Apocalypse Dawn (47 page)

Goose watched the Syrian soldiers spreading along the skirmish line the Rangers had posted along the scattered wrecks lining the Syrian side of the border.

“Phoenix Three, Four, and Five,” Goose said as he fed the M-203 another HE round. Two grenades remained in the bandolier he carried.

The squads responded, letting him know they’d had no casualties.

The sharp, distinct report of the Barrett .50-cal sniper rifle cut through the noise of the diesel engines and clanking treads. One of the Syrian soldiers dropped where he stood, as if knocked aside by a gigantic fist. Almost immediately, the.50-cal banged again and another man went down.

‘Three, Four, and Five,” Goose called, “be advised that you have sweepers inside your perimeter. Take them down and hold the center.”

“Affirmative, Phoenix Leader.”

“Two,” Goose went on, “we march to the rear. Cut off any retreat.”

“On your go, Leader,” Ybarra replied. “We’re locked and loaded here.”

Goose scanned his squad. Carruthers, Jansen, and Cusack were all standing, though they looked like dustcovered wraiths in their BDUs.

The three Rangers all nodded.

“Carruthers,” Goose said, “you’ve got point. Jansen, you’re walking slack. We’re going to hump back to the rear and take out the T-72. They know we’re not going to turn our artillery loose on them with squads in the field here.”

“You got it, Sarge.” Henderson held his assault rifle at the ready.

Goose opened the channel so all the squads could hear him. “One and Two are going to close the pincer. Three, Four, and Five, stand tall. Let’s make a statement here, get back some of what we gave up this morning.”

“Hoo-rah, Sarge! ” Cusack yelled.

Goose rose to his feet from the crouch he’d taken cover in. “Go,” he commanded.

Carruthers loped into the lead.

Goose followed the point man. His boots thudded against the spray of loose dirt spread over the hard-packed earth. The motion jarred him, awakening all the aches and bruises he’d acquired since morning, but he denied the pain’s hold on him. He’d trained seventeen years for this moment, and he was exemplary at his craft.

While Carruthers negotiated the small maze of wrecked armored cav units and support vehicles that still held dead men sitting inside, two Syrian soldiers broke cover to the left. They were obviously fleeing the tanks where the Marine sniper was taking advantage of every target of opportunity. The big.50-cal rifle sounded like a basso drum rolling in the background.

“Down!” Carruthers yelled, going to cover.

Goose threw himself down and to the left. He shouldered his weapon by the time he hit the ground on his left side, recovered, and squeezed the M-4A1’s trigger in three-round bursts. The hail of 5.56mm bullets caught the Syrian soldiers and drove them backward. Their heavier 7.62mm rounds cut the air over Goose’s head.

‘Up!” Goose commanded, surging to his feet and favoring his injured knee slightly.

His squad came up in unison. Cusack had a neat crease along his helmet where a round had deflected.

“Bucket saved your head,” Jansen said.

“Yeah.” Cusack reached up and adjusted his helmet. He looked a little pale.

Even after all the death the young Ranger had seen all morning, Goose knew death still became personal when it barely skated by. “Carruthers,” he said. “Let’s move.”

The Rangers raced to the rear of the fire zone and took up a position behind a collection of boulders. Goose and Cusack held to the center while Jansen and Carruthers flared out on either side and slightly ahead to cover their position.

The T-72 looked like a goliath amidst the other Syrian vehicles. Two of the three jeeps stayed close to the large MBT. The third lay flipped over, fire only now starting to catch under the engine. One of the Jeep’s crew attempted to crawl away from the overturned four-byfour, then dropped abruptly. Goose understood the reason immediately when the .50-cal report rolled over his position.

“Two,” Goose called. “Are you in position?”

“We’re here, Leader.”

Snarling like a great metallic beast, the T-72 fired into the mass of destruction lining the border where the Ranger squads battled the Syrian soldiers. Fully loaded, the Soviet-made tank carried forty-five rounds for its main gun, two more than the T-55s. There were also thousands of rounds for the 7.62 and 12.7mm light machine guns. Up and moving, able to fire while in motion, the T-72 was a juggernaut of destruction.

The Syrian tank crew knew the capabilities of their machine, and they were out to make the most of them. Confident of the thicker, layered armor the T-72 carried instead of the lighter armor the T-55s had, the tank drove straight into the teeth of Phoenix Three, Four, and Five.

“Cusack,” Goose called.

“Yeah,” the young Ranger replied.

“One round into the T-72,” Goose said. “To get its attention.”

Cusack held his weapon steady and fired. The 40mm grenade covered the ground in a split second and detonated in a wash of flames and smoke against the left side of the turret. Cusack kicked the spent casing free and thumbed another round in as the tank fired while rolling forward. The 40mm warhead only left a smudge of soot across the back of the tank.

“No penetration,” Cusack said.

Less than a hundred feet away, the T-72 rumbled maniacally across the field of dead, collided with one of the disabled tanks left from the Ranger squads’ earlier attacks, and knocked the T-55 aside. The tank fired, launching a 125mm round into the front of the derelict vehicles. Two wrecked jeeps and one cargo van shuddered and slid across the ground, leaving deep gouges in the earth for several feet.

Joel Carver, a private with Phoenix Four, took shrapnel through one shoulder that left him too injured to fight or even get himself clear. Phoenix Four had to pull back to take care of their wounded.

Eddie Ybarra’s squad took out another T-55 with two grenades, leaving two plus the T-72. One of the surviving jeeps wheeled and came toward Goose’s position, obviously tracking Cusack’s shot.

“Didn’t get the tank’s attention,” Jansen yelled, “but we’ve got people interested. Several Syrian soldiers turned in their direction as well.

Bullets peppered the rocks Goose and his squad used for cover. He kept his head down but watched as the enemy approached.

The Syrian soldier on the jeep’s rear deck stood and fitted a long tube over his shoulder. Goose recognized the weapon immediately as a Soviet RPG-7, a rocket-propelled grenade launcher specially made for taking out tanks and personnel.

The RPG-7 had come out of World War II as an antitank weapon for the German Panzerfaust. The Soviet army had embraced the weapon in 1961 and made it their own, then made tons of factory-assembled copies of the weapon that rendered the rocket launcher relatively inexpensive. The Afghanistan rebels had broken the back of the Communist war machine in the 1980s with the weapon, taking out tanks, APCs, and helicopters with the rocket-propelled rounds.

“I’ve got the Jeep,” Cusack said, leveling the M-4A1.

“Leave the Jeep,” Goose said. “I need it intact. Take out the troops. Let them know we bite.”

Cusack shifted, then squeezed the trigger. The 40mm grenade landed just in front of the approaching line of men. Corpses left the ground and landed in crumpled, smoldering heaps when the HE round detonated.

Staggered but obviously knowing they were fighting for their lives, the Syrians continued their advance.

Goose leveled his weapon and fired, putting another grenade in their midst and only a few yards in front of the Jeep. A small crater opened up, and the concussion took down more Syrian soldiers.

“Fire at will,” Goose said, slipping his finger over the M-4A1’s trigger. “Stonewall.”

“Go, Phoenix Leader. You have Stonewall.” The Marine sniper sounded totally cool, utterly competent.

“Stonewall, do you have our position?” Goose peered around cover, dropped to one knee, and swung the assault rifle around. Two three-round bursts took out a pair of Syrian soldiers.

Another Syrian went to ground and skidded to a stand of rocks just before Goose’s next burst hammered the terrain in line with where he had been.

“I’ve got your position, Phoenix Leader,” Stonewall said.

“I’ve got a target for you.” Goose shifted, reading the positions of his team and moving to keep the four in a solid two-by-two block of overlapping fields of fire.

“Name it.”

“1 need the Jeep intact. Then I need coverage till I get to it. The vehicle has ordnance I need to get the T-72 off your position.”

“Will do, Phoenix Leader. Stonewall has the ball.”

Goose held his position till the first Syrian soldier rounded the rocks. He fired into the center of the enemy, riding the M-4A1’s recoil up naturally.

The Syrian’s head snapped back, and he fell into a tangled heap with the man behind him.

“Incoming!” Cusack bellowed.

Goose hunkered down on one knee, reached under his jaw for his chin strap, and pulled his helmet down tight to protect him. An RPG7 antipersonnel round detonated against the rocks and proved to be more lethal to the Syrian troops than to the four besieged Rangers.

“Move!” Goose ordered as he swapped out magazines. “On me!” He led the three Rangers on a charge, peripherally aware that Jansen had taken at least two rounds through his thighs just above his knees. Blood matted the Ranger’s pants legs.

Sitting behind the rocks, they’d been sitting ducks for the same kind of pincer movement he’d used against the Syrian armored cav units. The Ranger squads had gotten spread thin, but there’d been no other way to contain the unexpected action from the surviving soldiers.

A Syrian soldier fired at Goose from behind loose collection of boulders. Beyond the man, the jeep was still in motion. The soldier on the rear deck had the rocket launcher over his shoulder again. Even as he swung around, he suddenly jerked sideways and fell from the moving vehicle.

Goose swept the assault rifle up and squeezed off two three-round bursts. The bullets missed the soldier but struck the rock beside him, driving stone splinters and steel-jacketed lead splinters into his face. The man fell back, slapping his hands over his bloody features and screaming.

Stretching his stride, knowing his team was following at his heels as they’d been trained to do, Goose raced for the RPG-7 that had fallen to ground. The dead Syrian soldier lay only a few feet away.

The Jeep came around in a tight turn.

As Goose watched the Jeep, watched the crew inside it turning frantically to face the Ranger squad, he saw that Ybarra’s team had accounted for the other two T-55s. One of the APCs sat in a smoking ruin along the skirmish line. The lead jeep of the surviving two suddenly caught a 40mm grenade in the grill and became a flaming pyre that slammed into some of the morning’s wreckage. The man who survived the initial attack didn’t get ten steps from the vehicle before Ranger rifles cut him down.

Only the T-72 remained.

Goose stopped as the jeep turned. He lifted his assault rifle and took aim. When he squeezed the trigger, the bullets ripped through the windshield and took out both men in the front seats.

Out of control, with no one manning the accelerator or the clutch, the jeep jerked forward, sputtered, and died.

Recharging his weapon, Goose ran for the dropped RPG-7 and scooped it from the ground, praying to God that the weapon remained intact. “Good shooting, Stonewall,” he said.

“I aim to please, Phoenix Leader. Glad you’re happy with it. Eight and I have a small problem.”

Goose glanced at the skirmish line and saw the Soviet-made tank smashing through the wreckage left from the morning’s attack like it was going through wet tissue. The T-72, clad in reactive armor, was nearly invincible on the battlefield and moved through the terrain with impunity.

“I’m working on that now, Stonewall. Two.” Goose slung his assault rifle and hefted the satchel of rocket grenades from the dead Syrian’s shoulder, then turned and jogged toward the Jeep. He scanned the three Rangers in his squad.

Jansen had the injuries to his legs and was barely holding his own. Cusack had a scalp wound that leaked blood down into his eyes.

“Carruthers,” Goose said. “I need a driver.”

“You got it, Sarge.”

Together, Goose and Carruthers yanked the dead bodies from the Jeep. Carruthers slid behind the wheel and keyed the ignition. Goose clambered onto the rear deck and prepped the RPG-7. He slapped Carruthers on the back of the helmet to signal him. “Let’s go.”

Carruthers stepped on the accelerator and let the clutch out. The Jeep’s four wheels slid through the loose dirt for a second, then grabbed traction.

“Phoenix Two,” Goose called as Carruthers steered for the T-72.

“Go, Leader. Two copies.’

“That tank’s covered in reactive armor,” Goose said, squinting through the dust, feeling the kerchief drying around his lower face. “Hit it with everything you’ve got left and let’s see if I can get a clear shot.”

“Done, Leader. Three, Four, and Five, if you’re anywhere near that tank, get clear.”

“We’re already clear, Two. There’s no way we can stop that thing.”

The crunch and shearing of metal filled the air and hurt Goose’s ears as he reached into the satchel and took out a rocket. He attached the rocket to the fore end of the RPG-7 tube.

Reactive armor was a fairly recent addition to tank protection. Every tank was covered with metal plates that protected its vital areas of steering, guns, and ammunition storage. Designed by a German inventor in the 1970s, reactive armor consisted of two sets of plates with an explosive between them. When hit by a shaped charge, the explosive would be set off, blowing the outer layer out from the tank and negating most, if not all, of the damage. The RPG-7 rounds could penetrate the T-72’s denser armor, but not the reactive armor, in one shot.

And Goose was very aware that one shot might be all he got.

Forty-millimeter grenades slammed into the T-72, but the flurry was quickly over because the Phoenix squads had only five to sevenGoose had lost count-rounds to spare. The onslaught had also drawn the tank crew’s attention to their back trail.