A novella on a hypothetical Chinese intervention in the Korean peninsula.
Night came to Korea.
Lieutenant Colonel Zhao Jianmin braced in the helicopter doorway, drenched with rain. His headset perked with the worries and technical exchanges of the pilots. Their talkativeness grated on him, like junk-sellers in a flea market, but he kept his silence and watched the crowded trace of the highway in the wet, fading light. The formation of attack drones, gunships, and transport helicopters throbbed between the last green hills before the target area.
Jianmin knew helicopter pilots, and he knew their machines. He knew the fliers who never thought of themselves as anything but aviators, the amateur warriors, and he knew the stone-cold killers who just happened to know how to fly.
Far too few of the latter, he thought.
And he knew the warning sounds that came into a pilot's voice, requiring firm commands through the intercom. In Uzbekistan, the troopships had sagged through the air, swollen birds who had eaten too rich a diet of men. The mountains were too high, the air too thin, and the missiles came up at you like bright modern arrows. You learned to command from a gunship that carried a light enough load to permit hasty maneuvers. You learned to let the slow ships full of fresh recruits draw the enemy's fire. You learned to swallow your pride and hide in the midst of the formation.
If you were a good airborne officer, you learned a great deal about killing. If you had no aptitude for the work, or if you were not hard enough on yourself and your men, you learned about dying.
Jianmin forced his thoughts back to the present. The valley road beneath the bellies of the aircraft intersected the rail line. They were very close now. Jianmin knew the route along the Gyeongbu Expressway from the ground; he had traveled it just months before on mission training, disguised as a civilian assistant driver for an international shipping company. The highways and roads leading to Gumi had impressed him with their quality and capacities, and by the swift orderliness of the traffic flow.
Now those same roads were in chaos.
Intermittent ROK support columns heading east struggled against a creeping flood of refugee traffic. At key intersections, military policemen desperately sought to assert control, waving their flourescent batons in the dull rain. As the helicopters carrying the Chinese air assault battalion passed overhead, soldier and citizen alike looked up in astonishment, shocked by this new dimension of trouble. Some of the more disciplined soldiers along the road opened fire at the waves of aircraft, but the small-arms fire had no effect beyond excited chatter in Jianmin's headset. The gunships returned fire, nervous pilots devastating the mixed traffic with bursts from their Gatlings.
Jianmin let them go. As long as they didn't overdo it. Terror was a magnificent weapon. Jianmin had learned his lessons from Uzbekistan. War was only about winning. Killing the other one before he killed you. They killed one of your kind, or perhaps just made the attempt, and you responded by killing a dozen, or a hundred, of them.
Olive-painted transport trucks and fine, brightly colored Korean automobiles exploded into wild gasoline fires. Drivers turned into fields or steered desperately over embankments. Others smashed into one another. Jianmin's rain-drenched face never changed expression.
He knew the garrison slang terms that sought to degrade, to cut him and those like him down to size. "Uzbekistan mentality. Blood drinker. There goes Crazy Genghis." Name-calling that in the end only betrayed the nervousness, the awe and even fear of those who had not gone.
The destruction on the roads had a purpose. Purposes. Create panic. Convince the enemy that he is defeated. Convince him that further resistance is pointless and too expensive to be tolerable. And tie up the roads. Immobilize the enemy. It cut both ways, of course. But with any luck, the Koreans or the Americans would clear the roads just in time for the Chinese armored formations that would be on their way to cross Jianmin's bridges over the Nakdong.
They approached an interchange, where an air-defense unit was busy trying to move from their position on the overpass to chase after Jianmin's battalion. A burst from a Gatling ripped through the roof of a civilian bus on the freeway below. The bus fishtailed sideways and stopped, blocking the overpass exit. Jianmin did not see anyone climb out. He made a mental note: the air-defense column would now be trapped at the interchange.
You could not let the fate of individuals weaken you, he thought. It was imperative to learn to regard them as resources, to be conserved whenever possible, but to be applied as necessary. In Uzbekistan, and now in Korea, the missiles and the autocannon fire traced skyward, and sometimes, his ships burst orange and yellow in a froth of black smoke. No passenger ever survived the fireball.
But it was all right now. Jianmin had been prepared for the loss of up to fifty percent of his battalion going in. Fortunately, the air defenses had been depleted along the penetration corridor. He could not be entirely certain, but from what he personally observed, and from the pilot chatter, he believed he would get on the ground with over seventy-five percent of his force. Now it all depended on the air defenses at Gumi and what happened at the landing sites.
The rail tracks below the helicopter paralleled the main road, Highway 1, down into the sudden clutter of the city, crammed into the valley on both sides of the Nakdong River. Jianmin looked at his watch for one second, and now they were over the first buildings.
"Falcon, what do you have up there?" Jianmin spoke into the headset mike, switching the control to broadcast. He wanted a report from his battalion chief of staff, who was tucked into the first wave, just behind the advance party.
A moment of pilot confusion bothered the net, one transmission spoiling another. Then: "Eagle, this is Raptor Seven," the pilot of his gunship called him. "The rail yards are packed. You want us to hit the rolling stock?"
Jianmin could just make out the funnel-shaped expansion of the rail yards.
"This is Eagle," he said. "Only strike combat-related activities. If there's any vehicle off-loading, hit them."
"Zero observed. But I've got heavies. I'm taking heavy machine-gun fire." Without waiting for his orders, the pilot and co-pilot navigator of Jianmin's aircraft began to bank the big gunship away from the rail line.
"Damn it," Jianmin told them, "just go straight in. That's nothing. Don't break the formation."
The pilots corrected back onto course. But the formation had grown ragged.
The chief of staff, Major Ma, finally came up on the net. "One heavy on the northern bridge, Eagle. Clearing him now. Scattered lights. It's manageable."
Good. All right. Just put them down on the far bank, Jianmin thought.
"Eagle, Falcon." Ma called again. "Tanks further north. Poor visibility, but I count five, maybe six. Heading east. Crossing tactical bridges down in the water."
"Get the hornets working on them," Jianmin ordered, using the old Uzbekistan slang for the drone helicopters. "Raptor Seven, did you monitor that transmission?"
"Working them now, we're working them."
"Falcon, can they range the landing zone?"
"Not mine. Not without maneuvering back. Shit. Beautiful. We're hitting."
Jianmin yelled into the mike. "Troopships down now!"
Even with the headset cups over his ears, Jianmin could hear ordnance cracking, and dull thumps.
"We got 'em. Got one tank dead in the middle of the river, burning like a campfire. Two on the banks. Remainder are trapped, for now. We're all right."
Immediately to the right of his aircraft, Jianmin watched a troop transport fly directly into the side of a high-rise building, as though the pilot had done it on purpose. Another story that will never be told, Jianmin thought. He was used to occurences that seemed to make no outward sense during air-assault operations. Pilots misjudged, or briefly lost control, and aircraft smashed into mountainsides. The blast wave from this latest crash seemed to strip the rain from his face.
Fewer tools to do the job, he thought. Seize and hold the northern bridge at all costs. Seize and hold the southern bridge, if possible. Tactical crossing sites to be destroyed if they could not be controlled.
Jianmin's command gunship pulled to the right, entering its assault approach. "Don't shoot up the traffic on the main bridges," Jianmin ordered. "I want them clean."
"This is Falcon. We're on the west bank. Lead elements en route to the northern bridge," Major Ma reported. "I'm going in myself."
"Let's go," Jianmin told his pilot. Moments later, his own aircraft and two others split north, away from the element headed for the landing zone south of town and the southern bridge. The lead element had gone in on the far bank to the secure the primary bridge in the north. The plan called for Jianmin, his headquarters element, and two squads from the special assault platoon to jump from a rolling hover onto the roof of a hospital building from which fields of fire commanded the west-bank approaches to the primary bridge, and from where Jianmin could control the initial actions of his battalion. The other special assault troops had been designated to block to the northeast, but their chopper had flown into a building. Now the main highway from the north on the near bank would be uncovered. And Ma was facing tanks there.
The hospital came up fast, emerging from the gaps between the other buildings. Jianmin spotted the river. He fixed the bridge. The burning hulk of an infantry fighting vehicle stood at its eastern approach. Last random traffic crowded in an urgent attempt to reach the western bank.
Jianmin felt the press of events now. He had time for one more brief transmission.
"Raptor Seven, have the gunships clear to the north and west. Don't pull out of here until you've cleared those tactical crossing sites to the north, or I'll shoot you down myself."
Jianmin unhooked his safety strap, then glanced over his shoulder. His command party was ready to go. Terrified. Faces all nervous energy and fear in a volatile mixture.
"Slow now. Damn it, slow," he told the pilot.
He stripped off his headset and threw it forward. Then he pulled on his command helmet and unhitched his assault rifle. The helicopter moved in a slow, hovering forward roll along the flat roof of the designated building, just high enough to clear the assortment of vents and fans.
Always a bad moment, no matter how many times you did it.
Watch the vent. Watch the vent. Jianmin jumped through the door, one foot skidding on the wet lip. As he leapt clear he could already feel the pressure of the second man behind him.
He hit the roof with one foot leading, and the pain toppled him over and jerked him into a curled-up roll. Fuck, he thought, furious at his beginner's clumsiness. Right foot. Or the ankle. He couldn't isolate the pain yet.
Now. Now, of all possible times.
Jianmin hugged his weapon as if he could squeeze the pain into it, while the slow rain teased his neck below the helmet rim. A blast hurt his ears. He climbet out of his preoccupation with his misfortune. An antitank missile slithered off the launch rails of a drone above them, hunting a target off to the north. A few seconds later, Jianmin heard a clang and a roar.
Just don't be broken, Jianmin told his injury. You can't be broken, damn you. And he forced himself to roll over and cover his field of fire.
The roof was clear to the south. He heard friendly voices now. Shouted names. Zhang. Li. Wang.
A hand touched Jianmin's back. "Are you all right, Comrade Battalion Commander?"
Jianmin grunted and pushed the hand away. Disorganized small arms fire sounded from several directions.
The voice continued. "First squad reports that the upper floor is clear. No opposition. But the hospital is full."
It was Wang Xingtan, the deputy commander for political affairs, a little puppy dog who had learned to quote Mao and the current Party lords. Jianmin suspected that Xingtan even believed half of it or more. And he wants to be a soldier, Jianmin thought sarcastically. Well, Captain Wang Xingtan was about to get his chance.
Jianmin pulled himself up on his knees behind the low wall rimming the roof. The pain was definitely in his ankle now, and it was excruciating. Perhaps it was just a sprain, he thought. Sprains could hurt worse than breaks. Jianmin made a deal with his body. He would accept any amount of pain, as long as the ankle was not broken.
"Comms. Li," Jianmin shouted. "Comms, damn it. I need to talk."
The soldiers of the command section came scrambling along the roof. A pimply-faced rifleman swiftly leaned his weapon over the balustrade and fired a burst down into the street. He had not extended the stock of the assault rifle, and he had little control of it. But he crouched lower, almost a cartoon of a warrior, and fired a second burst. Then the boy hunkered behind the protective barrier.
Jianmin could tell that the boy had no idea what he was shooting at. In combat, it made some men feel good just to fire their weapons. And there were others you had to beat with your fists in order to get them to let off a single round.
Sergeant Li took out a small tablet PC. "The battalion net is operational, Comrade Commander."
Jianmin tapped his helmet-mike. "Now get the long-range dish up," he told his comms specialist. A gunship passed overhead, then another, flying off in echelon.
Where were they going? Jianmin knew the helicopters had not finished their area-clearing mission.
"Li. Put me on the air frequency. Hurry."
Sergeant Li messed with the tablet. Meanwhile, the battalion net came to life. Major Ma's voice. "Those sons of bitches are clearing off. The gunships are clearing off, and the drones are all out of missiles. Eagle, I've got more tanks down here."
"I know, damn it. I'm trying to get them now. I'll be off this net."
Heavy-machine-gun fire. Not Chinese. Another pair of gunships pulsed overhead. Jianmin tried to stand up, struggling to wave at them, to communicate somehow.
They were leaving. The bastards were leaving.
Once upon a time, Jianmin had been a captain.
At the heat of the parched valley, in the rocks, high above the treeline, the transports had set them down. The Uighurs had waited with superb discipline--savages, but with superb discipine. They had waited until the helicopters hurried off. Then they fired into the company position from all directions. The mountains had come to life, monstrous, spitting things. And Jianmin had watched his men fall as though in a film.
The helicopters always cleared off too soon. Afraid. And Jianmin had waited to die in a mountain desert pass in a worthless land. They waited all afternoon. All night. When relief forces finally arrived the next day, only eleven men remained from the entire company. Jianmin never understood why the dushman had not come in to finish them off. And when they took him back to the base, he left his ten subordinates without a word and went to the pilots' quarters.
He smashed the first aviator he saw in the face, then kicked the next one the groin, and attacked the rest, one after another, calling them cowards and sons of a thousand fathers. It took half a dozen men to get him under control. But in the end, he had only recieved a verbal rebuke.
He was already considered one of the crazies then, and they gave him a medal and leave as a reward for losing his company, and the helicopters continued to desert the combat area as soon as possible. But Jianmin had not cared anymore. He simply killed what there was to kill and waited to die. Yet foolishly, crazily, he had expected better here.
"Comrade Commander," Li spoke in a nervous, embarassed voice. "I don't have the flight frequency. They didn't give it to me."
Jianmin almost hit the boy. But he caught himself. It would not do any good. Suddenly, he relaxed, as in the presence of an old friend. Even the pain in his ankle seemed to diminish, for that was that. They were on their own. The way it was, back in the mountains. Now there was only the fighting, and nothing else mattered in the world. Jianmin felt the familiar rush of terror and exhiliration.
"Xingtan!"
The political officer looked at him obediently. Xingtan was the most annoyingly conscientious officer Jianmin had ever known. He did everything the Party told him to do and more. He didn't drink. He studied tactics because the political officer was supposed to be able to take over from fallen comrades in battle. He spent more time out on the ranges than the company commanders. And he had an attractive wife who cheated on him every chance she got.
Jianmin did not have much regard for political officers, in any case. But he despised any man who let a woman control him or bring him embarassment. And Xingtan had shown weakness. In formulating the plan of operations, Xingtan had protested against landing atop the hospital building, even though it was the only possibility to control the crossing site from the outset. Jianmin doubted the enemy would have any scruples about using the structure. But Xingtan had cited the laws of war and endless paragraphs of rubbish.
Jianmin himself had no special desire to use the hospital; it was a question of practicality. Now he was going to give his cuckold captain the opportunity to apply some of the military knowledge he'd been cramming into his narrow little mind.
"Xingtan, I want you to take the first squad and get down to the bridge. Clear out anybody who's still resisting. Leave one machine-gunner on the roof where he can cover your movement. I'm staying here with the radios until I find out just what we managed to get on the ground. Just clear the approach to the bridge and hold on until Major Ma comes up. And watche for tanks from the north. We'll try to cover the approach, but keep your eyes open. Understand?"
The political officer saluted. Jianmin slapped the hand down. "No more of that shit. This isn't an anniversary parade in Tiananmen Square."
"Comrade Commander," Li, the communications specialist, said, "the long-range net is operational."
Captain Wang moved out along the roofscape, gathering the first squad. Jianmin felt sorry for the men under his command; he did not know whether they would come back alive. He turned to the matter of informing higher headquarters of the unit's arrival at the objective. He felt in his breast pocket and pulled out a small booklet, then leafed through the pages. It was increasingly hard to see in the rain-darkened evening light.
Li waited to copy the message into his tablet. Jianmin gave him the code groups for safe arrival, approximate percentage of strength, main bridge intact, and combat action. Then he carefully buttoned the booklet back into his pocket.
The firing on the near side of the river had no logical pattern to it. Probably exchanges with bridge guards and perhaps a few military policemen or support soldiers. But the firing on the western side was much more intense. Ma had a real fight on his hands.
"Falcon, this is Eagle. What's your status?"
Ma's voice was compressed by combat. "I've got tanks all around me. They took out the last troopship as it was unloading. I've got at least a company of armor over here, playing hide and seek with us. Older tanks, I think they're M60s. Korean. Maybe reservists. But plenty of trouble."
"Any of your men closing on the bridge?"
"Not yet. Bao's working most of his company down toward it. But we've got a mess over here."
"Listen, I don't think the bridge is prepped to blow. Just my instinct.
"But Bao needs to get down there, no matter what it takes, before somebody thinks clearly enough to start fixing charges. I've got a good view up here, but I can't cover the entire span. Kick Bao in the ass. And let the tanks into town. It's easier to work them among the buildings. Especially at night."
"Right. Moving now."
Jianmin paused a second, then called up the ranking officer of the southern landing party. "Vulture, this is Eagle."
"This is Vulture. You're coming in weak."
"Just tell me what you have on the ground down there."
"No combat action. A bit of sniping. I have about a combat company, about half of the mortars. I think they put the antitank platoon down across the river by mistake."
"Battalion support?"
"They just kicked out cases of ammunition. We're sorting it out now. Half of them broke open. I think the handlers went down."
"Leave a detail to sort that out. You get onto the southern bridge as quickly as you can. Be prepared to reinforce the northern bridgehead. And I want an accurate account of who made it in with you. Get everybody under control before it's too dark."
"We're missing at least a company's worth of troops. And the air defenders."
"Engineers?"
"I haven't seen them. They might be over with the antitank platoon."
"Sort it out. And move fast."
A tank fired in the distance. Across the river. Ma was probably right. Reservists. There was nothing to fire a tank main gun at. It was the machine guns that did the work in close, unless they cornered you in a building.
Li scampered closer. "Transmission passed and acknowledged. Divisional staff sends their congratulations, Comrade Commander."
"They can save it. Round up your boys and find a good site on the top floor. We can't all stay up here. And I don't want to lose the radios."
Li moved out. Jianmin respected the comms specialist. The boy was an electronics buff from his school days, and could make a working antenna out of anything but ground meat. Li's radios worked dependably--something that was not always the case in Jianmin's career-long experience.
Jianmin unded the clasps and wet laces of his right boot. Then he pulled the laces in so tight that the discomfort of the constriction vied with the pain of the injured ankle. It was time to move. Jianmin sensed things bogging down. And they were so close. It made him furious that his men were not on both bridges already.
Night came to Korea.
Lieutenant Colonel Zhao Jianmin braced in the helicopter doorway, drenched with rain. His headset perked with the worries and technical exchanges of the pilots. Their talkativeness grated on him, like junk-sellers in a flea market, but he kept his silence and watched the crowded trace of the highway in the wet, fading light. The formation of attack drones, gunships, and transport helicopters throbbed between the last green hills before the target area.
Jianmin knew helicopter pilots, and he knew their machines. He knew the fliers who never thought of themselves as anything but aviators, the amateur warriors, and he knew the stone-cold killers who just happened to know how to fly.
Far too few of the latter, he thought.
And he knew the warning sounds that came into a pilot's voice, requiring firm commands through the intercom. In Uzbekistan, the troopships had sagged through the air, swollen birds who had eaten too rich a diet of men. The mountains were too high, the air too thin, and the missiles came up at you like bright modern arrows. You learned to command from a gunship that carried a light enough load to permit hasty maneuvers. You learned to let the slow ships full of fresh recruits draw the enemy's fire. You learned to swallow your pride and hide in the midst of the formation.
If you were a good airborne officer, you learned a great deal about killing. If you had no aptitude for the work, or if you were not hard enough on yourself and your men, you learned about dying.
Jianmin forced his thoughts back to the present. The valley road beneath the bellies of the aircraft intersected the rail line. They were very close now. Jianmin knew the route along the Gyeongbu Expressway from the ground; he had traveled it just months before on mission training, disguised as a civilian assistant driver for an international shipping company. The highways and roads leading to Gumi had impressed him with their quality and capacities, and by the swift orderliness of the traffic flow.
Now those same roads were in chaos.
Intermittent ROK support columns heading east struggled against a creeping flood of refugee traffic. At key intersections, military policemen desperately sought to assert control, waving their flourescent batons in the dull rain. As the helicopters carrying the Chinese air assault battalion passed overhead, soldier and citizen alike looked up in astonishment, shocked by this new dimension of trouble. Some of the more disciplined soldiers along the road opened fire at the waves of aircraft, but the small-arms fire had no effect beyond excited chatter in Jianmin's headset. The gunships returned fire, nervous pilots devastating the mixed traffic with bursts from their Gatlings.
Jianmin let them go. As long as they didn't overdo it. Terror was a magnificent weapon. Jianmin had learned his lessons from Uzbekistan. War was only about winning. Killing the other one before he killed you. They killed one of your kind, or perhaps just made the attempt, and you responded by killing a dozen, or a hundred, of them.
Olive-painted transport trucks and fine, brightly colored Korean automobiles exploded into wild gasoline fires. Drivers turned into fields or steered desperately over embankments. Others smashed into one another. Jianmin's rain-drenched face never changed expression.
He knew the garrison slang terms that sought to degrade, to cut him and those like him down to size. "Uzbekistan mentality. Blood drinker. There goes Crazy Genghis." Name-calling that in the end only betrayed the nervousness, the awe and even fear of those who had not gone.
The destruction on the roads had a purpose. Purposes. Create panic. Convince the enemy that he is defeated. Convince him that further resistance is pointless and too expensive to be tolerable. And tie up the roads. Immobilize the enemy. It cut both ways, of course. But with any luck, the Koreans or the Americans would clear the roads just in time for the Chinese armored formations that would be on their way to cross Jianmin's bridges over the Nakdong.
They approached an interchange, where an air-defense unit was busy trying to move from their position on the overpass to chase after Jianmin's battalion. A burst from a Gatling ripped through the roof of a civilian bus on the freeway below. The bus fishtailed sideways and stopped, blocking the overpass exit. Jianmin did not see anyone climb out. He made a mental note: the air-defense column would now be trapped at the interchange.
You could not let the fate of individuals weaken you, he thought. It was imperative to learn to regard them as resources, to be conserved whenever possible, but to be applied as necessary. In Uzbekistan, and now in Korea, the missiles and the autocannon fire traced skyward, and sometimes, his ships burst orange and yellow in a froth of black smoke. No passenger ever survived the fireball.
But it was all right now. Jianmin had been prepared for the loss of up to fifty percent of his battalion going in. Fortunately, the air defenses had been depleted along the penetration corridor. He could not be entirely certain, but from what he personally observed, and from the pilot chatter, he believed he would get on the ground with over seventy-five percent of his force. Now it all depended on the air defenses at Gumi and what happened at the landing sites.
The rail tracks below the helicopter paralleled the main road, Highway 1, down into the sudden clutter of the city, crammed into the valley on both sides of the Nakdong River. Jianmin looked at his watch for one second, and now they were over the first buildings.
"Falcon, what do you have up there?" Jianmin spoke into the headset mike, switching the control to broadcast. He wanted a report from his battalion chief of staff, who was tucked into the first wave, just behind the advance party.
A moment of pilot confusion bothered the net, one transmission spoiling another. Then: "Eagle, this is Raptor Seven," the pilot of his gunship called him. "The rail yards are packed. You want us to hit the rolling stock?"
Jianmin could just make out the funnel-shaped expansion of the rail yards.
"This is Eagle," he said. "Only strike combat-related activities. If there's any vehicle off-loading, hit them."
"Zero observed. But I've got heavies. I'm taking heavy machine-gun fire." Without waiting for his orders, the pilot and co-pilot navigator of Jianmin's aircraft began to bank the big gunship away from the rail line.
"Damn it," Jianmin told them, "just go straight in. That's nothing. Don't break the formation."
The pilots corrected back onto course. But the formation had grown ragged.
The chief of staff, Major Ma, finally came up on the net. "One heavy on the northern bridge, Eagle. Clearing him now. Scattered lights. It's manageable."
Good. All right. Just put them down on the far bank, Jianmin thought.
"Eagle, Falcon." Ma called again. "Tanks further north. Poor visibility, but I count five, maybe six. Heading east. Crossing tactical bridges down in the water."
"Get the hornets working on them," Jianmin ordered, using the old Uzbekistan slang for the drone helicopters. "Raptor Seven, did you monitor that transmission?"
"Working them now, we're working them."
"Falcon, can they range the landing zone?"
"Not mine. Not without maneuvering back. Shit. Beautiful. We're hitting."
Jianmin yelled into the mike. "Troopships down now!"
Even with the headset cups over his ears, Jianmin could hear ordnance cracking, and dull thumps.
"We got 'em. Got one tank dead in the middle of the river, burning like a campfire. Two on the banks. Remainder are trapped, for now. We're all right."
Immediately to the right of his aircraft, Jianmin watched a troop transport fly directly into the side of a high-rise building, as though the pilot had done it on purpose. Another story that will never be told, Jianmin thought. He was used to occurences that seemed to make no outward sense during air-assault operations. Pilots misjudged, or briefly lost control, and aircraft smashed into mountainsides. The blast wave from this latest crash seemed to strip the rain from his face.
Fewer tools to do the job, he thought. Seize and hold the northern bridge at all costs. Seize and hold the southern bridge, if possible. Tactical crossing sites to be destroyed if they could not be controlled.
Jianmin's command gunship pulled to the right, entering its assault approach. "Don't shoot up the traffic on the main bridges," Jianmin ordered. "I want them clean."
"This is Falcon. We're on the west bank. Lead elements en route to the northern bridge," Major Ma reported. "I'm going in myself."
"Let's go," Jianmin told his pilot. Moments later, his own aircraft and two others split north, away from the element headed for the landing zone south of town and the southern bridge. The lead element had gone in on the far bank to the secure the primary bridge in the north. The plan called for Jianmin, his headquarters element, and two squads from the special assault platoon to jump from a rolling hover onto the roof of a hospital building from which fields of fire commanded the west-bank approaches to the primary bridge, and from where Jianmin could control the initial actions of his battalion. The other special assault troops had been designated to block to the northeast, but their chopper had flown into a building. Now the main highway from the north on the near bank would be uncovered. And Ma was facing tanks there.
The hospital came up fast, emerging from the gaps between the other buildings. Jianmin spotted the river. He fixed the bridge. The burning hulk of an infantry fighting vehicle stood at its eastern approach. Last random traffic crowded in an urgent attempt to reach the western bank.
Jianmin felt the press of events now. He had time for one more brief transmission.
"Raptor Seven, have the gunships clear to the north and west. Don't pull out of here until you've cleared those tactical crossing sites to the north, or I'll shoot you down myself."
Jianmin unhooked his safety strap, then glanced over his shoulder. His command party was ready to go. Terrified. Faces all nervous energy and fear in a volatile mixture.
"Slow now. Damn it, slow," he told the pilot.
He stripped off his headset and threw it forward. Then he pulled on his command helmet and unhitched his assault rifle. The helicopter moved in a slow, hovering forward roll along the flat roof of the designated building, just high enough to clear the assortment of vents and fans.
Always a bad moment, no matter how many times you did it.
Watch the vent. Watch the vent. Jianmin jumped through the door, one foot skidding on the wet lip. As he leapt clear he could already feel the pressure of the second man behind him.
He hit the roof with one foot leading, and the pain toppled him over and jerked him into a curled-up roll. Fuck, he thought, furious at his beginner's clumsiness. Right foot. Or the ankle. He couldn't isolate the pain yet.
Now. Now, of all possible times.
Jianmin hugged his weapon as if he could squeeze the pain into it, while the slow rain teased his neck below the helmet rim. A blast hurt his ears. He climbet out of his preoccupation with his misfortune. An antitank missile slithered off the launch rails of a drone above them, hunting a target off to the north. A few seconds later, Jianmin heard a clang and a roar.
Just don't be broken, Jianmin told his injury. You can't be broken, damn you. And he forced himself to roll over and cover his field of fire.
The roof was clear to the south. He heard friendly voices now. Shouted names. Zhang. Li. Wang.
A hand touched Jianmin's back. "Are you all right, Comrade Battalion Commander?"
Jianmin grunted and pushed the hand away. Disorganized small arms fire sounded from several directions.
The voice continued. "First squad reports that the upper floor is clear. No opposition. But the hospital is full."
It was Wang Xingtan, the deputy commander for political affairs, a little puppy dog who had learned to quote Mao and the current Party lords. Jianmin suspected that Xingtan even believed half of it or more. And he wants to be a soldier, Jianmin thought sarcastically. Well, Captain Wang Xingtan was about to get his chance.
Jianmin pulled himself up on his knees behind the low wall rimming the roof. The pain was definitely in his ankle now, and it was excruciating. Perhaps it was just a sprain, he thought. Sprains could hurt worse than breaks. Jianmin made a deal with his body. He would accept any amount of pain, as long as the ankle was not broken.
"Comms. Li," Jianmin shouted. "Comms, damn it. I need to talk."
The soldiers of the command section came scrambling along the roof. A pimply-faced rifleman swiftly leaned his weapon over the balustrade and fired a burst down into the street. He had not extended the stock of the assault rifle, and he had little control of it. But he crouched lower, almost a cartoon of a warrior, and fired a second burst. Then the boy hunkered behind the protective barrier.
Jianmin could tell that the boy had no idea what he was shooting at. In combat, it made some men feel good just to fire their weapons. And there were others you had to beat with your fists in order to get them to let off a single round.
Sergeant Li took out a small tablet PC. "The battalion net is operational, Comrade Commander."
Jianmin tapped his helmet-mike. "Now get the long-range dish up," he told his comms specialist. A gunship passed overhead, then another, flying off in echelon.
Where were they going? Jianmin knew the helicopters had not finished their area-clearing mission.
"Li. Put me on the air frequency. Hurry."
Sergeant Li messed with the tablet. Meanwhile, the battalion net came to life. Major Ma's voice. "Those sons of bitches are clearing off. The gunships are clearing off, and the drones are all out of missiles. Eagle, I've got more tanks down here."
"I know, damn it. I'm trying to get them now. I'll be off this net."
Heavy-machine-gun fire. Not Chinese. Another pair of gunships pulsed overhead. Jianmin tried to stand up, struggling to wave at them, to communicate somehow.
They were leaving. The bastards were leaving.
Once upon a time, Jianmin had been a captain.
At the heat of the parched valley, in the rocks, high above the treeline, the transports had set them down. The Uighurs had waited with superb discipline--savages, but with superb discipine. They had waited until the helicopters hurried off. Then they fired into the company position from all directions. The mountains had come to life, monstrous, spitting things. And Jianmin had watched his men fall as though in a film.
The helicopters always cleared off too soon. Afraid. And Jianmin had waited to die in a mountain desert pass in a worthless land. They waited all afternoon. All night. When relief forces finally arrived the next day, only eleven men remained from the entire company. Jianmin never understood why the dushman had not come in to finish them off. And when they took him back to the base, he left his ten subordinates without a word and went to the pilots' quarters.
He smashed the first aviator he saw in the face, then kicked the next one the groin, and attacked the rest, one after another, calling them cowards and sons of a thousand fathers. It took half a dozen men to get him under control. But in the end, he had only recieved a verbal rebuke.
He was already considered one of the crazies then, and they gave him a medal and leave as a reward for losing his company, and the helicopters continued to desert the combat area as soon as possible. But Jianmin had not cared anymore. He simply killed what there was to kill and waited to die. Yet foolishly, crazily, he had expected better here.
"Comrade Commander," Li spoke in a nervous, embarassed voice. "I don't have the flight frequency. They didn't give it to me."
Jianmin almost hit the boy. But he caught himself. It would not do any good. Suddenly, he relaxed, as in the presence of an old friend. Even the pain in his ankle seemed to diminish, for that was that. They were on their own. The way it was, back in the mountains. Now there was only the fighting, and nothing else mattered in the world. Jianmin felt the familiar rush of terror and exhiliration.
"Xingtan!"
The political officer looked at him obediently. Xingtan was the most annoyingly conscientious officer Jianmin had ever known. He did everything the Party told him to do and more. He didn't drink. He studied tactics because the political officer was supposed to be able to take over from fallen comrades in battle. He spent more time out on the ranges than the company commanders. And he had an attractive wife who cheated on him every chance she got.
Jianmin did not have much regard for political officers, in any case. But he despised any man who let a woman control him or bring him embarassment. And Xingtan had shown weakness. In formulating the plan of operations, Xingtan had protested against landing atop the hospital building, even though it was the only possibility to control the crossing site from the outset. Jianmin doubted the enemy would have any scruples about using the structure. But Xingtan had cited the laws of war and endless paragraphs of rubbish.
Jianmin himself had no special desire to use the hospital; it was a question of practicality. Now he was going to give his cuckold captain the opportunity to apply some of the military knowledge he'd been cramming into his narrow little mind.
"Xingtan, I want you to take the first squad and get down to the bridge. Clear out anybody who's still resisting. Leave one machine-gunner on the roof where he can cover your movement. I'm staying here with the radios until I find out just what we managed to get on the ground. Just clear the approach to the bridge and hold on until Major Ma comes up. And watche for tanks from the north. We'll try to cover the approach, but keep your eyes open. Understand?"
The political officer saluted. Jianmin slapped the hand down. "No more of that shit. This isn't an anniversary parade in Tiananmen Square."
"Comrade Commander," Li, the communications specialist, said, "the long-range net is operational."
Captain Wang moved out along the roofscape, gathering the first squad. Jianmin felt sorry for the men under his command; he did not know whether they would come back alive. He turned to the matter of informing higher headquarters of the unit's arrival at the objective. He felt in his breast pocket and pulled out a small booklet, then leafed through the pages. It was increasingly hard to see in the rain-darkened evening light.
Li waited to copy the message into his tablet. Jianmin gave him the code groups for safe arrival, approximate percentage of strength, main bridge intact, and combat action. Then he carefully buttoned the booklet back into his pocket.
The firing on the near side of the river had no logical pattern to it. Probably exchanges with bridge guards and perhaps a few military policemen or support soldiers. But the firing on the western side was much more intense. Ma had a real fight on his hands.
"Falcon, this is Eagle. What's your status?"
Ma's voice was compressed by combat. "I've got tanks all around me. They took out the last troopship as it was unloading. I've got at least a company of armor over here, playing hide and seek with us. Older tanks, I think they're M60s. Korean. Maybe reservists. But plenty of trouble."
"Any of your men closing on the bridge?"
"Not yet. Bao's working most of his company down toward it. But we've got a mess over here."
"Listen, I don't think the bridge is prepped to blow. Just my instinct.
"But Bao needs to get down there, no matter what it takes, before somebody thinks clearly enough to start fixing charges. I've got a good view up here, but I can't cover the entire span. Kick Bao in the ass. And let the tanks into town. It's easier to work them among the buildings. Especially at night."
"Right. Moving now."
Jianmin paused a second, then called up the ranking officer of the southern landing party. "Vulture, this is Eagle."
"This is Vulture. You're coming in weak."
"Just tell me what you have on the ground down there."
"No combat action. A bit of sniping. I have about a combat company, about half of the mortars. I think they put the antitank platoon down across the river by mistake."
"Battalion support?"
"They just kicked out cases of ammunition. We're sorting it out now. Half of them broke open. I think the handlers went down."
"Leave a detail to sort that out. You get onto the southern bridge as quickly as you can. Be prepared to reinforce the northern bridgehead. And I want an accurate account of who made it in with you. Get everybody under control before it's too dark."
"We're missing at least a company's worth of troops. And the air defenders."
"Engineers?"
"I haven't seen them. They might be over with the antitank platoon."
"Sort it out. And move fast."
A tank fired in the distance. Across the river. Ma was probably right. Reservists. There was nothing to fire a tank main gun at. It was the machine guns that did the work in close, unless they cornered you in a building.
Li scampered closer. "Transmission passed and acknowledged. Divisional staff sends their congratulations, Comrade Commander."
"They can save it. Round up your boys and find a good site on the top floor. We can't all stay up here. And I don't want to lose the radios."
Li moved out. Jianmin respected the comms specialist. The boy was an electronics buff from his school days, and could make a working antenna out of anything but ground meat. Li's radios worked dependably--something that was not always the case in Jianmin's career-long experience.
Jianmin unded the clasps and wet laces of his right boot. Then he pulled the laces in so tight that the discomfort of the constriction vied with the pain of the injured ankle. It was time to move. Jianmin sensed things bogging down. And they were so close. It made him furious that his men were not on both bridges already.
Last edited:
