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

  “Looks like they have engine trouble,” Waddingham said. “That’s why the arc light is set up. They’re trying to fix the issue.”

  Edge made a quick calculation. They were perhaps a hundred yards away from the vehicles. It was not an impossible shot with the M4, but the darkness made the task more difficult. But to creep within range of certain kills would mean crawling through another field of long grass – and every second would be a moment of high risk.

  “We’re moving in,” he decided, despite the danger. “I’m going to get close enough to take a shot. If that is a command vehicle, it means there must be a high-ranking officer somewhere nearby. I’m going to lay up in the field and wait for my chance. I want you to circle to the west and find an ambush point,” he indicated the dirt trail that ran towards the road. “Once I open fire, anyone and everyone within earshot is going to come running. Take out as many as you can. We’ll rendezvous back on the opposite side of the ridge where we intersected the fire trail.”

  Waddingham hesitated as though he wanted to ask questions, then decided simply to follow the plan. He nodded agreement.

  Edge had a final word of warning. “If I’m not back at the rendezvous point by three in the morning, move on without me. Link up with Kalina and the Captain, and make your way back to the Squadron.”

  *

  Major Konstantin Bondarchuk lit another cigarette and waited impatiently for the radio operator to relay his message. It was cramped inside the Russian R-145BM mobile command vehicle, with most of the available space dedicated to banks of radio communication equipment and a folding map table. Bondarchuk was a big bear of a man with a shock of white hair. He felt trapped in a steel coffin. All the hatches were open but still the air inside the vehicle was ripe with the stench of sweat and smoke.

  He sat drumming his fingers on the tabletop through thirty long seconds of static and then snarled at the radio man.

  “Damn it! Let me know when you send the message and have a reply from Shock Army Command.”

  He clambered out of the vehicle through a wide hatch in the hull and growled at the mechanic working on the engine.

  “Well?”

  “No success yet, Major,” the enlisted recruit said fretfully. “I suspect it might be a problem with the fuel lines.”

  “Fix it!” Bondarchuk snapped. Despite the day’s triumph against the American armored Stryker column he was in a foul mood. He had lost sixty-three men in the fighting, mainly to American canister and HEAT shells, with a further twenty-one men wounded. If the Americans returned in the morning, he would have less than a hundred soldiers left of his two-Company command to repel the next assault… and two T-90 tanks. They were the muscle of his defense; the iron fists that had smashed the American attack and tore it to pieces. The tanks were positioned hull down on either side of the road as it rose up through the saddle of the ridge, carefully concealed and well protected. Bondarchuk had chosen the sites personally.

  He crushed the cigarette out beneath his boot and strode to the nearest of the two Iveco LMV’s. Three junior officers were huddled around the 4WD vehicle, talking animatedly. They snapped to attention when the Major’s hulking frame emerged into the glaring light.

  “Casualty report?” Bondarchuk demanded.

  “Three more of the men who were injured in today’s fighting have since died, Major,” a pale-faced Lieutenant stammered.

  Bondarchuk grunted. Injured or dead – it mattered little to him. If the wounded men could not fight tomorrow, they might as well be dead, he reasoned. Any man who could not raise a weapon was a useless drain on resources.

  “And the Americans?”

  “We’re waiting for satellite images, Major,” A Captain answered. “But our best intelligence estimate suggests they have retreated to the west.”

  Bondarchuk shook his great shaggy head and eyed the officer contemptuously. “They might have withdrawn, but retreat? No,” he spoke to the officer the way a parent speaks to a small, slow-witted child. “Mark my words. They will be back, and when they return we must be ready to give them another bloody nose.”

  *

  Edge lay in the tall grass in the middle of the open field, a scant thirty yards from the Russian armored command vehicle. He was lathered in sweat, every nerve drawn tight. His heart thumped so loudly in his chest that he was sure the knot of Russian soldiers backlit by the arc lamp must surely hear him. He felt horribly exposed and vulnerable. He knew he would have just one fleeting opportunity for revenge before all hell broke loose.

  He took careful aim, drew a breath and began to exhale as he squeezed the trigger. The M4 roared in his hands.

  The hail of close-range gunfire cut down the four Russian officers and dashed their blood against the side of the Iveco, painting the vehicle in ghastly lurid splatters.

  The tall Major was the first to die. He clutched at his stomach, his expression startled. Blood seeped from between his fingers and then he slowly fell forward like a toppled tree. The knot of three junior officers were cut down in the swathe of gunfire. The impact flung them back against the vehicle and the flaming roar of the M4 drowned out their agonized cries as they died. One of the men was struck in the throat as he turned towards the gunfire. His mouth sagged open and a gush of blood fountained down the front of his tunic. He was dead before he hit the dirt.

  Fighting his instinct to flee, Edge pounced to his feet and dashed forward. He crouched over the four Russian bodies for several seconds, and when he came to his feet again, he had grenades in his hands. He dropped one down through the open hatch of the command vehicle and lobbed the second into the open door of an Iveco. The vehicles erupted in a great booming thunder of fire and smoke. He shot the startled mechanic in the chest and then killed two more Russians who came running out of the shadows. They might have been mechanics or perhaps drivers; Edge had no way of telling. He cut them down with a burst of chattering gunfire.

  Edge turned and fled. He was halfway back to the safety of the tree line before Vince Waddingham suddenly opened fire. The sound of the M4 was like the noise of a great sheet of canvas being torn apart. Edge saw a flickering tongue of flame from the corner of his eye about a hundred yards to the west. Edge ran on, lifting his legs high and pumping his arms to drive himself through the long grass until, at last, the dark fringe of woods enveloped him. He crashed through the undergrowth and in his haste he cannoned off a tree trunk then trapped his foot in a gnarled twist of roots. He bounced to his feet and put himself to the hilly slope. The sound of two more far-away explosions that echoed across the night told him Vince Waddingham was still killing Russians.

  *

  “Not yet,” Captain Walker said. His voice was weak but his tone stubborn. “We’ll wait until noon. By then we will know for sure.”

  Kalina knelt over the Captain and shook her head, but she did not protest. Walker’s face was pale, his lips bloodless. His eyes had sunk into their sockets and the flesh across his cheeks was drawn so tightly that he looked gaunt and feverish. He lay stretched out beside the riverbank, beneath the branches of a shady tree. Kalina had stripped him to the waist and used his jacket as a makeshift pillow. The flesh around the bullet hole in the Captain’s shoulder was livid red and swollen – but no longer bleeding.

  They had heard the far-off chatter of gunfire during the night and the echo of several explosions. Since then, the two soldiers who accompanied them had stood a constant vigil by the riverbank. Now the sun was rising on a new day.

  “If you do not soon get medical attention you will die,” Kalina said.

  “A few more hours won’t make a difference,” Captain Walker countered and then compromised when he saw the look on the Polish woman’s face. She had a fiery temper and little respect for rank. “Two more hours,” he bargained. “If Edge and Waddingham haven’t returned by then, we’ll make our way back to the Squadron.”

  She nodded curt agreement and got to her feet. They hadn’t eaten since the previous day and they were down
to their last canteen of water. Kalina went to the river and stared west. The sun was rising from over her shoulder, painting the smooth water’s surface with reflected shades of gold and copper, and casting the land in long morning shadow. They were, all of them, covered from head to toe in filth and grime and mud. She crouched ankle deep in the water and saw her own reflection mirrored. The face that stared back was haggard with exhaustion and fatigue. She scooped up a handful of water and began to wash the mud from her face so that it was several seconds before she became aware of the sudden electricity of excitement that charged the atmosphere. She rose to her feet and followed the outstretched pointing arm of one of the soldiers. He was staring up river where two dark blobs of shape bobbed and dipped.

  Edge and Waddingham had found them.

  The two men had been carried almost six miles downstream. As the current swept them around the river’s bend, they had seen small figures by the water’s edge in the distance. Edge felt a rush of relief and began kicking out towards the bank. Kalina waded out into the water to meet them, keeping her voice quiet.

  “You can stand up,” she said. “The water is shallow.”

  Edge planted his feet in the muddy riverbed and stood. The water in the middle of the river only reached to his waist. He and Waddingham waded ashore, streaming mud and slime. They collapsed in the long grass, their chests heaving, their arms aching.

  They lay like that for several minutes, overcome with the heavy weight of their fatigue. Then Edge sat up with a sudden start.

  “The river,” he said as the realization dawned on him. “Christ! You’ve discovered a natural fording point. Do you realize what this means?”

  Suddenly the crushing exhaustion lifted from him like a cast off cloak, and he was eager to be on his way. The two soldiers fashioned a crude stretcher for the Captain using long tree branches and tied tunic jackets. Ten minutes later they waded across the Sypitki and onto the far bank.

  Edge was in a hurry to rejoin the Cavalry.

  The battle to win the bridge was not over.

  Chapter 7:

  Several of the Strykers had flat tires. Many were scarred, dented and blood-splattered, their steel hulls gouged by ricocheting machine gun fire. The side of one vehicle had been scorched black from its proximity to a mortar blast and one of its wheels was buckled.

  The forest was a hive of subdued activity; soldiers bustled between maintenance and repair tasks with bleak, sullen expressions. Men growled irritably at each other under a black pall of gloom that hung over the forest, thick as smoke.

  Edge stood under the shade of a tree and watched a vehicle’s crew replenish the autoloader of an M1128 with fresh shrapnel canisters and HEAT rounds. He felt exhausted; the kind of bone-weary fatigue that not even a shower and a meal were able to erase.

  “HEAT, carousel one,” the vehicle’s driver carried a round from a parked M977 HEMTT ammo truck and loaded it through the open rear doors of the Stryker.

  “HEAT, carousel one,” the vehicle’s gunner, stationed inside the vehicle, repeated the information as he inputted the data into the vehicle’s fire control computer.

  “Cannister, carousel two,” the driver leaned through the open doors with another round. As he straightened, he saw Edge watching him. The Stryker’s driver was a fresh-faced young man with haunted eyes behind steel-rimmed glasses. In the background an M1078 LMTV food truck bounced and revved loudly along a makeshift dirt trail, escorted by a Humvee and a Stryker.

  “Was it your first time in action?” Edge asked quietly.

  The young man nodded. His face was deathly pale.

  “It gets better,” Edge reassured him. It sounded unconvincing, even to Edge, and the young trooper did not reply. He just pushed his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose with his fingertip and strode back to the ammunition truck for another shrapnel canister. Edge turned away to watch the arrival of a fuel truck.

  A voice called out to him, loud and insistent, and a Lieutenant, dressed in a rumpled sweat-stained uniform, beckoned to Edge. “Sergeant?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Colonel Sutcliffe will meet you now in the TOC.” The Lieutenant tried to soften the order with an engaging smile. He looked Edge up and down and grimaced as though his appearance was cringeworthy. “Do you want to change, or wash?”

  Edge tugged at the sleeves of his OCP top. “I have washed.”

  The Lieutenant’s smile did not falter. “Follow me. We don’t want to keep the Colonel waiting any longer than necessary.”

  They strode through the press of bustling activity, weaving between parked vehicles, stepping around mechanics and boxes of machine gun ammunition. The Lieutenant kept glancing over his shoulder to be sure Edge was on his heel. As they walked, he filled Edge in on the events following the decision to withdraw the Squadron from the bridge.

  “The Colonel was struck by shrapnel when the Su-25 attacked the column. Luckily it was only a flesh wound. The medics have patched him up but he’s like a bear with a sore head,” the Lieutenant warned. “You might need a whip and a chair…”

  “Have we called for air support, sir?” Edge kept pace with the Lieutenant.

  “Yes, but it’s not going to happen. Every air asset is being centered on the impending defense of Warsaw. I’m afraid we’re on our own.”

  They reached the clearing where the TOC stood. A Humvee was parked outside the main tent. A trooper knelt washing blood from the interior with a bucket of water and a brush. The Lieutenant stopped and turned back to Edge, pointing a warning with his finger. “I don’t know why, or what you’ve done, Sergeant, but the Polish Major wants your head served on a platter. He’s convinced you are to blame for the failed attack.”

  “Me?” Edge snarled.

  The Lieutenant nodded. “He’s been calling for your court-martial.”

  An armed sentry stood outside the tent. He stepped aside as Edge approached. The Lieutenant gave him a last pitying look. “Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

  Edge ducked under the flap of the tent to find himself face-to-face with Major Nowakowski. The Polish officer’s lips were curled into a snarl of distain. He glared at Edge, his eyes blazing.

  “Damn you! Your faulty scouting report of the terrain around the bridge has cost over a hundred lives and lead to the destruction of several armored vehicles. I am going to see that you pay for your dereliction of duty. I am going to see you broken, Sergeant Edge. Broken and driven from the Army!” Nowakowski’s face was a savage mask of anger. The NATO diplomat tried to tactfully intervene, plucking at the Polish Major’s elbow to draw him away. Nowakowski shook the tall German man’s hands off. “Your cowardice is unworthy of your nation’s fine military tradition – and it’s unworthy of my brave men and women who lost their lives due to your negligence!”

  Edge kept his composure, drawing his face rigid until the Squadron’s XO came forward from the far end of the tent. He held a copy of Edge’s report in his hand. Ignoring Nowakowski, the Executive Officer gestured for Edge to follow him. The blustering red-faced Polish Major followed unbidden, yapping at Edge’s heels until the knot of aides in the corner of the tent parted.

  Colonel Sutcliffe sat slumped in a chair, favoring his injured side. His chest had been swathed in fresh bandages. Edge stood to attention and saluted. Sutcliffe’s expression was unreadable.

  “Well, what do you have to say for yourself?” the Colonel asked. He lifted a copy of the hasty report Edge had written on his return from the river and looked at it.

  “There is a fordable crossing, sir. It’s about six clicks east of the bridge.”

  The Colonel flipped through the pages until he found Edge’s map. He narrowed his eyes, his expression calculating as he studied the terrain. Then he closed the file and sighed heavily. “You say you took out the Russian command element?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “On your own?”

  “No, sir. Scout Team Leader, Sergeant Waddingham, was with me.”

&nb
sp; The Colonel and his XO exchanged a pointed glance. “Do you know who you killed?”

  “A Russian Major, a Captain and two Lieutenant’s, sir. I also destroyed their command vehicle and a 4WD with grenades.”

  “Rubbish!” Major Nowakowski interrupted. His voice thrust like a cold steel blade. He too had read Edge’s report. Now he pushed his way into the knot of men around the Colonel and his voice was loud with oily triumph. “If your report is accurate, Sergeant, then how could you possibly know the ranks of the men you claim to have shot? You said yourself that the action took place in the dark hours of early morning, and that the only light came from an arc lamp. You expect us to believe you could identify the ranks of the men you claim to have killed? They could have been cooks, or medical staff!”

  There was a long chill silence. The air crackled with the challenge. Without saying a word Edge reached into the pocket of his pants and threw a handful of epaulettes onto a table. There were four strips of camouflaged cloth, each one decorated with Russian ranking pips. The Squadron XO picked up one of the epaulettes. It was a patch of camouflaged fabric inset with a large metallic star.

  “After I killed the four officers, I went forward and took their epaulettes,” Edge explained. His voice was tight with forced restraint so that he seemed to speak through clenched teeth.

  Colonel Sutcliffe let his gaze drift to the stunned expression on the Polish Officer’s face.