“Smoke!” Brentwood ordered, as Aussie began a weaving pattern to throw off the Chinese small-arms fire. Soon all along the line the smoke from the 40mm canisters being fired from the FAVs rear-mounted gun was so thick that the FAV drivers had to gear down, then go quickly for the gaps created by the out-pressure of the guns still firing on Freeman’s advancing tanks two miles behind.
The FAVs wheeled around behind the guns, taking out the crew with machine gun and, in a few cases, TOW fire. Half the hostages died as a result of either American or ChiCom fire. It was a chaotic battle lasting only minutes, the FAVs’ rear gunners often literally throwing fragmentation grenades down a Pepperpot barrel or otherwise spiking the big guns so that they could no longer be used against Freeman’s main battle tanks.
There was a stomach-churning rumbling sound, like an earthquake, and the noise of the FAV ChiCom infantry battle was pierced by the high-toned squeak of metal on metal as the first echelons of Cheng’s main battle tanks now lurched forward, starting their advance toward the overrun Pepperpot artillery this side of the mines that had slowed Freeman’s echelons, which were now turning into right and left “refused” formation — three of the five tanks in an echelon having their guns aimed straight ahead, the remaining two, to one side. Cheng’s MBTs contained everything from laser-sight, up-gunned T-59s to T-72s.
Two of the FAVs were turned back by Brentwood with only a driver and gunner, the rear “cage” section with the spare wheel and the side compartments that normally carried ammo and other supplies now used to hold those few civilians who had survived the attack on the guns, one of them being Alexsandra Malof.
“Jesus Murphy!” Aussie said as the FAV carrying her and others passed him. “Would I ever like to mount—”
“All right,” Brentwood snapped. “Turn to the right flank and stay well out of range of their MBTs.”
“I can’t fucking well see the MBTs,” Aussie replied.
“You will soon enough.”
There were only ten FAVs remaining.
Freeman knew that now the big ChiCom artillery batteries had been silenced he would soon be engaging Cheng’s main battle tanks, and he knew that while the laser-ranging M1A1, with a top speed of fifty miles per hour and 120mm cannon, was considered the best MBT in the world, this was not enough to win. The American MBTs of World War II had been as inferior to the Nazis’ Tiger and Panther MBTs as the ChiCom T-59 was to the American M1A1, but the then inferior U.S. tanks had won the day through their sheer weight of numbers, ironically validating the Soviet maxim that “quantity has a quality all its own.”
It was not clear enough yet for SATRECON to see how many Chinese tanks were now aligned against Freeman following the collapse of the Pepperpot line, and the padre’s weather prayer, though stated clearly, had done no good at all. Freeman estimated Cheng would have had time to marshal at least a three-to-one MBT advantage. And if the radar station could not be found and taken out quickly enough to render the ChiComs’ triple AA defenses ineffective against the slower but deadly U.S.A. Thunderbolt and Apache tank killers, Cheng could still quickly overwhelm the Americans.
Further, once the ChiCom and American echelons mixed it up it would be near dark, and IFF — identifying friend or foe — would become increasingly difficult. The MBTs of both sides would be so close in the dust-churned night that even with friend or foe recognition not being a problem, the danger of blue-on-blue fire on the ground and from the air would become a certainty, yet only TACAIR could help redress the odds against the Americans. And so it was imperative that the ten remaining SAS/D FAVs take out the radar that would otherwise identify the incoming American planes once the weather cleared.
Freeman’s lead tank, identifiable by its two aerials rather than one, received a burst-coded message of the latest intelligence estimate out of Khabarovsk of the enemy MBT strength based upon rail movements along the southern Manchurian mainlines and from Beijing to Erenhot.
“What are the odds, sir?” the loader asked.
“I was wrong,” the general said. “It’s not a three-to-one advantage after all.”
“That’s good—”
“It’s five to one,” Freeman said.
“Visibility’s increasing to fifty yards, sir,” the driver reported. “Dust storm seems to be falling off a little.”
“Huh,” Freeman grunted. “Maybe we’ll just pass one another — eh, Lawson? Like two ships in the night.”
“Unlikely, General.”
“Damned unlikely, son. Anyway, you wouldn’t want to miss it, would you?”
“No, sir,” lied Lawson, who was now berating himself for all the times he’d been grumpy at having to put his two kids to bed at night and knowing now he’d give anything to be doing that at this moment, and if he died, would God, if there was a God, forgive him? “Visibility increasing,” he said. “Sixty yards.”
A minute later he reported that the dust had closed in again — visibility back down to forty yards.
The other bad news was that Freeman’s earlier hope that the ChiCom radar complex was a fixed installation — which once the weather cleared might be an ideal smart bomb target — was dashed by a recent burst of radar waves from the ChiCom side that came in on a different vector. This meant that the radar unit was mobile, yet another reason why an air strike would yield nothing in a sky through which the American pilots couldn’t see. A reconnaissance Kiowa had been sent out to test infrared visibility through the dust, but no radar target could be found, which puzzled Freeman’s HQ. In any event, even if the weather had cleared in time, Freeman was remembering how most ordnance dropped in the Gulf War missed its targets — what the public saw on CBN were the relatively few hits. He knew it was up to Brentwood and his FAVs to take out the ChiCom radar. If they didn’t, Freeman would lose any TACAIR advantage he might otherwise have.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
His private jet approaching Dutch Harbor from Anchorage, Alaska, Jay La Roche was reclining in his Spanish calfskin chair, a bevy of “gofers” attending his every need. He had lost only one deal in his life, and her name was Lana, née Brentwood, now, in his view, wasting herself in some berg of an island, “playing at nurse,” as he derisively put it. He’d kicked her out in Shanghai years ago, he told Francine and anyone who would listen, and, for the kind of money La Roche had, a lot of people did. He neglected to tell the whole truth: that in Lana’s case she had been the one to leave him when, in a frenzy of his orgiastic sadism, he’d beaten and choked her till she was near death — the climax of his sexual passion often, as Francine could attest to, being to urinate and defecate on his partner.
At those moments he was uncontrollable, but he consistently viewed such forays as occasional lapses, a self-deception that even now allowed him to think he could get his wife to come back to him. He had tried, through Congressman Hailey, to get her transferred out of Dutch Harbor nearer to New York. Hailey had tried but failed, even though urged on by La Roche’s color stills of the elected official’s dalliances with several congressional page boys.
“What happened to him?” Francine had asked, trying to be nonchalant but remembering the congressman’s name had been mentioned once or twice to her by Il Trovatore’s barman as a warning about never crossing La Roche.