The Bear and the Dragon

“Roger that, thank you, out.” Giusti checked the map to be sure he knew exactly where the chopper was.

So, twenty miles ahead there was still nothing to be concerned about, at least according to the captain flying his lead helicopter. Where would it start? Giusti wondered. On the whole, he would have preferred to stand still and sit in on the divisional commander’s conference, just to find out what the hell was happening, but as cavalry-screen commander, it was his job to go out forward and find the enemy, then report back to IRON Six, the divisional commander. He really didn’t have much of a mission yet, aside from driving up to the Russian fuel depot, refueling his vehicles there, and setting up security, then pulling out and continuing his advance as the leading elements of the First Armored’s heavy forces got there. It was his job, in short, to be the ham in the sandwich, as one of his troop commanders liked to joke. But this ham could bite back. Under his command were three troops of armored cavalry, each with nine M1A2 Abrams main-battle tanks and thirteen M3A2 Bradley cavalry scout vehicles, plus a FISTV track for forward observers to call in artillery support-somewhere behind him, the First Armored’s artillery would be off-loading soon from its train, he hoped. His most valuable assets were D and E troops, each with eight OH-58D Kiowa Warrior helicopters, able both to scout ahead and to shoot with Hellfire and Stinger missiles. In short, his squadron could look after itself, within reasonable limits.

As they got closer, his troopers would become more cautious and circumspect, because good as they were, they were neither invincible nor immortal. America had fought against China only once, in Korea nearly sixty years earlier, and the experience had been satisfactory to neither side. For America, the initial Chinese attack had been unexpected and massive, forcing an ignominious retreat from the Yalu River. But for China, once America had gotten its act together, the experience had cost a million lives, because firepower was always the answer to raw numbers, and America’s lasting lesson from its own Civil War was that it was better to expend things than to expend people. The American way of war was not shared by everyone, and in truth it was tailored to American material prosperity as much as to American reverence for human life, but it was the American way, and that was the way its warriors were schooled.

I think it’s about time to roll them back a little,” General Wallace observed over the satellite link to Washington.

“What do you propose?” Mickey Moore asked.

“For starters, I want to send my F-16CGs after their radar sites. I’m tired of having them use radar to direct their fighters against my aircraft. Next, I want to start going after their logistical choke points. In twelve hours, the way things are going, I’ll have enough ordnance to start doing some offensive warfare here. And it’s about time for us to start, General,” Wallace said.

“Gus, I have to clear that with the President,” the Chairman told the Air Force commander in Siberia.

“Okay, fine, but tell him we damned near lost an AWACS yesterday-with a crew of thirty or so-and I’m not in a mood to write that many letters. We’ve been lucky so far, and an AWACS is a hard kill. Hell, it cost them a full regiment of fighters to fail in that mission. But enough’s enough. I want to go after their radar sites, and I want to do some offensive counter-air.”

“Gus, the thinking here is that we want to commence offensive operations in a systematic way for maximum psychological effect. That means more than just knocking some antennas down.”

“General, I don’t know what it looks like over there, but right here it’s getting a little exciting. Their army is advancing rapidly. Pretty soon our Russian friends are going to have to make their stand. It’ll be a whole lot easier if the enemy is short on gas and bullets.”

“We know that. We’re trying to figure a way to shake up their political leadership.”

“It isn’t politicians coming north trying to kill us, General. It’s soldiers and airmen. We have to start crippling them before they ruin our whole damned day.”

“I understand that, Gus. I will present your position to the President,” the Chairman promised.

“Do that, will ya?” Wallace killed the transmission, wondering what the hell the lotus-eaters in Washington were thinking about, assuming they were thinking at all. He had a plan, and he thought it was a pretty good systematic one. His Dark Star drones had given him all the tactical intelligence he needed. He knew what targets to hit, and he had enough ordnance to do the hitting, or at least to start doing it.

If they let me, Wallace thought.

Well, it wasn’t a complete waste,” Marshal Luo said. ”We got some pictures of what the Russians are doing.”

“And what’s that?” Zhang asked.

“They’re moving one or two-probably two-divisions northeast from their rail assembly point at Chita. We have good aerial pictures of them.”

“And still nothing in front of our forces?”

Luo shook his head. “Our reconnaissance people haven’t seen anything more than tracks in the ground. I have to assume there are Russians in those woods somewhere, doing reconnaissance of their own, but if so, they’re light forces who’re working very hard to keep out of the way. We know they’ve called up some reserves, but they haven’t shown up either. Maybe their reservists didn’t report. Morale in Russia is supposed to be very low, Tan tells us, and that’s all we’ve really seen. The men we captured are very disheartened because of their lack of support, and they didn’t fight all that well. Except for the American airplanes, this war is going extremely well.”

“And they haven’t attacked our territory yet?” Zhang wanted to be clear on that.

Another shake of the head. “No, and I can’t claim that they’re afraid to do it. Their fighter aircraft are excellent, but to the best of our knowledge they haven’t even attempted a photo-reconnaissance mission. Maybe they just depend on satellites now. Certainly those are supposed to be excellent sources of information for them.”

“And the gold mine?”

“We’ll be there in thirty-six hours. And at that point we can make use of the roads their own engineers have been building to exploit the mineral finds. From the gold mine to the oil fields-five to seven days, depending on how well we can run supplies up.”

“This is amazing, Luo,” Zhang observed. “Better than my fondest hopes.”

“I almost wish the Russians would stand and fight somewhere, so that we could have a battle and be done with it. As it is, my forces are stringing out somewhat, but only because the lead elements are racing forward so well. I’ve thought about slowing them down to maintain unit integrity, but-”

“But speed works for us, doesn’t it?” Zhang observed.

“Yes, it would seem to,” the Defense Minister agreed. “But one prefers to keep units tightly grouped in case there is some contact. However, if the enemy is running, one doesn’t want to give him pause to regroup. So, I’m giving General Peng and his divisions free rein.”

“What forces are you facing?”

“We’re not sure. Perhaps a regiment or so could be ahead of us, but we see no evidence of it, and two more regiments are trying to race ahead of us, or attack our flank, but we have flank security out to the west, and they’ve seen nothing.”

Bondarenko hoped that someday he’d meet the team that had developed this American Dark Star drone. Never in history had a commander possessed such knowledge as this, and without it he would have been forced to commit his slender forces to battle just to ascertain what stood against him. Not now. He probably had a better feel for the location of the advancing Chinese than their own commander did.

Better yet, the leading regiment of the 201st Motor Rifle Division was only a few kilometers away, and the leading formation was the division’s steel fist, its independent tank regiment of ninety-five T-80U main-battle tanks.

The 265th was ready for the reinforcement, and its commander, Yuriy Sinyavskiy, proclaimed that he was tired of running away. A career professional soldier and mechanized infantryman, Sinyavskiy was a profane, cigar- chomping man of forty-six years, now leaning over a map table in Bondarenko’s headquarters.

“This, this is my ground, Gennady Iosifovich,” he said, stabbing at the point with his finger. It was just five kilometers north of the Gogol Gold Field, a line of ridges twenty kilometers across, facing open ground the Chinese