Ian Slater - WW III

Beneath the bridge, which lead onto Mansudae Street, the demo team kept working along the slippery embankment with the extraordinary concentration of sappers, whom Freeman had always held to be among the bravest of the brave. The rain was still heavy and the lone American marine on the bridge took cover behind the burning U.S. truck, not seeing the cupola of the lead car open until its top-mounted.76 began raking the Humvee, pieces of metal and upholstery flying through the air.

“How long?” the marine called to the sappers.

“Two minutes max!”

“They’re on top of us.”

“Hold ‘em, Arnie!”

Arnie dashed from the big stanchion near the end of the bridge across the traffic lanes behind the burning wreckage of the Hummer, hearing a faint gurgling sound coming from it. Going low, catching a quick look at the armored car, he saw the NKA car commander, his leather World-War-II-type helmet striking the marine as old-fashioned as hell. The marine gave him a full burst. The man flung his arms back before he slumped over the right side of the cupola. The marine heard a lot of shouting coming from inside the armored car, but still it kept coming, turning now to ram the Hummer. Arnie dropped his heavy automatic squad gun, ran left to a gap of about three feet between the Hummer’s rear wheels and bridge rail, saw the armored car, now only six feet away, going straight for the front of the American truck. It took him one, two — three steps, up on the wheel guard flange, and two grenades down the cupola, conscious of a stringent, unpleasant odor: the dead man’s breath as he lolled on the cupola. The second car veered and hit Arnie so hard, the demolition team, running the wire back and slipping on the grass, heard their buddy’s ribs snap like sticks. Now the second NKA car was blocked by the V formed by the wreckage of the Humvee and the other armored car. It backed up and suddenly its searchlight penciled out along the embankment. The cupola opened and the gunner, the.76 coaxial slaved to the searchlight, sprayed straight down the approach to the bridge. Out of nowhere, a MiG flashed low, canisters falling, the armored truck enveloped in napalm, the pilot having mistaken the three armored vehicles in radar clutter as American.

One of the demolition team cranked, and the other pushed the plunger. They felt a slight tremor, heard a thud, then a louder claplike noise. The approach to the bridge had collapsed only six or seven feet, but until it was fixed, nothing would be coming across to Mansudae Street.

By now the unarmed Prowlers had been gone from Pyongyang twenty minutes, though it seemed much longer to some of the men on the ground. Still the possibility loomed — was it possible that Freeman could make his “Doolittle” hit-and-run and get out virtually unscathed?

Shirer told half of his remaining twelve F-14s who had made up the second wave to drop chaff and go for railyards on the city’s south side, and he designated three strikers to take out the six bridges across the Potong, particularly Chungsong Bridge on the southwest side, where reinforcements might be rushed from the port of Nampo twenty miles to the south.

Laser-guided bombs took out three of the bridges, but Chung-song in particular was an elusive target, its span running over the island of Suksom pleasure ground bisecting the target, making it more difficult to get at. What made the situation worse all of a sudden was that the chaff jamming over the city was now coming to an end, even as Shirer could see MiGs, at least twenty of them, coming from the west, another seven from northern airfields, perhaps in Manchuria.

Until the Tomcats were relieved in five minutes, they would have to leave the ground force to its own devices. The AA batteries were opening up again now that the jamming was weakening. Shirer half hoped the MiGs would reach them before his and other Tomcats’ fuel dictated a withdrawal, for in the mixed-up blips of Tomcats and MiGs in aerial combat on their screens, the NKA batteries, including the remaining SAMs, would be more discerning lest they hit one of their own.

“Outstanding! Excellent!” were repeated so often in the first half hour by Douglas Freeman as he saw the thousand men secure the perimeter around the square that he began worrying it was all going too well, a suspicion now reinforced by the Tomcats’ leader telling him that though the next wave of Tomcats hadn’t arrived, he would have to take his flight back for refueling.

Then, on the PSC-3 Manpak satellite-bounce radio he was using, Freeman heard the eight hundred airborne troops from the two Galaxies were pinned down at the airport. One of the big planes was forced to stand, soaking up small-arms fire as its men unloaded, and one of the Phantoms that had escorted it was shot down as, low on fuel; it turned back with the second Galaxy, which had delivered its load of four howitzers.

The howitzers and their ammunition had come in on pallets from the Galaxy now heading back, but one of the drag chutes had failed to open, so that the guns were now at the outer flooded edge of the airport rather than on it, and in the darkness a fight raged between the U.S. Airborne and NKA militia for possession of the guns.

Freeman knew it would all come apart if the six tanks that the Airborne’s Colonel Menzies was now sighting managed to reach the airport before the Airborne could get the 105-millimeters into action.

“You can take care of them, Rick,” Freeman told his Airborne commander. “Their goddamned rattletraps come apart if you fart. Over.”

“They’re our tanks, General. Captured M-60s.”

The general paused. “Then knock ‘em off with the howitzers.”

“When we get—” There was an explosion in the background, drowning Menzie’s voice. When he came back on the radio, he told Freeman, “General, there’s a good chance we’re going to lose the Galaxy. It’s one mother of a target — even in the dark. I ‘m concerned about my men, General. If that big bird goes…”

“Then our empty cargo Chinooks can take you out… How long do you think you can hold?”

“Not a matter of holding, General. We can hold all day, but it’s no good if we can’t get out.”

“An hour’s all I need, Rick. You hold.”

“Yes, sir.”

A minute later the sky over the airport went yellow, followed by an explosion — the Galaxy going up in flames, illuminating the Airborne better than any flare.

Freeman turned to Al Banks and a marine major. “I’m going on to Mansudae Hall.” He said it as if he were going over to the PX for a moment. Perhaps, thought the major, the general’s enormous self-confidence came from the long hours of preparation, of poring over the SATINT and Japanese intelligence reports. But then, anyone could read a map. There was more to it. Freeman’s élan had spread through all the men, now digging in around Kim II Sung Square, readying for the inevitable NKA counterattack with three of the bridges on the west side still intact.

“By God,” said Freeman, “what I wouldn’t give for an M-1.”

“Hey, General. You don’t need a tank, sir. You got us.”

They were hunkering down close to the Hummer.

“Where you from, son?”

“Brooklyn, sir.”

“You stay by me. I need a man like you.”

“Where we goin’, General?”

“We’re going to start a fire, son, right in that runt’s seat of government. By God, those Commies talk about ten days that shook the world. We’ll do it in ten minutes!”

There was a shuffling sound — the boy’s buddy hitting the cement.

“Down!” bellowed Freeman. There was another shot, but they couldn’t see where the sniper was.

“Medic!” called the boy from Brooklyn. The stretcher bearers ran over, crouching. There was a flash in the darkness south of the square from the Haebangsan Hotel. The Humvee’s machine gun roared to life, illuminating the rain and several marines nearby.