THE TEN THOUSAND

by Harold Coyle

  Lewis, standing up, folded his arms and shook his head. "I really doubt it. But that doesn't make a difference. Scotty Dixon has a reputation for hanging his tail end over the edge. Jan knows without having to be told that Scotty is doing his duty and doing it from the front."

  "You know, Ed, I wish he weren't leading that effort. For Jan's sake, I wish he weren't."

  Leaning down, Lewis placed his knuckles back on the desk. His voice became rather stern. "No you don't, Madam President. Scotty Dixon is the best that you, the commander-in-chief, have. No. You, as the President and not the woman, want Dixon exactly where he is. Besides," Lewis concluded as he stood up, "he's a soldier. That means he's an expendable commodity. He knows that, Jan knows that, and you, the commander-in-chief, know that. It's when commanders become so concerned about the welfare of their soldiers that they are no longer willing to risk them in battle that men die needlessly and all is lost."

  Wilson shook her head. "That might be true, Ed. But it doesn't make this any easier."

  "And, Madam President, so long as you and those who follow you feel that way, this country will in my opinion be a cut above the rest." Finished, Lewis stood there for a moment. He suddenly felt very foolish for having lectured the President. It was, he realized, not the way things were done. But then again no one would ever accuse Lewis of doing things in a conventional way. Wanting to end this particular discussion, Lewis smiled. "Besides, Scotty Dixon's a brigade commander, a full colonel. There's so many people between him and the shooting that only an incredible stroke of bad luck could put him in harm's way."

  Sensing that the mood had suddenly changed, Wilson sat up and looked Lewis in the eye. There was a hint of a smile on her face. "Ed."

  "Yes, Madam President?"

  "Thanks."

  Though he didn't know exactly what Wilson was thanking him for, Lewis took it that the personal crisis she had been suffering when he had walked in had passed and that she was ready to get down to the business at hand.

  Knowing that there was no time to lose, Captain Albrecht Benen ran up and down the line of flatbed rail cars sitting in the Dermbach rail yard in an effort to hurry his men. With the sound of the rest of the 4th Panzergrenadier Division's 1st Brigade already moving north through the town, Benen knew he didn't have much time to get his men and equipment offloaded and moving to their assigned forming-up point. Looking at his watch and seeing that it was not even twenty hundred hours, Benen wondered how the rest of the brigade, using roads, had gotten there before him, formed up, and moved to join the 2nd Panzer Division. But the noise of tracked vehicles and heavily laden supply trucks rolling through the town told him that at least some elements of the brigade had.

  With no time to lose, Benen did his best to ignore the rumbling ground caused by tanks and tracked vehicles and to hasten the efforts of his soldiers. They had twelve Jaguar 1 antitank guided-missile tank destroyers, two trucks, and a small jeep to untie and get off the rail car. Doing it in the darkness of the deserted rail yard without the help of any railway workers only served to make things worse. The workers were no doubt screwing off with the police somewhere. No matter. The whole operation, from the first day that they had rolled out of their kasern to the receipt of the orders that had placed them on this train while the rest of the brigade had road-marched, had been a muddle. Why, he asked his first sergeant, should this be any different?

  The first sergeant grunted his agreement. Then, looking in the direction of the town center, the first sergeant asked if maybe it would be a good idea for someone from the company to go into town and let someone from brigade know that they had arrived. Benen, embarrassed that he had arrived late, told the first sergeant that he would do so as soon as the company was ready to move. Besides, he needed every man he had to get the company's vehicles off the rail cars and moving. That decision, however, was countered by the captain himself with his next breath. Seeing that the lieutenant who commanded the one platoon that was already off the train had his men and vehicles assembled and ready to move, the captain shouted to the lieutenant to take his platoon of three anti-tank guided-missile tank destroyers up to the center of the town and wait there until the rest of the company was ready.

  The first sergeant was about to point out that the personnel from that platoon could help offload the other Jaguar anti-tank guided-missile tank destroyers but didn't. Seeing that his commander was quite agitated and as confused in his own mind as the situation within the division appeared to be, the first sergeant shrugged and walked away. Officers, he thought, were sometimes difficult to understand. Tired from the long series of marches and countermarches that had taken them from one end of Germany to another, the first sergeant decided that this was neither the time nor place to argue with another confused and tired man. Better just to shut up and do as he was told while the officers sorted out this mess. Besides, the sound of tank engines growing fainter and fainter told him that whoever had been passing through the town's center had left. With the village cleared, at least for the moment, of military traffic, there would be little danger of their three tank destroyers getting mixed in with another convoy or adding to some other commander's confusion in the village. While the revving of engines of the lead tank destroyer platoon began to fill the rail yard, the first sergeant walked the line and shouted to his soldiers to hurry up and get a move on.

  As the last tank of the 2nd Battalion, 4th Armored Division, left the north side of Dermbach, Scott Dixon and his tactical command post entered the town from the south. Leading the small convoy from his tank, Dixon was anxious to catch up to the rear of the 2nd Battalion, if for no other reason than to tuck up within it for security. The single M-1A1 tank, three M-113 armored personnel carriers, and one M-577 command post carrier didn't offer much in the way of defensive firepower. In a pinch, against anything bigger than a platoon, the best Dixon could hope for was a valiant last stand.

  Looking down to his left, Dixon watched Colonel Vorishnov for a moment. Standing upright in the loader's hatch of Dixon's tank, Vorishnov was leaning over on his folded arms that rested on the flat race ring of the loader's 7.62mm machine gun while he looked to the front, keeping track of where they were going while watching for any sign of trouble. Like Dixon, Vorishnov was bundled up in a heavy parka with its fur-lined hood pulled up over his armored crewman's helmet. A wool scarf wrapped around his neck several times was pulled up over Vorishnov's nose to protect his mouth and nose while a set of heavy plastic and rubber goggles were pulled down to keep his eyeballs from freezing in their sockets. Like every armored crewman who had to hang out of his vehicle and face the freezing temperature and the cutting winds, both Dixon and Vorishnov had every square inch of skin covered by as many layers of clothing as they could wear while maintaining their ability to function.

  Vorishnov's desire to be up front where he could see what was going on was second only to Dixon's desire to have him nearby. Dixon had come to rely on Vorishnov's opinions and insights. It was like having a second pair of eyes that were just as keen as his own and trained to operate at the same level and speed. Vorishnov, understanding his role, never argued with Dixon and never tried to impose his own opinion on him. Instead he would stand back watching and listening. When he did have something to say or add, he would always start by saying, "Excuse me, Colonel, but could I make a comment?" By the time the order from division had come down to commence the flanking maneuver against the 2nd Panzer Division, no one on Dixon's staff would even consider commencing a briefing without the tall, stocky Russian colonel present. Vorishnov even shared Dixon's love of being a tanker, throwing himself into the task of learning how to function as a loader on an American tank. Though he couldn't help but comment every chance he had about how much better it was to have an automatic loader, like on Russian tanks, Vorishnov enjoyed being there with Dixon.

  From the second-story window of his family's small corner apartment that overlooked the town's square, seven-year-old Hans Gielber watched in fascination as
the line of three Jaguar tank destroyers moved from the rail yard toward him. Finally, he thought, the German Army had arrived. After watching American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles pass right under his own window for the last hour, someone was finally coming to stop them. Though he could only count three tank destroyers, that didn't matter. They were German tank destroyers, armed with either long-range TOW anti-tank guided missiles or the intermediate-range HOT anti-tank guided missiles. Either way, Hans knew that the big heavy American tanks would be no match for the fast, hard-hitting Jaguars that he and the other boys in his class had been learning about over the past weeks.

  Like most of his classmates, he had great confidence in the abilities of the German Army and the effectiveness of its weapons. He didn't realize that the long-range anti-tank guided missiles on the Jaguars would be ineffective at very close range in street fighting due to the warhead's arming process that required the missile to fly a considerable distance before becoming fully capable. What young Hans Gielber knew in his heart was that both the soldiers and the weapons were the products of a nation with a long, proud military heritage that combined the knowledge of great engineers with the skills of master craftsmen. Nothing made in America, he told his friends in school, could ever hope to match a precision-made German machine in the hands of a brave German soldier. That he would be able to see the vindication of his arguments from his own window excited Hans no end.

  While he intently watched the Jaguars move closer, Hans felt the floor of his apartment begin to vibrate as it had before when the last of the American tanks had come through. Pressing his face against the glass, Hans put his hands up on the window and looked in the opposite direction, down a side street that led to the south, to see if there were more American tanks coming. In the glow of the dim streetlights that circled the town square, Hans could just make out the image of a long heavy gun tube coming out of the shadows and into the town center. It was another American tank. Looking back to where the Jaguars were, Hans waited impatiently to see who would fire first. Not that it made a difference, he thought. The Jaguars would in short order reduce the American tank to a burning hulk. And he, out of all the boys in his class, would be there to see it.

  Noting that they were about to enter the town's center crowded with shops and buildings, Dixon twisted about in his open hatch to look behind him to make sure that Cerro and the armored personnel carriers were keeping up. In his desire to make up for lost time, it was easy to forget about the slower, heavily burdened carriers. In the dim lights that lit the dingy little streets of the eastern German village, Dixon could make out the image of Cerro's personnel carrier as it wound its way through the narrow streets of Dermbach. He was about to key his intercom switch to order the driver to slow down so that the rest of the command post could catch up when Vorishnov, in a voice that was excited, yet clear and concise, cut Dixon off. "German anti-tank guided-missile carrier to the front, fifty meters!"

  Snapping his neck about, Dixon instantly focused on the squat boxlike tracked vehicle emerging from a side street directly across the town square from where his own tank was coming. While his body prepared him for battle, dumping adrenaline into his blood while his groin muscles tightened to keep from venting urine or bowel, Dixon's mind automatically flipped through a mental file of armored vehicle images and profiles. Without much conscious thought needed, a voice inside Dixon's brain shouted, Jaguar.

  With that completed, Dixon's training as a tanker took over, treating the armored vehicle to his front as an enemy until such time as he could determine otherwise. With a single seamless order, Dixon shouted directions to his crew in the form of a fire command that did not come out as clear and concise as he would have liked. But that didn't seem to make a difference as the crewmen, including Vorishnov, responded to each element of the command. "DRIVER STOP! GUNNER—BATTLE SIGHT—ANTI-TANK!"

  The driver, already alerted to the presence of an enemy by Vorishnov's acquisition report, had eased up on the throttle and was prepared to continue or stop when Dixon issued his fire command. With measured practice, the driver eased down on the brake, bringing the massive tank to a smooth stop.

  The gunner, lulled into a near state of sleep, had also been jerked to life by Vorishnov's warning. By the time Dixon uttered his first word, the gunner had his eye on the primary sight, and the thermal sight switched from standby to on. Like Dixon, the gunner's training overrode any panic. Instead, his hand moved across the face of the primary sight's controls and knobs, ensuring by feel that all was ready to engage the target. Though Dixon had announced battle sight, the gunner intended to range to the target using the laser range finder integrated in the primary sight. In fact, the gunner didn't even have to think twice about that as his right thumb automatically twitched and depressed the laser range finder button on the top of the gunner controls. This action caused the 120mm main gun to jump as the computer received automatically the correct range to the target, computed a proper ballistic solution for the forthcoming engagement, and applied that ballistic solution to the tank's fire-control system, all done before Dixon had finished spitting out the last word of his fire command.

  Vorishnov, steeled for action before anyone else, had dropped to the turret floor and plopped himself down on the seat he had been standing on. Reaching across, Vorishnov grabbed the long, crooked arm that served to arm the tank's main gun as well as deflect the wide base plate of expended main gun rounds into a container hanging from the gun's breech. Finished with that, Vorishnov pulled his whole body over to one side to escape the recoil of the main gun and hung on to the handles as he had been shown.

  As he sat there watching Dixon in the dim blue-green light of the turret, he pondered whether he should ask what round Dixon wanted to load next but decided not to. Dixon's mind, he knew, was busy going over the shoot-don't shoot decision process. Vorishnov, knowing that they were facing an anti-tank unit, would load a high explosive anti-tank, or HEAT, round next, once the armor-piercing, fin-stabilized anti-tank round already in the gun's chamber was fired. He would have to announce that to the gunner so that he could change the ammunition selection lever on the primary sight and allow the fire-control computer to provide a new ballistic solution. But that was easy and worth the effort. Though Vorishnov hadn't been told, he assumed that the Americans, like his own Army, preferred the HEAT round, a chemical round that caused a-shaped-charge explosion on contact with target when engaging lightly armored vehicles and material targets. Armor-piercing rounds used against enemy tanks were nothing more than a depleted uranium slug that used kinetic energy to punch its way through the armor plate of the target. Against the Jaguar there was the chance that the armor-piercing round would sail through both sides of the Jaguar without destroying it. Though Vorishnov doubted that would happen, a HEAT round next time would be better.

  If there was any doubt in Dixon's mind about whether or not he should engage the Jaguar across the square from him, he didn't dwell long on it. They were committed to war. First blood had been drawn, and this was neither the time nor place to determine if the crew of the Jaguar across from them was made up of good Germans or bad Germans. Only the fact that Vorishnov had forgotten to announce that he was UP, or ready for action, caused a delay. Out of habit, Dixon shouted, "LOADER! ARE YOU UP?"

  Vorishnov, realizing his error, shouted, "UP," then silently cursed himself for being so stupid.

  Dixon instantly shouted, "FIRE!" causing the gunner to respond with "ON THE WAY" just before he pulled the trigger.

  The first engagement of the evening was over before the last of the reverberations from Dixon's tank died away in the close confines of the town's square. Like a giant dart, the depleted uranium penetrator sliced through the armor plate of the lead Jaguar 1 of Captain Albrecht Benen's company. Vorishnov's fear that such a round would have minimal effect against the Jaguar was ill founded, as the depleted uranium penetrator, pushing a chunk of the Jaguar's own armor plate in front of it, cut through stored ammunition i
nto the Jaguar's fuel cell and out the rear through the engine compartment. The tremendous heat created by the transformation of the penetrator's kinetic energy into heat upon contact with the Jaguar set off first the propellant of the stored ammunition, then the diesel fuel.

  Hans Gielber never had the opportunity to see any of this. By the time the lead Jaguar began shuddering from internal explosions, Hans was fleeing from the window, his face, chest, and upper arms shredded by glass that had been shattered by the concussion of the muzzle blast from Dixon's main gun. Though he would survive, he, like other children around the world, would pay for the decisions made by men who claimed to be their leaders and the men who were opposed to them. Like many of his countrymen caught in the middle of a conflict which few understood, Hans Gielber would carry the mental and physical scars of war with him for the rest of his life.

  With the initial threat dealt with, Dixon now had to make a series of quick decisions. They were, relative to his rank and position, rather simple decisions. But that didn't make them any less critical. Knowing full well that anti-tank guns don't travel alone, Dixon knew there were more somewhere nearby, if not immediately behind the one he had just destroyed. The destruction of the lead Jaguar would serve as an effective, if somewhat bloody, warning to any German unit in the area that the Americans were there. So sneaking away into the darkness was out of the question. That didn't rule out the option of retreat. Dixon's tank was the only combat vehicle in the entire tactical command post. Though there might only be one more guided-missile anti-tank vehicle in the town, the chances of there being more were just as good, and Dixon had no way of knowing which answer was the correct one. So retreat was a prudent choice.

  No one who knew Scott Dixon, however, would ever be able to accuse him of being conservative or prudent when it came to tactics. It was that reputation that had led his superiors to select his brigade for the foray into the Ukraine. It was those traits that gave them confidence that Dixon's brigade would be able to pull off the ride around the 2nd Panzer Division's flank. And in a moment of sheer panic Dixon's hard-hitting and aggressive nature overrode common sense and dictated his next series of orders. Keying the radio net, he ordered Cerro to find somewhere that the soft-skinned vehicles of the tactical command post could be protected by the officers and enlisted of the staff with the few anti-tank rockets that they had while they waited for the lead element of the next battalion to reach them.