Battlefield Pacific

Battle of Kaliningrad

Spring had nearly arrived in Belgium as the winter snows finally disappeared, revealing brown grass that patiently awaited the new season's rain and sunshine. Looking at up at the midday sun, General James Cotton, the Global Defense Force Commander Europe, enjoyed the warmth of its rays after spending the last week deep underground in one planning meeting after another.

“I need to get outside more often. I can’t stay cooped up in that bunker all the time,” General Cotton thought as he walked around the command center perimeter. He managed to ignore his private security detail, who was never far away.

While the war in Asia had been raging for nearly four months, the war in Europe was ongoing, albeit at a slower pace than in Asia. The Russians had largely pushed the Allies out of Estonia and Latvia but had been unable to remove them from Lithuania and relieve their beleaguered garrison in Kaliningrad. Cotton’s subordinate commanders had urged him to capture the Russian enclave in Kaliningrad, but he had resisted the urge up to this point since the small territory held very little strategic value or relevancy once it had been neutralized.

With the Baltic Sea now cleared of Russian naval forces, including the submarines they had positioned there, the Allies were now making heavier use of the Allied Baltic ports. This greatly reduced the distance needed to travel to supply the front lines. In less than four months, the Allies would launch a massive invasion of Russia, and the shorter they could make their supply lines, the easier it would be to keep the grand army on the move. Hence, Cotton was now planning to invade Kaliningrad.

General Cotton turned away from the warmth of the midday sun and began his trek back down into the bowels of the underground complex that made up his command center, toward the high-tech wizardry that felt more like a dungeon with each passing month. As he walked toward the elevator, a guard placed his hand in front of the door sensor to hold it open for him. He stepped into the elevator with one of his aides, closing his eyes for a moment and bracing himself for the controlled chaos he was about to walk into.

“General Cotton!” a British colonel shouted at him the moment the elevator door opened. It was almost as if he had perched nearby, waiting for Cotton to return so he could be the first to bombard him with a question or update.

Cotton took a deep breath, then patiently responded, “What have you got for me?”

“Sir, we just received a report from the port in Hamburg. One of the newly arrived freighters from the Atlantic convoys had just docked at the pier to offload munitions when a mine or some other explosive detonated. That explosion set off a chain of secondary explosions, which destroyed the heavy cranes at the pier in addition to the ship. The shell of the ship’s charred remains has settled next to the pier, which is going to prevent any further ships from docking,” he explained frantically.

The general sighed deeply. This was just the latest act of sabotage that the Russians had been able to carry out since the start of the war. “How long until they can remove the ship and get the pier operational again?” he asked.

The colonel’s face turned red. “I’ll have to get back to you with that information, Sir,” he responded, rushing off to find out the answer.

General Cotton walked over to the big board and looked at the positions of the various units scattered across the front lines. The Russians had moved nearly 300,000 soldiers to the front. Most of these were reservists and newly conscripted soldiers, who were largely making do with antiquated T-72s and T-62 tanks.

Cotton grunted. “Even an old tank can be dangerous,” he thought.

“What’s the status of General Ripton’s Fifth Corps? Are his units set in their positions and ready to start the attack after the preparatory artillery strike is completed?” he asked, speaking broadly to anyone who might overhear him.

A French colonel, part of the operations staff, turned to respond to the question. “Yes, Sir. The orders were received by them earlier, and now they are waiting on the execution order. The offensive should be starting momentarily.”

Cotton turned his attention to several of the wall monitors at the front of the room to observe the battle. Kaliningrad was completely surrounded, which meant that the dozen Global Hawk surveillance drones loitering around the enclave would be able to provide real time images of the entire scene.

As he watched the screens, the battle officially began. A massive artillery barrage lit up most of the known enemy positions. As each round impacted on its target, General Cotton heard the fire support officers calling for adjustments. While the artillery was going to work, a few dozen Reaper drones had moved into the battlespace; they used their precision-guided missiles to hit some of the trickier targets inside the high-density residential areas, minimizing the likelihood of civilian casualties. Fortunately, most of the civilians had left the city once the Allies had encircled them and cut off any source of supplies.

An hour into the aerial and artillery bombardment, Cotton signaled for them to send the ground forces in. It was still amazing to him that he could watch a skirmish take place in real-time while sitting in a bunker several hundred kilometers away.

A second after issuing the order for the ground forces to start their attack, the drone feeds suddenly cut out, leaving everyone to stare blankly at the now-black screens. While they were all still in a state of shock, the rest of the computer screens in the command center cut out, displaying the proverbial “blue screen of death.” Text began to scroll across the screens, displaying the message, “Death is coming for you! Surrender while you can!”

Cotton yelled to his communications and cyber-warfare groups, “Find out what just happened to our systems, and get them back online now!”

Command Sergeant Major Luke Childers had been released from the Army hospital at Landstuhl just prior to New Year’s. After taking a couple of weeks of leave to travel home and see friends and family, he was ready to get back to the job of training soldiers to defeat the Russians and bring this war to a close.

While at home, Luke had toured the damage to Air Force Plant 4, which was located just east of downtown Fort Worth, Texas. The Lockheed, Pratt and Whitney Engine facility there had been heavily damaged by a Russian Spetsnaz team, two weeks prior to him coming home. It was all everyone was talking about, and it was really no surprise. A massive gunfight had taken place there when Russian Special Forces had encountered a ragtag group of Texans. A small group had been celebrating the retirement of a colleague when the attack had started. Within a minute of hearing the first explosions off in the distance, a couple of the men, who had previously served in Iraq, recognized the noise as mortars landing nearby. Many of those at the retirement party and BBQ also had rifles on the gun racks in their trucks and proceeded to organize a small group to go put a stop to the attack. While many of the civilians in the spoiling attack had been killed, their heroics had prevented the Spetsnaz from continuing to bomb the facility. Three Russians had been killed in the attack, two more had been captured, and six had escaped to live and fight another day.

When Childers had seen the damage to the plant that was so close to his family’s home, it had angered him immensely. He had joined the military to protect his country, to avenge those who had been killed on September 11, 2001. Now, fellow countrymen from his own hometown had been killed by foreign invaders. After an exceptionally sobering day, he’d met up with a few of his friends at their favorite watering hole and proceeded to get very drunk and do his best to forget about the horrors he had seen and done in the name of defending his country.

A few days after the attack, when Childers had reported to duty, he had been assigned to the squadron headquarters as the new command sergeant major. In peacetime, his primary duties would have been to advise the senior command officers about personnel issues and facilitate communication with the troop first sergeants. As it was, his new job was to get the squadron trained and ready for combat. Following their escape from Kiev, the entire regiment had been sent to Germany to regroup and reorganize, which turned out to be very necessary as their group doubled in size, mostly with raw recruits fresh from basic training, and they needed all hands on deck to get them ready.

The next two months were spent drilling the young soldiers in how to fight in an urban environment and in a static defense. One strategy Childers implemented within each of the troops was two half-day lectures that went over after-action reviews of previous battles the squadron had taken part in up to that point. He wanted the younger soldiers to listen to what had happened during the battles with the Russians and to ask questions, to learn what had gone right, what had gone wrong, and where they had just gotten lucky. If they could save the lives of his new soldiers, then passing that knowledge on to them was worth taking the training time to do so.

After months of waiting, Childers finally received the news he had been waiting to hear. Lieutenant Colonel Alex Schoolman walked up to him as he was scanning the perimeter with his binoculars and got his attention. “Sergeant Major, we just received word from headquarters. The attack is a go,” he announced. He signaled for one of his staff officers to pass the information on to the rest of the squadron.

“‘Bout time we get this war back on again,” Luke thought. He nodded in acknowledgment to his boss, but then quickly resumed his task of looking across the border with his binoculars.

As the artillery bombardment lifted, the Allied forces moved across the border toward their various objectives. Dozens of the squadron’s armored vehicles sprinted forward, following the UK’s 7th Armoured Brigade and their Challenger 2 tanks. The Stryker command vehicle from which Childers was observing the battle suddenly lurched forward, and they joined the column of advancing British vehicles. Only ten minutes after crossing the border, the British tanks had already encountered the remnants of the Russian units who had been left to defend the small territory.

Boom! Bang! Ratatat! The chattering of machine guns and explosions grew increasingly louder as Childer’s vehicle drove toward the action. Suddenly, a loud explosion shoved their Stryker violently to one side, jostling everyone inside. “What the hell was that?” shouted Childers.

The gunner manning the automated 20mm autocannon replied, “That lead British tank just blew up. It looked like a missile strike from the sky.”

Everyone craned their heads back and looked up at the sky above them. “Could a Russian fighter or helicopter have gotten through our air cover?” Childers wondered.

A moment later, the air was pierced with another loud explosion. The colonel yelled to his driver, “Stop the vehicle!”

Colonel Schoolman quickly grabbed his radio and yelled to the rest of the squadron, “All stop!”

He turned to Childers and barked, “We have to figure out what’s going on!”

Childers stood up and scanned the skies for the threat. At that moment, another missile streaked down and hit a third British tank, blowing the turret clean off.

“There! I see it. What the—? It’s one of our Reaper drones that’s firing on us!” Childers shouted, now angry that whoever was controlling that drone had just blown up multiple Allied tanks.

A moment later, the lieutenant who was in charge of the squadron’s communications platoon spoke up. “Colonel, I just received a report from regiment. They said they were informed the Russians have apparently taken control of some of our Reaper drones and are using them against us.”

The colonel’s nose and eyebrows wrinkled up in disgust. “What do they want us to do about it?” he yelled.

A second later, the lieutenant replied, “They said to keep the attack going. The Air Force is working on the problem.”

In the few seconds that it took the frazzled lieutenant to relay that information, one of the Reaper drones exploded in spectacular fashion as one of their fighters swooped in and blew it out of the sky.

“It does look like the Air Force is on top of it, Sir,” Childers said, pointing to the small smoke cloud in the sky where the drone had just been.

“Order all units to continue the attack. Those blasted hackers — they just cost us several tanks!” The colonel was clearly fired up. His face was red with anger, and a vein on the side of his forehead was visibly pulsating.

“I’m glad he’s on my side,” thought Childers.

When they got closer to the burned-out wrecks of the Challenger tanks, they suddenly came into contact with some sporadic small-arms fire. The soldier manning the automated turret swiveled the gun in the direction of the incoming bullets and spotted several Russian soldiers manning a heavy machine gun in a burned-out building, shooting at a group of British soldiers who were advancing toward their structure.

Childers leaned down to the soldier. “See if you can’t give those guys some help and take that gun position out,” he gently suggested.

The young soldier looked up at the sergeant major and just nodded. This was the first time the kid was going to use the gun in battle, and he looked nervous. Allowing his training to take over, the soldier sighted in on the enemy position and depressed the firing button. A short burst from his 20mm cannon slammed into the building. The first burst was a bit high and off target. The young soldier recentered and tried again, this time scoring a direct hit, silencing the gun position.

“Good job, soldier,” said Childers. “Do it just like that every time. Make sure your fields of fire are clear and engage the enemy. You may have just saved a few soldiers’ lives by taking that gun position out, so it’s important that you don’t hesitate in the future when you see a threat like that. OK?” He wanted to make sure the young soldier knew he wasn’t in training any more — he couldn’t second-guess things.

Smiling and obviously feeling a lot more confident, the young soldier answered, “Yes, Sergeant Major. I understand. I’ll do better next time.”

Forty minutes after crossing the border, the squadron had now moved to the outskirts of Chernyakhovsk. There were two airfields in the vicinity that they had been charged with securing. One of them had been a Russian strategic nuclear base prior to the war, and there was still some question as to whether or not the Russians still had nuclear weapons at the facility.

While they maneuvered toward the air base, they started to hear the distinctive popping of a shoot-out in a nearby neighborhood. Schoolman pointed to the area and asked, “What unit is over there?”

The young communications lieutenant consulted his map and then responded, “That’s 1st BN, Royal Irish Regiment, Sir.”

“They're kicking the tar out of those Russians over there,” the colonel said with a wry grin on his face.

As they continued approaching the air base, a series of heavy machine guns opened fire on the troop nearest the perimeter. Putting his binoculars to his face, the colonel could see several of his Stryker vehicles engaging the enemy positions. The back hatches had dropped, and the infantry was now disgorging from their armored chariots as they advanced on foot toward the enemy.

The infantrymen steadily advanced with fire support from the Strykers, silencing one gun position after another. Suddenly, a missile streaked out of the tree line from just inside the perimeter. At first, it was just the one missile, but seconds later, six more joined the fray. Three of the missiles were destroyed by the vehicles’ antimissile systems, causing them to swerve or veer off course at the last minute. Unfortunately for the Americans, the other missiles hit their marks, destroying four of the Strykers.

“Damn Kornets. See if we can get some mortar fire to suppress those missile teams in the tree line,” barked the colonel, angry that a dozen of his troopers had just been killed.

The fight for the airport lasted nearly three hours. The squadron had to clear each building and the area around the airfield without the use of air strikes or heavy artillery. Because the Allies didn’t know if there were still nuclear weapons stored at the facility, they were barred from destroying any buildings or munition bunkers, no matter how stout a defense the enemy was putting up in those places.

“Colonel, Nemesis Troop is requesting your presence at one of the bunkers they just secured,” one of the staff officers said, his voice barely audible over the sound of rifle and machine-gun fire that was still raging around other parts of the city.

“Let’s go, Sergeant Major,” Schoolman responded. He grabbed his own rifle and trudged off in the direction of his troop commander. Childers followed close behind.

Several additional soldiers headed out with the colonel and the sergeant major to see what they had stumbled upon. As they approached the bunker, they spotted a number of dead enemy soldiers, along with the remains of a few of their own troops. Not far from the bunker, a small cluster of wounded soldiers was being treated by a couple of the medics while they waited on a medevac helicopter to come in and take them back to a higher-level trauma center.

They walked up to the gaggle of soldiers. “Captain Taylor, what do you have for us?” asked Colonel Schoolman.

“Colonel, Sergeant Major, I think we may have found some nuclear weapons,” he said, to the shock and concern of the soldiers who had just walked up to the bunker.

Sergeant Major Childers immediately barked at the soldiers standing around. “Set up a wider perimeter around the bunker!” he yelled. “You, over there, start clearing some of the overgrowth around the entrance.”

They rushed off to follow his orders. Sure enough, as they cleared brush along the outer wall of the bunker, they found a yellow metal placard with the universal pinwheel symbol that indicated nuclear material.

“Send a message back to regiment,” Schoolman directed. “Tell them what we found, and ask them to send an explosive ordnance specialist over here to inspect them. I want to make sure these infernal things are secured and not going to go off on us.”

Every moment that passed felt like eternity as they waited for EOD to arrive. Childers started daydreaming, thinking about what Jack Bauer would do in an episode of 24, and how he would grab his flashlight from his vest and boldly announce, “Sir, I’m going to take a peek at them and make sure none of them are rigged to detonate.”

In his thoughts, all of the younger soldiers stepped aside for him, and before the colonel could object, he’d storm his way in there. He’d probably have some eager young gun follow him, and he’d ask him to hold his flashlight. He imagined searching for visible wires, LED timers, or anything that might indicate these warheads had been rigged to detonate. Of course, he’d have to open them up in some glorious show of heroism, just to be sure.

In reality, they just continued waiting until it felt like he would fall asleep. In a very anti-climactic ending, the EOD specialist finally emerged from the warehouse and announced, “Your families won’t be cashing in those life insurance policies just yet.”

Suddenly, his friend, Captain Jack Taylor, walked up and greeted him. “How’s it going, Sergeant Major?”

Childers smiled. “It looks like we’ve just been given a new lease on life,” he answered.

Taylor came over, and then, before anyone could object, he poked his head into the warehouse. He must have known he was breaking all kinds of protocol, because he snapped himself back outside before there was a chance to complain. “I just had to see them,” he mumbled. “They really do look like in the movies… it’s hard to believe that such a small device can wipe out an entire city.”

Schoolman must have overheard Taylor talking. He walked over. “It was a device a little larger than this that wiped out San Francisco. My wife, my daughter, and my twin boys were visiting my parents in Alameda, near Oakland,” he said quietly, wiping a tear away.

The colonel had been carrying a heavy burden of guilt for some time now. When the war in Europe had started, he had sent his wife and kids to stay with his parents in California; he’d figured they’d be safe there, far away from the fighting. As things heated up in North Korea, he decided it might be better for them to go stay with his brother in Montana, but he was unable to make a call back home, and less than 24 hours later, his wife, children and parents were all dead, part of the hundreds of thousands who had been vaporized when the bomb had gone off over the port of Oakland.

Taylor didn’t know what to say. The awkward silence hung in the air. Finally, Schoolman cleared his throat and addressed Childers. “I want the squadron to bivouac here for the night while we wait for new orders,” he said.

“Yes, Sir,” Childers answered.

They went around the corner to start issuing the new orders and saw that a small group of Russian prisoners had been collected and were being questioned by a couple of the intelligence members of Schoolman’s staff. Lieutenant Colonel Schoolman walked over. “Have you gotten anything useful from them?” he asked.

Chief Warrant Officer 3 Fillips just shook his head. “Nothing yet, Sir. From what I can gather, none of them were even aware that there were nuclear weapons still being stored here. Then again, my Russian is a bit rusty. Regiment said they’re sending a couple of Russian translators and an interrogation team over here ASAP.”

“I speak Russian pretty well. Let me give it a try,” Schoolman responded. He walked toward the prisoners, with the warrant officer quickly following him.

Childers sensed something wrong in the way his boss said he wanted to “try” and talk to the Russians, so he followed him to the group of prisoners. He didn’t know Schoolman very well, but he could tell that he was obviously emotionally distraught over the loss of his family.

When the colonel approached the group of prisoners, he identified the two officers among the gaggle of prisoners and proceeded to single them out. He grabbed what appeared to be a young private to join the group and lined the three of them up.

Luke didn’t like the look of this and moved toward Schoolman, whispering softly, “Don’t do anything you’ll regret, Sir. It isn’t worth it.”

Colonel Schoolman looked angrily at him. “Enough, Sergeant Major!” he yelled. Then he turned back to face the prisoners.

“Are there other bunkers with nuclear weapons?” he asked them in Russian. His hand was fiddling with the SIG Sauer in his leg holster as he grilled them.

The prisoners shook their heads, acting surprised.

He pointed to the bunker with the warheads, where several of his soldiers were standing guard. “Are any of the nuclear weapons in that bunker boobytrapped or rigged to explode?” he shouted.

Now the prisoners looked concerned, but again they said they had been unaware that nuclear weapons were still being stored here. One of the officers, the oldest looking of the two, said in rapid-fire Russian that they had been told all the nuclear warheads had been moved back to the Motherland prior to the war.

Schoolman, now confident that he had gotten a straight answer from the two Russian officers, turned and headed back toward the tactical command center his staff had now set up. As he walked, his signaled for Childers to come closer.

“What did you mean, ‘it isn’t worth it’? Did you believe I was going to shoot those prisoners?” he asked, surprised that his sergeant major would think that lowly of him.

Childers stopped walking for a minute, forcing the colonel to stop as well. He wanted to have this conversation out of earshot of any of the other soldiers. “Sir, when we were in the bunker, and you told us about your family, I honestly didn’t know they had died in Oakland. You had never spoken of them before. When you said you wanted to talk to the prisoners, I wasn’t totally sure where your head was in that moment.”

Childers paused for a second. “When I was a young Ranger on my second combat deployment, we suffered a terrible loss in the Korengal Valley of Afghanistan. Our captain and platoon sergeant were killed, and we captured a couple of prisoners following an extended battled with the Taliban. One of the Taliban prisoners had been wounded, and our lieutenant at the time was determined to get some useful information out of him before we provided him treatment or brought him back to headquarters. They dragged the prisoner away from the rest of us to question him away from prying eyes. We heard a lot of screaming going on and a lot of yelling. Eventually, we heard a single gunshot, and our lieutenant, and two other soldiers appeared from where they had been questioning the prisoner. They said the prisoner gave up the location of where other fighters were hiding, so we moved out to engage them. The next thing I knew, we were in another gun battle; eventually, we killed a few dozen more Taliban fighters later that day.”

The colonel could see his sergeant major was getting emotional about the story and placed his hand on his shoulder. “It’s OK, Luke. You can tell me what happened next. I need to know.”

Looking up, he nodded. “When we got back to base, one of the sergeants lodged a complaint against the lieutenant. The next day, our entire company was taken off rotation, and we were all interviewed about the situation. I was the youngest and newest sergeant in the company, so I wasn’t held responsible for not trying to stop it. But several of the sergeants first class were. The lieutenant was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer and kicked out of the Army. The two other sergeants and one other soldier that was with him were drummed out too. Sometimes, when I sleep or just have a moment to myself… I can still hear that man screaming. I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, but I could tell he was in terrible pain.”

Childers then looked at Schoolman. “When I heard you tell us about your family, I could see that same rage in your eyes I saw in that lieutenant, and when you said you wanted to talk to the prisoners and had your hand on your sidearm… I just wanted to make sure you didn’t do something you would regret. You’re a good commander, and we need more like you,” Childers finished.

“That could have been me. It probably was going to me…” Colonel Schoolman realized.

“Thank you, Sergeant Major, for sharing that. I can’t imagine how hard that has been for you to carry that burden. I wish your lieutenant hadn’t failed you guys like that and had been a better leader. We’re all humans, and we make mistakes. You saw me losing control, and you interceded in a way that prevented me from doing something I’d regret, and you did it in a manner that no one else saw or noticed. I owe you for that. You’re going to make a great sergeant major,” Schoolman said. He extended his hand, and the two of them shook hands.

They continued on toward the command center. When they arrived, they found the regiment commander had arrived, along with a few weapons experts. They talked for a few minutes and showed them the nuclear weapons. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief when they learned that none of the weapons had been rigged to detonate and were, in fact, in safe storage and could be transported without fear of something going wrong.

One of the staff officers got the attention of his regimental commander. “What in the world happened with our drones attacking us, Sir?” he asked.

Colonel Hastings answered the question on everyone’s minds. “What a cluster mess that was. I was told a Russian hacker group, probably their intelligence directorate, had gained access to our C4ISR network and essentially turned everything off. The Division CG said they lost contact with GDF HQ, and then the Reaper drones in the area that were supposed to help provide us air support were taken over by the hackers who turned the weapons on us. Luckily, the Air Force had some fighters in the area that were able to locate and destroy the drones before they could fire any more of their missiles.”

Lieutenant Colonel Schoolman asked, “Are comms back up and running with headquarters, or is our division essentially operating on our own?”

“From what I’ve been told, the problem was largely isolated to GDF HQ and US Army Europe headquarters staff. We lost our surveillance and digital links, but it hasn’t interrupted our HF or UHF radios, so we’ve switched over to our backup systems,” Major Montanya, the regiment’s communications officer, replied loud enough for everyone to hear. “Don’t ask me when they’ll have everything sorted out — I have no idea, but I’ll make sure to pass along any additional information we learn,” he added.

The Russians had been wreaking havoc on the Allies’ communication and computer systems with their army of hackers. While the US forces had largely closed off a lot of the vulnerabilities discovered during the outbreak of the war, several of the Allied nations were still struggling to keep up.

One of the captains piped up. “Well, if this was a dress rehearsal for the summer offensive, I’d have to give us a C. Our surveillance and communications were all sorts of screwed up,” he said.

Colonel Hastings looked at his officers and senior NCOs, then added, “Kaliningrad was an easy objective to take, but it still cost us nearly three dozen soldiers killed and four times that number wounded. That’s unacceptable. We have a couple of more months before the summer offensive starts. I want to figure out what went right, what we screwed up, and what we should have been better at forecasting. Make sure those lessons are gone over with everyone. Be sure your junior officers and NCOs correct those issues, and let’s hope we’re able to incur fewer casualties when the big show finally does begin,” he concluded.