Red Metal

CHAPTER 70

General Lazar’s headquarters tent had been erected twenty kilometers north of Mrima Hill in a dry, shallow streambed that intersected the jungle here on the flatlands. After he woke from a nap in the back of his command vehicle, he climbed out and walked over to the tent, already a hive of activity.

He entered and was offered tea by a young sergeant, which he took and sipped molten-hot, even though the nighttime temperature was eighty degrees and the humid jungle air kept him covered in sweat.

He saw Colonel Kir talking to the radio section. “Dmitry. Where is Colonel Borbikov?”

Kir said, “He just left with a contingent of his Spetsnaz. They said they were heading to inspect the new artillery firing park that’s being set up now.”

Lazar stood in silence for a moment. Then he uttered something between a statement and a question: “Special forces is going to inspect artillery.”

“I admit, I was confused, sir. He asked for the location on the map and left with his men.”

“I tell you, Dmitry, there is no good to come from this latest news.”

“Yes, Comrade General,” Kir replied, then: “Forgive me. I’m not sure what you mean.”

“Come with me outside the tent.” For a very public leader like Colonel General Lazar, taking one of his senior subordinates aside to speak with him in private was an unusual move, enough to gain looks from the men in the command post.

Out in the darkness and away from others, Lazar said, “We were bloodied at the port and lost much of our armored punch. The damnable flank attack gouged out a sizable part of 1st Regiment. We are left now with three understrength infantry regiments. We still outnumber and outgun the Americans, but they have the defensive positions.”

Kir countered, “Our estimates are they’re nothing more than a single reinforced regiment. We have three — damaged, but still we have three. And our BTRs are superior to the bulk of their power, their LAVs. Only their few tanks pose any real—”

Lazar interrupted. “I know all this, of course. My concern is not the Americans.”

“Then what is your concern, sir?”

“I cannot control Yuri Borbikov. He has a benefactor in Anatoly Rivkin. I don’t trust the colonel, and I’m sure he has something planned.”

Kir cocked his head. “He has airborne troops to bolster the final phase of the attack, but you knew that already.”

“I’m speaking of the nuclear devices. In order to serve as a deterrent to counterattack once we take the mine, they must be placed at the center and wired together so they can be activated with a timed detonator.”

Kir knew about the artillery shells — Lazar had told him — but he’d been ordered to keep it to himself.

When he made no reply, the general said, “We take the mine, Borbikov sets up his ridiculous nuclear brinkmanship, and then we are safe and sound, or so the plan goes.” He paused, then said, “But if we are unsuccessful in capturing the mines… then what will he do?”

“I… I don’t know.”

“If all you have is a hammer, Dmitry, every problem becomes a nail.”

Kir blinked in surprise. “You are suggesting that if we fail to take the mines, he will detonate?”

Lazar shrugged. “He’d have to be able to deliver the nuclear warheads deep within the Marines’ lines to render Mrima Hill inoperable for generations. But if failure is at hand, I know he will launch the shells on the Americans from distance.”

Kir never cussed in front of his general, but now he said, “Shit. That’s why a Spetsnaz colonel is inspecting the artillery.”

With a solemn look, Lazar slapped the younger man on the shoulder. “So… we must be victorious — to save the world.” He smiled a little, but the impact of his previous comments remained.

The general continued. “The Americans have a carrier battle group that will be in range in less than two days. So we attack immediately from three directions. We blast the enemy with artillery on one side, then advance on the two other fronts. They may have good firepower, some air coverage, but we are the attacker and they the defender. They are static and we are mobile. In a battle of fixed frontages, the defender loses.

“Didn’t I teach this to you in school?”

“You did, Comrade General, only… this is different.”

“Not at all. We will split his attention. In my estimation, the Americans no longer know how to fight a conventional force. They have been fighting insurgency for years.

“We place the Marines and their French allies in the horns of a dilemma. How will the enemy commander divide his few aircraft? Until the carrier arrives, he has only the few planes the Marines have on board the Boxer. He does not have the sortie generation rate, and if he brings them in small numbers, our antiaircraft fire will smash them. Where does he place his anti-armor missile systems? We identify them and take them out. Then we look to see which side of his defense is breaking and we attack there with everything in the reserve.”

Kir said, “We penetrate and we annihilate.”

“Da,” said Lazar.

Nearly fifty M1A2s hid behind the various hills on the western bank of the Bug River. The air sparked with continued sporadic fire, but the battle was at a stalemate. To Grant, it seemed the Russians planned to stay at the border and lob shells as long as they knew there were targets within range, and this had bought him the time he needed to put his plan into action.

The radio in his M1’s headset crackled with the call from the commander of 1st Battalion. “Courage Six, this is Bandits Six.”

Grant keyed his radio while standing in the turret and looking out into the snowy night. “Bandits, Courage. Go.”

“Copy. We’re set. Time now.”

“Understood. Awaiting the call from Dukes. Once they are in position, we will commence the attack.”

Instantly a new voice crackled. It was the 2nd Battalion Commander. “Courage, this is Dukes. We’re in our cold positions. All ready to go here.”

“Copy, Dukes. Commence your support by fire.”

“Courage, this is Dukes. We’re commencing our fires, time now.” Within seconds of his radio call, the sharp blasts of thirty U.S. tanks firing their 120mm main guns erupted, and simultaneously coaxial .50-caliber machine guns began chattering all over the Polish side of the river. The cacophony of the U.S. suppression fire and the arc of tracer fire electrified the night. The Russians were slow to respond, but soon they began firing back with their own guns. Occasionally an anti-tank missile crossed the open terrain and rocketed over the narrow river.

But Grant wasn’t watching the tanks. Instead he was eight miles to the north, peering through his night-vision optics at a distant rail bridge that crossed the river into Belarus. To the south he heard the battle resume with new vitality, but on the far side of the Bug here he counted only four Russian tanks, a single platoon, guarding the bridge.

He assumed they would have wired the iron-and-timber trestle bridge to blow sky-high in the event the Americans tried to cross, but he suspected the Russians weren’t expecting any crossings.

Especially not here. This bridge was old, and it didn’t look heavy enough to accommodate more than one piece of armor at a time. It was, Grant’s scouts determined, a passenger-train-only bridge, unable to handle the much heavier loads of rail cargo.

The lieutenant colonel peered through his thermal sights as a small group of his scouts crept through the fields on the Polish side, then began shimmying under the bridge. His heart threatened to beat out of his chest as he watched the men crawling along, clinging precariously to the undersides of the spans. Their gear and equipment plainly visible in his thermals, they made their way in silence and in darkness, hoping like hell the Russians were scanning deeper into Polish territory for tanks and Humvees, and not looking under the bridge for individual sappers.

Grant checked yet again into Belarus, but still there was no reaction in this sector. Either his plan to paralyze their headquarters with an immense fusillade was working, or any second he would watch a platoon of his best scouts evaporate in a ball of fire.

He held his breath when a soldier’s foot slipped on ice, and the man nearly fell forty feet to the hard, frozen river below. He managed to get caught in rigging attached to two other men as he fell, and the other young soldiers were forced to grab tight on their own spans, holding on for dear life as the man hung there for a moment before pulling himself back onto a lower metal beam. Quickly, Grant scanned the four tanks in their dug-in emplacements to the north and saw no evidence that his men had been spotted.

The team radioed back that they had discovered multiple explosive charges. Grant didn’t have the resolution in his night optic to see them clipping the wires, but they stopped at different points along the bridge, worked intently for a moment, and then moved farther down.

The distant sound of heavy cannon fire and the flashes and flames lighting up the night to the south were incessant.

After what seemed like an eternity to Grant, the scouts radioed that they had clipped the wires at all five charges under the span.

Now the second squad, their Javelin missiles clearly visible in the thermal contrast on his goggles, crept slowly across the ice covering the Bug River on the northern side of the bridge, out of the view of the tanks, which were positioned on the train tracks as well as to the south. The squad was well led, and in minutes they were across the frozen expanse.

Finally the third team moved out, following the first, only this one crawled along the top of the bridge, and some of the men hauled the big Javelins along with them. The men were dressed head to toe in white, and with the snowfall all around and their careful movements they remained undetected. Soon they reached their position and lay prone, hidden behind the wooden beams over the bridge.

Grant breathed a sigh of relief.

The firing to the south intensified, low reverberations of cannon reports and explosions continuing, but here, in the snowy woods miles to the north, all was still.

Then Grant heard a faint rumbling behind him that grew in volume by the second. The ground began to vibrate, and snow fell in clumps from the trees.

Grant called over his radio.

“Hit ’em.”

An instant later six FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles rocketed atop fiery blasts from the dense brush and high reeds of the far bank. A second later six more were fired from the middle spans of the bridge, where the second scout team had crawled.

The strike got the job done, but in the end it was massive overkill. The platoon of four Russian tanks dug in across the river never knew what hit them. The T-14 reactive armor fired to diminish the damage done by the Javelins, but the missiles rained down from such a high angle that several of them penetrated the turret hatches.

All four Armatas exploded in fireballs.

Watching and listening to the beginning of the supporting fire attack from 2nd Battalion, Grant transmitted to 1st Battalion, “Bandits, you’re clear. Launch your forces into the attack. The bridge is open.”

“Roger.” An Abrams lurched from deep in the Polish forest and began heading toward the rail bridge spanning the Bug River and then onto the territory of Russia’s vassal state of Belarus.

Behind them the increasing rumble turned into the unmistakable sound of more tanks, and a dozen massive M1s rolled at their top speed of forty-five miles per hour along the cleared forest next to the train tracks, racing to get behind the first to cross the bridge.

And to the south, dozens more American tanks unleashed a continuous hell as the radio call reporting the success of the scouts went out, keeping the main force of Russian tanks heavily occupied.

The first M1 slowed as it arrived at the train bridge, then rolled gingerly onto the span. Keeping his speed down, the commander bravely continued all the way across.

Only when he was completely clear of the bridge on the Belarusian side did the second tank begin its crossing.

More American armor broke cover out of the forest and drove at top speed for the bridge. Again they received massive suppression fire from the south while they, one by one, rolled onto the bridge, each M1 trying the crossing a little faster than the one that went before.

The four tanks on the far side moved to cover as another two and then two more M1s made for the bridge.

Grant had an understrength regiment of U.S. armor, depleted by the fighting against the Russians over the past several days, but by now these tanks were operated by incredibly experienced drivers, gunners, loaders, and commanders, and they re-formed into platoons and companies easily in the darkness over the border.

Lieutenant Colonel Grant watched from the wood line as all twenty-eight tanks that crossed the bridge made it to cover.

Grant turned to his S3. “I didn’t think we’d make it this far before the Russians figured us out.”

“You and me both, sir. Looks like 2nd Battalion’s fires are keeping them pinned down, but the scouts did a damn good job wiping out anybody who could report in.”

“Let’s mount up and head for that rickety bridge that just had to go through the stress of two dozen M1 crossings.”

“Sounds like a hell of a plan, boss.” Both men began moving for their vehicles.

Boom! A U.S. tank round fired just beyond the bridge on the Belarusian side of the river. This told him his armor had found the flank of the Russian tanks past the now-dead bridge guard platoon.

More pounding erupted seconds later, and within moments heavy cannon fire rippled through the forest from across the Bug, joining the sounds of the continuous fire from 2nd Battalion to the south.

Grant climbed into his Humvee and looked through the advanced optics of his SPI IR 360 surveillance camera system. He could see his cavalry company making their way back over the bridge and finding cover near the bank on the Polish side. Their mission had been a dangerous one. He would talk to the master sergeants later. These guys deserve to be the ones with the big, fat medals, he thought.

Grant’s tank lurched forward now and began racing for the bridge.

He’d just ordered an invasion of another country, and he wanted to get his licks in before he was thrown into the stockade.