"Why doesn't it hurt more," Quantrill asked, limping down a narrow corridor to a faintly-lit room.
"It will," the man predicted. “Take this towel and stretch out. Co-cap 'n Bly's our paramedic, I 'll get him soon as we're at cruise altitude." He started to duck out of the room as Quantrill gazed at the swollen discoloration where the slug had exited his flesh. "You have any idea where we're going?"
"We had a stop scheduled at Hot Springs, but cap'n doesn't want a repeat of this. We're headed home for weapons refitting."
"Where's home?"
"College Station, Texas. If you got any Texas Aggie jokes, pal, better jettison 'em now," he grinned. "We'd like you to be a live hero."
The flood of self-redemption, and of awareness that he had been shot, washed over Quantrill in successive waves. He fainted.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Sandys jurnal Aug. 16 Fri.
My dady had mom drive us to aggie pens today. Turkys are real dumb, most were dead and pecked up. We let the longhorns.go, the rushian bores had dug under the ciclone fence. Boy they must be woppers the hole was big as a tumblweed. My dady says its just as well. He dont want to deal with them d-v-ls, there smarter than some folks he knows. Mom and me helped my dady, he cant use his hands, says there better but I think thats a fib. Got fewl for truck. A man says aggie stashion here will do goverment work on ant racks. Boy that must be a sight but why bild ant racks? Mistery!! Man says fallout worse next 2 days so back we go to the hole. I dont like it so much now, it has long deep cracks and I hear things squeek back there. My dady is all tuckered, I wish I was bigger so he coud lean on me.
Chapter Thirty-Six
As the delta neared the Mississippi River, isotope-enhanced RUS curtain bombs carved away two CPA spearheads south of the Khrebet Dzhagdy, the Dzhagdy mountain range. Once again the swath of destruction fried animal tissue through armor and, thanks to isotope enhancement, this time the land would lie fallow for over a year before it could be safely traversed. It was essential that a curtain bomb be physically aimed and sequenced with others. Given a few hours preparation, and despite the fact that they condemned half a division of their own rearguard to death as well, RUS munitions specialists were able to detonate a chain of devices that sterilized a strip of their own embattled soil for hundreds of klicks. It was truly a demilitarized no-man's land, and a jubiliant Tass dubbed it the Wall of Lenin. Tacticians on all sides were quick to see that such a device, far from an ultimate weapon, generally was best employed in open country or down the length of a valley. The sizzling stream of neutrons could not zap an infantry squad through a mountain, though their escape might be problematic.
Taras Zenkovitch, the burly Ukrainian field marshal in the Amur heights, watched a split-screen monitor that simultaneously showed spy-eye views of the western Amur basin and the Irkutsk region around Lake Baikal. "Were I Chang Wei," he rumbled into his scrambler circuit to the Supreme Council room deep in the Urals, "I would be mobilizing at Ulan Bator for a strike toward Ozero Baikal. Were I Minister Konieff," he added, "I would have our ski troops dug in above those Mongol passes in the next twenty-four hours." Thanks to a glitch in the system, Zenkovitch had no video to the war room half a continent away.
Chairman Oleg Konieff's reply lanced out of the mumble of several voices: "Ski troops in August, Marshal Zenkovitch?"
"They will need skis before Chang is through testing us there."
"Indeed. Have you less concern for their movement from Sinkiang into Kirghiz and Kazakhstan?"
"With the shoulder-fired weapons we furnish the Kazakhs, I would say Chang is the one who will have the greater concern," Zenkovitch replied. "If the Afghans had been as well supplied against us in 1980, our gunships and personnel carriers would have availed us little."
It was a gamble to trust the southern Islamic republics which had once been member states of the USSR, but so far it was paying off. The doughty Turkic-speaking Kazakhs and Kirghiz valued their nomadic traditions more than progress. A mounted, befurred Kazakh with a self-guided SSM at his shoulder comprised a wicked welcome for an Indian gun-ship. RUS leaders were beginning to hope that buffer republics were more economical than tributary states.
"The SinoInds will suffer far more attrition than we, along the southwestern border," Konieff agreed. "Our situation south of Baikal may be more serious—if the Chinese still hope to take the new railway."
"We will know that by the efforts they make to destroy it," said Zenkovitch. "Will they send conventional air strikes, or nuke the UstKut and Kumora railyards?"
Another voice; Zenkovitch guessed it was Suslov, the dour Georgian marshal. "You seem to take the loss of our rail link for granted."
"We have known it was vulnerable. We can only sell it dearly and," he tried rough optimism, "hope the sale is not transacted."
Konieff, the crucial connection between the RUS Army high command and the all-powerful Supreme Council, headed off this clash of generals with, "Can our troops move beyond those passes to Ulan Bator?"
"I could have two divisions in Mongolia in sixty hours," Suslov rasped. "But they would only draw more Chinese into a region that must be defended man against man. Far more efficient to strike directly into Sinkiang, as I outlined in my summary."
Murmurs of agreement, with no grave dissent. RUS supply lines were much better to the Kazakhstan-Sinkiang border, and the Kazakhs — more or less friendly — were not expected to resist RUS troops moving toward China.
"And where do you stand on the defense of Irkutsk?"
"I concur with Zenkovitch," said Suslov, "with division HQ supporting a brigade of mountain troops in the passes north of Ulan Bator. No more than a brigade at the moment; we do not want to overstate our preparations there."
When Suslov and Zenkovitch agreed, it was a marriage of exigency and monolithic far-sightedness: fox and hedgehog. Konieff expected agreement from the Supreme Council and said as much.
In another war room near Yangku, Minister of Defense Chang Wei mused over a battle map with strategists of the CPA; the Chinese People's Army. The relief map might have seemed anachronistic with Chang, at forty-three the most vigorous leader of the CPA since Lin Piao during the historic Long March. Yet the solidity of the map lent an air of realism somehow lacking in video displays. Chang's heavy-lidded eyes were cool, but the pulse at his temple was prominent: When he spoke now, the chiefs of staff knew he addressed rotund Jung Hsia, Marshal of the 3rd CPA. "The flatlands and marshes of the Amur were a bitter lesson, compatriots. We would have done better to strike from Ulan Bator."
Jung swallowed audibly. Wu Shih, a Jung disciple who was quick to see an implication, took the apologist's role. "The Amur spearhead was a courageous blow, esteemed Chang. With more hovercraft, the 3rd Army might have reached the Dzhagdy Chain before the counterblow fell." The Dzhagdy range was the last natural barrier to the Okhotsk Sea. Once into those recesses, the CPA troops could have lived through the Wall of Lenin. “We all accepted the risk; must we not accept its consequences?"
As Chang replied he removed small counters from the map, bitterly aware of their symbolism. "Three front-line divisions are a costly consequence," he said, and glanced almost shyly at the small colorless man who had so far said nothing. "Fortunately, I am assured, Minister Cha can extract a greater toll from the enemy."