Looking into the commander's sight, McRae saw the cluster of T-72s his gunner was tracking, and he picked out the one with the most antennas on it — it was probably the company or battalion commander's tank. “Gunner Sabot Tank!" he ordered.
"Identified!" exclaimed Sergeant Spence.
Specialist Kostic yelled, “Sabot up!”
"Fire!" screamed McRae.
"On the way!" shouted Sergeant Spence.
Boom!
The cannon fired, recoiling back inside the turret as the vehicle rocked back on the tank’s tracks. The spent aft cap of the sabot round clanged on the turret floor as the turret filled with sulfuric fumes after the round was fired.
McRae watched the round fly out from his tank, the flat trajectory crossing the distance in a couple of seconds, only to see the round sail right over the tank and hit the dirt harmlessly, right behind the tank.
“Crap! We missed,” he yelled. “Load Sabot. Spence, manually adjust for the speed of the enemy tank and lead it a bit.”
Now that he had led the way and fired the first shot, Captain McRae watched the rest of his company fire on the enemy. A couple of his fellow tankers also missed their targets, but many more found their marks. The turrets of some of the T-72s blew clean off from the sheer force of the Sabot rounds, slicing through their armor and setting off their own ammunition. He made a mental note to ensure that all his tanks do a complete boresight when time permitted, to avoid further misses in any future engagements.
“Sabot up!” shouted the loader as he pulled up the arming handle.
"Fire!" ordered McRae.
“On the way!” yelled Spence as he depressed the firing button again.
This time the round found its mark, and the tank they had originally aimed at took a direct hit. The enemy tank slowly came to a halt. Seconds later, the top hatch opened up, and as McRae watched the enemy soldier try to get out of the vehicle, it blew up. A flaming jet of fire shot through the enemy soldier and blasted past the turret, blazing at least ten feet in the air before the entire structure of the tank was ripped apart by another explosion.
“Good hit, Spence! New target identified. Load Sabot,” he bellowed.
While Captain McRae’s company was steadily picking off the attackers, their tanks received a series of enemy artillery rounds, indicating they had stayed still in one place for too long.
“Guidons, pop smoke and fall back two hundred meters,” he directed over the company net. They needed to obscure the enemy artillery observers and back out of their crosshairs.
Crump! Crump! Crump! Crump! Explosions continued to rock their area as pieces of shrapnel pinged off their armor shell.
"Doppler, back us out of this artillery," McRae said to his own driver as he toggled his own tank's smoke grenade launchers.
“Those tanks are now 3,100 meters. We’ll be in their range momentarily,” Spence yelled to be heard over the roar of enemy artillery going off around them.
“This is all happening too fast,” muttered McRae.
Looking through the commander's sight extension, Captain McRae found the next target just as he observed a series of their own artillery rounds landing amongst the enemy tanks. Some of the rounds scored hits, while others did not. Taking his eyes away from the commander's sight, he looked at Spence. “I need you to take over calling targets and engaging them. I have to start managing the company,” he said. Then he turned his attention his computer tracking system, which let him see an electronic overview of where his tanks were.
He needed to get a status on his platoons and find out how many of his tanks had been hit. In all the confusion, he had neglected his duty to make sure the other platoons were doing what they were supposed to do. As he made contact with his platoon leaders, he learned they had lost two tanks to that enemy air attack. One other tank was destroyed during the enemy artillery bombardment and one more damaged. He quickly got on the radio relaying the information back to battalion headquarters, once again requesting an air strike to hit the enemy force advancing on him. He also ordered his medics and first sergeant to evacuate as many of the wounded as they could. The dead would have to wait.
When Captain McRae was just about finished relaying the information to his battalion commander, his tank was jarred hard. He knocked his head against the commander's extension, causing him to momentarily see stars.
“It bounced off our armor,” someone yelled as McRae tried to regain his composure and continue to relay his report. It took a second for his mind to register what had just happened.
His battalion commander interrupted his fuzzy thoughts. “Charlie Six, I’m ordering your unit to withdraw to rally point Bravo now. You guys are about to be overrun. Fall back now!” he yelled.
Realizing his commander was right, McRae snapped out of his head fog and sent a message out to the rest of his company to fall back to rally point Bravo.
Their driver plugged in the coordinates, and they began a fighting retreat rearward. As they fought their way back, they would eventually cross the next line of American tanks as they continued to make their way further back in the intentional bulge in their lines they were letting the enemy carve out. Once the Indian forces had pushed their way deep into the bulge, the division would close the trap, and if the Americans were lucky, they’d destroy a large chunk of the Indian Army in Russia.
General Jackson looked on in amazement as the tank battle continued to unfold on the digital monitor they had set up in his makeshift 4th Armored Division headquarters. His forward tank elements did a phenomenal job luring the enemy in. The Indian Army seemed to sense hesitation on the Americans’ part; once they saw a battalion of American tanks retreat, they must have assumed they had broken the Americans will to fight and now wanted to press their attack. They ordered one brigade after another into the ever-growing bulge in the American lines.
Five hours into the attack, it looked like the entire center of the American lines was in the process of falling apart. The division’s PSYOPS and signals intelligence group were sending out frantic calls for reinforcements, saying that the tanks were running out of ammunition and fuel. They did their best to spread general hysteria over the open net and frequencies they knew the Indian Army could intercept. This must have caused the enemy commanders to believe they were on the verge of an American collapse if they could just press the Americans a little further.
Six hours into their offensive, the Indians sent in their third brigade of enemy tanks into the bulge, which had now expanded to fifteen miles deep.
Jackson turned to his air operations LNO. “I think it’s time we send you flyboys into the soup,” he said.
The LNO smiled. The Air Force had a couple squadrons of new tank busters they wanted to test on the Indian Army. He made a call to the airfield to release the hounds.
The Air Force had been terribly short on ground-attack aircraft since the commencement of the war, and there weren’t enough A-10 Warthogs to go around. The A-10s had also been taking some terrible losses in Europe and Asia, which were taking a long time to replace as older airframes were still being pulled out of mothball and made ready for combat. Searching for a stopgap, the Air Force had ordered 1,000 Beechcraft AT-6 Wolverine turboprop ground-attack planes.
The Wolverine was unique in that it was the first turboprop aircraft the Air Force would be using in combat since the Vietnam war. It had a large glass bubble canopy, which provided exceptional visibility for both the pilot and the weapons officer. Because it was a turboprop as opposed to a jet engine, it could land and take off on a much shorter runway. It could also operate on some pretty rugged airstrips, which made it highly suitable to the hostile environment of Siberia. Although the Wolverine was incredibly inexpensive in comparison to its jet counterparts, it still packed a lethal punch.