Nung shook his head as a cargo helicopter came in from the north for a landing. The last thing he wanted to do now was enter the command tank with Ping. He loathed the East Lightning commissar. All these fine vehicles given him to command and he was shackled in their use. It simply made no sense!
He had done a Hannibal, referring to the ancient general who had brought his elephants and cavalry over the Alps. The alpine, winter trek had cost Hannibal dearly, and it had cost the cross-polar taskforce. The deadly weather and extreme distance had brought endless headaches and equipment failures. Now the supplies from Ambarchik across this stretched line had dropped to a trickle. That had surprised Nung most of all. He had left Lieutenant-General Bai in charge back at base. What could have happened to turn Bai into such an incompetent?
Heavyset Nung stared at the command snowtank. These specialized vehicles were a marvel of Chinese engineering. Each snowtank had two main sections connected by a hydraulic ram. To facilitate climbing snowy slopes such as awaited them in Alaska, the center of gravity was just back of center. Normal tanks would flip or slide on such snowy terrain, quickly rendering them helpless. The snowtank had four independent track sections that helped stabilize the vehicle. The tracks themselves were rubber-rimmed to prevent the wheels turning the tracks from freezing. The articulated tank with its aluminum alloy treads and high-adhesion track-cleats allowed it to travel forty kph on hard ice or flat rock. The snowtank’s rear compartment was armed with an ATGM-launcher. The front used the same type of cannon as the hovertanks: a 76mm gun with rocket-assisted shells. The snowtank was built light, with a ground pressure of two psi, one third that of a Marauder tank.
The cargo helicopter from the north had landed. The side door opened and men rushed out, shouting his name.
General Nung sighed and waved. Now what? Soon, the men stumped near. Nung looked in shock. Despite the parka, hood and goggles, one of the men reminded him of Bai, his logistics master back at Ambarchik Base. Then the man shouted his name, confirming his identity.
“Bai?” asked Nung. “What in blazes are you doing here on the ice? You’re supposed to be back at Ambarchik, making sure I receive my supplies.”
Bai told him an incredible tale. It began with Ruling Committee Minister Jian Hong sending Bai out here to give a verbal for-his-ears-only command. The longer Bai talked, the more incensed Nung became.
“They’re berating me for not attacking?” Nung said at last, his face feeling like an oven, he was so angry.
“Yes, sir,” said Bai. “By the way, sir, I’m also to report that your wife and son are safe. East Lightning no longer has them.”
Nung blinked, with his mind awhirl with a hundred questions. Finally, he thundered, “Why in the name of Mao didn’t you radio all this to me?”
“It was the Chairman’s orders, sir. This could only be relayed to you by face-to-face contact. I’m sorry I didn’t find you sooner, but my plane crashed and we waited days for rescue. Then my next plane was left stranded at an airstrip as we awaited more fuel. Here at the end, I had a hard time discovering which of these little bases you were at last.”
Nung ingested Bai’s story. It encapsulated what had happened to the entire taskforce. What had started out so well had turned into a tangled fiasco. Distance plus equipment-failure plus an alien terrain— “If you’re out here,” Nung said, “who is running my supplies back at Ambarchik?”
“I believe that Minster Jian Hong has taken that upon himself, sir.”
Nung wanted to shout. The Ruling Committee itself was sabotaging his efforts? He shook his head, trying to clear it of anger. They actually accused him of cowardice. They accused him of holding back when all this time he’d wanted to attack.
“Come with me,” Nung said in a thick voice. He strode for the command snowtank. Bai trotted after him, with the others he’d brought trailing behind.
“What are you planning, sir?” asked Bai.
Nung removed his right mitten and drew his pistol. The metal was freezing cold, but that felt good now. Nung could no longer speak and his eyes seemed to spark with emotions. He fumbled with the hatch, clicked it and opened the way into the command-tank. He squeezed through.
Commissar Ping played cards with his bodyguard. The commissar looked up, and he must have seen something on Nung’s face. Ping dove as he shouted for his bodyguard to save him.
Nung’s pistol barked three times. The bodyguard with eyes like oil slid to the tank’s floor.
Ping was openly weeping. His mouth moved, but Nung couldn’t hear a thing because his ears were still ringing from the shots. Maybe the commissar finally found it impossible to taunt him, found it impossible to articulate the words he attempted to speak.
“Give me one of your sayings now!” roared Nung, his breath misting.
Once more, Commissar Ping tried to speak.
Smiling with malice, Nung raised his pistol. A deafening boom sounded. He kept firing until he was out of bullets. Then he shoved the pistol into its holster. Ping’s corpse was a bloody, twisted pile of meat. Nung climbed out of the tank and turned to a stunned Bai.
“They want me to attack?” Nung asked.
Bai only seemed capable of nodding.
“Then I name this as our central depot,” Nung said. “You’re in charge of supplies.”
“The American submarines…” said Bai.
“I know all about them,” Nung said. “We’ll widen our defensive cordon.”
“You’re going to attack how, sir?”
“It won’t be anything fancy. A two-tier wave assault will do it. The hovertanks will go in immediately, with the snowtanks following as fast as they can. All the while, our air will pound the Americans and our helicopters will drop infantry onto the North Slope.”
“You’re too far away to do that from here,” said Bai. “And if you start now, the hovertanks will outstrip the snowtanks by days.”
“I said it isn’t fancy,” Nung said. “The way we’re set up it is either stay on the ice and wait for the Americans to explode it out from under our feet, or fight and die against the enemy. Well, I’m going to choose the third way.”
“What is that, sir?”
“Fight and break through to the oilfields,” Nung said.
“Can we hold the oilfields once we take them?”
“We’ll worry about that once they’re ours. Until then, it’s just a moot question. Maybe our very capturing of them will cause the Americans to surrender. It’s what happened with the Siberians.”
Bai licked his lips.
“Don’t tell me that the Americans aren’t Siberians,” Nung said. “I’m sick of hearing that.”
Hastily shaking his head, Bai said, “No, no, of course not, sir. To the North Slope, and victory over the Americans.”
Nung’s eyes gleamed. At last, he could do things his way. He was badly out of position thanks to Commissar Ping and Army High Command that had saddled him with the mincing coward. But he wasn’t going to complain. He was going to attack fast the way it should have been done in the first place.
“It’s the Chairman, sir,” the communications officer told Jian Hong. “He’s asking for you personally. He must know you’re here.”
Jian swallowed. “I will take the message in my office.”
He noticed the rest of the officers of the communications staff staring at him. Forcing heartiness into his bearing, Jian glanced around. As soon as he closed the door behind him, however, Jian closed his eyes.