Chapter 55
Looks and Hurts
General Peng was all the way forward now, with the leading elements of his lead armored division, the 302nd. Things were going well for him—sufficiently well, in fact, that he was becoming nervous about it. No opposition at all? he asked himself. Not so much as a single rifle round, much less a barrage of artillery. Were the Russians totally asleep, totally devoid of troops in this sector? They had a full army group command section at Chabarsovil, commanded by that Bondarenko fellow, who was reported to be a competent, even a courageous, officer. But where the hell were his troops? Intelligence said that a complete Russian motor-rifle division was here, the 265th, and a Russian motor-rifle division was a superbly designed mechanized formation, with enough tanks to punch a hole in most things, and manned with enough infantry to hold any position for a long time. Theoretically. But where the hell was it? And where were the reinforcements the Russians had to be sending? Peng had asked for information, and the air force had supposedly sent photo-reconnaissance aircraft to look for his enemies, but with no result. He had expected to be mainly on his own for this campaign, but not entirely on his own. Fifty kilometers in advance of the 302nd Armored was a reconnaissance screen that had reported nothing but some tracks in the ground that might or might not have been fresh. The few helicopter flights that had gone out had reported nothing. They should have spotted something, but no, only some civilians, who for the most part got the hell out of the way and stayed there.
Meanwhile, his troops had crewed up this ancient railroad right-of-way, but it wasn’t much worse than traveling along a wide gravel road. His only potential operational concern was fuel, but two hundred 10,000-liter fuel trucks were delivering an adequate amount from the pipeline the engineers were extending at a rate of forty kilometers per day from the end of the railhead on the far bank of the Amur. In fact, that was the most impressive feat of the war so far. Well behind him, engineer regiments were laying the pipe, then covering it under a meter of earth for proper concealment. The only things they couldn’t conceal were the pumping stations, but they had the spare parts to build plenty more should they be destroyed.
No, Peng’s only real concern was the location of the Russian Army. The dilemma was that either his intelligence was faulty, and there were no Russian formations in his area of interest, or it was accurate and the Russians were just running away and denying him the chance to engage and destroy them. But since when did Russians not fight for their land? Chinese soldiers surely would. And it just didn’t fit with Bondarenko’s reputation. None of this situation made sense. Peng sighed. But battlefields were often that way, he told himself. For the moment, he was on—actually slightly ahead of—schedule, and his first strategic objective, the gold mine, was three days away from his leading reconnaissance element. He’d never seen a gold mine before.
I’ll be damned!” Pavel Petrovich said. ”This is my land. No Chink’s going to chase me off of it!”
“They are only three or four days away, Pasha.”
“So? I have lived here for over fifty years. I’m not going to leave now.” The old man was well to the left of defiant. The chief of the mining company had come personally to drive him out, and expected him to come willingly. But he’d misread the old man’s character.
“Pasha, we can’t leave you here in their way. This is their objective, the thing they invaded us to steal—”
“Then I shall fight for it!” he retorted. “I killed Germans, I’ve killed bears, I’ve killed wolves. Now, I will kill Chinese. I’m an old man, not an old woman, comrade!”
“Will you fight against enemy soldiers?”
“And why not?” Gogol asked. “This is my land. I know all its places. I know where to hide, and I know how to shoot. I’ve killed soldiers before.” He pointed to his wall. The old service rifle was there, and the mining chief could easily see the notches he’d cut on the stock with a knife, one for every German. “I can hunt wolves and bear. I can hunt men, too.”
“You’re too old to be a soldier. That’s a young man’s job.”
“I need not be an athlete to squeeze a trigger, comrade, and I know these woods.” To emphasize his words, Gogol stood and took down his old sniper rifle from the Great Patriotic War, leaving the new Austrian rifle. The meaning was clear. He’d fought with this arm before, and he was quite willing to do so again. Hanging on his wall still were a number of the gilded wolf skins, most of which had single holes in the head. He touched one, then looked back at his visitors. “I am a Russian. I will fight for my land.”
The mining chief figured he’d buck this information up to the military. Maybe they could take him out. For himself, he had no particular desire to entertain the Chinese army, and so he took his leave. Behind him, Pavel Petrovich Gogol opened a bottle of vodka and enjoyed a snort. Then he cleaned his rifle and thought of old times.
The train terminal was well-designed for their purposes, Colonel Welch thought. Russian engineers might have designed things clunky, but they’d also designed them to work, and the layout here was a lot more efficient than it looked on first inspection. The trains reversed direction on what American railroaders called a wye—Europeans called it a turning triangle—which allowed trains to back up to any one of ten off-loading ramps, and the Russians were doing it with skill and aplomb. The big VL80T electric locomotive eased backwards, with the conductors on the last car holding the air-release valve to activate the brakes when they reached the ramp. When the trains stopped, the soldiers jumped from their passenger coaches and ran back to their individual vehicles to start them up and drive them off. It didn’t take longer than thirty minutes to empty a train. That impressed Colonel Welch, who’d used the Auto Train to take his family to Disney World, and the off-loading procedure in Sanford, Florida, usually took an hour and a half or so. Then there was no further waiting. The big VL (Vladimir Lenin) engines immediately moved out for the return trip west to load up another ten thousand tons of train cars and cargo. It certainly appeared as though the Russians could make things happen when they had to.
“Colonel?” Welch turned to see a Russian major, who saluted crisply.
“Yes?”
“The first train with your personnel is due in four hours twenty minutes. We’ll take them to the southern assembly area. There is fuel there if they need it, and then we have guides to direct them east.”
“Very good.”
“Until then, if you wish to eat, there is a canteen inside the station building.”
“Thank you. We’re okay at the moment.” Welch walked over to where his satellite radio was set up, to get that information to General Diggs.
Colonel Bronco Winters now had seven red stars painted on the side panel of his F-15C, plus four of the now-defunct UIR flags. He could have painted on some marijuana or coca leaves as well, but that part of his life was long past, and those kills had been blacker than his uncle Ernie, who still lived in Harlem. So, he was a double-ace, and the Air Force hadn’t had many of those on active duty in a very long time. He took his flight to what they had taken to calling Bear Station, on the western edge of the Chinese advance.
It was an Eagle station. There were now over a hundred F-16 fighters in Siberia, but they were mainly air-to-mud rather than air-to-air, and so the fighting part of the fighter mission was his department, while the -16 jocks grumbled about being second-class citizens. Which they were, as far as Colonel Winters thought. Damned little single-engine pukes.
Except for the F-16CGs. They were useful because they were dedicated to taking out enemy radars and SAM sites. The Siberian Air Force (so they now deemed themselves) hadn’t done any air-to-mud yet. They had orders not to, which offended the guys whose idea of fun was killing crunchies on the ground instead of more manly pursuits. They didn’t have enough bombs for a proper bombing campaign yet, and so they were coming up just to ride guard on the E-3Bs in case Joe Chink decided to go after them—it was a hard mission, but marginally doable, and Bronco was surprised that they hadn’t made the attempt yet. It was a sure way to lose a lot of fighter planes, but they’d lost a bunch anyway, and why not lose them to a purpose ... ?
“Boar Lead, this is Eagle Two, over.”
“Boar Leader.”
“We show something happening, numerous bandits one-four-five your position, angels three-three, range two hundred fifty miles, coming north at six hundred knots—make that count thirty-plus bandits, looks like they’re coming right for us, Boar Lead,” the controller on the AWACS reported.
“Roger, copy that. Boar, Lead,” he told his flight of four. “Let’s get our ears perked up.”
“Two.” “Three.” “Four,” the rest of his flight chimed in.
“Boar Leader, this is Eagle Two. The bandits just went supersonic, and they are heading right for us. Looks like they’re not kidding. Vector right to course one-three-five and prepare to engage.”
“Roger, Eagle. Boar Lead, come right to one-three-five.”
“Two.” “Three.” “Four.”
Winters checked his fuel first of all. He had plenty. Then he looked at his radar display for the picture transmitted from the AWACS, and sure enough, there was a passel of bandits inbound, like a complete ChiComm regiment of fighters. The bastards had read his mind.
“Damn, Bronco, this looks like a knife fight coming.”
“Be cool, Ducky, we got better knives.”
“You say so, Bronco,” the other element leader answered.
“Let’s loosen it up, people,” Colonel Winters ordered. The flight of four F-15Cs separated into two pairs, and the pairs slipped apart as well so that each could cover the other, but a single missile could not engage both.
The display between his legs showed that the Chinese fighters were just over a hundred miles off now, and the velocity vectors indicated speeds of over eight hundred knots. Then the picture dirtied up some.
“Boar Lead, looks like they just dropped off tanks.”
“Roger that.” So, they’d burned off fuel to get altitude, and now they were committed to the battle with full internal fuel. That would give them better legs than usual, and they had closed to less than two hundred miles between them and the E-3B Sentry they clearly wanted to kill. There were thirty people on that converted 707, and Winters knew a lot of them. They’d worked together for years, mainly in exercises, and each controller on the Sentry had a specialty. Some were good at getting you to a tanker. Some were good at sending you out to hunt. Some were best at defending themselves against enemies. This third group would now take over. The Sentry crewmen would think this wasn’t cricket, that it wasn’t exactly fair to chase deliberately after a converted obsolete airliner ... just because it acted as bird-dog for those who were killing off their fighter-pilot comrades. Well, that’s life, Winters thought. But he wasn’t going to give any of these bandits a free shot at another USAF aircraft.
Eighty miles now. “Skippy, follow me up,” the colonel ordered.
“Roger, Lead.” The two clawed up to forty thousand feet, so that the cold ground behind the targets would give a better contrast for their infrared seekers. He checked the radar display again. There had to be a good thirty of them, and that was a lot. If the Chinese were smart, they’d have two teams, one to engage and distract the American fighters, and the other to blow through after their primary target. He’d try to concentrate on the latter, but if the former group’s pilots were competent, that might not be easy.
The warbling tone started in his headphones. The range was now sixty miles. Why not now? he asked himself. They were beyond visual range, but not beyond range of his AM-RAAM missiles. Time to shoot ’em in the lips.
“Going Slammer,” he called on the radio.
“Roger, Slammer,” Skippy replied from half a mile to his right.
“Fox-One!” Winters called, as the first one leapt off the rails. The first Slammer angled left, seeking its designated target, one of the enemy’s leading fighters. The closure speed between missile and target would be well over two thousand miles per hour. His eyes dropped to the radar display. His first missile appeared to hit—yes, the target blip expanded and started dropping. Number Eight. Time for another: “Fox-One!”
“Fox-One,” his wingman called. Seconds later: “Kill!” Lieutenant Acosta called.
Winters’s second missile somehow missed, but there wasn’t time for wondering why. He had six more AMRAAMs, and he pickled four of them off in the next minute. By that time, he could see the inbound fighters. They were Shenyang J-8IIs, and they had radars and missiles, too. Winters flipped on his jammer pod, wondering if it would work or not, and wondering if their infrared missiles had all-aspect targeting like his Sidewinders. He’d probably find out soon, but first he fired off two ’winders. “Breaking right, Skippy.”
“I’m with you, Bronco,” Acosta replied.
Damn, Winters thought, there are still at least twenty of the f*ckers. He headed down, speeding up as he went and calling for a vector.
“Boar Lead, Eagle, there’s twenty-three of them left and they’re still coming. Dividing into two elements. You have bandits at your seven o’clock and closing.”
Winters reversed his turn and racked his head against the g-forces to spot it. Yeah, a J-8 all right, the Chinese two-engine remake of the MiG-21, trying to get position to launch on him—no, two of the bastards. He reefed the turn in tight, pulling seven gees, and after ten endless seconds, getting his nose on the targets. His left hand selected Sidewinder and he triggered two off.
The bandits saw the smoke trails of the missiles and broke apart, in opposite directions. One would escape, but both the heat-seekers locked on the guy to the right, and both erased his aircraft from the sky. But where had the other one gone? Winters’ eyes swept a sky that was both crowded and empty at the same time. His threat receiver made its unwelcome screeching sound, and now he’d find out if the jammer pod worked or not. Somebody was trying to lock him up with a radar-guided missile. His eyes swept around looking for who that might be, but he couldn’t see anyone—
—Smoke trail! A missile, heading in his general direction, but then it veered and exploded with its target—friend or foe, Winters couldn’t tell.
“Boar Flight, Lead, check in!” he ordered.
“Two.” “Three.” A pause before: “Four!”
“Skippy, where are you?”
“Low and right, one mile, Leader. Heads up, there’s a bandit at your three and closing.”
“Oh, yeah?” Winters yanked his fighter to the right and was rewarded with an immediate warbling tone—but was it friend or foe? His wingman said the latter, but he couldn’t tell, until—
Whoever it was, it had launched at him, and so he triggered a Sidewinder in reply, then dove hard for the deck while punching off flares and chaff to distract it. It worked. The missile, a radar seeker, exploded harmlessly half a mile behind him, but his Sidewinder didn’t miss. He’d just gotten another kill, but he didn’t know how many today, and there wasn’t time to think things over.
“Skippy, form up on me, we’re going north.”
“Roger, Bronco.”
Winters had his radar on, and he saw at least eight enemy blips to the north. He went to afterburner to chase, checking his fuel state. Still okay. The Eagle accelerated rapidly, but just to be safe, he popped off a string of chaff and flares in case some unknown Chinese was shooting at him. The threat receiver was screeching continuously now, though not in the distinctive chirping tone that suggested lock-up. He checked his weapons board. Three AIM-9X Sidewinders left. Where the hell had this day gone to?
“Ducky is hit, Ducky is hit!” a voice called. “Aw, shit!”
“Ghost Man here, got the f*cker for you, Ducky. Come right, let me give you a damage check.”
“One engine gone, other one’s running hot,” the second element leader reported, in a voice more angry than afraid. He didn’t have time for fear yet. Another thirty seconds or so and that would start to take hold, Winters was sure.
“Ducky, you’re trailing vapor of some sort, recommend you find a place to set it down.”
“Eagle Two, Bronco, what’s happening?”
“Bronco, we have six still inbound, putting Rodeo on it now. You have a bandit at your one o’clock at twenty miles, angels three-one, speed seven-five-zero.”
“Roger that, Eagle. I’m on him.” Winters came a little right and got another acquisition tone. “Fox-Two!” he called. The smoke trail ran straight for several miles, then corkscrewed to the left as it approached the little dot of gray-blue and ... yes!
“Rodeo Lead,” a new voice called. “Fox-One, Fox-One with two!”
“Conan, Fox-One!”
Now things were really getting nervous. Winters knew that he might be in the line of fire for those Slammers. He looked down to see that the light on his IFF was a friendly, constant green. The Identification Friend or Foe was supposed to tell American radars and missiles that he was on their side, but Winters didn’t entirely trust computer chips with his life, and so he squinted his eyes to look for smoke trails that weren’t going sideways. His radar could see the AWACS now, and it was moving west, taking the first part of evasive action, but its radar was still transmitting, even with Chinese fighters within ... twenty miles? Shit! But then two more blips disappeared, and the remaining ones all had friendly IFF markers.
Winters checked his weapons display. No missiles left. How had all that happened? He was the United States Air Force champ for situational awareness, but he’d just lost track of a combat action. He couldn’t remember firing all his missiles.
“Eagle Two, this is Boar Lead. I’m Winchester. Do you need any help?” “Winchester” meant out of weapons. That wasn’t entirely true. He still had a full magazine of 20-mm cannon shells, but suddenly all the gees and all the excitement were pulling on him. His arms felt leaden as he eased his Eagle back to level flight.
“Boar Lead, Eagle. Looks like we’re okay now, but that was kinda exciting, fella.”
“Roger that, Eagle. Same here. Anything left?”
“Negative, Boar. Rodeo Lead got the last two. I think we owe that major a couple of beers.”
“I’ll hold you to that, Eagle,” Rodeo Lead observed.
“Ducky, where are you?” Winters called next.
“Kinda busy, Bronco,” a strained voice replied. “I got a hole in my arm, too.”
“Bronco, Ghost Man. Ducky’s got some holes in the airframe. I’m going to shepherd him back to Suntar. Thirty minutes, about.”
“Skippy, where you be?”
“Right behind you, Leader. I think I got four, maybe five, in that furball.”
“Any weapons left?”
“Slammer and ’winder, one each. I’ll look after you, Colonel,” Lieutenant Acosta promised. “How’d you make out?”
“Two, maybe more, not sure,” the squadron commander answered. The final tally would come from the AWACS, plus a check of his own videotape. Mainly he wanted to get out of the aircraft and take a good stretch, and he now had time to worry about Major Don Boyd—Ducky—and his aircraft.
So, we want to mess with their heads, Mickey?” Admiral Dave Seaton asked.
“That’s the idea,” the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs told the chief of naval operations.
“Makes sense. Where are their heads at?”
“According to what CIA says, they think we’re limiting the scope of operations for political reasons—to protect their sensibilities, like.”
“No foolin’?” Seaton asked with no small degree of incredulity.
Moore nodded. “Yep.”
“Well, then it’s like a guy holding aces and eights, isn’t it?” the CNO thought aloud, referring to the last poker hand held by James Butler—“Wild Bill”—Hickok in Deadwood, South Dakota. “We just pick the mission that’s sure to flip them out.”
“What are you thinking?” Moore asked.
“We can slam their navy pretty hard. Bart Mancuso’s a pretty good operator. What are they most afraid of ... ?” Seaton leaned back in his swivel chair. “First thing Bart wants to do is take out their missile submarine. It’s at sea now with Tucson in trail, about twenty thousand yards back.”
“That far?”
“It’s plenty close enough. It’s got an SSN in close proximity to protect it. So, Tucson takes ‘em both out—zap.” Moore didn’t get the terminology, but Seaton was referring to the Chinese ships as “it,” meaning an enemy, a target worthy only of destruction. “Beijing might not know it’s happened right away, unless they’ve got an ‘I’m Dead’ buoy on the sail. Their surface navy’s a lot easier. That’ll be mainly aircraft targets, some missiles to keep the surface community happy.”
“Submarine-launched missiles?”
“Mickey, you don’t sink ships by making holes that let air in. You sink ships by making holes that let water in,” Seaton explained. “Okay, if this is supposed to be for psychological effect, we hit everything simultaneously. That’ll mean staging a lot of assets, and it runs the risk of being overly complicated, having the other guy catch a sniff of what’s happening before we do anything. It’s a risk. Do we really want to run it?”
“Ryan’s thinking ‘big picture.’ Robby’s helping him.”
“Robby’s a fighter pilot,” Seaton agreed. “He likes to think in terms of movie stuff. Hell, Tom Cruise is taller than he is,” Seaton joked.
“Good operational thinker. He was a pretty good J-3,” Moore reminded the senior sailor.
“Yeah, I know, it’s just that he likes to make dramatic plays. Okay, we can do it, only it complicates things.” Seaton looked out the window for a second. “You know what might really flip them out?”
“What’s that?” Moore asked. Seaton told him. “But it’s not possible for us to do, is it?”
“Maybe not, but we’re not dealing with professional military people, are we? They’re politicians, Mickey. They’re used to dealing with images instead of reality. So, we give them an image.”
“Do you have the pieces in place to do that?”
“Let me find out.”
“This is crazy, Dave.”
“And deploying First Armored to Russia isn’t?” the CNO demanded.
Lieutenant Colonel Angelo Giusti was now certain that he’d be fully content never to ride on another train as long as he lived. He didn’t know that all of the Russian State Railroad’s sleeper cars were being used to transport Russian army forces—they’d never sent any of the cars as far west as Berlin, not to slight the Americans, but because it had simply never occurred to anyone to do so. He took note of the fact that the train veered off to the north, off the main track, thumping over various switches and interlockings as it did so, and then the train came to a halt and started going backwards slowly. They seemed to be in the yard alone. They’d passed numerous westbound trains in the past two hours, all with engines dragging empty flatcars, and the conductor who appeared and disappeared regularly had told them that this was the approximate arrival time scheduled, but he hadn’t really believed it, on the premise that a railroad with such uncomfortable seats probably didn’t adhere to decent schedules either. But here they were, and the off-loading ramps were obvious for what they were.
“People, I think we’re here,” the commander of the Quarter Horse told his staff.
“Praise Jesus,” one of them observed. A few seconds later, the train jolted to a stop, and they were able to walk out onto the concrete platform, which, they saw, stretched a good thousand meters to the east. Inside of five minutes, the soldiers of Headquarters Troop were out and walking to their vehicles, stretching and grousing along the way.
“Hey, Angie,” called a familiar voice.
Giusti looked to see Colonel Welch and walked up to him with a salute.
“What’s happening?” Giusti asked.
“It’s a mess out east of here, but there is good news.”
“What might that be?”
“There’s plenty of fuel stashed for us. I’ve been flying security detachments out, and Ivan says he’s got fuel depots that’re the size of f*ckin’ supertankers. So, we’re not going to run out of gas.”
“That’s good to know. What about my choppers?” Welch just pointed. There was an OH-58D Kiowa Warrior sitting not three hundred yards away. “Thank God for that. What’s the bad news?”
“The PLA has four complete Group-A armies in Siberia and heading north. There hasn’t been any heavy contact yet because Ivan’s refusing combat at the moment, until they can get something big enough to meet them with. They have one motor-rifle division in theater and four more heading up there. The last of ’em just cleared this railyard an hour and a half ago.”
“That’s, what? Sixteen heavy divisions in the invasion force?”
Welch nodded. “Thereabouts.”
“What’s my mission?”
“Assemble your squadron and head southeast. The idea is First Armored will cut off the bottom of the break-in and interrupt their supply line. Russian blocking force will then try to stop them about two hundred miles northeast of here.”
“Can they do it?” Four Russian divisions against sixteen Chinese didn’t seem especially favorable odds.
“Not sure,” Welch admitted. “Your job is to get out and establish lead security for the division. Advance to and secure the first big fuel depot. We’ll play it from there.”
“Support?”
“At the moment, the Air Force is mainly doing fighter work. No deep strikes yet because they don’t have enough bombs to sustain any kind of campaign.”
“What about resupply?”
“We have two basic loads for all the tracks. That’ll have to do for a while. At least we have four units of fire for the artillery.” That meant four days’ worth of shells—based on what the Army computed that a day of combat required. The supply weenies who did those calculations weren’t stingy on shells to shoot at the other guy. And in the entire Persian Gulf war, not a single tank had completely shot out its first basic load of shells, they both knew. But that was a different war. No two were ever the same, and they only got worse.
Giusti turned when he heard the first engine start up. It was an M3A2 Bradley Scout track, and the sergeant in the commander’s hatch looked happy to be moving. A Russian officer took over as traffic cop, waving the Brad forward, then right toward the assembly area. The next train backed up to the next ramp over. That would be “A” or Avenger Troop, with the first of Quarter Horse’s really heavy equipment, nine of the M1A2 main battle tanks.
“How long before everything’s here?” Giusti asked.
“Ninety minutes, they told me,” Welch answered.
“We’ll see.”
What’s this?” a captain asked the screen in front of him. The E-3B Sentry designated Eagle Two was back on the ground at Zhigansk. Its crew was more than a little shaken. Being approached by real fighters with real blood in their eyes was qualitatively different from exercises and postmission analysis back stateside. The tapes of the engagement had been handed off to the wing intelligence staff, who viewed the battle with some detachment, but they could see that the PLAAF had thrown a full regiment of first-line fighters at the AWACS, and more than that, done it on a one-way mission. They’d come in on burner, and that would have denied them a trip back to their base. So, they’d been willing to trade over thirty fighters for a single E-3B. But there was more to the mission than that, the captain saw.
“Look here,” he told his colonel. “Three, no, four reconnaissance birds went northwest.” He ran the tape forward and backward. “We didn’t touch any of them. Hell, they didn’t even see them.”
“Well, I’m not going to fault the Sentry crew for that, Captain.”
“Not saying that, sir. But John Chinaman just got some pictures of Chita, and also of these Russian units moving north. The cat’s out of the bag, Colonel.”
“We’ve got to start thinking about some counter-air missions on these airfields.”
“We have bombs to do it?”
“Not sure, but I’m taking this to General Wallace. What’s the score on the air fight?”
“Colonel Winters got four for sure and two probables. Damn, that guy’s really cleaning up. But it was the -16 guys saved the AWACS. These two J-8s got pretty damned close before Rodeo splashed them.”
“We’ll put some more coverage on the E-3s from now on,” the colonel observed.
“Not a bad idea, sir.”
Yes?” General Peng said, when his intelligence officer came up to him.
“Aerial reconnaissance reports large mechanized formations one hundred fifty kilometers west of us, moving north and northeast.”
“Strength?” the general asked.
“Not sure. Analysis of the photos is not complete, but certainly regimental strength, maybe more.”
“Where, exactly?”
“Here, Comrade General.” The intelligence officer unfolded a map and pointed. “They were spotted here, here, and from here to here. The pilot said large numbers of tanks and tracked vehicles.”
“Did they shoot at him?”
“No, he said there was no fire at all.”
“So, they are rushing to where they are going ... racing to get to our flank, or to get ahead of us ... ?” Peng considered this, looking down at the map. “Yes, that’s what I would expect. Any reports from our front?”
“Comrade General, our reconnaissance screen reports that they have seen the tracks of vehicles, but no visual sightings of the enemy at all. They have taken no fire, and seen nothing but civilians.”
Quickly,” Aleksandrov urged.
How the driver and his assistant had gotten the ZIL- 157 to this place was a mystery whose solution didn’t interest the captain. That it had gotten here was enough. His lead BRM at that moment had been Sergeant Grechko’s, and he’d filled up his tanks, and then radioed to the rest of the company, which for the first time broke visual contact with the advancing Chinese and raced north to top off as well. It was dangerous and against doctrine to leave the Chinese unseen, but Aleksandrov couldn’t guarantee that they’d all have a chance to refuel otherwise. Then Sergeant Buikov had a question.
“When do they refuel, Comrade Captain? We haven’t seen them do it, have we?”
That made his captain stop and think. “Why, no, we haven’t. Their tanks must be as empty as ours.”
“They had extra fuel drums the first day, remember? They dropped them off sometime yesterday.”
“Yes, so maybe they have one more day of fuel, maybe only half a day, but then someone must refill them—but who will that be, and how ... ?” the officer wondered. He turned to look. The fuel came out of the portable pump at about forty liters or ten gallons per minute. Grechko had taken his BRM south to reestablish contact with the Chinese. They were still sitting still, between frog-leap bounds, probably half an hour away if they stuck with their drill, from which they hadn’t once deviated. And people had once said that the Red Army was inflexible ...
“There, that’s it,” Aleksandrov’s driver said. He handed the hose back and capped the tank.
“You,” the captain told the driver of the fuel truck. “Go east.”
“To where?” the man asked. “There’s nothing there.”
That stopped his thinking for a few seconds. There had been a sawmill here once, and you could see the wide swaths of saplings left over from when whoever had worked here had cut trees for lumber. It was the closest thing to open ground they’d seen in over a day.
“I came from the west. I can get back there now, with the truck lighter, and it’s only six kilometers to the old logging road.”
“Very well, but do it quickly, Corporal. If they see you, they’ll blast you.”
“Farewell then, Comrade Captain.” The corporal got back into the truck, started up, and turned to the north to loop around.
“I hope someone gives him a drink tonight. He’s earned it,” Buikov said. There was much more to any army than the shooters.
“Grechko, where are you?” Aleksandrov called over his radio.
“Four kilometers south of you. They’re still dismounted, Captain. Their officer seems to be talking on the radio.”
“Very well. You know what to do when they remount.” The captain set the radio microphone down and leaned against his track. This business was getting very old. Buikov lit a smoke and stretched.
“Why can’t we just kill a few of them, Comrade Captain? Would it not be worth it to get some sleep?”
“How many times must I tell you what our f*cking mission is, Sergeant!” Aleksandrov nearly screamed at his sergeant.
“Yes, Captain,” Buikov responded meekly.