The Vampire Tank

The Vampire Tank

J Christopher Corey

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 J Christopher Corey

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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

1

The desert south of Kandahar was a blanket of dark tan silt.

Abandoned by an ocean dried long ago, it was trapped for millennium between giant rusty mountains baked hard by the cruel Afghan sun and blown to powder by her unremitting winds. After it’s turned to sludge by cold winter rains, it will be baked hard once again by the still, cruel sun. The torturous cycle makes the people of this region as hard, at times as cruel, as the landscape that defines their lives. It also makes them proud to be the nation known as the graveyard of empires.

On the day an American battle tank turned into a blood-drinking monster, the sun brought a temperature of nearly 110 degrees Fahrenheit, and not one cloud formed in her skies to soften its torment. No living thing dared cross the desert’s surface and, without a trace of wind or rain, it was to be as still as it was empty, except for a single violent intrusion.

To the south, growing to a length of one hundred yards, a column of dust was gouging a line through the landscape. At its head could be seen the front of an American M1 tank and behind it, hidden in the dust, were three more tanks and with them could be heard the usual racket of whining turbines and grinding metal. Two men’s heads protruded from the tank’s two hatches. The men looked as lifeless and as menacing as the weapon system that carried them, most certainly a part of that machine, with their faces dwarfed beneath Combat Vehicle Crewman helmets, CVCs, and emotions masked behind black-lens goggles.

Sergeant First Class Alan Totten, the tank platoon’s Platoon Sergeant and second in command of its leadership team, was in a tank to the rear of the column. His voice crackled through the earmuff speakers in the CVCs the entire platoon wore. All right, Third. Let's do some tanking. Put us in a wedge, Blue One.

Blue, this is Blue One, wedge on me.

The voice of Blue One belonged to Second Lieutenant Joseph Delacruz, the tank platoon’s commander. By job description, he was ultimately responsible for the sixteen men and four tanks that composed the platoon, and responsible for everything his platoon did or failed to do. Lieutenant Delacruz was as of yet untested, though, so Totten was making the big decisions until Totten believed Delacruz was as ready as any cherry lieutenant could be to make his own mistakes—which he already did; he was only waiting for Delacruz to step up and snatch the reins from him.

The column of dust began to grow wider in response to the lieutenant’s orders. The platoon's tanks drifted to the left and right until they were in a formation that resembled migrating ducks, with Delacruz's tank the tip of the wedge. This was, according to published doctrine, the tank platoon’s preferred formation for combat. It allowed all cannons to fire to the front and at least two to fire to each flank without the risk of fratricide.

Delacruz scanned to the right, eyeing Sergeant Totten and his tank there. Delacruz remembered being impressed with the look of the M1 Abrams when he watched them storm into Iraq on TV when he was just six years old. Its silhouette looked flat and streamlined when he saw one parked next to its clunky Russian counterpart. The Russian tank's turret, as he remembered, was as round as a beach ball and looked like a cyst growing from the tank. The M1's turret was low and wide, a perfect match for the rest of the tank that he would describe with the same two words. He assumed there was lots of space inside the tank, but when he finally grew to realize his dreams, he was confronted with the truth that there was really no room inside the tank at all.

The tank was divided into two distinct parts with two distinct purposes. First, there was the hull. It contained the engine, the fuel tanks, the driver's station, and the entire suspension system with its wheels, sprockets, and track. It also contained a large portion of its second major part, the turret. The turret is best described by the casual observer as the rotating half of the tank that the gun sticks out of. It actually is the gun, and even though a large portion of it sits inside the hull, it only allows just enough room for everything: optics, radios, ammunition, and recoil mechanism, and everyone it needs to function: Commander, Gunner, and Loader. The equipment and crew were stacked in layers with minimum concern for comfort or accessibility. If the engineers who designed it could eliminate anything or anyone from the turret, they would just fill that space with more ammo.

Once inside, Delacruz learned fast that the tank was all about the tank, and not at all about the tanker.

Despite the posturing, there was no threat of enemy at that time. The platoon conducted these drills mostly for spiritual reasons. Tankers, as armor crewman prefer to be called, are trained to believe that they are the single most devastating element of ground warfare. They are also aware that once the battle is won, their skills become less relevant, and they must submit to being marginalized. They would prefer to be forgotten and just let to go home, but they never are. They are required to stick around and help the infantry with occupation duties.

Lieutenant Delacruz's platoon was also in a bad environment for tanks. The Afghan mountains and old Russian minefields forced them to ride mostly on roads which served only to further diminish their usefulness. The tankers would spend most of their days escorting logistic convoys or VIPs from camp to camp. Occasionally, they would be included in a raid but only tasked to provide over-watch for an infantry company as it cordoned and cleared a village of Taliban.

They were always lauded by the Infantry commanders for bringing the heavy weapons, but it was the infantry commander who told them where to provide cover and, in the rare event of enemy contact, where to provide fire. The most challenging part of that particular type of mission was staying awake. This was peacekeeping. This was nation-building. This was no place to bring a tank. So when they found an opportunity to conduct a little textbook-style maneuvers-training, not one man in the platoon would offer a complaint. The practice reminded them all of better times.

To Delacruz’s delight, the platoon was completely on its own. No support soldiers to babysit. No infantry to support. That day, Lieutenant Delacruz was tasked with leading his platoon on a patrol of the southern villages. These were mostly peaceful communities, far from the Taliban strong points or supply lines to the north. They were just small collections of mud huts that served as the homes for simple shepherds and their families. Without space in the tanks for an interpreter, there was no way to stop and talk to the villagers. The platoon would just roll past within view of villages and wave back if the farmers offered to wave first. This kind of patrol was aptly named a presence patrol. It served no other purpose.

They rarely conducted presence patrols, but Delacruz knew why they were given this easy mission: He had been tasked with testing a tank prototype, and by the size of the parade of defense contractors and engineers that took turns briefing Delacruz on the system, no one was going to take a chance on getting it blown up.

Delacruz turned around in his hatch so he could look back on his formation of tanks. He was relieved to no longer be choking on another tank’s dust, and a little excited to see a real tank formation again. Everything he’d learned at the Armor Officers’ Basic Course seemed mostly irrelevant since he’d taken command of this platoon halfway through its one-year tour. All the training he’d received had prepared him to defeat the enemy with overwhelming firepower, and the current war, if he dared call it a war at all, was being fought in contrast to any doctrine he had been exposed to.

He thought maybe the terrorists were updating their tactics faster than the army could publish a means by which to defeat it.

Delacruz kept trying to refer back to the Armor School or the basic soldiering he’d received in ROTC, and none of it seemed to apply. He was confident he could do as he was trained to do, but now he was supposed to lead in an environment where most decisions seemed to be made from anecdotal experience of which he simply had none.

Sergeant Totten's voice interrupted the lieutenant's thoughts through the radio. Nothing but open desert between here and KAF. It's race time. Let's see if that prototype of yours has any balls, Blue One.

All right, Delacruz responded. Blue, this is Blue One. On line!

All tanks were abreast of each other in seconds.

First one to the hardball wins. Go!

Let's see what this fucker's got, Sergeant Trillbaum, the lieutenant's gunner, said. I'm coming up. By that he meant he was abandoning his seat at the bottom of the turret to trade with the loader who spent most of his time standing on his seat with a view of the world the gunner never got. The loader, Private First Class Baxter, was tall, but pale and boyish in his appearance. His features were soft and rounded, and the effect was that of a giant baby. Delacruz had noticed over the past few days that Baxter just wasn’t the type to put up a fight, or even offer his opinion, about anything. He followed his orders without comment and slid past Trillbaum down to the gunner's seat, where he knew not to touch the control handles or any of the switches or dials in the gunner’s station.

Delacruz glanced at Baxter’s open-mouthed innocence to watch it be replaced with Trillbaum's narrow eyes and dirty mustache.

Don't touch nothin’ down there, Baxter, or I'll smoke ya, Trillbaum promised after he reconnected his CVC to the intercom. Sergeant Trillbaum was Baxter’s opposite. He was narrow and wiry, with a pointed nose and angry slits for eyes. He appeared to be in a perpetual argument with everyone about everything. Delacruz noted early on that he was more than willing to offer an opinion on any matter whether it was an informed one or not. Delacruz deduced that he had been in the army for some time. When he met Trillbaum and asked him where he was from, he was both amused and insulted when he answered, Fort Hood. Delacruz wasn’t sure if Trillbaum was trying to be difficult, or had just been a part the army for so damn long. Yeah, this thing is quiet, he continued with his usual sarcasm, but there has to be some tradeoff. Bet it’s electric and I bet it can't pass thirty.

What’s our speed, Driver?

Just passed thirty, Specialist Stokes chirped from the driver’s stations at the front of the hull, glad to prove Trillbaum wrong. Specialist Stokes, the tank’s driver and second most experienced member of the crew, wasn’t as easy to push around as Baxter. He was an upbeat black kid raised in a tough Chicago suburb where he learned early on that it was as important to stand up for yourself as it was to choose your battles. Since he’d begun working for Trillbaum a year before, he had been testing and marking boundaries between Trillbaum and himself, and just that week had been recommended for promotion to sergeant himself and was now starting to explore a relationship where the two would be peers.

Bullshit! Trillbaum countered. I didn't even feel it change gears.

Don't change gears. Hasn't since we left.

Impressive. What does this thing have for an engine?

What are we doing now? the lieutenant interrupted. He was beginning to realize there was a lot more to being this crew’s commander than giving it orders. He was going to have to be some kind of a referee or worse, some kind of a parent.

Uh . . . forty-five.

And still no noise, Trillbaum added. I'm gonna take a looksee when we get back.

No, you're not, Delacruz said. No one can. It’s top secret.

Delacruz knew these guys had already spent too much time together, but was starting to suspect it might have more to do with their placement and proximity to each other while in the tank. Tanks were close-quarter things. Delacruz's seat was mounted on the right side of the turret facing forward, and Baxter's was on the left facing to the center. They could stand on the seats when manning their machine guns up top, or sit on them while the main gun was being put into action. They were practically on the same level, but Baxter's was lowered so his torso was level with the gun, allowing him to pull giant tank rounds from the stowage rack on his right and slam them with great violence into the gun's breach on his left. The space inside the turret was limited, and Delacruz could always reach over and tap Baxter if he wanted his attention, but when compared to his distance from his gunner, Trillbaum, Baxter seamed far away.

Trillbaum's seat was directly in front of Delacruz's, but positioned very low in the turret so his head, and his optics, would be on the same level as the canon. There was little space from front to back in the turret, so the back of Trillbaum’s chair was only one foot in front of Delacruz's. This resulted in Trillbaum having to live with his head between Delacruz's knees, and Delacruz having to live with Trillbaum's jokes about how he needed a shower. He felt sorry for Trillbaum on long days. On those days he suspected his Gunner wasn't joking at all.

Stokes drove the tank from a seat that put him on his back and in the fetal position at the very front of the hull below everybody else and just two feet off the ground. Surrounded by the tank’s thickest armor and impossible to breech from the outside, the driver’s station gave it’s occupant a feeling of safety that was in fact a lie. Tanks were dangerous machines and had a tendency to catch fire and become submerged in mud, and the driver, so deeply encased in the hull, often died in their stations with no way to get out. Stokes had just under a foot to his left and right of his shoulders to move his arms; the effect was cocoon-like, and the position was so relaxing and confining that Stokes found it as hard to stay awake as he did to fall asleep. When he did fall asleep, the only person who could see him or shove him awake was Trillbaum, who preferred to poke him with the long, skinny rod they used to swab the machine gun barrels.

We're over fifty. Stokes sang with excitement, half celebration, half warning.

Christ, that's fast. We better slow down, or the track’s gonna break, Trillbaum warned him.

That's ridiculous, Delacruz argued, tired of the constant pranks soldiers always played on the new guy. The stiff wind created by their movement added tension to the banter. How's the track gonna break?

Sixty miles per hour.

That's enough, Blue One, Sergeant Totten called on the radio. Slow your roll before you break that track, and I have to clean you up with a shovel.

Told ya. Trillbaum smiled.

Slow it down, Driver, Delacruz ordered. Stokes was already easing off. Here's the hard ball. Put her up on the road.

Stokes was still going faster than he was accustomed to. M1's were governed at 30MPH because their tracks, held together by nuts and bolts, do in fact disassemble while moving and can come completely apart at high rates of speed if not constantly maintained. He let off the throttle hard when he realized he was climbing the bank to the paved surface, and the tank lurched forward just as it crested the berm and began to settle without a sound in the middle of the two-lane road.

Forward hard right, Stokes, Delacruz commanded as he leaned forward and to the left, adjusting to the rapid decrease in speed. Put her in the center and stop.

As the tank took its place on the road, the gunner and commander looked over their right shoulders just to see how far back the other three were. Their mouths opened in amazement. The other tanks were just strips of dust in the distance.

Trillbaum spoke first. I think we might have been going faster than sixty, LT. This thing can't be real.

2

As the platoon guided their tanks through the winding gate of Kandahar Airfield, Lieutenant Delacruz waved at the Canadian Guards who manned the towers before dismounting the tank to clear his pistol. He was joined by Trillbaum at the clearing barrel which was a half-buried fifty-five-gallon drum filled with sand and designed to catch any accidentally discharged munitions.

Can you believe they have to paint these things red? Trillbaum returned his pistol to the holster that hung below his left shoulder and squinted up as he continued his conversation with his platoon leader. He had to look up, partly because he barely broke 5’2, but also because Lieutenant Delacruz towered above all his men with a gangly frame that reached 6’3 when he stood up straight and didn’t slouch, which was his practice so as not to stand out as much as he just naturally did. I mean, what the hell is someone gonna confuse it with?

Delacruz didn't bother to respond to the question. "When we get back to the motor pool, I have to go straight to R.C. South for my debrief. You have to turn this prototype into the contractors at Bay Echo. It's technically not supposed to be out of my sight, but I just got traffic from Battalion