"Comrade Captain!" the radar operator shouted. "Two and Three report they are being strafed!"
"Have they been hit?"
"No casualties, sir!"
"Have all units switch on their radars." There was nothing to be gained by hiding now.
"Three targets, Comrade Captain. Incoming, range three thousand…"
"Lock on!"
The turret traversed slowly, the quad guns rising to firing position.
"Target locked! Tracking!"
"Chigum!" Sun shouted. "Now! Fire!"
The firing of the four 23-mm cannons sounded like paper tearing or a buzz-saw, but impossibly loud. A shower of empty shell casings arced golden into the night, and the ZSU's turret shuddered with the force of the gunfire. Brilliant green tracers streamed into the night.
0433 hours
Tomcat 205
Tombstone pulled back on the stick. His chances of hitting anything were practically nil, but his pass might have broken the gomers' concentration.
"Three Intruders coming down behind us" Snowball reported. "They report target lock. They're into their run."
"Hang tight, Snowy. We'll loop back and give them cover."
0433 hours
Intruder 555
Jolly saw the tracers arcing toward him from the ground, intermittent streams of green pinpoints which swelled to grapefruit size as they snapped past his cockpit. Instinctively, he hauled the stick right and kicked in his rudder, standing the A-6 on its right wing to avoid the wall of fire.
A glance back at his VDI showed the targeting pipper almost on the target. They were already committed.
Then the Intruder buffeted wildly as something slammed into the hull. Shit!
Jackhammer blows crashed along the starboard side of the aircraft, and there was a searing, metallic ricochet sound that felt suspiciously like a turbine blade chopping through paper-thin hull metal.
"We're hit!" Chucker yelled.
"Damn it, don't you think I know that?"
Power died on his starboard engine. The VDI was dead, the computer off-line. The annunciator panel was lit up like a Christmas tree with warning lights: hydraulic pressure; right generator; right engine; fuel pumps two, three, and four.
Almost without thinking, Jolly switched the weapons release to manual and jettisoned the entire load. They'd swung east of their attack path and had lost the target now. The one consolation was that they were no longer near the Nyongch'on LZ. With a thump, the bomb rack broke free and tumbled into the night. There was a flash from somewhere behind, and Jolly hoped their bomb rack had landed on something important. The aircraft leveled off at eight hundred feet, still in a shallow turn to port. They had to buy some altitude. The coast was only a few miles away. If they could just reach the sea…
The fire warning light for the right engine glared at him. He shot out his hand and snapped off the master fuel switch to the starboard engine. The Intruder's fuel readings were plummeting anyway. Jolly could imagine raw fuel spraying into the damaged right engine.
"Jolly," Chucker said, twisting in his seat to look aft. "We got real problems."
Jolly leaned forward, looking past his BN. He caught the yellow glare of open flames licking from the root of the wing. The wing itself had half a dozen holes punched in it, and he could see liquid streaming aft from the punctures.
"That's it," Jolly said. The Intruder could explode any second. "Punch out!"
Chucker leaned back in his seat, reached up over his head, grabbed the primary ejector handle, and yanked it down.
There was a blast, a whirlwind storm of raw noise and shattered Plexiglas. Emptiness yawned at Jolly's right side as he reached for his own ejection handle and pulled it down with a hard, clean motion.
The universe exploded in a thunderclap.
CHAPTER 26
0434 hours
Inside Nyongch'on-kiji
Lieutenant Sikes heard the thunder of the first jet, heard the ratcheting fire from the ZSU. Moments later, the second jet roared overhead farther to the west. There was a flash beyond the road and to the south, and he felt the concussion of high explosives seconds later.
ZSUs! Damn! That was just what they did not need at the moment. From his position at the Nyongch'on airstrip, he could see the ZSU's green tracer fire streaming into the sky in short, precisely targeted bursts, but he couldn't locate the vehicle itself.
He reached for his tactical radio. "Bushmaster Seven, this is Bushmaster One!" There was no answer. "Bush Seven, Bush Seven! Kohl, come in! Over!"
And still there was silence. Kohl and the Navy flier would have shut the big radio down before leaving the hide, but Kohl ought to be picking him up on his tactical set. Something bad was going down out there, though. He'd lost his radio link with the outside world… and that included Cavalry One, which ought to have arrived by now. ZSUs sitting on top of the LZ could blow the whole op. The Navy would have warned Cavalry One off before attacking the Korean armor… which explained why the Marines were late in touching down. But how much later would they be?
"Bushmaster Five, this is Bushmaster One. Do you copy, over?"
"One, this is Five," Huerta's voice replied. "Go ahead."
"Situation report!"
"Bush Six is with us, Lieutenant. POW compound secure and we've got the prisoners. We're sorting them out now."
"Any casualties?"
"One POW dead, three wounded. The bad guys tossed a grenade before we got there."
"How about your force?"
"Han is dead. And Vespasio's wounded. One of the POWs winged him when we moved in."
Sikes frowned. In any combat action accidents were bound to happen, but he needed every man now. If the Marines didn't come in damned soon… "Okay, Five," he said at last. "You know the drill. Ask for volunteers and pass out AKs. Things could be getting rough here pretty quick. Bushmaster One, out."
Operation Righteous Thunder was teetering on the brink between success and disaster. It didn't matter that the SEALs had freed Chimera's crew. If an NK counterattack overwhelmed them in the next few minutes, if half of Chimera's sailors were killed while defending themselves in what was supposed to be their rescue, it would look nasty in the news headlines.
Of course, that wouldn't matter to Sikes personally, because he would be dead, along with his entire command. The SEALs had only their personal weapons, what little equipment they'd been able to haul in on their backs, and whatever they could scrounge from the base. They had no Dragons or TOWs or even LAWs with which to attack enemy armor. Things were getting serious.
He could hear the shriek of another Navy plane, coming in low. If they didn't clear those ZSUs fast, there was going to be one hell of a butcher's bill.
0436 hours
Intruder 537
Lieutenant Jake "Blondie" Shaw squeezed the commit trigger and watched the display change on his VDI. "Desperado Two, coming' in hot!" he announced on the radio. Behind him, Intruder 532 was falling into line for its attack run.
"Left three degrees," Timmons said, his face buried in the radar hood. "I think we're getting a buzz from a Gun Dish."
"ZSUs," Shaw said. He pronounced it zoos. "Can you get a lock?"
"No way," the BN replied. "You're on manual release."
A blazing line of green fire rose dead ahead, so close it seemed impossible that they would miss. Shaw jinked left, then right, his eyes fixed now on the pipper crawling toward the target graphic on his screen. One mile now, less than ten seconds…
Something hit the Intruder's wing with a dull thump, forcing Shaw to correct. "Left two!" Timmons shouted.
"I've got it!" The pipper reached the target box and he pickled the bomb release.
The A-6 shook with a succession of small bumps as the Rockeye cannisters fell away, two at a time. Shaw rammed the throttles home and hauled back on the stick.
He'd been deliberately conservative in the approach, not wanting to scatter Rockeye bomblets into the Nyongch'on compound. Of course, tha
t could mean missing the lead tank in line.
0436 hours
On the Anbyon Road
The ZSU shuddered, overwhelmed by the wall of sound trailing behind the enemy plane. Captain Sun rose cautiously in his hatch just as a rapid-fire succession of brilliant white flashes began popping away in the night several hundred meters from his vehicle. The roar of explosions continued second after second, but fading into the distance; the Yankee had released a string of cluster bombs, each strewing hundreds of bomblets south along the road. One particularly savage blast shook the air, and an orange fireball rolled into the sky. Streamers of fire arced through the darkness as ammunition boxes detonated, rippling and flashing like Chinese firecrackers.
The thunderous bombardment continued, but the explosions were erupting farther and farther to the south. Sun had already decided that he was out of the line of fire. The enemy bombardier had delayed his release a split second too long; the other three Shilkas in his command might have been hit, but his was safe.
Or would be if he could get off the road and into Nyongch'on. No American aircraft would attack him there and risk the lives of his own countrymen.
"Kapsida!" he shouted at the driver. "Go! Go! Go!" The ZSU lurched forward.
0438 hours
inside the Nyongch'on perimeter
Lieutenant Sikes heard the growl of the approaching vehicle and knew at once what it must be. It would be too much to ask of Lady Luck for the Navy ground attack planes to get all the KorCom ZSUs with one pass. Flames seared the night toward the southwest, but at least one of the Soviet-made AA wagons had escaped and was heading toward the camp. It sounded as though it were approaching the main gate, which was facing the road on the south side of the camp.
"Krueger," he snapped. "Austin. With me!"
The two SEALs materialized seconds later. The entire team, except for Robbins, Pasaretti, Vespasio, and Huerta, had rendezvoused at the airstrip. They waited now in the shadows cast by the burning wreckage of the Mi-8.
"Yessir!" Austin said. He carried a silenced H&K MP5. Krueger was the team's second machine gunner, a blond giant who carried the bulky M-60 slung over his shoulders, and wore crossed ammo belts which gave him the air of a muscle-bound hero of some paramilitary movie epic. To his teammates he was known as "Hulk."
"Either of you guys see any RPGs laying around?" Sikes asked.
"Yeah, Boss," Krueger said. "Armory, up by the communications shack. Brian took out some guy with a 'G after we blew the com tower."
"Okay. I need your '60 with me. Austin, get the RPG. Meet us by the motor pool."
"On my way." The SEAL with the MP5 turned and vanished into the shadows again. Sikes touched Krueger's shoulder. "Let's go, Hulk."
The two men ran south, toward the roar of engines.
0439 hours
Outside the Nyongch'on main gate
"Hold it here!"
The Shilka drew to a shuddering halt just outside the main gate as Captain Sun studied the camp through narrowed eyes. Something was decidedly wrong here. He could see the flames from several spots beyond the barbed-wire-crowned chain-link fence. The camp might well have been bombed before his arrival, but that seemed unlikely, given that American POWs were being kept here.
A pair of bodies caught his attention, lifeless forms in mustard-colored jackets sprawled near the gate, AK-47s at their sides. A third body lay farther inside the camp.
So, Nyongch'on had already been attacked by ground troops ― American Special Forces or Rangers, possibly, or even South Korean commandos. Those incoming helicopters were probably intended to ferry out the POWs once they were freed.
A peal of thunder reminded him that there were still killers near, invisible in the sky. More Yankee bombers could be overhead at any time. He dropped down into the turret and banged the hatch shut. "Forward!" he barked.
The Shilka's tracks chewed at the earth, and the vehicle ground forward. There was a rattling jar, and then the chain-link fence parted like cloth before the heavy machine's advance. Something whanged off the hull, followed by a staccato drum-roll of metal striking metal. Machine gun! The Shilka's turret armor was thin ― only nine millimeters ― and was easily pierced by.50caliber machine gun fire. From the sound, he guessed that these were.223 rounds, M-16s possibly, or an M-60.
He peered into the gunner's periscope. Nothing… no! There! He spotted the telltale flicker of a muzzle flash close beside the wreckage of a motor pool garage.
"Turret traverse!" he yelled. The gunner worked the turret control, swinging the quad guns into line. The Shilka's quad mount was extremely versatile, able to engage any target between eighty degrees high and minus seven degrees low. In Afghanistan, the Russians had used them to great effect against guerrilla ground forces. "Depress fifteen!"
He switched to the weapon sight. Cross-hairs centered above the muzzle flash, bouncing with the ZSU's forward motion. Machine gun fire continued to hammer at the turret. The loader checked the receiver. "Ready to fire!"
"Fire!"
The quad guns roared.
0440 hours
The motor pool, Nyongch'on-kiji
"Hit the deck!"
Explosions shrieked and howled, filling the air with whirling splinters and chips of stone. Sikes rolled to the left, sheltering behind the concrete block foundation wall of the motor pool garage as 23-mm shells tore through the wooden side slats like bullets through paper. He'd been hoping to find a point on the ZSU's armor thin enough that the M-60 could penetrate it, but Krueger's volleys hadn't seemed to have any effect at all. The quad turret swung back and forth in short arcs, the cannons rattling away in short, sharp bursts as hell exploded inches above Sikes's head.
"Pull back!" he yelled, wondering if his voice would carry over the storm of noise. Explosive shells chewed into the foundation blocks, spraying chunks of concrete into the garage. "Krueger! Pull-"
He stopped when he saw Krueger, slumped over the stock of the now-silent M-60. Most of the big SEAL's head was gone.
The stuttering howl of the AA tank's guns fell silent, replaced by the roar of its engine as the driver throttled up. Sikes reached down to his harness and detached a grenade. The ZSU was still way too far for a throw, but the monster was grinding closer.
And closer…
0441 hours
Near the motor pool, Nyongch'on-kiji
Captain Sun pressed the radio handset to his ear. "Yes, Comrade General!" he shouted. The Shilka had ceased fire, but the engine was thundering now as they rumbled forward. "Yes! Enemy commandos had infiltrated Nyongch'on-kiji!"
"How large a force, Captain? Have you made contact yet?"
"We have silenced one machine gun, Comrade General. Enemy strength unknown. We have not yet made contact with our own troops."
"What of your own force, Captain?"
Sun had already called the other Shilkas. He'd been unable to raise Numbers Two and Three, and Number Four had thrown a tread. "Two out of action, one damaged, Comrade General. I have moved my vehicle into the camp, where the Americans cannot get at me without bombing their own people."
"Good thinking, Captain. Continue your operation. Flush out the Americans in the camp. Reinforcements are on the way to support you."
"Very well, Comrade General. I-"
The Shilka rocked wildly, as though recoiling before a blow from a gigantic sledgehammer. The radar operator was slung from his seat and smashed against the turret's steel bulkhead. White smoke boiled out of nowhere, fouling the air, burning Sun's eyes. "Comrade General!" he screamed into the handset. "Comrade General!"
No answer. The set was dead.
"We must get out, Captain!" the gunner said, his eyes wide with fear.
"Don't panic!" Undogging the hatch above his head, he drew his pistol, a Chinese Type 59 ― a copy of the Soviet Makarov ― then flung the hatch open.
Flames licked at the Shilka's engine compartment. By the light, he could see the jaggedly twisted metal on the starboard skirts where a high-e
xplosive round had smashed the drive wheel. Of greater concern was the fire. If the flames reached the fuel supply or the ammo stores, they wouldn't find enough of Number One's crew to bury.
He hitched himself out of the hatch and swung his legs over the side. Thunder rolled once more. To the southwest, green tracers arced skyward until a fireball rolled into the heavens.
So, Number Four was gone as well. Captain Sun felt tears burning his eyes, and not just from the acrid smoke. These Americans ― their ROK allies ― had invaded his country, murdered his countrymen. If he could reach them…
Movement caught his eye and he turned. He saw men ― big men, too tall to be South Koreans ― moving out of the shadows. One braced a familiar-looking, meter-long tube over his right shoulder, an RPG-7. A tank killer…
"Ani!" Sun screamed. "No-"
0442 hours
Motor pool, Nyongch'on-kiji
The M-760 bucked in Sikes's hands, the rounds pinning the Korean officer back against the hull of his ZSU. At the same moment, Austin triggered the RPG for a second shot. The booster charge ignited and kicked the five-pound grenade clear of the launcher; the rocket fired an instant later, lifting the grenade in a swiftly rising trajectory which sent it arrowing straight toward the target, just as a second crewman clambered out of the turret.
Austin's first shot had nearly missed. SEALs trained regularly with foreign weapons like the RPG-7, but that was the first time he'd tried to fire one in combat, in the dark, and against a moving target.
This time his target was stationary, well-lit by the flames rising from the rear deck. The rocket-propelled grenade hissed into the ZSU's broad turret and struck a foot above the dying Korean's head. The flash lit up half the compound. Austin and Sikes ducked as exploding ammunition banged and thumped. Fire engulfed the vehicle with a roar.
There was no trace at all left of the ZSU's crew.
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