“Very well,” Cheng said. “Now he retreats, where does he go? He must either come through the corridor or—”
“Go eastward to the dunes that border the corridor,” his aide suggested. Cheng uttered an ancient oath. With the corridor mined as well as honeycombed by tunnels, there was only one place Freeman could go: toward the dunes. But it was impossible to tunnel the dunes. Sand had the insistent habit of falling in on you the moment you tried to dig a foxhole in it.
Very well, Cheng thought, returning to Sun Tzu’s axiom: “The military has no constant form, just as water has no constant shape — adapt as you face the enemy.” It must adapt. Freeman had, and so would he.
“Colonel,” Cheng ordered, “get me Shenyang air army HQ immediately.” The drop he had in mind would be a little haphazard and it would have to be done in execrable conditions, but it was the only way to stop the Americans. Besides, it gave Cheng a sense of perverse satisfaction to know that the very weapons he’d be using against Freeman had been provided by an American, La Roche, out of Warsaw Pact surplus. Cheng recalled how hard he had to fight the Central Committee for the allocation funds to buy the weapons. Now he would be vindicated.
If there was one thing Freeman hated it was retreat, and already a CBN reporter well in the rear of me logistical tail of the armored column, hearing that Freeman’s armored spearhead was withdrawing, was in immediate contact with his Tokyo affiliate via his “four wire” satellite dish phone.
Within the hour the La Roche tabloids around me world were spewing forth FREEMAN ON THE RUN. Freeman was flipping over the leaves of his satchel-size operational map pad, assuring himself that you either went through the corridor between the dunes to the east and the Mongolian border to the west where SATRECON in one photo out of fifty had peeked through a brief clearing in the storm and spotted hundreds of heavy ChiCom field batteries — or you could try a fast end run across the dunes on his extreme left, then wheel about southwest in the sand. But if he knew this he knew that Cheng must know it, too, so if you were Cheng you’d try to stop the Americans at the dunes or better still try to take them out before they reached the dunes.
Freeman knew his M1A1s had a distinct advantage over the Chinese T-72s and T-59s in that the M1 was much faster. Then he got the bad news that the most forward of his tanks, which were now withdrawing from the antitank tunnel corridor and swinging east toward the dunes, were already reported as being under attack by swarms of ChiCom motorcycle and sidecar battalions, many equipped with Sagger optically controlled antitank missiles. It was difficult enough to deal with antitank ordnance normally, which is why Freeman had ordered the withdrawal from the tunnel-honeycombed corridor. But mobile Sagger antitank teams were a much more dangerous threat, even though Freeman knew it would probably be as difficult for the ChiCom sidecar units to spot his tanks in the blinding dust storm as it was for the tanks to see them.
Despite the blinding sandstorm, however, the quick turning ability of the motorcycle sidecar units was a distinct advantage for the ChiComs. There was the muffled crump of yet another tank as the explosion of fifty rounds of its ammo went up, and for a minute.50mm tracers from its machine gun ammunition could be seen flying madly in all directions as faint orange streaks in the dust-choked battlefield. It was at that point that Freeman realized from the reports of two drivers from the knocked-out tanks that it wasn’t mines that were planted in the corridor but the much more dangerous mobile antitank RPG units that had stopped them. The general immediately ordered a battalion of his tanks to race at maximum speed for the sands, and the bulk of 205 tanks to re-form for an echelon attack, five tanks to an echelon, forty-one echelons in all heading forward again toward the tunneled corridor, but not until he ordered his three squadrons of SAS/D men—210 men — to race ahead of the tanks in their seventy three-man FAVs, or fast attack vehicles—”dune buggies” built for war.
The battalion of American tanks racing for the dunes on Freeman’s left flank were told not to enter the dunes the moment Freeman had received a report from the forward-most tank that aircraft could be heard there above the dust storm.
“You sure they’re not our Apaches trying to get a look see?”
“Positive — definitely fixed-wing aircraft, General.”
“Right,” Freeman acknowledged, “then we must assume the ChiComs are dropping mines — thousands of them — onto the dunes.”
It left him with no choice. He would either have to retreat fully or hope his FAVs as outriders could somehow navigate a safe passage through the corridor.
As he re-formed the tanks for another attempt on the corridor, the first FAVs appeared, the lead vehicle being manned by Aussie Lewis as driver, David Brentwood as codriver and machine gunner, with another SAS/D trooper on the back raised seat behind the TOW missile tube. Brentwood ordered the seventy FAVs to spread across the ten-mile-wide, twenty-three-mile-deep corridor. This meant that there were approximately seven FAVs to a mile of front, but while they tried their best to keep no more man a 200-yard spacing between them it was impossible to be sure because of the visibility being no more than twenty feet.
“What the hell’s he doing now?” a CBN reporter demanded of Norton.
“Attacking,” Norton replied tersely, uncharacteristically adding, “What the hell’s it look like?”
“Well, we’re too far back to see.”
“Exactly,” Norton commented. “Didn’t report that to your paper, did you — that Freeman was in a lead tank?”
But right now the CBN reporter was more alarmed than insulted. “But Jesus, he’s trying to drive through the corridor before the chinks turn their big guns from the Mongolia border on him. Shouldn’t take them long to tow them into position.”
“No,” Norton said. “It’s a race all right. He’s running for gold and they’re coming in from the flank.”
“Jesus Christ! It’ll be nip and tuck, won’t it?”
Norton waved over a FAV.
“Yes, sir?”
“You fellas got room for an observer?”
“Sure, in the back,” said Salvini, who was driving with another SAS/D man on the machine gun in the codriver’s position and Choir Williams in back, manning the TOW. “Next to Choir — you can get a grip on the roll bar.”
“Ah — listen,” the reporter said. “If you guys are pushed for space—”
Norton had his sand goggles up and winked at Salvini, who waved encouragingly at the La Roche reporter. “Hell, no trouble, man. Always glad to help the press.”
The reporter hesitated.
“Don’t want me to tell the New York office you’re chicken, do you?” Norton pressed, only half-joking.
The CBN reporter smiled weakly. “No—”
“Right, off you go then.” And within thirty seconds they were gone, Choir Williams advising the reporter against the sound of the wind and the whine of the ninety-four-horsepower engine, “You hang on, boyo. When we get to those holes it’ll be bloody murder!”
“What holes?”
“Them bloody manholes that Cheng has popped here and there atop his nest of runnels. Throw you clear off if you’re not careful. You just get a grip on the roll bar here like Mr. Salvini says. Okay?”