Chapter 56
March to Danger
Lieutenant Colonel Giusti started off in his personal HMMWV, the new incarnation of the venerable jeep. Using a Bradley would have been more comfortable, even more sensible, but overly dramatic, he thought, and there wouldn’t be any contact anytime soon. Besides, the right front seat in this vehicle was better for his back after the endless train ride. In any case, he was following a Russian UAZ-469, which looked like a Russian interpretation of an American SUV, and whose driver knew the way. The Kiowa Warrior helicopter he’d seen at the railyard was up and flying, scouting ahead and reporting back that there was nothing there but mostly empty road, except for some civilian traffic being kept out of the way by Russian MPs. Right behind Giusti’s command vehicle was a Bradley flying the red-and-white guidon of the First of the Fourth Cavalry. The regiment had, for American arms, a long and distinguished history—its combat action had begun on July 30, 1857, against the Cheyenne Indians at Solomon River—and this campaign would add yet another battle streamer to the regimental standard ... and Giusti hoped he’d live long enough to attach it himself. The land here reminded him of Montana, rolling foothills with pine trees in abundance. The views were decently long, just what a mechanized trooper liked, because it meant you could engage an enemy at long range. American soldiers especially preferred that, because they had weapons that could reach farther than those of most other armies.
“DARKHORSE SIX to SABRE SIX, over,” the radio crackled.
“SABRE SIX,” LTC Giusti responded.
“SABRE, I’m now at checkpoint Denver. The way continues to be clear. Negative traffic, negative enemy indications, over. Proceeding east to checkpoint Wichita.”
“Roger that, thank you, out.” Giusti checked the map to be sure he knew exactly where the chopper was.
So, twenty miles ahead there was still nothing to be concerned about, at least according to the captain flying his lead helicopter. Where would it start? Giusti wondered. On the whole, he would have preferred to stand still and sit in on the divisional commander’s conference, just to find out what the hell was happening, but as cavalry-screen commander, it was his job to go out forward and find the enemy, then report back to IRON Six, the divisional commander. He really didn’t have much of a mission yet, aside from driving up to the Russian fuel depot, refueling his vehicles there, and setting up security, then pulling out and continuing his advance as the leading elements of the First Armored’s heavy forces got there. It was his job, in short, to be the ham in the sandwich, as one of his troop commanders liked to joke. But this ham could bite back. Under his command were three troops of armored cavalry, each with nine M1A2 Abrams main-battle tanks and thirteen M3A2 Bradley cavalry scout vehicles, plus a FISTV track for forward observers to call in artillery support—somewhere behind him, the First Armored’s artillery would be off-loading soon from its train, he hoped. His most valuable assets were D and E troops, each with eight OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters, able both to scout ahead and to shoot with Hellfire and Stinger missiles. In short, his squadron could look after itself, within reasonable limits.
As they got closer, his troopers would become more cautious and circumspect, because good as they were, they were neither invincible nor immortal. America had fought against China only once, in Korea nearly sixty years earlier, and the experience had been satisfactory to neither side. For America, the initial Chinese attack had been unexpected and massive, forcing an ignominious retreat from the Yalu River. But for China, once America had gotten its act together, the experience had cost a million lives, because firepower was always the answer to raw numbers, and America’s lasting lesson from its own Civil War was that it was better to expend things than to expend people. The American way of war was not shared by everyone, and in truth it was tailored to American material prosperity as much as to American reverence for human life, but it was the American way, and that was the way its warriors were schooled.
I think it’s about time to roll them back a little,” General Wallace observed over the satellite link to Washington.
“What do you propose?” Mickey Moore asked.
“For starters, I want to send my F-16CGs after their radar sites. I’m tired of having them use radar to direct their fighters against my aircraft. Next, I want to start going after their logistical choke points. In twelve hours, the way things are going, I’ll have enough ordnance to start doing some offensive warfare here. And it’s about time for us to start, General,” Wallace said.
“Gus, I have to clear that with the President,” the Chairman told the Air Force commander in Siberia.
“Okay, fine, but tell him we damned near lost an AWACS yesterday—with a crew of thirty or so—and I’m not in a mood to write that many letters. We’ve been lucky so far, and an AWACS is a hard kill. Hell, it cost them a full regiment of fighters to fail in that mission. But enough’s enough. I want to go after their radar sites, and I want to do some offensive counter-air.”
“Gus, the thinking here is that we want to commence offensive operations in a systematic way for maximum psychological effect. That means more than just knocking some antennas down.”
“General, I don’t know what it looks like over there, but right here it’s getting a little exciting. Their army is advancing rapidly. Pretty soon our Russian friends are going to have to make their stand. It’ll be a whole lot easier if the enemy is short on gas and bullets.”
“We know that. We’re trying to figure a way to shake up their political leadership.”
“It isn’t politicians coming north trying to kill us, General. It’s soldiers and airmen. We have to start crippling them before they ruin our whole damned day.”
“I understand that, Gus. I will present your position to the President,” the Chairman promised.
“Do that, will ya?” Wallace killed the transmission, wondering what the hell the lotus-eaters in Washington were thinking about, assuming they were thinking at all. He had a plan, and he thought it was a pretty good systematic one. His Dark Star drones had given him all the tactical intelligence he needed. He knew what targets to hit, and he had enough ordnance to do the hitting, or at least to start doing it.
If they let me, Wallace thought.
Well, it wasn’t a complete waste,” Marshal Luo said. ”We got some pictures of what the Russians are doing.”
“And what’s that?” Zhang asked.
“They’re moving one or two—probably two—divisions northeast from their rail assembly point at Chita. We have good aerial pictures of them.”
“And still nothing in front of our forces?”
Luo shook his head. “Our reconnaissance people haven’t seen anything more than tracks in the ground. I have to assume there are Russians in those woods somewhere, doing reconnaissance of their own, but if so, they’re light forces who’re working very hard to keep out of the way. We know they’ve called up some reserves, but they haven’t shown up either. Maybe their reservists didn’t report. Morale in Russia is supposed to be very low, Tan tells us, and that’s all we’ve really seen. The men we captured are very disheartened because of their lack of support, and they didn’t fight all that well. Except for the American airplanes, this war is going extremely well.”
“And they haven’t attacked our territory yet?” Zhang wanted to be clear on that.
Another shake of the head. “No, and I can’t claim that they’re afraid to do it. Their fighter aircraft are excellent, but to the best of our knowledge they haven’t even attempted a photo-reconnaissance mission. Maybe they just depend on satellites now. Certainly those are supposed to be excellent sources of information for them.”
“And the gold mine?”
“We’ll be there in thirty-six hours. And at that point we can make use of the roads their own engineers have been building to exploit the mineral finds. From the gold mine to the oil fields—five to seven days, depending on how well we can run supplies up.”
“This is amazing, Luo,” Zhang observed. “Better than my fondest hopes.”
“I almost wish the Russians would stand and fight somewhere, so that we could have a battle and be done with it. As it is, my forces are stringing out somewhat, but only because the lead elements are racing forward so well. I’ve thought about slowing them down to maintain unit integrity, but—”
“But speed works for us, doesn’t it?” Zhang observed.
“Yes, it would seem to,” the Defense Minister agreed. “But one prefers to keep units tightly grouped in case there is some contact. However, if the enemy is running, one doesn’t want to give him pause to regroup. So, I’m giving General Peng and his divisions free rein.”
“What forces are you facing?”
“We’re not sure. Perhaps a regiment or so could be ahead of us, but we see no evidence of it, and two more regiments are trying to race ahead of us, or attack our flank, but we have flank security out to the west, and they’ve seen nothing.”
Bondarenko hoped that someday he’d meet the team that had developed this American Dark Star drone. Never in history had a commander possessed such knowledge as this, and without it he would have been forced to commit his slender forces to battle just to ascertain what stood against him. Not now. He probably had a better feel for the location of the advancing Chinese than their own commander did.
Better yet, the leading regiment of the 201st Motor Rifle Division was only a few kilometers away, and the leading formation was the division’s steel fist, its independent tank regiment of ninety-five T-80U main-battle tanks.
The 265th was ready for the reinforcement, and its commander, Yuriy Sinyavskiy, proclaimed that he was tired of running away. A career professional soldier and mechanized infantryman, Sinyavskiy was a profane, cigar-chomping man of forty-six years, now leaning over a map table in Bondarenko’s headquarters.
“This, this is my ground, Gennady Iosifovich,” he said, stabbing at the point with his finger. It was just five kilometers north of the Gogol Gold Field, a line of ridges twenty kilometers across, facing open ground the Chinese would have to cross. “And put the Two-Oh-First’s tanks just here on my right. When we stop their advance guard, they can blow in from the west and roll them up.”
“Reconnaissance shows their leading division is strung out somewhat,” Bondarenko told him.
It was a mistake made by every army in the world. The sharpest teeth of any field force are its artillery, but even self-propelled artillery, mounted on tracks for cross-country mobility, can’t seem to keep up with the mechanized forces it is supposed to support. It was a lesson that had even surprised the Americans in the Persian Gulf, when they’d found their artillery could keep up with the leading tank echelons only with strenuous effort, and across flat ground. The People’s Liberation Army had tracked artillery, but a lot of it was still the towed variety, and was being pulled behind trucks that could not travel cross-country as well as the tracked kind.
General Diggs observed the discussion, which his rudimentary Russian could not quite keep up with, and Sinyavskiy spoke no English, which really slowed things down.
“You still have a lot of combat power to stop, Yuriy Andreyevich,” Diggs pointed out, waiting for the translation to get across.
“If we cannot stop them completely, at least we can give them a bloody nose” was the belated reply.
“Stay mobile,” Diggs advised. “If I were this General Peng, I’d maneuver east—the ground is better suited for it—and try to wrap you up from your left.”
“We will see how maneuver-minded they are,” Bondarenko said for his subordinate. “So far all they have done is drive straight forward, and I think they are becoming complacent. See how they are stretched out, Marion. Their units are too far separated to provide mutual support. They are in a pursuit phase of warfare, and that makes them disorganized, and they have little air support to warn them of what lies ahead. I think Yuriy is right: This is a good place for a stand.”
“I agree it’s good ground, Gennady, just don’t marry the place, okay?” Diggs warned.
Bondarenko translated that for his subordinate, who answered back in machine-gun Russian around his cigar.
“Yuriy says it is a place for a f*cking, not a wedding. When will you join your command, Marion?”
“My chopper’s on the way in now, buddy. My cavalry screen is at the first fuel depot, with First Brigade right behind. We should be in contact in a day and a half or so.”
They’d already discussed Diggs’s plan of attack. First Armored would assemble northwest of Belogorsk, fueling at the last big Russian depot, then leap out in the darkness for the Chinese bridgehead. Intelligence said that the PLA’s 65th Type-B Group Army was there now, digging in to protect the left shoulder of their break-in. Not a mechanized force, it was still a lot for a single division to chew on. If the Chinese plan of attack had a weakness, it was that they’d bet all their mechanized forces on the drive forward. The forces left behind to secure the breakthrough were at best motorized—carried by wheeled vehicles instead of tracked ones—and at worst leg infantry, who had to walk where they went. That made them slow and vulnerable to men who sat down behind steel as they went to battle in their tracked vehicles.
But there were a hell of a lot of them, Diggs reminded himself.
Before he could leave, General Sinyavskiy reached into his hip pocket and pulled out a flask. “A drink for luck,” he said in his only words of broken English.
“Hell, why not?” Diggs tossed it off. It was good stuff, actually. “When this is all over, we will drink again,” he promised.
“Da,” the general replied. “Good luck, Diggs.”
“Marion,” Bondarenko said. “Be careful, comrade.”
“You, too, Gennady. You got enough medals, buddy. No sense getting your ass shot off trying to win another.”
“Generals are supposed to die in bed,” Bondarenko agreed on the way to the door.
Diggs trotted out to the UH-60. Colonel Boyle was flying this one. Diggs donned the crash helmet, wishing they’d come up with another name for the damned thing, and settled in the jump seat behind the pilots.
“How we doing, sir?” Boyle asked, letting the lieutenant take the chopper back off.
“Well, we have a plan, Dick. Question is, will it work?”
“Do I get let in on it?”
“Your Apaches are going to be busy.”
“There’s a surprise,” Boyle observed.
“How are your people?”
“Ready” was the one-word reply. “What are we calling this?”
“CHOPSTICKS.” Diggs then heard a laugh over the intercom wire.
“I love it.”
Okay, Mickey,” Robby Jackson said. ”I understand Gus’s position. But we have a big picture here to think about.”
They were in the Situation Room looking at the Chairman on TV from the Pentagon room known as The Tank. It was hard to hear what he was muttering that way, but the way he looked down was a sufficient indication of his feelings about Robby’s remark.
“General,” Ryan said, “the idea here is to rattle the cage of their political leadership. Best way to do that is to go after them in more places than one, overload ’em.”
“Sir, I agree with that idea, but General Wallace has his point, too. Taking down their radar fence will degrade their ability to use their fighters against us, and they still have a formidable fighter force, even though we’ve handled them pretty rough so far.”
“Mickey, if you handle a girl this way down in Mississippi, it’s called rape,” the Vice President observed. “Their fighter pilots look at their aircraft now and they see caskets, for Christ’s sake. Their confidence has got to be gone, and that’s all a fighter jock has to hold on to. Trust me on this one, will ya?”
“But Gus—”
“But Gus is too worried about his force. Okay, fine, let him send some Charlie-Golfs against their picket fence, but mainly we want those birds armed with Smart Pigs to go after their ground forces. The fighter force can look after itself.”
For the first time, General Mickey Moore regretted Ryan’s choice of Vice President. Robby was thinking like a politician rather than an operational commander—and that came as something of a surprise. He was seemingly less worried about the safety of his forces than of ...
... than of what the overall objective was, Moore corrected himself. And that was not a completely bad way to think, was it? Jackson had been a pretty good J-3 not so long before, hadn’t he?
American commanders no longer thought of their men as expendable assets. That was not a bad thing at all, but sometimes you had to put forces in harm’s way, and when you did that, some of them did not come home. And that was what they were paid for, whether you liked it or not. Robby Jackson had been a Navy fighter pilot, and he hadn’t forgotten the warrior ethos, despite his new job and pay grade.
“Sir,” Moore said, “what orders do I give General Wallace?”
Cecil B. goddamned DeMille,” Mancuso observed crossly.
“Ever wanted to part the Red Sea?” General Lahr asked.
“I ain’t God, Mike,” CINCPAC said next.
“Well, it is elegant, and we do have most of the pieces in place,” his J-2 pointed out.
“This is a political operation. What the hell are we, a goddamned focus group?”
“Sir, you going to continue to rant, or are we going to get to work on this?”
Mancuso wished for a lupara to blast a hole in the wall, or Mike Lahr’s chest, but he was a uniformed officer, and he did now have orders from his Commander-in-Chief.
“All right. I just don’t like to have other people design my operations.”
“And you know the guy.”
“Mike, once upon a time, back when I had three stripes and driving a submarine was all I had to worry about, Ryan and I helped steal a whole Russian submarine, yeah—and if you repeat that to anyone, I’ll have one of my Marines shoot your ass. Sink some of their ships, yeah, splash a few of their airplanes, sure, but ‘trailing our coat’ in sight of land? Jesus.”
“It’ll shake them up some.”
“If they don’t sink some of my ships in the attempt.”
Hey, Tony,” the voice on the phone said. It took Bretano a second to recognize it.
“Where are you now, Al?” the Secretary of Defense asked.
“Norfolk. Didn’t you know? I’m on USS Gettysburg upgrading their SAMs. It was your idea, wasn’t it?”
“Well, yeah, I suppose it was,” Tony Bretano agreed, thinking back.
“You must have seen this Chinese thing coming a long way off, man.”
“As a matter of fact, we—” The SecDef paused for a second. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, if the ChiComms loft an ICBM at us, this Aegis system does give us something to fall back on, if the computer simulations are right. They ought to be. I wrote most of the software,” Gregory went on.
Secretary Bretano didn’t want to admit that he hadn’t really thought about that eventuality. Thinking things through was one of the things he was paid for, after all. “How ready are you?”
“The electronics stuff is okay, but we don’t have any SAMs aboard. They’re stashed at some depot or something, up on the York River, I think they said. When they load them aboard, I can upgrade the software on the seeker heads. The only missiles aboard, the ones I’ve been playing with, they’re blue ones, exercise missiles, not shooters, I just found out. You know, the Navy’s a little weird. The ship’s in a floating dry dock. They’re going to lower us back in the water in a few hours.” He couldn’t see his former boss’s face at the moment. If he could, he would have recognized the oh, shit expression on his Italian face.
“So, you’re confident in your systems?”
“A full-up test would be nice, but if we can loft three or four SAMs at the inbound, yeah, I think it oughta work.”
“Okay, thanks, Al.”
“So, how’s this war going? All I see on TV is how the Air Force is kicking some ass.”
“They are, the TV’s got that right, but the rest—can’t talk about it over the phone. Al, let me get back to you, okay?”
“Yes, sir.”
In his office, Bretano switched buttons. “Ask Admiral Seaton to come in to see me.” That didn’t take very long.
“You rang, Mr. Secretary,” the CNO said when he came in.
“Admiral, there’s a former employee of mine from TRW in Norfolk right now. I set him up to look at upgrading the Aegis missile system to engage ballistic targets.”
“I heard a little about that. How’s his project going?” Dave Seaton asked.
“He says he’s ready for a full-up test. But, Admiral, what if the Chinese launch one of their CSS-4s at us?”
“It wouldn’t be good,” Seaton replied.
“Then how about we take our Aegis ships and put them close to the likely targets?”
“Well, sir, the system’s not certified for ballistic targets yet, and we haven’t really run a test, and—”
“Is it better than nothing?” the SecDef asked, cutting him off.
“A little, I suppose.”
“Then let’s make that happen, and make it happen right now.”
Seaton straightened up. “Aye aye, sir.”
“Gettysburg first. Have her load up what missiles she needs, and bring her right here,” Bretano ordered.
“I’ll call SACLANT right now.”
It was the strangest damned thing, Gregory thought. This ship—not an especially big ship, smaller than the one he and Candi had taken a cruise on the previous winter, but still an oceangoing ship—was in an elevator. That’s what a floating dry dock was. They were flooding it now, to make it go down, back into the water to see if the new propeller worked. Sailors who worked on the dry dock were watching from their perches on—whatever the hell you called the walls of the damned thing.
“Weird, ain’t it, sir?”
Gregory smelled the smoke. It had to be Senior Chief Leek. He turned. It was.
“Never seen this sort of thing before.”
“Nobody does real often, ’cept’n those guys over there who operate this thing. Did you take the chance to walk under the ship?”
“Walk under ten thousand tons of metal?” Gregory responded. “I don’t think so.”
“You was a soldier, wasn’t you?”
“Told you, didn’t I? West Point, jump school, ranger school, back when I was young and foolish.”
“Well, Doc, it’s no big deal. Kinda interesting to see how she’s put together, ‘specially the sonar dome up forward. If I wasn’t a radar guy, I probably woulda been a sonar guy, ’cept there’s nothing for them to do anymore.”
Gregory looked down. Water was creeping across the gray metal floor—deck? he wondered—of the dry dock.
“Attention on deck!” a voice called. Sailors turned and saluted, including Chief Leek.
It was Captain Bob Blandy, Gettysburg’s CO. Gregory had met him only once, and then just to say hello.
“Dr. Gregory.”
“Captain.” They shook hands.
“How’s your project been going?”
“Well, the simulations look good. I’d like to try it against a live target.”
“You got sent to us by the SecDef?”
“Not exactly, but he called me in from California to look at the technical aspects of the problem. I worked for him when he was head of TRW.”
“You’re an SDI guy, right?”
“That and SAMs, yes, sir. Other things. I’m one of the world’s experts on adaptive optics, from my SDI days.”
“What’s that?” Captain Blandy asked.
“The rubber mirror, we called it. You use computer-controlled actuators to warp the mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortions. The idea was to use that to focus the energy beam from a free-electron laser. But it didn’t work out. The rubber mirror worked just fine, but for some reason we never figured out, the damned lasers didn’t scale up the way we hoped they would. Didn’t come up to the power requirements to smoke a missile body.” Gregory looked down in the dry dock again. It certainly took its time, but they probably didn’t want to drop anything this valuable. “I wasn’t directly involved in that, but I kibitzed some. It turned out to be a monster of a technical problem. We just kept bashing our heads against the wall until we got tired of the squishy sound.”
“I know mechanical engineering, some electrical, but not the high-energy stuff. So, what do you think of our Aegis system?”
“I love the radar. Just like the Cobra Dane the Air Force has up at Shemya in the Aleutians. A little more advanced, even. You could probably bounce a signal off the moon if you wanted to.”
“That’s a little out of our range gate,” Blandy observed. “Chief Leek here been taking good care of you?”
“When he leaves the Navy, we might have a place for him at TRW. We’re part of the ongoing SAM project.”
“And Lieutenant Olson, too?” the skipper asked.
“He’s a very bright young officer, Captain. I can think of a lot of companies who might want him.” If Gregory had a fault, it was being too truthful.
“I ought to say something to discourage you from that, but—”
“Cap’n!” A sailor came up. “Flash-traffic from SACLANT, sir.” He handed over a clipboard. Captain Blandy signed the acknowledgment sheet and took the message. His eyes focused very closely.
“Do you know if the SecDef knows what you’re up to?”
“Yes, Captain, he does. I just spoke to Tony a few minutes ago.”
“What the hell did you tell him?”
Gregory shrugged. “Not much, just that the project was coming along nicely.”
“Uh-huh. Chief Leek, how’s your hardware?”
“Everything’s a hundred percent on line, Cap’n. We got a job, sir?” the senior chief asked.
“Looks like it. Dr. Gregory, if you will excuse me, I have to see my officers. Chief, we’re going to be getting under way soon. If any of your troops are on the beach, call ’em back. Spread the word.”
“Aye aye, sir.” He saluted as Captain Blandy hustled back forward. “What’s that all about?”
“Beats me, Chief.”
“What do I do? Getting under way?” Gregory asked.
“Got your toothbrush? If not, you can buy one in the ship’s store. Excuse me, Doc, I have to do a quick muster.” Leek tossed his cigarette over the side and went the same way that the captain had.
And there was precisely nothing for Gregory to do. There was no way for him to leave the ship, except to jump down into the flooding floating dry dock, and that didn’t look like a viable option. So, he headed back into the superstructure and found the ship’s store open. There he bought a toothbrush.
Bondarenko spent the next three hours with Major General Sinyavskiy, going over approach routes and fire plans.
“They have fire-finder radar, Yuriy, and their counter-battery rockets have a long reach.”
“Can we expect any help from the Americans?”
“I’m working on that. We have superb reconnaissance information from their movie-star drones.”
“I need the location of their artillery. If we can take that away from them, it makes my job much easier.”
“Tolkunov!” the theater commander yelled. It was loud enough that his intelligence coordinator came running.
“Yes, Comrade General!”
“Vladimir Konstantinovich, we’ll be making our stand here,” Bondarenko said, pointing to a red line on the map. “I want minute-to-minute information of the approaching Chinese formations—especially their artillery.”
“I can do that. Give me ten minutes.” And the G-2 disappeared back out to where the Dark Star terminal was. Then his boss thought about it.
“Come on, Yuriy, you have to see this.”
“General,” Major Tucker said by way of greeting. Then he saw a second one. “General,” he said again.
“This is General Sinyavskiy. He commands Two-Six-Five. Would you please show him the advancing Chinese?” It wasn’t a question or a request, just phrased politely because Tucker was a foreigner.
“Okay, it’s right here, sir, we’ve got it all on videotape. Their leading reconnaissance elements are ... here, and their leading main-force units are right here.”
“F*ck,” Sinyavskiy observed in Russian. “Is this magic?”
“No, this is—” Bondarenko switched languages. “Which unit is this, Major?”
“Grace Kelly again, sir. To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant, Hitchcock movie that one was. The sun’ll be down in another hour or so and we’ll be getting it all on the thermal-imaging systems. Anyway, here’s their leading battalion, all look like their Type-90 tanks. They’re keeping good formation discipline, and they just refueled about an hour ago, so, figure they’re good for another two hundred or so kilometers before they stop again.”
“Their artillery?”
“Lagging behind, sir, except for this tracked unit here.” Tucker played with the mouse some and brought up another picture.
“Gennady Iosifovich, how can we fail with such information?” the division commander asked.
“Yuriy, remember when we thought about attacking the Americans?”
“Madness. The Chinks can’t see this drone?” Sinyavskiy asked, somewhat incredulously.
“It’s stealthy, as they call it, invisible on radar.”
“Nichevo.”
“Sir, I have a direct line to our headquarters at Zhigansk. If you guys are going to make a stand, what do you want from us?’ Tucker asked. ”I can forward your request to General Wallace.”
“I have thirty Su-25 attack bombers and also fifty Su-24 fighter bombers standing by, plus two hundred Mi-24 helicopters.” Getting the last in theater had been agonizingly slow, but finally they were here, and they were the Ace of Diamonds Bondarenko had facedown on the card table. He hadn’t let so much as one approach the area of operations yet, but they were two hundred kilometers away, fueled and armed, their flight crews flying to practice their airmanship and shooting live weapons as rehearsal—for some, the first live weapons they’d ever shot.
“That’s going to be a surprise for good old Joe,” Tucker observed with a whistle. “Where’d you hide them, sir? Hell, General, I didn’t know they were around.”
“There are a few secure places. We want to give our guests a proper greeting when the time is right,” Gennady Iosifovich told the young American officer.
“So, what do you want us to do, sir?”
“Take down their logistics. Show me this Smart Pig you’ve been talking to Colonel Tolkunov about.”
“That we can probably do, sir,” Tucker said. “Let me get on the phone to General Wallace.”
So, they’re turning me loose?” Wallace asked.
“As soon as contact is imminent between Russian and Chinese ground forces.” Mickey Moore then gave him his targets. “It’s most of the things you wanted to hit, Gus.”
“I suppose,” the Air Force commander allowed, somewhat grudgingly. “And if the Russians ask for help?”
“Give it to them, within reason.”
“Right.”
LTC Giusti, SABRE SIX, got off the helicopter at the Number Two fueling point and walked toward General Diggs.
“They weren’t kidding,” Colonel Masterman was saying. “This is a f*ckin’ lake.” One and a quarter billion liters translated to more than three hundred million gallons, or nearly a million tons of fuel, about the carrying capacity of four supertankers, all of Number Two Diesel, or close enough that the fuel injectors on his tanks and Bradleys wouldn’t notice the difference. The manager of the site, a civilian, had said that the fuel had been there for nearly forty years, since Khrushchev had had a falling-out with Chairman Mao, and the possibility of war with the other communist country had turned from an impossibility into a perceived likelihood. Either it was remarkable prescience or paranoid wish fulfillment, but in either case it worked to the benefit of First Armored Division.
The off-loading facilities could have been better, but the Soviets evidently hadn’t had much experience with building gas stations. It was more efficient to pump the fuel into the division’s fuel bowsers, which then motored off to fill the tanks and tracks four or six at a time.
“Okay, Mitch, what do we have on the enemy?” General Diggs asked his intelligence officer.
“Sir, we’ve got a Dark Star tasked directly to us now, and she’ll be up for another nine hours. We’re up against a leg-infantry division. They’re forty kilometers that way, mainly sitting along this line of hills. There’s a regiment of ChiComm tanks supporting them.”
“Artillery?”
“Some light and medium, all of it towed, setting up now, with fire-finder radars we need to worry about,” Colonel Turner warned. “I’ve asked General Wallace to task some F-16s with HARMs to us. They can tune the seekers on those to the millimeter-band the fire-finders use.”
“Make that happen,” Diggs ordered.
“Yes, sir.”
“Duke, how long to contact?” the general asked his operations officer.
“If we move on schedule, we’ll be in their neighborhood about zero-two-hundred.”
“Okay, let’s get the brigade commanders briefed in. We party just after midnight,” Diggs told his staff, not even regretting his choice of words. He was a soldier about to go into combat, and with that came a different and not entirely pleasant way of thinking.