Ian Slater: Force of Arms

The FAV — fast-attack vehicle or “dune buggy”—with Aussie Lewis driving, David Brentwood on the.50 machine gun to his right, and Choir Williams mounting the TOW antitank launcher behind them on the elevated seat, had reported that the sabotage seemed to be nothing more than a single line break. It would take Cheng’s forces a matter of hours to fix it, but then it would be open for rail traffic again. Freeman made calls up and down the line wanting SITREP, but except for the explosion on the Orgon Tal line, everything seemed quiet, the tension notwithstanding.

“Thank God for that,” Freeman said, thwacking his right leg again with the birch stick before using it as a pointer on the map. “Because, Norton, if that fox Cheng hits us anytime before the ten days are up, we are up the proverbial creek without a paddle.”

“Well, sir,” Norton said hopefully, “the weather’s closing in.”

Freeman turned about. “Who told you that? Harvey Simmet?”

“No, CNN.”

“Hmm — I ever tell you about that survey they did in England of all those weather wrap-ups on TV?”

“No, sir.”

“Well they found out hardly anyone who listens to weather forecasts can remember anything that was said five minutes later. All those damn isobars, arrows, convection currents, jet streams flying about complicate it to hell. Best weather report came from a TV channel that had no graphics, ho gimmicky electronics, just someone telling the audience that tomorrow it will be wet and windy.”

“I guess you’re right, General. I’m usually too busy watching the presenter.”

“So am I,” Freeman confided. Thwack! “Good-looking wenches on those newscasts.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Still,” Freeman responded, his tone more businesslike now, “I’d like an accurate reading on the weather within the last half hour. Get Harvey up here right away, will you?” The general turned back to the map of the three provinces, one of which lay directly ahead of him, the other two on his flanks.

Norton glanced at his watch. Seventeen hundred hours. Well, it was just starting to get dark at mealtime. He didn’t know how it happened, but usually whenever the general called for Harvey Simmet, the chief met officer of Second Army HQ was either about to eat or was asleep. Sleepy eyed, Simmet would trudge to the HQ tent usually wrapped up like an Indian during the winter of 1806.

Simmet wasn’t in his tent, however, and had to be paged. He was just sitting down to his favorite meal, ham and mashed potatoes with raisin sauce, and he had his fork loaded.

“Old man wants to see you, Harvey.”

Everyone in the officers’ mess started laughing.

“Gotcha again, Harv!.. Atta boy, Harvey… Duty calls.”

Harvey Simmet looked at the fork piled high with the succulent ham and potato dripping in the raisin sauce….

“No,” he said emphatically, “I’m not going to rush it. Damn it — Cookie, can you keep this under the lamp?”

“Better than that, sir. Give you a fresh lot when you come back.”

“You’re a gentleman and a scholar, Cookie.”

Norton slapped Harvey amicably on the shoulder. “I don’t think the general’ll keep you long.” They left the mess tent.

“He’s put a hex on me,” Harvey said as they made their way up toward the headquarters hut. “Last time he sent someone for me I was on the can. You believe that?”

“Harvey, I believe you anytime. He wants to know if the weather’s closing in.”

“It is.”

“Yeah, but you know!”

“Yes, I know, he wants it up to date every friggin’ five minutes.”

“Maybe, Harv, but remember Yakutsk.”

“Yeah,” Harvey said, glancing skyward at the velvet darkness of the Inner Mongolian sky. “I remember Yakutsk.”

It was a town in the Yakutsk oblast, or region, northeast of Lake Baikal. The Siberians were chopping up Second Army’s Ten Corps as they tried to withdraw across the frozen lake. Outnumbered and outgunned by more than three to one in main battle tanks, Freeman had given what to his men was the almost incredible order to withdraw, all the time asking Harvey Simmet by his side what the temperature was in the Yakutsk area — the coldest place in the Soviet Union, where the temperature often plummeted to more than minus seventy degrees centigrade. Simmet told him it was minus sixty and still dropping.

American tanks were ensconced in revetment areas, some dug in so deep in defilade position that only the edge of their cupolas and muzzle of their main gun showed as they waited for a point-blank exchange. Then they got another order from Freeman to retreat still further. A few tank commanders thought aloud that the old man’s nerve had cracked. But when the temperature dropped to minus sixty-nine degrees, the general thanked Harvey and suddenly told the American tanks to charge. It would go down in military history as one of the most brilliant tactical moves ever made. From the mastery of the minutiae of war to the mastery of grand strategy, Freeman knew that Siberian T-72s and T-55s would now grind to a standstill. The inferior refined Siberian oil would begin settling out in the vicious cold, the waxes in the oil solidifying like chunks of cholesterol stuck in the bloodstream — hydraulics would overheat and the tanks would become immobile.

It had been called the Yakutsk turkey shoot, and Siberian tanks that one minute were a threat now were stuck, unable to move as the M1s, with the higher-quality American-refined oil, raced ahead through the deep snow, slewed and turned and took out the Siberian armor on the move. The snowy explosions, their bases black fountains of undersoil, rose high in the air as red-hot metal from the M1A1s tore into the T-72s and more than evened the score.

“Good of you to come, Harv,” the general said, as if Harvey Simmet had any choice in the matter. “Harv, they tell me this weather’s ‘closing in,’ moving in on our left flank from the Bo Hai Gulf. Now what specifically does that mean for Orgon Tal?”

It had been an hour since Harvey had monitored the incoming SATREP — satellite reports — and in two hours a lot had happened: the wind picking up at the three-thousand-foot level, cold air from the northeast hitting the hot Gobi air, producing fog in northern Manchuria, and minor dust storms from Ulan Bator in Mongolia down as far as Orgon Tal 280 miles northwest of Beijing. Harvey made a call to the met tent and got the latest isobar readouts and cloud pattern through on the fax. It was not showing at the moment, but in his mind’s eye the data told him that soon the air pattern would go into an ominous circular spiral path, heading in fast from the coast. But he saw it as good news for Freeman. “Looks like a typhoon’s forming, General— over Bo Hai Gulf. Winds will increase from forty to sixty-five — maybe seventy — miles per hour, and the cloud density promises heavy rain that will probably peter out at the edge of the Gobi here at Orgon Tal, most of the rain falling on me mountain range northwest of Beijing.”

“Bog his armor down, General,” Norton said.

“And ours,” Freeman commented.

“Yes, sir, but I mean—”

“Yes—” Freeman finished the sentence for him. “Lousy weather for him to move in — to attack.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Thank you, Harv.”

When Simmet got back to the mess there’d been a snafu. Cookie had gone off for a few minutes to check the coffee and someone had grabbed the last plate of ham and raisin sauce.

“Ham’s finished,” Simmet was informed by a new server.

“Jesus!” Harvey said. “I tell you he’s got a hex on me.”

“Sir, we’ve got an MRE.” He meant one of the “meals ready to eat” in a foil-wrapped dinner tray that could be warmed by body heat and were unaffectionately known by the troops as “meals refused by everybody.”