Battlefield Russia

They Kept Coming

It was nearly morning as First Lieutenant Martinez sat with Sergeant First Class Price, poring over the images being fed to them by their reconnaissance drone. They were nervously monitoring the movement of an enemy force heading toward them. The number of enemy soldiers and vehicles showing up was scary.

For the past twelve hours, Martinez had been watching the enemy build up around the city of Ranipet. On three separate occasions, he had tried to call in for an airstrike, only to be told the available air assets were busy dealing with an Indian armor unit further to the north. Desperate for some fire support to break up this enemy buildup, he tried to get some friendly artillery units to do the job. Unfortunately, the battery of 105mm artillery guns were still being towed to the airfield they had captured thirty-six hours earlier. While the capture of the airfield was a huge tactical boon, it had also placed them very deep behind enemy lines, well beyond the initial fire support bases the Allies had set up outside of Chennai.

“I wish we had armed drones. At least we could feel like we’re doing something,” said the sergeant operating their little surveillance drone. They watched several busses drop off another large batch of soldiers at the edge of the city.

Patting the guy on the shoulder, Sergeant Price responded, “The gun bunnies will be set up soon enough. It doesn’t look like these guys are getting ready to move anytime soon.”

“I can’t believe how many enemy soldiers are amassing like this. If we had proper air assets available to us right now, these guys would be toast,” mused Lieutenant Martinez.

The rest of the company had finally made it to the base twelve hours ago. They’d been working with the regular Army units getting the base perimeter expanded beyond the airfield to include enough flat ground for two batteries of artillery. An engineering unit had also arrived and was quickly working to get fortified bunkers, gun positions and trenches built, while an Air Force Red Horse unit was getting the airfield operational.

Lieutenant Martinez’s radio came to life. “Zombie Four-Six, this is Zombie Six. What’s the status of that enemy unit you guys have been watching?” asked their company CO, Major Fowler.

“Zombie Six, this is Zombie Four-Six,” Martinez answered. “We have eyes on at least two battalions’ worth of irregular militia forming around the city of Ranipet, roughly nine kilometers from our position. The militia appear to be outfitted with a series of pickup trucks and older-model army trucks as transports. Break.”

“Several kilometers beyond the city appears to be one battalion’s worth of mechanized infantry and one armor unit, count twenty-eight T-72 Ajeya main battle tanks, and thirty-two BMP-2s. No artillery support spotted. How copy?” asked Martinez after he’d read off their report.

“Good copy, Zombie Four-Six. We need to buy more time for the base defenses to be built and for the artillery units to arrive. I’m sending Third Platoon to reinforce your position. They’re going to bring our mortar tubes and two hundred mortar rounds with them. If those forces move before we give you the order to fall back to the base, then I need you to try your best to bog them down and keep them busy to buy more time. How copy?”

Martinez and Price looked each other over, both obviously aware this was nuts.

Regardless, Lieutenant Martinez acknowledged the order and then got off the radio.

“Well… it looks like we’re waiting on Third Platoon to arrive,” Martinez said, using a tone that was half laughing, half ready to cry. “I guess we’d better work on getting our position as prepared as possible for an incoming enemy attack.”

The Rangers of Fourth Platoon went to work, feverishly getting their positions ready as best they could to repel an enemy advance. They set their heavy machine guns up to provide interlocking fields of fire and prepared a couple of positions ready where they would place the company’s five 81mm mortar tubes once they arrived.

Martinez and Price continued to talk on the side about the situation at hand, and eventually agreed that if any of those tanks or BMPs attacked their position, orders or not, they would fall back to the base. They didn’t have any weapons that could stand up to a tank. At least on the base, they had those Strykers that packed TOWs, and some were equipped with 105mm and 20mm antitank weapons.

Morning turned to early afternoon, and then Third Platoon arrived with 48 extra Rangers and their mortar tubes. The added soldiers began to dig a series of three-man foxholes at the perimeter of the forest preserve and set up their three additional machine guns. Then the Rangers continued to wait for news that their artillery support had finally arrived so they could start to put a world of hurt on the forces building up before them.

“Zombie Four-Six, Zombie Six. How copy?” called their commander.

Lieutenant Martinez called back, “Zombie Six. Zombie Four-Six. Good copy. Send.”

“I’ve just received word the air base is officially operational. Five AT-6 Wolverines are now en route to the base, along with a cargo plane bringing munitions and fuel for them. We’ll have tactical air support available within a few hours. Break.

“The battery of 105mm Howitzers we’ve been waiting on will be ready to start fire missions within thirty mikes. A second battery of 155mm Howitzers will be operational in ninety mikes. Start prioritizing targets for the gun bunnies. Break.

“The base commander wants to keep you guys in your current location to spot for the artillery and ground-attack planes until closer to evening. Then we’ll look to pull you guys back closer to the base. How copy?” confirmed Major Fowler.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Martinez was glad they weren’t going to have to spend any more time in this position than they had to. “That’s a good copy on all. We’ll prioritize the enemy armor first, then work our way down to the troop concentrations. Is it possible to get any HIMARS support from Chennai?” asked Martinez.

“Negative on HIMARS. They’re tasked with the battle in the north. Do your best. Zombie Six, out.”

Lieutenant Martinez called Third Platoon leader, First Lieutenant Franklin, and Sergeant Price over to talk with them. A few minutes later, they gathered around the drone operator with a few pads of paper and their Air Force TACP and artillery FSO LNO to go over targets.

After reviewing the drone footage, the FSO LNO spoke up. “Sir, if I may, I’d like to recommend that artillery focus on hitting the lightly armored and nonarmored trucks and vehicles the militia appear to be using. If we can destroy their rides, then we can largely force them to move on foot. That would obviously slow them down and allow us to continue to harass them at will with remaining artillery.”

This option drew the approval of everyone there.

The Air Force TACP suggested, “I think we should have the AT-6 Wolverines focus exclusively on destroying the enemies’ tanks for the time being. We have zero armor support of our own to rely on, so taking out the enemy’s armor has to be their top priority.”

Martinez nodded.

The TACP continued, “Following the destruction of the enemy tanks, the Wolverines could focus more on going after the enemy troop concentrations, which are looking more and more intimidating as the reinforcements keep piling on.” They all glanced at the drone feed. There was no denying he was right.

Lieutenant Martinez was on board so far. “Rather than starting our artillery barrage as soon as artillery support is available, I think we should hold off until the Air Force says they’re ready on their end,” he said. He held up a hand to preempt any questions. “That way, we hit the enemy hard all at once and cause as much confusion and disorganization as possible.”

The other men nodded; it was a solid plan. At 1500 hours, with only maybe four hours of light left, all the pieces of the puzzle were finally in place. The five AT-6s had just lifted off from the airfield and were now moving in to hit the enemy armor. The planes would go in first, and then the artillery barrage would start in earnest.

First Lieutenant Kimberly “Sparkles” McNeal was both exhausted and excited. Her squadron, the newly created 359th “Death Dealers,” had drawn the short end of the stick and had to ferry their planes from Indonesia to India while their sister squadron was able to have their planes disassembled and flown directly to Chennai. With four drop tanks of fuel, the Death Dealers had able to make the flight, but it had been a very long and arduous one.

Once they’d arrived in Chennai, she’d had little time to rest before her squadron had received orders to move out. Before she knew it, she was on her way to a small forward air base deep behind enemy lines to support a group of Rangers and infantry facing an overwhelming number of enemy soldiers.

She’d arrived at the spartan air base barely twenty minutes ago, and they’d already been briefed on their next mission and quickly sent back into the air. As Lieutenant McNeal flew toward her target, she looked to her left and then to her right and saw her flight mates, which made her feel much better about her first combat mission. Having only graduated flight school four weeks ago, she was eager to prove herself to her male counterparts. As the only female pilot in her squadron, so she’d been given the call sign “Sparkles,” which suited her just fine.

She smiled when she looked briefly at her wings through the large bubbled canopy and saw the four AGM-65 Mavericks she was carrying. Sparkles relished the opportunity to destroy some tanks. She also had two rocket pods carrying seven 70mm antimaterial rockets for added punch.

Suddenly, her radio crackled to life. “Death Dealers, we’re going to move down to 3,000 feet and line up for our attack from the east.” While each of the pilots had their own call signs, they also went by DD one through five — a shortened version of Death Dealers — to keep themselves identified with their air traffic controllers.

“I want DD 1 and 2 to go in first, then DD 3 and 4 next, and I’ll follow in last. Remember, our first pass is meant to go after the tanks,” ordered their flight leader, Captain Adrian “Beaker” Adler.

Each flight of two moved to their loitering and attack positions, roughly fifteen kilometers away from the enemy they were about to attack. Thus far, they hadn’t detected any enemy air defenses, but that didn’t mean they weren’t lying in wait for them either.

The first flight of Death Dealers swooped in out of the late-afternoon sun, completely catching the enemy by surprise. Both aircraft were able to identify and engage eight of the T-72 tanks, scoring hits before the enemy even realized they were under air attack. As the planes pulled away from their victims, a slew of antiaircraft fire erupted around them, giving chase to the fleeing aircraft.

The element of surprise had been broken, but the second wave of Death Dealers lined up for their own attack, this time angling from a different direction and altitude to throw off the defenders, who would now be waiting for them.

Checking the arming switch on her missiles, Sparkles felt confident going into her first-ever attack run on a real enemy. Her turbocharged engine roared hard as she picked up speed, fully opening the throttle up as she sped up to stay in formation with her wingman, “Hedge,” who’d acquired his call sign based on his last name, Hedgerow.

The two of them swooped in like a pair of German Stukas as they activated the targeting cameras on their Mavericks. Her onboard targeting computer picked out four tanks to her immediate front, roughly ten kilometers away, assigning a missile to each of them. The computer also sent a quick burst message to her wingman as the two aircraft’s targeting computer systems deconflicted their targets, making sure they weren’t double-targeting a tank. All of this happened in fractions of a second as her heads-up display or HUD began to show green triangles over the targets her computer had found.

“Firing now!” radioed Hedge as he released his four missiles.

Sparkles depressed her own firing button once, then twice, then two more times as her Mavericks flew out in front of her toward their intended targets. Seconds after her missiles had fired, she saw a slew of what appeared to be bright objects flying right at her. Her mind instantly recognized this as incoming antiaircraft fire, and her training took over.

“Break right!” yelled Hedge as he broke to the left, dodging several lines of enemy rounds.

In the midst of her hard turn to the right, Sparkle’s missile warning alarm blared in her ears. She craned her neck around to look for the possible threat.

“Enemy missile, enemy missile,” announced the automated system. She pulled her plane into a steep climb and then banked hard to the left. Sparkles hit the flare button, firing out a series of flares every three seconds until all eight flares were spent.

She looked at her altimeter, which now read 5,500 feet. Then she looked behind her to see if she could spot the enemy missile that had been tracking her. “There you are,” she said to herself as she saw the missile explode amongst her flares. She quickly leveled her plane out as she looked around for her wingman.

In a brief flash, she saw his plane spitting out a second batch of flares just as an enemy missile exploded nearby. His plane was blown sideways through the air and instantly spouted smoke from the engine.

Hedge radioed in. “I’ve been hit,” he said. “I’m going to try and make it back to the airfield for an emergency landing if I can.”

“Death Dealers, good attack run. Re-form on me,” Beaker said over the radio. “Hedge, are you OK? Are you hurt?”

“I’m fine — a bit shaken up, but I’m fine. I’m losing oil and hydraulic pressure though. I’ve got some pretty big holes in my wings, but she’s holding together so far.”

“OK, good to hear. If you need to ditch your plane though, try to get as close to the airfield as possible. The rest of you, get ready for our next run.”

“Holy cow, that was awesome!” Sparkles thought. The adrenaline coursed through her veins, and she couldn’t believe she’d just survived. When she’d taken a few deep breaths, she paused and sent Hedge a prayer — she hoped he made it back to the base all right.

“On this next run, we’re going to unload our rockets on the BMPs on the west side of the river,” explained Beaker. “Since there are only four of us, I’m going to take over as Sparkles’ wingman. Everyone needs stay frosty on this run. The enemy knows we’re here and will be gunning for us.”

“Beaker, or anyone else, do you guys know what kind of missile hit Hedge?” asked one of the other Death Dealers. “Was it a MANPAD or something else?”

“It was a MANPAD,” replied Beaker.

A collective sigh of relief washed over them. It meant they were dealing with a much smaller missile, and one with a limited range. Their planes could largely survive a hit from a MANPAD, as Hedge’s plane had just proven. If it had been a traditional SAM, they would have been in serious jeopardy.

Five minutes later, the flight of four Wolverines lined up from a different vantage point and descended for their second attack run on the enemy below. Sparkles saw the small cluster of vehicles she’d been assigned to strafe with her rockets and angled her fighter toward them. Once she was within ten kilometers of her prey, she increased her throttle, opening her engines up and pushing her plane to 530 mph. Her HUD indicated she was still a little too far away to release her unguided rockets on the cluster of vehicles, though she now saw her targets starting to scatter. They’d spotted her.

Seconds after the vehicles began to move, tracers flew right at her, attempting to blot her from the sky. She deftly banked her wings from left to right and made herself a harder target to hit by changing her flight path every couple of seconds. She continued closing the gap on her targets. With the enemy BMPs now scattering, she zeroed in on a group of four of them that were heading in the same direction. When the targeting reticle on her HUD turned green, she depressed the firing button on the stick, releasing two rockets every time she depressed the button. With six of her rockets away, she pulled up hard and banked to the right, while Beaker broke to the left in an effort to split the enemy groundfire.

“Good attack run, Sparkles. Did you happen to see those clusters of ground troops advancing toward the Rangers on the ground?” he asked as they both formed back up around 8,000 feet, several kilometers away from the hornet’s nest they’d just stirred up.

“Yeah, I saw it. How many soldiers you think are down there?” she asked out of curiosity.

“I have no idea. But our next attack run is going to focus on them with our remaining rockets. This time, instead of breaking off, I want us to also strafe them with our guns — we have enough ammo to make a couple of strafing runs before we head back to base. You think you can handle a strafing run?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m good. Let’s do it,” she replied, excitement evident in her voice.

Beaker radioed the other two planes in his flight and relayed their next attack plan. For the next twenty minutes, their flight of four Wolverines made two more passes at the enemy, pummeling them with rockets and .50 machine guns. Many of the enemy soldiers scattered when they saw the fighters swooping in, but the Death Dealers still scored plenty of hits. As they made their runs, a lot of ground fire flew up to meet them, but thus far, none of it had scored any critical hits.

When their ordnance was spent, they radioed back to the base, letting them know they had cleared the battlespace so the artillery guys could begin their own mission. When the fighters landed, Sparkles and the rest of the pilots were surprised to see their planes had sustained quite a number of bullet holes. The ground crews did their best to make sure nothing critical had been damaged and that the planes could get back in the air when the next mission was called for.

It was nearly 1700 hours. With maybe two hours of light left, Lieutenant Martinez weighed their options. The last couple of hours, they had been calling in one strike after another on the advancing mob of Indian soldiers several kilometers in front of them. Up to this point, they had only been probed with a few small-scale attacks, but eventually, the enemy was going to try and bum-rush their positions.

They could fall back to the airport now that reinforcements had arrived, but giving up their forward position right now also meant the enemy would be that much closer to encircling the air base. The longer they held this position, the more they made the enemy react to them, as opposed to the other way around.

“Lieutenant!” the sergeant manning the drone shouted in an excited voice. “They’re moving in,” he said, showing him the image of a mob of undisciplined militiamen surging toward their position.

Before Martinez could say a word, they heard the whistling sound of mortars starting to fall on their positions.

“Incoming!” he shouted. The soldiers around him hit the dirt just as a series of rounds landed in the cluster of trees where they were hiding.

Crump, crump, crump, crump, crump.

Five explosions ripped through the forest, sending hot shrapnel in all directions. Then a guttural sound emanated from the gathering horde that was now roughly a kilometer away from their position.

Sergeant First Class Price poked his head up from his fighting position and looked for the militiamen rushing toward their positions. He turned to the Rangers to his left and right, and yelled, “Hold your fire, men! Wait until they get within two hundred meters and then cut loose on them.”

More mortar rounds landed among their positions as they watched the enemy soldiers get closer with each passing second. Once the enemy left the smoldering ruins of the village next to the forest preserve, they had a brief hundred yards of open ground they had to cross before they edged into the wooded tree cover where the Rangers were set up.

Zip, crack, zip, zap.

Bullets whizzed over their heads, hitting some of the nearby trees and underbrush they were using for cover. Just as the enemy crossed into a stretch of open terrain that marked them to be roughly two hundred meters away, the Rangers cut loose with their M240G machine guns. The red tracers from their machine guns looked like lasers as they crisscrossed back and forth across their interlocking fields of fire, shredding the attackers. The first several waves of enemy soldiers were simply cut apart by the five M240s the Rangers had placed on this line of their defense.

Price raised his own rifle to his shoulder and took aim at the wall of enemy soldiers charging relentlessly toward them. Bullets were cracking all around him, but he zeroed in on each target and blocked out his other senses.

Bang, bang, bang, bang.

Sergeant Price just kept pulling the trigger. Time and time again, he scored a direct hit with nearly every trigger pull. However, despite every man he saw taken out by one of his shots, enemy soldiers just kept coming at him.

Price dropped his now-empty magazine, quickly slapping a new one in its place as the relentless horde continued unabated toward them, threatening to envelop them in a tsunami of bullets and pure suicidal hatred. Flipping his selector switch from semiauto to full-auto, he knew he needed to cut through the enemy ranks at a much quicker pace or they’d be on his position in minutes.

The chattering ratatat of the machine guns was almost nonstop as the gun crews did their best to cut down their attackers and keep them at arm’s length.

Crump, crump, crump.

Friendly mortar and artillery fire hit the enemy ranks, throwing bodies and parts of bodies in every which direction, adding to the carnage unfolding before them.

“How can they keep charging like this?” Price thought, horrified. In that moment, he just wanted to be anywhere but there.

He reached to his right as a string of bullets flew right past were his head had just been, and grabbed the first clicker, depressing the button.

BOOM!

An enormous explosion occurred seventy-five meters in front of him as his Claymore mine detonated, flattening fifteen or twenty tightly packed enemy soldiers as the wall of ball bearings cut them down like a scythe.

When the enemy reached within 75 meters of their lines, more of the Rangers detonated their Claymore mines. As the fighting continued, many of the Indian militiamen were now using any cover they could find to seek shelter from the fuselage of bullets and ball bearings being thrown at them. The Indian militia began to take more accurately aimed shots at the defenders, finally scoring hits against the Rangers, who up to this point had been absolutely butchering them.

Price turned to the Ranger next to him to tell him to blow his Claymore when the man’s head snapped back and disintegrated in a midst of blood and gore and his body collapsed to the bottom of their fighting position. Shaking the sight from his mind, Sergeant Price reached over and grabbed the Claymore clicker, detonating the last mine they had in front of them.

BOOM!

Another swath of enemy soldiers was cut down. His only remaining battle buddy threw hand grenades at the enemy like it was going out of style.

Crump, crump, crump. Shrapnel being thrown everywhere.

Just as Price thought, “This is it — we’re going to be washed over by the enemy horde,” he suddenly heard dozens of whistles. The militiamen fell back — not to their original starting point, but several hundred meters away. Shooting between the two sides continued unabated, but the relentless charges stopped for the time being.

Lieutenant Martinez tapped Price on the shoulder. “We have to get the heck out of Dodge, or we’re done. I don’t know how we just survived that,” he said in awe.

Price nodded. “It’s starting to get dark, LT. The enemy probably pulled back to allow darkness to settle in, and then they’ll resume their attack when it’ll be harder to see them.”

Martinez shook his head and then grabbed his radio. “All Zombie elements, fall back to the vehicles immediately,” he ordered. “We need to get out of here ASAP. Leave the dead, but make sure we don’t leave any of our wounded behind.”

Sergeant Price was a bit impressed as he watched Lieutenant Martinez trot up and down the line to make sure everyone knew they were falling back. “Those Rangers don’t need to be told twice to leave,” he thought with a smirk.

The lieutenant and Price met up on their way back to the vehicles, but Martinez made a critical mistake and looked back at the front line, where the enemy had been pushing toward them moments ago. He immediately grabbed his stomach and fell to his knees, retching. Price stole a glance backward — the carnage was unimaginable. The ground was practically covered in dead and mangled bodies all the way up to the edge of their positions.

“What kind of commander could order his men into such a slaughter?” asked Martinez as he wiped away the vomit from his mouth with his hand.

When they arrived at their vehicles, Price and Martinez discovered that a couple of them had been destroyed by mortars, and one was simply too damaged to be used. Martinez looked around the motley crew nearby and sadly commented, “Looks like we lost several Rangers in this last battle though, so there’s no risk of leaving anyone behind from Third or Fourth Platoon.”

Just as they were about to leave, a massive artillery bombardment slammed into both the enemy lines and their own lines, where they had just been a few minutes earlier. This was their fire support to cover their retreat as they sped away in their vehicles back to the airfield.

As he sat in the passenger seat of the SOF JLTV, Sergeant Price was exhausted. His hands were shaking as they sped away quickly to the protective perimeter of the airfield. The drive was short, roughly twenty minutes, but it felt like an eternity.

Eventually, they found the entrance to the newly built perimeter, and some of the infantrymen guided them in. Price was glad to see the familiar outline of the Stryker vehicles in the dusk, as well as the Army soldiers manning the various machine-gun bunkers. He was also happy to see the trenches that the engineers had managed to dig and at least one row of concertina wire that had been placed.

The convoy of vehicles made its way to the center of the airfield where the bombed-out hangar was that the Rangers had taken over. Major Fowler was there waiting to greet them. He gestured with his hand in a way that indicated he was performing a head count of the men, and his face dropped. Only sixty-two of the original ninety men had returned.

When the vehicles finally stopped next to the bombed-out hangar, medics rushed forward to help assist with the wounded soldiers. One of the medics announced, “We have helicopters inbound to evacuate the wounded.”

Sergeant Price climbed out of the vehicle, and Major Fowler walked toward him. Price’s right hand continued shaking as he tried to steady himself. Then he bent over and threw up. Unable to control the flood of emotions that was washing over him, he dropped to his knees and suddenly began sobbing.

Major Fowler stopped in his tracks for a second. A few of the other Rangers were reacting the same way. Despite his overwhelming physical reaction, Sergeant Price spotted Fowler waving down Lieutenant Martinez.

“What the heck happened, Lieutenant? Some of your men look to be coming apart,” he said with concern in his voice.

Martinez paused for a second. “It was terrible, Sir… it was worse than terrible. It was pure murder. Whoever the enemy commander was, he just kept ordering these militiamen forward. They just kept charging and charging right into our machine guns, our Claymores, grenades and artillery. The entire ground in front of our position was awash in torn and mangled bodies, Sir,” he explained. “It was pure murder,” he repeated.

Major Fowler just stood there dumbfounded for a moment, not knowing with what to say or how to respond. He hadn’t expected this, especially from his most battle-hardened platoon and Rangers. Looking at what remained of the platoon, he quickly observed that these guys were useless to him as a fighting force for the moment. He’d need to give them some time if he hoped to get them back into the battle anytime soon.

For the next half hour, he and his first sergeant spent their time just consoling and helping their fellow Rangers, calming them and letting them know it would be OK.

“This slaughter wasn’t your fault,” he told several of the soldiers. “You were just doing your jobs. If you want to blame anyone, blame me, or the enemy who placed those men in that position.”

The battle for India was going to be much more difficult than he’d anticipated.