by Ian Slater
The babushka, now back inside her small bungalow, the wood-carved fretwork beneath the snow-filled window boxes shuddering like something alive, watched fearfully as the entire advance came to a halt. For a moment she could hear only the noise of mournful howling of the blizzard driving itself against the already snow-laden birch forest, but then she saw something that completely mystified her as the armored personnel carriers, with their blunt, bargelike snouts, advanced in line through the columns of main battle tanks and self-propelled artillery and, obeying flag signals— Yesov having banned any radio transmits — slowly turned left, northward, in unison, like a long line of prehistoric monoliths issuing forth enormous billowing clouds of thick, flour-white smoke into the white purity of the blizzard.
“Stranno!” Crazy! the babushka told her husband, an old reservist who had lost a leg in the final days before the cease-fire, during the American commando attack on the missile-launching midget subs’ base at Baikal.
“They’re making camouflage,” he answered grumpily, cutting one of the rationed, brick-hard sugar cubes in half, clenching it between his teeth before sucking through the strong, hot, samovar-brewed tea, the samovar’s brassy shine in stark contrast to the dank darkness of the cabin.
“What do you mean, camouflage?” she asked him. “It’s crazy — the snow is already white — camouflage enough.”
“You don’t know anything,” he grumped, the sugar only now starting to dissolve. “It’s small-particle smoke,” he explained. “Thicker than usual. It will stop the Americans’ infrared scopes from seeing the heat exhaust of our tanks and big mobile guns when they begin the attack. Infrared can see through normal smoke.”
“It’s crazy,” she repeated.
“I’ll tell you what’s crazy,” he told her, reaching for his crutch, a rough triangle of birch wood, its shoulder pad a small arc of rubber from an American Humvee, part of the American equipment captured in one of the last firefights around the southern end of the lake before the cease-fire. “It’s crazy for us to stay up here. We’d best get down to the cellar before—”
There was a tremendous crash, the door flung open, the blizzard howling in — a half-dozen white-hooded, white-clothed figures barging in like angry ghosts.
“Idite!” You must go! ordered the lieutenant. “We are commandeering your house.” The other men were already pushing past the babushka, two of them moving toward the basement, unraveling a coil of wire held between them.
“Idi!” Go! said the babushka. “Where to, pray?”
“Back,” answered the lieutenant, using the AK-47 to motion westward over his shoulder in the general direction of Irkutsk.
“But that’s over forty kilometers,” she protested. The husband caught a glimpse of a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt as the lieutenant took off his white camouflage overlays to better handle the land lines that they were in the process of laying. The land lines would be much more secure for being sheathed, and so much less likely than wireless radio traffic to be jammed by American electronic countermeasures once the fighting started. The old man, however, was more interested in the blue-and-white T-shirt. It told him they were SPETS.
“Be quiet, Natasha,” he cautioned his wife.
“They’ll have a truck to take you back to Podkamennaya,” said the lieutenant, sticking the AK-47 through the line spool.
“That’s no good,” protested the babushka defiantly. “That’s still over twenty kilometers from Ir—”
“It’s warming!” the lieutenant said. “On the lake the ice is starting to break up. It won’t be such a cold walk.”
“Come on!” said the husband. He knew the SPETS would have another kind of answer if they protested too much. Didn’t she realize that a major attack was about to start? “Radi Boga, tishe!” For God’s sake, be quiet! he told her, pushing at her with the crutch, anxious to get as far away as possible. Once the land lines were connected, hell would erupt.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Khabarovsk
“I tell you,” declared Freeman, “I don’t trust the sons of bitches. They’re going to hit us, Dick.” He paused, looking at the map. “God damn this snow!” His hand swept up, covering the entire north-south axis of the lake. “No way we can protect it all, so we have to narrow the field. If he penetrates our defenses and gets on that ice — four hundred miles.” He shook his head at the thought. “He could move a division anywhere across there in less than—”
“Well, I know aerial reconnaissance doesn’t show anything because of the blizzard, General. But there’s no IR report either. Not a sign they’re advancing.”
“Could be using IR suppressor smoke. If only I could launch a preemptive strike on Irkutsk or—”
“We’d be condemned by every country in the U.N.,” cut in Norton. “As well as our allies. Fighting to push back the Chinese is one thing, sir, but us breaking the cease-fire with the Siberians would—”
“You’re right, dammit!” conceded Freeman, turning away from the map to the tote-board display, trying to put himself in Yesov’s shoes. “Great weakness of a democracy, Dick. We can only finish a war — can’t start it.”
“Would you want it any other way?” proffered Norton, anticipating the question might be asked in the news conference about to start in the briefing room.
Freeman didn’t answer, but his grimace was reply enough. “Hell, I’m in trouble enough with Washington, trying to convince them Beijing started this crap on our southern sector.” Peering down over his reading glasses, he swept his hand over the midsection of the map. “ ‘Course, Yesov couldn’t spread himself too thin, either. Even if he had every division of his — he wouldn’t risk a four-hundred-mile-long front. Soon as the bad weather lifted, our TACAIR’d rip him to pieces.” The general took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in his fatigue. “Then again, we can’t hold very much of it, either, having to move most of our forces south to help push the Chinks back.”
Norton experienced a surge of panic, instinctively looking around for any media types who might have somehow wandered through security from the briefing room, where even now chairs were scraping the Quonset hut floor as a “gaggle” of over 120 media “vultures,” as Freeman called them, from around the world were assembling. They were hungry for General Douglas Freeman’s latest assessment of, and explanation for, what the Chinese and others in the U.N. were calling “an unprovoked imperialist attack upon the People’s Republic of China,” and one that would be “severely punished by the People’s Liberation Army.”
“General,” urged Norton, “you’d better be careful what you say. If the La Roche papers got hold of something like that…”
Freeman was looking at him, amused. “What the hell’re you talking about?”
“ ‘Chinks,’ “ said Norton. “They get hold of something like that, General, and you’ll have every civil rights group from here to—”
“Ah, to hell with them. You know I don’t mean any disrespect toward the little yellow bastards. Damn good soldiers. Only color I care about is anyone who’s yellow inside.”
“I know that, General, but — well, you know what newspapers are like. I think we’d better stick to ‘ChiComs,’ “ Norton advised, pointing out that ironically it was the gutter press of the La Roche papers, who were the real racists, who would make such a big deal of such a slip.
La Roche’s tabloids were already talking about “swarms” of Chinese Communists attacking the American positions in the southwest corner of the Amur hump—”swarms” creating the none-too-subtle implication that the Americans were being attacked by subhumans. On the front, with American casualties mounting not because of the Chinese numbers, but because of their tenacity and skill, U. S. soldiers were already making their ironic comments on the La Roche reporters, telling sergeants they’d just shot “another swarm” when only one ChiCom fell.
“They’re all out there, sir!” It was the general’s briefing room aide, in charge of setting up the appropriate cha
rts and maps.
Freeman turned away from Baikal, ran a comb through his gray shock of hair, put his forage cap on, square and center, and hitched his trousers a notch, careful to make sure his tunic waistband was over the nine-millimeter Parabellum with which he’d replaced the old Hi-Vel .22 automatic that he used to carry and sleep with beneath his pillow. He’d debated about replacing that Hi-Vel — he’d had it all through Europe and Korea, and it had become a kind of talisman — but he liked the Sig Sauer better, and anyway, he hated staying with anything because of superstition. Said it bred “lack of self-confidence.” Didn’t go with ball players not changing their underwear because they believed it brought them luck. “Hell, only reason they make another home run is because one whiff of ‘em’d knock any baseman off the bag.”
As the general and Norton stepped into the press room, Norton was momentarily blinded by the multiple explosions of flashbulbs amid the mass of mike-clutching reporters, already in a feeding frenzy over what the Chinese incursion meant and what wording the general was going to use and what Washington thought about the general and was it true that they were keeping him on a tight leash?
The general looked serious yet not grim, concerned but not stressed, the furrows in his brow as much a signal to those members of the press who already knew him that he, not the press corps, was going to set the agenda, and that the television klieg lights were too bright. He held his hands up for silence. “Ladies and gentlemen, before I take any questions, I wish to clarify an unfortunate error reported by some of you.”
“Who?” shouted one young reporter, a woman — midtwenties, good-looking, her red hair conspicuous in the glare, the strap of the Pentax camera slung about her neck bisecting her breastline, making her figure even more prominent as she lunged forward with a fishing-rod-like boom mike, her emerald-green eyes keen with the determination not to let her inexperience stand in her way. “Unfortunate error by whom, General?” she shouted.
Freeman wanted to say, “By the toilet newspapers of the La Roche chain,” but Norton’s cough by his side cautioned him from being specific, to remember what he himself had told Norton — that “vexatious reporters are the most venomous, vengeful bastards in the world.”
“It’s been reported,” Freeman began, “that our positions in the southwestern sector of the Amur hump have been attacked by ‘swarms’ of Chinese infantry. Now I’m here to tell you the Chinese have never attacked in swarms here, in Korea, or anywhere else. That was a myth concocted by overeager reporters trying to win brownie points with fat, unfit editors back home.” There were ripples of laughter, and Norton starting a coughing fit. “Chinese infantry,” Freeman proceeded, hands akimbo, “seldom attack above regimental level. And they attack well-defined targets— they don’t swarm over anything. Like any other army, the Chinese army—”
Norton coughed, whispering, “Don’t offend Taiwan.”
“… The Chinese Communists,” continued Freeman, “have never launched ‘hordes’ or ‘swarms,’ as one of your colleagues put it. That’s a bunch of coon — dirt.” There was more laughter. “And those stories about one in ten Chinese infantry being properly armed, the other nine yahooing and beating bamboo until they get a chance to pick up a dead man’s weapon, are a figment of some reporter’s imagination. Now, admittedly that might have occurred here and there in Korea, but not here. The People’s Liberation Army’s weapons are simple, highly reliable, and they’ve got plenty of ‘em. I can assure you we are not beating swarms — we are fighting highly trained ground troops on their own ground.”
“You mean you don’t think we can win? Another Vietnam?” Even some of the older reporters turned around, surprised by the redhead’s chutzpa, though most of them, Norton suspected, were drawn as much by her cleavage as she once again thrust the mike above her colleagues’ heads toward the general.
“Not at all,” replied Freeman icily. “What I’m saying is that the enemy is formidable but that I believe the American soldier can and will regain lost ground and—”
“But can we win, General?” The redhead’s mike was barely a foot from Freeman’s face, other reporters ducking out of the boom’s way. The general didn’t notice; he was reading a scribbled note, hastily passed from the duty officer to Norton and thence to the general.
“That’s all. Thank you,” he announced crisply, and was gone. The uproar from the media reminded Norton of rock and roll aficionados just informed of a no-show.
“Where?” demanded Freeman, whipping off his forage cap in the Ops room, throwing it down on the table before the map of Lake Baikal, the hum of computers and bursts of radio traffic stabbing in the background.
“Here,” said Norton, indicating a point just north of the southernmost end of the lake. His fingers slid farther along. “And here.” Then he tapped a third position farther north of the other two, and like them, on the western side of the lake.
“Estimated strength?” asked Freeman.
“Four, possibly six, divisions. Least a hundred thousand men,” the duty officer cut in. “G-2 suspects SPETS troops are the spearheads. Whatever the troop concentration, General — we’re looking at three breakthrough points.”
“Satellite-confirmed?” pressed Freeman. He wasn’t about to commit any reserves to possible feints by Yesov until, in the absence of aerial reconnaissance reports, he had confirmed visual sightings.
“Infrared-confirmed in each case, General. They’re moving east, all right. Straight toward our Three Corps at Port Baikal. No doubt about it.”
“Radio intercepts?”
“Nothing there, sir. Apparently Yesov’s got them moving by flag signal and sheathed land line. So we have no intercepts.”
“Now lookit, Jimmy,” Freeman replied, his eyes fixing his duty officer. “I don’t want another Skovorodino road trap here.” The duty officer was aware that there were no roads along most of the lake, but knew immediately what Freeman meant. Were they fake tanks — as they’d been at Skovorodino before the cease-fire — giving off infrared signatures in hopes of dummying Freeman into committing his revetted armor at Port Baikal to precisely the wrong places, leaving Port Baikal largely defenseless?
“I’ve already thought of that one, sir. No, sir, it’s the real thing, all right. Infrared images were moving.”
“Flashlights can move. How about our ground sensors?”
“Got that one covered, too, General. Snow muffles the sensors all right, so nothing registered for a while. But then Port Baikal started registering definite shakes — horizontal movement — mile-and-a-half-advance rumble. They’re main battle tanks, sir — they’re not driving fake tanks around on truck chassis, if that’s what you’re concerned about.” The duty officer turned and snatched up a SITREP sheet, saving the best evidence for last. “Besides, one of our patrols out of Port Baikal, halfway down to Kultuk at the southern end of the lake, got an LAW round off. He was up a tree, General — literally. Put his shot right through the tank’s cupola. Said the thing went up like the Fourth of July. Kept rolling — couple of Siberians tried to get out. On fire when they hit the snow.”
“And our patrol?” inquired Freeman.
“Not so good, General. Three confirmed dead — two missing — but the other four got back to Port Baikal.”
Freeman was nodding, looking worriedly at the map, the three points, fifty miles apart, now marked with red circles — a large S inside of each. A 150-mile-long front. “How did our patrol get back so fast? Ahead of the Siberian tanks?”
“They used four Arrows.”
Freeman nodded. The Arrows weren’t the Israeli antimissile missiles, but the small snow vehicles that young David Brentwood and his SAS/Delta commando team had used to go across the lake before the cease-fire to take out the midget sub pens at Port Baikal.
“We, gentlemen,” said Freeman, looking from the duty officer to Norton and back, “are in a fix. If we recall any of our troops we’ve ordered south against the ChiComs, the ChiComs’ll punch an even bigger
hole through our southern flank. But if I don’t stop this Siberian triple play”—his knuckle rapped the middle of the three red circles marking the 150-mile-wide Siberian offensive—”our boys’ll have to hightail it across that ice — leave all our heavy equipment behind if they’re to make it in time.” He dismissed the idea of such a retreat as quickly as it had occurred to him. It was die worst-case scenario. “Any sign of the weather clearing?”
“ ‘Fraid not, General,” answered the duty officer, showing him the isobar printout from Harvey Simmet, the senior met officer. “It’s warming, but that’s only going to mean more fog, and they’re only miles from our boys on the lake. Even if we call in TACAIR now that we more or less know their positions, our A-10s are gonna have one hell of a time with IFF.” He meant identifying friend or foe.
Freeman knew the duty officer was right and recalled that even in the relatively unlimited visibility of Operation Desert Storm, Schwarzkopf had lost over twenty percent of those killed in action to “friendly fire,” these so-called “fratricidal” casualties ten times higher than in any military action in the twentieth century, including World War Two and Vietnam. “That cunning bastard Yesov,” said Freeman, facing the map, “knows damn well we can’t use TACAIR when he’s so close. And you know why he’s so close?” Freeman turned around, eyes bright with anger. “Because those fairies back in Washington insisted on a cease-fire! All right — Dick, now listen up. I want all our units north of the Siberian midpoint here on the west side of the lake to pull south fast as they can, to reinforce the units between the midpoint — designation S-Two — and the Siberians’ southernmost point at the end of the lake, designation S-Three. That’ll buy us some time. Now when that northernmost part of Yesov’s assault line, S-One, reaches the lake, it’ll start to pivot south…”
Already Norton was seeing the general’s plan, and not for the first time was filled with admiration at the sheer speed of Freeman’s analysis. This wasn’t grace under pressure — it was brilliance. “Right,” said Norton, “and when they pivot, their armor will have to come out onto the ice—”