“Bronco, Skippy is on one!” his wingman reported, and Winters took position behind, low, and left of his wingman. “Skippy” was First Lieutenant Mario Acosta, a red-haired infant from Wichita who was coming along nicely for a child with only two hundred hours in type. “Fox-Two with one,” Skippy called. His target had turned south, and was heading almost straight into the streaking missile. Winters saw the Sidewinder go right into his right-side intake, and the resulting explosion was pretty impressive.
“Eagle, Boar Lead, give me a vector, over.”
“Boar Lead, come right at zero-nine-zero. I have a bandit at ten miles and low, angels ten, heading south at six-hundred-plus.”
Winters executed the turn and checked his radar display. “Got him!” And this one also was well within the Slammer envelope. “Fox-One with Slammer.” His fifth missile of the day leaped off the rail and rocketed east, angling down, and again Winters kept his nose on the target, ensuring that he’d get it on tape … yes! “That’s a splash. Bronco has a splash, I think that’s five.”
“Confirm five kills to Bronco,” Eagle Two confirmed. “Nice going, buddy.”
“What else is around?”
“Boar Lead, the bandits are running south on burner, just went through Mach One. We show a total of nine kills plus one damage, with six bandits running back to the barn, over.”
“Roger, copy that, Eagle. Anything else happening at the moment?”
“Ah, that’s a negative, Boar Lead.”
“Where’s the closest tanker?”
“You can tank from Oliver-Six, vector zero-zero-five, distance two hundred, over.”
“Roger that. Flight, this is Bronco. Let’s assemble and head off to tank. Form up on me.”
“Two.” “Three.” “Four.”
“How we doing?”
“Skippy has one,” his wingman reported.
“Ducky has two,” the second element leader chimed in.
“Ghost Man has two and a scratch.”
It didn’t add up, Winters thought. Hell, maybe the AWACS guys got confused. That’s why they had videotape. All in all, not a bad morning. Best of all, they’d put a real dent in the ChiComm Flanker inventory, and probably punched a pinhole in the confidence of their Su-27 drivers. Shaking up a fighter jock’s confidence was almost as good as a kill, especially if they’d bagged the squadron commander. It would make the survivors mad, but it would make them question themselves, their doctrine, and their aircraft. And that was good.
So?”
“The border defenses did about as well as one could reasonably expect,” Colonel Aliyev replied. “The good news is that most of our men escaped with their lives. Total dead is under twenty, with fifteen wounded.”
“What do they have across the river now?”
“Best guess, elements of three mechanized divisions. The Americans say that they now have six bridges completed and operating. So, we can expect that number to increase rapidly. Chinese reconnaissance elements are pushing forward. We’ve ambushed some of them, but no prisoners yet. Their direction of advance is exactly what we anticipated, as is their speed of advance to this point.”
“Is there any good news?” Bondarenko asked.
“Yes, General. Our air force and our American friends have given their air force a very bloody nose. We’ve killed over thirty of their aircraft with only four losses to this point, and two of the pilots have been rescued. We’ve captured six Chinese pilots. They’re being taken west for interrogation. It’s unlikely that they’ll give us any really useful information, though I am sure the air force will want to grill them for technical things. Their plans and objectives are entirely straightforward, and they are probably right on, or even slightly in advance of their plans.”
None of this was a surprise to General Bondarenko, but it was unpleasant even so. His intelligence staff was doing a fine job of telling him what they knew and what they expected, but it was like getting a weather report in winter: Yes, it was cold, and yes, it was snowing, and no, the cold and the snow will probably not stop, and isn’t it a shame you don’t have a warm coat to wear? He had nearly perfect information, but no ability to do anything to change the news. It was all very good that his airmen were killing Chinese airmen, but it was the Chinese tanks and infantry carriers that he had to stop.
“When will we be able to bring air power to bear on their spearheads?”
“We will start air-to-ground operations this afternoon with Su-31 ground-attack aircraft,” Aliyev replied. “But …”
“But what?” Bondarenko demanded.
“But isn’t it better to let them come in with minimal interference for a few days?” It was a courageous thing for his operations officer to say. It was also the right thing, Gennady Iosifovich realized on reflection. If his only strategic option was to lay a deep trap, then why waste what assets he had before the trap was fully set? This was not the Western Front in June of 1941, and he didn’t have Stalin sitting in Moscow with a figurative pistol to his head.
No, in Moscow now, the government would be raising all manner of political hell, probably calling for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council, but that was just advertising. It was his job to defeat these yellow barbarians, and doing that was a matter of using what power he had in the most efficient manner possible, and that meant drawing them out. It meant making their commander as confident as a schoolyard bully looking down at a child five years his junior. It meant giving them what the Japanese had once called the Victory Disease. Make them feel invincible, and
“Andrey, only a few aircraft, and tell them not to risk themselves by pressing their attacks too hard. We can hurt their air force, but their ground forces-we let them keep their advantage for a while. Let them get fat on this fine table set before them for a while.”
“I agree, Comrade General. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but in the end, harder for them to eat-assuming our political leadership allows us to do the right thing.”
“Yes, that is the real issue at hand, isn’t it?”
CHAPTER 52 Deep Battle
General Peng crossed over into Russia in his command vehicle, well behind the first regiment of heavy tanks. He thought of using a helicopter, but his operations staff warned him that the air battle was not going as well as the featherheads in the PLAAF had told him to expect. He felt uneasy, crossing the river in an armored vehicle on a floating bridge-like a brick tied to a balloon-but he did so, listening as his operations officer briefed him on the progress to this point.
“The Americans have surged a number of fighter aircraft forward, and along with them their E-3 airborne radar fighter-control aircraft. These are formidable, and difficult to counter, though our air force colleagues say that they have tactics to deal with them. I will believe that when I see it,” Colonel Wa observed. “But that is the only bad news so far. We are several hours ahead of schedule. Russian resistance is lighter than I expected. The prisoners we’ve taken are very disheartened at their lack of support.”
“Is that a fact?” Peng asked, as they left the ribbon bridge and thumped down on Russian soil.
“Yes, we have ten men captured from their defensive positions-we’ ll see them in a few minutes. They had escape tunnels and personnel carriers set to evacuate the men. They didn’t expect to hold for long,” Colonel Wa went on. “They
That information got Peng’s attention. It was important to know the fighting spirit of one’s enemy: “Did any of them stand and fight to the end?”
“Only one of their bunker positions. It cost us thirty men, but we took them out. Perhaps their escape vehicle was destroyed and they had no choice,” the colonel speculated.
