‘He thinks he’s Terry and the Pirates,’ said Podini. ‘Says gung-ho and all that kind of crap.’ Podini cleared his throat and spat into the darkness. ‘Remember the Alamo!’
‘He said that?’
Podini chuckled. ‘Well, not exactly. But he sure meant to.’
‘He’s hoping it’s going on tape back at HQ, so’s maybe he’ll get a field promotion and a Distinguished Service Cross… it’s his fuckin’ bullshit. He should have stayed with the Iron Brigade. I got my own plans.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like staying alive. If the captain wants to play Buck Rogers, he can do it on his lonesome. I don’t aim to buy the farm for someone else’s benefit.’
Browning shivered, pulled his collar closer to his neck and wiped a drop of moisture from his nose with the back of his gloved hand. He stamped his feet a few times, wondered why the hell he was standing out in the chill air, and clambered back up into the turret. He could smell the scent of sweat and fuel oil drifting up from the fighting compartment and decided to keep his head and shoulders outside for a few more minutes. He leant against the metalwork, it was ice-cold; below him the hull of Utah was white-dusted with hoar frost. To the north and west the stars were still bright in a dark sky.
There was soft music, just audible outside the tank. It came from the driving compartment where Mike Adams was relaxing, listening to a tape recorder. Adams’ driving compartment was as customized as the US army would permit… which was only a little. Given a free hand, he would have filled it with gadgets, stereo, additional lighting, a coffee machine, mirrors. As it was, he managed to get away with an imitation leopard-skin seat cover, and his Japanese tape recorder. An official request to be allowed to fit a cigar-lighter had been met with a horrified refusal from the captain. Not only was smoking forbidden inside a tank because of fuel fumes but, in any case, Adams was informed, a cigar-lighter was aesthetically out of place in an American fighting vehicle. Adams had retaliated by bribing a German waiter to post ‘No Smoking’ notices at various strategic places throughout the officers’ mess; they had spent an uncomfortable week smoking outside on its terraces before they found it had nothing to do with their colonel. A New Yorker, from Winfield Junction, twenty- four year old Mike Adams looked on’ the XM1 tank, Utah, as the kind of supercharged super-rod he had always wanted as a kid.
Utah had lost her name. So far, no one other than Will Browning was aware of this. She had lost not only her name, but also the white stars on the front of her hull and turret sides, the ordinance numbers, and her red and white shields containing the rampant black horse insignia of the 11th Cavalry. Despite the fact that all of these items were revered by the captain, Master Sergeant Will Browning had painted them out with a can of matt camouflage green earlier that night. His action had been the result of something which had occurred to him in Vietnam. He had decided that distinctive markings gave a convenient aiming point to VC infantrymen with a missile launcher. As the international tension had escalated over the past days, the thought had reappeared in his mind. In war you had to expect to be a target, but there was no need to make it easy for the marksman. And if Will Browning could find any way of lessening the chances of having to survive two direct hits in one lifetime, he was going to make use of it… however small a protection it might give him, and to hell with the captain!
There was an observation helicopter somewhere towards the north, and Browning was attempting to pick it out against the sky. He could hear the steady thrashing of its rotors. It sounded like one of the West German Heeresflieger BO 105s, heavier than the US Bell. The BO 105, on patrol along the frontier, would probably be armed with anti-tank missiles.
Browning suddenly saw what he first thought was a shooting star; a bright trail of light above the distant woods. With a tightening of his stomach muscles he realized the meteorite was travelling the wrong way, from earth skywards! The trail of light was joined by others, soundless from this distance.
The throb of the helicopter’s rotors, now faint, was joined momentarily by a shrieking sound, followed almost instantaneously by a vivid white and orange explosion which balled out into the night as an expanding incandescent cloud, lighting the forest and open grassland beneath, and blinding Will Browning for a few seconds.
He felt tugging at his legs, and heard the anxious voice of Podini, Utah’s gunner. ‘What the hell was that?’
Before he could answer, the thunderous roar of the explosion reached the tank. He let his legs collapse, dropping into the interior and pulling the hatch closed above him. He could feel the heavy hull of the Abrams vibrating.
‘What…’ began Podini, again.
‘Get your eyes to the night sights, and keep them there.’ He was shouting. Hal Ginsborough the loader was somewhere in the darkness. ‘Gins, load APF and stand-by.’
‘There was a clank of metal as Ginsborough obeyed. ‘Loaded.’
Podini called desperately, ‘You want me to fire? I don’t see a target, I don’t see a target!’
‘For Christ’s sake don’t fire… just prepare for action.’
The hull of the tank was vibrating again, and the thunder in the distance was continuous. There was a crackling in Browning’s headphones. A voice, urgent. ‘November Squadron, this is Godfather, affirm radio contact. Over.’ There was interference on the wavelength — which Browning knew was jamming by some communications unit across the border. If it became too efficient then the short-range communication could be maintained by HF which was more difficult to block out, and the squadron had a wide choice of alternative wavelengths. There was a pause as the troop leaders made their answering calls, then the squadron captain again. ‘Hullo November we have Daisy May…’ Jesus! What a code name for full hostilities, thought Browning. ‘November… prepare for incoming…’
Communication was lost in a tumult of sound that swelled around the Abrams; the mingled screams and howls of rockets, the whistling roar of howitzer shells. Browning peered, startled, through his periscope lenses. The sky was criss-crossed now by hundreds of white trails of fire. The woods beyond the frontier were alight with countless explosions. Mistakenly, for a moment he thought the barrage was solely that of the NATO artillery to the rear, but then the ground heaved and rippled. A blue-orange flash erupted a few meters to the left of the tank, hurling earth, tree branches and shrapnel skywards.
Metal splinters shrieked from the Abrams’ hull.
FIVE
The first shells to touch NATO-defended soil were those of a battery of 152mm D-20s fired from eleven kilometers behind the East German frontier, the battery commander anticipating his orders by several seconds. His twenty guns began a steady rate of fire of four rounds a minute each. They were joined by several RM-70 missile batteries stationed beyond the second ridge of hills and closer to the border, their rockets launched in ‘ripple’ sequence from the forty muzzles on each vehicle. The intense barrage erupted along almost the entire east-west borders, from northern Germany to southern Austria, the town of Lübeck coming under an artillery blitzkrieg from the Soviet heavy 180mm S-23s with their rocket-assisted shells.
The NATO forces’ response was immediate. The previous days had not been wasted. Satellites, air reconnaissance, the intelligence units working in the East German territory, ground radar and the pre-laid electronic sensors, had provided a vast quantity of information on the positioning of Warsaw. Pact troops and equipment. The pilots of the NATO air forces had been briefed and, rebriefed many times during the past hours in anticipation of imminent conflict, the artillery brigades closest to the border already knew of any concentrations of armour or mechanized infantry.