The Kill Box
Page 27
One of the headquarters sergeants who had the duties of fires-NCO moved a pin on the map put his finger on the houses and made a pencil circle with a compass around them, drawing the radius for the KAB-500S-E guided smart bomb. His job was to coordinate all the indirect fires, artillery, bombs, et cetera, but also to make sure they didn’t inadvertently kill their own men. The KAB-500S had a yield of 195 kilograms, and, not even calculating for a missed drop, which happened frequently, the blast radius still covered Shenkov’s men in the woods entirely. The sergeant looked back over his shoulder at Uintergrin. “Comrade Major, if you target the houses with heavy bombs, you will hit Captain Shenkov.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, boy!” Uintergrin hissed. He was sick and tired of the tone and comments the men were giving him. He was almost positive they were because he wore the chemical symbol on his collar, not the plain collar or insignia of a Russian infantry officer.
One of the new infantry lieutenants spoke up. “Comrade Major, I must protes—”
Uintergrin interrupted the man. “Shut your mouth, and hand up the coordinate for the buildings. We have the enemy in a classic move. It’s called a kill box. I don’t expect you to understand advanced infantry tactics.”
The infantry lieutenant paused to stare at the major. He had seen a kill box established before, and this wasn’t it. Nevertheless, he nodded to the radio operator to send coordinates back to the Russian Pentagon.
* * *
Tyce felt two bullets impact his flak jacket. They knocked him back onto his ass, but a cavalryman picked him roughly up by his arm and stood him up. The wind was still knocked out of him. He put a hand to his chest. He could still feel the bullets embedded partway in his jacket; the ceramic plate underneath had prevented their penetration, but he was certain his healing ribs had rebroken. The other man looked at him as he stood unsteadily. His good leg was wobbly, but his prosthetic leg held him up straight. He nodded at the man, and together, they continued racing forward.
Tyce had been practically the lead man before he got shot and had now dropped back only a few steps behind the two lead teams. He watched the lead team overrun a Russian light gun position. The men fired their weapons into the two Russians and continued without stopping. He saw the looks of surprise on the Russian men’s faces when they died. They had never expected anyone to show up at their sides. Tyce ran forward, firing at every pocket of Russians as he went. Adrenaline was pumping so fast now, he felt like his feet weren’t even touching the ground. He leapt over a long, unburied metal drainpipe and was surprised to see two Russians half covered under it. He was about to turn to fire on the Russians when two Marines and a cavalryman behind him leapt over behind him, firing downward and killing the Russians.
Tyce had seen a lot of combat, but the intensity that came with catching the enemy by surprise and rolling up their flanks was something he’d only read about. He turned back and ran to catch up with the lead men.
* * *
“Fire the damned rocket!” Shenkov yelled, but he could not be heard above the din of the battle. After a few futile attempts to get their attention, Shenkov brazenly stood up and ran over to the rocket men. He dove into their position, crashing among them. He saw that one of the men was clutching at his ankle, and at first, Shenkov thought he had landed on the man’s leg. Then he glanced at it and saw only meat and bone where the man’s foot had once been.
He pushed the man aside and picked up the big 105mm rocket, sighted in, and aimed at one of the buildings. He set the shoulder brace and stared into the flip-up sight. He’d used one of these rockets before, just not under the withering fire he and his men were under now. Rounds were kicking up all around him, and at least one of the enemy riflemen had noticed his kneeling form. He squeezed the trigger. The rocket launcher let loose a thunderous roar, dirt and leaves jumping into the air all around him, and the warhead blasted downrange, leaving a trail of white smoke. The shot was perfect. It connected right against the basement’s short stone wall.
Boom!
A tremendous explosion erupted, spars and timbers vaulting skyward in a cloud of black smoke. Through the dirt and debris, Shenkov could see the house had collapsed in on itself, and one of the American heavy machine guns was now silenced.
* * *
Tympkin listened to the exchange, then looked back to the live UAV feed. Before he could say anything, Kolikoff grabbed the radio handset. “Listen to me. Get Major Uintergrin on the radio, right now.”
Uintergrin came onto the radio. “Comrade General, very good of you to call. The battle is unfolding to plan. We have the enemy exactly where we want them—”
“According to whose plan?” Kolikoff interrupted. “Now you listen to me. The coordinates you passed will directly impact your men. That bombing run is denied, and I want to know how you intend to change the tide back to your favor.”
There was a moment’s pause. Then Uintergrin came back on. “Comrade General, I think you can understand we are stressed by the sting of combat, but we still have the upper hand. Any reports to the contrary are just absurd.”
Major Pavel was manning the radios to the bomber squadron and looked at both generals. Kolikoff shook his head. Pavel understood and told the bombers to hold position and wait until they developed the situation further.
Tympkin pulled Kolikoff aside. “Viktor, things are going badly for your man on the ground. He is beginning to sound unhinged. We need to resolve this thing now and get my train moving.”
Kolikoff was acutely aware that the man was actually part of the unit General Tympkin had hand-selected for his own nefarious mission, but there were more important problems to worry about. The counter ambush had been a plan handed to him by Stazia, but he had jumped at the chance to kill the American mountain unit. So now he owned this mess. Fine, then he would fix it.
“General, when this is done, I need to know what’s on that train.”
“Fix this, and we’ll talk. Maybe even have something to show for all this chaos after the war is over.”
It looked like he was going to remain in the dark for the moment. In Russian terms, ignorance wasn’t necessarily bliss. Whatever Tympkin was caught up in would probably filter down to him eventually.
“Pavel,” Kolikoff shouted gruffly, “they are too close to engage with smart bombs, and I will not risk it. Tell the bombers I want them to switch to precision, low-level passes. Have them set up gun-runs from the north to the south. One bird at a time.”
“Low passes?”
“Yes, Pavel, you dunce. They have the Afanasev Makarov AM-23 autocannons. If they can’t use their bombs, they can strafe the targets. They can save the bombs until we find a chance to use them.”
“Aren’t those guns on the back?”
“Pavel, you do not need to personally instruct each and every pilot how to maneuver his aircraft. They are trained for this. Tell them what we want, and let them do the rest.”
Tympkin beamed at Kolikoff. “Viktor, you are still one of my best in a pinch.”
Kolikoff would normally be proud to receive the comment, but he hardly believed that this would be enough to stop what looked like a rapidly unraveling situation.
* * *
Tyce stopped mid-stride and watched as the house Gunny had been fighting from blew sky-high. He couldn’t help but stare at the ruins that once held his senior enlisted man, someone he considered a good friend. The smoke hung in the air like a white mist, and big chunks of the building began to fall all around. Chunks of concrete, bricks, and pieces of wood all came down with a clatter. The sheer noise of the explosion was enough that everyone in the area, both American and Russian, momentarily ceased their fire across the battlefield to watch the spectacle. Then, almost as quickly as the explosion happened, the small-arms fire resumed.
Tyce felt an uncharacteristic rage boiling up in him. He had been in enough battles that he was usually able to keep his animalistic instincts at bay, but this felt different. He’d just lost s
omeone close to him, an old vet whom he’d counted upon and trusted for many years, along with a full squad of men. The pain of the loss was gut-wrenching.
He felt himself surging forward, rushing ahead. His mind was a blur. Suddenly, he was among the first team. They had stalled; the Russians had noticed them and were turning toward their flanks, trying to adjust their lines to counter this new threat. Tyce wasn’t going to let that happen. He heard a roar, a guttural noise like something he’d heard in a Hollywood Viking movie. It was coming from him. He was bellowing and running and firing. He ran and jumped over Russian fighting positions, shooting at everything on the ground. Everything before him was enemy, and he wanted to kill them all. A part of his rational brain told him to stop, let the others catch up with him, let the .50 cal gunners shift their fires. He might even be racing directly into his own machine gun fires, but something inside him didn’t let go, wouldn’t let up.
He took a big leap over a stand of bushes, but then he realized his rifle was dry. The two men on the other side saw his wild-eyed, frenzied look and stood up to confront him. Something hammered into his prosthetic leg. He felt the leg get ripped off of him, and he fell forward, catching both of the Russians in the chest with his rifle. The three men wrestled on the ground. One Russian reached toward his belt for a fighting knife while the other tried awkwardly to short-stock his rifle to get a shot at Tyce at point-blank range. Tyce took his rifle by the barrel and bashed the Russian trying to shoot him. The buttstock skipped off the Russian’s face and slammed against the man’s AK-15 rifle, driving the barrel into the dirt while it discharged. One of the bullets caught Tyce in the front of his body armor, the other two hit the ground behind and in front of him. The brute force of the blow knocked the Russian to the ground, a massive gash across his nose and mouth gushing blood.
The second Russian had his bayonet out and up at the ready. He got to his knees and leapt on top of Tyce, leading with the knife like a cobra striking its prey. He held the knife downward, his other hand making a fist behind the hand that held the knife. The weight of his body helped plunge the knife deep, driving it through Tyce’s flak jacket and all the way up to the hilt and into Tyce.
* * *
Stazia had rebalanced the Barrett and was looking for another target among the LAV men when she heard the sounds of big aviation engines. She watched the first giant Russian bomber descend into the Shenandoah Valley from the north. She could see another a ways back, lining up behind the first.
“What the hell are they doing?” she said.
It was just too big an aircraft to be that low. It looked out of place. For a moment, she got the feeling that she was in its path and might get caught up in its fires, or bombing run, or whatever it was up to. It was an optical illusion, of course, but there was an undeniable fear factor inherent in the arrival of such a great force among what, till now, had been a relatively two-dimensional fight. One that she’d enjoyed immensely, driving around and seeing from every angle. She watched the aircraft as it seemed to hover in midair. Then, in a flash, it was overhead, and a stream of heavy gunfire spewed out the back, blasting into the middle of the remaining three houses. The rounds also impacted in the woods where she’d seen Tyce and Captain Shenkov’s men fighting. The streams almost looked like two firehoses, except these were setting fires and not putting them out. The broken, caved-in roof of the middle house was smoldering, and she could see the flicker of a yellow flame. Two or three more passes, and the civilian houses in which she’d seen Tyce’s men would all be gone. She lay down her rifle, shifted the car into gear, and floored it back along Interstate 81 to a spot on the overpass where she knew she’d be able to better see the battle.
My work here against Lieutenant Bryce’s men is done for now, anyhow, she thought.
CHAPTER 38
Strasburg, Virginia
Now it was Tyce’s turn. Though his left arm and shoulder hung uselessly, he had a knife in his right. In one swift motion, he whipped the blade up and directly into the man’s neck. There was no protection there, and the man had been so focused on driving the knife into Tyce that he’d left his neck completely exposed. The violence of Tyce’s upswing was so powerful that the knife penetrated, slicing cleanly through the man’s windpipe and out the other side. The man gurgled, his body spasming. He let go of the knife in Tyce’s arm and reached for his neck.
Tyce kicked the man off. He was still moving, but Tyce knew he didn’t have long left to live. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other Russian. This man lay in the dirt, his nose bashed in and blood covering his face, but he was only wounded. He let out some labored breathing and reached for the AK. Tyce was still on his back, so now it just came down to the matter of who was fastest. Tyce dropped his knife and drew his pistol from its holster just as the other man grabbed his AK and turned it to fire. For the briefest of instants, Tyce prayed that he’d remembered to chamber a round. There was no way he’d be able to rack a round into the pistol one handed—if he even had time to try. He aimed loosely for the man’s head and shoulders and squeezed the trigger.
The first round ripped into the Russian’s neck, the second grazed him across his back, but the third hit him squarely in the head. He fell where he lay, his finger curled around the trigger of his own AK. He had been just a little too slow.
Tyce let out a loud groan, balanced the pistol on his stomach, and reached his right hand up to the knife in his chest. Under his arm in the small gap in his flak jacket, he could feel the point of the Russian’s bayonet. The Russian dagger had penetrated his flak jacket, but the jacket and a rib bone in his chest had partially deflected the blade, so it had gone through his pectoral muscle and out his armpit. When he breathed, he could feel the cold steel rubbing against the ribs and between the muscles.
“Shit,” he said, lying and listening to the sounds of the battle still raging around him.
He watched as his men stormed around and past him. They took up temporary firing positions near logs, the big, unburied drainpipes, and what remained of grenade-felled trees. The rate of fire had died down considerably, and the. 50 cals were now mostly silent. Tyce wanted to call out, but he’d used up all his energy and lay silent for a few seconds, feeling his heartbeat and wondering what to do next.
“Hey, sir, there you are. Dragoons is on the radio and wants you to know the train is starting to move. He wants to know what you want him to do.”
Tyce looked at the radioman weakly, then signaled for him to come closer.
“Dang, sir. You got a fucking knife sticking outta you.” The man knelt down to get a better look. He looked around at Tyce’s smoking pistol and the two dead Russians, one with a knife in his neck, then yelled, “Medic! Medic!”
Tyce took the handset. “Dragoons six, Dragoon six, this is Iron Horse six, do you copy?” It was hard to breathe, but he could feel adrenaline still coursing through his veins.
“Iron Horse, good to hear from you. Dragoon six is . . . a fallen hero,” Tyce recognized the voice of Staff Sergeant Peters, Bryce’s platoon sergeant. “Be advised, I have assumed command and I need instructions. The train looks like it might start to move again.”
“Roger, Darkhorse five. You take control, but I need you to get fire on that train. Hit that engine, but only the engine. It’s still got chem on board, and we don’t want any leaks. Same rules apply.”
“Understood. We’ll do our best, but those BTRs are making life pretty tough on us.”
Tyce looked around for the radioman, who was standing up and signaling for a medic to hasten over. “Get your head down, son.”
“It’s okay, sir. We got them mostly on the run. The guys followed your insane charge all the way up their flank. The Russians are hightailing it out to the east. There’s a few pockets, but we’re cleaning them out.”
Tyce thought, How on earth . . . ? It worked!
It was a testament to the American spirit; the guys just didn’t let up. As he’d told them, once you have the element of s
urprise, don’t stop. The enemy will see you raging and think he’s defeated, even if he still has greater numbers. Tyce caught sight of a long steel ammo crate near the detritus and the two dead Russian. He couldn’t read Cyrillic, but he recognized the Roman numbering. It was 105mm. He knew that could only be a rocket.
“Hey, trooper.”
“It’s McClotsky, sir.”
“Got it. Belay that corpsman or medic and go grab me an a sergeant or a staff sergeant. We gotta get things going. We have the upper hand, but it won’t last long if we don’t do something now.” The soldier eyed him but got ready to leave him to go find a leader. Tyce looked around. “Uh, before you go, help me find my leg.”
* * *
Uintergrin was in a complete panic. The BTR men were starting to withdraw, there was no word from Captain Shenkov, and the Tu-95s flying at treetop level and blazing away with their tail guns made a hellish noise that made him cringe.
“Sir, General Kolikoff is on the line. He wants a situation report.”
Another radio operator leaned back. “Major, the BTR unit leader says he is running very low on ammo. He also reports seeing the Spetsnaz forces retreating from the woods and moving to the east. They are not stopping.”
Uintergrin was aware of a man standing in the doorway. It was one of the guests, the former FBI traitor. “What do you want?”
“Our guards ran. We didn’t know what was happening, and we’ve been encased in these infernal suits for hours. When is someone going to let us in on the plan?”