Red Metal

CHAPTER 36

Viper One-Six flew through the night, with Sean “Jesse” James on the stick. In the front seat, Glitter confirmed receipt of the transmission from the Courage communications sergeant, then called over to the other helicopter in her flight. “Two-Six, this is One-Six. You are clear to engage targets.”

Badfinger said, “Okay, Two-Six, but I’m having difficulty spotting through this fog. Can’t lase targets in these conditions.”

Glitter told Jesse she had the stick and took over flying the aircraft.

“Two-Six,” she said, “I’m going in low to see if I can get better visibility and engage with rockets. Watch to my south, my left side. I’ll paint anything I can see.”

Glitter maneuvered the Apache down to an altitude of two thousand feet and slowed to twenty-five miles per hour. The crystal clear night sky meant the three-quarter moon and the stars lit up the fog, turning it into a white blanket across the terrain. Patches of trees on higher ground protruded from it here and there.

Suddenly several bursts of fire from heavy weapons lit up the fog. The Russians had clearly tracked the Apache’s approach. Fortunately the fog was having the same effect on them as it was on the two Apaches, and although the fires were heavy, they were uncoordinated and wide.

“Badfinger, you seeing this? Every time they fire, it lights up the fog.” The Russians’ heavy gunfire and tracers created a quick but unmistakable yellow-red glow surrounded by a bright white aura where it illuminated the mist.

Now they had the Russian armor pinpointed.

“I got ’em,” Badfinger replied. “But Courage says they are no longer in contact. Who are they shooting at?”

“Everything in their way, I guess.”

Badfinger came over the net with anger in his voice. “Let’s fuck ’em up.”

“Copy.”

She slewed her gunship onto the closest of the many flashing gunfire halos in the fog, and Glitter lined up the light in the center of her target reticle. She pressed the trigger and pounded out twenty 2.75mm rockets from her Hydra rocket pod.

The rockets streaked down toward the target for several seconds, and then she was rewarded with a massive explosion and several flashes of bright light.

Secondaries and fire immediately caused the fog to glow constantly over the area.

Nailed him, she thought.

She and Jesse shifted her gunsight instantly to the next Russian vehicle shooting blindly at them in the fog, and she unloaded another twenty rockets. Another explosion. Another fireball. This time the fire rose in a great plume of flame, partly burning open a hole above and through the fog. The perfect outline of a T-14 tank was now clearly visible, flames roaring out the top hatch as its ammunition cooked off.

“Two-Six, get in here, stay left, and line up with Route Niner. They are traveling at a high rate of speed, maybe forty kph, down the road.”

“Roger,” came the response.

Sandra and her wingman fired at the Russian muzzle flashes until they were out of rockets, then switched to their 30mm guns. Eventually the Russians clued in to what was happening, becoming aware that the fog was protecting them, but only if they maintained fire discipline to remain unseen from the attack helicopters.

Sandra slewed the 30mm M230E1 chain gun to her right eye and raked the burning enemy vehicles with heavy cannon fire, giving each one “a good squirt” of about twenty rounds for extra measure. The vehicles erupted in brighter flame, and on her next pass she saw them all glowing in the night, oil and gasoline burning steadily, with occasional firework shows when ammo stores cooked off in the vehicles.

Glitter swiveled her head, tracking the hot spots on her thermals. The big chain gun below her slewed to her movements as she scanned and concentrated her cannon on the vehicles most likely to be the infantry personnel carriers.

She picked a target and opened fire.

Bra-rak-rak-rak. The gun caused the helo to shudder as it hovered just above treetop level.

A new voice came onto her net now. “Viper One-Six, this is Viper Six actual.” It was her company commander, and she felt an instant wash of relief. He said, “I am coming into your zone from the south. I am at the nine-eight and six-four grid square and proceeding along Route Nine. Give me a read in on the current sit.”

“Copy, sir. Glad to hear your voice. We have engaged roughly a regiment-sized element of Russian armor proceeding on Route Nine, moving south at about forty-five kph. They are not stopping. The tank unit we are supporting says they believe it to be an advance guard. Its composition has been consistent with that. Looks like mainly frontline armor: Bumerangs and the new tanks, the T-14s.”

The company commander replied quickly. “Here’s what I want. I will have clear visibility once the Russian column comes south of Münchberg on Route Nine. I will strike them as they pass. I’ll hit lead vics; you will then hit them in the flank. You two start your attack run offset from Route Nine along—”

The transmission was abruptly cut short, as all aircraft heard an air threat indicator in their cockpits. Sandra spun her head to a new light at her nine o’clock, and she saw a hellish streak of flame lifting from the earth, just above the blanket of fog but miles away to her west.

The streak of yellow and red soon passed far behind her, racing to the south.

It had not been gunning for her.

The speed of the ordnance took Glitter by surprise. This was no shoulder-fired missile. This looked like an SA-21, which, she knew, traveled an incredible 4,500 miles per hour.

The company commander’s voice came tight and anxious now. “Viper Six actual, evasive!”

Coursing from north to south, the missile traveled at just under Mach 6. It connected with its target in six seconds, and the commander of Viper Squadron’s AH-64 turned into an aerial fireball that traced a bright descending arc until impact with the ground. Sandra could still see the flames as Jesse yawed her aircraft right and the other aircraft with her did the same.

“Fuck, Jesse!” Glitter said. “That was a fucking SA-21!”

“Shit, shit, shit!” said her pilot. “How the fuck did they get mobile SA-21 launchers into Germany this fast?”

“No idea. It’s not even possible. But it did not come from the force we’ve been engaging! There’s something else out there. We need to rearm back at Ansbach, then get back up as quickly as we can.”

General Eduard Sabaneyev clapped his fire direction control officer on the shoulder. “Good hit, Major. We don’t want to use too many Triumf missiles on the enemy’s helos, though. Save the big stuff for the jets.”

Sensing that he needed to reinforce the latest decisions made by his inferiors, he nodded approvingly and added, “But we have ensured that the Amerikanski and German aviators will now spread the word that there is an antiair missile defense shield around the assault column. If any of those other bastards get inside the missile radius, they’ll feel our wrath.”

He amplified his last point by clapping the fire direction control officer again on the shoulder in an attempt at a fatherly manner.

General Sabaneyev was known to be anything but fatherly, and the Russian major flinched visibly.

The major said, “Yes, sir. We would have locked onto them earlier if we hadn’t been masked by those hills. We’re getting reports of other American attack helicopters over there, but they are too low and we can’t engage.”

The general forced another smile. “Stay on it.” Turning toward a row of officers at their computers on fold-down desks, he said, “Operations, what is Colonel Dryagin’s casualty count?”

“Sir, Colonel Dryagin reports eight BTRs, catastrophic kills,” the senior operations lieutenant colonel answered. “Five T-14s also knocked out. Colonel Dryagin wasn’t sure if all his T-14 losses were full kills. He left them behind so he could continue his mission. He reports he has successfully bypassed the enemy ambush point as ordered, but he was raked by aircraft-delivered gunfire as they moved on. Three support vehicles were abandoned with mechanical issues, but his rate of march has resumed its pace.”

General Sabaneyev turned abruptly from the operations men to look at the maps. Five interlinked map boards were hung against the bulkhead of the train. Adjacent to these, a network of digital radar screens emanated a light greenish glow. But these were clearly not the off-the-shelf new tech that was used throughout the command car. As much as the vehicle held state-of-the-art technology, it also contained pieces of standard Russian military hardware that had been adapted to the train out of necessity.

The Russian air-sweep radars were each tuned to different altitudes and zones around the train. The screens now showed a few blips, high-flying jets above the tactical area. All were coded as routine high-altitude passenger flights. Their tracks were lettered and numbered in accordance with known flight plans. If any deviated drastically from the high, steady trajectories — if their profiles looked like there was even a 5 percent chance they were NATO bombers ready to enter the combat area — they would be shot down without question.

The general was certain all commercial air travel in Europe would be ground-stopped by now, since there was no GPS, so he assumed the few blips were longer-haul flights: from the U.S. to Africa or the Middle East, most likely.

Everything was going well, Sabaneyev told himself. The attack column and the two support trains had made it this far into Germany with what the general considered to be minimal contact.

This meant that Red Metal had achieved both strategic and operational surprise. A few local NATO commanders, as ill prepared as they were, would certainly come out to play. But that was nothing Dryagin couldn’t handle with his speed, surprise, and violence of action.

And the Russian casualties? Sabaneyev considered them regrettable but expected, and far below anyone’s best expectations, considering the operation’s progress.

He now had a virtually clear shot from here to Stuttgart and no other enemy contact reported.

He steadied himself, grabbing an overhead handhold as the train jostled and shook while rounding a bend. The tracks clacked and the car bounced and vibrated.

Still smoother than Russian rail, he thought.

He dialed up the command net and broadcast a digital report back to attack headquarters in Belarus. The assault train had an HF long wire attached that allowed the Russians to communicate in the absence of satellites in excess of 3,000 kilometers. They couldn’t send large amounts of data, but the pipeline was just large enough to send back basic messages.

Above him he heard the sounds of the radar whirring in its housing. One omnidirectional 29YA6 radar and the 42S6 Morfey active electronic array gave them a radar envelope of more than twenty-five kilometers. The radar dome popped up and out of the train, but when they passed into a tunnel or wanted to remain covert, it could be retracted into its housing.

Red Blizzard 1 had four radar systems total to detect incoming air threats. As long as the switching stations captured by Spetsnaz forces were kept open, and the train remained within twenty kilometers of the assault column, the systems on board could detect and fire on any air or ground target within that bubble and keep the path clear all the way to their objective.

The rail and roads are open. There is no one left to oppose us. We are steps away and NATO was unprepared for our smaller, faster, smarter force.

Fools, he thought. The West always believed they would have time to react to a full-scale Russian invasion, the long-assumed “pizza slice” movement from Belarus into Germany. A wide border crossing into Poland with the Russian invasion route narrowing and strengthening on its way toward Berlin. But NATO never even considered a classic operational raid. Small-scale but intense, lightning fast, and brutally efficient.

A scalpel through the heart of Europe, slipping effortlessly through flesh to cut out the cancer AFRICOM, so old Boris Lazar could hold his target in Africa without worrying about America.