FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
25 April, 1986
1600 Hours
"There they go," Timmons said. We were in the grass beside The Fort. We'd gone outside and dropped into the brush, laying there while everyone not assigned to Atlas had rolled out at 0300 this morning. About noon Foster had come outside and fired five spaced M-16 shots into the air. I knew that the signal meant that the tanks had arrived at Perseus. Now the Soviet troops had all piled into their vehicles and were heading out. We'd watched as the GRU officer had thrown a fit, the fuel trucks had left at thirteen hundred hours, and had not come back until two hours ago. They'd spent the next two hours refueling the tanks, R-17's, BMP's, and trucks.
"You called it," I said.
He snorted. "Don't act stupid, Specialist, you knew as well as I did that he'd have no choice but to relocate to keep 1/68th from lunging out of Perseus and flanking him as well as being able to hit the Guards base." He looked at me, and his grin was feral, "They've moving the entire division out now, they have no choice." He looked back through the binoculars at the tanks moving away.
The driving was erratic. They weren't in an orderly line now, they kept grouping up and letting their distances vary.
Another explosion went off.
I didn't even flinch. I was used to it. I'd notice if it didn't happen.
"Now we wait," He said. I lit a cigarette and rolled onto my back, staring at the sky. The weather was for shit, but I was having a good time.
"Current safe road speed for that pack of incompetent fuckups, they won't be in position to block Perseus until almost twenty-hundred," I said, blowing out a smoke ring.
"I know," Timmons said. He lit a cigarette of his own. I'd noticed he had the habit of field stripping his cigarettes. He pulled an MRE candybar out of his pocket and tore it open with his teeth. "Goddamn these are good."
He was ex-military, and not an officer either. He was ex-enlisted, ex-ground pounder, not some rear echelon retard.
He was having a blast.
"How long are we going to be here?" I asked.
"You might as well get some sleep, Specialist. I'll take first watch shift," Timmons told me.
"Works for me," I said. I noticed he hadn't answered my question.
I was beat. Five days of wearing a chemical mask and running around, watching the engineers do shit, making sure the right bunkers were being demo'd and rebuilt. Right now the concrete was curing on the first layer of slabs. At the rate 54th was going, they'd have the bunkers rebuilt by the end of the month.
Chief Henley had come by a few times, screamed at everyone, including Timmons and the other CIA dwonks, then left after threatening to murder us.
Little-Bit had left a note at one of her message drops that she'd ID'd where all the Spetz were hiding, that they were getting strung out by the constant explosions and the CS gas.
Which Timmons was just as immune to as I was.
I folded by hands behind my neck, let my head relax against my helmet webbing, and closed my eyes.
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"Psst," Timmons' kick woke me up. I could hear the roar of turbo-diesel engines.
"What the fuck?" I asked, rolling over. It was pitch black and I glanced at my watch. Twenty-two hundred hours. I flipped down my NVG's and turned them on. When I looked out at the road I saw the bumper numbers on the tanks that were rolling onto Atlas.
1-68th Arm Bn
What the hell were they doing back.
Timmons chuckled next to me.
"Like that?" He asked.
I just grunted, rolling on my side away from him, pulling out my dick, and pissing in the grass before tucking it away and rolling back onto my stomach.
The tanks rolled downrange. The roads had been cleared of artillery shells, the rest on top of or in between bunkers or out in the Back Forty. There were still MRLS bomblets to watch out for, but they wouldn't matter for shit against the heavy steel tracks of the massive 65 ton Main Battle Tanks.
Fifty tanks rolled by. Then 54th's Bradleys and M113 APC's. Then the Rangers. All heading downrange. Fuel trucks came after the heavy vehicles, and I could tell that they were going to do hot refueling.
If the Soviets were going to keep up, they had to turn around and drive back.
I watched as mechanics swarmed over the tanks in front of us in the dark, working without lights, just their NVG's. I saw them check track wear and tension, then tighten the track on the one in front of us. I also watched as they replaced two of the thick rubber track pads that kept the massive armored vehicles from tearing up pavement and asphalt. The ground pressure from those monsters was enormous and without those thick rubber pads the tracks would tear the shit out of asphalt, destroying roads and parking lots.
All of the tanks were in blackout drive, just the little tiny lights marking where they were. As I watched they all turned and faced the 1K Zone, barrels pointing East Germany. That was new, because as far as I knew they weren't supposed to do that.
Timmons chuckled, standing up and walking out toward the tanks. I followed.
"Got a guess?" He asked me as we moved through the grass. Aine had checked the area for bomblets and after the EOD guys handled them, declared it clear.
"You're making them run. They're a little slower than the M1, and while they supposedly have better horsepower because they're lighter, and are supposed to be more maneuverable, we've both seen that doesn't matter," I said, following him up to the tank. "They could goddamn Formula-One racers mounting goddamn gauss cannons, hell, they could be fucking Battletech Mad-Cats, and it wouldn't fucking matter, because their crews suck ass."
"And are exhausted," He smiled.
"And that."
The tank commander popped out of his hatch and Timmons looked up at him. "How are your men?"
"They're fit to fight," He said. "I'm rotating drivers borrowed from Three Three Two. The drivers for the 2/67th reactivation."
"Iron Dukes," Timmons nodded. The Colonel looked surprised as Timmons continued. "Open up your packet marked Golf Six Niner Bravo, follow the instructions, Colonel."
The Colonel nodded.
We waited, both of us smoking cigarettes in the dark. After awhile I went over and sat in the Gypsy Wagon, pulling off my helmet, putting on my softcap, and pulling the brim down over my eyes so I could catch some Z's.
I was in the middle of a damn good dream, one without Stillwater, Atlas, the Army, or the fucking CIA, when a tapping woke me up.
"You're gonna wanna see this, Specialist," Timmons grinned.
I checked my watch. It was 0200.
The tanks coming into the opposing Soviet watch-station had all their lights on, and the ZSU's were swivelling. I could hear rotors, and I had to look through the NVG's to see nearly a dozen Apache's about two hundred feet up that slowly flew over Atlas, flashed their lights, then peeled back off to the West.
11th ACR, Blackhorse. They'd been trailing the Soviets.
The big M1A1 next to me was silent, the engine shut off, the metal cool to the touch.
The T-80's clustered up around fuel trucks, and I saw the crews get out.
Downrange came multiple detonations, the artillery rounds being destroyed right on schedule. The tankers on the tanks flinched. I could see some of them coughing, and knew that the CS gas that was causing my sinuses to prickle was probably tearing the shit out of them.
"Wait for it..." Timmons said softly, watching across the 1K Zone with night vision binoculars with the 2nd Armor logo on the sides.
The last of the tanks straggled up, and I noticed that about six of them were towing other ones. They got near the fuel trucks, and the ones being towed were first on the list for gasoline. I saw the GRU officer get out of a vehicle, and noticed he was practically staggering.
"Now..." Timmons whispered.
Every single armored vehicle hit their floodlights, bathing the 1K Zone and the Soviet tanks in harsh white light as over a hundred armored vehicles lit up the night.
"Shit!" I grabbed Timmons and slung him down on the dirt, diving on top of him.
Someone panicked, and I heard a Soviet Fifty-One cook off. Heavy rounds clanked off the tank next to me, and I knew this was it. That Timmons had pushed us into World War Three. There was another explosion, and another one almost immediately afterwards. There were four more, and the world lit up as pressure slammed me against the ground.
The tank next to me rocked back as the explosion hit the front glacias plates and the thermal bloom lit up the night.
Still the M1A1's sat there.
The lights went off.
"Get up, we gotta move," Timmons said. I jumped to my feet and pulled him up. He led me to the Gypsy Wagon, jumping in and grabbing the radio as every tank I could see, nearly as one, rotated ninety degrees to the North. The tank in front of us had a divot in the armor, the paint blasted off around the dent on the angle to the left of the barrel. I could see sullen glowing red. A glance showed that the cinderblocks on the corner of The Fort had been blown away to reveal the inner concrete layer.
"Tempest Six Alpha, this is Atlas Five Actual," Timmons snapped, and my blood ran cold.
"Atlas Five Actual, this is Tempest Six Alpha, go ahead," The 1/68th CO's voice was strong.
"Any casualties, over?"
"Negative casualties. Thought we'd had it when those dumb fuckers fired, but the armor took their single hit," The Colonel said. I could hear the stress in his voice. "Good call having us unload the chamber, over."
"Do not reply, repeat, do not reply. This must be stressed, do not reply to fire, over," Timmons voice was tight.
"Roger that, Atlas, Tempest out."
"Atlas, out," Timmons said, dropping the mic into the cradle. He wiped his forehead and looked at me. When he lit his cigarette I noticed his hands were shaking. "It almost all came apart on me right there. I'd hoped they wouldn't do that, but was pretty sure they would."
I nodded slowly, resisting an urge to reach out and strangle the shit out of the CIA agent.
"We could do it, you know that, John?" He said suddenly.
"Do what?" I asked.
He waved at the window. "The entire Guards division is there. Most of them are on fumes, their crews are terrible, and right now the GRU guy is going to force them reload."
His eyes were bright, "It's going to happen, John. You know it, I know it, but we could control it, right here. That's their entire tactical nuclear stockpile, right there. Their tanks can't hurt us, their crews aren't trained enough to take on 1/68, and we could take out the entire division and be rolling deep into East Germany before they even know what happened."
I shook my head. Goddamn it was tempting. It was real tempting. We could bust a hole straight through to goddamn Moscow before they could even really respond. Hell, if it wasn't for their ICBM fields, we could roll them all the way back to Russia, push them entirely out of Eastern Europe, and they couldn't do jack or shit about it. It was tempting.
I was suddenly glad I was in charge, and not Stillwater.
"The ICBM's, we can't stop them, and someone would panic and fire," I said.
He nodded slowly, his eyes calming. "I know. I know," He sighed, a longing sound, "We could have. Hell, we might have been able to take out their entire heavy armor in Eastern Germany."
He slapped the side of his own face and looked at me. "Thanks."
I nodded.
He checked his watch. "It'll take them one to two hours to refuel. The GRU officer will have to execute the tank commanders who fired, they'll shuffle around the crews, then chase 1/68 again. By the time they get to Minotaur, he'll have probably fallen for the feint and run to Perseus, or at least gone a long way toward it before he finds out that 1/68th is at Minotaur, and he'll have to run back by. As soon as 11th ACR reports they're turning around, I'm going to have 1/68 turn around and sprint for us."
I shook my head. I could see what he was doing. He was forcing the 39th Guards Armored Rifle Division to chase a single US Army armor battalion back and forth. He didn't have fuel trucks in place, while 1/68 could refuel at any of the three FSTS's or from the fuel vehicles that kept running with them.
I knew that 1/68 trained for that. Rapid movement, hell, I'd even seen them refuel under movement, which was a hell of thing to see, was 1/68th and pretty much every C-DATs bible. Scoot, shoot, communicate, that was what tanks did now. M1A1's could cruise at 45 MPH, not too shabby for 65 tons of goddamn metal, and rumor had it that if they turned off the governors and slammed the pedal without worrying about blowing a track they could hit 80 or 100 MPH.
Christ, the 39th Guards must be having kittens. The M1A1's were faster than them, had a further operating range, and the crews were fucking trained armored badasses.
Someone in the Kremlin was going to get shot in the face over this if he was lucky, sent to Siberia if he wasn't.
Timmons little psy-ops operation was going to kill motherfuckers who thought they were untouchable.
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FSTS-317/NATO Site 93
Classified Location
Edge of the 1K Zone
Fulda Gap, Western Germany
26 April, 1986
1600 Hours
The next day I stood on the pad for Bunker-68 and watched the M1A1's roll by. They were spinning their cupolas as they just drove in circles around the site. Every once in awhile Timmons had my crew fire off flares like it was Mardi-Gras, and we'd stopped throwing smoke. He'd stepped up the artillery detonations to having twenty teams armed with the anti-material rifles shooting two at time every minute so between the tanks and the demo teams the entire site was a roaring cacophony of military destruction.
I ducked down as the Apaches from 11th ACR came roaring over us, joining the M1A1's in doing circles, twenty of them in all, before setting down on the pads of inner row bunkers. I watched as the fuel truck on the pad next to me pulled up and the private on loan 11th ACR ran out and hit the static discharge for the Apache.
They refueled it and it sat there. Waiting.
On a radioed signal it fired up, the engines roaring, and I watched it take off. They hovered there, then began peeling off one at a time and heading North. I knew they'd be heading to Perseus to refuel. I raised the binoculars and checked on our friends across the 1K Zone.
The HiNDs that had followed them in just sat there. I could see the refueling teams arguing with other people. One of them shook the fuel nozzle he was holding, then threw it on the ground and stomped away. The crew member from the HiND went over the GRU officer and they started arguing.
They were out of fuel.
Holy shit.
Almost on cue the six modified Bradleys lit up their sound systems and AC-DC started blaring loud enough to be heard over the roar of the tanks and the explosions of detonating artillery shells. I shook my head and began walking uprange.
By the time I hit the main road, the tanks were gone.
Racing off to either Perseus or Minotaur.
The Soviet tank crews were running out of the half-assed tents and toward their tanks.
Once again, they were out of position.
This was crazy. He was running the shit out of them, giving them practice driving their vehicles. Hell, now they know that an M1A1 could take a direct hit from one of the HEAT rounds and not even really feel it.
The 1/68th CO had painted a bullseye on the dent like a total dick with "HA-HA!" sprayed above it. Little Bit had been acting as an observer. Apparently ten total tanks fired. One round had hit The Fort, one had hit a tank, two had hit bunker doors (and didn't even dent the twenty-five ton nuclear blast rated doors), and the rest hit trees behind Atlas.
Ten fucking shots, one hit.
A US Army tank commander would have beaten his men with a whip.
The Fort came into sight, the engineers fixing the damage to the exterior brick wall, which had done exactly what it was designed to do, and I could see two engineers with concrete saws removing the damaged section of the outside inner blast wall. From what they'd told me, the HEAT round hit hadn't even penetrated to the radiation shielding.
Christ, was ANYTHING the Soviet Union made actually worth a shit?
Reddings was staring at Timmons, who was grinning like he'd just invented fucking.
"Ah, Specialist Bomber, I was just telling Sergeant Reddings that he'll have almost twenty-four hours before he'll be hosting 1-68 again," Timmons grinned.
I shrugged.
"Blase as always, my Texas friend," Timmons grinned. His smile grew wide and I had to restrain an impulse to draw my .45 and shoot him.
"The fun is just beginning."