Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  Cazz had an additional cause for satisfaction. This was the ferry, to all appearances undamaged, though draped with bodies. Indeed, the ferry’s engine was still idling, putting a thin stream of diesel smoke into the air.

  When I kick in Bravo company to stomp the enemy flat, we’re gonna get the rest across this river in style.

  Even light tanks can make a considerable racket. Thus, Lott heard their approach long before the outpost on his far right started reporting their order of march.

  Lying in a bush, peering out toward the road, some sixty meters away, Lott, like his men, wore grease paint to hide the features and the shine of his sweaty face. He held the firing devices—“clackers,” in the parlance—for two directional mines, one in each hand. They’d be mostly useless against armor, of course, Though I might get lucky and cap a tank commander or two, but they were the best things available to indicate to his entire company that the enemy column was exactly where he wanted it and that they should open fire. This was a partial exception to the rule on initiating and ambush with the greatest casualty producing weapon available. When dealing with both a ambushing force and an enemy of these sizes, positioning of the target—and making sure it was all in the kill zone—was more important than getting a few more kills with the first blow.

  From where he lay, Lott could see all the way to the leftmost end of the ambush position, nearly four hundred meters away. That would be his key to fire, when their point reached it. To his right, also, Lott could see far up the road. Indeed, his heart leapt as he saw the lead enemy tank, barrel-assing down the road and churning up enough dust that, Ah, shit, I’m not going to be able to see their point when they reach my left flank. Damn the things you never really think of.

  Lott’s heart, which had begun pounding at his first glimpse of the enemy, started to beat so strongly that it almost felt as if he were being tossed a few inches into the air with each stroke.

  Four RPGs, and not just any old RPGs, but RPG-29 Vampires, were a lot of firepower.

  At his level, Master Sergeant John Biltz. the platoon leader for Second Platoon, didn’t have to worry about signaling; he was the one being signaled to. Thus, he had all four of the Vampires near him, on line, and aimed up the road. Two he had set on the same point; that lead tank must die, to block the road. The other two, farther to his left, were aimed at points beyond where he intended to kill that first tank.

  The Vampire was a bit of an odd duck, in the great RPG clan. Much heavier than most, at twenty-seven pounds, unloaded, it was really a crew-served weapon in a way that, say, the old RPG-7 had not been It actually had more in common, and not just in its weight class, with the U.S. Army’s old M-67 recoilless rifle. As a heavy piece, it was best, when used in an ambush, to set it for a target and wait for the target to line itself up. Moreover, like the old M-67, it had a monopod for stability. Indeed, since the rocket burned itself out completely before ever leaving the tube, it was, in practice, more of a smoothbore recoilless than it was a rocket launcher.

  It didn’t have quite the accuracy of the M-67, despite being a much newer design. But what it lacked in accuracy, it more than made up for in punch. The Vampire could defeat explosive reactive armor and still burn through thirty inches of steel.

  The Scorpions Biltz could see rolling in his direction had, at best, about three percent of that, and aluminum, not steel.

  Wide eyed, wide eyed enough, in fact, that the Venezuelans probably could have seen his whites if they’d been looking, Biltz watched the Scorpions roll closer and closer. They were soon well past the point where the commander should have fired his Claymores, initiating the ambush.

  “What the fuck …”

  One of the Vampire gunners, his target gone past his scope’s line of sight, shot Biltz a questioning, even fearful, glance.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  If the sky that we look upon

  Should tumble and fall

  And the mountains should crumble to the sea

  I won’t cry, I won’t cry, no I won’t shed a tear

  Just as long as you stand, stand by me

  —Ben King, “Stand by Me”

  Nine Miles North of San Martin de Turumban, Venezuela

  Master Sergeant Biltz had two nicknames in the regiment. One, Blitzen, as in Santa’s reindeer, was used to get his goat. The other, though, Blitz—Lightning—was altogether more serious and an indicator that everyone had faith in his ability to think and act like lightning when under pressure.

  He was already rolling—no time—toward the nearest Vampire gunner—to clear the backblast area—when the nearest Venezuelan Scorpion—no time—was about fifty meter away—to even aim.

  Biltz—Blitz—snatched the Vampire from its gunner’s hands and stood upright, slinging the thing to one shoulder as he did. Automatically, his right leg stepped back as he lined the muzzle up approximately with the center of the light tank.

  Now it was a Venezuelan soldier’s eyes that grew wide at the apparition of an enemy growing straight up from the ground with what looked like a murderous weapon aimed at him. Caught between trying to give commands to his crew and trying to swing his own machine gun around, the tank commander succeeded in neither before Biltz fired.

  Three things combined to knock Biltz silly. One was that in his unavoidable haste to get the gun into action, he’d neither noticed, nor been able to do anything about it if he had noticed, that there was a rather large tree behind him at the moment he pulled the trigger. The backblast from the rocket hit that tree, bounced off, and effectively slapped him from behind with a vaporous two by four. The second was that, a mere fraction of a second later, the warhead hit the tank, exploding and hitting Biltz from in front with a another figurative two by four. He’d likely have stayed there, swaying in indecision between falling on his face and falling on his ass, except that that jet from the warhead managed to burrow its way into the Scorpion’s ready ammo rack, setting it off, blowing the turret and the by now very dead tank commander into the sky, and knocking Biltz flat on his butt.

  Lott caught a glimpse of the enemy tank turret rising through the trees, leaving a trail of thick smoke behind it. Thank God! His fingers clenched down on the firing devices, setting off the claymores farther forward. One of them hit nothing, so far as Lott could tell. But one was at least in the right position to sweep the rear half of a truck overloaded with infantry. A dozen men or more went down, screaming and shrieking in a spray of blood and gore, while the remainder added a chorus of horror experienced too near at being covered with bits and drops of their comrades.

  Lott heard only a couple of the distinctive blasts from his Vampires; they, quite properly, were waiting for a target to come to them. The machine guns, however, along with the rifles, began a continuous volley that sounded like nothing so much as cloth being ripped. That continuous volley, then, was punctuated by more Vampires, and still more as ones that were fired were reloaded and began a more active hunt for targets.

  Rojas couldn’t feel his legs and was reluctant to look down to see if they were still there. His left arm, he knew—he couldn’t help but know—wasn’t there anymore. Rojas thought that maybe it might be on the ground, on the other side of the tank. His right hand still gripped the machine gun, pintle-mounted atop the turret, but he didn’t have the strength to move it. Though he could feel, even more than hear, the firing of heavy weapons, no more rockets were coming his way now. He was distantly aware of that, just as he was distantly aware of the probable reason—the flames arising from the driver’s hatch. He wasn’t in any pain. If he’d had any doubts about whether or not he was dying, that fact would have dispelled them.

  Too eager …I was too eager. Damn.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Rojas’ fingers relaxed their grip on the machine gun. His head nodded forward slowly, finally coming to rest on the edge of his own hatch. Too …eager.

  San Martin de Turumban, Venezuela

  Even nine miles away, and even before Lott called to confirm,
Cazz knew, because he heard, that the ambush had been sprung. It was time.

  “B Company, commence your attack.”

  From the woods to the right, on the other side of the river, a banshee howl arose, interspersed with heavy machine gun fire and an unmistakable barrage of Vampires, firing thermobaric warheads.

  “And don’t fuck with my soon-to-be trucks!”

  There were a dozen of them, including the three trucks Lott had managed to salvage and send back. The trucks were mostly much the worse for wear, and Lott’s haul still dripped blood, but Cazz expected they’d last the sixty-odd miles by road to Tumeremo. Delta and Bravo Companies, with two squads of engineers—the other was running the ferry—plus the bulk of the scout platoon and some of the heavy mortar platoon, was loading them, rather overloading them, even now.

  To the west, a pillar of smoke arose from the large airfield, where the scouts had managed to catch that one plane on the ground before finishing off the defenders and moving to rejoin the battalion.

  Down at the river, the ferry was moving supplies across as the mule train staggered up to the load point. At about thirty laden animals a trip, it was slow going. There weren’t any bodies on the ferry anymore; the troops had unceremoniously pitched those over the side, to float downstream.

  A half dozen of the trucks had a 120mm mortar attached to their towing pintles. Some of the spillover among the troops hung onto two overloaded Tiunas they’d captured. A line of mortar maggots were even further overloading those, and the trucks, with ammunition they pulled from the backs of the much-relieved mules, as those came across by ferry. A third Tiuna Cazz had grabbed for himself, with Singh at the wheel. The battalion supply sergeant was working on getting a fourth up and running. The S-4, himself, sat in the back of Cazz’s commandeered vehicle.

  Also down by the ferry, a bevy of about fifty Venezuelan POWs sat in the shade under guard. Cazz had ordered that only walking wounded be used for that. He had some few of those. He also had some dead: one scout, two men from Delta, one from Bravo, and eight from Alpha. The Venezuelan tanks had not died easy, nor without a fight, despite being caught in such a shitty position.

  Time matters more than ammunition, men, or—in this case—even organization, Cazz thought. And enough of it’s been wasted.

  He strode to the Tiuna and stepped up onto the hood, via the bumper. “Five minutes!” he bellowed, loudly enough to be heard even over the uneven coughing of the trucks’ diesel engines.

  Tumeremo, Venezuela

  Looking through his field glasses at the encampment around the airfield, a few miles south of the town, Master Sergeant Austin grinned. It’s like looking at Bambi Meets Godzilla, he thought. The wide eyed innocence …the flurry of nervous activity …this pervading sense of doom. Hehehe.

  “Hey, Sergeant,” said Austin’s radioman, “de colonel, he wan’ you.”

  The sergeant dropped the binoculars, rolled to his back, and took the microphone from an outstretched hand. “Austin here, sir.”

  “We’re coming, Sergeant. We’ve got the ferry and we’ve got some badly overloaded trucks. What’s the situation there?”

  Unseen, the sergeant nodded. “They seem to be aware of what happened, and are currently somewhere between stout defense and panic mode.”

  There was a brief delay. Apparently the battalion commander was musing on something. Finally, he asked, “Can you call in the heavy mortars? We didn’t have time to load more than maybe fifty rounds, but if you think that might scatter them …”

  “It might. No promises; I don’t read minds. But, yes, I can adjust.”

  “Stand by.”

  Highway Ten, South of Tumeremo, Venezuela

  Driving at a bone jarring pace, they’d only halted only once and only long enough to enable Delta Company to pick up their AT gunners. The ambush position had been a sickening sight and an even more sickening smell, with the stench of burned bodies, blood, and cordite mixing in the air. With no more ceremony or time given than required to physically haul the Vampires and their crews, plus Delta’s weapons platoon sergeant aboard, the column set off again, moving as fast as the dirt road would permit.

  At the intersection of the road to San Martin and Highway Ten the column turned right, onto the good asphalt of the latter. The ride immediately smoothed.

  “Faster, my brothers!” Cazz had intoned over the radio.

  Cazz consulted his map and his GPS, and then mentally reviewed the ground ahead. He looked right and thought, That will do. Having reached a decision, he held one hand up beside Singh’s face, the hand clenched into a fist. The batman stopped Behind the Tiuna, the column of trucks likewise came to a halt, amidst a symphony of screaming brakes.

  Pointing to a flat spot off to the right, Cazz bellowed, “Mortars, unass the trucks and get your guns. You set up there. Emphasis on getting at least one section laid in, in a hurry. And don’t forget your fucking ammunition. Mortar platoon leader?”

  A lieutenant, though he’d left the Marine Corps as a captain, ran up and saluted.

  “You set up there. Master Sergeant Austin has priority of fires. Give me a high sign when you’ve got everything you need.”

  “I need about three hundred more rounds, sir.”

  Cazz snarled, “Don’t waste my time. Everything you need of what’s available.”

  “Yessir.”

  * * *

  “Mount up,” Cazz ordered. “Go, Singh.”

  With the mortars hastily lying in behind him, the column set off again up the highway. Here it was good asphalt and they made good time accordingly. At a point where the road began the second leg of a broad S-turn, about four miles south of the town and a mile and a half from the airfield, Cazz again called a halt and stood up in the Tiuna.

  “D Company,” he shouted, pointing north in the direction of a ridge that paralleled the highway, “our objective is the airfield on the other side of that ridge. Fix the enemy to the south of the field. Now dismount and go! The rest of you, follow me.”

  “Guns up,” Sergeant Austin heard over the radio. “That is to say, one section of three is up and ready to fire. We’ve got limited ammunition, so use it sparingly.”

  “Roger,” Austin replied. “Adjust fire. Grid.”

  “Adjust fire, grid, over...”

  The fire mission was interrupted by Cazz’s voice. “Stay the fuck away from the supplies and the trucks, Austin. We need those.”

  There was a rattling from overhead and forward, as B Company dismounted, a kilometer north of the end of the S-turn. The rattling ended just before a very loud explosion shook the air.

  Newman, the B Company commander, raced up, half out of breath.

  “I’m going with you,” Cazz said. He pulled open his map and began to point. “We’re going to move straight north into those trees, then form on line and face left. Yeah, yeah, drill’s got no place on the battlefield …except when it does. This is one of those times.” A stubby, stout finger tapped Newman’s chest. “Move, Captain.”

  Turning to his S-4, still in the back of his Tiuna, Cazz said, “You stay safe. Here. And, need I repeat, safe? We’re going to need you and your people to sort the supplies, take what we need, destroy the rest, and get us moving again.”

  “More fun than herding cats.” Austin chuckled as a heavy round slammed into the ground about a hundred meters from a group of milling about, apparently leaderless, MPs. They began to run in the opposite direction.

  “Adjust fire, shift,” Austin said into the radio. Hehheheh.

  He called in the shift of target, making sure that he kept it far away from his own people, maneuvering down the north. Then he saw through his glasses a company emerging from some tree-covered low ground, east of the field.

  Won’t be long, now.

  Cazz stood almost precisely where the hard surface of the western portion of the runway gave way to the dirt of the eastern half. On both sides, columns of smoke arose from deliberately burned helicopters. He counted almost thr
ee dozen such pyres. There were a few others from fixed wing aircraft, caught on the ground. At the bases of several pyres were helicopter gunships, basically upgraded Hinds.

  “I was worried about those,” he admitted to himself. “I’m still worried about their air force.”

  Most of the battalion was scattered around the airfield, with their looted trucks. Nearly forty more trucks, from cargo to fuel to long beds with trailers, were lined up in groups of three to five north of the strip. Some of those were the dozen he’d started with. Others were newly acquired. Slowly, too slowly, the trucks were being loaded with loot from the dumps.

  We’re lucky, too, that the Venezuelans had a mix of ammunition. Most of their people are carrying 7.62 Kalashnikov. Enough of them have 5.45 for us to take two thousand rounds per man, or so. They don’t have the mortar ammunition for our 120’s. But they did have a couple of thousand rounds of Russian 120mm. We can use that, even if the range is comparative shit and the firing tables on both sides all wrong. We’ll figure the right factors for range adjustment, given a little time. For a wonder, we got a few thousand rounds for our light mortars. Fuel, we’ve got now, in abundance. Food is food and we’ve captured enough to feed the battalion for about six months. There was even a pile of mines. Damned considerate of Hugo to provide them, and I’ll tell him so to his face, if I ever get the chance. God knows why they bothered carrying light antiair missiles here—doctrine, I suppose—but thank God they did. I only had twelve of them before. Now we’ve got over a hundred.