As he repeated the order, a “pic” stick or stick grenade bounced off the spare tire and exploded ten feet behind the FAV. Another Chinese twenty yards ahead of them pulled a cord fuse of another “pic” grenade, but it blew up instantly, taking his hand off. David Brentwood didn’t know why but the ChiComs had a fixation about picric acid. It had cost them quite a few hands, the acid-packed grenade becoming dangerously unstable if any moisture was allowed to accumulate in the grenade boxes. But then picric acid was cheap, and the PLA had three million men to arm. Cheng probably figured the odd hand was worth it; the cast-iron shrapnel from the stick grenade when it worked had been the cause of many American casualties in Southeast Asia, American medevac choppers being called in to carry out the wounded.
Whenever the Americans were hit they had the habit of stopping until their wounded were taken care of. To wound an American seriously, in Cheng’s view, was better than killing him — for it tied up at least a dozen men, from first-aid types to chopper crews who could have been more useful carrying the battle forward. Indeed Freeman was already ordering troop-carrying Hueys, “Blackhawks,” up forward, not in an evac role but to see whether it was yet feasible to use them in an offensive role in the storm. But nap-of-the-earth flying was well-nigh impossible because of the ground clutter caused by the bouncing of millions of pieces of silica, the sand reflecting radar rays in a dancing static.
Besides, banks of PLA type-77 and W-85 12.7mm AA machine guns were radar linked, and once the helos rose above twenty or thirty feet some of them were coming under fire, for at this height they were out of the radar clutter that prevented them from flying nap-of-the-earth but it took them high enough to be picked up on the most powerful of the ChiComs’ radar. Freeman ordered them to land and wait till the high winds and sandstorm abated enough to reduce the “bounce-back” clutter on their own radars. It was a mistake.
Chinese infantry streaming out of the holes had taken out four of Freeman’s helos with “corncobs,” the name given by the Americans to the conical shape of the 40mm type-69 antitank grenade round. Freeman quickly ordered the helos to get airborne, at least those that were not shot up too much, to return to their hover positions behind the tanks four miles back.
Freeman cursed himself for such a dumb move, which the La Roche tabloids would have called “brilliant and daring” if it had worked out and opened a hole in the ChiCom defenses but which even now was being described by one of CBN’s “four-wire” phone-in rear observers as “Freeman Reeling before PLA!”
The only bit of good news Freeman got that day was that Admiral Kuang — true to his word — was apparently en route to the Chinese mainland off Fukien province and so, Freeman hoped, was effectively bottling up the PLA’s Army Group One and Group Twelve in the Nanjing military district that served Fukien province.
Freeman had already lost fourteen M1A1s — and most of their crews — to the Pepperpot harassment fire. It was to be expected under such odds, and he was confident that once out of the corridor bounded by high dunes right and left of him he’d have room to move, and then he’d show Cheng what the M1s, free of a mine field, could do. But against this he had a morale problem, his troops’ earlier enthusiasm already hemorrhaging with the loss of fourteen tanks and their crews. And he knew that if they broke through to the end of the corridor they would still be facing four to five tanks for each of the M1s and that those odds would go higher every time Freeman lost another M1 while being forced to proceed in column behind the flail and other antimine grader tanks. Yet to retreat would be to suffer the same kind of attrition among his tanks, as the Pepperpots would not let up.
“Problem is,” he told Dick Norton, who was now aboard a Bradley APC running close alongside him in the lee of one of the grader tanks, “our guys got a bit spoiled with Saddam Insane. For all our smart bombs duly reported by a tightly controlled press — you know 75 percent of all bombs dropped failed completely to hit their targets?”
Norton nodded. Actually the general was wrong. It was even worse: Over 77 percent of all bombs had missed their targets in Iraq, but the army had controlled the press in a way it had never been able to in Vietnam, and the few spectacular successes with the smart bombs made the whole Iraqi campaign seem a walkover that Freeman and others should be able to duplicate.
“And they’re wondering why I’m not sending in the air force,” Freeman thundered. “Christ, there’s already been four choppers taken out in this pea soup. This isn’t Iraq — it’s a damn sight tougher.” The general closed his eyes, took off his goggles, wiped them clean, and put them on again, announcing to Norton, “Well, if Huang gets to Fukien he’ll keep them bottled up in the south.”
“Yes, sir. Met boys say the storm will pretty much die down in an hour or so.”
“That’s what they told me an hour ago. By God, where’s Harvey Simmet? He’s the only weatherman who knows anything. Get him up here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Harvey Simmet, the meteorological officer for Freeman’s HQ, was a man whose patience and dedication had been sorely tried by Freeman in earlier Arctic battles, Freeman calling on him half-hourly, sometimes every five minutes in the heat of the battle. Everyone thought Freeman had been acting strangely, but he knew that once the temperature hit minus sixty the waxes in the poor-quality Siberian lubrication oils would settle out and clog the hydraulics, stopping the Siberian tanks in their tracks. Then he could counterattack. And he did.
“Where the hell’s Simmet?” Freeman demanded.
“We’re having him brought up the line soon as we can, sir.”
Freeman grunted. “This damn storm has been sent to try us, Norton. It’s hell-sent.”
“Yes, sir.” Norton wasn’t about to contradict the general who had very specific ideas about hell and often viewed the vicissitudes of nature as heaven-sent omens. In this the general was as superstitious as the Chinese.
“Fellas!”
Neither Salvini nor Choir could hear the CBN reporter as Choir was busy blazing away at a motorcycle and sidecar unit with his M-60, Salvini using his M-16 on anything that moved in the dark day of the sand.
“Fellas!” the reporter repeated. “Let’s head back—”
There was no answer.
“Look,” the reporter said. “A thousand bucks — okay? You’ve been very good. I’ve seen enough…”
“No, no, boyo!” Choir yelled without turning his head, starting a new belt for the M-60. “You haven’t seen the big stuff, laddie. ‘E ‘as to see that now hasn’t he, Sal?”
“Oh, definitely,” Salvini agreed.
“What’s that?” the reporter asked, ashen faced in his goggles, the goggles giving him a mad look.
“Pepperpots,” Choir explained. “Biggest fucking gun in the world, boyo!”
It wasn’t, but it was big, and Choir knew that with its sheer size it would be an awesome sight — if they reached the guns alive.
Sal shifted down as they went up a small hill, changing up as soon as he felt the two rear Wrangler tires grip. The reporter was holding a fistful of notes. “You keep your money, chief,” Sal said. “When you see those Pepperpots you might need some toilet paper.”
“You’re both mad!” the reporter yelled. “SAS is fucking insane!”
“Hang on!” Salvini yelled, then hit a series of deep potholes, the FAV sounding like a junk shop amid an earthquake.
Out of the original seventy FAVs only thirty now remained, and not one had failed mechanically. Then Salvini saw another go up in flame, hit by a Sagger. “Twenty-nine now,” said Salvini.