Charge To Battle: A World War 3 Techno-Thriller Action Event Read online

  CHARGE TO BATTLE

  Nick Ryan

  Copyright © 2021 Nicholas Ryan

  The right of Nicholas Ryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any other means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Dedication:

  This book is dedicated to my fiancé, Ebony; the love of my life and my best friend.

  -Nick.

  About the Series:

  The WW3 novels are a chillingly authentic collection of action-packed combat thrillers that envision a modern war where the world’s superpowers battle on land, air and sea using today’s military hardware.

  Each title is a 50,000-word stand-alone adventure that forms part of an ever-expanding series, with six new titles published every year.

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/NickRyanWW3

  Website: https://www.worldwar3timeline.com

  Other titles in the collection:

  ‘Charge to Battle’

  The Invasion of Poland

  World War III came suddenly and with fearful fury to Europe.

  The early days of the conflict were a nightmare of shock and horror. While a disbelieving world watched on, Russian tanks and troops stormed across the borders of the Baltic States in their thousands. Paratroopers and fighter bombers filled the sky. The sound of artillery shattered the brittle peace and rang like the drums of doom, lighting the horizon with flashes of fire and thunder.

  Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were overwhelmed, assaulted on every front by well coordinated Russian strikes. NATO troops spread thin across the Baltics were quickly crushed. Within days the invading Russian army was well-established and fortifying the ground it had won, while stubborn resistance fighters battled on to their inevitable bitter end.

  NATO reeled from the conflict, appalled and stunned. The combined Russian assault into the Baltics was so overpowering that for several days the allied armies were flung back in disarray. Diplomatic protests went unheard. The death toll reached tragic proportions. Towns and cities were reduced to rubble. Crumpled corpses lay bloated and broken amidst the ruins. The sky filled with a black pall of smoke that hung over all of Europe.

  Not content with the ground gains won during their brutal gromovaya voyna ‘thunder war’, the Russian generals cast their covetous gaze southwards to a narrow stretch of land between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and the border of Belarus.

  Punching through the Suwalki Gap with an iron fist of armor, beneath a swarm of fighter jets and a barrage of missiles, the Russian Army burst through NATO’s ragged border defenses and drove deep into Poland.

  One by one, towns in the northeast of the country fell to the relentless advance of steel and soldiers until the tip of the Russian spear was within one hundred kilometers of Warsaw.

  Defending their advance were a ramshackle assortment of hastily-assembled NATO troops, under-equipped and ill-prepared – while on the flanks of the spearhead allied units sought to contest the Russian advance through a series of lightning attacks and precision air strikes.

  It was a time of killing and chaos.

  It was a time of dark despair and fear.

  And it was a time when even the best and bravest of soldiers had to fight with savage desperation just for the right to survive…

  DRYGALY

  NORTHERN POLAND

  Chapter 1:

  The sound of clattering steel tracks mixed with the roar of diesel engines as the vehicles turned off Tadeusza Kosciuszki and then swung southeast. They were Polish Army BMP-1 armored troop carriers, their low-profile conical turrets turning slowly from side to side through an arc of forty-five degrees as they cruised along the tree-lined street. Their uniformed vehicle commanders stood waist-high behind the open hatch covers. Wearing headsets and helmets, they stared straight ahead, their expressions stern.

  The vehicles were streaked in swathes of green and brown camouflage, their grinding tracked wheels caked in clumps of dry mud. They left in their wake an oily black belch of diesel exhaust that hung in the still dawn air.

  Then came the tanks; Polish PT-91 Twardy main battle tanks – vast hulking steel beasts – with their long barrels swaddled in burlap strapping to disguise their shape, and the rumbling roar of their huge engines like the sound of a rolling thunder storm.

  Some of the villagers clapped. People leaned out of their top floor windows and cheered. Teenage girls gathered in groups on the street corner and smiled coquettishly at the handsome uniformed warriors as they passed – yet the stern-faced soldiers bid them no notice.

  The older village folk remained aloof. They had endured a lifetime of war and all its wickedness. Their experienced eyes watched the long column pass by in stony silence and they asked themselves why the armored procession was turning southeast towards Warsaw when the rampaging Russian Army was, at that moment, surging across the occupied Lithuanian border, a scant two hour drive north from where they stood.

  Finally, a procession of troop-carrying trucks rounded the village corner. They were boxy Star 1466 utilities, their cargo bodies covered by paint-streaked tarpaulins to conceal the infantry they carried. They rumbled through the intersection, driven nose-to-tail.

  Thirty minutes later the sky over the tiny village filled with more dreadful clattering noise. Now it was the deafening hammer of helicopter rotors beating the air that drew the villagers curiously back onto the narrow sidewalks.

  The helicopters were US Army CH-47 Chinooks; huge ungainly tandem-rotor workhorses that looked like prehistoric insects against the high clouds. The Chinooks appeared from behind a tall palisade of trees to the north, their noses angled down as they streaked across the sky in pursuit of the armored column.

  At the Bemowo Piskie Training Area a few miles north of Drygaly village, Sergeant First Class Tom Edge watched the last of the CH-47 Chinooks lift into the air and then he turned his attention back to the ACU jacket in his hands.

  There was a bullet hole in the sleeve. He thrust his finger through the ragged tear and shook his head in wonder. He tossed the jacket to his vehicle’s Scout Team Leader, Sergeant Waddingham (E-5), who held the garment up to the light to inspect it.

  “You gonna sew that up, or leave it as a memento?”

  Edge grunted. The bullet hole had missed the Velcro Cavalry SSI on his left sleeve by a couple of inches. He shrugged the jacket back on.

  “A bit to the left and you’d be washing out blood stains.”

  Edge nodded. The startled Russian soldier who had stumbled onto their OP had almost killed him, his AK-74M assault rifle swinging towards Edge’s center mass when Waddingham’s bullet had torn the top off the man’s head and sprayed the contents of his skull across the forest foliage.

  “Did I ever thank you for saving my ass?”

  “It was my pleasure.”

  Edge’s team had spent the last four days conducting roadside reconnaissance from a camouflaged observation post situated three miles inside the Russian O
blast of Kaliningrad. The OP had been located on road 27A-028, east of Zheleznodorozhny, set back from the verge amidst tall trees and dense bushland. Their task had been to monitor Russian military vehicle movements.

  The squad had left their Stryker M1126 and the vehicle’s crew on the Polish side of the border and trekked into enemy territory in the dead of night, surviving on MRE’s and broken sleep for ninety-six hours before a Russian army transport truck had stopped by the side of the road and a dozen armed soldiers had jumped down from the tarpaulin-covered cargo tray. The scouts in their hide had immediately tensed. Each man in the team had completed a sixteen-week OSUT training course at Fort Benning, and two of the squad had deployed to Camp Buehring in the middle of the Kuwaiti desert as non-combat support. But only Tom Edge and Vince Waddingham had gone to war in Afghanistan and experienced first-hand the horror and tension of combat.

  Edge ordered his men to frozen silence with curt hand signals as the Russians spread out and stepped away from the road. They had their weapons slung over their shoulders. Several of the Russians had cigarettes dangling from their mouths. Edge heard the banter of subdued voices. One of the soldiers walked towards the hide and unbuttoned his trousers.

  Edge took a deep breath. Straining his neck, he saw the Russian’s boots and the bottom of his fatigues, stained with mud and grass. Then the trickling sound of water and the acrid stench of warm urine filled the air. The Russian coughed up a wad of phlegm and spat it into the grass.

  None of the scouts dared blink. It seemed incredible that the Russian hadn’t noticed them amongst the night’s shadows within a few feet of where he splashed piss on his boots.

  The Russian buttoned himself up and was about to turn back to the truck. The rest of the soldiers were standing in a knot by the tailgate of the vehicle, lighting fresh cigarettes, their heads huddled close together, the planes of their faces lit into harsh angles by the small flaring firelights. Someone in the group called out a name and the soldier standing by the hide grunted.

  “Podozhdi minute,” the man growled. He started to fasten his belt and then stopped.

  The man frowned curiously, then leaned forward, reaching his hand down in the dark towards Tom Edge’s face.

  Edge blinked.

  The Russian’s expression transformed into a look of utter astonishment. His mouth fell open, and then he jumped back and began shouting.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. The Russian reached for his weapon. It slid off his shoulder and into his hands, but he fired too soon, spraying a burst of bullets that churned into the soft earth. Edge felt something snatch at his arm. He exploded from the shallow ditch and seized the Russian around the waist. The soldier fired again, staggering backwards. There was a strangled sound of fear choked in the back of his throat. He swung the barrel of his AK-74 back onto Edge just as Vince Waddingham opened fire, decapitating the Russian. He fell to the ground dead behind a soft cloud of pink mist.

  The night erupted into a flurry of chaos, flickering flame and bullets. The Russians fired blindly into the darkness. The Americans were calm and clinical. Within seconds the soldiers around the truck were dead.

  The Cavalry scouts ghosted away into the night, falling back in disciplined bounds. They reached the Polish border just as the dawn’s pale light rimmed the horizon. Now they were back at Bemowo Piskie, tired and exhausted – and puzzled because the vast NATO training facility was practically abandoned.

  Waddingham handed Edge a cigarette. He was an inch shorter and a year younger than Edge with a cheerful, ready smile and a dry sense of humor. He seemed to know the SFC’s mind. “Where do you reckon everyone has gone?”

  Edge shrugged his shoulders. “There’s a war on. Maybe everyone has mobilized towards the border.”

  “Maybe the Russians heard 2nd Platoon, ‘Outlaw Troop’ were in the area and they surrendered?” Waddingham offered a lopsided grin and a moment of levity.

  “I wish.”

  Vince Waddingham said no more. The subject was a delicate one. Tom Edge had been due to return stateside at the end of the month to take up a scout instructor’s role at Fort Benning, Georgia. His wife and infant daughter had packed up their home in Dallas and moved across the country to Columbus in anticipation of his return. Now – because of the war – those plans were on hold indefinitely. The cruel twist of fortune had soured Edge’s attitude and left him brooding and sullen. Waddingham knew his Platoon Sergeant was bitter, and that the sudden change of orders had put a strain on his marriage. The war with Russia had flung the world into peril, and no one was predicting a quick resolution, not even the politicians.

  A Humvee braked to a sudden halt close to the two soldiers, and a man emerged from the passenger door. He came across the empty parade ground, hobbling on crutches. He had his lower right leg encased in plaster and a grimace of discomfort wrenched across his face.

  Vince Waddingham did a double-take. “It’s the Lieutenant.”

  Edge looked up and blanched with surprise.

  Lieutenant ‘Brit’ Parker reached the two men and stopped, balancing awkwardly. His lips were pressed tightly together. The officer waved away the men’s salutes irritably.

  “Dammit! Dammit to hell,” the 2nd Platoon commander growled with feigned tetchiness, his accent unmistakably English. “Stop waving your bloody arms about and look at my ankle.”

  Parker had started his military career as a teenage recruit in the British Army, and served in the Middle East. On a training course in Florida he had met and eventually married an American woman. Two years later he joined the US Cavalry. The uniform had changed, but his peculiar accent and mannerisms remained.

  Edge looked dutifully. The plaster reached all the way up to the Lieutenant’s right knee.

  “What did you do?” Edge felt a sudden sensation of foreboding.

  “I didn’t do any-bloody-thing,” Parker protested, although the outburst lacked real venom. “It’s your fault, Edge!”

  “Mine sir?” Tom Edge asked dryly. He felt like the straight-man in a good-natured comedy act.

  “Of course,” Parker pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and worried his nose. “You insisted on volunteering for the OP job. I shouldn’t have listened to you. I should have led the patrol myself.”

  Edge nodded. Behind the Lieutenant’s shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Vince Waddingham grinning. “Well, if it makes you feel better, Lieutenant, we did manage to get ourselves shot at and almost killed.” To confirm the veracity of his report Edge poked his finger back through the bullet hole in his sleeve.

  “Well it doesn’t,” Parker frowned. But the twinkle of mischief went from his eyes and his tone became more fatalistic. He propped his back against the side of Edge’s mud-spattered Stryker and sighed, suddenly serious. “I fell in a hole on the gunnery range yesterday,” he confessed dully, and made a helpless gesture with his hands. “A little bloody ditch. The doctor says I snapped my ankle, and now they’re sending me home. I’m on the next helicopter to Warsaw and then back to the States.”

  “Oh,” Edge said. His weather-worn expression darkened. Lieutenant Parker saw the disappointment on the other man’s face. Edge’s last possible hope of being posted back to the States had just been broken on the wheel of more ill fortune.

  Parker looked genuinely apologetic. “Tom, I’m sorry,” it was the first time the Lieutenant had ever uttered Edge’s Christian name, “I really am.”

  Edge stirred himself and shrugged off his disappointment. He gave a sour laugh that lacked any trace of humor. “Well,” he grunted. “At least things can’t possibly get any worse.”

  Which was when a column of twelve Polish KTO Rosomak infantry fighting vehicles suddenly appeared.

  *

  Edge watched the Polish vehicles pull up in a ragged line across the concrete pad of the parade ground. Known more commonly as a Wolverine, the armored personnel carriers were 8x8 multi-role vehicles armed with a 30mm ATK Mk 44 chain gun mounted in the turret. The vehicle wa
s based on the Finnish Patria, and had earned a reputation across Europe for being solid and reliable. The Rosomak carried a crew of three and eight passengers – and had seen combat action in Afghanistan.

  Not that any of the vehicles parked on the parade ground had been in a battle, Edge guessed. They looked brand new. Their camouflage paint was unscratched, the huge tires still factory black and shiny.

  “There are a couple of small things I haven’t yet mentioned,” Lieutenant Parker grimaced. Edge was still frowning at the curious parade of Polish vehicles. Lieutenant Parker cleared his throat to get Edge’s attention.

  “You men have another mission. Something important has come up. It’s an opportunity to punch back hard at the Russians, and it can’t wait.”

  Edge shot Waddingham an ominous sideways glance. The two men had been firm friends ever since their time served in Afghanistan. They worked well together, and seemed to intuitively understand each other, even in the frantic chaos of a firefight. More than anything else they trusted each other’s ability as soldiers.

  Lieutenant Parker wobbled on his crutches and then his tone became serious. “First, you need to know that as of right now the Platoon is yours to command into the foreseeable future. You’re in charge. HQ is sending a squad leader for the fourth Stryker.”

  Edge said nothing. He wasn’t being promoted. He was just being expected to take on a Lieutenant’s work-load and responsibilities for the same meager salary. He pushed the disgruntled thought aside and gave a cold smile.

  Lieutenant Parker saw Edge’s expression and ploughed on manfully.

  “Second is the mission. You’re going back into harm’s way.”

  Edge and Waddingham exchanged another significant glance. The men in his squad were tired and exhausted. “When?”

  “Today.”

  “Where?”

  Lieutenant Parker pulled a map of northern Poland from his pocket and Vince Waddingham unfolded it flat on the rear ramp of the Stryker. Using the rubber-capped crutch tip as a crude pointer, Parker traced a grubby line from the Poland-Lithuania border to Warsaw.