Sword Point

Chapter 15

Deep in the bowels of the building that served as the Red Army's nerve center, a captain by the name of Dubask sat at a small desk overcrowded with papers and photos. He was hunched over, studying the latest glut of satellite photos. On one corner of the desk was a pile of photos awaiting his review. They had long since swamped the in box, flopping over onto his desk. He had little time to examine each in detail. For his task, however, he did not need much time. Unlike most of the other photo analysts in his section, Dubask was looking for a specific target. He could therefore ignore anything that did not fit his target criteria. He noted in very general terms items of interest he stumbled across, but left the detail analysis to someone else.

The target he was interested in seemed at first as though it would be simple to locate. He had to find a base camp with manufacturing facilities.

The KGB major who had briefed Dubask stressed continuously the importance of pinpointing this facility, though no reason was given. Nor was one expected. You did not ask questions unless you really had to.

The simple task, however, became frustrating. Dubask was amazed at the number of villages there were in the areas that were officially labeled uninhabited. It took him several days to confirm that most were in fact permanent settlements. His next problem was sorting out the roving bands of Iranian partisans. Once the permanent settlements had been tagged, he concentrated on these groups. Clearing them from the clutter took over a week as Dubask tagged each group and checked for them over the next several days.

If they moved, he stopped worrying about that area and reduced his list of likely targets. He didn't even bother with the numerous photos showing small groups, some as small as ten people, wandering about the great expanses of Iran. In Dubask's section, any group that numbered fewer than twenty-five people was considered tactically insignificant and was not reported. There was too much that needed to be reported to waste time on such a small number of people.

On this particular day Dubask came across two photos that caught his attention. The first was of an area in the Dasht-a Lut near a place called Robat-a Abgram. Several days before, when an early-morning photo dated 9 July showed a number of trucks gathered there in a compound of several buildings, he had marked that area as one that needed to be watched.

The photos of 8 and 10 July had shown no vehicles present. Digging back, he found that in earlier analyses of the area he had discounted the compound as being a permanent settlement and had scratched it from his list. The unaccounted-for appearance of trucks, however, was out of the norm. He had not seen trucks at any of the other settlements, the Iranians having been reduced to animals and foot for transportation. Dubask began to watch that area with greater interest, alerting his superior that Robat-a Abgram was a possible target.

The second item of interest, though not falling within his target criteria, was also sufficiently significant to warrant alerting his superior. In the southeast corner of the Dasht-a Lut he came across a large number of armored vehicles. A quick check showed that they did not belong to the 89th Motorized Rifle Division, the unit responsible for that area of the front.

The American unit opposing the 89th MRD was the 6th U.S. Marine Division, unit that did not possess large armored formations. The sudden appearance of these vehicles was out of the norm.

Dubask's first reaction was to pass the photo off to someone else, with a simple note on it, as he had done with another such photo on 9 July, the day he found the trucks at Robat-a Abgram. On that day he had come across a photo that showed large numbers of armored vehicles moving north around the eastern flank of the 28th Combined Arms Army. Dubask had thought this odd and important, but it was not his concern. He had already noted the trucks at Robat-a Abgram and wanted to go back and study that photo more closely. Dubask therefore placed a note on the photo and dropped it into an out box behind him. There it sat for an hour, until a runner making his rounds came by, emptied the out box and dumped the photo and the note into another overfilled in box on another analyst's desk. Somewhere in the process, the note and the photo became separated.

It was not until the tenth that Dubask made the connection between the disaster that befell the 28th CAA and the photo of the armor column he had looked at but passed on. All day on the tenth and the eleventh he sat at his desk, fearing that someone would find out that he had seen the photo but had taken no action. He feared what might happen to him and his family when it was found that he could have alerted STAVKA to the threat to the 28th CAA's flank. But no one said anything or even broached the subject.

From his desk he watched the routine continue unabated. Every hour a new glut of photos was distributed on the stack of unviewed photos already in the in boxes of the analysts in the section. Dubask's error went undetected.

Dubask finally satisfied himself that nothing would ever happen.

Everyone was too overwhelmed worrying about what was about to happen and did not have time to go back and try to figure out what had happened. Free of his unfounded fears, he began to concentrate on his immediate task, sorting through the stack before him, looking for the latest photos of Robat-a Abgram. He had already made two serious errors, discounting Robat-a Abgram the first time and the 9 July photo showing the U.S. armored column. They had been costly. Dubask doubted he would be as lucky a third time.

The sun had already dipped below the western horizon when Staff Sergeant Hernandez woke his platoon leader, Sergeant First Class Duncan.

Hernandez and three other men of the I st Platoon were completing their four-hour tour of guard duty. This did not mean, however, that they were finished for the day. On the contrary. Since they had escaped being annihilated with the rest of the battalion at Rafsanjan, Duncarrand his men had been operating exclusively at night.

By day the platoon went to ground, concealed in the nooks and crannies of the wadis and draws that cut through the Iranian wilderness like unhealed scars. It was only at night, hiding under the cloak of darkness, that they came out like the other desert predators. Their sole purpose in life since the twenty-eighth of June had been survival.

They moved south in the forlorn hope of eventually finding friendly forces. Making it back was only a hope-a dim, flickering light at the end of along, dark and dangerous tunnel. The more immediate tasks of escaping detection and finding sufficient food were the reality of the day, two problems that constantly loomed before each of the men with Duncan.

Simply put, these two tasks were in direct conflict with each other. On one hand, in order to live the men had to avoid being detected by the Soviet patrols searching for such ragtag collections of men. Besides the Russians, Iranian bands also roamed the desert looking for unwary infidels, Americans and Russians alike. On the other hand, Duncan and his men had to hit either the Soviets or the Iranians to secure food, water, weapons and medicine. The trick was to find isolated groups or small convoys moving around at night, sneak up on them and hit them hard, fast and without mercy. They could not afford to take prisoners, who would only compound Duncan's problems. By being selective about whom they hit and backing off from questionable confrontations, Duncan and his men had managed to survive two weeks and put many miles between themselves and their start point.

As Duncan passed from sleep to consciousness, his first reaction was to tighten his grip on the Kalashnikov assault rifle that lay at his side.

He had picked the Russian rifle up one night to replace his own M-16 when the platoon became short of 5.56mm. ammo. Hernandez watched this and calmed his platoon leader's fears. "Nothin' happening, Sarge. Just sunset."

Duncan raised his head and turned slowly. Around him he could see the rest of the platoon being rousted out of their cubbyholes by Specialist Four Thorton, one of Hernandez's men. Duncan turned back to Hernandez.

"What's for supper?"

Faking an Oriental accent, Hernandez said, smiling, "Oh, no problem, GI. fix you right up, chop chop." He reached into a wide fatigue-pants pocket, pulled out a clump of foil and offered it to Duncan. "I got just the ticket for you, GI. Number one. Fresh five months ago."

Duncan sat up and accepted the clump of foil. He looked it over before unwrapping it. When he began to peel away the foil, he did so with great care, not wanting to lose a single crumb. The prize in the center was a chunk of black bread. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have tossed it away. These, however, were not ordinary circumstances. Duncan knew that the chunk of bread, captured four days ago in the ambush of alone Soviet truck broken down on the side of the road, represented his entire evening meal.

As he inspected it, he decided that the fuzzy green mold growing on it had to go, starvation or not. He reached into one of his ammo pouches and pulled out a Swiss Army knife. As he carefully cut away the offending mold, he talked to Hernandez, the second man in the platoon's chain of command.

"Everyone else get something to eat?"

Using his normal conversational voice, Hernandez replied, "Roger that, Boss. Thorton's passing out the last of the rations as he goes along."

Finishing his carving, Duncan held the bread up before his face at arm's length and inspected his dinner one more time. "I hope they fared better than I did." With that he stuck it into his mouth, tore a chunk off with effort and began to chew, talking as he ate. "Well, looks like it's time to go grocery shopping. What do you feel like tonight? More Russian, or should we try the local cuisine again?"

Hernandez made a face. "Fuck that Iranian shit. I've seen maggots turn down better food than what the Iranians eat. It's no wonder these people are so pissed at the whole world. If I had to eat their food all the time, I'd have a grudge, too."

"Beggars can't be choosers. If we can't find a good target on the road by midnight, we go into the nearest village and grab what we can. We don't have the time to sit around and wait for the Soviets to send us a mess truck."

Hernandez shook his head from side to side. "I don't like going into those villages, Sarge. The last time we did that it took two days to shake those rag heads We're asking for trouble screwing with 'em, if you ask me."

Duncan turned serious. "I didn't ask you. And in case you haven't caught on, every time we hit a Russian convoy, we get visits from a pair of attack helicopters for the next twenty-four hours. Either way you split it, we're up shit's creek. We go for what we can deal with and run like hell. One way or the other I'm going to get this platoon back." The two men looked at each other for a few moments before Duncan continued. "You know the drill. Lineup and inspection in ten minutes. Get on it, Sergeant."

Hernandez left without saying a word. What could he say? Duncan was right.

Duncan was always right.

As Duncan finished his bread, he dug a plastic bag from one of his pockets with his free hand. He took off the elastic band wrapped around it and pulled out a small dog-eared green army note pad and a pencil. Setting the pad on his leg, he began to write. Since their escape into the desert, he had been keeping a log of the platoon's activities. Each evening Duncan recorded the situation, his plans for the night and his observations on the morale and conduct of the men under his command. Every morning he would summarize the activities of the platoon and describe the land they had traversed, what they had seen and the status of men, weapons, ammunition and food. His comments were terse, often incomplete and at times nothing more than random thoughts scribbled by a hand being driven by a tired and frustrated mind.

What the log did provide was a history of the platoon and its wanderings.

Duncan held few illusions about their ultimate fate. They had started with eighteen men on 28 June. On this day there were only thirteen men left with him. Two were dead-one killed outright in an ambush by Iranians and the second during a strafing run by a Soviet attack helicopter. Two men had been severely wounded. Though Duncan had tried to bring them along, the effort slowed the platoon and exposed the wounded men to death from infection and lack of medical care. Both had been left near the road in the hope that they would be found by the Russians and treated humanely as prisoners of war. The fifth man Duncan had lost was missing, unaccounted for. One morning the platoon had settled into hiding with all men present, but that evening Hernandez woke Duncan to report that Private Slatter was missing.

Sometime during the day Slatter had up and wandered off on his own. The platoon stayed in place that night in the hope that he would return.

He didn't. Nor did he return the next day. With great reluctance, Duncan left the area where they had lost Slatter, never knowing what had happened or why.

This disturbed Duncan-not knowing. This concern for knowing and giving others the chance to know was what motivated him to record what they did.

If fate dealt them a bad hand and the platoon was wiped out, the story of their wanderings would be preserved. Duncan hoped that someone would find the log and see it for what it was. Perhaps the Russians would even turn the green notebook over to someone in the International Red Cross. For all the propaganda, Duncan knew that the Russians were, in reality, people. The Iranians, on the other hand, were fanatics.

Religious fanatics, yes. But a fanatic is still a fanatic and as such is totally insensible to anything or anyone not conforming to his narrow way of thinking. If the green book fell into the hands of the Iranians and was destroyed, it would mean that the platoon lost more than their lives-they would lose their souls. This Duncan feared more than death.

Watching his men, Duncan gathered his thoughts before he started to write.

When he was ready, he jotted down the night's entry.

13 July. Nothing to report. Day was quiet. No Soviet patrols or Iranians spotted. Last of the food gone. Tonight we move down to the road and hit the Russians. Need to pick up more Russian weapons and ammo. Only three men have M-16s left and each of them are down to 60 rounds of 5.56. Targets have to be soft tonight, only have one LAW and 2 RPG rounds. If we do not find a good target by midnight, we will go into town and take whatever we need from the locals. Don't want to do this. The bastards chased us the last time we hit them and damned near caught us. Only going to do so if needed.

Duncan Hernandez waited until Duncan had finished writing before announcing that the platoon was ready for inspection. Of all the men in the platoon, only Hernandez and Sergeant Younger knew of the green book and its purpose.

Both NCOs were under orders from Duncan to recover the book and keep the record going as long as they could if he went down.

Each night before the last ray of light faded and they moved out, Duncan inspected his platoon, checking the men, their weapons and the pitiful remains of their equipment. In spite of the desperateness of their plight, the grim reality of their chances of survival and their deterioration due to fatigue and approaching malnutrition, Duncan demanded discipline. His nightly inspections 288 were a method of reminding the men that they were soldiers. As he stepped in front of each man, Duncan looked him in the eye, searching for his deepest thoughts, gauging his will and ability to go on. He looked for doubts and fear. Usually he spoke to each one softly as he snapped the man's weapon from his hands and inspected it for cleanliness and proper function. After handing the weapon back, he gave the man a once-over, adjusting gear and equipment, judging each man's load as he did so to ensure that everyone carried a fair share. Though some of the men griped to Hernandez about the daily inspection, they stood and were inspected. They were, after all, soldiers, regardless of their plight and situation. Duncan used every opportunity to remind them of that fact.

As the last hint of daylight left the sky, Hernandez and another man took point duty and moved out. Duncan waited a few moments, then led the rest of the men out. Younger took up the rear. As always, they moved south, five meters between men, weapons at the ready. In an hour Hernandez would angle over to the southeast toward the road in search of an ambush site. With a little luck, the platoon would find an easy mark, be able to hit it and be alive in the morning to enjoy a full meal of Russian rations. Regardless of luck, they would be a little closer to friendly lines, wherever they were, in the morning. The pursuit of survival, like their trek, dragged on.

The lead BRDM recon vehicle and the BMP moved off into the distance.

Kurpov watched them with detached interest. His three-vehicle platoon was in pursuit of an other phantom. An image on a photo had no doubt caught someone's attention and he had decided it was a danger. An intelligence estimate had been sent down to Front Headquarters, where it was decided that action was needed. From there, orders had been passed to Army, Army had issued their own orders, and Division had done the same. Kurpov leaned down and told his driver to move out, the final order in the long chain.

Kurpov's mission was to locate an enemy armored column that had been reported moving north. Despite the dearth of fuel, a reinforced battalion was being dispatched to deal with the threat. The commander of the 89th Motorized Rifle Division did not want to let the enemy get deep into his rear areas, as had happened to the 28th Combined Arms Army. Had aircraft been available, the threat would have been dealt with from the sky.

Everything that could fly, however, had been diverted to the west to keep a bad situation from getting worse. The 89th MRD, long since relegated to last priority in everything, had even less.

Kurpov followed the progress of his lead element and checked off their location on his map as they moved south. He had not been surprised by the order to move out. For over three weeks they had done nothing but spar with the American Marines across a front stretching from the Pakistan border to the Dasht-a Lut. The battles had been small, violent affairs fought by units numbering fewer than five hundred in most cases. Both they and the Americans in the eastern sector were spread thin, responsible for far more ground than could be properly patrolled, let alone defended. The result was a strange frontier war in which the opponents made sudden thrusts to seize key terrain features or destroy isolated outposts. The thrusts were normally met with a counterattack from either air or ground forces. The fighting never lasted for more than a day and resulted in few changes other than in the number of soldiers left on each side. It did not take Kurpov long to figure out that the 89th MRD and the American Marines were engaged in a sideshow, a battle that wouldn't influence the final outcome of the war. This, however, didn't change the fact that men fought just as hard and the losers were just as dead.

As his platoon moved into the area known to both sides as no-man's-land, Kurpov began to grow more apprehensive. There had been no friendly air recon by either helicopters or the Air Force. The last report of the Americans was over twelve hours old. The American Marines had picked up the habit of faking a thrust in order to make the 89th MRD react. Sitting well to the rear, airborne intelligence-gathering platforms watched and tracked the movement of the Soviet force reacting to the Marine fake. When enough information had been gathered to make a good estimate of where the Soviet force would be at a given time, attack helicopters were dispatched to ambush sites along the route.

More than once the counterattack force rolled into such an ambush.

The Americans, however, didn't always have it their way. One Soviet regimental commander, anticipating such a trick, had sent every antiaircraft weapon in the regiment with the counterattack force. In that instance, it was the Americans who had been surprised and had come off the worse.

In the gathering darkness Kurpov ordered his vehicles to close up. To the west he could not see the other recon platoon. Nor could he see the lead elements of the rifle battalion that was following them at a distance of fifteen kilometers. It had been reasoned that that distance was necessary in order to give the rifle battalion time to deploy against an enemy found by the recon patrols. Kurpov scanned the area to his front in frustration.

His three little vehicles were totally inadequate for their task. They were moving far too fast to properly check out the entire area. They could drive past whole companies of American Marines hidden in the wadis. It is hard to find someone who does not want to be found, especially when you are not given the time to search. Kurpov likened his predicament to that of a bear crashing through a thicket. If there was an elephant hiding in there, they might find it. But they would never see a snake until it was too late.

Private First Class Chester Hewett, USMC." was glad to see the sun disappear over the western horizon. A native of Vermont, Hewett had never been in a desert before 6 June. The oppressive heat, the barren terrain, the extreme dryness were foreign to a man raised among pine trees and snow-covered mountains. Parris Island and Camp Lejeune in the Carolinas had been a shock to him. There the men had likened riding about in the monstrous LTVP-7 amphibious assault vehicles to living in an oven. Since their arrival in Iran, they had upgraded the status of the LT VPs to microwave oven. Fortunately their CO had them moving only at night. During the day the battalion hunkered down, with a third of the men on alert and the rest asleep.

In a short speech before moving out on their current mission, the Old Man had told them that they were going out hunting for bear, a term the battalion commander liked to use when they made raids deep into no-man'sland for the express purpose of picking a fight with the Russians. This raid was an all-armored affair. LAV-25 light armored recon vehicles thrown out in the lead had the mission of finding and tracking the Soviets. Once they had done so, the main body, consisting of a battalion of Marine infantry mounted in LT VPs and accompanied by an M-IAI tank company, would close with the Russians and strike.

Hewett's platoon was the rear guard.

Their mission was to keep an eye on the back door, just in case it was the Russians who got the upper hand.

With the booming voice that many had likened to that of a beached whale, Hewett's platoon sergeant called in the men on outpost duty. There was no need for whispers here. If there had been Russians around, they would have announced their presence a long time before. Rising from his shallow pit, Hewett picked up his Dragon missile launcher. It was still warm from the sun. A cool breeze hit Hewett as he stood and stretched. It felt good until he remembered that the temperature that night would never get as low as the highest temperature he had ever experienced back home in Vermont. He had joined the Marines to see the world. Looking around at the barren wasteland, he decided that if the rest of the world looked half as bad as

Iran, Vermont was all he would ever need for the rest of his life.

In the darkness the recon elements of the two antagonists passed by each other unseen. Had they found each other, the fight would have been a reasonably even match. Instead, the recon vehicles continued to grope about in the night, each rolling forward into a head-on collision with their enemy's main body.

A flash and the explosion of a vehicle hit in the distance signaled the first contact. Kurpov turned in the open hatch and faced west. He could see a red glow in the sky, a beacon marking the spot where an armored vehicle had died. But whose? Kurpov stretched himself until he was standing on his toes in an effort to see what was happening to the west. The crack of the radio and the frantic report by the other recon-platoon leader provided the answers he sought. Tanks! The other platoon had run into a pair of American tanks moving north. Two more flashes lit up the west. Each was followed by an explosion. The sudden termination of the other platoon leader's radio transmission in mid-sentence told Kurpov that his friend Sasha was dead.

While the rifle-battalion commander, leading the main body still fifteen kilometers behind, attempted to raise Sasha on the radio, Kurpov ordered his platoon to seek covered positions from which they could observe their assigned sectors. When the vehicle commanders had acknowledged his order, he directed his own driver into a position between two rocks from where he could see out to his front as well as the general location of his other two vehicles. The battalion commander, having failed to raise the platoon that had made contact with the enemy, called Kurpov for a report. Kurpov's platoon was not actually in contact: What he told the battalion commander was exactly what he had seen, his current location and his intent.

The commander of the Soviet motorized rifle battalion thought about the situation for a moment. He estimated that he had at least five minutes to digest the scant information he had, devise a plan and issue necessary orders. He assumed that the recon platoons had stumbled upon the enemy recon forces. He did not know that the enemy recon, two U.S. Marine LAV-25s, had passed by his own recon and were now sitting undetected in a wadi at a range of twelve hundred meters, watching his column move south and reporting to their commander. A series of muzzle flashes and the exploding of a BMP in the middle of the main body quickly destroyed the Soviet commander's initial estimate of the situation. In an instant the sky was lit up with tracers as the other Soviet vehicles in the company that had lost the BMP returned fire in the direction from which the attacker had struck. The battalion commander directed his BMP into a shallow defilade and watched for a moment. The hail of Soviet fire continued without any indication that it was hitting anything. Nor could he see any further firing directed toward the column. The enemy had taken a potshot at his battalion in order to make them react. No doubt the enemy was part of a recon force that was probably reporting what it saw even as it was withdrawing.

The battalion commander ordered all units to cease fire and report.

Though the firing stopped, the images of tracers and muzzle flashes were burned into the battalion commander's eyes. As he waited for his company commanders to respond, he rubbed his eyes in an effort to eradicate the spots.

The pressing seemed only to make the images more intense. Slowly the reports came in. He listened impassively as his commanders gave their inflated reports of kills. Each report fueled the battalion commander's anger. When all units had reported in, he yelled into his handset, demanding that they give him accurate reports, challenging anyone to bring him the head of a dead marine. He didn't really expect his commanders to do so, and they knew it. They also knew what he meant.

As his commanders sorted out their situation, he reevaluated his. The enemy now knew where his main body was. Through deductive reasoning based on the scant information he had, the battalion commander was able to put together a mental image of the battlefield and the relative locations of his forces and the enemy. The enemy had hit the recon platoon deployed in the west.

Immediately after that, his main body had been hit by a recon element firing on his battalion from the west. That meant that the enemy force was to his west. Dropping down into the BMP and turning on a small red-filtered light, he 294 looked at his map, quickly drew two simple symbols to show where the enemy was, then looked at the terrain for a moment. He realized what had happened. By sheer chance the two antagonists had brushed shoulders as they moved about in the dark.

Satisfied that his grasp of the tactical situation was correct, the battalion commander began to issue his orders. Like clockwork, the battalion began to reconfigure itself from a column to an attack formation.

Kurpov sat and listened to the reports and the battalion commander's tongue-lashing. The BRDM driver chuckled. "We would not be as lucky if we gave such bad reports."

The comment broke the tension. Kurpov smiled. "Ivan, I consider us lucky any time we stumble into a fight and are able to report."

The crew of the BRDM laughed. For the moment, the nervous stress, the fear and the dread of what would happen next were forgotten. But the war was still out there. The sound of ammunition cooking off in the burning vehicles was muffled by distance, the armor of the BRDM and the crewmen's helmets. Kurpov stood up in his hatch. Slowly he turned, studying the terrain and the immediate area. Nothing; there was nothing to be seen other than his other BRDM and the BMP. To the west and the north the sky glowed faintly red, marking where men had died.

They were of no concern to Kurpov.

It was the ones who were alive that he was interested in. He knew that at that very moment hundreds of men, manning the most sophisticated combat vehicles in the world, were out there, creeping about, intent on finding one another and killing.

The LTVP-7 came to a jolting halt. The ramp hadn't even hit the ground when the squad leader was up and yelling, "Let's go, Marines, Deploy and hit it!" The LTVP-7 was empty in seconds. Each man rushed out and ran to either the left of the track or the right. As they ran forward the Marines spread out until the squad was in a rough line deployed to either side of the track. As soon as Hewett came around the side of the vehicle and began to run to the front, he searched the darkness for a position. The LTVP was in some kind of shallow ditch. Its prow was up against the side of the ditch, splitting the squad up. Hewett saw a good position that appeared to offer the best protection and headed for it. His assistant gunner followed, carrying a spare Dragon missile. The bulky tub, and the personnel weapons and other assorted equipment hanging on each of them, made running awkward but not impossible. With enough adrenaline, just about anything was possible.

Once in position, Hewett slowly popped his head up and surveyed the lay of the land, checking to see whether he had a good field of fire. The ditch they were in ran along the crest of a small rise. It was almost like a custom-made trench. The ground to his front had a gentle downward slope. From where he was, he had a clear field of fire for better than one thousand meters, more than enough for his Dragon.

Satisfied, Hewett turned to survey the back blast area. Firing a Dragon could be just as deadly to friendlies as to the enemy. As he was checking that area, the squad leader came up.

"This looks like a good place, Sarge," Hewett said. "What do you think?"

The squad leader examined the position, then slapped Hewett on the back.

"Good to go. Set up here." Without waiting for a response, the leader was gone, moving down to check the next position.

Hewett pulled the boxlike thermal sight from the pouch at his side and attached it to the Dragon missile he had been carrying. He could not see what he was doing, but that was not necessary. Hours of redundant drilling had made the handling of the missile launcher second nature.

Once the sight was in place, Hewett hoisted the Dragon onto his right shoulder, put his eye up to the rubber eyepiece, then flicked the switch with his finger. The darkness disappeared. Through the thermal sight, he viewed the landscape in more detail, looking for any sign of life or movement. Everything to his front was now black and red. He could clearly see everything worth seeing, which wasn't much.

Nor did he expect to see anything. As part of the rear guard, they were looking in the wrong direction. The enemy was to the north. They were facing south, just in case the enemy tried to sneak through the back door.

As Hewett scanned the area, he thought about their mission and weighed the mixed feelings that cluttered his head. On one hand, he did not like the idea that they probably would not get a chance to shoot at anyone all night. They had pulled rear guard before on smaller raids.

It was frustrating to get all psyched up preparing for combat, then spend several days rolling around the godforsaken country and doing nothing. On the other hand, combat meant danger, the chance to get torn apart, maimed or killed.

Every mission completed alive meant that he was that much closer to home.

The thought of home pushed aside Hewett's debate on whether it was better to be in the rear or the front. Instead, images of the lush green pine forest that covered the mountains came to mind. His mountains were alive, vibrant, inviting. The stark black and red images he was viewing were so foreign, so different, so hostile.

The order to find the enemy's flank or rear came as no surprise. Kurpov made one more sweep of the area before he ordered his platoon to move out.

This time, the platoon proceeded with great caution. The BMP over watched as the two BRDMs crept forward. They advanced for a while under the watchful eye of the BMP until the BMP could no longer cover their movement. Then Kurpov held the BRDMs in place until the BMP could advance, find a new position to cover the next move and settle in. As the BMP moved forward, Kurpov and the other BRDM commander scanned their areas looking for signs of the enemy. When the BMP commander was ready, he signed Kurpov, who then moved out again. Though the process was slow, it was the safest and most thorough.

Because he wanted to find the enemy rear, Kurpov initially moved south.

He knew that the enemy was immediately to the west. That piece of information had cost the recon company one of its last two platoons.

Only Kurpov's platoon was left of the original company. Kurpov intended to be a live veteran after the war. He reasoned that the Soviet Union already had more than enough heroes. Besides, a dead recon leader provides his unit with no information, other than where not to go.

Only when he was satisfied that they had gone south far enough did Kurpov turn west. He would proceed west for about two kilometers and then turn north. When he did that, he intended to go even slower.

Following Kurpov's platoon was a motorized rifle company. They would strike once the rear had been found and plotted by the recon element.

Success or failure now hinged on which commander had made the best guess and who found whom first.

Hewett's mind was still wandering about the slopes of Vermont when the faint image of two dust clouds first appeared in his sight. By the time he jerked his mind back to the present, the two BRDMs had stopped in concealed defilade positions. The dust kicked up and heated by the engines' exhaust was dissipated when Hewett made his next sweep of his assigned area.

Kurpov studied the far slope as he waited for the BMP to move into its next position. He wanted to cut north, but did not like the idea of running across the open area that stretched from his position to the next covered position. The BMP would have difficulty covering them all the way. Kurpov was still mulling over the alternatives when the BMP signaled that he was set and ready to cover.

Kurpov was about to move out and continue to the west when the battalion radio net came alive with contact reports. The two main bodies had collided. The battle was on. Kurpov no longer had all the time in the world to sneak about and find the safest, most secured route. He had to find the enemy rear quickly and guide the rifle company following him to a position from which it could launch a surprise attack. The red flashes to the north and the faint boom of tank cannons in the distance galvanized Kurpov into action. He ordered his driver to move out 298 and to the right. They would try to bound across the open as rapidly as possible. Luck favors the bold, Kurpov told himself.

The sound of tanks firing and explosions broke into Hewett's dreams of home. He turned around and looked to the north for a moment. He could see the sky suddenly glow as a weapon fired. Here and there a fireball leaped up, announcing the death of an armored vehicle and its crew.

That thought convinced Hewett that rear guard wasn't so bad after all.

He turned around, hoisted the Dragon back onto his shoulder and put his eye to the sight. In an instant, the image of two armored vehicles burned itself into his eye.

Hewett felt himself go cold. His heart began to beat faster. He could almost feel the adrenaline course through his veins. The enemy.

In a voice that was neither a whisper nor a shout, he alerted his squad leader. In an instant he, followed by the platoon leader, came stumbling up to where Hewett sat transfixed, tracking the progress of the enemy vehicles.

The platoon leader spoke first. "What do you have, Marine?"

"Two vehicles. Looks like BRDMs, Skipper, headed straight for us at about twelve hundred meters."

Reaching for the Dragon, the lieutenant whispered, "Let me see." Hewett relinquished control of the Dragon to him. The lieutenant needed only a second. When he had convinced himself, he turned it back over to Hewett, issuing orders to the squad leader as he did so. "Kendle, find Gunney. Have him report to the CO that we have two BRDMs moving on our position from the south. We are engaging and will hold here until we receive further orders."

Turning to Hewett, "Marine, you take out the one on the right. Fire when he gets to five hundred meters. I'll get Thompson to take out the other. Be prepared to get the second one if Thompson misses."

The lieutenant was gone before Hewett could say, "Aye aye, sir."

Turning to his assistant, Hewett told him, "No doubt the skipper's telling Thompson to be ready to take out the other BRDM in case we miss. Well, we ain't gonna miss."

His assistant slapped Hewett on the shoulder and acknowledged with "Fuckin' a-men."

Hoisting the Dragon back into position, Hewett set the sight's cross hair on the center of mass of the BRDM on the right and began to track it. His fingers lightly tapped the trigger as he waited for the enemy vehicle to reach the designated range.

They were at the halfway point. Kurpov stood upright in his hatch and looked to his right. The other BRDM was having difficulty keeping up with him. Turning to the front, he could see no sign of activity on the slope that they were fast approaching. There were only six hundred meters to go.

Three minutes. Time seemed to stand still. It was taking so long to get there. These things always seemed to take forever.

The image of the BRDM, growing by the second, seemed to fill Hewett's sight. He no longer concerned himself with the one to the left. It was falling behind and not his concern. At that moment, his entire life, his whole being, centered around the image of the enemy vehicle bearing down on him. Time swept by. Any second now. Hewett began to control his breathing, taking in a full breath, letting it out, taking another. He watched the BRDM, he timed his breath, he waited until he felt he could wait no more.

At that instant he drew in one final breath, held it, then squeezed the trigger.

Although he was looking right at it when it fired, Kurpov did not immediately recognize the antitank guided missile for what it was. For the briefest of moments, he stared at the bright-orange orb closing on him.

"Missile, missile, missile! Driver, hard right!" The order surprised the driver, but he responded with a violent jerk to the left. The maneuver threw Kurpov off balance and sent him sprawling onto the floor of the BRDM.

Hewett held his breath and kept the sight glued to the BRDM. Five seconds, that was all it would take the missile to fly five hundred meters. Three seconds were gone, two to go. Hewett had almost anticipated the sharp turn. With ease he followed the BRDM as it now exposed its flank to him. Hewett gripped the launcher tightly, his eye pressed to the sight, and held his breath until the bright glow of the high-explosive warhead on the side of the BRDM lit up his sight.

Kurpov was lying on the floor, looking up and struggling to grab on to something when the missile slammed into the side of the BRDM. The dark interior was suddenly lit up by a blinding flash of light. The shaped-charge warhead had detonated on the side of the BRDM and formed a jet stream of molten metal that bored its way through the vehicle's thin armor. As the jet stream pushed through, it added the BRDM's armor that lay in its path, now liquefied and white hot, to the stream.

In horror Kurpov saw the stream cut through the gunner. The man's shrieks were cut short by the explosion of onboard ammunition. Blinded by the light, unable to move or avoid the jet stream, Kurpov felt himself being ripped by fragments and peppered by molten clumps of metal tossed aside as the jet stream dissipated. He screamed as his brain was overwhelmed with pain. He was unconscious when the final cataclysmic explosion tore the BRDM apart.

Hewett didn't need to watch the death of the BRDM. The initial impact told him he had scored a square hit. The BRDM wasn't going anywhere anymore.

Instead of watching, he turned to the task of taking his sight from the expended Dragon tube and fitting it to the new round held by the assistant gunner. They had just about completed their drill when the sky was lit up by the explosion of the second BRDM. Thompson had also scored.

Hewett finished what he was doing and looked back at the BRDM he had hit.

It was now totally involved in flames. Fuel dripped from a ruptured tank, forming a flaming little pond that spread as he watched. For a moment, he considered the crew. That thought, however, was interrupted by the sharp report of a 30mm. gun. In the distance, at a point from which the two BRDMs had 301 come, an automatic cannon was firing. Hewett, seeing that the firing was wild, put his sight up to his eye and began to search for the new enemy.

The battle had just been joined. It would be a long and bloody night as two antagonists, each many miles from home, tore at each other in a battle that would, at best, someday be referred to as a sideshow.