Jiminez could feel the acceleration in his back. The noise and vibration rose until they shook the cockpit controls. At full military power they roared out of the valley. Speed one hundred and ten. Altitude thirty feet and falling.
They heeled over hard — turning sharply over the Amur. The frozen river snaked through white hills. Tipton rolled the Apache from side-to-side to follow it. To the right was Russia. To the left — China.
Hector’s hand firmly gripped the joystick. His finger was ready to pull the chain gun’s stiff trigger. The pilots of the gunships now increased their spacing. The Apache they followed was over two hundred meters ahead. Hector could no longer see their flight leader’s aircraft.
‘Engaging!’ came the lead’s shout. The loud rattle of his chain gun was clearly audible in the background. The river turned sharply to the left just ahead.
‘Here we go!’ Tipton yelled.
They banked hard around the river bend, then flew straight into the drifting smoke. The gunship ahead of theirs opened fire. It belched orange flame nearly straight toward the ground. Hector saw the first Chinese.
The river was brown from one side to the other. The Chinese had poured dirt to improve the vehicles’ traction. Half a dozen narrow lanes traversed the white ice of the Amur. Each was choked with trucks and scattering infantrymen.
‘Goin’ rockets!’ Tipton shouted at a range of two miles. A half-dozen rockets whooshed from their tubes. Tipton wove wildly through the wide river valley as the rockets raced off in straight, smoking trails. Red fireballs burst all along the Amur. Trucks filled with fuel and ammunition added towering secondary explosions.
Hector shut the sights and sounds from his mind. He lined up a group of scurrying infantrymen and squeezed off a short burst. The gun thrummed through the floorboard into his feet. Small orange flames lit the frozen surface, felling men. A truck pulled out around a burning hulk. Hector laid the crosshairs directly atop the fleeing vehicle. He steadied the aim as Tipton rolled the gunship again. A squeeze of the pistol grip let loose a dozen rounds in a single second. Troops tumbled out of the back of the smoking truck. Fire began licking at the green canvas top.
They were fifteen feet over the battlefield flying at 150 miles per hour. Hector aimed and squeezed as fast as he could. The gun gyrated wildly. Shells exploded in orange strings along the white ice.
A crashing blow knocked the aircraft sideways. Hector’s breath froze solid in his lungs. His eyes shot to the instrument console. There were no red warning lights. When Tipton fired more rockets, Hector assumed the aircraft could still fly. Red-glowing tracers stretched across the flat, open river. He saw flashes in the trees on the riverbank. He trained the crosshairs on the flaming muzzles and held the trigger down. His 1,100 rounds remaining dropped quickly to under a thousand. The woods were on fire. The Chinese anti-aircraft gun fell silent.
The helicopter burst out of the smoke and flame of the battlefield. There were no more targets in the windshield. Hector saw the flight leader’s rotor over a hill to the north of the river.
‘Five three’s at two o’clock!’ he called out. ‘Circling back.’ Tipton followed the river then banked. Two helicopters hovered on the far side of the hill. They rose in unison above the crest and fired. Their wings belched fire as they expended rockets from the safety of a mile’s distance.
Tipton flew up to the ridge beside them. Once in a hover, they began to rise. They peeked out over the rocky spine of the hill. The frozen river lay before them, smoking. The last of the Apaches was weaving its way across the valley. Brilliant flares spat from its tail.
‘Better pull on up clear of the…’ Hector began to say to Tipton, but it was too late. The whoosh of a rocket and blinding flash of an explosion was followed instantly by shrapnel. The 2.75-inch rockets had flown only thirty feet before impacting the hill.
‘Auto-rotating? Tipton shrieked. Hector hung on. The Kevlar main rotor hit the rocks. The canopy shattered. Hector was riddled with shards. By the time the helicopter came to rest in the snow drifts on the valley floor, Hector didn’t have long to live. Leaking fuel cut the process short. The fireball lit the surrounding hills.
Pyotr Andreev sat glued to the television.
‘The White House, Pentagon and Pacific Command in Hawaii all declined to comment on the reports coming out of Paris. But other news agencies in Europe confirmed them. To repeat, Agence Presse reported today that U.S. aircraft in Siberia have engaged Chinese air and ground forces violating the border of the former Republic of Russia. And in Beijing, the Foreign Ministry reiterated its demand that UN troops withdraw from Siberia. “The claims of the former Republic of Russia to Asia,” the Foreign Ministry said, “have never been accepted by the People’s Republic of China and have no legitimate basis in law or in fact.”’
‘Aren’t you going to eat your bweakfast, daddy?’ Masha asked.
It was in such flawless English that Pyotr and Olga both turned. Olga beamed as she dished out pancakes. The girls already spoke to each other exclusively in English. And they had met American friends and adopted American ways. All the trouble seemed so far away.
‘Satellite photographs,’ the news continued, ‘apparently show mass graves just on the outskirts of Moscow. The State Department was unable to speculate whether the deaths were from starvation or disease — which have grown to crisis proportions in Moscow — or from political repression by the Anarchists.’
The television went dark. ‘Come, eat,’ Olga said. She laid the remote control on the table. She wouldn’t look him in the face. His eyes were drawn repeatedly to the darkened television screen.
Chapter Eleven
The C-130 revved its engines. Stempel looked back over his shoulder at the noise. Snow flew off the one-lane road behind the engines. The aircraft had just dropped him and his new platoon in Siberia. Others like it had offloaded the rest of 2nd Battalion, 263rd Infantry. They had flown them in from Japan via Vladivostok. Now they were leaving. Stempel shivered when the backblast washed over the ranks. The stubby, dark green aircraft sped away. It lifted easily into the air. It was empty.
‘2nd Platoo-o-on,’ the lieutenant called out, ‘lock ’n load!’ Men busied themselves all around Stempel. They worked on weapons. It reinforced the nakedness he felt at having no weapon. It was like one of those dreams that you had, showing up at school with no pants. Only it wasn’t a dream.
His bulging white Arctic Bag was strapped onto his back. Mountain Bag for sleeping. Air mattress. He’d read the instructions on the plane. You laced the water-repellent Arctic Bag onto the sleeping bag. It had a quick release zipper for emergency exits.
The platoon sergeant decided Stempel’s load was too light. He hung four ammo belts for the platoon’s two M-60s around his neck. ‘Stick close to the LT,’ he said. Stempel was an unknown quantity. An outsider. Dead weight.
‘Don’t you got a pocket knife or anything, man?’ someone asked. Everyone laughed. It was the jittery laughter of nervousness.
Stempel looked at the sky. The transports were gone. All was quiet. Even the men moving off the road seemed to make no noise. The warmth of his Arctic gear seeped out. It was replaced by the same cold that scraped at his cheeks with each breeze. The sky was clear. The sun was still high in the early afternoon sky. But it seemed to emit no heat.