Final Storm (19 page)

“Load co-ax!” LaRochelle yelled to the loader, who reached forward and yanked the charging handle of the 7.62mm M240 machine gun mounted coaxially with the main gun.

“Co-ax up!” the loader screamed in reply, confirming the rapid-fire machine gun was armed and ready to fire.

There was no time for the tank crew to use the sophisticated laser rangefinder. The Russian RPG squad would be firing in less than ten seconds and the powerful rocket-propelled grenade could disable the tank, if not destroy it. They had to eyeball the range, hoping that any close shot in the general vicinity of the Soviets might make the RPG gunner’s aim a little less deliberate, giving the American tank the split-second it needed.

Normally, it was not possible to fire the tank’s main gun and the coaxially mounted machine gun simultaneously, but LaRochelle had an experienced crew, and he had taught them well.

Squeezing the Cadillacs’ triggers, the gunner sent a stream of machine gun tracer rounds arcing over the heads of the stunned RPG team. At the same time, he twisted the manual firing handle near his left knee—this was the “master blaster,” an electromechanical firing mechanism for the tank’s 120mm main gun.

Charged by the master blaster’s spark, the big gun roared again, sending a bright orange tongue of flame out of the end of the Abram’s barrel. The shot screamed over the heads of the clustered infantry but plowed smack into the BMP, which erupted in a mushroom-shaped orange fireball. Still fingering the Cadillacs, the gunner adjusted his aim down one half-mil and once again pressed the machine gun triggers.

This time the tracers streamed directly into the kneeling form of the RPG gunner, cutting the forward Soviet infantryman in two at the waist. His partner, wounded as well, looked up from his own bloody legs to see the revolting scene, then passed out.

LaRochelle was too busy to watch the RPG crew die; and he had no time to congratulate his gunner on the shot. In a treeline at nine o’clock from a range of just two thousand meters, he saw a peculiar flash and a cloud of smoke. A shudder ran through him—he’d seen enough training films to identify it as an antitank guided missile, probably a Soviet AT-4 “Spigot.”

“Sagger! Sagger! Sagger!” he yelled, keying the microphone in his Combat Vehicle Crewman (CVC) headgear to the “transmit” position. It was the universal NATO warning for an anti-tank missile attack. Instantly all the tanks on CVC frequency began to move. Abandoning their hiding places, the tanks began driving evasively, jinking back and forth crazily in an effort to give the Soviet missileers tougher targets to hit.

Their turbine engine whined as LaRochelle’s driver reacted to the implied command, moving the tank backward out of its battle position snug against the rock formation.

Looking through the vision blocks, LaRochelle estimated that they would have another twenty meters to cross before they were screened from the missile’s path.

“Driver! Jink for you life! Go! Go! Go!” the tank commander hollered into the intercom.

The driver needed no further encouragement. He wheeled the tank madly to the left, hoping to present a more difficult target while also shifting to a forward gear to make a faster getaway.

It was too late. Instantaneously the sixty-ton tank was shaken by a terrific blast. Each crewman rose out of his seat as flakes of paint showered down from the turret walls and roof. Dust rose from every nook and cranny, filling the air inside the turret. Wiring-harnesses, binoculars, kit-bags, notebooks, ration-packs, and other equipment were torn loose from retaining brackets, stowage trays and hiding places.

LaRochelle’s head was filled with a loud ringing. Were it not for the hearing protection provided by their CVC headgear, the whole crew would have been completely deafened.

“Driver!” he yelled above the reverb echoing in his ears, hoping that the stricken tank could still maneuver. Through the vision blocks the TC saw the smoking hulk of his wingman’s tank to the right. He reached for the keying switch on his radio microphone, issuing the orders for the unit to withdraw to the next line of battle positions. When he heard no static, he realized that the hit had knocked out the tank’s radio.

“Driver—Move out—Position Bravo—Route Blue!” he yelled. He said a silent prayer that the surviving tankers would begin their withdrawal once the word was passed. He saw other Abrams throwing rooster tails of fine snow behind them, and he knew they’d gotten the word. He hoped that the Soviets would not be able to get any shots at them en route to the next position. That last hit had been too close for comfort.

“Crew report!” LaRochelle announced over the intercom—at least
that
was still working.

“Gunner up! Computer inop—turret power up,” said the man just below and in front of the tank commander.

“Driver up—engine’s hot,” answered the unseen driver from his position in the forward belly of the big tank.

“Loader up! Ammo door’s jammed!” the loader called out from the depths of the still-smoky turret interior.

LaRochelle realized then that the Soviet missile must have penetrated the auxiliary ammunition compartment at the turret’s left rear corner. The terrific explosion that had rocked them was caused by several rounds of main gun ammo detonating simultaneously.

Fortunately, the blast door had prevented the explosion from entering the turret, instead causing it to exit through blow-out panels in the top of the ammo compartment. Had their vehicle been an old M60 “Patton”—which lacked such a sealed compartment—the missile would almost certainly have killed everyone in the tank.

He was never more glad that he was riding in an M1A1 Abrams.

Momentarily just thankful to be alive, LaRochelle soon realized that he and his crew were still in a jam. They were still facing the large Soviet column in a tank with no communications, an inoperative fire-control system, and all they had to throw at the enemy were three HEAT rounds that were stowed in the ready rack next to the main gun.

The American commander knew that his tank force had taken out several enemy vehicles—certainly more than they’d lost themselves. But the Soviets were still rolling forward across the open field with waves of armor.

LaRochelle looked at the three meager shells in the ready rack, and at the grime-streaked faces of the other two men in the turret. He cursed the silent radio, wondering how they could hope to stop the Red Army’s juggernaut.

He thought it would take nothing less than a miracle to save them all….

H
UNTER WAS THE FIRST
one to see the long green streams of Soviet armor.

It looked just like a flood. The enemy tanks and BMPs were spilling out onto the German countryside, emptying into a two-mile-wide field like a river delta meeting the sea. On the near side of the field were the rear guard NATO armored units, withdrawing from what had been a thin defensive line.

Black scars in the earth with jagged metal centers marked the graves of both Soviet and NATO tanks. Though there were more smoking hulks on the Soviet side—Hunter counted about a dozen or so—the American tank company on the southern flank was particularly close to being overrun. Even as he approached the area, he could see the big Abrams tanks racing to their back-up positions, the Soviet T-80s in hot pursuit.

Flying in the lead, Jones, too, took one look at the deteriorating NATO situation and knew what had to be done. Keying his microphone switch, he called back to the A-10 Thunderbolt flight commander, who was leading a squadron of sub-sonic ground support aircraft a few miles behind the F-16s.

“Tango leader, commence attack immediately!”

“Roger, Falcon Leader,” came the reply.

The message had been received loud and clear by the A-10 flight leader, Captain Marcus A. Powers. Instantly he ordered his airplanes to peel off out of formation and drop to four hundred feet.

Captain Powers armed his GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun, the rotary cannon nestled in the Thunderbolt’s fat nose. With the touch of the trigger, a full load of heavy, depleted-uranium slugs would pour out of the big gun, punching through the relatively thin armor on the tops of the Soviet tanks. For good measure, underneath their stubby wings, the A-10s carried Rockeye cluster bombs packed with anti-armor bomblets.

One pass over the battlefield and Powers was able to select his targets. Dividing his squadron into four flights of three, he assigned each flight to one of the main columns of Soviet armor rolling down the roads into the battle area. Then dropping further still to just two hundred feet, he and his two wingmen lined up on the southernmost column of enemy tanks.

The surprised Soviets didn’t have enough time to get off the road when the Thunderbolts swooped in for their first pass. Their mobile radar unit had disintegrated under a direct hit by the German artillery ambush a few miles back, and they hadn’t had time to bring up a replacement. The orders were to advance, prepared or not, and that’s just what they had done. The price for this adherence to orders was the blind-siding they received from the American attack planes.

Captain Powers squeezed off several long bursts from his nose cannon into the stream of green Soviet armor on the roadbed below him. Bright flashes appeared under the A-10’s chin as the spent uranium slugs pumped out of the whirling barrels, lancing downward in cascading arcs toward the Soviets. His first volley struck a T-80 directly behind the turret, exploding the tank’s engine in a fireball. The torrent of heavy slugs walked back to the next tank in line, ripping jagged and flaming holes in its thin top armor as the deadly effects of the uranium burst the turret at its base, killing the crew in a fiery explosion.

One of the Thunderbolts to Powers’s right found a Soviet fuel truck in the column, and its content erupted in a yellow-orange mushroom of flame that engulfed several surrounding vehicles.

At the same instant the A-10 on Powers’s left caught a burst of anti-aircraft fire from a mobile Soviet Gatling-type battery. Spouting flame and smoke from under the wing, it staggered out of the battle area, engines missing sporadically, until a gray-black column of smoke could be seen rising from the horizon where he had plowed into the frozen ground.

Powers suddenly found himself gulping oxygen from his mask like there was no tomorrow. It was his first taste of combat and he imagined he could feel his heart beating right out of his chest.

“God help me,” he whispered to himself. “God help us all …”

On the next pass, Powers ordered his Thunderbolts to dump their Rockeye clusters over the stalled Soviet columns. With morbid precision, literally hundreds of the armor-shredding bomblets rained down onto the enemy tanks, BMP armored personnel carriers, and other vehicles that made up the Soviet assault force.

With a quick glance down and back from his high speed vantage point, Powers estimated that one in every three of four enemy vehicles were being hit by the deadly downpour.

By their third pass, Powers could see the roads were now clogging up with the burning wreckage of many armored vehicles. But still the Soviet battle tanks poured out onto the open field—from the woods, from dry river beds, from smaller roads—roaring across open space to chase the retreating NATO armor. A fierce counter-volley from the M-1s and Leopards—coincidentally fired at the same time as the A-10s’ first pass—had momentarily stopped the advance in some places. But at the same time, more Soviet T-80s and T-72s were approaching on the main roads, maneuvering around the hulks of their less fortunate comrades’ tanks and joining the fray.

Worse, two more of the attacking Thunderbolts were hit by ground fire on their bombing run and went down in side-by-side fiery crashes. At that point, Powers reluctantly gave the order to withdraw.

Immediately Jones keyed his microphone and sent out an order to his F-16s: “Falcon Flight, first unit, commence ground support ops.”

Instantly half the F-16s peeled off, leaving their eight counterparts to watch the skies for enemy fighters. The first unit pilots, led by Jones and Hunter, armed their 20-mm cannons while diving down to 200 feet.

“Spread out wide on four,” Jones called back to his pilots.

With aerial show precision, the eight airplanes lined up in two rows of four across. Now down to just 50 feet, the two quartets streaked over the covering forest on the southern edge of the plain and across the open field, their cannons roaring. The spontaneously combusted cannon shells found targets every few feet—tanks, BMPs, troop trucks and armored cars. The Soviet vehicles caught in the wall of cannon fire below tried desperately to zigzag their way out of the aerial assault. But for many, it was too little too late.

Hunter was purposely seeking out and firing at the enemy’s fast-moving mobile guns. Keying in on the tracked vehicles’ distinctive outline, he sent fiery tongues of flame shooting out from the cannon muzzle on the left-hand side of his F-16’s fuselage, propelling a stream of shells aimed at the vehicles’ ammunition supply. Each time a unique, greenish fire burst forth from the tracked vehicle like a clustered fireworks display gone awry as dozens of rounds whizzed off in all directions.

But still the Soviets came forward …

There were now four hundred tanks deployed in the open field, rolling toward the sparsely populated line of NATO armor. If they got across the three-kilometer expanse of open ground, they would easily overwhelm the outnumbered American and German forces. And they would be across in less than ten minutes, even under the withering fire they’d received from the Thunderbolts and the F-16s.

Pulling up and out of the long strafing run, Jones knew it was time to play his trump card.

Punching in a pre-selected radio frequency, the general made a quick call to the orbiting B-52. Once its pilot assured him that he had been following the situation and that everything was “green,” Jones keyed his mike to the F-16 squadron’s channel.

“Copperhead strike!” he shouted into his oxygen mask microphone. “Clear it out!
Repeat.
Copperhead!”

Jones glanced back over his shoulder at the other F-16 pilots as they punched their afterburners, pumping raw JP-8 into their engines to give them an extra jolt of speed. With one eye on them, and the other on the dark speck above him that he knew was the B-52, Jones kicked his own afterburner and started orbiting in a high, wide circle over the battlefield, leaving lots of space between him and the open field full of Soviet armor.