"Comrade, it will be difficult to say on state television that things are going well when this is available to anyone with a computer."
"Ahh." Less a sound of satisfaction than one of sudden dread. "Anyone can see this?"
"Anyone with a computer and a telephone line." The young lieutenant colonel looked up, only to see Luo's receding form.
"I'm surprised he didn't shoot me," the officer observed.
"He still might," a full colonel told him. "But I think you frightened him." He looked at the wall clock. It was sixteen hours, four in the afternoon.
"Well, it is a concern."
"You young fool. Don't you see? Now he can't even conceal the truth from the Politburo."
"Hello, Yuri," Clark said. It was different to be in Moscow in time of war. The mood of the people on the street was unlike anything he'd ever seen. They were concerned and serious-you didn't go to Russia to see the smiling people any more than you went to England for the coffee-but there was something else, too. Indignation. Anger… determination? Television coverage of the war was not as strident and defiant as he'd expected. The new Russian news media were trying to be even-handed and professional. There was commentary to the effect that the army's inability to stop the Chinese cold spoke ill of their country's national cohesion. Others lamented the demise of the Soviet Union, whom China would not have dared to threaten, much less attack. More asked what the hell was the use of being in NATO if none of the other countries came to the aid of their supposed new ally.
"We told the television people that if they told anyone of the American division now in Siberia, we'd shoot them, and of course they believed us," Lt. Gen. Kirillin said with a smile. That was something new for Clark and Chavez to see. He hadn't smiled much in the past week.
"Things looking up?" Chavez inquired.
"Bondarenko has stopped them at the gold mine. They will not even see that, if my information is correct. But there is something else," he added seriously.
"What's that, Yuriy?" Clark asked.
"We are concerned that they might launch their nuclear weapons."
"Oh, shit," Ding observed. "How serious is that?"
"It comes from your president. Golovko is speaking with President Grushavoy right now."
"And? How do they plan to go about it? Smart bombs?" John asked.
"No, Washington has asked us to go in with a special-operations team," Kirillin said.
"What the hell?" John gasped. He pulled his satellite phone out of his pocket and looked for the door. "Excuse me, General. E.T. phone home."
"You want to say that again, Ed?" Foley heard. "You heard me. They've run out of the bombs they need. Evidently, it's a pain in the ass to fly bombs to where the bombers are."
"Fuck!" the CIA officer observed, out in the parking lot of this Russian army officers' club. The encryption on his phone didn't affect the emotion in his voice. "Don't tell me, since RAINBOW is a NATO asset, and Russia's part of NATO now, and since you're going to be asking the fucking Russians to front this operation, in the interest of North Atlantic solidarity, we're going to get to go and play, too, right?"
"Unless you choose not to, John. I know you can't go yourself. Combat's a kid's game, but you have some good kids working for you."
"Ed, you expect me to send my people in on something like that and I stay home and fucking knit socks?" Clark demanded heatedly.
"That's your call to make. You're the RAINBOW commander."
"How is this supposed to work? You expect us to jump in?"
"Helicopters-"
"Russian helicopters. No thanks, buddy, I-"
"Our choppers, John. First Armored Division had enough and they're the right kind…"
"They want me to do what?" Dick Boyle asked. "You heard me."
"What about fuel?"
"Your fueling point's right about here," Colonel Masterman said, holding the just-downloaded satellite photo. "Hilltop west of a place called Chicheng. Nobody lives there, and the numbers work out."
"Yeah, except out flight path takes us within ten miles of this fighter base."
"Eight F-111s are going to hit it while you're on the way in. Ought to close down their runways for a good three days, they figure."
"Dick," Diggs said, "I don't know what the problem is exactly, but Washington is really worried that Joe is going to launch his ICBMs at us at home, and Gus Wallace doesn't have the right bombs to take them out reliably. That means a special-ops force, down and dirty. It's a strategic mission, Dick. Can you do it?"
Colonel Boyle looked at the map, measuring distance in his mind… "Yeah, we'll have to mount the outrigger wings on the Black-hawks and load up to the max on gas, but, yeah, we got the range to get there. Have to refuel on the way back, though."
"Okay, can you use your other birds to ferry the fuel out?"
Boyle nodded. "Barely."
"If necessary, the Russians can land a Spetsnaz force anywhere through here with additional fuel, so they tell me. This part of China is essentially unoccupied, according to the maps."
"What about opposition on the ground?"
"There is a security force in the area. We figure maybe a hundred people on duty, total, say a squad at each silo. Can you get some Apaches out there to run interference?"
"Yeah, they can get that far, if they travel light." Just cannon rounds and 2.75-inch rockets, he thought.
"Then get me your mission requirements," General Diggs said. It wasn't quite an order. If he said it was impossible, then Diggs couldn't make him do it. But Boyle couldn't let his people go out and do something like this without being there to command them.
The MI-24s finished things off. The Russian doctrine for their attack helicopters wasn't too different from how they used their tanks. Indeed, the MI-24-called the Hind by NATO, but strangely unnamed by the Russians themselves-was referred to as a flying tank. Using AT-6 Spiral missiles, they finished off a Chinese tank battalion in twenty minutes of jump and shoot, sustaining only two losses in the process. The sun was setting now, and what had been Thirty-fourth Shock Army was wreckage. What few vehicles had survived the day were pulling back, usually with wounded men clinging to their decks.
In his command post, General Sinyavskiy was all smiles. Vodka was snorted by all. His 265th Motor Rifle Division had halted and thrown back a force more than double its size, suffering fewer than three hundred dead in the process. The TV news crews were finally allowed out to where the soldiers were, and he delivered the briefing, paying frequent compliments to his theater commander, Gennady Iosefovich Bondarenko, for his cool head and faith in his subordinates. "He never lost his nerve," Sinyavskiy said soberly. "And he allowed us to keep ours for when the time came. He is a Hero of Russia," the division commander concluded. "And so are many of my men!"
Thank you for that, Yuriy Andreyevich, and, yes, for that you will get your next star," the theater commander told the television screen. Then he turned to his staff. "Andrey Petrovich, what do we do tomorrow?"
"I think we will let Two-Six-Five start moving south. We will be the hammer, and Diggs will be the anvil. They still have a Type-A Group army largely intact to the south, the Forty-third. We will smash it starting day after tomorrow, but first we will maneuver it into a place of our choosing."
Bondarenko nodded. "Show me a plan, but first, I am going to sleep for a few hours."
"Yes, Comrade General."
CHAPTER 60
It was the same Spetsnaz people they'd trained for the past month or so. Nearly everyone on the transport aircraft was a commissioned officer, doing sergeants' work, which had its good points and its bad ones. The really good thing was that they all spoke passable English. Of the RAINBOW troopers, only Ding Chavez and John Clark spoke conversational Russian.
The maps and photos came from SRV and CIA, the latter transmitted to the American Embassy in Moscow and messengered to the military airfield out of which they'd flown. They were in an Aeroflot airliner, fairly full with over a hundred passengers, all of them soldiers.