Nizhneangarsk. The blizzard afforded more cover for Freeman’s foot soldiers than for the squeaky Siberian T-80s whose laser range finders were cut by the blizzard, four of the tanks erupting in flame, hit by American LAW 80 rounds, and in one case engulfed by flame thrower. It didn’t mean there wasn’t hard fighting, Freeman’s first battalion engaging a company of SPETS troops in the open area immediately northwest of the Nizhneangarsk tower, where the brine of the salt marshes had turned the edge of the lake a dirty cream color. Here combat was often hand-to-hand, and the two Lynx helicopters with eight ninety-five-pound Hellfire missiles apiece attacked, having dealt with another six of Malik’s lead tanks. One of the Lynx helos that had helped lay the mines, so that the Siberians had only a quarter-mile-wide front on which to attack, was temporarily downed because of shrapnel from a prematurely detonated mine whose fragments were too big for the self-sealing fuel tank to handle. Nevertheless, the Lynx had taken down one of Malik’s vital forward Hind D spotter helos just before the blizzard promised from the north hit full force.
But if there was a general collapse of morale among Nizhneangarsk’s regular troops, there was no such weakening of the Siberian Sixth Guards Regiment aboard the enormous air-cushioned vehicles — Aists — whose huge propellers were speeding them north from Port Baikal under orders from Irkutsk HQ. Though Freeman had as yet no report of them, they were now only a half hour from his paratroopers.
The Siberian Sixth Guards, quite apart from being the best
It was only when Freeman’s paratroopers had reached Nizhneangarsk, securing the rail line — the surprise and rapidity of the American paratroopers’ attack having overwhelmed the garrison — that the first of several reports came in from one of the Lynxes that the Aists. — at least eight, maybe more — had been sighted. The report said they were approximately fifteen miles south of Nizhneangarsk, which meant they’d be at the railhead in fifteen minutes — Freeman knowing his paratroopers didn’t have anything like the huge, heavily armed and armored Aists with which to resist.
Colonel Dick Norton felt his throat constrict. “What now, General?”
Standing on a slight rise, arms akimbo in his characteristic, defiant pose, snow peppering him as he overlooked the white on white that was the expanse of the lake stretching south from him, Freeman thought he could see the Aists’ blobs. Or was it a mirage or some other trick of the whiteout? It couldn’t be them, as it was still snowing too heavily, reducing his visibility to no more than a quarter mile or so. It struck him that he may have momentarily been a victim of what he called “Hegel sight”—the ever-present danger he constantly warned his troops about: that in times of excitement, particularly in moments of high stress, you often see what you expect to see, projecting your worst fears outward — in this case to the ice. To a small boy at night, for example, an old coat on a doorknob could easily become the feared intruder. It took training and a victory over fear to see what in fact was there. “Dick, I want those two howitzers up here right now, plus heavy mortars and sappers. Fast!”
As Dick Norton radioed back to the main force, now collecting about the railhead a quarter mile back, he knew they were in serious trouble. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, a couple of howitzers and heavy mortars could do to stop the giant 250-ton, 155-foot-long, fifty-five-foot-wide air-cushion assault Aist crafts. These amphibians, propelled forward by two push, two pull props and driven by two gas NK-12 MV turbine engines at over seventy-five miles per hour, could move about a hundred times faster on the mirror-smooth ice than could the two 155mm guns or their crews. And each of the ten 250-ton Aists, in addition to carrying 250 fully armed shock troops, boasted eight surface-to-air Grail missiles which could make very short work of the remaining choppers — and of anything else.
As if to support Dick Norton’s pessimism, the snowfall eased and Freeman, through the ten-power binoculars, could see white blobs on white, the tiny, hard snow racing at him like huge tracer. Through the dancing screen of the snow particles, he could see what appeared to be clouds of steam — the “up-blow” of snow and moisture from the Aists’ one-foot-high cushion of air, billowing out from beneath the bulbous rubber skirting on each of the huge craft.
Behind and all around him, Freeman could hear the sappers and mortar crews arriving, and behind them the clank of the two howitzers’ anchor spades in the snow and ice.
Norton, too, could see the Aists — there were not eight, but ten — still out of the howitzers’ effective range but steadily growing bigger, like blunt-nosed destroyers, their superstructure bulky and bullying in appearance. They were big targets, but Norton knew there was no way two howitzers could handle the Aists, with the Siberian crafts’ maneuverability. Freeman announced that if he were the Siberian commander, he would deploy the 250 troops aboard each Aist into the taiga for a flank attack before using the PT-76 tanks, four aboard each Aist, and their five-mile-range Grail SN-5 missiles. The second thing he’d do, he said, would be to use the Aists, which could not traverse the timber taiga, for a swerving S frontal attack against the railhead. Norton’s accurate estimate that such a maneuver would mean no less than two and a half thousand enemy shock troops coming at them was interrupted by someone shouting that the fleet of Aists — which Norton could now see clearly through his binoculars — were moving closer to the taiga. They were about a hundred yards apart and five miles away, to the right of the American position, and now turning to their left — to the Americans’ right — the up-blow from the assembled Aists’ skirts forming a huge flour-white cloud of snow. Norton could see their shock troops unloading, streaming out of the white cloud like small wooden sticks, disappearing into the snowy umbrellaed taiga.
The Aists closest to the forest having spewed out their human cargo, now moved off and were forming up in single file so as to deny Freeman any effective lateral fire. Their commander was obviously intent, as Freeman had predicted, on a frontal attack against the Americans, the second part of what was obviously going to be a scissor offensive. One blade would be made up of the shock troops from the Aists moving now through the timber, cutting in toward Freeman from his right flank and putting stiffener into Malik’s two motorized regiments, which had been driven back into the forest from the railroad only a short time before. The other blade would be the Aist attack itself.
Freeman grabbed the field phone and relayed his instructions, his paratroopers taking up positions all along the rail line left and right of his Humvee, picking the spots where the rail lines, encrusted with ice, formed the rim of a slight rise in the ground, the rise having been man-made in order to lift this section of the Trans-Siberian above flood level. It created a natural firing mound behind which Freeman’s sappers also set up their mortars, several of the crews already crouching over the dial sights, the two howitzer crews — pathetically, it seemed to Dick Norton, yet bravely — aligning the guns against the missile-armed Aists.
Freeman’s two remaining Lynx choppers, one of them with the patched fuel tank, rose like huge dragonflies frightened by noise, their cargo nets of pressure mines slung pendulously beneath them as they headed to the right, west of Nizhneangarsk, to do what Freeman, still glued to his binoculars, called, “A little oat sowing.” Still watching the Aists for the first wink of a missile, he shouted over the roar of the choppers to Dick Norton about the mines. “Mightn’t help stop their infantry, Dick… but it sure as hell’ll slow ‘em up. Damned if I’d like to be feeling my way through the forest, fearing any moment I’d be wearing my balls for a necklace.”
“Yes, sir,” said Norton. “But the Aists — I know their missiles aren’t any good over five miles, but what are you going to do when they—”
“Oh, you beautiful bastards!” yelled Freeman without taking his eyes from the binoculars. Norton took up his and, in the circle of eye-blinding white, saw the Aists — or rather one of them, obscuring any view of the others, which had apparently lined up behind the leader. It presented Freeman’s artillerymen, for all the good the two 155mms could do, with the smallest possible cross-section of target, and only one target at that. It was a frontal attack, all right, just as Freeman had predicted. Hopefully, thought Norton, the hero of Pyongyang and Ratmanov had also figured out a defense!
“We’ve only got two friggin’ guns,” said one of the loaders, pulling on his helmet but careful not to strap it lest an explosion’s concussion tear his head off. “Why the hell doesn’t the old man open up, now we’ve got ‘em in range? Might be lucky and pick off the lead one, anyway. Least do some friggin’ damage.”
“Don’t ask me,” commented the battery officer. “General told us not to fire until he gives us the green light.”
After calling the Aists “beautiful bastards” for the second time, and several of his treetop spotters reporting
