Assault by Fire

by Lt. Col. H. Ripley Rawlings IV (USMC, Ret. )

  “You make it sound like you’re not sticking around. Doesn’t exactly make me trust in your plan, General.”

  “Yes. I have to hit the road for a bit. And one of the details I’m going to give you will be exceedingly tricky. I need you to find some tungsten.”

  “The metal tungsten? How the hell am I supposed to find that?”

  “Son . . . remember what I said? You have to use what’s around you. My boy, you are surrounded by America’s Ruhr Valley.”

  “Come again?”

  “You are in the center of America’s mining heartland. Every ferrous metal known to man is harvested from these hills. And if you look in the surrounding valleys, you will find some pretty advanced metallurgy shops doing what men and miners have done here for generations. They take metals from the hills and shape them into things. I expect if I give you the specifications, it’ll only take them half a day, or maybe less.”

  “How much time do you think we actually have, General? It sounds like a pretty tall order.”

  “It is, it is. But trust me, no plan hinges on one thing. It’s the effect inside the commander’s head that matters.” Lawton tapped his temple, emphasizing the point.

  The old general’s ideas and knowledge were admirable, but Tyce was the one about to commit the men to another battle. One so soon after their last, and likely more dangerous. Right now, the men were flying high on their last victory, glad to have defeated a numerically inferior but well-armored enemy with fewer rounds of ammo and few casualties. But Tyce also knew what defeat looked like. He had tasted it more than once in Iraq. He was hoping to keep the men’s spirits high until they reached a safer spot. Somewhere they could let their guard down and relax for a little bit.

  “Where, and how, should we set up?”

  “That ‘where’ is easy, the ‘how’ will be a bit more complicated. You must start with your map of the valley. Then think like the enemy. Be the Russian commander and see the valley as he sees it. Where would you position your forces if you were the Russian?”

  “Well . . .” Tyce began reluctantly, the audience of all his troops making him slow to answer with any real commitment. “I might approach from the north. Especially because it would shorten my supply lines back to Morgantown.”

  “Good. What else?”

  “I would have a reconnaissance element out forward,” Tyce said, growing bolder.

  “Light, vehicular-mounted scouts with full comms,” interjected Lieutenant Zane sheepishly from the sidelines. He was obviously entranced by the back and forth.

  “Keep this one around, he’ll make colonel for sure,” said the general casting a pleased smile toward the young officer, “Okay, but what would they be searching for?”

  “I . . . not sure. Us, I guess,” Tyce answered.

  “Yes, but where?”

  “In defensive positions?”

  “Is that a question, Major Asher? Because it sounds like you are still thinking like the American commander. That will never do. Be the Russian commander. He will search you out using all of his senses.”

  Tyce felt a little like a lieutenant going over his first field problem, but he realized he had to get over it. The general was right. If they were to plan a good ambush, they had to keep in mind the fact that the Russians were a thinking, seeing enemy. They had to be careful about what the Russian commander would see on the battlefield in order to make him respond the way they needed him to. “Well, I would give him something to see. Possibly some dug-in defensive positions. Something to draw in his fire. He will want to shoot and maneuver.”

  “Excellent. That’s his sight. What about taste, smell, and hearing?”

  “I don’t follow—how will he taste or smell us?”

  “It’s a metaphor, Major, stick with me. Start with hearing.”

  Tyce glanced around the barn. His pack of leaders seemed to be really getting into the general’s line of thinking. At the very least, it was a great way to think through the upcoming battle.

  “I guess he’d hear with his reconnaissance and his radio intercepts.”

  “Good, so give him what he wants. Let his reconnaissance see prepared defensive positions, and let him hear you blasting radio transmissions from this very barn. It’s called confirmation bias. If he sees a defense and hears intercepted radio chatter, what will he do?”

  “He’ll test his intelligence further before committing,” said Tyce, beginning to see things from the enemy commander’s perspective. “He will send his reconnaissance to find the flanks of the defense, then he will pin us down in the defensive positions and try to use his better mobility and his BTRs to maneuver around us or to our flanks.”

  “Very good, Major Asher. Now, you see, he begins to feel across the battlefield. One that you have shaped for him, and when he feels what he expects—fixed frontages guarding a headquarters command barn—he will start to taste his own success. He will pounce.”

  “So we let him attack us?”

  “In a way. But just when he thinks he has won, you spring your final move. Then he is finally defeated where it counts. Not on the battlefield, but in his own mind.”

  Tyce hated treating combat like a game and committing the lives of his men to possible death like they were just some kind of chess pieces. But really, any ambush they performed had to accomplish two things: get the Russians away from Parsons and give the Russians a big bloody nose. Enough of a bloody nose to get his men in the hills, where they could take the time to lick their wounds, calculate their next moves, and reconstitute their firepower to fight some more.

  Tyce looked at Captain Blake, Gunny, and SSgt. Diaz, then he looked back to General Lawton, who stood at the table, a smile visible under his bandaged eyes and face. He seemed happy at the planning table and truly at home in front of the maps. Tyce was most comfortable out in the field, away from the radios and in the trench with his men. The rest of his leaders seemed to be reflecting on the same things as Tyce. Maybe they had a bit of doubt that this whole thing would work, but also, Tyce thought, they might have some hope that they could pull the whole thing off.

  The general seemed to read everyone’s thoughts. “Don’t worry, you all. If we can give them a bloody nose and a big fat lip, you’ll get some breathing room to plan another attack. Might even get some time in the coming winter to gather more weapons and men.”

  He really has forgotten more than I have ever known about tactics, Tyce thought.

  He looked around the troops gathered in the cold barn, flickering bare bulbs and Humvee headlights illuminating them as they worked, quietly and quickly, to get the antenna up and radios working. The general had good ideas. Really good ideas. But the rest was up to Tyce, and he knew something the others didn’t. He had frozen in combat at the worst possible time. This had cost him the lives of several of his best men. The memory still woke him at night. He looked around the barn at everyone’s faces, eerily illuminated by the low light. Some looked down from the rafters, smiling through the tobacco smoke at Tyce and the general. A few looked back at him as if weighing his leadership, measuring Tyce against the task in front of them. They were listening to every word.

  Tyce’s felt his stomach tighten as he fought to control and hide his own fears and doubts.

  And now they’re counting on me again, he thought, and in his mind, he saw the trusting faces of the men he’d lost the last time he took a great risk.

  CHAPTER 21

  Harman Valley, West Virginia

  Tyce’s temporary command post was on the west side of the Harman Valley and tucked into the deep woods. His position had practically no visibility of the valley itself. An old logging route nearby gave the regiment the only possible escape route once they’d finished their ambush. Mr. Bill Degata had woken the general, and the two had left hours earlier on their unknown mission.

  In the command post, preparations had renewed at a fast and steady pace. Tyce picked the three locations on the map from which to spring the ambush based on what he th
ought the Russians would do. He chose three leaders—Lieutenant Zane, Captain Blake, and Gunny—and told them to go to the coordinates on the map, to each inspect the area, and then to come back with recommendations.

  No more than half an hour had passed when Lieutenant Zane, from the northern ambush spot sent a runner requesting to move his spot to conform better to the terrain and permission to establish an OP, short for observation post. Tyce approved the move and had the HQ men place the pins on the map to reflect the changes.

  Captain Blake, in the position they named simply “Center,” sent a runner saying he was all good to go at his location. Gunny Dixon sent word from the South ambush location to tell Tyce that the spot worked well, and he was ready to construct the back door. Tyce looked over Gunny’s location on the map with respect to the other two positions, then approved it through another Humvee runner.

  We better find a new way to communicate, thought Tyce, or we’re going to run the valley out of gas. With winter approaching, he didn’t need to rub another town the wrong way. He discussed things over with his communications sergeants, but besides turning on their radios, they were stumped.

  “Hey, boss man,” said Wynand.

  “Yeah,” Tyce answered, a little startled to see Wynand appear out of nowhere.

  To everyone’s surprise, Wynand hadn’t left yet and had been lurking around on his new motorcycle and earning a reputation as a scrounger. He had been chased away from Commander Remington’s medical station on no fewer than three occasions while pretending to be sick. Commander Remington had caught him eyeing up her scarce medical supplies, so she gave him some Motrin and sent him packing. When that didn’t work and he returned, she had issued him some ipecac, which she had relabeled as cough syrup. He’d been heard barfing his guts out all night and had been laying low ever since. So Tyce was a little surprised when he spoke up from the headquarters shack’s darkened corner.

  “Do you have point-to-point, closed-loop phones?”

  “Field phones? Yeah, we have them.” Tyce looked at the communications sergeants, who nodded. They had been lugging around a full regiment’s suite of communications, although most of it could not be used out of fear that the Russians were in charge of or monitoring everything from the American satellite network to interceptor gear for their military band radios. “We don’t have enough slash wire, though.”

  “Slash . . . what?”

  “The wires to connect them. It’s miles between the three ambush locations.”

  “I don’t know nothin’ about no slash wire. But did you see the phone lines crisscrossing the valley, boss man? Can’t you just tie into those?”

  A surprisingly good suggestion. The comms guys spoke up: It was feasible. They’d get right on it. Tyce thanked Wynand, but still got the impression the man was just doing whatever it took to ingratiate himself with whomever was in charge. Tyce had a feeling his true colors were a bit darker than he was letting on. In the meanwhile, however, he was useful. Useful for finding intelligence, and maybe later Tyce could find a use for him in scrounging up something they needed.

  Tyce really had no idea how long it would be until the Russians might find them by chance, but he knew that as soon as he threw the lever on the radios, they’d be there pretty fast. The general had called the radio ruse a Venus flytrap, and that had caught on with the men. Now, though tired to the bone, they were talking about how they were going to lure the Russians in and then smoke them. Maybe it was the lack of sleep, maybe it was the pressure, but it was hard for Tyce not to get a little giddy along with his troops.

  “Sir, just got a runner from attack position North. They have all their positions in the forest dug in and camouflaged. The lieutenant is asking for you to come and inspect his positions.” One of his headquarters operations men handed him a Yellow Canary.

  Tyce had been using runners in Humvees to pass messages between the three ambush positions to create complete radio silence. In addition, he had his leaders post air sentries. men who watched the skies and called out for everyone to go to ground when aircraft were spotted. In Tyce’s estimation, an abundance of caution would give them the most time before they were inevitably discovered.

  “Got it. What’s the news on positions Mid and South?” said Tyce.

  “South is dug and set. Center is having some trouble. Seems one of the local farmers is not having any of it. He refuses to let them make the oil pits along his farm. Says it’ll poison the groundwater for years to come.”

  “Okay,” said Tyce, removing his Kevlar helmet and running his fingers through his sandy blond hair as much out of consternation as to feel how dirty it was. Flakes of sweat-caked dirt fell free. “He’s probably right, but unless we kick these Russians out of here, they’ll soak the soil with a lot more than just burning oil.”

  “Like what, sir?” asked one of the headquarters sergeants.

  “The blood of patriots, to start,” Tyce said, giving the sergeant a sardonic smile and a wink. Combat had hardened many of the men, but Tyce wasn’t about to start treating the citizens’ backyards like his own personal military proving grounds. That’s how a tyranny was formed—he knew enough of history to know that. And if even one citizen got hurt in his clash with the Russians, he could count on word spreading, and that would mean less and less support from any of the other valleys in the future. Who knew how long this conflict was going to last before they kicked the Russians out? What he did know was that it wasn’t going to be soon, and he needed to be as close to the people he was defending as possible.

  “Sir, it’s not as if the EPA or the health department are going to check up on it, and without the fires, we won’t be able to blind their thermal and night optics.”

  “Not sure of the health effects on us. The guys in Center section are liable to get a few lungsful of that stuff, but it’s a bit better than getting a boot put into our spine and a bullet in our backs, which is what the Russians have in store for us.”

  As if on cue, Tyce spotted Commander Remington making her way through the woods toward the small group clustered near the hunting shack. She had taken off her navy camouflage uniform shirt and was wearing a Marine Corps green sweatshirt to stay warm. It looked good on her. More notable, though, were the bloody nitrile gloves. Tyce turned to walk to the dirt logging trail where his Humvee was parked, hoping to make it the ten feet before she arrived. The last thing he needed was more confrontation.

  “Nope! I see you, Major Asher,” she barked. “I heard you were back at the CP, and I need to speak to you.”

  Tyce turned toward her and put on his helmet, both because he was about to mount up and because he knew there was a possibility of a storm brewing between him and Victoria. The men had warned him she was looking for him, and he’d purposely avoided her.

  “Dr. Remington, I presume,” he said, attempting some humor.

  She gave him a small smile but put her hands on her hips defensively. “I just finished working on your man, Sergeant Carson. I saved the hand, but he needs time to rest.”

  “Vick . . .” Tyce started, then corrected himself. “Commander Remington, I’m not sure you fully understanding the situation here.” His curtness relayed some of his own fatigue. “If I don’t get every swinging Richard in the field, engaged in making this ambush site perfect, you will be needing to save a lot more than Carson’s hand.”

  She grimaced. “Okay, buster, here’s the deal.” She poked him in the chest. “At least give your men time to wash up. They are all filthy, and that will compound my problems immeasurably if you start taking casualties. The surgery is as ready as we can make it, but if the men don’t clean themselves, the infection rates among your wounded will kill far more than I can save with my surgical skills.”

  She had a really good point, but Tyce wasn’t about to halt everything to let the men take showers. “Got it. I’ll tell the North, Mid, and South ambush leaders to let their off-duty men clean up.”

  “Not good enough.” She shook her head.
“Either you order the men to hygiene, or I’ll go directly to them and issue the order. We may be the same rank, Major, but in combat and on medical concerns, I outrank everyone, capisce?”

  By the tone of her voice and the fire in her eyes, Tyce could tell that she was dead serious. The way she said capisce, not the American “capeesh,” made him think that maybe she had some Italian heritage. Interesting. Against his better judgment, he was beginning to like her. She was right about the infections and disease. Tyce had seen it in ill-disciplined units. It started with things like jock itch and laziness in shaving. It ended with serious illnesses that put many men in the hospital and out of action for months.

  “Okay, Commander. I’ll pass the word.”

  “Good. And while you’re at it”—she scrunched her nose and waved her hand—“maybe do something about yourself, too. You smell like a horse.”

  Tyce didn’t reply, instead pivoting and walking to his Humvee to go inspect the three ambush positions. He was smiling.

  * * *

  A day and a half passed without rest, everyone working to make the ambush positions, and Tyce could see the weariness in the men’s eyes. As he and Trigger were making the rounds, he stopped by one of the machine gun nests at the North position. The men had dug fighting holes big enough for two men, then covered them with pine logs and branches. The effect was a blend of cover and concealment. A narrow slit about the width of a cereal box was all that was visible.

  Trigger, by now a happy sight to all the troops, wove his way among the fighting positions, finding even the completely camouflaged ones easily. Tyce hoped the Russians didn’t bring any dogs with them or the attack was over before it began. In each bunker, the men patted the dog and scratched between his ears. Each squad and platoon usually found some hidden treat for the frisky—and always hungry—Belgian Malinois. Gunny had put Trigger on a diet, but when the dog ran around with Tyce, the diet was ignored. Trigger seemed to know Tyce was a softy and often jumped into his Humvee, knowing he’d be spared the dry dog food diet that Gunny enforced.