Red Phoenix

by Larry Bond

  Kevin listened as his platoon leaders signaled their understanding and rose to his knees to get a better view down the road. Smoke shells were bursting now at the edge of his vision, providing cover for the grab-bag armored cavalry squadron trying to break contact with the enemy.

  He focused the binoculars as the first vehicles emerged from the gray smoke pall hanging over the highway, racing toward his positions. One by one they sped past. A battle-scarred M-60 tank, several M-113 APCs packed with troops, another damaged M-60, and then a pair of ITVs — M-113s modified to carry TOW antitank guided missile launchers. A last M-60 rolled back down the road, its turret facing backward, ready to fire at the first North Korean vehicles to appear out of the smoke.

  The radio crackled again. “Kilo Two One, this is Kilo Two Eight, November Kilos in sight. Three Tango Seven Twos. Repeat, Three Tango Seven Twos. Engaging now — ”

  The transmission ended abruptly and Kevin watched in horror as the M-60 lurched to a halt and burst into flame. The top hatch blew skyward as ammo inside the tank cooked off.

  “Oh, shit, man.” Montoya sounded sick. “Oh, Jesus.”

  Kevin clicked the transmit button on the handset. “Echo Five Six to Five Two. Hold your fire. Repeat, hold your fire. Do not engage the November Kilos. Out.” He wanted to keep the 2nd Platoon hidden as an ace in the hole.

  He let go of the handset and rose to a low crouch. “Sergeant Bryce!”

  A helmet down the line turned. “Lieutenant?”

  “Pass the word to the Dragon teams. Tell ’em to open fire as soon as the first NKs come in range. Hit their tanks first. Got it?”

  Bryce nodded and scuttled off to relay his orders. Kevin glanced at Rhee. The South Korean grinned and gave him a thumbs-up signal. He’d already briefed the tank commanders on what they were expected to do. Kevin nodded and dropped back behind his log.

  Shapes were appearing at the edge of the smoke, resolving into low-hulled tanks with long-barreled 125mm guns pointed south down the road: T-72s. Five of them. This was modern, first-line equipment. The M-48 tanks opposing them were over twenty years old and had 105mm guns. Two veered to pass to the left of the burning M-60, and the other three rolled off the road to the right, treads squealing as they reformed into line.

  Other vehicles appeared out of the drifting smoke. Troop carriers. Tracked BMPs and wheeled BTR-60s. Kevin grimaced. There wasn’t much doubt of the importance the North Korean high command attached to this attack. That was the first string out there.

  The T-72s swept closer, and the range dropped rapidly, 1,200 meters, 1,100, 1,000. Christ! They were in range, why hadn’t his Dragon teams fired? Kevin started to get to his feet.

  WHOOOOSH. Flame leapt out from the Dragon position to his right as a missile left the launcher and streaked toward an oncoming T-72. The tank started turning, trying to evade it, but the Dragon gunner saw the attempt and corrected his missile’s flight. It slammed in to the T-72’s hull and exploded. For a second the tank kept rolling with smoke streaming out the back. Then it ground to a halt and sat immobile, wreathed in flame.

  CRACK! The M-48 to his right fired its cannon. Kevin swiveled, looking for the target. There. Another T-72 sat motionless, caught with its vulnerable belly exposed while climbing a rice-paddy dike.

  Another Dragon team fired off to the flank, but its target tank suddenly disappeared in a cloud of whitish-gray smoke. Must’ve popped its smoke dispenser, Kevin thought. The missile plunged into the smoke cloud and missed. Damn.

  CRACK! An M-48 further down the line fired at a T-72 that had closed to within five hundred meters. WHANG! The 105mm round glanced off the North Korean tank’s bow armor and bounded high in the air. The T-72 came on and fired back.

  The M-48 exploded, spewing orange flame and metal fragments through the trees. There were screams from some of the infantry foxholes near the wrecked tank. “I’m hit! Oh, GOD! I’m hit!”

  Kevin dropped flat to the ground, pressing his hands to his ears, trying to shut out the sounds. It was happening again, just like Malibu West.

  “Lieutenant! Lieutenant!” It was Montoya, nudging him, holding out the radio handset. “It’s Echo Five Two.”

  Kevin looked up. The RTO was crouched with his back to the log, staring at him like a little lost puppy dog. Somehow the sight gave him a sense of purpose. Montoya needed him. Maybe they all needed him.

  He grabbed the handset. “Two, this is Six. Over.”

  Geary’s voice quavered audibly; he’d been shaken by what he was seeing. “Six, PCs to your front are unloading troops.”

  Kevin grabbed his binoculars and focused them on the open ground below the hill. No good. The smoke from the two burning T-72s blocked his view. The other three had disappeared. Had they pulled back?

  He swept the binoculars from right to left, searching for signs of movement. There. He could see shapes moving in the smoke — men carrying AKM rifles, RPK light machine guns, and RPG-7 launchers. Engine noises were audible above the crackling flames. Troop carriers backing up the North Korean infantry he could now see clearly. They were only four hundred meters away and trotting in fast.

  “Sierra Echo Two One, this is Juliet Echo Five Six. I have a Delta Tango for Yankee Delta two three zero six seven five. Over.” Kevin called in a DT — a defensive target artillery fire mission. He wanted to see how the North Koreans liked a dose of their own medicine.

  “Roger, Echo Five Six. Stand by.” The NK infantry kept moving forward, hunched over under the weight of their gear. BMPs and BTRs were visible now, nosing out from the smoke.

  The BMPs and BTRs were armored vehicles, designed to carry infantry. Kevin had forgotten what the letters stood for, an abbreviation of their Russian designations. The Soviets rarely gave their equipment sexy names like “Patton” or “Bradley.”

  The BTR was an eight-wheeled armored box with a machine gun on top. It was big and could carry fourteen men. The BMP was a nastier beast but could only carry nine troops. To make up for the difference, it carried a small turret with a 73mm gun, an antitank missile launcher, and a machine gun. It had better armor and was tracked, so it could go places the BTR couldn’t. Both could swim across rivers.

  The radio spoke: “Shot, out.”

  Kevin heard a high-pitched howling arcing overhead and saw dirt spray skyward behind the advancing North Koreans. “Echo Two One, this is Six. Drop fifty and fire for effect!”

  He dropped back behind cover as the first time-fused shells whirred over and exploded in midair, showering deadly fragments across the wave of North Korean infantry charging toward the hill. A dozen or more dropped into the snow without a sound, mowed down like standing wheat at harvest time. Others were thrown back screaming, torn apart by splinters.

  Kevin felt the ground rock. A shell burst two hundred meters away, hurling dirt away in a black cloud. Then another exploded, closer in. Holy shit! Those weren’t American shells. The North Koreans were responding in kind, walking their own artillery in on his positions.

  “Cover! Cover! Incoming!” He threw himself back into a shallow foxhole and dragged Montoya in after him. Evergreen needles slashed at his face. They hadn’t had time to strip the branches off the logs providing overhead cover for their holes.

  WHAMMM! WHAMMM! WHAMMM! WHAMMM! Shells burst all along the fringe of woods sheltering the 1st Platoon. Treetops exploded as North Korean guns found the range, spraying clouds of whining wood and metal splinters across the hill. A foxhole with two GIs crouching low inside it suddenly disappeared in a flash of bright white light, leaving nothing but a smoking crater.

  The noise was deafening, maddening. Kevin and Montoya coughed as dirt thrown by a near-miss cascaded into their foxhole.

  “Echo Five Six, this is Two. Over.” He could barely hear it.

  He wriggled round to get at the radio strapped to Montoya’s back and had to shout to make himself heard. “Two, this is Six! Go ahead.”

  “NK infantry stopped. But the BMPs are still closing with you
.”

  It was time to show his ace. “Two, this is Six. Open fire! Say again, open fire!”

  “You got it!” Geary sounded excited now. He and his men had flank shots on most of the approaching North Korean vehicles. BMPs started going up in flames as Dragon teams hidden among the rice paddies found the range.

  WHAMMM! WHAMMM! WHAMMM! Enemy shells continued landing all over the hill, shaking the ground, toppling trees, blasting foxholes — killing and wounding men crouching helpless under the barrage. The 2nd Platoon’s missile teams and machinegunners were wreaking havoc on the North Korean vehicles, but they kept coming, surging forward toward the pinned-down 1st Platoon. Kevin knew he had to get his men out from under this artillery fire or they’d be overrun. But how?

  TARGET ACQUISITION BATTERY, 3-35 ARTILLERY, SOUTH OF THE HAN RIVER

  “Target, sir!” The corporal’s yell brought the captain’s head back inside the darkened radar van.

  “Where?”

  The corporal leaned closer to his green-glowing monitor, pounding keys as the van’s onboard computer evaluated radar traces made by the North Korean shells pounding Echo Company’s hill. In a microsecond it backtracked along their projected trajectory, compensated for known temperature and wind velocity, and flashed the estimated position of the North Korean battery on-screen. It was in range.

  The captain grabbed his command phone. “Fire mission! Counterbattery!” He squatted to look at the corporal’s computer monitor. “Target at Yankee Delta six five eight two three zero!”

  He carried the handset over to the van’s open door, looking down into the shallow valley where the four surviving guns of Battery B were deployed.

  “Target laid in.” The battery commander’s voice was flat, all emotion ground out by more than ninety-six hours of near-continuous combat and heavy losses.

  “Fire at will!”

  Battery B’s 155mm self-propelled howitzers crashed back, flinging four HE shells toward the North Korean artillery battery sixteen kilometers away. Four more followed fifteen seconds later.

  BATTERY 3, 2ND BATTALION, 44TH ARTILLERY REGIMENT, NEAR PYOKCHE, SOUTH KOREA

  The North Korean artillery captain froze in shock as the first American shells exploded on and around his battery’s gunline.

  His second-in-command had quicker reflexes. He dove to the bottom of a slit trench dug next to the CP and stayed there for a full minute as the ground trembled from hit after hit. When the barrage lifted, he raised his head cautiously above ground level to survey the damage.

  He glanced back at the CP and quickly averted his gaze from the bloody scraps of flesh that had once been his captain. Things weren’t any better anywhere else. One D-30 howitzer had taken a direct hit and sat mangled on its central firing jack, with its seven-man crew lying dead beside it. Four of the battery’s five remaining guns were also out of action, and more than half his gunners were dead or severely wounded. Moans rose from the wreckage.

  The North Korean lieutenant stared at the carnage for a moment and then went to help the wounded. The attacking force his howitzers had been supporting would have to fend for itself. Battery 3 was out of action.

  1ST PLATOON’S POSITION, SOUTH OF WONDANG

  At first the silence was overpowering. But then, as Kevin’s hearing returned, other sounds of the battle came flooding back — the rattle of machine gun fire from 2nd Platoon’s rice-paddy dikes, sharp explosions as American proximity-fused shells continued to burst in midair over open fields now carpeted with North Korean dead, and the grinding squeal of North Korean BMPs lumbering up the slope toward the woods he and his men held.

  Kevin wriggled out from under the logs of his foxhole and sat up. Montoya followed him.

  Trees had been blown down all around their position, sheared off by the North Korean barrage. The next foxhole over wasn’t there anymore; an evergreen had landed right on top of it. Kevin swallowed hard and looked away from the thin red smear oozing out from under the fallen tree.

  Burning vehicles dotted the ground below his hill. A handful of BMPs, a scattering of wheeled BTR-60s, and five T-72 tanks sat motionless, spewing smoke. But three BMPs were still advancing, spraying the woods with machine gun fire and rounds from their 73mm cannons. Kevin couldn’t see any return fire from his own positions.

  He craned his head, looking for the M-48 tanks attached to his command. One sat afire in the woods nearby. A thick, black column of smoke marked the funeral pyre of a second farther down the line. But where was the third? They needed armor support to stop the BMPs from overrunning the hill.

  A soldier bellycrawled over from behind a splintered tree stump. It was Rhee.

  Kevin reached out and pulled him into cover. “Where’s the fucking tank?”

  Rhee’s face was grim. “Gone.” He pointed over his shoulder. “It fled and abandoned us.”

  “Shit!” The BMPs were closer now, shooting up the forward edges of the wood. Kevin could see his men now. They were starting to give ground, slipping back through the trees. Echo Company’s defense was collapsing all around him. He felt the nerve under his left cheek twitch again. Another failure.

  Three men ran past, one without a rifle.

  Bastards. Kevin stood up and yelled, “Get back on the line! Goddamnit, we can hold ’em! Get back in your holes!”

  They swept by without answering. Others were following them.

  Kevin jumped up out of the foxhole. He felt Rhee’s hand on his leg, pulling him down, but he shook it off. He moved to intercept the troops heading away from the oncoming BMPs.

  One carrying a LAW slung over his back came right at him. Kevin stepped into his path and held out a hand to stop him. “Hold it right there, soldier. We need that weapon.”

  The man shoved him aside without even looking and snarled, “Fuck off!”

  Kevin felt something explode in his brain for just an instant. Something infinitely cold and infinitely hot. An anger greater than he had ever known before surged through him. He gave in to it and threw himself at the soldier’s back — knocking the GI flat into the snow.

  Kevin got to his knees first and wrenched the fiberglass-tubed antitank rocket off over the man’s neck, tearing away skin and the soldier’s helmet. The lead BMP was pushing its way into the mangled woods just twenty meters to the right, roaring up and over fallen trees.

  Ignoring the white-faced GI on the ground, Kevin scrambled to his feet and ran toward the North Korean infantry combat vehicle, swinging the LAW up and onto his shoulder as he ran. He could hear himself shouting something at the top of his lungs, but he couldn’t make out the words.

  Snow spurted all around him, and wood splinters sprayed off a tree to the side. A second BMP had spotted him and was firing its coaxial machine gun. Kevin ignored it, really conscious only of his target and the white-hot rage he felt.

  He got to within ten meters of the lead BMP and slid to a stop, feet plowing through the snow and churned-up mud. He braced and aimed, focusing along the length of the LAW toward the BMP’s massive, armored flank.

  “Bastards!” Kevin screamed, and pulled the trigger. The 66mm antitank rocket roared out of its launch tube and slammed into the BMP It ripped through sixteen millimeters of steel armor and exploded inside. The BMP shuddered to a halt with smoke pouring out of its firing slits.

  Kevin stood staring at it for a second and then felt himself knocked to the ground. Machine gun bullets cracked overhead, ripping branches off the evergreens around him and tearing away deeper into the woods. Kevin rolled over and came face-to-face with a grinning Lieutenant Rhee. He opened his mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Rhee shook his head and waved a hand at the woods around them. American soldiers were settling back into foxholes, their weapons out and ready. Kevin saw one man raise another LAW, point it downslope toward the second BMP and fire. It hit, but the BMP kept coming. A second soldier off to the flank saw it and fired a third antitank rocket. This one burst near the driver’s slit and sent fr
agments ricocheting around the interior of the North Korean vehicle. It rolled on for a few meters more and then juddered slowly to a stop.

  The last BMP abruptly popped its smoke dispensers and reversed rapidly away from the hill, jinking from side to side to throw off the aim of any American missile teams zeroing in on it.

  Kevin sat up slowly and then levered himself to his feet, looking at the wrecked vehicles and corpses scattered across the hillside and through the woods. He could hear faint cheering coming from the rice paddies occupied by his 2nd Platoon, but the men of his 1st Platoon sat silent, relieved just to be alive. He reached down and helped Rhee to his feet, gradually realizing that a smile was spreading across his face — an expression he hadn’t worn for what seemed like an eternity.

  He looked down at his hands and saw that they were steady. No more trembling. They had won — at least this round. They’d stopped the North Koreans cold.

  Kevin turned on his heel and started back through the tangle of shredded trees, looking for Montoya. His orders still stood. They’d bought some time. Now it was time to fall back to the next battle position and do it again.

  NORTH OF THE HAENGJU BRIDGE, NEAR HANGJUSAN CASTLE

  “Drop one hundred, right fifty.”

  The spotting round sent chunks of asphalt flying as it gouged a crater in the highway. Kevin clicked the transmit button. “Got it! On target! Let ’em have it!”

  More artillery rounds screamed in, blasting the road and the open ground around it. North Korean infantrymen scattered in all directions, seeking cover where there was none. Earth and fragments of torn bodies fountained high into the air.

  Kevin stopped watching the barrage and wriggled back into his foxhole to consider his next move. Echo Company and the units covering its flanks had fought steadily all day, gradually giving ground in the face of repeated North Korean attacks. Each time the pattern had been the same. Bloody the NK columns from concealed positions. Force them to waste time deploying for a more deliberate attack and then beat a quick retreat down the road to the next set of defensive positions.