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

  “Christ Almighty!” Vince Waddingham gasped.

  A moment of stunned silence seemed to envelope the battlefield. Then the second T-90 revealed its position, opening fire on a Wolverine that had slewed off the road to seek cover. The garish flash of the shot lit up the night and the Wolverine took a direct hit that ripped it apart. The Polish infantry began to falter, assailed by infantry and armor. Some of them edged back towards the trees. Others flung themselves down into abandoned enemy trenches.

  The Russian infantry recognized the sudden shift of momentum. They dashed forward, firing from the hip, and drove the Polish back. It looked like a scene from hell; flashes of muzzle flame stabbing into the dark, blooms of exploding light among the trees, and the moans of men dying, shrieking in agony. The militia began to retreat, going deep into the woods to escape the fury of the determined counter attack. Machine gun fire followed them, slashing through leaves and thudding into tree trunks.

  “They’ve broken,” Edge groaned as he watched the Polish flee, shattered and in disorder. The militia’s charge had failed, leaving the battlefield layered in dense veils of smoke. It twisted in tendrils through the trees and it cloaked the bodies that lay dead and dying. The stench of cordite hung in the air.

  Waddingham stared into the chaos, bereft and despairing – and saw something move in the distance. It came from the far side of the rise, moving through the smoke towards the ridge. He seized Edge’s arm and pointed.

  Edge held his breath.

  The American M1128 MGS burst through the haze a hundred yards shy of the crest and took aim on the rear of a T-90. The MGS carried the same 105mm cannon that had been fitted to the original version of the Abrams main battle tank. In a prolonged firefight with a T-90, the thin-skinned MGS was woefully under gunned – but against the Russian tank’s vulnerable rear armor from close range, the 105mm cannon could wreak havoc.

  The MGS lurched to a sudden halt in the middle of the road and opened fire. The recoil of the massive blast rocked the Stryker on its suspension so it swayed like a boat on a storm-tossed sea. The sabot round crashed into the rear of the T-90 and consumed the tank in a thick choking billow of smoke and dust. But when the haze began to clear, the Russian tank was undamaged, and its turret began turning to hunt the MGS. The Stryker fired a second round, and this time the sabot dart penetrated the Russian tank’s thin rear armor. The T-90 erupted in fire, thrown forward on its steel tracks by the impact so it seemed to lurch behind a wall of fierce flame. Two of the vehicle’s crew bailed out of the burning vehicle through the turret hatch but were gunned down by Polish infantry.

  The second T-90 reversed from behind its redoubt. The tank’s heavy steel tracks shredded the blacktop as the vast steel beast trundled onto the road. It fired on the MGS and obliterated the American Stryker, the wicked whip-crack of its main gun splitting the dark night apart.

  Edge sensed the assault hung precariously in the balance. “The other MGS needs to get into the fight before that T-90 can turn the tide of battle.”

  Vince Waddingham had a better idea.

  Chapter 10:

  “Follow me!” Waddingham turned and went down the slope of the knoll like a mountain goat. “We’ve got to get to one of the Wolverines.”

  Edge ran in Waddingham’s wake. His gear flapped and banged about his waist as he leaped a shell crater. He jinked left to avoid the corpse of a dead Russian soldier who had been decapitated during the American bombardment. Sweat streamed into his eyes, and the weight of his body armor felt like an anchor. His injured chest hurt fiercely with every step but he gritted his teeth and pushed himself on.

  “That one!” Waddingham pointed to the trees on the far side of the road where a Wolverine stood, half-concealed in the gloom. The vehicle had crashed nose-first into a Russian trench and been abandoned by its crew. It was canted drunkenly to one side, the rear doors of its empty troop compartment swinging open.

  “Come on!” Waddingham reached the verge of the road and ran, doubled over into a fusillade of crossfire. Bullets gouged at the blacktop around his feet, ricocheted off twisted steel wreckage and flew past his ears. Arcs of white tracer reached out for him, hunting his fleeting shape as he dashed into danger. Edge followed. The road was a charnel of bloodied bodies. Some lay on the blacktop as dark unmoving lumps, others screamed their pain.

  “Run!” Waddingham shouted. Once across the road he dropped to his knee and returned fire on the Russians. Edge ran as if the devil was on his heels. He angled his sprint across the open road, weaving between the carnage. A Polish militia officer standing waist-high in an abandoned trench mistook Edge for a Russian and fired at him in blind panic. Edge felt the bullet’s hot passage pass so close to his cheek that he staggered.

  “I’m American, you stupid bastard!” Edge bellowed the reproof.

  “Russians on the right!” Waddingham shouted the warning and Edge threw himself to the ground as Waddingham opened fire. Two Russians had come down from the crest of the road, hunting the Polish militia as they retreated. Waddingham shot them both. Edge saw the first Russian twist as three bullets struck him in the groin. It seemed, for an instant, that his legs buckled. Then he toppled forward into the dirt, screaming in pain. The second Russian tried to duck for cover as Waddingham swung his weapon onto him. The soldier threw himself to the right, towards a patch of dark shadow, but a hail of bullets caught him in mid-flight. He dropped to the dirt like a shot bird and didn’t move again.

  “Get up! Run!” Waddingham bellowed.

  Edge scrambled to his feet and ran. When he reached the gravel verge of the road he dived into cover like a runner sliding head-first into home plate.

  Another Russian loomed out of the flickering chaos, moving in short rushes. He had come from the fringe of trees, stalking prey. An explosion closer to the bridge lit Waddingham’s kneeling outline in silhouette. As the Russian took aim he was plucked violently backwards, his helmet spinning in the air. The sudden roar of gunfire from so close by startled Waddingham. He spun wide-eyed and saw Kalina in the shadows.

  “Get to the Wolverine!” Waddingham shouted again.

  Edge and Kalina ran. They reached the Polish APC and scrambled behind its huge steel bulk for shelter. Russian bullets zinged off the hull, leaving bright silver scars in the metalwork.

  “What are we doing here?” Edge gasped.

  Waddingham climbed into the vehicle’s darkened interior without answering. Kalina leaned her shoulder against the rear of the Wolverine and fired up the rise towards the enemy. The battlefield was enveloped in a moment of darkness and swirling smoke, but through the gloom shadows of running men ghosted.

  “What are we looking for?” Edge repeated.

  “This,” Waddingham smiled with triumph. He was holding the CLU of an American Javelin missile system, and at his feet were two disposable launch tube assemblies, the black cannisters hung from thick shoulder straps.

  The Javelin was a ‘fire-and-forget’ shoulder-launched anti-tank weapon that used an imaging infrared system to detect and lock onto enemy tanks at distances up to five thousand yards. Waddingham deftly began assembling the weapon’s components. Edge ducked his head around the side of the Wolverine. The last remaining T-90 was on the crest of the rise, backlit by the flickering orange glow of a far-off explosion. The Russian tank began reversing up the slope, its turret traversing onto a Polish Wolverine that had been abandoned in the middle of the road.

  “Kalina, find a radio! Any radio. You must get through to the TOC and tell command that the Russian mortars have been taken out. Tell them to attack across the bridge,” Edge said.

  Waddingham leaped down from the Wolverine and handed the spare missile tube to Edge. Kalina disappeared into the night. Waddingham crept to the corner of the Wolverine and settled the Javelin on his shoulder. He dropped to the ground, bracing his left leg forward, taking the weight of his body onto his right knee. He powered up the weapon and waited until he heard the battery hum to life.

&nbs
p; “Take the shot!” Edge croaked.

  Waddingham took a deep breath to settle himself. The night was ripped apart by the T-90’s cannon firing. The muzzle flash leaped from the barrel like the fiery breath of a dragon and the night glowed with lurid orange light. The abandoned Wolverine, just fifty yards away from their position, disintegrated in a fireball of metal and flames. Shrapnel flew through the air like wind-driven rain, ripping through tree branches.

  “Hurry, for Christ’s sake!” Edge breathed.

  Waddingham waited patiently. The T-90 became concealed behind a shroud of billowing grey smoke. The light behind the Russian tank flickered, died and then flared again as a fresh explosion fell in the distance. When the smoke drifted from the road, the T-90’s turret began turning towards them – centering on the Wolverine where Edge and Waddingham sheltered.

  “Jesus! Hurry up!” Edge hissed. “The tank is turning onto us. We’re going to be killed you crazy bastard if you don’t fire now. Fire!”

  Still Waddingham waited. The T-90’s turret continued to traverse. It seemed to Edge that he was staring down the open mouth of the tank’s muzzle.

  “Fire! For Christ’s sake, fire!”

  Waddingham locked on to the T-90. The tank was no more than three hundred paces away. Even in the gloomy glowing light Edge could see the tank’s tracks in detail, see the rivets along the hull join, and see the camouflage net dangling from the length of its huge barrel.

  “Fire!”

  Waddingham squeezed the trigger. The Javelin leaped against his shoulder. The CLU ejected the missile from the launcher using a conventional rocket propellant. After a split-second delay the flight motor ignited, sending the missile skyward on a sparking tail of fire. Known as a ‘curveball’, the missile shot a hundred and fifty meters into the air before it began to plunge almost vertically onto the Russian tank. Waddingham and Edge were enveloped in a billow of smoke. Edge jumped to the left to clear his line of sight from the haze. The battlefield seemed to swim before his eyes. He saw the missile arrowing towards the T-90 and then the thin armor protecting the top of the tank was engulfed in a huge roiling wall of fire and black smoke.

  The Russian tank blew apart. The shock of the massive explosion quivered the air and shook nearby trees. The vibration of the blast rumbled the earth beneath their feet. The rise in the road became shrouded in smoke, flickered by the light of the flames that engulfed the tank.

  The Russian defenders had been reduced to fighting in shrunken, ragged pockets of resistance, crouched in their trenches by the road’s crest that was blanketed in swirling smoke and lit up by tracer fire and explosions. Behind the fighting a couple of Iveco LMV’s crowded with junior officers sped away, stealing cross-country into the night. One by one the Russian infantry still fighting began to abandon their positions. Some retreated and disappeared into the haze. A few – a very few – threw down their weapons and flung their arms in the air to surrender. Some fought on bravely. Others skulked away in the confusion and disappeared into the forest from where the Polish had launched their flank attack.

  A sudden roaring engine made Edge turn. A Cavalry Stryker came racing across the bridge, its 50cal firing, hammering the air. Behind it followed a second vehicle and in the gloom of the night Edge saw more Strykers dashing forward. The Americans had won the bridge, the Russian armor defending the road had been destroyed, and the enemy’s shattered infantry were in retreat.

  Waddingham threw down the Javelin and snatched up his M4. Edge watched the silhouettes of three Russian soldiers melt into the forest fringe. He tapped Waddingham on the shoulder and pointed. “I’m going after those bastards.”

  Vince Waddingham nodded. “I’ll come with you.”

  *

  “Take the bridge!” Colonel Sutcliffe barked orders down the line. “Move! Move! Move!”

  It was the order the column of Strykers had been worrying might never come. They had risked their lives to create a diversionary attack and they had paid heavily in vehicles and blood. The troopers inside each Stryker were angry and spoiling for revenge. The first vehicle jounced onto the bridge with its 50cal machine gun blazing a swathe of fury through the night. The commander and driver were tense, expecting at any moment to see death appear out of the darkness on a rocket’s tail of fire and sparks. Behind the lead vehicle were two others, and behind them six more. The column was backed up for over a mile down the dark road.

  The moment the lead Stryker reached the far side of the bridge the steel rear ramp came down and the infantry who were bottled up inside exploded through the opening. They dashed across the road, firing from the hip as they ran, eager to join the battle and come to grips with an enemy that had frustrated their advance for almost an entire day.

  The troopers surged towards the crest of the road with a savage roar of vengeance in their throats. The shattered remnants of the Polish militia Company were swept along by the charge. Together the Allied troops overwhelmed the last of the defenders with sheer weight of numbers.

  Some enemy infantry stubbornly refused to surrender. They fought from their trenches until the bitter end. A Russian Sergeant sprayed the night with machine gun fire until he ran out of ammunition, and then pulled the pin on a grenade and clutched it to his chest. A man fighting from a trench surrounded by sandbags was shot in the face when he rose from cover with a loaded RPG on his shoulder.

  “Checkmate Six Romeo, this is Bull Six Actual,” a Stryker Troop Commander radioed the TOC when his vehicle had joined the others on the far side of the bridge. “We have secured the crossing. Repeat. We have secured the crossing.”

  *

  Edge slanted his pursuit through the forest, working an angle to intercept the Russians who had fled the fighting. He went cautiously, stepping high, watching the fall of each foot to minimize noise. Away from the fighting and within the embrace of the woods, the darkness quickly closed around him.

  He dropped to a crouch and listened hard into the night. The sporadic flare of fighting from the bridge drowned out the sounds of any movement. He drew Vince Waddingham beside him and whispered in the dark.

  “I think they’re somewhere up ahead of us.”

  They pushed on, their ears tuned for abrupt noise, their weapons up and pulled into their shoulders, their eyes following the arc of the barrel as they moved. Waddingham drifted twenty yards to the left of Edge, maintaining their orientation through sense more than sight. The smell of smoke through the forest overpowered everything. Edge was anticipating a burst of Russian automatic fire, the sudden roar of bullets and a leaping tongue of flame that would presage his death. He heard nothing except the muted din of battle in the distance. A wisp of breeze rustled the upper branches of the trees then faded back to silence. Edge focused his attention until he could hear the thumping beat of his heart echo in his ears. The sound of every twig and dry leaf crackling underfoot sounded obscenely loud. He stepped into a small clearing lit by the night’s ambient light, and waited. No shots rang out. No snarled voice cried a challenge in hatred or defiance.

  Was he being watched? Were the Russians lying in ambush on the far side of the clearing, waiting for him to walk into their trap? He licked his lips. In his imagination every dark patch of shadow transformed into the silhouette of a Russian with his weapon raised; every faint sound manifested as a hoarse rasp of breath. His boot crunched down on a dead tree branch and he paused like a man who had trodden on a landmine. He swallowed hard and eased his foot back. Sweat ran in rivulets down his face and stung his eyes. He shivered and then let out a long silent sigh.

  After ten tense minutes they found no sign of the enemy. It was as if the three Russians had melted into the darkness and vanished.

  Edge let some of the tightness ease from his shoulders. The sounds of the battle had faded into the distance, coming in undulating snarls of frantic gunfire. He shuffled across to where Vince Waddingham stood and leaned his head close.

  “They’re gone,” he conceded defeat. “We’ll never fin
d them now.”

  They had drifted north during their hunt. Edge turned due south, knowing eventually he would intersect the fire trail that would lead them back to the road. Waddingham followed in his wake, still alert, never allowing himself to relax.

  A flare of white light appeared in the night.

  “Down!” Edge hissed.

  The two men dropped to the ground and lay unmoving for sixty seconds. The light remained constant; a twin beam that sliced through the night perhaps a hundred yards ahead of them, its narrow glow filtered by the intervening trees.

  “Russians?” Waddingham whispered, lifting his head and peering through a gap in the foliage.

  “Probably,” Edge conceded. “Maybe the Ruskies had a couple of 4WD’s parked in the forest in case they needed them for escape. We have to find out.”

  They crawled forward quickly, approaching the headlights from the side. As they drew closer, they heard muffled voices, speaking a foreign language in hushed but urgent tones. Edge saw the silhouettes of two men, moving back and forth across the lights. Then a third figure stepped into view. He leaned against Waddingham’s ear and whispered.

  “I can’t understand a fucking word they’re saying,” Edge muttered. “But it seems like they’re in a hurry. If we don’t move soon we’ll lose them.”

  He was about to come up onto his knees and take a firing position when Waddingham clamped a huge hand on his arm to stay the movement. He wriggled ten yards to his right, slithering like a snake, and stared intently. When he returned, and his face reappeared out of the darkness, he was smiling with cunning anticipation.

  “That’s not a 4WD, and they’re not Russians,” he whispered to Edge. “It’s Major Nowakowski and a couple of his aides. They’re standing in front of his Wolverine.”