Ian Slater - Warshot

“Stranno!” Crazy! the babushka told her husband, an old reservist who had lost a leg in the final days before the cease-fire, during the American commando attack on the missile-launching midget subs’ base at Baikal.

“They’re making camouflage,” he answered grumpily, cutting one of the rationed, brick-hard sugar cubes in half, clenching it between his teeth before sucking through the strong, hot, samovar-brewed tea, the samovar’s brassy shine in stark contrast to the dank darkness of the cabin.

“What do you mean, camouflage?” she asked him. “It’s crazy — the snow is already white — camouflage enough.”

“You don’t know anything,” he grumped, the sugar only now starting to dissolve. “It’s small-particle smoke,” he explained. “Thicker than usual. It will stop the Americans’ infrared scopes from seeing the heat exhaust of our tanks and big mobile guns when they begin the attack. Infrared can see through normal smoke.”

“It’s crazy,” she repeated.

“I’ll tell you what’s crazy,” he told her, reaching for his crutch, a rough triangle of birch wood, its shoulder pad a small arc of rubber from an American Humvee, part of the American equipment captured in one of the last firefights around the southern end of the lake before the cease-fire. “It’s crazy for us to stay up here. We’d best get down to the cellar before—”

There was a tremendous crash, the door flung open, the blizzard howling in — a half-dozen white-hooded, white-clothed figures barging in like angry ghosts.

“Idite!” You must go! ordered the lieutenant. “We are commandeering your house.” The other men were already pushing past the babushka, two of them moving toward the basement, unraveling a coil of wire held between them.

“Idi!” Go! said the babushka. “Where to, pray?”

“Back,” answered the lieutenant, using the AK-47 to motion westward over his shoulder in the general direction of Irkutsk.

“But that’s over forty kilometers,” she protested. The husband caught a glimpse of a blue-and-white-striped T-shirt as the lieutenant took off his white camouflage overlays to better handle the land lines that they were in the process of laying. The land lines would be much more secure for being sheathed, and so much less likely than wireless radio traffic to be jammed by American electronic countermeasures once the fighting started. The old man, however, was more interested in the blue-and-white T-shirt. It told him they were SPETS.

“Be quiet, Natasha,” he cautioned his wife.

“They’ll have a truck to take you back to Podkamennaya,” said the lieutenant, sticking the AK-47 through the line spool.

“That’s no good,” protested the babushka defiantly. “That’s still over twenty kilometers from Ir—”

“It’s warming!” the lieutenant said. “On the lake the ice is starting to break up. It won’t be such a cold walk.”

“Come on!” said the husband. He knew the SPETS would have another kind of answer if they protested too much. Didn’t she realize that a major attack was about to start? “ Radi Boga, tishe!” For God’s sake, be quiet! he told her, pushing at her with the crutch, anxious to get as far away as possible. Once the land lines were connected, hell would erupt.

“I tell you,” declared Freeman, “I don’t trust the sons of bitches. They’re going to hit us, Dick.” He paused, looking at the map. “God damn this snow!” His hand swept up, covering the entire north-south axis of the lake. “No way we can protect it all, so we have to narrow the field. If he penetrates our defenses and gets on that ice — four hundred miles.” He shook his head at the thought. “He could move a division anywhere across there in less than—”

“Well, I know aerial reconnaissance doesn’t show anything because of the blizzard, General. But there’s no IR report either. Not a sign they’re advancing.”

“Could be using IR suppressor smoke. If only I could launch a preemptive strike on Irkutsk or—”

“We’d be condemned by every country in the U.N.,” cut in Norton. “As well as our allies. Fighting to push back the Chinese is one thing, sir, but us breaking the cease-fire with the Siberians would—”

“You’re right, dammit!” conceded Freeman, turning away from the map to the tote-board display, trying to put himself in Yesov’s shoes. “Great weakness of a democracy, Dick. We can only finish a war — can’t start it.”

“Would you want it any other way?” proffered Norton, anticipating the question might be asked in the news conference about to start in the briefing room.

Freeman didn’t answer, but his grimace was reply enough. “Hell, I’m in trouble enough with Washington, trying to convince them Beijing started this crap on our southern sector.” Peering down over his reading glasses, he swept his hand over the midsection of the map. “ ‘Course, Yesov couldn’t spread himself too thin, either. Even if he had every division of his — he wouldn’t risk a four-hundred-mile-long front. Soon as the bad weather lifted, our TACAIR’d rip him to pieces.” The general took off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose in his fatigue. “Then again, we can’t hold very much of it, either, having to move most of our forces south to help push the Chinks back.”

Norton experienced a surge of panic, instinctively looking around for any media types who might have somehow wandered through security from the briefing room, where even now chairs were scraping the Quonset hut floor as a “gaggle” of over 120 media “vultures,” as Freeman called them, from around the world were assembling. They were hungry for General Douglas Freeman’s latest assessment of, and explanation for, what the Chinese and others in the U.N. were calling “an unprovoked imperialist attack upon the People’s Republic of China,” and one that would be “severely punished by the People’s Liberation Army.”

“General,” urged Norton, “you’d better be careful what you say. If the La Roche papers got hold of something like that…”

Freeman was looking at him, amused. “What the hell’re you talking about?”

“ ‘Chinks,’ “ said Norton. “They get hold of something like that, General, and you’ll have every civil rights group from here to—”

“Ah, to hell with them. You know I don’t mean any disrespect toward the little yellow bastards. Damn good soldiers. Only color I care about is anyone who’s yellow inside.”

“ I know that, General, but — well, you know what newspapers are like. I think we’d better stick to ‘ChiComs,’ “ Norton advised, pointing out that ironically it was the gutter press of the La Roche papers, who were the real racists, who would make such a big deal of such a slip.

La Roche’s tabloids were already talking about “swarms” of Chinese Communists attacking the American positions in the southwest corner of the Amur hump—”swarms” creating the none-too-subtle implication that the Americans were being attacked by subhumans. On the front, with American casualties mounting not because of the Chinese numbers, but because of their tenacity and skill, U. S. soldiers were already making their ironic comments on the La Roche reporters, telling sergeants they’d just shot “another swarm” when only one ChiCom fell.

“They’re all out there, sir!” It was the general’s briefing room aide, in charge of setting up the appropriate charts and maps.

Freeman turned away from Baikal, ran a comb through his gray shock of hair, put his forage cap on, square and center, and hitched his trousers a notch, careful to make sure his tunic waistband was over the nine-millimeter Parabellum with which he’d replaced the old Hi-Vel .22 automatic that he used to carry and sleep with beneath his pillow. He’d debated about replacing that Hi-Vel — he’d had it all through Europe and Korea, and it had become a kind of talisman — but he liked the Sig Sauer better, and anyway, he hated staying with anything because of superstition. Said it bred “lack of self-confidence.” Didn’t go with ball players not changing their underwear because they believed it brought them luck. “Hell, only reason they make another home run is because one whiff of ‘em’d knock any baseman off the bag.”