Yang sighed. “Before you ask, I do not know what the other divisions or army groups are doing. I only know our orders and what we are supposed to accomplish. Please move to have your soldiers prepare to carry out the orders given to us. The eyes of the world and China will be upon us. We cannot fail.”
His future, his life, depended on the ability of the men in front of him to execute the orders they had just been given. The PLA did not look fondly on failure, and neither did the generals above him. He would be equally as hard on his own generals and their officers. The State must prevail at all cost.
Basement Dwellers
Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Lisa Kowalski was overwhelmed by the continued screaming of the air-raid sirens, which continued to wail all around her. Another wave of Chinese bombers began to hit strategic areas around the city. Several bombs landed close enough to the Embassy that it caused the building to shake violently, even from Lisa’s vantage point in the basement. Fortunately, the reinforced bulletproof windows were holding so far, and none of them had burst from the impacts.
As Lisa looked around the basement of the Embassy, she could see fear written across the faces of those huddled under the various tables and desks. Like her, the CIA station chief sat in a chair, trying to read a book and wait out the bombing. Others looked at them like they were crazy for not trying to hide and take further shelter.
The CIA guy got tired of the looks and asked, “Do you really think a table or desk is going to save you if the floor above us collapses?” Then he went right back to reading his book.
Lisa giggled at the interaction. She had been deployed several times to Iraq and Afghanistan during the height of the war, so she remembered what it was like to wait out a bombing. There really wasn’t much point to hiding under a table or desk if the multi-ton floor above you collapsed; it was just as likely to kill you if you were under a desk or sitting in a chair reading a book.
The Embassy had been warned by the DIA about forty-eight hours ago that the Chinese might attack Vietnam. The State Department, however, insisted that China was just making a show of force along the border, that they would not invade.
Two hours ago, when the first bombs and missiles began to hit the capital city of Hanoi, the Ambassador sent an urgent message to headquarters asking what to do. They had been directed to get all non-essential personnel out of the country as best they could and to hunker down in the basement of the Embassy. Supposedly, headquarters was working on coordinating things with the Chinese government to make sure the Embassy and its staff were not targeted by whatever the Chinese were currently doing, but that brought little comfort to those hunkered down with Lisa in the basement. There wasn’t anything to do but wait, however, whether nervously or curled up with a book.
Run Pappi, Run
Lieutenant Colonel Rob Fortney (“Pappi”) was exhausted. He had been trudging through the woods, farm fields, dirt roads, and streams, evading Russian search parties for nearly a week. He was not sure how far he had traveled on foot, but at some point, he stopped hearing dogs and helicopters, so he figured he must have moved far enough away from the search party that they had lost him.
“I hope Ricky made it out,” he thought to himself as he surveyed a farmhouse not far from the edge of the woods.
As he looked at the dwelling, he squinted to see if they had a vehicle. He knew he would never be able to walk out of Russia, but it occurred to him that unlike the Soviet Union, a person could drive from one region to another within Russia without special papers. He figured he could hotwire a car, drive it as close to the Latvian border as possible, and then cross on foot. He had been scoping out this farmhouse for hours now though, waiting to see if there was any activity, and wondering if someone might come home later in the day.
Around 1900 hours, he saw a middle-aged man pull into the drive in a Lada Priora, and he instantly knew he had found what he was looking for. The man got out of the vehicle carrying what appeared to be a bag of groceries and walked to the house and went in. Several lights turned on inside as the man began his evening routine. Pappi waited almost three more hours, until the lights slowly began to turn off and he believed that the man was now in bed, asleep
To be absolutely certain, Pappi waited another hour before he started to move cautiously towards the Lada. As he approached the vehicle, he gently lifted the door handle, hoping with everything in him that there was no car alarm that would go off, alerting the man in the house to his presence. As he lifted it, the door slowly opened without incident.
“No car alarm, thank God,” he thought to himself.
Pappi knew if he started the car there, chances were the owner would hear it. Instead, he placed the vehicle in neutral and undid the parking brake. Then he positioned his hands on the frame of the driver side door and began to gently push the car backwards down the driveway. As he neared the road, he turned the steering wheel slightly, angling the car onto the road.
Once the vehicle was on the road, he pushed it a little further, to make sure he was not directly in front of the house he had just stolen it from, and then he began to look for the wires under the steering column that would allow him to hotwire the car. It took him a few minutes to find the right wires and a few false starts, but eventually the engine of the Lada Priora roared to life. With the vehicle running, he hopped in and opened the glove box. Inside, he found a couple of maps, which he quickly began to look over. He had to estimate where he was since he had no GPS and hadn’t had access to coordinates for some time, but he saw he was not too far from a road that would lead him down to the M-9. If he had calculated correctly, that road would turn into the E-22, which would lead directly to Latvia.
It was roughly 0000 hours in the morning, and Pappi knew he had roughly eight hours or so until the sun came up. If he was going to make his break for it, he needed to do it at night while there was limited traffic on the roads. After getting turned around once, he found a sign that led him to the M-9. From there, he drove for roughly an hour and then the road turned into the E-22.
He glanced nervously at the fuel gauge. There was a little more than three quarters of a tank, but he wasn’t sure how far that would take him.
After nearly two hours on the road, he drove through a couple of small cities and towns. He had seen very few vehicles, and the only ones he did observe were military transport trucks. Many of them were carrying soldiers, towing artillery pieces, or carrying other tools of war. He made sure to keep his distance; he was too close to making it out of Russia to get pulled over for tailgating a military truck or trying to pass a convoy.
As he got closer to the Latvian/Russian border crossing at Terehova, he spotted a small gas station on the right and pulled over. He was less than a mile from the Latvian border and freedom, but he still wasn’t sure how to get across the border without being stopped by the Russians. Because Latvia was a NATO member, there were a number of Russian infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers (BMPs and BTRs) blocking the road at the border. Neither side was actively shooting at each other-at the moment, both sides were content to hope the war would stay in Ukraine and not involve them all the way up here.