“Do you have sufficient forces to protect your interests in that region?”
“Minister, I am not a military expert, and I cannot comment on that,” Adler replied. That was entirely true, but a man in a position of strength would probably have said something else.
“It would be a great misfortune if you cannot,” Zhang observed.
It might have been fun to inquire about the PRC’s position on the matter, but the answer would have been neutral and meaningless. Nor would they have said anything about the presence of the Eisenhower battle group, now flying patrols over the “international waters” of the Formosa Strait. The trick was to make them say anything at all.
“The world situation occasionally requires reexamination of one’s position on many things, and one must sometimes think carefully about one’s friendships,” Adler tried. It lay on the table for half a minute.
“We have been friends since your President Nixon first courageously came here,” the Foreign Minister said after reflection. “And we remain so, despite the occasional misunderstanding.”
“That is good to hear, Minister. We have a saying about friendship in time of need.” Okay, think about that one. Maybe the news reports are true. Maybe your friend Daryaei will succeed. The bait dangled for another fifteen seconds.
“Really, our only area of permanent discord is America’s position on what your President inadvertently called the ‘two Chinas.’ If only this could be regularized... ,” the Minister mused.
“Well, as I told you, the President was trying to express himself to reporters in a confusing situation.”
“And we are to disregard it?”
“America continues to feel that a peaceful solution to this provincial dispute serves the interests of all parties.” That was status quo ante, a position established by a strong, confident America whom China would not challenge openly.
“Peace is always preferable to conflict,” Zhang said. “But how long must we show such great forbearance? These recent events have only served to illustrate the central problem.”
A very small push, Adler noted: “I understand your frustration, but we all know that patience is the most valuable of virtues.”
“At some point, patience becomes indulgence.” The Foreign Minister reached for his tea. “A helpful word from America would be most gratefully received.”
“You ask that we alter our policy somewhat?” SecState wondered if Zhang would speak again after altering the course of the conversation ever so slightly.
“Merely that you see the logic of the situation. It would make the friendship of our two nations far more substantial, and it is, after all, a minor issue to countries such as ours.”
“I see,” Adler replied. And he did. It was certain now. He congratulated himself for making them tip their hand. The next call on this would have to be made in Washington, assuming they had the time there for something other than a shooting war.
THE 10TH ACR crossed back into Saudi territory at 0330L. The Buffalo Cav was now spread in a line thirty miles across. In another hour, they would be astride the UIR army’s supply line, having gotten here without any notice. The force was moving faster now, almost thirty miles in an hour. His lead elements had found a few patrol and internal-security units in UIR territory, mainly single vehicles which had been dispatched immediately upon sighting. There would be more now, as soon as they hit the next road. It would be MP units at first—whatever the enemy called them—used for traffic control. There had to be a lot of fuel rolling down the road to KKMC, and that was the first mission of the Buffalo Soldiers.
SECOND BRIGADE OF the Immortals had been under fire for nearly an hour, when orders came to go forward, and the armored vehicles of the former Iranian armored division moved with a will. The two-star in command was in back of the flanking 3rd Brigade now, listening rather than talking, wondering about and thankful for the absence of American air power. Corps artillery had arrived and set up without firing to reveal its presence. They might not last long, but he wanted the benefit of their presence. The opposing force could hardly be as much as a full brigade on this side of the highway, and he had double that—and even if he did face a complete brigade, then his Iraqi comrades on the far side would loop around to support him, as he would for them if he found a clear field. Over the radio, on the move in order to prevent being attacked by artillery or helicopters, he exhorted his commanders to press the attack, as he followed on in an open-topped command vehicle. Now, if his enemy would just sit still in the positions they’d held successfully for the first attack, he would see about things....
LOBO PASSED PHASE-LINE MANASSAS twenty minutes late, to the quiet anger of Colonel Eddington, who thought that he’d allowed ample time for the maneuver. But that damned criminal lawyer a redundancy, he’d joked more than once—commanding HOOTOWL was well forward again, covering the right while his battalion XO took the left, calling fire but not taking any shots of his own.
“WOLFPACK-SIX, this is HOOT-SIX, over.”
“SIX-ACTUAL, HOOT,” Eddington replied.
“They’re coming on, sir, two brigades on line, packed in pretty close, advancing over phase-line HIGHPOINT right now.”
“How close are you, Colonel?”
“Three thousand. I am pulling my people back now.” They had designated safe-travel lanes for that. HOOT hoped that everybody remembered where they were. The redeployment would take them east, to screen the right edge of the flanking battalion task force.
“Okay, clear the field, counselor.”
“Roger that, Professor Eddington. HOOTOWL is flying,” the misplaced lawyer replied. “Out.” In a minute he told his driver to see how fast he could go in the dark. It was something the NASCAR fan was just as pleased as hell to demonstrate.
The same report arrived four minutes later from the left. His one brigade was facing four. It was time to narrow those odds some. His artillery battalion shifted fire. His tank and Bradley commanders started sweeping the horizon for movement, and the three mechanized battalions started rolling forward to meet their enemy on the move. Company and platoon commanders checked their lines for proper interval. The battalion commander was in his own command tank on the left side of the line. The S- 3 operations officer backed up the right. As usual, the Bradleys were slightly back on the fifty-four Abrams tanks, their mission to sweep the field for infantry and support vehicles.
The falling artillery was common shell, and now VT proximity, to make life very hard on tanks with open hatches and people dumb enough to be in the open. Nobody thought of armored knights. The battlefield was too dispersed for that. It was more like a naval battle fought on a sandy, rocky sea which was every bit as hostile to human life as the conventional kind, and about to become more so. Eddington stayed with WHITEFANG, which was essentially an advancing reserve force, as it became clear that the enemy was advancing on both flanks, and leaving the center with a screening force, if anything.
“Contact,” a platoon leader called on his company net. “I have enemy armored vehicles at five thousand meters.” He checked his IVIS display to confirm, again, that there were no friendlies out there. Good. HOOTOWL was clear. There was only a Red Force to his front.
THE MOON WAS up now, less than a quarter of a waning moon, but it lit up the land enough for the lead Immortals to see movement on their visible horizon. The men of 2nd Brigade, furious at the pounding they’d taken in their wait to advance, were loaded up. Some of them had laser range-finders, which showed targets at nearly double their effective range. That word, too, went up the line, and back down came orders to increase speed, the quicker to close the distance and get out of the indirect fire that had to stop soon. Gunners centered on targets that were still too far away, in anticipation of that changing in two minutes or less. They felt their mounts speed up, heard the words of their tank commanders to stand by. There were enough targets to count now, and the opposing numbers were not impressive. They had the advantage. They must have, the Immort
als all thought.
But why were the Americans advancing toward them?
“COMMENCE FIRING AT four thousand meters,” the company commander told his crews. The Abrams tanks were spread nearly five hundred meters apart in two staggered lines, covering a lot of ground for one mounted battalion. The TCs mainly kept their heads up and out of the vehicles for the approach phase, then ducked down to activate their own fire-control systems.
“I’m on one,” one gunner told his TC. “T-80, identified, range forty-two-fifty.”
“Setting?” the tank commander asked, just to make sure.
“Set on Sabot. Loader, all silver bullets till I say different.”
“I hear you, gunner. Just don’t miss any.”
“Forty-one,” the gunner breathed. He waited for another fifteen seconds and became the first in his company to fire, and to kill. The sixty-two-ton tank staggered with the shot, then kept moving.
“Target, cease fire, target tank at eleven,” the TC said over the interphones.
The loader stomped his boot down on the pedal, opened the ammo doors, and yanked out another “silver bullet” round, then turned in a graceful move, first to guide, then to slam the mainly plastic round into the breech.
“Up!” he called.
“Identified!” the gunner told the TC.
“Fire!”
“On the way!” A pause. The tracer flew true. “Right through the dot!”
Commander: “Target! Cease fire! Traverse right, target tank at one.”
Loader: “Up!”
Gunner: “Identified!”
Commander: “Fire!”
“On the waaaaay!” the gunner said, squeezing off his third shot in eleven seconds.
It wasn’t like reality, the battalion commander saw, really too busy watching to take his own shots. It was like an advancing wave. First the lead rank of T-80s blew up, just a handful of misses that were corrected five seconds later, as the second rank of enemy vehicles started to go. They started to return fire. The flashes looked like the Hoffman simulation charges he’d so recently seen at the NTC, and turned out to be just as harmless. Enemy rounds were marked with their own tracers, and all of their first volley fell short. Some of the T-80s got off a second shot. None got off a third.
“Jesus, sir, give me a target!” his gunner called.
“Pick one.”
“Bimp,” the gunner said, mainly to himself. He fired off a high-explosive round, and got a kill at just over four thousand meters, but as before, the battle was over in less than a minute. The American line advanced. Some of the BMPs launched missiles, but now they were being engaged by tanks and Bradleys. Vehicles exploded, filling the sky with fire and smoke. Now individual men were visible, mainly running, some turning to fire or trying to deploy. The tank gunners, with nothing large left to shoot, switched to the coaxial machine guns. The Bradleys pulled up level with the tanks, and they did the serious hunting.
The lead line of tanks passed through the smoking wreckage of the Immortals division less than four minutes after the first volley. Turrets traversed left and right, looking for targets. Tank commanders had their heads back up, hands on their top-mounted heavy machine guns. Where fire originated, it was returned, and at first there was a race to see who could kill the most, because there is an excitement, a rush to battle unknown to those who have never felt it, the feeling of godlike power, the ability to make a life-and-death decision and then enforce it at the touch of a finger. More than that, these Guardsmen knew why they were here, knew what they had been sent to avenge. In some, that rage lasted for some minutes, as the vehicles rolled forward, grinding along at less than ten miles per hour, like farm tractors or harvesting combines, collecting life and converting it to death, looking like something from the dawn of time, utterly inhuman, utterly heartless.
But then it began to stop. It stopped being duty. It stopped being revenge. It stopped being the fun they’d expected it to be. It became murder, and one by one, the men on the weapons realized what they themselves were supposed to be and what they might become if they didn’t turn away from this. It wasn’t like being an aviator, hundreds of meters away, shooting at shapes that moved comically in their aiming systems and were never really human beings at all. These men were closer. They could see the faces and the wounds now, and the harmless backs of people running away. Even those fools who still shot back attracted pity from the gunners who dispatched them, but soon the futility of it was clear to everyone, and soldiers who’d arrived in the desert with rage grew sick at what the rage had become. The guns gradually fell silent, by common consent rather than order, as resistance stopped, and with it the need to kill. Battalion Task Force LOBO rolled completely through the smoking ruin of two heavy brigades, searching for targets worthy of professional attention, rather than personal, from which they had to turn away.
THERE WAS NOTHING left to be done. The general stood and walked away from his command vehicle, beckoning for the crew to do the same. On his order, they put their weapons down and stood on high ground to wait. They didn’t have to wait long. The sun was rising. The first glow of orange was to the east, announcing a new day far different from the old.
THE FIRST CONVOY rolled right in front of them, thirty fuel trucks, driving at a good clip, and the drivers must have taken the south-moving vehicles for those of their own army. The Bradley gunners of I-Troop, 3rd of the 10th, took care of that with a series of shots that ignited the first five trucks. The rest of them halted, two of them turning over and exploding on their own when their drivers rolled them into ditches in their haste to escape. The Bradley crews mainly let the people get clear, plinked the trucks with high-explosive rounds, and kept moving south past the bewildered drivers, who just stood there and watched them pass.
IT WAS A Bradley that found him. The vehicle pulled to within fifty meters before stopping. The general who, twelve hours before, had commanded a virtually intact armored division didn’t move or resist. He stood quite still, as four infantrymen appeared from the back of the M2A4, advancing with rifles out, while their track covered his detail with even more authority.
“On the ground!” the corporal called.
“I will tell my men. I speak English. They do not,” the general said, then kept his word. His soldiers went facedown. He continued to stand, perhaps hoping that he could die.
“Get those hands up, partner.” This corporal was a police officer in civilian life. The officer—he didn’t know what kind yet, but the uniform was too spiffy for a grunt—complied. The corporal next handed his rifle off and drew a pistol, walked in, and held it to the man’s head while he searched him expertly. “Okay, you can get down now. If you play smart, nobody gets hurt. Please tell your men that. We will kill them if we have to, but we ain’t going to murder anybody, okay?”
“I will tell them.”
WITH THE COMING of daylight, Eddington got back into the helicopter he’d borrowed, and flew to survey the battlefield. It was soon plain that his brigade had crushed two complete divisions. He ordered his screen forward to scout ahead for the pursuit phase that had to come next, then called Diggs for instructions on what he was supposed to do with prisoners. Before anyone figured that out, a chopper arrived from Riyadh with a television crew.
EVEN BEFORE THE pictures got out, the rumors did, as they always do in countries lacking a free press. A telephone call arrived in the home of a Russian embassy official. It came just before seven, and awakened him, but he was out of his house in minutes and driving his car through quiet streets to the rendezvous point with a man who, he thought, was finally crossing the line to become an agent of the RVS.
The Russian spent ten extra minutes checking his back, but anyone following him this morning would have to be invisible, and he imagined that a lot of the Ayatollah’s security forces had been called up.
“Yes?” he said on meeting the man. There wasn’t much time for formalities.
“You are right. Our army was—defeated la
st night. They called me in at three for an opinion of American intentions, and I heard it all. We cannot even talk with our units. The army commander simply vanished. The Foreign Ministry is in a panic.”
“As well it might be,” the diplomat thought. “I should tell you that the Turkoman leader has—”
“We know. He called Daryaei last night to ask if the plague story was true.”
“And what did your leader say?”
“He said that it was an infidel lie—what do you expect?” The official paused. “He was not entirely persuasive. Whatever you said to the man, he is neutralized. India has betrayed us—I learned about that, too. China does not yet know.”
“If you expect them to stand with you, you have violated your religion’s laws on the consumption of alcohol. Of course, my government stands with America as well. You are quite alone,” the Russian told him. “I need some information.”
“What information?”
“The location of the germ factory. I need that today.”
“The experimental farm north of the airport.”
That easy? the Russian thought. “How can you be sure?”
“The equipment was bought from the Germans and the French. I was in the commercial section then. If you wish to confirm, it should be easy. How many farms have guards in uniform?” the man asked helplessly.
The Russian nodded. “I will see about that. There are other problems. Your country will soon be fully—by which I mean completely—at war with America. My country may be able to offer her good offices to negotiate a settlement of some kind. If you whisper the right word into the right ear, our ambassador is at your disposal, and then you will have done the world a service.”