Red storm rising - By Tom Clancy Page 0,176

of the next attack. In fact, we should move the whole division up. This opportunity will not last long."

"Very well. I'll call STAVKA for permission."

Alekseyev leaned back and closed his eyes. The Soviet command structure: to deviate from the Plan, even a Theater commander had to get permission! It took over an hour while the staff geniuses in Moscow examined the maps. The lead regiment of 30th Guards was released and ordered to join the motor-rifle division in the next attack. But they were late, and the attack was delayed ninety minutes.

Second Lieutenant Terry Mackall--he still wore his stripes and was too tired to care about his change in rank--wondered how seriously Command was taking this little tank battle. Two battalions of German regulars arrived in tracked vehicles, relieving the exhausted Landwehr men, who moved back to prepare defensive positions in and around the village to their rear. A company of Leopard tanks and two platoons of M-1s reinforced the position, with a German colonel in overall command. He arrived by helicopter and surveyed all the defensive positions. A tough-looking little bastard, Mackall thought, with some bandages on his face and a tight unsmiling mouth. Mackall remembered that if Ivan broke through here, he just might be able to flank the German and British forces that had stopped the Russians' deepest penetration at the suburbs of Hannover. That made the battle important to the Germans.

The German Leopards took the frontal positions, relieving the Americans. It was a full troop now, back to fourteen vehicles. The troop commander split the force into two parts, with Mackall commanding the southern group. They found the last line of dug shelters, just southeast of the village. Mackall arrayed his newly assigned command with care, checking each position on foot and conferring with each tank commander. The Germans were thorough enough. Any position that did not already have natural shrubbery in place had had it transplanted in. Nearly all of the civilians who lived here had been evacuated, but a handful of people were unwilling to desert the homes they'd built. One of them brought some of the tankers hot food. Mackall's crew didn't have time to eat it. The gunner repaired two loose connectors and reset the balky fire-control computer. The loader and driver worked on a loose tread. Artillery was falling around them before they finished.

Alekseyev wanted to be there. He had a telephone link with the division, and listened in on the division command circuit. The colonel--Alekseyev wanted to make him a general if the attack succeeded--complained that they had been forced to wait too long. He'd asked for and gotten a reconnaissance mission over enemy lines. One of the aircraft had vanished. The other's pilot reported movement, but could not provide a strength estimate, so busy had he been dodging surface-to-air missiles. The colonel feared there had been an increase in enemy strength, but without hard evidence could not justify either a further delay or further reinforcements.

Mackall also watched from a distance. The last row of hills was a mile away, across what had been a farm but was now covered mostly with small trees, as though the soil had been exhausted. His forces were organized in two three-tank platoons. As commander, his job was to lie back and direct them by radio.

Twenty minutes after the radio reported a strong Russian advance, he began to see movement. German personnel carriers began streaming down the hill, toward the village. Some Soviet helicopters appeared to the north, but this time a Roland battery hidden in the village engaged them, exploding three before they retreated out of sight. Next came the German Leopard tanks. Mackall counted and came up three short. NATO artillery pounded the hilltops, and Soviet guns dropped shells in the fields around the American tanks. Then the Russians appeared.

"Buffalo, all units hold fire. Repeat, everyone hold fire," the troop commander said over the radio.

Mackall saw that the retreating Germans were passing through the village. So, that's what that little Kraut bastard has planned, he thought. Beautiful ...

"We have them on the run!" the colonel told Alekseyev over the command circuit. On the map table in front of the General, counters were moved and plotting officers made marks with grease pencils. They penciled in a red gap in the German lines.

The leading Soviet tanks were now five hundred meters from the village, racing down the two-kilometer gap between B-Troop's tanks. The German colonel gave his order to the American troop commander.

"Buffalo, this