ARMAGEDDON'S SONG (Volume 3) 'Fight Through' (41 page)

“India Three roger, standby…standby…fire!”

The Challenger II rocked backwards on its sprockets
with the recoil of its main gun and the tungsten sabot flew true, striking
their target where turret met body.

Less than a heartbeat later three other
tank guns fired and sent two HESH and a further sabot down range.

The sound of the onboard ammunition in Venables target
exploding caused the 23
^rd
MRRs commander to stop and look back towards his lead
companies.

The Company commander’s tank had already blown up but
the sound had taken a little time to reach the regimental commanders ears. He
was in time to observe a four wheel SAM vehicle and a pair of ZSU-23-4s explode
in unison, and moments later the first Milan missiles struck the charging line of
tanks.

Aside from the visible proof that NATO ground forces
could still fight, something caught his eye, something had briefly popped up
from behind trees on the crest of Vormundberg but it had been so fleeting that
he had only the barest impression, and then the frighteningly swift passage of
a Hellfire missile ended with the death of another of his tanks.

“Kurva drat!”

Another object, though not in the same spot came into
view and he saw a British Lynx helicopter half visible behind the trees, but
unlike the Apache that had loosed off the Hellfire, the Lynx had to keep the
target in view whilst attacking with the older, wire guided TOW missile, but
older technology or not the T-72 it struck was reduced to burning scrap. .

Tank rounds, Milan, TOW and Hellfire missiles were
coming thick and fast, although not all hit or killed their targets first time.
Some crews were still blessing the luck that had given them a glancing blow
only, when their attacker re-engaged and destroyed them.

He glared at his aide. “Get me close air support!”

“You were offered it earlier sir, but turned it
down…it may take time to get it back?”

Unable to do anything to silence the enemy anti-tank
weapons himself, the regimental commander took it out on the junior officer.

“Ty debile zasranej…so why are you wasting time making
excuses?”

The business of controlling the tank fire was not, at
this precise time, the responsibility of the squadron commander. The attack was
being directed against 3 Company and therefore his troop commander controlled
their aspect of the fight.

Major Venables and his crew were in a position to
assist and so once he had initiated the fire, he allowed his crew to become
subordinate to the troop commander, 3 Troop.

Venables Challenger arrived in its second fighting
position having fired twice from the initial location. It had reversed out of
that hole and motored to its present one where it had crept up a muddy ramp to
present only the smallest target area possible to an enemy and still be able to
engage. The gunner was looking through his sight at the dwindling number of
tank targets below, traversing the main gun as he tried to decide which to
engage when Major Venables took over, using the commander’s over-ride to halt
the main guns wanderings and bring the elevation up a few degrees.

“Target BMP with antennae’s.”

The gunner took a half second to answer.

“Identified!”
He thumbed the
laser rangefinder and Venables released the over-ride, allowing the gunner sole
control over the weapon once more. A sabot round was already loaded but there
were more tanks out there then they had sabot rounds to kill them with, so each
one counted.

“Load HESH.”

His loader opened the guns breach, removing one of the
bag charges along with the sabot before replacing it with a HESH round, closing
the breach once more and sliding the safety gate across.

“HESH loaded!”

“Firing!”

Overall command of the two companies had been borne by
the commander of the infantry company since the loss of his opposite number in the
first tank to be taken out, and he would probably have managed it quite ably
had he been given a few more minutes to settle into the job. Having been struck
by a round fired a greater height than the BMP-2 enjoyed, its angled frontal
armour stood no chance of deflecting the round away. The HESH round struck the
armour plate square on, its hollow nose cone flattening against the 9mm thick
armour even as the projectiles rear mounted fuse fired. Roof hatches, gun ports
and the rear troop door blew
off,
sent spinning away
by the expansion of white-hot gasses from within the armoured vehicle. A second
later the heat set off the 30mm cannon rounds stored within the vehicle and it
blew up.

Venables did not dwell on the vehicles destruction; he
was looking for more targets.

“Okay, let’s find
anoth
…”
and then the suns reflecting off a smooth surface caught his eye, drawing it to
the insect-like body and bug eyes of a machine hovering just above the ground a
half kilometre beyond the APCs, but it took a moment for his brain to register
the thing was pointing unerringly at them.

“…
back us up
NOW!”

Not needing to be told twice his driver gunned the
engine and the Challenger jerked backwards down the ramp and not a moment too
soon. A SPIRAL, anti-tank guided missile fired from the Mi-24V, Hind-D passed
six inches above the turret of the retreating Challenger and exploded against a
tree a dozen feet behind the position.

Having missed the shot the attack helicopters gunner
cursed in frustration and loosed of a barrage of 23mm rounds from the twin,
nose mounted cannons. He was hoping for either a lucky hit or to startle the
tank into seeking fresh cover, but receiving only an angry rebuke from his
squadron commander whom he had not realised was watching. It really wasn’t his
day at all and if he hadn’t been busy wasting ammunition he would possibly have
noticed a Stinger being fired from elsewhere in the enemy lines.

Veneer watched the helicopter stagger as the missile
struck the side of its port engine and explode. It wasn’t a very big explosion,
and although he knew the weapon had only a quite small warhead he was
disappointed. He remembered once as a small boy in the run up to Bonfire night
he had spent a week’s pocket money on a biggish rocket with an impressive sounding
name, but he had felt cruelly cheated at the feeble bang and lacklustre
sparkles when he had let it off on the night. The Stinger seemed to have the
same lack of punch as the ‘Galactic Zammer’ because after the impact the pilot
had steadied the aircraft and there it hovered, twelve feet above the ground
and apparently undamaged.

The first derisive catcalls were sounding from the
neighbours when a gout of black smoke issued from the port exhaust and the
aircraft suddenly lost power. It dropped to the ground, bounced once and then
toppled onto its side, its rotor blades shattering against the earth and the
fragments flying off in every direction. The Hind-D didn’t blow up and it
didn’t catch fire, but it definitely counted as a kill.

“
Buggermesideways
!”
He allowed the launcher to be taken from him by Troper, muttering about sheer
flukes and that it was his turn now.

“I thought that Stinger was a dud for a minute.”

“Don’t talk soft, do
ya
really think he would have carried on just sitting there if something hadn’t
got broke?”

They noticed that the 82
^nd
men had fallen
silent, and both Guardsmen began a soccer chant, pointing their fingers at the
paratroopers as they taunted them.

“Oh it’s all gone quiet, all gone quiet; it’s all
gone quiet over there!”

Any listening music lovers were spared the horrors of
a second chorus by a 57mm rocket striking the hillside twenty feet below, and
sending everyone in the vicinity headlong back into the shelter bays, where
they rolled themselves into protective balls as the victim’s squadron commander
worked over the area of hillside that the Stinger had been fired from.

Once that Mi-24V had relocated, leaving in search of
fresh targets for its remaining three pods and four SPIRALS’ it carried, the
Guardsmen re-emerged. Thirty-two rockets had added to the damage already
inflicted by the artillery, but that damage was limited to the trees, hillside
and defence works, but the downing of the helicopter had not endeared them to
their neighbours. A rocket had caused a cave-in at the position occupied by the
trio from the far side of the pond, and when the two Coldstreamers eventually
reappeared, they paused in their frantic spadework to glare in a most hostile
fashion.

Unable to think of anything else to say, Troper called
across. “Nice morning for it!” He gave a half-hearted wave that was as sheepish
as the awkward smile on his face, and ducked back out of sight.

Venables driver eased the big machine into their third
firing position and the squadron commander cracked the hatch. Standing half
inside the turret he studied the panorama before him, and nodded to himself in
satisfaction before reporting on the battalion net that a half dozen Czech AFVs
were retreating back the way they had come. The remainder were burning fiercely
in the fields below, and none had come closer than a quarter of a mile.

All of 3 Troops vehicles were intact and ammunition
expenditure had been light, so it was a pretty good start to the fight.

He took in the heavier than normal scent of pine,
courtesy of all the freshly splintered trees, and smiled wistfully because he
had always liked the smell of pine. Pine scented disinfectants, air fresheners
and those tablet things that they put in urinals didn’t count, they just
weren’t the same thing at all. He enjoyed the moment, even if the flavour was
tainted with the stink of spent explosives, and then raised his binoculars to
look off to where about three times the number of the last attackers was
approaching the sunken lane.

The advancing battalion was coming on with two
companies abreast, and those lead companies were fast approaching the sunken
lane which the Major could only make out at that distance by the avenue of
trees marking its passage. He studied the distant shapes, trying to fathom what
calibre of soldier was manning these personnel carriers and tanks, and
grudgingly allowed that they were probably veterans, judging by the combat
spacing between the vehicles and general good order of the formation.

By his reckoning the left wing of this new attack would
overlap 4 Company to encompass 3 Company’s number 7 Platoon, and the right
could well be driving on positions held by their neighbours 2LI, the 2
^nd
Battalion Light Infantry.

Pat had visited the Wessex Regiment soldiers, those
who were on loan to the Light Infantry, and he had no doubts about their
courage and skill but the boundary between units was always the weak spot, the
seam between two separate command and control organisations that could be
widened and exploited by a determined enemy.

The Hussar’s C Squadron, commanded by Jimmy McAddam an
old acquaintance, was attached to 2LI and he was tempted to call them up, but
there was nothing he could tell him that he wouldn’t already be aware of and
now was not really the time.

The sound of eight Fv-432s in low gear reverberated
through the lines, working their way up the reverse slope to just shy of the
crest, taking advantage of the tree clearance undertaken by the oppositions
artillery which had given them another base plate position. On reaching the desired
position the engine sounds quietened and the mortar crews ‘Number Two’s, with
each weapons aiming post in hand, left the APCs as the two semi-circular
hatches in the roofs of the vehicles were opened to reveal the medium mortars.

The business of laying-on, i.e., the placing of the
individual aiming posts in such a fashion as to overlap exactly the vertical
line on the mortars sight, was conducted between the Number One’s and Number
Two’s. For a novice crew the laying-on could take minutes, but for the well-practiced
it was but a matter of seconds.

“In
Two
!” had been shouted
eight times in less than thirty seconds and the Number Two’s were back with the
vehicles. The mortars were ready for business.

The Hussars commander heard the distinctive ‘ploop’ of
81mm mortar rounds leaving the barrels, and they were leaving very rapidly
indeed. Eighty mortar rounds were in the air before the first one had landed,
and the Number Two’s had retrieved the aiming posts at the run, clambering back
into the vehicles, which were already moving off.

Peering through his binoculars at the oncoming Czech
battalion, Major Venables was surprised to see not the geysers of earth and
smoke that HE rounds would have caused, but thick white smoke. The ground
immediately before the sunken lane took on the aspect of a dense fog bank,
which drifted with the breeze towards the Czech formation, blotting out the
lane and all visible clues as to its location. The drivers of the Czech
armoured vehicles slowed down, not wanting to encounter the sunken lane whilst
driving at full tilt. They knew that the obstacle was somewhere close by, but
hitting it at forty miles per hour was courting serious if not fatal
consequences.