' The Longest Night ' & ' Crossing the Rubicon ': The Original Map Illustrated and Uncut Final Volume (Armageddon's Song) (17 page)

So far luck had been with them, despite losing five infantry fighting vehicles and their compliments in the ambush at the cutting. That was Lorenzo’s opinion anyway.

Two of his tanks had been damaged but not seriously enough to warrant immediate repair, and they had destroyed five enemy tanks plus another five IFVs. What concerned him though were the American company commander’s sightings of vehicles on the forest firebreaks heading west. This was not something Pierre Allain had expected, an attempt to seize two of the vital junctions, and not just the one.

A quick radio conference with the English at the next junction had confirmed an attack by enemy tanks was ongoing,

although the Soviet armour was standing off and softening up the defenders, as it waited for the infantry that had escaped his own tanks.

Were there just four or five Soviet MBTs remaining, or was there another tank company out there?

His cavalry regiment’s recce vehicles were again leading the way, but more cautiously now. Two were three hundred metres apart in the forest to the north of Autobahn 2, trying to locate which route the enemy had taken. A second pair was doing the same thing to the south. The remaining Lince was driving in a zig-zag fashion along the autobahn so as to hard-target for enemy tank and Sagger gunners.

“Six, this is Echo Two Five, over?”

Lorenzo was up in the hatch of his damaged Ariete, again getting wet despite his best intentions.

“Six, send over?”

“Echo Two Five, we’ve been following the firebreak the IFVs took when they bugged out, the track marks are easy to follow,
and then they are joined by more at a firebreak intersection.”
The grid reference was added.

“Six, How many, and can you tell if they were tanks or IFV’s?”

“Echo Two Five, no way of telling what made them, but I reckon a squadron’s worth, the ground here is pretty chewed up.”

It went along with had been deduced regarding the numbers involved in the earlier breach between 3 Para and 1 Wessex’s positions.

Apparently the Soviets had got it wrong too, and had expected a NATO reaction from the north, not the east, and had committed a company against each of the junctions while having at least another company in a blocking position to the north straddling the valley road from Lehre and the Vormundberg beyond.

Consulting his map, Lt Col Rapagnetta saw the thick pine forests on the valley slopes either side of a road bordered by fields with stone walls typical of this area. A good spot for a tank company to halt a much superior force, probably from ambush. Fortunately Lorenzo had chosen the less tactical but speedier approach or they could have driven straight into that.

If he were the Soviet commander he would have relocated when the attack on TP33 failed, but would he merely reinforce the tank company attacking the junction at TP32 to ensure success quickly, or would he be covering the eastern approaches too?

Lorenzo ordered the tanks to halt briefly upon the autobahn while he carried out a hasty reorganisation, combining the tanks of the units into two groups, a full squadron and a troop of three.

To the south the Americans single remaining M1 was leading the cavalry regiment Pumas through Bieinrode and into Brunswick from that direction. His aim there was to initially demonstrate to the east, drawing out the enemy in that direction thereby allowing the infantry to reinforce the junction by swinging up from the south. The 5
th
Cavalry Regiment’s infantrymen had the Israeli
Spike
ATGW man-pack system which the English were in dire need of at TP32.

With the reorganisation complete he led the squadron of ten into the forest and onto a parallel firebreak to the much used one and headed west with the Lince vehicle on point.   

Russia

Had this been a Hollywood movie then there would somehow have been a rear-view mirror that would have been present in the cockpit to capture the back view, the awful light in their wake as they flew north. Major Caroline Nunro and Captain Patricia Dudley, USAF, were combat aircrew veterans so killing was not something new to them. It was sanitised in comparison to what an infantryman experiences and it was easy not to dwell on an aircraft they had ‘splashed’ having contained at least one other human being, with family and loved ones who would grieve. The ground target that they ‘neutralised’ may contain dozens, but they never saw them, just the explosion, a successful strike.

Tonight they had seen nothing more than the light of several suns through the filtered screens, and felt some of the ground effects, a fraction of what an air or surface burst would have had. But they flew in silence, in a kind of shock, knowing that nothing about themselves would ever be the same again, and no one who knew what they had done would look at them in quite the same way either.

Moscow was still on high alert of course and a fuel costly detour brought them to thirty miles out from the forest airstrip.

Patricia broke communications silence, using relaxed VP on the heavily encrypted channel.

“
Surf Club
receiving
Petticoat Express
on Secure Eight, over?”

Silence followed.

“
Surf Club
receiving
Petticoat Express
on Secure Eight, report my signal, over?”

There was still silence.

“This doesn’t seem good.” Caroline commented. “Do you think they already hightailed it out of there?”

“No way of telling.”

“If they have gone then we have an hour’s fuel at best before we hit the silk and hike the last thousand miles to friendly lines.”

“Petticoat this is Surf, we have you strength three!”

An explosion and the sound of small arms fire in the background was evident.

“Surf this is ‘coat, you guys sound kind of busier than when we left, we are five minutes out but are you waving us off?”

“We are having trouble with the neighbours but we have their measure until the ammunition runs out. The other guys came up the logging trail through the forest from the west, so approach from the north east, over.”

“Roger that, out.”

On the ground, Limanova had been using the two elderly IFVs to ferry the men to an RV a half mile from the airstrip. As they had appeared out of the trees, tired and fed up, their new CO had briefed them, the old CO in plain sight behind him, dead upon the wet grass. Lt Col Limanova split them into groups of fifteen for ease of transport, and these would form five man fire teams in the attack. He did not expect cheers and what the Americans called Gung Ho, and in that he was not disappointed. The forest at night was in none of the militiamen’s comfort zones.

It had taken the Green Berets a little while to work out what was going on and six of the groups were delivered to the RV, crammed inside if they were lucky, or sitting on the roof getting wet if they were not. Groups 7 and 8 didn’t make it, the vehicles were ambushed with venerable 66mm LAWs. Four men escaped back into the forest but Petrov was not one of them. 

He had ninety men with him and another hundred awaiting transport that was now burning fiercely on the logging trail. He told them to make their way to him on foot.

Those one hundred men were complying with his order, but they made their way very slowly.

They had an old M41 82mm mortar and two men who knew how to use it but no aiming post so they would use open sights and guess the required elevation.

With a few words of encouragement they had moved off and begun their attack.

It was as black as pitch but the landing lights, infra-red strobes, though invisible with the naked eye were clear and bright on the plasma screens.

Tracer flashed back and forth on the right of the airstrip and Caroline brought them in low over the trees to minimise their exposure to the ground fire.

The Green Beret commander was waiting for them, shouting above the sound of the still running engines and the gunfire.

Svetlana was in his command bunker trying to reach her contact in the government to get the militia pulled off. She had frequencies and callsigns that Torneski was meant to monitor, but if she were listening she certainly was not responding.

The fuel bowser was not there to meet them, it was back in the trees, a less obvious target.

“I know where it is, I’ll fetch it if the keys in the ignition?”

A mortar round landed over to the right, attempting by guesswork to hit or damage the aircraft they had heard land.

“Jesus!” Caroline swore.

“He can’t see to aim.” The Green Beret commented.

“He doesn’t need to.” Patricia said.

“There’s a pair of my guys near the fuel truck.” He told Patricia. “Be sure to shout a warning and don’t forget the password, okay?”

Patricia took off , running along the edge of the lighter runway until the break in the trees. She swung left, slowing as she headed into the dark trees.

A flash robbed her of all night vision and she was flying through the air to land in brambles, her hearing was gone, shot, robbed by the 82mm mortar rounds blast and only a tree trunk being between them had saved her life.

She regained her feet and blundered about trying to find the track again. She could not see the Green Beret sentries, or hear anything, let alone a shouted challenge for a password.

The burst of automatic fire on the opposite side of the runway to that of the attack drew an immediate request for a sitrep from the CP.

The phrase Blue on Blue is rather innocuous and disguises the enormity of an incident in the same way
that calling a dead civilian ‘Collateral Damage’ does. The unit medic arrived at a run but Captain Patricia Dudley was already quite dead. 

Frustrated at the lack of progress and despairing at his men’s reluctance despite there being an aircraft on the ground only a few hundred yards away. The Americans knew the ground well and had set up their defence accordingly. Lt Col Limanova had lost eight men within as many minutes of his attack starting and it ground to a halt. In his mind this was a stalemate, but in reality the professional soldiers had control of the engagement. He tried for air support to no avail and although he could find neither fault with the radio or its operator, but he was unable to raise anyone. This was thanks to silent jamming from the Americans. So involved was he with the radio and lack of communications he did not notice his force reducing in size as men slipped away, back in the direction they had come.

By the time Limanova decided on trying to get into a position where small arms could be used on the aircraft if it took off again, fire from his own militia towards the defenders was bordering on
the pathetic. He left the radio operator with the mortarmen and went to investigate.

The jet aircrafts engine pitch altered and it began its take-off run. Limanova was reduced to shouting at the shadows to fire several aircraft lengths in front of it if they did actually see it.

Lt Col Limanova was on the track, kneeling and peering up into the rain, his AKM at the ready but he saw only a tail flame that suddenly appeared in mid-air, accelerating around in a great sweeping turn to dive into the ground at the same spot as his mortar and radioman. The blast deposited him several feet from where he had been standing to land in one of the many clusters of wheel ruts that had now formed large puddles on the logging trail. Earth, gravel and even parts of the radio operator and mortarmen were landing around him with a splash, a final mission critique on a now dazed Limanova’s first mission as a sub district commander.

Patricia’s death had demanded some kind of response, some action to mark her violent passing and the Maverick’s destroying the mortar and anyone nearby would have to suffice.

The Green Berets abandoned their positions and slipped away into the night, taking with them Patricia’s body to be buried in the forest at a traceable spot where she could be exhumed for proper burial by her family at some time in the future.

The shock and the grieving must wait though. They flew on, climbing to ten thousand feet to keep away from opportunists with Strela launchers, and turning due west with enough fuel, in theory, to reach NATO lines in Germany, but they had a head wind, the same one carrying the weather front from Western Europe to cover both Central and Eastern Europe.

Svetlana had been in her escape kit, camouflage coveralls over her civilian clothes and her face cammed to hide the shine for when the time came for her to evade away into the forest with the Green Berets. Her own ‘G’ suit had been buried after they arrived weeks before as she would not be using it again, at least that had been the thinking back then. She had retained only the thermals that Caroline called her ‘pornstar suit’ worn beneath jeans and sweater.  So there she was, with a green and brown grease painted face and soil grubby
G-suit in the back seat, wishing she had paid more attention when Patricia had once run through what her board could do.

She switched between
‘Nav’
and
‘Attack’
with a subsequent near cold sweat breaking out when she could not switch back. The ‘Help’ icon had saved the day, and that was now being employed as a tutor tool. Several hundred hours would be required for her to approach Patricia’s level of skill, but she had to start somewhere. After a half hour though she was smart enough to know she wasn’t smart enough.