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

  “Sitrep,” he demanded.

  The officer who had been shouting orders straightened. He was the commander of Comanche Troop. His eyes were bloodshot and his face wrenched into a bleak grimace. “The Russians have at least one, maybe two tanks hull-down by the side of the road,” the office spoke quickly. “We haven’t spotted them yet, but they’re there, probably on the rise where the road passes through the saddle of the ridge. They’re battering everything we send across the river.”

  Sutcliffe grunted. The air was filled with swirling dust and smoke. A mortar shell landed fifty yards away, throwing up an eruption of dirt and debris. The soldiers flinched instinctively. Major Nowakowski cringed and seemed to shrink away. He moved until he was standing in the shelter of a Stryker, still in earshot of the Colonel as he fired off questions.

  “Losses?”

  “Heavy, sir. The infantry has been hammered, and we’ve lost upwards of half-a-dozen Strykers.”

  The Colonel took a moment to make sense of the chaos, walking towards the bridge with the cluster of staff officers trailing him. He seemed contemptuous of the danger, ignoring the staccato rattle of enemy machine gun fire. A Russian shell landed on the riverbank and flung a geyser of mud and water into the air. Sutcliffe snatched up a pair of binoculars and scanned the bridge. The smoke had thinned enough so that he could make out the horrific destruction clearly. The bodies of the soldiers not yet recovered lay in crumpled heaps, and near the middle of the bridge, where the fighting had been fiercest, they were stacked in careless bloody mounds between the burned-out ruins of several Strykers.

  “We have to attack in force,” Sutcliffe assessed the situation. So far the Strykers had crossed the bridge in wary pairs and been picked off by Russian RPG’s, but now most of the enemy fire seemed to be coming from the ridge. “And I want the rest of the Squadron’s MGS’s brought into the battle. I want every gun we have aimed at the saddle of that crest. Everything, understand?”

  One of the officers following the Colonel nodded and scurried back to the command vehicle to issue orders.

  The Russians chose the moment to launch a barrage of mortar shells and the sound of the cacophony was like an echoing clap of doom. The noise became a deafening percussive assault that melded into an endless thunder. A soldier standing just twenty yards away from the Colonel was snatched away in an explosion of blood. Skeins of choking dust hung in the air, thick as smoke.

  Through the clamor of the bombardment a curious far-away whine seemed to float on the air, barely discernable above the ground rumbling crash of explosions. It sounded like a wavering echo that persisted, growing louder.

  “Incoming!” a sharp-eyed soldier pointed into the sky.

  “Enemy aircraft! Take cover!”

  The Su-25 appeared from behind the far ridge, flying low and fast. The Frogfoot was the mainstay of Russian ‘shturmovoy’ ground-attack regiments. It was the approximate equivalent of the American A-10 Warthog. The aircraft had been designed as a tank killer that specialized in providing close air support to troops on a battlefield, and it had seen combat action in every major theatre of conflict since the ’80’s.

  The aircraft was armed with sixteen AT-16 Vikhr anti-tank missiles suspended from its wing pods and a 30mm cannon.

  The Su-25 flashed over the battlefield, flying just a few hundred feet above the ground, and unleashed its entire payload into the long stationary column of American vehicles. The missiles leaped off their rails in a blinding flare of flames and sparks, and flew like arrows towards the tangled traffic jam of Strykers. The AT-16’s darted over the bridge littered with dead bodies and ruined burned out vehicles… over the river that was stained with blood and strewn with corpses… over the heads of the American soldiers who milled around the riverbank – and then plunged down at last into the Squadron of vehicles. Suddenly the battlefield filled with a fresh thunder of massive explosions. Shrapnel whistled through the air and the ground seemed to erupt. Chunks of burning debris were hurled hundreds of feet into the sky and then fell like hail. The noise was a deafening numbing crescendo fit for the end of the world. Men were thrown to the ground. Others were immolated in the blasts. A bloom of bright orange fireballs billowed into the sky. Dust and debris blanketed the battlefield. Black oily smoke blotted out the sun.

  The first murderous attack was over in just a few seconds. The Russian Su-25 turned in a tight circle over the village and roared back, its twin engines at full military power and its lethal 30mm cannon spitting flame. Troopers that just moments before had been waiting idly in the grassy fields scrambled desperately for cover. Some men fired their M4’s at the Su-25 as it flashed overhead like a hunting bird of prey.

  One alert trooper made a desperate dash across the road and drew a shoulder-launched Stinger missile system from the interior of a Stryker. He powered up the system and aimed the missile at the Su-25 just as the aircraft began climbing out of its strafing run. When the seeker system locked on to the Russian aircraft, the Stinger made a distinctive sound. The trooper squeezed the trigger and a small rocket shot the missile out of the launch tube. Then the main solid rocket engine ignited. The Stinger flashed across the sky at Mach 2 trailing a tail of white smoke.

  The Stinger’s passive IR/UV sensors tracked the Su-25 by locking on to the infrared heat signature produced by the aircraft’s engines.

  The missile struck the Russian ground attack aircraft as it began to change course to the south east. The plane erupted in flames, and a heartbeat later the sound of the explosion filled the air. The Su-25 fell from the sky as burning debris. The soldiers on the ground gave a ragged cheer. It was a small triumph, but it did not compensate for the nightmare of destruction the Su-25 left in its wake. Six Strykers had been struck and destroyed in the attack, and fifty men killed or injured.

  Major Nowakowski had been flung to the ground during the missile strike. Blood splashed his tunic and sprayed his face. He cried out in appalled horror.

  “Good God! I have been struck! Help me! Help me someone, please. I am badly wounded.”

  Dust-covered soldiers went to his aid. They hauled the Major upright. “You’re not hit,” one of the soldiers made a rudimentary inspection and could find no injuries. “It’s not your blood – it’s his.”

  Swaying on his feet, his ears ringing and his senses numbed, Major Nowakowski stared mutely at the corpse of a Lieutenant whose chest had been blown open by the blast. The man had been standing on the outer circle of Colonel Sutcliffe’s aides and had inadvertently shielded the Major from the horrendous impact of the explosions.

  More men ran to where Colonel Sutcliffe lay. He was in the dirt on his back, his chest soaked in warm spreading blood. One of the soldiers shook Sutcliffe’s shoulder and shouted, his voice thick with alarm.

  “Sir! Sir! Can you hear me?”

  Sutcliffe was bleeding from a chest wound. His face was ashen and there was more blood on his neck, soaking the collar of his uniform. Two men gingerly lifted him to his feet. Sutcliffe clamped his hand over the wound and sagged forward so he leaned, almost doubled over. He stood like that, his features wracked with pain, and his voice sounded thick and gasping.

  “Pull everyone back from the bridge. Disengage immediately.”

  “But sir!” the Squadron’s Operation’s Officer protested. “We’ve worn the Russians down. Resistance from machine gun fire and hand-held anti-tank weapons has been suppressed close to the river. I know we can force a bridgehead with just one more concerted push.”

  “I said fall back, immediately!” Sutcliffe growled. His breath rattled in his chest and he took a tottering step to keep his balance. A medic arrived wearing blood-covered rubber gloves. “Stretcher!”

  Before Sutcliffe could be carried from the battlefield, the S-3 tried one last time to salvage the attack. “Colonel, if we pull back now, everyone and everything we have lost in this fight will have been for nothing. Sir! That bridge is soaked in American blood. The men died trying to force a bridgehead. We o
we it to them to continue trying. With one well-coordinated push we can overwhelm the enemy armor and force a victory.”

  “Damn it! I said disengage!”

  “The Colonel is right,” Major Nowakowski said. His face was ashen, his eyes dulled with shock. He was scared. His hands trembled and his voice quavered. The attack by the Russian Su-25 had terrified him. “The enemy are deeply entrenched and they have tanks defending the road. There is nothing we can do with armored troop carriers against such force. We must call in our own air strikes. Until then any further attempt to force a crossing is suicidal folly.”

  It was over.

  The attack to seize the bridge over the Sypitki had failed.

  *

  At first Edge thought the Strykers were preparing for a fresh attack, then he thought Command was massing the MGS’s to bombard the ridge, then he speculated the assault would be from the infantry this time. Finally, as the wind picked up and the sounds of machine gun fire began to wane, he realized that there was no imminent attack, and that the smoke was being fired to conceal a withdrawal.

  Behind a dense curtain of grey haze, the American and Polish armored troop carriers retreated from the battlefield. The M1128 MGS’s were the last to leave, remaining to provide overwatch until the final Stryker withdrew.

  Edge watched the ignominious retreat from the muddy slope of the far riverbank, his eyes wide with slow dawning horror.

  “They’re abandoning us,” Captain Walker groaned.

  “Jesus!” Vince Waddingham stared into the shifting veil of smoke. “Do you think it’s some kind of tactical feint?”

  “No.” Edge turned and gazed at the Russian-held ridge. Through the skeins of swirling mist, he could see that the crestline had been completely denuded of trees and foliage. It remined him of a World War 1 battlefield. Broken, blackened tree stumps dotted the ragged ground.

  “We’ve been left for dead!” Kalina’s voice filled with horror and disbelief.

  It was a disaster. For several more minutes they stared into the opaque greyness, looking for signs that the Squadron’s Strykers were forming up to resume the fight, or that infantry were massing beyond the bridge, preparing to rush the crossing. Nothing moved. The sounds of rumbling engines grew fainter. The gunfire died to a faltering staccato and then stopped abruptly. They had been forsaken.

  There were a dozen survivors, clinging to the muddy slope of the riverbank, many of them injured. They were all that remained of the ill-fated attempt to reach the cover of the trees. Between them they had a handful of M4’s, a few spare magazines of ammunition and maybe twenty grenades; not enough to turn back a determined attempt to overwhelm them.

  Not that the Russians even needed to mount an attack. They could simply pound the Americans into submission with mortar fire, hammering the river’s edge with a bombardment of explosions until either the stranded men were all dead, or beaten into dazed surrender.

  Two of the troopers went from man to man, salvaging spare weapons, grenades and ammunition from the dead and the seriously wounded. Someone handed around cold MRE’s and a canteen of water. With a small start, Edge realized how thirsty he was. He drank his fill and passed the canteen to Kalina.

  Edge considered their position and his mood grew dark. There was no hope of escape to the west – that would mean crawling along the riverbank, passing beneath the bridge, and then exposing themselves to Russian fire from the ridge. He turned and looked east. The riverbank was about eight feet of sloping mud and stone, fringed by a low natural wall of shrubs. But he could see no position that could be defended. The river ran in a relatively straight line for about a mile before kinking out of sight. What lay beyond the bend Edge did not know, but he doubted so many wounded could be moved safely without arousing Russian attention. He swore uselessly.

  The river was about sixty feet wide, flowing east on a strong current. The water’s edge was overgrown with wild reeds, clumps of long grass and stunted gnarled trees. Closer to the bridge grew a high stand of green bulrushes. There were bodies of dead American soldiers snagged in the reeds, floating face down in the brown water.

  The sight of the bobbing, stranded corpses seemed to deepen Edge’s despair. He had a dozen injured soldiers and they were marooned on a riverbank, surrounded by Russian troops, with no hope of rescue and not enough weapons to defend themselves.

  Edge suspected that he, Waddingham and Kalina could escape – either by waiting until dark and making another attempt for the woods, or by quickly following the riverbank east, evading capture before the Russians could organize themselves and come down from the ridge to confront them. But what of the injured?

  And if they were captured while trying to escape the Russians, what would be the consequences? If they surrendered themselves now; if they threw down their weapons and rose from cover with their hands held high, most likely they would end up in a prisoner of war camp.

  Edge ran his eyes over the miserable haggard faces of the survivors and grimaced. Only a couple of the men were uninjured. The rest were badly wounded. Most of them had stomach and leg wounds. One man had his forehead swaddled in grubby blood-stained bandages. He was muttering to himself in a feverish delirium, his hands fluttering like dying birds at his side. He had been shot in the back of the head. He was unlikely to survive the hour. There were others in a similar state; two Apache Troop soldiers who had been amongst the first to cross the bridge were now clinging to life. One man had been shot in the neck. His breathing was shallow and his pulse weak. His buddy had been hit in the groin by flying shrapnel. He lay in a pool of spreading blood and mud and whimpered softly. Neither would live to see another day. Other men were nursing broken bones and heavily bandaged wounds. Barely half of the survivors could fire a weapon if the Russians decided to launch an assault.

  “We don’t know if the Squadron is coming back to mount a fresh attack,” Edge leaned close to Waddingham and Kalina and kept his voice low. “They could be calling in an air strike…”

  “Unlikely,” Captain Walker interrupted. His voice was tight with pain from his wound. “Everything NATO has available is being pulled back to defend Warsaw. Planes, men, tanks. It’s all massing around the capital.”

  Edge grunted. “Okay. So if they’re not pulling back to await an air strike they’re either re-organizing for a new attack or – ”

  “Or we’ve been left for dead,” Vince Waddingham said bleakly.

  “Right,” Edge admitted. “We have to face the possibility that help isn’t coming and that we’re going to have to find our own way back to the Army.” He spoke simply, but behind his words he was seething. The Army had been mauled and humiliated by the Russians. The bridge crossing had been a diabolical disaster. Edge’s pride was bruised. It was foolish, perhaps even naïve, but Edge was a proud soldier, raised with an undying faith in the American military’s ability to overcome the sternest challenge. He wanted to strike back. He wanted to show the Russians that American Cavalry troopers were elite warriors who didn’t know the meaning of defeat.

  He wanted revenge.

  “What will we do?” Kalina asked in a small voice. Her face was set and pale, but the fear showed in her eyes.

  Edge shrugged. “The way I see it, we can either attempt to give the Russians the slip, or we have to surrender. Most of the wounded can’t fight, and a lot of them aren’t going to reach a field hospital,” he said obliquely.

  “I say we make another attempt to reach the woods,” Vince Waddingham offered.

  Captain Walker nodded agreement. “If we can hold out until dark…”

  Edge shook his head. “The Russians aren’t going to sit up on that ridge now the Squadron has disengaged,” he said matter-of-factly. “Sooner or later they’re going to send patrols to the bridge and along the riverbank.”

  “So you want to surrender?” Kalina frowned.

  “No. I want to kill every one of the murdering Russian bastards,” Edge’s temper flared, revealing a glimpse of his inner thoughts. Th
en it faded again and his voice became neutral once more. “I enlisted to protect America from its enemies, and until someone tells me the war is over, I’m going to keep fighting because that’s what soldiers do.”

  “Then we attempt an escape?” Waddingham asked. “How? To where?”

  The afternoon began to turn cold. The sun was blood red behind drifting clouds of smoke. A small chill wind came hunting across the landscape, rustling the trees and abrading the surface of the river. Kalina shivered.

  “You use the river,” Edge spoke the idea that had been forming in the back of his mind since he had seen the bodies of the dead soldiers snagged amongst the bulrushes. “The current is flowing east. You take Captain Walker and you wade out into the middle of the river and let it carry you to safety. The Russians will think you’re just more dead bodies. A mile from here the river bends. Once you reach that point, you’ll be out of sight and out of danger.”

  “You kept saying ‘you’. You meant ‘we’, right?” Waddingham asked.

  Edge said nothing.

  “What about the rest of the wounded?” Captain Walker’s first concern was for the injured.

  “Sir, most of them are not going to make it, and none of them would survive drifting downriver for several miles.”

  “So you want to leave them to die?”

  “No. Their best chance of survival is surrender to the Russians. Maybe some of them will receive the medical help they need in time.”

  Walker grunted. Waddingham circled back to his original question, this time more forcefully.

  “You kept saying ‘you’…”

  “That’s right,” Edge said. “You, Kalina, and the Captain. I’m not going.”

  “You’re going to surrender with the wounded?”

  “No, I’m going to get revenge,” Edge vowed. “The Squadron might have disengaged from the battlefront but the fight isn’t over. I’m going to get some payback for the men that died today.”

  Waddingham narrowed his eyes. “Then I’m coming with you.”