by Ian Slater
“And they’re wondering why I’m not sending in the air force,” Freeman thundered. “Christ, there’s already been four choppers taken out in this pea soup. This isn’t Iraq — it’s a damn sight tougher.” The general closed his eyes, took off his goggles, wiped them clean, and put them on again, announcing to Norton, “Well, if Huang gets to Fukien he’ll keep them bottled up in the south.”
“Yes, sir. Met boys say the storm will pretty much die down in an hour or so.”
“That’s what they told me an hour ago. By God, where’s Harvey Simmet? He’s the only weatherman who knows anything. Get him up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harvey Simmet, the meteorological officer for Freeman’s HQ, was a man whose patience and dedication had been sorely tried by Freeman in earlier Arctic battles, Freeman calling on him half-hourly, sometimes every five minutes in the heat of the battle. Everyone thought Freeman had been acting strangely, but he knew that once the temperature hit minus sixty the waxes in the poor-quality Siberian lubrication oils would settle out and clog the hydraulics, stopping the Siberian tanks in their tracks. Then he could counterattack. And he did.
“Where the hell’s Simmet?” Freeman demanded.
“We’re having him brought up the line soon as we can, sir.”
Freeman grunted. “This damn storm has been sent to try us, Norton. It’s hell-sent.”
“Yes, sir.” Norton wasn’t about to contradict the general who had very specific ideas about hell and often viewed the vicissitudes of nature as heaven-sent omens. In this the general was as superstitious as the Chinese.
* * *
“Fellas!”
Neither Salvini nor Choir could hear the CBN reporter as Choir was busy blazing away at a motorcycle and sidecar unit with his M-60, Salvini using his M-16 on anything that moved in the dark day of the sand.
“Fellas!” the reporter repeated. “Let’s head back—”
There was no answer.
“Look,” the reporter said. “A thousand bucks — okay? You’ve been very good. I’ve seen enough…”
“No, no, boyo!” Choir yelled without turning his head, starting a new belt for the M-60. “You haven’t seen the big stuff, laddie. ‘E ‘as to see that now hasn’t he, Sal?”
“Oh, definitely,” Salvini agreed.
“What’s that?” the reporter asked, ashen faced in his goggles, the goggles giving him a mad look.
“Pepperpots,” Choir explained. “Biggest fucking gun in the world, boyo!”
It wasn’t, but it was big, and Choir knew that with its sheer size it would be an awesome sight — if they reached the guns alive.
Sal shifted down as they went up a small hill, changing up as soon as he felt the two rear Wrangler tires grip. The reporter was holding a fistful of notes. “You keep your money, chief,” Sal said. “When you see those Pepperpots you might need some toilet paper.”
“You’re both mad!” the reporter yelled. “SAS is fucking insane!”
“Hang on!” Salvini yelled, then hit a series of deep potholes, the FAV sounding like a junk shop amid an earthquake.
Out of the original seventy FAVs only thirty now remained, and not one had failed mechanically. Then Salvini saw another go up in flame, hit by a Sagger. “Twenty-nine now,” said Salvini.
* * *
Cutting in on the FAV network, Freeman informed Brentwood and the remaining FAVs that a Kiowa helo’s mast radar had picked up a high, stationary blob on his screen before returning to hover position over the M1A1s. His explanation: a high radar tower that once the storm died could give the exact positions of the M1s.
“That’s your second job,” Freeman ordered the FAVs through Brentwood.
The reporter, with Salvini and Choir, sallow with fear, asked what the first job was.
“To follow Aussie — under the guns,” Salvini said. “Haven’t you ever heard of that, under the gun?”
“I thought it meant, you know, having a gun on you,” the reporter said nervously.
Salvini shook his head. “Not here, chief. Freeman got us all together back there and told us the Pepperpots have an elevation of plus fifty-five and a down angle from the horizontal of minus two. You see he knows they can’t lower their barrels beyond minus two. So once we get into their no-shoot zones — under the guns, like the cavalry used to, that is, beneath me lowest angle of their dangle — they can’t use the artillery on us anymore.”
“So what will you do?”
“Are you serious?” Salvini yelled, shifting down again. “Shoot the fuckers. The gun crews. Think we’re out here for a picnic?”
There was a loud bang — the right front tire. The FAV skewed in the clay, or rather in what seemed to be hard soil much like clay. Salvini was out and unstrapping a spare-Choir covering him with the M-60 before the La Roche reporter knew what was going on. In the distance, a half mile to their left, there was a terrific salvo hitting and shaking the earth, and four more FAVs were gone. Only twenty-five remained.
* * *
By now some FAVs had taken more than twenty prisoners and returned them to the head of Freeman’s column, where me general himself directed the interrogation.
“Ask them who are party members.”
There was no response, though clearly several of the prisoners were frightened.
“Is it a shame to be a party member?” Freeman pressed through the interpreter. “Is there no honor?”
After a few seconds one of the Chinese POWs raised his hand. “Wo shi dang yuan, wo wei ci er gan daojiao ao”— I am a party member and proud of it.
Another man, then another, raised their hands, signifying that they too were party members. It was a surprise to the Humvee driver who’d driven Freeman back from his M1 to the mobile APC interrogation unit. Like so many American soldiers, he didn’t understand that the actual membership in the party in China, as in the CIS, was no more than 10 to 15 percent of the entire population. Most of the population in China merely obeyed because to do otherwise was to risk prison, torture, or death — beheading now reintroduced by Cheng and the Central Committee as a much cheaper alternative than wasting expensive bullets.
Freeman had the Communist party members removed from the APC. One of them glowered back threateningly at the others. Freeman’s calf-gloved hand shot out, his forefinger jammed hard against the man’s forehead. “Now don’t worry about it, Jack — it’s none of your business.”
Outside the APC a grunt was puzzled, asking another, “How come Freeman called the prisoner ‘Jack’?”
“Always does when he’s mad at you,” the older veteran replied.
“Where we got to take them?” the first grunt asked.
“Take them down the line and give them an MRE.” He meant one of the prepacked “meals ready to eat.”
“Constitution says we can’t do that,” the other grunt complained.
“Why the hell not?”
“It’s cruel and unusual punishment. One taste of that crap and—” They all flattened beneath the scream of incoming, the explosion of a Pepperpot’s shell seventy yards off creating a crater and a rain of sand.
Back in the APC, Freeman took his gloves and helmet off, the close atmosphere thick with the smell of oil, sweat, and cordite. Everyone was perspiring in the cramped quarters, including the general, but he looked fresher and suddenly became more informal, which helped ease the tension between him, the interpreter, Norton, and the POWs. Looking directly at the remaining prisoners, he nevertheless spoke quickly to the interpreter, the echo of his voice fairly booming inside the APC. “Tell them I admire the Chinese people. Magnificent fighters for thousands of years.”
Some men showed no emotion, looking impassively at him. Others had their faces down. One, unable to wipe his nose properly because of the plastic strip that cuffed his hands behind him, was wiping his nose on the shoulder of his loose-fitting, olive green “pajamas.” Freeman ordered Norton to cut the plastic cuffs off them.
“I like the
Chinese,” Freeman repeated. “But I hate the party. The party exploits the people. A man needs more than an iron rice bowl.” Nearly all of the prisoners now looked up at him because he knew of Mao’s promise of the iron rice bowl — a promise of a strong agricultural revolution that would feed all China.
“A rice bowl is good,” Freeman went on, his hands resting in front of him in a relaxed, yet authoritative manner. “But is this all a man and his kin desire? Why can you not get into the foreigners’ hotels? The luxurious friendship stores — serving foreigners while you must work to make goods you cannot buy even if you had the yuan, which you don’t. Why is this?” No one answered, but he had their undivided attention.
“It is,” Freeman told them, “because the party keeps everything for itself. While you slave they sit in their baths at the Zhongnanhai and dine on succulent delicacies, and their chauffeurs drive them in Red Flags while you ride a bicycle.” The general paused. He knew they knew he spoke the truth.
“There must be another revolution against the party,” he added. “If you are to be free. But now you are like the cormorants who fish on the Yangtze with the rings about their necks so they can catch fish but are not allowed to swallow them. Do you wish to have the ring about your throat all your life?”
The interpreter finished, but there was no answer.
With that, Freeman took a large manila envelope from Norton, tore it open, and tipped it upside down — bundles of hundred-dollar bills spilling out on the bottom of the APC. “We suspect,” Freeman said, “that the party has a large radar tower and complex immediately to the south of us. We need to know its position because the storm hides it from us.” He put a thousand-dollar bundle in front of each man. He did not expect anyone to take it but merely wished to whet their appetites. But as he was putting his helmet and gloves back on, a hand dashed out and took a thousand, the man’s expression defiant. He spit and yelled.
“What did he say?” Freeman asked.
“It’s a little indelicate, General.”
“What’d he say, God damn it!”
“He said, ‘Fuck the party!’ “
“By God!” Freeman said, sitting fully up and grinning, looking like George C. Scott. “I like that. By God I do!” He extended his hand in friendship and the PLA soldier took it.
“Take the particulars from him, Norton. Once you’ve got the grid references—” Another man took a thousand, then another, and another. Soon only one bundle was left, and the last man — the others all looking at him — shrugged, then took the bundle before him.
“When you have the references, Norton,” Freeman repeated, “give them to the FAV leader. I want those towers and whatever buildings are around them taken out, and fast— before this storm stops!”
“If the FAVs get through the guns, sir.”
“If they don’t,” Freeman said, lowering his head to get out from the APC’s rear door, “I’ll kick ass from here to Kentucky. And Norton?”
“Yes, sir?”
Once outside, Freeman indicated the two of them should keep walking. Freeman pulled his gloves on tightly, then squinting while adjusting his sand goggles, told Norton, “Tell those dirty little rats in there that if the information they give you doesn’t jibe — if we don’t find a goddamn tower where they tell us there’s one — I’ll shoot every one of the sons of bitches — personally!”
“General, may I say something off the record?”
“Go.”
“Sir, what you’ve already done contravenes the Geneva Convention. Paying taxpayers’ money to—”
“And what about shooting them?” Norton couldn’t tell whether Freeman was bluffing — couldn’t see his eyes clearly enough through the goggles — but the general was just unpredictable enough…
“That’d be murder, General.”
Freeman leaned over, his voice barely audible above the storm. “Yes, but they don’t know that.” There was a trace of a grin, but then it was gone, the general saying, “Soldiers ratting like that on their own men deserve shooting.”
“I thought you didn’t like the party either.”
“I don’t. But to risk their own men’s lives by telling us. I don’t go for that. That’s despicable.”
“But,” Norton said as the general mounted his M1 and stepped into the cupola, “you’re glad they did.”
As Freeman stood, his head out of the cupola, binoculars raised in the hope of seeing something in this forlorn wasteland, he rapped on the tank for the M1 to start off. There was a subdued growl from the gas turbine engine. “I’m a general, Norton. Not a fool. You get those coordinates to Brentwood, or if his FAV’s gone give them to the next in command, but it has to be done or we’ll have us a massacre out here once it clears and their radar starts working.”
“By last report we only have twenty-four FAVs left, General.”
“Get it done, Dick!” Freeman yelled back.
Norton was incorrect, for as they spoke there were only eighteen FAVs left out of the original seventy.
* * *
Harvey Simmet arrived and told Freeman that the met forecast was actually wrong. Freeman was delighted, thinking that the storm would last until he could get past the Chinese guns.
“No,” Harvey Simmet said. “The storm is about to abate.”
It meant the FAVs had less time to take the guns and to do anything about the radar complex.
“Damn it, Harvey, what kind of forecast is that?”
“I can’t change the weather, General. I’m not God.”
Freeman suddenly remembered Patton’s relief of Bastogne when bad weather had delayed him until he ordered a prayer for good weather and got it. Freeman sent for the padre and told him to get rid of “this appalling bitch of a sandstorm!” Harvey Simmet and Norton exchanged glances but said nothing.
“By God!” Freeman thundered. “We have to start killing Chinese — soon as we can.”
* * *
Aussie watched the needle on the 4,400 rpm dial quivering, his right foot jammed so hard down on the accelerator he thought he’d push it right through the floor as the Wrangler’s tires gripped and kicked up sand on a thirty-degree slope, hauling the two-thousand-pound vehicle and exerting 165 pounds per square inch as its ninety-four-horsepower engine gave all it had.
It mounted the summit of a dune, and was immediately taking fire from no more than thirty yards away. Brentwood responded with a long burst of tracer from his front-mounted 50mm machine gun. There was an explosion — a burst of lemon-colored light in the dust storm. Only now did he see he had committed a “blue on blue”—fired on a friendly FAV, the latter rearing up like some wounded metallic monster, its cage engulfed in flame, its TOW controller already afire, the driver still strapped into his seat as it came down with a thump, the right-seated gunner, Brentwood’s opposite number, having released his seatbelt and been thrown clear. There was no time to mourn — everyone knew “blue on blue” was a high danger in the dust storm and was the very reason Freeman could not yet commit AIRTAC to the battle.
Aussie drove toward the burning vehicle, the flame giving the afflicted FAV the appearance more of a skeletal, tubular frame than the fighting vehicle it had been seconds before.
Brentwood was out of his FAV before Aussie had brought it to a complete stop and was rolling the burning TOW operator over and over in the sand, extinguishing the flames, the gunner, who had been thrown free and only slightly wounded, trying with Aussie to douse the driver with the extinguisher, but soon the foam was exhausted, the driver dead. The TOW operator had been saved, but the man was horribly burned, his face looking as if half of it had simply melted and slid away. It immediately reminded David Brentwood of the seemingly endless plastic surgery that had had to be performed on his brother Ray, who had received third degree burns aboard a Perry-class guided frigate at the beginning of the war. David turned his attention to the gunner. “How about you? Okay?”
“Yes, sir — sorry, sir, we thought you were a ChiCom motorcy
cle/sidecar coming over the rise and—”
“Never mind,” Brentwood said. “Stay with your buddy. I’ll radio your GPS position back to the main column for medics.”
“Yes—” He hadn’t even got the “sir” out before Brentwood was back in his seat and Aussie was driving off, Brentwood realizing he’d killed two of bis own men — his silence now infused with tension.
“They fired first, mate,” Aussie said, moving the FAV from zero to forty miles per hour, despite the poor visibility.
“I know that, damn it!”
Two other FAVs were lost in other “blue-on-blue” engagements as they passed from the big guns’ killing range into the zone where, because of the declination of the guns being only minus two degrees, and because the guns themselves were on the clay ridge, the shells could no longer bother them. The remaining fifteen FAVs, as Freeman had hoped, like those horsemen in the last great cavalry charge in history — the Australian Light Horse at Beersheba in 1917— were under the guns, the fifteen FAVs racing up toward the looming enormities that were the ChiCom’s Pepperpot batteries.
ChiCom infantry and APCs came out to meet them. But here the sheer mobility of the FAVs, with their relative lightness and stunningly accurate TOW missiles, took a deadly toll of the slower Chinese personnel carriers, and the much heavier firepower of the FAVs was creating a hosing fire that ignited one APC after another.
“Go for the gun crews!” Brentwood shouted on the FAV network. “The gun crews!” he repeated. “Then go to the flanks. Repeat, gun crews, then the flanks. Do not engage their tanks.” Conscious that “flank” might sound like “tank” in the confusion of static and explosions, David repeated, “First the gun crews, then find the radar. Repeat, first the…”
Salvini swung hard right, and there were two sudden bumps and screams as he ran down two ChiCom infantry exiting one of the manholes, his TOW operator exhilarated by having taken out three APCs and now “pissed off,” in his own words, that they had to stick to the original plan to take out the gun crews first. Choir yelled back at the La Roche reporter. “Lively enough for you, boyo?”