WW III 04 Fort Suicide by Nick Ryan

Author:Nick Ryan [Ryan, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-07-28T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7:

Ponting left the defense of the main trench in the hands of Sergeant Harley and scampered to the northwest corner of the COP where the Platoon’s two Javelin anti-tank teams were cowered in separate sandbagged trenches. As he dashed across the shell-cratered ground, he turned his head to gauge the Russian advance across the valley. A dozen T-90 tanks were visible through the drifting smoke, though he knew there were many more concealed behind the blanket of haze. The closest Russian MBT was accelerating across a narrow irrigation ditch, marked by a lush green line in the farm fields about a kilometer and a half from the knoll.

Ponting flung himself down into the shelter of the closest trench, gasping.

The position was reinforced with sandbags and lengths of timber, shielded on the inside by thin sheets of iron plating. There were two men in the cramped space and a stockpile of six missile tubes in their cannisters.

Due to the depth of the trench, the Javelin’s operator was standing with his weight forward, his legs spaced and braced, the command launch unit set on his right shoulder and a missile already loaded. His teammate stood off to the side holding a second missile cylinder by its carry handle, ready to reload.

The two men were covered in mud and dirt, their faces streaked with runnels of sweat. The operator had his eye pressed to the Javelin’s viewing lens, the cumbersome fifty-pound weight of the system balanced evenly.

Ponting watched while the soldier scanned the approaching Russian T-90s and acquired a target. He locked the infra-red seeker.

“Hit the bastards!” Ponting’s voice was savage.

The operator pulled the trigger and the missile leaped from the launcher in ‘soft’ launch to minimize back blast and to conceal their firing position. Once in the air, the missile’s main rocket motor activated and sent the projectile lancing into the sky.

The Javelin was a fire-and-forget anti-tank weapon; the operator slid the unit from his shoulder and the support man beside him immediately began to reload with a fresh missile. Ponting watched the Javelin missile skid through the air and then climb high over the battlefield on a streaking tail of white smoke. When it reached the zenith of its trajectory, it turned over in the clouds and began to plunge to earth, homing in on its unsuspecting target.

Down in the valley the lead Russian T-90 tank jounced over a small rise, its engine belching black smoke, its steel tracks gouging the rain-softened farm fields. Then suddenly it exploded in a huge fireball of roiling orange flame. A second later the vehicle was consumed in a cloud of smoke as the steel carcass was torn apart by the Javelin. The projectile ripped through the vehicle’s thin top turret armor and blew the tank into a thousand metal pieces.

“Hit!” Ponting exulted, and felt the cruel savage thrill or retribution. “Keep firing!”

The Javelin was reloaded and the operator hoisted the cumbersome CLU back onto his shoulder. His support man thrust a pointed finger

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