Chieftains (4 page)

FOUR

The most northerly-situated tank of the Fifth United States Force was commanded by Master Sergeant Will Browning. He was one of the few men in November Squadron with battle experience. He was one of the even fewer men in the entire United States Army in Europe who had survived a direct hit on a previous tank by a communist shell fired From a Russian-built T-54. He had been in action below Mutter's Ridge, north of Dong Ha in Vietnam.

Browning tried to think about the incident as little as possible. His survival was miraculous...a mistake had been made...he should have died with his crew. Almost superstitiously, it seemed better not to remind a God that he had overlooked a heavenly candidate who was now living on stolen time.

The 100mm high explosive shell had struck between the centre of Browning's M48's track and the bustle of its turret. The US tank's gunner had been following a VC target moving away to the right.

The M48's cast-steel turret was torn clean from the tank and hurled fifteen meters away. Somehow it carried Will Browning with it, still in one piece. A fraction of a second later the tank's ammunition exploded, tearing the already wrecked hull and the bodies of the crew into fragments. Browning was protected from greater injuries by the casing of the turret. He had suffered multiple fractures, burst eardrums and shrapnel wounds in his thighs and buttocks. Had he been a conscript the wounds would have ended his service, but as a regular cavalryman he was pronounced fit for further service eight months later.

It had not rained in the mountains of the Hohe Rhön east of Fulda, and the night had been clear and sharp with a touch of frost in the air above the high ground. To the front of the cavalry position the River Ulster followed the line of the East German border, before dissecting it two kilometers to the north. Backing them, three kilometers to the rear of the hill, was the highway linking Tann with Fulda where the Black Horse 11th Cavalry had been stationed.

Like most of those guarding the eastern frontier at this time, Master Sergeant Will Browning had been thinking about his own future. There was every possibility of war, and he knew that unlike most occasions in the past it would not begin with the signing of a declaration. Pearl Harbour had taught the USA a hard lesson, and with modern weapons a determined enemy would be foolish to give formal notice of its intentions by more than minutes. The preparations he had watched during the past hours no longer resembled those of an exercise. Three minefields had been laid in the fields beside the river; meadows which normally contained grazing cattle were now empty. Helicopters had flown across the woodland on the far slopes, seeding the forest tracks and glades with anti-personnel mines. When he had left Fulda, he had seen a party of German combat engineers placing demolition charges in the bridge. It was a simple and precise task, for every bridge of possible strategic importance built in West Germany since the Second World War had been constructed with future demolition in mind: special chambers to hold explosives were sited at critical points of their structures.

War? Maybe. Another war, another tank! Browning thought about Utah, his Abrams; she was a hell of a lot bigger and tougher than his old M48, safer too. They claimed her Limey armour was almost shell-proof. Goddamn Limeys...they could invent something good like this, and then not be able to afford it themselves! Browning hadn't met many British soldiers, but knew their reputation as tough fighters and drinkers; someone in the Pentagon even cared enough about the latter to print a warning in a pamphlet issued to all American personnel serving in Europe. Limey soldiers were supposed to be a bad influence on John Does! When he had read it, Browning had laughed; it was only a year since the American Armed Forces had solved one of their own problems, the taking of drugs by almost fifty per cent of their men. The solution had been simple – remove the crime and you improved the statistics. They had legalized the smoking of marijuana in the US. Overnight, the illegal use of drugs by servicemen was cut by three-quarters!

Armour. Browning stared up at the Abrams silhouetted against the night sky like a desert rock, indestructible, angular, solid, sleeping. Awake, Utah was a fearsome powerhouse. The regiment had only recently been equipped with the Abrams, the Chrysler XM1s, heavier and faster than their old tanks, and capable of a useful fifty kilometers an hour from an engine producing six hundred horse power more than that in the M60A1s. The Abrams' profile was low, sleek and functional, the weaponry familiar: a 105mm gun, a Bushmaster co-axial cannon, a 12.7mm machine gun mounted on the commander's cupola, and a lighter 7.62mm machine gun on the loader's hatch. The fire-power was impressive.

Browning wondered how they would fare against the Soviet armour. If the East Germans were involved in the assault they would probably use T62 and T72 tanks...perhaps a few T 10s. It was unlikely that they would yet have the new T-80, for US intelligence claimed these were in limited production and available only to the Soviet armoured regiments in small numbers. But intelligence was often incorrect.

Browning realized he was allowing himself to grow apprehensive. He knew what war was like, he knew the feel of it, the stink, and he knew this was going to be different from all the others; the ultimate horizon perhaps, for mankind.

Less than four kilometers away were the enemy, waiting, as he waited, for the signal that would hurl them forward into action. It was believed they were part of the Soviet 8th Guards...what a title, Browning thought, for aggressors! They were somewhere in front of him, hidden in the forest beyond the first ridge of hills. Sometimes when the wind had blown from the east, he had heard the engines of their tanks, the distant squeals of labouring tracks, the roar of exhausts.

Browning had been in Germany for a little over a year. He enjoyed the posting, though it would have been better if the dollar exchange rate had been more favourable, Before that his appointments had been at Fort Sam Houston, Fort McClellan, and finally Fort Dix. Down Barracks in Fulda was a pleasant break from the routine of Stateside army life. 'Smile, the border community cares', advised the notice at the barracks entrance; some of the men seemed to interpret it as an order and intensified 'their gloom deliberately. Browning spent far more of his free time out in the German countryside than most others in the camp.

'Coffee?' It was Del Acklin, the commander of Idaho, the neighbouring Abrams. He was a hundred meters from his vehicle and, in view of their orders, was taking a risk leaving it. He held an aluminium mess tin towards Browning.

The warmth of the metal was pleasant, and the smell of the coffee sweet in the cold air. 'Thanks.' He sipped it, the hot liquid was laced with Austrian Stroh rum.

Acklin said: 'I'm scared, Will.' He kept his voice low so Browning's gunner, above them in the turret, wouldn't hear the remark.

'We're all scared.'

'I keep thinking about my kids.'

'Well, that's good.' Browning could hear the nervousness in Acklin's speech, almost feel the tension of the man's body. He and Browning drank together a couple of times a week and were fairly close buddies, but Browning wasn't feeling like conversation now. 'You'd better get back to your tank before the lieutenant decides to take a walk around.'

'It's going to happen, isn't it?'

'What?'

'The war is going to happen.'

'Maybe not a real war, just a limited action to straighten out a few of the kinks in the frontier. Perhaps it won't even happen at all. We've got pretty close before...this could be the same.'

'You don't think I'm chicken, do you?'

'Nope.' He handed back the mess tin. 'Thanks.'

Del Acklin half turned away, then hesitated. 'I just, er, thought it wouldn't be good for my kids to grow up without their father.'

'Then don't let it happen.'

'No, sure.' He walked away a few paces until he was barely visible in the gloom of the woodland. 'Good luck, Will.'

Browning ducked his head to light mother cigarette in the shelter of his overalls. How long had it been since the last battle...since Dong Ha? 1968! Seventeen years! He had been nineteen years in the cavalry! Good God, be was an old man...thirty-eight! Maybe that wasn't too old, though. Too old for what? He hadn't got any special plans! He didn't want to quit the service to open a shop, or become a salesman, or find a job as a clerk in some government bureau; he liked things as they were...nicely regulated...no hassle. Retirement? He didn't think about it too often. A small house somewhere, in a small town...a stoop to relax on...wasn't that what all vets wanted? A place to fade away in.

Shit! He was getting maudlin. Browning had never married; it seemed like making trouble for yourself, perhaps he would sometime...settle down. Settle down! Jesus, you were in the army or out of it! Being army was being settled; what the hell more did you need?

Women. Browning grunted, dropped the butt of the cigarette and ground it out with his heel. He had few illusions about his looks; some guys were handsome, he wasn't. Some guys found women everywhere, he didn't. His face hadn't been much to write home about before Vietnam; it was worse afterwards. A long wound from the centre of his forehead, running across the bridge of his nose and down his cheek, made him look like the loser of a knife fight. Because he was balding a little at the front of his head, he kept his hair cropped short. And he wasn't some tall lean clothes-horse who could make every suit he wore look straight out of Fifth Avenue; he had the build of a middleweight, broad shoulders, heavy chest and narrow hips. Out of uniform, he looked like an all-in wrestler. It frightened women...well, most of them...he couldn't even smile straight with the wound, it had severed a couple of cheek muscles. A grin from Browning could make some women think he was suing them up for a chain-saw murder! Most didn't take the risk to find out what he was like underneath.

'The captain's flapping his jaw on the air.' Podini, the Abrams' gunner, was leaning out of the turret above him.

'So what does the nice guy say?' The squadrons' leader wasn't Browning's favourite officer. As a graduate of West Point Military Academy, he had a habit of treating his NCOs like first-year plebs.

'He thinks he's Terry and the Pirates,' said Podini. 'Says gung-ho and all that kind of crap.' Podini cleared his throat and spat into the darkness. 'Remember the Alamo!'

'He said that?'

Podini chuckled. 'Well, not exactly. But he sure meant to.'

'He's hoping it's going on tape back at HQ, so's maybe he'll get a field promotion and a Distinguished Service Cross...it's his fuckin' bullshit. He should have stayed with the Iron Brigade. I got my own plans.'

'Like what?'

'Like staying alive. If the captain wants to play Buck Rogers, he can do it on his lonesome. I don't aim to buy the farm for someone else's benefit.'

Browning shivered, pulled his collar closer to his neck and wiped a drop of moisture from his nose with the back of his gloved hand. He stamped his feet a few times, wondered why the hell he was standing out in the chill air, and clambered back up into the turret. He could smell the scent of sweat and fuel oil drifting up from the fighting compartment and decided to keep his head and shoulders outside for a few more minutes. He leant against the metalwork, it was ice-cold; below him the hull of Utah was white-dusted with hoar frost. To the north and west the stars were still bright in a dark sky.

There was soft music, just audible outside the tank. It came from the driving compartment where Mike Adams was relaxing, listening to a tape recorder. Adams' driving compartment was as customized as the US army would permit...which was only a little. Given a free hand, he would have filled it with gadgets, stereo, additional lighting, a coffee machine, mirrors. As it was, he managed to get away with an imitation leopard-skin seat cover, and his Japanese tape recorder. An official request to be allowed to fit a cigar-lighter had been met with a horrified refusal from the captain. Not only was smoking forbidden inside a tank because of fuel fumes but, in any case, Adams was informed, a cigar-lighter was aesthetically out of place in an American fighting vehicle. Adams had retaliated by bribing a German waiter to post 'No Smoking' notices at various strategic places throughout the officers' mess; they had spent an uncomfortable week smoking outside on its terraces before they found it had nothing to do with their colonel. A New Yorker, from Winfield Junction, twenty- four year old Mike Adams looked on' the XM1 tank, Utah, as the kind of supercharged super-rod he had always wanted as a kid.

Utah had lost her name. So far, no one other than Will Browning was aware of this. She had lost not only her name, but also the white stars on the front of her hull and turret sides, the ordinance numbers, and her red and white shields containing the rampant black horse insignia of the 11th Cavalry. Despite the fact that all of these items were revered by the captain, Master Sergeant Will Browning had painted them out with a can of matt camouflage green earlier that night. His action had been the result of something which had occurred to him in Vietnam. He had decided that distinctive markings gave a convenient aiming point to VC infantrymen with a missile launcher. As the international tension had escalated over the past days, the thought had reappeared in his mind. In war you had to expect to be a target, but there was no need to make it easy for the marksman. And if Will Browning could find any way of lessening the chances of having to survive two direct hits in one lifetime, he was going to make use of it...however small a protection it might give him, and to hell with the captain!