The Bear and the Dragon

“We shall see about that, Comrade Lieutenant.” And the machine gun spoke again. Return fire was coming in now. Komanov could see tracers bouncing off the turret’s thick armor into the sky.

“Regiment, Five Six Alfa here. Post Five Zero is under deliberate attack now from infantry, and-”

Then more artillery shells started landing, called in directly on Five Zero. He hoped Ivanov was now under his hatch. The turret had a coaxial machine gun, an old but powerful PK with the long 7.62-mm cartridge. Komanov let his gunner survey the threat to his bunker while he watched how the Chinese attacked Sergeant Ivanov’s. Their infantry moved with some skill, using what ground they had, keeping fire on the exposed gun turret-enough artillery fell close enough to strip away the bushes that had hidden it at first. Even if your bullets bounced off, they were still a distraction to those inside. It was the big shells that concerned the lieutenant. A direct hit might penetrate the thinner top armor, mightn’t it? An hour before, he would have said no, but he could see now what the shells did to the ground, and his confidence had eroded quickly.

“Comrade Lieutenant,” his gunner said. “The people headed for us are turning away to attack Ivanov. Look.”

Komanov turned around to see. He didn’t need his binoculars. The sky was improving the light he had, and now he could see more than shadows. They were man shapes, and they were carrying weapons. One section was rushing to his left, three of them carrying something heavy. On reaching a shallow intermediate ridgeline, they stopped and started putting something together, some sort of tube …

… it was an HJ-8 antitank missile, his mind told him, fishing up the information from his months of intelligence briefings. They were about a thousand meters to his left front, within range of Ivanov …

… and within range of his big DshKM machine gun. Komanov stood on his firing stand and yanked back hard on the charging handle, leveling the gun and sighting carefully. His big tank gun could do this, but so could he …

So, you want to kill Sergeant Ivanov? his mind asked. Then he thumbed the trigger lever, and the big gun shook in his hands. His first burst was about thirty meters short, but his second was right on, and three men fell. He kept firing to make sure he’d destroyed their rocket launcher. He realized a moment later that the brilliant green tracers had just announced his location for all to see-tracers work in both directions. That became clear in two minutes, when the first artillery shells began landing around Position Five Six Alfa. He only needed one close explosion to drop down and slam his hatch. The hatch was the weakest part of his position’s protection, with only a fifth of the protective thickness of the rest-else he’d be unable to open it, of course-and if a shell hit that, he and his crew would all be dead. The enemy knew their location now, and there was no sense in hiding.

“Sergeant,” he told his gunner. “Fire at will.”

“Yes, Comrade Lieutenant!” And with that, the sergeant loosed his first high-explosive round at a machine- gun crew eight hundred meters away. The shell hit the gun itself and vaporized the infantrymen operating it. “There’s three good Chinks!” he exulted. “Load me another!” The turret started turning, and the gunner started hunting.

Getting some resistance now,” Wa told Peng. ”There are Russian positions on the southern slope of the second ridge. We’re hitting them now with artillery.”

“Losses?”

“Light,” the operations officer reported, listening in on the tactical radio.

“Good,” said General Peng. His attention was almost entirely on the river. The first bridge was about a third complete now.

Those bridging engineers are pretty good,” General Wallace thought, watching the ”take” from Marilyn Monroe.

“Yes, sir, but it might as well be a peacetime exercise. They’re not taking any fire,” the junior officer observed, watching another section being tied off. “And it’s a very efficient bridge design.”

“Russian?”

The major nodded. “Yes, sir. We copied it, too.”

“How long?”

“The rate they’re going? About an hour, maybe an hour ten.”

“Back to the gunfight,” Wallace ordered.

“Sergeant, let’s go back to the ridge,” the officer told the NCO who was piloting the UAC. Thirty seconds later, the screen showed what looked like a tank sunk in the mud surrounded by a bunch of infantrymen.

“Jesus, that looks like real fun,” Wallace thought. A fighter pilot by profession, the idea of fighting in the dirt appealed to him about as much as anal sex.

“They’re not going to last much longer,” the major said. “Look here. The gomers are behind some of the bunkers now.”

“And look at all that artillery.”

A total of a hundred heavy field guns were now pounding Komanov’s immobile platoon. That amounted to a full battery fixed on each of them, and heavy as his buried concrete box was, it was shaking now, and the air inside filled with cement dust, as Komanov and his crew struggled to keep up with all the targets.

“This is getting exciting, Comrade Lieutenant,” the gunner observed, as he loosed his fifteenth main-gun shot.

Komanov was in his commander’s cupola, looking around and seeing, rather to his surprise, that his bunker and all the others under his command could not deal with the attackers. It was a case of intellectual knowledge finally catching up with what his brain had long proclaimed as evident common sense. He actually was not invincible here. Despite his big tank gun and his two heavy machine guns, he could not deal with all these insects buzzing about him. It was like swatting flies with an icepick. He reckoned that he and his crew had personally killed or wounded a hundred or so attackers-but no tanks. Where were the tanks he yearned to kill? He could do that job well. But to deal with infantry, he needed supporting artillery fire, plus foot soldiers of his own. Without them, he was like a big rock on the seacoast, indestructible, but the waves could just wash around him. And they were doing that now, and then Komanov remembered that all the rocks by the sea were worn down by the waves, and eventually toppled by them. His war had lasted three hours, not even that much, and he was fully surrounded, and if he wanted to survive, it would soon be time to leave.

The thought enraged him. Desert his post? Run away? But then he remembered that he had orders allowing him to do so, if and when his post became untenable. He’d received the orders with a confident chuckle. Run away from an impregnable mini-fortress? What nonsense. But now he was alone. Each of his posts was alone. And-

— the turret rang like an off-tone bell with a direct impact of a heavy shell, and then-

– “Shit!” the gunner screamed. “Shit! My gun’s damaged!”

Komanov looked out of one of his vision slits, and yes, he could see it. The gun tube was scorched and … and actually bent. Was that possible? A gun barrel was the sturdiest structure men could make-but it was slightly bent. And so it was no longer a gun barrel at all, but just an unwieldy steel club. It had fired thirty-four rounds, but it would fire no more. With that gone, he’d never kill a Chinese tank. Komanov took a deep breath to collect himself and his thoughts. Yes, it was time.

“Prepare the post for destruction!” he ordered.

“Now?” the gunner asked incredulously.

“Now!” the lieutenant ordered. “Set it up!”

There was a drill for this, and they’d practiced it. The loader took a demolition charge and set it among the racked shells. The electrical cable was in a spool, which he played out. The gunner ignored this, cranking the turret right to fire his coaxial machine gun at some approaching soldiers, then turning rapidly the other way to strike at those who’d used his reaction to the others’ movement for cover to move themselves. Komanov stepped down from the cupola seat and looked around. There was his bed, and the table at which they’d all eaten their food, and the toilet room and the shower. This bunker had become home, a place of both comfort and work, but now they had to surrender it to the Chinese. It was almost inconceivable, but it could not be denied. In the movies, they’d fight to the death here, but fighting to the death was a lot more comfortable for actors who could start a new film the next