frisian hogs would if anything blew.
    The chance of an ambush was less than one in ten, but Margulies’ platoon had provided security on this run fourteen times already.
    “You ought to come to Cantilucca, Missie,” Angel said, throttling back to 60 kph. “You’d love it. With a tract of top gage land—”
    “Sarge,” Margulies said, “I’m a city girl, born right smack in the center of Batavia. I wouldn’t know which end of a hoe to use, and I don’t even like gage. Alcohol works just fine for me.”
    When they crossed the road, Margulies hunched higher in the seat to view the left treeline over her driver’s head. Angel watched the potential danger area also, navigating with his peripheral vision. A sub-machine gun was clamped beside his seat. Though it was ready for use, it didn’t interfere with his driving the way a slung weapon would have done.
    “Huh!” Angel said. “The only thing you can get from booze that you can’t from gage is a hangover. The good stuff—the pure stuff, we’re not talking about refinery tailings, sure—there’s no side effects at all. You just go to sleep when you come down. Why would anybody want booze over gage?”
    “Because if something pops, I can deal with it if I’m hung over and I can’t if I’m in a gage coma,” Margulies said tartly. That was true enough, but it wasn’t the reason she relaxed with alcohol instead of stim cones of gage. It was all a matter of what you got used to—
    Like everything else across the board. There was no question that a city was the most dangerous combat environment you could find: stone and concrete ate troops. Nonetheless, Margulies was always more comfortable patrolling or even fighting in a city than she was in the open air like this.
    Not that it mattered. She was here to do a job.
    This portion of the route was through lowlands. The soil was mucky, and there were frequent potholes where the treads of road trains had chewed through the gravel. The trees outside the cleared strip were five to ten meters tall. Their foliage was vaguely blue.
    Margulies’ four combat cars flanked the convoy front and rear, fifty meters out from the road. Because of the size of the road trains, the convoy was more than half a kilometer long even when closed up properly. The tribarrels of the combat cars could still sweep the full length of it on straight stretches.
    They were coming to one of the route’s few major curves, nicknamed Ambush Junction until the guerrillas hit what turned out to be a platoon of Frisian tanks instead of the Brigantian armor they’d expected. The route had been quiet as a grave since then.
    Margulies keyed her commo helmet. “White Six to Rose One,” she said, calling the driver of the leading road train. She glanced up at the cab looming beside her. Because of the angle, she couldn’t see the Brigantian to whom she was speaking. “Can you crank up the speed a little? This isn’t a place I want to hang around. Over.”
    A wash of hollow