The local region here had different names. One was the Colorado Front Range. Liang preferred its other name: the Front Range Urban Corridor. It stretched from Pueblo, Colorado north along I-25 to Cheyenne, Wyoming. Within the oblong area lived nearly five million Americans. The cities sheltered themselves where the Great Plains merged into the Southern Rockies. The majority of the people of Colorado lived here under the auspices of the looming mountains. Denver itself lay a mere twelve miles east from the beginning range.
Because of the protecting Rockies, it was normally sunny this time of year. Usually the mountains were a bulwark against the eastward-traveling storms. Instead, there had been rain, rain and more rain. Finally, for the last several days the temperature had dropped. It froze the mud into icy ground the vehicles could use. Ever since the new orders and the proper winter weather, he had been maneuvering the assault Armies into position.
The Tenth and the Fifteenth Armies would give him Greater Denver. He’d half-expected Chairman Hong to give him such a useless order as this, so he’d had his staff prepare a contingency plan at the start of the rains. The shifting of corps had already taken place.
The Third Front had become a well-oiled machine. Despite desperate months of battle, it still reacted swiftly to his will.
Liang checked his watch. The opening attack would occur in less than three hours. For this city storming, he had decided to return to the old-fashioned methods of urban assault: mass bombardments of air and artillery, followed by the attack. In this case, it would primarily rely on artillery power for the opening assaults. The bulk of his air…he had an altogether different use for it.
The plan was simple. The best ones usually were. Massed long-range guns would turn Greater Denver and the outlying cities into rubble. The Tenth and Fifteenth Armies would then smash their way in through costly but time-effective wave assaults. That would be inelegant, he knew, but he would turn what would otherwise become a draining slugfest into a fast siege. He’d support it through massive air power, choking the Americans of reinforcements and supplies. He could afford an attrition battle on one condition. He had to make sure the Americans didn’t receive any replenishment—more soldiers. They could always airlift a trickle, of course. He had to prevent a flood.
Liang sipped his tea. He’d welcomed the needed rest the rains had forced upon the Third Front. It had given the mechanics time to repair the tanks, the trucks and the IFVs in that order. It had given his commanders time to reorganize and rest their soldiers for the next great push. The speed at which Tenth and Fifteenth Armies had shed their tank corps and accepted more infantry divisions proved their renewed zest.
With a click, Marshal Liang set his teacup into its saucer. He rose and stepped to the window. Through the falling snow, he spied four Mobile Canopy ABMs. They waited on specially-built rail cars, having arrived this morning.
Each MC ABM was massive, bigger even than an American Behemoth tank the Chairman dreaded. The Behemoth weighed three hundred tons. The MC ABMs weighed twice as much. Of course, they were not battlefield weapons in the strict sense like an IFV or hovertank.
He could put these to good use. In fact, their arrival had convinced him of the rightness of his idea. He would risk his air power in the next few days. These MC ABMs would mightily strengthen his anti-air defenses, giving him a strong fallback in case of an aerial disaster. He didn’t expect a catastrophe, but he was Marshal Liang, the commander who left nothing to chance.
Liang’s eyes went blank as once more he thought about what Marshal Wu had told him, how General Cho Deng’s death had persuaded the Chairman of the need for haste north.
It was clever of the Chairman to understand what General Cho Deng’s death signified. Liang would miss his best hovertank commander. It still was incredible to him how the Americans had gone to such fantastic efforts to kill him. How had they known General Deng would inspect the supply group that night? That implied a spy ring inside the Chinese military. The thought was sobering indeed.
But the point of the assassination meant something critical. The Americans hadn’t assassinated any other generals, just Cho Deng.
Many on his staff believed the Americans were violent barbarians, given to emotionalism. Countless of the Chinese higher command thought of Americans as Mongols from China’s past. Liang did not agree with the assessment. These Americans could be shrewd and were often cunning. Sometimes they were brilliant.
The assassination of General Cho Deng was one of those times. To Liang, it showed the spy ring was larger and more intrusive than he would have believed possible. How otherwise did the Americans know about General Deng’s influence? Other commanders had carefully listened to Deng’s theories. By killing him, the Americans slew the strongest proponent of relentless tank and hovercraft breakthroughs and exploitation drives. Cho Deng had not only practiced those drives better than others did. His words and example pushed other commanders to do likewise.
Chairman Hong paid lip service to the ideal of deep penetration drives, but did the Chairman truly understand what must be done to defeat the Americans? Liang had his doubts. The order ten weeks ago to divert Third Front’s armor to help the South Americans captured the enemy around Oklahoma City had hurt the Americans, but it had been wrong nevertheless. Chinese and Brazilian arms had won a great operational battle. Instead, they might have struck a strategic deathblow by driving north harder and deeper and trapping an even greater number of enemies, perhaps shattering the entire Midwestern American Front.
The key to this continental campaign was speed. They needed to drive fast and deep so the Americans never had a chance to recover their poise. The grueling summer battles had been a mistake. Liang would have sent a massive and potent tank Army Group straight up the middle of the prairies. Drive deep and deeper still, spreading out behind the American lines and destroying all communication and higher command. Instead, there had been vast battles of attrition, a slow grind through New Mexico and Texas.
Marshal Liang put his hands behind his back. His right shoulder protested as a half-healed muscle strained at the pull. In less than three hours, the Denver assault would begin. It would fix American attention on the front door, right where he wanted it. With the massed wave assaults, the Americans would no doubt believe the Chinese meant to grind the Denver-defending soldiers to death. He would catch them by surprise, therefore, with his end-run air assault.
The key to taking Denver was the high-altitude I-70 corridor, the thin ribbon of road and rail through which most of the Americans’ supplies would have to thread. If he could destroy I-70 as a supply route, Denver would die on the vine.
His gaze moved again to the MC ABMs. Each vehicle possessed a twelve-man crew. It was a linked system, three rail cars pulled by a massive tractor. One of the trailers held gigantic batteries and chemical fuel storage tanks. Another was a magnetic-propulsion turbine. The last was the laser focusing system. It could project a beam of near strategic strength.
That meant several things. They could shoot down American satellites from the middle of their country, if the enemy was foolish enough to loft any. Even better, he would soon have a nearly impenetrable anti-air and anti-missile umbrella. In a week, several more MC ABMs would arrive.
He would have to compose a poem to Marshal Wu for the man’s thoughtfulness of giving him these strategic assets. Because of them, he would badly surprise the Americans and he might even surprise Chairman Hong.
I leave nothing to chance.
That was his secret. He thought deeper than his fellow marshals did and much deeper than the Americans. Part of the secret was that he had gathered a brain trust of brilliant officers. Outthinking the enemy and beating him with an economy of force made the best use of what he possessed. It would give China the victory despite the un-strategic folly of attempting two variant goals at one time.