by Peter Nealen
Not everybody was as ready for the blast. Tony tripped as the gale plucked at him, and went down, fortunately with enough presence of mind to avoid falling on the Mk 48. Reuben, lugging the second belt-fed, got a hand under his arm and helped him up, with Scott on the other side. The wind battered at all of us as we fanned out from the tail, forming a semi-circular perimeter, our backs to the water, facing the Zealand interior. The other two teams were off to our left, putting us closest to the road.
The countryside was dark, only a few lights showing from houses in Halsskov. There was traffic moving on the road, but not much. It was just after 0100 hours, and it seemed that the Danish night life was understandably minimal, with everything going on.
Scott turned and gave the crew chief a thumbs up and got the same signal in return. We were all off and clear. The battering windstorm of prop wash intensified, and then the Ospreys were lifting away, the snarl of their props fading into the night as the wind died down, leaving us in an eerie calm.
The lawn we’d set down on along the shoreline was flat and wide open, but the side of the road had been bermed up, and bushes and shrubs grew alongside the guardrail. There wasn’t much cover to be had. And the need for mobility had limited what we could bring to block the road. The Marines had some concertina wire, but if the Danes sent armored vehicles, that would be of only limited utility.
We had two AT-4s per team, but those wouldn’t be our primary weapons if the Danes sent tanks and artillery. No, the primaries would be the radios and the F-35s that were still flying racetracks overhead.
I glanced up as we started to move into position. The birds weren’t showing lights, but I could hear them, the rumble of their jet engines audible even from thirty thousand feet. There should be two flights up there, one from the Iwo Jima, one from the Abraham Lincoln. There were more birds in the air—the Abraham Lincoln had their own Combat Air Patrol up, along with more F/A-18F Super Hornets, EA-18G Growlers, and a handful of working F-35s, covering the MEU until we could shift over to coverage from the Dwight D Eisenhower in the North Sea. We had a lot of air cover. The Danes had, so far, been keeping clear of American aircraft, and the EDC’s capabilities that far north had been severely eroded since the Charles de Gaulle had been driven out of the North Sea by strikes from the Abraham Lincoln.
The EDC was desperately low on modern aircraft, thanks to a combination of attrition and their member countries’ own reticence to spend money on defense for decades before.
We got to the side of the road and started to set in. The Marines appeared on the far side, and we made linkup via IR flashes. Then the Marines started to string the concertina across the road, and I sent David and Chris up to help out, while the rest of us got ready to repel anyone who tried to force the bridge.
We had to hold for three to four hours, depending on how this went. I briefly prayed for a boring three to four hours, then got to work.
***
During planning, we had considered just staying concealed, watching, and waiting. Letting civilian traffic cross the bridge and only acting if the Danes tried to push tanks and artillery onto the span. As a plan, it had the advantage that it would have let us maintain the element of surprise—as much as was possible after roaring in on Ospreys, anyway—and it would have leveraged our capabilities to the utmost.
In fact, that had been the primary course of action that all of us, Marine leadership and Triarii Grex Luporum leadership both, had urged. But we’d been overruled by the MEU Commander. He didn’t want anything on that bridge while his ships and Marines were steaming under it.
I couldn’t entirely blame him. We’d seen VBIEDs used in Poland already. And there were plenty of factions within Denmark—as we’d seen when we’d gone in to get Landau out—who would be willing to use such weapons. So, tanks and artillery weren’t our only concern.
Still, it meant we had to stick our necks a lot farther out than any of us were comfortable with.
The concertina wire was strung across the four lanes leading onto the East Bridge after the first fifteen minutes or so. Reflective cones had been set out across the road another hundred yards inland, just so innocent civilians didn’t go plowing into the wire because they didn’t see it in the dark at 0200 in the morning.
We were set in on one flank, the Force platoon on the other. We actually outnumbered the Marines, a fact that I didn’t think was lost on the MEU Commander when he okayed the mission, but while we might not entirely trust each other, I figured that everyone understood that we were alone and unafraid, and had only our fellow Americans to lean on if things went loud.
I looked around us. We had brought entrenching tools, so we were partially dug in, much like Bradshaw and his boys were planning to do in Brussels. It wouldn’t do much if we got hit hard, but it was better than nothing, even if the shallow scrapes we’d dug out weren’t much more than a tactical security blanket.
Even as I scanned the headland, a cone of dim white light swept across us. I got lower and tucked myself in behind my rifle, reaching out to touch the AT-4 that lay next to my hole. Greg was on the other side with the radio.
A single pair of headlights was coming toward the bridge from the east, the first traffic we’d seen since setting down thirty minutes before. I watched them come closer, sparing a glance at the rest of the team, only to see that they were all switched on and ready to fight.
Time stretched. It seemed to take a long time for the headlights to get closer. Of course, Denmark’s flat as a table, so that shouldn’t be that much of a surprise. They had a good amount of distance to cover before they got to us.
As they got closer, it became more obvious that it was just one vehicle. But was it a civilian, out for a drive in the wee hours of the morning, or was a Royal Danish Army scout?
The headlights slowed as they got closer and started to gleam off the reflective triangles in the road. Whoever it was, they were hesitating. Which might simply mean they thought there might be construction or an accident ahead, or they might recognize the barrier for what it was, and they were already calling back to their command for instructions.
NVGs don’t work all that well with magnified optics, and it’s even worse when they’re being whited out by headlights, but I tried to put one tube of my PS-31s against my scope’s ocular lens, trying to get a better view of the oncoming vehicle. It didn’t work. I just got blinded up close. I blinked as I lifted my head off the optic.
Even as my eye readjusted after the searing glare, the oncoming headlights stopped. For a moment, they just sat there, as the driver considered what he could see in front of him. He probably couldn’t quite make out the concertina wire. It was too far behind the triangles. But the triangles were set two to a lane, all the way across.
Then the cones of light swung out toward the north as the driver started to turn around. I got back on my scope, trying to get a better look.
I let my breath out a little. Turned aside, the glare of the headlights passing over the field to our north, I could see that the car was a tiny hybrid. Either the Danes were cutting their scout budget a lot, or this was just a civilian, trying to drive from Zealand to Funen in the middle of the night.
We still watched, still and silent, rifles trained on the vehicle, as the car’s red lights receded into the dark, going the wrong direction. The toll booth for the bridge was back there, clearly visible in the distance. My eyes narrowed as I studied it.
Unless I missed my guess, this was about to get interesting.
***
Sure enough, blue flashing lights appeared a few minutes later, coming from the toll booth. Someone had, inevitably, called in the blockage, and now the police were checking on it.
This could get complicated. The MEU wasn’t even supposed to get to the bridge for over an hour.
“Knife, this is Golf Lima Ten. Think we can get a show of force over the highway here?” My voice was a low, almost sub-vocal murmur into my mic. There’d been a time when we’d had to make it
look as if it had been harder to sync our comms with the regular military than it actually had been. We’d had an inside track on US military comms since before we’d inserted into Slovakia. Now, having worked hand-in-hand with the Army and the Marine Corps for the last several months, it wasn’t as big an issue.
“This is Knife. Affirm. Stand by and keep your heads down.” Captain Weiss had inserted along with the rest of the platoon, I was sure to his Marines’ great enthusiasm. He might be a mustang and a human wrecking ball, but from what I’d come to learn about Recon Marines, to a man they detested having officers along.
We waited as the flashing blue lights got closer. It looked like they’d sent out two cars. Which was actually a good sign. It meant they hadn’t quite figured out what was happening and called in the Army yet.
“Get ready to engage if they push this.” The murmured order was passed down the line of Triarii facing the road. I didn’t particularly want to light up what were probably poorly-armed Danish Politiet, but if we had to…
Somewhere above us, a growl started to get louder and throatier. I glanced up, but I couldn’t see the bird. Still, it was coming.
The growl rose to a snarling banshee howl, and then the bird was right overhead, less than five hundred feet up. The pilot kicked in the throttle, though not quite hitting afterburner, and the F-35 roared over the two police cars with a roll of thunder that had to rattle their teeth. Barely seconds later, the pilot’s Dash Two followed.
I could feel the jets’ engines rattle my bones. And apparently, the cops could, too. They were smart. They figured it out quick.
In seconds, both police cars were retreating toward the toll booth, showing us their red brake lights as they went.
***
Things stayed quiet for the next hour. The Force Platoon notified us that they had eyes on the ships coming up the strait.
Only a few minutes later, the Danish Army showed up.
They didn’t come with quite the show of force that I’d been halfway expecting, but they still deployed a company column of armored vehicles toward the bridge. The Royal Danish Army’s 2nd Brigade was stationed in Slagelse, barely ten miles away. This had probably been inevitable.
“Knife, Golf Lima Nine. I have eyes on what appears to be a tank platoon, plus two platoons of Piranha Vs, coming around the toll booth to the north.” Tucker had beaten me to it.
“Confirm you have a company of combined tanks and motorized infantry approaching from the east/northeast?” The Recon Marines, on the south side of the road, must not have as clear a view.
“Confirmed. Four tanks, ten Piranha V light armored vehicles.” Tucker’s voice was flat and professional, hiding the annoyance I had no doubt he was feeling at being questioned. “They are off the main highway, on the frontage road, and beginning to spread out toward the fields.”
“Knife copies, stand by.”
I turned to Greg, who was already listening. We had the combined air freq, so we should be able to listen in on the call for fire.
He looked up at me. Even with the poor detail that I could see through my NVGs at that close distance—they were focused for longer range, so that I could see the oncoming armored vehicles with some clarity—he looked disgusted.
“Only a show of force authorized, again.” Greg was a nice guy in every sense of the word, but right then, even he couldn’t keep the contempt out of his voice. “The MEU Commander wants to avoid ‘inflaming’ the Danes.” He listened again. “Oh, apparently this is because of what happened when we went to get Landau out. Seems we didn’t make many friends among the officer corps, shooting the people who were out to assassinate her.”
“We didn’t exactly make friends with her when we did that,” I pointed out, my eyes back on the oncoming armored column. “But again, I can’t be too surprised.”
Once again, the pair of F-35s roared overhead, shaking the ground with their passage. I ignored the planes, watching the armored column instead.
They didn’t stop, or even slow down. They wouldn’t be deterred by a simple show of force, not on their own soil.
Maybe we should have fired on the police. Then they might not think that we were too reluctant to hurt anybody, and would have advanced more cautiously.
As the Lightning IIs climbed away, the four Leopard 2A5 tanks turned away from the highway, spreading out across the fields now that they were past the entrance to the railroad tunnel that paralleled the bridge, only under the strait. They kept their turrets turned toward the water, and us. The Piranha Vs stayed back, except for one platoon that pushed out fast to the north, getting on the tanks’ flank to hold their security.
“Knife, Golf Lima Ten. No reaction. They are still coming.” I kept my own voice low and even, unwilling to show the Marines even the hint of an emotional reaction at facing a full tank platoon with only a couple of AT-4s.
“Roger. Stand by.” Was that some trepidation I heard in Weiss’s voice?
Greg was listening, the handset pressed against his ear. I could hear the whine and rattle of the tanks’ treads out there, far too close already.
“They’re getting some pushback from the COC. But Weiss, at least, is holding his ground. Says that we’re going to be overrun in the next few minutes if he doesn’t get warheads on foreheads.” I was sure that Weiss wasn’t using that particular phrasing, but Greg was entitled to add his little flourishes when he was just reciting what he was hearing.
The tanks halted, and the infantry started to dismount from the Piranhas. I wanted to check where the ships were, but I couldn’t afford to take my eyes off the enemy.
“Wings level. Danger close.” Greg had just sent that over our team net. There wasn’t time for anything else. We got as low as we could.
The F-35s didn’t come in as low as they had for the show of force. We could still hear them overhead as the munitions dropped from their internal bays. I didn’t know what was incoming; we hadn’t given coordinates for a JDAM, and we didn’t have a laser designator for the AGM-65 Maverick Air to Ground Missiles that were still in service.
Whatever the weapon was, it hit way too close.
The flash was almost simultaneous with the volcanic thunderclap that practically picked us up off the ground and slammed us back down. For a moment, I thought I’d been knocked out again. One moment, I was watching the tanks and light armored vehicles, the next, three of the tanks had disappeared in a boiling, ugly, black cloud, and fragmentation was raining down out of the sky on us. We huddled as low as we could get in our Ranger graves, trying to cover the backs of our necks and other sensitive parts of our anatomy.
Once I dared look up again, I saw that only one tank had been hit. It was burning fiercely, what was left of it. It appeared to be mostly a shattered hull—there was no sign of the turret.
There might have been bodies on the ground—I couldn’t imagine that the dismounted infantry had gotten low enough fast enough for all of them to avoid the blast. But I couldn’t see them. I could, however, make out that the rest of the vehicles were retreating, the tanks popping smoke as they rolled back to the east. They didn’t want to mess with air support just then.
As they retreated, I glanced over my shoulder, in time to see the lead ships passing under the span of the East Bridge.
Only a couple more hours before we could extract.
It was going to be a long two hours.
Chapter 24
We waited as the darkened ships cruised up the strait and the stricken tank burned on the field. There wasn’t much wind, fortunately. We still got a few whiffs of smoke from the burning hulk, but it could have been a lot worse.
I could still hear the fast movers overhead, circling like sharks. They were the one thing that was probably going to keep the enemy off us. Fortunately, it appeared that the Danes weren’t interested in pushing the matter, having just sacrificed a tank and I didn’t know how many foot mobiles.
Sometimes, even a near-peer adversary, tech-wise, isn’t quite unciviliz
ed enough to make a truly formidable opponent.
We didn’t talk with the Marines and SEALs over on Sprogø. I expected that Weiss had comms with the Bn Recon platoon, but he appeared to be focused on the Force platoon’s sector. We didn’t hear any gunfire or bomb impacts from that direction, so it appeared that they were better placed than we were.
After all, they were in the middle of the strait. Any forces attempting to dislodge them would have to either cover seven klicks of bridge, or else come at them from the water.
Since the rest of the team was focused on the landward side, and no new attacks appeared to be forthcoming, I could direct my attention to the rest of our surroundings. The Iwo Jima had already passed under the bridge, and was steaming steadily north. The USS Leyte Gulf had taken point, and was barely visible on night vision off to the north. The destroyer Mason was hanging back in the rear, and still had yet to pass under the bridge.
A faint growl sounded high above. I turned my NVGs up to the sky, but I couldn’t see anything beyond the nearly-invisible dots of the F-35s and F/A-18Fs overhead.
Then I thought I saw something. It was hard to see, even through the white phosphor NVGs, but there appeared to be more fast-movers coming from the northwest.
Were the Danes trying to clash with the Navy and Marine Air?
The next moment, a fiery streak rushed away from one of the birds overhead, arrowing toward the oncoming dots. I watched it as it crossed the distance quickly, even as the incoming fast movers suddenly scattered, diving toward the deck and spouting flares, tiny sparks floating down out of the sky at that distance.
It’s weird, watching air-to-air combat at that distance, from the ground, on NVGs. It seems like you shouldn’t be able to see it, with all the beyond-visual-range engagements. But the American pilots must have been told to try to warn the Danes off before they fired, so the range had closed to the point where I could look up and watch the dogfight.