The LAVs breached the threshold, then drove right through the perimeter, finally stopping their lightning charge and in control of the position. Then the trucks and Humvees disgorged their cargo of infantry, each one eager to get the hell out of the vulnerable canvas-covered vehicles and into the fight. A few glanced back at their stricken truck, now burning voraciously—sorry for its fate, but thankful for their own.
Casillas’s LAVs then turned their turrets toward several more distant guard towers, which fired sporadic and harassing, long-range automatic weapons on the Marines. Turrets swung over, one vehicle to each tower, and pumped out accurate fire. Two towers splintered apart, wooden boards, sandbags, and fragments of ballistic glass flying through the air. A third tower, silenced by the snipers moments earlier, was blasted to pieces, just to be safe. The fourth blew sky high, ripping the top off the tower and commenced a spectacular display that continued through the next ten minutes of battle.
Everyone in and near the airport, even those far away, looked toward the immense, rolling explosions. Both friend and foe alike turned instinctively from their own skirmishes to see the fireworks as they lit up the sky. Those closest saw the most sickening spectacle, as two men, both literally engulfed in flames, chose to leap the forty feet to their deaths rather than be burned alive.
Morgantown
A banging on Colonel Nikolaevich’s door woke him from the deepest slumber. The last radio transmission from his men attacking the insurgent stronghold in Parsons suggested things were going very well and according to plan. They had crept up to the enemy’s positions and were going to: “pound them to dust,” promised their commander. So the colonel had turned in for some much-needed rest.
“What the hell is it?” he shouted, more out of surprise at being woken than actual anger.
“Colonel . . . Colonel, there has been a . . . a . . .”
It was Nikolaevich’s normally mousy adjutant. Nikolaevich was hardly about to wake up for some administrative tidbit better left till morning.
“Yes, yes,” he called out, yawning, “I will sign the TM-44 requisition documents in the morning, Mikhail. But give me some rest. I just need a few hours. And tell the duty officer that I should not be disturbed unless there is a real emergency.”
To the colonel’s surprise, his door flung open, bathing him in the bright lights of the outer hallway. Nikolaevich shielded his eyes and somewhat modestly covered his new flannel PJs with a blanket.
“What the hell—”
“Colonel,” Mikhail continued apologetically, “I was sent here by the duty officer. He is down in the ready room, and he sent me to wake you, immediately. There’s, um. That is . . .”
“Mikhail, get to the God-damned point. What is so urgent that you burst in here?”
Mikhail shuffled nervously from foot to foot. He was not used to being this forward with his commander, but the duty officer had been insistent, even grabbing him by the uniform collar and yelling into his face.
He played with the brim of his army-issue cap. “I, uh. Well, it is not certain. I mean, you understand, Colonel, I do not fully understand the tactics of the matter, I am only an admini—”
“Mikhail, you worthless bastard, get to the fucking point.” Nikolaevich’s patience with his adjutant was always strained by the man’s circumspection, but at two a.m., his fuse was instant.
Unable to contain himself, Mikhail blurted out, “Colonel, Charleston has been invaded!”
“What?!”
Colonel Nikolaevich grabbed the glasses off his nightstand and leapt from bed, pushing his adjutant aside and racing to the operations room. Mikhail followed, stammering about how none of it was his fault and other unintelligible objections. He stopped short of reminding the Colonel he was still in his pajamas.
CHAPTER 40
Yeager Airport
The timing was imperative. The assault by fire and attack to seize the gate had to dominate the Russians’ attention, and Lieutenant Zane’s mobile assault force—now the hammer punch—needed speed, surprise, and momentum. Tyce watched the occasional machine gun tracer fire hitting a few positions deep in the airfield: a Russian in a window, or a vehicle’s movement on an adjacent road suppressed by Diaz or wiped out by Blue and the snipers.
He allowed himself a tiny bit of joy when the HQ men around him cheered as the call from Dragoons came over the radio. “Front gate is secure.”
The route appeared to be open, but there was no time left, and only those truly ignorant of warfare let themselves be fooled by small tactical successes. Reversals were common in combat, and small victories were fleeting. If they didn’t send the second wave of the attack now, they could expect a strong and swift counterattack. Although General Lawton was back in the woods, Tyce could almost hear him saying some such thing, recommending caution while also being quick to seize the opportunities his attack had created.
Tyce grabbed the radio handset and barked out the next command. “B Troop, commence your attack.”
Lieutenant Zane, who had clearly been waiting on his radio for his chance, was quick to respond. “Copy, sir. Attacking now.”
Everyone in the small, hastily dug and snow-covered trench glanced to the right, looking toward B Troop’s concealed positions on an adjacent road network.
Twenty Humvees burst from the woods, racing forward. They were joined by Zane’s last two operational M3 Bradley Fighting Vehicles, brought up on two flatbed trucks through windy back logging trails at great effort. They nearly hadn’t made the journey. Mayor Susanna had found Tyce two logging truck drivers who were more than willing to embrace the cause. With their heavy treads clanking , the Bradleys now advanced in the middle of Zane’s pack of Humvees.
They look just like a pack of wild dogs, thought Tyce.
The Humvees were loaded with Zane’s scouts, whose critical piece involved securing the two aircraft they needed. The M3 Bradley Cavalry Fighting Vehicle amounted to Tyce’s last remaining surprise. He had no other card tricks to play. Zane’s force at full strength was three platoons, packed with four Brads apiece. But the Russian strafing attack on his column, coupled with a huge lack of both maintenance men and the parts required for the heavy machines, meant Tyce’s surprise force would not be the overwhelming force it could have been. Still, it would have to do.
It looked like Zane and his boys didn’t care. Being a lighter force had its advantages, too, and Zane knew it. Every Humvee-mounted machine gun was thumping away, and the Bradleys’ cannons were lighting up the darkness with accurate fire directed at two guard towers in their sector of the perimeter that were blocking their access.
The two Russians here had either been too surprised to fire back or too focused on Tyce’s diversion at the front gate to show much resistance. They popped off some small arms and shot a shoulder-fired rocket-propelled grenade at the Brads at long range. All of it impacted in and around the rapidly advancing vehicles, but none did any damage of note.
Zane’s men returned fire on any targets that showed themselves with a zest and audacity that the National Guard scouts were known for.
All the better, thought Tyce, just business.
The Russians’ conduct against civilians at Parsons crossed his mind briefly, but there was never time in a fighting man’s heart for retribution. Rage, payback, reprisal—these were all words for combatants who fought without thinking. That type of approach might win a battle or two, but eventually, that steam wore off. A larger purpose was what galvanized an organized troop. Still, against his better nature, it felt good to get some wins.
Ultimately, Tyce knew, the thinking dog won the day, and right now Tyce had unleashed the hounds. Zane’s hounds. He peeled back his NVGs; they were not necessary to see the right flank, such was their volume of fire. The Bradleys were going to town. Almost uninterrupted, their 25mm cannons devastated the towers, then zeroed in on the few GAZ Tigrs bold enough to show themselves.
Tyce’s assault positions were now officially supporting one ano
ther. Excellent, there’s no stopping this momentum! he thought jubilantly.
He was wrong.
Parsons
Ba-Boom!.
It was impossible not to look at the source of the incoming fire. The second Russian T-90, still masked by several outbuildings on the interior of the airfield, looked like it had turned back toward the gate when Zane’s men attacked. The driver had decided or been commanded to address and halt Zane’s advance.
Tyce’s stomach fell to a new low, and for a brief moment, he thought he was going to actually, physically retch. The tank had caught B Troop at the worst possible moment of their advance: completely in the open, in a barren field, and exposed from all sides and guilty of a high, perhaps too high, level of confidence, which had overtaken Tyce as well. Tyce had picked that sector on the map because he had estimated all reinforcements would be headed to the front gate. But the Bradleys, like their wheeled LAV brothers, were no match for the T-90 that turned to face Zane’s forces.
* * *
“Jesus Christ!” yelled the commander of Bradley hull number 727 through the intercom.
It was all instinctual language—language he rarely used. He was a religious man, but he blurted it out as he felt his hair stand on end and his muscles collapse.
“Motherfucking tank. T-90, direct front, eight hundred meters. Gunner open motherfucking fire!” he yelled.
The first rounds ricocheted harmlessly off the front glacis, the sloped armor meant to deflect incoming projectiles. But then it was the T-90’s turn. He was loaded and ready.
Boom!
Spaaang!
The incoming 125mm skipped off, up, and over the Bradley. But the noise of the impact inside the Brad was unbearable rattling their brains and causing popped and bloody eardrums and noses. Unfortunately, Sergeant First Class Garrison, 727’s commander, knew that the Russians had just fired an HE, or high-explosive round, probably what had been loaded to deal with the dismounted Marines he’d been advised were attacking the gate. The next round would most assuredly be a AT, or anti-tank, round. This took the Brads’ survival chances to less than five percent. It was just a matter of time before the Russian gunner got his ammo and range correct and peeled the Brads open like tin cans.
SFC Garrison flicked a switch to extend the batwings, the mechanical arms that held two anti-tank missiles. The BGM-71 TOW anti-tank missile was now his best chance, perhaps his only chance, of survival. Driving while firing the TOW was less than optimal—in fact, the handbook said it wasn’t to be done. If they didn’t hold the vehicle steady, the gunner couldn’t track the wire-guided missile all the way to the target. As the missile jetted over the terrain, a tiny copper wire would spool out behind it, and the gunner had to guide it in flight like a remote-controlled car on a wire. This was hard to do for most gunners, even sitting while static on a training gunline. Right now, 727 was moving at its max speed of forty miles per hour.
“Gunner, fire TOW!” yelled SFC Garrison.
The gunner was too preoccupied to respond. With a whoosh, a TOW missile fired and the whole turret shook. The gunner’s face was still buried in his optic, trying hard to keep the stabilized turret firmly locked on the enemy tank while the vehicle bounced over the field.
Garrison pressed his face into his own gunsight and watched the missile fly toward the tank. It spiraled through the air, popping up and down as the gunner struggled to keep the seven-hundred-mile-per-hour thirteen-pound warhead flying toward its target.
Below both men, to their front and left, the driver had heard the orders and felt the missile launch, and was now fighting the wheel and throttle. He’d been trained to keep the vehicle steady when the gunner fired, and he used every bit of concentration on his own job to keep things steady—a challenge, given he could barely see the landscape at their speeds, but he dare not slow down or they would become an even better target for the T-90. The whole crew had to work as a team on a nearly impossible task. Melded with their machine, they were going to live as one or die as one.
“Almost there,” said the gunner, whisper quiet into his intercom. “Almost—”
But it was a miss. Both SFC Garrison and his gunner let out a bitter sigh as the missile struck the high chain-link fence between them and the tank. The warhead flew a second farther, pulling the fence along with it, then nosed into the tarmac and detonated, leaving a gaping hole in the fence.
At the very least, it had opened the fence for their next shot. It was a slim consolation, as the T-90 would respond before they could take that shot.
* * *
Inside the Russian T-90, things were just as chaotic as inside their counterparts’ turret.
“Chert voz’mi, zagruzchik, God damn it! Get my fucking gun reloaded, you simple son of a bitch!” yelled the tank commander. He’d seen the enemy’s missile launch, and he knew the capability of the TOW missile. It could kill them.
“Zagruzhen!” shouted the loader to inform his commander that it was reloaded. He grabbed another round in expectation and clicking the foot switch to close the hatch on his ammunition storage rack.
“Zagruzhen!” the commander yelled in response.
“V doroge. On the way . . .” the gunner barely breathed into the intercom, not wanting to shout and lose his concentration, keeping his face buried in his own sight.
The big 125mm cannon roared, the breech ramming back into the turret and locking open.
Before the round had even struck its target, the commander yelled into the intercom again. “Load HEAT!” A high-explosive anti-tank round would surely cut through the American vehicle like butter.
The loader already had the next round cradled in his hand. He jammed it into the waiting breech assembly and tapped his foot to close the ammo door.
“Uurah!!” yelled both the gunner and commander as they watched the high-explosive anti-tank round blast into the Bradley.
The Russian HEAT round burrowed into the Brad’s one-inch-thick laminate armor, boring a thumb-sized hole through. The commander knew that inside the Brad, the shaped charge created a murderous mass of molten metal. The chunks would spin and tumble throughout the vehicle, passing directly through men and equipment with no remorse.
The Russian gunner saw smoke out the top hatches and the gun port.
“Target destroyed, slewing onto the second Amerikan-ski.” and he wasted no time jamming the turret hard to the right to get his optic on the second Bradley.
* * *
“Fucking hell!” said 727’s driver, looking through his periscope vision blocks. He watched their brother Brad in front grind to a halt, smoke and flame visible from its top. “They just killed 728.”
Garrison didn’t waste breath to tell the driver to shut up. They had all seen what had happened to their lead Brad.
“Fire second TOW,” he said.
“On the way,” responded the gunner, pulling the trigger.
The second, and last remaining ,TOW catapulted off the Bradley’s launcher. They had now closed to within four hundred meters of the perimeter fence and six hundred meters from the T-90. The time of flight for the missile would be shorter, but the terrain was still rocky, and holding the wire-guided missile on target was once again proving challenging.
The gunner’s face was plastered so tightly into the eyecups that when the driver hit a big ditch, he felt his nose crunch, breaking immediately. The cartilage sliced through the skin, and blood began to pour down his face. In spite of it, he remained fixed to his sight. On the other side of the ditch, he saw the missile’s tail fins and bright white exhaust gases, still visible.
“Motherfucker . . .” he muttered to himself, watching the TOW, a death grip on the controls, guiding it toward its target, his face and sight now a mess of dripping red blood. Each new bump and every twitch of his palm control cut his broken nose even deeper.
The missile traveled the remaining distance to its target like lightning, the gunner keeping it steady all the way. SFC Garrison let out a war whoop as the
missile closed, but he stopped his victory cry as he saw a puff of smoke from the T-90’s barrel.
The driver saw it too and yelled, “We’re dea—” but a Russian-made, 125mm tank round entered directly into his compartment, the red-hot metal cutting short his last words and killing him instantly.
* * *
The Russian tank crew let out a war whoop of their own as they watched their round penetrate the second, and the only remaining, enemy Bradley. All that was left now was to mop up the Humvees charging willy-nilly at them. The commander thought perhaps they should switch over to their coaxial 7.62mm machine gun to conserve some of the tank’s main gun rounds. No telling what other surprises the Yankees might still have in store for them.
More than a little confident and pleased with his crew’s performance, he stuck his head up through the top hatch to get a better view. The main threats eliminated, just as they had practiced in tank school back in the No-vocherkassk Armor Academy, he could now take a little time to enjoy the fruits of his men’s labors. He still felt the cold, prickly sweat dripping down his spine.
A harrowing adventure, to be sure. I cannot wait to brag about it to my buddies up in Morgantown, he thought. Now, let’s not waste time. Maybe I’ll personally take out a few of these pesky Humvees with my 12.7mm Kord machine gun.
He propped himself against the top of the turret, the frozen air now burning his nostrils as he gripped the Kord and prepared to sight in and fire on the approaching Humvees.
Assault by Fire Page 26