The Bear and the Dragon

“He’s a very bright young officer, Captain. I can think of a lot of companies who might want him.” If Gregory had a fault, it was being too truthful.

“I ought to say something to discourage you from that, but-”

“Cap’n!” A sailor came up. “Flash-traffic from SACLANT, sir.” He handed over a clipboard. Captain Blandy signed the acknowledgment sheet and took the message. His eyes focused very closely.

“Do you know if the SecDef knows what you’re up to?”

“Yes, Captain, he does. I just spoke to Tony a few minutes ago.”

“What the hell did you tell him?”

Gregory shrugged. “Not much, just that the project was coming along nicely.”

“Uh-huh. Chief Leek, how’s your hardware?”

“Everything’s a hundred percent on line, Cap’n. We got a job, sir?” the senior chief asked.

“Looks like it. Dr. Gregory, if you will excuse me, I have to see my officers. Chief, we’re going to be getting under way soon. If any of your troops are on the beach, call ’em back. Spread the word.”

“Aye aye, sir.” He saluted as Captain Blandy hustled back forward. “What’s that all about?”

“Beats me, Chief.”

“What do I do? Getting under way?” Gregory asked.

“Got your toothbrush? If not, you can buy one in the ship’s store. Excuse me, Doc, I have to do a quick muster.” Leek tossed his cigarette over the side and went the same way that the captain had.

And there was precisely nothing for Gregory to do. There was no way for him to leave the ship, except to jump down into the flooding floating dry dock, and that didn’t look like a viable option. So, he headed back into the superstructure and found the ship’s store open. There he bought a toothbrush.

Bondarenko spent the next three hours with Major General Sinyavskiy, going over approach routes and fire plans.

“They have fire-finder radar, Yuriy, and their counter-battery rockets have a long reach.”

“Can we expect any help from the Americans?”

“I’m working on that. We have superb reconnaissance information from their movie-star drones.”

“I need the location of their artillery. If we can take that away from them, it makes my job much easier.”

“Tolkunov!” the theater commander yelled. It was loud enough that his intelligence coordinator came running.

“Yes, Comrade General!”

“Vladimir Konstantinovich, we’ll be making our stand here,” Bondarenko said, pointing to a red line on the map. “I want minute-to-minute information of the approaching Chinese formations-especially their artillery.”

“I can do that. Give me ten minutes.” And the G-2 disappeared back out to where the Dark Star terminal was. Then his boss thought about it.

“Come on, Yuriy, you have to see this.”

“General,” Major Tucker said by way of greeting. Then he saw a second one. “General,” he said again.

“This is General Sinyavskiy. He commands Two-Six-Five. Would you please show him the advancing Chinese?” It wasn’t a question or a request, just phrased politely because Tucker was a foreigner.

“Okay, it’s right here, sir, we’ve got it all on videotape. Their leading reconnaissance elements are … here, and their leading main-force units are right here.”

“Fuck,” Sinyavskiy observed in Russian. “Is this magic?”

“No, this is-” Bondarenko switched languages. “Which unit is this, Major?”

“Grace Kelly again, sir. To Catch a Thief with Cary Grant, Hitchcock movie that one was. The sun’ll be down in another hour or so and we’ll be getting it all on the thermal-imaging systems. Anyway, here’s their leading battalion, all look like their Type-90 tanks. They’re keeping good formation discipline, and they just refueled about an hour ago, so, figure they’re good for another two hundred or so kilometers before they stop again.”

“Their artillery?”

“Lagging behind, sir, except for this tracked unit here.” Tucker played with the mouse some and brought up another picture.

“Gennady Iosifovich, how can we fail with such information?” the division commander asked.

“Yuriy, remember when we thought about attacking the Americans?”

“Madness. The Chinks can’t see this drone?” Sinyavskiy asked, somewhat incredulously.

“It’s stealthy, as they call it, invisible on radar.”

“Nichevo.”

“Sir, I have a direct line to our headquarters at Zhigansk. If you guys are going to make a stand, what do you want from us?’ Tucker asked. ”I can forward your request to General Wallace.”

“I have thirty Su-25 attack bombers and also fifty Su-24 fighter bombers standing by, plus two hundred Mi-24 helicopters.” Getting the last in theater had been agonizingly slow, but finally they were here, and they were the Ace of Diamonds Bondarenko had facedown on the card table. He hadn’t let so much as one approach the area of operations yet, but they were two hundred kilometers away, fueled and armed, their flight crews flying to practice their airmanship and shooting live weapons as rehearsal-for some, the first live weapons they’d ever shot.

“That’s going to be a surprise for good old Joe,” Tucker observed with a whistle. “Where’d you hide them, sir? Hell, General, I didn’t know they were around.”

“There are a few secure places. We want to give our guests a proper greeting when the time is right,” Gennady Iosifovich told the young American officer.

“So, what do you want us to do, sir?”

“Take down their logistics. Show me this Smart Pig you’ve been talking to Colonel Tolkunov about.”

“That we can probably do, sir,” Tucker said. “Let me get on the phone to General Wallace.”

So, they’re turning me loose?” Wallace asked.

“As soon as contact is imminent between Russian and Chinese ground forces.” Mickey Moore then gave him his targets. “It’s most of the things you wanted to hit, Gus.”

“I suppose,” the Air Force commander allowed, somewhat grudgingly. “And if the Russians ask for help?”

“Give it to them, within reason.”

“Right.”

LTC Giusti, SABRE SIX, got off the helicopter at the Number Two fueling point and walked toward General Diggs.

“They weren’t kidding,” Colonel Masterman was saying. “This is a fuckin’ lake.” One and a quarter billion liters translated to more than three hundred million gallons, or nearly a million tons of fuel, about the carrying capacity of four supertankers, all of Number Two Diesel, or close enough that the fuel injectors on his tanks and Bradleys wouldn’t notice the difference. The manager of the site, a civilian, had said that the fuel had been there for nearly forty years, since Khrushchev had had a falling-out with Chairman Mao, and the possibility of war with the other communist country had turned from an impossibility into a perceived likelihood. Either it was remarkable prescience or paranoid wish fulfillment, but in either case it worked to the benefit of First Armored Division.

The off-loading facilities could have been better, but the Soviets evidently hadn’t had much experience with building gas stations. It was more efficient to pump the fuel into the division’s fuel bowsers, which then motored off to fill the tanks and tracks four or six at a time.

“Okay, Mitch, what do we have on the enemy?” General Diggs asked his intelligence officer.

“Sir, we’ve got a Dark Star tasked directly to us now, and she’ll be up for another nine hours. We’re up against a leg-infantry division. They’re forty kilometers that way, mainly sitting along this line of hills. There’s a regiment of ChiComm tanks supporting them.”

“Artillery?”

“Some light and medium, all of it towed, setting up now, with fire-finder radars we need to worry about,”