The Abrams settled into its hull-down position with mechanical precision, Boone feathering the throttle until only the turret and the business end of the M256 smoothbore protruded above the scraped berm. The turbine’s whine dropped to a whisper — its fifteen hundred shaft horsepower idling like a caged predator.
Torres pressed his face against the CITV’s padded eyepiece. The commander’s independent thermal viewer painted the battlefield in stark contrasts — white hot against black cold. Through the drifting smoke from their earlier engagements, the next-generation FLIR cut through the visual clutter like a scalpel through flesh.
He spotted movement in the trees; something was darting between the birch trees and pines. Heat plumes from diesel engines soon appeared, betraying the OPFOR vehicles crawling through their scripted dance. They were the T-90M surrogates — tracked drone targets with bolt-on visual enhancers, making them look like Russian tanks. They executed their pre-programmed routes with robotic precision. Beyond them, the fixed targets lurked in scraped fighting positions, their IR-suppression blankets turning the forty-ton steel monsters into hidden ghosts, at least to the untrained eye.
“Contact front, tank. T-72 at our eleven o’clock!” Burke called out with the practiced precision of a man who’d found what he was hunting. His hands danced across the gunner’s control handles — not frantic, but precise. “Whoa, scratch that. It’s a pair of T-90s, not T-72s. Six hundred meters moving from our eleven o’clock position to our three o’clock… hang on. I’m still searching the treeline.”
Burke continued his search with the thermal sights as he swept right, the magnification jumping from three-power to ten with a flick of his thumb. “Torres — I got three more tanks, right side of those pines to our four o’clock. They’re in hull-down position, T-72 profile. Six hundred and twenty meters.”
“Got it! Load sabot. Gunner — target left T-90,” Torres commanded, his words following the precise cadence drilled into every tanker at Fort Moore. No wasted syllables. No confusion. In combat, confusion killed.
The ballistic computer system absorbed the data like a digital deity of destruction. Wind speed, air density, barrel drop from the previous rounds fired — all processed in nanoseconds.
But Munoz was already moving. His right knee snapped the knee switch, and the ammunition ready rack door retracted with a hydraulic hiss. The sabot round sat waiting — forty-five pounds of tank-killing precision. He grabbed it, pivoting his body as he rammed it home. He slammed the breech shut.
“Sabot up!” His palm struck Burke’s shoulder, letting him know the gun was ready to fire.
Burke never stopped tracking the T-90 as it continued to move. The stabilization kept the reticle dead center on its turret ring.
“Fire!” Torres shouted.
“On the way!”
The Abrams bucked. Sixty-eight tons of steel compressed against the torsion bars as the main gun roared to life. Downrange, the sabot petals separated in a brief metallic flower before the penetrator — a depleted uranium dart — punched through the target.
Orange smoke erupted from the pyrotechnics, confirming their kill. Four seconds had elapsed from contact to kill. In combat, four seconds was forever. Here, it was good enough.
“Target identified!” Burke was already traversing right. “Engaging second T-90!”
The dance continued — acquire, engage. Each evolution was smoother than the last. Torres watched his crew work with grim satisfaction.
Outside their tank, more artillery simulators exploded, continuing to add to the surreal scene around them. Torres spun his commander’s independent thermal viewer through a full 360-degree sweep, checking their flanks and rear while Burke maintained his sight picture on the tree line. Through the CITV, he caught glimpses of the battle unfolding — Polish K2s maneuvering through smoke, their 120mm guns thundering. An M5 Ripsaw darted between burning target hulks, its autocannon chattering.
“Target, eleven o’clock, static T-72!” Burke called out, already tracking.
“Fire and adjust!” Torres confirmed, continuing his scan. There wasn’t anything behind them yet, but that could change fast.
“Up!” Munoz had another sabot ready.
“On the way!”
The gun fired again. The brass base from the combustible casing spat out of the breach, clanking against the floor as Munoz readied the gun to fire.
Torres had nearly completed his sweep when he caught movement in his peripheral vision — black specks against gray sky.
“Drone swarm, three o’clock high!” he called over the company net.
The sky filled with angry hornets — thirty-plus FPV drones converging from multiple vectors. Some carried training munitions, others just cameras, but in combat each would pack enough explosive to mission-kill a tank.
“All Warrior elements, air threat inbound!” Novak called. “Leonidas systems to auto-engage!”
