Ian Slater - Asian Front

The six Shenyang far northeast armies, forty-three thousand men in each, specifically the Twenty-third based in Harbin, the Forty-sixth from Kirin, the Sixteenth from Changchun, and the three armies, the Thirty-ninth, Fortieth, and Sixty-fourth from near Shenyang city itself — over a quarter million men in all — were now moving en masse, crossing the Sungari and Nen Chiang rivers en route to the Amur River hump. But now, instead of attacking their traditional enemy, the Siberians, they were attacking the American Second Army, and Lin Biao’s famous dictum during the Korean War—”So we lose a million or two”—was being broadcast through loudspeakers all along the Amur River crossings, trying to terrify the U.S. soldiers. The U.S. Army countered by reminding their men of American technological superiority. But to men who knew how the mightiest nation on earth — theirs — had been humbled by the North Vietnamese Army, a much smaller army than that of the Chinese, the Chinese broadcast had some success.

Freeman gave an order for every piece of “goddamn ice” from here — Khabarovsk — to Manzhouli in far western Manchuria to be blown out of the river. He knew of course there wasn’t enough TNT in Second Army or in the Pacific convoys of resupply to blow up that much river ice, but it got the message across — the Chinese had to be stopped at the river crossings. And all bridges were to be blown as ice coagulated around the piers. CAS — close air support — was part of his strategy, but only part of it, as even the U. S. Air Force and carrier force in the Sea of Japan couldn’t hope to lay down a “bomb fence” twenty-four hours a day, particularly given the vicissitudes of the weather in these latitudes and over eighteen hundred miles of winding river. Of course the major crossing points known from the long Siberian-Chinese hostility on the border might be taken out, but Cheng was known, like Freeman, for not being tied to the orthodox battle plans of others. He would make crossings wherever he willed.

Freeman looked at the vast front on his wall map, a front longer than the Wehrmacht had faced in Russia in 1942, a front along which the vast Amur River became the Argun further to the west. Still further west flowed the Herlen River, which came down from Mongolia’s Hentiyn Nuruu.

“The west! Mongolia!” Freeman told Norton, his bifocals, used as a pointer, flashing in the Quonset hut’s light. “Here — south of Chita on the Siberian side of the border-south of Mangut — across the border beyond the jumble of mountains on the Siberian-Chinese border. That’s where we have to strike. Head south — hit the bastard on his left flank. Push him back, Dick — into the Manchurian fastness — keep him tied up there in the foothills on the Mongolian-Chinese border while our main force drives south.”

It seemed sound enough — giving your opponent a straight left while your right outflanked him south. Norton too was gazing up at the huge wall map. “How far south, General? You mean far enough to push them well across the Siberian-Chinese border — the DMZ?”

“South,” Freeman said, and Norton felt a cold fear turn his bowels. It was unthinkable. Congress would have a blue fit. But then Freeman had made a career of thinking the unthinkable, and then doing it.

“But General,” Norton cautioned, “if you drive due south from Mangut, to get at Cheng’s left flank you’d have to pass through Mongolian territory.”

“And if we don’t we’ll have to move east of Mangut,” Freeman retorted. “We’d have to make a detour through Chinese territory — a detour of hundreds of miles. With each M-1 tank guzzling two gallons for every mile that’s one hell of a detour, Norton.”

“But it is in Chinese territory,” Norton pointed out. “Going straight south from Mangut would mean taking a shortcut across Mongolian—” He stopped, for it was at that moment that he realized precisely why Freeman had sent the SAS/D troop of four on their mission deep into Mongolia — the SAS/D troop, as Freeman’s envoys, were to tell the Mongolian president in Ulan Bator that it might be necessary for American troops to cross from Mangut into China so as to hit the Chinese deeper on their left flank — go into the steppe country in the Gobi Desert — tank country — across which Freeman’s echelons might race. Would Freeman’s request for free passage be acceded to by the Mongolians? On the one hand, the Mongolians had a long and intense hatred of the Chinese. On the other, they were still in fact, if not in name, largely dependent on the whims of Siberia. Would Novosibirsk go along with letting Freeman take the shortcut across Mongolian territory? Or had Freeman told young David Brentwood something else to tell the commander of the Ulan Bator forces? Was it to be as much a warning as a request — let the Americans pass through Mongolian territory or else? Norton suspected it had been both — the carrot and the stick.

Suddenly Norton saw it — Freeman’s real objective — and the general sensed disbelief in the face of his aide.

“Listen, Colonel,” Freeman told him. “I didn’t come over here to dance.” His fist thumped Beijing, rattling the map. “Only thing these jokers understand, Dick, is defeat. We don’t get this dragon where it lives, by the throat, the son of a bitch’ll be hissing and spitting for another twenty years. We lost China once in forty-eight. Goddamn it, we’re not going to lose it again. Trouble with you, Dick, is you’re thinking like the rest of them. Monolithic China. Don’t you see? It’s just like we used to think of the Soviet Union — now what do we have?” He answered his own question, gesturing at the board north of the Siberian-Chinese border. “Thirteen new republics and they’re still counting. China’s the same, Dick. Rotten at the center. Old farts hanging onto power for grim death. Like tortoises in their shell.”

“General, they could lose a million men and still have twice as many men at arms as we do.”

“A tough shell, I’ll agree to that, Dick. Damn tough. But Dick, with a little ingenuity and determination we can do anything.”

Any excitement in Norton had waned, and now all he felt was a dull headache.

“A little ingenuity, General? Your southern strategy seems sound enough, but how about all these Chinese armies massing on the Manchurian border along the Amur? What if they suddenly come west against your flank attack?”

“Then my flank attack wouldn’t work, Dick.”

“Well, sir, we can hardly ignore them. There’re over five armies along that river.” He meant the Amur hump.

“We’ve got to keep them occupied,” Freeman answered, with what seemed calculated ingenuousness.

“Yes, General, but how? Our CAS can only do so much, and given the bad weather—”

“Dick — you have that wolf dung I told you to get?”

“Lots of it, General. You know what they’re calling us here in Khabarovsk?”

“What?”

“The shitheads.”

Freeman let forth a belly laugh that could be heard in his communications room. “Shit stirrers, Dick! That’s what they’re going to call us. Stirrers!”

“Yes, sir. But what if the Ulan Bator mission doesn’t go smoothly?”

“Why shouldn’t it?” Freeman demanded. “No one knows they’re there except us. Boys are well trained for exactly this kind of mission. Thrive on it. Their instructors were with Special Forces in Iraq. They’ll be okay.”

“I hope you’re right, General. And then there are those missiles we have to worry about.”

“Ah — I don’t think we’ll have any trouble with that either,” Freeman responded confidently. “You’re a good officer, Dick, but you have to guard against being too pessimistic. Stop seeing the glass as half empty. Start seeing it half full.”