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  Force of Arms

  ( WW III - 7 )

  Ian Slater

  Three Chinese armies swarmed across the trace, with T-59s providing covering fire. The Chinese armor,T-60 tanks 85mm guns and 90,000 PLA regulars rush in. Through the downpour the American A-10 Thurnderbolts came in low, their RAU-B Avenger 30mm seven-barreled rotary cannon spitting out a deadly stream of depleted uranium, white-hot fragments that set off the tank's ammunition and fuel tanks into great blowouts of orange-black flame. Four sleek, eighteen-foot long Tomahawk cruise missiles are headed for Beijing. It is Armageddon in Asia…

  Ian Slater

  FORCE OF ARMS

  CHAPTER ONE

  Spring

  It happened in the last forty minutes before the latest cease-fire.

  The Medevac choppers came in and found themselves almost immediately “bracketed” by heavy ChiCom 82mm and light 60mm mortar fire, a dozen U.S. Blackhawk helos either afire or unable to take off with the wounded — some of whom were ChiComs who had been gathered up and put in the wire litters that were carried both in and astride the helos.

  One such wounded was Wan Zhang, a private from Shenyang’s Sixteenth Army who had been hit by an unexploded American 60mm mortar round that passed into the man’s body via his shoulder girdle, penetrating the pectoralis major and entering the axilla, the unexploded mortar bomb, seen clearly in the X ray, finally lodging subcutaneously down outside the rib cage in the patient’s right side just above the crest of his right hip.

  The only other case on record of an unexploded round in a soldier had occurred in Vietnam. Even without the X rays, the surgeon at the inflatable MUST — Medical Unit Self-contained Transportable — hospital behind the lines at Orgon Tal could see the bomb’s outline bulging in the patient’s right side. They injected Zhang with morphine and left him on the stretcher well outside the MUST, lest the round go off and kill other patients as well as the ChiCom.

  The operating table had to have sandbags all about it to a height of five feet in case something should go wrong and the mortar bomb explode.

  “All right,” said the chief surgeon, Colonel Walter Paine. “The operation on the prisoner is purely voluntary. I’ll welcome any help I get, folks, but it’s your call. Anyone want out?” One of the nurses looked at the other, but no one moved in the team of two doctors, two nurses, and the anesthetist.

  “All right, let’s do it,” the colonel said. Despite the sandbags and the Kevlar vests and helmets they would be wearing, Paine said he would allow only one nurse near the sandbagged area at a time. Meanwhile, another blast wall was being erected between the operating room and the patient area of the MUST and around the anesthetist.

  “Should let the mother die!” one of the patients opined, a sapper next to the operating room’s wall.

  “That’d make us just like the Communists,” the Medevac corporal said. “Makes me damn proud to be American.”

  “Yeah,” the sapper said, “well you aren’t near the fuckin’ wall!”

  “I’ll stay here then,” said the corporal, who’d been passing through. “We can play a round of gin rummy.”

  “Please yourself.”

  Everyone except two men who’d been blinded in action saw the trolley slowly pass through the ward, the only noise the flapping of the inflatable hospital’s sides like some huge kite in the threatening wind. Several men involuntarily held their breath as Wan Zhang passed them.

  * * *

  Fresh from the States, an eager young logistics captain was assigned to the Khabarovsk headquarters of General Douglas Freeman’s Second Army, the spearhead of a U.N. task force sent to prevent any further annexation of territory in the Far East by either the newly declared Siberian Republic or China.

  Freeman, his forces now on the northern plain 280 miles north of Beijing and the Great Wall, was absorbed in studying a relief map of China’s northern and central provinces. Even so, he took time to acknowledge the major’s salute with a friendly, “Welcome to Second Army.”

  “Thank you, sir. I—”

  “What’s the gauge of the Trans-Siberian?” Freeman asked without looking up from the relief map.

  The captain was nonplussed — of all the questions — still, he kept his cool. “Fifteen twenty millimeters, sir.”

  “Chinese railways?” Freeman asked.

  “Ah — the same, sir.”

  “Son,” Freeman said, still immersed in studying the relief map, moving about the table, as intent on a possible artillery position as a pool player lining up his cue, “with that information you’d be responsible for the biggest logistical fuckup since Arnhem — where they dropped spare berets to the commandos instead of ammo. Take you days instead of hours to move a division. And what are you going to do with a sixty-ton Abrams M1? Carry it across from one rail to the next on your back? Chinese gauge is fourteen thirty-five millimeters. You’ll be assigned patrol duty along the trace. Dismissed.”

  “Yes, sir.” The captain saluted and walked out, his ego shattered. But soon — when he got to the trace, the DMZ between the People’s Liberation Army and the U.S. — he was glad he’d been fired from the HQ logistics job. No way he wanted to work for a pickass like Freeman.

  The incident, small enough in itself, was another example of Freeman’s command of even the minutiae of logistics that added to his legend as America’s foremost fighting general. But railway gauges weren’t the only thing General Freeman was sure of. He believed, like the Taiwanese, that the truce agreed to by the diplomats of the U.N. and China would not hold and that there were many Chinas — none strong enough by itself to overcome the oppressive Beijing regime but all wanting more freedom — waiting.

  General Douglas Freeman’s Second Army stood on the northern plain beyond Beijing following a fierce tank battle with the Chinese People’s Liberation Army from the Amur River south across the Gobi Desert. Sent to head the U.N.’s peacekeeping forces along the Amur River, the Americans, with some help from the British and underground fighters in the Siberian border area known as the JAO — Jewish Autonomous Oblast, or region — were now the only players in the Allied push south. Meanwhile, Admiral Kuang’s Taiwanese invasion fleet lay poised a hundred miles across the Formosa Strait — eager to regain power in Beijing after all these years, should the opportunity present itself.

  * * *

  In the MUST operating room, surgeon Colonel Paine had called for forceps and gingerly begun to extract the 60mm mortar bomb from Wan Zhang, pulling it by its stabilizer fins, when it exploded, killing Paine with shrapnel that passed up under his chin, through the roof of his mouth, into his brain. One nurse was blinded in one eye, the anesthetist suffered multiple lacerations to the face, and the other doctor and nurse were badly burned about the head. The explosion, hitting the oxygen feed, immediately started a fire that was quickly extinguished, but not before it had rendered the MUST OR a burned-out shell. The story quickly passed down the line and was taken as a bad beginning to any kind of truce, the ChiComs quickly claiming that Wan Zhang had been tortured to death. With this in mind, it was clear to each and every ChiCom that it was better to die than fall prisoner to the Americans.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Bangor Base, Washington State

  Halfway around the world, a combination Hunter-Killer/ICBM sub, a Sea Wolf II, the USS Reagan, was about to get under way. Some of the crew had been joking about making love — a dawn breaker — on the day they were to leave. Others said nothing about it, the tension of their impending goodbyes having inhibited rather than released sexual passion. And the older members of the Reagan’s gold crew said little, for most of them were married and had children, and trying to make time for lovemaking on the day the Sea Wolf was about to slip out of Bangor was like tryin
g to arrange a kid’s birthday party. In the end, it defeated you, and so they hugged a lot, knowing they would have to wait until their six months of duty were complete and it was time for them to return to base and hand the Reagan over to the blue crew for the next six months.

  The skipper, Commander Robert Brentwood, to all outward appearances was the cool, “let-go-aft” voice of reason as the sub slipped out toward Hood Canal and one of the degaussing stations that would wipe out its magnetic signature should enemy subs be lurking beyond the two-hundred-mile limit, trying to get a fix on the craft through comparing her signature to those in a threat library of “sound prints.”

  Officially the Reagan was not on patrol, but unofficially she was to make her way to the China station in the Gulf of Bo Hai because General Douglas “George C. Scott” Freeman did not believe the Chinese, who had agreed to a cease-fire, would keep their word. The only thing he was sure about was that the PLA’s predominantly brown-water, or coastal, navy was going for blue or deep water capability, having bought another four CIS attack diesel submarines from the old Soviet Union’s Baltic fleet.

  A diesel sub could fire ship-to-ship missiles or ICBMs for that matter. Robert Brentwood, or “Bing” as he was called affectionately by his crew, had been one of those for whom the good-bye had to be a kiss on the cheek, his English wife, Rosemary, seven months pregnant, just recently moved from Holy Loch in Scotland to Bangor. The Holy Loch base had been closed down, a victim of congressional cutbacks, and so Rosemary now found herself in Bremerton, a U.S. naval town in northwestern Washington that served the Bangor base. Robert, age forty-three, was worried about the baby, and about Rosemary settling in at the American base, penetrating American English, and fitting in with the wives whose status was as carefully graded according to their husbands’ rank as was the English class structure.

  Rosemary too underwent the natural anxiety of being a new wife settling into a new country. There was another fear of which neither spoke: the exceptionally large REM dose of radiation that Robert and some of his crewmen had received in action earlier in the war when they had been victims of a leak in the “coffee grinder”—the reactor. Some had fared worse than others, a few having to have sick leave since, and it only added more anxiety to Rosemary, who was already worried enough about the baby due in the coming months. The sonograms of the baby, using the same technique as a sub does to detect the shape and position of another ship, did not reveal any obvious physical deformity, but there was always the risk of some other complication, which, as a new mother, she was naturally apprehensive about. Life, as Robert had pointed out, was full of hazard, especially with the possibility of another outbreak of hostilities with China, but they had decided on having at least two children. As he’d said good-bye to her he’d joked, “Remember now, you’re an English teacher used to Shakespeare and standard BBC English, but you’ll have to learn the lingo.”

  ‘Try me,” she’d said.

  “All right — you say ‘boot,’ we say—”

  “Trunk,” she answered.

  “Okay, you say ‘mudguard.’ “

  “You call it a fender.”

  “Very good,” Robert said.

  “Yes, but what about the supermarket?”

  “Just look at the pictures,” he responded.

  She had smiled, slipping her arms into his. “I’ll miss you.”

  “What — going shopping? Any of the other wives’ll help you.”

  “It’s not that,” Rosemary answered. “I’ll miss you wherever I am.”

  “Morning, sir.” It was Rolston, the Reagan’s XO, snapping off a salute.

  Robert let go of Rosemary’s hand, returning the salute. It was a small thing, but his almost intuitive reaction reminded her about that part of his life he could never really share with her and that therefore separated them.

  “I mean,” she said again, “I’ll miss you everywhere. Night and day.”

  It was unusual for Rosemary to be so insecure. In England, in her Shakespeare class, she ruled otherwise rowdy sixth formers with a firm hand and a resilience that had deserted her upon her arrival in the United States. Robert knew what it was like — that is, what was beneath it all. Earlier in the war, before he’d left Holy Loch on a six-month war patrol, he, like some other submarine captains, had been listed by the enemy for “special treatment”—for assassination. It was different now and more worrisome because the Gong An Bu, the secret arm of China’s Public Security Bureau, had been after captains and their executive officers. Two XOs were already dead, found shot through the base of the skull — Chinese execution style. It was a calculated attack upon the morale of the submarine crews, many of whom were engaged in shepherding the vital convoy resupply to General Douglas Freeman’s divisions in China. Of course they had the FBI and CIA investigating the assassinations, but as more than one godfather had reiterated, “The lesson of our age is that you can kill anyone.” They had tried to get Robert on his and Rosemary’s honeymoon in Scotland, but there the CID and MI5 had joined forces and turned the tables on the would-be assassins. Rosemary tried to change the subject “Oh well, you might get to see your brother David over there. Say hello from me.”

  “Unlikely,” Robert Brentwood said. “He’s with Freeman’s ground troops. Don’t be afraid to use the gun,” Robert told her.

  “Afraid? I’m terrified.”

  “But I’ve shown you how to use it.”

  “Oh, is that supposed to reassure me?”

  “Look, hon, the base security is tighter than a drum. Ditto the family housing. Anyone would have to be bonkers to try to break in.”

  “You don’t think there aren’t people who are bonkers?”

  “C’mon, you know what I mean.”

  “I’m sorry, Robbie, I feel as heavy as a tank — I guess it’s the ‘prepartum’ blues or something.”

  “Take a swig of that Scotch your father sent.”

  “Uh-uh,” she said, adopting a schoolmarmish tone. “Not with the baby.”

  “Very well,” he said as he might answer the officer of the deck. “Carry on.”

  “Bye, darling,” she said, hugging him tightly. “Sorry I can’t get any closer with Junior here.”

  “This suits me fine. Take care, sweetheart.”

  In the tradition of subs sailing from Bangor, the families of the crewmen piled into trucks and cars to race further along the sound where they would get one last glimpse of the men. Then the men disappeared, and duty took over in the litany of the dive.

  “Officer of the Deck — last man down. Hatch secured.”

  Rolston took up his position as officer of the deck. “Last man down. Hatch secured, aye. Captain, the ship is rigged for dive. Current depth one three zero fathoms. Checks with the chart. Request permission to submerge the ship.”

  “Very well, Officer of the Deck,” Brentwood said. “Submerge the ship.”

  “Submerge the ship, aye, sir.” Rolston turned toward the diving console. “Diving Officer, submerge the ship.”

  “Submerge the ship, aye, sir. Dive. Two blasts on the dive alarm. Dive, dive.” The sound of the alarm followed, loud enough for the crew in the combat control center to hear but not powerful enough to pass through the hull.

  “All vents are shut,” a seaman informed the OOD.

  “Vents shut, aye.” A seaman was reading off the depth. “Sixty-two… sixty-four…” A chief of the boat was watching the angle of the dive, its trim and speed. “Officer of the Deck, conditions normal on the dive.”

  “Very well, Diving Officer,” Rolston confirmed, turning to Brentwood. “Captain, at one fifty feet, trim satisfactory.”

  “Very well,” Brentwood answered. “Steer four hundred feet ahead standard.”

  Rolston turned to die helmsman. “Helm, all ahead standard. Diving Officer, make the depth four hundred feet.”

  “Four hundred feet, aye.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Khabarovsk

  “Why can’t we stay here, Au
ssie?” Alexsandra sighed, reclining on the picnic blanket, looking over a long stretch of the Amur river, closing her brown eyes and stretching— albeit unknowingly — sensuously in the weak morning sun. “Why can’t we stay here and make love forever?”

  Aussie Lewis’s eyes lingered on her white blouse. Just watching her breathing was a treat. “Because,” he said, in the flat down-under tone of his, “you’re a soft touch— always trying to do more than your share. If this truce doesn’t last, you’ll be at it again. Right?” Aussie propped himself up on his elbow, his blue eyes looking down at her. “Stone the crows, Sandy, you’ve done your bit — knocking out Chinese troop trains and all that. Washington’s already given you a gong for duty beyond and above — you’ve done more than your bit.”

  “No,” she said quietly, still not opening her eyes, “not as long as the Chinese threaten the JAO.” The region lay in the disputed territory along the Siberian-Chinese border, the border being the Amur river to the Siberians and the Black Dragon to the Chinese. “If we don’t fight,” Alexsandra said, “we’ll end up just like Tibet — another Chinese province. Anyway”—she turned on the picnic blanket, shutting her eyes—”who are you to talk? You and your SAS/Delta troopers.” She was referring to the SAS/D troop — the British Special Air Service and American Delta force commandos that Freeman called on to plug any sudden gap in the line or to carry out deep missions behind the enemy lines — to fight if there was no truce, to collect intelligence if there was.

  “Yeah, I’d go,” conceded Aussie, who had rescued Alexsandra as one of many civilian hostages the Chinese had tied to the guns at the battle of Orgon Tal. To the astonishment of his colleagues in the SAS/Delta teams, Aussie Lewis had fallen head over heels for Alexsandra Malof — even to the point of having stopped swearing. His buddies — David Brentwood, officer in charge of his SAS/D troop; Salvini from Brooklyn; and Choir Williams, a Welshman — had wagered that the Australian couldn’t last an entire week without a profanity. They still had two days to go.