Red Metal Page 35

  CHAPTER 47

  GERMAN-POLISH BORDER

  27 DECEMBER

  Tom Grant, his crew helmet on, sat on the top of the tank, tethered to the turret through the radio cable. His gunner was locked on the Russian armor staged on the far side of the river with the tank main gunsights.

  “Hey, sir,” said Sergeant Anderson, his eyes still pressed up against the sight’s eyecup, “how long since you slept?”

  “Couple of days, Anderson. Same as you. Same as all of us.”

  “Yes, sir, but we aren’t the ones making the decisions.”

  “You’d better be. You’d better have your sight on one of those enemy vics out there and you better have decided on your next five targets if it comes to that.”

  “Hooah, sir. Those fucks deserve a few parting shots.”

  Grant nodded imperceptibly. To the twenty-year-old African American from Pittsburgh he said, “You can think about it all you want, Sergeant. Just don’t do it. And keep your finger off the trigger while you’re thinking. We don’t want to be the ones starting this thing up again.”

  Grant had said what he needed to say to the young man, but in truth there was no one in his regiment who wanted to open fire on these bastards more than he did.

  The lieutenant colonel zeroed his binos in on a Russian Bumerang in the column. They were preparing to cross the bridge and resume their withdrawal from Poland. A Russian soldier in the back top hatch of the Bumerang leaned forward and dropped his pants, showing his bare ass, which he began to smack with his hands.

  “Sir, you see that?” young Anderson shouted. “I have his ass cheeks right in my sights . . . Just give me the word.”

  Grant sighed. Being in this position was bad, but being in this position surrounded by testosterone-filled twenty-year-old American heroes—men who had proven themselves over the past two days serving as the American bulwarks in this conflict—made it all better somehow. He’d been one of those kids once, fighting in Iraq, and he remembered the frustration with the rules of engagement then.

  Not much had changed, he realized. He hated his ROEs now as well, and wanted to give Anderson and all the other gunners the command to start blowing up enemy armor again.

  Instead he just keyed his mic. “Major Ott, bring your lead tanks up to the left of the crossroads.”

  “Copy,” said the German commander.

  The Russian vehicles began to move slowly to the bridge. As the first vehicle came alongside Lieutenant Colonel Grant, a Russian lieutenant stepped off a BTR-4. Late twenties, dirty-blond hair, he looked out of place, except that the snow-patterned uniform designated him a reconnaissance officer. Grant knew he was probably one of the assholes who reconned his fighting positions in Münchberg and likely Stuttgart, too. The officer arrogantly motioned to them and without any words made it clear Grant needed to move his tank off the road to give them more room.

  Without looking back to get acknowledgment, the lieutenant mounted up on his GAZ Tigr and radioed something back; then the long column of Russian equipment rolled over the bridge. First a reconnaissance element of Bumerangs and mixed small vehicles, including the Tigrs and even some motorcycle scouts. Then a battalion’s worth of T-14 Russian main battle tanks.

  The Russian vehicles and equipment looked mostly unscathed. A few Bumerangs showed some battle damage, but they were all moving under their own steam.

  * * *

  • • •

  It was an hour later when Grant and his tank crew watched the last pack of rearguard Bumerangs cross the bridge. With their passage through his location, Grant would now follow the Russians over the bridge and into Poland. The plan, as he understood it through the relayed messages he’d received, was to stay behind the Russians and ensure that they didn’t resume hostilities.

  “Courage main, this is Courage Six. You got the count?”

  “Yes, sir, we have them. Forty-two Bumerangs, ten BTRs, and thirty-one tanks. All T-14s. I count an additional thirty-eight service and support vehicles. One hundred eleven total.”

  Grant thought to himself. He’d be shepherding an enemy force much larger than his, even without taking the damn train, wherever the hell it was, into account.

  As much as he wanted to heed the wishes of Sergeant Anderson, restarting hostilities would mean one hell of a nasty fight.

  * * *

  • • •

  By late evening on 26 December, the massive array of PLF had begun to arrive in position north of Wrocław. Their reconnaissance and headquarters elements immediately drew their battle lines and set their quartering parties. Next, advance guardsmen began the grueling effort of digging through the rock-hard Polish dirt, building rushed camouflaged anti-tank emplacements.

  Once again, the dark, hard, frozen earth, even in this modern age of technology, was the last refuge of the forlorn infantryman.

  Any sound, any noise above a whisper, annoyed the senior men to no end. They assumed Russian observers were in the area, knew they would detect thousands of soldiers no matter how much or how little light they used and how much sound they made, but the Ministry of National Defense had directed this action. Keep it quiet, but know you will be observed at all times.

  The top, “tier one,” unit of Polish special forces was called Group for Operational Maneuvering Response, the acronym GROM in Polish, which is also their word for thunder. The three squadrons of soldiers, A, B, and C, had been in Warsaw, but they flew into Wrocław just after ten p.m. They were driven in buses to several hotels along the Oder River, all in sight of the five bridges.

  Other Polish special forces units arrived in the city over the next few hours, and by midnight more than four hundred GROM men were in Wrocław, all in civilian dress, having traveled in by truck, train, or helicopter.

  Multiple individual units of the Territorial Defense Force, the civilian militia of Poland, began getting orders to reposition to Wrocław proper. They were not told why, and they brought only the equipment they had with them. Coaches, trains, and old army trucks delivered the units to their designated locations in the city throughout the night. They did not arrive as a single massive force but rather in company-sized elements.

  A motor coach or two here, a convoy of three school buses there.

  By two a.m. the special forces and militia in place had quietly begun erecting fighting positions along the anticipated path of the Russian troops. In apartment windows, in stores and offices and government buildings, anti-armor rocket launchers, machine guns, and even rifles and grenades were positioned.

  Civilians all around the city asked what was going on, but they were told nothing more than that the forces were there purely for their protection.

  It would be a long night of work, and those involved wondered if it would only end after a long morning of fighting a far superior and better-equipped force on the innocent and vulnerable city streets of their own nation.

  * * *

  • • •

  WEISSWASSER, GERMANY

  27 DECEMBER

  Colonel General Eduard Sabaneyev woke in his private quarters in Red Blizzard 2. He sat up in his sleeping berth after a jolting ninety minutes of rest, looked at the real-time map on the notebook computer in front of him, and saw they were about to pass over the border into Poland.

  The map indicated Dryagin and his column had crossed forty kilometers or so to the south and were already in Poland.

  It was all going to plan.

  The general entered the command car and reached for a thermos of tea offered by Colonel Smirnov, when a flash intelligence report came over the radio. A headset was passed over to him.

  “Sabaneyev.”

  “Colonel General”—it was Major Orlov, his intelligence officer—“I’m sending some files to you right now, sir.” A map flashed up on the display above Sabaneyev’s workstation. It was the southern Polish landscape, with th
ermal heat registers clustered north of the city of Wrocław.

  “What is it?”

  The colonel spent five minutes relaying all the information he had on the rapid Polish military buildup under cover of darkness along the column’s route.

  Sabaneyev confirmed the details with Orlov. “Two mech brigades, an armored brigade, and a recon regiment?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Any change to their air posture?”

  “Negative, sir, but they know at our present speed we won’t reach their location until eight hundred hours tomorrow. They appear to be trying to set up an ambush of some sort.”

  Sabaneyev found himself surprised. He’d actually doubted the Poles would want another fight after the thrashing they got from his force on the way in.

  But now it looked like that was just exactly what the Polish president was instigating.

  “Fucking fool.”

  Colonel Orlov hesitated, then spoke over the command net. “Sir?”

  “Zielinski. Wanting to stand and fight. Idiot.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Smirnov leaned over Sabaneyev to look at the display. He had a headset on himself, so he’d heard Orlov’s warning. “We can defeat a force of Poles three times that size.”

  The general shrugged, sipped the hot tea. “With time, yes. But just moving the column into fighting position will take more time than I want to spend in the flatlands of western Poland.” Sabaneyev then addressed Orlov through the radio. “What’s going on inside Wrocław?”

  “We have a pair of Spetsnaz teams on the ground: one up near the A8 Motorway positioning to monitor this new Polish troop concentration, and the other in cover near the A4 and A8 junction, which is to the west of the city.”

  “I want to know what’s happening inside the city.”

  The intelligence officer replied, “A UAV flight a half hour ago showed nothing irregular, sir. A normal night. Activity on the highways but nothing that looks like troop movements inside Wrocław. There are some militia in the city, but they aren’t in well-fortified positions.”

  Sabaneyev turned to his XO. “Smirnov, bring up the plans for a movement through Wrocław.”

  Colonel Smirnov spun back to his computer, and soon pages of text alongside maps appeared on the center display screen.

  The idea that the Poles would set up a blocking force on the egress route had been considered by the Russians, of course, and a number of contingencies had been planned. If there was a large force on the A8 Motorway in the vicinity of Wrocław, one of the possible alternatives was to drive right through the city.

  But while the Wrocław contingency had been drawn up, Sabaneyev hadn’t expected to utilize it.

  He sighed now. This would slow him down a few hours no matter what he did. But then a new thought occurred to him. If he did go through the city, there was no doubt but he would face the Polish militia. The poorly trained Territorial Defense Force wouldn’t be disciplined enough to hold their fire, and there would certainly be clashes along the route.

  The Russian general was already thinking of his memoirs; in truth he’d been thinking of them since that day in the Kremlin when he and Lazar received their orders. Any fight in a NATO nation on his return to Belarus would be another feather in his cap. Even if it was nothing but a few skirmishes between his scouts and the militia, if it happened in a major city, the “battle” could be dressed up with literary flair to provide an exciting last act to the story of his heroic actions during Red Metal.

  Sabaneyev suddenly liked the idea of moving through the city, but he wasn’t a fool. To Smirnov he said, “Push a reconnaissance force ahead of the column. Send them into Wrocław. Support them with two . . . no, three mechanized companies held just to the west. Have the recon element locate any militia strongholds along our path. Order them to find the most open routes to the bridges over the Oder. Send the Spetsnaz units already in the city to the bridges, have them get under them, and make certain they aren’t wired.”

  He shrugged. “If we can get our equipment through, and there’s no funny business from the Poles, we’ll move around the PLF on the A8 by going straight through downtown Wrocław.” He smiled. “We rule this country now—we can do whatever the hell we want.”

  CHAPTER 48

  WEST OF WROCŁAW, POLAND

  27 DECEMBER

  Eight GAZ Tigr all-terrain infantry mobility vehicles rolled outside Wrocław just after five a.m. They parked along a trail barely wide enough for one vehicle but remote enough to remain hidden. After thirty minutes of gathering brush and shoveling snow atop their vehicles, their crews took an accurate map reading and confirmed it using the still-working Russian laser system placed on hills and mountains to the south; then they moved out on foot toward Wrocław, the lights of which twinkled in the distance. At eight men per vehicle, there was a total of forty-eight soldiers and officers, all from the 45th Guards Detached Spetsnaz Brigade.

  Dressed in civilian clothes, they carried heavy packs containing communications gear, weapons, and rations. The eight-man sections worked as groups using devices that looked like civilian smartphones but actually contained sophisticated military software.

  All moved as teams to different parts of the city and to different, vital infrastructure. Bridges, key road intersections, larger highways, and especially rail bridges.

  One by one they sent their reports over HF radios; all appeared to be normal. There was an exceedingly light defensive presence from the Polish military—some built-up militia positions, nothing more. The entire city seemed completely clueless to the fact the Russian army was probing its streets.

  One team rode through and around the Old Town on tram cars in the early morning. Efficient and visible, the team was the perfect form of reconnaissance. They arrived at the Oder, crossed the bridges, and continued east. They reported no unusual activity around any of the five critical bridges.

  Another team had the central train station as their zone of reconnaissance. They reported back that light commuter trains were coming and going through the early-morning hours. A few buses were parked in front of local hotels around the Old Town, a normal enough occurrence, not an unexpectedly large amount of civilian traffic for predawn in a European city.

  After less than an hour and a half they’d successfully navigated across all parts of Wrocław that Sabaneyev’s planners had listed as key terrain.

  The way looked clear to send the column.

  * * *

  • • •

  RED BLIZZARD 2

  WESTERN POLAND

  27 DECEMBER

  Nearly one hundred kilometers to the west, digital reports were coming in one after another to the support train Red Blizzard 2’s command operations center. The computers processed the data and plotted points of interest. The central digital map screen was now zoomed in to Wrocław.

  Sabaneyev looked over his operations officer’s shoulder and read the raw reports from the Spetsnaz reconnaissance men as they came in. Some of the men were verbose, others brief and to the point, but in their entirety the first reconnaissance reports revealed nothing to indicate any real danger. The colonel general began to weigh his options.

  “I want to know for sure before turning south,” he said. “If we continue on our course, we run right into what reconnaissance says is a growing Polish defensive belt. What say you, Ops-O?”

  “Sir, maybe it’s time to ditch the support train. It’s done its job, just like the assault train. We have our armor off-loaded and the column is full up on fuel and ammo. Plus, we can count on full resupply nearer the center of Poland from Red Blizzard 3. At this stage, we should consider evolving back into assault formations. Quicker, more decisive, and adaptable to whatever the Poles try to toss at us.”

  General Sabaneyev looked over the map. “We have not seen all of the NATO air, or even Polish air, they might throw again
st us, and I want the train to help mitigate that.

  “And keep the special teams in Wrocław watching for military activity. And one more reconnaissance at first light to check those bridges to make sure they’re clear. If I am right, the Poles will put something on the outskirts of Wrocław to let us know we shouldn’t go that way, but they’ll also believe we’d be mad to attempt to take an armored column through a city.”

  “Sir, even if they do get forces in town, they won’t have enough time to get much in the way of defenses up and established,” said the assistant operations officer, drawing a scowl from the operations officer for speaking out of turn and above his pay grade.

  “Yes . . . I like the way you are thinking, Lieutenant Colonel.”

  The operations officer, Colonel Feliks Smirnov, sat down hard in the metal chair in front of his maps. Sabaneyev loved playing his officers against one another. It worked to keep them in line, and it worked as they tried to outdo one another to find solutions, he believed.

  * * *

  • • •

  WROCŁAW, POLAND

  27 DECEMBER

  Paulina Tobiasz sat in a second-class compartment as her train slowed in Wrocław’s central train station. She looked down at the white sling holding her left arm up and felt the tight bandages on her forearm. She scratched at her wrist because she couldn’t scratch under the bandage.

  I’ll have a wicked scar, she thought. Then she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the window. Her eyes looked tired, sad.

  She wasn’t a young girl anymore.

  But what was she? A toughened warrior? More like a scared little wretch. She had always glamorized female warriors in legends. Tough ladies who persevered and showed the world what women could do. Maybe they weren’t real, either. Maybe they just got lucky, just like her. And maybe it was universal; perhaps male warriors relied on nothing more than luck as well.