Red Metal

CHAPTER 80

Captain Apollo Arc-Blanchette and his men made their way down the hill, past the Darkhorse staging areas, and out to India Company’s lines. Along the way they paused to ask permission to pass through each layer of the defense, and they waited until each senior officer directed them to proceed farther.

Finally, the French Dragoons found themselves with the forwardmost fireteam in the forwardmost squad in the forwardmost platoon of the Marine lines. The landscape changed dramatically, from heavy woods and thickets in the rear to earth pockmarked from heavy artillery and rockets closer to the front; burned and broken trees and brush and a mix of derelict and abandoned U.S. and Russian vehicles. Some still smoldered as burning gas, oil, or tires gave off thick black smoke into the night above flames sputtering like a dying man’s last breaths. The apocalyptic war zone served as a gruesome reminder of the ever-present possibility of death to everyone here at the front.

Apollo and his men crouched with a young lieutenant in a trench just twenty-five yards from the razor wire signifying the extent of the Marines’ control, with the shredded jungle just beyond. Movement to their left turned heads as a short, wiry Marine sergeant climbed down into the trench. In seconds the rest of the sergeant’s thirteen-man squad climbed down with him, making the already tight space almost claustrophobic.

The lieutenant grabbed a thick wad of chewing tobacco from a pouch and stuck it in his cheek. He brushed off his hands and said, “Captain, meet Sergeant Cruz,” slapping one of the dirt- and sweat-covered young men on the shoulder. “He’s my best squad leader… Fuck, he’s my last squad leader alive, so bring him back in one piece. He and his men will lead you through our minefield, help you with your recon, and then kick ass alongside you on your raid. Then they’ll lead you back up here.”

The whizz and pop of parachute flares overhead turned most of the men’s eyes to the sky. They watched quietly while the illumination devices drifted over no-man’s-land. Apollo took the opportunity to get a look at his newest troops. The Marines appeared war-weary, like everyone on Mrima Hill, but alert enough.

He also saw that Sergeant Cruz had a four-inch scar from the crease in his lip to his cheekbone. It had been badly stitched and it oozed blood.

These are the right kind of men for this mission, thought Apollo.

Sergeant Cruz spoke in an aggressive, heavy Bronx accent over the sound of a machine gun a few hundred yards away. “So, what are we supposed to call you, sir?”

“Captain Apollo is fine.”

“Right. Now, what the hell is the plan… Captain Apollo?”

“We are going down the hill to fight the Russians before they come to us.”

One of the squad said, “Fuck yeah,” and another added, “’Bout fuckin’ time,” and then Apollo briefed them on their mission.

Fifteen minutes later the men walked cautiously through the darkened, torn jungle, past the barbed-wire entanglements. Then Cruz skillfully maneuvered both his squad and the fifty-six Frenchmen around a network of claymore mines and booby traps.

Infiltration of the Russian lines by the Dragoons and the Marines was only possible because the Russians were there to attack, not to defend. The nearly seventy-man force sneaking through the shredded jungle was able to take advantage of the Russian plan to crack the American lines with everything they had as quickly as possible. The Russians had been sending their forces in pounding waves, and had not erected defenses like their adversaries. While the Marines held their desperate line with barbed wire, anti-tank ditches, and machine-gun slit trenches, the Russians followed offensive doctrine and intentionally guarded only their most rearward areas from conventional assaults, leaving more forces with which to attack. The tactic, of course, was not about seizing or holding terrain but about crushing the static Marines.

It was working in that regard, and the Russians were supremely confident that the defenders of the mine didn’t have the forces to engage in any sort of meaningful counterattack, but this confidence left them vulnerable to smaller infiltrations.

Colonel Caster had banked on this when he sent Apollo and his men forward, and Apollo’s slow, careful, and stealthy infiltration of the enemy lines was effected like a thing of beauty.

At the first gray of dawn, Apollo sat exhausted in waist-high elephant grass, kneeling back on his haunches so only his head was exposed. A group of panting Marines and French special forces was positioned loosely around him, their weapons pointed outboard in a 360-degree defense. Throughout the night, the sixty-eight men had crept in and around and through the Russian front lines with great skill, remaining undetected as they identified several fuel and ammunition stockpiles, all stored under infrared-concealing camouflage to protect them from any Marine Corps aerial detection. These were clearly staging areas for the upcoming attack. Apollo found them lightly defended but he recognized them for what they were, and knew they would soon fill with troops and armor.

The Marines gridded in the locations on maps and radioed the coordinates to Lieutenant Colonel Connolly.

Apollo was under no illusion that they had found all of the hidden positions, but they had found all they could before the dawn without exposing themselves.

Apollo brought his leaders and the Marine sergeant close enough to whisper, “Men, we’ve done our night’s work; now we must prepare, with whatever darkness is left, for our final task.” Apollo pointed with the infrared laser pointer on his carbine to a spot of level terrain about three hundred meters away. “There is a road network right here that leads to the easternmost Russian staging areas. So that is where the Russian right flank will pass.”

The men sat in silence, staring at their new leader.

Sergeant Cruz said, “And you want to hit that when the troops move into staging.”

“Oui.”

“We’re almost totally exposed,” said Sergeant Cruz.

Sergent-Chef Dariel said, “Mon capitaine, I must agree with the sergeant: this location, it is virtually suicide.”

“I see no better concealment than this tall grass. It will provide no cover itself, but we can use the time we have to quietly dig in.”

When no one replied to this, Apollo said, “Look, men, we have to attack. If the artillery can focus on the other five staging areas, we can batter this one. If we need support, we will call it in.” He looked at the sky. “Sometime in the next half hour a force of Russian infantry will fill up that clearing. If we don’t hit them here, then they and their mates will overrun Darkhorse. We have to give our defenses a chance.”

“What happens if we don’t? I mean, what happens if they just barrel over us?” Sergeant Cruz asked.

Apollo’s voice slowed and deepened in pitch, to the point of anger. “Then we die, Marine. We will die the most ghastly death an infantryman can imagine, ground to meat under the tracks and wheels of the advancing enemy.” He stared into Sergeant Cruz’s now-visible eyes and saw his slashed cheek glistening with blood, as the wound had reopened. “Is that what you are wanting to hear, Sergeant Cruz?”

After a pause, Cruz said, “Yeah, Cap. That’s all you had to say, sir. We Marines just like to know the odds. Tell us straight. And as long as we get to pop a bunch of those Russkies, death ain’t but a thing.

“Let me go brief the boys,” Cruz added, and then he was off to gather his men.

“Weren’t you laying into him a bit, mon capitaine?” said Sergent-Chef Dariel.

“Yes, but that’s what Marines want from their officers. They push back on everything and then listen for certainty from their leaders. Lie to them about the odds, and they won’t believe another thing you say, but tell them they are going to die in a hail of glory, and they will advance toward hell.”

“I am beginning to like these Marines, mon capitaine,” said the sergent-chef.

“Me, too. Now, get the men digging in, and go ensure that all the rockets are prepped. Our first volley must count, because we may not get a second.”

The men took what little time they had to prepare their ambush. They spread out in a loose line from north to south, oriented to the west, covering about 150 yards, and dug shallow pits hidden in the high grass.

Apollo would have liked another fifteen minutes to better coordinate the action to come, but the rumble of engines starting up reached their position from the north, and this told him the enemy would appear en masse sooner than he hoped.

Apollo chanced one last spot check, sprinting in a low crouch up and down the ambush line. The northern sector was led by Sergent-Chef Dariel, the southern sector by Sergeant Cruz. He checked to see that each of the dozen men charged with firing the AT-4s had two anti-tank rockets laid out, the shipping safeties off. He made sure each of the dozen or so machine gunners had four or five belts of ammunition neatly organized so he could grab the tail of a belt and feed it rapidly into his gun.

He then returned to his position in the center of the ambush and leapt into the foot-deep trench next to the Marine radio operator, who whispered into his headset, listened to the radio a moment, and then turned to the French captain.

“Artillery all set?” Apollo asked.

“Yes, sir. Grizzly fires has the five locations you asked for plotted. He says there is little chance he can get any air for us, and he did say our drones confirmed a dozen Russian vehicles are coming down the road now.”

“Good. Get ready. Keep low.”

“Aye, sir.” The radioman put his headset back to his ear.

The men lay there for ten minutes, staring through binos and riflescopes at the staging area in the distance, where they could see a small cluster of BTRs, tents, ammo crates, and fuel bladders. A dozen men worked feverishly now around the area, making it clear to Apollo that the attack was imminent.

And then the sound of racing engines increased. The first wave of Russian troop transports dashed into view: six BTRs with one tracked ZSU-23-4 “Shilka” antiaircraft gun.

“Hold it,” Apollo ordered through his headset.

Two trucks followed the first group; these were both open-topped and full of troops, some paratroopers hanging off the sides.

“Wait,” said Apollo softly.

Six more BTRs appeared on the road, then followed the others into the clearing, where the staging area was ready to receive them.

When they were clustered together as tightly as he had hoped, Apollo yelled, “Fire!”

Eight AT-4 gunners rose to their knees and launched eight rockets, their weapons’ backblasts thundering. The munitions streaked through the blue-gray light, across the high grass, and toward the staging area off the dirt track three hundred meters away.

Four rockets found their marks, catching the Russians by complete surprise.

Three of the BTRs were destroyed, and a heavily laden troop transport erupted in a ball of fire. Bodies were tossed like rag dolls into the air along with the flying wreckage.

Without pause, another six rockets were launched, with two BTRs taking hits. A white jet of molten fire poured into the closed vehicles, literally cooking the men inside alive. Secondary explosions only made the situation worse for those who had already dismounted vehicles in the staging area.

Now the Marine and Dragoon machine gunners began firing at dozens of troops in the open. Everyone with a rifle followed suit.

Another row of vehicles appeared on the road from the north — nearly a company of APCs — and these Russians immediately saw that their staging area was taking accurate fire from the high grasses to the east. Weapons in the APCs swung in that direction as the convoy bumped off the dirt track and began approaching.

A gun battle raged, and another pair of French AT-4s rocketed across the field and slammed into an APC, but more armor appeared out of the north in the predawn.

The incoming fire was withering, and Apollo was forced to bury his face in the dirt as rounds bit into the ground around him, blasting chunks of earth and tufts of grass into the air.

Apollo looked up and down the French and Marine line. All the men were similarly pinned; only a few were firing rifles and machine guns now as they tried to weather the heavy guns of the APCs and the increasingly accurate rifle fire from the dismounts near the dirt road.

Merde! Apollo thought. So this is how we will die.

When he heard more vehicles approaching his position, he took grim satisfaction, even without being able to look up, that the Russians had peeled off another group of APCs to come and rout out Apollo and his men. By now it seemed a full company had halted their advance to focus on the ambush.

In the distance he heard the Darkhorse artillery pulverizing the other five staging areas.

Oui, we will all die in this African dirt, he thought to himself, but the plan was working.

Apollo chanced a glance above the grass and behind him, looking for any escape for him and his men, but the terrain was flat in all directions. There was nowhere to go but down. Again he buried his helmet in the dirt.

The chirps, whizzes, and pings of incoming bullets made the air alive like a hornet’s nest.

Apollo felt intense heat behind him. He looked back; the grass had caught fire from the Russian onslaught.

The Marine radioman defied death to inch over to Apollo. “Sir! Sir! I have the Grizzly fires officer on the net. Colonel Connolly says for us to keep our heads down.”

“I don’t think we can get much lower, Private.”

“He said, ‘Danger close,’ and it’s corporal, sir.”

Jesus, thought Apollo, only a U.S. Marine would quibble over his rank in the face of certain death. But it was a short-lived thought, because an AT-4 took out another APC just one hundred meters away, and this caused the line of armor to pour more fire on the ambush line.

Someone to his left shouted, “Dismounts approaching!”

Apollo looked in the direction of a pointed finger and he saw a platoon of men assaulting forward through the grass, almost even with the Russian APCs. He knew if he didn’t elimate these troops, he’d have enemy in his ambush line in under a minute.

Just after another AT-4 raced toward the Russians on his right, slamming into the tires of one of the APCs and causing a mobility kill, a loud screech came from the sky behind him.

Apollo understood what it was immediately.

“Fast movers,” he said out loud.

Sergeant Cruz’s shout from fifty yards away could be heard by Apollo a second later. “Motherfucking fast goddamned movers!”

The Russians didn’t have any aircraft. The screeching of racing jet engines sounded like angels from heaven to Apollo.

The rest of the men seemed to realize the same thing, and a muffled yell erupted from the pinned-down defensive line.

A last hope, Apollo thought. But we have to eliminate those dismounts before they get into the line.

He looked over his shoulder and saw a Marine F-35 bearing down on them at an exceedingly deep dive angle, its underbelly alight from its four-barreled 25mm GAU-12 Equalizer cannon. Apollo watched the steady stream of tracer fire lancing over his position, then turned as it blasted into the Russians less than one hundred meters away.

The earth shook.

Enemy vehicles began to scatter across the field, and more BTRs approaching on the dirt road heading south left the track to distance themselves from the other vehicles, hoping to make a small and less enticing target for the American aircraft.

Two missiles blasted from the wings of the F-35 and streaked groundward, quickly followed by a pair of GBU-39 bombs. Apollo spun away, slamming his face down into the shallow trench shielding his view, but two quick thunderclaps told him the Marine pilot had hit his mark. The bombs landed only a hundred meters in front of Apollo — close enough that shrapnel fell through the air around the trench, peppering the lines with falling fragments.

A second jet, wingman to the first, followed just seconds behind with both guns and bombs. Apollo heard more thunderstrikes as targets were hit; then he lifted his head above the grass to see the black columns of smoke and showers of sparks from the secondary detonations.

Apollo’s hope rose. But it was too soon.

A third aircraft was not as lucky.

The Russians rapidly attuned themselves to the new threat. Across the battlefield, eight or ten Russian ZSU radars locked, and their heavy-barreled, rapid-fire machine guns opened up.

The ZSUs had been mixed into the advance columns in true Russian fashion for just this very reason.

Apollo could only watch what happened next.

Streams of tracer bullets played across the sky like fire hoses, each spraying wide at first, but then they converged nearly simultaneously as the heavy antiaircraft guns found their range and accuracy.

The third diving Marine F-35 pilot tried to pull wide, recognizing the trap he’d entered, but it was too late. Heavy rounds slammed into his fuselage.

A wing tore free.

The aircraft entered a hellacious corkscrew and continued uncontrollably on its original trajectory, spinning faster and faster as it tumbled earthward. Flames spewed out of the torn wing like a red spiraling comet.

There was no time. No parachute pop. No way for the pilot to escape his fate.

The aircraft disappeared over the jungle to the east, and a roiling ball of yellow-orange fire rose into the morning sky.

All the APCs that had been advancing one minute earlier were now either destroyed, damaged and immobile, or racing back toward the dirt road.

But in all the smoke and fire in the area ahead, Apollo continued to worry about the dismounts he’d seen. He assumed they were now hidden down in the grass, or perhaps they found some gully he hadn’t detected. He didn’t believe it possible that they all had been killed by the F-35s.

He called over his radio, ordering his men to hurl grenades.

But just as he did so, he heard AK fire just forward of his position, and more of it to his south.

“Enemy in the lines!” he shouted into his mic, just as a Russian appeared in the firelight, a rifle at his shoulder. Apollo swung his carbine up and shot him a half dozen times, knocking him back into the grass. As the man fell Apollo had the presence of mind to realize the soldier was wearing the uniform of a Russian paratrooper.

More Russians appeared through the burning grasses. A few leapt down into the tiny trench, and gunfights broke out at contact distance. Apollo spun to aim at a big paratrooper twenty meters to his right, but he couldn’t get a bead on him because Dragoons and Marines were in his line of fire.

Up and down the ambush line, medium machine guns, carbines, and rifles poured fire. He heard shouts and yelling all around, while above, the F-35s made another attack run on the APCs.

Apollo gave up on the enemy to his right, then spun back to his left just in time to see a Russian leap out of the smoldering grass and bayonet an American in the throat. Apollo raised his rifle to kill the attacker, but from the other direction gunfire ripped into the man and sent bullets whizzing past Apollo’s position.

The gunfight in the trench lasted only a minute before it devolved into hand-to-hand combat as the frantic Russian paratroopers tried desperately to get away from both the APCs taking fire from above and the burning grasses all around. They’d deemed their enemy lines to be the safest place for them, and it created utter pandemonium in the fight.

But Apollo battled through the terror of the moment, personally eliminating another paratrooper just as the man lined his weapon up on a Dragoon who was dealing with a closer threat. He shouted orders into his squad radio for the men to stay focused and keep their fire discipline intact, and in another minute there was no more AK fire in close.

Just like that, as quickly as it had begun, the Russian attack of the shallow trenches stalled. Even so, there were still troops near the road, still APCs functional but retreating, and certainly more enemy troops in the smoldering grassland.

Dariel leapt to his feet and began moving forward, firing first left, then right, swearing bloody murder as he advanced, bursts from his carbine targeting any Russian that moved. Men would stand up amid the burning grass to return fire, but Dariel pumped burst after burst into each of them mercilessly.

One by one, the French special forces and Marines rose out of the shallow trenches and began moving forward, following the brave sergent-chef.

Two Marine medium machine gunners held their guns at the hip, opening up and concentrating fire on a group of Russians who appeared from behind a wrecked BTR. Belts of ammo tore through their guns as they fought the recoil to walk slowly forward. One of the Marines dropped, felled by an AK blast, but the other kept moving.

After twenty meters Apollo yelled for the men to cease firing. The last of the Russians were in full retreat back to the road, diving behind wreckage there.

The men looked at him as if he were insane. We’re winning! they thought. But Apollo knew better. They were outgunned and outnumbered in enemy territory. They had the chance to withdraw, and Apollo knew getting as many of these men as possible back to the American lines alive was his mission now.

He gave the order to withdraw.

The men kept up a brisk fire and fell back. Hoisting the wounded and the dead up on their shoulders, they ran through the grass fires, a mass of destruction in their wake. A few shots rang out behind them, but the sounds of heavy explosions to the east and big plumes of smoke just visible in the growing light meant they had done their job. The Russians had been rocked by the preplanned American artillery strikes in the five staging areas. Additionally, the ambush here at the right flank had routed the enemy, and the only Russian paratroopers Apollo saw now through the haze of smoke in the morning were in vehicles racing back to the north, in full retreat.

Exhaustion hit the French captain like a mallet, but he shook it away and went to help some Marines struggling to run while carrying a man on a litter.

Apollo had won; he could feel it in his bones. But he also could feel the loss. He had no idea how many of his Dragoons were dead or wounded now. His father had been among the first Frenchmen to fall in this short but fierce Africa campaign, and he wondered if one of his brave men might end up being the last.

Just then, a voice came over the radio. It was Dariel. “Sir, Konstantine is dead.”

“Merde,” Apollo said softly as he took hold of a litter.