Jake set his assault rifle on the ground, reached back and unhooked a LAW tube. He readied it as the SUV gunned to life. The last doors slammed shut. Lifting the launcher so it rested on his shoulder, Jake sighted and fired.
The SUV began backing up, and the shell slammed against it and exploded. The SUV crashed onto its side.
Dropping the tube, Jake scooped up his assault rifle. He knelt, raised it and shot each survivor trying to climb out of the wrecked vehicle.
For them, the fight for Tian Village ended. Intelligence learned later that Jake had guessed right. The seven policemen had forced the villagers to attack with hand grenades. Inside the temple were the villagers’ children, alive, thank God.
The war for Heilongjiang Province continued.
Stan Higgins stood in the temporary V Corps headquarters building, an abandoned Manchurian barn. General Taylor ran the corps, which belonged to First Army.
Taylor’s people spread a computer scroll over a foldup table, tacking it into place. Stan and his two fellow V Corps generals stood around it, waiting.
Stan sipped coffee as he looked around. Portable heaters warmed the barn, but nothing helped like warming his insides. Ah, the first gulp always tasted the best.
“Ready, Mike?” General Taylor asked one of his people.
A short man with a buzz cut nodded curtly. He then turned and snapped his fingers at the data-net personnel.
“Check,” a woman said on a swivel chair.
“Check two,” a man said, tapping his computer.
“Check three,” the operator at the main panel said.
“Okay, sir,” Mike told General Taylor. “It’s up and running.”
“Thanks,” Taylor said. The general was a stocky man with a large gut, looking like a Russian wrestler. He had flushed features and his uniform was always rumpled as if he’d slept in it. Maybe he had. “Let’s see what intelligence has for us today,” Taylor told his three divisional commanders.
Stan sipped more coffee as the electronic paper map lit up with color, depicting mountains, rivers, plains and built-up areas. Blue symbols were American units. Red was for Chinese.
“Hmmm,” Taylor said. “Looks like the Chinese added more formations to their line last night. How come no one spotted these units moving up?”
“This is just like Vietnam,” Stan said.
“What kind of answer is that?” Taylor asked in a peeved tone.
“The NVA were good at night movement,” Stan said. “That’s all I mean.”
“I get that,” Taylor said. “But Vietnam was jungle. Show me the jungle here. None. Nowhere. Besides, none of that matters to me this morning. Once again, the bastards are throwing up heavier fronts than we expected. That means regular battle deployment instead of blitzkrieg. We need to move through this country, not fight every inch of the way.”
Stan eyed the map. US 3rd Army Group drove for Harbin, the capital and largest city of Heilongjiang Province. It was the eighth most populous metropolitan area in China, with over fifteen million people. For their purposes, the city was important as a communications hub. The roads and rails of Heilongjiang Province all connected in Harbin. In winter, the provincial capital was bitterly cold, he’d read. The Chinese had actually nicknamed it the Ice City. Apparently, Harbin was notable for its beautiful ice sculptures in winter and its Russian legacy from Tsarist times. Good thing they were attacking in June instead of January.
“We’re supposed to open this route,” Taylor said, peevishly. “I’d expected another day of motoring. Now the Chinese have sealed it up again, much sooner than we expected.”
The divisional commanders nodded, Stan among them. That had been the continuing problem so far. Militia and guerilla forces rose up like weeds, slowing the advance long enough for the Chinese to rush yet another group of regular formations in front of them. That meant another formal assault, as the general had already said, with air and artillery assistance. They needed speed in order to shock the enemy and paralyze his reactions. That had happened the first week. At the end of the second, the Chinese were already stiffening as if they’d taken the measure of their enemies and knew what to do now.
“Any ideas?” Taylor asked.
Stan sipped his coffee in silence.
“What’s this, Professor?” Taylor asked. “Usually you have something to say.”
“Well…” Stan said.
“Here we go,” General Peters muttered beside him.
“Spit it out, Higgins,” Taylor said.
Swallowing the rest of his coffee, tossing the cup aside, Stan pointed at the Songhua River. It flowed north to the Amur River between Siberia and Manchuria, and from here it reached south all the way to Harbin, actually curving west around the city and heading in the direction of the Great Manchurian Plain—the Russians drove toward Harbin from that direction. The river also happened to cut though the enemy’s latest defensive positions before them.
“I see the Songhua,” Taylor said. “So what? It’s simply another obstacle, is all.”
“Maybe it’s time we gave the Chinese a new flavor of stealthy maneuvers,” Stan said.
“I don’t have time for your cryptic comments, Higgins. Just get to the point.”
“As you know, sir, our Lees are amphibious.”
Taylor squinted at Higgins as if he didn’t know that.
The Lee was a twenty-ton scout or light tank. Stan liked them because they could do things a heavier Jefferson couldn’t. For one thing, the Lee could cross a bridge that couldn’t handle a Jefferson. It burned one-third as much fuel, which made a big difference in a cross-Manchurian sprint. Unfortunately, while the armor could resist 12.7mm guns and heavy caliber rifles, it couldn’t stop RPGs or 40mm autocannons, let alone a Chinese main battle tank’s round. As the name implied, the Lees scouted. They did not engage in frontal assaults like a MBT.
Another thing that made the Lee interesting to Stan was its main armament. The light tank lacked a strong enough turret and chassis to take the recoil of a 120mm cannon, let alone a 175mm like the Jefferson. To give the Lee enough punch, the designers had installed a missile-firing barrel. That eliminated the need for a complex, stabilized cannon. The recoil from the missile was negligible, so the Lee’s barrel could super-elevate to target tall buildings, mountainsides and helicopters.
Way back in the 1960s, the US Army had a similar design, the M551 Sheridan light tank. Back then, though, the electronics proved too crude and the Sheridan fired a large, 152mm low-velocity round with poor accuracy. It also fired one of the first guided missiles—the Shillelagh—which also had low reliability. The Sheridan had been a bust, but that was then and this was now.
The Lee launched the proven Hellfire II missile for pinpoint accuracy. When simple bombardment was called for, the crew substituted a cheap dumb rocket with greater explosive power in place of the Hellfire’s sophisticated internal guidance system.
Each of their battalions had a platoon of Lees. As Stan studied the map, he thought about General James Wolfe in the battle for Quebec City and Canada back in 1759. Maybe they could do something similar with the Lees.
“Sir,” Stan said, “none of us are going to easily maneuver through the mountains.” He pointed at the rugged terrain beside the Songhua. “If we know it, the Chinese must realize it, too. If they’ve sticking to the procedures they’ve already shown, I’m sure they’ve already buried hordes of mines here, here and here.” He indicated easy open terrain.
“I’m still not tracking your amphibious statement,” Taylor said.