Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

Meanwhile, his troops had crewed up this ancient railroad right-of-way, but it wasn’t much worse than traveling along a wide gravel road. His only potential operational concern was fuel, but two hundred 10,000-liter fuel trucks were delivering an adequate amount from the pipeline the engineers were extending at a rate of forty kilometers per day from the end of the railhead on the far bank of the Amur. In fact, that was the most impressive feat of the war so far. Well behind him, engineer regiments were laying the pipe, then covering it under a meter of earth for proper concealment. The only things they couldn’t conceal were the pumping stations, but they had the spare parts to build plenty more should they be destroyed.

No, Peng’s only real concern was the location of the Russian Army. The dilemma was that either his intelligence was faulty, and there were no Russian formations in his area of interest, or it was accurate and the Russians were just running away and denying him the chance to engage and destroy them. But since when did Russians not fight for their land? Chinese soldiers surely would. And it just didn’t fit with Bondarenko’s reputation. None of this situation made sense. Peng sighed. But battlefields were often that way, he told himself. For the moment, he was on-actually slightly ahead of-schedule, and his first strategic objective, the gold mine, was three days away from his leading reconnaissance element. He’d never seen a gold mine before.

I’ll be damned!” Pavel Petrovich said. ”This is my land. No Chink’s going to chase me off of it!”

“They are only three or four days away, Pasha.”

“So? I have lived here for over fifty years. I’m not going to leave now.” The old man was well to the left of defiant. The chief of the mining company had come personally to drive him out, and expected him to come willingly. But he’d misread the old man’s character.

“Pasha, we can’t leave you here in their way. This is their objective, the thing they invaded us to steal-”

“Then I shall fight for it!” he retorted. “I killed Germans, I’ve killed bears, I’ve killed wolves. Now, I will kill Chinese. I’m an old man, not an old woman, comrade!”

“Will you fight against enemy soldiers?”

“And why not?” Gogol asked. “This is my land. I know all its places. I know where to hide, and I know how to shoot. I’ve killed soldiers before.” He pointed to his wall. The old service rifle was there, and the mining chief could easily see the notches he’d cut on the stock with a knife, one for every German. “I can hunt wolves and bear. I can hunt men, too.”

“You’re too old to be a soldier. That’s a young man’s job.”

“I need not be an athlete to squeeze a trigger, comrade, and I know these woods.” To emphasize his words, Gogol stood and took down his old sniper rifle from the Great Patriotic War, leaving the new Austrian rifle. The meaning was clear. He’d fought with this arm before, and he was quite willing to do so again. Hanging on his wall still were a number of the gilded wolf skins, most of which had single holes in the head. He touched one, then looked back at his visitors. “I am a Russian. I will fight for my land.”

The mining chief figured he’d buck this information up to the military. Maybe they could take him out. For himself, he had no particular desire to entertain the Chinese army, and so he took his leave. Behind him, Pavel Petrovich Gogol opened a bottle of vodka and enjoyed a snort. Then he cleaned his rifle and thought of old times.

T he train terminal was well-designed for their purposes, Colonel Welch thought. Russian engineers might have designed things clunky, but they’d also designed them to work, and the layout here was a lot more efficient than it looked on first inspection. The trains reversed direction on what American railroaders called a wye-Europeans called it a turning triangle-which allowed trains to back up to any one of ten off-loading ramps, and the Russians were doing it with skill and aplomb. The big VL80T electric locomotive eased backwards, with the conductors on the last car holding the air-release valve to activate the brakes when they reached the ramp. When the trains stopped, the soldiers jumped from their passenger coaches and ran back to their individual vehicles to start them up and drive them off. It didn’t take longer than thirty minutes to empty a train. That impressed Colonel Welch, who’d used the Auto Train to take his family to Disney World, and the off-loading procedure in Sanford, Florida, usually took an hour and a half or so. Then there was no further waiting. The big VL (Vladimir Lenin) engines immediately moved out for the return trip west to load up another ten thousand tons of train cars and cargo. It certainly appeared as though the Russians could make things happen when they had to.

“Colonel?” Welch turned to see a Russian major, who saluted crisply.

“Yes?”

“The first train with your personnel is due in four hours twenty minutes. We’ll take them to the southern assembly area. There is fuel there if they need it, and then we have guides to direct them east.”

“Very good.”

“Until then, if you wish to eat, there is a canteen inside the station building.”

“Thank you. We’re okay at the moment.” Welch walked over to where his satellite radio was set up, to get that information to General Diggs.

Colonel Bronco Winters now had seven red stars painted on the side panel of his F-15C, plus four of the now-defunct UIR flags. He could have painted on some marijuana or coca leaves as well, but that part of his life was long past, and those kills had been blacker than his uncle Ernie, who still lived in Harlem. So, he was a double-ace, and the Air Force hadn’t had many of those on active duty in a very long time. He took his flight to what they had taken to calling Bear Station, on the western edge of the Chinese advance.

It was an Eagle station. There were now over a hundred F-16 fighters in Siberia, but they were mainly air-to-mud rather than air-to-air, and so the fighting part of the fighter mission was his department, while the -16 jocks grumbled about being second-class citizens. Which they were, as far as Colonel Winters thought. Damned little single-engine pukes.

Except for the F-16CGs. They were useful because they were dedicated to taking out enemy radars and SAM sites. The Siberian Air Force (so they now deemed themselves) hadn’t done any air-to-mud yet. They had orders not to, which offended the guys whose idea of fun was killing crunchies on the ground instead of more manly pursuits. They didn’t have enough bombs for a proper bombing campaign yet, and so they were coming up just to ride guard on the E-3Bs in case Joe Chink decided to go after them-it was a hard mission, but marginally doable, and Bronco was surprised that they hadn’t made the attempt yet. It was a sure way to lose a lot of fighter planes, but they’d lost a bunch anyway, and why not lose them to a purpose …?

“Boar Lead, this is Eagle Two, over.”

“Boar Leader.”

“We show something happening, numerous bandits one-four-five your position, angels three-three, range two hundred fifty miles, coming north at six hundred knots-make that count thirty-plus bandits, looks like they’re coming right for us, Boar Lead,” the controller on the AWACS reported.

“Roger, copy that. Boar, Lead,” he told his flight of four. “Let’s get our ears perked up.”

“Two.” “Three.” “Four,” the rest of his flight chimed in.

“Boar Leader, this is Eagle Two. The bandits just went supersonic, and they are heading right for us. Looks like they’re not kidding. Vector right to course one-three-five and prepare to engage.”