The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

demanded, then answered his own question: 'It does not make sense!'
'Then give me something that does,' Fowler said.
'Mr President, we are in the very earliest stages of a crisis. The information
we have coming in now is scattered and confused. Until we know more, trying to
put a spin on it is dangerous.'
Fowler's face bore down on the speaker phone. 'Your job is to tell me what's
going on, not to give me lessons in crisis-management. When you have something I
can use, get back to me!'
***
'What in the hell are they thinking?' Ryan asked.
'Is there something I don't know here?' Goodley asked. The young academic looked
as alarmed as Ryan felt.
'Why should you be any different from the rest of us?' Jack snapped back, and
regretted it. 'Welcome to crisis management. Nobody knows crap, and you're
expected to make good decisions anyway. Except it's not possible, it just
isn't.'
'The thing with the carrier scares me,' the S&T man observed.
'Wrong. If we only splashed four aircraft, it's only a handful of people,' Ryan
pointed out. 'Land combat is something else. If we really have a battle going on
in Berlin, that's the scary one, almost as bad as an attack on some of our
strategic assets. Let's see if we can get hold of SACEUR.'
***
The nine surviving M1A1 tanks were racing north along a Berlin avenue, along
with a platoon of Bradley fighting vehicles. Street lights were on, heads
sticking out windows and it was instantly apparent to the few onlookers that
whatever was happening wasn't a drill. All the tanks had the speed governors
removed from their engines, and they could all have been arrested in America for
violating the national interstate highway limit. One mile north of their camp,
they turned east. Leading the formation was a senior NCO who knew Berlin well –
this was his third tour in the once-divided city – well enough that he had a
perfect spot in mind, if the Russians hadn't got there first. There was a
construction site. A memorial to the Wall and its victims was going up after a
long competition. It overlooked the Russian and American compounds which were
soon to be vacated, and bulldozers had pushed up a high berm of dirt for the
sculpture that would sit atop it. But it wasn't there yet, just a thick dirt
ramp. The Soviet tanks were milling about on their objective, probably waiting
for their infantry to show up or something. They were taking TOW hits from the
Bradleys, and returning fire into the woods.
'Christ, they're going to kill those Bradley guys,' the unit commander – a
captain whose tank was the last survivor of his company – said. 'Okay, find your
spots.' That took another minute. Then the tanks were hulldown, just their guns
and the tops of turrets showing. 'Straight down the line! Commence firing, fire
at will.'
All nine tanks fired at once. The range was just over two thousand meters, and
now the element of surprise was with someone else. Five Russian tanks died with
the first volley, and six more in the second, as the Abrams tanks went into
rapid fire.