Just before they reached the elevator shafts, Ilvanich stopped short. To his front, rock, shattered concrete, and debris formed a wall that blocked access and brought their search to an abrupt halt. As he studied the rubble before him, Ilvanich hoped that it would seal the further escape of radiation from the storage chambers below. If nothing else, he thought, this brought their search to an end.
Ilvanich was just about to announce his intention to turn around when the beam of his flashlight fell upon one body partially buried in the rubble. With the uniform ripped away and burned, there was no way of telling which side he had belonged to. Not that it mattered. What struck Ilvanich was the expression on the face, a face that seemed to be looking right at him. Most of the skin and muscle on the face was peeled away by the force of the explosion and the fireball. What struck Ilvanich, as he stood there unable to turn away from the mangled body, was the skeletal grin that stared back at him. It was to Ilvanich as if the corpse was laughing at him, a laughter he could almost hear ringing in his ears. Slowly, uncontrollably, Ilvanich's hand began to tremble as he suddenly imagined that the corpse was laughing at him and everyone who had survived. The corpse was laughing at them because they were alive and had not yet seen the end of their suffering.
Only with the greatest of efforts did Ilvanich manage to tear himself away from his dead tormentor. Pivoting, he began to move back toward the entrance of the tunnel, brushing Rasper with his shoulder and blurting as he did so, "We have gone far enough."
Rasper, his eyes glued to the radiacmeter in an effort to avoid seeing the bodies that littered the floor of the tunnel and assembly area, said nothing as he turned and followed Ilvanich. He was sorry that he had not listened to the Russian. He was sorry that he had insisted on coming in the tunnel. Not in his most tortured nightmares had he imagined anything could be like this. Such thoughts soon gave way as he struggled to hold down the contents of his stomach that the bile in his throat told him was coming.
After shaking Ilvanich, Fitzhugh finally got a response. Slowly Ilvanich turned his head and faced the young lieutenant.
"Sir, the company is ready to move."
Ilvanich blinked, then nodded. "Fine, fine." He looked over Fitzhugh's shoulder to where two men were helping Rasper. "Is the sergeant all right?"
Fitzhugh looked over his shoulder, then back to Ilvanich. "I don't know. Did you suck down that many rads that fast?"
"No, that is not radiation sickness. It is sickness of the heart."
There was a pause while Ilvanich looked toward the tunnel entrance. "If, my young friend, we could take the leaders of your country and mine, hand in hand with the leaders of the Ukraine, for a walk down that tunnel, we would have no more talk of wars."
Fitzhugh looked into the dark, gaping entrance of the tunnel, wondering what could possibly turn two veteran soldiers like Ilvanich and Rasper into emotional basket cases. Whatever it was, it was better that he didn't know.
Pushing thoughts of the tunnel aside, Ilvanich forced himself to turn his attention to the current situation they faced. "You said the company is ready to move?"
"Yes, sir. We were just waiting for your return."
Ilvanich pushed himself away from the wall. When he had his balance, he looked at Fitzhugh. "Good, good. Now get the company moving. I will be along in a minute."
Fitzhugh saluted, turned, and walked away, passing the word for the 1st Platoon to mount up and move out. When he was gone, Ilvanich looked back into the tunnel one more time before he shook his head, then walked over to Rasper to see if he was ready to go.
The first volley of 152mm rounds impacted to the rear of Ellerbee's platoon, just short of the roadblock next to a farmhouse being manned by Second Lieutenant Matto's engineers. Like a great trigger, those eighteen artillery rounds catapulted hundreds of soldiers, both American and Ukrainian, who were spread out over an area that encompassed a couple hundred square kilometers, into action.
On C60, Kozak automatically turned to her rear, looking to see where the rounds impacted, before dropping into the turret. Wolf, without needing to be told, yelled to Tish to crank up the engine. Tish, like Wolf, didn't need to be told either. Her finger was already on the starter when Wolf yelled. Paden's eyes popped open as if he had been hit by an electrical shock. In a single glance he checked the frequency settings on both the receiver-transmitter and the auxiliary receiver to ensure that they were set on the correct radio nets. Then, knowing that Tish would be starting the Bradley, he reached up and turned the radios off until after the engine turned over.
When she heard the sound of the radio click back on over her earphones, Kozak waited a second before she pushed the push-to-talk lever on the side of her helmet with her thumb. Listening for the beep that told her the radio was in the secure mode, Kozak notified battalion that they were receiving artillery fire on the tank platoon's position.
Even before Kozak began to transmit her initial report, Sal Salatinni knew the Ukrainian barrage had commenced as the Firefinder radars lit up the 1st Brigade's TACFIRE net with the information that the rocket launchers designated for counter-battery fire would need. Since the mission was already planned for, there was no need for anyone in the division artillery chain of command or at the 1st Brigade to intervene. Salatinni sat in his command post carrier where he monitored the process, yelling out to Cerro that the show was about to begin as he waited for the rocket launchers to acknowledge receipt of mission and confirmation that they had fired.
Ten kilometers from the brigade command post and twenty kilometers behind Kozak's position, the three-man crew of each of the rocket launchers was alerted that they had an incoming mission. Huddled in the armored cab of their launchers, the MLRS crews watched and responded as their computer display took them through the launch sequence. The TACFIRE computer at the field artillery battalion to which the MLRSs were attached assigned each of the three rocket launchers a separate target based on the known location of the rocket launchers and the target locations identified by the Firefinder's radar and computer. When the rocket launcher's computer finished receiving the data and was ready, it cued the crew to initiate the firing sequence.
Outside the rocket launcher there was no sign of human life, no indication that men were involved in the killing drill that was taking place. Like a great robot, the boxlike rocket pod swung about, aiming its twelve missiles toward the Ukrainian artillery batteries currently engaged in their own killing drill thirty kilometers away. When the computer sensed that the rocket pod was locked onto the proper elevation and azimuth, it gave the crew of the rocket launcher a green ready-to-fire light. A simple flick of a switch lit up the night sky as a ripple of twelve rockets issued forth out of each pod and streaked south toward their designated targets. No sooner had the last rocket left the launch pod, than the pod was returned to the travel position and the MLRS moved out, headed for a new spot where it would reload and await its next mission.
To the south, no one in Kozak's company saw or heard the rockets pass overhead. Kozak's people were too involved in preparing to receive the attack that the Ukrainian artillery had announced. Nor did the Ukrainian assault elements and their supporting tanks see or hear the incoming American rockets. The attention of the men making the assault or supporting it was riveted to their immediate front, looking for targets across the river or at the hundred or so meters of open ground between their jump-off points at the river's edge. The rockets, while they would influence their fight, belonged to a separate battle, an artillery duel that the Ukrainians lost before they even realized that it had been initiated.