The second shot, a Mk 153 SMAW rocket, skipped off the front glacis of the Russian T-90, but detonated on the tank’s turret. The nose cone must have hit at a wrong angle and been bent, because it looked like it did little to no damage to the tank’s turret. Through the NVGs, SSgt. Diaz could see the glow of lights coming from inside the tank. They were spinning the beast up.
Uh oh. Here comes trouble.
No more time to think about it. The firing of the rockets was the signal for everyone to kick off the attack and advance. SSgt. Diaz knew her part. She depressed the butterfly trigger on her Browning, and a burst of heavy .50 caliber rounds sang through the air, striking the two GAZ Tigrs. Her other three machine guns opened up in a throaty roar, and all guns joined to create a dense haze of bullets impacting in and around the front gate.
Metal struck metal, and sparks flashed all around, adding to the mayhem. Chunks of metal, mirrors, pieces of the GAZ tires, and glass flew in all directions. The Russians caught in the open as the crossfire began were immediately blasted to the ground and churned into chunks; such was the force of the heavy rounds.
Like a lumbering giant, the big T-90 began to move. The driver, eager to get into the action, or just blinded by SSgt. Diaz’s withering incoming fire, ran over one of the pinned Tigrs, and likely several of their wounded comrades. It crashed through the front gate and headed directly toward the Dragoons as they emerged from behind the hill, racing into the Marines’ oncoming assault on the front gate.
* * *
Blue was surrounded on both sides by Marine snipers. Six of them, plus himself, had been lying in complete stillness, embedded deeply in the snow.
“One thing certain, you men sure are quiet,” Blue whispered to the nearest one. The man nodded. He and all the other men’s eyes were fixed forward through their special night vision optics. Their white camouflage and thermal-reducing ghillie suits made them almost completely invisible to even the best Russian equipment. Blue, on the other hand, was wearing Duluth Trading Company flannels and an old mountain parka that had been painted white for him by the men.
He smiled. The usually uncommunicative man suddenly seemed to have the urge to talk. “You boys know when we supposed to start?” he whispered.
The nearest man next to him patted him on the arm and put his fingers to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Diaz’s rockets fired. The noise, even from Blue’s position a few hundred meters away, was immense, but Blue had been told to expect it, and he didn’t move.
Then her machine guns opened up. The halo of the bullets left streaks with their tracers, bright against the darkness and illuminating the white snow. The fiery impacts and noisy ricochets were even more impressive to Blue. “Whoa. You boys ever seen somethin’ like this before?”
The Marine next to him grinned, then whispered, “Now.”
All six Mark 13 Mod 7 sniper rifles and one .460 Weatherby Mk V Magnum fired simultaneously. They pierced the night like assassin’s daggers. Unlike Diaz’s heavy guns, the Marine’s rifles used no tracers, gave no muzzle flash, and the targets they struck gave off no sparks. Six of the seven targets fell silently into the snow from their guard towers or back into their Tigrs without a whimper or a word. Most were struck across the chest, the wind literally sucked out of them as the round opened up a nickel-sized hole and tore through their lungs and split their hearts.
But Blue’s designated target was a single Russian guard half-outside his tower, his rifle up and still staring in the direction of the rocket fire. The Marine snipers had given him a “can’t-miss target,” about three hundred meters away and a small zone near the front gate. But Blue had spotted something else by the tracer fire at the last second: a Russian officer standing way back by his vehicle, cigarette in one hand and the radio receiver to his ear in the other.
At least Blue figured he was an officer; He’s standing there all cocky-like. As if he owns the joint.
Blue figured the other snipers just hadn’t seen the man yet, or they would have probably told him to shoot the officer and not just some dopey guards.
Seems a better target, he thought.
Blue really didn’t relish disobeying orders, so he’d tried to tell someone. But they all seemed to be too intent on their own primary and secondary targets.
The trouble was the officer was well behind the lines, about twelve hundred meters away and mostly obscured behind an armored vehicle door, wearing a steel helmet. He was not controlling the action at the front gate through the radio but was about to jump in the vehicle and move off. Probably someplace where he could better control his troops against Blue’s U.S. boys. But Blue wasn’t about to let that happen.
Blue wasn’t classically trained like the Marines who had spent years learning to aim their high-velocity rounds directly into the middle of the chest at center mass, or longitudinally through the soft spot under the arm or even through the arm and into the chest. No, Blue just did what seemed best and aimed for the impossibly tiny target he had available to him and well beyond the rifle’s intended maximum range. He trusted the Lord and his father’s. 460 Weatherby Mk V to hurl the huge, fat, rhino-stopping Magnum 450-grain bullet at more than 2,660 feet per second, which would close the distance before one full beat of the target’s heart. Or as Blue always liked to think of it: most lickety-split.
Bang!
Blue squeezed the trigger. The rifle jumped in his hands. He didn’t miss. The round tore directly through the Russian’s face and came out the back side of his neck and kept on going into a building another few hundred meters farther on. The officer’s head exploded, his arms flailed wildly into the air, and then his torso slammed up against the vehicle. The vehicle crew stared at his carcass in horror.
Blue said a quick Bible verse to himself: “These things I have spoken unto you, that in me ye might have peace. In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”
Then he figured he was still obliged to kill the target he’d been assigned, the tower guard. He worked the bolt, loaded another, and fired, killing the man with another face shot. Then loaded again and switched to the Tigr’s top gunner, killing him. Then loaded another and shot a man working a machine gun near the gate. The man’s head knocked back, like it’d been swatted by a baseball bat, and the gun superelevated, firing harmlessly into the air and over the mountains. Then Blue took two men in rapid succession, midstride running to reinforce their companions at the gate, knocking them both flat to the ground.
“They jus’ keep on comin.’” said Blue chancing a glance at the others. All six of the other snipers stared at Blue, eyes wide at his incredible shooting skills.
“Sorry,” Blue said. “Did I kill some of your’n? I’ll stick to them Russkies in my zone.” And Blue went back to killing more targets in the zone he was assigned.
* * *
Ned had to admire both the Russians’ courage and their ability to rapidly shift under the tough combat conditions Ned’s men had meted out to them. With each move, and even with all Tyce’s preplanning, they were able to fight with tenacity and a certain hardheadedness.
Well, that was all fine, but now it was time to deal his last card.
“Three-team. Go!” said Ned.
“On the way!” yelled the three-team leader back into the radio.
And with that, in one swift combined action, two-team launched into the Russians on a third flank. Three-team had been hidden directly next to the light artillery. Ned hadn’t known the Russians would park artillery there, but he had given them a nice flat, protected piece of land and expected they probably would use it to park something soft and squishy. He had been hoping for the Russian leader’s command post, but the man was as tenacious as his troops and had advanced in respectable fashion with his men.
The skirmish—more like an execution—was over in just a few seconds. Three-team fired their rifles, then overran the artillerymen’s positions, spraying each Russian multiple times. The specia
l forces men’s assault was swift and merciless, and then they moved on farther, toward the rear of the advancing Russians.
The Russians continued to advance on three-team’s positions, thinking they had two-team properly suppressed in the wood line with their light artillery. Suddenly, they faced fire from two sides again. Three-team sensed their slackening fire and popped up on the berm again from the Russian front. Two-team, no longer driven deep into the dirt from the artillery, low-crawled back onto their machine guns at the edge of the woods and began laying waste to the Russian left flank.
With the Russians trying to defend on three of four sides, they quickly withered and died, unable to keep up a steady enough fire to prevent Ned’s men from advancing slowly into them. One by one, they were given a choice on how to die: stay in place and be mowed down by two-team’s machine guns, advance and be picked off by one-team’s rifles and now grenades, or retreat and run smack into three-team’s cautiously advancing men. The firing angles on the Russians were tricky, but Ned’s men were careful to prevent fratricide.
Ned himself lobbed M203 rifle grenades into the dwindling Russian mass. The 40mm explosive dropped a deadly fan of light shrapnel, putting steel into the pockets of Russians but also crushing what Ned thought might be an attempt to mount a comeback.
Some men on the right side, clustering around their brave but foolhardy leader, seemed like they were going to try to make a run for the woods. At least, it looked like there was some attempt to get out of the bloody kill zone. Whatever order the Russian commander was giving to his men died in his throat as Ned pumped more 40mm rounds at him, and the last of the Russian special forces suffered well-aimed shots and death by tiny cuts from a hundred steel shards.
Ned had walked down the hill at a fast, firing walk, emptying a magazine at medium range while on the move and trying to coordinate over his throat mic radio. Halfway, he took a knee and slapped a new magazine into his rifle. It had all ended so quickly. Spotting his first sergeant, Ned waved him over, still surveying the carnage.
“Hey, sir. Helluva fight.” The first sergeant knelt by Ned. “We took twelve wounded. I’ll get them back to the navy medical folks the commander left us. Glad she did—that arty was worse than we’d bargained for. If three-team hadn’t attacked when they did . . .” he shook his head. “Anyway, two wounded, Morgan and Colvin from two-team. Looks like they’ll need more than what the docs here have. We’ll need to get them to the commander ASAP.”
Ned couldn’t suppress a brief smile, expecting a worse tally from the first sergeant. “Could have been worse—”
“No, sir, not finished,” interrupted the first sergeant, still a little out of breath from the fighting. “We also have ten Angels.” Everyone dreaded hearing that term on the battlefield.
Ned and the first sergeant pulled off their helmets, wiping their brows. In spite of the below-freezing nighttime temperature, both men were near exhaustion and overheating. Their adrenaline was crashing down, leaving them sweaty and drained.
“Copy,” said Ned. “What . . . who?”
The first sergeant pulled out his notepad. “Bishop, Cruz, Gibbons, Mendez, and Morris from two-team. Barnes, Cameron, Dillman, Harper, and Houtz from three-team.
“Harper? Harper . . . Harmonica Harper?”
“The same, sir.”
Behind them, shouts and sporadic rifle fire echoed across the clearing as a wounded Russian made a move toward his weapon and was cut down.
CHAPTER 39
Yeager Airport
The Dragoons began their assault with four LAV-25s tearing up and over the last ridgeline just two kilometers from the perimeter fence of Yeager Airport. They gunned the heavy Detroit Diesel engines, which roared, dominating the early morning and partially drowning out SSgt. Diaz’s still blazing guns.
The vehicles bounded across the frozen fields. Two vehicles sprinted ahead as the other two provided covering fire, then they switched roles, maintaining a continuous leapfrog in this manner and keeping up a continuous volume of fire. Directly behind them, six Humvee gun trucks followed, firing .50 cal, and behind that, three five-ton troop trucks were taking up the rear. The trucks were unarmored, but still, they advanced just behind the assault wave, ready to release their Marines, attack the gate, and seize a foothold.
They hadn’t gotten more than two hundred meters when their lead vehicle spotted the Russian T-90 tank careening headlong through the front gate right for them. For a moment, all four vehicles paused, slowing almost to a halt, like adolescent hyenas who had just spotted a full-grown lion bearing down on them. Then the Humvees slowed, and the trucks in the back stopped dead in their tracks.
Across the entire Marine front assault line, the momentum stumbled and hesitated. In their planning and rehearsals, they had never counted on tanks. Moreover, even though the tanks had been spotted and reported a few minutes earlier, not everyone had heard about them yet. Those who had, mostly the unit leaders, had been told Diaz’s rocketmen could take them out in the opening salvo. But as each vehicle crested the rise and their men saw the tank blasting at them, they all braked.
The attack was breaking. Even the able, eight-wheeled LAVs, excellent in their assigned role of raiding, scouting, and reconnaissance, were completely unprotected against the tank’s 2A82-1M 125mm smoothbore main gun’s fire.
Everyone yelled over the radio at the same time, “T-90 is still up. I say again, the tank is still operational!” The tactical radio nets were jammed from platoon to company and up to Tyce, with the report that the big steel beast yet lived.
* * *
Inside the turret of hull number 11, the lead LAV, SSgt. Casillas, barked over the intercom, “Gunner! Tank! Direct front, eight hundred meters. AT, fire now, God damn it!”
The young gunner, a corporal, was too shocked to reply to the command. He had also spotted the tank in his gunner’s sight and started panicking, even before being given the command to fire. The enemy tank filled almost his entire sight. The tank stood out in complete contrast to the cold night in his thermal imagers, and the mighty T-90’s silhouette was unmistakable. He had committed it to memory in gunners’ school. He squeezed the trigger and prayed.
Thump—thump—thump.
Cannon fire shook the inside of the turret, filling it up with hot gases and thickening the atmosphere in the already tense, sweaty, and cramped quarters. HE rounds blasted the side of the tank with no effect other than to cause a neat shower of sparks. The LAV gunner fired six more rounds of HE, watching the effect through his sight.
SSgt. Casillas, who had sunk into the turret and was watching the gunner’s actions through his own commander’s sight, kicked at the gunner with his free foot and yelled, “God damn it, Corporal, I said fucking AT!”
He grabbed the gun’s palm control switch, overriding the corporal, and screamed, “From my position.” meaning the turret and its 25mm gun were now slaved to his controller.
He then began a milliseconds’ long preparatory ritual, born from living, eating, and breathing inside the turrets of LAVs since joining the Corps almost fourteen years prior. Through prickly-hot stress-induced sweat, his heart beating out of his chest, he concentrated fully on the Russian tank in his gunsight reticle, and the electric turret motor whirred in response to the deft movements of his wrist. He clicked the thumb selector to AT, then swung the gun in a G-shape, slowly zeroing in on a tiny gap, a chink in the enemy’s armor.
The gunner panicked some more. “He’s firing, Staff Sergeant!”
There was a loud boom, and behind them one of the troop trucks disappeared in a cloud of black shrapnel and hot fire. More than a dozen men had just gotten evaporated off the battlefield.
“I know,” said the SSgt, recognizing that he had only one chance, and he’d better make it count or the tank would pick the troop trucks off one at a time.
He was looking for a gap on the tank turret. Since the inception of modern tank warfare, this gap had been called the Hull-Turret Separation. But a
trained gunner just knew it as the chink in the armor, the sweet spot, on most heavily armored tanks. He could hear the blasts of the other LAVs in his platoon firing away. He could see the sparks of their shots against the tank as he aimed, all of his brothers’ shots went erratic, all wild, all panic fire. There was little to no room for error. He took careful aim and pulled the trigger.
Boom—boom—boom.
Three 25mm depleted-uranium shaped, fin-stabilized penetrators hummed toward their target.
The first was a quarter inch too high and ricocheted harmlessly just like his fellows’ shots, which continued like bees stinging a single-minded bear. The second round peeled back an inch of metal on the turret, but likewise had no discernable effect on the gargantuan beast. But the third struck its mark, passed through the tiny gap between the hull and turret just where he had aimed, and penetrated into the skin of the tank. On the outside, it left only a bright red mark, looking a lot like a fluorescent cherry through the gunsights. A bright white puff of smoke billowed from the hole.
Everyone across the Marines’ advancing line let out a sigh as, a second later, the top hatches of the T-90 blew off and a jet-white spout of flame blazed skyward like a blowtorch.
God bless those men, thought Casillas, sitting back in his seat.
“Your gun,” he yelled to the gunner, who relinquished his own palm switch, “And don’t ever do that again.”
The LAV men were not tankers—far from it, they were infantry and reconnaissance men. But they understood perfectly what kind of death those five men inside had just experienced.
“They would have given us the same, if we’d have let them,” said Casillas through the intercom, reading his men’s minds and popping up on top of his turret to polish off some Russians with his pintle machine gun.
Casillas and his three wingmen closed the rest of the distance to the front airfield gate in under eight seconds, their throttles wide open. There wasn’t much left of it after the withering rocket, 25mm rounds, and Diaz’s machine gun fire. The Russians who still resisted had nothing but small-arms fire, which couldn’t penetrate the Marine LAVs. Casillas and the others switched back to HE and laid waste to the surviving vehicles and sandbagged positions, sending shrapnel spiraling through the area in a web no one could escape, killing the remaining soldiers.
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