“Got them. Three vehicles,” Farrington said.
“Same here. Give me the first target,” Seva said, suddenly flush with energy.
“Range to right Tiger?” Farrington said.
“Hold on,” he said, fumbling with the MLRF’s rubberized buttons.
The green LED readout on the back of the MLRF gave him a distance of 1700 meters, but he wasn’t sure the laser had been centered on the Tiger, since he couldn’t see the laser in his scope.
“Confirm that my laser is on target. On three, two, mark,” he said.
“On target!” Farrington and Seva yelled simultaneously.
“Sixteen hundred meters!” Gosha said.
“Mark the right Tiger for Seva and watch your rangefinder. Our first salvo goes out at 1000 meters. I need to know the instant they start shooting,” Farrington said.
“Copy that,” Gosha said. “You ready, my friend?” he said, nudging Seva.
“As long as you don’t nudge me while I’m firing,” he replied, sounding much like the smart-ass Seva he knew.
Lieutenant Mikhail Greshev lowered his rifle in utter disbelief. Standing on the hood of his Tiger, he had been watching the vehicle’s approach through the night vision scope on his rifle for over a minute. The vehicle had disappeared behind a hill for several seconds, and when it reappeared, a bright green laser connected his vehicle with the oncoming Tiger.
“They’re marking us, sir!” said the sergeant manning the automatic grenade launcher.
“I can see that,” he grunted, jumping down onto the hard ground.
“Do they have air support?” his platoon sergeant said from the window of the Tiger.
“Nothing was reported. They’re probably ranging us,” Greshev said. “Radio!” he said, fuming that his radioman had suddenly gone missing.
A soldier trotted up to him from the darkness and pushed a radio handset into his shoulder.
“Intrasquad net,” Greshev said, swiping the handset.
“Yes, sir.”
“Master Sergeant, make sure he’s sighted in on the 700 meter mark. Fire on my command only,” he said, sending the same command over the radio to the other Tiger. “Battalion command net,” he ordered.
“Right away, sir,” his radioman said.
He was in the middle of reporting contact with the suspected terrorist cell when one of the soldiers across the street started screaming, “They’re shooting at us!” He raised his rifle and stared through the scope, watching in horror as the grenade launcher on the approaching Tiger flashed bright green several times.
“Incoming!” the gunner screamed behind him, scattering everyone standing near the Tiger.
He did the math in his head, like he had been trained to do. The incoming fire would be inaccurate and likely ineffective at first, but the hostile force could rain grenades down on him for another fifteen seconds before his first grenades arched skyward. The terrorists had started firing well outside of the 700 meter marker. Even an ineffective barrage could cause mayhem throughout the platoon, disrupting his carefully laid plan. All of this information collided inside a brain well aware that an unknown number of 30mm high-explosive projectiles were a few seconds away from possibly landing on top of him. Suddenly confronted with conflicting information, under threat of annihilation, he did what any newly minted officer might do in a similar situation. He panicked and tried to make a last-second adjustment to a plan that would have served him well.
“Gunners, add 200 meters and fire! Add 200 meters! Fire!”
He searched for his radioman, but couldn’t make anything out in the darkness. He had been using the night vision scope on his rifle so frequently throughout the night that he had practically forgotten about the night vision goggles attached to his helmet. He took off running for the road, screaming his orders to the second Tiger and colliding with one of his own soldiers. Knocked off his feet, he regained his footing just as both of his own Tigers started lobbing grenades down the road.
He crouched in place on the side of the road and waited for the hostile rounds to land in his position, showering the black sky with glistening body parts and glowing metal fragments. Instead, the first salvo of projectiles from the inbound Tiger struck 100 meters short of their position. By the time the deep, rhythmic thumping of multiple high-explosive impacts reached him, he realized what he had done. He had effectively killed his platoon.
“Enemy rounds out! 900 meters to target,” Gosha screamed, keeping the laser centered on the rightmost Tiger.
“Reloading!” Seva yelled.
The AGS-30 was fed by a detachable drum that held twenty-nine grenades. With a rate of fire exceeding 400 rounds per minute, the weapon was good for four to five sustained bursts before reloading. Unfortunately, they didn’t have a spare operative to help with the procedure.
He felt the Tiger lurch forward on the road as Seva disappeared, straining at its top speed of 90 miles per hour along the improvised road. His rifle bounced everywhere as the speeding Tiger jarred him against the hatch, rendering his efforts useless.
“Help Seva reload! I need that gun back up in twenty seconds!” Farrington said.
Gosha slung his rifle and swiveled the launcher ninety degrees to the right to facilitate reloading. Twenty seconds was a tall order for a crew that had just practiced loading and reloading this system for the first time an hour and a half ago on an even road. He detached the empty drum and tossed it over the back of the Tiger, catching multiple flashes in his peripheral vision. He turned his head over his shoulder, watching in awe for a brief second as several dozen bursts of white light, surrounded by brilliant orange sparks, decorated the road behind them.
“Multiple impacts. 100 meters behind us,” Gosha said, grabbing the ammunition drum handed to him from inside the Tiger.
Now he understood what Farrington had done. He had lured them into overshooting somehow and very likely emptying their ammunition drums. At 90 miles per hour, their Tiger would reach the convoy in less than thirty seconds, which might not give the Russians enough time to put their grenade launchers back into action. His team’s biggest concern from this point forward would be vehicle-mounted machine guns and small arms fire, which was no small threat to their lightly armored vehicle. Fortunately, they would have twenty-nine rounds of 30mm ammunition to even the odds. He attached the drum and secured it tightly, stepping to the right to put his laser back into action. Seva finished the job, pulling back on the charging handle and searching for the rightmost Tiger through the 2.7X sight attached to the AGS-30.
Green tracers raced past them, snapping closely overhead and bouncing off the ground in front of them.
“300 meters!”
He winced as a tracer bounced off the grenade launcher mount, sizzling the air between their heads. Unfazed by the close call, Seva put the AGS-30 back into action, concentrating the 30mm maelstrom on the two heavily armed vehicles. Through the thermal scope, Gosha saw several yellow blossoms envelop the rightmost Tiger, which was immediately followed by a similar digital light show on the left side of the road. His entire scope image suddenly turned bright white, causing him to lower the rifle. A massive fireball rose in front of them, indicating that one of the Russian vehicles had been destroyed by a secondary explosion. The AGS-30 coughed several more rounds and fell silent amidst the chaos of inbound tracers, supersonic cracks and the sound of bullets striking metal.
“Switching to rifle!” Seva yelled, indicating that the launcher’s drum was empty.
Gosha ejected the spent magazine in his rifle and reloaded another from one of the pouches on his vest, firing at the bright flashes seen through his fuzzy thermal sight, keeping only his shoulders and head exposed through the hatch. Seva took the same position on the right side of the Tiger, and they both fired furiously at the quickly approaching cluster of soldiers on the ground.