“Did they ever try to shoot at you?”
“Mainly with artillery,” Pasha answered. “A sniper affects the morale of a unit. Men do not like being hunted like game. But the Germans didn’t use snipers as skillfully as we did, and so they answered me with field guns. That,” he admitted, “could be frightening, but it really told me how much the Fritzes feared me,” Pavel Petrovich concluded with a cruel smile.
“There!” Buikov pointed. Just off the trees to the left.
“Ahh,” Gogol said, looking through his gunsight. “Ahh, yes.”
Aleksandrov laid his binoculars on the fleeting shape. It was the vertical steel side on a Chinese infantry carrier, one of those he’d been watching for some days now. He lifted his radio. “This is GREEN WOLF ONE. Enemy in sight, map reference two-eight-five, nine-zero-six. One infantry track coming north. Will advise.”
“Understood, GREEN WOLF,” the radio crackled back.
“Now, we must just be patient,” Fedor Il’ych said. He stretched, touching the camouflage net that he’d ordered set up the moment they’d arrived in this place. To anyone more than three hundred meters away, he and his men were just part of the hill crest. Next to him, Sergeant Buikov lit a cigarette, blowing out the smoke.
“That is bad for us,” Gogol advised. “It alerts the game.”
“They have little noses,” Buikov replied.
“Yes, and the wind is in our favor,” the old hunter conceded.
Lordy, Lordy,” Major Tucker observed. ”They’ve bunched up some.”
It was Grace Kelly again, looking down on the battlefield-to-be like Pallas Athena looking down on the plains of Troy. And about as pitilessly. The ground had opened up a little, and the corridor they moved across was a good three kilometers wide, enough for a battalion of tanks to travel line-abreast, a regiment in columns of battalions, three lines of thirty-five tanks each with tracked infantry carriers interspersed with them. Colonels Aliyev and Tolkunov stood behind him, speaking in Russian over their individual telephones to the 265th Motor Rifle’s command post. In the night, the entire 201st had finally arrived, plus leading elements of the 80th and 44th. There were now nearly three divisions to meet the advancing Chinese, and included in that were three full divisional artillery sets, plus, Tucker saw for the first time, a shitload of attack helicopters sitting on the ground thirty kilometers back from the point of expected contact. Joe Chink was driving into a motherfucker of an ambush. Then a shadow crossed under Grace Kelly, out of focus, but something moving fast.
It was two squadrons of F-16C fighter-bombers, and they were armed with Smart Pigs.
That was the nickname for J-SOW, the Joint Stand-Off Weapon. The night before, other F-16s, the CG version, the new and somewhat downsized version of the F-4G Wild Weasel, had gone into China and struck at the line of border radar transmitters, hitting them with HARM antiradar missiles and knocking most of them off the air. That denied the Chinese foreknowledge of the inbound strike. They had been guided by two E-3B Sentry aircraft, and protected by three squadrons of F-15C Eagle air-superiority fighters in the event some Chinese fighters appeared again to die, but there had been little such fighter activity in the past thirty-six hours. The Chinese fighter regiments had paid a bloody price for their pride, and were staying close to home in what appeared to be a defense mode—on the principle that if you weren’t attacking, then you were defending. In fact they were doing little but flying standing patrols over their own bases—that’s how thoroughly they had been whipped by American and Russian fighters—and that left the air in American and Russian control, which was going to be bad news for the People’s Liberation Army.
The F-16s were at thirty thousand feet, holding to the east. They were several minutes early for the mission, and circled while awaiting word to attack. Some concertmaster was stage-managing this, they all thought. They hoped he didn’t break his little baton-stick-thing.
Getting closer,” Pasha observed with studied nonchalance.
“Range?” Aleksandrov asked the men down below in the track.
“Twenty-one hundred meters, within range,” Buikov reported from inside the gun turret. “The fox and the gardener approach, Comrade Captain.”
“Leave them be for the moment, Boris Yevgeniyevich.”
“As you say, Comrade Captain.” Buikov was comfortable with the no-shoot rule, for once.
How much farther to the reconnaissance screen?” Peng asked.
“Two more kilometers,” Ge replied over the radio. “But that might not be a good idea.”
“Ge, have you turned into an old woman?” Peng asked lightly.
“Comrade, it is the job of lieutenants to find the enemy, not the job of senior generals,” the division commander replied in a reasonable voice.
“Is there any reason to believe the enemy is nearby?”
“We are in Russia, Peng. They’re here somewhere.”
“He is correct, Comrade General,” Colonel Wa Cheng-gong pointed out to his commander.
“Rubbish. Go forward. Tell the reconnaissance element to stop and await us,” Peng ordered. “A good commander leads from the front!” he announced over the radio.
“Oh, shit,” Ge observed in his tank. “Peng wants to show off his ji-ji. Move out,” he ordered his driver, a captain (his entire crew was made of officers). “Let’s lead the emperor to the recon screen.”
The brand-new T-98 tank surged forward, throwing up two rooster tails of dirt as it accelerated. General Ge was in the commander’s hatch, with a major acting as gunner, a duty he practiced diligently because it was his job to keep his general alive in the event of contact with the enemy. For the moment, it meant going ahead of the senior general with blood in his eye.
Why did they stop?” Buikov asked. The PLA tracks had suddenly halted nine hundred meters off, all five of them, and now the crews dismounted, manifestly to take a stretch, and five of them lit up smokes.
“They must be waiting for something,” the captain thought aloud. Then he got on the radio. “GREEN WOLF here, the enemy has halted about a kilometer south of us. They’re just sitting still.”
“Have they seen you?”
“No, they’ve dismounted to take a piss, looks like, just standing there. We have them in range, but I don’t want to shoot until they’re closer,” Aleksandrov reported.
“Very well, take your time. There’s no hurry here. They’re walking into the parlor very nicely.”
“Understood. Out.” He set the mike down. “Is it time for morning break?”
“They haven’t been doing that the last four days, Comrade Captain,” Buikov reminded his boss.
“They appear relaxed enough.”
“I could kill any of them now,” Gogol said, “but they’re all privates, except for that one ...”
“That’s the fox. He’s a lieutenant, likes to run around a lot. The other officer’s the gardener. He likes playing with plants,” Buikov told the old man.
“Killing a lieutenant’s not much better than killing a corporal,” Gogol observed. “There’s too many of them.”
“What’s this?” Buikov said from his gunner’s seat. “Tank, enemy tank coming around the left edge, range five thousand.”
“I see it!” Aleksandrov reported. “... Just one? Only one tank—oh, all right, there’s a carrier with it—”
“It’s a command track, look at all those antennas!” Buikov called.
The gunner’s sight was more powerful than Aleksandrov’s binoculars. The captain couldn’t confirm that for another minute or so. “Oh, yes, that’s a command track, all right. I wonder who’s in it ... ”
There they are,” the driver called back. ”The reconnaissance section, two kilometers ahead, Comrade General.”
“Excellent,” Peng observed. Standing up to look out of the top of his command track with his binoculars, good Japanese ones from Nikon. There was Ge in his command tank, thirty meters off to the right, protecting him as though he were a good dog outsi
de the palace of some ancient nobleman. Peng couldn’t see anything to be concerned about. It was a clear day, with some puffy white clouds at three thousand meters or so. If there were American fighters up there, he wasn’t going to worry about them. Besides, they’d done no ground-attacking that he’d heard about, except to hit those bridges back at Harbin, and one might as well attack a mountain as those things, Peng was sure. He had to hold on to the sill of the hatch lest the pitching of the vehicle smash him against it—it was a track specially modified for senior officers, but no one had thought to make it
safer to stand in, he thought sourly. He wasn’t some peasant-private who could smash his head with no consequence ... Well, in any case, it was a good day to be a soldier, in the field leading his men. A fair day, and no enemy in sight.
“Pull up alongside the reconnaissance track,” he ordered his driver.
Who the hell is this?” Captain Aleksandrov wondered aloud. ”Four big antennas, at least a division commander,” Buikov thought aloud. ”My thirty will settle his hash.”
“No, no, let’s let Pasha have him if he gets out”
Gogol had anticipated that. He was resting his arms on the steel top of the BRM, tucking the rifle in tight to his shoulder. The only thing in his way was the loose weave of the camouflage netting, and that wasn’t an obstacle to worry about, the old marksman was sure.
“Stopping to see the fox?” Buikov said next.
“Looks that way,” the captain agreed.
Comrade General!” the young lieutenant called in surprise.
“Where’s the enemy, Boy?” Peng asked loudly in return.
“General, we haven’t seen much this morning. Some tracks in the ground, but not even any of that for the past two hours.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Not a thing,” the lieutenant replied.
“Well, I thought there’d be something around.” Peng put his foot in the leather stirrup and climbed to the top of his command vehicle.
It’s a general, has to be, look at that clean uniform!” Buikov told the others as he slewed his turret around to center his sight on the man eight hundred meters away. It was the same in any army. Generals never got dirty.
“Pasha,” Aleksandrov asked, “ever kill an enemy general before?”
“No,” Gogol admitted, drawing the rifle in very tight and allowing for the range....
Better to go to that ridgeline, but our orders were to stop at once,” the lieutenant told the general.
“That’s right,” Peng agreed. He took out his Nikon binoculars and trained them on the ridge, perhaps eight hundred meters off. Nothing to see except for that one bush ...
Then there was a flash—
“Yes!” Gogol said the moment the trigger broke. Two seconds, about, for the bullet to—
They’d never hear the report of the shot over the sound of their diesel engines, but Colonel Wa heard the strange, wet thud, and his head turned to see General Peng’s face twist into surprise rather than pain, and Peng grunted from the sharp blow to the center of his chest, and then his hands started coming down, pulled by the additional weight of the binoculars—and then his body started down, falling off the top of the command track through the hatch into the radio-filled interior.
That got him,” Gogol said positively. ”He’s dead.” He almost added that it might be fun to skin him and lay his hide in the river for a final swim and a gold coating, but, no, you only did that to wolves, not people—not even Chinese.
“Buikov, take those tracks!”
“Gladly, Comrade Captain,” and the sergeant squeezed the trigger, and the big machine gun spoke.
They hadn’t seen or heard the shot that had killed Peng, but there was no mistaking the machine cannon that fired now. Two of the reconnaissance tracks exploded at once, but then everything started moving, and fire was returned.
“Major!” General Ge called.
“Loading HEAT!” The gunner punched the right button, but the autoloader, never as fast as a person, took its time to ram the projective and then the propellant case into the breech.
Back us up!” Aleksandrov ordered loudly. The diesel engine was already running, and the BRM’s transmission set in reverse. The corporal in the driver’s seat floored the pedal and the carrier jerked backward. The suddenness of it nearly lost Gogol over the side, but Aleksandrov grabbed his arm and dragged him down inside, tearing his skin in the process. ”Go north!” the captain ordered next.
“I got three of the bastards!” Buikov said. Then the sky was rent by a crash overhead. Something had gone by too fast to see, but not too fast to hear.
“That tank gunner knows his business,” Aleksandrov observed. “Corporal, get us out of here!”
“Working on it, Comrade Captain.”
“GREEN WOLF to command!” the captain said next into the radio.
“Yes, GREEN WOLF, report.”
“We just killed three enemy tracks, and I think we got a senior officer. Pasha, Sergeant Gogol, that is, killed a Chinese general officer, or so it appeared.”
“He was a general, all right,” Buikov agreed. “The shoulder boards were pure gold, and that was a command track with four big radio antennas.”
“Understood. What are you doing now, GREEN WOLF?”
“We’re getting the fuck away. I think we’ll be seeing more Chinks soon.”
“Agreed, GREEN WOLF. Proceed to divisional CP. Out.”
“Yuriy Andreyevich, you will have heavy contact in a few minutes. What is your plan?”
“I want to volley-fire my tanks before firing my artillery. Why spoil the surprise, Gennady?” Sinyavskiy asked cruelly. “We are ready for them here.”
“Understood. Good luck, Yuriy.”
“And what of the other missions?”
“BOYAR is moving now, and the Americans are about to deploy their magical pigs. If you can handle the leading Chinese elements, those behind ought to be roughly handled.”
“You can rape their daughters for all I care, Gennady.”
“That is nekulturniy, Yuriy. Perhaps their wives,” he suggested, adding, “We are watching you on the television now.”
“Then I will smile for the cameras,” Sinyavskiy promised.
The orbiting F-16 fighters were under the tactical command of Major General Gus Wallace, but he, at the moment, was under the command—or at least operating under the direction—of a Russian, General-Colonel Gennady Bondarenko, who was in turn guided by the action of this skinny young Major Tucker and Grace Kelly, a soulless drone hovering over the battlefield.
“There they go, General,” Tucker said, as the leading Chinese echelons resumed their drive north.
“I think it is time, then.” He looked to Colonel Aliyev, who nodded agreement.
Bondarenko lifted the satellite phone. “General Wallace?”
“I’m here.”
“Please release your aircraft.”
“Roger that. Out.” And Wallace shifted phone receivers. “EAGLE ONE, this is ROUGHRIDER. Execute, execute, execute. Acknowledge.”
“Roger that, sir, copy your order to execute. Executing now. Out.” And the colonel on the lead AWACS shifted to a different frequency: “CADILLAC LEAD, this is EAGLE ONE. Execute your attack. Over.”
“Roger that,” the colonel heard. “Going down now. Out.”
The F-16s had been circling above the isolated clouds. Their threat receivers chirped a little bit, reporting the emissions of SAM radars somewhere down there, but the types indicated couldn’t reach this high, and their jammer pods were all on anyway. On command, the sleek fighters changed course for the battlefield far below and to their west. Their GPS locators told them exactly where they were, and they also knew where their targets were, and the mission became a strictly technical exercise.
Under the wings of each aircraft were the Smart Pigs, four to the fighter, and with forty-eight fighters, that came to 192 J-SOWs. Each of these was a canister thirteen feet long and not quite
two feet wide, filled with BLU-108 submunitions, twenty per container. The fighter pilots punched the release triggers, dropped their bombs, and then angled for home, letting the robots do the rest of the work. The Dark Star tapes would later tell them how they’d done.
The Smart Pigs separated from the fighters, extended their own little wings to guide themselves the rest of the way to the target area. They knew this information, having been programmed by the fighters and were now able to follow guidance from their own GPS receivers. This they did, acting in accordance with their own onboard minicomputers, until each reached a spot five thousand feet over their designated segment of the battlefield. They didn’t know that this was directly over the real estate occupied by the Chinese 29th Type A Group Army and its three heavy divisions, which included nearly seven hundred main-battle tanks, three hundred armored personnel carriers, and a hundred mobile guns. That made a total of roughly a thousand targets for the nearly four thousand descending submunitions. But the falling bomblets were guided, too, and each had a seeker looking for heat of the sort radiated by an operating tank, personnel carrier, self-propelled gun, or truck. There were a lot of them to look for.
No one saw them coming. They were small, no larger, really, than a common crow, and falling rapidly; they were also painted white, which helped them blend in to the morning sky. Each had a rudimentary steering mechanism, and at an altitude of two thousand feet they started looking for and homing in on targets. Their downward speed was such that a minor deflection of their control vanes was sufficient to get them close, and close meant straight down.