Bullet Magnet roared through the night, climbing Hill 57’s steepest slope like a giant tarantula. As it crested the ridge line, Cordite ordered the crew to stop: “Hold up here.”
The tank churned to a halt, its engines idling, as Cordite stood up in the commander’s hatch and scanned the distance with night vision binoculars. Tex’s voice crackled over Cordite’s com-system. “What’re you looking for?” the gunner asked.
“Lacey,” Cordite replied.
“Lacey? Wouldn’t Axel have killed her when he captured Cagney?”
“He would have, but he didn’t.”
Ratchet interjected to explain. “We spotted her hiding in those woods while those gunmen were refueling.”
“It’s how I knew Cagney wasn’t a traitor,” Cordite said. “If she really had joined up with Axel she would have brought her dog with her.”
“But why?” wondered Maverik. “What good does getting captured do?”
“She’s not captured, she’s infiltrating. She knew the farm would never be free until we attacked the prison and took Axel out once and for all. And she knew we didn’t have enough fuel to get there. This was her way of getting us that fuel.
“Then I got a better chance of spotting that dog than you do,” The turret began to swivel back and forth as Tex used the Abrams’ thermal optics to search for Lacey. Sure enough, Lacey’s thermal image appeared on Tex’ visual display. The dog was hiding in the underbrush, her black and tan coat blending perfectly into the night’s shadows. “Spotted her,” Tex announced.
Cordite, his head and chest still sticking out of the tank turret, clicked his tongue and called out to the dog. “Where’s Cagney, Lacey? Where’s Cagney? Go find Cagney!” The dog moved like a shadow as it abandoned her hiding place and bounded forward into the darkness. “Follow the dog – she knows where to take us."
Maverik didn’t have to be told twice. Smooth as silk he put the tank in gear and rolled after the running dog.
Meanwhile Cagney, Axel and over a dozen Gunment were waiting by the Penitentiary’s main gain. A guard in the watchtower lowered his nightvision binoculars and called out: “Contact!”
“Light ‘em up!” Axel commanded.
Search lights burst to life, their beams cutting through the darkness to illuminate two mechanical beasts of prey: the remaining Korean MBT’s. The search lights’ beams tracked the progess of the Type-99’s as they approached the main gate. Lt. Lin, commander of the lead tank, called up from his commander’s cupola. “What is going on?”
“Change of plans,” Axel explained. “We’re gonna ambush the Abrams here.”
“You think he’s coming?” the Chinese Lieutenant wondered.
“We know he is!” Cagney assured.
Lietenant Lin looked over the penitentiary, scanning its concrete buildings with approval. “Much better plan. Easier to kill an Abrams in a closed environment.”
“Told you so,” smiled Cagney.
Axel frowned. “Women always love to say ‘I told you so’.” He looked back at Lin. “Get your tanks inside so we can douse the lights. We’ll switch to nightvision and the watch towers will alert you when the Abrams appears. Axel then pulled Mac, a fat bear of a man with a shaved head and scraggly beard, aside. “Arm the javelin and bring around the Humvee.” Axel nodded toward Cagney. “And make sure someone’s watching her. I still don’t trust this bitch
Not far away, Bullet Magnet continued to follow Lacey through the darkness. In the distance the shadows of the penitentiary’s tall walls and watch towers were already beginning to appear at the edge of the forest. “They’ll be expecting us,” Maverik warned.
“So let’s create a diversion. Load HEAT!” Cordite commanded.
“Loading HEAT!” Ratchet confirmed.
“All right, let’s bring her around the west side."
But the watch tower guards immediately spotted the trees getting knocked over by the approaching tank. “Contact! Contact! Contact!” they yelled into their radios. A watch tower machine gun erupted, tracking the Abrams with tracer fire as the tank emerged from the forest and began to circle around the west.
And Lieutenant Lin, in his special Type-99 command tank, reacted calmly to the alert. “Bravo-2, shadow Rogue’s movement and fire at will.”
Bravo-2, the call sign of the second Type -99, sat silent and dark inside the prison walls. “Affirmitive, Bravo-1,” confirmed the tank’s leader. “Electric power only!” he commanded the gunner.
Bravo-2’s turret swiveled, following the path indicated by the watch tower’s machine gun fire.
Meanwhile Mac and another of Axel’s gunmen ran up behind Cagney, who was marching between two administrative buildings toward her temporary quarters in the cell blocks. “Cagney,” Mac called out, “Hold up!”
Cagney wasn’t fooled by the friendly tone of voice. “Haven’t you guys had enough of me for one night?”
“Axel just wanted to make sure you got back to your quarters safely.”
“Yeah, sure he did.” That’s when Cagney heard the bark of the watch tower machine guns. She looked up, alert. “We’re under attack.”
“Just like you predicted,” Mac acknowledged.
“It’s coming from the west wall.”
Cagney started jogging in that direction but Mac grabbed her shoulder. “No, Axel wants you back in your –“
Cagney grabbed Mac’s hand in a death grip and pulled him over her back, flipping him. He landed hard on the ground in front of her, letting go his Kalashnikov. Cagney grabbed the rifle, spun it, and unloaded a burst of fire into the other gunman, who barely had time to feel the pain of multiple impacts before crumpling to the ground in a bloody heap. Then, in one fluid motion, Cagney smashed Mac’s head with the butt of his own rifle, putting him out of his misery for good. Then she slung the rifle over her shoulder and ran in the direction of the sound of combat, ducking into an administration buildings on her way. There was no power inside the building, but the flashes of machine gun and tank fire out created a strobe effect.
Meanwhile, outside the west wall, Bullet Magnet circled around the compound, machine gun bullets ricocheting off its hull and turret in every direction. Cordite, still exposed in the commander’s hatch, ignored the danger. “Fire when ready!” The Abrams 120mm smoothbore hammered a high explosive shell into the prison wall, blasting open a ten-foot hole. “Keep moving!” Cordite urged, “Go! Go! Go!”
The shot was a planned diversion, intended to trick the prison defenders into thinking that’s where the Abrams would enter the compound. Instead, Bullet Magnet continues to accelerate outside the wall. “Loading canister!” reported Ratchet over the radio.
Maverik took a sharp right turn toward the north of the prison. He was just in time because three shell rip through the wall right where the Abrams would have been if it went through the hole in the wall instead of around to the north. “Incoming!” Maverik reported.
Tex reacted immediately, triggering the six mortars on the sides of Bullet Magnet’s turret. They all went off at once, shooting grenades into the air. They burst into streams of falling smoke. “Smoke deployed!”
Cordite peered through his nightvision binoculars. “We got a bandit, five o’clock, Type-99, auto-loader!"
The Type-99’s continued to fire blindly into the smoke, its gun roaring with a shot every five seconds. One of the shells scored a lucky hit, but it struck the Abrams’ hull at an odd angle, glancing off the chobham armor and missing Cordite’s head by inches.
“Re-loading sabot!” Ratchet announced, ignoring the incoming rounds.
“Buttoning up!” Cordite reported, deciding safety was the better part of valor. He ducked down into the turret, closing the commander’s hatch behind him. The Abram’ turret swiveled, keeping the gun pointed at the Type-99 even as Bullet Magnet continued to accelerate away from it and around the outer corner of the prison.
Inside that turret Tex watched the thermal display of the Type-99, which was barely visible since it was running cold on electrical power only. Tex only found it at all by tracing the heat signatures of the incoming shells. “Ready to fire!” he announced.
“Sabot loaded!” Ratchet confirmed.
Tex pulled the trigger and the Abrams’ main gun roared. The armor-piercing shell rocketed out of the barrel and toward the prison wall. As it accelerated, carbon fins deploy and then tear off, stabilizing the shell’s flight and then falling behind it like flower petals. The depleted uranium core of the anti-tank round slammed into the prison wall. But it didn’t blow it down, because the shell didn’t explode. Instead it punched right through the concrete like it was paper. It emerged on the other side and slammed into the Type-99’s turret. But the impact with the wall deflected the round just enough to strike the Chinese tank at a steep angle. The shot ricocheted. But the near miss panicked the Type-99’s crew. “Evade! Evade! Evade!” yelled the leader in Chinese.
“Did we penetrate?” Cordite hopefully asks.
“Negative,” Tex is forced to admit, “wall deflected the shot.”
“Loading sabot!” Ratchet yells, continuing to focus on her job.
“Enemy retreating!” Tex reported as he watched the Type-99 turn so that its strong frontal armor remained pointing at the Abrams while it backed up between the administration buildings.
“We gotta get after it before it can ambush us again!” insisted Cordite.
“Affirmitive!” assured Maverik. He spun the tank to the south, smashing through the prison wall.
Bullet Magnet and the Type-99 were driving parallel to each other, now, down alleys separated by the concrete walls of an administration building. Despite the huge concrete structure between them, both tanks had their turrets and guns pointed at each other, tracking each other with their thermal sights. The Type-99’s gun roared as it fired its auto-loader relentlessly, smashing round after round through the concrete and drywall in an attempt to destroy the Abrams. But the poorly-aimed snapshots never struck a weak point, each round deflecting off of Bullet Magnet’s turret.
“Sabot loaded!” reported Ratchet.
“Track it!” commanded Cordite.
Tex fired and an anti-tank depleted uranium sabot round ploughed through the concrete
Tex fired and an anti-tank depleted uranium sabot round ploughed through the concrete and plaster of about a dozen walls. This time, however, it wasn’t aimed at the Type-99’s turret, it was aimed at the enemy tank’s tracks. So even though the round was deflected, it still slammed into one of the Type-99’s road wheels, shattering it. The armored tracks ripped apart as the remaining wheels ground to a halt and twisted the tank, causing it to slam into a crush a load-bearing wall. A whole section of the administration building collapsed on top of the Chinese tank, but the concrete blocks did minimal damage, literally bouncing off the war machine’s armor. But the front of the tank was buried, trapping it in place.
“Reverse! Reverse!” commanded Cordite.
Maverik threw the Abrams into reverse as more auto-loader rounds slammed into the chobham armor. Suddenly a part of Bullet Magnet’s turret exploded outward with a deafening boom and a burst of flame. “They racked us!” lamented Ratchet.
“How much we got left?”
“Five sabot and two canister! All the HEAT destroyed!”
“Keep loading!”
“Sabot loaded!”
The Abrams emerged from the alley, stopped, turned right, and accelerated. Now it was approaching the alley that the Type-99 was stuck in, and it’s approaching the rear of the enemy, where its armor was weakest. “Fire at will!”
Tex pulled the trigger, penetrating the rear of the Type-99 with another sabot round. Cordite could almost hear the shell ricocheting inside the Chinese tank’s crew compartment, mixing the driver and the commander into a bloody pulp like they were inside a giant blender. The Type-99’s turret stopped moving and the husk of the tank just sat there, smoking. “Enemy destroyed!” Tex reported.
“Nice shooting, Tex.” Cordite acknowledged. Then he yelled out with sudden concern: “ATGM! ATGM!”
Bullet Magnet rocked as a javelin anti-tank guided missile slammed into its rear. Cordite threw open the turret hatch and swung around the .50 caliber machinegun to engage whoever just fired the ATGM. But all he saw was the exhaust of a Humvee disappearing around the corner. “Activate softkill!”
“Softkill just knocked out our thermal imaging.” Tex switched to standard optics.
“I’m seeing smoke coming from our engine,” Cordite assessed.
“Affirmitive,” reported Maverik, “engine’s dead.”
“I’m on it.” Ratchet wiggled out of the turret and raced around to pop the access hatch to the rear engine. She ducked back as smoke belched out. “I’m gonna need about seven hours.”
“You’ve got less than seven minutes,” Cordite predicted. “Keep the softkill active, we can’t afford to take another hit from that javelin.
“If there’s another Type-99 lurking around here we’re gonna be blind,” warned Tex.
“Then let’s hope there isn’t one because right now we gotta deal with that Humvee.”