Recovering from his dark thoughts, Uvarov looked at the map. He had to do something. He refused to be run over. Reaching out, he indicated a point east of the Al Jagbub-Tobruk road. His actions caught the officer who was briefing by surprise. Everyone else at the map stood silent, watching Uvarov and waiting for him to speak.
"Issue the following order," he finally said. "The 24th Tank Corps will cross the Al Jagbub-Tobruk road here, at El Cuasc, and advance to a line from Bir Berraneb to Gabr Saleh. The 8th Cuban Division will cross here at Gueret Hamza and advance to Bir Gibni. Once they reach those points, no one — I repeat, no one — will continue further east without my permission. I refuse to go charging off into a void. The 24th Tank Corps will assume a hasty defense from Bir Berraneb to Gabr Saleh; the 8th Division, from Gabr Saleh to Bir Gibni. Are there any questions?"
The operations officer looked at the locations Uvarov had pointed out. It was all very clear to him. Uvarov meant to establish an anvil-
like position southeast of Tobruk, while the Libyans, coming from Tobruk, would act as a hammer, smashing the remains of the 14th Egyptian Division. Needing to clarify some points, the operations officer turned to Uvarov. "General, what if the Libyans cannot finish the encirclement and the Egyptians manage to break out? How far do we advance in order to link up with the Libyans?"
Uvarov looked at the operations officer, realizing that he was missing the purpose of his order. "Colonel, I have no intention of trapping the Egyptians. In fact, I have no intention of fighting them. We will continue to follow the orders we have to the letter. But we will go no further. I intend to do everything in my power to keep us out of this mess. There is perhaps still time to stop this situation from getting out of hand. Do you understand?" The operations officer sheepishly nodded.
To drive home his point, Uvarov looked at each officer gathered about him. "I repeat, we will do nothing that will broaden this conflict. In time STAVKA will come to realize what is happening and stop this madness. Until then, we do nothing to make it worse."
Chapter 14
When you are occupying a position which the enemy threatens to surround, collect all your forces immediately, and menace him with an offensive movement.
From his position north of the road, Lieutenant Colonel Ahmed Hafez watched the remnants of the 22nd Mechanized Division as it moved back east. Less than twelve hours before, that same division had been preparing to begin the final assault on Tobruk. Soviet intervention, and the widespread use of chemical weapons, had changed all that. Now, instead of driving west to complete the campaign, Egyptian forces were retreating back to Egypt in an effort to avoid encirclement and destruction.
Hafez could hear the distant rumble of artillery to the west. The 5th Armored Division was heavily engaged with Libyan forces coming out of Tobruk. Shortly after the chemical attacks the 5th Armored, which had escaped those attacks, assumed a hasty defensive posture east of Tobruk from Abiar el Amar to the Mediterranean. It did not, however, escape the Libyans' attention. Throughout the day it had beaten back numerically superior Libyan forces. Still, the Libyan attacks, though piecemeal and poorly coordinated, were persistent; eventually they would succeed in grinding down the 5th Armored. Before that happened, the 22nd Division, and the 14th Armored coming up from the south, had to reach the coastal road and get back into Egypt. Only then would the 5th Armored Division be allowed to begin its own withdrawal. Whether or not that would happen depended on the skill of the soldiers of the 5th Armored, the speed of the Russian attack, and how much of a threat the Republican Brigade could make itself.
Since early morning Hafez's tank battalion, part of the Republican Brigade, had been on alert. They were under orders to counterattack to the southwest to blunt the Soviet drive once the lead Soviet units crossed the Al Jagbub-Tobruk road. In the event the Libyans managed to break through the 5th Armored Division before the Russians reached the Al Jagbub-Tobruk road, the Republican Brigade would counterattack to the west and cover the withdrawal of the 5th Armored. The Brigade, consisting of three tank, one mechanized, and one artillery battalion, stood ready for either possibility.
Hafez's battalion would be the lead battalion for either option and was ready after six days of relative inactivity. Along with the rest of the Republican Brigade, it had followed the advance of the lead divisions along the coastal road. The Brigade had almost been committed on two occasions. The first was when the 22nd Division had difficulty destroying an enemy unit fighting a delaying action near Bir el Hariga on the second day. At the last minute the Libyans withdrew, allowing the 22nd to continue west. The second time was on the fourth day, when the same division failed to penetrate Libyan defense south of Gambut. Success in the south, however, by the 14th Armored Division, had caused the commander of the 1st Army to cancel the direct attack on Tobruk from the east. Instead, the focus of the attack, and hence the Republican Brigade, shifted to Al Adam.
The inactivity had been particularly hard on Hafez. Since the seventh of December he had been living in fear that his role in the assassination attempt would be discovered. Though he had not actually done anything to assist the assassins, he was guilty of treason. Simple association with the assassins and failure to inform his superiors was more than enough to earn him a death sentence and his family undying disgrace. The war had offered him an honorable means to purge himself of his guilt. Death in battle would bring an end to his life of fear and cleanse his soul. But his unit's relegation to reserve status almost robbed him of his chance. When the final attack on Tobruk was being prepared with no active role for his unit, Hafez had been gripped with a despondency that had almost paralyzed him.
The intervention by the Russians, therefore, as terrible as it was for his country, was greeted by Hafez as a salvation. Not only would he be afforded an opportunity to atone for his sins; he would be able to do so in a spectacular manner — in a manner befitting a soldier.
Slowly Captain Bob Mennzinger walked around his helicopter. His pilot followed him, calling off items from a check list for Mennzinger to inspect. Most of the items were routine — normal checks done before every flight. Even the two 230-gallon external fuel tanks were nothing big. They had, after all, flown the Atlantic using them.
The weapons load for that night, however, was not normal. On the outer-wing storage pylons were two rocket pods. Each rocket pod was uploaded with nineteen 2.75-inch M-261 Hydra multipurpose submunition rockets. The Hydra rocket was new to the inventory and had great potential. Each Hydra carried six small bomblets, called submunitions. The rockets, able to release the bomblets at any range designated by the copilot-gunner, could be fired singly, in groups, or in a continuous volley. Regardless of how the target was engaged, the effects of the Hydra on lightly armored vehicles, to say nothing of soft-skinned vehicles and exposed troops, would be devastating. Other Apaches preparing for lift-off carried a different mix of stores. Four were armed with Hellfire missiles, two with a mix of 2.75-inch M-261 Hydra MPSM rockets and Hellfire missiles, and four with M-255 2.75-inch flechette rockets. All ten carried their combat load of twelve hundred 30mm cannon rounds.