“I’m glad to see you’re still among the living, Brigadier.”
“Me, too, Professor. I’d like to chat, but I have too much to do. We’re getting a respite with his storm, but no more than that. When it’s done, we’re going to slug it out with a million Chinese.”
“As many as that?” asked Stan.
“Maybe not quite,” said Ramos, “but it feels like it. No matter how many we kill—and I’ve been killing a lot of them—they just keep coming. Now go on, go home and sleep in your bed for a change. Then get ready for the fight of your life.”
Stan stared at the small brigadier. He had questions for the man. Instead of asking any, he yawned. Before he slumped over, he needed to show the mechanics things about the three Abrams.
“All right,” he told the chief mechanic. “If you’ll step over here, I’ll show you the first problem.”
-16-
Ice War
ARCTIC OCEAN
General Shin Nung of the Chinese Cross-Polar Taskforce paced outside on the pack ice between several of his snowtanks. Impotent anger gripped him, it had been for several weeks now. Why had they even given him command of the taskforce if they allowed East Lightning Commissar Yongzheng veto power over his decisions?
The commissar was militarily a fool, an incompetent and a coward. The Americans had used a nuclear torpedo, destroying a forward supply base. Chinese submarines now hunted the Americans under the pack ice. So far, it had kept the enemy from using another such weapon. Meanwhile, American Special Forces driving snowmobiles had raided other supply dumps. Those teams likely also spotted for the submarines.
Because of nuclear weapons, Nung’s fighters and bombers flew from base camps hundreds of kilometers away from where they should be. It took them longer to reach the North Slope now and engage the American aircraft. Because of the distance, the Chinese planes had a much shorter window over the targets. Nung had ordered the airstrips moved closer, but the Air Force general in charge of the planes had refused, saying he couldn’t risk it until the American snowmobile teams were destroyed. Foolishly and by now predictably, Commissar Yongzheng had agreed with the man’s cowardly decision.
Nung had an insane desire to draw his pistol and empty the clip into the ice. Despite the nuclear-tipped torpedo and snowmobiles, Commissar Yongzheng had insisted they follow Army doctrine on a cross-polar assault.
Yet why bother with forward supply dumps now? It would have been better by far to allow the supplies to gather in one location four hundred kilometers from the coast. Once the tail coiled up and the formations gathered, they would spring to Dead Horse and ANWR. It was a risk, and the American submarines might find the large base and launch their torpedoes. But with everything in one locale, every spotter and helicopter could comb the ice for the snowmobile teams. Locate and destroy. As it was, the crafty Americans used the many seams between small formations to slip here and there. To be sure, they had killed seven such snowmobile teams already, but the American submarines kept launching more.
Taunting Commissar Yongzheng had insisted they scatter the taskforce in order to make it difficult for the Americans to take them out at a blow. What had happened instead was a hopeless muddle, with too much fuel used scattering units and transshipping supplies back and forth in a useless game of chess with the Americans. Now supplies were drying up and they were no closer to the Alaskan coast.
Nung shook his head as a cargo helicopter came in from the north for a landing. The last thing he wanted to do now was enter the command tank with Yongzheng. He loathed the East Lightning commissar. All these fine vehicles given him to command and he was shackled in their use. It simply made no sense!
He had done a Hannibal, referring to the great ancient general who had brought his elephants and cavalry over the Alps. The alpine, winter trek had cost Hannibal dearly, and it had cost the cross-polar taskforce. The deadly weather and extreme distance had brought endless headaches and equipment failures. Now the supplies from Ambarchik across this stretched line had dropped to a trickle. That had surprised Nung most of all. He had left Lieutenant-General Bojing in charge back at base. What could have happened to turn Bojing into such an incompetent?
Heavyset Nung stared at the command snowtank. These specialized vehicles were a marvel of Chinese engineering. Each snowtank had two main sections connected by a hydraulic ram. To facilitate climbing snowy slopes such as awaited them in Alaska, the center of gravity was just back of center. Normal tanks would flip or slide on such snowy terrain, quickly rendering them helpless. The snowtank had four independent track sections that helped stabilize the vehicle. The tracks themselves were rubber-rimmed to prevent the wheels turning the tracks from freezing. The articulated tank with its aluminum alloy treads and high-adhesion track-cleats allowed it to travel forty kph on hard ice or flat rock. On the pack ice, it only moved at a miserable seven kph. Otherwise, the snowtank would create too great of a wave-action under the ice. With its weight, that wave-action could crack or splinter the ice. The snowtank’s rear compartment was armed with an ATGM-launcher. The front used the same type of cannon as the hovertanks: a 76mm gun with rocket-assisted shells. The snowtank was built light, with a ground pressure of two psi, one third that of a Marauder tank.
The cargo helicopter from the north had landed. The side door opened and men rushed out, shouting his name.
General Nung sighed and waved. Now what? Soon, the men stumped near. Nung looked in shock. Despite the parka, hood and goggles, one of the men reminded him of Bojing, his logistics master back at Ambarchik Base. Then the man shouted his name, confirming his identity.
“Bojing?” asked Nung. “What in blazes are you doing here on the ice? You’re supposed to be back at Ambarchik, making sure I receive my supplies.”
Bojing told him an incredible tale. It began with Ruling Committee Minister Jian Shihong sending Bojing out here to give a verbal for-his-ears-only command. The longer Bojing talked, the more incensed Nung became.
“They’re berating me for not attacking?” Nung said at last, his face feeling like an oven, he was so angry.
“Yes, sir,” said Bojing. “By the way, sir, I’m also to report that your wife and children are safe. East Lightning no longer has them.”
Nung blinked, with his mind awhirl with a hundred questions. Finally, he thundered, “Why in the name of Mao didn’t you radio all this to me?”
“It was the Chairman’s orders, sir. This could only be relayed to you by face-to-face contact. I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner, but my plane crashed and we waited days for rescue. Then my next plane was left stranded at an airstrip as we awaited more fuel. Here at the end, I had a hard time discovering which of these little bases you were at last.”
Nung ingested Bojing’s story. It encapsulated what had happened to the entire taskforce. What had started out so well had turned into a tangled fiasco. Distance plus equipment-failure plus an alien terrain— “If you’re out here,” Nung said, “who is running my supplies back at Ambarchik?”
“I believe that Minster Jian Shihong has taken that upon himself, sir.”
Nung wanted to shout. The Ruling Committee itself was sabotaging his efforts? He shook his head, trying to clear it of anger. They actually accused him of cowardice. They accused him of holding back when all this time he’d wanted to attack.
“Come with me,” Nung said in a thick voice. He strode for the command snowtank. Bojing trotted after him, with the others he’d brought trailing behind.
“What are you planning, sir?” asked Bojing.
Nung removed his right mitten and drew his pistol. The metal was freezing cold, but that felt good now. Nung could no longer speak and his eyes seemed to spark with emotions. He fumbled with the hatch, clicked it and opened the way into the command-tank. He squeezed through.
Commissar Yongzheng played cards with his bodyguard. The commissar looked up, and he must have seen something on Nung’s face. Yongzheng dove as he shouted for his bodyguard to save him.
Yongzheng was openly weeping. His mouth moved, but Nung couldn’t hear a thing because his ears were still ringing from the shots. Maybe the commissar finally found it impossible to taunt him, found it impossible to articulate the words he attempted to speak.
“Give me one of your sayings now!” roared Nung, his breath misting.
Once more, Commissar Yongzheng tried to speak.
Smiling with malice, Nung raised his pistol. A deafening boom sounded. He kept firing until he was out of bullets. Then he shoved the pistol into its holster. Yongzheng’s corpse was a bloody, twisted pile of meat. Nung climbed out of the tank and turned to a stunned Bojing.
“They want me to attack?” Nung asked.
Bojing only seemed capable of nodding.
“Then I name this as our central depot,” Nung said. “You’re in charge of supplies.”
“The American submarines…” said Bojing.
“I know all about them,” Nung said. “We’ll widen our defensive cordon.”
“You’re going to attack how, sir?”
“It won’t be anything fancy. A two-tier wave assault will do it. The hovertanks will go in immediately, with the snowtanks following as fast as they can. All the while, our air will pound the Americans and our helicopters will drop infantry onto the North Slope.”
“You’re too far away to do that from here,” said Bojing. “And if you start now, the hovertanks will outstrip the snowtanks by days.”
“I said it isn’t fancy,” Nung said. “It’s either stay on the ice and wait for the Americans to explode it out from under our feet, or fight and die against the enemy. Well, I’m going to choose the third way.”
“What is that, sir?”
“Fight and break through to the oilfields,” Nung said.
“Can we hold the oilfields once we take them?”
“We’ll worry about that once they’re ours. Until then, it’s just a moot question. Maybe our very capturing of them will cause the Americans to surrender. It’s what happened with the Siberians.”
Bojing licked his lips.
“Don’t tell me that the Americans aren’t Siberians,” Nung said. “I’m sick of hearing that.”
Hastily shaking his head, Bojing said, “No, no, of course not, sir. To the North Slope, to victory over the Americans.”
Nung’s eyes gleamed. At last, he could do things his way. He was badly out of position thanks to Commissar Yongzheng and Army High Command that had saddled him with the mincing coward. But he wasn’t going to complain. He was going to attack fast the way it should have been done in the first place.
AMBARCHIK, EAST SIBERIA
“It’s the Chairman, sir,” the communications officer told Jian Shihong. “He’s asking for you personally. He must know you’re here.”
Jian swallowed. “I will take the message in my office.”
He noticed the rest of the officers of the communications staff staring at him. Forcing heartiness into his bearing, Jian glanced around. As soon as he closed the door behind him, however, Jian closed his eyes.
How I am supposed to play this? I never imagined that Bojing was such a bumbling idiot and couldn’t find his way to Nung. He’d been waiting a long time to hear that everything proceeded as planned. What had happened to that fool Bojing?
Licking his lips, Jian told himself that instead of Bojing it could have been him lost out on the Arctic ice. It was a logistical nightmare keeping such a large body of troops supplied with their daily needs over thousands of kilometers of pack ice. The Army generals who had concocted this mess had no idea of the foolishness of their plan.
Jian shook his head. There was no way to explain all that to the Chairman now.
You need your wits, Jian. This is the moment.
He sat down, cracked his knuckles and ran a hand through his hair. Then he turned on the monitor. The sickly Chairman regarded him on the screen.
Jian bowed with grave respect.
“It has been some time, Comrade,” the Chairman said.
“I have been hard at work carrying out your command, sir.” With those words, Jian realized that he would lie to the end. If needed, he’d make sure that everyone here who knew of his deception died. Yes, he’d slip their corpses through the ice. Let the seals and polar bears eat their carcasses.
“I am glad to see that you are safe after such a harrowing journey,” the Chairman said. “Yet why have I heard about any victory-news from you? Why did you sit so long on the pack ice?”
“I have lit a fire under General Nung, sir. I have also reorganized the supply situation. It was a—”
“Do not tell me what you did. Tell me when Nung is going to give me the oilfields. You’ve seen him. You’ve judged his competence. Has the American nuclear attack rendered him and the taskforce immobile?”
“I have taken pains,” Jian said, “to render the American submarines useless.”
“Explain that to me.”
“Firstly, sir, our submarines hunt the American vessels under the ice. Secondly, I have spread out the supply depots, making the targets unworthy of their limited nuclear torpedoes.”
“How does that help you attack Alaska?”
“We have carefully moved into attack position, sir,” Jian said. He hoped that was true.
The Chairman squinted at him, creating a thousand wrinkles on that old face. “You are to return to Beijing immediately. I want face-to-face news of Nung and news of conditions on the ice. As you no doubt have learned, a terrible storm blocks us from the final assault against Anchorage. Once the storm passes, Admiral Ling will hand me Anchorage, which he assures me will give us the rest of the State. If your General Nung can take the oilfields at the same time, I believe the Americans will capitulate.”
“I couldn’t agree more, sir,” Jian said.
“I want you here when the Americans plead for peace. If you’ve done your part and truly unleashed Nung, all will be well.”
“Yes, sir,” Jian said, bowing and wondering how he could free himself from this mess.
“Until tomorrow, Comrade, I wish you well.”
Jian bowed once more. When he looked up, the contact was broken. He turned and blinked at a wall. It had a tiny porthole window, showing the bleak winter landscape outside. He hated Ambarchik and the endless headaches involving Army supply. It was time for a purge here. It was good more of his personal security team had arrived. Yet he must do this carefully. He would have to think more on the matter.
So much depended on what Nung achieved. Why didn’t the general attack? What was going on over there?
ARCTIC OCEAN
During the last few days in the Arctic darkness, General Shin Nung had gathered his hovertanks from the outlaying bases. He had them topped off and added fuel pods to each. Then he’d readied sleds as backups.
“Some of the snowtanks must follow us as you gather more fuel,” Nung told Bojing in a command caterpillar. They were in the primary base, four hundred kilometers from the North Slope. “After we leave and as soon as you can, send those fifty tanks after us. Then top off the next fifty as soon as you can gather them together.”
Nung had been hard at work reversing Yongzheng’s dabbling, pulling in the many soldiers, vehicles and planes from the scattered bases. The nuclear attack had frightened the commissar. Well, it didn’t frighten him. Nuclear just meant a bigger explosion, nothing more.
“If we remain stationary at this base for too long,” said Bojing, “the Americans will pinpoint our location. Then it will be the end of the polar taskforce.”
“It’s a risk,” admitted Nung. He had thought about that last night. “Use half the helicopters and keep them on air patrol. Before you launch the last tanks, send every helicopter to the North Slope. Land as close as you can to the oilfields.”
“Sir, if we fly that far, the helicopters won’t have enough fuel to make it back to base.”
“We’ve reached the point in the campaign where it will be a one way journey for the helicopters. I need soldiers in Alaska now!”
“Supplies for them—”
“The helicopter-borne soldiers will carry enough supplies to storm the American bases,” Nung said. “Our soldiers can then feed off the captured stores. The need for hot food and shelter will spur our men to acts of heroism.”
Bojing grew thoughtful. “Can I ask where you will be during all this, sir?”
“I’m riding in the saddle, as the Russians call it. I will lead from the front, as a tank commander should. In other words, I’ll go in with the first wave of hovertanks.”
“Yes, General,” said Bojing.
Nung knew that look. Bojing didn’t like it, but his logistics officer had never appreciated his smash-through tactics. “Once you’ve topped off the last snowtanks, you will return to Ambarchik Base. Talk the Politburo minister there into rolling up the long tail across the ice. With the loss of so many cargo planes and caterpillar-haulers, I cannot see how we can keep the stretched line intact.”
“That would cut you off from supplies, sir.”
“How very perceptive of you,” Nung said. “I have learned a valuable lesson this campaign.”
“Would you care to share it with me, sir?”
“You should understand the lesson better than I.” Nung concentrated. “This is a nightmare land. The limitations of vehicle speed, particularly the snowtanks, the vicious cold and the blizzards, it eats a mechanized army. It devours men, supplies and machines. The longer one remains on the pack ice, the worse the situation becomes. I do not believe it is possible to keep our forces in North Slope Alaska supplied for long, at least not across the ice and not with darkest winter coming. What one can do is move fast, taking everything in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, our hovertanks are too delicate for such a long crossing. I wish now I’d used my sleds and caterpillar-haulers to haul my hovertanks as close to Alaska as I dared. I’ve had to cannibalize nearly half our remaining hovers just to keep the other half viable.”
Invasion: Alaska Page 43