What Bao did not know was that that particular spot had been picked for the blocking position because the small stream running off the northerly side and running under the railroad could provide its defenders with water. The water ran under the railroad tracks in a culvert that would be destroyed or blocked when the bridge fell on it.
Raw and recently denuded mountain slopes were now on either side of the tracks where the railroad passes into the mountain range. The angry slash of red dirt contrasted greatly to the rest of the heavily forested lower slopes of the mountain range that was visible to the men working on the position and to the Chinese watching them. Where there had once been trees along the railroad tracks and service road there were now rough patches of bare reddish earth torn with numerous trenches, holes, and sand bagged positions.
The source of the destruction was obvious: Twenty or more huge bulldozers and other types of heavy construction equipment were working all over the site and the adjacent hills and mountain sides; the troops walking and working around the equipment looked like an army of ants. There were obviously many thousands of them. Their tents and equipment were everywhere.
This is a major construction project, was Bao’s first thought as he adjusted the focus on his binoculars and settled in to watch. Both civilian and military vehicles were constantly moving westward on the railroad and the road running along it. It was instantly obvious from the armor, artillery, and military vehicles parked everywhere that this is a military project. And it’s new; it is not shown on the map Colonel Ma gave me.
Unfortunately for Bao, his company’s “radio man” was only carrying a bulky older battery-powered portable radio good only for listening; he could not report that the Russians were here in force instead of along the border as he had been led to believe. Oh well, he thought. Sooner or later someone will report it.
Also, but not unfortunately for Bao, was the fact that at least one of his men was an informer planted by his regiment’s political officer. Having such an informer in every company was party policy. It meant that if Bao dis not attack as ordered,he would be denounced and severely disciplined if and when he returned to China. It really makes no difference even if the informer becomes a casualty; if I go back to China without attacking someone else will report me. I have to either lead the attack or defect and try to surrender.
Then he brightened as he recalled an earlier thought.
I don’t have to attack a bridge where the Russians are strong and get us all killed. I can hit another bridge either above or below this place. No one except me will know whether it was the right one.
****** General Evans
We flew into naval airfield at Vladivostok in the Starlifter. It was instantly obvious that the Russians on the Vladivostok airfield had never seen a plane like it before—it immediately attracted a small crowd of curious enlisted personnel. They disappeared as if by magic, however, when the door opened and General Danovsky began walking down the portable stairs that were hurriedly pushed into place.
A small group of Russian officers were at the bottom of the stairs to welcome Danovsky and they too seemed to be curious about the plane. And, of course, they threw down their cigarettes and stood to attention as the general walked down the stairs with everyone coming down behind him.
As he was walking down, a strange-looking car and an old bus pulled up. They were obviously there to take us to the local military headquarters. Danovsky didn’t introduce me or anyone else in his entourage. He just crisply saluted the assembled officers, shook a few hands, and headed for the transportation.
Danovsky and I rode in the spacious back seat of an old black Zil limousine with a dirty interior; everyone else rode in the bus. At first I didn’t know what kind of a car we’re in, so I asked. It was an old Zil. It reminded me of the picture I had seen of an American car that had long ago stopped being produced. A Packard or Nash I think they were called.
As we drove away from the Starlifter I could see one of the Russian naval officers hurry to a jeep and speak into a handheld radio microphone. He seemed a bit excited and was obviously reporting that someone important has unexpectedly arrived in addition to General Danovsky, a man wearing a Russian officer’s fatigues without any rank or insignia.
What made my arrival so unique, and obviously caused the officer’s hurried report, was that I was riding with Danovsky in the limo while several Russian generals and a number of colonels and other officers were riding on the bus. Who is that masked man? That was my irreverent thought as we drove away and I saw the naval officer’s gestures as he spoke excitedly into the phone.
******
Vladivostok was a godawful place. The only thing more dingy and run down than the airfield and the military headquarters was the city itself. All we saw as we drove in on the pot holed concrete road from the airfield to the Naval Headquarters were row and after row of ugly and decrepit concrete apartment buildings.
They really were a mess. Laundry was flapping out of the windows and cars are haphazardly parked around them, many of them obviously rusty derelicts in various stages of decay. A handful of pre-teens and teenagers were clustered at some of the building entrances smoking.
All in all, it looks like a damn depressing place to live. It reminded me of the housing projects I had once been shown in Chicago.
Vladivostok itself was a port city located at the very end of the Far Eastern Military District which Danovsky commanded. It was important to Russia because it was Russia’s only all-weather port with access to the Pacific.
The city was particularly important at the moment because, in addition to its regiments of naval infantry, it was also the home of one of Danovsky’s armies, the Fourteenth, consisting of six understrength army divisions and a few navy and air force fighter and reconnaissance squadrons.
The Fourteenth Army was one of the four new armies that were brought into the Russian East some years ago when the Chinese attacked in 2003 in what turned out to be another futile effort to take back some disputed territory around the Ussuri River. They had been here ever since.
During the past ten days, four of the six army divisions began moving north to Khabarovsk and most of the aircraft, at least those that could still fly, left for Podovsk. The Fourteenth Army’s other two divisions were to begin moving as soon as rail space became available.
Their repositioning, Danovsky confided on the flight, was occurring despite serious naval opposition which resulted in orders from Moscow that seemed to suggest that he should leave the six divisions and the planes in Vladivostok.
“Unfortunately,” he explained with a smile, “we are having communications outages so I won’t get the definitive orders to do nothing until it is too late to stop the planes and troops from redeploying.”
There will be, he admitted when I asked, quite a row at the Defense Ministry about his orders relocating the divisions.
"But the defense minister is a former general and the army has more political power than navy—so at some point the order will be quietly rescinded and forgotten."
I did not tell Danovsky that I knew from NSA intercepts—that the Vladivostok-based general in command of the Fourteenth Army and its six army divisions and planes had received orders countermanding Danovsky's He had obviously chosen to obey Danovsky’s orders and pretend he had not received those from Moscow ordering him to stay in Vladivostok. He had probably heard about the fate of the political officers.
From what I could see, and I told him as much, Danovsky was doing the right thing by redeploying the six army divisions and Vladivostok’s air force squadrons to the interior.
Taking Vladivostok and denying Russia a port with access to the Sea of Japan and the Pacific may be one of China’s goals. But Danovsky’s reality was that he needed to concentrate his forces to win the war, not split them up to win a battle to hold a port and the lands around it that would almost certainly be lost if the war was lost.
Russia faces the same choice in Vladivostok that it faced in
Turkey a few months ago—and the answer was the same this time as well: Don’t keep troops away from the main battle to protect something that will surely be lost if the main battle is lost.
Whether the Russian admirals liked it or not, the Russian navy would have to dig in and fight on its own to defend the port if the Chinese attack. And they’ll have to do so without some of the four naval infantry battalions, the Russian Marines, stationed here. Danovsky wants to take at least two of them as well, maybe more or even all of them.
He nodded when I told him I thought he should take them all while he could since they could be replaced with the reinforcements that land at Vladivostok after the railroad line running out of Vladivostok was cut.
But will the Chinese even attack in an effort to take Vladivostok and, if so, when and how? And how long could it hold out?
Those were significant questions because Vladivostok could possibly be significant for the Russians as a staging area for a second front. For example, enough Russian forces might be shipped here after the war starts to support an attack up the rail line towards Khabarovsk in an effort to draw Chinese troops and equipment away from the main conflict.
Alternately, the Russian forces at Vladivostok could attack directly over the border into China itself in an effort to draw Chinese troops away from the main conflict.
In any event, so long as the port holds out and the rail line and the road running north remain open between Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, the Russians could bring troops and supplies from Vladivostok and use them to reinforce Khabarovsk and the interior where the crucial battles for the Russian East were likely to be fought.
Obviously the Chinese know all this, so they’re likely to cut the Vladivostok railroad line and road to Khabarovsk as soon as the war starts. Or they might launch a serious effort to try to take the port to prevent its use as a staging area for a counterattack. Or the Chinese might let a Russian build up occur and move north, and then come out of China and cut it off and destroy it.
It was like I was watching a big chess game with the lives of many thousands of men on every square.
Chapter Ten
Vladivostok.
I was the one who wanted to visit the big naval base, not Danovsky. So far as he and Turpin and his other generals are concerned the Russian navy was on its own and wouldn’t cooperate. They see Vladivostok and the Russian Navy as being of no further use once the Chinese cross the border and cut the final leg of the rail line running north along the border from Vladivostok to Khabarovsk, I was not so sure about that, but I didn’t try to reason with him. At least not yet.
In any event, if I had to bet, and in a sense I am, I would bet that the Chinese will launch an attack on Vladivostok, but that it will be a diversion, not the major attack that decides the war. What was much more likely would be an attack designed to pin the Russian forces here so they could not be used wherever the decisive battles were actually fought. I certainly agreed with Danovsky about that.
What we both thought was that there would be a vicious battle for Vladivostok, but that it would only be a bloody feint. We expected the Chinese to concentrate their forces further to the west for the main battle, and merely cut the rail line and the road running along the border so that supplies and reinforcements cannot be landed at Vladivostok and shipped north to wherever the Chinese main thrust occurs.
Why did we think this? Because that’s what we would do if we were the Chinese commanders; concentrate our forces for use in the main battle which was likely to be fought somewhere else.
******
Convincing Admiral Krusak, the Russian commander of the Pacific Fleet based in Vladivostok, that General Danovsky plan was correct was another matter entirely. Krusak was a tall, lean, gray haired man and absolutely furious at Danovsky for withdrawing his planes and the army troops. He was so anxious to tell Danovsky that he didn’t even wait for us to sit down, let alone offer us the customary tea and cookies.
“Don’t you understand how important this naval base and port is?” he shouted as he waved his arms about. “For God’s sake it’s the only year-round port we have in this part of the world. It must be defended.”
“If that’s the case,” I snapped back via Basilof before Danovsky even has a chance to reply, “you need to move fast to get as many of your naval infantry regiments up north so they can participate in the key battles to save Vladivostok for Russia. And you’ve got to hurry before the rail line to Khabarovsk and the road running along it are cut.”
He looked at me accusingly. “You are an American. An enemy. You want Russia to lose this port.”
“Frankly,” I responded, “I personally don’t give a shit whether you lose it or not. But my Commander in Chief is the President and he ordered me to help Russia keep it. Otherwise I’d just stand off and laugh at how your stupid thinking is going to cause Russia to lose it.” I’m glad looks don’t kill. If they did I’d be dead by now.
“Look Admiral,” I said, poking a finger at his chest for emphasis, I bet it’s been a long time since he got that treatment “there is going to be a war with China and it is going to be a land and air war that is won, or lost, by Russia’s army and air force. If China wins, the Chinese will take this port and its naval base despite the fact that you were able to hold on to it while the war was being lost.”
“Nonsense. I don’t even believe there will be a war.”
“If there is no war you can order your naval infantry to turn around and come back. But if there is a war, and Russia loses it because you sat on your hands and wouldn’t let your naval infantry join the fight, what do you think Moscow is going to do to you. Hmm?
They’re going to shoot you, you fool. Do you really want to risk that?
An orderly brought in the tea and smoked herring and we talked and talked and talked. And the Russians smoked and smoked and smoked. And no one touched the fish.
The more we talked about a Chinese invasion, and the more the room filled up with cigarette smoke, the more obvious it became that really serious tensions and differences exist between the Russian army and the Russian navy.
On paper the naval forces, including naval infantry regiments in Vladivostok, the Russian Pacific Fleet’s Marines, all belong to Danovsky’s Far Eastern Military District. In reality, as Danovsky explained to me on the flight coming here, they are totally independent. The Russian navy and the Russian army don’t get along and rarely cooperate on anything. It sounded like the Pentagon.
“Russia’s bottom line,” I told Admiral Krusak as I pointed to the map Danovsky had unrolled on the Admiral’s table, “is that Vladivostok can be resupplied and reinforced by sea; and it can get its artillery support and air support from Russia’s naval forces; Khabarovsk and the interior cannot, and that is where the war and Russia's hold on Vladivostok will be won or lost.”
“That, Comrade Admiral, is exactly why everything that Russia can get to the interior has to be sent there immediately. Once the war starts it will be very difficult to get significant amounts of supplies and reinforcements to where the main battles will be fought and the war won or lost.”
Krusak finally began to see things in a new light when I told him that I was going to recommend to Washington and Moscow that, as a condition of continuing United States assistance, that Russia immediately deliver, "deliver," I repeated to Krusak with emphasis, not just assign or promise, every single ship and naval infantry regiment in its inventory to his Pacific Fleet for use against China.
“Even if they arrive after the war has already begun you can use them to close down the Chinese ports and launch a counter invasion into the very heart of China.”
Admiral Krusak was obviously not much of a poker player; the idea that he might command a much bigger fleet and more Russian Marines obviously held great appeal. So did the idea that he would be able to direct a campaign of unrestricted naval warfare against China from the relative safety of Vladivostok.
What I didn’t tell Krusak is that our analys
ts think China has so many Pacific ports available for use as alternatives to Vladivostok that Vladivostok is a likely candidate for China’s first tactical nuclear strike if it decides to make one.
Krusak’s antagonism really began to turn around when I pointed out that the planes that will be flying in with the replacements for the Russian Marines he sends north could be use to carry his dependents back to Russia.
I knew things were starting to go our way when Krusak began talking about the problems he would have getting his dependents to evacuate.
“Many of them won’t go,” he said. “They have heard how bad things are in Russia now that the Eastern Union has collapsed and Russia is packed with refugees. At least here they have apartments and beds.”
Four hours later, over dinner and the vodka I didn’t drink “because of my medical condition,” Krusak left the room for about twenty minutes. When he returned he announce, with slurring words and a lot of satisfaction, that he has just ordered his Marine regiments to move north and place themselves directly under Danovsky’s command.
We all touched glasses. My canned orange juice was nothing to write home about. Then Krusak showed his big tobacco stained yellow teeth with a smile and asked how soon we thought “the first of my additional ships will start arriving.”
******
Immediately after the banquet broke up I got a ride back to the Starlifter and send a long scrambled satellite message to Bill Hammond explaining the situation and strongly suggesting that he ask the President to call the Russian president and strongly suggest, read require if they want our assistance to continue, that the Russians immediately assign every ship and Marine regiment in their inventory to Admiral Krusak’s Red Banner Pacific Fleet.
“It’s absolutely imperative,” I wrote on the message pad, “that every Russian naval ship that floats get underway at flank speed with every Russian Marine, helicopter, and winter-equipped soldier the Russians can quickly cram on board. If they don’t do that, Russia will almost certainly lose the war and we need to seriously reconsider continuing to provide assistance if it’s all going to be for nothing.” We sure as hell don’t want to keep helping these fuckers if they won’t help themselves.
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