Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,172

chief, who lifted a field phone and spoke two words:

"Commence firing."

It took several seconds for the sound to reach them. Every gun the division owned, with an additional battery from the tank division, spoke as one dreadful voice, and the thunder echoed across the countryside. The shells arched overhead, at first striking short of the opposite ridgeline, then closing on it. What had once been a gentle hill covered with lush grass turned into a brown obscenity of bare earth and smoke.

"I think they're serious, Sarge," the loader said, pulling his hatch down tight.

Mackall adjusted his helmet and microphone as he peered out the view ports built into his commander's cupola. The thick armor plate kept most of the noise out, but when the ground shook beneath them, the shock came through the treads and suspension to rock the vehicle, and each crewman reflected to himself on the force needed to budge a sixty-ton tank. This was how the lieutenant had bought it--a one-in-a-thousand shot from a heavy gun had landed a round right on his turret, and it had burrowed through the thin overhead armor to explode the vehicle.

Left and right of Mackall's tank, the largely middle-aged German territorials cowered in their deep, narrow holes, their emotions oscillating between terror and rage at what was happening to them and their country--and their homes!

"Good fire plan, Comrade Colonel," Alekseyev said quietly. A screaming sound passed overhead. "There is your air support."

Four Russian ground-attack fighters wheeled overhead to trace parallel to the ridgeline and dropped their loads of napalm. As they turned back toward Russian lines, one exploded in midair.

"What was that?"

"Probably a Roland," the colonel answered. "Their version of our SA-8 rocket. Here we go. One minute."

Five kilometers behind the command bunker, two batteries of mobile rocket launchers ripple-fired their weapons in a continuous sheet of flame. Half were high-explosive warheads, the other half smoke.

Thirty rockets landed in Mackall's sector and thirty in the valley before him. The impact of the explosives shook his tank violently, and he could hear the pings of fragments bouncing off his armor. But it was the smoke that frightened him. That meant Ivan was coming. From thirty separate points, gray-white smoke billowed into the air, forming an instant man-made cloud that enveloped all the ground in view. Mackall and his gunner activated their thermal-imaging sights.

"Buffalo, this is Six," the troop commander called in over the command circuit. "Check in."

Mackall listened in closely. All eleven vehicles were intact, protected by their deep holes. Again he blessed the engineers--and the German farmers--who had dug the shelters. No further orders were passed. None were needed.

"Enemy in view," the gunner reported.

The thermal sight measured differences in temperature and could penetrate most of the mile of smoke cover. And the wind was on their side. A ten-mile-per-hour breeze was driving the cloud back east. Sergeant First Class Terry Mackall took a deep breath and went to work.

"Target tank, ten o'clock. Sabot! Shoot!"

The gunner trained left and centered the sight reticle on the nearest Soviet battle tank. His thumbs depressed the laser button, and a thin beam of light bounced off the target. The range display came up in his sight: 1310 meters. The fire-control computer plotted target distance and speed, elevating the main gun. The computer measured wind speed and direction, air density and humidity, the temperature of the air, and the tank's own shells, and all the gunner had to do was place the target in the center of his sights. The whole operation took less than two seconds, and the gunner's fingers jammed home on the triggers.

A forty-foot muzzle blast annihilated the shrubs planted two years earlier by some German Boy Scouts. The tank's 105mm gun jerked back in recoil, ejecting the spent aluminum case. The shell came apart in the air, the sabot falling free of the projectile, a 40mm dart made of tungsten and uranium that lanced through the air at almost a mile a second.

The projectile struck the target one second later at the base of the gun turret. Inside, a Russian gunner was just picking up a round for his own cannon when the uranium core of the shot burned through the protective steel. The Russian tank exploded, its turret flying thirty feet into the air.

"Hit!" Mackall said. "Target tank, twelve o'clock. Sabot! Shoot!"

The Russian and American tanks fired at the same instant, but the Russian shot went high, missing the defiladed M-1 by nearly a meter. The Russian was less lucky.

"Time to