Pretty good for a tiny band of patriots …
The patter of rain on his flight helmet was being displaced by the roar of approaching tanks and the chatter of machine guns. Palcikas recognized the sounds: the T-72 main battle tank had that characteristic high-pitched squeal when the turret was traversed, no matter how well you tried to keep the bearings lubricated, and its V-12 diesel engine always sounded like the wheezing of an old man. Palcikas peeked over his cover of boulders. My God, he thought, there were at least four of them, all less than two hundred meters away — he was close enough to see the red-and-green Byelorussian flag flying on the leader. Some infantrymen were following along behind the tanks, shooting into the hills. The tanks had to stop in a few meters, Palcikas thought, so the infantry would be exposed soon. He could pin down the infantry with his AK-47 until his ammunition ran out or until the main gun of one of those tanks blasted him out of his rock hiding place — no way in hell was he going to be captured alive by the damned White Russians …
The main gun on one of the T-72s fired, the blast dislodging rocks and dirt around Palcikas and causing him to scream aloud in pain. The sheer thunder of that blast numbed his entire body. He barely heard the scream of compressed air as the shell flew through space, then a flash of light and a huge secondary explosion from somewhere above him — the gun had found a truck or had finally destroyed his disabled Mil-8 helicopter …
… But the scream of the artillery shell seemed to continue, except it was no longer flying over his head toward the Highlands, but from the east toward the column of Byelorussian tanks. Palcikas saw nothing, only heard the strange screaming noise — then suddenly two of the T-72s right in front of him exploded in huge balls of fire. The massive explosions threw the other two tanks over onto their turrets and they began rolling down the canyon toward the highway, finally coming to rest on their blackened sides.
It took several minutes for Palcikas’ head to clear after the maelstrom of fire before he could pull himself back up onto the rocks protecting him and look out over the Minsk-Vilnius Highway below.
What he saw was incredible. It seemed as if every armored vehicle in the Byelorussian Army’s column was on fire.
It was like some eerie holiday lantern chain, stretching for thousands of meters. He saw rivers of burning fuel spilling out onto the highway, roasting the bodies of thousands of soldiers that were strewn about the roadside like so many stones. Ammunition was cooking off everywhere, and he had to take cover behind his rocks again to protect himself.
He was sitting deep in the crevasse, listening to bullets pinging off the rocks around him, when he looked up into the gray night sky and saw an incredible sight — a massive aircraft with huge wings roared barely a hundred meters overhead — it seemed as if it was close enough to touch, so low that he thought it was going to land on the highway.
It was obviously an American B-52.
It had released some kind of anti-armor mines or bomblets that had decimated the Byelorussian armored column in one swift stroke.
It was not until then that General Palcikas understood the meaning of the message he had received from Lithuanian President Kapocius, just before he left Vilnius on his way east to ambush the Byelorussian Army — Kapocius had told him that he had received word from an unnamed foreign source that did not want to be identified. It said that if Palcikas could attack and destroy the air-defense units belonging to the invading Byelorussian Home Brigade forces, help would arrive. Palcikas thought it would be help from Poland, or even Russia or the rest of the Commonwealth — he never expected help to come from the United States of America.
The sounds of explosion and popping ammunition subsided, to be replaced a few minutes later by the sounds of boots on rocks.
“General Palcikas!” someone shouted. “General! Where are you?” There was a slight pause; then the voice shouted, “I wish the punishment, so that I may prove myself worthy!”
Palcikas smiled, filled his lungs with damp, cold air, and shouted, “To receive the power!” It was his officers’ personal code-phrase, borrowed from their knighthood ceremony. Soon he was being helped out of the crevasse, and medics were tending to his wounded leg.
“How bad is it?” Palcikas asked.
Captain Degutis, Palcikas’ headquarters intelligence staff officer recently promoted from lieutenant after the Fisikous raid, held a poncho over Palcikas’ face to keep the rain out. “Your leg is in bad shape, sir, but I think you’ll be—”
“Not my leg, damn you, Pauli. The brigade. Do you have a report?”
“Sorry, sir. The brigade has formed up at rendezvous point Whirlwind and is proceeding back to Vilnius at best speed. We lost approximately three hundred personnel in the battle, mostly from First Battalion when the Byelorussian tanks in the front of the column turned and attacked. Second and Third battalions came out very well — there was enough confusion in the rear to allow Third Battalion to escape. Your helicopter and one Defender were lost, along with four tanks and eleven APCs and trucks. Would you like an estimate on Byelorussian casualties and an estimate of the Home Brigade’s offensive capability, sir?”
Palcikas felt a needle prick in his left gluteus, and he knew that the medics had drugged him so they could start removing pieces of bullets from his leg. “Only… if you can make it… quick, Captain,” Palcikas gasped through the pain as he felt forceps dig deeply into his left thigh and blood spill down his leg.
“Yes, sir, it’ll be quick,” Degutis said with a smile. “Home Brigade losses: one hundred percent, Unit offensive capability: zero percent.”
“I’ve got sensor contact on the return,” Patrick McLanahan reported. The Fisikous-170 Tuman stealth bomber’s telescopic forward-looking infrared scanner, slaved to the attack radar, had picked up a column of tanks moving northeastward near the small town of Kazly Ruda, just twenty nautical miles from Lithuania’s second-largest city of Kaunas. McLanahan used a tracking handle, very similar to the old ASQ-38 radar tracking handle in the B-52G bomber, to center a set of crosshairs on the lead tank, then pressed a trigger. A white box centered itself around the tank. “Locked on, showing one-fifty to go.” He turned to General Ormack in the pilot’s seat. “Any luck over there, John?”
“No, damn this thing,” Ormack cursed. He was struggling with the electric trim button on the bomber, which kept on driving itself first to the full nose-down, then suddenly to the full nose-up position. “Dave, dammit, are you sure I can’t disconnect the flight-control system?”
“Not until after weapon release, sir,” David Luger replied, sitting in the instructor pilot’s seat between Ormack and McLanahan. “Flight control system needs to be in ACTIVE if it’s not faulted.”
“Well, can’t you pull a circuit breaker or something?”
“I tried that,” Luger said. He was dressed in no less than two flight suits and a thick, winter-weight leather flying jacket to keep warm-his emaciated body simply could not generate enough heat. “Something’s still energizing the trim drive system. Try the secondary hydraulic-system switch again.”