I decided to collect a little information from his friends. Sidling up to the short one, I introduced myself. Despite a completely ordinary American accent, the man is apparently a Russian, Volodya Ivanov. He worked with McCormick on the Lafayette Initiative, along with McCormick’s taller friend Hans Dietrich.
Volodya explained his story briefly, explaining that he had been a sergeant in Spetsnaz before leaving to work for a security company run by a now-dead Scotsman named Douglas. I let him spin his story, then asked at the end, “How did you come to take orders from McCormick?”
He looked surprised for a moment. “I’m not taking orders from him,” he said. “Dietrich and I are old pros. We listen to McCormick, but we decide for ourselves.”
“Then how did you come to listen to him?”
Volodya weighed the question for a moment, then said, “We both should have died yesterday, but that McCormick is damn near impossible to kill. He saved my life, as well as Dietrich’s and a few others’. If he wants to try to swing this war, the least I can do is tag along.”
“And why does he care about this war so much?” I asked.
The Russian frowned. “I’m not sure exactly.”
Dietrich chimed in helpfully, “I’d say he’s latched onto the notion of doing something useful with his life as a result of disenchantment with elite society, embarrassment at failed personal relationships, and ennui in a post-industrial society in economic decline. Taiwan, with its technology and inspiring leaders, has become a foil to the failure he associates with the United States and, metonymically, with his own life.”
Snapping his fingers, Volodya said, “Yeah, that’s what I was going to say.”
I struggled to follow the idea. “So he’s nucking futs?”
The German, though functionally fluent in English, didn’t get my wordplay. “What?”
Volodya simply laughed and nodded. “Yeah, that’s basically it. But he’s a clever maniac.”
Twenty yards ahead and out of earshot, McCormick halted our little column and walked over to Volodya and me. “OK, the crossing is just north of here.”
I asked pointedly, “So where’s the fight and where do I tell my guys to shoot?”
With a smile, McCormick waved the rest of the Airborne soldiers over. Letting the grunts in on the whole plan was doubtlessly something he learned the importance of as a sergeant.
He drew a circle in the dirt by the side of the road. “This is Citadel.” He drew two lines looping around either end of the city. “The PLA sent two pincers around Citadel to cut it off from resupply in Yilan.”
Drawing an X over the line on the left, he said, “Volodya, Dietrich and I — along with your Captain Concitor — took the western pincer out a few hours ago. Now, we’re going after the eastern pincer.”
He drew a line running straight through Citadel that took a sharp downward turn on the right side. “This is the river. According to Taiwanese mini-satellites, the eastern pincer is going to cross the river at a small bridge on the other side of this hill to our north in twenty minutes. Lieutenant Barker, please space your guys out along the southern bank of the river. Set up a killing field on the bridge.”
I asked, “Where are you and your men going to be?”
“On the north bank of the river. You and your team are going to be the anvil. Once they’re engaged with you, we’re going to be the hammer. We’ll hit them from behind and break them.”
Private Brosnan fingered his web gear and asked, “How many of them are there going to be?”
“Not a single one after we’re done with them,” McCormick said.
Volodya and I laughed, but no one else did. McCormick sighed and said, “No more than 150.”
“Shit,” Brosnan whispered. “That’s more than they had at Farmers’ Ridge.”
“Fewer tanks though,” I said, trying to shut Brosnan up before he spooked the others. “We can kick their ass in a fair fight.”
McCormick nodded approvingly, and for the first time in years I felt pleasure at a man’s approval. “I agree, but this isn’t going to be a fair fight. It’s going to be a goddamn massacre.”
Seventeen minutes later, I had my squad in cover, arrayed among the thick vegetation on the riverbank. McCormick and his men had hurried away to sneak off across the river and find their own cover. It occurred to me that my soldiers might hit him them accidentally, though McCormick assured me that they’d be well out of the crossfire.
I had inspected each of my squad members’ hiding places, making sure that they were almost totally invisible from the far riverbank. There was nothing left to do but wait.
Finally, McCormick called over the radio. “Column approaching my position, passing through to the bridge soon.”
The bridge itself was actually solid earth, spanning the river where it was only about fifty yards wide. In the summer, the water was probably only waist-deep in the middle, but with the snow melting in the mountains, the PLA soldiers would have needed to swim across. Not many soldiers would choose to swim when they could walk.
Of course, a bridge wasn’t as safe as a Sunday stroll either. It gave us a single point to concentrate our fire on. Whoever was commanding the Chinese infantry wasn’t an idiot, and he knew that the crossing was a point of maximum vulnerability. He would take precautions to minimize the danger, just as McCormick and I would try to maximize it.
“PLA infantry in sight,” one of the squad members reported. And suddenly, there they were, walking down to the bridge, studiously avoiding the main path.
I remembered Farmers’ Ridge just a few hours earlier and thanked God the situation was different now. Colonel Brown had just plunked us down in a stupid static defense line at the top of a ridge and invited the Chinese to pound away at us with artillery and tanks. If not for McCormick and Concitor pulling miracles out of their asses, we would have been toast. At this river, we had a plan and it would be the Chinese who got the nasty surprise, I told myself.
The approach of battle makes my heart beat and my mind race. It’s not nerves, you know I’ve never been a nervous type. It’s more of a thrill, a feeling that I’m alive and doing, not just watching a clock waiting for lunchtime in some office somewhere. I have to consciously remind myself to wait until the PLA are in the trap before starting the battle.
The company-and-a-half of Chinese troops were spread widely along the opposing riverbank, and for a second I thought they might just try to swim across. Instead, they spent a few minutes observing the far bank, then decided it was safe to cross on the bridge.
One squad of infantry moved first, three at a time with the other seven covering them. They reached our side of the riverbank and began scanning the area.
Patience.
Several more squads walked across, their weapons at the ready. They clearly knew that something had happened to the other pincer, and they were wary, ready for an attack from our side of the river.
When about half of the Chinese soldiers were dispersed along our side of the riverbank, it was time.
No command was necessary. I had the first shot. I had kept an eye out for the highest-ranking officer I could find. Of course, in this day and age, the officers try to blend in to look just like their subordinates. But you can always tell. Grunts don’t talk into their radios every thirty seconds. They also don’t look like they should be home tending a garden.
I looked down the red-dot sight on my M-4 rifle. I was about thirty yards upstream and fifteen yards into the brush. Impossible to miss. I squeezed the trigger slowly.