Wei took a swig of water before he went on. “We’re going to let them advance until they hit the Beizhen Line. As I’ve briefed before, we’ve built a defensive line from the outskirts of Panjin to Hure. This line is 220 kilometers in length and has been built and fortified for the past seven months with around-the-clock work crews and engineers. We have underground tunnels, bunkers, artillery positions, antiaircraft guns, missiles, and everything we need to prevent the Americans from getting through and threatening Beijing. We decided on this line after the Americans destroyed Shenyang with a nuclear bomb, destroying all but only a handful of routes the American ground forces could travel to threaten Beijing. In addition, a large swath of that area is still radioactive, which means they won’t be able to have their forces stay there. We’ve focused the bulk of our defenses on the most likely avenues of attack, and I am confident that our men have been extremely thorough.”
“Hmm…,” said President Xi, deep in thought.
“More importantly, this frees up our armored forces to cover the northern passes between Changchun and Harbin, which is far better tank country,” General Wei asserted. “Again, my biggest concern is not so much with the forces in front of us — it’s with that American army group in Siberia. If they’re able to break through the Russian lines and decide to push down into Mongolia, then that could be disastrous. Our armored and mechanized infantry divisions are going to be protecting Harbin and Changchun; they won’t be able to turn and meet an American army group in our rear area without collapsing my northern front.”
Chairman Zhang spoke up at this point to add, “I’ve been assured by the Russians and our Indian allies that they will be able to stop the Americans. The Indians have moved a substantial part of their army to Siberia over the last five months. They should be able to defeat the Americans,” he said convincingly. The others seemed pleased with this information, and the threat of this army group wasn’t discussed any further.
Satisfied with the brief, President Xi dismissed everyone except Zhang. He wanted to talk further with him about some personnel changes that may need to happen. The two men deliberated over potential successors to the current heads of the navy, air force and army, should these commanders fail them again. Xi was particularly interested in finding new, younger, more talented generals that had proven themselves in the war thus far, and more importantly, would be loyal to Xi and Zhang. These recent defeats had weakened both of their standings, and this wasn’t something either of them could allow to go on.
Cowboys and Indians
General Tony Wilde had been put in charge of the US First Army Group, which had formed around the original I Corps, or “Eye Corps.” Once the Marines had been ordered to the South Pacific, he had moved his soldiers from the Korean front to the Russian Far East. It had been a real challenge in the spring to get the entire Corps and Army Group formed up and ready for combat. I Corps, like the other army commands, had essentially doubled in size with all of the draftees arriving by the thousands per day. When his army group surpassed 180,000 troops, General Wilde felt ready to take the Indian Army head-on and defeat them. Now he was poring over maps, reviewing the battle plans.
All that stood between him and the Russian city of Irkutsk was the newly formed Indian Fifth Army. While the Russians had been fighting a delaying action against his forces, the Indians had consolidated their army near Irkutsk. Once his forces had pushed the Russians to within a few hundred miles of Irkutsk, the Indian Army finally moved forward to meet the Americans.
Intelligence indicated the strength of the combined Russian-Indian Army to be somewhere around 240,000 soldiers, a solid 60,000 soldiers more than the Americans they were gearing up to battle. However, the American soldiers were battle-hardened, not just from the recent fighting in Korea, but the decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. What General Wilde lacked was a sufficient number of vehicles to allow the majority of his forces to be mobile. He had to rely heavily on helicopters to transport troops near their objectives, and then they had to move in on foot. This lack of necessary equipment was the one area that concerned General Wilde the most, but it was also the one area he had no control over until the factories back home were able to produce the needed tools to support such a massive army fighting in both Europe and Asia.
Brigadier General Sam Sykes got his attention as he pointed to sections on the digital map. “Sir, the latest reports from the field show the Indians are deploying their armor units here, here and here,” he explained.
Wilde nodded. “Those are good positions. It gives them a lot of maneuver room,” he replied and then ran his hand across the map along the road that led to this particular plateau.
“This is good tank country,” he concluded privately.
“Deploy our tanks here but do not engage,” General Wilde suggested. “The Indians are using T-72s. Those tanks do not have nearly the reach ours do. Let’s draw them in to us and then snipe at them from a distance.” He looked around the room to see if there were any objections from the group or any possible considerations he might have missed.
Brigadier General Todd Jackson spoke up. “If we deploy the tanks there, then we should move some of our antitank vehicles and troops to these locations here,” he explained, pointing. “This will protect our flanks. My concern with luring the enemy armor closer to us is that they outnumber us a good six to one. By placing our antitank units here, we not only protect our flanks, but we’ll be able to hammer them when their reserve units charge forward in a pincer move.”
General Wilde smiled. “I knew there was a reason why we invited you tankers to these strategy meetings,” he said to a few laughs and head nods.
“Well, someone needs to make sure headquarters knows what’s going on out there,” General Jackson replied with a wry smile.
General Wilde put a lot of stock in anything Jackson said — he was a brilliant tanker. He commanded the newly reconstituted 4th Armored Division, which had famously spearheaded General Patton’s charge at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. General Jackson had commanded a tank brigade during the early days of the Second Korean War and had fought with great distinction. His reward had been taking command of this newly constituted and largely inexperienced division in the Russian Far East.
“If I could, General, I’d also like to recommend that we place a battalion of self-propelled 155mm Howitzers, our Paladin unit, in this area here,” Jackson said, pointing to an area a few kilometers back from where the battle would take place. “This gives the guns space to maneuver when they take counterbattery fire and still keeps them close enough to hit the enemy’s rear area.”
General Wilde nodded. “No objection here,” he said.
Since General Jackson had received one ask, he decided to push for two. “I was also made aware that the 57th Field Artillery Brigade had recently been equipped with the new M142 high-mobility artillery rocket system or HIMARs,” he said. “When the enemy moves their armored force ten kilometers into the bulge, I’d like your permission to have the entire brigade’s worth of HIMARs launch their antitank rockets. Saturating the enemy advance with hundreds of 227mm rockets will hammer them right before I unleash my ambush.”
Looking at the map, and at the units he had available for this coming battle, General Wilde nodded in agreement again. “I think that’s a good plan. Once the enemy armor has spent themselves, we’ll need to go on the offensive, and this still keeps that battalion close enough to the front, so they can catch up when we advance and still provide good artillery coverage.”