Thirty kilometers, he thought. Damn! Only a half-hour since the German grenadiers had punched a hole in the Russian lines, and zoom! goes the Black Horse Cav! It was crazy, but hell, it was crazy to have stayed alive ever since his first engagement--an hour after the war started. Ten klicks to go.
"Look at that! More of our tanks southbound. What the hell is going on?" Sergetov snarled to his driver, even talking like his general now.
"Are they our tanks?" the driver asked.
The new major shook his head. Another one passed through the gap in the trees-the turret had a flat top, not the usual dome shape of Soviet tanks!
A helicopter appeared over the gap and pivoted in the sky. Sergetov didn't mistake this for a Russian, and the stubby wings on either side of the fuselage marked it as an armed attack-chopper. The driver lurched to the right just before the nose-mounted machine gun flashed at them. Sergetov jumped clear as the tracers reached out. He landed on his back and rolled toward the treeline. His head was down, but he could feel the heat blast when the machine-gun tracers ignited the spare gas tank on the back of the truck. The young officer scampered into the trees and looked around the edge of a tall pine. The American helicopter flew to within a hundred meters of his vehicle to ensure its destruction, then spun off to the south. His radio was in the overturned, burning truck.
"Buffalo Three-One, this is Comanche, over."
"Comanche, this is Three-One. Report, over."
"We just popped a Russian truck. Everything else looks clear. Roll 'em, cowboy!" the helicopter pilot urged.
Mackall laughed at that. He had to remind himself that this wasn't really fun. Quite a few tank drivers had gotten into trouble by getting just a little too unwound on the German countryside, and now they were being ordered to! Two more minutes and three kilometers passed.
Here's where it gets tricky.
"Buffalo Three-One, we show three Russian vehicles standing guard on the hilltop. Look like Bravo-Tango-Romeos. All the bridge traffic seems to be trucks. The repair shop is on the east bank north of the town."
The tank slowed as they came to the last turn. Mackall ordered his "track" off the road, onto the meadow grass, as it edged ponderously around a stand of trees.
"Target BTR, eleven o'clock, twenty-seven hundred! Fire when ready, Woody!"
The first of the eight-wheel vehicles exploded before any of their crews knew a tank was near. They were looking for aircraft, not enemy tanks forty kilometers in the rear. The next two died within a minute, and Mackall's platoon of four tanks dashed forward.
They all reached the ridge three minutes later. One by one, the huge Abrams tanks crested the hill overlooking what had once been a small city. Many days of continuous air attacks and artillery fire had ended that. Four ribbon bridges were in operation, with numerous trucks crossing or waiting to cross.
First the tanks located and engaged anything that looked even vaguely dangerous. Machine-gun fire began working on the trucks, while the main guns reached into the tank-repair yard established in the fields north of the town. By this time, two full troops were in place, and infantry vehicles took on the trucks with their light 25mm cannon. Within fifteen minutes, over a hundred trucks were burning, along with enough supplies to keep a whole Russian division in business for a hard day of combat. But the supplies were incidental. The rest of the squadron was catching up with the advance party, and their job was to hold this Russian communications nexus until relieved. The Germans already had Gronau, and the Russian forces east of the Leine were now cut off from their supplies. Two of the Russian bridges were clear, and a company of M-2 Bradley infantry carriers darted across to take up position on the eastern edge of the town.
Ivan Sergetov crawled to the edge of the grassy road-he didn't know what it was-and watched the units pass while his stomach contracted into an icy ball. They were Americans, at least a battalion in strength, he estimated, traveling light. No trucks, just their tracked vehicles. He kept his wits enough to begin a count of the tanks and personnel carriers that raced before him at a speed that he'd never really appreciated before. It was the noise that was most impressive. The turbine-driven M-1 tanks did not make the roar of diesel-powered tanks. Until they were a few hundred meters away, you couldn't even know they were there-the combination of low noise and high speed... They're heading towards Alfeld!
I have to report this. But how? His radio was gone, and Sergetov had to think for a minute to determine where he was... two kilometers from the Leine, right across that wooded ridge. His choice was a difficult one. If he returned to the command post, it was a walk of twenty kilometers. If he ran to the rear, he might find friendly units in half the time and get the alarm out. But running that way was cowardice, wasn't it?
