Arc Light (71 page)

Chandler slipped down into the turret again and told Jefferson to close his loader's hatch as Chandler dogged his own shut. He
called brigade and gave them the
SHELLREP
, reporting the artillery attack so that the ground radar team could find the shells with their radar in midflight and plot the locations of the guns that had fired them by reversing the trajectory. Once pinpointed, the battery of sixteen M-109 155-mm self-propelled howitzers assigned to them—one section of eight always on standby and the other moving or setting up in a new position but available—would rip the Russian guns to shreds with counterbattery fire.

Should we displace?
Chandler wondered, knowing that the fire would shortly adjust onto their positions. As he pondered the question, Chandler saw through the battlesight extension vehicles, friendly vehicles, appearing at various places along the ridge and streaming in Chandler's direction. U.S. M-1s and M-3 scouts. Armored cavalry. Chandler's heart pounded so hard that his breathing grew labored.

“All units,” Chandler said over the battalion net, almost surprised that he had keyed the radio to speak, “this is Juliet Lima One, those are friendly, I say again, friendly units.” He swallowed to wet his throat before continuing. “Be prepared to fire at follow-on vehicles, but hold fire until my command. Out.”

The remnants of the covering force from VII Corps' 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment trailed clouds of dust and billowed smoke from diesel shot onto hot exhausts by their smoke generators as they roared back across the farmland toward them, all of their gun barrels pointing to their rear except one, its gun at an odd angle to the side.
It's been hit,
Chandler guessed,
and the turret motor's out.
Chandler radioed brigade that they were “passing the line.”
Not much of a line,
he thought.

The artillery still shredded the empty forest to their rear.
Surely the Havocs have reported in,
Chandler thought.
Or could it be . . . ?
he wondered. The notoriously cumbersome Russian command and control system, which right now would be under a barrage of U.S. attacks both electronic and high explosive, might be so disrupted that the helicopters could not talk to the artillery, one of the “force multipliers” that U.S. Army doctrine sought to obtain.

When the friendly tanks were about halfway to their line, the first Russian tanks crested the ridge. Chandler was stunned at the sight even though he knew they were coming. They were T-72s, one generation older than the Russians' best tanks, the T-80s, but still formidable in the hands of good crews.
They'd been fighting at under a thousand meters!
Chandler realized as he calculated the distance between the American and Russian units.
Hand-to-hand for tanks!

The armored cav tanks opened fire immediately, and their
Bradleys spewed out TOWs toward the seemingly countless Russian combat vehicles pouring over the crest of the ridge. The slope was coated dark green with the moving Russian hulks, some suddenly erupting into flames, and Chandler began to fear that his unit would be overwhelmed before he could disengage.

When the first of the Russian tanks fired from the bottom of the ridge, Chandler watched as great sparks flew off the side of an M-1's turret and then saw a tree fall out of the corner of his eye from behind his own line, its trunk sheered in two. The American tank continued its high-speed retreat, and Chandler decided he could not hold his fire any longer for fear of the losses that the cavalry would take.

“What the hell's goin' on, man?” the driver asked, his field of vision ending at the embankment about ten feet in front of the tank. Chandler fingered the
PUSH-TO-TALK
button of the radio as the gunner, whose eyes were glued to the main gun's sight, described the sight to the driver and Jefferson.

Now we'll see,
Chandler thought almost sick with worry, and he keyed the radio. “All units, all units, this is Juliet Lima One. Commence firing, I say again, commence firing.” Chandler then quickly told Loomis, his executive officer, to report the contact to brigade, watching as Russian tanks began to explode in flame.

As the first of the fleeing M-1s reached the railbed, a huge display of sparks engulfed it. The tank's treads quickly rolled to a stop as flame shot skyward a hundred feet into the air. Amazingly, the commander's hatch on the turret flew open. A man tried to get out but was forced back inside by the tremendous violence pouring through the blowout panels on the back deck of his tank.

Chandler flicked on the intercom and locked down the
PUSH-TO-TALK
button. “Gunner, three tanks descending ridge—one o'clock.” The tank that he was looking at, along with several others, exploded before the gunner had acquired it. “Gunner, two tanks and BDRM—bottom of ridge—one thirty!” Chandler said. “Right tank!”

“Identified!” The gunner, who had chosen to slide the thermal sight shutter into place because of the growing smoke on the battlefield, had a target in his sight. Chandler glanced down at him. His face was buried in the padded walls of his sight, staring at the small optical/thermal imaging screen with its ghostly green images of the battlefield. Chandler looked down into his own gunsight extension and saw the familiar green world of heat and cold, a duplicate of the gunner's. The gunner was fine-tuning the turret's rotation and the gun's elevation.

“Fire!” Chandler yelled.

“On the way!” the gunner replied, and the cannon erupted—
WH-A-A-A-NG!
—jarring the sixty-ton tank violently and instantly unsettling Chandler.

“Hit!” the gunner shouted almost instantly. “She blew—turret's in the air!”

Chandler saw it himself through his own sight. Sure enough, the turret of the rightmost tank was falling lazily to the ground off to the side. The tank itself spewed a ferocious yellow fire skyward as the ammo locker burned off. Unlike the M-1 he had seen earlier, from which now scrambled two men, one assisting the other, the Russian tanks did not have Halon fire-suppression systems or armored bulkheads separating the crew compartment from the ammo locker and fuel cells.

“Gunner,” Chandler shouted, “next tank—bottom of ridge—!”

The gunner interrupted, “Identified!” and Chandler saw the cross hairs settle onto the correct target.

“Load sabot!” Chandler yelled. He looked down to see the baseplate of the large 120-mm round ejected, as usual, not into its special bin but onto the floor of the cabin. Chandler watched as Jefferson, his hand covered in a thick mitten, picked up the metal baseplate, smudged black and smoking, and dropped it in a bin. The baseplate was the only part of the long propellant cartridge not fully combustible, and you had to make sure to account for each baseplate. At several hundred degrees, they would ignite the propellant casing of an unexpended round if they came in contact with each other.

“Up!” Jefferson shouted.

“Fi-i-re!”
Chandler ordered.

“On the way!” The main gun blasted another round out, shaking Chandler's internal organs. His ears began to ring.

“Yeah, baby! We bad, we
so-o-o
bad!” the gunner yelled as Chandler saw the target roll to a stop, black smoke erupting out of the point of impact on its turret. Chandler called for more sabot as he watched the tank, suspicious that it might not be dead. All of a sudden, a hatch blew off and flames as bright as sparks spewed out in growing intensity.

“Yeah, baby!” the gunner said again as Chandler directed him to fire at will. Chandler watched as the last of the fleeing armored cav tanks smashed up and over the railroad embankment and the few remaining Bradleys found the ramps hurriedly built by the engineers. Chandler could see that the Russian force was being reduced to a burning junkyard, at least twenty or thirty vehicles killed already. He contemplated withdrawal to their second line at the stream but hesitated, agonizing.

The gun roared again and the tank bucked. “Reach out and
touch
somebody, baby!” the gunner shouted, and Jefferson replied, “Treat 'em rough!” as he slammed the gun's breech closed.
WHA-A-ANG!
Chandler was getting used to the rhythm—he no longer jumped at each round fired—but the smell of cordite from the spent shell casings burned his nostrils and he coughed. The number of live targets dwindled.

Just as Chandler prepared to report to brigade that the attack was faltering, a second echelon of Russians rolled over the ridge. As their numbers grew and grew, he saw that it was even larger than the first, and it roared forward firing. Chandler turned to see huge chunks of the railbed blown skyward, the twisted rail bent up into the air at an angle.

Chandler's own tank blazed away. The gunner no longer cheered each kill, the sight of the new wave having noticeably chilled his enthusiasm to a quiet resolve. Each time the guns of the approaching Russian tanks shot fire and smoke seemingly straight at Chandler's tank, his nerves braced for the crash of the kinetic energy penetrator even though he knew that their muzzle velocity was so great he'd never see it coming.

Forcing himself to pay attention to his job, Chandler nervously eyed the Alpha Company tanks. None of them seemed out of action, but one in the near distance had an ugly black streak down the side of its turret and its netting hung from it in tattered panels. When its gun blazed, dust shaking off the hull and from the ground around it, Chandler saw that it was still operational.

Still watching Alpha Company to his left, Chandler saw first the barrels and then the hulls of numerous M-1s edging up to the railbed from the treeline. Their guns fired quickly, some even while on the move forward.
The armored cav!
Chandler realized.
The bastards came back!
Chandler counted over twenty M-1s as they pulled into the spaces between Alpha Company's tanks, their fire more than doubling that of Alpha's fourteen tanks.
Is that enough?
Chandler wondered as he looked back at the smoking field ahead.

His own tank's gun continued its steady beat, the gunner firing rounds as fast as Jefferson could hump them into the breech. The heavily sweating Jefferson asked, “How we doin' out there, man?” but the gunner, his eyes pressed to the sight, didn't answer. They were firing at their maximum rate of fire, about eight aimed rounds per minute.
Jesus,
Chandler worried.
What's our ammunition gonna be like?
—doing the math in his head as the fighting raged.

He looked back to the front. Pyres burned from every spot. As the second echelon weaved its way among the previously destroyed vehicles on the valley floor, some using the burning wreckage as cover, a third echelon crested the ridge and Chandler's heart fell.
He knew now that he would have to order disengagement and withdrawal, and he pivoted to measure again the distance to the cover of the light woods. Tree trunks, each threatening to cause a track to be thrown, littered the floor of the woods where the artillery had fallen.

The armored cav!
he thought suddenly.
I don't even have their frequency!
He couldn't just leave them. He'd have to call brigade, who would then either try to raise their regimental command post directly or maybe have to go up through division or even corps and then back down.
How long would that take?
he wondered, panicking.
Would it even work? What if some link in the communications chain was gone, destroyed in the fighting they'd just been through?
He measured the distance to the first tank. He could dismount and run for it, or better yet drive over and just hop down.

Artillery burst just behind one of Alpha Company's tanks as he watched, shredding its camo netting to tatters. “Shit!” Chandler said as he looked back around at the front. The artillery was light, but up ahead the killing continued apace. How many more waves would there be? Chandler nervously called up his other three companies to the right and was told that all was quiet. Chandler considered pulling Bravo Company off the line and moving it over to the left to lend its firepower, but . . .

CH-A-A-A-N-N-G-G!
Chandler felt the pain in his knees first. After a second or two, his head cleared and he looked over at the gunner and Jefferson. They both looked around confused, and Chandler realized that he had fallen onto his knees on the floor of the crew compartment. It had been a near miss, and it hadn't penetrated.

“Everybody okay?” he shouted. They all reported in, sounding shaken. “Systems check,” Chandler said, climbing back up to his post and doing the radio check on the brigade and battalion nets himself. The radios worked, but Chandler had to refuse Harkness's request for a report when checking in with brigade because of his need both to fight his own tank and to make his decisions as battalion commander.

“Computer's rebooting,” the gunner said. “Manual fire only till . . . wait, it's back up!”

“Resume firing,” Chandler said.

“Gun's hot,” the gunner said, but kept firing. Chandler knew the heat was warping the barrel, but the reference mirror mounted on its muzzle would precisely measure the warp to allow the tank's computer to make minute compensations for the shells' trajectories.

“We're runnin' through ammo at a good clip, sir,” Jefferson said. He looked at Chandler as the gun exploded with the firing of another round. After slamming another sabot round into the breech
and yelling, “Up!” Chandler felt Jefferson's eyes on him again. “How . . . how're we doin' out there?”

Chandler looked back out at the battlefield, feeling sick with the thought of wasting time in confusion over what to do.
My God!
he thought in amazement.
They're . . . we stopped 'em!
Chandler could see only one vehicle, a Russian BTR filled, presumably, with infantrymen, as it scurried from behind one burning hulk to another. Gunning its engine and then stopping behind cover, chased by several shots each time but protected by what had to be over a hundred wrecked vehicles, all belching smoke.