Suddenly the unseen forest behind the tree line erupted in smoke and flashes. It went on for over a minute as every weapon that could reach the tree line discharged its allotted ten rounds. Then everything went quiet. Ten minutes later and the smoke in the air had dissipated. It was as if nothing had happened.
Vern and I would leave when Chernenko hits them again with the second barrage in about two hours.
Chapter Twenty-seven
We run for it.
We were as ready to go as we’d ever be. As soon as the flare went up and the firing for the second preemptive round of shelling began, we manhandled the hand pumper on to the nearest set of tracks, threw on our backpacks full of food and ammunition, and began pumping like hell. Our assault rifles were slung over our shoulders and our pockets were stuffed with ration cans, cigarette lighters, and ammunition.
Our hand cart was moving right along when the Russians stopped firing. Damn this is sort of fun even if I can’t see where we’re going.
About thirty minutes and five or six miles later we were on the right hand track and boogying right along in the darkness towards the bridges when something suddenly dawned on me. I could actually feel the hair on the back of my neck rise.
“Jeez, Vern,” I panted in a whisper, “Something just dawned on me. The goddamn Russians drive on the goddamn left side of the road. We’re going south on the northbound track. Didn’t the colonel say that there is another troop train coming about now?”
“Shit, Dick, you’re right. And the fucker will be running without lights.”
“Stop,” I whisper urgently. “Halt.” Even the Russian who doesn’t speak English instantly picked up the command. We coasted for a few feet and stopped.
“Quiet,” I snapped. “Everyone listen”… “Oh shit here it comes.”
“Hurry,” I shouted needlessly as we all leaped off the handcar and rushed to lift it on one side in order to tip it off the tracks along with all our gear. It took only a couple of seconds.
“Everyone off the roadbed and get down,” I ordered in a stage whisper.
And not a moment too soon. Less than a minute later we could hear the distinctive sound of a handcar pumping its way towards us in the dark. Then, even before the hand pumper reached us, we could hear the distinctive chuff of a coal powered steam engine coming towards us from further down the track.
“Stay down for God's sake. Don’t move” I whispered. “If they see us they’ll think we’re fucking Chinese and start shooting.”
We froze as first the hand car clattered by and then the front of a flat car with what looked like a BMD sitting on it loomed out of the darkness provided by the cloud covering the moon. There wasn’t a light to be seen as the long unlit train following them slowly rumbled past us. Several times we heard voices without being able to see who is doing the talking.
It was so dark that even from fifteen feet away where we huddled at the bottom of the track embankment we couldn’t count the cars or see what they are carrying. There must have been quite a number of cars—it seemed to take forever before the three big locomotives pushing them chugged past us and disappeared into the darkness as if they were ghosts.
******
We tipped our hand pumper back on the track, which took some doing and several tries in the darkness, and continued pumping our way south for about thirty minutes when the sky behind us was suddenly lit by flares and the sound of shooting and explosions filled the night.
Two pre-emptive barrages had not stopped the Chinese. Chernenko’s little brigade of soldiers and naval infantry at Bikin was obviously once again under heavy attack.
Ominously, the number of flares going up seems to diminish and several times the noise seems to get louder even as we get further and further away. Truth be told, I feel more than a little bit guilty that Jerry and I weren’t there to help them.
Chernenko’s two bouts of preemptive counterfire devastated the Chinese coming out of the trees, particularly the second. Even so, the survivors had attacked on schedule. Failure to do so would have resulted in immediate and very severe punishments. In essence, they had to attack or they’d die for certain. The division commander and his political commissioner were fanatics for discipline even if they were safely out of danger themselves.
Unlike the morning attack, however, this time the Chinese charging into the open area in front of the tree line were supported by a similar mass attack from two battalions of Chinese who had spent the entire day infiltrating across the rail line further to the north so they could swing around and simultaneously attack the Russians positions from the rear.
Following their orders, the attackers in the rear waited in the darkness for a full three minutes after the Chinese in front of the Russians came charging out of the tree line and the shooting starts. The idea was for them to hit the Russian rear and roll it up while the Russians were fully engaged with the Chinese human wave attack coming out of the trees. It didn’t work.
That the Chinese would circle around behind them and attack the Russian rear was such an obvious move that Chernenko and his troops expected it. The turrets and machine guns on some of the tanks and BDMs quickly swiveled around to face the rear and so did the Russian Marines and army troops in the second line of positions. Mortar flares quickly lit up the Chinese attacking the Russian rear.
What was not expected by either side was that the train, the one which had passed Captain Carpenter about half an hour earlier, would arrive as the fighting intensified and pass right through the charging mass of Chinese hitting Chernenko’s rear.
“Get on the floor and keep going.” That’s what the engine driver had been ordered to do if the train was attacked and that was what he did.
The men on the train, two battalions of armored infantry from 97th Guards, didn’t have a clue as to what was happening. All they know was that mortar flares were lighting them up and people on both sides of the train were shooting at them. So they fired back just as they had been ordered to do if the train was attacked.
In fact, no one was shooting at them. It just looked that way because they were passing through an active battlefield and wre in the crossfire of the two opposing forces. But it didn’t matter. The reality was that the train, carrying well over a hundred tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, had much more fire power than Chernenko’s troops and the Chinese attackers combined. The men of the 97th fired at everything that moved as the train slowly clanked its way through the battlefield under the glare of the flares fired by the Chernenko's men and from the mortars on the train’s flat cars and gravel cars.
By the time the train passed out from under the light of the flares, the Chinese attackers have been cut to shreds and Chernenko has lost all of his tanks and BMDs and at least half of his Marines and army troops. Almost a hundred men on the train were killed or wounded, mostly as a result of being caught in the cross-fire.
******
Chief Matthews’ offer of big money enticed all but two of the original swimmers to go out again. It probably helped that the swimmers and helicopter pilots had been immediately handed a Russian medal and packets of crisp new twenty dollar bills as soon as they returned from their first mission. Forty-one of the original fifty-three swimmers returned safely and several more were believed to still be on their way back.
Thirty-nine of the original swimmers will go out again tonight plus one who had been too drunk to go last night and three new arrivals. They will hit more of the Chinese rail and road bridges being used to support the invasion. Those going out for the first time will be teamed with the swimmers who succeeded and came back last night.
******
“Gunfighter,” Navy Lieutenant Vladimer “Vladi” Borz, and his four squadron mates of the carrier Kuznetsov’s 107th squadron barely reached Podovsk in time to refuel when their squadron of Navy Su-33s was thrown into the battle against the Chinese. Originally the “Cowboys” had been fourteen. But five did not return from the first of the two night time sorties agains
t the Chinese and three from the second. And poor Igor, radio name “Sidekick,” was lost when their AWACS controller vectored them to the dirt emergency strip twenty miles south of Podovsk after their second mission.
“It is flying at night that is the problem, not the combat,” Gunfighter explained to the others in the pilots’ meeting before they lift off from the emergency field for the short flight back to Podovsk. Everyone is certain he is right. They are, after all, the best of the best squadron's and famous throughout Russia—because of a news show a few years ago that made much of the radio names they adopted after watching dubbed Italian cowboy movies.
The Cowboys were sure it was the darkness and the terrible AWACs controllers who caused their casualties, not the combat. The Chinese pilots, they kept assuring each other, aren’t worth a damn.
Landing on the emergency field right after sunup had been a piece of cake for all them. Its length was endless compared to the short deck of the Kuznetsov. Sidekick, they all agreed, had forgotten for a few seconds that there would be no arresting cable. That’s why he’d run off the end of the runway and exploded his plane.
Or maybe his brakes failed. The 107th was famous for its cowboy attitude, not its maintenance. The squadron maintenance officer, God rest his soul, had preferred to fly and read girlie magazines from Romania.
Arkhara Airfield was open and ready to resume limited operations. Its ground crews and “volunteers” from its infantry defenders worked all day to get it ready. And they did—they finish clearing the wreckage and debris from this morning’s assault by the Chinese paratroopers by late in afternoon.
The Cowboys may be back at Arkhara and their planes may be refueled and ready, but Gunfighter and four his fellow pilots were not. He and the other pilots have been awake for more than sixty straight hours. They’d spent the day at the emergency field trying to sleep—first on the ground and then in their cockpits. But it had been impossible. Siberia was too cold even though winter had not yet arrived.
In a word, they were totally exhausted after two nights without sleep, two incredibly tense combat missions, and an emotionally draining hour spent trying to unhook a mangled and scorched Sidekick from his ejection seat—which hadn’t fired him high enough into the air when he tried to eject out of the flames of his crashed plane.
An officious Lieutenant Colonel tried to assign a mission to the Cowboys as soon as they landed. Vlad was the senior surviving Cowboy and the acting squadron leader. He didn’t exactly refuse the assignment; he just put his head down on the table and fell asleep while the colonel was telling him how important it was that he and the others fly again as soon as their planes finished being refueled and rearmed.
Six hours of sleep and a good meal later it was dark, their planes had been refueled and rearmed, and Vlad and his men were finally ready to go. Fuck your mother, I’m the senior officer and commanding the squadron. And I’ve got six kills already. Can it be true?
******
Russian helicopters and tanks were back in action in front of Khabarovsk. They were counterattacking the Chinese and using their night vision sights to great effect. Vlad and his Cowboys don’t know any of this—just that they are needed at Khabarovsk because all of its planes were destroyed by Chinese paratroopers.
They had taken off from Arkhara in the darkness and been sent to Khabarovsk to refuel. Finally, a little after midnight, they climbed out of Khabarovsk to thirty thousand feet and reported their availability to the area AWACS.
“Kuznetsov 107 plus four.”
Their AWACs controller can see from their IFF designators that they were Navy Su-33ss. That’s good.
“Kuznetsov 107 turn right heading 270. Descend to ten. Targets three Chinese MiG-21s at seven.
Two minutes later Vlad saw the blinking icons of two Chinese fighters appear on his radar screen and fires two Aphid missiles. Seconds later one of the icons brightens into little flecks of light and disappears. “That’s seven,” Gunfighter announced as he reefs his plane around in a tight turn—and collided with the Moscow Kid.
****** Major Jerry Carpenter
It was an hour or so after midnight and we were pumping away without a clue as to how close we are to the bridges south of Bikin. All we knew for sure was that the bridges were somewhere up ahead of us in the darkness. That’s more than a bit worrisome because the three Russian infantry companies defending the bridges were undoubtedly filled with undisciplined conscripts, terrified kids who are likely to start shooting without thinking when they hear us coming.
I didn’t know about Vern and the two Russians, but in addition to getting more and more worried, I was getting more and more bushed and my hands were getting seriously blistered. Eugene was certainly smarter and colder than we were; over an hour ago he took off his shirt and wrapped it around the metal pumping bar he was holding.
“Hold up,” I finally whispered as I stop pumping. “Let’s listen. We don’t want to get our asses shot off by some seventeen year old kid with a gun and six weeks of basic training.”
“Good idea,” Vern says as we coasted to a stop. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. But what the fuck are we going to do about it?”
The night was dark and silent. Really silent. Not even a breeze to rustle the leaves of the trees and bushes that crowd the embankment all the way up to the rails. We waited and listened for what seems like a very long time. Absolutely nothing.
Then I almost had a heart attack.
“Amerikanski?” The quiet voice comes out of the pitch black darkness.
“Da. Da.” We all answered almost simultaneously, every one of us. I instinctively stepped off the hand cart and stumbled to the ground as I fumbled for my weapon. Vern was even faster. I could barely make him out even though he was only a few feet away; by the time my foot hit the ground he had already stepped off the cart. I could see him dimly in the moonlight; he was backing away, going down the side of the embankment with his weapon up.
A terse flood of Russian came from somewhere in the darkness. Obviously a question. Eugene responded with his own question. I didn’t know what Eugene was saying but relief was evident in his voice.
My heart was beating a hundred miles an hour as I stood up straight and re-slung my weapon.
******
Chinese and Russians troops were not the only ones on the move tonight. At 0120 in the morning at least ten divisions of the impoverished quasi-kingdom of North Korea surged across the Russian border towards Vladivostok all along the North Korean border with Russia south of Vladivostok.
North Korea’s invasion was a highly concentrated because North Korea has only seventeen kilometers of border with Russia. The North Koreans quickly got across the Tumen River both by using crude wooden boats and by marching on wooden planks laid across the Tumen River Railroad Bridge that brings the Trans-Siberian Railroad into North Korea.
The handful of surprised Russian Frontier Guards on the border didn’t have a chance. They were quickly overwhelmed by a massive human wave of North Korean infantry and taken prisoner. The small and rundown Russian border city of Khasan fell instantly without a fight and the North Koreans marched through it without breaking stride.
North Korea’s propaganda ministry immediately went on the air to explain that North Korea has been forced to join the war because of its mutual defense treaty with China. Their rapid response to the Russian attack, the North Koreans tell the world and those few of its citizens lucky enough to have radios, will relieve pressure on the Chinese and help assure a communist victory.
Whatever the motivation and explanations of the North Koreans, the result was that the outnumbered Russian defenders on the outskirts of Vladivostok now faced another and even larger invasion force.
******
China’s politicians and military leaders were equally surprised and furious. The middle of the night phone call alerting the Party Chairman about the North Korean invasion was not going well for the embarrassed general in charge of Chinese intelligence
whose agency hadn’t seen it coming.
“But look at it this way Comrade Chairman,” explained the embarrassed general in charge of Chinese intelligence. “We are only attacking Vladivostok to draw the Russian reserves away from Chita and the Amur River border. Now the Koreans are doing it for us. It means we can withdraw our troops and send them to Chita to join the real battle.”
“Yes,” fumed the Party Chairman. “That is correct. But if that goddamn little shit takes Vladivostok he’ll try to hold on to it—they’ll replace the Russians and we’ll still be cut off from access to that part of the Sea of Japan.”
******
Vladivostok’s docks were brightly lit by their overhead floodlights. It was the second night of the war and the rumbling thunder of artillery fire could be heard both to the north from the Chinese Front and to the southwest from the new Korean Front. The level of activity at the port remained extremely high as many of the ships of the Russian Navy were still arriving with their cargos of troops and equipment.
One long train of flatcars was on the dock spur frantically loading newly arrived troops and equipment destined for Kharbarovsk and the interior. Another long line of flatcars was standing by on a nearby spur on the dock waiting its turn to move in.
The newly landed troops didn’t need to be told to hurry. They were moving fast because they can hear the distant rumble of the artillery and fear being caught out in the open by a Chinese air attack; the senior officer on the scene, who hadn’t slept for almost seventy two hours, was pushing them hard because he feared the rail line will soon be cut. If it isn’t already.
The major supervising the unloading of the casualties from Bikin knew exactly what the casualties and the distant thunder meant—the railroad was either cut or about to be cut. God, I’m glad they sent me here instead of with that brigade. Poor Chernenko.
Our Next Great War Page 37