Elvis had broken up the attack on the aid station but that did not mean it was safe. Probably dozens of wounded men would be executed mercilessly if these Communists got over that hill. He ran from the last grenade explosion with bullets flying all around him, or at least it seemed that way. He was gasping for air when he jumped into a shell crater. He had taken two bullets to the chest. The vest stopped both of them. One bullet hit the ceramic plate on the center of the vest and caused him no discomfort at all but the other hit only Kevlar and it felt like it broke one of his ribs. Hopefully it did not puncture a lung. He had trouble catching his breath.
The whole hillside was infested with many more enemy soldiers now than it was just ten minutes ago. ‘Maybe two hundred,’ he thought to himself. His thoughts alternated from how he would keep alive and escape to the thought of his friends and buddies murdered like Gabriel and Boris. For a small moment he closed his eyes, nodded his head forward. “Thy will O Lord, not mine be done” he whispered. No sooner did he finish the sentence when a beautiful, warm feeling flowed down through his chest and filled his belly. He could feel it roil inside of him. His eyes flew open and his backbone literally stiffened. There was no question that he would fight it out. He knew the Lord had communicated with him as surely as he knew anything. He would never have doubted or second guessed it had he lived a hundred years, which of course was not likely. He would be lucky to live a hundred seconds.
Elvis peered over the top of the crater. While it was true that there were numerous Communists on the hillside they were poorly equipped for night fighting. He was a few hundred meters behind the front line and he had seen only one officer with night vision goggles on. The officer was kneeling and looking in the general area of the TRAP gun. The AK47 sights were a little awkward to use with his night vision eyepiece but as he sighted the rifle a couple of times he got used to it. He aimed, Wham! The Officer disappeared along with the goggles. At sixty meters he was sure he hit him. Elvis quickly jumped out of the crater and crawled twenty meters away and laid flat. A few rifle rounds flew blindly over the crater he had just left. The guy who fired them was laying in plain view. It was pathetic. Elvis killed him with one shot then crawled some more. He could crawl and kill like this for a while before he bought the farm but it would not stop the assault. He then remembered the tank with the driver he had killed. He crawled to the edge of a small rise overlooking the tank and saw it was still intact. He crawled toward the tank, stopped, looked and listened a couple of times when he saw a soldier clamber up on top of the tank. The soldier put his right leg in the top hatch and sat on top of the turret. The tanker then raised his left leg to put it into the hatch when Elvis shot him. The body fell backward and hung at an awkward angle with one leg in and one leg out of the hatch. Elvis stood and ran a zigzag pattern the remaining thirty meters toward the tank before dropping again. Two soldiers lay prone behind the tank. One was firing a cut off version of the AK47 into the night. The other had his hand up in the air in a tentative surrender to an unseen enemy. Elvis put three rounds into the one firing then turned the gun toward the other.
“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” Yelled the Communist at the top of his lungs.
“Silence,…uh, uh American!” hissed Elvis to shut him up. He moved in closer and whispered. “Get your other hand up.” The soldier obeyed. “You the tank commander?”
The soldier, still lying on his belly silently pointed to the dead man lying next to him.
“I’m the gunner.”
“Get up.” Elvis frisked the soldier while nervously looking around. He took the man’s Makarov 9mm handgun and one of his grenades. “Get up there,” Elvis said, “and get in.”
The gunner got on the tank and started climbing up the turret. Elvis grabbed his pant leg.
“I’ve got a grenadelxxi, I’m pulling the pin,” Elvis said as he flattened the pin wings. He grasped the smooth baseball sized bomb with all four fingers holding the safety lever tightly against the grenade, put his index finger through pin ring and pulled. “I die, you die.”
The man simply stared into the blackness of the night, nodded his head once, continued to climb then disappeared into the tank. Elvis hated the idea of climbing up to the top of that tank. He couldn’t climb in the drivers hatch with a dead man blocking it. The loaders hatch was buttoned down and that left only the commanders hatch. Elvis suddenly remembered how tight a fit it was when he climbed into a captured T62 and T55 tank back in basic training at Guantanamo.
He realized that his vest may make it too tight of a fit to get down that hatch. He pocketed the handgun and started ripping at the Velcro straps that held the vest in place. He finally got the vest off concentrating on his hold of the grenade. He took a couple of quick breaths, made his characteristic growling sound and jumped on the tank. He heard a voice calling out behind him, “hey, did you capture an American?” Elvis did not break stride as he muttered, “yes, over there” and jumped feet first down the hatch. Elvis found himself sitting in front of the Commander’s console with the gunner sitting patiently next to him. Elvis’ helmet and night vision was knocked askew. In the jet blackness he said, “get that hatch closed.”
“Hey, hey!” yelled the voice outside the tank.
The gunner reached up, grabbed the hatch handle and yelled, “Get off the tank, we’re moving out”
“Oh… are you alright?” the inquisitor asked as the gunner slammed the hatch shut.
Through the driver’s open hatch he heard the muffled question, “Where’s the American?”
Elvis, still adjusting his night vision, turned to the gunner and said, “close that hatch too.”
The gunner moved in the exceedingly cramped confines as only one who wants to save his own life can move. The gunner moved his foot pedals and slinked out of his seat like a child sliding out of his high chair. He pushed the driver’s body forward to slump over the controls. He lay upside down on the body of his poor dead friend and facing the hatch, struggled to get it closed. This was a sliding hatch and more difficult to slide back in place especially in his awkward position. As the gunner struggled with it he heard a different voice from outside the tank. This one was more insistent and demanded, “What the blank is going on?”
The gunner yelled “Get the blank out of my way, I’m not tellin’ ya again,” as the hatch finally buttoned down.
The gunner spoke now as if to calm a child’s tantrum. “I will do whatever you say just put the pin back in the grenade”
“Shut up!” responded Elvis. “Get on the radio. You get them to hit this hill with artillery. You make them believe it or you’re a dead man!”
There was a pause. Elvis was just about to add a few more threats when the gunner responded, “I will.”
The gunner grabbed the microphone “Armor three-seven-eight to fire control, armor three-seven-eight to fire control. Fire mission same grid co-ordinates as last mission. We have been beaten back. Enemy still in control of hillside. Fire for effect.”
Another voice crackled on the speaker. “Armor three-seven-eight, this is Captain Vazquez. I’ve got men on that hillside, Commander.”
The gunner, now playing the role with gusto, decided to take a gamble. He knew how far back from the fighting this Captain was likely to be and what a bewildering assemblage of hodge-podge units he was in command of. This tank was pulled from its regular motorized rifle unit and thrown into the assault along with anything else that was mobile and ready to travel. “You’re not here Captain. I am. I’m telling you the enemy has the hill. We need fire support now!”
“Who is this?” crackled the Captain.
“This is tank gunner Sergeant Felix Prieda. Tank commander is dead, Sir. Sniper.”
The Captain posed a question to all within radio range. “Anyone know this Sergeant Prieda?”
Another voice came very faint came through the speaker, “Armor four-two- nine, I know Prieda, Sir. That’s him Sir.”
The Captain tried again. “BMP seven-nine
-three, this is CO, Captain Vazquez. Can you confirm the fire mission request? Over”
“BMP seven-nine-three to CO, no sir, we’re stuck on the road. A tank is blocking the road, being cleared now and we’re trying to find a detour. I hear small arms and grenades maybe some enemy mortars on the hill. Heavy casualties Sir.”
There was a long pause then he heard the Captain’s voice again. “Fire mission authorized,” followed by a different voice. “on the way.”
Elvis smiled. It was too good to be true. He had just called in Communist artillery on Communist positions. He turned to the gunner. “Get in the driver’s seat and let’s move out. Go up the hill.”
“I” the gunner paused “I…”
“What is it? What?” demanded Elvis.
“I need the light on. I barely know how to drive this thing,” the gunner said.
“Ok,” Elvis responded in condescending irritation, “go ahead.”
A dim red light clicked on and for the first time the gunner saw Elvis. They were sitting side by side. He looked almost alien to the gunner with the night vision eyepiece turned toward him.
Elvis flipped up the eyepiece and turned toward the gunner, their faces not more than a foot apart. “Well, get moving.”
The gunner grabbed the body of his friend. It had already started to stiffen. With great effort he drug him out of the driver’s compartment. The tank was not built with enough space for an extra body in it. Somehow he shimmied over the body and dropped into the driver’s seat.
The gunner craned his neck around to see the lower half of Elvis’ body sitting in the Commander’s seat directly behind and above him. He could see a Makarov handgun in one hand and he was gripping the grenade in the other.
“Please put the pin back in that grenade,” the gunner said “If I don’t go with you they’re gonna shoot me for calling in that artillery. I’ve got to go with you now. I don’t want to burn in this tank. Put that…”
“Man, you’re a regular chatty Cathy. Shut. Up.” Elvis said in slow, loud staccato, “Drive the tank.” He paused and listened for the artillery over the roar of the engine as the gunner started up the engine. He looked around the interior of the tank. He had wished he paid more attention to the training that was available to all FCAF units regarding Communist vehicles. Even though he got the rudiments of the T62’s operation, the gun sights, loading and firing the gun and driving, he was neither interested in the subject or motivated to take the training seriously. Nothing inside this tank looked familiar to him.
“I don’t hear any artillery yet. Is it coming?” Just then they both heard a low thrumming sound as a large round flew overhead then the impact. More rounds started to fall all around them rocking the tank and pinging shrapnel against its armor. Elvis was still wearing the grenade ring on his finger and decided the gunner’s suggestion a good one. He put the pistol in his pocket and started to put the pin back in, which was like threading a needle in the dark.
The gunner saw him fooling with the grenade “Don’t do that. Just open the hatch and throw it.”
Elvis did so.
The tank lurched slowly around to face downhill and stopped moving. Elvis clumsily fired the coaxial machine gun and tried to control the turret with its old toggle switch. He didn’t hit a thing.
Elvis looked down at the gunner. “I told you to head uphill.”
The gunner flipped off the interior light and said “There is a platoon of BMP’slxxii (armored personnel carriers) behind us. Their seventy three’s (millimeter guns) can kill us from behind. We’ve got to put our frontal armor toward them.”
Elvis remembered the other armored vehicles blocked by the knocked out tanks on the road. They said over the radio that they would clear the road or find a detour.
“Oh, OK, OK get back up here in the gunner’s chair,” Elvis said.
Elvis tried his best to look for the BMP’s but it was extremely awkward trying to see through the vision blocks with his night vision and impossible to see anything through the dust and debris the artillery had thrown into the air. Then he saw it.
“BMP, one o’clock. Fire at him.”
“Not a chance, I’m not shooting my own guys,” said the gunner.
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes.”
Elvis used the toggle switch to traverse the turret. “How do you elevate the gun?”
The gunner gave no response. “How!” Elvis angrily yelled.
“The two buttons next to the switch,” the gunner mumbled.
Elvis decided to take a different tack.
“Look,” said Elvis, “you’re now a soldier in the Free Cuban Armed Forces. I am your commanding Officer. I am giving you an order. You know what happens to you when you don’t follow an order?”
“Let me guess, I get shot,” the gunner said with dejected sarcasm.
“I won’t shoot you, they will. Remember, I die, you die. I’m protecting this hill till I’m relieved, that means you too.”
The gunner got into his regular position, armed the gun, then had a feeling of overwhelming revulsion. He just couldn’t fire the gun. He did not know these men in the armored vehicles, they were from another unit. Indeed, he didn’t know anyone on the battlefield except the guys in his tank platoon and they were all dead now. He had no love at all for the retched Communists that ruled him, spied on him, starved him, deprived him and treated him with contempt, but he just could not fire on fellow soldiers.
Through the constant radio chatter both of them could tell that the ruse was over. The screaming of the NCO’s (non commissioned officers) to cease fire, the screaming of the Commanding officer, Captain Vazquez for the gunner Prieda and the artillery stopped raining down.
“Look, I won’t ask you to shoot them. I just want you to load and answer my questions. That’s an order,” said Elvis in a reasonable tone.
Elvis practiced a few seconds elevating and traversing the gun. Luckily it was similar to his TRAP gun in its movements. “Where’s the firing button?”
“Flip the trigger guard and press the red button here,” said the gunner, pointing to the mechanism in front of him.
The most difficult thing now was using the night vision monocular up against the gun sight optics. At first it seemed like a hopeless task. He only caught glimpses of the target as it floated in and out of his viewfinder with the slightest movement. The optics interacted in some way that made the visual image appear as a quarter moon shape to the left of the crosshairs. It reminded Elvis of the time his teacher let him try to observe a star with a small telescope. With the slightest adjustment the star would be lost and he had great difficulty acquiring it again.
“Where do I place the crosshairs at this range?”
“Negative One-point-two meters.”
Elvis depressed the gun and fired. The shell went high by a few millimeters and flew over the personnel carrier. “Reload,” yelled Elvis.
The gunner overrode the commander’s controls, aligned the barrel in load position and ejected the casing. At that same moment Elvis had leaned over with his left hand to touch something he thought were controls when the automatic loader whacked his hand. Just another inch and it would have taken a finger or hand off. The tank struck Elvis as a monstrously dangerous place. An egg shell filled with fuel, explosives and him…and now an automatic loader that could maim him. It smelled like decades of sweat, diesel, grease and steel. Elvis had a strong impulse to get out and run.
Elvis cradled his hand “Ahh! that hurt! A little warning next time!”
The gunner slammed another shell into the breech. “You’re warned,” he said as he pointed the barrel in the general area of the Personnel Carrier. “Fire it.”
Whang! An explosion rocked the tank and it felt like someone had hit Elvis in the chest and ears with a sledgehammer. The BMP had hit the tank with its seventy-three millimeter gun. Except for the ringing in Elvis’ ears it did no damage to the tank as far as he could tell. Elvis acquired the vehicle which was m
oving to his right and fired. The explosion lifted the BMP off its tracks momentarily like a boxer receiving a body blow. Black smoke and orange fire poured out of it then the ammunition brewed up.
“Reload!”
The gunner did so. “You see any more? There are five more BMP’s in that platoon. Stick your head out of the turret and take a look,” the gunner said with a smile in his voice. “And don’t let them get behind us!”
“I think I’m fine right here,” Elvis responded. “You poke your head out,” he mumbled lamely.
Elvis patiently waited, scanning the vision blocks while the gunner took control of the turret and returned it to its loading position.
The gunner loaded and yelled, “You’re up.”
Elvis grabbed the coaxial machine gun handle and traversed the gun looking for a threat to the tank. He found numerous infantry but he was only interested in ones with RPG’s lxxiii(rocket propelled grenades) or night vision equipment. There were dozens of men heading downhill and dozens more heading uphill. The difference was that the men heading uphill obviously had his tank as their objective. Elvis assumed the personnel carriers had deployed their troops with orders to knock out the traitorous tank.
The Cuban Liberation Handbook Page 16