Ian Slater - Warshot

The PT-76s paid dearly as the one-man portable one-shot LAW antitank weapons nearest them were brought to bear, the six-pound AT rounds sinking all but one of the remaining six amphibians. Some of the Siberians afire inside these tanks were trying desperately to get out, the sound of them beating against the inside of the cupolas whose seals had been warped under impact of the antitank rounds clearly audible to the LAW teams. Only one cupola managed to open, and a gunner, aflame, tried futilely to abandon the tank, falling forward as the tank went down, its gun coming up, striking him face-on and knocking him back into the water. The man was pushed toward the edge of the ice by a wave from the sinking tank, its gun, now at a crazy, sky-pointing angle, disappearing into an enormous bubbling, the tank’s chopped-up flotation boards ripped, letting the tank slide backward into the oblivion of three thousand feet of water.

“I’ll tell you, Dick,” said Freeman. “I don’t envy those poor bastards.”

There was no reply. When Freeman turned about, Norton was out cold, his left hand lost from view in the blood gushing from his left eye.

“Medic!” yelled Freeman.

With the medic came more bad news. SATINT over China showed what the G-2 officer surmised had been a pinpoint burst of light situated about a mile upstream of the Nanking Bridge. Freeman said nothing, kneeling by Norton, who had been with him since his days in Europe, since Ratmanov.

“Sir?” the intelligence officer pressed, unsure as to whether Freeman had heard him.

“I know!” Freeman growled up at him. “You’re telling me the Country Market team’s been discovered?”

“Well yes, sir, but we’re not sure about both boats. We think this photo is definitely of one boat, but there’s a chance the second is still operational.”

“So, they’re in trouble,” said Freeman curtly. “Can’t do anything about it from here. Right?”

“No, sir. But whether they blow it or not, there’s the problem of getting them out. ChiComs are sure to be looking for them around the bridge.”

“Well, we sure as hell can’t leave them there.”

“No, sir.”

“They issued an emergency call?”

“Not yet, sir. Extraction’s scheduled in ninety minutes.”

“What do you suggest?”

A line of Siberians, dripping wet, some shivering so much from the cold that Freeman could actually hear their teeth chattering, was passing them under guard. One man saw him and saluted. Solemnly, the general rose and returned the salute, hearing the small arms fire in the background at the edge of the taiga a half mile to the east. Freeman knew he had a formidable problem either way. If the SEALs didn’t blow the bridge, there’d be no hope of contesting the invasion by the northern ChiCom armies. If there were some SEALs still alive and they did blow the bridge, chances were their original drop-off point would no longer be usable, ChiComs now searching upstream from whence they’d come.

“Any suggestions?” Freeman repeated.

“Well, sir, Tom Pierce, the Pave Low commander on Salt Lake City, says that if his helos went in under the radar undetected, they can go in — and out — again. Problem is, there’ll be absolutely no chance of even a touch-and-go extraction on the riverbank mud. Apart from possibly bogging down if that chopper landed, the ChiComs’d swarm all over ‘em.”

“Is there any other way?” asked Freeman.

“Well, sir, Pierce says it’s possible. SEALs carry an IFF — friend-or-foe identifier. Pierce thinks he could try a STABO link — if you approve.”

Freeman raised his eyebrows, watching Norton coming to, the colonel having involuntarily soiled his pants in the shock of getting hit. The general nodded to his G-2 that they should move away, give the medic room.

“First problem those SEALs’ll have,” the general told the G-2, “is that damn bridge. Whether it goes or not, they’ll know any attempted pickup’ll have to be made soon as possible after. We’d have to have those helos from Salt Lake City in the air pretty damn fast. Have ‘em almost to the China coast.”

A Siberian officer, an American army blanket clutched around his shoulders, his face covered in oil, stumbled by, toward what he obviously thought was a vision or the grandest American invention since the Model T — the paratroopers’ portable MUST, already inflated, taking in wounded, its sterile air filter unit humming a soft song in the din of battle.

“Well, you’d better get everything ready, son,” Freeman told his G-2. “Use Black Hawks for that?” He meant one of the ubiquitous Utility-60 helos of Vietnam fame, the best for a STABO pickup.

“Pierce thinks the Pave can handle it, sir. He’s all set to go.”

“What’s the SEALs’ emergency call?”

“Mars.”

“All right. Have those Paves airborne soon as you can.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And lieutenant…”

“General?”

“You tell those big, ugly Paves to add some firepower.”

“Yes, sir.”

Freeman’s use of the phrase “big, ugly Paves” momentarily reminded him of the big, ugly, fat fellows — the B-52s he had ready at Nayoro should the weather ever clear over the Black Dragon River. With Americans and Chinese so close together in such foul weather, not even the B-52s’ pinpoint bombing could avoid killing as many Americans as Chinese.

“Lieutenant…”

“Sir?”

“SEALs carry that STABO stuff?”

“No, sir, it’s dropped.”

“All right, you attend to that. I’ll see if our navy boys on Salt Lake City can give us a few strikers offshore if we need them.”

“I hope those SEALs blow that bridge, sir.”

“They don’t, son,” Freeman called out, “you’re gonna miss the World Series.” He bent down again next to Norton, who was now sitting up, having his head bandaged. “And we, my friends,” he told the medic and Norton, “will be up shit creek without a paddle.”

“You think they’ll—” began Norton, then stopped, feeling the bump of the bandage over his eye. He was having trouble seeing with his right, and it felt as if his head would fall off. He began again quietly. “You think Yakutsk will hit us from the north? I mean, the weather’s still pretty bad for us having any hope of air cover. They might try it.”

“They might,” said Freeman. In the presence of wounded men, he always tried to sound confident, reassuring.

It was a commander’s job. It was also a commander’s job to look facts square in the face, and if he was the C in C of Yakutsk, and American cover was socked in, then he’d go for broke: release his armor and attack the railhead. Overwhelm it with armor. Still, Freeman didn’t regret having brought his airborne to Nizhneangarsk, for it had achieved its aim of stalling Yesov’s eastern advance and given him time to move his M-1s west to Nizhneangarsk. The next move was Yesov’s — to stay put or…

“Maybe,” said Norton, his voice dry, groggy from a shot of Demerol, “maybe they’re already on the move.”

Looking up from thirty feet below the river’s surface, Robert Brentwood could see a tan-colored sheen— moonlight on the water — which would make it easier for him and his co-diver, Dennison, and for the other Echo One pair: Smythe and young Rose. But Robert Brentwood also knew that it would be welcomed by the ChiComs, the better to see anything moving on the river. Already the Chinese were holding up traffic on the right-hand channel off the eastern bank, not allowing any vessel under the bridge. Brentwood estimated he and Dennison were now two hundred yards from the bridge. Smythe and Rose, though farther out in the river, were presumably about the same distance away from the piers. For a moment he toyed with the idea of using his penlight on the handheld GPS affixed to his weight belt to get their exact position, but decided that even at this depth it was too much of a risk with the ChiComs up and about. He and Dennison would have to reorientate themselves visually regarding pier four in a minute or so, the current moving them more swiftly now that the river was narrowing from three and a half to three miles wide as it approached die straightway leading into the big left-right hook of river that lay beyond the bridge.