by James Rosone
Turning to look at Miller, Regan shouted, “Tank identified. Load sabot.”
“Sabot up,” echoed their loader.
Knowing they already had a sabot in the tube, the loader lifted the arming handle up, letting the computer know the gun was ready to fire.
Looking through the targeting sight one last time, Miller yelled, “Firing!”
Boom.
The cannon belched flames out the front as it recoiled back inside the turret, and the spent aft cap dropped to the floor, making a metallic clink. The cabin filled with the smells of burnt cordite and powder.
“Load sabot!” Miller shouted as he got them ready to engage another tank.
The loader hit the ammo locker door with his knee, bent over, and grabbed the back of a sabot round with his gloved hand. As he pulled the round out of the ammo locker, his knee knocked the door button, closing it again as he shifted his body around to ram the next round into the empty breach. With the round now seated, he closed the breach, lifting the arming handle up again.
“Sabot up!” he shouted.
The tank continued to bounce a bit as they made their way over a lot of uneven farm fields. Their company was continuing to move toward the known German lines, which were still another fifteen miles to their front. As they jolted around a bit from the terrain, Miller continued to scan to their left for additional targets while Regan looked to their right.
BOOM, BOOM.
Two enormous explosions went off, nearly knocking Miller and Regan out of their seats. The loader fell backward, hitting his head on something sharp. The gash was bleeding profusely as he tried to shake off what had just happened.
“What the hell was that?” yelled their driver over the crew net.
“Driver, halt. I need to go topside. Miller, see if you can help Mouse. That cut looks pretty bad.”
The vehicle came to a quick halt, and Regan unlocked the commander’s hatch and pushed it open. He reached above the lip with his hands and pulled himself out of the turret. Standing up, Regan looked out to see what had blown up. To his surprise, he saw the remains of a minivan nearby were ablaze and completely torn apart. A few feet away from the van was a Stryker vehicle that had been blown over on its side. Half a dozen soldiers had set up a defensive perimeter while the other soldiers were tending to their wounded.
Looking further behind them, Regan saw a Bradley on fire. It appeared to have hit a mine or an IED. In either case, it wasn’t operational.
Shaking his head in frustration, Captain Regan cursed at himself for allowing them to have been ambushed like this. He wondered if they had been too predictable in their attack.
Several more of the tanks from his company pulled up alongside his vehicle, with their commanders looking out of their hatches to get a better view of the area. Regan nodded toward a few of them as he pulled out his map. A few Bradleys rumbled up next to them, and the second echelon of troops that were going to support them joined them as well.
Looking down at the map, Regan saw they were in front of the small town of Weldon. Then an idea hit him. Sensing they needed to make a change in strategy, Regan switched his radio to the battalion net. It was time to call an audible.
“Dixie Six to all Rebel elements, pull your maps out and listen up. Our initial plan was to assault from Waypoint Bravo. Break.” He paused for just a second before resuming. “The enemy must have anticipated us moving there because they hit us with one hell of an ambush. Break.”
Feeling like the plan was all coming together in his head, Regan continued. “Right now, we’re supposed to advance to Waypoint Charlie, but that’s the most likely avenue of attack for our tanks with our current battle plan. I think there’s also another ambush waiting for us, so I’m calling a FRAGO. Break.
“I’m going to shift my Dixie element around Lake Clinton and jump on the hardball on State Road 54 and advance behind Farmer City. I’m requesting all Rebel elements follow my lead through Clinton. How copy?”
Now came the moment of truth. Captain Regan wondered if the colonel would chew him out for breaking away from the stated plan or if he’d back him. The radio crackled and then beeped, letting him know the SINCGARS had synced. “Dixie Six, Rebel Actual. Good call on the change of plans. Proceed with your FRAGO. All Rebel elements follow Dixie through Clinton. Good hunting, Dixie elements. Rebel out.”
Regan breathed a sigh of relief. He lifted his field glasses to his eyes again so he could survey further ahead. Looking toward the city of Clinton, Regan spotted the two JLTVs zipping ahead of their armored column as they scouted the area for them. The vehicles drove fast; they’d already reached the outskirts of the city, and thus far, they hadn’t encountered any problems.
Five minutes later, Regan’s tank passed by a large trucking company that had a sign on the side of its building for Miller Container Corporation. A handful of people had come outside to gawk at the armored chariots and the men riding in them as they got closer. They also pointed and stared at the dozens of black smoke pyres rising into the sky from the earlier fighting.
Just as Regan was about to return his attention to the nuclear power plant that was down the road, a couple of men in overalls and trucker hats started waving their hands and walking toward his men.
Regan shouted for the driver to halt the vehicle and asked Miller to come up. As the tank stopped, the men approached them cautiously. “Keep an eye on them,” Regan ordered. “I’m going to go talk with them and see why they wanted to stop us.”
Miller undogged the M240 machine gun in front of his hatch and made sure the safety was off. He kept the weapon trained on the civilians as Regan walked toward them.
As Regan approached, one of the men held up his hands as if surrendering. “We saw you guys coming and wanted to give you a warning,” he said. “The Germans came through here a couple of weeks ago. They’ve been setting up all sorts of booby traps for you guys.”
Regan’s left eyebrow rose. “If I show you a map, can you tell me where and what kind of trap they’ve placed?” he asked.
“I’m Eric, by the way,” the civilian replied. “And, yes, if you show me a map, Bill and I can show you what they’ve been doing. We’re just glad you all are here and didn’t abandon us. We’ve been hearing all sorts of reports out of Chicago about how they’re calling the areas liberated by the UN ‘Free America’ and the rest of the country ‘Occupied America.’”
Regan shook his head in disgust. “Follow me over to my tank,” he directed. Meanwhile, the column of vehicles behind them was once again bunching up as they all came to a halt.
After spending a few minutes with a map, the locals were able to tell them where the Germans had laid several IEDs and explained where they had set up a couple of fortified bunkers.
Armed with the new information, Regan got on the radio and passed along what he’d learned. He called his vehicle commanders, and they made a few adjustments to their routes. Five minutes later, the group of tankers was back on the move. This time, instead of driving down County Road 54, the road that would take them near the Clinton Power Station, they headed north, down Walnut Street to Heyworth. It was a twenty-minute detour, but it kept them away from the ambushes the locals had told them about.
When they reached Heyworth, they turned east again. This time, they’d approach Farmer City from further behind the enemy position. Five minutes into the drive down US Highway 136, they found their first sign of enemy activity.
“Infantry fighting vehicle, twenty-one hundred meters to our four o’clock!” shouted an excited Miller.
Regan looked through the commander’s sight extension. “Got it. Load HEAT.”
Mouse echoed, “Loading HEAT.” In one fluid motion, he removed the unspent sabot round, placing it into an empty hole and grabbed one of the HEAT rounds from the second-to-bottom layer of the rack. Slamming the HEAT round in the breech, he yelled, “HEAT up!”
Regan sent a quick message out to the rest of his tankers about what they’d found, and they reported bac
k to him that they’d found some targets of their own. Seconds later, one of the other tanks in his crew fired first.
When he heard the first shot, Regan shouted, “Fire!”
BOOM.
The cannon recoiled inside, spitting out the aft cap.
“Tank! One thousand, four hundred meters to our two o’clock,” shouted Miller. “He’s inside that barn across I-74. You see it?”
Captain Regan squinted to try and see better. However, even after zooming in on the spot where Miller had said the tank was hiding, he couldn’t spot it.
Where is he? he wondered.
Just then, he saw a flash. Some flame spat out of the darkness from within the barn. He couldn’t believe they’d actually placed a tank in there.
“I see it,” Regan shouted. “Fire!”
BOOM.
Their round flew flat and sailed like a red-hot lawn dart right into the barn. They saw some sparks from within, but no explosion.
“Damn! I think we missed, or maybe it ricocheted. Load another sabot,” Regan yelled apprehensively.
Bam.
Debris rained down on their tank. They heard small chunks of metal and rocks bounce off their armored shell.
Ping, ping, ping.
“We got infantry to our right flank shooting at us!” shouted the driver. His voice was barely audible over the noise of everything going on around them.
“Miller, get another round in that barn and take him out!” Regan ordered. “I’m climbing up to deal with the infantry.” Then he undogged the hatch above him and climbed out.
Zing, whiz, zap.
Bullets whipped past Captain Regan. A few of them dinged off the armor around him. He scanned their right flank and spotted several enemy soldiers. Regan unlocked the Ma Deuce from the remote firing system and manually moved it to face the infantry. He spotted about a dozen infantrymen shooting away at his tank and the others near him. The soldiers likely knew that their bullets couldn’t penetrate their armor, but that didn’t stop them from sending a lot of lead his way.
Swoosh…bang.
Out of nowhere, the tank to his right, maybe two hundred meters away, was suddenly hit by a rocket of some sort. The tank clanked to a halt, its track having been blown off its sprocket.
Captain Regan swiveled the Ma Deuce in the direction the rocket had originated from and spotted the attackers. A German soldier had just sighted in on one of the Stryker vehicles; he fired just as the fifty-caliber rounds from Regan’s gun ripped the man’s body apart.
Captain Regan hit the talk button on his CVC. “All Dixie elements, beware. They have rocket teams in the area. They just took two of our guys out. Either the gunners or tank commanders need to get up on their crew serve weapons and take ’em out.”
In that instant, another enemy tank round flew out of the barn and slammed into one of his tanks, hitting its right rear section. The round cut right through the thin armor on that side of the vehicle and tore right into the engine compartment. A fraction of a second later, the entire rear section of the tank blew up as the vehicle’s fuel bladder caught fire. That explosion caused the tank’s ammo locker to explode, sending flames to vent some thirty feet in the air for a few seconds as the ammo cooked off.
“Damn it, Miller! Take that tank out—he just nailed another one of our guys.”
BOOM.
Regan’s tank belched flame and fire as their second round flew right into the barn. This time they were rewarded with a blast. A second after the initial burst, the roof of the barn exploded skywards as the tank’s ammo cooked off. The resulting fire ravished the structure.
“All Dixie elements, shift your fire southeast toward Farmer City and charge!”
Captain Regan’s tank practically jumped as his driver gunned the engine. They roared through the farmer’s field, closing in on Interstate 74. As they neared the rest stop attached to the side of the road, Regan saw a few explosions up ahead. Some of his tankers had clearly found some targets to engage.
Zip, zip, zip.
Regan saw several strings of 30mm tracer rounds rip right into one of his unit’s Bradleys and a Stryker. The Stryker summarily blew apart—some of the bullets must have hit one of their TOW missiles. A couple of infantrymen were thrown into the air from the rear troop hatches, their bodies on fire.
The Bradley spun to one side as the driver sought to get them out of the line of fire. Unfortunately, the driver must have overcorrected, because he summarily rolled the vehicle. Whoever was shooting at them pumped a few dozen more rounds into the stricken Bradley, causing it to explode before the infantrymen and the crew could crawl out.
“Take that IFV out, Miller!” Regan shouted.
“I’m looking for it,” Miller replied.
Suddenly, the area around the rear side of the town they were charging into was filled up with IR-inhibiting smoke. The Germans were attempting to blind them.
Regan was overwhelmed by the sounds of gunfire. There was the singular popping of semiautomatic assault rifles, the staccato of light and heavy machine guns, and occasionally, the swooshing of a rocket followed by an explosion. It suddenly hit him how surreal the scene was. The charging tanks, the infantry fighting vehicles shooting their 25mm cannons, the Strykers rushing the infantrymen forward—it all seemed like a scene from a movie. Yet it was very real.
Miller pulled him out of his reflections. “Tank! Eight hundred meters. He’s behind that grain silo.”
Regan dropped back inside the tank and placed his eyes against his sight extension. He spotted the tank immediately.
“Sabot up!” shouted Mouse.
“Fire,” Regan ordered.
BOOM.
“Got him!” shouted Miller excitedly.
Hitting the talk button, Regan called out to his company, “All Dixie elements, halt. Dismount the infantry and prepare to support them. Continue to look for targets of opportunity, but let’s not destroy the entire town in the process if we can avoid it.”
The next thirty minutes saw some fierce fighting between a handful of enemy infantry fighting vehicles, two more tanks, and about two companies’ worth of soldiers. When a couple of Apache gunships were finally able to assist them, the remaining Germans in the town finally gave up. At first, it was just a couple of pockets waving white flags, but soon, the entire lot followed suit.
When the sun had finally set, Regan’s regiment had punched through forty miles of enemy territory. That evening, his tanks were refueled and rearmed. At 0300 hours, they’d set out for Kankakee—their next objective and the last major enemy stronghold between them and Gary, Indiana.
*******
New Delhi, India
Dr. Harsh Gandhi looked at the printed photo of Yichang, shaking his head as he did. He set the picture down, then examined an aerial shot of Wuhan next. The devastation of the two cities was massive. Virtually no building was left standing in Yichang.
“It’s pretty incredible, isn’t it?” asked Minister of Defense Sitharaman as she slipped into his office. She closed the door behind her and took a seat in front of his desk.
Dr. Gandhi looked up at her. “It is incredible. I honestly didn’t think the Americans would do it.”
Her left eyebrow rose. “Really? After Sachs had been trapped in that bunker for more than a week, I’m surprised he didn’t nuke China much harder.”
“Destroying the Three Gorges Dam wasn’t exactly a small strike. It probably killed more than ten million people,” Dr. Gandhi countered. “I just read a report yesterday that said the country is experiencing a series of blackouts in southern and central China. This is going to wreak havoc on their economy.” He paused. “How is the PM reacting to it all?”
She snorted. “Like a dithering fool,” Sitharaman replied flatly. “On the one hand, he’s appalled by the nuclear attack on America, but then he’s equally appalled by the American response to it. If you ask me, he seems paralyzed with what to do next.”
She was growing more and more frustrated w
ith the PM’s unwillingness to confront China. She had warned him the Americans would hit the Chinese hard if they invaded, and now they had.
Dr. Gandhi nodded. “If we ever want to settle our border dispute with China or liberate Tibet, we aren’t going to get a better chance than now. My sources on the ground are reporting that the PLA is moving several of their divisions away from the frontier to assist in the rescue efforts in Hubei province. If we acted soon, we could catch them completely by surprise.” He showed her a couple of recent intelligence reports to back up what he was saying.
She’d been reading over the intel reports too. She knew what was going on—she was just not in a position to make the Prime Minister move. “The PM is concerned that if we join this war now, the Chinese in their weakened state might respond by hitting us with tactical nuclear weapons. I’m not yet confident the PLA wouldn’t use them on our forces, either. Have your sources been able to confirm the current status is of the PLA’s nuclear force structure?” Sitharaman asked.
Reaching for his pack of cigarettes, Dr. Gandhi pulled one out and lit it up. He held the smoke in and waited until he felt the rush from the nicotine hit before exhaling. “I can confirm their ICBM fields are destroyed,” he responded. “The Americans wiped those out. They also hit every nuclear storage site that we knew of. What I can’t say for certain is how many of their smaller tactical warheads they dispersed before they launched their attack on the Americans.”
She shook her head in frustration. “Harsh, I can’t push the PM into our corner to attack if I don’t know how many tactical nukes they may still have or where they are. If I convince him to give the go order and the PLA hits us with a few nukes, we’ll have to respond. If that happens, it’ll most certainly drag Pakistan in. I can fight and win a conventional war against the PLA, but I can’t fight and win against the PLA and Pakistan. The Chinese know that, and so does Pakistan.”
“And therein lies the rub,” Dr. Gandhi replied, blowing a smoke ring. “Pakistan—the bane of our existence. How many times have we been hampered in what we can do because of Pakistan?” Gandhi asked angrily. For decades, Indian foreign policy had been constrained by China to their east and Pakistan to their west—both nuclear-armed powers.