Air Battle Force

“Address him as ‘General’ or ‘sir,’ Colonel,” Orazov said angrily.

“Shut up, you bastard!” Turabi exploded. “You don’t know what you’re—”

At that moment a siren began to wail throughout the headquarters company — the air-raid siren. Turabi’s blood turned cold. It was too late. He thought for certain they had one more day. They were at the extreme edge of effective combat range of the Mi-24 attack helicopters based at Mary. Turabi believed that the Russians would wait until they attempted their assault on their objective, the oil-control facility at Bayramaly. That would give the big Hind-D attack helicopters several more weapons to carry into the attack, several more minutes over the target area. But surprise was everything in battle — and the Russians had just achieved it.

“Gunships! Helicopter gunships to the south!” one of the command-post lieutenants shouted. “Sir, spotters have detected two formations of three, about fifteen kilometers out.”

“Not even a full squadron. It might be a feint,” Turabi said. He motioned for the radio handset and shouted, “This is Colonel Turabi. Clear this net! I said clear this net immediately!” He waited a few moments for the excited chatter to die down. Then: “Echo Company, Echo Company, alert your scouts and make sure they’re ready to deal with the main body. If it’s coming, they’ll be rushing in from the north.

“Break. All antiaircraft crews, all antiaircraft crews, listen up. Do not panic when you see the damned Hinds. If you keep your cool, you’ll have a good chance. Dismount your man-portable missile crews, disperse and hide in every crack and crevice you can find, and go to remotes on your gun units. The Hinds like big targets out in the open — don’t give them one. Relax and get hits. Vanguard units, don’t break out of formation until you see the enemy break first, and don’t start radioing artillery-grid coordinates until you see their attack formation take shape. I want our artillery to drop ordnance on where they are, not where they were.” He threw the headset into Orazov’s face. “You wanted a fight, Orazov, you got one now.” Turabi ran off to the command truck, not waiting to see if Zarazi or Orazov followed.

They did not.

Turabi sat in the commander’s seat, in front of a large Plexiglas board with a grid showing the location of all their units. Behind the transparent board were communications technicians receiving reports from scouts and brigade commanders; another technician quickly drew and erased the symbols on the board, writing backward so Turabi on the other side could see them properly, as the battle progressed. On either side of the commander’s seats were the deputy’s seat and seats for communications officers and other advisers and specialists. Turabi could speak with anyone in his team, from a rifle-platoon leader to a battalion commander, by flicking a switch.

It was happening exactly as he’d envisioned it: a classic Soviet-style envelopment attack. Two flights of helicopter gunships were sweeping in from the south; a small formation of light tanks, just a dozen spotted so far, were heading up the highway toward them. But these were just the diversions — the main-objective force had still not been spotted. “Echo Three, this is Green One,” Turabi radioed to one of the scout platoons that was the farthest north and west, “what do you see? They should be right in front of you.”

“Negative contact, Green One,” the leader of the three-tank scout platoon reported.

Either the platoon was not where it was plotted on the board, Turabi thought, or the Turkmen forces were coming in from even farther north than he’d anticipated. “Echo, this is Green One, move one of your platoons straight north, straight north, right to that H-1 access road. They have to be coming in from farther north — your scouts are too close in and too far west.”

“Echo acknowledges,” the scout-company commander radioed back.

Turabi studied the board for a few moments, counting scout units, then flipped the channel selector: “Airborne Two, this is Green One, I don’t see any of your units up. What’s the problem?”

“Green One, we lost the diesel-powered pump for the refueling bladders,” the helicopter-company commander radioed back. The helicopters were refueled from giant twenty-thousand-deciliter collapsible rubber bladders, resembling tire inner tubes, using high-volume, diesel-powered pumps. They could have all the fuel they needed available — but if the pumps went out, getting the fuel into the aircraft’s fuel tanks was long, hard work. “Our first chopper should be airborne in five to ten minutes.”

“Two, if you ever again fail to report a malfunction like that in a timely manner, I’ll have your eyeballs for breakfast!” Turabi shouted. “Break. Airborne Three, how fast can you get a cover aircraft over to grid three-zero- Charlie?”

“Green One, stand by,” the commander of another helicopter company reported. After a short but utterly nerve-racking wait: “Green One, I’ll send a unit in right now, ETE three minutes. He can be on station for about five minutes before he bingos.”

“Very well, Airborne Three. Break. Airborne Two, get your aircraft in the air as soon as you can, or—”

A tremendous explosion outside shook the command-post vehicle so hard that Turabi almost flew out of his seat. “What was that?” he shouted, struggling back to his seat.

“A bomb!” someone else shouted. “At least a two-hundred-kilo gravity bomb! It hit the radar truck!”

An antiradar missile or TV-guided missile, Turabi thought. Too big for a small, helicopter-fired missile, Turabi knew — it had to be from a fixed-wing aircraft. And if it was TV-guided, it could just as easily have hit the command-post truck — that would have been a juicier target. No one had reported any low-level bombers inbound, so it had to be a cruise missile, launched from high altitude, or a long-range guided missile. “Switch to the number- two radar van and recalibrate,” Turabi directed, “then order them to go to intermittent operation.” It took several moments, but finally he could see the radars up front in the command vehicle come back to life. They were still in the fight, but down to their last radar array.

“Should we retreat, sir?” the operations officer asked nervously, shouting his question out at the top of his lungs even though Turabi was only a couple meters away. “I think we should get out of here now! ”

“No one is retreating, Captain — not yet,” Turabi said quickly. No, he thought, they should have retreated days ago — it was way too late now. “Calm yourself. Go get a report on that impact area. Have someone check for chemical or biological weapons. Pressurize the command cab.” Turabi had to swallow hard as the pressure quickly built up in the command-post truck. If those last weapons dropped nearby had chemical or biological weapons aboard, the positive pressure inside the cab would help keep toxic chemicals from seeping inside. On the commandwide net, Turabi radioed, “All units, I think that was an antiradar-missile attack. Check for biochem weapons and report. Bravo Three, Bravo Three, wheel north to H-1 and engage targets.”

“No targets spotted yet, Green One.”

“They’ll be there!” Turabi insisted. “Bravo Four, back up Bravo Three to the north. Bravo Six, move forward and take Five’s position on the tail, and do it right now,” Turabi ordered. “Prepare to move to the west to engage the enemy’s left flank if they come in from the north. Acknowledge.”

Another long pause, more confusion on the network. Turabi thought the reserve unit had bugged out already. But finally: “Acknowledged, Green One, Bravo Six is on the move.”

“Very well. Move up as fast as you can. Break. Bravo Five, take Bravo Two’s position on the left flank and move forward fast. Airborne One, take the point. Airborne Two, get your birds fueled and move north to cover Bravo Three and Four, and you’d better have them all up in ten minutes or I’m going to rip your head off and shit down your throat! Airborne Three, don’t engage those Hinds — go around them and see if you can get them to follow you. They have to be low on fuel. Get Charjew to start moving fuel down here on the double!”

He thought for another moment. There was no supply line behind them anymore, Turabi knew. They would either make it to Bayramaly and their objective, the petroleum-control station outside the city, or they would get smashed out here. If they ran out of fuel, they weren’t going to get any more from Charjew in time. The reserve force, Battalion Six, had to move up to join the fighting. If they didn’t advance, they were going to turn and run back to Charjew on first contact.

“Bravo One and Bravo Two, move out and engage the point vehicles. Blast them the hell off the highway, and don’t dance with them — those Hinds will be after you before too long. I want both One and Two at the objective point in one hour, or we’re going to get chewed to pieces. Let’s get moving, or we’ll die out here in the desert.”

He held on as the command vehicle lurched forward, wheeled sharply left up and down over the edge of the highway, and drove several dozen meters away into the cotton fields. Moments later another explosion shook the area — and, yes, it had landed two hundred meters northeast on the highway, exactly where they’d be if they’d pulled back and stayed on the highway. Crap, this was getting hairy now. Turabi could practically feel a TV- or