Ian Slater: Asian Front

Freeman had called the Pentagon the moment he had heard news reports of Beatty’s counterattack. But his warning, having to go through normal channels, was treated merely as an advisory which, while it stunned those in Washington who never thought they’d hear Freeman back away from a fight, arrived too late to have any effect. By now more U.S. and Japanese troops had been committed, and General William Beatty was within hours of earning the epithet of “Batty Beatty.” Freeman had seen immediately — from the rapidity of the hit-and-run Chinese attack — that this was a typical ChiCom guerrilla tactic. More than that, it was a classic maneuver right out of the pages of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War about trapping your enemy by withdrawing or, as Freeman called it, a “sucker play.” Subutai had used the same tactic at the Battle of Sajo River in 1241, withdrawing across the river, dummying the Hungarians after him, before suddenly turning in a massive broad-stroke movement, snapping shut the trap. And this is precisely what Cheng’s troops did as they wheeled about in the hills around Xunhe, a village three miles south of the river. Their numbers were swollen to ten times their original four thousand by troops from the Harbin-based Twenty-three Army Corps, who had been rushed forward on a forced march the night before from supposedly “destroyed” barracks sixty-five miles west of the river on the single lane road along the Xun River valley.

Beatty realized his mistake, but too late, for by then the two Chinese pincers of the breaststroke had closed on the southern bank — three Guard companies, 520 men in all, having the express task of mortar bombing the fog-shrouded ice and pontoons, hence not only destroying any natural bridge for an American retreat but smashing their supply line.

Meanwhile Chinese T-59s, up-gunned T-55s, were now moving up the road from the deserted barracks to Xunhe village and toward the bridge — the American First Battalion taking the brunt of the armored attack while Second Battalion quickly made an abatis, sappers from Second Battalion blowing trees at a height of five to six feet from their base, felling them at approximately a forty-five-degree angle, creating a formidable obstacle course of fallen but not completely severed trees along the road, delaying the tanks for two hours. This saved some Americans from death, if not capture, but the bulk of the American force remained cut off from retreat.

The Chinese were so close to them that even if Beatty called in TACAIR strikes, the fog would deny the pilots any reliable identification of friend or foe. The final blood-boiling humiliation for the Americans was the glimpse of a lone, low-flying Phantom fighter, which might have at least made an attempt to rake the old ChiCom barracks with its 20mm cannon, but which made only one low pass in a gap in the fog and then turned eastward, presumably hightailing it for the coast.

Within minutes of the Phantom slamming down on the deck at 150 miles per hour, its tail grabbing the three-wire arrestor cable, its video shown aboard Salt Lake City revealed sullen-looking hills in a stark monochrome, covered for the most part with fog, and hills further south devoid of fog but covered with what seemed like thousands of insects, zoom shots showing, however, that they were Chinese regulars advancing along an estimated fifty-mile front against the Poyarkovo section of the U.N.-Manchurian line.

One of the more brazen acts of lying, even by Communist standards, occurred the following day in the U.N., when General Cheng’s emissaries tried to explain away the Xunhe “incident” by claiming that the presence of PLA troops was in response to concerns over banditry in the area. Bandits, it was said, had been responsible for launching the hit-and-run attack on the Japanese Defense Force — the PLA presence merely a reaction to the Americans violating the integrity of China’s borders.

“Oh no,” President Mayne said, “not this time. Those bastards can’t have their cake and eat it, too. They started this. We’ll finish it.”

“What can we do?” press secretary and adviser Trainor asked. “Beatty made a complete hash of—”

“Reinstate Freeman!”

“But Mr. President…” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff began.

“Unleash him!” Mayne ordered.

“Yes, sir.”

“But Trainor—” the president added.

“Yes, Mr. President?”

“Tell him to end it as soon as he contains it. This isn’t a fishing expedition.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You think that’ll do it, Mr. President?” inquired Schuman, the national security advisor.

“We’ll see,” Mayne answered.

The president’s advisers were not sure what he meant by it. What would they see? The end of the fighting, or how difficult it was to contain Douglas Freeman once he was unleashed?

“That son of a bitch tried to kill me.” They were the first words Freeman uttered upon touching down at Khabarovsk.

“You mean Cheng?” Norton inquired.

“I mean Cheng. Monkey wants to make it personal. Well, Dick, I won’t fall for that piece of Sun Tzu about getting angry and then losing the battle because you lose your head. I’m not angry, Norton.”

“No, sir.”

“I’m mad as hell!” Freeman pulled on his learner gloves. “Weather’s supposed to be warming up.”

“It is, sir.”

“Course, Dick,” Freeman said, striding toward his staff car like an old athlete resurrected, “trick is not to stay mad. Be cool. Rational.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s his disposition of forces?”

“We figure it at ten divisions minimum on the Manchurian border. More coming.”

“They got that damn Nanking Bridge fixed over the Yangtze?” It was the bridge that the captured Smythe and the other SEALs had attacked and severed earlier in the war.

“Figure they must have, General,” Norton said. “Either that or they’ve put a pontoon across — though that would take some making. It’s at least three miles across there.”

Freeman grunted, pulled up his collar, and buttoned it at the throat. “Should be warmer than this. We heard anything from that SAS/D troop?”

“No, sir.”

“That’s good news then.” The commandos were on radio silence.

“We hope, sir.”

“How far would they be from Ulan Bator?”

“They ‘re flying in on a Pave Low now.”

“What’s the drill?” Freeman asked. “A burst radio message approximately forty-eight hours from now when they’ve completed their mission?”

“Yes, sir — if they do.”

“Pray to God we get that message through, Dick.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Anything else?” He sensed there was — Norton had that look about him.

“Yes, sir.”

“Spit it out!”

Norton slipped a folder from his flip-top briefcase as they entered the Quonset hut. “Bad news I’m afraid. Photos,” he said, taking a steaming cup of coffee from the general. “All from Ofek-10.” It was the Israeli high-resolution electro-optical camera satellite, one of those launched by IAI–Israeli Aviation Industries — using a Shavit, or “comet” rocket, known to Freeman’s G-2 staff as a “Shove it!”

“Well,” Freeman said, looking down at the whitish shape made by the microdot-size pixels that looked about half the size of a cigarette filter against a background of gray, barren landscape. “Sure as hell aren’t Scuds.”

“East Winds,” Norton said. “Type four. Confirmed by the Pentagon. Conventional or three-megaton payload. Range three thousand miles. Has a circular error probability of around plus or minus two miles — so Tel Aviv says. But a CEP of plus or minus two miles doesn’t matter much if they’re after a big target like a city or—”