Red Metal

by Mark Greaney

  The rockets streaked down toward the target for several seconds, and then she was rewarded with a massive explosion and several flashes of bright light.

  Secondaries and fire immediately caused the fog to glow constantly over the area.

  Nailed him, she thought.

  She and Jesse shifted her gunsight instantly to the next Russian vehicle shooting blindly at them in the fog, and she unloaded another twenty rockets. Another explosion. Another fireball. This time the fire rose in a great plume of flame, partly burning open a hole above and through the fog. The perfect outline of a T-14 tank was now clearly visible, flames roaring out the top hatch as its ammunition cooked off.

  “Two-Six, get in here, stay left, and line up with Route Niner. They are traveling at a high rate of speed, maybe forty kph, down the road.”

  “Roger,” came the response.

  Sandra and her wingman fired at the Russian muzzle flashes until they were out of rockets, then switched to their 30mm guns. Eventually the Russians clued in to what was happening, becoming aware that the fog was protecting them, but only if they maintained fire discipline to remain unseen from the attack helicopters.

  Sandra slewed the 30mm M230E1 chain gun to her right eye and raked the burning enemy vehicles with heavy cannon fire, giving each one “a good squirt” of about twenty rounds for extra measure. The vehicles erupted in brighter flame, and on her next pass she saw them all glowing in the night, oil and gasoline burning steadily, with occasional firework shows when ammo stores cooked off in the vehicles.

  Glitter swiveled her head, tracking the hot spots on her thermals. The big chain gun below her slewed to her movements as she scanned and concentrated her cannon on the vehicles most likely to be the infantry personnel carriers.

  She picked a target and opened fire.

  Bra-rak-rak-rak. The gun caused the helo to shudder as it hovered just above treetop level.

  A new voice came onto her net now. “Viper One-Six, this is Viper Six actual.” It was her company commander, and she felt an instant wash of relief. He said, “I am coming into your zone from the south. I am at the nine-eight and six-four grid square and proceeding along Route Nine. Give me a read in on the current sit.”

  “Copy, sir. Glad to hear your voice. We have engaged roughly a regiment-sized element of Russian armor proceeding on Route Nine, moving south at about forty-five kph. They are not stopping. The tank unit we are supporting says they believe it to be an advance guard. Its composition has been consistent with that. Looks like mainly frontline armor: Bumerangs and the new tanks, the T-14s.”

  The company commander replied quickly. “Here’s what I want. I will have clear visibility once the Russian column comes south of Münchberg on Route Nine. I will strike them as they pass. I’ll hit lead vics; you will then hit them in the flank. You two start your attack run offset from Route Nine along—”

  The transmission was abruptly cut short, as all aircraft heard an air threat indicator in their cockpits. Sandra spun her head to a new light at her nine o’clock, and she saw a hellish streak of flame lifting from the earth, just above the blanket of fog but miles away to her west.

  The streak of yellow and red soon passed far behind her, racing to the south.

  It had not been gunning for her.

  The speed of the ordnance took Glitter by surprise. This was no shoulder-fired missile. This looked like an SA-21, which, she knew, traveled an incredible 4,500 miles per hour.

  The company commander’s voice came tight and anxious now. “Viper Six actual, evasive!”

  Coursing from north to south, the missile traveled at just under Mach 6. It connected with its target in six seconds, and the commander of Viper Squadron’s AH-64 turned into an aerial fireball that traced a bright descending arc until impact with the ground. Sandra could still see the flames as Jesse yawed her aircraft right and the other aircraft with her did the same.

  “Fuck, Jesse!” Glitter said. “That was a fucking SA-21!”

  “Shit, shit, shit!” said her pilot. “How the fuck did they get mobile SA-21 launchers into Germany this fast?”

  “No idea. It’s not even possible. But it did not come from the force we’ve been engaging! There’s something else out there. We need to rearm back at Ansbach, then get back up as quickly as we can.”

  * * *

  • • •

  17 KILOMETERS SOUTHWEST OF MÜNCHBERG, GERMANY

  25 DECEMBER

  General Eduard Sabaneyev clapped his fire direction control officer on the shoulder. “Good hit, Major. We don’t want to use too many Triumf missiles on the enemy’s helos, though. Save the big stuff for the jets.”

  Sensing that he needed to reinforce the latest decisions made by his inferiors, he nodded approvingly and added, “But we have ensured that the Amerikanski and German aviators will now spread the word that there is an antiair missile defense shield around the assault column. If any of those other bastards get inside the missile radius, they’ll feel our wrath.”

  He amplified his last point by clapping the fire direction control officer again on the shoulder in an attempt at a fatherly manner.

  General Sabaneyev was known to be anything but fatherly, and the Russian major flinched visibly.

  The major said, “Yes, sir. We would have locked onto them earlier if we hadn’t been masked by those hills. We’re getting reports of other American attack helicopters over there, but they are too low and we can’t engage.”

  The general forced another smile. “Stay on it.” Turning toward a row of officers at their computers on fold-down desks, he said, “Operations, what is Colonel Dryagin’s casualty count?”

  “Sir, Colonel Dryagin reports eight BTRs, catastrophic kills,” the senior operations lieutenant colonel answered. “Five T-14s also knocked out. Colonel Dryagin wasn’t sure if all his T-14 losses were full kills. He left them behind so he could continue his mission. He reports he has successfully bypassed the enemy ambush point as ordered, but he was raked by aircraft-delivered gunfire as they moved on. Three support vehicles were abandoned with mechanical issues, but his rate of march has resumed its pace.”

  General Sabaneyev turned abruptly from the operations men to look at the maps. Five interlinked map boards were hung against the bulkhead of the train. Adjacent to these, a network of digital radar screens emanated a light greenish glow. But these were clearly not the off-the-shelf new tech that was used throughout the command car. As much as the vehicle held state-of-the-art technology, it also contained pieces of standard Russian military hardware that had been adapted to the train out of necessity.

  The Russian air-sweep radars were each tuned to different altitudes and zones around the train. The screens now showed a few blips, high-flying jets above the tactical area. All were coded as routine high-altitude passenger flights. Their tracks were lettered and numbered in accordance with known flight plans. If any deviated drastically from the high, steady trajectories—if their profiles looked like there was even a 5 percent chance they were NATO bombers ready to enter the combat area—they would be shot down without question.

  The general was certain all commercial air travel in Europe would be ground-stopped by now, since there was no GPS, so he assumed the few blips were longer-haul flights: from the U.S. to Africa or the Middle East, most likely.

  Everything was going well, Sabaneyev told himself. The attack column and the two support trains had made it this far into Germany with what the general considered to be minimal contact.

  This meant that Red Metal had achieved both strategic and operational surprise. A few local NATO commanders, as ill prepared as they were, would certainly come out to play. But that was nothing Dryagin couldn’t handle with his speed, surprise, and violence of action.

  And the Russian casualties? Sabaneyev considered them regrettable but expected, and far below anyone’s best expectations, considering the op
eration’s progress.

  He now had a virtually clear shot from here to Stuttgart and no other enemy contact reported.

  He steadied himself, grabbing an overhead handhold as the train jostled and shook while rounding a bend. The tracks clacked and the car bounced and vibrated.

  Still smoother than Russian rail, he thought.

  He dialed up the command net and broadcast a digital report back to attack headquarters in Belarus. The assault train had an HF long wire attached that allowed the Russians to communicate in the absence of satellites in excess of 3,000 kilometers. They couldn’t send large amounts of data, but the pipeline was just large enough to send back basic messages.

  RED BLIZZARD: AHEAD OF SCHEDULE.

  ENEMY ARMOR VICINITY MUNCHBERG.

  MINOR LOSSES TO RAID FORCE.

  ATTACKING AMERICAN AIRFIELD ENROUTE.

  ATTACKING AMERICAN SUPPLIES ENROUTE.

  WEST MOVEMENT CONTINUES.

  SUCCESS IS ASSURED.

  ON OBJECTIVE IN 3-HOURS.

  Above him he heard the sounds of the radar whirring in its housing. One omnidirectional 29YA6 radar and the 42S6 Morfey active electronic array gave them a radar envelope of more than twenty-five kilometers. The radar dome popped up and out of the train, but when they passed into a tunnel or wanted to remain covert, it could be retracted into its housing.

  Red Blizzard 1 had four radar systems total to detect incoming air threats. As long as the switching stations captured by Spetsnaz forces were kept open, and the train remained within twenty kilometers of the assault column, the systems on board could detect and fire on any air or ground target within that bubble and keep the path clear all the way to their objective.

  The rail and roads are open. There is no one left to oppose us. We are steps away and NATO was unprepared for our smaller, faster, smarter force.

  Fools, he thought. The West always believed they would have time to react to a full-scale Russian invasion, the long-assumed “pizza slice” movement from Belarus into Germany. A wide border crossing into Poland with the Russian invasion route narrowing and strengthening on its way toward Berlin. But NATO never even considered a classic operational raid. Small-scale but intense, lightning fast, and brutally efficient.

  A scalpel through the heart of Europe, slipping effortlessly through flesh to cut out the cancer AFRICOM, so old Boris Lazar could hold his target in Africa without worrying about America.

  CHAPTER 37

  3RD AVIATION BRIGADE, REGIMENTAL HQ

  ANSBACH ARMY AIRFIELD

  KATTERBACH KASERNE, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  Parked on the tarmac just outside her ready room just after one a.m., Sandra clicked through the navigation systems on her Apache but found nothing but blank screens.

  Into her mic she said, “Still no GPS, Jesse.”

  “Roger. That blows.”

  She cycled through the electronic maps, none of which could sync up, then finally pulled out old paper maps from the flight case next to her. She quickly penned in map checkpoints of known friendly and enemy positions, then triple-checked the grid coordinates, trying to stem the fog entering her mind now that it was momentarily at rest.

  Pausing in her task, she looked out the left side of her aircraft as the ground crew pumped fuel into her tank. Despite the chill night’s gloom, she could see some of the young troopers’ faces. They looked utterly focused on the job at hand. The crew chiefs had kept the men up to date on Sandra and her men’s exploits, no doubt, and these boys knew how important their usually mundane duties of refueling and rearming were tonight.

  She watched two boys racking missiles on her wing pylon hardpoints. In the strobe lights they looked like characters in an old black-and-white movie.

  Not boys—men, she corrected herself.

  Old enough to do their duty for God and country.

  Old enough to die. How many young men have died on the battlefield tonight already?

  She didn’t know, but she did know for certain she had sent some Russian boys to their graves.

  Fiery, smoke-choking, burning deaths.

  That’s enough of that, she thought. The Russians chose their fate when they crossed the border. And there was the life of her captain—her commander—and his second seater, and many more in the U.S. and German tanks to consider.

  Her absentminded musing was shattered as Lieutenant Thomas’s unmistakable shape came up on her right, climbing up the rungs to her cockpit, then knocking on the windscreen. She opened the hatch and pushed back her flight visor.

  “Jesus, Glitter. I heard you guys were in the shit! The major wants an update and your recommendations on where he should send Echo Company once they’re all assembled. About a third of them are in now. They’re with the major in the ready room getting briefed on your contacts. He says he’ll talk to you on the radio as soon as he can break free but to get airborne immediately. He says you are in command of Delta Company now.”

  Sandra just nodded absently, looking down at her maps.

  Thomas continued. “Anyway, the men are gonna paint three kills on the side of your bird. How ’bout that?”

  Now Sandra reached up to her windscreen hatch. “It’s five . . . bitch!” she said, then closed the hatch abruptly and turned back to plotting waypoints on her paper map.

  * * *

  • • •

  Glitter updated the Brigade S3 and flew away from her base at Ansbach, heading northeast toward Nuremberg. She clicked over to UHF and began briefing her three wingmen.

  “We need to link up with our armor on the ground. We fly recce as long as we can and help them pick off any targets of note. If able, I want to identify enemy numbers. Once the rest of our squadron can get some more platoons up here, they can go help out the tankers to hit whatever main body might be coming through next.”

  She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Still doesn’t make any sense to me why they’re going south and not up toward Berlin. That’s the pattern of attack we always studied back in school. If the Russians went into Poland, they would be heading for Berlin . . .” Glitter trailed off, trying to remember Russian Cold War tactics.

  She didn’t know this enemy nearly as well as the one she’d expected to fight in Afghanistan, and that, she recognized, was a problem.

  * * *

  • • •

  NEAR NUREMBERG, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  Colonel Dryagin looked at his map and ticked off the most recent checkpoints with a jittery hand due to the high speed his command vehicle traveled along the German autobahn. He stood in the open top hatch, a stiff, icy breeze blowing around him and down into the vehicle. His command and operations personnel were used to the cold wind; the colonel believed it kept everyone awake, and he liked to look out frequently to get a better idea of the terrain, the weather, and his forces in action.

  The ops personnel below him listening to the incoming radio traffic moved the pins on the analog map board in front of them, updating the position of the lead Bumerang in the column.

  Dryagin noted the lead elements were about thirty kilometers ahead of schedule and just south and west of Nuremberg.

  “Hey, Viktor?” said the colonel, lowering his torso back inside the command chassis. He took off his goggles and pulled the ice-vapor-encrusted white face mask down to his neck to speak more clearly, his face windblown and red. “Besides the next target set, now we know there is at least one tank battalion out in the woods. Our egress will not be as easy as the ingress. I know the predictions, but now we know for certain who is out there. This enemy tank commander will not sit idle. He was trying to pin us down into a direct fight. I want you to work with the general on planning to take alternate route C back. Start making calculations on fuel consumption and determine where we must intersect with the assault train to refuel after the raid on Stuttgart
.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “And make sure you’re on top of mechanical issues for my whole raid force. I want to be able to resupply from the support train down to every last vehicle. Understood?”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Good. Template that American tank battalion. I had a thought,” he said, drumming his gloved fingers on the metal hull. “I expect them to go back to Grafenwöhr to pick up supplies. I want to intersect them. Take out one of their supply columns.”

  “Yes, Col—”

  “And request permission from the general to pull a section of BTRs from the support train immediately.”

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  Dryagin stood up again, scanned the frosty morning distance for threats, just as he knew the eyes of another two hundred vehicle commanders and gunners were doing.

  The colonel and his assault force didn’t want any surprises, because this Russian force itself intended to be the surprise this morning.

  * * *

  • • •

  37TH ARMORED REGIMENT (COMPOSITE) AND PANZERBATAILLON 203

  MÜNCHBERG, GERMANY

  26 DECEMBER

  Tom Grant and Blaz Ott stood in shin-deep snow in front of Grant’s Humvee. It was three a.m., and they’d been frantically loading and maneuvering, and even more frantically fighting for over six hours straight. The American and German officers stared at the map laid out in front of them on the hood and tried to figure out just what the hell they were in the middle of.

  Grant knew the tankers and maintenance men of the 37th Composite just didn’t have the skill to mount a dogged pursuit of the Russians. With Russian doctrine in the forefront of their minds, and absolutely zero incoming battlefield intelligence, he was under the assumption that the regiment-sized force they’d encountered was an advance guard for a larger Russian force that had not yet been identified. With no higher headquarters feeding them information, that was the most likely explanation.