'Sir, the company is ready to move.'
Ilvanich blinked, then nodded. 'Fine, fine.' He looked over Fitzhugh's shoulder to where two men were helping Rasper. 'Is the sergeant all right?'
Fitzhugh looked over his shoulder, then back to Ilvanich. 'I don't know. Did you suck down that many rads that fast?'
'No, that is not radiation sickness. It is sickness of the heart.'
There was a pause while Ilvanich looked toward the tunnel entrance. 'If, my young friend, we could take the leaders of your country and mine, hand in hand with the leaders of the Ukraine, for a walk down that tunnel, we would have no more talk of wars.'
Fitzhugh looked into the dark, gaping entrance of the tunnel, wondering what could possibly turn two veteran soldiers like Ilvanich and Rasper into emotional basket cases. Whatever it was, it was better that he didn't know.
Pushing thoughts of the tunnel aside, Ilvanich forced himself to turn his attention to the current situation they faced. 'You said the company is ready to move?'
'Yes, sir. We were just waiting for your return.'
Ilvanich pushed himself away from the wall. When he had his balance, he looked at Fitzhugh. 'Good, good. Now get the company moving. I will be along in a minute.'
Fitzhugh saluted, turned, and walked away, passing the word for the 1st Platoon to mount up and move out. When he was gone, Ilvanich looked back into the tunnel one more time before he shook his head, then walked over to Rasper to see if he was ready to go.
The first volley of 152mm rounds impacted to the rear of Ellerbee's platoon, just short of the roadblock next to a farmhouse being manned by Second Lieutenant Matto's engineers. Like a great trigger, those eighteen artillery rounds catapulted hundreds of soldiers, both American and Ukrainian, who were spread out over an area that encompassed a couple hundred square kilometers, into action.
On C60, Kozak automatically turned to her rear, looking to see where the rounds impacted, before dropping into the turret. Wolf, without needing to be told, yelled to Tish to crank up the engine. Tish, like Wolf, didn't need to be told either. Her finger was already on the starter when Wolf yelled. Paden's eyes popped open as if he had been hit by an electrical shock. In a single glance he checked the frequency settings on both the receiver-transmitter and the auxiliary receiver to ensure that they were set on the correct radio nets. Then, knowing that Tish would be starting the Bradley, he reached up and turned the radios off until after the engine turned over.
When she heard the sound of the radio click back on over her earphones, Kozak waited a second before she pushed the push-to-talk lever on the side of her helmet with her thumb. Listening for the beep that told her the radio was in the secure mode, Kozak notified battalion that they were receiving artillery fire on the tank platoon's position.
Even before Kozak began to transmit her initial report, Sal Salatinni knew the Ukrainian barrage had commenced as the Firefinder radars lit up the 1st Brigade's TACFIRE net with the information that the rocket launchers designated for counter-battery fire would need. Since the mission was already planned for, there was no need for anyone in the division artillery chain of command or at the 1st Brigade to intervene. Salatinni sat in his command post carrier where he monitored the process, yelling out to Cerro that the show was about to begin as he waited for the rocket launchers to acknowledge receipt of mission and confirmation that they had fired.
Ten kilometers from the brigade command post and twenty kilometers behind Kozak's position, the three- man crew of each of the rocket launchers was alerted that they had an incoming mission. Huddled in the armored cab of their launchers, the MLRS crews watched and responded as their computer display took them through the launch sequence. The TACFIRE computer at the field artillery battalion to which the MLRSs were attached assigned each of the three rocket launchers a separate target based on the known location of the rocket launchers and the target locations identified by the Firefinder's radar and computer. When the rocket launcher's computer finished receiving the data and was ready, it cued the crew to initiate the firing sequence.
Outside the rocket launcher there was no sign of human life, no indication that men were involved in the killing drill that was taking place. Like a great robot, the boxlike rocket pod swung about, aiming its twelve missiles toward the Ukrainian artillery batteries currently engaged in their own killing drill thirty kilometers away. When the computer sensed that the rocket pod was locked onto the proper elevation and azimuth, it gave the crew of the rocket launcher a green ready-to-fire light. A simple flick of a switch lit up the night sky as a ripple of twelve rockets issued forth out of each pod and streaked south toward their designated targets. No sooner had the last rocket left the launch pod, than the pod was returned to the travel position and the MLRS moved out, headed for a new spot where it would reload and await its next mission.
To the south, no one in Kozak's company saw or heard the rockets pass overhead. Kozak's people were too involved in preparing to receive the attack that the Ukrainian artillery had announced. Nor did the Ukrainian assault elements and their supporting tanks see or hear the incoming American rockets. The attention of the men making the assault or supporting it was riveted to their immediate front, looking for targets across the river or at the hundred or so meters of open ground between their jump-off points at the river's edge. The rockets, while they would influence their fight, belonged to a separate battle, an artillery duel that the Ukrainians lost before they even realized that it had been initiated.
After reaching the apogee of their flight, the rockets began their descent, each one spreading out and away from the others that it had been fired with. When the clamshell-like warhead of each of the rockets burst open, spewing its 644 bomblets, the Ukrainian gunners were in the process of preparing to load the fourth round of their barrage. None of the guns, however, managed to fire that round as the bomblets saturated an oblong beaten zone encompassing an area a little over one kilometer in size. The resulting devastation was not as complete as Salatinni would have liked, leaving several guns, vehicles, and artillerymen untouched. Left alone and given time, the Ukrainian artillery battalion would be able to recover some of its ability to function. It was, however, in military terminology, effectively neutralized and would no longer play a part in the battle that was developing along the Latorica.
The artillerymen supporting 1st Brigade were not finished. Their work, in fact, was just beginning. Even before the first MLRS rocket left its pod, the 155mm artillery battalion was receiving its firing orders over the TACFIRE net.
Bursts of radio traffic were heard on the frequencies that the brigade S-2, Lea Thompson, believed to be the Ukrainian brigade command net and artillery net, caught by the EH-60A Quickfix helicopter just after their artillery began to fire. Though each message was only a few seconds in length, together they were enough to fix the Ukrainians' locations. The electronic surveillance package on board the helicopter received and processed the signals using the targeted frequencies and recorded that information in its computer as back azimuths, or lines leading from the helicopter back in the direction from which the signals originated. After several seconds, this computer had accumulated several back azimuths, since the helicopter was moving and the source of the signal was not. Using its own internal mapping system, the computer plotted all the back azimuths and compared them. The point where all the back azimuths came together gave it, and everyone who had access to the computer's data down-link, the precise location of where the signals originated.
Lea Thompson compared the new location provided by the EH-60A helicopter with the one they had previously suspected to be the Ukrainian brigade command post based on earlier signal intelligence. When she saw that they matched, she became excited. 'We've got 'em. We've got their CP.' Bounding out of her command post carrier, she went over to Cerro.
'Hal, we should fire on the Ukrainian brigade CP now, while we have it.'
Salatinni, hearing Thompson's request, stuck his head out of his command post carrier. '1st of the 66th Field Artillery is ready to fire that mission. Do we have a go?'
Cerro looked at Salatinni, then at Thompson. For a second he wondered if they appreciated what they were about to do. Did they really understand that through their actions they were about to dump several hundred pounds of steel and high explosives on a group of real human beings? And did they know what would happen to those human beings when that happened? How could these staff officers, so far removed from the actual killing, appreciate what they were doing? But as quickly as those thoughts passed through his head, they left, allowing the brain of the operations officer to re-engage. Without further hesitation, he turned back to Salatinni. 'Go ahead, Sal, fire it.'
Pulling his head back into his track, Salatinni nodded to his sergeant seated at the TACFIRE console. A
