The Bear and the Dragon

a Chinese lieutenant, judging by his shoulderboards, probably commander of this platoon. He ordered his people around a lot, but didn’t mind taking the lead. So, he was probably conscientious. He is, therefore, the one we should kill first, Aleksandrov thought. Their BRM reconnaissance track had a fine 30-mm cannon that could reach out and turn the gardener into fertilizer from a thousand meters or so, but Captain Aleksandrov had forbidden it, worse luck, Buikov thought. He was from this area, a woodsman of sorts who’d hunted in the forests many times with his father, a lumber-jack. “We really ought to kill him.”

“Boris Yevgeniyevich, do you wish to alert the enemy to our presence?” Aleksandrov asked his sergeant.

“I suppose not, my captain, but the hunting season is-”

“-closed, Sergeant. The season is closed, and no, he is not a wolf that you can shoot for your own pleasure, and- down,” Aleksandrov ordered. The gardener was looking their way with his field glasses. Their faces were painted, and they had branches tucked into their field clothing to break up their outlines, but he was taking no chances. “They’ll be moving soon. Back to the track.”

The hardest part of their drill was to avoid leaving tracks for the Chinese to spot. Aleksandrov had “discussed” this with his drivers, threatening to shoot anyone who left a trail. (He knew he couldn’t do that, of course, but his men weren’t quite sure.) Their vehicles even had upgraded mufflers to reduce their sound signature. Every so often, the men who designed and built Russian military equipment got things right, and this was such a case. Besides, they didn’t crank their engines until they saw the Chinese doing the same. Aleksandrov looked up. Okay, the gardener was waving to those behind him, the wave that meant to bring their vehicles up. They were doing another leapfrog jump, with one section standing fast and providing over-watch cover for the next move, should something happen. He had no intention of making anything happen, but of course they couldn’t know that. Aleksandrov was surprised that they were maintaining their careful drill into the second day. They weren’t getting sloppy yet. He’d expected that, but it seemed that the Chinese were better drilled even than his expectations, and were assiduously following their written doctrine. Well, so was he.

“Move now, Captain?” Buikov asked.

“No, let’s sit still and watch. They ought to stop at that little ridge with the logging road. I want to see how predictable they are, Boris Yevgeniyevich.” But he did trigger his portable radio. “Stand by, they’re jumping again.”

The other radio just clicked on and off, creating a whisper of static, rather than a spoken reply. Good, his men were adhering to their radio discipline. The second echelon of Chinese tracks moved forward carefully, at about ten-kilometer speed, following this opening in the forest. Interesting, he thought, that they weren’t venturing too far into the adjoining woods. No more than two or three hundred meters. Then he cringed. A helicopter chattered overhead. It was a Gazelle, a Chinese copy of the French military helicopter. But his track was back in the woods, and every time it stopped, the men ran outside to stretch the camo-net around it. His men, also, were well-drilled. And that, he told his men, was why they didn’t dare leave a visible trail if they wanted to live. It wasn’t much of a helicopter, but it did carry rockets-and their BRM was an armored personnel carrier, but it wasn’t that armored.

“What’s he doing?” Buikov asked.

“If he’s looking, he’s not being very careful about it.”

The Chinese were driving up a pathway built ages ago for an unbuilt spur off the Trans-Siberian Railroad. It was wide, in some places five hundred meters, and fairly well-graded. Someone in years past had thought about building this spur to exploit the unsurveyed riches of Siberia-enough to cut down a lot of trees, and they’d barely grown back in the harsh winters. Just saplings in this pathway now, easily ground into splinters by tracked vehicles. Farther north, the work was being continued by army engineers, making a path to the new gold find, and beyond that to the oil discoveries on the Arctic Coast. When they got that far, the Chinese would find a good road, ready- made for a mechanized force to exploit. But it was a narrow one, and the Chinese would have to learn about flank security if they kept this path up.

Aleksandrov remembered a Roman adventure into Germany, a soldier named Quintilius Varus, commanding three legions, who’d ignored his flanks, and lost his army in the process to a German named Armenius. Might the Chinese make a similar mistake? No, everyone knew of the Teutonenberg Forest disaster. It was a textbook lesson in every military academy in the known world. Quintilius Varus had been a political commander, given that command because he’d been beloved of his emperor, Caesar Augustus, obviously not because of his operational skill. It was a lesson probably better remembered by soldiers than by politicians. And the Chinese army was commanded by soldiers, wasn’t it?

“That’s the fox,” Buikov said. This was the other officer in the Chinese unit, probably the subordinate of the gardener. Similar in size, but he had less interest in plants than he had in darting about. As they watched, he disappeared into the tree line to the east, and if he went by the form card, he’d be invisible for five to eight minutes.

“I could use a smoke,” Sergeant Buikov observed.

“That will have to wait, Sergeant.”

“Yes, Comrade Captain. May I have a sip of water, then?” he asked petulantly. It wasn’t water he wanted, of course.

“Yes, I’d like a shot of vodka, too, but I neglected to bring any with me, as, I am sure, you did as well.”

“Regrettably, yes, Comrade Captain. A good slug of vodka helps keep the chill away in these damp woods.”

“And it also dulls the senses, and we need our senses, Boris Yevgeniyevich, unless you enjoy eating rice. Assuming the Chinks take prisoners, which I rather doubt. They do not like us, Sergeant, and they are not a civilized people. Remember that.”

So, they don’t go to the ballet. Neither do I, Sergeant Buikov didn’t say aloud. His captain was a Muscovite, and spoke often of cultural matters. But like his captain, Buikov had no love for the Chinese, and even less now that he was looking at Chinese soldiers on the soil of his country. He only regretted not killing some, but killing was not his job. His job was watching them piss on his country, which somehow only made him angrier.

“Captain, will we ever get to shoot them?” the sergeant asked.

“In due course, yes, it will be our job to eliminate their reconnaissance elements, and yes, Boris, I look forward to that as well.” And, yes, I could use a smoke as well. And I’d love a glass of vodka right now. But he’d settle for some black bread and butter, which he did have in his track, three hundred meters to the north.

Six and a half minutes this time. The fox had at least looked into the woods to the east, probably listened for the sound of diesel engines, but heard nothing but the chirping of birds. Still, this Chink lieutenant was the more conscientious of the two, in Buikov’s opinion. They should kill him first, when the time came, the sergeant thought. Aleksandrov tapped the sergeant on the shoulder. “Our turn to leapfrog, Boris Yevgeniyevich.”

“By your command, Comrade Captain.” And both men moved out, crouching for the first hundred meters, and taking care not to make too much noise, until they heard the Chinese tracks start their engines. In five more minutes, they were back in their BRM and heading north, slowly picking their way through the trees, Aleksandrov buttered some bread and ate it, sipping water as he did so. When they’d traveled a thousand meters, their vehicle stopped, and the captain got on his big radio.

Who is Ingrid?” Tolkunov asked.

“Ingrid Bergman,” Major Tucker replied. “Actress, good-lookin’ babe in her day. All the Dark Stars are named for movie stars, Colonel. The troops did it.” There was a plastic strip on the monitor top to show which Dark Star was up and transmitting. Marilyn Monroe was back at Zhigansk for service, and Grace Kelly was the next one up, scheduled to go in fifteen hours. “Anyway”-he flipped a switch and then played a little with his mouse control-“there’s the Chinese lead elements.”

“Son of a bitch,” Tolkunov said, demonstrating his knowledge of American slang.

Tucker grinned. “Pretty good, ain’t it? Once I sent one over a nudist colony in California-that’s like a private park where people walk around naked all the time. You can tell the difference between the flat-chested ones and the ones with nice tits. Tell the natural blondes from the peroxide ones, too. Anyway, you use this mouse to control the camera-well, somebody else is doing it now up at Zhigansk. Anything in particular that you’re interested