Chapter 58
Political Fallout
It was a difficult night for Marshal Luo Cong, the Defense Minister for the People’s Republic of China. He’d gone to bed about eleven the previous night, concerned with the ongoing operations of his military forces, but pleased that they seemed to be going well. And then, just after he’d closed his eyes, the phone rang.
His official car came at once to convey him to his office, but he didn’t enter it. Instead he went to the Defense Ministry’s communications center, where he found a number of senior- and mid-level officers going over fragmentary information and trying to make sense of it. Minister Luo’s presence didn’t help them, but just added stress to the existing chaos.
Nothing seemed clear, except that they could identify holes in their information. The 65th Army had seemingly dropped off the face of the earth. Its commanding general had been visiting one of his divisions, along with his staff, and hadn’t been heard from since 0200 or so. Nor had the division’s commanding general. In fact, nothing at all was known about what was happening up there. To fix that, Marshal Luo ordered a helicopter to fly up from the depot at Sunwu. Then came reports from Harbin and Bei’an of air raids that had damaged the railroads. A colonel of engineers was dispatched to look into that.
But just when he thought he’d gotten a handle on the difficulties in Siberia, then came reports of an air attack on the fleet base at Guangszhou, and then the lesser naval bases at Haikuo, Shantou, and Xiachuandao. In each case, the headquarters facilities seemed hard-hit, since there was no response from the local commanders. Most disturbing of all was the report of huge losses to the fighter regiments in the area—reports of American naval aircraft making the attacks. Then finally, worst of all, a pair of automatic signals, the distress buoys from his country’s only nuclear-powered missile submarine and the hunter submarine detailed to protect her, the Hai Long, were both radiating their automated messages. It struck the marshal as unlikely to the point of impossibility that so many things could have happened at once. And yet there was more. Border radar emplacements were off the air and could not be raised on radio or telephone. Then came another phone call from Siberia. One of the divisions on the left shoulder of the breakthrough—the one the commanding general of 65th Type B Group Army had been visiting a few hours before—reported ... that is, a junior communications officer said, a subunit of the division reported, that unknown armored forces had lanced through its western defenses, going east, and ... disappeared?
“How the hell does an enemy attack successfully and disappear?” the marshal had demanded, in a voice to make the young captain wilt. “Who reported this?”
“He identified himself as a major in the Third Battalion, 745th Guards Infantry Regiment, Comrade Marshal,” was the trembling reply. “The radio connection was scratchy, or so it was reported to us.”
“And who made the report?”
“A Colonel Zhao, senior communications officer in the intelligence staff of 71st Type C Group Army north of Bei’an. They are detailed to border security in the breakthrough sector,” the captain explained.
“I know that!” Luo bellowed, taking out his rage on the nearest target of opportunity.
“Comrade Marshal,” said a new voice. It was Major General Wei Dao-Ming, one of Luo’s senior aides, just called in from his home after one more of a long string of long days, and showing the strain, but trying to smooth the troubled waters even so. “You should let me and my staff assemble this information in such a way that we can present it to you in an orderly manner.”
“Yes, Wei, I suppose so.” Luo knew that this was good advice, and Wei was a career intelligence officer, accustomed to organizing information for his superiors. “Quick as you can.”
“Of course, Comrade Minister,” Wei said, to remind Luo that he was a political figure now rather than the military officer he’d grown up as.
Luo went to the VIP sitting room, where green tea was waiting. He reached into the pocket of his uniform tunic and pulled out some cigarettes, strong unfiltered ones to help him wake up. They made him cough, but that was all right. By the third cup of tea, Wei returned with a pad of paper scribbled with notes.
“So, what is happening?”
“The picture is confused, but I will tell you what I know, and what I think,” Wei began.
“We know that General Qi of Sixty-fifth Army is missing, along with his staff. They were visiting 191st Infantry Division, just north and west of our initial breakthrough. The 191st is completely off the air as well. So is the 615th Independent Tank Brigade, part of Sixty-fifth Army. Confused reports talk of an air attack on the tank brigade, but nothing precise is known. The 735th Guards Infantry Regiment of the 191st division is also off the air, cause unknown. You ordered a helicopter out of Sunwu to take a look and report back. The helicopter will get off at dawn. Well and good.
“Next, there are additional reports from that sector, none of which make sense or help form any picture of what is happening. So, I have ordered the intelligence staff of the Seventy-first Army to send a reconnaissance team across the river and ascertain what’s happening there and report back. That will take about three hours.
“The good news is that General Peng Xi-Wang remains in command of 34th Shock Army, and will be at the gold mine before midday. Our armored spearhead is deep within enemy territory. I expect the men are waking up right now and will be moving within the hour to continue their attack.
“Now, this news from the navy people is confusing, but it’s not really a matter of consequence. I’ve directed the commander of South Sea Fleet to take personal charge of the situation and report back. So say about three hours for that.
“So, Comrade Minister, we will have decent information shortly, and then we can start addressing the situation. Until then, General Peng will soon resume his offensive, and by evening, our country will be much richer,” Wei concluded. He knew how to keep his minister happy. His reward for this was a grunt and a nod. “Now,” General Wei went on, “why don’t you get a few hours of sleep while we maintain the watch?”
“Good idea, Wei.” Luo took two steps to the couch and lay down across it. Wei opened the door, turned off the lights, then he closed the door behind himself. The communications center was only a few more steps.
“Now,” he said, stealing a smoke from a major, “what the hell is happening out there?”
“If you want an opinion,” a colonel of intelligence said, “I think the Americans just flexed their muscles, and the Russians will do so in a few hours.”
“What? Why do you say that? And why the Russians?”
“Where has their air force been? Where have their attack helicopters been? We don’t know, do we? Why don’t we know? Because the Americans have swatted our airplanes out of the sky like flies, that’s why.”
“We’ve deluded ourselves that the Russians don’t want to fight, haven’t we? A man named Hitler once thought the same thing. He died a few years later, the history books say. We similarly deluded ourselves into thinking the Americans would not strike us hard for political reasons. Wei, some of our political leaders have been off chasing the dragon!” The aphorism referred to opium-smoking, a popular if illegal pastime in the southern part of China a few centuries before. “There were no political considerations. They were merely building up their forces, which takes time. And the Russians didn’t fight us because they wanted us to get to the end of the logistical string, and then the f*cking Americans cut that string off at Harbin and Bei’an! General Peng’s tanks are nearly three hundred kilometers inside Russia now, with only two hundred kilometers of fuel in their tanks, and there’ll be no more fuel coming up to them. We’ve taken over two thousand tanks and turned their crews into badly trained light infantry! That is what’s happening, Comrade Wei,” the colonel concluded.
“You can say that sort of thing to me, Colonel. Say it before Minister Luo, and your wife will pay the state for the bullet day after tomorrow,” Wei warned.
“Well, I know it,” Colonel Geng He-ping replied. “What will happen to you later today, Comrade General Wei, when you organize the information and find out that I am correct?”
“The remainder of today will have to take care of itself” was the fatalistic reply. “One thing at a time, Geng.” Then he assembled a team of officers and gave them each a task to perform, found himself a chair to sit in, and wondered if Geng might have a good feel for the situation—
“Colonel Geng?”
“Yes, Comrade General?”
“What do you know of the Americans?”
“I was in our embassy in Washington until eighteen months ago. While there, I studied their military quite closely.”
“And—are they capable of what you just said?”
“Comrade General, for the answer to that question, I suggest you consult the Iranians and the Iraqis. I’m wondering what they might try next, but thinking exactly like an American is a skill I have never mastered.”
They’re moving,”, Major Tucker reported with a stretch and a yawn. ”Their reconnaissance element just started rolling. Your people have pulled way back. How come?”
“I ordered them to collect Comrade Gogol before the Chinese kill him,” Colonel Tolkunov told the American. “You look tired.”
“Hell, what’s thirty-six hours in the same chair?” A helluva sore back, that’s what it is, Tucker didn’t say. Despite the hours, he was having the time of his life. For an Air Force officer who’d flunked out of pilot training, making him forever an “unrated weenie” in Air Force parlance, a fourth-class citizen in the Air Force pecking order—below even helicopter pilots—he was earning his keep more and better than he’d ever done. He’d probably been more valuable to his side in this war than even that Colonel Winters, with all his air-to-air snuffs. But if anyone ever said such a thing to him, he’d have to aw-shucks it and look humbly down at his shoes. Humble, my ass, Tucker thought. He was proving the value of a new and untested asset, and doing so like the Red Baron in his red Fokker Trimotor. The Air Force was not a service whose members cultivated humility, but his lack of pilot’s wings had compelled him to do just that for all ten of his years of uniformed service. The next generation of UAVs would have weapons attached, and maybe even be able to go air-to-air, and then, maybe, he’d show those strutting fighter jock-itches who had the real balls in this man’s Air Force. Until then, he’d just have to be content gathering information that helped the Russians kill Joe Chink and all his brothers, and if this was Nintendo War, then little Danny Tucker was the by-God cock of the by-God walk in this virtual world.
“You have been most valuable to us, Major Tucker.”
“Thank you, sir. Glad to help,” Tucker replied with his best little-boy smile. Maybe I’ll grow me a good mustache. He set the thought aside with a smile, and sipped some instant coffee from an MRE pack—the extra caffeine was about the only thing keeping him up at the moment. But the computer was doing most of the work, and it showed the Chinese reconnaissance tracks moving north.
Son of a bitch,” Captain Aleksandrov breathed. He’d heard about Gogol’s wolf pelts on state radio, but he hadn’t seen the TV coverage, and the sight took his breath away. Touching one, he halfway expected it to be cold and stiff like wire, but, no, it was like the perfect hair of a perfect blonde ...
“And who might you be?” The old man was holding a rifle and had a decidedly gimlet eye.
“I am Captain Fedor Il’ych Aleksandrov, and I imagine you are Pavel Petrovich Gogol.”
A nod and a smile. “You like my furs, Comrade Captain?”
“They are unlike anything I have ever seen. We have to take these with us.”
“Take? Take where? I’m not going anywhere,” Pasha said.
“Comrade Gogol, I have my orders—to get you away from here. Those orders come from Headquarters Far East Command, and those orders will be obeyed, Pavel Petrovich.”
“No Chink is going to chase me off my land!” his old voice thundered.
“No, Comrade Gogol, but soldiers of the Russian Army will not leave you here to die. So, that is the rifle you killed Germans with?”
“Yes, many, many Germans,” Gogol confirmed.
“Then come with us, and maybe you can kill some yellow invaders.”
“Who exactly are you?”
“Reconnaissance company commander, Two-Six-Five Motor Rifle Division. We’ve been playing hide-and-seek with the Chinks for four long days, and now we’re ready to do some real fighting. Join us, Pavel Petrovich. You can probably teach us a few things we need to know.” The young handsome captain spoke in his most reasonable and respectful tones, for this old warrior truly deserved it. The tone turned the trick.
“You promise me I will get to take one shot?”
“My word as a Russian officer, comrade,” Aleksandrov pledged, with a bob of his head.
“Then I come.” Gogol was already dressed for it—the heat in his cabin was turned off. He shouldered his old rifle and an ammunition pack containing forty rounds—he’d never gone into the field with more than that—and walked to the door. “Help me with my wolves, boy, will you?”
“Gladly, Grandfather.” Then Aleksandrov found out how heavy they were. But he and Buikov managed to toss them inside their BRM, and the driver headed off.
“Where are they?”
“About ten kilometers back. We’ve been in visual contact with them for days, but they’ve pulled us back. Away from them.”
“Why?”
“To save you, you old fool,” Buikov observed with a laugh. “And to save these pelts. These are too good to drape over the body of some Chinese strumpet!”
“I think, Pasha—I am not sure,” the captain said, “but I think it’s time for our Chinese guests to get a proper Russian welcome.”
“Captain, look!” the driver called.
Aleksandrov lifted his head out the big top hatch and looked forward. A senior officer was waving to him to come forward more quickly. Three minutes later, they halted alongside him.
“You are Aleksandrov?”
“Yes, Comrade General!” the young man confirmed to the senior officer.
“I am General Sinyavskiy. You’ve done well, boy. Come out here and talk to me,” he ordered in a gruff voice that was not, however, unkind.
Aleksandrov had only once seen his senior commander, and then only at a distance. He was not a large man, but you didn’t want him as a physical enemy in a small room. He was chewing on a cigar that had gone out seemingly hours before, and his blue eyes blazed.
“Who is this?” Sinyavskiy demanded. Then his face changed. “Are you the famous Pasha?” he asked more respectfully.
“Senior Sergeant Gogol of the Iron and Steel Division,” the old man said with great dignity, and a salute which Sinyavskiy returned crisply.
“I understand you killed some Germans in your day. How many, Sergeant?”
“Count for yourself, Comrade General,” Gogol said, handing his rifle over.
“Damn,” the general observed, looking at the notches, like those on the pistol of some American cowboy. “I believe you really did it. But combat is a young man’s game, Pavel Petrovich. Let me get you to a place of safety.”
Gogol shook his head. “This captain promised me one shot, or I would not have left my home.”
“Is that a fact?” The commanding general of 265th Motor Rifle looked around. “Captain Aleksandrov, very well, we’ll give our old comrade his one shot.” He pointed to a place on the map before him. “This should be a good spot for you. And when you can, get him the hell away from there,” Sinyavskiy told the young man. “Head back this way to our lines. They’ll be expecting you. Boy, you’ve done a fine job shadowing them all the way up. Your reward will be to see how we greet the bastards.”
“Behind the reconnaissance element is a large force.”
“I know. I’ve been watching them on TV for a day and a half, but our American friends have cut off their supplies. And we will stop them, and we will stop them right here.”
Aleksandrov checked the map reference. It looked like a good spot with a good field of fire, and best of all, an excellent route to run away on. “How long?” he asked.
“Two hours, I should think. Their main body is catching up with the screen. Your first job is to make their screen vehicles disappear.”
“Yes, Comrade General, that we can do for you!” the captain responded with enthusiasm.
Sunrise found Marion Diggs in a strangely bizarre environment. Physically, the surroundings reminded him of Fort Carson, Colorado, with its rolling hills and patchy pine woods, but it was unlike America in its lack of paved roads or civilization, and that explained why the Chinese had invaded here. With little civilian population out here, there was no infrastructure or population base to provide for the area’s defense, and that had made things a lot easier for John Chinaman. Diggs didn’t mind it, either. It was like his experience in the Persian Gulf—no noncombatants to get in the way—and that was good.
But there were a lot of Chinese to get in the way. Mike Francisco’s First Brigade had debauched into the main logistics area for the Chinese advance. The ground was carpeted with trucks and soldiers, but while most of them were armed, few were organized into cohesive tactical units, and that made all the difference. Colonel Miguel Francisco’s brigade of four battalions had been organized for combat with the infantry and tank battalions integrated into unified battalion task groups of mixed tanks and Bradleys, and these were sweeping across the ground like a harvesting machine in Kansas in August. If it was painted green, it was shot.
The monstrous Abrams main-battle tanks moved over the rolling ground like creatures from Jurassic Park—alien, evil, and unstoppable, their gun turrets traversing left and right—but without firing their main guns. The real work was being done by the tank commanders and their M2 .50 machine guns, which could turn any truck into an immobile collection of steel and canvas. Just a short burst into the engine made sure that the pistons would never move again, and the cargo in the back would remain where it was, for inspection by intelligence officers, or destruction by explosives-carrying engineer troops who came behind the tanks in their HMMWVs. Some resistance was offered by the Chinese soldiers, but only by the dumb ones, and never for long. Even those with man-portable anti-tank weapons rarely got close enough to use them, and those few who popped up from Wolfholes only scratched the paint on the tanks, and usually paid for their foolishness with their lives. At one point, a battalion of infantry did launch a deliberate attack, supported by mortars that forced the tank and Bradley crews to button up and reply with organized fire. Five minutes of 155-mm fire and a remorseless advance by the Bradleys, spitting fire from their chain guns and through the firing ports for the mounted infantry inside, made them look like fire-breathing dragons, and these dragons were not a sign of good luck for the Chinese soldiers. That battalion evaporated in twenty minutes, along with its dedicated but doomed commander.
Intact enemy armored vehicles were rarely seen by the advancing First Brigade. Where it went, Apache attack helicopters had gone before, looking for targets for their Hellfire missiles, and killing them before the ground troops could get close. All in all, it was a perfect military operation, totally unfair in the balance of forces. It wasn’t the least bit sporting, but a battlefield is not an Olympic stadium, and there were no uniformed officials to guard the supposed rules of fair play.
The only exciting thing was the appearance of a Chinese army helicopter, and two Apaches blazed after it and destroyed it with air-to-air missiles, dropping it in the Amur River close to the floating bridges, which were now empty of traffic but not yet destroyed.
What have you learned, Wei?” Marshal Luo asked, when he emerged from the conference room he’d used for his nap.
“The picture is still unclear in some respects, Comrade Minister,” the general answered.
“Then tell me what is clear,” Luo ordered.
“Very well. At sea, we have lost a number of ships. This evidently includes our ballistic missile submarine and its escorting hunter submarine, cause unknown, but their emergency beacons deployed and transmitted their programmed messages starting at about zero-two-hundred hours. Also lost are seven surface warships of various types from our South Sea Fleet. Also, seven fleet bases were attacked by American aircraft, believed to be naval carrier aircraft, along with a number of surface-to-air missile and radar sites on the southeastern coast. We’ve succeeded in shooting down a number of American aircraft, but in a large fighter battle, we took serious losses to our fighter regiments in that region.”
“Is the American navy attacking us?” Luo asked.
“It appears that they are, yes,” General Wei answered, choosing his words with care. “We estimate four of their aircraft carriers, judging by the number of aircraft involved. As I said, reports are that we handled them roughly, but our losses were severe as well.”
“What are their intentions?” the minister asked.
“Unclear. They’ve done serious damage to a number of bases, and I doubt we have a single surface ship surviving at sea. Our navy personnel have not had a good day,” Wei concluded. “But that is not really a matter of importance.”
“The attack on the missile submarine is,” Luo replied. “That is an attack on a strategic asset. That is something we must consider.” He paused. “Go on, what else?”
“General Qi of Sixty-fifth Army is missing and presumed dead, along with all of his senior staff. We’ve made repeated attempts to raise him by radio, with no result. The 191st Infantry Division was attacked last night by heavy forces of unknown identity. They sustained heavy losses due to artillery and aircraft, but two of their regiments report that they are holding their positions. The 735th Guards Infantry Regiment evidently took the brunt of the attack, and reports from there are fragmentary.
“The most serious news is from Harbin and Bei’an. Enemy aircraft attacked all of the railroad bridges in both cities, and all of them took damage. Rail traffic north has been interrupted. We’re trying now to determine how quickly it might be reestablished.”
“Is there any good news?” Marshal Luo asked.
“Yes, Comrade Minister. General Peng and his forces are getting ready now to resume their attack. We expect to have the Russian goldfield in our control by midday,” Wei answered, inwardly glad that he didn’t have to say what had happened to the logistical train behind Peng and his 34th Shock Army. Too much bad news could get the messenger killed, and he was the messenger.
“I want to talk to Peng. Get him on the phone,” Luo ordered.
“Telephone lines have been interrupted briefly, but we do have radio contact with him,” Wei told his superior.
“Then get me Peng on the radio,” Luo repeated his order.
What is it, Wa?” Peng asked. Couldn’t he even take a piss without interruption?
“Radio, it’s the Defense Minister,” his operations officer told him.
“Wonderful,” the general groused, heading back to his command track as he buttoned his fly. He ducked to get inside and lifted the microphone. “This is General Peng.”
“This is Marshal Luo. What is your situation?” the voice asked through the static.
“Comrade Marshal, we will be setting off in ten minutes. We have still not made contact with the enemy, and our reconnaissance has seen no sizable enemy formations in our area. Have you developed any intelligence we can use?”
“Be advised we have aerial photography of Russian mechanized units to your west, probably division strength. I would advise you to keep your mechanized forces together, and guard your left flank.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal, I am doing that,” Peng assured him. The real reason he stopped every day was to allow his divisions to close up, keeping his fist tight. Better yet, 29th Type A Group Army was right behind his if he needed support. “I recommend that 43rd Army be tasked to Hank guard.”
“I will give the order,” Luo promised. “How far will you go today?”
“Comrade Marshal, I will send a truckload of gold back to you this very evening. Question: What is this I’ve heard about damage to our line of supply?”
“There was an attack last night on some railroad bridges in Harbin and Bei’an, but nothing we can’t fix.”
“Very well. Comrade Marshal, I must see to my dispositions.”
“Carry on, then. Out.”
Peng set the microphone back in its holder. “Nothing he can’t fix, he says.”
“You know what those bridges are like. You’d need a nuclear weapon to hurt them,” Colonel Wa Cheng-Gong observed confidently.
“Yes, I would agree with that.” Peng stood, buttoned his tunic, and reached for a mug of morning tea. “Tell the advance guard to prepare to move out. I’m going up front this morning, Wa. I want to see this gold mine for myself.”
“How far up front?” the operations officer asked.
“With the lead elements. A good officer leads from the front, and I want to see how our people move. Our reconnaissance screen hasn’t detected anything, has it?”
“Well, no, Comrade General, but—”
“But what?” Peng demanded.
“But a prudent commander leaves leading to lieutenants and captains,” Wa pointed out.
“Wa, sometimes you talk like an old woman,” Peng chided.
There,” Yefremov said. ”They took the bait.”
It was just after midnight in Moscow, and the embassy of the People’s Republic of China had most of its lights off, but not all; more to the point, three windows had their lights on, and their shades fully open, and they were all in a row. It was just as perfect as what the Americans called a “sting” operation. He’d stood over Suvorov’s shoulder as he’d typed the message: I have the pieces in place now. I have the pieces in place now. If you wish for me to carry out the operation, leave three windows in a row with the lights on and the windows fully open. Yefremov had even had a television camera record the event, down to the point where the traitor Suvarov had tapped the ENTER key to send the letter to his Chink controller. And he’d gotten a TV news crew to record the event as well, because the Russian people seemed to trust the semi-independent media more than their government now, for some reason or other. Good, now they had proof positive that the Chinese government was conspiring to kill President Grushavoy. That would play well in the international press. And it wasn’t an accident. The windows all belonged to the Chief of Mission in the PRC embassy, and he was, right now, asleep in his bed. They’d made sure of that by calling him on the phone ten minutes earlier.
“So, what do we do now?”
“We tell the President, and then, I expect, we tell the TV newspeople. And we probably spare Suvarov’s life. I hope he likes it in the labor camp.”
“What about the killings?”
Yefremov shrugged. “He only killed a pimp and a whore. No great loss, is it?”
Senior Lieutenant Komanov had not exactly enjoyed his last four days, but at least they’d been spent profitably, training his men to shoot. The reservists, now known as BOYAR FORCE, had spent them doing gunnery, and they’d fired four basic loads of shells over that time, more than any of them had ever shot on active duty, but the Never Depot had been well stocked with shells. Officers assigned to the formation by Far East Command told them that the Americans had moved by to their south the previous day, and that their mission was to slide north of them, and do it today. Only thirty kilometers stood between them and the Chinese, and he and his men were ready to pay them a visit. The throaty rumble of his own diesel engine was answered by the thunder of two hundred others, and BOYAR started moving northeast through the hills.
Peng and his command section raced forward, calling ahead on their radios to clear the way, and the military-police troops doing traffic control waved them through. Soon they reached the command section of the 302nd Armored, his leading “fist” formation, commanded by Major General Ge Li, a squat officer whose incipient corpulence made him look rather like one of his tanks.
“Are you ready, Ge?” Peng asked. The man was well-named for his task. “Ge” had the primary meaning of “spear.”
“We are ready,” the tanker replied. “My leading regiments are turning over and straining at the leash.”
“Well, shall we observe from the front together?”
“Yes!” Ge jumped aboard his own command tank—he preferred this to a personnel carrier, despite the poorer radios, and led the way forward. Peng immediately established a direct radio connection with his subordinate.
“How far to the front?”
“Three kilometers. The reconnaissance people are moving now, and they are another two kilometers ahead.”
“Lead on, Ge,” Peng urged. “I want to see that gold mine.”
It was a good spot, Aleksandrov thought, unless the enemy got his artillery set up sooner than expected, and he hadn’t seen or heard Chinese artillery yet. He was on the fairly steep reverse side of an open slope that faced south, rather like a lengthy ramp, perhaps three kilometers in length, not unlike a practice shooting range at a regimental base. The sun was starting to crest the eastern horizon, and they could see now, which always made soldiers happy. Pasha had stolen a spare coat and laid his rifle across it, standing in the open top hatch of the BRM, looking through the telescopic sight of his rifle.
“So, what was it like to be a sniper against the Germans?” Aleksandrov asked once he’d settled himself in.
“It was good hunting. I tried to stick to killing officers. You have more effect on them that way,” Gogol explained. “A German private—well, he was just a man—an enemy, of course, but he probably had no more wish to be on a battlefield than I did. But an officer, those were the ones who directed the killing of my comrades, and when you got one of them, you confused the enemy.”
“How many?”
“Lieutenants, eighteen. Captains, twelve. Only three majors, but nine colonels. I decapitated nine Fritz regiments. Then, of course, sergeants and machine-gun crews, but I don’t remember them as well as the colonels. I can still see every one of those, my boy,” Gogol said, tapping the side of his head.
“Did they ever try to shoot at you?”
“Mainly with artillery,” Pasha answered. “A sniper affects the morale of a unit. Men do not like being hunted like game. But the Germans didn’t use snipers as skillfully as we did, and so they answered me with field guns. That,” he admitted, “could be frightening, but it really told me how much the Fritzes feared me,” Pavel Petrovich concluded with a cruel smile.
“There!” Buikov pointed. Just off the trees to the left.
“Ahh,” Gogol said, looking through his gunsight. “Ahh, yes.”
Aleksandrov laid his binoculars on the fleeting shape. It was the vertical steel side on a Chinese infantry carrier, one of those he’d been watching for some days now. He lifted his radio. “This is GREEN WOLF ONE. Enemy in sight, map reference two-eight-five, nine-zero-six. One infantry track coming north. Will advise.”
“Understood, GREEN WOLF,” the radio crackled back.
“Now, we must just be patient,” Fedor Il’ych said. He stretched, touching the camouflage net that he’d ordered set up the moment they’d arrived in this place. To anyone more than three hundred meters away, he and his men were just part of the hill crest. Next to him, Sergeant Buikov lit a cigarette, blowing out the smoke.
“That is bad for us,” Gogol advised. “It alerts the game.”
“They have little noses,” Buikov replied.
“Yes, and the wind is in our favor,” the old hunter conceded.
Lordy, Lordy,” Major Tucker observed. ”They’ve bunched up some.”
It was Grace Kelly again, looking down on the battlefield-to-be like Pallas Athena looking down on the plains of Troy. And about as pitilessly. The ground had opened up a little, and the corridor they moved across was a good three kilometers wide, enough for a battalion of tanks to travel line-abreast, a regiment in columns of battalions, three lines of thirty-five tanks each with tracked infantry carriers interspersed with them. Colonels Aliyev and Tolkunov stood behind him, speaking in Russian over their individual telephones to the 265th Motor Rifle’s command post. In the night, the entire 201st had finally arrived, plus leading elements of the 80th and 44th. There were now nearly three divisions to meet the advancing Chinese, and included in that were three full divisional artillery sets, plus, Tucker saw for the first time, a shitload of attack helicopters sitting on the ground thirty kilometers back from the point of expected contact. Joe Chink was driving into a motherf*cker of an ambush. Then a shadow crossed under Grace Kelly, out of focus, but something moving fast.
It was two squadrons of F-16C fighter-bombers, and they were armed with Smart Pigs.
That was the nickname for J-SOW, the Joint Stand-Off Weapon. The night before, other F-16s, the CG version, the new and somewhat downsized version of the F-4G Wild Weasel, had gone into China and struck at the line of border radar transmitters, hitting them with HARM antiradar missiles and knocking most of them off the air. That denied the Chinese foreknowledge of the inbound strike. They had been guided by two E-3B Sentry aircraft, and protected by three squadrons of F-15C Eagle air-superiority fighters in the event some Chinese fighters appeared again to die, but there had been little such fighter activity in the past thirty-six hours. The Chinese fighter regiments had paid a bloody price for their pride, and were staying close to home in what appeared to be a defense mode—on the principle that if you weren’t attacking, then you were defending. In fact they were doing little but flying standing patrols over their own bases—that’s how thoroughly they had been whipped by American and Russian fighters—and that left the air in American and Russian control, which was going to be bad news for the People’s Liberation Army.
The F-16s were at thirty thousand feet, holding to the east. They were several minutes early for the mission, and circled while awaiting word to attack. Some concertmaster was stage-managing this, they all thought. They hoped he didn’t break his little baton-stick-thing.
Getting closer,” Pasha observed with studied nonchalance.
“Range?” Aleksandrov asked the men down below in the track.
“Twenty-one hundred meters, within range,” Buikov reported from inside the gun turret. “The fox and the gardener approach, Comrade Captain.”
“Leave them be for the moment, Boris Yevgeniyevich.”
“As you say, Comrade Captain.” Buikov was comfortable with the no-shoot rule, for once.
How much farther to the reconnaissance screen?” Peng asked.
“Two more kilometers,” Ge replied over the radio. “But that might not be a good idea.”
“Ge, have you turned into an old woman?” Peng asked lightly.
“Comrade, it is the job of lieutenants to find the enemy, not the job of senior generals,” the division commander replied in a reasonable voice.
“Is there any reason to believe the enemy is nearby?”
“We are in Russia, Peng. They’re here somewhere.”
“He is correct, Comrade General,” Colonel Wa Cheng-gong pointed out to his commander.
“Rubbish. Go forward. Tell the reconnaissance element to stop and await us,” Peng ordered. “A good commander leads from the front!” he announced over the radio.
“Oh, shit,” Ge observed in his tank. “Peng wants to show off his ji-ji. Move out,” he ordered his driver, a captain (his entire crew was made of officers). “Let’s lead the emperor to the recon screen.”
The brand-new T-98 tank surged forward, throwing up two rooster tails of dirt as it accelerated. General Ge was in the commander’s hatch, with a major acting as gunner, a duty he practiced diligently because it was his job to keep his general alive in the event of contact with the enemy. For the moment, it meant going ahead of the senior general with blood in his eye.
Why did they stop?” Buikov asked. The PLA tracks had suddenly halted nine hundred meters off, all five of them, and now the crews dismounted, manifestly to take a stretch, and five of them lit up smokes.
“They must be waiting for something,” the captain thought aloud. Then he got on the radio. “GREEN WOLF here, the enemy has halted about a kilometer south of us. They’re just sitting still.”
“Have they seen you?”
“No, they’ve dismounted to take a piss, looks like, just standing there. We have them in range, but I don’t want to shoot until they’re closer,” Aleksandrov reported.
“Very well, take your time. There’s no hurry here. They’re walking into the parlor very nicely.”
“Understood. Out.” He set the mike down. “Is it time for morning break?”
“They haven’t been doing that the last four days, Comrade Captain,” Buikov reminded his boss.
“They appear relaxed enough.”
“I could kill any of them now,” Gogol said, “but they’re all privates, except for that one ...”
“That’s the fox. He’s a lieutenant, likes to run around a lot. The other officer’s the gardener. He likes playing with plants,” Buikov told the old man.
“Killing a lieutenant’s not much better than killing a corporal,” Gogol observed. “There’s too many of them.”
“What’s this?” Buikov said from his gunner’s seat. “Tank, enemy tank coming around the left edge, range five thousand.”
“I see it!” Aleksandrov reported. “... Just one? Only one tank—oh, all right, there’s a carrier with it—”
“It’s a command track, look at all those antennas!” Buikov called.
The gunner’s sight was more powerful than Aleksandrov’s binoculars. The captain couldn’t confirm that for another minute or so. “Oh, yes, that’s a command track, all right. I wonder who’s in it ... ”
There they are,” the driver called back. ”The reconnaissance section, two kilometers ahead, Comrade General.”
“Excellent,” Peng observed. Standing up to look out of the top of his command track with his binoculars, good Japanese ones from Nikon. There was Ge in his command tank, thirty meters off to the right, protecting him as though he were a good dog outside the palace of some ancient nobleman. Peng couldn’t see anything to be concerned about. It was a clear day, with some puffy white clouds at three thousand meters or so. If there were American fighters up there, he wasn’t going to worry about them. Besides, they’d done no ground-attacking that he’d heard about, except to hit those bridges back at Harbin, and one might as well attack a mountain as those things, Peng was sure. He had to hold on to the sill of the hatch lest the pitching of the vehicle smash him against it—it was a track specially modified for senior officers, but no one had thought to make it
safer to stand in, he thought sourly. He wasn’t some peasant-private who could smash his head with no consequence ... Well, in any case, it was a good day to be a soldier, in the field leading his men. A fair day, and no enemy in sight.
“Pull up alongside the reconnaissance track,” he ordered his driver.
Who the hell is this?” Captain Aleksandrov wondered aloud. ”Four big antennas, at least a division commander,” Buikov thought aloud. ”My thirty will settle his hash.”
“No, no, let’s let Pasha have him if he gets out”
Gogol had anticipated that. He was resting his arms on the steel top of the BRM, tucking the rifle in tight to his shoulder. The only thing in his way was the loose weave of the camouflage netting, and that wasn’t an obstacle to worry about, the old marksman was sure.
“Stopping to see the fox?” Buikov said next.
“Looks that way,” the captain agreed.
Comrade General!” the young lieutenant called in surprise.
“Where’s the enemy, Boy?” Peng asked loudly in return.
“General, we haven’t seen much this morning. Some tracks in the ground, but not even any of that for the past two hours.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not a thing,” the lieutenant replied.
“Well, I thought there’d be something around.” Peng put his foot in the leather stirrup and climbed to the top of his command vehicle.
It’s a general, has to be, look at that clean uniform!” Buikov told the others as he slewed his turret around to center his sight on the man eight hundred meters away. It was the same in any army. Generals never got dirty.
“Pasha,” Aleksandrov asked, “ever kill an enemy general before?”
“No,” Gogol admitted, drawing the rifle in very tight and allowing for the range....
Better to go to that ridgeline, but our orders were to stop at once,” the lieutenant told the general.
“That’s right,” Peng agreed. He took out his Nikon binoculars and trained them on the ridge, perhaps eight hundred meters off. Nothing to see except for that one bush ...
Then there was a flash—
“Yes!” Gogol said the moment the trigger broke. Two seconds, about, for the bullet to—
They’d never hear the report of the shot over the sound of their diesel engines, but Colonel Wa heard the strange, wet thud, and his head turned to see General Peng’s face twist into surprise rather than pain, and Peng grunted from the sharp blow to the center of his chest, and then his hands started coming down, pulled by the additional weight of the binoculars—and then his body started down, falling off the top of the command track through the hatch into the radio-filled interior.
That got him,” Gogol said positively. ”He’s dead.” He almost added that it might be fun to skin him and lay his hide in the river for a final swim and a gold coating, but, no, you only did that to wolves, not people—not even Chinese.
“Buikov, take those tracks!”
“Gladly, Comrade Captain,” and the sergeant squeezed the trigger, and the big machine gun spoke.
They hadn’t seen or heard the shot that had killed Peng, but there was no mistaking the machine cannon that fired now. Two of the reconnaissance tracks exploded at once, but then everything started moving, and fire was returned.
“Major!” General Ge called.
“Loading HEAT!” The gunner punched the right button, but the autoloader, never as fast as a person, took its time to ram the projective and then the propellant case into the breech.
Back us up!” Aleksandrov ordered loudly. The diesel engine was already running, and the BRM’s transmission set in reverse. The corporal in the driver’s seat floored the pedal and the carrier jerked backward. The suddenness of it nearly lost Gogol over the side, but Aleksandrov grabbed his arm and dragged him down inside, tearing his skin in the process. ”Go north!” the captain ordered next.
“I got three of the bastards!” Buikov said. Then the sky was rent by a crash overhead. Something had gone by too fast to see, but not too fast to hear.
“That tank gunner knows his business,” Aleksandrov observed. “Corporal, get us out of here!”
“Working on it, Comrade Captain.”
“GREEN WOLF to command!” the captain said next into the radio.
“Yes, GREEN WOLF, report.”
“We just killed three enemy tracks, and I think we got a senior officer. Pasha, Sergeant Gogol, that is, killed a Chinese general officer, or so it appeared.”
“He was a general, all right,” Buikov agreed. “The shoulder boards were pure gold, and that was a command track with four big radio antennas.”
“Understood. What are you doing now, GREEN WOLF?”
“We’re getting the f*ck away. I think we’ll be seeing more Chinks soon.”
“Agreed, GREEN WOLF. Proceed to divisional CP. Out.”
“Yuriy Andreyevich, you will have heavy contact in a few minutes. What is your plan?”
“I want to volley-fire my tanks before firing my artillery. Why spoil the surprise, Gennady?” Sinyavskiy asked cruelly. “We are ready for them here.”
“Understood. Good luck, Yuriy.”
“And what of the other missions?”
“BOYAR is moving now, and the Americans are about to deploy their magical pigs. If you can handle the leading Chinese elements, those behind ought to be roughly handled.”
“You can rape their daughters for all I care, Gennady.”
“That is nekulturniy, Yuriy. Perhaps their wives,” he suggested, adding, “We are watching you on the television now.”
“Then I will smile for the cameras,” Sinyavskiy promised.
The orbiting F-16 fighters were under the tactical command of Major General Gus Wallace, but he, at the moment, was under the command—or at least operating under the direction—of a Russian, General-Colonel Gennady Bondarenko, who was in turn guided by the action of this skinny young Major Tucker and Grace Kelly, a soulless drone hovering over the battlefield.
“There they go, General,” Tucker said, as the leading Chinese echelons resumed their drive north.
“I think it is time, then.” He looked to Colonel Aliyev, who nodded agreement.
Bondarenko lifted the satellite phone. “General Wallace?”
“I’m here.”
“Please release your aircraft.”
“Roger that. Out.” And Wallace shifted phone receivers. “EAGLE ONE, this is ROUGHRIDER. Execute, execute, execute. Acknowledge.”
“Roger that, sir, copy your order to execute. Executing now. Out.” And the colonel on the lead AWACS shifted to a different frequency: “CADILLAC LEAD, this is EAGLE ONE. Execute your attack. Over.”
“Roger that,” the colonel heard. “Going down now. Out.”
The F-16s had been circling above the isolated clouds. Their threat receivers chirped a little bit, reporting the emissions of SAM radars somewhere down there, but the types indicated couldn’t reach this high, and their jammer pods were all on anyway. On command, the sleek fighters changed course for the battlefield far below and to their west. Their GPS locators told them exactly where they were, and they also knew where their targets were, and the mission became a strictly technical exercise.
Under the wings of each aircraft were the Smart Pigs, four to the fighter, and with forty-eight fighters, that came to 192 J-SOWs. Each of these was a canister thirteen feet long and not quite two feet wide, filled with BLU-108 submunitions, twenty per container. The fighter pilots punched the release triggers, dropped their bombs, and then angled for home, letting the robots do the rest of the work. The Dark Star tapes would later tell them how they’d done.
The Smart Pigs separated from the fighters, extended their own little wings to guide themselves the rest of the way to the target area. They knew this information, having been programmed by the fighters and were now able to follow guidance from their own GPS receivers. This they did, acting in accordance with their own onboard minicomputers, until each reached a spot five thousand feet over their designated segment of the battlefield. They didn’t know that this was directly over the real estate occupied by the Chinese 29th Type A Group Army and its three heavy divisions, which included nearly seven hundred main-battle tanks, three hundred armored personnel carriers, and a hundred mobile guns. That made a total of roughly a thousand targets for the nearly four thousand descending submunitions. But the falling bomblets were guided, too, and each had a seeker looking for heat of the sort radiated by an operating tank, personnel carrier, self-propelled gun, or truck. There were a lot of them to look for.
No one saw them coming. They were small, no larger, really, than a common crow, and falling rapidly; they were also painted white, which helped them blend in to the morning sky. Each had a rudimentary steering mechanism, and at an altitude of two thousand feet they started looking for and homing in on targets. Their downward speed was such that a minor deflection of their control vanes was sufficient to get them close, and close meant straight down.
They exploded in bunches, almost in the same instant. Each contained a pound and a half of high-explosive, the heat from which melted the metal casing, which then turned into a projectile—the process was called “self-forging”—which blazed downward at a speed of ten thousand feet per second. The armor on the top of a tank is always the thinnest, and five times the thickness would have made no difference. Of the 921 tanks on the field, 762 took hits, and the least of these destroyed the vehicles’ diesel engine. Those less fortunate took hits through the turret, which killed the crews at once and/or ignited the ammunition storage, converting each armored vehicle into a small man-fabricated volcano. Just that quickly, three mechanized divisions were changed into one badly shaken and disorganized brigade. The infantry carriers fared no better, and it was worse for the trucks, most of them carrying ammunition or other flammable supplies.
All in all, it took less than ninety seconds to turn 29th Type A Group Army into a thinly spread junkyard and funeral pyre.
Holy God,” Ryan said. ”Is this for real?”
“Seeing is believing. Jack, when they came to me with the idea for J-SOW, I thought it had to be something from a science-fiction book. Then they demo’d the submunitions out at China Lake, and I thought, Jesus, we don’t need the Army or the Marines anymore. Just send over some F-18s and then a brigade of trucks full of body bags and some ministers to pray over them. Eh, Mickey?”
“It’s some capability,” General Moore agreed. He shook his head. “Damn, just like the tests.”
“Okay, what’s happening next?”
Next” was just off the coast near Guangszhou. Two Aegis cruisers, Mobile Bay and Princeton, plus the destroyers Fletcher, Fife, and John Young, steamed in line-ahead formation out of the morning fog and turned broadside to the shore. There was actually a decent beach at this spot. There was nothing much behind it, just a coastal-defense missile battery that the fighter-bombers had immolated a few hours before. To finish that job, the ships trained their guns to port and let loose a barrage of five-inch shells. The crack and thunder of the gunfire could be heard on shore, as was the shriek of the shells passing overhead, and the explosions of the detonations. That included one missile that the bombs of the previous night had missed, plus the crew getting it ready for launch. People living nearby saw the gray silhouettes against the morning sky, and many of them got on the telephone to report what they saw, but being civilians, they reported the wrong thing, of course.
It was just after nine in the morning in Beijing when the Politburo began its emergency session. Some of those present had enjoyed a restful night’s sleep, and then been disturbed by the news that came over the phone at breakfast. Those better informed had hardly slept at all past three in the morning and, though more awake than their colleagues, were not in a happier mood.
“Well, Luo, what is happening?” Interior Minister Tong Jie asked.
“Our enemies counterattacked last night. This sort of thing we must expect, of course,” he admitted in as low-key a voice as circumstances permitted.
“How serious were these counterattacks?” Tong asked.
“The most serious involved some damage to railroad bridges in Harbin and Bei’an, but repairs are underway.”
“I hope so. The repair effort will require some months,” Qian Kun interjected.
“Who said that!” Luo demanded harshly.
“Marshal, I supervised the construction of two of those bridges. This morning I called the division superintendent for our state railroad in Harbin. All six of them have been destroyed—the piers on both sides of the river are totally wrecked; it will take over a month just to clear the debris. I admit this surprised me. Those bridges were very sturdily built, but the division superintendent tells me they are quite beyond repair.”
“And who is this defeatist?” Luo demanded.
“He is a loyal party member of long standing and a very competent engineer whom you will not threaten in my presence!” Qian shot back. “There is room in this building for many things, but there is not room here for a lie!”
“Come now, Qian,” Zhang Han Sen soothed. “We need not have that sort of language here. Now, Luo, how bad is it really?”
“I have army engineers heading there now to make a full assessment of the damage and to commence repairs. I am confident that we can restore service shortly. We have skilled bridging engineers, you know.”
“Luo,” Qian said, “your magic army bridges can support a tank or a truck, yes, but not a locomotive that weighs two hundred tons pulling a train weighing four thousand. Now, what else has gone wrong with your Siberian adventure?”
“It is foolish to think that the other side will simply lie down and die. Of course they fight back. But we have superior forces in theater, and we will smash them. We will have that new gold mine in our pocket before this meeting is over,” the Defense Minister promised. But the pledge seemed hollow to some of those around the table.
“What else?” Qian persisted.
“The American naval air forces attacked last night and succeeded in sinking some of our South Sea Fleet units.”
“Which units?”
“Well, we have no word from our missile submarine, and—”
“They sank our only missile submarine?” Premier Xu asked. “How is this possible? Was it sitting in harbor?”
“No,” Luo admitted. “It was at sea, in company with another nuclear submarine, and that one is also possibly lost.”
“Marvelous!” Tong Jie observed. “Now the Americans strike at our strategic assets! That’s half our nuclear deterrent gone, and that was the safe half of it. What goes on, Luo? What is happening now?”
At his seat, Fang Gan took note of the fact that Zhang was strangely subdued. Ordinarily he would have leaped to Luo’s defense, but except for the one conciliatory comment, he was leaving the Defense Minister to flap in the wind. What might that mean?
“What do we tell the people?” Fang asked, trying to center the meeting on something important.
“The people will believe what they are told,” Luo said.
And everyone nodded nervous agreement on that one. They did control the media. The American CNN news service had been turned off all over the People’s Republic, along with all Western news services, even in Hong Kong, which usually enjoyed much looser reins than the rest of the country. But the thing no one addressed, but everyone knew to worry about, was that every soldier had a mother and a father who’d notice when the mail home stopped coming. Even in a nation as tightly controlled as the PRC, you couldn’t stop the Truth from getting out—or rumors, which, though false, could be even worse than an adverse Truth. People would believe things other than those they were told to believe, if those other things made more sense than the Official Truth proclaimed by their government in Beijing.
Truth was something so often feared in this room, Fang realized, and for the first time in his life he wondered why that had to be. If the Truth was something to fear, might that mean they were doing something wrong in here? But, no, that couldn’t be true, could it? Didn’t they have a perfect political model for reality? Wasn’t that Mao’s bequest to their country?
But if that were true, why did they fear having the people find out what was really happening?
Could it be that they, the Politburo members, could handle the Truth and the peasantry could not?
But then, if they feared having the peasantry get hold of the Truth, didn’t that have to mean that the Truth was harmful to the people sitting in this room? And if the Truth was a danger to the peasants and workers, then didn’t they have to be wrong?
Fang suddenly realized how dangerous was the thought that had just entered his mind.
“Luo, what does it mean to us strategically,” the Interior Minister asked, “if the Americans remove half of our strategic weapons? Was that done deliberately? If so, for what cause?”
“Tong, you do not sink a ship by accident, and so, yes, the attack on our missile submarine must have been a deliberate act,” Luo answered.
“So, the Americans deliberately removed from the table one of our only methods for attacking them directly? Why? Was that not a political act, not just a military one?”
The Defense Minister nodded. “Yes, you could see it that way.”
“Can we expect the Americans to strike at us directly? To this date they have struck some bridges, but what about our government and vital industries? Might they strike directly at us?” Tong went on.
“That would be unwise. We have missiles targeted at their principal cities. They know this. Since they disarmed themselves of nuclear missiles some years ago—well, they still have nuclear bombs that can be delivered by bombers and tactical aircraft, of course, but not the ability to strike at us in the way that we could strike at them—and the Russians, of course.”
“How sure are we that they are disarmed?” Tong persisted.
“If they have ballistic arms, they’ve concealed it from everyone,” Tan Deshi told them all. Then he shook his head decisively. “No, they have no more.”
“And that gives us an advantage, doesn’t it?” Zhong asked, with a ghoulish smile.
USS Gettysburg was alongside the floating pier in the York River. Once the warheads for Trident missiles had been stored here, and there must still have been some awaiting dismantlement, because there were Marines to be seen, and only Marines were entrusted to guard the Navy’s nuclear weapons. But none of those were on the pier. No, the trucks that rolled out from the weapons depot were carrying long, square cross-sectioned boxes that contained SM-2 ER Block-IVD surface-to-air missiles. When the trucks got to the cruiser, a traveling crane lifted them up to the foredeck of the ship, where, with the assistance of some strong-backed sailors, the boxes were rapidly lowered into the vertical launch cells of the forward missile launcher. It took about four minutes per box, Gregory saw, with the captain pacing his wheelhouse all the while. Gregory knew why. He had an order to take his cruiser right to Washington, D.C., and the order had the word “expedite” on it. Evidently, “expedite” was a word with special meaning for the United States Navy, like having your wife call for you from the baby’s room at two in the morning. The tenth box was duly lowered, and the crane swung clear of the ship.
“Mr. Richardson,” Captain Blandy said to the Officer of the Deck.
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant answered.
“Let’s get under way.”
Gregory walked out on the bridge wing to watch. The Special Sea Detail cast off the six-inch hawsers, and scarcely had they fallen clear of the cleats on the main deck when the cruiser’s auxiliary power unit started pushing the ten thousand tons of gray steel away from the floating pier. And the ship was for sure in a hurry. She was not fifteen feet away when the main engines started turning, and less than a minute after that, Gregory heard the WHOOSH of the four jet-turbines taking a big gulp of air, and he could feel the ship accelerate for the Chesapeake Bay, almost like being on a city transit bus.
“Dr. Gregory?” Captain Blandy had stuck his head out the pilothouse door.
“Yeah, Captain?”
“You want to get below and do your software magic on our birds?”
“You bet.” He knew the way, and in three minutes was at the computer terminal which handled that task.
“Hey, Doc,” Senior Chief Leek said, sitting down next to him. “All ready? I’m supposed to help.”
“Okay, you can watch, I suppose.” The only problem was that it was a clunky system, about as user-friendly as a chain saw, but as Leek had told him a week before, this was the flower of 1975 technology, back when an Apple-II with 64K of RAM was the cat’s own ass. Now he had more computing power in his wristwatch. Each missile had to be upgraded separately, and each was a seven-step process.
“Hey, wait a minute,” Gregory objected. The screen wasn’t right.
“Doc, we loaded six Block-IVD. The other two are stock SM-2 ER Block IIIC radar-homers. What can I tell you, Cap’n Blandy’s conservative.”
“So I only do the upgrade on holes one through six?”
“No, do ’em all. It’ll just ignore the changes you made to the infrared homing code. The chips on the birds can handle the extra code, no sweat, right, Mr. Olson?”
“Correct, Senior Chief,” Lieutenant Olson confirmed. “The missiles are current technology even if the computer system isn’t. It probably costs more to make missile seeker-heads with current technology that can talk to this old kludge than it would to buy a new Gateway to upgrade the whole system, not to mention having a more reliable system overall, but you’ll have to talk to NAVSEA about that.”
“Who?” Gregory asked.
“Naval Sea Systems Command. They’re the technical geniuses who won’t put stabilizers on these cruisers. They think it’s good for us to puke in a seaway.”
“Feathermerchants,” Leek explained. “Navy’s full of ’em—on land, anyway.” The ship heeled strongly to starboard.
“Cap’n’s in a hurry, ain’t he?” Gregory observed. Gettysburg was making a full-speed right-angle turn to port.
“Well, SACLANT said it’s the SecDef’s idea. I guess that makes it important,” Mr. Olson told their guest.
I think this is imprudent,” Fang told them all.
“Why is that?” Luo asked.
“Is fueling the missiles necessary? Is there not a danger of provocation?”
“I suppose this is a technical matter,” Qian said. “As I recall, once you fuel them, you cannot keep them fueled for more than—what? Twelve hours?”
The technocrat caught the Defense Minister off guard with that question. He didn’t know the answer. “I will have to consult with Second Artillery for that,” he admitted.
“So, then, you will not prepare them for launch until we have a chance to consider the matter?” Qian asked.
“Why—of course not,” Luo promised.
“And so the real problem is, how do we tell the people what has transpired in Siberia?”
“The people will believe what we tell them to believe!” Luo said yet again.
“Comrades,” Qian said, struggling to keep his voice reasonable, “we cannot conceal the rising of the sun. Neither can we conceal the loss of our rail-transport system. Nor can we conceal the large-scale loss of life. Every soldier has parents, and when enough of them realize their son is lost, they will speak of it, and the word will get out. We must face facts here. It is better, I think, to tell the people that there is a major battle going on, and there has been loss of life. To proclaim that we are winning when we may not be is dangerous for all of us.”
“You say the people will rise up?” Tong Jie asked.
“No, but I say there could be dissatisfaction and unrest, and it is in our collective interest to avoid that, is it not?” Qian asked the assembly.
“How will adverse information get out?” Luo asked.
“It frequently does,” Qian told them. “We can prepare for it, and mitigate the effect of adverse information, or we can try to withstand it. The former offers mild embarrassment to us. The latter, if it fails, could be more serious.”
“The TV will show what we wish them to show, and the people will see nothing else. Besides, General Peng and his army group are advancing even as we speak.”
What do they call it?”
“This one’s Grace Kelly. The other two are Marilyn Monroe and—can’t remember,” General Moore said. “Anyway, they named ’em for movie stars.”
“And how do they transmit?”
“The Dark Star uploads directly to a communications satellite, encrypted, of course, and we distribute it out of Fort Belvoir.”
“So, we can send it out any way we want?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay, Ed, the Chinese are telling their people what?”
“They started off by saying the Russians committed a border intrusion and they counterattacked. They’re also saying that they’re kicking Ivan’s ass.”
“Well, that’s not true, and it’ll be especially untrue when they reach the Russian stop-line. That Bondarenko guy’s really played his cards beautifully. They’re pretty strung out. We’ve chopped their supply line for fair, and they’re heading into a real motherf*cker of an ambush,” the DCI told them. “How about it, General?”
“The Chinese just don’t know what’s ahead of them. You know, out at the NTC we keep teaching people that he who wins the reconnaissance battle wins the war. The Russians know what’s happening. The Chinese do not. My God, this Dark Star has really exceeded our expectations.”
“It’s some shiny new toy, Mickey,” Jackson agreed. “Like going to a Vegas casino when you’re able to read the cards halfway through the deck. You just can’t hardly lose this way.”
The President leaned forward. “You know, one of the reasons we took it on the chin with Vietnam is how the people got to see the war every night on Huntley-Brinkley. How will it affect the Chinese if their people see the war the same way, but live this time?”
“The battle that’s coming? It’ll shake them up a lot,” Ed Foley thought. “But how do we—oh, oh, yeah ... Holy shit, Jack, are you serious?”
“Can we do it?” Ryan asked.
“Technically? It’s child’s play. My only beef is that it really lets people know one of our capabilities. This is sensitive stuff, I mean, right up there with the performance of our reconnaissance satellites. It’s not the sort of thing you just let out.”
“Why not? Hell, couldn’t some university duplicate the optics?” the President asked.
“Well, yeah, I guess. The imagery systems are good, but they’re not all that new a development, except some of the thermal systems, but even so—”
“Ed, let’s say we can shock them into stopping the war. How many lives would it save?”
“Quite a few,” the DCI admitted. “Thousands. Maybe tens of thousands.”
“Including some of our people?”
“Yes, Jack, including some of ours.”
“And from a technical point of view, it’s really child’s play?”
“Yes, it’s not technically demanding at all.”
“Then turn the children loose, Ed. Right now,” Ryan ordered.
“Yes, Mr. President.”