Harold Stempel cowered against the icy wall. The trenchline was inundated with artillery and mortars. The night glowed with indescribable orange fire. Each of the crushing blasts was a body blow. Each was the end of the world.
‘What’s goin’ on? screamed the unshaven man next to Stempel.
Stempel didn’t budge from his fetal position. He held his helmet down on his head with one hand, his knees to his chest with the other. Stempel’s hood was drawn tight around his face. The newly issued body armor covered his torso. He watched the orange lightning from behind layers of wool and Kevlar. Each flash opened a wound in Stempel. But it was a wound you couldn’t see.
His vision tunneled. His eyes filled so fully with tears that the orange flashes starred. He was acutely aware of his rapid breathing. He tried to slow it, but he couldn’t draw enough air.
A near miss bounced Stempel off the ground and covered him in snow. Now even the earth lashed out at him.
‘Dear God in Hea-…!’ Stempel began. But the trench itself exploded. His voice was swallowed by thunder. ‘Please sto-o-o-p!’ he yelled.
A medic picked Stempel up. The man was profiled against the low blanket of white clouds that had socked in their air support. He dropped Stempel and ran off toward the screaming. Everyone was firing. Everyone but Stempel. No one looked at him. Their weapons blazed. Stempel knew he had to get up. He groped frantically for his rifle.
A massive burst shook the earth. A boiling mushroom cloud rose over the rear wall of the trench. The Chinese had blown an ammo bunker. Smaller and closer explosions still rained down. But Stempel saw something more frightening. Their squad leader came down the trench. ‘Let’s go! Every other man! Come on!’ He pulled people from the wall. He sent them off through a communications trench.
A blast from a heavy shell knocked Stempel to his knees. He was senseless for a moment. Sergeant Moncreif stopped in front of him. ‘Come on, Stemp! They’re inside the wire!’
Stempel rose. He followed the others. Men he now knew better than anybody else in the world. He’d seen them put through every extreme in life. There remained few secrets about their character. They’d been tested. He knew which had passed and which had failed. But as a unit they’d always done their job.
‘They’re inside the wire!’ Moncreif shouted to motivate others to their feet. Stempel followed his squadmates down a slit trench. It was so narrow he had to turn sideways. When the men in the lead slowed, the followers collided. They all were slipsliding on the perpetually slick floor. Time was everything now. Every second that Chinese soldiers remained alive inside the main perimeter meant the chances of holding the base fell. If they circled back to hit a section of the trenches from behind, they’d peel open a hole so wide the base’s defenses would burst like a balloon.
Someone began a scream that was cut short by an explosion.
Again the only thing that saved Stempel were bodies. Layers of people in front of him absorbed the shrapnel from a grenade. Searing fire burned into Stempel’s right arm. He was underneath a man’s body. Bullets flew over his spinning head. The dying man on his legs was unable to draw a breath.
Stempel ducked his chin and looked down his body. The flak jacket was ripped ragged. The pain from his upper arm was intense. The air all around him was filled with projectiles. The ice above him was being sheared away in ledges. There wasn’t a thing he could do to survive. He was helpless.
Two grenades exploded among the Chinese. Stempel saw them fall in the trench ahead. French soldiers dropped into the trench with their stubby rifles spraying fire wildly. One of the Legionnaires was shot in the back by his own man. Another’s helmet flew off as he collapsed backwards. But they killed more than they got killed.
Boots trampled Stempel. Every third or fourth man stomped right on Stempel’s head or chest. He yelled to them for help. Some responded in incomprehensible French. They all kept moving. Finally American medics arrived. They cut at the clothing around Stempel’s upper arm. Peeling the fabric back caused intense pain. So did the fiery alcohol and the pressure bandages. Stempel cried out and kicked his feet into the dead men. The medic gave Stempel a pill, which he swallowed dry. ‘You’ll be fine,’ he said. He sat Stempel up and ran off toward the firefight, which was intense.
Stempel could hardly remember what had happened. The artillery barrage had stopped. A deep rumble rocked the ground for some time. Steady and deep like the thudding subwoofer in his father’s media room. Like five-hundred-pound firecrackers going off hundreds at a time.
He almost felt good. He remembered the main trench. Then in the slit trench. He couldn’t remember the attack. He didn’t even think he’d fired his rifle, which he was surprised to find at his side. Another herd of men stampeded past. Stepping on him. ‘Off to war!’ he mumbled — slurring.
They stopped to toss the bodies of the fallen out of the trench. ‘Hey!’ Stempel yelled, but not loudly enough to get their attention. ‘Those are my buddies!’ His shout drew glances from the nearest two men.
They tossed the last body in the snow… but carefully. They moved on. Stempel was alone again with the dead.
Clark’s J-2 reported to the meeting of joint force commanders. ‘The ice has thinned from over sixty centimeters to under ten.’ The chief of joint staff intelligence had become an expert on the Amur River ice pack. ‘We’re already seeing the Chinese have trouble with their heavy vehicles. They’re laying pontoons to distribute the weight. Plus they halve the loads on their trucks. And it appears to us they’re preparing for the ice flow themselves. They’re using all their available transport just to get supplies across. Pack animals move it from there to the front.’
Clark held his J-2’s gaze. ‘Any guess as to how long we’ve got before it breaks?’ He knew the answer. He was just raising the subject.
‘I’d say… between two and four weeks from now.’
His answer brought a stir from around the table. The French commander said, ‘That means we must attack sometime between right now and two weeks’ He held his hands up in mock confusion. ‘But which? How can we know?’
‘I’ve got a team goin’ in tonight,’ the commander of Clark’s special operations group offered.
‘We launch the offensive at zero four hundred local time on April 14th,’ Clark announced. There was stunned silence. Everyone knew of the funding showdown. No one directly raised the subject of any connection. The German commander came closest.
‘That means the ice must hold for at least three weeks,’ the general said. ‘What if it does not? Is there any flexibility in that date?’ Clark replied that there was not. Although the question ‘Why?’ hung over the room, no one gave voice to it.
The senior French general asked, ‘Has President Davis approved penetration into China to the Jilin-Harbin-Qiqihar line?’
‘Yes,’ Clark replied. ‘He has assured me that no calls for a ceasefire will be entertained until those objectives have been reached. That line is approximately 560 kilometers or 350 miles south of the Amur. It should ensure that the bulk of their invasion forces and mobile reserves are fully enveloped.’
‘We can’t get tied down in civilian control,’ the British general pointed out. ‘There could be chaos. Mass rioting. Disorder.’
‘We won’t,’ Clark replied. ‘If the diplomats start negotiating the shape of the conference table, we’ll reduce those pockets by force and withdraw. Our mission is to destroy the offensive capabilities of the People’s Liberation Army. We’re getting back across the Amur quickly. We have no time for anything more than operational security. No humanitarian relief. No civil administration. Just war, gentlemen. War that will be prosecuted with the utmost violence and skill that we are collectively able to muster. From the moment we launch this counter-offensive, to the moment the last track rolls back across the Amur, I have only one goal. To destroy the ability of my enemy to fight so completely that he will pose no immediate threat to the security of Siberia.’