tread off a tank.
'Buffalo, this is Six, begin moving to Bravo Line-execute.'
As platoon leader, Mackall was the last to leave. He saw both of his companion tanks rolling down the open reverse slope of the hill. The infantry was moving also, into their armored carriers, or just running. 'Friendly' artillery blanketed the ridgeline with high explosives and smoke to mask their withdrawal. On command, the tank leaped forward, accelerating to thirty miles per hour and racing to the next defense line before the Russians could occupy the ridge they were leaving behind. Artillery fire was all over them, exploding a pair of German personnel carriers.
'Zulu, Zulu, Zulu!'
'Get me a vehicle!' Alekseyev ordered.
'I cannot permit this. I cannot let a general-'
'Get me a damned vehicle! I must observe this,' Alekseyev repeated.
A minute later, he and Sergetov joined the colonel in a BMP armored command vehicle that raced to the position the NATO troops had just vacated. They found a hole that had sheltered two men-until a rocket had landed a meter away.
'My God, we've lost twenty tanks here!' Sergetov said, looking back.
'Down!' The colonel pushed both men into the bloody hole. A storm of NATO shells landed on the ridge.
'There's a Gatling gun!'' the gunner said. A Russian antiaircraft gun carrier came over the ridge. A moment later a HEAT round exploded it like a plastic toy. His next target was a Russian tank coming down the hill they'd just left.
'Heads up, friendly air coming in!' Mackall cringed, hoping the pilot could tell the sheep from the goats.
Alekseyev watched the twin-engine fighter swoop straight down the valley. Its nose disappeared in a mass of flame as the pilot fired his antitank cannon. Four tanks exploded before his eyes as the Thunderbolt appeared to stagger in midair, then turned west, a missile chasing after him. The SA-7 fell short.
'Me Devil's Cross?' he asked. The colonel nodded in reply, and Alekseyev realized where the name had come from. From an angle, the American fighter did look like the stylized Russian Orthodox crucifix.
'I just called up the reserve regiment. We may have them on the run,' the colonel said.
This, Sergetov thought incredulously to himself, is a successful attack?
Mackall watched a pair of antitank missiles reach out into the Russian lines. One miss, one kill. More smoke came in from both sides as the NATO troops fell back another five hundred meters. The village they were defending was now in sight. The sergeant had counted a total of five kills to his tank. He hadn't been hit yet, but that wouldn't last. The friendly artillery was really in the fight now. The Russian infantry was down to half the strength he'd first seen, and their tracked vehicles were laying back, trying to engage the NATO positions with their own missiles. Things looked to be going reasonably well when the third regiment appeared.
Fifty tanks came over the hill in front of him. An A-10 swept across the line and killed a pair, then was blotted out of the sky by a SAM. The burning wreckage fell three hundred yards in front of him.
'Target tank, one o'clock. Shoot!' The Abrams rocked backward with yet another shot. 'Hit.'
'Warning, warning,' called the troop commander. 'Enemy choppers approaching from the north.'
Ten Mi-24 Hinds arrived late, but they made up for it by killing a pair of tanks in less than a minute. German Phantom jets then appeared, engaging, them with air-to-air missiles and cannon in a wild melee that suddenly included surface-to-air missiles also. The sky was crisscrossed with smoke trails, and suddenly there were no aircraft in view.
'It's bogging down,' Alekseyev said. He'd just learned one important lesson: attack helicopters cannot hope to survive in the face of enemy fighters. Just when he thought the Mi-24s would make a decisive difference, they'd been forced away by the appearance of the German fighters. Artillery support was slacking off. The NATO gunners were counterbatterying the Soviet guns expertly, helped by ground-attack fighters. He had to get more front-line air support.
'The hell it is!' the colonel answered. He radioed new orders to the battalions on his left flank.
'Looks like a command vehicle at ten o'clock, on the ridgeline, can you reach it?'
'Long shot, I-'
Whang! A shot glanced off the turret's face.
'Tank, three o'clock, close in-'
The gunner turned his yoke controls and nothing happened. Immediately he reached for the manual traverse. Mackall engaged the target with his machine gun, bouncing bullets off the advancing T-80 that had come out of nowhere. The gunner cranked frantically at the handle as another round crashed into their armor. The driver aided him, turning the vehicle and praying that they could return the fire.
The computer was out, damaged by the shock of the first hit. The T-80 was less than a thousand meters away when the gunner settled on it. He fired a HEAT round, and it missed. The loader slammed another home in the breech. The gunner worked his controls and fired again. Hit.
'There's more behind that one,' the gunner warned.
'Buffalo Six, this is three-one, bad guys coming in from our flank. We need help here,' Mackall called; then to the driver: 'Left track and back up fast!'
The driver needed no encouragement. He cringed, looking out his tiny viewing prisms, and rocked the throttle handle all the way back. The tank raced backward and left as the gunner tried to lock onto another target-but the automatic stabilization was also out. They had to sit still to fire accurately, and it was death to sit still.
Another Thunderbolt came in low, dropping cluster munitions on the Russian formation. Two more Soviet tanks were stopped, but the fighter went away trailing smoke. Artillery fire joined in to stop the Soviet maneuver.
'For Christ's sake, stop so I can shoot one of the fuckers!' the gunner screamed. The tank stopped at once. He fired, hitting a T-72 on the tread. 'Reload!'
A second tank joined Mackall's, a hundred meters to his left. It was intact and fired off three quick rounds for two hits. Then a Soviet helicopter reappeared and exploded the troop commander's tank with a missile. A shoulder- fired Stinger missile then killed the chopper as the German infantry redeployed. Mackall watched a pair of HOT antitank missiles go left and right of his turret, reaching for the advancing Soviets. Both hit.
'Antenna tank, dead ahead.'
'I see him. Sabot!' the gunner cranked the turret back to the right. He elevated his gun to battle sights and fired.
'Captain Alexandrov!' the division commander shouted into his microphone. The battalion commander's transmission had stopped in midword. The colonel was using his radio too much. Ten miles away, a German battery of 155mm mobile guns tracked in on the radio signals and fired twenty quick rounds.
Alekseyev heard the incoming and jumped into a German-dug foxhole, dragging Sergetov with him. Five seconds later the area was blanketed by smoke and noise.
The General stuck his head up to see the colonel still standing, still giving radio orders. Behind him the command vehicle was burning, the radios with it. Five men were dead, another half-dozen screaming with the pain of their injuries. Alekseyev looked with annoyance at a bloody streak on the back of his hand.
Mackall killed one more tank, but it was the Germans who stopped the attack, using the last of their HOT missiles to do so. The remaining Russian commander lost his nerve when half the tanks in the battalion were hit. The survivors turned on their smoke generators and retreated back around the hill to the south. Artillery chased after them. The land battle was over for the moment.
'Mackall, what's happening down your way?'' the troop executive officer inquired.
'Where's Six?'
