held the promise of rain later.
On the highway ahead, the BTRS of the reconnaissance platoon were stirring up a cloud of dust. Turning in his steel-ringed perch and looking back past the heads of the naval infantry commandos riding on his command vehicle, he could see the rest of the column strung out on the road behind him, six amphibious PT-76 tanks and a long line of personnel carriers.
“We’re all here, Comrade Colonel,” one of the soldiers said, shouting to make himself heard above the roar of the armored car’s engine. The others laughed. “None of us has left yet!”
“Well, then,” Yevtushenko said, grinning, “perhaps I’d better get into uniform!” Ducking back below the hatch, he removed his regulation steel helmet and pulled out his beret, the famous black beret of the Russian naval infantry, and donned it at a jaunty angle. Rising again in the hatch, he grinned at the soldiers and tossed them a strictly nonregulation one-fingered salute.
“Ah!” one shouted. “Now I know we are going into combat!” He removed his own helmet and pulled his beret out from inside his one-piece, light-camouflage uniform. In seconds, the others had done the same. Russian military uniform doctrine specified steel helmets for naval infantry troops, but the black beret was such a beloved and distinctive part of their uniform by now that most commanders had long since given up trying to enforce that regulation. In fact, the Morskaya Pekhota, the naval infantry, was an elite combat unit, classified as a “Guards” unit, in fact. As such, they were permitted to wear their berets, with the red triangular patches peculiar to the Russian marines, and at any desired angle, shape, or position on the head, a bit of unit nonconformity surprising for an otherwise superbly disciplined force.
The morale of the men was good, and Yevtushenko was pleased at that. In a civil war ? or a mutiny ? it was never possible to know ahead of time exactly how the troops would react. Often they had friends, even family, among the troops on the other side.
Fortunately, in this case, at least, the enemy forces were composed mostly of Spetsnaz, and there was little love lost between the Russian special forces and the marines. Spetsnaz ? the name was a contraction of the Russian Spetsialnoye Nazranie, “Special Designation Forces,” and they technically belonged to military intelligence, the infamous GRU. Naval Spetsnaz units worked closely with the naval infantry, providing frogman and reconnaissance forces, but Boychenko’s Bodyguard, as some of the men jokingly called the 4th Black Sea Fleet Spetsnaz Brigade, were army, participants in the sharp rivalry between naval and army units throughout the Russian military. Yevtushenko had explained the situation carefully to his men ? itself something rare among Russian military commanders in any service ? telling them that Boychenko’s people wanted to abandon the Crimea to the Ukrainians.
Perhaps a quarter of Yevtushenko’s men were native to the Crimea, and many others had wives or sweethearts here. His own wife and twelve-year-old son lived in base housing at Glazivska, just a few kilometers north of Kerch. He and his people were not simply going to abandon their homes and loved ones to the Ukrainian genocides.
And if protecting those homes required in some left-handed fashion that they fight fellow Russians, so be it. He’d explained that by stopping ? or at least punishing ? the mass defection of Boychenko’s men, Krasilnikov would be made to understand the larger issues at stake here, perhaps even be induced to send more men to the Crimea’s defense.
And as for the rumors that U.S. Marines were helping Boychenko’s troops, so much the better. The Morskaya Pekhota would have them for breakfast… then turn and crush the Ukrainians if and when they dared set foot on Crimean soil. It was unfortunate only that Boychenko himself, at last report, had escaped to refuge with the American fleet, coward and deserter that he was.
Scouts had already reported on the rebel position, occupying a low ridge not far from the Arsincevo refinery and storage facility south of Kerch. American fleet units were reported approaching from the south. Yevtushenko’s unit ? a reinforced battalion ? was not enough to block a major amphibious assault, but they could certainly spoil the enemy’s plans to cross the straits at that point.
Thunder boomed overhead, and he looked up. Mig-29s, a flight of six of them, howled overhead, their bellies bristling with missiles.
He was eager for this coming clash. Boychenko’s force did not stand a chance.
CHAPTER 24
By 0830 hours, the U.S. Marines were firmly ashore, moving onto and across the beach by a variety of means. Dozens of LVTP-7 amtracks, each carrying twenty men, churned through light surf at nine knots toward the beach. As their tracks hit sand, they lurched up out of the water like prehistoric beasts rising from the sea, grinding inland in a meticulously planned double envelopment that secured both the undefended beachhead and the refinery complex at Arsincevo. A public beach south of Kerch was designated Red Beach. Moments after dawn, LCACS ? Landing Craft Air Cushion ? howled across the surf in billowing curtains of spray, then drifted across the beach shelf over self-generated hurricanes of windblown sand. As each hovercraft settled down onto collapsing rubber skirts, bow and stern ramps dropped to disgorge twenty-four troops or as many as four vehicles. The first amtracks growled ashore at 0750 hours, just twenty minutes after sunrise.
Overhead, Marine helos clattered through the air, racing inland to touch down and disgorge Marine strike teams at key points around the tank farm and the naval base. Marine Harrier jets and Cobra gunships joined with the F/A-18 Hornets off the Jefferson to hit the Kerch airfield and various military facilities all over the eastern end of the peninsula. Others were precision-blasted by cruise missiles launched from the carrier group’s attack subs, a storm of robotic killers droning in on stub wings to seek out SAM sites, radar complexes, command posts, communications centers, and even individual vehicles with deadly precisionist accuracy. Larger or more dispersed targets were hit repeatedly by A-6 Intruders of VA-84 and VA-89, flying mission after low-level mission off the Jefferson.
These attacks, particularly the air attacks, were not intended to destroy all opposition. Indeed, the strike planners had recognized early on that there were simply too many targets to hope for a clean sweep. Rather, they had been designed to throw the defenders into disorganized confusion for a critical several hours, isolating them from outside communications, and misleading them as to the exact scope and target of the Marine incursion.
Since the 1970s, U.S. Marine doctrine had stressed the MAGTF concept, or Marine Air-Ground Task Force, as a means of providing combined arms ? sea, air, and land ? at all levels of Marine unit deployment. The largest MAGTF unit was the Marine Expeditionary Force, or MEF, which consisted of an entire Marine division, an aircraft wing, and ancillary support units, with a total of over fifty thousand Navy and Marine Corps personnel deployed from a task force consisting of about fifty amphibious ships. The recent operation in the Kola Peninsula had been carried out by II MEF.
Next in size and complexity was the Marine Expeditionary Brigade, which deployed fifteen thousand Marines and six hundred seventy naval personnel ? not counting the ships’ crews ? from twenty-one to twenty-six amphibious ships. It consisted of a Regimental Landing Team, a reinforced aircraft group, and support units.
Smallest of the deployable MAGTF units in the Marine Corps was the MEU, the Marine Expeditionary Unit, composed of a Battalion Landing Team, a reinforced helicopter squadron, and an MEU Service Support Group. Total strength, not counting the Navy crews of its four to six amphibious operations ships, totaled 2,150 Marines and 116 Navy personnel. Colonel Winston Howell commanded MEU-25’s ground forces.
Twenty-five-hundred-odd men was not much of an invasion force, but they had the advantages of speed and surprise, backed by the tremendous sheer firepower of CVBG-14. MEU-25 had shifted position during the night, keeping pace with the fast-moving carrier group. The LPH Guadalcanal, the LHA Saipan ? only recently detached from service with II MEF ? and the LPD Shreveport made up the core of the naval half of the MEU, together with several other amphibious vessels, a scattering of supply ships, two Perry-class frigates, and the guided-missile destroyer Isaiah Robinson. Another advantage was the wing of twenty CH-53A Super Stallions. Normally, an MEU
