Captain Taylor shook his head in disgust as he listened to his mentor describe the scene.
“Thanks, Sergeant Major, for helping to get them back. I heard you call in some artillery. Do you think you nailed them?”
“I don’t know, Captain. We should send your Strykers down the block and see if there are any additional holdouts once we get the wounded back to an aid station,” Childers replied. Although he wanted payback, his first concern right now was making sure the wounded were taken care of.
The medics and a couple of the other soldiers loaded the wounded into one of the Strykers, which then turned around and headed back to the battalion aid station. Captain Taylor got on the radio and called back to battalion headquarters to see if he could get some armor support and then poked his head down the street where the enemy was located.
“Childers, I hate to see that Stryker vehicle down there burning,” he said. “My company has already lost four Strykers since we entered St. Petersburg twenty-four hours ago — if we keep losing vehicles to enemy action, we’ll be a light infantry unit on foot instead of a cavalry unit.”
Childers just nodded. Things could definitely be going better.
Thirty minutes went by. Then they heard the unmistakable clatter of metal creaking and the cracking of tank tracks. The ground shook and vibrated as the noise got closer, and then they spotted the source of the sound. Looking down the road toward where the Allies’ line was, Taylor and Childers saw two Finnish Leopard II tanks and four CV-9030 infantry fighting vehicles rumbling toward them. When they pulled up next to Taylor’s group of six Stryker vehicles, what appeared to be a Finnish officer hopped out of one of the vehicles and walked toward them.
“I’m Colonel Juho Heiskanen,” the officer said, extending his hand. “I’m the Jaeger Brigade commander. I was told by your colonel that your unit needed some armor support.” By his demeanor, he seemed very eager to go blow something up.
“I’m Captain Jack Taylor, the commander for Nemesis Troop, 4th Squadron Sabers. We’ve run into an enemy stronghold down the road there,” he said as he pointed to where one of his vehicles was still burning in the road.
“I see. Can you point to me where the enemy positions are?” the Finnish officer asked as he pulled a small radio from his body armor. Taylor and Childers pointed to the locations where the enemy machine-gun positions had been located, along with the sniper nest.
The Finnish officer relayed the information in his own language, presumably to the tankers. Both of the vehicles lurched forward. Once they reached the turn in the street, they pivoted on their tracks, heading down the road the Americans had been ambushed on.
The turret on the first tank moved slightly, then recoiled as it fired.
Boom! Bam!
The gun turned slightly and fired again at the next target.
Boom! Bam!
Then the tank lurched forward slowly as it started to rumble down the street. The second tank also moved forward quickly, followed by the four infantry fighting vehicles, their turrets staggering from right to left as they provided cover for the tanks should any additional Russian units decide to show themselves.
“Holy hell, if those guys aren’t cocky, Sergeant Major,” Taylor said as a few of the other sergeants nodded and chuckled.
“We should get going, follow these guys in,” Childers offered as he looked at Taylor.
Captain Taylor reluctantly said, “Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Then he turned to his men and shouted, “Mount up! Let’s follow our allies forward!”
They all moved forward dutifully. When the first Finnish tank reached the end of the block, a massive explosion from underneath the road — possibly from the sewers — exploded skywards, lifting the 60-ton tank nearly fifteen meters into the air and flipping it over on its back. The explosion was so large, the shockwave pushed the other Leopard tank sideways onto the sidewalk and shoved it into a café, collapsing part of the building onto it.
The shockwave from the blast knocked most of the soldiers who were not riding in the Stryker vehicles to the ground as the overpressure blew out many of their eardrums. Sergeant Major Childers found himself lying on the ground against the side of a blown-out Lada sedan. Looking up at the sky, through the haze, he saw debris, snow, dirt and parts of the road starting to fall back to the ground below. Childers rolled over to his side, then suddenly realized he needed to breathe. He struggled for air — his lungs burned. Finally, he was able to gasp and inhale.
It took him a moment to recover. As he did, he saw dozens of soldiers stumbling around him, also trying to collect their thoughts and figure out what in the world had just happened. Looking down the road where the Finnish soldiers had been, Childers saw an enormous hole at the center of the T-intersection, where the lead Finnish tank had just been a few minutes earlier.
One of the Finnish CV-9030 infantry fighting vehicles lurched forward toward the massive crater, driving as far away from the edge of it as it could while navigating around it to get at the enemy on the next block over. The 40mm Bofors autocannon fired away at some unseen enemy as the vehicle quickly advanced. The other CV-90s rushed forward behind the lead vehicle, adding their own firepower to the scene. Several of Captain Taylor’s Stryker vehicles raced to catch up while twenty or so soldiers that were on foot continued to recover from the near-death experience of that massive bomb that had just taken out both Finnish tanks.
Once he had collected himself, Sergeant Major Childers attempted to rally the rest of the soldiers to move forward with him and try to keep up with the rest of the company. Sensing some wetness on his neck, Childers placed his hand near his right ear; as he moved his gloved hand away again, he spotted blood on his hand. Not a lot, but it was definitely coming from his ears.
“Crap! My eardrums have probably been blown out,” he thought angrily. He didn’t have time to deal with that. At least that explained why he could barely hear the Finnish 40mm autocannons firing.
He indignantly trudged along, trying to keep up with the rest of Nemesis Troop. If his hearing didn’t return shortly, he’d have no choice but to be medevacked out until he could hear properly. If he couldn’t communicate on a radio or hear what was happening around him, he would be pretty useless in a battle scenario, and possibly a danger to himself and those around him.
When he came near the crater in the road, he saw the sewer system fully exposed, along with a lot of water and heating pipes. He was in awe, thinking of exactly how many explosives must have been placed in that sewer in order to create a crater this large.
Childers spotted a soldier yelling at him but couldn’t hear anything that was being shouted. Then suddenly he found himself being tackled to ground. The vehicle he had been hiding next to just moments ago took some heavy-caliber rounds.
As Sergeant Major Childers looked up, he saw that the soldier that had tackled him was trying to say something, but he was having a hard time making it out. He shook his head and pointed to his ears. The soldier nodded and gave him a thumbs-up before guiding them to a position with better cover. His new friend said something to a few other soldiers, who nodded toward Childers; he must have been bringing them up to speed on his current condition.
A half an hour went by, and Childers’s hearing was slowly starting to return to normal. He tried his best to shelter his ears by placing some hearing protection in them once he was sure they weren’t still bleeding. He refrained from firing his own rifle and did his best to stay toward the rear of the fighting, focusing his efforts more on helping some of the wounded soldiers. When they had nearly a dozen wounded American and Finnish soldiers, Captain Taylor detailed off one of his Stryker vehicles to take the wounded back to the regiment aid station. He ordered Sergeant Major Childers to head back and get his ears checked out as well.