‘I won’t take it. As far as I’m concerned, my visit here didn’t happen. It’s off the record. This base is gonna hold, I can feel it. We’re gonna start sending out combat patrols to clear the snipers. These guys’ve got the starch to hold the place, and it doesn’t have anything to do with me.’
‘Tell that to Newsweek magazine,’ Dekker said. ‘They’ve already called. Your picture’s gonna be on the Goddamn cover — “Come and take it!” printed in big letters. I can’t fire you now, Nate. You’re a hero. But if you ever disobey another order that I give you — I don’t care how trivial — I’ll stand you up against a wall and make your Goddamn death wish come true! You read me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Clark replied.
Dekker slammed the phone down.
A man was waiting with a radio message. It was from an unrecoverable unit on the road to Khabarovsk. Nate had personally decided it was unrecoverable. ‘Ammo is gone. All weapons destroyed. No sign of relief. Will surrender my unit as ordered. Am destroying radio. Please pray for us. Out.’
Chapter Thirteen
Things had grown worse and worse as the night wore on. Columns of Chinese had come close to Stempel’s small band. There had to be thousands of them — tens of thousands of them — all moving toward the airbase. Finally, one long file of men walked straight through the middle of their dispersed hiding places. Lying under his blanket of snow, Stempel didn’t even breathe for fear of exhaling a white vapor that would begin the killing. But no one saw them. From the frightened looks on the faces of the passing Chinese soldiers, they were too concerned with what lay ahead to pay any attention to their immediate surroundings.
By dawn, the last waves of Chinese had passed, and the battle had begun. So many Chinese had passed that Stempel couldn’t imagine how the airbase could’ve held. The sounds of fighting were intense, but they were nothing when compared with what was to come next.
The woods exploded. That was what it seemed like to Stempel. Wave after wave of concussions. A flight of four jets screamed overhead. In their wake, a storm of fire rolled through the forest. The last bomb in the string was barely a hundred meters away. The ground vibrated under Stempel’s back. Then came the stampeding Chinese. They ran like wild animals. Leaping fallen logs. Darting this way and that. Crashing through limbs that hung low with their weight of snow — falling and being half covered by the avalanche.
Stempel feared the retreating infantry. But he feared death from the sky the most. The thick drifts of snow beside the streambed had been a natural place to hide. But the streambed also offered pilots a break in the thick forest’s canopy.
Gunships flew straight down the narrow stream. Their chopping rotors and whining engines changed pitch as they twisted and turned in the air. Fleeing Chinese who crossed the stream were mowed down. The Apaches’ chin guns stripped branches and even felled whole trees. Thick ice was thrown up in great sheets. The earth shuddered with hundreds of blows. Chinese caught in the open simply disintegrated. Desperate mobs — heedless of the sounds of the airborne predators crossed the ten-meter cut through the woods. Turbines whined. Rotors hacked at air above the agile birds of prey. Snow and ice exploded.
It was impossible to count the dead. The constituent parts of their bodies littered the landscape. Gunships cut great swaths through masses of men. Others ran on unharmed. Life and death were reduced to a senseless, random lottery. And in the background — far, far away — there was thunder. The deep, hellish sound of heavy bombing. B-52s, Harold thought. It had to be. Every thirty-second rumble reminded Stempel that if death sought him out, there was no place on earth to hide.
When the last of the surviving Chinese were gone, the whines of the engines diminished until all was quiet. Even the wails and moans of the wounded quickly fell silent.
The Sergeant rose up. Snow cascaded from his Arctic gear. With vigorous arm signals he waved everyone to their feet. Six of the men got up. Three didn’t.
The Private Who Couldn’t Feel His Feet and two others remained stuck in their banks of snow. During the stillness of their hours in hiding, they had lost all feeling in their lower extremities. The Sergeant took a look at them in the dim light — peeling back their clothes and prodding and probing.
He moved away to exchange urgent whispers with the Spec Three. Stempel heard everything.
‘They got frostbite bad,’ the sergeant said.
‘Should we try rubbin’ snow on their skin?’ the Spec Three asked.
‘Naw. They’re frozen too deep. Don’t rub or massage ’em. Don’t even try to bend ’em. They’re gonna lose them toes and fingers. They’ll be lucky not to lose their hands and feet.’
‘Can they walk at all?’
‘No way.’
That started Stempel on his own calculations. There were six of them who could walk. But one was The Private With The Leg Wound. There weren’t enough healthy guys to go around.
‘Everybody down!’ The Sergeant suddenly hissed. All those who had risen returned to their spots and covered themselves back up. Stempel had barely finished the last flicks of his gloved hands when he caught sight of movement. A point man profiled against the light Not stooped over, but with his rifle at the ready. Stempel let the man pass before burying his arms and hands, finding the hard grips of his rifle under the snow.
Stempel kept his eyes right on the rounded shape of the helmet. The man wearing it was clearly watching him, also.
‘All right,’ The Sergeant said in a normal tone of voice. ‘Nobody move. You got that flag?’ The Spec Three showed him the white towel. The Sergeant nodded. ‘Okay. Lift it up slowly — slo-o-owly — and wave it over your head.’
The Spec Three spun the white towel in lazy figure eights. Time passed. Stempel shivered in the quiet of the frozen woods. He waited to die. He gripped his rifle so firmly with numb hands that his forearms cramped. His gaze remained fixed on the round, white helmet.
‘Freeze!’ someone shouted from a distance. The Spec Three’s towel hung limply. ‘American soldier! Identify yourself!’
Stempel couldn’t believe it. The Sergeant had a grin on his face. The Spec Three was laughing. The Private Who Couldn’t Feel His Feet cried. It was true. Stempel’s eyes drooped shut.
‘Second of the 263rd!’ the joyous sergeant replied.
Stempel opened his eyes. Then they sunk closed again. He heard the crunching of snow. His eyes opened just long enough to see GIs with M-16s. They closed again.
‘You guys really from 2nd Battalion?’ he heard. Stempel forced his eyelids open. Several heads nodded. ‘Is there anybody else?’ he asked. Puffs of smoke shot from his mouth and nose.
Their vow of silence seemed to have taken hold completely. No answer to his question was given. Stempel’s eyes again closed.
Pyotr Andreev trailed Olga through the Safeway. He positioned himself at the end of an aisle. He stayed between the shopping cart filled with his girls and the suspicious-looking man. As his family turned into the next aisle, the man approached Pyotr slowly. He appeared overly preoccupied by the shelves of goods. Pyotr checked his family’s aisle, then stepped back around to watch the man.
He wore a long coat. It wasn’t black — and his hair was bushy, not shaved — but he was large. Muscular. Menacing. He lingered. He stopped at every new brand to study its package. Diapers! Pyotr thought. What’s a man doing shopping for diapers? He quickly checked Olga’s aisle again. She was reading labels — lowly approaching a spot directly opposite the man. Only the thin metal shelving separated the two.