Red Army by Ralph Peters

threw a track now, they were dead.
    “ Go, damn you.”
    In the thick smoke, the lights of the blasts seemed demonic, alive with deadly intentions.
    “More to the left . . . to the left. ”
    The tracks seemed to buckle on the edge of a ditch or gully, threatening to peel away from the road wheels.
    “Target,” Plinnikov screamed.
    But the sudden black shape off to their right side was lifeless, its metal deformed by a direct hit. The driver swerved away, and the tracks came level, back on the trail again.
    Plinnikov broke out in a sweat. He had not seen the shattered vehicle until they almost collided with it. He wondered, for the first time, if he had not done something irrevocably foolish.
    Slop from a nearby impact smacked the external lens of Plinnikov’s periscope, cracking it diagonally, just as the vehicle reached a pocket where the wind had thinned the smoke to a transparent gauze. Several dark shapes moved out of the smoke on a converging axis.
    “Targets. Gunner, right. Driver, pull left now. ”
    But the enemy vehicles moved quickly away, either uninterested in or unaware of Plinnikov’s presence. The huge armored vehicles disappeared back into the smoke, black metal monsters roaming over the floor of hell. None of the turrets turned to fight.
    “Hold fire.”
    The enemy were evidently pulling off of a forward position. The fire was too much for them. Plinnikov tried his radio, hoping the antenna had not been cut away.
    “Javelin, this is Penknife. Do you hear me?”
    Nothing.
    The heaviest fire struck behind them now. But the smoke, mingled with the fog and rain, still forced them to drive without points of orientation. Plinnikov worried because he had once turned in a complete circle in a smokescreen on a training exercise, in the most embarrassing experience of his brief career. He could still hear the laughter and the timeworn jokes about lieutenants.
    “Javelin, this is Penknife. I have a priority message.”
    “Penknife, this is Javelin.” The control station barely came through the sea of static.
    “Enemy forces in at least platoon strength withdrawing from forward positions under fire strike. I can’t give you an exact location.”
    “Where are you? What’s your location?”
    “I’m in my assigned sector. Visibility’s almost zero. We just drove under the artillery barrage. We’re in among the enemy.”
    “You’re hard to read. I’m getting a garbled transmission. Did you say you’re behind the artillery barrage?”
    “On the enemy side of it. Continuing to move.”
    There was a long silence on the other end. Plinnikov sensed that he had surprised them all. He felt a bloom of pride. Then the faint voice returned.
    “Penknife, your mission now is to push as far as you can. Ignore assigned boundaries. Just go as deep as you can and call targets. Do you understand?”
    “Clear. Moving now.”
    Plinnikov switched to the intercom. The smoke thinned slightly. His first instinct was to move for high ground so he could fix his location. But he quickly realized that any high ground would not only reveal his presence but was likely to be occupied by the enemy.
    “Driver, follow the terrain, stay in the low ground. Just watch out for ditches and water.”
    He switched again, this time to his platoon net, trying to raise his other two vehicles.
    “Quiver, this is Penknife.”
    He waited. No answer. He tried again and still received no response. He swung the turret around to get a better view, straining to see through his cracked and dirty optics.
    There was nothing. Misty gray emptiness.
    “Penknife, this is Stiletto.” Plinnikov heard Senior Sergeant Malyarchuk’s voice. “I can’t hear any response from Quiver. My situation as follows: moving slowly with the barrage. Can’t see a damned thing. I lost you twenty minutes ago.”
    “This is Penknife. Clear transmission. Continue to move on primary route. Watch for Quiver, he may be stuck out there. End transmission.”
    His other