“I do, sir. Sixteen men absent, but some of the men think they just ran out a different side. Went east instead of west. We have all our medical cases accounted for, though. No telling how they’ll do now. We had to manhandle most of them, and it probably opened up their wounds. We’ll need priority medical support.”
“Got it, First Sergeant, that’s your first task, then. You and Schmalcs that medical section to set up a temporary hospital.”
Charleston, West Virginia
Blue pulled the trigger. The Weatherby made a loud bang that echoed across the government square. As soon as Blue fired his rifle, the sheriff jerked his pistol toward him. Blue had been ready for this and swung his rifle upward, slamming the barrel hard against the sheriff ’s gun hand. The pistol discharged, and the bullet creased Blue’s shoulder, tearing off an inch of flesh. Surprised, the sheriff stood all the way up, quickly switched his pistol to his opposite hand, and readied for a second shot. But Blue didn’t hesitate. Still prone, he rolled and pointed the barrel of the Weatherby at the sheriff ’s head and pulled the trigger. Simultaneously, a cascade of machine gun bullets blasted the parapet to pieces. The Russians had a clear line of sight and fired at everything in view. The sheriff disappeared as a hailstorm of bullets ripped him to shreds.
The Russian armored vehicles were now firing full force up at the roof. Blue got up to a low crouch, clutching his rifle to his side and racing for the roof door. In seconds he had it open and was down the stairs without giving the sheriff ’s remains a backward glance.
Near Tucker County High School
West Virginia
Fifteen minutes after the attack, Tyce and Gunny had already set up a makeshift command post and were getting reports by both runner and radio. Most of the radios had made it out, thanks to the actions of the quick-thinking communications NCOs. The school was smoldering, a reminder of how close they’d gotten to losing the entire 150th.
Men raced to bring reports of new injuries and damage to equipment. Some of the men had gotten so separated from the group that there was still a question of finding everyone. Although open to the elements, the woods were a good temporary HQ. They only had what they’d been able to grab at the last minute, but it afforded them some cover from any aerial reconnaissance Tyce was sure would be coming. They had maps and several status boards set up, and the men were manning the radios—just as they’d drilled a hundred times before.
A civilian ambulance pulled into the parking lot near the demolished high school. It pulled straight past onto the firebreak and followed the small packs of Marines and soldiers looking through the wreckage and salvaging equipment to take back into the woods. To Tyce’s surprise, it pulled up nearby and Victoria and Wynand got out and walked over to him.
She didn’t pause for niceties. “How bad is it?” she asked.
“We’re still getting a count, but so far we have four men missing.” Victoria looked back toward the still-smoldering ruins of the school. “It could have been a lot worse. Catastrophic, even. Petty Officer Van Andersson’s intelligence saved us.” Victoria turned back to Tyce with a quizzical look. “She found the mole. It was one of your sailors.”
Victoria’s eyes widened. “Who?”
“Petty Officer Bartlett.”
Victoria frowned. “What? Couldn’t be. The girl from Jersey?”
“No idea, but she didn’t make it. Van A killed her.”
Victoria’s frown deepened at Tyce’s shortening of Stacey’s name. Then she looked around for her. “Where is she?”
“She helped us get the big antenna up so we could pass the new ambush location to Lieutenant Bryce, but she had to go. She’s following a new lead.”
“Really? Tyce, I’m not so sure of her. She’s kind of a bitc—”
“Hey!” Tyce interrupted Victoria and pulled her away from the command post area to where they could talk privately. “Look, right now I have four missing men, a platoon of LAVs headed to attack a train full of chemical munitions, and we just got the crap bombed out of us. I am gonna need you to get your medical section on top of taking care of all the wounded special forces men. A lot of them got reinjured when we pulled them out. Can you do that for me?”
Victoria’s azure eyes bored into Tyce’s but quickly softened as everything settled in. “Fatta! You got it, boss.”
“Thank you, Victoria.”
“Yeah. By the way, we got the meds for the general. And a bunch of other stuff we could probably put to good use now.”
“Excellent. Everything else go smoothly?”
“Yeah, rescued a kid, saved Bill from drowning, kicked Wynand’s ass—the usual.”
Tyce gave her an odd look, but didn’t have time for details, “Get your folks ready for more. Me and Gunny are headed out soon to try to join Lieutenant Bryce at the ambush.”
Victoria pursed her lips and furrowed her chin. Her eye’s scanned Tyce’s face. This wasn’t welcome news, and her feelings were once again deeply in conflict with her duties. She slipped her hand down and gently touched his palm with the tips of her fingers, drew closer, and whispered, “Be safe, and go give ’em hell, Amore mio.” Then she walked off to go take charge of her surgical team.
CHAPTER 33
Russian Pentagon
Washington D. C.
Major Pavel looked up from the Russian tactical messaging computer. “General, Panther has reported in. We have the enemy’s new ambush location pinpointed. A city called Strasburg.”
“Good,” said Kolikoff. “How long to get Shenkov rerouted?”
“He says he can be on the ground in there in fifteen minutes.”
“General.” Major Quico held up the watch floor’s tactical telephone. “It is General Tympkin. He requests a status report.”
Kolikoff did some hasty mental calculations, then picked up his own tactical phone. “Give me the 184th Guards Heavy Bomber Aviation Regiment. I have an urgent strike mission.” Kolikoff wasn’t going to take chances this time. Shenkov would still get his chance, but he was going to back him up with a heavy bombing run.
A voice came back on the phone. “Colonel Barbarov.”
“Donni, this is your old friend calling.”
“Viktor! Er . . . I guess it is General Kolikoff now. How are you, old man?”
“Listen, Donni, not much time for pleasantries today. I have an urgent strike request for you. I need an immediate heavy carpet-bombing run in a place called Strasburg, Virginia.”
There was silence on the other end of phone.
“It is in the American Shenandoah Valley.”
“Yes, I know the area, but this is very short notice, and the improper channel for a strike request, General.”
“Yes, yes, I know, my dear friend. But I seem to remember you have a fondness for American whiskey. I have a case of the best—really premium stuff—if you can help us out.”
“I’m listening.”
Finally, thought Kolikoff. We’ll get these hillbilly bastards out in the open.
Wardensville, West Virginia
The six Humvees and four civilian pickup trucks tore down Route 48 at a reckless speed. Tyce had ordered the men to drive as fast as humanly possible to try to make a link up with Lieutenant Bryce before the train arrived at his location. One understrength platoon from the 150th was all that he could spare to join Bryce’s LAVs, which were already at the ambush position outside Strasburg, Virginia. They grabbed their gear and tossed in all the heavy weapons and spare ammo they could scrounge from Tyce’s mostly demolished armory.
Gunny was loading loose ammo into rifle magazines and stopped to look over to Tyce, who had his face buried in a map. “Are we gonna make it, sir?”
“Barely. Train will be there in thirty minutes, and we’re thirty minutes out from the target area,” said Tyce. Just as he said it, their vehicle slowed to a halt, causing Tyce to look up angrily from his map. He called over the radio, “Hey, what’s the damn holdup?”
The report came back at once. “Si
r, there’s a street barbeque outside a small bookstore. There are civilians standing all over the road.”
“Crap, this is all we need.” Tyce felt like he was about to have a heart attack. His chest was pounding from the adrenaline. He keyed the radio. “Tell them to get the fuck out of our way.”
“We’re all good, sir,” came the report, and the vehicles were already starting to accelerate.
Tyce looked at Gunny. There was sweat beading down both men’s faces even though the temperature was only in the forties.
“Can we have any more trouble?” Tyce said. Gunny shook his head and went back to loading rifle magazines.
South of Strasburg, Virginia
Major Uintergrin walked up and down the line of new infantrymen. He’d been ordered to pick up two full platoons of men and three armored combat vehicles when they reached Lexington, Virginia. Communications had been spotty through the mountain ranges, but he’d managed to get several messages from the Pentagon. Intelligence had located an ambush along his route, and rather than give him a detour through the coastal cities, they’d beefed up his forces and told him to fight.
It really is the golden mission, he thought. The one that would vault him up to lieutenant colonel. He’d been given two additional fighting platoons, a group of tough soldiers who had been putting down a mixed bag of local militia and students at the Virginia Military Institute.
Uintergrin looked back through the glass at the two new flatbed train cars they’d added, but mostly he looked appreciatively at the reason for their addition, the three BTR-90 armored battle wagons. They were packed with the latest in Russian military hardware, from a 30mm chain gun to several 7.62mm machine guns, a 9M113 Konkurs anti-tank missile launcher, and even a 30mm automatic grenade launcher. He was to receive air support, at a critical point in the battle, from a flight of four Tupolev Tu-95 four-engine turboprop strategic bombers. But what really made him grin was that he’d been handed the exact coordinates of the enemy ambush.
He’d always wanted to be an infantry off icer. His grandfather, father, and uncles had all been infantry officers, but he’d scored too high on the entrance exams. Or maybe he didn’t look or act the part. Either way, he was made a chemical officer with little chance for advancement and next to no chance for glory on the battlefield. He’d watched men with half his mental acuity rise up in the ranks with great success. Successes that weren’t their due. But this mission had changed everything, and he’d known it from the beginning. Known it even when that rat-faced colonel of his had tried to hold him back, maybe even stop him from success. Just like all the stories his father and uncles had told him, everything important happens on the battlefield.
Uintergrin went into his new operational planning room, barely able to suppress a smile. It was now his command car. His boss had regrettably suffered gross exposure to a chemical leak caused by the American attack. At least, that was the way he’d filled out the digital report to his headquarters. Naturally, he’d been able to advise his headquarters that he had no trouble taking on the role of commander. The extra troops weren’t even his idea, headquarters had just told him to pick them up on the way through Lexington and to expect all the support they could manage at short notice. It had caused a delay, but he now had the equipment and personnel to spring a classic counter-ambush. Just like his grandfather had at the Battle of Kursk, and just like he’d studied in school.
He entered the command area, and five men plus two infantry lieutenants sprang to attention. The room contained the dining section of the Amtrak train but had been converted by pasting maps on the walls and stacking military grade radios on the tables. Crude, but effective.
“At ease,” he said confidently, relishing the concept that he now had officers, real fighting infantrymen, under his authority. He’d commanded bean counters and chemical nerds all his career, but from now on, things would be different. He extended a radio antenna as a pointing stick and slapped it against the ambush site on the map. “Prepare to receive your mission orders. I will now brief you on how we will crush an enemy ambush. Take out your notebooks.”
A truly golden mission, he thought to himself as the train raced on.
West of Strasburg, Virginia
Twenty minutes later, Tyce was within radio range of Lieutenant Bryce’s ambush position. He started calling him over the radio using his call sign. “Dragoons, Dragoons, this is Iron Horse six, do you copy?”
A faint crackle came through, then nothing. He tried again. Another crackle, and nothing else.
“I think he’s reading you, sir, but our radios aren’t powerful enough to hear him.”
Tyce tried a few more times as they sped toward the site. Then finally, he heard “Iron Horse, we read you.”
“Thank God,” Tyce said. He keyed the radio. “Hey Bryce, we’re inbound to your poz. Be there in about ten.”
“Copy, sir. Be advised . . . already . . . see the train.” Any other words were lost to the crackling radio.
Tyce’s heart went into overdrive. “Damn it.” He banged his elbow against the armrest, then immediately regretted it. Stinging pain went through his arm. He rekeyed the radio, his voice sounding more desperate than he wanted it to. “Say again, Dragoons. Did not copy.” Tyce hoped to God he had heard the lieutenant wrong.
“I say again, we already see the train.” This time the transmission came through, clear as day.
Tyce gritted his teeth. “I copy, the ambush is yours. Hit the engine and get it to stop. We’ll be there in”—Tyce looked at his watch—“six minutes.”
“Commencing ambush, time now,” came the response. On the last two words, Tyce could hear the thump-thump of Bryce’s 25mm rounds.
Or so he thought. Another transmission from Bryce followed quickly. “We’re under heavy fire—” Boom-boom. Tyce could hear the background noise of explosions and the rattle of machine gun fire. “There are two, no, three enemy vehicles firing on our positions. They’ve dismounted troops. We’re being hit from two sides.”
Tyce sat up straighter in his seat and grabbed what the troops called “the Jesus bar” because you grabbed it when the vehicle was going so fast or over such rocky terrain that you cried out and grabbed the bar to keep yourself from being flung from the vehicle. He was preparing himself. “Corporal Dunworthy, I don’t care what you have to do, but make this thing go faster, and get us to Lieutenant Bryce.”
The corporal already had the throttle almost all the way open, but on Tyce’s command, he gave it the last bit of gas and locked his arms out to hold the wheel steady. Gear was bouncing all around the Humvee, and Tyce’s vision was obscured by the back of the next Humvee.
Tyce called out on the local squad radio. “Pick up to maximum speed, everyone get ready. It sounds like Lieutenant Bryce is in a shit sandwich.” Holding the radio in the crook of his neck, the map with one hand, and the Jesus bar with his other, he thought up a quick tactical scenario. “We’ll approach from the north and act as a counterattack force. The enemy will be attacking from the rail lines at about the intersection of Route 55 and Interstate 81. If we hit them with enough force, we can split his forces. They’ll be focused on Bryce. Get all weapons locked and loaded, we hit the ground running.” The men in his vehicle must have been listening, too. Tyce heard the .50 cal machine gunner on the top turret rack his charging handle back. The two other Army National Guard troops who were squeezed in the vehicle back seats locked a magazine and started checking over each other’s gear. One of them was a grenadier and had a 40mm grenade launcher attached to his rifle’s barrel. He opened his pack, pulled out a bunch of extra 40mm rounds, and started talking his buddy into carrying most of them.
Gunny was looking over Tyce’s shoulder. “Hey, sir, there’s a civilian housing development right near there.” He tried to point out the location on Tyce’s map as the vehicle bounced around crazily.
“I know. Can’t be helped. It’d be a lot worse if we tried to go around him to the south. That would mess up Bryce
’s geometry of fires. It’s the best option.” He switched back to the radio. “Dragoons, Dragoons. Give me a SIT-REP if you can.”
“Heavily engaged,” came the report. “Stand by.”
Tyce hated getting a “stand by” from one of his field units. It meant they were so heavily engaged that they couldn’t even take the time to talk. The situation must have gotten even more dire. Of course, Tyce imagined the worst, but he had to ensure he projected calm confidence to his man. “Copy, fight and report when able.”
Tyce briefly let go of the bar to load a magazine—right when they went over an enormous bump. Even though he was buckled into his seat, he flew up and smashed his head against the roof of the Humvee. He had his helmet on, but his neck seared in pain. He looked up and saw why Corporal Dunworthy had suddenly gone off road.
Ahead of them, in a valley just below the highway, an immense volley of tracer fire zigzagged across an open dirt construction site. Tyce could see the train engine stopped just under five hundred meters in front of them. The engine looked very much intact, and, in fact, Tyce could see it had stopped at a perfect location to dismount its troops next to a long, low berm. The Russians were able to remain in cover while raking Bryce’s men from his right flank and keeping him pinned from the front.
“There, there!” Tyce pointed to a collection of newly constructed houses at the edge of the field. “Get us over to those houses. No terrain around to mask us, so artificial terrain will have to do for getting close.” Then, over the radio, he said, “Each of you, pick a house.” Tyce held on for dear life. The seat belt wasn’t enough to hold him steady as the vehicle careened over curbs and bounced across unfinished sod lawns.
“There.” Tyce managed to point at a house. “Go fast.” Tyce knew better than anybody that they had the element of surprise. If the BTRs saw the new arrivals, they’d train their 30mm guns on them and open them up like tin cans.
The Kill Box Page 24