Ian Slater: Warshot

Ten minutes later Freeman got the report from his forward patrols that the Siberian tanks had split up into echelons of five, eighty feet between them in line abreast, the classic attack formations that the Siberians had used earlier in the war, swarming through Fulda Gap. Freeman sent Dick Norton back to what he called Harvey Simmet’s “cubbyhole” for the latest outside temperature as reported by the men who were now hurriedly retreating to defilade positions, behind either already existing snowdrifts or any fallen timber they might find close to hand. Some of the M-1 tank crews, with the rapid sarcasm troops the world over can call up for even the most popular leaders, were already calling Freeman “Dig-in Doug.”

No one liked to be a sitting target.

Norton returned from the met room. “Sir, Major Simmet’s indisposed.”

“What?”

“He’s on the can. Taken the met printout with him apparently.”

“Well get him off the can, Dick. He’s the best goddamned met officer we’ve got, and I want him to tell me the forecast.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Norton entered the “latrine module,” a series of prefabricated stalls, he could hear the wind and snow beating wildly against the aluminum exterior. When he saw Simmet’s feet and told him the general wanted another forecast, Harvey jerked the chain so hard it came right off the S arm. “Jesus, tell him it’s fucking cold and going to get colder!” bellowed Simmet.

“C’mon, Harv!” It was the general. “How cold’s that?” When Norton turned to face the general, Freeman winked at him, gesturing toward the cubicle wherein there was a furious unraveling of paper. “You say something, Harv?”

Norton was starting to get worried. It wasn’t uncommon for commanders to come a bit unglued, albeit temporarily, under extreme stress. Schwarzkopf could lose his temper— blow a gasket. At times Freeman dealt with the pressure by trying to be the Far East Jay Leno. But any hope of a joke with Simmet died as the outside door slammed. It was a messenger coming in from Signals. A forward American observation post was reporting that the spearhead echelons of the Siberian tank army were less than seven miles away from the dug-in M-1s.

Harvey Simmet, pulling his trousers up, was reading off the printout, “Snow gusts increasing to one hundred kilometers — sixty miles per hour, General. Visibility zero.”

“Not zero visibility for infrared and laser sights, Harvey!” Freeman commented.

“They’ve got infrared sights and laser, too, General.”

Freeman said nothing, but his frown told Harvey that Jay Leno was gone for the night. Coming out of the cubicle, Harvey looked apprehensively at Norton for reassurance that Freeman hadn’t miscalculated. Norton couldn’t give him any.

“Temperature?” Freeman asked Simmet.

Simmet dropped the printout in a puddle of melted snow by the urinal as he was lifting his suspenders. He cussed. “Minus fifty-five. Going to get worse,” he warned, looking up at Norton.

“Norton,” ordered Freeman, “signal all commanders to fall back another ten miles.”

Norton didn’t argue. He didn’t know what to think. It made sense to withdraw, given the odds, but that wasn’t the general’s style. Was Freeman finally seeing the light, or had Jay Leno metamorphosized into “Duck-Away Doug”?

Watching the vertical and crisscross-trussed girders of the lower railway deck coming at him like huge X’s in the darkness, truck-back floodlights above them on the vehicular deck, Robert Brentwood took off his Mae West vest, cut the Chinese bargeman free, pulled the cartridge on the Mae West, handed the inflated vest to the man, and gestured back over his shoulder to the river. The man was off the stern in three seconds. Brentwood heard the faint splash even amid the babble and excited yells on the Nanking Bridge and all around him in the jumbled bumping of sampans and junks, caught in the wash of the searchlights, scattered every which way, putting as much distance between them and the oncoming barge as possible.

Fifty yards from the channel, between piers four and five, he reached over to the rope trailing from the barge’s capstan and jerked out the holding bolt, the resulting run of the anchor chain sounding like a dump truck upending a load of marbles. Now there was a splitting sound that grew rapidly: a volley of gunfire aimed at the bamboo housing but well aft of the propane tanks, in the PLA’s desperate attempt to stop what they now realized was a boat with American commandos aboard.

The barge’s bow struck the pier and shuddered, its stern swinging about, pivoting on the anchor chain, the stem bashing into the concrete midway under the bridge along the base of pier four. The barge was now completely covered by the rail decking above it, the small arms fire ceasing because of the danger of ricocheting off the crisscross trusses into the propane tanks. Brentwood had determined that to spend time trying to rescue either Rose or Smythe would be to jeopardize the whole mission, and against impulse had to weigh the lives of thousands of Americans that lay in the balance to the north should the Nanking Bridge not be blown. He pulled the ten-minute acid-ampule timer. But then, with heart-stopping suddenness, he realized that with the PLA’s fear of firing down at him for fear of hitting the tanks, he had a sudden chance, albeit a short one, as he climbed off the barge onto the narrow maintenance ladder running from pier five’s base to the rail decking and the vehicular deck above it. A roaring like another great river entering the Yangtze could be heard off to his right, the glaring headlight of a northbound goods train starting across the bridge. Halfway up the ladder, his left hand on a rung, he swung the mini machine hard right, firing from the hip, several of the long bursts crashing into the train’s headlamp, denying the PLA any clear sight of him. Immediately above Rose he saw several PLA figures silhouetted against the rail. He fired another burst, and cut Rose loose as the PLA clambered over the rail, still too frightened to shoot but determined to exact a price.

“Go! Go!” It was Smythe yelling, tied high above pier four off to the left, cheering them on.

“C’mon!” hissed Brentwood, Rose following him down the ladder above the propane tank so quickly that, his muscles stiff from having been tied up, Rose almost fell, his left heel smashing into Brentwood’s nose.

With only three minutes to go before the acid ampule would eat through the primacord, igniting the charges, Brentwood went back up the ladder another two rungs, putting himself above the level of the passing train, its hot slipstream buffeting him. He saw three black figures on the northern side ladder under the bridge and fired a long burst. Two men fell, their screams barely audible above the rush of the goods train, one body bouncing off a boxcar into the girders, the other falling into the river over a hundred feet below.

The moment they hit the barge deck, Brentwood handed Rose his penlight. “Rendezvous point with Dennison — two miles down the river. If we get separated, head for the west shore. One flash — I’ll respond with two, ten seconds apart. Got it?”

“Got it.” Suddenly the train was gone, and in the half slice of a flashlight’s beam on a girder Brentwood saw two more PLA figures fifty feet above him. He fired a burst, saw one slump, and holding the gun tightly to his chest, dove off, feeling the cold current moving him swiftly downriver, feet kicking as he submerged more powerfully than in the most rigorous training session. Immediately in the underwater blackness he made for his left, where the current would carry him to the west bank. For several seconds time raced as he tried to make as much distance between him and the barge as possible, waiting for the sound of the detonation. Then it seemed as if minutes had passed, that something had gone wrong, that the primacord had—