Tijuca began to whistle a flamenco tune. Margulies smiled at his enthusiasm. She noticed that despite the sergeant’s air of heedless relaxation, every time they overhauled a road train his eyes flicked left. He was checking through the gaps between vehicles to see what was happening along the far treeline.

Combat engineers had defoliated, then burned off, strips a hundred meters wide along either edge of the road. Ash flew out from beneath the jeep’s skirts. It merged with the yellow dust which the trains’ cleats raised from the gravel road surface. The breeze was slightly from the right, so for the moment the jeep 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—”