by James Rosone
“That’s incoming. If it was outgoing, you wouldn’t hear it blowing up,” Gomez replied. He kept his eyes fixed on the scope, scanning for targets with Melton.
“Ranger Three, get your trophy system ready,” called one of the nearby tanks. “We have inbound Z-19s.”
“What the hell is a Z-19?” asked Pittaki, his voice rising an octave higher.
“Oh, Lord. Don’t tell him, Melton,” replied their driver. Then he set about making sure their IR-inhibiting smoke grenades were ready.
Pulling the zoom out on his commander’s sight extension, Melton scanned the horizon for the aerial threats. “Found it. He’s off to our three o’clock.”
“Hit the dazzler and make sure he can’t get a lock on us.”
Melton activated their antitank missile defensive suite and hoped for the best.
“Hey, those don’t look like T-96s,” Gomez said as he resumed his hunt for targets.
Before Melton could respond, they heard the scream of a jet engine as it flew low and fast over their position.
“Those are ours,” explained Melton before any of his guys could ask. He watched as the F-15 fired off a pair of missiles at the helicopters that were gearing up to attack them. Melton laughed out loud before he hit the intercom button. “He just smoked those helicopters. Now, what tanks are you talking about? Where should I be looking?” Melton asked.
“They’re still pretty far out. I think it’s the next attack wave. To our eleven o’clock, five thousand meters.”
Turning his commander’s sight in the direction his gunner had said, Melton zoomed in as far as their equipment would let him.
Damn, that kid’s got eagle eyes. I would have missed those tanks until they got closer, he reflected.
Melton pulled a Chinese vehicle identifier card out of his breast pocket and looked at it, comparing the tiny image to what he saw on his screen. “It’s hard to tell from this distance, but I think that might be a Type-99,” he announced. “If it is, then those are their top-tier tanks. This is probably going to be a big push by them.”
“All Ranger elements, we’re going to let Thunderbolt element work over the enemy tanks,” their battalion commander announced over the radio. “They’ve taken up positions to our west. We’ve been ordered to go after the infantry fighting vehicles and APCs. We have additional fast movers inbound, so if you hear fighters, they’re ours.”
“You know, I like that about our battalion commander—he goes out of his way to make sure even us lowly sergeants know what’s going on,” Gomez commented.
“Here they come. Stand by to engage,” Melton directed.
Two new pairs of attack helicopters appeared from further behind the Chinese attacking force and fired off multiple ATGMs at their sister battalion. Melton silently cursed at the new threat, angry that he was powerless to do anything about it.
Then, to his surprise, he saw the sky above the attack force light up with strings of anti-aircraft fire. Next, several missiles took off toward some unseen aerial targets. A few seconds later, two of the four attack helicopters exploded, and the other two dove for cover to try and evade whatever had been fired at them.
Brrrrrr.
“Woohoo. Did you see that A-10? He just took three tanks out in a single pass,” Gomez called out excitedly to Melton.
As he watched the scene unfold before him, Melton saw the A-10 bank hard to the left as the pilot sought to regain some altitude after his attack run. The aircraft spat out flares the whole time while multiple strings of anti-aircraft fire raced after it.
Two missiles flew up from the ground and chased the A-10. Both projectiles hit one of the flares. Then one of the strings of enemy tracers managed to cut right across the left side of the aircraft. It blew out one of the engines and ripped part of the wing right off. The damaged aircraft now trailed smoke and flames as the pilot struggled to try and escape the incoming fire.
“ZBD identified: 3,500 meters, three o’clock. Load sabot,” Gomez called out.
Melton shook the image of the A-10 from his mind and returned to the job of fighting the tank before him. He mirrored his sight to what his gunner had found for him. Sure enough, there was a wave of ZBDs, ZBLs, and ZSDs charging right behind the tanks. They were the primary infantry fighting vehicles of the PLA’s mechanized force and packed an arsenal of antitank guided missiles.
“I got ’em,” Melton announced. “Loader, switch to HEAT rounds going forward. I want to save our sabot rounds for actual tanks. Fire as soon as he crosses the 3,200-meter mark. Driver, we’re going to fire five rounds from this position and then move—so start thinking about where you want to move us.” Once the shooting started, everything was going to happen very rapidly, so Melton wanted to make sure the game plan was set.
A minute went by, and then Gomez started the action. “Firing!” he yelled.
Boom.
The glass windows on the Ford F-150 in front of them exploded from the concussion of their cannon firing. They all watched as his round raced across the more than 3,000-meter divide.
Gomez cursed when he saw the round just miss the vehicle. “Load HEAT!” he barked.
“It’s OK, Gomez. We all miss sometimes. You’ll get him with this next round,” Melton said as he sought to reassure his gunner.
Pittaki hit the button on the ammo locker, opening it up. He reached down and grabbed the HEAT round from the second-to-bottom row. Within six seconds of having fired the first round, Pittaki had the HEAT round loaded and ready to fire.
“HEAT up!”
“Firing!”
Boom.
“Load HEAT.”
“ZBS identified,” called out Gomez.
The Chinese vehicles were doing their best to change their course, sometimes doing short zigzags or slowing down and then speeding up in an attempt to throw off the tank gunners shooting at them at the last minute.
“Good hit, Gomez. You nailed him,” Melton announced.
“HEAT up!”
“Firing!”
Boom.
“Load HEAT!”
Before Gomez could fire another round, their driver threw the vehicle in reverse and gunned it. A fraction of a second later, the F-150 truck in front of them exploded. The front half of the tank got showered with shrapnel and debris.
Then the tank lurched forward as they advanced to the next firing position. While they were moving, a series of artillery rounds plastered everything around them. From inside, it sounded like a hailstorm as shrapnel peppered one side and then the other. The near misses bounced the entire tank around despite its heaviness.
Suddenly their vehicle stopped, and the gears made an odd noise.
“What’s going on?” called out Melton, fearing one of those misses might have hit something important.
“I think we threw a track,” called out the driver.
“Ah, crap! Gomez, start searching for a target. Make sure no one’s getting too close to us. I’m going topside to see what kind of damage we’re looking at.”
Melton undogged the commander’s hatch and pushed it open. Pulling himself up and out of the turret, he hopped down onto the chassis and then down to the ground. Looking at the right side of the tank, he saw it was dented in a few spots and had a ton of scratch marks from shrapnel, but the tracks and gears appeared to be in good order.
He then moved around to the left side of the tank and immediately saw the problem. A piece of shrapnel had gotten wedged between one of the tank sprockets and the track. Had their driver tried to power his way through the grinding noise, chances are he would have thrown the track. If that had happened, they would’ve been stuck until a wrecker could’ve come to help them. Given they were in the middle of a battle, that would pretty much have been the end of them as a fighting tank.
Melton climbed back up into the vehicle and stuck his head in the turret. “Pittaki, I need your help,” he hollered. “Grab the tool kit and come assist me. Gomez, get up here on the gun in case we need you to c
over us.”
While Melton and Pittaki used a crowbar and some other tools to pry the piece of metal out of where it had gotten stuck, the sounds of battle continued to rage. All around them, tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, mortars, artillery, and helicopters from both sides were in a desperate clash. It was terrifying being stuck outside their armored shell, unable to fight or do anything until they got their track system fixed.
After a couple of minutes, Melton and Pittaki finally got the piece of metal yanked out of where it had gotten wedged, and their driver moved the tank forward a couple of feet with them, observing it to make sure the track and the sprocket were good to keep moving.
Once they were back in the tank, their driver sped forward. At this point, the enemy had closed to within fifteen hundred meters. They were now at the edge of the US-Mexico border.
“Staff Sergeant, I’m going to reposition us over near the Sunland Park Elementary School,” the driver announced over the intercom. “There’s a couple Bradleys and Strykers taking up a position near the neighborhood. They look like they could use a tank, and we need some infantry support.”
“Good call. Get us moving,” Melton replied. “Gomez, turn the gun around, and let’s try and see what we can find.”
Looking through the commander’s sight extension, Melton saw most of the enemy armor was moving further west. He also saw additional helicopters on the horizon, which could prove problematic for them.
He grabbed the radio. “Ranger Six, this is Ranger Three. We’ve relocated to the Sunland Park Elementary School. I see some helicopters on the horizon. Do we have any additional air support that can deal with them?”
It took a minute for Melton to get a reply. Their CO knew about the helicopters and had placed a call in for help, but he was unsure if or when they’d receive it.
An hour went by as their company consolidated on the elementary school and formed up with the two Bradleys and three Strykers. Including Melton’s tank, they had seven of them left. Twenty-eight hours of combat and they had been whittled down from sixteen tanks to just seven. They had lost a lot of friends already, and they were far from safe.
*******
Sergeant Higgins felt a lot better now that a few tanks had come over to their position. For a while there, the 1st Battalion, 6th Infantry Regiment was down to just their couple of Stryker vehicles and a few Bradleys—not exactly an ideal setup when facing down a brigade of enemy tanks and mechanized infantry. They needed armor to deal with this threat, and that was something the Americans appeared to be short of.
His lieutenant walked up to him in a rush. “Higgins, get your fireteam up on the top floor of that building and set your machine gun up in one of the windows. Your team needs to cover this field of fire. See if you can’t get a couple of Javelins positioned in some of the nearby classrooms as well. If you spot any troops or armor heading our way, radio me and let me know. I’m sending Bravo Team to that building over there. They’ll cover your flank while you help cover theirs. Got it?” He pointed to the two buildings where he was deploying First Squad.
Looking at the school building, Higgins nodded. “On it, sir.”
Higgins turned to find his guys, then barked out some orders for them to each grab a Javelin and some extra ammo for their lone M240G machine gun. If the LT wanted them to set up a position on the top floor, then he wanted to make sure they had enough ammo and supplies for whatever might be coming their way.
After his fireteam entered the school, they eventually found their way to a stairwell that led them to the third floor. It took them a few minutes to find the best room for setting up the machine gun. While Higgins initially wanted to set it up in the corner room, he realized that it’d be the most likely room the enemy would blow up, so he moved one room over. He then had his guys place a Javelin in the next couple of rooms down the hallway. His thinking was that his team could fire one, then move down the hall to shoot the next one. This way, if the enemy fired at them, they’d be long gone and shooting from a different position.
“Sergeant, I think we have some vehicles headed our way,” called out one of the corporals.
A second later, they heard two of the tanks nearby fire their main guns. Clearly, they had found something to shoot.
Walking up to his corporal, Higgins pulled his pocket binos out of a pouch on his vest and put them to his eyes.
Damn. That looks like a dozen of ’em headed our way, he realized.
“Good eye, Corporal.”
Higgins pressed the talk button on his radio. “Lieutenant, we’ve got movement,” he explained. “Looks like about a dozen or so IFVs and APCs headed our way. I spotted a couple of tanks with them, but it looks like our tanks are taking them out. Do you want us to start using the Javelins on the IFVs or APCs?”
“Take out the IFVs first. They have more firepower, and we only have a handful of them.”
“Good copy. Out.”
He turned to Corporal Meyers. “Start hitting those IFVs with our Javelins, Corporal,” he ordered. “When you’ve shot them all off, come back here and get ready to help these guys.”
He then moved over to the two privates manning their machine gun. “We’ve got some APCs and IFVs headed our way. Make sure you guys are watching that neighborhood over there. If I were those Chinese soldiers, I’d do my best to get inside that area and use it for cover to attack us.”
“Roger that, Sergeant. We’ll be ready for them,” the soldiers replied.
This fight was gearing up to be their first actual conflict of this new war. While they had been accompanying the armor battalion for the last day, they hadn’t had the opportunity to engage any enemy infantry. Their Stryker had fired a couple of TOWs at some tanks, but they were out of missiles. All their platoon had left was six Javelins spread between the four squads.
The radio came to life. “Sergeant Higgins, I’m ready to engage those vehicles,” announced Corporal Meyers from next door. “You want me to start?”
“Yeah. Let’s get this show started.”
Pop...swoosh…bang.
Higgins watched the Javelin fly out toward the enemy vehicles. They were shooting it like an AT4, straight and level as opposed to a top-down attack—there wasn’t room for that kind of shot from inside the school. As the antitank guided missile raced through the air toward the enemy vehicles, some of them popped some IR-inhibiting smoke to try and throw the guidance system off.
The missile was halfway to its target when Higgins heard the second Javelin fire. The beautiful thing about the Javelin over the TOW or the older Dragon ATGMs was that the Javelin was a true fire-and-forget weapon. Once the target was locked in, the onboard targeting computer would guide the missile to the objective without any operator guidance.
BOOM.
Higgins saw the ZBD-04 Meyers had shot at explode. The vehicle came to a halt as flames engulfed it.
Higgins scanned to watch the second missile. Unfortunately, he did so just in time to watch it get blown up by some sort of countermeasure, right before it was about to make impact.
Dang! It was going to hit one of the Type 89s too, he thought. The Type 89 tracked armored fighting vehicles were considered deadly, and they could carry thirteen soldiers—a full squad.
“Get down!” yelled one of the privates. He dove at Higgins, knocking him to the floor.
An instant later, the entire room was suddenly getting ripped to shreds by a heavy-caliber machine gun. Then it sounded like one of the rooms they’d fired the Javelin from blew up. A second later, the room right next to them was hit, showering them with dust, smoke, and pieces of the ceiling.
“Get back on the gun!” shouted Higgins. He pushed himself up and went to check on Meyers.
As he entered the hallway, Sergeant Higgins was shocked by the scene before him. The passageway was strewn with debris, burning papers and school supplies. He kept walking forward anyway. As his eyes focused on an object further down, he realized he was looking at an arm.
&nb
sp; What the hell? he thought. And then it occurred to him that this was all that was left of Corporal Meyers. Shaking the image from his mind, he turned to head back to his machine-gun crew.
Ratatat, ratatat.
His machine-gun team was already firing at something, which meant the enemy must be close. Higgins got a couple of feet away from the room when an explosion blew him backward. His body slammed against the wall of lockers behind him. He slumped down on the ground, his head spinning. Trying to shake off the effects of the blast, Higgins looked at the room the rest of his squad was in and saw that the door and most of the wall was missing. Something had blown it up.
No, no, no…I can’t lose more of my guys, he thought.
Higgins suddenly felt a surge of adrenaline. He popped up and raced through the hole that used to be a doorway into the room. His heart sank…the two privates were torn apart. They were both dead—their bodies ripped apart by the explosion.
Zip, pop, bang!
The front of the school building was being lit up by small-arms fire now. In addition to the bullets smacking the walls, Higgins heard explosions nearby and felt the reverberations in his chest.
His radio came to life. “Higgins, if you’re still alive, I need you to get your machine gun back up and running,” said his lieutenant. “We have Chinese soldiers trying to push through the neighborhood nearby.” The sound of rifles and machine guns in the background of the transmission came through loud and clear.
Sergeant Higgins depressed the talk button. “I’m on it, LT.”
Looking around, Higgins found the M240G and grabbed it. He moved over to the blown-out wall of the building. It was easy to see what the lieutenant was talking about—at least thirty or forty enemy soldiers were bounding toward them. Scanning the area swiftly, he also saw that two of the three Strykers had been blown up, and so had both of the Bradleys. A couple of the tanks were raging infernos, but a few of them were still firing away at the enemy vehicles.
Higgins leveled the machine gun at a group of enemy soldiers, depressed the trigger, and fired several three- and five-second bursts at them. Some of the Chinese infantry went down while many more scrambled to find cover. He shifted his fire to another group of enemy soldiers he spotted charging forward.