9:15 in the morning, Titrick Underground Command Center.
Ahmed licked his chapped lips, the blood seeping from the cracks spreading a taste of rust on the tip of his tongue.
He stared at the old IBM ThinkPad T43 laptop in front of him, the screen glowing with a ghastly white light.
A model from 2005, the battery was long dead, powered by an external car battery.
The screen displayed a battlefield sketch hand-drawn using simple drawing software, with rough lines marked with Arabic and scrawled coordinate numbers.
Information was transmitted in the most primitive way, sent via encrypted text messages from frontline observers using prepaid phones.
A few young soldiers in the command center, who had some education and literacy, were responsible for receiving and translating the information, updating the sketch on another computer using a simple drafting tool.
No real-time satellite imagery, no drone video streams, no digital maps integrated with IFF signals.
