“Pete Rose,” Beria continued, “was disgraced and never made baseball’s Hall of Fame at Cooperstown because he had been caught betting on baseball games. I think mention of him by Freeman is to tell Tibbet that everything in the message is exactly the opposite of what Freeman intends to do.”
“You’re crazy,” said Abramov. “You’ve been reading too much American press. It’s full of lies.”
Beria ignored the remark and continued calmly, “During World War II, when English-speaking Japanese pilots tried to pass themselves off on radio as Americans, the American pilots, if suspicious, used to ask questions, the answers to which were common knowledge to born-and-bred Americans. If the American pilots didn’t get the right responses, they knew there was a spy amongst them. And if you’ve bothered to read Freeman’s file — indeed, if you know anything about Freeman — you’ll know he has an encyclopedic mind about things military, and it’s exactly the kind of trickery and wartime practice that he’d know about.”
Abramov opened his hands, like a holy man, in the universal gesture of conciliation. “I tell you, Viktor, this Pete Rose thing is nothing. The phrase is probably merely a decryption identification key for their intercomputer traffic. You’re being paranoid, Viktor. Now recall your infantry.”
Before Beria could respond, Cherkashin added, “Mikhail’s right, Viktor. You’re making too much of this. We’re all on edge. But you have to recall your naval platoons because we’ll need them here. We’ll finish the Americans off together, eh?”
It was two against one, so Beria compromised. He recalled two of the four platoons — eighty of the best, and now most highly paid, terrorist infantry in the world.
“Good decision, Viktor,” said Abramov. “Now I should tell you both that I’ve ordered several company HQs to assign video technicians along the two-mile front. That means, Comrades, the pictures of the Americans being decimated as they attack us will be on CNN and Al Jazeera this evening, tomorrow morning’s newscasts at the latest.”
Cherkashin was a tad uncomfortable with Abramov’s use of the word “decimated.” The tank general was using it, Cherkashin knew, as most people did, to mean a casualty rate of nine out of ten, when in fact it had originally meant one casualty in ten. Still, this was a high rate for American commanders. Abramov’s TV idea was a good one, because the American public always started to panic as soon as they saw a single body bag coming off an aircraft on CNN. And when the CNN woman with the big chest, Marte Price, started yakking about more American casualties, the Americans would start going weak at the knees. She and other American media announcers were considered by ABC’s clientele such as El-Hage, Hamas, and Hezbollah as valuable, albeit unwitting, propagandists for the terrorist cause.
One of a pair of Hummers flown in less than ten minutes before from the second wave and ordered by Tibbet to assist Freeman in his attack through the tunnels’ exit, skidded to a stop as its gunner saw tanks moving and snaking quickly through the minefield’s safe road. The four tanks’ commanders were doing an Israeli, standing up, cupolas open to see better in the pouring rain, despite the T-90s’ infrared recon and laser-targeting system. The commanders, four of Abramov’s best from the Siberian Sixth, were cursing the snaking course of the road, meant to keep the tanks off a straight line to prevent any anti-armor units having time to “frame” them for successful missile attack. But now that the American line was reported as being still five hundred yards southeast of the square mile of mines, it was unlikely any of them would see any more Russian armor in the heavy rain.
Radio silence between the four T-90s was maintained. Instead, the tanks’ COs were communicating by the tried-and-true Russian method of using rapid yet distinct flag signals, such as those still used by such elite forces as the British Royal Navy when a ship was requested to go SID — Signals Dead — for reasons of launching a surprise attack against the enemy. Colonel Nureyev, Abramov’s second in command and tactical leader of the T-90 force, took the small but distinct yellow flag he used on such occasions and held it out snappily to his left. Soon they would be out of the minefield, the crackle and spit of small-arms fire so loud now that he could see the flashes of the soon-to-be outnumbered and outmechanized American force in this area.
Because of the midair collision of the Cobras during the first wave, many marines, because their transport helos had had to take sharp evasive action, ended up being too far north of the minefield and too close to the lake. Fighting their way westward from the lake, then south, they were exhausted and desperately short of ammunition and food. Worst of all, they were now too far away to lend support to Freeman’s team.
The three-man fire team of Kegg and the two other marines, one of them with the SAW machine gun, formed a C-shaped defensive arc facing away from the general area indicated on the Korean’s map as the exit zone. It was the C-arc’s job to protect the backs of Freeman, Aussie, Sal, Choir, and Johnny Lee as Choir used his small metallic “finger” to search for mines. As he moved the two-and-a-half-inch-long battery-powered sonar-activated probe, which extended like a bayonet from the end of his M-16, he listened attentively for the probe’s low-pitched return “warning,” the outgoing pitch so high that it was detectable by only a few individuals whose hearing was well above the 2,000-hertz level. The instrument was so expensive that only one had been issued per four-man fire team. It might have saved Eddie Mervyn from his horrific wound, but in the pressure of battle, not knowing how far away the Russians were, there had been no time to use it.
But now that Tibbet’s second wave was arriving, bolstering the first, Freeman seized the window of opportunity to press forward with the search for the exit hatch.
“No mines here, sir,” said Choir, planting one of his green safety flags and sweeping the finger from one side of the suspected exit zone to the other without getting a mine “tone” over his Walkman-type earphones. Preoccupied as he was with his task, indeed precisely because he was so preoccupied searching for mines, Choir thought of Prince and felt heartsick.
Two minutes later, one of the three marines manning the protective C-arc spotted a T-90’s aerial whipping back and forth and moving his way above head-high reeds two hundred yards away, its diesel engine a subdued but angry growl in the sodden vegetation. Then it disappeared.
“Shit!” said the marine. “Where’d he go?” He radioed back to the Hummer. “You see that tank?” he asked the corporal.
“Affirmative,” came the answer. “Got the fucker on thermal. There are three more a ways back, coming from the direction of the minefield.”
“Tone!” shouted Choir. “Ten o’clock.” He moved farther left. “Tone! They’ve mined this side of the snow hump right up to those four tree trunks that they’re using to hide the air shafts. But they’ve left clear ground on the other side, so that’s obviously where anyone coming out of the tunnels is going to head, if this is an exit.”
“Well,” Freeman ordered, “if we find an opening anywhere in this goddamn hump, make sure we flag it correctly.” He didn’t want to see another Eddie Mervyn incident.
“Let’s probe the snow mound on the mine-free side,” said Choir. “Quickly. Use your bayonets. If that map’s right, we should find a door or something.”
Freeman could hear more armor approaching in the distance. The tanks were moving more slowly than the first T-90 that the Hummer’s corporal had fixed in his thermal sight, but the general could see they were gaining ground nonetheless, and so he told the men to stop digging, ordering everyone back. He would use the Hummer to do the digging. “Corporal!” he radioed the Hummer. “Back up out of these reeds. Get two hundred yards from here. If we lose the radio, I’ll use visuals. One wave with my helmet, hit the mound with a TOW. Second Fritz, use another one. Got it?”