‘Charlie Foxtrot Seven Seven?’ came the much louder voice of the fire controller. ‘Can you confirm that grid coordinate has been overrun, over?’
The signal was dying out. Swallowed by the distance. ‘Fire for effect! Fire for effect!’ shouted the fading man.
‘Charlie Foxtrot Seven Seven, do you read, over?’ There was no response. ‘Charlie Foxtrot, do you read, over?’ Again nothing. Through the swirling electronic noise they heard, ‘Charlie Foxtrot Seven Seven, fire for effect at last coordinates.’ They couldn’t understand the garbled response. But the fire controller could. ‘Fire for effect, Goddamnit! On my authority! Out!’ The sign-off broke the spell cast over the room. The radio fell silent with a click. It was an ordinary field radio carried on a backpack. Like the one the man screaming for fire was probably using. People began to clear out.
‘Weird atmospherics,’ someone muttered on passing Andre.
Andre grabbed the man by the arm. ‘Who was that?’
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘Somebody in the shit.’
‘It’s the 25th,’ another man said.
Men edged past Andre, who sagged against the wall.
‘Hey, man? You gonna hand out the mail?’ someone yelled from down the hall.
Andre couldn’t move. Stempel’s in the 25th. He shook his head. No. Stempel was back in Hawaii. Or still on some ship with his parents. He headed down the hall to the mail bag. But still he couldn’t shake the unsettling feeling. If it wasn’t Stempel, it was somebody else. It was thousands of people just like him. All in the shit. The deep, deep shit.
‘Are you gonna hand out the fuckin’ mail or what?’ one of the soldiers said, reaching for Andre’s bag.
‘Hey-hey-hey? Andre warned. He jerked the bag out of his reach. There were complaints from all around. Andre smiled. ‘Now this is 3rd platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, ain’t it?’
‘Come on, fuckhead!’
‘Wait, now. We in the Postal Detachment got us a pro-cedure? He reached into the bag and pulled out the stack of envelopes and small packages. All were battered and crushed. Two thick rubber bands held everything together. Andre cleared his throat theatrically, again rousing the men’s obscenities. ‘Is there an “Aguire” here?’
‘Yo!’
Andre tossed him his letter. ‘Okay,’ he said, intentionally taking his time. He fended off an impatient grab at the mail. It was the same every day. He cleared his throat again. ‘How about an “Alvarez”?’ Alvarez got his package. ‘So far, so good,’ Andre continued. He held the next letter up as if he were farsighted. ‘Next we got us a “Be—”, “Bej—”… Jesus Christ!’
‘Bejgrowicz!’ several shouted all at once. One man grabbed the letter and tossed it high into the air. Bejgrowicz went to retrieve it. Thus it went until ‘Wolfson’ walked away with the padded envelope which clearly held a videotape. Nearly half of 3rd Platoon, Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion were still waiting to see if something had been sorted out of alphabetical order.
Every day since NATO first attacked China, Lieutenant Chin had heard the distant rumble. For the first hour or two, he had looked for storm clouds. Chin didn’t remember the exact moment that he realized what the deep drumbeats really were. He just remembered the feeling. The sinking sensation from somewhere inside. Like when he feared he’d caught leprosy during an outbreak in his province. It had turned out to be a rash, but until the fear had been dispelled by a visiting doctor it had eaten away at him like a psychological rot.
It wasn’t fear. It was melancholy. The thunder of the NATO bombing was fate. It was drawing nearer to him, and he to it.
At the top of the last ridge he finally saw it. The River of the Black Dragon. He knew it was their destination even though they’d been told nothing. They climbed down from the trucks. The road that descended to the riverbank was clogged with burned-out hulks of trucks. More trucks would meet them on the far side of the river, they were told. Chin and his platoon headed down. The river snaked through the hills. They followed its track with their eyes in silence.
The bank was rocky. The river was frozen solid. Men traversed it in long lines of tiny specks. Chin stepped out onto the flat surface. His platoon trailed single file. There were at least half a dozen such columns visible before the twists of the river bent the ivory highway beyond sight.
Chin was nearly halfway across when he saw the first wounded men. One helped the other as they limped to the south. The taller man leaned on a long, crooked branch. His leg was wrapped in bloody bandages. His shorter comrade’s bandages covered his face and head. His arm rested on his buddy’s shoulder. Their progress was slow, but it had purpose. It was homeward bound.
Chin passed the lucky pair. Their faces were drawn and pallid. They were surely in no mood to accept the congratulations of Chin — a healthy man. Perhaps they wouldn’t even understand why he would congratulate them.
But Chin understood. He’d understood for days. Ever since he first heard the rumble.
When they reached the Russian side of the river, there were no trucks.
Nate Clark stood before a bank of radios, but it was clear that they couldn’t raise the 2/263. He stumbled through the busy room. He passed men and women from various nations without seeing them. He sank into his chair. His head, his limbs — they seemed heavy. Like he was on the surface of a huge planet.
Clark picked up the telephone. ‘Get me General Dekker.’ He waited through a series of clicks and hisses — ever more distant connections. The telecommunications net patched him into the Pentagon some seconds later.
‘Nate?’ Dekker said. No words came out. ‘General Clark? Are you there?’
‘I’m here, Ed. I got some bad news.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Second Battalion, 263rd Infantry Regiment’s been overrun by the Chinese.’
‘How bad are the casualties?’
Clark closed his eyes. ‘I said they were overrun, Ed. They met and engaged advancing Chinese infantry from hastily prepared positions. They were overrun as were their rear areas. Brigadier General Merrill — commander of the 2nd Brigade — needed a screening force to buy him time to organize defenses around the airbase at Birobidzhan. The 2nd of the 263rd was that screen.’
‘Oh, God, Nate,’ Dekker said. ‘Squads disappear without a trace, Nate! Sometimes platoons! But never an entire battalion, for Christ’s sake! And you’re tellin’ me Merrill just sacrificed five hundred Goddamn GIs?’
‘I don’t know, sir. But are you ready for the rest?’ Dekker said nothing. ‘We’re not going to be able to withdraw Merrill’s brigade from Birobidzhan to Khabarovsk. The road was cut by Chinese who’d infiltrated undetected to set up blocking positions.’
‘Can’t they push on through?’ Dekker asked. ‘What’s the Chinese strength?’
‘We don’t know. We got only sporadic radio reports from some of the transportation units that were ambushed. Aerial recon shows over a hundred vehicles — mostly trucks — destroyed and burning on the road with no sign of their crews.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Dekker muttered. ‘This is a disaster of the first magnitude.’