Operation Red Dragon and the Unthinkable (World War III Series Book 2)

by James Rosone

  SFC Nelson looked over the battlefield, and all he could see were burning hulks of what were once fearsome Russian battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Thousands of Russian soldiers were still intermixed with the destroyed vehicles firing at his battalion. Their objective was simple…advance across the battlefield and make direct contact with the Russian infantry. The American counter-attack was now in full swing. It was now time to tie the Russian units down while other armor units advanced around their flanks and closed off any chance of retreat.

  As Jordy Nelson advanced, he could see hundreds of red and green tracers flying back and forth between the two opposing groups. Soldiers on both sides were being hit, some just dropping dead before they even knew what happened to them, while others fell to the ground languishing in pain, screaming for a medic or their mothers. The slow whistle of artillery could be heard, and he was not sure if the rounds were friendly or incoming, Nelson knelt down next to a rock and a tree stump while he took aim at the enemy and began to engage them.

  The built-in HUD and targeting system with the M5 AIR was amazing. With the 5x zoom he could see targets up to 250 meters away and engage them easily. There were hundreds, perhaps thousands of Russian and IR soldiers, frantically digging fox holes and firing back at his soldiers and the rest of his battalion.

  Within ten minutes, Nelson had gone through two 250 round magazines. His power pack was at 47%--still good for at least another magazine and a half. Checking his HUD, Nelson could see his platoon had seven KIAs and thirteen WIAs. The medics were working on the wounded guys, pulling them back behind cover and then moving them back to the rear area where they could be medivacked to a hospital.

  SFC Nelson switched his radio frequency from the company net to his platoon net and addressed his group, “Everyone listen up. That Russian gun emplacement has been causing us a lot of grief since we got here. It’s time we take it out. First and second squad are going to provide covering fire while third and fourth squad advance. We are going to move forward to that debris pile about 20 meters in front of our current positions. I want heavy suppressive fire when we move, understand?”

  “Sergeant, how close do we need to get before we can just use our AT6s and take that position out?” asked one of the soldiers in the platoon.

  “We need to advance at least 50 meters before we use them. I want us to get close so that once it goes down, the platoon is ready to advance on that trench line” SFC Nelson responded.

  Captain Chantilly came over the company net and said, “Everyone, the artillery guys are about to drop a few rounds on the enemy. I want everyone to be ready to advance to the enemy trench line once the barrage ends. Battalion wants us to go on the offense for a while. Be ready to advance.”

  Dropping to the 1st platoon net, Captain Chantilly spoke to the platoon and SFC Nelson, saying, “I heard your plan to engage the enemy gun position, and I agree, we need to take that thing out. I wanted to let you know that I called in the artillery to assist you guys and the rest of the company will follow your lead. Good initiative, 1st Platoon! Out.”

  Smiling, Nelson was happy that someone recognized the need to take that gun position out. Finally, the Company would be going on the offensive rather than sitting still and getting shot at. “All right everyone, you heard the Captain--same plan as before. We just wait for the barrage to finish and then we advance.”

  The artillery continued to whistle overhead as it flew through the air, this time impacting all around the enemy gun positions and defensive trench line. A mixture of ground and airburst rounds could be seen and heard as they hit all along the Russian positions. Nelson could only imagine how many soldiers were being killed or maimed from this barrage. As soon as the bombardment started, it ended. That was when the platoon (and then the company) advanced.

  Within seconds of advancing, the remaining Russians in the defensive line began popping up from their foxholes and trenches to engage the Americans. Nelson could hear bullets zipping past his head. He quickly hit the dirt. Immediately, he brought his rifle to bear, and quickly identified a soldier in a foxhole shooting away at his platoon. He took aim and fired, hitting the soldier in the face and turning his head into a bright red mist.

  Checking his HUD quickly, he saw his platoon had taken a couple of casualties but was advancing in good order. Within a couple of minutes, they had moved forward to within 30 meters of the Russian defensive positions. Soldiers on both sides began throwing grenades at one another. Then the Captain came over the radio and ordered the entire company to charge the positions immediately and overwhelm them. Everyone stood up and began to yell as loudly as they could, charging into the enemy positions. In seconds, sergeant Nelson was nearing a foxhole with two Russians in it. He fired a quick burst from his gun, killing both men. He jumped into the foxhole with their dead bodies. Bullets could be heard whistling overhead, and others were slapping the dirt around his position.

  Nelson took a second before popping his head up to see where the firing was coming from. He saw three other Russians in another foxhole about 20 meters to his right. They were now focused on some of his platoon mates to their front, so Nelson grabbed one of the grenades from his vest, pulled the pin and threw it in their direction. He quickly grabbed a second grenade and threw it at them as well. The first grenade landed a little short of their position but caused them to duck, the second grenade landed near the edge of their foxhole and went off just as two of the enemy soldiers had poked their heads up to begin firing again. Nelson took aim with his rifle and took the third soldier out. In seconds, his platoon mates had made it to the position and jumped in for cover.

  The Company had pushed the Russians back, forcing them to give up their defensive positions. The ground around the area was littered with dead American and Russian soldiers. The wounded began to cry out for medics and help. Medics and doctors began to move from one wounded soldier to another, triaging to see which ones they could help, and making comfortable the ones that were too far gone.

  The Russians, unlike the IR, made the Israelis and Americans pay in blood for every inch they gave. The Israelis were probably the most fearsome fighters out of all the countries in the battle, and why shouldn’t they be? This was their country, and they knew that if the Arabs won, their families would be killed. The Arabs had already killed hundreds of thousands of Israeli civilians during the first several days and weeks of the war. It was wholesale genocide. In response, the Israelis were taking no prisoners in this war. The Americans had been abiding by the rules of the Geneva Convention, until hundreds and then thousands of American prisoners and wounded soldiers were being crucified on crosses and the IR nuked New York and Baltimore. Then the Americans threw the rule books away, and it became a very dirty and brutal war of either life or death. Surrender was not an option for either side.

  Alaskan Blues

  Day 152

  03 May 2041

  Nome, Alaska

  Nome Airport

  Pvt. Lopez hated Alaska. From the first day they arrived in Nome two weeks ago it had been miserable. It was cloudy, raining most of the time and the temperature stayed in the mid-50s. The weather had finally started to get better, but all they had done since they arrived was dig trenches, build bunkers and prepare machine gun nests. Now his platoon was working on building several anti-tank ditches and wiring them up with explosives.

  Word had it a Russian invasion force had already set sail for Nome and was expected to arrive within the next two weeks. Their lieutenant kept telling them they had to hurry, they did not have much time left to get the city and airport ready to defend, but Pvt. Lopez wondered what the point was. This was a small airport in the middle of nowhere Alaska. The real fight was going to be down near Anchorage.

  Stronghold

  Day 152

  03 May 2041

  Anchor Point, Alaska

  Sergeant Paul Allen had been transferred to the 12th Infantry Division, XI Army Group, Second Army, in Alaska after he had recove
red from his wounds a month ago. He had been part of the 1st Infantry Division and was wounded during the battle of Jerusalem. After taking several bullets to the chest and surviving, he was promoted to Sergeant and transferred to a brand new infantry division, the 12th, to help form the new NCO cadre and bring some combat experience to the group. Close to half of the NCOs and officers had been previously wounded in the Middle East or Europe, and rather than being transferred back to their old units, they were becoming part of the nucleus of the new infantry divisions being formed in the US.

  Anchor Point, Alaska was a small town, but it controlled the inlet leading to Anchorage, making it a critically important area to defend. If the Chinese wanted to secure Anchorage by sea, then they were going to have to dislodge the American positions at Anchor Point, and Homer. The engineers had been building numerous reinforced trenches, bombardment bunkers and gun emplacement positions for the 20mm heavy railguns. These railguns were going to be the primary land-based weapon in preventing the landing craft from getting ashore.

  Two kilometers behind the primary defensive positions at the beach was a secondary defensive stronghold. The engineers were building defensive positions that were between two and four kilometers apart. They were ensuring the Chinese infantry would have to fight every position, one at a time, in order to clear the peninsula to get at Anchorage. The fight for Alaska was going to be a bloody fight; if the Chinese and Russians thought they could invade America and find a weak and defenseless population, they were in for a real surprise. Dozens of civilian militia units had also formed, and were being armed by the military as well. They were being given specific hit and run targets to go after, while the regular army focused on the main enemy units. With tens of thousands of US Soldiers arriving in Alaska a day, this fight was brewing up to be one of the nastiest of the war.

  Quadrant Identification

  Day 152

  03 May 2041

  Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska

  General Tyler Black, the Commandant of the Marine Corps, stepped down from his duties at the request of the President to take over command of the newly minted American Second Army. He would now become the overall commander of the defense of Alaska and the West Coast. General Black had been in Alaska for four weeks, preparing the defenses from Nome, the Yukon Delta, and the Aleutians Island Chain, to Kodiak Island and the more densely populated areas of the mainland such as Homer, Seward and Anchorage. It was a daunting challenge considering more than 40% of his army was still on paper and not a reality yet.

  When General Black arrived four weeks ago, he had 160,000 troops currently in Alaska. Nearly 600,000 additional troops had been assigned and ordered to Alaska, but still had not completed basic combat training. Convoy after convoy of troops, infantry fighting vehicles, tanks and light drone tanks were constantly arriving in Anchorage from Seattle. 12,500 troops were arriving by air via commercial charter and military transports daily. Anchorage was becoming an enormous military encampment. Many of the Marine and Army Divisions were still being formed as soldiers and Marines continued to arrive daily from basic training and advanced military training schools.

  The next challenge, aside from the forming of the numerous divisions, was transportation and logistics. Moving divisions and their equipment to (in some cases) extremely remote locations throughout Alaska was proving to be a challenge. Ensuring those units were supplied and properly equipped was going to be the enduring logistical nightmare, especially once hostilities began. Intelligence said the Chinese fleet had set sail, meaning he had less than 12 days to finalize his troop deployments and prepare for what would be a truly enormous defensive effort.

  General Black broke the Alaskan theater down into three quadrants. The top half of Alaska, which included Prudhoe Bay, Fairbanks and Nome was quadrant one. Quadrant two included the entire Yukon Delta National Park and the Aleutians Island chain, including the Kodiak Islands. Quadrant three included everything from Homer to Denali National Park, and the Eastern half of the State.

  Quadrant one was being run by a major general with three divisions. 85,000 troops spread through a myriad of fire bases and combat outposts guarding strategic locations and infrastructure. Quadrant two was being managed by a major general as well, and had five divisions, or 150,000 troops. This group had the most actual land to defend, and the most beaches to have to repel the invaders from. They also had Kodiak Island to protect, which was a key strongpoint at the mouth of the inlet leading to Anchorage. Quadrant three was commanded by a lieutenant general and eight divisions, 235,000 troops. This was the most populated area of the state, and had the most critical infrastructure such as road and rail networks to defend. It was also the key to gaining access to the rest of the Canadian states and the lower half of the US. Additional troops from the rest of the country would continue to arrive even after the invasion started, but this would be the starting American defense force for the Russian/Chinese invasion of America.

  Rescuing Berlin

  Day 155

  06 May 2041

  Berlin, Germany

  Field Marshal Dieter Schoen’s Headquarters

  Major General Dieter Schoen had been promoted to Field Marshal, giving him his fourth star as a general. His defensive efforts in Poland had bought the German/EU and Allied armies the time they needed for the American Fifth Army to assemble and engage the Russians. It was the emergence of the Fifth Army that ultimately stopped the 3rd Shock Army from capturing Berlin. The Allies were now trying to determine if they were going to fight for Berlin and turn it into a blood bath like it had been during World War II, or if they were going to declare it a free city and hope that the Russians occupied it peacefully.

  Marshal Schoen’s army had been reinforced with an additional three hundred main battle tanks, bringing his total panzer force up to 680 again. He had also been given a full battalion of Pershing battle tanks, which was really giving his Army a big boost. Berlin had been turned to rubble during the Second World War, and turning it back into rubble was not something anyone in Germany wanted to have happen again. The new plan General Wade was promoting was for Schoen to pull his forces back to Brandenburg, West of Berlin. The hope was that this would draw General Putin’s 3rd Shock Army around Berlin to the open flat country near Rathenow, Germany; in these flatlands west of the city, they might have a better chance in a tank battle of either seriously hurting the Russians or stopping their attack.

  If their initial attack failed, then the fallback plan was to regroup at Stendal on the west side of the Elbe River and make their stand there. With nearly 3,000,000 Russian troops invading Germany, and 2,500,000 soldiers attacking through Southeastern Europe, the American and European armies were starting to buckle under the pressure. After significant pushing and outright threats from President Stein, Chancellor Lowden released control of the rest of the EU and National Armies, and allowed them to be controlled by NATO. The bulk of the forces were being sent to the mountains of Croatia, Slovenia, Austria and the German Alps to block the Russians from gaining entry into Southern Europe.

  The Allies controlled the Mediterranean and the Adriatic Sea, preventing the Russians from conducting a direct seaborne landing. The Reds could (and often did) parachute small numbers of forces into Italy to conduct raids and guerilla operations, but they lacked the capability to conduct a large scale airborne assault as the Allies had done.

  The Russian offensive in Europe was coinciding with their attack in the Middle East and their massive invasion fleet’s movement towards Alaska. Their operations in Europe were going well, with the Allies having been pushed back to the outskirts of Berlin. Operations in the Middle East had started out great, and they had nearly broken through to Tel Aviv before the Allies launched their surprise airborne and seaborne invasion of Lebanon. The 2nd Shock Army had a reserve contingent in Damascus and Aleppo, but both forces had been defeated by the Allied blocking force. Now the Russians had to make a hard choice: they could either give up the gains they and the Is
lamic Republic had made in capturing most of northern Israel, or they would face the real possibility of being surrounded and completely cut off from any reinforcements.

  General Lodz was a dynamic Russian General, and his loss was felt immediately. His deputy commander took over, but he either ignored the intelligence of the Allied strength at his flank, or thought he could go for broke and end the war. Either way, he decided to advance when he should have retreated. Now the 2nd Shock Army was in danger of being surrounded and cut off. If that happened, then chances were they would be forced to surrender…but not before they ran out of ammunition. They would bleed the Americans and Israelis before they had to throw in the towel.

  *******

  With the Allied decision made to declare Berlin a free city and withdraw, Marshal Schoen began the immediate work of moving his forces west of Berlin. His new post was in an area that he had identified to be a good location for one of the decisive tank battles of the war, a nice flat patch of land with the River Elbe to his back. The American Fifth Army had 620 Pershing main battle tanks and 2,800 of the older venerable M1A4 MBTs. Couple that with a fighting force of nearly 760,000 combat troops, and they were a superior force, despite being out numbered nearly 4:1.

  The advantage the Russians had was in their MiG40s, which were still wreaking havoc on the Allied air forces and their drone tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. The Russian drone IFVs were a particularly nasty drone. The Allies called them Lemmings because they were small, about the size of a Ford F150, and travelled in small packs, typically following a lead drone. They were lightly armored, but carried two 7.62mm machine guns mounted on a lowered armored turret and an upper turret with a single 30mm gun used for destroying light armored vehicles. They ran somewhat autonomously of their owners in that the drone pilot would program in the directions of where to go, and the drone would drive itself to that location. If it encountered resistance along the way, it would either stop to engage the opposition if it was substantial, or it could drive right through it. The drones had an automated targeting system that leveraged cameras, motion tracking, body temperature and a sophisticated AI that assisted the drone pilot. Typically, a drone pilot could manage three to five drones fairly easily, which is why they were often referred to as Lemmings, blindly following their masters.