Tom Clancy - The Bear and the Dragon

safer to stand in, he thought sourly. He wasn’t some peasant-private who could smash his head with no consequence … Well, in any case, it was a good day to be a soldier, in the field leading his men. A fair day, and no enemy in sight.

“Pull up alongside the reconnaissance track,” he ordered his driver.

Who the hell is this?” Captain Aleksandrov wondered aloud. ”Four big antennas, at least a division commander,” Buikov thought aloud. ”My thirty will settle his hash.”

“No, no, let’s let Pasha have him if he gets out”

Gogol had anticipated that. He was resting his arms on the steel top of the BRM, tucking the rifle in tight to his shoulder. The only thing in his way was the loose weave of the camouflage netting, and that wasn’t an obstacle to worry about, the old marksman was sure.

“Stopping to see the fox?” Buikov said next.

“Looks that way,” the captain agreed.

Comrade General!” the young lieutenant called in surprise.

“Where’s the enemy, Boy?” Peng asked loudly in return.

“General, we haven’t seen much this morning. Some tracks in the ground, but not even any of that for the past two hours.”

“Nothing at all?”

“Not a thing,” the lieutenant replied.

“Well, I thought there’d be something around.” Peng put his foot in the leather stirrup and climbed to the top of his command vehicle.

It’s a general, has to be, look at that clean uniform!” Buikov told the others as he slewed his turret around to center his sight on the man eight hundred meters away. It was the same in any army. Generals never got dirty.

“Pasha,” Aleksandrov asked, “ever kill an enemy general before?”

“No,” Gogol admitted, drawing the rifle in very tight and allowing for the range….

Better to go to that ridgeline, but our orders were to stop at once,” the lieutenant told the general.

“That’s right,” Peng agreed. He took out his Nikon binoculars and trained them on the ridge, perhaps eight hundred meters off. Nothing to see except for that one bush …

Then there was a flash-

“Yes!” Gogol said the moment the trigger broke. Two seconds, about, for the bullet to-

They’d never hear the report of the shot over the sound of their diesel engines, but Colonel Wa heard the strange, wet thud, and his head turned to see General Peng’s face twist into surprise rather than pain, and Peng grunted from the sharp blow to the center of his chest, and then his hands started coming down, pulled by the additional weight of the binoculars-and then his body started down, falling off the top of the command track through the hatch into the radio-filled interior.

That got him,” Gogol said positively. ”He’s dead.” He almost added that it might be fun to skin him and lay his hide in the river for a final swim and a gold coating, but, no, you only did that to wolves, not people-not even Chinese.

“Buikov, take those tracks!”

“Gladly, Comrade Captain,” and the sergeant squeezed the trigger, and the big machine gun spoke.

They hadn’t seen or heard the shot that had killed Peng, but there was no mistaking the machine cannon that fired now. Two of the reconnaissance tracks exploded at once, but then everything started moving, and fire was returned.

“Major!” General Ge called.

“Loading HEAT!” The gunner punched the right button, but the autoloader, never as fast as a person, took its time to ram the projective and then the propellant case into the breech.

Back us up!” Aleksandrov ordered loudly. The diesel engine was already running, and the BRM’s transmission set in reverse. The corporal in the driver’s seat floored the pedal and the carrier jerked backward. The suddenness of it nearly lost Gogol over the side, but Aleksandrov grabbed his arm and dragged him down inside, tearing his skin in the process. ”Go north!” the captain ordered next.

“I got three of the bastards!” Buikov said. Then the sky was rent by a crash overhead. Something had gone by too fast to see, but not too fast to hear.

“That tank gunner knows his business,” Aleksandrov observed. “Corporal, get us out of here!”

“Working on it, Comrade Captain.”

“GREEN WOLF to command!” the captain said next into the radio.

“Yes, GREEN WOLF, report.”

“We just killed three enemy tracks, and I think we got a senior officer. Pasha, Sergeant Gogol, that is, killed a Chinese general officer, or so it appeared.”

“He was a general, all right,” Buikov agreed. “The shoulder boards were pure gold, and that was a command track with four big radio antennas.”

“Understood. What are you doing now, GREEN WOLF?”

“We’re getting the fuck away. I think we’ll be seeing more Chinks soon.”

“Agreed, GREEN WOLF. Proceed to divisional CP. Out.”

“Yuriy Andreyevich, you will have heavy contact in a few minutes. What is your plan?”

“I want to volley-fire my tanks before firing my artillery. Why spoil the surprise, Gennady?” Sinyavskiy asked cruelly. “We are ready for them here.”

“Understood. Good luck, Yuriy.”

“And what of the other missions?”

“BOYAR is moving now, and the Americans are about to deploy their magical pigs. If you can handle the leading Chinese elements, those behind ought to be roughly handled.”

“You can rape their daughters for all I care, Gennady.”

“That is nekulturniy, Yuriy. Perhaps their wives,” he suggested, adding, “We are watching you on the television now.”

“Then I will smile for the cameras,” Sinyavskiy promised.

The orbiting F-16 fighters were under the tactical command of Major General Gus Wallace, but he, at the moment, was under the command-or at least operating under the direction-of a Russian, General-Colonel Gennady Bondarenko, who was in turn guided by the action of this skinny young Major Tucker and Grace Kelly, a soulless drone hovering over the battlefield.

“There they go, General,” Tucker said, as the leading Chinese echelons resumed their drive north.

“I think it is time, then.” He looked to Colonel Aliyev, who nodded agreement.

Bondarenko lifted the satellite phone. “General Wallace?”

“I’m here.”

“Please release your aircraft.”

“Roger that. Out.” And Wallace shifted phone receivers. “EAGLE ONE, this is ROUGHRIDER. Execute, execute, execute. Acknowledge.”

“Roger that, sir, copy your order to execute. Executing now. Out.” And the colonel on the lead AWACS shifted to a different frequency: “CADILLAC LEAD, this is EAGLE ONE. Execute your attack. Over.”

“Roger that,” the colonel heard. “Going down now. Out.”

The F-16s had been circling above the isolated clouds. Their threat receivers chirped a little bit, reporting the emissions of SAM radars somewhere down there, but the types indicated couldn’t reach this high, and their jammer pods were all on anyway. On command, the sleek fighters changed course for the battlefield far below and to their west. Their GPS locators told them exactly where they were, and they also knew where their targets were, and the mission became a strictly technical exercise.

Under the wings of each aircraft were the Smart Pigs, four to the fighter, and with forty-eight fighters, that came to 192 J-SOWs. Each of these was a canister thirteen feet long and not quite two feet wide, filled with BLU-108 submunitions, twenty per container. The fighter pilots punched the release triggers, dropped their bombs, and then angled for home, letting the robots do the rest of the work. The Dark Star tapes would later tell them how they’d done.