Red Metal

CHAPTER 32

Lieutenant Colonel Tom Grant was in a particularly foul mood already, and he hadn’t even started his workday. He’d gotten up a half hour earlier to FaceTime with his wife back in Boulder and wish her a merry Christmas only to find he had no Internet connection on his phone. He then tried to call her and, after sitting there with the phone to his ear for over a minute, realized his cell service was down as well.

His wife would be going to bed pissed at him.

Some Christmas morning this was shaping up to be.

Grant had been here at U.S. Army Garrison Grafenwöhr for the past month, preparing equipment for Broadsword, a massive NATO exercise to take place in Germany in late January. As commander of a tank maintenance regiment, he was ultimately responsible for the function of every single American Abrams tank in the operation, so he wasn’t able to spend Christmas with his family.

Broadsword was a NATO exercise, but the Poles, Germans, and Americans were the most heavily invested in terms of troops.

The other member nations were involved, but the three countries that would maneuver the vast majority of the regiments of ground power and wings of airpower remained the three most committed to the defense of northern Europe.

His job was tough enough without communications problems first thing this morning. He’d taken a shower while cursing Apple and Deutsche Telekom and various other vague, undefined forces conspiring against him, then dressed in his BDU and laced up his boots. He tried to dial home again as he walked down the hall, past the doors to the giant tank maintenance bays.

A former University of Minnesota tackle, Grant had been a muscular six feet back in the day. It had helped him immensely as a young tanker, hefting rounds and changing tank tracks. Now some of the muscle had sagged to his waist, and his auburn hair had thinned in front and given way to gray. He still maintained a blocky, solid appearance, but as with most driven men, he regretted that his duties gave him less time to concentrate on his fitness.

“Sir?” a voice from an open doorway called out, interrupting his attempt at a phone call that wasn’t going anywhere anyway. He turned to Lieutenant Darnell Chandler, his assistant logistics officer. “Morning, sir. There’s a call for you in the Layette Room.”

“At least one damn phone is working,” Grant said.

“Yes, sir. Couldn’t connect with my girlfriend this morning on Skype. Internet is down. Guess that’s gonna be my fault when I finally do talk to her.”

“No, Chandler,” Grant said as he passed him. “Not until you marry her. Then everything’s your fault.”

Grant had a personal rule about not getting his first good whiff of engine oil and hydraulic fluid until after breakfast, but he and Chandler headed out into the maintenance bay on his way to the room where the tools and other equipment were kept.

As he passed through the door, he was happy to see that several German soldiers and U.S. Army tankers were paired up and working hard. Inside the maintenance bay was a pair of massive M1A2 SEP Abrams tanks, and all of the men working on them were coated with different amounts of grease.

“Lieutenant Colonel Grant, Lieutenant Colonel Grant,” repeated the PA system as he walked along between the big tanks. “Phone call, line one.”

Tom Grant hastened his stride and glanced at his cell again. The damn thing still said Keine Verbindung. (No connection.)

He nodded as he walked by two senior enlisted leaders, Master Sergeant Kellogg and Oberstabsfeldwebel Wolfram, who was the German army equivalent of a master sergeant.

“Sir, they’re calling for you in the maintenance office,” said Kellogg.

“Yep, heard.” He kept walking, with Chandler right behind him.

After the major was out of earshot, the German turned to his American counterpart. “How’s your new boss?”

“He’s good,” said Kellogg. “I’ve been breaking him in slowly. But I think he gets it. He’s been around the block a few times, mainly at the tactical level. He finished ABOLC, the tank officer basic school, so he’s a legit tanker. Tank commander, even. But something got screwed up along the way.”

Wolfram wiped grease from his hands with a well-used rag. “What do you mean?”

“He got sent on a military training mission in Iraq, and they only send guys there as a punishment when they fuck up. It’s not pretty when an officer falls from grace. They give them the worst shit duty they have, and if they survive — shine, even — only then do they have any chance of saving their career.”

“You Americans are so much too hard on your officers. One mistake and all washed out, no?”

“Well, not exactly, but Grant won’t make it past lieutenant colonel no matter what he does.” He shrugged. “Anyhow, they sent him to maintenance officer school and he’s now a really damn good one. The troops love him. He’s got a nonstop work ethic, though — I’ll give him that. Dude even sleeps in the maintenance office some nights.”

The German said, “This sounds like my boss. I think maybe your lieutenant colonel and my major are stressed about the exercise next month.”

LTC Grant’s voice came over the PA. “I need Major Ott, Master Sergeant Kellogg, and Oberstabsfeldwebel Wolfram in the Layette Room immediately.”

The German and American master sergeants exchanged a look. “Shit,” Kellogg said. “Gotta teach the boss to not sound so high-strung on the PA. Dude sounds like there’s a damn war goin’ on.”

Three minutes later the two senior enlisted men stood in the Layette Room with Lieutenant Colonel Grant and Lieutenant Chandler. Grant hung up the landline phone and turned to the three men as Major Blaz Ott, commander of the German contingent here, came in to join them, looking worried.

“Blaz, grab a seat. I have something hot.”

A U.S. sergeant walked in with a clipboard of paperwork and interrupted. “Hey, Top, I can’t order that code ‘oh-three’ you wanted. The Internet is down again and—”

Kellogg snapped his finger and shouted, “Go away, trooper!”

The sergeant backed out and shut the door.

Grant said, “I got a call on the landline from our bosses, who, as you know, are up in Belgium on Christmas break with their families. They say cell service is out across all of Europe. So is all Internet. A few landlines are still working — they got through to me for a minute, but we got cut off.

“But here’s what I do know. The Russians have launched an attack in Poland.”

Every man in front of Grant sat up straighter, eyes wide.

“Fuck me,” muttered Kellogg.

“We don’t know yet what their exact composition is, and we have no idea what their intentions are.”

Ott asked, “How did they cross into Poland already without anyone knowing about it? It’s not as if you can hide the Russian army.”

Grant said, “No idea. We’re on alert status as of right now. Our bosses want us to grab the regiment and get on the move. We have to pull everyone we can muster from the battalions and line companies, man every tank that can drive with whoever is qualified.”

“To do what, exactly?” asked Kellogg.

“We’ll form a hasty blocking position, and the bosses will join us and take over command.”

“Sir, we don’t have the actual tankers,” said Kellogg. The main body of their unit, the 37th Armored Regiment, was still in the States. None of the maintainers had ever considered the possibility they might actually have to maneuver the line elements in the regiment, their M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks, in battle.

“I understand and the brigadier does, too. But we don’t have time to wait till the main body arrives. The rest of the BCT is not scheduled to depart the States until after the first of the year. It’s us and our German brothers or no one.”

Chandler spoke in an incredulous tone now. “Sir… this makes you… regimental commander?” Maintenance men, even those with a tank background, were not tank regimental commanders.

“Just for a few hours. I want to talk to the men in ten minutes. Then I want tanks staged within the hour.”

The consternation was visible on Grant’s face as he surveyed the small group of senior leaders. He knew as well as the others assembled here that not one of their men was a fully trained 19K, the military occupational specialty of armored crewmen. The Americans here at Grafenwöhr were mostly 91As and 45Es, system maintainers and turret mechanics.

“Gentlemen, I know what you are thinking, but almost all of our 91As have been to basic driving school. Hell, most of them get more driving time than the actual tank drivers. And we are all proficient in gunnery.”

Wolfram spoke up now. “But what happens if they make it into Germany before the rest of the regiment’s tankers make it in, sir?”

“We do as ordered: we are tankers and we execute the move until directed otherwise.”

Chandler said, “Sir, we’ll need to get you some headquarters vehicles and communications equipment for command and control.”

“Yes, get me the headquarters vics. Everything we have for radio communications. The satellites are all out and I want long haul comms to talk to the battalions.”

“Three tank battalions!” interjected Major Blaz Ott. “We are under your command, sir.”

Colonel General Boris Lazar was so used to the noise, the dust, the vibration, and the constant rubbing against sharp and unyielding surfaces that came along with riding in the turret of a tank that he didn’t notice any of it anymore. He just looked out at the long line of sand-colored armored vehicles in front of him, rumbling down the Hamadan-Bijar Road, some six kilometers northwest of the city of Zanjan, and listened in to the radio chatter in his headset.

Lazar had a headquarters vehicle, but he wanted to ride in a T-90 tank for this part of the journey. He could still get information over the radio and was in constant contact with his second-in-command, Colonel Dmitry Kir, who was buttoned up in the HQ vehicle only fifty meters behind him.

The command vehicle was one of only a few of the new Bumerang APCs in his force. Sabaneyev had scored the majority of the Bumerangs, while Lazar’s main troop carrier was the venerable but trusted BTR-82A. Lazar had spent over thirty years in variants of the BTR and he had no great desire to work with anything else, but the communications suite in the Bumerang HQ vehicles was second to none, so he’d begrudgingly added five of the latest-generation APCs to his force.

Sabaneyev could have the majority of the new shit: the Bumerangs and the T-14s. Lazar was an old-timer and he’d fight his war with the tried-and-true.

Lazar knew he had his work cut out for him, even here in friendly territory. He had to move his entire combat force, his entire headquarters and supply force, over nearly 1,300 kilometers of unfamiliar terrain. He’d never been to Iran, and even though the politicians in Moscow and the politicians in Tehran had worked out this movement of thousands of Russian troops and one hundred pieces of armor across the north-south axis of Iran, it was still one hell of an endeavor.

Lazar’s force moved with a large mass of Iranian armor and troops, not because they needed protection, but rather because to the lenses of the satellites still operational over the Middle East this was supposed to look like a joint training exercise between the two nations. Lazar’s force racing alone down toward the southern coastline would be looked at quite differently from the joint force heading south, at least for a day or two, and that was all Colonel Borbikov determined they would need to make Lazar’s mission a fait accompli.

Thirty-two hours of travel would put Lazar at port before the Americans figured out what he was doing—that had been Borbikov’s bet. A Russian-Iranian training exercise thousands of kilometers from either the Asian or the European theater would be the least of their worries.

Until the moment when Lazar and his force set sail for the Horn of Africa, when he would would suddenly turn into their greatest worry of all.