Responding to the report forwarded to him, Hafez called the Brigade operations officer and asked if the recon company had any vehicles stopped on the road at the coordinates given by his lead company commander. There was a pause while the Brigade operations officer told the Brigade intelligence officer to contact the recon company commander and ask him to confirm the location of his recon elements. The recon company commander acknowledged the order from the intelligence officer and queried his platoon leaders. They, in turn, called each of their vehicles and accounted for all of them and confirmed their locations. Once that was done, the information on the location and activity of all the recon vehicles and elements was passed back up the chain to the intelligence officer. When he had plotted and checked all vehicle locations on his map, he informed the operations officer that there were no friendly recon vehicles at the location given by Hafez. The operations officer passed that information back to Hafez. Calmly and matter-of-factly Hafez reported that he was therefore going to consider the vehicles enemy and destroy them.
Switching his radio to the battalion command net, he ordered the lead company commander to destroy the vehicles. With unmasked glee in his voice, the company commander acknowledged Hafez's order and prepared to order his company to engage.
Uvarov cocked his head, listening to the noise of advancing tanks "Ours?"
Trained as a motorized rifleman and with practical experience in Iran, Neboatov knew tanks. In Iran he had heard Soviet, American, and British tanks up close. A series of bright flashes, followed by the boom of tank cannons firing, confirmed what Neboatov already knew. "M-60 tanks — the Egyptians!" The same training and experience told Neboatov to seek cover. He dropped to his stomach and then looked for some place to crawl to.
Uvarov, transfixed by the sudden appearance of enemy forces so deep in their rear area, remained standing. Another volley of rounds from the approaching tanks found their mark. The night was lit up as the BTR blew up. Turning, Uvarov watched as the armored car that had been in the ditch, and was now halfway out, received two direct hits. Like the BTR, it blew up, throwing off a large ball of fire.
Disappointed that he had not been able to fire at the armored vehicles, the platoon leader of the left flank platoon began to search for targets further to the left. As his gunner traversed the turret, the image of a man standing alone in the desert appeared in the gunner's thermal sight. The gunner called out his newly acquired target to his tank commander. Dropping his head down, the platoon leader saw the target in his thermal viewer. Though not as good as a BTR, at least it was a target. He ordered the gunner to engage with the coaxially mounted machine gun.
Quickly, before the target dropped down or disappeared, the gunner laid his aiming dot onto the man's chest and depressed the button for the laser range finder. The invisible laser beam fired, hit the target, and reflected some of its energy back to the tank. The tank's fire control detected the reflected laser light, measured how long it took the light to return, and translated that information into range data for the ballistic computer. With input from other sensors, a ballistic solution was arrived at and automatically sent to the gun/turret drive system. By the time the commander gave the order to fire, the necessary information to allow a first-round hit was in the system and applied to the gun. Aided by the turret stabilization system, the gunner made a last, fine lay onto the center of the target and squeezed the trigger.
To his and the tank commander's surprise, instead of the rattling and chattering of the 7.62mm coax machine gun, they heard the main gun discharge, driving the breech back out of battery and spitting the spent shell casing of a 105mm main gun round onto the floor. In his haste, the gunner had forgotten to move the gun select switch from the main gun position to the machine-gun position.
Still undecided as to which direction to crawl in, Neboatov heard the crack of a tank cannon, followed by a gasp from the general. Looking up, he watched Uvarov fall over and hit the ground like a freshly chopped tree. Spinning on his stomach like a top, Neboatov crawled over to the general. In the light thrown off the burning BTR, he could see a look of surprise frozen on the general's face. Putting his hand on the general's chest to see if he was breathing, he felt a mass of goo. Carefully he ran his fingers about the wound to see how badly the general was hit.
The wound, however, didn't feel right. Propping himself up to visually inspect the wound, Neboatov was appalled by the sight that greeted him. The main gun round fired by accident had struck Uvarov square in the back. The armor piercing fin stabilized round had ripped through the general's chest as if it had been made of papier-mache. The fins, undeterred by mere flesh and bone, had not fallen off the penetrator. Instead, they had stayed with the round, pulling bits and pieces of lung and heart muscle out the front as they passed through the general's chest.
Pulling his hand away, Neboatov lowered himself behind the general's body. There was nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. Unable to do anything but play dead, Neboatov began to wipe his bloody hand in the sand while he hid behind the general's body and prepared to wait for the Egyptians to pass.
The gunner of the platoon leader's tank braced himself just before the heel of his tank commander's boot slammed into the back of his head. As the tank continued to roll on into the night, the commander cursed his gunner, then cursed his luck for having such a stupid man as a gunner. "How can we win," he yelled, "with men who do not know the difference between a cannon and a machine gun!" He knew it was a mistake: the excitement of battle often fostered such errors. But the thought did little to calm his anger.
With the exception of the noise generated by electrical systems and a few hushed conversations, the combat information center of the battleship USS Kansas was quiet. At general quarters since 0030 hours, the tactical action officer watched the clock on the wall of the strike warfare center. To one side the ship's captain watched but said nothing. He had no need to say anything: all was running as planned. In sixty seconds they would fire the first rounds by Americans in the latest Middle East war.
By order of the President, the commander of the 6th Fleet was directed to destroy all surface-to-surface missile units and their controlling headquarters. When announced publicly, the official communique would state that the attack was in response to the use of chemical weapons by the Soviet-Cuban-Libyan forces. Unofficially, the targeting would include headquarters and support elements, which would slow the Soviet advance and buy time for the Egyptian forces to withdraw into Egypt. The USS Kansas was part of that effort. Its target was the headquarters for the Soviet North African Front in Al Gardabah and the headquarters for the Cuban division still located near Gazala.
As the second sweep hand finally finished its climb to the number 12 on the clock, the tactical operations officer issued the order to fire to the plotting room officer. In the main battery plotting room, the plotting room officer pulled the trigger that fired the main battery. There was a momentary pause before the ship shuddered under the weight of nine 16-inch guns firing simultaneously. Topside, the entire port side of the Kansas was briefly illuminated by the muzzle blast.
Ashore, in scattered assembly areas, Cuban soldiers of the division that had remained behind at Gazala were woken by a distant rumble. Those on guard and close to the sea saw the sudden flash out to sea, just over the horizon. All heard the rumbling noise that resembled that made by a freight train that followed shortly thereafter. None knew that the noise passing overhead belonged to nine 16-inch rounds. Four of those rounds were Mark 144 Improved Conventional Munitions rounds, weighing close to nineteen hundred pounds apiece and carrying 666 shaped-charge bomblets. The other five were Mark 143 high-explosive rounds, also weighing nineteen hundred pounds but carrying 160 pounds of high explosive. Each projectile, pushed out of its 16-inch gun by 660 pounds of D-839 smokeless powder, was traveling at 2,500 feet per second, or just under a mile every two seconds. By the time any of those who witnessed the strange occurrence thought to report it, the projectiles had found their target.