After writing for the early issues of Dragon Magazine in the 1970s, Bill became one of the founders of, and the lead designer for, Mayfair Games. He has continued his board and electronic game design work on a number of RPGs and PC games. His first books were chosen path novels for TSR in the early days of D&D. His first fantasy series was Lord of Cragsclaw in the 1980s.
Bill's historical "Mistakes" series includes It Seemed Like a Good Idea, It Looked Good on Paper, You Did What, How To Lose A Battle, How To Lose a War, How To Lose WWII, How To Lose a War at Sea, and How To Lose the American Civil War. Among his non-fiction books are Oval Office Oddities, 100 Mistakes that Changed History, 100 Leadership Mistakes that Changed History, and 101 Stumbles in the March of History.
As an author, Bill has written or co-authored over a dozen fiction books plus close to fifty articles and short stories. Bill collaborated on several mystery novels with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro including the Authorized Mycroft Holmes novels. He interviewed for and edited two oral histories of the US Navy SEALs Hunters and Shooters and The Teams. As an anthologist Bill has edited or co-edited over 40 SF anthologies. Bill Fawcett & Associates has packaged over 400 science fiction, fantasy, military, non-fiction, and licensed books for major publishers.
The best steel is forged by the hottest fires and under the greatest pressures. So too, have the Kurdish Peshmerga been shaped by thousands of years of warfare and oppression.
Now, for the first time in history, they have their own nation, and it's a chance to live, grow, and develop as a unified people.
But they are surrounded by hostile dictatorships intent on the destruction of their young republic. Outnumbered and outgunned as armored columns swarm their borders, the Kurdish Republic's only hope lies in a canceled DARPA project—an experimental, powered combat suit—and the business tycoon who refuses to allow the nascent nation to go under.
The only question is, will they be enough?
"As a veteran and an author in the military thriller genre, I can tell you this series is as good as it gets! Grab your GOG suit and come along for the ride!"
– John Ringo, New York Times best-selling author of the Posleen War and the Troy Rising series"As a veteran who served during Desert Storm, the author's references in this near-future novel to real-world historic events I remember makes it all the more moving and powerful. I can easily imagine the story unfolding in a part of the world I became familiar with through most of my Air Force career. Very well done. I'm anticipating the next book in this series."
– D.T. Read, Internet ReviewerThe clouds of dust raised by the Russian-made tanks billowed across the western sky, dimming the late afternoon sun to a dirty haze. Thanks to UN air interdiction, neither side had air support, but the storm of Russian-built armor was a formidable force all by itself. As soon as the heavy tanks rolled into range—about a thousand meters—the Kurdish light tanks fired a volley of anti-tank rounds, supported by rockets launched from the scout vehicles. The impacts of these missiles raised some brief sparks of light, flames, and flashes among the attackers, but the oncoming avalanche of metal showed no signs of slowing.
To Timo, standing on his tank's hull, it was impossible to discern through his binoculars if any of the enemy tanks had been disabled by that initial volley. Immediately after firing, the Kurdish screening force broke from cover, falling back toward the main body. That retreat raised even more dust, masking the entire battlefield from ground-level observation.
The colonel's command tank sat in a hull down position just behind the slight rise, only the flat turret and lethal main gun poking above the enemy's horizon. Hidden two hundred meters back were the missile-armed Bradleys.
"Any news?" Timo asked after switching from his tank's frequency to the command one.
"One or two of them are burning after the first volley," an unknown officer replied.
Helgurd came on, "Didn't slow them any, but we didn't expect it to. Your screening force made a clean getaway, no casualties."
"Also as expected," Tim acknowledged, belying his relief. His men had been personally trained in field camouflage by Rafiq Jaziri himself, but all the training in the world couldn't render a man or vehicle proof against a lucky shot. "They're still coming, then?"
"If anything, they picked up the pace," General Helgurd said. "Taking the bait, just like you expected."
"What can your gun crews see?" he asked Tang, who was studying a different set of vidscreens.
"I suspect dust, mainly, even on infrared," the American replied from his position high above the battlefield. "But each rail has an advanced IR tracker. All four report picking up strong heat signatures. Too many to count. There'll be no shortage of targets. We've got the trigger line marked. Looks like six or eight minutes until they reach it."
"Time for me to mount up, then. We'll see how they like the main event."
"Timo, my son, take good care," Helgurd said in warm tones. The general wasn't Timo's father—Captain Randall Sheen, United States Army, had died near Fallujah in 2005—but the highest-ranking officer in the Kurdish Army had been Timo's mentor, guide, and adviser for most of his life.
"I will, sir," the colonel pledged. "They won't stand on one acre of Kurdish soil when this day is done."
"Remember, wait for the railguns to fire. That's the cue for your heavies," Helgurd reminded him unnecessarily.
"Please, sir," the colonel pleaded, "you're needed here. Your Bradley crews know what they're doing—let them do it without worrying about you."
"Do you think I'm too old for war?" The general's voice was gravid with frost.
Timo, knowing the question was rhetorical, held his tongue. Two minutes later, Timo scrambled into the turret of his Abrams tank, headphones tuned to the platoon frequency, and eyes fastened to the view scope. Inside the tank, he watched over the gunner's shoulder. The crosshatch of the targeting image wavered across the approaching wall of dust as he slowly traversed the turret from right to left, tracking a short arc before swinging back. He activated the gun-sight radar, which showed blurry images of solid objects moving through the haze.
"Dimen? Karwan?" he said to his gunner and loader through the intercom. "Ready with the 'fins?'"
"All set, Colonel." Dimen's voice cracked from the tension, but Timo could see his hand steady on the targeting grip. Barely eighteen years old, Dimen had been training for more than a year; he was ready to face his first battle. The loader, Karwan, was a little older. He calmly went about assembling the "fin," which is what the Kurdish tankers called the APFSDS—the armor-piercing, fin-stabilized, discarding-sabot projectile that could destroy any tank on the planet with a solid hit.
"We're waiting on the railguns," Timo reminded his crew. "When they engage, we'll shoot from here first, then fire and move on my order."
His driver, Redan, had fifteen years' experience and just grunted.
"Roger," the other two crewmen replied in chorus.
The first rank of retreating vehicles came into view of the naked eye now. These were the light tanks and scout vehicles of the Kurds' first line. They raced across the flat desert in a weaving pattern. Occasional shells burst around them, but Timo saw no direct hits. Once the light vehicles passed a preset line, they wheeled precisely around like a well-trained troop of horse cavalry—of which in many ways they were the direct descendants. Each vehicle quickly tucked into a shallow, prepared firing pit, screened from the enemy's view by piles of brush and other debris.
Now heavier, more ominous shapes solidified in the rolling wall of dust. Big, flat tanks rolled forward, smashing over scrub trees, crunching right through the brick wall marking the boundary of an old farm. These were T-82s, relics of the Soviet Union's Cold War army, each one still a powerful armored fighting vehicle. Thickly armored, they were immune to a wide array of battlefield attacks. The T-82s came on fast, their turbine engines barely audible as they approached Timo's position.
The first Syrian tanks crossed the trigger line. Roger Tang's four railguns fired simultaneously, and three squat tanks erupted into blasts of fire and boiling black smoke. The guns were eerily soundless and well hidden, revealed by neither smoke nor more than a brief muzzle flash. The attacks were followed by sonic booms that cracked across the field in the wake of the supersonic rounds. The railguns didn't rely on explosive shells for ammunition—instead, each hurled a depleted uranium projectile, using electrical power to accelerate the missile's velocity well in excess of seven thousand kilometers an hour. The spinning rods of metal traveled so fast that the gunners didn't even have to lead their targets, and they hit so hard, they melted and liquefied the metal of the T-82s' turrets and hulls as they slammed through, immolating everything inside each target struck.
Drones had been mostly grounded by ECM technology, but at short ranges, they could still be effective. A dozen Peshmerga infantry armed with mortar-launched drones popped up from the disguised holes they'd dug the day before as the Syrian tanks passed by and fired. Most were quickly killed by the infantry following the enemy armor. The winged drones flew high, then dived with deadly effect. Two penetrated the thinner top armor of the old Russian tanks, sending both up with explosive fury.
Timo wasted no time admiring the lethal handiwork. Even as the railgunners reloaded and powered up for the next volley, he fixed the crosshairs of his targeting scope on one of the T-82s that seemed to be breaking out ahead of its comrades.
"Fire!" he barked, and Dimen hit the trigger while the word still echoed through the intercom. The tank lurched slightly from the recoil, and Timo was back on the link, this time to Zagros, the driver. "Reverse, right twenty meters!" There was no time to watch the effect of their fire.
The tank backed smoothly out of the firing pit, pivoting like a dancer, and rolling along behind the low embankment. As it came to rest the prescribed distance away, a high explosive blast destroyed the earthen breastwork where the command tank had originally lurked. Timo grimly noted the speed and accuracy of the enemy's return fire—the Syrians had been at war for a long time, too. Well-trained and experienced crews manned the enemy tanks.
The front of the Syrians' attacking formation broke into a fragmented wave of burning tanks, sparkling weaponry, and rapid maneuvers. He could see the T-82 they'd fired at burning. Tracks crunched over the ground, swinging the armored hulls this way and that, while turrets spun briefly and then stabilized as gunners tracked targets. Missiles rose, and shells were fired from the light tanks still hidden from view. More explosions followed along the defensive front, and Timo knew that some of his light scouting vehicles were getting pounded mercilessly by the big T-82s' 120mm guns.
The Abrams settled into firing position, the turret swiveled ninety degrees to port, and Timo lined up on a target. Dimen sent another AP round into the fray, but this time the target rolled onward—the shot was either a miss, or a ricochet off the T-82's thick reactive armor.
Again, the command tank glided on, smooth and quiet with the turbine powering the Abrams along on its suspension of torsion bars and rotary shock absorbers. The little elevation that had sheltered them at the start of the battle petered out after fifty or sixty meters, and Timo ordered a hard left turn, bringing the tank once again full forward against the Syrians.
It was impossible to assess the effect of the railguns in the smoky chaos of the battlefield, but after a minute, Timo's radio crackled with a report from Tang's command crew: "Rail charges depleted, all four batteries. Recharging under way."
Field tests had shown that the guns, which required huge amounts of electricity to operate, required at least twenty or thirty minutes to fully recharge—and that was in bright sunlight. Timo had no idea how much the smoke-filled skies would impede the large solar panels' ability to turn light into power.
Dozens of enemy tanks were blazing wrecks by now, but an equal number, or more, still rolled forward. At some point, the T-95s had joined the fighting. They were about to swarm through the advance line, where the light tanks and scout vehicles huddled behind now insufficient cover.
"Let's hit them with the heavies," Timo barked over his battalion frequency. "Heavy company advance!"