Chapter Forty Three
The Hellmouth, Martial Plain of Dysprosium
“Let’s have any HEAD you have on board.” The voice from outside the tank combined urgency and boredom.
“Would you care to repeat that soldier?” Major Stevenson peered over the edge of her turret. She and her combat group had been waiting in the traffic jam by the Hellmouth for nearly four hours and she wasn’t in the mood for any insubordination. Besides, she was hot, tired and sticky from being inside a tank too long and chewing out a subordinate would be welcome relief. As the thought crossed her mind, she decided she’d probably been in Hell too long.
“I’m sorry Ma’am, but its orders. All outgoing armor is to unload any HEAD ammunition on board for reissue. Its in short supply and the units up on the Phlegethon are going to need it.”
“HEAD? You mean HEAT?”
“No Ma’am. High Explosive Anti-Demon. New round, just started getting the first shipments. Got an iron liner instead of copper. Baldricks surely do hate iron. If you got any Ma’am, we’ll unload it for you.” The Sergeant had noted the battered vehicles and suddenly decided that these units had been in Hell a lot longer than he had. And messing with this Major might be a very bad idea. Especially if the scuttlebutt about a battle brewing was true.
“Hokay. Sergeant, we’ve none of that on board. Any idea how long we’ll be hung up for? I kinda hanker to see a blue sky again.”
“Dunno Ma’am and that’s the honest truth. There’s stuff pouring in all the time. The Russians have been coming in all morning and we had an Israeli armored division before that and I’m told there’s a European armored division behind them. And then there’s the aircraft the brass are towing in. There’s more of our boys unloading down South, or their equipment is. Guys themselves being flown in. Look over there ma’am.”
‘Over there’ was the road leading through the hellmouth. The stream of Russian armor had stopped for a few minutes, their place taken by aircraft tractors, each one towing what looked like an A-10. Only, they were now painted red-gray and they had a mushroom-shaped filter over the engine intakes. Stevenson lifted her mask slightly and took a cautious sniff of the air. It was a lot cleaner here than further into hell, presumably there was some gas exchange through the Hellmouth, but there was a new smell as well. One that achingly reminded Stevenson of home in Bayonne. The smell of tar and oil refineries.
“A blacktop road in Hell. Whodathunkit.”
“Engineers all over ma’am. You should see the roads their building down from the north and up from the ports in the South. And the airfields, they’re sproutin’ like weeds after a thunderstorm. Some of the fighter jocks flew their birds through the ‘mouth but brass put a stop to it. Too risky they said. Look, ma’am, keep your engines running, I’ll get my boys to make a hole for you. Slide you out as fast as we can.”
The Sergeant did his best but it still took more than an hour to get Stevenson’s unit out. Finally, they managed it, sliding her out between the end of the A-10 unit and the start of a Hungarian Su-25 outfit. But, the military police managed it and, once again, there was the silent, undramatic transition as the cloudy red and gray overcast of Hell was replaced by the clear blue of the Earth sky. Just looking at it made Stevenson very happy. Ahead of them, a traffic direction private waved them off the road into a vast parking lot, full of Bradleys, Abrams and Paladins. Plus all the other vehicles that made up the order of battle of an Armored Division. Stevenson recognized the markings, they were all First Armored.
When his Bradley came to a halt, Major Warhol stretched and dropped out of the back, leaving the cramped compartment that had been his home for over a week. Some of his staff from the field operation of DIMO(N) were waiting and he got the customary back-slapping greeting. Behind them, the long cavalcade of vehicles had started moving again, the great Russian ZIL and MAZ trucks being followed by the first of the European Leopard II tanks. Warhol gestured at the convoys that stretched, nose-to-tail, as far as he could see.
“Well, if there wasn’t a Peak Oil problem before, there certainly will be now.”
One of the scientists snorted. “Peak Oil? That… Oh, never mind. Anyway, we’re hoping we’ll hit oil in Hell. How did it go Major?”
“Not bad, our sims were pretty accurate. The dust is bad though. I’m surprised to see aircraft going in. Licked the filtration problem?”
“Yes and no. The filters cut airflow to the engines by about 20 – 30 percent. So that hits performance. And the time between overhauls is horrible, 50 to 60 hours before an engine has to be pulled and stripped. The good news is the clogging problem’s been licked.”
Something about the way the man put that caught Warhol’s attention. Putting on his most casual voice he asked the question they’d been hoping he wouldn’t. “How did you crack it then?”
There was an embarrassed shuffling of feet. “Well, actually we didn’t. We designed a filter pack and a pod that would use reverse air blast to clean the filters. Only problem was the pilot would have to glide with the engines out while he used it. They didn’t like that. Couple of aircraftmen came up with something better, a series of tabs on the inside of the filter that interfered with the airflow and made the filter shake. The dust in there is dry and that worked like a charm. Doubled or more the time taken for the airflow loss to reach mission-ending proportions.”
Warhol laughed and shook his head. “Right, I just got to say my farewells and then you can bring me up to date on the rest.” Then he set off to where Stevenson was speaking with MacFarland.
“We’re leaving the vehicles here, First Cavalry will be taking them over. First Armored is being split up, First Brigade will be staying as the cadre for the rebuilt division, Second and Third will be cadres for two new armored divisions. We’re all going back to the States for that. Stevenson, you’ll be commanding First Battalion in the new First Brigade. Any idea what you want to name your battalion?”
Stevenson thought for a second. Spearhead was too obvious. “How about the Hellcat Battalion Sir?”
“Good choice. You done good Stevenson. So have your crew. Got a commission for one of them, the others get to jump up the enlisted grades. Who’s best officer material in your crew?”
Again, a quick thought. “Hey Biker? You’re an officer.”
Her driver’s head emerged from his hatch, his attention caught by the use of the crew nickname. As the message sank in he shook his head. “Oh no Boss, you can’t do that to me. Please. Not an Officer.”
The Hospital, Mai Xiao Village, Sinkiang.
“Every morning they came down to the village tea house to drink their morning cup of tea, well laced with an illicit portion of rice wine. There were ten of them now, once there had been fifteen but time and old age had taken its toll and one by one, they had quietly vanished. Even fifteen had been a dramatic fall for sixty of them had left the village in the far off days of 1950 and only those 15 had returned. Now, the ten survivors were old, old men. They youngest, still called ‘the boy’ by his fellows was eighty years old and the oldest, their sergeant, had been a veteran of the People’s Liberation Army even in 1950, and he was far into his mid-nineties. But his moustache still bristled even though it was snow white and his back was still straight.”
“They saved from their pensions to bribe the tea house owner to slip them their rice wine, I knew about it of course, everybody did, but these men were heroes and who denies a hero a little comfort in their old age? The truth was that their small savings wouldn’t buy them the drinks they needed but if the other villagers chose to make up the difference, that was their business, nobody else’s.”
“And so, every day they would come down, and gather around their table, drink their tea and tell their stories. Of how they had held the hill in Korea against the Americans. Of how they had been outnumbered and outgunned and the American artillery never stopped shooting and their planes never stopped bombing but they had held the hill anyway. Every year the story got a little more fanciful, the attacks so much worse, their stand so much braver. They’d tell the stories to everybody who listened, and everybody did because these were old men, whose wives had long died and they were left alone. Lonely as only old men who had outlived their time could be. So the villagers listened to the stories and counted themselves lucky they had not gone to Korea.”
“Then there came that day. The old men hadn’t arrived yet but something else did. A monster, a hideous monster from hell, the one the Americans call the baldrick. The village went black in its middle and the creature stepped out, looking only to kill and mutilate. Most of the men were far away, working in the fields or on the road and could not help. There were just the women and children left and they screamed when they saw the monster and they ran. But the monster could run as well, faster than they could and it started to kill them.”
“As the Party Leader I had a Type 56 rifle in my hut and I got it. I fired a burst at the monster and I think I hit it
