Catalyst

The first indicator that something was about to happen was when the local FM radio station that Major Colton Wayne was listening to suddenly went off the air, midway through an old country song he was enjoying. The exploding Abrams tank near to him confirmed that the attack had gotten underway.

Less than an hour before, everything was postcard peaceful. Spring Creek barely let out a gurgle into the night air as it slowly drifted by the banks. The calm and clear sky revealed all the stars that could be seen by the naked, human eye. Major Wayne thought, if things were under much better circumstances, this would be an almost perfect setting to bring a "lady friend" to.

All along the south bank, preparations had been made and triple checked for whatever was to come and crews had settled in to their night routines. Some would catch any sleep the night would afford them, others would keep watch and be ready to wake those from their sleep, straight into action.

Major Wayne wasn't even close to being tired, something was gnawing at his gut, like knowing a surprise party had been planned, just not knowing the conditions it was going to be sprung on him. However, he believed he had taken certain safeguards to dull the effect of such a surprise.

Modern combat, both with men and machine, had evolved with a heavy reliance on technology with the attempt to give one side an edge over each other. One of those breakthroughs happened well over a hundred years ago, when the first British Mark I tanks rolled across the landscape at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in France. From those modest beginnings of breaking the stalemate of trench warfare to the advanced armored fighting system that was the very Abrams tank he was sitting in now, Major Wayne knew that much had been dismissed and forgotten in man's race to embrace the new and cutting edge of doing things.

A slight smile formed on his lips as he reviewed one of those "old school" lessons he refused to forget: communications. In this age of wireless and satellite voice and data transmissions systems, folks can become literally paralyzed when they cease to function, as designed. The redundancy of a wired system or even pen and paper messages for that matter, has become a lost art. However, Major Wayne strongly impressed on anyone he commanded to learn and develop satisfactory proficiency in these "ancient" arts.

He turned his head to the left and looked down. He stared at three headsets for the cabled field phones that were installed, shortly after the defensive positions were plotted by map and compass techniques, then confirmed by Global Positioning System satellites. The red phone was a direct line to the forward position on the north side of the bridges that crossed Spring Creek. The blue phone was to reach out to the tip of the west flank, the green phone was for the east. If the opposing force should use an effective frequency jammer, these systems with their buried, insulated cables should be enough to maintain communications for a static, defense operation.

As he reached up to his helmet, Major Wayne clicked on a red light and looked down at the black and white map of the local area. Despite President Bill Clinton issuing the statement of the United States government discontinuing its use of Selective Availability in regards to GPS way back in May of 2000, he always had doubts this feature could always be reactivated in a time of crisis or conflict. He was also briefed on high possibility of enemy unit deployment of regional GPS denial capabilities, something he had been a part of in past and better funded operations. Just like those field phones, map and compass classes were taught and tested on a very regular basis in his command.

At 0155 hours, the radio died and the timeless voice of Johnny Cash went silent. 

Slowly lowering the map he was just studying, Major Wayne clicked off his red helmet light as the first shots were fired and one of his Abrams tanks exploded from the unseen impact.