Ralph Peters - Red Army

He switched over to the long-range radio, calling brigade headquarters.

Again, he received no response. The airwaves buzzed with static and surrealistic tones. The enemy were jamming everything. He sent his message anyway, hoping that someone would copy it, reporting that he was under heavy attack by enemy antitank helicopters. Finished with the transmission, he began to climb out of the tank, intending to take over a vehicle that remained mobile.

The sight of his battalion stopped him. Dozens of vehicles stood ablaze, marking the long trail of the battalion in the darkness. There were more fires than he could count, stretching down the road as far as he could see. It seemed impossible, a joke. It had been minutes, seconds.

Here and there, an untouched vehicle moved against the fiery backdrop like a stray dog scavenging. One of the roaming vehicles exploded just as Barak turned his eyes to it. Then another went up. It was as if some 302

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godlike enemy were out there, patiently exterminating them all. Barak almost jumped to the ground and fled. But he took command of himself, unwilling to be a coward, no matter how hopeless the situation. He slipped back into the hold to order his crew to evacuate the helpless vehicle with him.

A noise enormous beyond imagination stopped him.

The brigade's senior officer of transportation troops watched helplessly as his supply column began to explode. He had pulled off the road on a hilltop, positioning his vehicle so that he could count the trucks of the materiel support battalion as they passed, wondering how many had fallen out. And without warning, the faint dawn blew up. Enemy tanks, sleek, with flat, angular turrets, emerged from the murk across the valley, bristling into small-unit formations as they rolled north. They used their main armaments sparingly, raking the column of trucks with machine-gun fire. The steel phantoms seemed to float over the terrain, enhancing the ghostly effect of their unexpected appearance east of the Teutoburg forest. The transportation officer's concern with lone lost vehicles quickly disappeared.

A motorized rifle subunit assigned to protect the convoy tried to deploy and return fire. The transport officer watched with a surge of hope as sparks flew off an enemy turret. But the tank kept coming, impervious to the weapons of the infantry fighting vehicles.

The tanks opened up with their main guns to engage the guardian combat vehicles, destroying each with the first shot.

The transportation officer ordered his assistant and driver to take cover in the trees, where he joined them after securing his classified materials. The trio hunkered in the brush, watching the panorama of destruction. There had been no warning, except a casual mention of stray pockets of enemy resistance. But there was nothing feeble about this attack. It was determined, and big. The ammunition carriers and fuelers threw such spectacular fireworks into the air as they were hit that the enemy slowed, then briefly halted. At an unheard signal, the tanks opened volley fire on the precious transports, then backed off slightly, shying away from the secondary blasts, reorienting the angle of their attack before resuming movement.

The transport officer's abandoned vehicle lifted off the ground on a cushion of flames. The driver, lying nearby in the brush, screamed in pain, caught by a random fragment of steel.

The enemy tanks swept up over the hill, passing within a hundred meters of the transport officer's hiding place. Large, boxy infantry 303

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fighting vehicles trailed the tanks. The transport officer tried to get a count, but too many of the vehicles were hidden by folds in the terrain or blurred in the bad light. Phantomlike, the war machines disappeared back into the darkness, headed north. They seemed marvelously, almost supernaturally, controlled in their strange open formations. The transport officer knew they were not supposed to be this far north, that this was critical information. But his vehicle, carrying his radio, was a smoldering pile of junk.

After the whine of the engines subsided, he ordered his assistant to see to the driver. Then he started down into the burning valley on foot, cautious about the continuing blasts as ammunition cooked off and streaked across the lightening sky. Even though the enemy had passed, it sounded as though a great battle was still raging.

A radio, he thought. If they only left me a radio.

304 "

TWENTY-TWO

Anton felt the situation collapsing around him with irresistible speed.

The Americans had hit him broadside, hours before they were expected to appear, catching the brigade at its most vulnerable, with units strung out on both sides of the Teutoburg ridge. The first fragmentary reports had driven him to hastily establish his command post in a nearby grove so that he could get his communications gear fully set up. Reports from elements in contact came in broken and chaotic, and the number of enemy forces reported seemed impossibly high, multiplied by panic. A few things were clear, however. The Americans had found a gap between the forward elements of the Twentieth Guards Army, which had bogged down in the southeast, and the bulk of the Forty-ninth Corps' combat power, which had been pushing southwest and west as rapidly as possible. Anton's brigade had been a perfectly positioned target for the American onslaught from the southern flank. Helicopters or some special weaponry had catastrophically destroyed his advance guard, and other units reported contact at various points along the line of march. Feverish, Anton could not discern the pattern of the American attacks. His head would not come clear. He stared at the urgently plotted locations on the map, trying to make sense of the situation. His brigade was dissolving.

"Comrade Brigade Commander," his chief of staff called, "can you please listen to me?"

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Anton turned slightly. He had not even been aware of the man a moment before. He felt disgracefully weak. The surgeon had given him shots for the fever, but Anton could detect no improvement in his condition. Sleep, he thought. You can't get better unless you sleep.

He drew himself up erect before the map and the eyes of his staff, unsure of how much longer he would be able to remain on his feet.

"Look," the chief of staff said, "the brigade transport officer reports enemy tanks here, working their way north beyond Lemgo."

Anton tried again to focus on the map. To take in the reality of the scrawled colored markings. He wanted to sit back down and close his eyes.

"That's impossible," he said. "That would put them behind us."

"Yes, Comrade Commander. Behind us. I've verified the coordinates.

The transport officer swears he saw them with his own eyes. They overran the brigade resupply column."

Anton turned his head to look into the face of this bearer of bad news.

"Damage?"

"Severe."

This cannot be happening, Anton thought. I have no control over any of this. He laid his hand on the map, bracing himself, but attempting to disguise the action as a gesture of decisiveness.

"Order all units to halt where they are and assume a hasty defense. All units this time." He looked at the map. The colored arrows seemed to be teasing him, refusing to hold still. If the Americans had already slipped some elements behind them, his brigade could still block any forces that tried to follow in the wake of the lead elements. Yet no one seemed to know exactly where the enemy was located. It was all such a mess. There were too many possibilities.

Anton swept his hand along the trace of the brigade's march routes.

"Defend the intersections. Block them. Commandeer any civilian vehicles in the area and build antivehicle barricades. Use our support vehicles, if necessary. But I want every major intersection blocked and covered with fire."