Countdown: M Day

by Tom Kratman

  They crossed at Babcock-Moore’s speed, and he was walking slowly. Even so, each pontoon sank perilously as the leading edge of the treads pressed upon it. The passage took two minutes, or slightly less. It only seemed like hours.

  Moore patted the tank’s rump as it rumbled off, down the infrared-marked trail, to its company’s assembly area.

  Gonna be a looongngng night. Nah, be realistic. It’s going to be two long nights, because at this rate, we won’t get the entire battalion, with its attachments, across before daylight.

  Linden, Guyana

  Speed of passage, however, picked up once the tanks were across. Everything else was in a much lower weight class, with no chance of upsetting the bridge. By an hour before dawn, the bulk of First Battalion had closed on the small city of Lethem, with only a few stragglers still to show up.

  “Snyder? Six,” Reilly radioed, with the power turned all the way up. “Are your people in contact anywhere?” His turretless Eland was parked on the Mackenzie side of town, along Republic Avenue, a couple of hundred meters from the Demerara’s east bank. Snyder’s heavily reinforced command was strung out in an east-west line, about forty miles to the north.

  “No, sir,” the Bravo commander replied, “but I’ve got both roads under observation, north and northeast of Vryheid.”

  “Any change to their status?”

  “They seem dug in pretty well, with overhead cover. Some obstacles. No mines to speak of. For recon, they don’t seem to be pushing anyone out much more than a klick from their front line. Also, we got two deserters during the night, a man and a woman. I don’t know how much of what they say to believe, but the sheer fact that they deserted says morale’s probably not good up there.”

  “Yeah,” Reilly said. “Or they could be fuck buddies who couldn’t stand the idea of one or the other getting killed.”

  “That’s possible, too, Six.”

  “So what do you think, the main road”—the Soesdyke-Linden Highway—“or the one that parallels it to the east?”

  Snyder hesitated for a half a minute before replying, “That’s a pretty big call for you to dump on me, boss.”

  “Yeah, but you can see what’s there and I can’t, at least until we get the UAVs in range and ready to go. So which road?”

  “East,” Snyder answered. “The defense status is about the same, but the river really constricts your space to maneuver to the west. The east’s more open, mostly farmland and pasture.”

  “East it is,” Reilly agreed. “Leave one platoon in the east to screen my advance. Make it the scouts …”

  “It is the scouts,” Snyder interrupted.

  “Good. The rest of your company, plus Third Battalion’s Elands, I want you to take into an attack to threaten the Linden Highway, Low Wood, and Lana. I’ll tell you when to begin, but assemble your boys starting now. If you make progress, good, but mostly I want you to attract their attention, pin them in place, and raise enough noise that they don’t hear the rest of us coming until we’re nearly upon them. Or until we put on the music, whichever comes first.”

  “Wilco.”

  “They don’t know we’re across,” George said, confidently, his eyes scanning the surrounding skies. “If they did, they’d be on us like flies on shit. Instead, they’re still going after the wrecked bridge.”

  Reilly nodded. That was his estimation, as well. “They’re going to know soon enough,” he said. Then he asked, “Did the sappers tuck the bridge back in under the trees?”

  “Yes,” the battalion’s top NCO answered, “just as soon at the last vehicle was across.”

  “All right, then …time to start to roll. Or rock and roll, if you prefer.”

  George took a look at the floppy hat on Reilly head and started to take off his own helmet. “You really need to take—”

  Holding up a restraining hand, Reilly stopped him cold. “No, Top; it’s my own goddamned temper that cost me the old one. My fault, my problem, and until a new one shows up …”

  George dropped the hands that had begun tugging at his helmet straps. “You’re pig headed, sir; anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Vices of my virtues, Top; I’ve always been that way.”

  Even heavily upgraded into Jaguars, the T-55 was not remotely as quiet as an American Abrams. Still, there were degrees of noisy. The sound a T-55, or a load of them, produced at five miles an hour, with the engine practically idling, was a lot less than the cacophony they put out rolling at thirty. It also cut down substantially on the dust raised, though Reilly had three water trucks at the point of the column to spread enough moisture to keep the dust to a minimum, anyway.

  “Battalion,” Reilly ordered over the radio, “speed of march is slow …Roll.”

  As he gave the command, already the sound of firing—Snyder’s merry pirates in action—came from the northwest.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Valour is still value. The first duty for a man

  is still that of subduing Fear. We must get rid of Fear;

  we cannot act at all till then.

  —Thomas Carlyle,

  On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History

  Soesdyke-Linden Highway,

  South of Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

  Mao flopped himself behind the berm fronting Larralde’s command bunker and slithered in. A stream of machine gun bullets followed him, chipping wood from the trees and raising meter-high spouts of dirt and dust from the berm.

  “They’re not really trying, sir,” Arrivillaga announced. “This is a fucking feint.”

  “Seems like they’re trying to me,” Larralde said.

  “No …no. I got a good look. There’s not a single tank out there, only some armored cars—those old French jobs, I think—with guns. I figure I saw half of them and that half came to no more than ten vehicles. That’s a company, though maybe a big one, and it’s holding an entire battalion in place. But a company, attacking a battalion, is not serious. It’s playacting. And, somehow, I think the rest of their heavy battalion got across the Essequibo. Just a feeling, mind you, but I know of no contrary facts to dispute it.”

  “Okay,” Larralde agreed, “they’re acting. And maybe they did cross the river in the night.” He dropped down to the bottom of the dugout, picked up a field telephone, and began to turn the crank to contact higher. He passed on Mao’s observation, and was duly tut-tutted away by the battalion operations officer.

  “Look,” Larralde insisted, “just pass it on to brigade, will you?” Finally, in exasperation, he slammed the phone back on its cradle.

  Hmmm …maybe I should have let Hugo relieve the lot of them.

  “Battalion says not to worry about it.”

  “Best proof possible that we should be worrying about it,” Arrivillaga countered.

  “Yeah.” Changing the subject to something he could do something about, he asked, “How are the troops holding up?”

  Mao gave a wicked and cynical grin. “Scared shitless, frankly. If I were the brigade commander I’d put a line of MPs out, about a kilometer back, to shoot on sight anyone who runs.”

  “Casualties?”

  Mao shook his head. “Not a one, which is another reason I think it’s a feint.”

  “Hmmm …if it’s a feint here, I wonder where it won’t be.”

  “East,” Arrivillaga answered. “The river’s too constricting to the west. Not that we can do much about that; it’s not even our battalion’s sector.”

  Road to Saint Cuthberts, Guyana

  The scouts, now rejoined to the mass of the battalion, were about five kilometers forward, moving in a ragged line to the north, slowly. Reilly had his own APC parked a half a klick south of the intersection. Dismounted, standing by the side of the road, he gave each of his subordinate units their final orders as they came abreast of him.

  First came the battery. “Over there, one klick,” Reilly told Bunn, the battery commander. His good arm stretched to the northwest, showing the direction.
“Priority of fires to the scouts, initially, then to me, personally.”

  After the battery came C Company’s fifteen functioning tanks, plus a weapons platoon. Two more Jaguars were broken down along the road to the south with Dumisani and Viljoen’s crew trying desperately to get them moving again.

  “Turn your mortars over to the battalion mortar platoon and your AT guns to the sergeant major,” Reilly ordered. “Up this road …form on line, center of mass four kilometers in, parallel to the road and north of it, oriented northwest. Assume we’re going to change to ‘armor, Alpha’ as soon as we break them.”

  “Roger, sir,” Captain Green answered. “I’ll keep my first platoon on my left.”

  “Good. Go.”

  A Company arrived, three platoons of mechanized infantry with a section of Elands, another of mortars, and a brace of towed, 60mm antitank guns.

  “You won’t need those for now,” Reilly said, pointing at the guns. “Turn them over to the sergeant major. Your mortars go to Master Sergeant Peters. For the rest, form up behind the tanks, south of the road, spread out to support them.”

  Alpha drove off in the wake of Charlie. Peters’ six 120mm mortars came next. Peters spit tobacco juice over the side of his vehicle, then turned his attention to Reilly.

  “Sergeant Peters, take control of those four mortars gaggling about. You all fall in behind the infantry. Don’t set up until I tell you, which isn’t going to be until you can range the airport. Then …” Reilly stopped speaking, listening for a moment to the chattering of massed machine guns, interspersed with a series of heavier blasts. Then he said, happily and with a broad smile, “I see the scout platoon has made contact.”

  Soesdyke-Linden Highway,

  South of Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

  “Ah, shit,” Mao said, as more firing broke out to the east. He repeated it as soon as he heard and felt the heavier blasts of a mass of cannon, firing from somewhere farther south. “I told you, didn’t I?” Scant seconds later, the shells from those cannon began falling somewhere on the sister battalion to the east. Again, Arrivillaga repeated, “Ah, shit.”

  Suddenly the rate of cannon fire doubled, as some new battery, farther to the east, opened up.

  “Heavy mortars,” observed Larralde. “No cannon can match that rate of fire. You were right, Top, this attack wasn’t serious.”

  “So what the fuck do we do, sir? This is heavy tactical thinking. That’s your job, not mine.”

  Larralde licked his lips and exhaled loudly. “You stay here. I’m taking First and Third Platoon and stretching them at right angle. You thin out Second to cover the entire front.” The major chewed at his lip for just a moment before shouting, “Go!”

  As Larralde crept out from the command bunker, keeping carefully low lest that not serious attack on his company turn dreadfully serious for him, he heard something approximating music:

  “I AM IRONMAN!”

  “Now that,” Mao shouted after his commander, “that is serious.”

  Tank Charlie Three-three,

  Southeast of Cheddi Jagan Airport, Guyana

  The basset hound didn’t need to be told to get down into the bustle rack. As soon as it heard the first rounds of machine gun fire, it padded over on its own.

  Stupid humans, it thought. Disturbing my sleep for no worthwhile reason. Even so, it knew its duties. The dog raised its muzzle and added its own voice—Ahwooo—to: “I AM IRONMAN.”

  Wagner watched it go, then reached down to flick the lever that let his seat fall. Long experience let him flick it enough to drop him to where only the top of his head and his eyes peered out over the cupola. With one hand he reached back to pull the hatch to an almost closed position, over and protecting his head.

  The grunts, still in their APCs, were about two to three hundred meters behind the line of tanks. Their machine guns rattled, rounds passing between the tanks, beating down any return fire that might have hurt their Panzerkameraden. It wasn’t quite sufficient to suppress all the return fire; the Venezuelans were sending back a pretty good volume of small arms.

  Watching the bright dots of the tracers, Wagner’s eyes scanned for a target worthy of his main gun, the 105. He found it in the form of a bunker. Again he flicked the seat’s lever, falling down to where his eyes were parallel with the commander’s gun sight. He twisted the sight until he had a good view of the bunker.

  “Gunner …HE, delay …one o’clock …bunker, with heavy machine gun,” Wagner ordered through the intercom.

  The turret spun smoothly as it and the gun gave off a hydraulic whine.

  “Target,” the gunner announced in a fraction of the second. The main gun already had a round of high explosive loaded.

  “Fire!”

  The tank rocked with the recoil. Peering again through his sight, Wagner saw a cloud of evil black smoke and a collection of splintered logs where the bunker had been. Immediately, he popped up again and began scanning for a new target. This was made considerably harder by the fact that Peters’ mortars were now in operation, tossing between them a hundred or more shells a minute at the Venezuelan lines. Angry orange flowers blossomed, then turned black. Even this far back, one could hear the whine of malevolent bits of shell casing, coursing through the air.

  Wagner couldn’t see them, but was pretty sure that the grunts were now pouring out of their carriers like a horde of angry soldier ants in full “lunch-em” mode and forming up for an assault. He popped his seat almost all the way down, stood on it, and took over once again the heavy machine gun mounted in front of the commander’s cupola. Grasping the spade grips, one in each hand, he pressed his chest to the gun and automatically began to press the firing butterfly with his thumbs. The gun gave off a steady thunkthunkthunkthunking as it vibrated in Wagner’s hands and against his chest. The first burst was high, flying over a fighting position the sergeant thought not worth wasting a major round on. He shifted his aim lower and pressed the butterfly again.

  The gun was badly out of sync with the music:

  “PLANNING HIS VENGEANCE

  THAT HE SOON WILL UNFOLD”

  Behind the line of infantry, spreading out between their carriers and taking the prone, Reilly used binoculars to scan the Venezuelan line. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, just some indicator that they were on the cusp of breaking. Cessation of return fire from the bunkers that the tanks were crushing into so much strawberry jam couldn’t say much about that. Each hit only indicated some of the enemy were dead, not that any of them were broken in spirit. The lessening of return fire helped a bit, but that was accounted for, in part at least, by death or wounds.

  And one of the bastards with an RPG, holding his fire like a clever lad, could be the end of one of my crews.

  No, what Reilly needed was …

  Private Emilia Suarez—Second Squad, Third Platoon, Company A, First Parachute Battalion—could feel the hot urine running down her legs. Even so, she kept on with her job of breaking open boxes of machine gun ammunition and passing the bandoleers to the assistant gunner. The gun’s barrel was smoking already. Even if her terror, she hoped she wouldn’t have to help change the red hot barrel.

  Suarez felt something like huge fists, lancing through the air to strike bags of meal. Before her eyes, the assistant gunner’s chest exploded in a shower of blood, bone fragments, and torn guts and lungs, while the gunner’s head simply disintegrated and disappeared, causing a red torrent to spray straight upwards for an eternal moment.

  Still clutching in her hands the bandoleer she’d been about to pass to the AG, Suarez rocketed out of the machine gun bunker, then stood and ran, screaming her lungs out like some mad thing.

  And that’s what I was looking for, Reilly exulted. Sweeping his field glasses a little higher, he saw four or five more troops doing the bugout boogie to the rear. “Gotcha, ya fuckers.”

  He picked up a microphone. Keying it cut off the music, allowing him to speak directly through the loudspeakers. It also
sent out the same message via radio. “First Battalion! Into the assault …Forward.”

  I always did like the way the Russians did some things, Reilly thought, as his grunts arose, screaming, the tanks and APCs lurched forward, firing, and Black Sabbath resumed its soul-sucking chorus:

  “NOW HE HAS HIS REVENGE!”

  “Snyder? Reilly. Increase the pressure on the fuckers to your front. Now!

  “Faugh A Ballagh, motherfuckers!” Clear the way.

  The driver, Glass, heard the orders as well as Wagner had. On the word, “Forward,” he gave the tank full throttle, lunging at the enemy line. The acceleration pressed Glass back into his seat, even as it threw Wagner into the commander’s hatch, temporarily ruining the latter’s aim.

  A single RPG round lanced out, striking the tank to Three-three’s left, next to the driver, in the overhang under the gun mantlet. The hot jet from the warhead must have burned through and struck a ready shell, because the tank exploded in an instant, the turret blown high into the air, spinning. Fires erupted, shooting upward from the now vacant turret ring and the still occupied driver’s hatch.

  With a curse—those had been his friends in that tank!—Wagner swung his machine gun over, peppering the spot from which the RPG appeared to have been launched with heavy chunks of bronze-jacketed lead: Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunkthunk.

  Others joined their fire to his. It was apparently too much for the enemy soldier who had destroyed the tank. Wagner spotted a single man, running pell-mell to the rear. He fired and missed; fired and missed. On the third burst, after a quick adjustment of aim, followed by a long, ten-round stream, the Venezuelan antitank gunner’s legs went one way, while his body, spinning head over blood-gushing stumps, went the other.