Ian Slater: Force of Arms

The driver in Colonel Soong’s lead tank had switched over to the gyro drive of his TPD-K1 sight. Three minutes later he uncaged the gyro, the red light coming on followed by the green light mat told him he could begin traversing. Next the laser range-finder was activated, and he slewed the turret as Colonel Soong, in the same tank but in his independent cupola, was able to traverse. Soong saw the first M1A1 crossing the line and got ready to fire. However, even though the T-72 has an automatic loader and all one has to do is select the type of round from one of the twenty-two ammunition cassettes, the automatic breech must be opened by hand for the first round.

It was only a second lost, but by then the M1A1 had fired, and its laser-locked APDS wouldn’t be denied as it hit Soong’s tanks just as the Chinese APDS left the T-72. The T-72’s shot, however, was not as accurate, for there was no crosswind error corrective in the tank’s fire control, and given the other vicissitudes of barrel droop and the peculiarities of each tank versus any other tank even of the same make, the shot missed the Americans. In short, given equal fitness and determination on the part of each tank crew, American and Chinese, it was American technology, which, for example, quickly corrected for windage, that won the day.

But beyond the tank battle that ebbed and flowed at first because of the four-to-one Chinese advantage and their proximity to the crowds limiting what the A-10 Thunderbolts could do, it was the Bradley armed vehicle that sealed the Chinese fate. At twenty-two-and-a-half tons, its speed sixty-six kilometers per hour, with a 25mm gun and TOW antitank missiles and carrying seven men, the Bradley was simply the best armored personnel carrier in the field. But this wasn’t because of a lack of enemy APCs that could keep up with it. The British-Chinese coproduced NVH1 also had a speed of over sixty kilometers per hour and weighed four and a half tons less than the Bradley. It too had a 25mm automatic cannon with electrical 360-degree traverse and a secondary coaxial 7.62mm chain gun, and it carried six men in addition to the crew of three.

And there was the type YW309 infantry combat vehicle, which had a crew of three plus eight Chinese infantry and which, while not as fast on land at fifty kilometers per hour, did have a speed in water of six kilometers per hour, its main armament, a 73mm smooth bore, much more powerful than the Bradley.

But it was the Bradley’s suspension, with its quarter-inch hard steel sides and 30mm of appliqué armor on the front as well, that still held the day. The suspension, like that of the M1A1, had to be seen to be believed. While going up and down over the sandy wastes south of Honggor, the Bradley’s 25mm seemed to be sitting still while the underchassis did everything but flip.

The Chinese, as usual, were indisputably brave and on more than one occasion simply rammed their vehicle into an American as the only way of stopping it. But once the worst of the monsoon had passed, the Comanches came down and, hovering where the A-10 could not, became the scourge of the battlefield, their retractable claws carrying eight Hellfire antitank missiles and two Stingers, and their cannon having five hundred rounds of 20mm ammunition, the helos having a fuel capacity of nearly two hours on or about me target.

Standing off, guided by their digital map display and high-speed fiberoptic data and sensor-distribution systems, Vulcan II 20mm Gatling guns in their chin mountings, the Comanches killed as many Chinese tanks as did the American M1A1s, the latter being inhibited in areas where mines had been laid, mines that were triggered to be set off by the weight of main battle tanks but not lighter vehicles so that the Chinese might use their armored personnel carriers. It was a fatal mistake on the part of the Chinese, given the ability of the Bradley. And so it was no one weapon system that could take credit for the Americans simply overpowering the Chinese south of Honggor, but rather a concert of high-tech weapons, many already battle tested in Iraq, that carried the day.

When unit 8431 in the Forbidden City learned that the American tanks had reached the Juyong Pass and that the American Comanches were swarming over the Ming Tombs area seven miles east of the pass, scattering infantry companies left, right, and center amid the huge carved stone animals, unit 8431 knew that they might well be protecting a doomed government, and never mind the fact that it seemed as if the beachheads established by the American marine force at Beidaihe and by Admiral Kuang were growing as ton after ton of matériel and more Nationalist Chinese and U.S. marines swept ashore. But this knowledge only hardened the unit’s resolve that the Americans in the Forbidden City at least must be wiped out to the last man.

With helo resupply of ammunition and water, the SAS/D troops were ready for what would clearly be a fight to the, finish inside the nine-thousand-room Forbidden City.

The old nomad was entering the camp with only one yak. The five Chinese left there and still waiting for the patrol under Major Mah to return immediately asked him where he had been, and had he seen either the remains of an American fighter or its pilot? He either did not understand Chinese or refused to speak it if he did. He acted dumb, his age in the sixties probably but looking much older. His skin deeply creased by the elements and his imbecile stare satisfied the Chinese that the old fool had not seen anything, which wasn’t surprising in the storm. The Chinese huddled back into several tents, cold to the bone.

Meanwhile the patrol was having increasing difficulty following the hoofprints of the two laden yaks, as even their pathfinder — the man with the infrared scope — was hard pressed to see much difference in temperature between the fading hoofprints and the surrounding snow and hail. By the time they reached the ridge and snow gave way to windblown rock, the pathfinder was convinced they’d now lost the trail, but by spreading out, he told Mah, they might pick up the yaks’ hoofprints as the animals’ hooves would have shucked accumulated snow on the hard rock so that by the time the animals had crossed the rock their hooves would sink deeper in the snow. As they began to cross the rock, Mah noticed that there were several caves on the ridge, some little more than depressions and a few others that went deeper beneath rocky overhangs. Mah heard his pathfinder calling out excitedly that his prediction had been correct. He had picked up the yak’s hoofprints again in the snow. Mah asked him whether this meant the yaks might have rested on the ridge before stepping off to reenter the snow.

“It’s possible,” the pathfinder conceded. A rest on the ridge, inside one of the caves perhaps, would certainly explain the freshness of the new hoofprints. Mah looked about at the caves. What would he do if he’d found the pilot and wanted to hide him? The caves. But the longer they stayed to investigate the dozen or so caves, the less likely they would be able to find the hoofprints again, as it was still snowing. Mah decided to cover both possibilities: the caves and the new hoofprints they’d found. He told the patrol to move on, following the tracks, and kept one man to stay with him to have a quick look in the caves. The two of them would then follow the tracks of the patrol after they’d finished.

As the twelve men continued following the yaks’ hoofprints, unknowingly heading back to the camp, Mah, taking out his Shanghai black, a .38 revolver, pointed to one of the deeper-looking caves. “You take that one,” he ordered the soldier. “I’ll go over here. I’ll meet you back here in five minutes. It shouldn’t take us long.”

The soldier, unslinging his AK-47, didn’t look too happy about his assignment. He had a distinct aversion about going into dark places — and no flashlight, of course. Mah had one, but then majors in the People’s Liberation Army did have a lot more than those who served under them. To hell with the major, thought the private. He’d go into the cave a few yards or so, and if he didn’t see or hear anything then he’d come straight out.