World War III

Caffey loaded his last grenade and waited for Cable’s final shot. The private had to have radar vision to see through that frenzied white storm he’d created. Caffey could hear them shouting commands, but he could only barely make out the vehicles anymore. The last blast was nearest the column. Caffey realized that Cable had picked off the drums with the farthest first, so that the last explosion would have the most deadly effect. If that was his plan, it worked. The brilliant light of the fireball pierced the surrounding haze, highlighting figures, and seemed to engulf the closest vehicle as it blasted men and machines off the earth.

Caffey grabbed his radio as he tried to aim his rifle. “Get out of there, Cable! Go! Go!” He fired the last grenade and started running before he saw where it exploded. There was so much confusion it wouldn’t matter anyway.

He was halfway down the hill when he heard the high-pitched whine over his head. He recognized it instantly and dove under cover of a fallen tree. Cable hadn’t heard it or hadn’t recognized it because he was still running when the missile exploded thirty feet above him.

Cable was dead long before his body stopped rolling at the bottom of the hill. The impact area sizzled where a thousand bits of metal burned into the snow.

“Airburst!” Caffey yelled. He was on his feet and running again, shouting at the nearest helicopter, waving it away. “Airburst! Get out! Get out!”

The second missile exploded thirty yards uphill and Caffey was nearly knocked down by the red-hot shrapnel that glanced off a tree and hit him high on his left arm, ripping his parka from shoulder to elbow.

Cordobes in the first Huey got the message. Caffey saw him slap the pilot’s helmet and point up. The overloaded gunship lifted off, lumbering toward the west, away from the hill, as Caffey staggered toward the other chopper. “Get out,” Caffey yelled. Parsons hopped out of the doorway and literally threw Caffey into the helicopter.

“Phosphorus grenades!” Caffey was wildly pointing back at the column as the helicopter rose above the level of the hill. The helicopter wasn’t protected against a missile’s line-of-sight radar like it was at Shublik Ridge. They were easy prey for the short-range Grail missiles. “Drop the grenades!”

Parsons popped the pins of two grenades and tossed them out the open hatch as the receding battleground erupted with two tiny flashes of light.

The first Grail followed the brilliant heat of the burning phosphorus and exploded harmlessly a hundred feet below. The second Grail tried to adjust its turn against the steep angle of the falling grenade and broke apart in midair without exploding. The men cheered until several more flashes from the ground caught their attention and suddenly everyone who could get his hands on a grenade was tossing them out the hatch.

Caffey glanced out the other hatch to see Cordobes’s Huey. It was half a mile away and about five hundred feet higher. Caffey squinted at it, unbelieving. Nobody — was dropping grenades. “Jesus Christ!” He reached for the pilot, yelling, pointing at the sister craft. “Tell that sonofa—”

A Grail drove straight up the Huey’s tailpipe before Caffey could finish the sentence. He watched the explosion rip the helicopter into two major pieces. There wasn’t any fire, just the flash, and the only sound was a muffled boom in the whistling wind. The helicopter just stopped flying, separated into fragments and dumped Cordobes and fourteen screaming men into the frigid air twelve hundred feet above the frozen tundra.

“Sweet Jesus God!” somebody gasped.

Caffey only saw the loss of fifteen men, an aircraft and several thousand rounds of ammunition that he couldn’t afford to lose. God forgive him, he thought.

Vorashin watched the surviving helicopter until it disappeared into the distant fog. He wondered briefly if the American commander was aboard. It would be a pity for a man with such courage to die ignominiously. But whether he was alive or dead, the contest was over. The column would move again but without fear of another confrontation. They would reach their objective now. There would be no further interruptions so long as the weather held. The Americans were beaten. The small band of militia would not return again.

“Alex.”

The Soviet task-force leader turned as his deputy commander approached. “What is the damage, Sergei?”

“Two vehicles,” Devenko said. “The command car has suffered a broken axle and a weapons carrier has a blown engine. Still, all the equipment may be transferred to the remaining vehicles. We can be moving again in two or three hours.”

“Casualties?”

“Six dead, fourteen wounded, three critical.”

Vorashin nodded. He turned his back against the wind and glanced toward the horizon where he had last seen the helicopter.

“Do you think they will come back, Alex?”

“No.”

“They still have one aircraft. They might—”