The same pain was felt by everyone. But the others didn’t have the 60 to carry.
‘Don’t forget this,’ Chavez said sadistically. He was standing at the back of the truck, smiling — holding Stempel’s brand new M-60. Along with the fighter bombers, gunships and tanks, someone had scrounged up a few extra machine-guns. They’d drawn straws to see who’d carry it. Harold had lost under suspicious circumstances.
Chavez handed Harold the twenty-three-pound weapon. Harold muttered as he strapped the long sling over his neck and shoulder. That drew laughter from the others, who found his plight amusing. ‘How much you weigh, Stemp?’ Patterson asked. ‘One forty? You’re like an ant, man! Ants can carry ten times their weight, you know.’
‘Fuck you,’ Harold replied to more laughter. He weighed one sixty-five buck naked. They fell into a single file on the left side of the road. It was the side beneath the steep hills. The side from which all the Chinese ambushes had come. The men on the right — on the river’s side — had a bank they could hide behind. The men on the left were a dozen paces from safety.
‘Forward!’ came the command from the front of the line. They moved out. Harold was bent over thirty degrees at the waist. His lungs hurt from the weight of the pack on his back. Sweat popped out in beads along his forehead and neck. It began to trickle from his underarms despite the morning chill. Every footstep had to be carefully placed in the dark. An uneven patch of road threatened an instantly twisted ankle.
‘Feelin’ good, troopah?’ Patterson said to Stempel from behind. ‘Those little stick legs startin’ to wobble on ya any?’
‘F-fuck you,’ Stempel said — his voice broken by the immense effort of marching.
‘Oh, baby, please! Do me, Ha-arold — you big studly…!’
‘Knock it off!’ their squad leader barked. They fell quiet. But the chatter would’ve ended anyway. When they headed up the hill, Stempel’s legs and lungs began to burn.
Harold waited as the maneuver team crawled forward under furious fire. The Chinese knew exactly where the Americans were, where they were going, and what they were trying to do… which was kill them. Patterson and the others had some cover, but not much. The earth and underbrush around them was being peppered with high-powered rounds. They never raised any part of their bodies even an inch above high ground. Even so, he’d seen several of the men stop to bandage small flesh wounds from ricochets or splattered rock chips or wood splinters. Harold wished he could help, but his orders were to lie low till the squad leader gave the signal.
That signal came when the four men of the maneuver team were twenty feet from the bunker. Now it was time to pour on the fire. Everyone watched the squad leader’s silent countdown. He curled his fingers from five, four, three, two, down to one.
Harold raised his M-60 and laid it over the moss-covered rock. The riflemen around him began squeezing off rounds aimed at the black slit in the earth. The grenadiers fired 40-mm grenades which burst all around the single long firing port. Now it was Harold’s turn. He lined up the big gun on the earthen bunker’s open slit and pulled the trigger. It roared and pounded Harold’s shoulder and belched flame two feet from its muzzle. Harold calmly marched the fire into the opening. At seventy meters, he could easily see the dirt kicked up by the large 7.62-mm rounds. Long bursts disappeared into the dark hole where half a dozen men sheltered.
Out of the corner of his eye Harold could see the maneuver team begin their assault. The four men rose and rushed uphill at the bunker from directly beneath it. The men in the bunker were now as good as dead. Anyone who raised his head to fire would be killed by Harold or the five riflemen around him. But if no one stopped the assault team, they would all die in a meatgrinder of hand-grenade shrapnel.
No one stopped the assault team. The four Americans stood straight up and hurled four grenades. It was risky because the toss was uphill. In fact, one of the grenades rolled back down. The four men saw it coming and dove to the ground. It burst safely a few meters away just as the other three grenades lit up the bunker. Bright flame shot out through the slit. Black smoke poured out after it.
‘Cease fire!’ their squad leader shouted. The fire team’s guns all fell silent. The assault team scrambled up the slope. Harold cringed in anticipation, but there were no mines or boobytraps. The men crawled right up to the smoking hole. On silent count they easily slipped all four grenades into the bunker. The four men then slid back down the hill with their ears plugged. Again flame jetted through the firing slit. Harold safed his machine-gun and relaxed. He closed his eyes and massaged his throbbing temples. He was too tired to give a shit about the Chinese soldiers who’d just died.
‘Nate?’ Clark heard over the secure long-distance line. He closed his eyes at the sound of his wife’s voice. ‘Nate, are you all right?’
‘I love you, Lydia. And I miss you and the boys.’ His voice was thick.
‘What’s the matter?’ she asked — instantly on guard. He couldn’t answer just then. ‘Everything seems to be going so well! We’re all so proud of…’
‘I screwed up, Lydia’ he said. He then cleared his throat ‘I sent some brave men too far behind enemy lines, and now they’re going to die. I went too far. I rolled the dice and…’ He couldn’t finish.
Lydia sighed. ‘Tell me what you think you did wrong — exactly.’
Nate described their original plans for a counter-attack. Then his revisions to accelerate the timetables. All his gambles had paid off… except his biggest and last one. ‘I should’ve settled for something more modest. We should’ve done it in stages. Pocket north of the Amur first, then cross the border.’
‘Wouldn’t the Chinese have built defenses at the river? Tried to stop you from crossing…?’
‘If we lose that valley, Lydia, we could lose this war. Everything we’ve got is heading toward one choke point. The prize would be two whole Army Groups — six hundred thousand men and all their equipment — pocketed in the Amur River basin. But if the Chinese take that valley, we’re stuck. We can’t encircle them, and our flanks are totally exposed. We’d have to withdraw and consolidate our positions. They’d get out of the trap and then there’s no end in sight for this thing militarily.’
Lydia remained quiet for a moment. Nate felt the agony of being trapped in a box. Like there was no escape and he was running out of air. ‘You said if the Chinese take that valley,’ Lydia finally said. ‘That means it’s not certain yet.’
Nate sighed. He felt exhausted from worry. ‘I’ve done all I can do.’
‘No, you haven’t. There’s always something more! Think! You’ve always been the best soldier in the world. Now you’re the best general in the world! You can do it. I know you can!’
The Special Forces team had black grease paint on their faces despite the bright morning sun. Clark and the twelve men all sat on the bare metal deck of the pitching helicopter. He’d chosen the Green Berets team over the DOD bodyguards because there was no subtlety to the coming threat. There would be no doubt who and where the enemy was.
Clark and Reed watched the wooded hills of northern China flash by beneath the window. They put down along a narrow dirt road near the head of a column of dismounted infantry. They got out and the helicopter took off. It threw dirt and grit into Nate’s eyes. It would fly several miles to the rear, refuel, and return to pick him up.