twisted McGee’s gut with fear. Was he going to die tonight? Was this it?
Like the other M1A3s, McGee had carefully chosen his first spot. The tank used a small, grassy dune, putting the Abrams behind it in the “hull-down” position. It meant most of the tank used the sand as a shield. The turret was higher than the top of the dune and the gun-barrel depressed so it could fire straight at the enemy. It would make him a smaller sight on enemy thermals and the sand or dune would act as a shield against enemy shells. Well, the dune would stop a HEAT round, but he wasn’t sure about the latest Chinese sabot round.
In the Abrams’s thermal sights, he saw the first enemy tank—a T-66 by its size. It was nearly five thousands meters away. Behind it, others appeared, following the first monster. A squeeze of purified terror tightened McGee’s chest. He’d heard stories about the tri-turreted tanks. The battalion didn’t have a chance against them. But so what, huh? It was time to fight.
With the pistol grip, McGee adjusted the turret and put crosshairs on the target. The enemy tank was moving fast and would soon be in range.
“Gunner, sabot, tank,” McGee said. It made him glad his voice still sounded level. Maybe he could fool the others, not letting them know he was worried sick.
The first order—“gunner”—alerted the crew. The second told them what kind of shell he wanted. The last was the target they aimed at.
McGee glanced at the gunner. The man had his own thermal sights, leaning his brow on the pad. The gunner shouted, “Identified,” and took over control of the gun. With his left hand, the gunner flipped the switch on the fire control to “sabot.” At the same time, he ensured the crosshairs were on target. He used the laser range finder. It shot a beam at the target and returned, giving them the precise distance. The M1A3’s ballistic computer analyzed the type of ammo, the wind speed and direction, humanity and the angle of the tank relative to the horizontal plane. In microseconds, the computer showed the needed gun-tube elevation, which the gunner used to adjusted the mighty 120mm cannon.
While the gunner readied the gun, the loader—to McGee’s left and below him—turned to the rear bustle. With his right knee, the loader hit a switch. A one-inch-thick blast door slid open, showing rows of main gun rounds. He pulled out a fifty-pound sabot round. With a grunt, he turned and his knee lifted off the switch. The blast door slid shut, sealing off the deadly rounds. The loader shoved the round into the breech and slid it home with his fist. The breech-lock knocked his fist out the way as it sealed the breech. Some loaders had lost fingers that way. The loader finally flipped the safety switch on the turret wall and shouted, “Up!” over the intercom.
Now McGee waited, letting the enemy come to poppa. Before the T-66 reached the gun’s range, American artillery shells began falling on the enemy. This was perfect. McGee knew all about the enemy defensive systems. The T-66 had more than great armor, but included radar-directed flechettes and auto-cannons. The artillery shells might give the radar-guided defenses too many targets to monitor. Even better, the arty shells would possibly hit against the T-66s’ tops. Just like the Abrams, the enemy’s weakest armor was there. Unfortunately, enemy defensive systems began chugging at the steel hail.
After a wait that squeezed McGee’s stomach tighter than a fist, the lead and targeted T-66 came into range.
“Fire!” McGee said.
The gunner shouted, “On the way!” and fired the round.
The M1A3 shook as the 120mm smoothbore gun fired the shell. The entire front of the tank seemed to lift.
The sabot round contained a cardboard casing around the gunpowder, which was burned up by the explosion. It meant that no hot brass shell landed inside the tank.
The kinetic energy sabot round exited the tube. The word
Despite the artillery rain, Chinese flechettes flew as the round neared, but they missed, as did the auto- cannons tracking it by radar. Too many targets—this was great!
The DU round struck the T-66 with the mass and pressure equivalent to an NASCAR racer hitting a brick wall at 175 mph, all concentrated in an area the size of a golf ball.
The DU round punched through a turret. As it did, particles sheared off as the round penetrated. It was like a snake shedding its skin. The enormous pressure turned the projectiles white-hot. The peeled-off skins became fiery granules and were twice as dense as the steel that followed them. Those granules zinged around the compartment like a thousand white-hot BBs. They ignited everything they touched, killing the Chinese personnel and cooking off a round. In this instance, the pyrophoric effect resulted in a terrific explosion that ripped the turret from the T-66 and flipped the one-hundred ton tank onto its side, taking it out of the battle.
Back at the M1A3, McGee shouted, “Hit! We took out a T-66.”
The crew shouted with glee, the driver pumping his fist in the air, showing off his high school ring. Then McGee targeted the next enemy tank and the procedure began all over again.
All along the line from their hull-down positions, American Abrams opened up, reaching out over four thousand meters. Some rounds hit, a few making kills like McGee. Others hit and only burned in partway. A few hit and bounced—the angle and new, super-dense skirts working as designed on the Chinese tanks. The T-66s knocked down some rounds with defensive fire or deflected the sabots just enough. A few of the sabots just plain missed.
As all this happened, McGee realized the enemy probably had as good a night vision as they had, maybe even better.
“Back her up!” McGee shouted to the driver. “And give me smoke.”
The driver revved the gas turbine engine. The mighty seventy-ton tank lurched as it backed away from its dune and backed away from the advancing horde of Chinese monsters.
The Abrams lobbed smoke shells, creating dense clouds of it between them and the enemy.
The Abrams had two ways to make smoke. The first was how they were doing it, with the turret-mounted grenade dischargers. The second way was to inject a little fuel into the exhaust. That generated a heavy cloud of smoke.
Sergeant McGee pressed his forehead against the thermal sights. Night or day, they used them. They could “look” through most smoke and other interference. These smoke shells had tiny particles, however, making thermal imaging harder to achieve.
The opening battle raged against forty-two M1A3s and fifty-nine T-66s. The Chinese tanks now opened fire. On McGee’s thermal sights, the firings were bright blooms.
Unfortunately, for McGee and his fellow tankers it wasn’t sixty gun-tubes firing at the battalion, but one hundred and eighty. The Abrams had a 120mm tube. Each Chinese tank had three 175mm tubes and more advanced munitions.
Terrific explosions occurred outside McGee’s Abrams. Titanic hammers beat at metal and it rained shattered and exploded M1A3s.
“Get us out of here!” McGee shouted, with his voice cracking.
“I’m trying, Sarge! I’m trying!”
McGee leaned his forehead against the thermal sights. When the T-66s fired in unison, it looked like Hell had erupted.
First Lieutenant Sheng sat in the commander’s seat of the highest turret. He had several computer screens around him and wore safety straps as the T-66 roared at the retreating enemy.
The damned Americans had knocked out one of the platoon’s T-66s. It was because of the artillery shells. There had simply been too many targets for the defensive radar to track at once. An Abrams had hit, blown a turret off one of his T-66s, which had caused the tank to fall onto its side, thereby taking it out of the battle.
Sheng wanted revenge, which overrode the small sense of concern humming in his head for his own safety.
