“Then get me Peng on the radio,” Luo repeated his order.
“What is it, Wa?” Peng asked. Couldn’t he even take a piss without interruption?
“Radio, it’s the Defense Minister,” his operations officer told him.
“Wonderful,” the general groused, heading back to his command track as he buttoned his fly. He ducked to get inside and lifted the microphone. “This is General Peng.”
“This is Marshal Luo. What is your situation?” the voice asked through the static.
“Comrade Marshal, we will be setting off in ten minutes. We have still not made contact with the enemy, and our reconnaissance has seen no sizable enemy formations in our area. Have you developed any intelligence we can use?”
“Be advised we have aerial photography of Russian mechanized units to your west, probably division strength. I would advise you to keep your mechanized forces together, and guard your left flank.”
“Yes, Comrade Marshal, I am doing that,” Peng assured him. The real reason he stopped every day was to allow his divisions to close up, keeping his fist tight. Better yet, 29th Type A Group Army was right behind his if he needed support. “I recommend that 43rd Army be tasked to flank guard.”
“I will give the order,” Luo promised. “How far will you go today?”
“Comrade Marshal, I will send a truckload of gold back to you this very evening. Question: What is this I’ve heard about damage to our line of supply?”
“There was an attack last night on some railroad bridges in Harbin and Bei’an, but nothing we can’t fix.”
“Very well. Comrade Marshal, I must see to my dispositions.”
“Carry on, then. Out.”
Peng set the microphone back in its holder. “Nothing he can’t fix, he says.”
“You know what those bridges are like. You’d need a nuclear weapon to hurt them,” Colonel Wa Cheng-Gong observed confidently.
“Yes, I would agree with that.” Peng stood, buttoned his tunic, and reached for a mug of morning tea. “Tell the advance guard to prepare to move out. I’m going up front this morning, Wa. I want to see this gold mine for myself.”
“How far up front?” the operations officer asked.
“With the LEAD elements. A good officer leads from the front, and I want to see how our people move. Our reconnaissance screen hasn’t detected anything, has it?”
“Well, no, Comrade General, but—”
“But what?” Peng demanded.
“But a prudent commander leaves leading to lieutenants and captains,” Wa pointed out.
“Wa, sometimes you talk like an old woman,” Peng chided.
“There,” Yefremov said. “They took the bait.” It was just after midnight in Moscow, and the embassy of the People’s Republic of China had most of its lights off, but not all; more to the point, three windows had their lights on, and their shades fully open, and they were all in a row. It was just as perfect as what the Americans called a “sting” operation. He’d stood over Suvorov’s shoulder as he’d typed the message: I have the pieces in place now. I have the pieces in place now. If you wish for me to carry out the operation, leave three windows in a row with the lights on and the windows fully open. Yefremov had even had a television camera record the event, down to the point where the traitor Suvarov had tapped the enter key to send the letter to his Chink controller. And he’d gotten a TV news crew to record the event as well, because the Russian people seemed to trust the semi-independent media more than their government now, for some reason or other. Good, now they had proof positive that the Chinese government was conspiring to kill President Grushavoy. That would play well in the international press. And it wasn’t an accident. The windows all belonged to the Chief of Mission in the PRC embassy, and he was, right now, asleep in his bed. They’d made sure of that by calling him on the phone ten minutes earlier.
“So, what do we do now?”
“We tell the president, and then, I expect, we tell the TV news people. And we probably spare Suvarov’s life. I hope he likes it in the labor camp.”
“What about the killings?”
Yefremov shrugged. “He only killed a pimp and a whore. No great loss, is it?”
Senior Lieutenant Komanov had not exactly enjoyed his last four days, but at least they’d been spent profitably, training his men to shoot. The reservists, now known as BOYAR force, had spent them doing gunnery, and they’d fired four basic loads of shells over that time, more than any of them had ever shot on active duty, but the Never Depot had been well stocked with shells. Officers assigned to the formation by Far East Command told them that the Americans had moved by to their south the previous day, and that their mission was to slide north of them, and do it today. Only thirty kilometers stood between them and the Chinese, and he and his men were ready to pay them a visit. The throaty rumble of his own diesel engine was answered by the THUNDER of two hundred others, and BOYAR started moving northeast through the hills.
Peng and his command section raced forward, calling ahead on their radios to clear the way, and the military-police troops doing traffic control waved them through. Soon they reached the command section of the 302nd Armored, his Leading “fist” formation, commanded by Major General Ge Li, a squat officer whose incipient corpulence made him look rather like one of his tanks.
“Are you ready, Ge?” Peng asked. The man was well-named for his task. “Ge” had the primary meaning of “spear.”
“We are ready,” the tanker replied. “My Leading regiments are turning over and straining at the leash.”
“Well, shall we observe from the front together?”
“Yes!” Ge jumped aboard his own command tank—he preferred this to a personnel carrier, despite the poorer radios, and led the way forward. Peng immediately established a direct radio connection with his subordinate.
“How far to the front?”
“Three kilometers. The reconnaissance people are moving now, and they are another two kilometers ahead.”
“LEAD on, Ge,” Peng urged. “I want to see that gold mine.”
It was a good spot, Aleksandrov thought, unless the enemy got his artillery set up sooner than expected, and he hadn’t seen or heard Chinese artillery yet. He was on the fairly steep reverse side of an open slope that faced south, rather like a lengthy ramp, perhaps three kilometers in length, not unlike a practice shooting range at a regimental base. The sun was starting to crest the eastern horizon, and they could see now, which always made soldiers happy. Pasha had stolen a spare coat and laid his rifle across it, standing in the open top hatch of the BRM, looking through the telescopic sight of his rifle.
“So, what was it like to be a sniper against the Germans?” Aleksandrov asked once he’d settled himself in.
“It was good hunting. I tried to stick to killing officers. You have more effect on them that way,” Gogol explained. “A German private— well, he was just a man—an enemy, of course, but he probably had no more wish to be on a battlefield than I did. But an officer, those were the ones who directed the killing of my comrades, and when you got one of them, you confused the enemy.”
“How many?”
“Lieutenants, eighteen. Captains, twelve. Only three majors, but nine colonels. I decapitated nine Fritz regiments. Then, of course, sergeants and machine-gun crews, but I don’t remember them as well as the colonels. I can still see every one of those, my boy,” Gogol said, tapping the side of his head.
“Did they ever try to shoot at you?”
“Mainly with artillery,” Pasha answered. “A sniper affects the morale of a unit. Men do not like being hunted like game. But the Germans didn’t use snipers as skillfully as we did, and so they answered me with field guns. That,” he admitted, “could be frightening, but it really told me how much the Fritzes feared me,” Pavel Petrovich concluded with a cruel smile.
“There!” Buikov pointed. Just off the trees to the left.
“Ahh,” Gogol said, looking through his gunsight. “Ahh, yes.”
Aleksandrov laid his binoculars on the fleeting shape. It was the vertical steel side on a Chinese infantry carrier, one of those he’d been watching for some days now. He lifted his radio. “This is GREEN WOLF ONE. Enemy in sight, map reference two-eight-five, nine-zero-six. One infantry track coming north. Will advise.”
“Understood, GREEN WOLF,” the radio crackled back.
“Now, we must just be patient,” Fedor Il’ych said. He stretched, touching the camouflage net that he’d ordered set up the moment they’d arrived in this place. To anyone more than three hundred meters away, he and his men were just part of the hill crest. Next to him, Sergeant Buikov lit a cigarette, blowing out the smoke.