As Hutchins’s men had advanced, each trip to their impromptu aid station had gotten longer. Tony was creeping forward, with Hooter behind him, when he realized that they could see a small building, and that someone in it was shooting.
They flattened, Tony wiping snow off his face again. Looking left and right, he could see the troops pouring fire into the doors and windows. This went on for some time, when suddenly there was a whooshing sound and a smoke trail drew a line from the trees to the building. A second joined it, and the twin explosions tore chunks out of the walls, blew out the windows, and finally collapsed the roof.
There was no more firing.
CHAPTER 34
Crossings
McLaren focused his binoculars on the far side and listened to the tempo of the shelling. It was shifting, moving back from the rear areas toward the river, and increasing in volume as heavy mortars and other guns joined in. He nodded to himself. His instincts had been right. The North Koreans were trying to bull their way across the Han quickly — without a prolonged preparatory barrage.
He glanced at Hansen, who lay flat on the snowbank beside him. “Doug, make sure all commands are on their toes. It’s going to hit the fan any minute now.”
Hansen nodded and wriggled away toward the M577 command vehicle sheltered in a clump of trees. He dropped back into the snow a moment later.
“They’re as ready as they can be, General.” Hansen stopped talking and lowered his face as a shell whirred overhead and exploded two hundred meters behind them. When he looked up again, McLaren saw a deep frown. “Look, General. Staying around is crazy. There isn’t anything more you can do here — ’cept get killed, that is.”
McLaren knew his aide was right. He had an army to run, and he couldn’t do it with North Korean shells dropping all around his ears. But something in him resisted the idea of leaving. He’d grown tired of watching pins move back and forth across a bloodless map. It had grown too clinical, made him feel too detached from reality.
He’d come up to see the battle, to get a feel for what his troops were really going through. And McLaren was convinced that he needed that understanding. How else could he realistically appraise his units’ ability to carry out his orders? Prewar staff analyses of things like the effects of heavy artillery fire on unit morale and cohesion were one thing. It was quite another to hear the shells coming in, to see the explosions, and to witness the terrible carnage they could cause. Nothing he’d seen during his three tours in South Vietnam had quite prepared him for the terrible reality of this full-scale, flat-out war. That had been a different kind of fighting.
KARRUMPH. KARRUMMPH. KARRUMPH. Shells burst in the ice on the edge of the river, spewing clouds of gray smoke that drifted and merged with the freshening wind. The North Koreans were trying to build a smoke screen to cover their assault force.
They were unlucky in the wind. It was strong enough to thin and rip any screen almost as fast as it was laid. McLaren kept his binoculars on where he knew the far bank to be, waiting for a gap in the acrid-smelling smoke big enough to see through.
There. Squat, boat-hulled vehicles swarmed into view and trundled down the slope to slide into Han. They bellied through the ice-choked river, moving fast on twin engine-driven waterjets. McLaren identified them as BTR-60s — amphibious, wheeled APCs that could carry sixteen troops each. They vanished into gray obscurity as more smoke shells exploded along the near bank.
He hadn’t been able to get a good fix on their numbers, but if the NKs were following Soviet doctrine as rigidly as they had up till now, there was at least a battalion’s worth of armored vehicles out there swimming the river toward his position. Other North Korean battalions were undoubtedly attacking at other points along the Han — all probing for the weak spot.
McLaren smiled grimly to himself. If they got across, they’d soon realize that his defense line was weak along its entire length. In some places battalions were defending frontages that staff theoreticians would have thought too wide for brigades. And that meant that his troops couldn’t afford to lose this fight on the Han. Every enemy assault had to be driven back into the river before the NKs could start laying pontoon bridges to bring their heavy armor across.
He shook his head. If his men could just blunt this North Korean drive, they’d buy him a badly needed day to strengthen his defenses and assemble more of the reinforcements arriving hourly from the States and from South Korea’s reserve depots.
The engine noises from the river were audible now, even under the noise of the barrage. McLaren rose to his knees, studying the slit trenches and foxholes occupied by his first line of defense — Dragon teams and the infantry to guard them. The Dragon launchers were equipped with thermal sights that would let their crews see clearly through the now-ragged North Korean smoke screen. They would carry the fight to the NK assault force while his M-48 and M-60 tanks stayed hidden.
Seconds passed. C’mon, c’mon. Let ’em have it. Don’t let ’em get in too close. The Dragons couldn’t hit anything within three hundred meters. McLaren willed himself to patience. He had to assume that the infantry commanders below him knew what they were doing.
A team fired off to his left, the flame from its missile reaching through the smoke for an unseen target. McLaren followed it with his eyes and saw the gray smoke wall glow orange for a moment. A hit! Then another Dragon team fired. And another after that. Others followed suit, too fast to keep track of.
A rift appeared in the rapidly thinning screen, and through it McLaren could see the shattered remains of the North Korean assault force. Three BTR-60s were dead in the water, spinning rapidly downstream with the current. Several others were on fire, tilted over half-in and half-out of the water along the far bank. Another rolled over and capsized, the flames that cloaked it bubbling into white, hissing steam. Swirling foam marked the watery graves of still other APCs. Survivors splashed vainly in the icy water for moments before being pulled under, overcome by the cold and weighed down by their equipment. Only a handful of BTRs still came on, emerging from the smoke as they neared the riverbank.
The lead North Korean vehicle reared up out of the water and exploded as a round from an M-60 tank found its target. Others were marked down and destroyed in the shallows. It was a slaughter. The BTRs had armor that could stop machine gun fire. They weren’t intended to stand up to tank cannon — and they didn’t, at least not for long.
McLaren sat watching the last BTR-60s burn on the water’s edge while Hansen reported the results of the other attacks. They were all the same. The North Korean hasty assault had failed. Now they would have to spend precious time assembling their heavy artillery and armor before making another attempt.
McLaren had his day.
Colonel General Cho slowly lowered his binoculars. The 27th Mechanized Infantry had been one of his best battalions. He turned and looked steadily at his deputy, who now commanded Cho’s old II Corps. “I fear the smoke screen was an error in judgment.”
Lieutenant General Chyong nodded, his face carefully impassive. “I agree. The smoke didn’t interfere with the fascists’ missile systems at all. Instead, it only ensured that our own tanks and support weapons couldn’t provide sufficient covering fire.”
The two men turned and walked side by side down the hill toward their waiting command vehicles. They ignored the ambulances racing across the ground ahead of them, each filled with maimed survivors of the failed attack. Deaths and wounds were the currency of war, and neither Cho nor Chyong knew of any way to avoid them.