“Up!” he yelled.
"Fire!" screamed Diss, hoping with all that was in him that they took that guy out. He wasn’t sure how many more times their luck would hold out. They’d already taken several direct hits, and so far, the enemy rounds hadn’t penetrated his tank, but he recognized that it was luck at this point that was keeping them alive.
"On the way!" Sergeant Winters shouted urgently.
Winters depressed the firing button and prayed for a hit.
Boom!
The cannon fired, recoiling back inside the turret as the vehicle rocked back on the tank’s springs. The spent aft cap of the sabot round clanged on the turret floor, joining the pile that was now cluttering the floor.
Diss watched the round cross the distance and slam right into the tank, which burst it into flames.
“You got it!” yelled Captain Diss to his gunner. “Quickly, find that other tank and take it out before he realizes we’re still alive.”
“Sabot up!” shouted the loader as he pulled up on the arming handle.
Seeing that they had found the last remaining enemy tank, Captain Diss yelled, "Fire!" He said a quick prayer as the round was released.
Boom!
The cannon recoiled one more time inside the tank, and they watched the round fly right next to the turret of the burning tank to slam into the side of the other Arjun tank. In seconds, the tank blew up in spectacular form, adding another billowing cloud of oily black smoke to the surreal scene around them.
Crump, crump, crump.
More artillery rounds landed near them, rocking their tank.
“Get us moving!” Captain Diss yelled at his driver. “We need to get out of here. The enemy artillery has us zeroed in.”
Once they were speeding along, Captain Diss again returned his attention to the rest of the company. He needed to figure out how many more tanks he’d lost during this charge. He knew the one next to him had been destroyed, but he didn’t know whose tank it was or if they’d lost any additional vehicles.
Ten minutes went by as they moved through the area, past burnt-out wrecks of Arjun tanks, BMPs and BTR armored vehicles. Several Apache helicopters flew ahead of them, looking for more targets to take out. Just as Captain Diss was starting to feel somewhat safe about having them around, one of the Apaches exploded in midair, hit by some unseen missile. Then he identified the sound of more fighters overhead. An aerial battle was now in full swing above him.
General John Cotton, the Supreme Allied Commander, stormed into the briefing room.
“Why haven’t we broken through the enemy lines in the south of Poland yet?” he demanded. He singled out his operations chief, a German officer, and practically shouted, “Our forces in the north have routed the enemy — they pushed the Russians out of Poland and back into Belarus — we may very well capture Minsk in a few more days. What is the holdup with our forces in the south?”
Lieutenant General Wolfgang Kholman was not fazed by Cotton’s abrupt manner. He calmly responded, “The situation is still fluid at the moment, Sir. Despite being surprised by the Indian use of the Arjun Mk-2s, I just received a report that the US 1st Armored Division and the German 9th Panzer Division broke through the Indian positions there, and the Indians are now conducting a fighting retreat back to the Ukrainian border.”
Seemingly satisfied with his J3’s response, Cotton took a short breath and signaled for the others standing at the table to take a seat. “All right, everyone, we need to get the rest of the midafternoon update. I have a secured video teleconference with the President before dinner, and I need to be fully caught up on everything.”
Two captains sitting against the wall pulled out their notepads, ready to take detailed notes on the meeting. They had the dubious task of creating the slide deck to be presented to the President.
“OK,” said Cotton, now more poised, “if the 1st AD and the German 9th Panzers broke through, then what’s happening to the small contingent of enemy troops that are trapped in the Kraków pocket? Do we have an idea of how many enemy soldiers we’re facing?” Cotton asked.
Major General Sarah Tyndale, his intelligence officer or J2, took this question on. “We’ve been going over a lot of drone footage to analyze the numbers on that, Sir. We’ve also been combing through a lot of interrogation reports from prisoners taken near the city. The best we can tell is that at least one battalion of Indian infantry is still trapped in the city, along with a Russian motorized rifle regiment. We estimate it’s 5,000 enemy soldiers, give or take.”
General Kholman added, “We’ve been hitting their armored vehicles with precision strikes as best we can. Right now, they don’t have enough armor or other vehicles to force a breakout in any particular sector. I can order the 9th Panzer Division in, but my concern is we’ll end up destroying a lot of the city trying to root them out.”
General Tyndale nodded, then asserted, “Sir, I’d recommend we let the PSYOPS guys have a crack at it. The enemy has been on defense for a while; they’re getting hit from the air, snipers, and artillery. If we can’t convince them to surrender by the end of the week, then we can look at sending troops in.”
General Cotton put his two index fingers together in the shape of a steeple as he thought that over. Sending troops in now would surely result in a bloody street fight that would cause significant damage to a historic city. “I could give them a week,” he finally determined, “but no more.” Without enemy units in their rear, a longer delay just didn’t make sense.
“OK, General Tyndale, your intel guys have one week,” General Cotton instructed. “If you can’t convince the enemy to surrender, then I’m going to have General Kholman send the 9th in. I can’t have that division stuck encircling Kraków trying to starve them out. I need their armor to help press home the attack elsewhere. Understood?”
She nodded, smiling slightly. General Cotton knew her well enough to understand that saving a beautiful city from destruction meant something to her.
Cotton moved on to the next topic. “Slovakia — have we pushed the Russians out?”
“Yes,” answered General Kholman. “It didn’t really seem like they planned on holding the country. We sent one Italian division, one Croatian battalion and two Austrian battalions in there, and all they encountered were two Russian motorized infantry regiments and one armor battalion. The Russians barely fought. They did carry out an effective fighting retreat, which tore up a lot of the country’s infrastructure. Nearly every bridge they crossed, they destroyed. It’s going to make launching any offensive operations from Slovakia a mess until we can get those bridges repaired.”
General Cotton snickered. “That was the Russians’ entire plan, Herr Kholman,” he said with a smile. “They were never going to hold Slovakia, but now they’ve denied us its use as a launchpad to invade Ukraine. They want to force us to face them from Poland, where they’ve built an in-depth defense for us.”
General Kholman nodded and pulled up a map on PowerPoint. “Right now, Sir, the enemy defensive line stretches from Košice, Slovakia, to Nowy Sacz, Poland, in the south. In the center, they hold at Lublin, Poland, and in the north, their line stretches from Baranovichi, Belarus, to just east of Riga, Latvia.” A bulge in the enemy lines in the center had clearly developed.
Seeing the opportunity before him, General Cotton sat up straighter in his chair and announced, “I want Fifth Corps in Belarus to break off from their attack and shift south. Move the French division we have in reserve to take their place. I want Fifth Corps to drive south and capture Kovel, Ukraine. If they can capture that city, it’ll cut the entire Russian center force off from resupply and place an entire corps in their rear area. We’ll collapse the entire Russian front if we can pull it off,” he said excitedly.