by Tom Clancy
“Okay.” The captain stood and turned back to his armored command vehicle. “When you hear ‘Zulu, Zulu, Zulu,’ that means the air is less than five minutes out. If you see any SAM vehicles or antiair guns, for Christ’s sake take them out. The Warthogs have been hit real hard, Sarge.”
“You got it, Cap’n. You better get your ass outa here, it’s gonna be showtime soon.” One thing Mackall had learned was just how important a good forward air-control officer was, and this one had dug the sergeant’s troop out of a really bad scrape three days before. He watched the officer sprint fifty yards to the waiting vehicle, its engine already turning. The rear door hadn’t yet closed when the driver pulled out fast, zigzagging down the slope and across the plowed field toward the command post.
B Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment had once been fourteen tanks. Five of the originals were gone, and there had been only two replacements. Of the rest, all had been damaged to one degree or another. His platoon leader had been killed on the second day of the war, leaving Mackall in command of the three-tank platoon, covering nearly a kilometer of front. Dug in between his tanks was a company of German infantry—men of the Landwehr, the local equivalent of the National Guard, farmers and shopowners for the most part, men fighting to defend not just their country, but their own homes. They, too, had taken serious losses. The “company” was no more than two platoons of effectives. Surely the Russians know just how thin we’re spread, Mackall thought. Everyone was dug in—deep. The power of Russian artillery had come as a shock despite all the pre-war warnings they’d had.
“The Americans must love this.” The colonel gestured at the low clouds. “Their damned airplanes come swooping in too low for our radar, and this way we have practically no chance to see them before they fire.”
“How badly have they hurt you?”
“See for yourself.” The colonel gestured at the battlefield. Fifteen tanks lay in view—the burned-out remains. “That American low-level fighter did this—the Thunderbolt. Our men call it the Devil’s Cross.”
“But you killed two aircraft yesterday,” Sergetov objected.
“Yes, and only one of four gun vehicles survived the effort. The same vehicle got both—Senior Sergeant Lupenko. I recommended him for the Red Banner. It will be posthumous—the second aircraft crashed right on his vehicle. My best gunner,” the colonel said bitterly. Two kilometers away, the wreckage of a German Alphajet was a charred garnish atop the remains of a ZSU-30 gun vehicle. No doubt it had been deliberate, the colonel thought, that German had wanted to kill just a few more Soviets before he died. A sergeant handed his colonel a radio headset. The officer listened for half a minute before speaking a few words that he punctuated with a quick nod.
“Five minutes, Comrades. My men are fully in place. Would you follow me, please?”
The command bunker had been hastily built of logs and earth, with a full meter of overhead cover. Twenty men were crammed into it, communications men for the two regiments in the assault. The division’s third regiment waited to exploit the breakthrough and pave the way for the reserve armored division to break into the enemy’s rear. If, Alekseyev reminded himself, everything went as planned.
No enemy troops or vehicles could be seen, of course. They would be in the woods atop the ridge less than two kilometers away, dug in deep. He watched the divisional commander nod to his artillery chief, who lifted a field phone and spoke two words:
“Commence firing.”
It took several seconds for the sound to reach them. Every gun the division owned, with an additional battery from the tank division, spoke as one dreadful voice, and the thunder echoed across the countryside. The shells arched overhead, at first striking short of the opposite ridgeline, then closing on it. What had once been a gentle hill covered with lush grass turned into a brown obscenity of bare earth and smoke.
“I think they’re serious, Sarge,” the loader said, pulling his hatch down tight.
Mackall adjusted his helmet and microphone as he peered out the view ports built into his commander’s cupola. The thick armor plate kept most of the noise out, but when the ground shook beneath them, the shock came through the treads and suspension to rock the vehicle, and each crewman reflected to himself on the force needed to budge a sixty-ton tank. This was how the lieutenant had bought it—a one-in-a-thousand shot from a heavy gun had landed a round right on his turret, and it had burrowed through the thin overhead armor to explode the vehicle.
Left and right of Mackall’s tank, the largely middle-aged German territorials cowered in their deep, narrow holes, their emotions oscillating between terror and rage at what was happening to them and their country—and their homes!
“Good fire plan, Comrade Colonel,” Alekseyev said quietly. A screaming sound passed overhead. “There is your air support.”
Four Russian ground-attack fighters wheeled overhead to trace parallel to the ridgeline and dropped their loads of napalm. As they turned back toward Russian lines, one exploded in midair.
“What was that?”
“Probably a Roland,” the colonel answered. “Their version of our SA-8 rocket. Here we go. One minute.”
Five kilometers behind the command bunker, two batteries of mobile rocket launchers ripple-fired their weapons in a continuous sheet of flame. Half were high-explosive warheads, the other half smoke.
Thirty rockets landed in Mackall’s sector and thirty in the valley before him. The impact of the explosives shook his tank violently, and he could hear the pings of fragments bouncing off his armor. But it was the smoke that frightened him. That meant Ivan was coming. From thirty separate points, gray-white smoke billowed into the air, forming an instant man-made cloud that enveloped all the ground in view. Mackall and his gunner activated their thermal-imaging sights.
“Buffalo, this is Six,” the troop commander called in over the command circuit. “Check in.”
Mackall listened in closely. All eleven vehicles were intact, protected by their deep holes. Again he blessed the engineers—and the German farmers—who had dug the shelters. No further orders were passed. None were needed.
“Enemy in view,” the gunner reported.
The thermal sight measured differences in temperature and could penetrate most of the mile of smoke cover. And the wind was on their side. A ten-mile-per-hour breeze was driving the cloud back east. Sergeant First Class Terry Mackall took a deep breath and went to work.
“Target tank, ten o’clock. Sabot! Shoot!”
The gunner trained left and centered the sight reticle on the nearest Soviet battle tank. His thumbs depressed the laser button, and a thin beam of light bounced off the target. The range display came up in his sight: 1310 meters. The fire-control computer plotted target distance and speed, elevating the main gun. The computer measured wind speed and direction, air density and humidity, the temperature of the air, and the tank’s own shells, and all the gunner had to do was place the target in the center of his sights. The whole operation took less than two seconds, and the gunner’s fingers jammed home on the triggers.
A forty-foot muzzle blast annihilated the shrubs planted two years earlier by some German Boy Scouts. The tank’s 105mm gun jerked back in recoil, ejecting the spent aluminum case. The shell came apart in the air, the sabot falling free of the projectile, a 40mm dart made of tungsten and uranium that lanced through the air at almost a mile a second.
The projectile struck the target one second later at the base of the gun turret. Inside, a Russian gunner was just picking up a round for his own cannon when the uranium core of the shot burned through the protective steel. The Russian tank exploded, its turret flying thirty feet into the air.
“Hit!” Mackall said. “Target tank, twelve o’clock. Sabot! Shoot!”
The Russian and American tanks fired at the same instant, but the Russian shot went high, missing the defiladed M-1 by nearly a meter. The Russian was less lucky.
“Time to leave,” Mackall announced. “Straight
back! Heading for alternate one.”
The driver already had reverse engaged, and twisted hard on his throttle control. The tank surged backward, then spun right and headed fifty yards to another prepaied position.
“Damned smoke!” Sergetov swore. The wind blew it back in their faces, and they couldn’t tell what was going on. The battle was now in the hands of captains, lieutenants, and sergeants. All they could see was the orange fireballs of exploding vehicles, and there was no way to know whose they were. The colonel in command had his radio headset on and was barking orders to his subunit commanders.
Mackall was in his first alternate position in less than a minute. This one had been dug parallel to the ridgeline, and his massive turret trained to the left. He could see the infantry now, dismounted and running ahead of their assault carriers. Allied artillery, both German and American, ripped through their ranks, but not quickly enough . . .
“Target—tank with an antenna, just coming out of the treeline.”
“Got ’em!” the gunner answered. He saw a Russian T-80 main battle tank with a large radio antenna projecting from the turret. That would be a company commander—maybe a battalion commander. He fired.
The Russian tank wheeled just as the shot left the muzzle. Mackall watched the tracer barely miss his engine compartment.
“Gimme a HEAT round!” the gunner shouted over the intercom.
“Ready!”
“Turn back, you mother—”
The Russian tank was driven by an experienced sergeant who zigzagged his way across the valley floor. He jinked every five seconds, and now brought his tank left again—
The gunner squeezed off his round. The tank jumped at the recoil and the spent round clanged off the turret’s rear wall. Already the closed tank hull stank of the ammonia-based propellant.
“Hit! Nice shot, Woody!”
The shell hit the Russian between the last pair of road wheels and wrecked the tank’s diesel engine. In a moment the crew began to bail out, “escaping” into an environment alive with shell fragments.
Mackall ordered his driver to move again. By the time they were in their next firing position, the Russians were less than five hundred meters away. They fired two more shots, killing an infantry carrier and knocking the tread off a tank.
“Buffalo, this is Six, begin moving to Bravo Line—execute.”
As platoon leader, Mackall was the last to leave. He saw both of his companion tanks rolling down the open reverse slope of the hill. The infantry was moving also, into their armored carriers, or just running. “Friendly” artillery blanketed the ridgeline with high explosives and smoke to mask their withdrawal. On command, the tank leaped forward, accelerating to thirty miles per hour and racing to the next defense line before the Russians could occupy the ridge they were leaving behind. Artillery fire was all over them, exploding a pair of German personnel carriers.
“Zulu, Zulu, Zulu!”
“Get me a vehicle!” Alekseyev ordered.
“I cannot permit this. I cannot let a general—”
“Get me a damned vehicle! I must observe this,” Alekseyev repeated.
A minute later, he and Sergetov joined the colonel in a BMP armored command vehicle that raced to the position the NATO troops had just vacated. They found a hole that had sheltered two men—until a rocket had landed a meter away.
“My God, we’ve lost twenty tanks here!” Sergetov said, looking back.
“Down!” The colonel pushed both men into the bloody hole. A storm of NATO shells landed on the ridge.
“There’s a Gatling gun!” the gunner said. A Russian antiaircraft gun carrier came over the ridge. A moment later a HEAT round exploded it like a plastic toy. His next target was a Russian tank coming down the hill they’d just left.
“Heads up, friendly air coming in!” Mackall cringed, hoping the pilot could tell the sheep from the goats.
Alekseyev watched the twin-engine fighter swoop straight down the valley. Its nose disappeared in a mass of flame as the pilot fired his antitank cannon. Four tanks exploded before his eyes as the Thunderbolt appeared to stagger in midair, then turned west, a missile chasing after him. The SA-7 fell short.
“The Devil’s Cross?” he asked. The colonel nodded in reply, and Alekseyev realized where the name had come from. From an angle, the American fighter did look like the stylized Russian Orthodox crucifix.
“I just called up the reserve regiment. We may have them on the run,” the colonel said.
This, Sergetov thought incredulously to himself, is a successful attack?
Mackall watched a pair of antitank missiles reach out into the Russian lines. One miss, one kill. More smoke came in from both sides as the NATO troops fell back another five hundred meters. The village they were defending was now in sight. The sergeant had counted a total of five kills to his tank. He hadn’t been hit yet, but that wouldn’t last. The friendly artillery was really in the fight now. The Russian infantry was down to half the strength he’d first seen, and their tracked vehicles were laying back, trying to engage the NATO positions with their own missiles. Things looked to be going reasonably well when the third regiment appeared.
Fifty tanks came over the hill in front of him. An A-10 swept across the line and killed a pair, then was blotted out of the sky by a SAM. The burning wreckage fell three hundred yards in front of him.
“Target tank, one o’clock. Shoot!” The Abrams rocked backward with yet another shot. “Hit.”
“Warning, warning,” called the troop commander. “Enemy choppers approaching from the north.”
Ten Mi-24 Hinds arrived late, but they made up for it by killing a pair of tanks in less than a minute. German Phantom jets then appeared, engaging them with air-to-air missiles and cannon in a wild melee that suddenly included surface-to-air missiles also. The sky was crisscrossed with smoke trails, and suddenly there were no aircraft in view.
“It’s bogging down,” Alekseyev said. He’d just learned one important lesson: attack helicopters cannot hope to survive in the face of enemy fighters. Just when he thought the Mi-24s would make a decisive difference, they’d been forced away by the appearance of the German fighters. Artillery support was slacking off. The NATO gunners were counterbatterying the Soviet guns expertly, helped by ground-attack fighters. He had to get more front-line air support.
“The hell it is!” the colonel answered. He radioed new orders to the battalions on his left flank.
“Looks like a command vehicle at ten o’clock, on the ridgeline, can you reach it?”
“Long shot, I—”
Whang! A shot glanced off the turret’s face.
“Tank, three o’clock, close in—”
The gunner turned his yoke controls and nothing happened. Immediately he reached for the manual traverse. Mackall engaged the target with his machine gun, bouncing bullets off the advancing T-80 that had come out of nowhere. The gunner cranked frantically at the handle as another round crashed into their armor. The driver aided him, turning the vehicle and praying that they could return the fire.
The computer was out, damaged by the shock of the first hit. The T-80 was less than a thousand meters away when the gunner settled on it. He fired a HEAT round, and it missed. The loader slammed another home in the breech. The gunner worked his controls and fired again. Hit.
“There’s more behind that one,” the gunner warned.
“Buffalo Six, this is three-one, bad guys coming in from our flank. We need help here,” Mackall called; then to the driver: “Left track and back up fast!”
The driver needed no encouragement. He cringed, looking out his tiny viewing prisms, and rocked the throttle handle all the way back. The tank raced backward and left as the gunner tried to lock onto another target—but the automatic stabilization was also out. They had to sit still to fire accurately, and it was death to sit still.
Another Thunderbolt came in low, dropping cluster munitions on the Russian formation. Two more Soviet tanks were stopped, bu
t the fighter went away trailing smoke. Artillery fire joined in to stop the Soviet maneuver.
“For Christ’s sake, stop so I can shoot one of the fuckers!” the gunner screamed. The tank stopped at once. He fired, hitting a T-72 on the tread. “Reload!”
A second tank joined Mackall’s, a hundred meters to his left. It was intact and fired off three quick rounds for two hits. Then a Soviet helicopter reappeared and exploded the troop commander’s tank with a missile. A shoulder-fired Stinger missile then killed the chopper as the German infantry redeployed. Mackall watched a pair of HOT antitank missiles go left and right of his turret, reaching for the advancing Soviets. Both hit.
“Antenna tank, dead ahead.”
“I see him. Sabot!” the gunner cranked the turret back to the right. He elevated his gun to battle sights and fired.
“Captain Alexandrov!” the division commander shouted into his microphone. The battalion commander’s transmission had stopped in midword. The colonel was using his radio too much. Ten miles away, a German battery of 155mm mobile guns tracked in on the radio signals and fired twenty quick rounds.
Alekseyev heard the incoming and jumped into a German-dug foxhole, dragging Sergetov with him. Five seconds later the area was blanketed by smoke and noise.
The General stuck his head up to see the colonel still standing, still giving radio orders. Behind him the command vehicle was burning, the radios with it. Five men were dead, another half-dozen screaming with the pain of their injuries. Alekseyev looked with annoyance at a bloody streak on the back of his hand.
Mackall killed one more tank, but it was the Germans who stopped the attack, using the last of their HOT missiles to do so. The remaining Russian commander lost his nerve when half the tanks in the battalion were hit. The survivors turned on their smoke generators and retreated back around the hill to the south. Artillery chased after them. The land battle was over for the moment.