Pat pulled a face.
“I thought you two had been told to report to 1 Company?”
“With respect sir, the ground back there can be covered by a half blind clerk, the maximum range offered is only four hundred metres.” He was looking for signs of anger or annoyance in his commanding officer, but none were apparent. “We were loitering here and looking for a lift on a battle taxi going forward, sir.”
The sound of Rolls Royce Perkins, V8 engines reached them, winding their way around from hide positions in the rear.
The snipers thought their last orders did not befit their skills, and Pat was inclined to agree.
“Well you had better come along with me then.”
The Warriors halted outside where all three mounted up, running to the vehicles in a half crouch as heavy artillery rounds moaned their mournful way westwards, seeking NATO gun line’s.
Aboard ‘Sabre Dance Two Four’ the operators finished their post-MLRS strike estimate and passed on two sets of figures, the optimistic and the pessimistic, knowing the true figure lay somewhere between.
Elements of two divisions had been targeted, 9th and 13th Guards, both elite Russian units had been hit hard even if the lower figure were held to be true. It would be of little immediate assistance to the men and women blocking the juggernauts way to the autobahns though, the Hungarian division had finished its deployment into column of regiments and was moving now towards the units immediately in front, the Light Infantry, Coldstream Guards, Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders and the Wessex Regiment. All were British units of 3 (UK) Mechanised Brigade and the Guards were already in contact, but within an hour and a half the entire defence line from the Dutch 2nd Armoured Brigade on the left flank to the US 4th Armoured on the right were going to be fighting for their lives.
Down on the ground the anti-tank troop of the second Royal Marine unit, 44 Commando, hadn’t waited for the Hungarians to begin their advance. The marines ducked around the Romanians left flank, taking the fight to the enemy and getting their punch in first. The sensors on Sabre Dance Two Four picked up thermal signatures consistent with explosions of armoured vehicles amid the Hungarian ranks.
The forward edge of the battle area was not the only scene of activity on the operator’s screens, both the French 8th Armoured and Canadian 2nd Mechanised Brigades were now driving back towards the Elbe, and where they found enemy support units they destroyed them. Both brigades had detached small combat teams that headed west to provide a delaying force for the Soviet armour that would inevitably turn on them. A French company combat team had fallen on two batteries worth of Russian MSTA-S 152mm Self-Propelled howitzers and their ammunitions carriers being refuelled beside a road. The thick columns of black smoke and continuing secondary explosions punctuated the urgency of radio transmissions from Soviet troops under attack.
The route taken by Mark Venables Challenger had been picked up by the CO’s driver who had followed the trail marked by the tanks caterpillar tracks over the hilltop. It was an unplanned by-product of the track plan enforced by the CO, no vehicles had been permitted to venture onto the hilltop where its thermal output would have glowed brightly for all to see for miles around, assuming of course that the ‘all’ had heat sensors in their recce vehicles/surveillance aircraft. With an air raid in the offing the Warriors hadn’t hung around to admire the view, the rollercoaster ride had been endured by the vehicles occupants, terminating as it did a hundred and fifty metres from 3 Company’s CP.
Pat Reed clambered from the lead vehicle and jumped down into a nearby shell crater, waiting for Guardsmen in the second vehicle to manhandle two boxes of Stingers that the company’s CQMS had apparently requested. Sgt Higgins, Bill and Stef joined him, taking care to avoid the muddy water that was already starting to fill the hole.
Artillery had been falling on the forward slopes but suddenly it stopped.
Big Stef clambered up the side of the crater and looked for the next cover, it was another crater just a few yards away and he took advantage of the lull to jog towards it. A trio of jet aircraft screamed down the valley, flying parallel with the positions held by the Guards and 82nd men, Stef dropped to a crouch, taken unawares by their presence and feeling vulnerable above ground. He looked to see if they were friend or foe but the aircraft had gone, disappearing faster than his head could turn, and then the big Geordie was lifted bodily and thrown eight feet.
By chance Pat Reed had been looking in the direction the aircraft had appeared from and he had seen the large weapons carried either side of the aircrafts centre points. The aircraft, which he had identified as Mig-31 Fulcrums, were at less than a thousand feet and punching out flares and chaff. Two Stingers chased the burning magnesium instead of the Soviet machines, which released the weapons one at a time, a small drogue parachute deploying from the base of each almost immediately.
The Guards Lieutenant Colonel hadn’t been able to understand why they were dropping so far away from his defensive positions, and then noticed the first weapon to be released had disappeared from view in a rapidly expanding cloud of vapour that seemed to originate from within itself.
The vapour ignited.
The ground shook as though a giant had run a half dozen paces, the thunder of the detonations burst the eardrums of two men in the most forward positions, and the flash of the explosions left spots before the eyes.
Pat felt as though he’d run into a wall as over-pressure sent him tumbling into the craters mire-like bottom but immediately afterwards he was gasping for air like a landed fish. Dirt and light debris were sucked from the ground, drawn toward the growing, roiling balls of flame, following in the wake of the oxygen that they were feeding on.
Bill was the first to recover enough to crawl up the crumbling sides of the shell crater; the last of the fireballs was disappearing skywards, leaving behind smoke and confusion. Stef had landed in the churned mud at the side of the track, but he had regained his wits enough to give his mate a thumbs up that he was okay. Relieved, Bill looked towards the fields over which the fuel/air weapons had detonated; large burnt areas marked the spots below where the weapons had gone off.
A myriad of fires were burning in the fields, two hedgerows were aflame, and a grey haze of smoke polluted the air. In the middle distance more flames and smoke arose, though these were from one of the Fulcrums, brought down by a Starstreak before it could egress the area.
The weapons dropped by the Fulcrums had been far smaller than those used by NATO on the besieged towns, but their power had been frightening all the same. With all the dust and smoke in the air it took a moment for him to notice the damage that had been caused by the weapons incredible pressure waves.
“Sir, I think you had better look at this.”
Pat Reed took a moment to respond, he was indulging in the resumption of an old habit, that of breathing.
Forcing his aching body into motion the half soaked officer disengaged himself from the almost freezing water and mud, dropping down beside the sniper and letting his eyes follow where Bill was pointing. At first he thought his attention was being called to the approaching enemy assault, but then his gaze fell closer to home.
“Ah.” The CO took in the numerous small craters amidst the larger ones caused by the earlier questing artillery, using a single syllable to acknowledge recognition, and two to express a full understanding of the consequences.
“Bugger.”
Rolling over he looked for the Defence Platoon sergeant and found him at the bottom of the crater, liberally daubed in mud from the same puddle that he himself had been deposited in “Sarn’t Higgins.”