by Ian Slater
“Must be using high-particle smoke,” the gunner said, the reclined driver flexing his wrist on the handlebar control, his line-of-sight responsibility being the front, the loader on Freeman’s left responsible for the left side, Freeman responsible for the right and the all-round view and with the capability of overriding his gunner.
“Well, wait till the bastards get a taste of this high-ratio gearbox,” Freeman said, and with that the M1A2s moved quickly and efficiently over the sand, main gun steady, chassis undulating as if on a gimbals mounting, into the dense smoke. Ahead, the round, hunkered down domes of upgunned T-59s and T-72s were dimly, then more clearly, discerned, the weak sun no brighter than the moon as it sank over the desert. The driver picked up the first T-59, gave its position, and the gunner readied his 120mm — the HEAT, or high explosive antitank round, streaking out of the barrel a split second later.
“One o’clock — three hundred yards!” Freeman shouted as the first T-59 exploded from the molten jet that cut through its thick steel.
“In sight!” the gunner confirmed, the loader already shoving another HEAT round into “pussy,” as the breech was affectionately called, the round now en route to another T-59, the round striking its 75mm-thick glacis plate.
The fire-control computer aboard the M1A2 was already making minor adjustments for barrel drift, the gunner using the coaxial machine bursts so that his thermal imager picked up the tracer dots more easily in the smoke and dust, aligning the gun for the third shot in fourteen seconds, when a deafening bang, then a ringing noise, shook the M1A2 as if some giant had hit it with a mallet. The blow had come from a ChiCom infantry-fired RPG7, its shaped-charge round going instantly into a molten jet. But the jet of steel was prevented from penetrating the sloped armor of the M1A2 because of the tank’s reactive armor pack, which blew up upon the impact of me RPG7, diffusing the molten jet. There had been much debate in the Pentagon about the pluses and minuses of reactive armor, but for the men in Freeman’s tank it had worked admirably.
The moment the ChiComs’ RPG hit the M1A2 another HESH round had left the Abrams and another T-59 exploded but did not stop, its buckled tracks still somehow grinding forward, keeping the tank rolling down a dune, albeit arthritically, while it continued to disintegrate as a chain reaction was set off like some massive string of firecrackers, its crew having no time to escape but one of them, the driver, visible as a charred torso dangling from the driver’s exit beyond the turret. The air was pungent with diesel and gasoline fumes mixed in with the hot stench of burning skin melting into the sand, some of which was fused into glass by the molten jet of shaped charges.
“Three down!” the loader exulted, his voice a fusion of excitement and terror.
Freeman said nothing, conscious that even with a three-to-one kill ratio he might yet be unable to defeat the Chinese if they outnumbered him by more than three to one. Which they did. Freeman’s driver, acutely aware that the M1A2’s fuel tank was immediately to his left, started up from his nearly fully reclined position when he heard the tattoo of light machine gun fire raking the metal only inches from his ear.
“Goddamn infantry!” Freeman shouted. “Run the bastards over!”
For some inexplicable reason the driver started to laugh and couldn’t stop. The loader, hearing him on the intercom, also started cackling. Freeman glowered as the loader only with difficulty thrust another round home but couldn’t stop laughing. It was like a child being chased — full of fear and excitement, the vision of every M1A2 breaking formation, frantically taking off after individual Chinese, having struck the crew as insanely funny.
“What in hell’s the matter with you!” Freeman said, while pressing the thumb “traverse” control and hearing the rattle of machine gun bullets hitting the cupola. The loader was laughing so hard, hunched over by the shell racks, he was afraid he might have to urinate into his helmet. It was a kind of hysterical terror that only tankers and submariners know.
* * *
Several miles southward, beyond the ChiCom tanks, the dust was thinning out as Aussie’s FAV stopped just below the crest of a dune. Aussie and Brentwood, crawling on their bellies to the crest, looked down between two giant hills of sand on a sight so unexpected that it literally took their breath away — a forest so ordered and alien in its sudden appearance that they knew at once it was like the massive windbreaks of forests around Turpan — a reforestation project with menggulu or Mongolian willow forming the outer acres like a moat. There was also some shaji or seabuck thorn among them. Most of the forest, however, that looked to be about a mile wide and, through the scopes, about five miles deep, was made up of huyang — Chinese poplars, an island of green amid a sea of brown dunes.
“Well I’ll be buggered,” Aussie said. “So now what d’we do?”
“Over there,” Brentwood said, pointing to a dune about two hundred yards off to their left. “There’s one.” It was a ChiCom mobile radar van whose rectangular dish, the size of a collapsible bridge table, and housing set atop a hydraulic-legged ChiCom truck resembled a U.S. TPQ-63 type so much that Aussie suspected it was an American unit, probably bought, despite U.S. law forbidding it, through Chinese front companies in Hong Kong.
He was right. Jay La Roche had bought ten used units supposedly on sale for Taiwan and instead delivered them to China by diverting the cargo through Hong Kong.
Not far behind and below the radar unit on a wide, stony flat nearer the closer, or northern, end of the reforested area between the dunes there was what looked like a long refrigeration truck on stout hydraulic legs beneath a webbed camouflage netting, possibly an RAM-C, a radar management center, where the radar inputs from the various mobile sites would be collated and from where the deadly AA fire network would be operated. And in a flash David Brentwood realized that if the RAM-C unit could be taken out then no matter how many mobile radars there were — Freeman’s intelligence now suspected five on the move — destruction of the RAM-C would be killing the brain of the whole radar network.
The dust was clearing and the sun sinking fast. David Brentwood yearned for more smoke and dust cover, long enough for the attack. “Use the TOW!” he ordered Choir Williams.
“Yes,” Aussie put in, “but for Chrissake don’t miss!”
“I won’t, boyo,” Choir said as he aligned the weapon. He tried to fire it again — still nothing. Its circuit was dead.
“All right,” David said. “Now listen. We’ll have to go in with the FAV — straight for the RAM-C. Choir, you and I’ll hit the RAM-C. See those two doors midway along it?” It looked like a long camper.
“Yes.”
“You take the left, I’ll take the right. Aussie keeps the motor running.” He said nothing to the La Roche reporter who was sitting down next to Choir, his eyes glazed in a terrified stare. “Salvini, you cover us. Got it?”
“Got it!” Aussie cut in. “You have the fun while I sit on my ass!”
“You and Salvini take out any guards stupid enough to try and stop us.”
“I don’t see any,” Aussie said.
“That’s good,” Brentwood said. “Come on — let’s go!” The FAV mounted the crest. They heard a motorcycle/sidecar unit starting up, and Aussie put the FAV into reverse. Darkness had fallen, but with their SAS-issue Litton night goggles that in the daytime converted to binoculars they could see clearly between the dunes but were still at a loss to know precisely where the noise was coming from. Choir couldn’t tell, as his ears were still ringing from the thunderous sound of the titanic tank battle not far off.
“Between the dunes to the right somewhere,” Aussie proffered.
David Brentwood had his 7.62mm machine gun mounted on the dash pointed in the direction of the noise. Aussie reached over for the Haskins rifle strapped to the right seat strut, Choir unclipping it for him.
“Let me have a go with the suppressor.”
“Quickly then!” Brentwood said. Aussie had cut the engine and was out in a second and at the crest, lookin
g down the dunes both ways. The dust was thinning, but it was still falling like pepper in the night-vision goggles. Soon, through this curtain, he could see a high rooster feather of dust, the motorcycle and sidecar unit now just a dot four hundred yards away and moving along the flat, skirting the RAM-C or whatever it was and climbing up toward the dune and coming in the general direction of the SAS/D group. If he didn’t have to he wouldn’t shoot at them and would let them pass, but if they kept coming up over the dune toward the FAV he’d have no choice. They sure as hell were taking their time — bloody putt-putting along, as his father would have said.
* * *
Four thousand miles to the northeast in the Aleutian Islands, a bitterly cold wind howled across Dutch Harbor as Lana Brentwood, her parka hood dusted in fine white snow, made her way quickly from the motor pool’s shuttle bus into the warmth of the Davy Jones Restaurant. As she entered, CNN was interrupting a pretaped senior citizens’ pro golf tournament in New Orleans with news of the massive tank battle now taking place in China some three hundred miles north of Beijing and only 280 miles from the Great Wall, bad weather apparently preventing the effective use of the tank-killing American A-10 Thunderbolts.
Jay La Roche had been the only one who, complaining, “Where are we here — Hicksville?” had objected to the TV being turned on in the first place, conspicuously not watching it while most of the other patrons in the dimly lit booths had paused to hear the news flash. He sat desultorily stirring the Manhattan in front of him, having complained to the waitress that he’d ordered “on the rocks,” not “a fucking iceberg!” The young, ruddy-faced reporter from the Anchorage Spectator came in, spotted Jay, and once again tried eagerly to get a few words from him.
“Fuck off.” La Roche told the boy, who, acutely embarrassed, started to apologize profusely, but La Roche wasn’t interested. He saw Lana taking off her parka by the door and hanging it up. Immediately his expression of surly discontent vanished and he rose, smiling, moving out of the booth. She knew he was going to try to kiss her. Quickly she slid into the opposite side of the booth. “Sorry I’m late. Quite a flap on at the base. We’re part of the logistical tail for Freeman’s tooth. He takes quite a bite.”
“No sweat,” he said. “I could wait for you all day.”
“Weather over there’s been lousy,” she said. “Some huge dust storm or other coming out of the Gobi Desert. And the Chinese are apparently using some U.S. radar equipment against us and are trying to—”
“Hey — no shop talk. Okay?” He sat back, spreading his arms imploringly.
She shrugged. “All right. Where are the papers?”
“I thought we were going to have dinner first?”
“I never said that,” she answered.
“You had dinner?”
“No.”
“Well, then—”
“I’m not hungry, Jay.”
“Sure you are. You could do with a few more pounds. They’re workin’ you too—”
“No thanks.” She took her Wave hat off and put it, businesslike, beside her. “You told me you’d have the divorce papers ready for signing.”
“Hey, Lana. I thought we’d agreed on a civil good-bye? I came all this way. Is that too much to ask?”
She paused. With a private Lear jet and all his connections, Lana knew it hadn’t exactly been a chore for Jay to come “all this way,” as he put it. “After what you put me through, Jay — not to mention your threatening to smear my parents in your gutter press — yes, I would say it’s too much to ask. Dinner with you is too much. I agreed to meet. That’s all.”
“Hey,” he said easily, “that’s fine.”
She moved her head away from him, her hair catching the golden sheen of the candlelight. She turned back angrily and looked across the table at him. “Jay, I have no interest in you. I don’t want to see you anymore. Ever. There’s no point in all the smooth talk or the smutty innuendos that your whores probably think are so cute. Have you brought divorce papers or not? We’ll need a witness.”
“Yes. I’ve got one of my staff Xeroxing the damn set for you now.” He looked uncomfortable, jabbing at the crushed ice with his swizzle stick. “Hey, I’m sorry, all right? I didn’t want to screw this up but — I guess with you and me it’s oil and water now.”
“Yes,” she said solemnly. “I guess it is.”
“Okay—” He raised his glass, beckoning her to pick up hers. She hesitated. “Don’t tell me I got that wrong, too?” he said smiling. “Give me a break. You haven’t gone off martinis? Used to be your favorite poison.”
She loathed him now and couldn’t hide it. Her stare seemed an eternity to him.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Now you’re not gonna drink with me? Was I that bad to you?” Quickly he held up his hands. “Okay, I was. If you don’t want to drink with me, fine, but it’s, well — it’s kind of petty isn’t it? Christ — I’m going to give you a fair settlement, babe. A lot of bucks, believe me.”
She was still staring at him. “I remember,” she said, “in Shanghai one time you slipped me a drink. All friendly, lovey-dovey—”
“Jesus, Lana! Is that what you’re on about? Paranoid. Want to switch drinks? Unless,” he jibed sarcastically, “you think I got some venereal disease? Besides, I haven’t touched it. Been waiting for you. For my old flame.” She said nothing.
“Cheers,” he said, ignoring her, raising his glass. Reluctantly she lifted her glass and let his clink against hers and took a sip. The truth was, she was thirsty and would have killed for a Manhattan after a long shift at the base and another day of worrying about Frank — where he was, wondering when next they’d see one another — if ever. She couldn’t bear the possibility of him being killed.
* * *
The sound of the patrol motorcycle and sidecar was muted, its rattle absorbed by the enormous walls of sand that rose on either side of the gully between the dunes, a whirligig twisting along a crest, throwing the fine sand up like brown sugar. Then the rider turned up toward the crest, not fast and not at a steep angle but making a gradual, unhurried approach at no more than ten miles an hour.
It gave Aussie no choice. He flicked up the sand guard on the Haskins’s scope, fixed the machine gunner in the sidecar in the cross hairs, inhaled, let out half his breath, held it, and squeezed. The suppressor kept the noise to a quick “bump” sound, the machine gunner’s head and arms flying back like a rag doll’s against the white smear of the infrared-sighted exhaust. The driver made a quick U-turn but Aussie had the cross hairs on him and squeezed again. The bike coughed once or twice like some animal and fell over on its right side, the wheel of its sidecar still spinning. Aussie made his way quickly back to the FAV, the sound of the tank battle roaring unabated in the distance. Whether Freeman was winning or losing he had no idea — every crew was fighting its own war. Handing Salvini the Haskins, Aussie buckled himself in, saying quietly, “That Haskins is the best fucking rifle in the army.”
“The M-fourteen,” Salvini opined.
“Balls,” Aussie replied, starting the FAV up. “Ten to one you’re wrong.”
“Yeah — who’s to judge?”
Aussie slipped me FAV into low gear and moved toward the crest. “We pick two guys each — four in all — and they fire the Haskins and the M-fourteen — winner’ll be the Haskins.”
“Balls,” Salvini said.
“Come on — you in or out?”
“In.”
“Right,” Aussie whispered as they made the crest. Going down the other side they were all silent, Aussie confident that the thunderous reverberations from the tank battle would cover the approach of the FAV.
“No windows,” Choir observed, looking through his night-vision binoculars at me RAM-C.
“There will be when we hit it,” Aussie said.
“Remember,” David cautioned, the trailer hut now only three hundred yards off, “you stay in the car, Aussie.”
“Yes, mother!”
The
y were at the bottom of the crest where sand gave way to hard, cracked earth, when a hand clamped Aussie’s shoulder in a viselike grip.
“What the—?”
“Mine!” It was the first time in the last hour or so that the La Roche reporter had said anything. No one believed him until Choir saw it, too: poorly laid but a sliver of its black circumference showing. The loose soil dug up to cover it had almost completely been blown away.
“He’s right, boyo!” Choir confirmed. “Antipersonnel.”
“Jesus!” Aussie said. “What now? Must be all around us. They hear one of those going off and they’ll know—” He was interrupted by Brentwood, who was known to be “head fast,” as they called it in the SAS/D, and now showed why.
“Back up the dune — they won’t have laid them there — too much shifting sand. Come on, Aussie — back up.”
Aussie did so, and when they were back over the crest Salvini reminded them that if they didn’t knock out the RAM-C quickly the entire American advance would be incapable of receiving TACAIR support in time. Too much longer and the American and ChiCom tanks would be so close together, mixing it up at such close range, that not even the A-10 Thunderbolts could help.
“Aussie,” Brentwood said, “you get in the sidecar. Choir, you stay here with the FAV with the dashboard machine gun. Salvini, you behind me on the pillion seat. We’ll retrace their path through the mine field around the RAM-C.”
“Okay,” Aussie said. “Let’s go.” And within two minutes Aussie, taking one of the dead Chinese’s helmets, was in the sidecar behind a belt-feed PKS 7.62mm gun. Salvini, with his Heckler & Koch 9mm submachine gun slung over his right shoulder, sat on the pillion seat behind Brentwood, who had taken the other Chinese helmet and who was now adjusting his night-vision goggles, lowering them and blowing grains of dust off the eyepiece before he could pick up the two-wheeled track of the motorcycle and sidecar. It ran along a fifty-yard-wide porous clay gully between the dunes for a hundred yards or so and then turned left, through a man-made gap in the dune and on to more clay around what they were certain was a RAM-C trailer a hundred and fifty yards in front of them.