team consisted of three men armed with LAWS. On Duncan's order they would take out the BRDM leading the convoy.
Their firing would be the signal for the main team, deployed just off the road, to fire on the trucks nearest them. These men were further broken down into three-man sections. Each section was to fire on one truck, taking out the drivers and shooting the tires. Once a section managed to stop a truck and the immediate area appeared to be safe, two men were given sixty seconds to raid the truck for food, water and any types of antitank weapons they could find, while the third man covered them. The last team, located at the far end of the ambush, was the security team. Because the platoon was not large enough to deal with an entire column and could take on only a small chunk of it by isolating the lead trucks, the security team's job was to keep the rest of the convoy busy and provide covering fires while the ambush team rummaged through the stopped trucks. Once finished, all teams would withdraw to a predesignated rally point, then move to a hiding place where they would spend the following day.
Like most commanders leading men into battle, Duncan was nervous as he lay there watching the BRDM labor up the incline. His mind was filled with fear and apprehension. Had he thought of everything? Were his men really ready for combat? What happened if the BRDM wasn't knocked out by the team with the LAWS? Were the lead trucks full of supplies or Soviet infantry? Was the security team large enough to deal with the rest of the convoy? What would they do if his men didn't find any food on the trucks? Questions and concerns cascaded through his mind.
Despite the cool evening, he was sweating. He wiped his hands and watched the progress of the BRDM.
The image of his lieutenant's body, ripped open and quivering as its life force oozed out, flashed through Duncan's brain. His stomach began to turn and knot up. As he tried hard to compose himself, he wondered what he feared more, death or failure. Death was easier for him. Once he was dead, his problems were over. Failure was the more to be feared of the two. If he failed, his men would pay the price.
They would be ripped apart, just like the lieutenant. Other horrible images would crowd his mind. That, to Duncan, was more terrible than death.
The soldier next to Duncan nudged him and pointed. The BRDM was about to reach the point where the team with the LAWs could engage it. Duncan watched, waited and prepared to give the order to fire. In another second, it would be out of his hands.
A convoy of T-80 tanks of the 3rd Battalion, Soviet 68th Tank Regiment, moved through the darkness like a great mechanical snake. Its body turned and slithered along the road relentlessly, always going south.
This snake, however, was not alert. Hours of monotonous moving at the same unchanging, slow speed through a countryside that did not vary had drained the last ounce of vigilance from the young tank commanders and their crews. The rhythmic thumping of the tanks' tracks on the road, the steady vibration of the engines, and the silence of the radios and the intercom were more conducive to sleep than to alertness. Instead of standing in their turrets or peering through their sights, watching their assigned sectors, they struggled to stay awake, occupying themselves with thoughts of home.
Besides, with security forces out on the flanks and recon elements in front, the danger of an attack on the tanks was minimal.
As the long columns moved, it was not unusual for a tank to slowly drift off toward the shoulder of the road and into a ditch as its crew fell asleep. Sometimes the driver or the tank commander would feel the change in the vibrations of the tank as it moved onto the rough shoulder. When this happened, the driver, startled by the calamity he faced, would jerk the tank back into line, tossing the crew in the turret about. On other occasions, the crew never realized what was happening until the tank literally fell off the road.
Sometimes these incidents resulted in nothing more than a few bumps and bruises and a slight disruption in the column until the tank that had strayed climbed out of the ditch and back into the line of march. On other occasions the consequences were far more serious, particularly when the tank crew fell asleep as the unit was moving along a cliff.
Major Vorishnov came across a 2nd Battalion tank in which this had happened. The tank commander, unable to drop down into the safety of the turret, had been crushed when the tank rolled over on top of him as it fell off the cliff.
Vorishnov stopped to see whether there was something he could do. As he watched the recovery operation, he could not help but think what a terrible waste it was to have come so far from home, to have survived several battles, only to be killed in such a manner. Such nonbattie losses were more numerous than his superiors liked to admit. But to stop for rest was to lose their momentum and possibly the opportunity to end the campaign before the arrival of the bulk of the Americans' heavy forces. The decision was made to push on. Better to lose a few now by pushing hard than many because an opportunity was not taken.
Such decisions, however logical, did little to lessen the impact on the men who had to lift a forty ton tank off the body of a twenty-year-old tank commander whose driver had fallen asleep.
Three thousand meters away, fiberglass tubes, protruding from under camouflage nets that fluttered lazily in the cool night air, followed the progress of the T-80 tanks. Under the nets, TOW gunners, their eyes pressed against the rubber eyepieces on the TOWs' thermal night sights, tracked the tank that each had selected for destruction. With ease and steadiness achieved through countless hours of training and practice, the gunners kept the cross hairs fixed on the tank as if they were glued to it. Across the road, in positions similar to those occupied by the TOW gunners but closer, were Dragon gunners. They, like their compatriots, watched through thermal sights as the Soviet column slithered south.
Second Lieutenant Cerro slowly lowered his night-vision goggles. For a moment he was blind, his eyes unable to adapt themselves to the darkness after being exposed to the bright-green light of the goggles.
As his night vision returned, Cerro rose slightly from his position and looked to his left. Somewhere, in a rough line on the west side of the road that extended over fifteen hundred meters, there were four TOW-missile launchers under his command. He could not see them, which was the way things were supposed to be, but he knew they were there, tracking the Soviet column as he was. Satisfied that the Soviets were unable to see his TOW positions, Cerro put the night-vision goggles back up to his eyes and looked beyond the column to the east, where six Dragon teams were hidden. They, like the TOW positions, were also invisible.
It had taken the company hours to move up to where they wanted to be and prepare their positions. Every time a column moved down the road, the men would have to stop work and flatten themselves against the ground.. When they had scratched out positions that provided some cover, the TOW and Dragon crews draped nets over them. Once finished, they settled into the positions, set up their weapons and waited for the signal to fire.
Cerro, the acting company commander, had briefed them all on their roles and how the ambush would go down. When the unit was ready, he would designate the column to be hit. He wanted to go for tanks.
The signal to initiate the ambush would be a green star cluster sent up by Cerro. The TOWs would then fire, hitting the first, fourth' seventh and eleventh tanks in the column, after which the TOW gunners would go to ground and wait. If the Soviets reacted as Cerro expected, the remaining tanks would turn toward the TOWs. When they did, they would expose their rear decks to the Dragon teams. Each Dragon team would then take one shot and run for their designated rally point. Antitank mines lined the road on the Dragon gunners' side in case the Russians decided to turn and pursue them. If Cerro wanted the TOWs to take a second shot, he would fire a second green star cluster. If, however, the Russians appeared to be an immediate threat and the TOWs could not get another clean shot in, he would fire a red star cluster, the signal for the TOWs to withdraw to their rally point.
In support of the ambush a three-gun 81 mm. mortar section hidden in a wadi would fire high-explosive and smoke rounds. They would not kill any tanks, but would add to the confusion and cover the withdrawal of the company.
Helicopters hidden away in wide wadis not far from the two rally points waited for the ambush to be 207 sprung. Once the firing started, the pilots would crank up their machines, move to the rally points and pick up CerroIs men. With luck, the ambushers would be off the ground ten minutes after the first green star cluster was fired.
Cerro watched and waited. He passed the word to stand by. On the lip of his foxhole sat three star clusters, two green and one red, open and ready for use. The column to their front was theirs.
Unnoticed by the crew, the third tank in line began to weave back and forth across the road. In the driver's compartment, a young man not yet twenty fought to stay awake. His head bobbed up and down as he struggled to
