"Damned smoke!" Sergetov swore. The wind blew it back in their faces, and they couldn't tell what was going on. The battle was now in the hands of captains, lieutenants, and sergeants. All they could see was the orange fireballs of exploding vehicles, and there was no way to know whose they were. The colonel in command had his radio headset on and was barking orders to his subunit commanders.
Mackall was in his fast alternate position in less than a minute. This one had been dug parallel to the ridgeline, and his massive turret trained to the left. He could see the infantry now, dismounted and running ahead of their assault carriers. Allied artillery, both German and American, ripped through their ranks, but not quickly enough.
"Target-tank with an antenna, just coming out of the treeline."
"Got 'em!" the gunner answered. He saw a Russian T-80 main battle tank with a large radio antenna projecting from the turret. That would be a company commander-maybe a battalion commander. He fired.
The Russian tank wheeled just as the shot left the muzzle. Mackall watched the tracer barely miss his engine compartment.
"Gimme a HEAT round!'' the gunner shouted over the intercom.
"Ready!"
"Turn back, you mother-"
The Russian tank was driven by an experienced sergeant who zigzagged his way across the valley floor. He jinked every five seconds, and now brought his tank left again-
The gunner squeezed off his round. The tank jumped at the recoil and the spent round clanged off the turret's rear wall. Already the closed tank hull stank of the ammonia-based propellant.
"Hit! Nice shot, Woody!"
The shell hit the Russian between the last pair of road wheels and wrecked the tank's diesel engine. In a moment the crew began to bail out, "escaping" into an environment alive with shell fragments.
Mackall ordered his driver to move again. By the time they were in their next firing position, the Russians were less than five hundred meters away. They fired two more shots, killing an infantry carrier and knocking the tread off a tank.
"Buffalo, this is Six, begin moving to Bravo Line-execute."
As platoon leader, Mackall was the last to leave. He saw both of his companion tanks rolling down the open reverse slope of the hill. The infantry was moving also, into their armored carriers, or just running. "Friendly" artillery blanketed the ridgeline with high explosives and smoke to mask their withdrawal. On command, the tank leaped forward, accelerating to thirty miles per hour and racing to the next defense line before the Russians could occupy the ridge they were leaving behind. Artillery fire was all over them, exploding a pair of German personnel carriers.
"Zulu, Zulu, Zulu!"
"Get me a vehicle!" Alekseyev ordered.
"I cannot permit this. I cannot let a general-"
"Get me a damned vehicle! I must observe this," Alekseyev repeated.
A minute later, he and Sergetov joined the colonel in a BMP armored command vehicle that raced to the position the NATO troops had just vacated. They found a hole that had sheltered two men-until a rocket had landed a meter away.
"My God, we've lost twenty tanks here!" Sergetov said, looking back.
"Down!" The colonel pushed both men into the bloody hole. A storm of NATO shells landed on the ridge.
"There's a Gatling gun!'' the gunner said. A Russian antiaircraft gun carrier came over the ridge. A moment later a HEAT round exploded it like a plastic toy. His next target was a Russian tank coming down the hill they'd just left.
"Heads up, friendly air coming in!" Mackall cringed, hoping the pilot could tell the sheep from the goats.
Alekseyev watched the twin-engine fighter swoop straight down the valley. Its nose disappeared in a mass of flame as the pilot fired his antitank cannon. Four tanks exploded before his eyes as the Thunderbolt appeared to stagger in midair, then turned west, a missile chasing after him. The SA-7 fell short.
"Me Devil's Cross?" he asked. The colonel nodded in reply, and Alekseyev realized where the name had come from. From an angle, the American fighter did look like the stylized Russian Orthodox crucifix.
"I just called up the reserve regiment. We may have them on the run," the colonel said.
This, Sergetov thought incredulously to himself, is a successful attack?
Mackall watched a pair of antitank missiles reach out into the Russian lines. One miss, one kill. More smoke came in from both sides as the NATO troops fell back another five hundred meters. The village they were defending was now in sight. The sergeant had counted a total of five kills to his tank. He hadn't been hit yet, but that wouldn't last. The friendly artillery was really in the fight now. The Russian infantry was down to half the strength he'd first seen, and their tracked vehicles were laying back, trying to engage the NATO positions with their own missiles. Things looked to be going reasonably well when the third regiment appeared.
Fifty tanks came over the hill in front of him. An A-10 swept across the line and killed a pair, then was blotted out of the sky by a SAM. The burning wreckage fell three hundred yards in front of him.
"Target tank, one o'clock. Shoot!" The Abrams rocked backward with yet another shot. "Hit."
"Warning, warning," called the troop commander. "Enemy choppers approaching from the north."
Ten Mi-24 Hinds arrived late, but they made up for it by killing a pair of tanks in less than a minute. German Phantom jets then appeared, engaging, them with air-to-air missiles and cannon in a wild melee that suddenly included surface-to-air missiles also. The sky was crisscrossed with smoke trails, and suddenly there were no aircraft in view.
"It's bogging down," Alekseyev said. He'd just learned one important lesson: attack helicopters cannot hope to survive in the face of enemy fighters. Just when he thought the Mi-24s would make a decisive difference, they'd been forced away by the appearance of the German fighters. Artillery support was slacking off. The NATO gunners were counterbatterying the Soviet guns expertly, helped by ground-attack fighters. He had to get more front-line air support.
"The hell it is!" the colonel answered. He radioed new orders to the battalions on his left flank.
"Looks like a command vehicle at ten o'clock, on the ridgeline, can you reach it?"
"Long shot, I-"
Whang! A shot glanced off the turret's face.
"Tank, three o'clock, close in-"
The gunner turned his yoke controls and nothing happened. Immediately he reached for the manual traverse. Mackall engaged the target with his machine gun, bouncing bullets off the advancing T-80 that had come out of nowhere. The gunner cranked frantically at the handle as another round crashed into their armor. The driver aided him, turning the vehicle and praying that they could return the fire.
The computer was out, damaged by the shock of the first hit. The T-80 was less than a thousand meters away when the gunner settled on it. He fired a HEAT round, and it missed. The loader slammed another home in the breech. The gunner worked his controls and fired again. Hit.
"There's more behind that one," the gunner warned.
"Buffalo Six, this is three-one, bad guys coming in from our flank. We need help here," Mackall called; then to the driver: "Left track and back up fast!"
The driver needed no encouragement. He cringed, looking out his tiny viewing prisms, and rocked the throttle handle all the way back. The tank raced backward and left as the gunner tried to lock onto another target-but the automatic stabilization was also out. They had to sit still to fire accurately, and it was death to sit still.