That in itself would have been bad enough. The lay of the land beyond the road, however, conspired to make her position quite precarious. The ammo bunkers where she stood sat in a slight depression, with the West Gowen Road running along the higher ground. On the far side of the road, the land leveled out. This created a vast blind spot. Even on top of the tallest ammo bunker in the site, Nancy could not see any farther than the road itself. Intruders coming across the open range beyond could crawl up to the road unobserved. From there they would be free to set up whatever weapons they had and dominate the entire facility by fire.

It was this peculiarity of terrain that dictated the disposition of Nancy’s small command. She had few options. She could choose to defend the bunkers close in, which would mean surrendering control of the higher, dominant terrain. Or, she could extend her perimeter and establish one or more positions along the road in an effort to deny that ground to a hostile force. This would mean that her limited manpower would be stretched precariously thin. It also meant that any posts along the road would be isolated. Even a lightly armed force coming up along the road or from across the open range to the south would be able to pin those positions and isolate them.

There were advantages to this last course of action besides the most obvious one. Two positions, each with a machine gun, set on the high ground on the southern side of the road would be able to sweep the entire length of the West Gowen Road in either direction for a considerable distance. She could even establish roadblocks if greater security of the entire Gowen Field complex became necessary. Those same troops, using those same positions, would be free to parry any threat that came up from the south simply by shifting their fields of fire in that direction. If anything, the kill zones thus created would overlap, which would permit her people to cut any intruders to ribbons if an attacker were foolish enough to press their attack.