by James Rosone
Despite the frigid temperature, Captain Diss took the opportunity to open the hatch so he could get a better view of what was going on around them. Climbing up to his perch behind the M2 .50 machine gun, he watched and listened to the antiaircraft guns firing away a few kilometers to his left. Jets were roaring somewhere overhead. It was odd seeing the green tracers crisscrossing the morning sky, intermixed with the light dusting of snow. While he was taking everything in, an urgent call came in over the radio.
“Black Six, this is Avenger Six. Be aware, we have spotted what appears to be a Russian regiment-sized element, four kilometers to your front. We are moving to engage.”
Dropping back into the turret and closing the hatch, Diss jumped on the company net. “All Mustang elements, Avenger element is engaging enemy tanks, regiment-sized element, four kilometers to our front. Prepare for contact,” he announced.
Minutes later, their vehicle crested a small hill that bordered a large copse of trees to their right. As it did, he spotted one of the Apaches as it pulled a tight turn and banked its nose down, letting loose a string of antimaterial rockets on the tree line. Half a dozen explosions erupted within the trees, followed by several secondary explosions.
Captain Diss began to search the tree line for threats but was interrupted when explosions erupted all around them. His tank was jostled from side to side as chunks of shrapnel banged and clinked off their armor. “Look for targets! They must be close!” he shouted over the thunder of artillery explosions.
“Tank, 1,700 meters, three o’clock!” shouted his gunner excitedly.
Captain Diss moved his commander's independent thermal viewer and spotted the tank lurking under a white camouflage net a few meters inside the tree line. “How did Cox spot that thing?” he thought in amazement.
“Gunner, sabot tank!" he yelled.
"Identified!" exclaimed Sergeant Cox, eager to fire.
Specialist Mann acknowledged, yelling “Up!”
"Fire!" screamed Diss. It was hard to hear anything over the racket outside.
Crump, crump, crump!
Enemy artillery rounds continued to follow them as they advanced closer to the enemy positions.
"On the way!" Cox shouted. He depressed the firing button.
Boom!
The cannon fired, recoiling back inside the turret as the vehicle continued to race forward. The spent aft cap of the sabot round clanged on the turret floor, and the cabin filled with the sulfuric fumes so reminiscent of battle.
Returning his gaze to the front, Captain Diss caught sight of the silhouette of more enemy armor. Dozens of enemy vehicles had emerged from behind a bend in the nearby hill and from the forest to their right. The enemy vehicles appeared to be lining up for a charge.
Diss switched back to the company net. “Mustangs, we have a battalion-sized element 3,100 meters to our two o’clock. Company, change formation to a line position and advance to contact,” he ordered. He wanted to bring all of his platoons forward, so they could effectively mass their fire.
Captain Diss contacted his FIST team next. “Black Eight, this is Black Six. I need a fire mission. Get us some arty on that copse of trees and that mass of enemy vehicles charging us!” he yelled.
Then Diss turned to the battalion net and sent a quick message to his commander, letting him know what they were seeing.
“Captain, those tanks are charging toward us now!” yelled Sergeant Cox. “They’re crossing 3,000 meters.” The turret turned slightly to the right as he tracked their first target. “Enemy missiles, three o’clock!” he shouted.
Before the missiles could get close to them, the forested area erupted into a ball of fire as dozens upon dozens of artillery rounds landed all throughout the area. Secondary explosions added further carnage to the already messy scene. Many of the antitank missiles still streamed toward his vehicles, scoring a couple of hits against his tanks and Bradleys.
Bam!
A large blast detonated near their tank, sending a concussion through the air. Then a voice came over the company net. “Blue Two is hit.”
Diss had a sickening feeling in his stomach when he heard that announcement. He knew four of his troopers were most likely dead, judging by the intensity of the explosion nearby.
Turning his attention back to the immediate threat to his front, Captain Diss saw the enemy formation begin to advance toward them. However, another volley of 155mm artillery rounds hammered the enemy positions, and a couple of tanks suffered direct hits, exploding in spectacular fireballs. Some of the enemy BMPs and BTRs were also taken out of commission.
Spotting over a dozen T-90s heading toward them, Diss yelled, “Gunner, sabot tank! 1,800 meters, eleven o’clock.”
"Identified!" exclaimed Sergeant Cox. He had already found an enemy tank and placed the red targeting dot on it.
Specialist Mann tapped the loader's door lever with his knee, opening it up. He reached in the ammo well and grabbed another sabot round, slamming it into the breech of the cannon and pulling up on the arming handle. “Up!” he yelled.
"Fire!" screamed Diss. It felt like they could be blown up at any given second, and he was not about to waste time.
"On the way!" screamed Sergeant Cox.
He depressed the firing button. Boom! The cannon fired, recoiling back inside the turret. The more rounds they fired, the more the cabin filled with the sulfuric fumes of battle.
Continuing to press their attack, the Mustangs were now less than a thousand meters from the Russians as the enemy pushed their own assault.
Clang, clang, clang.
Three 30mm autocannon rounds from the BMPs bounced harmlessly off the turret of their tank. While the enemy rounds couldn’t penetrate their armor, it was still nerve-racking to realize their tank was taking multiple hits from the enemy.
While the Mustangs continued to charge the enemy formation, several of their brigade’s Apache helicopters let loose a string of hellfire missiles at the remaining enemy vehicles, destroying most of them. The helicopters then flew directly over their tanks, using their 30mm chain gun on the remaining armored vehicles as Captain Diss’s tanks continued to press home their attack.
Seeing a swarm of infantry disembarking the BTRs and BMPs, Captain Diss yelled to his gunner, “Keep firing the main gun!”
He needed to get up in the commander’s hatch and deal with the infantry. Swarms of infantry carrying RPGs were just as dangerous as an enemy tank if left unattended. Flipping the hatch open, Diss climbed up to his perch, unlocked the M2 .50 machine gun from its locking mount and trained the heavy weapon on a cluster of infantry soldiers maybe 800 meters to his front.
Depressing the butterfly button, he launched streams of .50-caliber rounds at the enemy soldiers, shredding many of them in seconds. One of the enemy soldiers had managed to set up an antitank missile with the help of one of his comrades—Diss sighted in on them and fired a short burst of fire in their direction. Afterward, all he saw was a red splattering of flesh and blood erupting, and then the missile they were trying to set up also exploded, adding its own shrapnel to the mix.
While his tank continued to charge forward, the main gun boomed nearly every eight seconds and they continued to nail enemy vehicles. As they got closer to the enemy soldiers, more bullets flew in his direction, many of them hitting the tank’s armor but not far away from hitting him in his perch. Captain Diss knew he needed to get back inside the tank, but he couldn’t resist the adrenaline high he was experiencing as his tank charged forward and he stood in the commander’s hatch, firing away on the infantry with his .50-caliber machine gun. He felt like a god swatting away all that stood before him. However, when the gun ran out of ammo, he loaded another box in its place and then dropped down into the turret again, closing the hatch behind him.
Five more minutes went by as they finished off the remaining enemy vehicles and passed through the Russian lines, using their machine guns to finish off whatever infantry they came across. Captain Diss was u
nder strict orders to press home their attack and keep going. Follow-on units moving behind them would clean up any stragglers or fortified positions they felt they had to bypass.
Once they traversed through the enemy lines, Diss called in a crew report to find out how bad their losses were. By the time his platoons had reported in, he discovered they had one tank destroyed to enemy artillery, two tanks disabled from the enemy artillery, three tanks destroyed by antitank missiles, and two tanks destroyed by the most recent enemy action with another tank disabled. His company had effectively lost fifty percent of their tanks, making them combat ineffective.
“Dear God—and we’ve only reached waypoint Bravo,” he thought. Captain Diss shook his head in disappointment and sorrow at the loss of his men. He radioed in their losses to battalion, who ordered Charlie Company forward to take their place. For the time being, Delta Company was out of the fight until their disabled vehicles could get repaired and they could return to the battle.
Humpty Dumpty
Moscow, Russia
President Petrov looked at the latest battle report from the front lines. He was not happy with what he was reading. “How could things be unraveling so quickly?” he thought. A year ago, the Americans and Europeans had been in their final death throes, and now it felt like the walls of the war were rapidly closing in on him. He wasn’t sure Russia could still win without using nuclear weapons.
Sighing, Petrov depressed the intercom button on his desk. “Send them in,” he said to his secretary, whose desk was directly outside his office.
In walked General Boris Egorkin, the head of the Russian Army, Alexei Semenov, the Minister of Defense, General Kuznetsov, the head of the Russian Air Force, and Admiral Anatoly Petrukhin. He’d wanted this meeting to be small and secretive for the time being. When the outer door closed, Petrov signaled to his Head of Security that he didn’t want anyone to disturb them. The agent nodded and made sure the outer guards knew not to let anyone in, no matter who they were.
Blowing air out of the side of his mouth in frustration, Petrov began, “Generals, it’s only the five of us in this room, so I need honest answers. I need to know how long we have left.”
The other men in the room almost visibly deflated in their chairs. Perhaps they had believed their own lies, or the half-truths their subordinates had told them, but in that moment, they realized Petrov knew the jig was up. Defeat was all but assured at this point. It was just a matter of how and when, not if anymore.
General Kuznetsov was the first to speak. “Mr. President, I am not confident our air forces are going to be able to prevent the Allies from eventually dominating the skies. More than seventy percent of our fighter and ground-attack planes have been destroyed. We still have most of our strategic bombers, but I’m not sure how long that will last. We have to rotate their bases every couple of days to prevent the Allies from locating and destroying them.”
He paused for a second, as if he was debating whether or not he should say what he wanted to say next. “Over the last couple of months, the Americans have used a new weapon to counter the advantage our S-400 had given us over the Allies up to this point. When they launch an attack on our integrated air-defense pockets, they send in multiple aircraft that launch a series of AGM-158 joint air-to-surface standoff missiles. These missiles have been specifically equipped with sophisticated jamming and electronic spoofing equipment. On radar, the aircraft appears to be an enemy fighter, which our SAMs rightly move to engage. While this is happening, the Americans release a series of small-diameter precision-guided glide bombs at our radar and missiles sites. These are small but effective little bombs they’ve come up with.”
The general paused for a second and sighed. “This new attack strategy is proving to be incredibly effective, Mr. President. The Allies have managed to destroy more of our SAM sites in the last three months than they had in the previous twelve months. These are not sustainable losses. It’s already having a hugely negative effect on our ability to protect our ground forces, as I’m sure General Egorkin can attest. We are working on figuring out how to counter this, but short of us completely disabling the world’s entire satellite network, which I might add would obliterate our own satellite capability, there just isn’t too much we can do.”
Minister Semenov added, “At this rate, Mr. President, the Allies will be able to largely fly anywhere in Russia with impunity within a couple of months.”
Clearing his throat, General Egorkin interjected, “When the Allies have full air supremacy, they’ll quickly isolate and destroy our remaining combat formations, making it virtually impossible for me to amass any forces or launch any major counterattacks.”
Admiral Petrukhin added, “Aside from our nuclear-capable submarines, we are essentially finished as a service. Our last major attack was at Bear Island in the Barents Sea. Those ships have since been sunk by the Allies; I have nothing left.” He looked down in shame, then continued, “Despite our losses, I would argue that the operation was a major success in that we successfully sank three Allied aircraft carriers, along with a dozen other warships.”
“And yet, the Allies still managed to land multiple divisions’ worth of soldiers in Severodvinsk, establishing a large beachhead and enemy base in Archangelsk. Even now, those forces they landed are threatening Moscow,” countered Petrov.
“Yes, Mr. President. But the sinking of those three carriers severely limited the number of aircraft that can support those ground forces. The loss of those Allied destroyers also limited the Allies’ ability to launch cruise missiles at us,” explained the admiral.
Petrov shook his head in frustration as he sat there listening to the raw truth his generals were telling him. His stomach churned a bit, and he felt a bit of bile build up in the back of his throat. Looking at his generals, he asked, “What are your suggestions? What can be done to turn the war around, or is there nothing more we can do?”
Minister Semenov hesitantly answered, “Unless you want the war to go nuclear, Mr. President, there isn’t much we can do to turn things around at this point. We could make heavy use of tactical nuclear weapons and probably wipe out the majority of the Allied combat forces in or near our borders, but the Americans would surely respond in kind. We saw what they did to North Korea and China. President Gates didn’t hesitate for a second in hitting China with a nuclear bomb once they confirmed the Chinese had provided the North Koreans with the ICBMs that hit their West Coast.”
“We know how Gates would respond, but he’s dead,” said Petrov. “How would his successor, President Foss, respond? Does he have that same resolve? Would he really have the guts to use nuclear weapons? Especially if it were just soldiers being killed and not American cities being destroyed?” He searched their faces for an answer.
“Mr. President, I implore you not to consider using nuclear weapons,” Semenov urged. “It will only lead to the complete destruction of our country. The Americans have invested too much into this war to make peace simply because we dropped some nuclear bombs on their military. They will level our remaining military bases and devastate our cities. We still have the support of our Indian allies and the Chinese. If we have to, Mr. President, we can move the government beyond the Urals and continue to wage an insurgency against the Allies.”
Petrov shook his head at that suggestion. He wouldn’t abandon Moscow, not while they still had the strength to fight. The Nazis had thought they could lay siege to Moscow, but they had lost that battle. “No. We won’t relocate the government,” he asserted firmly. “If we do that, we send a signal to the people and the military that we are abandoning them. They will lose heart in our cause and no longer fight. We’ll stay here and make our stand. I’ll speak with Minister Kozlov to press the Americans for a ceasefire. We will try to negotiate an end to the war, with acceptable terms that will allow everyone to save as much face as possible.”
Some of the military leaders in the room might not have liked Petrov’s decision, but they would never hav
e contradicted him out loud. They had their marching orders. With the essential military strategy having been decided, the military leaders left to make sure the military could defend the capital. If that meant conscripting more people, handing them a rifle and a couple magazines of ammunition and dropping them off to guard a trench, then so be it. They would remind the Americans how deadly a street fight would be if they persisted in attacking Moscow.
*******
Strogino District, Moscow
Oleg Zolotov poured himself another glass of Russo-Baltique vodka, a truly remarkable drink. As he filled the tumblers, he caught a short glance of his prized possessions playing with some toys in the living room, near the fireplace. His granddaughter, Eva, had just turned three, and his grandson, Ivan, was being cradled in his wife Katja’s arms with his daughter looking on.
“I am truly blessed to have such a beautiful family,” he thought.
He placed the tumbler on the end table between the two oversized chairs, where he could still look at the fireplace and watch the children and his wife and daughter from his private study. His son-in-law, Dmitry Chayko, took the tumbler, examining the liquid within before taking a sip. “This must be the finest vodka I’ve ever tasted, Oleg,” he commented.
Oleg nodded, and he also took a sip of the extremely expensive liquid, relishing its rich taste before swallowing it. Seeing the apprehensive look on his son-in-law’s face, he leaned to the right on his chair’s leather arm, bringing his face closer to him. “What’s going on, Dmitry? You seem preoccupied with something.”
Shaking his head slightly, Dmitry looked like he wanted to say something, but he held his tongue. Sensing his hesitation, Oleg got up and walked over to the door of his study. He muttered something to his wife and then closed the study off. Before he returned to his chair, he walked around to his desk and pulled a small device from one of the drawers. With the click of a button, the shades on the windows closed and a slight electronic hum buzzed lightly.
