Red Metal

CHAPTER 51

Paulina had found a new shooting position, a few offices down on the third floor of the municipal building. The window there had been shattered, either by gunfire from the street or else by the vibrations of the explosions all around, so she didn’t have to break it out before standing and leveling her sights on the rear of a Tigr scout car, the last Russian vehicle still moving within her line of sight. She watched it spraying 30mm grenades from the remote control launcher on its top turret as it moved, but she couldn’t see what the vehicle was firing at.

“Backblast is clear!” shouted the man beside her, and she began to press her finger against the trigger; but just as she did so, a grenade from another Tigr slammed into the wall right below her perch in the window an instant before the distant Tigr suffered a catastrophic kill.

The RPG-7 on Paulina’s shoulder discharged, but she was falling back on her heels as it did, and the rocket raced over the Tigr and exploded against the wall of a bank up the street.

The twenty-year-old blonde found herself on her back, the room filled with gray dust and choking black smoke. The men with her coughed somewhere nearby, which told her they were alive. The ceiling had partially caved in around her, and the twisted wreckage of aluminum ceiling beams hung low.

She fought her way back to her feet, lifted the now-empty launcher, and stumbled back up to the demolished window. Looking out into the street, she saw death, destruction, the chaos of frantic civilians, vehicles raging with fire and smoke, and Polish militia and soldiers running toward the river.

But she saw no more targets.

Two disabled Bumerangs littered the road below her, both with their rear hatches open, which meant the crews or infantry had disembarked. Along with this, three GAZ Tigr scout cars were utterly destroyed.

Mangled bodies lay around all the vehicles in sight.

The fight continued raging over by the river; this was plain to hear. Paulina turned to the men in the room with her as the dust and smoke cleared, and she found both to be unhurt and only now getting back to their feet.

“We will reset in another window. They might come back, or other vehicles in the column could pass this way.”

Ten minutes earlier and fifteen kilometers west, Tom Grant dug into a cold beef patty from an MRE pouch, shoveling it into his mouth as he looked up toward the cloudy sky. He had spent the morning following the Russian column to the east with his regiment, but he’d sent a company of Leopard 2 tanks to take the lead so he could halt to meet his commander at the helicopter LZ set up for him in a large, broad field on the northern outskirts of the town of Jawor. This halt by the headquarters section spread his force out on the highway a little more than he liked, but this escort duty was supposed to be nothing more than rolling along behind the enemy anyway; so whether he was personally one kilometer behind them or ten kilometers, he could close the distance at will if necessary.

Interestingly, a platoon of Russian BTR-82 armored personnel carriers was lagging far behind the Russian exodus out of Poland. The Russians had explained in the cease-fire talks that their unarmed medical train would be departing Germany and Poland behind their main assault element, and the BTRs were therefore needed near it for its defense.

It was obvious to Grant that this was a bullshit story. The Russian train was armed, it was likely their rolling headquarters, and the BTRs were back here because they’d been ordered to try to keep the Americans away from the main Russian column, assuming with a little muscle they could force the U.S. forces to simply bring up the rear behind them.

But Grant wasn’t falling for that. He’d sent his tanks on beyond the BTRs so that they could be within striking distance of the main body of the Russian force if the Russians broke the cease-fire. The BTRs still lagged behind the main column, just ahead of the headquarters section of Grant’s regiment, but they’d caused no trouble, and right now they were over a kilometer away and out of sight beyond a nearby forest.

He was glad his colonel was due back any minute: Grant was exhausted from the constant requirements of command during combat. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d gotten any real sleep, though it felt like a month.

He climbed out of his Humvee and stood with Major Ott and Captain Spillane. A security team of soldiers fanned out into the field and faced away from the landing zone, most taking a knee, hoisting their weapons to the ready.

Within moments helos could be heard overhead.

As the men looked up into the gray sky to try to spot the helicopters, the radioman sitting in the Humvee spoke up in a rushed voice. “Lieutenant Colonel Grant? Forward scouting elements report sounds of tank fire coming from the vicinity of the Russian column near the city of Wrocław.”

Grant looked to Ott. “How far are our tanks from the Russians?”

Ott replied, “I have a company of Leopards about five kilometers west of the rear of the main body.”

Ott’s radioman spoke to him in German now, and he looked up at the American commander. “Our Leopards are seeing aircraft overhead. Hearing the tank fire, too. Explosions seem to be coming from inside the city itself.”

“Son of a bitch,” Grant said. “Either the Poles or the Russians violated the cease-fire.”

Ott added, “And it doesn’t matter who at this point, because our forces are close enough to get stuck in the middle of it.”

Grant asked Spillane, “How far is that trail column of BTRs from us now?”

“They are just up the road, sir.” Without being asked, Spillane got on his own radio and ordered all units to be on guard for potential enemy action.

Now Grant looked up at the sky again. The two Chinooks ferrying the colonel and the rest of the command staff of the regiment were in sight, approaching from the northwest.

“Shit! Wave them off. This LZ is too close. We’ll move back west ten klicks where we are out of—”

Suddenly the sound of gunfire erupted on the other side of the field. Assuming they were the targets of the fire, Grant, Ott, and the others outside their Humvees hit the dirt, burying their faces in the cold, hard ground. They lay flat and tried to look for the source of the shooting. The zing of a few stray rounds passed overhead, but to the men’s newly trained ears they were likely not the targets. The section of BTRs that had been detached from the main group of Russians was exchanging fire with someone else.

“What the hell?” Grant shouted, and then he saw the Russians. The BTRs drove fast, out of the woods, turrets reversed and firing in the direction from which they were coming.

Grant yelled to Ott, “Something’s chased the Russians out of the forest!”

Ott said, “It’s not us. Must be the Poles.”

There was precious little they could do in the middle of the field but watch. The BTR crews had obviously seen something other than small arms that had spooked them. As they drove over the bumpy plowed fields, blazing away as they went, several streaks of fire and smoke came out of the wood line.

RPGs, thought Grant.

Then another salvo, this one better timed and better aimed than the first. Six rockets in total, and one found its mark, slamming into the rear of a BTR. The impact and destruction were nearly instantaneous: fuel ignited and panicked Russians dove out of the hatches of the burning vehicle. The second BTR halted and hastily returned to pick up a soldier, using the conflagration as cover from the continuous incoming small arms directed at it from the woods. With the Russian soldiers mounted on top of the second BTR, it took off, back to the road, to get away from additional salvos of RPGs.

As it bolted in haste, the BTR drove right toward Grant and Ott, still prone on the ground. The Russians must have assumed the Americans were working with the Polish fighters who had killed their partner vehicle. They opened up on the American and German forces, 30mm explosions rocking the earth, sending giant clods of frozen dirt flying around the two trapped men.

Three well-placed 30mm rounds caught a nearby Humvee, blasting dinner-plate-sized holes in and through the vehicle.

And then: Boom!

A single tank main gun round whizzed over Grant’s and Ott’s heads and smacked into the advancing BTR.

In milliseconds, the M830A1 high-explosive anti-tank HEAT round’s shaped charge melted through the vehicle’s hull, then burst into a white-hot jet of flame inside the crew compartment, setting everything on fire. Men, equipment, and ammo all went up, vaporized in a mere fraction of a second.

Grant pushed himself to his feet and watched the BTR burn a moment; then he ordered his men back aboard the Humvees and tanks so they could move to some cover.

Grabbing the radio out of the damaged Humvee, he called up to the helicopter on the tactical air net.

“Hot LZ, hot LZ!” He watched the helos turn away quickly.

Still listening to the tactical air net, he heard his commander’s voice.

“Grant? What’s the situation?”

“There’s new fighting in Wrocław, fifteen klicks east of my poz. The trailing forces of the Russian column just got into a firefight with an unknown group on the other side of a wood line from us, then came our way shooting. Two of the Russian scout BTRs just got killed. The Poles got one. We got the other.”

“Understood. We’re going to find us a better LZ and link up with you on the ground. We are heading—”

Grant heard a sound through the radio that made his heart sink. It was the unmistakable Klaxon warning of an inbound missile.

The colonel said, “Shit! We’ve got missiles inbound. Looks like air-to-air, long-range, radar-guided.”

Grant watched with horror as the two big Chinooks weaved in the gray sky, chaff and flares firing frantically from their sides.

Seconds later one Chinook exploded into a ball of flame and spun toward the ground. A second missile hit the other helo and it, too, nosed toward the ground, leaving a trace of fire in its path.

Both helos exploded over the low rise of a hill not more than two kilometers to the west.

The commander of the 37th Armored Regiment and his second-in-command had been killed right over Tom Grant’s head.

Grant got on the radio. “Air defenses! Eyes open for any MiGs or Sukhois!”

“Sir?” came a shaky voice from atop the nearby M1A2 tank. It was Sergeant Anderson. “I fired the shot that took out the BTR. I had to. Is it my fault?”

“Enough of that shit!” shouted Lieutenant Colonel Grant, his blood boiling. The fear, the loss of his commander — all of it slipped away, replaced by the thoughts he next gave voice to. “You did what you were supposed to, trooper! Those fucks were going to kill us. Now mount up. We’ll check the crash sites for survivors; then we’re going to pursue these Russians all the way to fucking Moscow if we have to.”

The Poles had broken the cease-fire, but the Russians had attacked American forces, and this was the news that made it back to the Pentagon. Within minutes the president of the United States was notified at the White House, where he’d just gone to sleep after working in the Oval Office until well past midnight.

President Henry had had it with the Russians, and he did not hesitate in his response.

By now he knew Russia’s attack on Europe had been one part feint and one part the disabling of AFRICOM so that Russia could take and hold the rare-earth-mineral mine in Kenya. The entire cease-fire had been a trick, and he, President Jonathan Henry, had fallen for it.

His anger was reflected in his orders.

Speaking to his secretary of defense over the phone, he said simply, “Under my authorization, all military forces of the United States of America are ordered to engage hostile Russian forces inside Poland until they quit Poland entirely. If they fire on U.S. forces from Belarus, U.S. forces are authorized — no, ordered—to return fire.”

The secretary of defense understood the clear message, and he passed it to the Pentagon.

The Pentagon, in turn, transmitted it to Europe via the newly working communications links.