Red Metal

CHAPTER 74

The frigid weather made the image in General Sabaneyev’s binoculars stand out crisply and clearly. He drew in a deep breath, the cold air filling his lungs, then held the breath to steady the binoculars. He rolled the dial with his forefinger, trying to make out any sign of the enemy.

Colonel Smirnov stepped up next to him. “Colonel General, Moscow has sent a digital combat message response to your last transmission. They said to continue with all haste to the Russian border.”

Sabaneyev listened but held still. He took another deep breath of the freezing air, remaining sighted in on a small speck on the highway in the distance. It could easily be just another commercial tractor trailer, except for the fact that the Belarusian government had halted all civilian traffic earlier in the morning.

Then he saw another speck, and then another. They were definitely large vehicles and definitely moving in his direction. With his eyes still pressed firmly into the binos he said, “Did Command say anything about Belarusian military coming to our aid?”

More vehicles approached.

“He did not, sir. He gave us assurances the Kremlin was negotiating, but Belarus had their hands tied. He said NATO had given them an ultimatum to stay neutral and at the moment Minsk seems to be complying with it.”

“Damn it,” Sabaneyev hissed to himself, vapor clouds rising around him. “It’s just one lone tank brigade that’s on our tail. The rest of the NATO forces are hours behind us and well to the north. We’ve beaten this attacking brigade and battered it and certainly forced it to expend most of its ammunition. The Belarusian forces could coordinate with me, and we’d slaughter them in an hour.”

“Command gave no further guidance, General,” said Smirnov, wrapping his greatcoat around his face. The Belarusian plains were colder than the Russian hills and wooded countryside. Open and wind whipped, the country was probably nice in summer, but now there was hardly a tree to shield them and everything south of Minsk they’d passed had been open farmland.

Sabaneyev slewed the binos to the left of the specks that were growing in his vision to compare their size with a few buildings. They were nearing the off-ramp, where the rearguard would intercept them if they were, in fact, American tanks.

“Any word from 3rd Battalion?”

“They are on the radio now giving a report, but I thought you would want to hear the message from Moscow.”

“To hell with Moscow. Go and listen to 3rd. I need to know if this new traffic I see is the Americans continuing to advance from the west.”

The sun warmed the pavement, causing heat lines to blur his image of the distant vehicles.

He shifted his gaze nearer, and now he could see the Bumerangs of the 3rd Battalion staged on his side of the overpass, just over a kilometer away. They were in the process of rotating their turrets around in the direction of the approaching vehicles.

Explosions of flame and dirt kicked up around 3rd Battalion before Sabaneyev’s eyes.

American guns were firing on them.

Sabaneyev said, “This tank commander — he’s clearly insane, out of his mind with rage, desperate for revenge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Doesn’t he see this is just war? Why is this so fucking important to him?”

“I don’t know, sir,” said Smirnov. “It’s madness.”

Eduard Sabaneyev watched the fight a few moments more. The Bumerangs were no match for the heavier M1 tanks with their longer-range guns. Several Kornet missiles were launched by the Russians, and some struck their targets, but soon the surviving Bumerangs of 3rd Battalion were in full retreat, racing down the E30 highway toward Sabaneyev and the headquarters group.

The general released his iron grip on the binos, wiping cold sweat from his brow. Now, as he relaxed his concentration, he felt the wind whipping his face again and the chill settling into his bones.

The Americans and the Germans were still coming.

He walked down to his vehicle and gave the signal for the unit to move out.

In his memoirs he’d have to justify running from the small but seemingly unstoppable force of NATO tanks, but, he told himself, that was a problem for another day.

For now it was all about staying alive.

A deafening roar echoed through the mine, and dust and small stones fell from the ceiling. Everyone in the HQ looked up nervously, worried the damn roof would collapse. This wasn’t incoming but rather outgoing artillery, fired in desperate support of 1st and 2nd Battalions in both the east and west. Connolly heard urgent requests for fire over the radio every few minutes; then the gun line would calculate the trajectories and the artillery boys would go to work.

Lieutenant Colonel McHale’s response to the attack on two fronts had been to split the firing batteries. Caster had been out of the mine shaft checking on his troops, but as soon as he returned he agreed with McHale. This lessened the firepower in either direction, but there was no alternative anyone could see.

Despite the limited number of artillery pieces, the sounds of booming 155mm M777 howitzers ripping out into the early morning were comforting to Connolly and the men with him. But while it was good for the Marines to hear outbound fire, it also signaled that the enemy was within artillery range now, and that meant the Russians were closing in.

Marine radio operators fought to be understood as well as to understand the incoming transmissions. Pressing their handsets tight against their ears, they spoke between the terrific sounds of the nearby guns.

“Apache Red One, say again your last!” shouted a radio operator when there was a brief respite in the artillery fire.

The response was immediate and the tone urgent. “Roger. I say again, Force Recon, north of my position, has been overrun on Jombo Hill.” There was a pause. The call sign identified the transmitter as an LAR platoon commander, a lieutenant, fighting to get his transmission back as he bounced over the terrain. “We have extracted the remnant of the Force team.” He was interrupted by the sounds of cannon fire on the radio, then the pounding of machine-gun fire close to the radio handset. “We’re withdrawing south. Let Darkhorse Battalion know we’re coming in hot. The Russians are six hundred meters back, right on our ass!”

Another voice on the radio, probably the man’s gunner, could be heard yelling in the background, “Four hundred meters, sir! Engaging.” The transmission was cut short again as the sound of more 25mm cannon fire drowned out whatever the lieutenant was trying to say.

The radio operator next to Connolly tried to sound calm. “We copy. Call off a grid. We’ll work up a fire mission and close that door behind you.”

“Copy. I am the trail victor in my platoon. My grid…” There was a pause, a loud explosion, then momentary silence. Then the voice of the platoon commander came back on. “Be advised, we are hit… still mobile… trying to get south. My northing is at the two-five-six. All north of my poz is enemy.”

The radio broke off again, and there was another long pause.

The regimental CP was silent, all men hanging on to the one broadcast from the Marine in distress. He sounded like a younger officer, likely a second lieutenant. Connolly stared at the radio with everyone else in the HQ, trying to picture the desperate scene.

Then there was a screech of noise and the lieutenant’s voice returned, but in a bloodcurdling scream. “We’re on fire!”

The radio went dead.

Connolly didn’t hesitate; he grabbed the field phone tied into the artillery batteries outside. “Patriot, fire mission. Immediate suppression. HE and WP mix. Battery Six, target location two-five-six, zero-niner-three. Lineal sheaf east to west. Over.”

The response came back acknowledging the mission, and the firing battery read back the coordinates but told him there’d be a delay. They had to “shift trails,” or pick up the heavy howitzers’ rear legs, known as the spades, and physically rotate the weapon ninety degrees. They knew when they received an immediate suppression mission that the shit was hitting the fan and the infantry, or in this case the LAR unit, was in desperate need.

It took time, but soon the Marine artillery began firing into the grid. A wall of flame brightened the morning sky to the north as a Marine platoon raced to the south. It came too late to save the young officer, but his dying act was slowing the Russians just enough to protect what was left of his platoon.

A Marine tank platoon commander lay in the dirt, looking through his binos, watching the artillery fire and the flames spewing from a demolished Marine light-armored vehicle on the winding dirt road.

Behind the young officer and down the hill, the loader on the platoon commander’s tank shouted out, “Hey, Lieutenant, the LAR guys say they are hell-for-leather with Russians on their heels! He’s a reduced platoon of three LAV Two-Fives, coming in fast. You should see them any second.”

Sure enough, through the lieutenant’s binos, three shapes materialized in the near distance, traveling off-road now. He grabbed his map case, binos, and carbine, then scrambled back down the hill to his tank. There, he climbed onto the armor hull, donned his helmet, and leapt down the tank’s hatch, sitting down hard in the commander’s chair.

He keyed the intercom. “Driver, into the hot position. Now!”

The tank, two more to the left, and one more to the right, all revved up instantly and then lurched forward, driving just a dozen meters and then down into the dugout created by the Marine engineers. The gunner immediately swiveled the turret in the direction of the LAV-25s.

The light-armored vehicles screamed past, one of them almost running into a half-buried M1A2 tank in the process.

The four tanks’ heavy 120mm main guns then picked targets among the pursuing Russians and fired, reloaded, then repeated the process as fast as the crews could operate. Each time the tanks fired at a BTR, a haze of dust billowed around them. Their fields of fire gave the tanks the advantage as they picked off Russian armored personnel carriers one at a time.

But the BTR crews were able to see where the fire was coming from, and their missiles were accurate. They snuffed out first one, then two of the four tanks.

Eight Marines died with the first salvos.

The last two American tanks continued firing until they’d taken a half dozen missile strikes in and around their positions. The near misses left their turrets damaged, but they managed to pull out of their positions in an attempt to escape, driving through preselected routes of gullies and ravines that led back to the south.

One of the big M1 Abrams tanks succumbed to its earlier hits from a fast-flanking BTR and threw a track. The Marine tankers grabbed their rifles and whatever gear they could carry, climbed out of the big, dead piece of armor, and then sprinted to the sole surviving tank. They clambered aboard and held on when it lurched forward, resuming its frantic escape from the attacking Russian forces.

Twelve kilometers from the mines, 3rd Battalion’s Javelin gunners prepared to fire. Through the thermal imagers attached to the launchers, they watched the three American LAVs, then the damaged M1 with surviving tankers clinging to it, retreating in their direction.

The Marine weapons company executive officer was in charge of the Javelin teams, and he and the company gunnery sergeant called back and forth on their radio net now, dividing up targets.

After a signal from the XO, the first Javelin belched out from a team lying on the roof of a farmhouse. The gray puff of smoke was barely visible, and then the missile jetted from the launch tube ahead of a spear of fire.

The instant the missile was away, the Marines grabbed their gear, jumped off the roof, and ran to their next position, a clump of trees two hundred meters back in the direction of the hill.

The Javelin “fire-and-forget” missile continued skyward. The advanced munition would fly in an arc, level out for a second, then drop to strike the target where it was most vulnerable, on the less armored top.

The Javelins were built to destroy tanks, so using them on the more lightly armored and less powerful BTRs was overkill, but none of the Marines gave a damn about the expense of each launch. The red trace of three other missiles now joined the first, all darting across the early-morning sky. The Russian armored personnel carriers had no way to avoid them; they could do nothing more than fire in the general direction of the launches in a last act of defiance before they were destroyed.

The Marine missilemen crews and a crew from One Team of the French Dragoons each fired a Javelin, then fell back to another concealed position. Fire, run, get to a new location, reload the weapon, and prepare to fire again at an enemy who was gaining ground by the second.

Lieutenant Colonel McHale took Connolly and Colonel Caster aside. Addressing the colonel, he said, “Sir, enemy is ten kilometers north of Darkhorse’s final defensive lines, and Darkhorse is down to his last tank in his sector.”

“I’m tracking,” said Caster, standing over the map, watching as the small red pins were moved in closer to the mine.

Things to the north were bad — the line seemed to be slowly but steadily collapsing — but that didn’t mean the situation in the east and west was that much better. That said, it looked like the break 1st Battalion got in splitting the Russians was playing to their favor. They still had all four of their tanks and a full LAV platoon.

The broken terrain to the east had meant the BTRs could approach only three abreast, so 2nd Battalion was still more or less in control of their fight, though they, too, were falling back slowly.

In Darkhorse’s zone, though, the Russians were closing in quickly.

“What do you think, Dan?” the colonel asked.

“Sir, I could tell you a whole lot better if you’d let me go down there and lend Darkhorse a hand.”

“You think you can do something for them there you can’t do here?”

“Maybe. A spare officer who knows how to call for fire might come in handy. Worst case, I’m still shooting high expert with my rifle.” Connolly smiled and hefted his carbine up.

Colonel Caster didn’t return the smile. “No shit? Well, all Marines are riflemen first, regardless of rank.” He looked around. “And we might all be tested on that before this day is through.” Rubbing his stubbly gray hair, he said, “Eric, if you don’t need Dan right now, let’s send him down to Darkhorse. He can give Darkhorse Six a chance to focus on his fight and let us know how we can help them from up here.”

McHale agreed, and Connolly was moving in under a second. He grabbed his kit and the expensive radios he’d been lugging around and slung them onto his shoulder. He pointed to Sergeant Casillas, who had been standing along the wall of the mine shaft, awaiting orders. “Let’s go, Sergeant.”

“Yes, sir!”

“One thing, though, Dan,” Caster called out as Connolly headed for the exit. “Darkhorse Six is the best, a top-notch officer, but if his line is cracking, he’ll be the last to admit it. He’s a real fighter. So if things look really bad and I need to shift over a company from 2nd or some tanks or LAVs from 1st Battalion, you let me know.”

“Aye, sir.” Connolly and Casillas raced out the door.

Sergeant Casillas directed his LAV’s driver down to Darkhorse Battalion’s position along a steep, winding stretch of mining road that had a thick jungle canopy covering it. During the few times they could catch a view to the north, however, they watched tracer fire and missiles streaking across the battlefield in the darkness. The sounds of booming artillery and tank main gun fire had become a constant orchestra of low, rumbling explosions, higher-pitched pops, and whizzes racing overhead.

The light-armored vehicle passed the two artillery batteries, which had by now moved to a new firing position. Called a “survivability move,” the relocation was an admission that the Russians would soon be inside the range where they could pound the source of the artillery that had been pounding them. It would be assumed that the location of the big Marine guns had been approximated by the enemy, so moving them a few hundred meters away, though arduous and time-consuming, was the only way to keep them in the fight.

The cannoneers had reset their weapons, and the guns were once again firing furiously: grabbing the heavy, nearly hundred-pound shells by hand, hoisting them onto the sled, ramrodding them into the breech, and then packing powder bags in behind. As his vehicle raced past, Connolly watched one of the split batteries in the morning light as the men closed the breeches and yanked the lanyards all in unison. He also saw that they were now divided into thirds; just four M777 artillery pieces covered each of the cardinal directions.

Less concentrated fire. Much less, he thought.

Soon there would likely be a gunfight between the two sides’ artillery forces, since the Russians would probably creep their big 152s in behind the infantry. It was an old tactic, but Connolly figured if anyone was going to use it, it would be the crafty old general.

Penetrate and obliterate, Connolly said to himself.