“Jesus, that looks like real fun,” Wallace thought. A fighter pilot by profession, the idea of fighting in the dirt appealed to him about as much as anal sex.
“They’re not going to last much longer,” the major said. “Look here. The gomers are behind some of the bunkers now.”
“And look at all that artillery.”
A total of a hundred heavy field guns were now pounding Komanov’s immobile platoon. That amounted to a full battery fixed on each of them, and heavy as his buried concrete box was, it was shaking now, and the air inside filled with cement dust, as Komanov and his crew struggled to keep up with all the targets.
“This is getting exciting, Comrade Lieutenant,” the gunner observed, as he loosed his fifteenth main-gun shot.
Komanov was in his commander’s cupola, looking around and seeing, rather to his surprise, that his bunker and all the others under his command could not deal with the attackers. It was a case of intellectual knowledge finally catching up with what his brain had long proclaimed as evident common sense. He actually was not invincible here. Despite his big tank gun and his two heavy machine guns, he could not deal with all these insects buzzing about him. It was like swatting flies with an icepick. He reckoned that he and his crew had personally killed or wounded a hundred or so attackers-but no tanks. Where were the tanks he yearned to kill? He could do that job well. But to deal with infantry, he needed supporting artillery fire, plus foot soldiers of his own. Without them, he was like a big rock on the seacoast, indestructible, but the waves could just wash around him. And they were doing that now, and then Komanov remembered that all the rocks by the sea were worn down by the waves, and eventually toppled by them. His war had lasted three hours, not even that much, and he was fully surrounded, and if he wanted to survive, it would soon be time to leave.
The thought enraged him. Desert his post? Run away? But then he remembered that he had orders allowing him to do so, if and when his post became untenable. He’d received the orders with a confident chuckle. Run away from an impregnable mini-fortress? What nonsense. But now he was alone. Each of his posts was alone. And-
— the turret rang like an off-tone bell with a direct impact of a heavy shell, and then-
– “Shit!” the gunner screamed. “Shit! My gun’s damaged!”
Komanov looked out of one of his vision slits, and yes, he could see it. The gun tube was scorched and … and actually bent. Was that possible? A gun barrel was the sturdiest structure men could make-but it was slightly bent. And so it was no longer a gun barrel at all, but just an unwieldy steel club. It had fired thirty-four rounds, but it would fire no more. With that gone, he’d never kill a Chinese tank. Komanov took a deep breath to collect himself and his thoughts. Yes, it was time.
“Prepare the post for destruction!” he ordered.
“Now?” the gunner asked incredulously.
“Now!” the lieutenant ordered. “Set it up!”
There was a drill for this, and they’d practiced it. The loader took a demolition charge and set it among the racked shells. The electrical cable was in a spool, which he played out. The gunner ignored this, cranking the turret right to fire his coaxial machine gun at some approaching soldiers, then turning rapidly the other way to strike at those who’d used his reaction to the others’ movement for cover to move themselves. Komanov stepped down from the cupola seat and looked around. There was his bed, and the table at which they’d all eaten their food, and the toilet room and the shower. This bunker had become home, a place of both comfort and work, but now they had to surrender it to the Chinese. It was almost inconceivable, but it could not be denied. In the movies, they’d fight to the death here, but fighting to the death was a lot more comfortable for actors who could start a new film the next week.
“Come on, Sergeant,” he ordered his gunner, who took one last long burst before stepping down and heading toward the escape tunnel.
Komanov counted off the men as they went, then headed out. He realized he hadn’t phoned his intentions back to Regiment, and he hesitated, but, no, there wasn’t time for that now. He’d radio his action from the moving BTR.
The tunnel was low enough that they had to run bent over, but it was also lit, and there was the outer door. When the reserve gunner opened it, they were greeted by the much louder sound of falling shells.
“You fucking took long enough,” a thirtyish sergeant snarled at them. “Come on!” he urged, waving them to his BTR-60.
“Wait.” Komanov took the twist-detonator and attached the wire ends to the terminals. He sheltered behind the concrete abutment that contained the steel door and twisted the handle once.
The demolition charge was ten kilograms of TNT. It and the stored shells created an explosion that roared out of the escape tunnel with a sound like the end of the world, and on the far side of the hill the heavy turret of the never-finished JS-3 tank rocketed skyward, to the amazed pleasure of the Chinese infantrymen. And with that, Komanov’s job was done. He turned and followed his men to board the eight-wheeled armored personnel carrier. It was ensconced on a concrete pad under a grass-covered concrete roof that had prevented anyone from seeing it, and now it raced down the hill to the north and safety.
Bugging out,” the sergeant told the major, tapping the TV screen taking the feed from Marilyn Monroe. ”This bunch just blew up their gun turret. That’s the third one to call it a day.”
“Surprised they lasted this long,” General Wallace said. Sitting still in a combat zone was an idea entirely foreign to him. He’d never done fighting while moving slower than four hundred knots, and he considered that speed to be practically standing still.
“I bet the Russians will be disappointed,” the major said.
“When do we get the downlink to Chabarsovil?”
“Before lunch, sir. We’re sending a team down to show them how to use it.”
The BTR was in many ways the world’s ultimate SUV, with eight driving wheels, the lead four of which turned with the steering wheel. The reservist behind that wheel was a truck driver in civilian life, and knew how to drive only with his right foot pressed to the floor, Komanov decided. He and his men bounced inside like dice in a cup, saved from head injury only by their steel helmets. But they didn’t complain. Looking out of the rifle-firing ports, they could see the impact of Chinese artillery, and the quicker they got away from that, the better they’d all feel.
“How was it for you?” the lieutenant asked the sergeant commanding the vehicle.
“Mainly we were praying for you to be a coward. What with all those shells falling around us. Thank God for whoever built that garage we were hidden in. At least one shell fell directly on it. I nearly shit myself,” the reservist reported with refreshing candor. They were communicating in face-to-face shouts.
“How long to regimental headquarters?”
“About ten minutes. How many did you get?”
“Maybe two hundred,” Komanov thought, rather generously. “Never saw a tank.”
“They’re probably building their ribbon bridges right now. It takes a while. I saw a lot of that when I was in Eighth Guards Army in Germany. Practically all we practiced was crossing rivers. How good are they?”
“They’re not cowards. They advance under fire even when you kill some of them. What happened to our artillery?”
“Wiped out, artillery rockets, came down like a blanket of hail, Comrade Lieutenant, crump,” he replied with a two-handed gesture.