Walker so wanted to blame those obstinate dinosaurs, with stars on their shoulders and more in their eyes, for her woes. Because the alternate theory was even worse. That higher up knew damn well the limitations of her unit, but didn’t care. All they cared about was that an 8-wheeled Stryker moved twice as fast as its more formidable Bradley counterpart could on an open road. All that mattered to the brass was getting some federal combat power behind the fleeing rebels; not how long they could survive. Was her whole company judged a worthwhile sacrifice if they could delay the enemy for a few minutes? Well, did it really matter? Too much work to do. She went back to managing her advancing squads. Truth, intent, the big picture… who has time for all that shit?
Only a few miles outside their targeted town, Walker received a radio call. Since the battalion’s small recon element just went suddenly “off line,” battalion headquarters retasked her advance party directly. Sometimes she hated all the advanced communication gear in the interconnected modern Army. Too easy for the rear echelon to micromanage.
She loved that calm staff officer’s useless advice. Conduct a “reconnaissance in force” into downtown. Without the rest of the company. Too often, that old line was code for “peek your head in and count how many holes appear.” Oh well. At least in an urban environment they’d be out of the open. After so many years in Afghanistan and Iraq, close quarters combat was old hat for the Army. Cruising around highways and open fields while fighting an enemy with a real air force and major artillery assets was a spooky new feeling.
Speaking of spooky, Walker spotted a little heat on her thermal scope just a mile outside of town. “All Blackjack elements hold fast!”
One of the few advantages of this overpriced Stryker vehicle was the badass digital display. Instead of gluing her eyes to some periscope, she could zoom into her computer screen and switch back and forth from thermal to color display. That heat signature wasn’t an isolated event. In seconds, she counted a dozen green mounds poking out of the earth. The sneaky bastards must have had a bulldozer dig out giant foxholes for their tanks. Only the strangely shaped armored turrets were visible.
An infantry squad leader peeked over her shoulder and whistled at the tanks. He actually had to rest his head on her shoulder in the crowded track. “Holy shit, Sergeant! What museum did they haul those relics out of?”
She shrugged him off. “Relax. Those are M60 tanks; so what? Hot shit in the Vietnam War, but there’s a reason they’re retired and used for target practice. Our missiles have a much longer range than their old guns. We just need….” She idly panned the camera around, but now stopped. Those twin smoke columns near the next farmhouse were not downed planes.
She found their missing scout team.
Both recon Strykers were completely ripped to shreds. To split a 17-ton armored car into multiple chunks, at that range, is no easy matter. They must have been hit from multiple directions at once. Incredibly well coordinated…
“Contact, 10 through 12 O’clock. All elements fall back 500 meters!” Those old timey tanks didn’t have her elaborate sensor suite and were more than a mile away. With a little luck, maybe they hadn’t spotted her platoon yet. A fusillade of smoke in the distance showed what a bitch Lady Luck was.
Her team’s sudden withdrawal at least threw off the enemy’s aim. All of the cannon rounds landed short. Well, except for one. A black cloud swallowed the lead Stryker only 50 meters ahead of her vehicle. Walker held her breath as the thunderclap washed over her. With a sigh of relief, she counted all ten of her guys safely bailing out the back ramp. None being carried. They dispersed into the cornfields and were invisible in seconds.
The enemy tank shell had struck one of the front wheels and detonated against the bottom of the vehicle. Anywhere else and those inside would have been liquefied. Thanks to years of fighting in high-threat IED environments, the underside of a Stryker is its one strong point. She silently thanked those faceless engineers and their double-v armored hull design.
A surge of fear electrified her senses. The machine guns and grenade launchers on their Strykers might be badass against AK-wielding insurgents in some Baghdad shantytown, but were rather inadequate against real armor out in a fucking farm field! With those big tanks and their well-hung 105mm guns against them, her “infantry fighting vehicles” and their light weapons were less than satisfying. She caught a brief glimmer of why some guys were so self-conscious about the size of their manhood. This emasculating impotence was terrifying!
Walker bit down on her fear and squeezed it into anger. Size wasn’t going to matter here. “All Blackjack elements: Pop smoke and dismount left! Dismounts into the fields and get those Javelin missiles up! Once your boys are clear, all Strykers fall back 300 more yards. Get off the damn highway and into the tree line!”
She didn’t even wait for an acknowledgment before switching to the company net and begging for help. With the little smoke grenade launchers on her vehicle puffing out green smoke in front of them, she couldn’t see a thing. Which cut both ways. However, the moment the clouds dissipated, her three remaining vehicles would be naked against those tanks. Nothing but speed, luck and thin aluminum armor to protect them.
At least her captain finally responded. “Roger that, Blackjack 2–6. I’m sending you the FIST artillery spotter element and the MGS heavy gun platoon. Lay down a base of fire and keep those fuckers occupied. I’ll take the rest of the company north and flank them. The XO will be at your location in three mikes; he’ll take the reins. You just fight your platoon. Hooah, over?”
“Hooah! Good copy, out!”
One of the few advantages of being in a high tech 21st century unit, but fighting a 20th century mechanized war, were the modern unit organizations. These new Stryker companies packed far more organic fire support assets than a “traditional” mechanized unit. In particular, the three Mobile Gun Systems (MGS) heading their way. Those mini-tanks rocked only a 105mm gun and weren’t intended to go toe-to-toe with tanks, but they at least gave her options. The trick was to hold out until they got there.
Since she had no attached artillery observers, Walker flipped on her laser range finder and tried to plot a fire mission. This ultra-modern company had its own heavy mortar section. Unfortunately, they also had shitty gear. The laser kept returning a range of 100 meters as it bounced back from the remnants of the protective smoke cloud in front of her.
Sergeant Walker popped out of the hatch armed only with her binos and map, ready to do things the old-fashioned way. She almost had a grid location for an artillery strike when the target belched fire. Oh God, he had eyes on one of her vehicles. She scanned frantically around for whatever fool didn’t follow her orders. Who wasn’t hiding?
Oh. The garage of some cute little farmhouse only 20 yards behind her exploded. In all her intensity, she never heard the whistling of the incoming round. She let her cussing driver pull them off the highway and deeper under cover. Getting herself killed would set a terrible example.
Speaking of setting the example, one of her dismounted teams exposed themselves. At least in a good cause. A Javelin anti-tank missile erupted from the cornfield ahead and raced towards the oncoming steel herd. Seconds later, the fire-and-forget missile pile-drove in from above and erased an enemy tank from existence. A fusillade of manually aimed return fire from the other ancient tanks missed her men. Without fire control computers, they were clearly at the edge of the enemy’s effective range… but easily within range of her man-portable guided missiles. Most importantly, the cumbersome tanks had no infantry along to protect them.