To the south the Americans single remaining M1 was leading the cavalry regiment Pumas through Bieinrode and into Brunswick from that direction. His aim there was to initially demonstrate to the east, drawing out the enemy in that direction thereby allowing the infantry to reinforce the junction by swinging up from the south. The 5th Cavalry Regiment’s infantrymen had the Israeli Spike ATGW man-pack system which the English were in dire need of at TP32.
With the reorganisation complete he led the squadron of ten into the forest and onto a parallel firebreak to the much used one and headed west with the Lince vehicle on point.
Had this been a Hollywood movie then there would somehow have been a rear-view mirror that would have been present in the cockpit to capture the back view, the awful light in their wake as they flew north. Major Caroline Nunro and Captain Patricia Dudley, USAF, were combat aircrew veterans so killing was not something new to them. It was sanitised in comparison to what an infantryman experiences and it was easy not to dwell on an aircraft they had ‘splashed’ having contained at least one other human being, with family and loved ones who would grieve. The ground target that they ‘neutralised’ may contain dozens, but they never saw them, just the explosion, a successful strike.
Tonight they had seen nothing more than the light of several suns through the filtered screens, and felt some of the ground effects, a fraction of what an air or surface burst would have had. But they flew in silence, in a kind of shock, knowing that nothing about themselves would ever be the same again, and no one who knew what they had done would look at them in quite the same way either.
Moscow was still on high alert of course and a fuel costly detour brought them to thirty miles out from the forest airstrip.
Patricia broke communications silence, using relaxed VP on the heavily encrypted channel.
“Surf Club receiving Petticoat Express on Secure Eight, over?”
Silence followed.
“Surf Club receiving Petticoat Express on Secure Eight, report my signal, over?”
There was still silence.
“This doesn’t seem good.” Caroline commented. “Do you think they already hightailed it out of there?”
“No way of telling.”
“If they have gone then we have an hour’s fuel at best before we hit the silk and hike the last thousand miles to friendly lines.”
“Petticoat this is Surf, we have you strength three!”
An explosion and the sound of small arms fire in the background was evident.
“Surf this is ‘coat, you guys sound kind of busier than when we left, we are five minutes out but are you waving us off?”
“We are having trouble with the neighbours but we have their measure until the ammunition runs out. The other guys came up the logging trail through the forest from the west, so approach from the north east, over.”
“Roger that, out.”
On the ground, Limanova had been using the two elderly IFVs to ferry the men to an RV a half mile from the airstrip. As they had appeared out of the trees, tired and fed up, their new CO had briefed them, the old CO in plain sight behind him, dead upon the wet grass. Lt Col Limanova split them into groups of fifteen for ease of transport, and these would form five man fire teams in the attack. He did not expect cheers and what the Americans called Gung Ho, and in that he was not disappointed. The forest at night was in none of the militiamen’s comfort zones.
It had taken the Green Berets a little while to work out what was going on and six of the groups were delivered to the RV, crammed inside if they were lucky, or sitting on the roof getting wet if they were not. Groups 7 and 8 didn’t make it, the vehicles were ambushed with venerable 66mm LAWs. Four men escaped back into the forest but Petrov was not one of them.
He had ninety men with him and another hundred awaiting transport that was now burning fiercely on the logging trail. He told them to make their way to him on foot.
Those one hundred men were complying with his order, but they made their way very slowly.
They had an old M41 82mm mortar and two men who knew how to use it but no aiming post so they would use open sights and guess the required elevation.
With a few words of encouragement they had moved off and begun their attack.
It was as black as pitch but the landing lights, infra-red strobes, though invisible with the naked eye were clear and bright on the plasma screens.
Tracer flashed back and forth on the right of the airstrip and Caroline brought them in low over the trees to minimise their exposure to the ground fire.
The Green Beret commander was waiting for them, shouting above the sound of the still running engines and the gunfire.
Svetlana was in his command bunker trying to reach her contact in the government to get the militia pulled off. She had frequencies and callsigns that Torneski was meant to monitor, but if she were listening she certainly was not responding.
The fuel bowser was not there to meet them, it was back in the trees, a less obvious target.
“I know where it is, I’ll fetch it if the keys in the ignition?”
A mortar round landed over to the right, attempting by guesswork to hit or damage the aircraft they had heard land.
“Jesus!” Caroline swore.
“He can’t see to aim.” The Green Beret commented.
“He doesn’t need to.” Patricia said.
“There’s a pair of my guys near the fuel truck.” He told Patricia. “Be sure to shout a warning and don’t forget the password, okay?”
Patricia took off, running along the edge of the lighter runway until the break in the trees. She swung left, slowing as she headed into the dark trees.
A flash robbed her of all night vision and she was flying through the air to land in brambles, her hearing was gone, shot, robbed by the 82mm mortar rounds blast and only a tree trunk being between them had saved her life.
She regained her feet and blundered about trying to find the track again. She could not see the Green Beret sentries, or hear anything, let alone a shouted challenge for a password.
The burst of automatic fire on the opposite side of the runway to that of the attack drew an immediate request for a sitrep from the CP.
The phrase Blue on Blue is rather innocuous and disguises the enormity of an incident in the same way that calling a dead civilian ‘Collateral Damage’ does. The unit medic arrived at a run but Captain Patricia Dudley was already quite dead.
Frustrated at the lack of progress and despairing at his men’s reluctance despite there being an aircraft on the ground only a few hundred yards away. The Americans knew the ground well and had set up their defence accordingly. Lt Col Limanova had lost eight men within as many minutes of his attack starting and it ground to a halt. In his mind this was a stalemate, but in reality the professional soldiers had control of the engagement. He tried for air support to no avail and although he could find neither fault with the radio or its operator, but he was unable to raise anyone. This was thanks to silent jamming from the Americans. So involved was he with the radio and lack of communications he did not notice his force reducing in size as men slipped away, back in the direction they had come.
By the time Limanova decided on trying to get into a position where small arms could be used on the aircraft if it took off again, fire from his own militia towards the defenders was bordering on the pathetic. He left the radio operator with the mortarmen and went to investigate.