******
Sergey and his swimmers reached the evacuation sandbar more than an hour early. Then they talked about meaningless things in low voices while they waited anxiously, worried that they might have been betrayed and their ride home would not appear. Finally, a few minutes before it was scheduled to arrive, they heard the familiar sound of a helicopter approaching. Suddenly it came into view in the moonlight directly over them.
Their ride home was just settling down to pick them up when in the distance they could hear their three charges going off almost simultaneously in one long rolling boom. The three men cheered and hugged each other.
In the moonlight the swimmers can see the pilots and the unexpected passenger beaming at them as they climbed in. Little wonder—they’d seen the swimmers react when the explosions occurred and knew exactly what it meant.
“I wonder if we can get another bridge assignment and make more money,” was what Sergey was thinking as he gave the pilots and the volunteer observer a big thumbs up and then, a few seconds later, shook their hands.
Ten minutes later Sergey was shouting something over the engine noise to Mikhail and Andrei about volunteering for another mission when the helicopter plowed into the side of a snow-capped Chinese mountain and exploded.
******
It took the fifty-seven hundred heavily loaded men of the 114th Infantry Division’s nine infantry assault battalions almost five hours of walking in the moonlit night to come though the tree covered slopes of the mountain and reach the edge of the big meadow. The log cabin buildings and a few flickering lights in Bikin were about three kilometers ahead of them. They knew from their maps that the railroad tracks were just beyond the little village.
Colonel Bo Huwang, the division’s deputy commander in name, and actual commander in reality, had watched from the mountain last week as the Russian troops began to garrison the village. It really would have made a lot more sense, he thought with a great deal of twenty-twenty hindsight, if we’d gone straight for the bridges.
But orders were orders. No one expected the Russians to be here two weeks ago when the division commander handed him his final orders and rushed off to safety just before Colonel Bo and the first of his men began to cross the river.
Perhaps we are here because the bridges are even more heavily defended. It was a reassuring thought.
******
It is early in the afternoon in the United States, and still the middle of the night in the Russian East, when reports started coming in to the media about big air battles over northern China and missile attacks on Chinese ports and ships. They were welcomed by the media as big stories in what was otherwise shaping up to be a slow news day.
True to form, the television networks canceled their morning cooking shows and mobilized their news readers and talk show hosts. Similarly, the world’s political leaders immediately began thinking of ways to make political capital out of the war. The news was alarming and there were photo opportunities to be had.
Many world leaders, including the President, quickly call press conferences to lament the fighting and offer solutions. The President, and almost all of the other heads of state, forthrightly and sincerely called upon everyone to stop shooting and for the United Nations to hold an emergency meeting to organize a peace conference.
The TV Networks were similarly happy; their viewership began to increase as breathless commentators interrupted their regular programming to discuss the situation with each other. Their conversations were interspersed with “breaking news” which consists of old footage, the arrival of new talking heads, and coverage of the irrelevant press conferences quickly called by politicians who knew nothing about the situation.
In the United States the flash bulbs and TV lights lit up as the President strode with determination into the White House Rose Garden and earnestly expressed his concern about the fighting and implored everyone to stop. Then the Secretary of State, after giving the media enough time to walk over from the White House, earnestly and soberly appeared in the State Department’s auditorium to announce that she was terribly concerned about world peace and was willing to go anywhere at any time in pursuit of it. The media ate it up.
All we could do at The Detachment, however, was sit around with our fingers up our asses and wait and worry as an ever increasing number of NSA reports and intelligence updates poured in. One thing we didn’t even try to do was contact Danovsky and the handful of our men still out there. There was nothing more we could add to what we’d already suggested and our own men had long ago received their orders and knew what to do when the war started.
Finally, as the afternoon wore on in France and the NSA’s first reports came in about the Chinese air armada heading over Mongolia towards the Russian airfields west of Lake Baikal, we got out the maps of the area and began looking for a staging area the Russians might use to recapture the airfields they were virtually certain to lose. At least it would keep us busy.
Damnit, we should have seen that coming. Hmm. Perhaps the Russians could use the airborne troops we were about to start repatriating from Germany and Belgium.
With nothing else to do except watch the TV news and read the incoming intelligence reports, I sent high priority messages to Bill Hammond and to NATO intelligence. Each message inquired as to the numbers and locations of the Russian airborne survivors.
Bill called a few minutes after I got home, mainly it soon became apparent, so we can commiserate with each other about our impotence to affect the unfolding events and enhance the safety of our men who were still in eastern Russia. Ann and I were saddened to hear that Marjorie was still being treated for stress related to the terrorist attack.
It was still light outside so John Christopher and I decided to dig some worms out of the worm bucket and go fishing before supper. I took my cell phone with me.
Chapter Twenty-four
Media problems.
Everything changed as dawn arrived in Siberia and the surviving Chinese transport planes began dropping paratroopers on every Russian airfield east of Lake Baikal. Each of the fields became a cauldron of intense close quarters fighting as the Chinese paratroopers and, in a couple of cases, helicopter borne assault troops, begin landing on the Russian airfields. They landed in the face of ferocious Russian opposition that had been ready and waiting on the ground.
Amazingly, a recently arrived CNN camera crew was still in the Arkhara transit lounge waiting for Russian customs officials to arrive when the Chinese paratroopers begin landing. The CNN crew had arrived in the middle of the night on a Malaysian charter out of Seoul and most of them are asleep, or trying to sleep, in the little transit lounge when the Chinese paratroopers started landing all around them. They woke up in time to film the assault and beam it back to Atlanta via some kind of satellite hookup.
Dawn was just breaking and the Arkhara runway and the buildings on the air base were just becoming visible when the Chinese paratroopers began landing and the CNN crew began filming. The Chinese came down everywhere including all around the plywood transit lounge with its potbelly stove in the middle of the room to warm it.
It was quickly clear from the pictures being beamed to the CNN studios in Atlanta that many of the Chinese were being hit either before they reached the ground or as they desperately scrambled to get out of their parachutes and try retrieve their weapons from their drop bags. It was fascinating and television networks all over the world picked it up. Ann and I watched as we ate dinner.
The Chinese did not instantly start shooting because they dropped with their weapons and ammunition in canvas duffle bags attached to each paratrooper by a cord. The bags hung down below each man so they would reach the ground just before he did. It is obvious from the early morning footage that many of the Chinese, but certainly not all of them, were shot in the air or on the ground before they could get to their weapons.
The noise was horrendous, and we could see the transit lounge building shake and watch as most of its windows we
re shot out. Several times during the almost ten minutes of live filming screams and shouts could be heard over the constant roar of gunfire.
What CNN was able to broadcast before it suddenly went off the air was both gruesome and fascinating. The Chinese paratroopers didn’t have a chance. Neither, in the end, did the CNN crew. The last sound before the broadcast abruptly ended was a screamed cry of “grenade.”
******
The Chinese paratroopers were incredibly brave and the fight for the Arkhara field lasted well over an hour. But the Chinese had been dropped on an airfield surrounded by a ring of two-man infantry positions backed up by a second ring of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles. Some of the Chinese landed inside the rings and some outside them. But no matter where they landed they tended to be in the open and facing Russians who were in sandbagged positions or armoured vehicles with lots of ammunition. It was a slaughter.
On the other hand, not all of the Chinese were instant casualties and not all of the Russian defenders were fully protected. American Marine veterans of the battle for Campbell Barracks watched the coverage with particular fascination; it was the first time they have been able to see what they had experienced first hand.
The battle with the Chinese paratroopers went through pretty much the same phases at every one of Danovsky’s airfields. First the descending paratroopers took heavy casualties as they came down in the face of carefully aimed fire from defenders shooting upwards. On the other hand, they jumped at a low altitude, typically two hundred meters, so their period of extreme vulnerability was very brief.
Once on the ground the Chinese paratroopers tended to remain vulnerable, particularly in the first few moments as they scrambled to discard their chutes and get their weapons and ammunition out their attached duffle bags. Those who survived long enough to retrieve their weapons then either quickly find some form of cover or died trying.
Everything changed once the first of the surviving paratroopers found cover. Airfields, and certainly their runways and taxiways, appear to a casual observer to be flat and open areas. In fact, there are everywhere slight rises and falls in the ground and numerous buildings and pieces of equipment behind which a trained soldier can take shelter and return fire.
Indeed, it is amazing how even the slightest rise or depression can provide protection from the bullets whooshing past overhead. It’s also a fact that small arms fire from a tank turret or from behind sand bags can travel quite a distance and hit someone across the way. Little wonder that significant numbers of Russian casualties were the result of the intense friendly fire rather than caused by the Chinese.
******
Within a couple of minutes there were Chinese dead and wounded everywhere in the open and the overall battle settled down to numerous individual firefights between Russians in their prepared positions and the Chinese paratroopers who had made it to some kind of shelter.
A number of Chinese, for example, made it to the relatively safe south side of the Podovsk transit lounge where the CNN crew had waiting to clear customs. There the Chinese would be safe, at least temporarily, so long as they stayed really low. If they tried to rise they were likely to be hit by the small arms fire passing through the transit lounge’s windows and thin plywood walls.
Private Bo Shiun heard the sound of moving people and shouting from inside the building where the CNN crew continues to film. He was lying flat on the ground when he underhanded two thermite grenades through a broken window and ended CNN’s live feed.
An hour later most of the Chinese including Private Bo were down. Then the wary Russian survivors began moving slowly and cautiously as they followed their tanks and BMD’s through the airfield's hangars and the built-up areas around the runways and parking aprons. They didn’t know it yet, but it was going to take them almost twenty-four hours to eliminate all the pockets of Chinese resistance and reopen the field.
******
Things were totally different much further to the west at Angarsk and Irkutsk. The frantic warnings of the Russian AWACS enabled a few of the planes on the two fields to be manned and fly off before the Chinese arrived. Very few.
Those that got off in the chaos did so even though many of them were low on fuel or ammunition or both. They tried to make the nearby emergency fields or even, in a couple of cases of planes with some ammunition and missiles left, bravely tried to intercept the incoming Chinese before they ran out of fuel and crashed when their engines flamed out.
The planes in the second wave of Chinese planes, the ones coming out of Mongolia's airspace, were still being challenged by the remnants of the eleven Russian fighters as the Chinese transports came in low over the two still-packed airfields at about six hundred feet and began dropping their paratroopers.
On the jammed airfields pilots were still climbing into planes and frantically trying to leave amidst the chaos even as the first Chinese transports roared overhead and parachutes began to open. Most of the Russian planes did not get off.
One of the Russian fighters trying to escape Irkutsk actually hit a Chinese parachute as it lifted off. It crashed in a ball of flames as its desperate pilot attempted a crash landing in the open area beyond the end of the runway. The fighter behind it somehow succeeds in avoiding the parachutes and dangling men only to flame out and crash a few minutes later as its pilot vainly attempted to reach an auxiliary field before running out of fuel.
Sergeant Chin Haolin of the 1091st Special Company didn’t know any of this. He and the men of his squad were expecting serious opposition as they poured out of their low flying Chinese-made copy of a Russian AN-12 turboprop and their parachutes jerked open above the Irkutsk airfield. They did’t even know the name of the field or that it was somewhere in Russia.
Sergeant Chin and the men of his company floated to ground unopposed in the midst of a target-rich chaos. Russian planes were parked everywhere with men running to and from them and pilots trying to climb in or out of them. Other planes were still attempting to taxi to the end of the runway for takeoff.
Chin and his men were astonished to find that they had landed unopposed. Yes, there was scattered shooting, but mostly from nervous Chinese; not a Russian soldier was to be seen except for the confused pilots and aircrews, at least no live ones. More importantly, there was no return fire, just lots of smoke and noise and confusion.
Each of the Chinese paratroopers had grenades and ammunition in the baggy pockets of his fatigues and he and his comrades knew their duties—they began destroying the Russian planes as fast as they could, even if their pilots and crews were still in them. But they didn’t touch the fuel facilities, airport equipment, or the runways. Their orders were very clear about leaving them untouched. When they finished they would begin clearing the runways and digging in to hold the field against the inevitable Russian counterattack.
At the crowded Irkutsk airfield the unarmed Russian ground crews and administrative staff received absolutely no warning and were totally surprised and unprepared for the arrival of the Chinese. They fled from the field in every direction. Many of them climbed the perimeter fence surrounding the field and headed off towards the nearby city of Irkutsk on foot.
******
Things are very different at the airfields east of Lake Baikal, very different. The airfield at Darasun was a good example. Several thousand Chinese paratroopers land on the field at dawn. Colonel Altaysk and his men knew they were coming and were ready in their little two man holes. So were the men in the Russian tanks and personnel carriers surrounding the field.
Fire from the Russian defenders was intense and many of the Chinese were dead or wounded before they hit the ground. Others wre cut down because they are clearly visible in the flat open areas of the airfield’s runways, taxiways, and parking areas.
In the end, less than a thousand of the four thousand Chinese paratroopers dropped on Darasun actually got into action. The rest became casualties before they could even retrieve their weapons and find cover. On the other hand
, even a few hundred highly trained and motivated paratroopers is more than enough men for an intense firefight no matter how well-armed and positioned their opponents might be. The fighting lasted several hours until it petered out as the vulnerable Chinese ran out of ammunition and options.
No one knew it at the time, but it would take another twelve hours before the last two pockets of Chinese holdouts were finally eliminated. Both consisted of about a dozen Chinese who came down off the end of the runway and were holed up with a couple of terrified Russian families in their log homes.
Three hours after the first Chinese touched the ground, and after surveying the field and speaking with the air force base commander, Colonel Altaysk radioed to headquarters that by nightfall Darasun would be able to begin recovering the planes that had been dispersed to its emergency fields and handle incoming traffic from the west. There was nothing he could do about the dozens of planes the Chinese destroyed on the ground except use bulldozers to push them out of the way.
All the rest of the airfields in the east, every single one of them, were the scenes of similarly vicious battles between their Russian defenders waiting on the ground and the Chinese paratroopers dropping from the sky. And all of them except Irutsk and Angarsk had roughly the same outcome—the waiting Russians destroyed the attacking Chinese paratroopers, but not before Chinese paratroopers destroyed all the Russian planes on the ground.
Only at Areda was the issue still in doubt. The newly arrived Russian defenders held one end of the field, and the newly arrived Chinese paratroopers the other. Smoldering and destroyed planes were everywhere.
Russia’s basic problem was that the two key airfields west of Lake Baikal and a significant majority of its remaining operational fighters and ground attack aircraft had been lost as a result of the Chinese airborne attacks. The two airfields the Chinese are holding are important because of where they are located—Chinese fighters based on them will be perfectly positioned to intercept Russian transports bringing supplies and reinforcements to Chita and the Russian forces further east.
Our Next Great War Page 32