Arc Light (89 page)

“Mount up!” he heard shouted in Russian, and soldiers began to rise amid the storm of high explosives and brush the glass from their uniforms. Lambert felt his arm being tugged to pull him to his feet. Shattering explosions and smoke rose from all corners of the city around him. A screaming roar burst overhead and soldiers
ducked reflexively, standing suspended in a stoop until the wall of noise had passed. Lambert never saw the jets that had passed low overhead, and the soldiers began to run toward their vehicles.

Another grip on his biceps jerked him roughly around. It was Razov, with Filipov at his side.

“Are they attacking the city?” Filipov shouted, the shock evident in his voice. “You are assaulting the city on the
ground,
aren't you?” Again an accusation, the anger palpable.

Another stunning burst shook the park across the river, and Lambert saw the first of the Russian self-propelled guns displacing from their firing positions where they had been unseen to Lambert but not, obviously, to U.S. reconnaissance.

Slightly light-headed from the shock waves battering his body and his ears as another shell threw water from the river up onto the street, Lambert still managed to shout, “Yes!”

“What are the other plans?” Razov shouted, his eyes boring holes in Lambert's. He waited only a second before grabbing the taller Lambert by both arms and shouting, “Tell me what your plans are!” as he shook Lambert out of his daze.

Lambert's tongue found the slight rise on the molar of his lower jaw and probed the small crown. He knew he shouldn't talk, that he should go to his death without revealing vital secrets, but the realization of the enormity of the mistake came rushing in to him at once.

Razov's eyes widened and his jaw dropped. “The Bastion,” he murmured, his eyes opening in shock. His grip grew soft as he looked straight through Lambert into the distance.

“Goddammit!
” Filipov yelled as another shell ripped into the park across the river and a roaring series of secondary explosions rattled Lambert's chest with puffs of hot air. Lambert ducked involuntarily but could not take his eyes off Razov's pale face as the general stood there, unmoving. “We
told
you not to attack those submarines, damn you!” Filipov shouted. “Have you gone
mad?
What could you
possibly
have been . . . ?”

Behind the two officers, the column of armored vehicles was forming, turrets unlimbering and riflemen at their firing ports ready for action, ready to fight the invading Americans to the death in a meaningless gesture during the last hour of the two countries' greatness. Standing close beside Lambert with his assault rifle unslung and pointed loosely in his direction was Lambert's escort.

As the rain of artillery continued to fall around the city, a pair of jets whined by at slightly higher altitude—British or Italian Tornados drawing Lambert's attention as they flashed across the river
in a steep bank dropping brilliant white flares. Razov picked up an assault rifle, an AK-74, from the pile of prisoners' equipment and turned to face Lambert from a distance of about ten feet.

Lambert's escort edged away as Filipov turned to watch the scene from off to the side. Lambert stood there all alone as the armed Razov faced him, Lambert's jaw firmly clenched, prepared to grind. Razov raised the rifle, fingered and then looked at the selector switch just above the trigger housing, and looked back at Lambert.

Lambert took a deep breath and lowered his head as he saw Razov raise the rifle out of the edge of his field of vision. He looked up just in time to reach out with both hands to shield himself from the flying weapon, which banged against his chest and neck with a painful blow.

“To the Kremlin!” Razov shouted to an officer jutting from the lead BMP's hatch. Lambert looked at the Russian Army helmet that Filipov was holding out to him and at the heavy black assault rifle still clutched awkwardly to his body, and then mounted the armored fighting vehicle for the drive to the Kremlin.

“Up!” Jefferson yelled over the open intercom, the wind rushing by Chandler as he stood high in the commander's hatch but not penetrating the folds and mask of his chemical protective suit, providing no relief from the sweltering heat.

“Fire!” Chandler yelled.

“On the way!” the gunner shouted, and the main gun punched out another round, the roar tickling Chandler's abused eardrums.

“Hit!”
the gunner said over the intercom.

Chandler loosed a burst of .50-caliber rounds at a canvas-covered truck that came into view from behind a small building as the tanks of Chandler's battalion rushed headlong toward the imposing Moscow defenses, toward the Moscow Line. The truck's engine began to smoke as three men jumped from the back. “BMP!” Chandler yelled as he caught sight of movement from a construction site. “Ten o'clock! Load HEAT!”

“We're low on HEAT, sir,” Jefferson said. “Down to four rounds.”

“Squash Head, then—
load it!”
Chandler shouted as the gunner called out, “Identified!”

“Up!” Jefferson said.

“Fire!” Chandler ordered, and the gunner replied, “On the way!”

The tank shook as the two-ton main gun recoiled against the gush of flame that erupted from the muzzle. Chandler pulled his binoculars up to his eyes to pay special attention to this shot. The HESH round, High Explosive Squash Head, was not highly favored because it did not usually give as dramatic a read on its results as a HEAT round or sabot. The opposite of a penetrator, which focuses its energy on as narrow a point as possible, a Squash Head has a soft casing that is designed to spread out on impact. A fuse then detonates the charge, and the dull but powerful force of the blast fragments the interior lining of the vehicle's walls and knocks loose scabs of metal at high speed. That “spalling” kills or maims a crew as the hot, jagged metal ricochets inside a vehicle, but only rarely detonates ammo or fuel to give a nice, loud secondary explosion to confirm the kill.

The Squash Head had clearly struck the vehicle's side, and the BMP stood still, its nine occupants presumably dead or dying from the shrapnel of their own armor.

“You want another shot, Colonel?” the gunner asked.

Chandler looked over at the burning column of trucks on the road to the left. Some trucks were pulling off the road to get around, trying to escape the noose they were speeding to close around the slower Russian retreat before they made it back to the main belt of defenses. “No,” he said, again traversing his gun to the road. “Just keep your eyes peeled.”

He rattled out another burst, this time getting a thunderous explosion from the back of a truck and seeing it flatten to the ground, its axles, wheels, and suspension giving way under the downward force of the detonating ordnance carried under its canvas.

“You want me on the sixty, sir?” Jefferson asked as they approached the line of trenches ahead, the Provisionals' Moscow Line. “No!” Chandler shouted just as he saw one of the M-3 scouts ahead burst into flame right at the trenches and roll in agonizing slow motion onto its side. “Stay ready down there!” Lining up a new target, this one a small truck much like a Humvee, Chandler squeezed off another burst and saw flames begin to lick the ground from the holes punched straight through the metal vehicle. Chandler swiveled the heavy machine gun now to the earthen bunkers of the trench ahead whose black slits they were now rapidly nearing. He squeezed the trigger again, hurling the heavy bullets through the thick earth and log supports of the bunker's walls as dust rose from all around the fist-size holes punched into the soil.

He stole a glance back to his right where his team still engaged the remaining armor emerging from their fighting holes with telltale puffs of exhaust from their aging engines. The streaking missile was almost on them, fired from the BMP that they had shot with the Squash Head round.

“A-A-A-H-H!”
Chandler yelled over the open intercom, involuntarily pulling his legs up into the hatch as the missile hit the lighter armor on the side of the M-1. Burning pain shot up from his legs as a flash of heat radiated out of the tank's crew compartment. The jarring explosion shook his grip loose, and he fell into the inferno below.

Within 250 milliseconds, the M-1's fire suppression system flooded the crew cabin with Halon gas. By the time Chandler's helmet smashed against the deck, the fire was out. Chandler tumbled forward along the cabin floor as the treads of the now stalled M-1 ground to a halt, and he lay there dazed, coughing from the Halon that had temporarily evacuated the oxygen atmosphere from the cabin. The effort of coughing sent pain shooting from a hundred places. “Je-e-ez,” he heard someone hiss through clenched teeth from behind his gas mask, and Chandler managed to struggle up onto his elbows.

“O-o-o-o-h,” Chandler heard from his left, from deep in the throat and inhuman sounding. Jefferson lay on his back staring blankly up through the lenses of his mask at the white ceiling of the interior. It was dark and still.

Chandler's mind cleared and he lurched for the smoke dischargers, squeezed first one and then both triggers, blowing the two six-barreled M-250 smoke dischargers on either side of the turret front. Chandler waited as the gunner crawled over to Jefferson and the driver asked, “Everybody . . . everybody okay?” as he tried unsuccessfully to restart the engine.

Jefferson continued to moan as the smoke grenades popped all around the tank's front and sides, enshrouding them, Chandler knew, in the only protection they had left. He kept his eyes peeled at the sky above through his open hatch, holding his breath behind the gas mask without realizing it.
Motionless on a battlefield—sitting ducks,
he thought.
We have to get outa here.

“Oh, man,” the gunner said as his voice was forced through the mask. He sat over Jefferson, the loader. “Colonel Chandler.”

Chandler was focused on the hissing of the smoke grenades and the random sounds of fighting coming through the open commander's and loader's hatches. He looked over his left shoulder. Sunlight poured through a perfectly round hole, one inch in diameter, in the turret.

“Colonel!” the gunner cried, and Chandler crawled over to Jefferson. He thought he heard something outside, but when he heard
it again he realized that it came from Jefferson's chest. A sucking sound.

“Oh, God,” Chandler said. “Get something—a poncho! Something airtight!” Chandler stripped Jefferson's torso. His chest was shiny with frothy orange blood straight from his lungs. Every couple of seconds a horrible sucking sound emanated from the wound as he slowly suffocated.

“Here!” the gunner said, handing Chandler the muzzle cover. Chandler pressed the vinyl fabric tightly down onto the open wound.

Under Chandler's hands Jefferson began to buck, to convulse.

A sudden whoosh from outside ended in a rocking thud and thunderous explosion felt both in Chandler's knees and in his lungs. For a moment afterward, as he gasped for breaths of the oxygen that flooded back into the cabin, it seemed to be all over but for a crackling sound like dry wood in a fire. He jumped at the first explosion, which set off a string of ferocious bursts like enormous firecrackers as the main gun rounds began to cook off in the rear of the tank, each one sounding like the end of the world. The explosions grew in violence and intensity to a continuous roar.

Vibrations rattled the men's insides, the driver's screams as he lay strapped into his seat sounding as if someone was thumping his chest. Through the open hatches, Chandler looked up to see a brilliant white fire of pure burn as the propellant vented through the blowout panels, a fire that he had seen before from a distance. The noise and heat suddenly doubled as the fuel burst into flame from the rear of the tank, and Chandler tucked his chin down, his face frozen in a grimace and his eyes watering and squinting closed against the heat. It took all the effort he could muster to keep his hands pressed down on Jefferson's chest and not to clamp them over his ears as the gunner and driver did.

He glanced up, not at the fire jetting a hundred feet into the sky above them but at the armored bulkhead that separated them from the furnace on the other side. As the noise and heat and vibration plateaued, he had only one focus: that bulkhead. The white paint began to turn brown right in front of his eyes, and smoke rose from it. Chandler gave up his battle to force his eyes open and let them close, the moisture that had welled up in them trickling down his cheeks as tears. In that darkness, the sounds clawing at his eardrums became a series of painful tones, and the radiant heat from the ammo locker grew on his chemical gear, which seemed to scorch his skin even through the fabric of his uniform underneath.

With surprising quickness, the vibrations through Chandler's knees faded to a stop. He opened his eyes. The ammo door was now black other than in several places in which it glowed a grayish white.
He looked up through his hatch to see a pall of black smoke blotting out the sun. Chandler jumped when he felt hands on his arm. It was the gunner, and he repeated something obviously in a loud voice.

“What?”
Chandler yelled, but he could barely hear himself over the ringing in his ears. He felt dizzy and nauseous, and a sudden flash of cold sweat made him just want to find a place to lie down, to ride out the feeling.

“It's no good!” Chandler heard through stabs of pain in his ears. “He's gone!”

Chandler looked down, and then eased his pressure on Jefferson's chest, his arms and shoulders and neck aching from the frozen strain of his effort.

As the sound of the fires from the back of the tank died down completely, Chandler listened for the rattle of Bradleys' automatic cannon that should have been bunker-busting at the trenches ahead by now. There was fighting, but even with the deadened acuity of his tortured ears he could tell it was receding into the distance.