Red Metal

CHAPTER 75

Casillas’s LAV made it to the Darkhorse command post. Connolly climbed out of the back hatch and ran toward the tent, which was well protected in a small natural gully reinforced with timber and sandbags.

When he entered the CP, he could feel the tension instantly. A few red lights were hung up here and there, but they barely illuminated the dim interior. Marines ran in and out carrying messages to and from company defensive positions.

Maps and command boards hung on the tent walls, and men huddled around them; radio sets, just like back at regimental command, broadcast a constant traffic of voices of men in combat.

The CP was a hive of activity, but activity conducted in whispers and low light.

All but one of the Darkhorse Javelin teams had made it back from their forward positions, married up with their companies, and were now integrated into the final defensive lines. The one surviving tank had been given a spot near Kilo Company, where the engineers had prepared another firing position for it. The tankers and the infantrymen there knew the M1 was now a fixed part of the lines; there was nowhere farther to fall back to.

Connolly stepped over to speak with the commander, a short but thickly built lieutenant colonel with a big wad of chewing tobacco puffing out his lower left cheek. As had been the case with McHale, Connolly and Dickenson knew each other from way back.

The lieutenant colonel turned and saw Connolly. “You here to support me or to relieve me?”

“Here to work for you if you can use me, Ben. Put me in, coach.”

A smile broke out on the man’s chapped lips and tanned face. “Can you work my fires?”

“If your men will take me.”

“Shit yeah, they’ll be happy to have you. I had to send my weapons company CO down to help his boys lay in new positions for the .50-cals once the Javelin teams came in.” He spit tobacco juice onto the ground with a scowl. “Honestly, I didn’t think they’d be on us so quick. We’ve been hitting them hard, but the fuckers broke through the LAR screen like butter and waved my fucking tanks aside.”

Connolly said, “Boris Lazar’s got a lifetime of combat experience. He’s not going to roll over. We have to destroy his ability to advance.”

Dickenson turned to grab a radio handset from a communications sergeant; then, covering the mic, he turned back to Connolly. “Wait. Did the old man tell you to watch over me in case I got in too deep?”

Connolly gave a half shrug. “Yeah, something like that. He’s ready to send you a company or tanks from 1st and 2nd if you need ’em.”

“I’d ask for them now, but it’d be more trouble than help trying to set them with everything else going on. If it gets to that, we’ll make the call together.”

Connolly nodded as Dickenson pulled out another big wad of tobacco and stuck it on top of the first one.

Seeing his old buddy deep in the fray and hearing firsthand that the Russians were bearing down were unsettling, but Connolly was glad to be closer to the fight. The dark mine shaft was not where he needed to be.

He moved over to confer with his new team: the air officer, the artillery liaison officer, and the mortar team leader. Together, they made up the battalion’s fire support section.

Connolly was in his element now; he was an expert in the use of combined-arms fire, a system of mathematics and maps, of trajectories and timing, of calculating depth, and, most of all, of combat intuition. It was a balance of estimating the risks and weighing the needs and urgency of each unit in the fight based on a best estimate of the enemy situation now, a minute from now, ten minutes from now, and beyond.

A new transmission on the Darkhorse net from the front lines reported the sounds of loud buzzing in the sky. The infantrymen were unsure what they were hearing.

But Connolly knew instantly. It would be the Russian drones, judging from the observation that the noise was like that of multiple lawn mowers. He had seen them at Mount Kenya and knew the three-meter-wingspan UAVs had pinpointed the Americans’ positions.

Immediately, reports came in from frontline companies confirming his suspicion. They had seen them flying over their heads.

Connolly said, “The companies there can expect incoming artillery soon.”

He gave directions to his fires coordination cell, or fires team, to call back to the artillery battery. If those drones really did presage a Russian artillery attack, he wanted to make sure the Marine counter-battery radar was up and searching to the north. If the radar could catch the trajectory of the incoming rounds, they could triangulate the back azimuths, letting Connolly know where the Russian batteries were firing from.

In less than five minutes the whizzing sounds of incoming artillery filled the air. At first it sounded like a kid’s whistle, then more like a symphony of whistles, but immediately the explosions began, slamming into the hill to the southeast of Connolly’s position. Either the battalion command post hadn’t been spotted, or else it had simply been spared the first barrage.

But within a minute it was clear that rounds were falling closer.

A radio officer looked up at Connolly. “Sir, counter-battery radar has a fix on the artillery. It’s not certain, but it might be enough.”

Connolly grabbed a slip of paper from the radio operator and checked the coordinates on his map. He carefully plotted the location. It was a thick jungle area about fifteen kilometers from his current position.

“What do you think, guys?” he asked his fires team.

The artillery liaison was the first to respond. “If it were me I’d fire from there. Looks to be a good location we wouldn’t be able to spot from higher up on the hill behind us.”

The rest of the team agreed.

Connolly said, “Work up a fire mission. Call it up to the guns. Let’s hit that target now. If my guess is right, the really heavy stuff hasn’t come yet.”

The fires team went to work, calling the data over to the artillery fire direction center. In minutes they heard the Marine Corps’ big guns on top of the hill thumping out return fire. It wasn’t a large amount of outgoing, maybe ten or twelve rounds, but Connolly guessed the batteries were now trying to conserve ammunition for targets that were more certain than the speculative fix they’d gotten from the counter-battery radar.

Still, the incoming Russian artillery stopped almost immediately.

Just as the men began congratulating themselves, word came in near simultaneously from the three rifle companies on the defensive lines. The enemy had been spotted five kilometers from the leading edge of the battle space.

And they were advancing in swarms.

Connolly leaned into the radios to listen to every broadcast. The companies were engaging at their maximum effective range. SMAW anti-tank rockets could be heard going out in earsplitting cracks. Browning M2 .50-cals cracked automatic fire, loud even here in the HQ.

And the noise increased by the minute.

Connolly stepped out of the tent now and looked toward the bottom of the hill. He could see mortars impacting and pillars of black smoke rising from burning fuel, indicating destroyed armor.

Tracer rounds burst from the Marines’ lines in reds, ambers, and yellows. The incoming fire came in the form of green tracers. Russian weapons sprayed at first from twenty or thirty points in the distance, then forty or fifty. In less than ten minutes, the exchange of deadly fire on Darkhorse’s frontage turned into a constant, violent fireworks display of horror.

Dan Connolly watched, one hand pressed against his ear to lessen the noise, the other firmly against the radio, listening for the calls for fire from the line companies.

New reporting came in that Russian soldiers had made it to the edge of the Marine barbed-wire-and-obstacles perimeter.

Soon Connolly could make out the blasts from claymore mines detonating within the cacophony.

He looked over at Darkhorse Six; Ben Dickenson was desperately talking to his line commanders through the radio, ordering them to hold. He moved a few platoons around to plug gaps in the lines created by the slackening of outgoing fires resulting from the Russian vehicles’ pounding the Marines’ positions.

Connolly briefly considered calling Colonel Caster but decided instead to up the ante and begin forcing fire support to those areas that needed it most but might be too busy to request it. He conferred with his cell and they all called back to the regiment, using the terms they knew would garner all the support they could get.

The air officer called the 9-line requests over the UHF radio. In moments he was told he’d get two passes from the Harriers and one pass from the F/A-18s.

It wouldn’t be nearly enough, but it was a start.

The mortar leader directed the 81mm mortars to fire at coordinates to the north, everywhere a thinning in the American lines had been reported.

Darkhorse Six yelled over to Connolly now. “India Company has Russians in the wire! What can you give me right now, Dan?”

“Get me a grid and I’ll get the battery to fire an immediate suppression mission.”

The commander passed on the coordinates, then went back to his radio to reassure India Company’s captain they were about to get close artillery.

“Patriot, Patriot, this is Darkhorse fires,” the artillery officer called into his mic next. “Fire mission. Immediate suppression. All guns fire. Danger close. I say again, danger close!”

Seconds later, the speakers crackled. A voice said, “Station calling. This is Patriot. Need authentication. Over.”

“Damn it,” muttered Connolly. Without higher authority, the artillerymen would not fire and risk hitting friendly troops.

The voice of Colonel Caster, back in the mine shaft higher on the hill, boomed over the regimental command net. “Dan, you have my authorization if you think it’s worth the risk.”

“Yes, sir, I do.”

Connolly picked up the radio from the artillery liaison. “Patriot, initials Bravo Charlie.”

“Patriot copies. On Grizzly Six approval, stand by for danger-close mission.”

“Acknowledged. Sending target location,” replied Connolly as the artillery officer relayed the grid.

From the sounds of things over the battalion radio sets, Russian soldiers were less than three hundred meters away from where Connolly now stood. He could easily make out the rapid snap-snap of rifle fire in the cacophony of jolting noise. The entire line of Marine infantrymen engaged with all the arms in their arsenal in a fierce battle to keep the Russians off the hill.

As a battery of outbound artillery shells shrieked overhead, a small cheer went up in the tent. They didn’t fire for long, but Connolly hoped it would have a pulverizing effect on the Russian attackers.

And then, when the shooting slackened for a moment, the sounds of drones outside the tent could be heard. First one, then another and another. They seemed to be buzzing right overhead.

Lazar had zeroed in on the Darkhorse command post.

“Everybody out! Everybody out!” screamed Connolly.

He helped the fireteam grab their radios, and in seconds Marines were racing out through the tent flaps, trying to get far enough away from the command position before the inevitable.

Connolly and his crew dove into slit trenches dug for just this contingency under thick trees fifty meters away. Seconds later a 152mm artillery round slammed into the hillside, just seventy meters short of the HQ. Men fell to their knees; shrapnel whistled through the air. The second and third rounds all fell less than twenty meters from the tent; then a fourth hit just ten meters from the timber wall on the northern side of the tent. Connolly heard the screams from the men who had not made it to the trenches before shrapnel ripped through them.

Connolly watched three more rounds land in rapid succession. Four Marines caught out in the open vanished in the fire and flame. There was nothing he could do for them — nothing anyone could do.

“Sir!” yelled the mortar team leader over the noise. “The counter-battery system is picking up the data on those incoming rounds!”

“You’re kidding me. They’re still up and working?”

“Yes, sir, they called it in. Here’s the grid.” He handed Connolly a torn slip of paper with the grid on it.

More incoming as four heavy artillery shells blasted the now-vacated battalion command post to shreds. Tables, tarps, and radio equipment launched through the air, adding to the shrapnel. Farther down the slit trench, Connolly could see Darkhorse Six surrounded by Marines. He was the epitome of the fearless Marine Corps commander, standing in the trench, trying to see everything for himself, a radio held to his ear. The clerks and radio operators around him all had their rifles at the ready, scanning the trees down the hill to the north.

Connolly grabbed the regimental fires coordination cell radio from the artillery liaison. “Grizzly Fires, Grizzly Fires, this is Darkhorse Fires. How copy?”

Higher on the hill, shells and missiles rained down around Colonel Caster’s regimental command post. The horrific screaming wail of the multiple-launch rocket systems, one of the Russians’ favorite shock weapons ever since they were called “Stalin’s Organs” during World War II, pummeled an area the size of several football fields at the top of Mrima Hill, and the shaft where Caster and his men were hunkered down shook violently with each impact. The concussions entered the tunnel, making work and even clear thought challenging. Dust fell in cascades with each impact.

The barrage slackened for a moment, and more than fifty men from the regimental logistics section stumbled in from the outside, seeking shelter. Wounded and dead were carried in as well. The mine was now cramped, filled with sweating, stinking, and bleeding men.

The Russian artillery resumed in earnest, raining death outside.

Caster knew his northern line was failing; the enemy had his HQ pinpointed, and there were a hell of a lot more of them than there were of his Marines.

This could well be over in a couple of hours, he caught himself thinking, but he shook the thought away and began shouting out new orders.