Red Metal

CHAPTER 68

Colonel General Sabaneyev stood outside his GAZ Tigr all-terrain infantry mobility vehicle, snowfall covering his shoulders and his helmet, as the last T-14 tank crossed the Polish border into Belarus. It was difficult not to breathe a sigh of relief, although he hid his emotions from his subordinates.

The tanks from the fighting battalions had shown their effectiveness in combat, they had accomplished the mission, and now virtually all of the once brightly painted and new precision instruments bore the effects of battle: scratches and giant dents from the hard combat in the concrete jungle of Wrocław; layers of mud churned up from battle across the Polish fields; and, on virtually every piece of armor, small pockmarks and large, jagged scars exposing bare steel, gained from strikes from RPGs, machine-gun fire, and 120mm tank fire.

A long line of BTRs crossed the bridge next, weary infantry mounted atop them, glad to be catching a ride from their armored brothers.

Sabaneyev and his staff had already crossed, and now they observed the movement from the crest of a small hill outside Brest as the columns of armor and men drove past. As they watched the column, a T-14 missing its entire turret drove past, a crew of infantrymen hanging off the top, the vehicle’s function transformed from battlewagon to a simple but overengineered tracked cart for moving personnel. The turret of this tank had been blown off in combat in what was called the jack-in-the-box effect, a result of enormous overpressure, usually caused by a detonation inside the vehicle. Often this killed the entire crew instantly, but sometimes, as was the case here, the vehicle remained roadworthy, just lacking a turret. Often, within its cramped quarters, the gruesome remnants of its former occupants bore witness to their final horrible moments.

But for the group of exhausted infantrymen sitting on the vehicle, men who’d seen enough of combat, this battered tank was just another way to get home.

Upon watching the sad sight roll on a few seconds more, Sabaneyev realized this tank was an obvious symbol that they were no longer the attackers, the wolves on the prowl. Now they were fleeing, the victims of a series of battles that had left them crippled and worn.

He reached out and took Colonel Smirnov by the arm.

“Feliks, tell that unit to abandon that tank; it will have a terrible effect on the men if they see it.”

“Sir… for them that is now a viable alternative to walking. If I ask them to abandon that tank, those men will be forced to continue on foot, and it will slow their company’s rate of march.”

“I don’t care if they crawl to Moscow from here, Feliks. We are in friendly territory and we must consider our next stage. We will throw up a line at the border. I want those Yankees and their Polish dogs to pay a final price. We will fire across the border when the enemy arrives, cause maximum damage with whatever munitions we have remaining, then continue our march back to Russia. Do you understand?”

“Da, sir,” said the operations officer, sensing that now was not the time for any dissent. “I will make the necessary arrangements to fight once more, then withdraw.”

“Good. And have that damaged tank driven into the woods and left. It’s bad for morale.”

Eduard Sabaneyev stormed off toward his Bumerang to give new orders to Colonel Dryagin.

“Walking through the snow is bad for morale, too, General,” Smirnov muttered to himself.

One of the Russian tank platoons that was still fully intact, four T-14 Armatas in all, formed a line abreast in thick trees on the eastern side of the Bug River. The metal beasts were covered in dark black mud and snow. The platoon commander for this particular section, a lieutenant, enjoyed a cup of coffee the crew had brewed by putting their steel pot on the engine’s exhaust. The coffee wasn’t the usual military-issue junk but rather something his platoon mechanic had stolen from a Polish house when they’d been driving over frozen farmland between Görlitz and Wrocław.

Fucking Wrocław! the platoon commander thought as he sipped the coffee and picked at chunks of moss covering a section of his vehicle under the turret.

His platoon sergeant walked over, interrupting his thoughts. The commander dropped the moss and picked up some of the black mud and squeezed it between his fingers, not wanting to be caught idling like a girl.

The sergeant said, “That crap Polish mud will be damn hard to wash out from the turret ring, sir.”

The commander agreed. “Da. We’ll need to put a hose to it once we’re back in the heated tank ramps in Smolensk.”

“Any idea how long we’re to be here, sir?”

“Orders are to fire at the Americans and Poles as they approach the border and the west side of the bridge. We are to engage targets from here as long as there are targets to engage and we have ammunition with which to engage them. With a little luck the fucking Americans will want to stand and fight, and we’ll kick their asses. Here we give them one final taste of what it means to be up against the Russian army, unlike the pigs they’re used to fighting in the sands of the Middle East.”

The platoon commander looked behind him as another tank crew moved a tank hulk missing its turret into the trees. They were from an adjacent company he’d trained with before, and he’d known the men on board. He hadn’t seen them get hit in Wrocław, but he’d heard about it. A Polish militia unit had attacked them from an upper story in a building with an AT-4, and the blast had blown the turret sky-high. He supposed the turret would become some kind of monument to the Polish people’s resistance to their attack.

The turretless tank hulk was depressing to look at. At least it might afford the infantry some protection, he thought.

The crew fired up his vehicle again. The platoon sergeant had been given their exact location to set up their defense, about two hundred meters away, concealed among the pines. He scrambled to the back deck of the T-14 to grab the coffeepot before it fell off the tank and deposited its contents into the snow.

They rolled up to the bank of the Bug River on the Belarusian side near the raised automobile bridge. There they had a clear line of sight over the ice-covered water to the fields and forests on the eastern edge of Poland.

When the tanks stopped, the lieutenant clambered up onto the slippery steel of his Armata, while around him the men began gathering branches and brush to camouflage the platoon. He slid down into the open turret and clicked several switches; then a whir started up on the infrared sight’s cooling system. Behind him, the tank’s backup generator hummed as it kicked in, providing holdup power. He pushed his face onto the tank’s eyecups and yelled, “Turret rotating!” to forewarn anyone close by as he began to turn the main gun and the sight to scan the horizon.

This terrain was perfect for a tank battle. He zoomed in the T-14s’ sight system and scanned slowly across the Polish landscape. He saw a Czech Škoda Octavia some three kilometers away on the Polish highway 698, its driver unaware of what was soon to take place here.

He put his padded Russian winter tanker’s helmet on and called through the intercom: “Driver.”

He heard some clunks as the driver fumbled around and keyed his microphone. “Yes, sir?”

“I want you to fire up the engines for fifteen minutes, then cut them off. We need them to cool long enough to be invisible to the enemy IR systems. We’ll button up and turn up the heaters so we can maintain a bit of warmth, but it’s going to get cold in here while we wait.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Gunner, you copy?”

“Yes, sir,” said the gunner from outside the turret. He jumped in through the top hatch; snow came off his boots in clumps and fell on the metal decking. He pulled his helmet on and switched channels to pass the lieutenant’s instructions over the radio to the rest of the platoon.

The lieutenant heard a rough rumble and the tank shook as the powerful Chelyabinsk Tractor Plant 360 engine came to life. He reached into the emptied machine-gun ammo can he had bolted to the back of his tank commander’s seat and pulled out a pad and pen.

“Gunner, get out a notepad and write our tank’s range card. See that frozen pond at about two kilometers at two-four-zero degrees?”

“Yes, sir. I see it.”

“Call that center and find me a reference point to the left and right. I expect the enemy to arrive on the main east-west highway, then spread out onto the fields. I’m going to walk our line and get the platoon’s position diagram and have the other three working on their range cards, too.”

“Yes, sir,” said the gunner, who took over the controls from his boss on the dual-pad turret and stared through the sights, making himself even more familiar with the terrain.

The lieutenant stood from his seat and pulled himself out of the turret, back into the cold air. He climbed down into the snow and walked over to his three other tanks in succession. Each time he climbed aboard, knocked on the hatch, and then leaned in to confer with the tank commander.

Each man passed over his range card, including a diagram of his tank and its relationship to the other tanks in the platoon and its frontage.

The lieutenant then went back to his tank, where he combined the small diagrams into a fire plan sketch, which he reviewed with the company commander when he came down the line a few minutes later. The commander brought it up to his battalion commander, and the final consolidation of everyone’s drawings across the battalion gave the unit its full defensive fire plan.

The final product was a diagram of a location crisscrossed with trigger lines, alternate positions, reinforcement and resupply lanes, and a host of other military data required for the commander to make decisions and hopefully maximize the potential of his unit against the enemy.

When they were done, when all the tanks up and down the river were emplaced and ready, the men looked out to the west and waited for the arrival of the Americans and Germans who’d caused them so much grief over the past several days.

Sergeant Casillas directed the driver of the light-armored vehicle up the dirt road leading to the regiment’s command headquarters. The LAV–C2 antennas slapped the branches of the dense jungle foliage as they made their way up the steep slope. Connolly stood in the turret, ducking constantly to avoid getting smacked on the helmet. He silently cursed Casillas for trying to take his head off.

Sensing his lieutenant colonel’s frustration, Casillas spoke over the vehicle intercom. “Sir, I told the driver to hit as many branches as possible on the way up.”

Connolly relaxed, the sergeant’s gibe reminding him that all the men on the LAV were just doing their jobs. The instructions he’d given them had been to “get me to the regimental CP as quick as possible,” and, he had to admit, they were doing a damn fine job at that.

This rutted dirt road had seen better days. Cut some years back to allow heavy equipment up to an old copper mine shaft on the northern slope of the hill, the road went into disrepair when the shaft stopped producing ore. Now other roads had been improved that led to the main rare-earth-metal pit, and the Kenyan jungle was hard at work reclaiming its territory here on the route to the disused shaft.

And it didn’t help the surface of the road that the regimental vehicles had all come this way, ripping down big limbs and leaving sizable obstacles and torn-out sections of the dirt track in the process.

If it ain’t the Russians, it’s gonna be these crazy roads that kill us, thought Connolly.

The Mrima Hill mine complex was at the top of the thickest part of the woods in a naturally made and human-enhanced terrain feature called a “saddle.” A bowl or crater had formed between the two hilltops from hundreds of years of erosion, the constant digging, and piles of wasted mine tailings. This double crest afforded some protection to the area where the regiment had set its command post. The greenery, like much of the East African landscape, was a mishmash of low and dense thickets, scrub plants, and tightly packed broad-leaved trees.

The mine itself was now practically abandoned. Word of the impending Russian attack had spread like wildfire, and all the employees and local villagers for many miles around had cleared out.

Ditto the Kenyan military. The French Foreign Legion troops who had been protecting the mine had remained, while the Kenyans had taken off to Mombasa. There was politics in play here: Kenya’s very real desire to maintain a good relationship with the Russians when, in the minds of many, they inevitably took over the mine. Many of the Kenyan soldiers wanted to stay and fight, but just like with Borbikov and his unit three and a half years earlier, orders were orders.

The Foreign Legion contingent was only two hundred men, but they were most helpful to the Marines because they knew their way around the area, and were adept at giving advice on how to best fortify the location’s defenses.

Three Marine infantry battalions were now dug in around the base on the northern, eastern, and western sides. To the south lay a swamp determined to be uncrossable except by venomous snakes, huge flocks of cranes, and some hippos, but the Foreign Legion troops had been positioned there to keep an eye out, anyway.

Mrima had two sister hills nearby: Marenje, six kilometers to the southwest, and Jombo, seven kilometers to the northwest. Mrima was the biggest of the three, but the others would certainly be key terrain in the upcoming fight, so the Marines posted units on both of these adjacent hilltops.

As Sergeant Casillas pulled into a parking area by the mine shaft, the row of Humvees and LAVs and a pair of dug-in artillery batteries indicated to Connolly that the regiment had been exceedingly busy while he had been slowing the Russian attack up north.

As he stepped down from the big armored vehicle, he watched and listened to the sounds of Marines around him preparing for the impending battle. Improvements to the regiment’s defenses were constant, as were the shouts from angry NCOs, unhappy with the Marines’ speed, skill, or both as they dug in, cut limbs, vines, and brush, prepared their machine-gun bunkers, and disguised their positions. The men had clearly not received a break since they arrived. The corporals and sergeants knew the Americans and French would force Lazar’s brigade to discover the hidden positions only when they had closed to within a lethal distance so the Americans could fight them toe-to-toe.

Connolly left his LAV and walked toward the entrance to a horizontal mine shaft two-thirds up the hill on the northern side. Copper had been extracted there long before anyone knew what a rare-earth mineral was, but the copper had dried up and this part of the hill had been abandoned, and now REMs were mined out of a massive open pit on the top and back side of the saddle.

Outside the entrance to the old copper mine shaft sat a scattering of one- and two-story shacks. The 5th Marine Regiment had converted the shacks and the area just inside the cavelike shaft into its headquarters. When the Russians commanded this ground years earlier, they’d set their headquarters up in the cinder-block buildings of the REM mine itself, almost a kilometer behind and high above where the Marine HQ was now positioned. It was hoped Lazar would assume his enemy would simply move into and fortify these buildings, as his countrymen had done before, and that this would allow the Marine regimental HQ to remain hidden, at least for a while.

Rusted mine machinery and a few heavy-duty cranes, abandoned for years, had now become host to a small cohort of Sykes’s monkeys. They scurried across the tops of the equipment and sat observing the Americans as they worked. Some scavenged food from the young Marines, who, though warned not to play with the animals, couldn’t help themselves. Connolly knew it would inevitably be some young kid who would try to pet one and get bitten. Of course, this was probably preferable to what could happen if the regiment remained at the mine more than a few weeks. Then, in Connolly’s experience, the men would try to domesticate a few, turning them into platoon mascots and pets.

In Iraq, Connolly once broke up a Marine-constructed fighting pit for snakes versus scorpions, but these things only happened once boredom set in, and from the looks of things around here, the NCOs kept boredom in check by giving their Marines plenty to do.

He spotted the guidon, a small pennant, this one representing the Fighting Fifth Marine Regiment. It flapped gently in the breeze in full view, indicating that Colonel Caster was here and not out touring the battalions.

Dan asked a group of passing Marines if they knew the whereabouts of the command post. They slowed just enough to salute and pointed to the entrance to the shaft, but they kept moving. Dan soon saw why. Just astride the rocky entrance to the mine, a regimental supply section had set up a full chow line. The men quickly hurried off to grab trays and get in line, and Connolly entered the horizontal shaft.

Ten feet into the mine, the temperature dropped significantly. It was a relief, but it was still hot: the air was thick, damp, and muggy. Still, the shaft was dug into hard rock and looked like an incredibly durable position.

Nevertheless, Connolly couldn’t help but remember the fate of the Marines, sailors, and soldiers on Corregidor during World War II. They, too, had holed up in a tunnel. He hoped the outcome would be a bit better than that of the brave men who fought that fateful battle, when the men were eventually surrounded, cut off from supply, and forced to surrender to the Japanese.

A steady flow of water leaked into the cave from the roof, making the floor wet and muddy, with rank smells. The stench of bat guano hit Connolly full in the face as he walked deeper into the huge space.

Swarms of black fruit bats flew by above, their rest disturbed by whatever the Marines were doing deeper within. They moved en masse to the entrance, then, sensing it was still daytime, turned around to go back. Soon they were swirling in an odd dance just below the rocky ceiling.

Two hundred feet or so into the mine shaft, a wide section had been cleared of debris and the headquarters NCOs had put out folding tables and chairs for the many officers and staff NCOs. Battle boards, covered with maps dividing up the surrounding terrain by sectors, were hung against the rock. The regimental fires officer, in conjunction with the battalion fires leaders, had marked their maps up with strike-aviation attack vectors, holding areas, battle positions, and preplanned artillery targets in spots where the Marines expected the Russians would most likely muster before or during an assault on the mines.

At another row of tables, a line of radiomen worked busily. The beeping, humming, and crackling of the multitude of speakers echoed in the dark, cavernous space. Thick knots of antenna cables and communications wires banded together with tape stretched up toward the cave mouth and then outside to antennas positioned high on the rocky, jungle-covered hill. Adding to the din of radios squawking with patrol reports and readiness data from the battalions was the noise of the battery of Marine Corps M777 155mm howitzers being set up and dug in not far from the cave. No better location could be found as an ammo bunker for the artillery shells, so Marines walked back and forth, hauling the ammo into the mines so that it would be ready when needed.

Dan took it all in, then dropped his pack on the periphery and out of everyone’s way. He was uncomfortably aware he was still something of an outsider.

He sighted Colonel Caster and headed over to him.

“Hey, Dan.” The colonel clapped him on the shoulder in a genuinely friendly manner. “Glad to get ya back in one piece. You bought us some time and the battalions here did a pretty good job getting set up. Now is when the real work begins.”

“Thanks, sir. The LAR and tank guys did all the heavy lifting. How are things looking back here?”

“Me and the sergeant major toured each of the battalions and they are about as ready as they can be.”

“Hope you still have a use for me in the upcoming battle, sir.”

“Yep, right here. I need you supporting the fight by helping me and McHale coordinate the battle. Sit down and we’ll read you in on the game plan.”

Connolly sat at the map table with Eric McHale. Both of them looked older than their years at the moment, due to the effects of battle and lack of sleep.

McHale smiled at Connolly. “You look like shit, Devil Dog.”

Connolly used a green towel to wipe a layer of grime and sweat off his face and neck while McHale explained the plan, its execution, and Colonel Caster’s intent: to defend each sector using the might of all his combined arms. The defense was well laid out, but it was clear to Connolly the Marines and French forces were stretched thin.

Connolly listened to McHale describe what could only be considered a fight-or-die situation, and he thought of the Alamo for a moment.

He then quickly told himself, This is a terrible time to remember the Alamo.