by James Rosone
“Fine,” said Xi in a passive-aggressive tone. “Whatever you have to do to eliminate this problem, do it. We have to stop these incursions by their stealth bombers. Their attacks were pinpricks the first few months of the war—now they’re turning into the death by a thousand cuts. It needs to stop.”
General Xu simply nodded.
Xi then turned his attention to the PLA ground force commander, General Wei Liu, fixing his steely gaze on him. Without saying a word, he had conveyed the message that he wanted to—if General Wei didn’t have any good news to report, it might be his last meeting. “General,” said Xi after an awkward pause, “has our northern army recovered from your failed attempt at retaking the Korean Peninsula?”
Like Admiral Shen, General Wei shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the reminder of his enormous failure. His “trap” he had laid for the Americans had nearly succeeded, and probably would have, if so many resources hadn’t been tied down with the invasion of Taiwan and the Philippines. As it was, his offensive had cost the PLA northern army group nearly 140,000 casualties—something that was impossible to hide from the public eye and had resulted in a lot of angry protests across the country.
“We have, Mr. President,” answered General Wei, trying to save face. “Thanks to the reinforcements from the PLA Militia, the northern army group has now swelled to over 600,000 soldiers. We’ve also pulled nearly 3,000 T-62 tanks out of our reserve force and performed the necessary modifications to get them combat ready. I know the Americans have been building up their forces for a multipronged attack, and so have I. If you will allow me, I’d like to discuss our strategy to deal with their coming offensive.” He was looking for permission to use a version of PowerPoint to visually walk everyone through the plan.
Xi softened his face a bit and nodded for General Wei to begin. “Perhaps the fool has learned his lesson and may still have a use,” he thought, although he made mental plans to speak with General Yang who was commanding the southern forces, in case he needed a replacement.
Turning the presentation on, General Wei brought up the first map. “The Americans have broken their forces down into three main army groups. Army Group Two is currently in Korea, and they’re planning to launch a massive 100-kilometer-wide attack within the next six weeks,” he explained.
Chairman Zhang interrupted to ask, “—How do you know it will begin within six weeks? My sources tell me the Americans will try to coincide their northern offensive with the invasion of Formosa.”
Everyone’s eyes shifted back and forth from Chairman Zhang, the deputy head of State Security, and the PLA ground force commander, not sure who might be telling the truth.
“Mr. Chairman, your source may be correct, and I’m not disputing what your intelligence has discovered. The PLA has several sources within the South Korean Army and the Japanese Defense Force that have given us a rough timeline of when their forces will be attacking China. They told us the timeline could shift, but it would happen plus or minus two weeks of the dates they gave us. That may very well coincide with the timeline for the invasion of Formosa,” he said, doing his best to play both sides of the fence.
When no one else said anything, General Wei continued. “Prior to the American breakout of Korea, the Americans’ First Army Group, which is currently in the Russian Far East, plans to launch an offensive to capture the Russian city of Irkutsk. If they’re able to do this, it’ll place a very large contingent of American soldiers dangerously deep behind our lines. When the Americans start their offensive in Russia, then we can anticipate them also launching their breakout of the Korean Peninsula within the following couple of weeks,” he said and then brought up another slide that talked in greater detail about how they planned on dealing with the Americans once they did invade again.
The discussion lasted for another thirty minutes before Xi asked another question. “Your plan appears to be sound, at least on paper, but right now, you’re relying on the Americans overstretching their supply lines. If there is one thing the Americans are masters at in war, it’s logistics. How do you believe your strategy will account for that?”
“We’ve pondered that question a lot, Mr. President,” said General Wei. “You’re correct—the Americans are masters at logistics. It’s perhaps their greatest strength. The only things that we have in great abundance are time and distance. Our supply lines from the factory to the front lines are short, so we can keep our men supplied faster and easier. That is not the case for the Americans.”
Wei took a swig of water before he went on. “We’re going to let them advance until they hit the Beizhen Line. As I’ve briefed before, we’ve built a defensive line from the outskirts of Panjin to Hure. This line is 220 kilometers in length and has been built and fortified for the past seven months with around-the-clock work crews and engineers. We have underground tunnels, bunkers, artillery positions, antiaircraft guns, missiles, and everything we need to prevent the Americans from getting through and threatening Beijing. We decided on this line after the Americans destroyed Shenyang with a nuclear bomb, destroying all but only a handful of routes the American ground forces could travel to threaten Beijing. In addition, a large swath of that area is still radioactive, which means they won’t be able to have their forces stay there. We’ve focused the bulk of our defenses on the most likely avenues of attack, and I am confident that our men have been extremely thorough.”
“Hmm…,” said President Xi, deep in thought.
“More importantly, this frees up our armored forces to cover the northern passes between Changchun and Harbin, which is far better tank country,” General Wei asserted. “Again, my biggest concern is not so much with the forces in front of us—it’s with that American army group in Siberia. If they’re able to break through the Russian lines and decide to push down into Mongolia, then that could be disastrous. Our armored and mechanized infantry divisions are going to be protecting Harbin and Changchun; they won’t be able to turn and meet an American army group in our rear area without collapsing my northern front.”
Chairman Zhang spoke up at this point to add, “I’ve been assured by the Russians and our Indian allies that they will be able to stop the Americans. The Indians have moved a substantial part of their army to Siberia over the last five months. They should be able to defeat the Americans,” he said convincingly. The others seemed pleased with this information, and the threat of this army group wasn’t discussed any further.
Satisfied with the brief, President Xi dismissed everyone except Zhang. He wanted to talk further with him about some personnel changes that may need to happen. The two men deliberated over potential successors to the current heads of the navy, air force and army, should these commanders fail them again. Xi was particularly interested in finding new, younger, more talented generals that had proven themselves in the war thus far, and more importantly, would be loyal to Xi and Zhang. These recent defeats had weakened both of their standings, and this wasn’t something either of them could allow to go on.
Cowboys and Indians
Russian Far East
Mukhorshibir, Russian Steppe
General Tony Wilde had been put in charge of the US First Army Group, which had formed around the original I Corps, or “Eye Corps.” Once the Marines had been ordered to the South Pacific, he had moved his soldiers from the Korean front to the Russian Far East. It had been a real challenge in the spring to get the entire Corps and Army Group formed up and ready for combat. I Corps, like the other army commands, had essentially doubled in size with all of the draftees arriving by the thousands per day. When his army group surpassed 180,000 troops, General Wilde felt ready to take the Indian Army head-on and defeat them. Now he was poring over maps, reviewing the battle plans.
All that stood between him and the Russian city of Irkutsk was the newly formed Indian Fifth Army. While the Russians had been fighting a delaying action against his forces, the Indians had consolidated their army near Irkutsk. Once his forces had pushed the Russians
to within a few hundred miles of Irkutsk, the Indian Army finally moved forward to meet the Americans.
Intelligence indicated the strength of the combined Russian-Indian Army to be somewhere around 240,000 soldiers, a solid 60,000 soldiers more than the Americans they were gearing up to battle. However, the American soldiers were battle-hardened, not just from the recent fighting in Korea, but the decades of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. What General Wilde lacked was a sufficient number of vehicles to allow the majority of his forces to be mobile. He had to rely heavily on helicopters to transport troops near their objectives, and then they had to move in on foot. This lack of necessary equipment was the one area that concerned General Wilde the most, but it was also the one area he had no control over until the factories back home were able to produce the needed tools to support such a massive army fighting in both Europe and Asia.
Brigadier General Sam Sykes got his attention as he pointed to sections on the digital map. “Sir, the latest reports from the field show the Indians are deploying their armor units here, here and here,” he explained.
Wilde nodded. “Those are good positions. It gives them a lot of maneuver room,” he replied and then ran his hand across the map along the road that led to this particular plateau.
“This is good tank country,” he concluded privately.
“Deploy our tanks here but do not engage,” General Wilde suggested. “The Indians are using T-72s. Those tanks do not have nearly the reach ours do. Let’s draw them in to us and then snipe at them from a distance.” He looked around the room to see if there were any objections from the group or any possible considerations he might have missed.
Brigadier General Todd Jackson spoke up. “If we deploy the tanks there, then we should move some of our antitank vehicles and troops to these locations here,” he explained, pointing. “This will protect our flanks. My concern with luring the enemy armor closer to us is that they outnumber us a good six to one. By placing our antitank units here, we not only protect our flanks, but we’ll be able to hammer them when their reserve units charge forward in a pincer move.”
General Wilde smiled. “I knew there was a reason why we invited you tankers to these strategy meetings,” he said to a few laughs and head nods.
“Well, someone needs to make sure headquarters knows what’s going on out there,” General Jackson replied with a wry smile.
General Wilde put a lot of stock in anything Jackson said—he was a brilliant tanker. He commanded the newly reconstituted 4th Armored Division, which had famously spearheaded General Patton’s charge at the Battle of the Bulge during World War II. General Jackson had commanded a tank brigade during the early days of the Second Korean War and had fought with great distinction. His reward had been taking command of this newly constituted and largely inexperienced division in the Russian Far East.
“If I could, General, I’d also like to recommend that we place a battalion of self-propelled 155mm Howitzers, our Paladin unit, in this area here,” Jackson said, pointing to an area a few kilometers back from where the battle would take place. “This gives the guns space to maneuver when they take counterbattery fire and still keeps them close enough to hit the enemy’s rear area.”
General Wilde nodded. “No objection here,” he said.
Since General Jackson had received one ask, he decided to push for two. “I was also made aware that the 57th Field Artillery Brigade had recently been equipped with the new M142 high-mobility artillery rocket system or HIMARs,” he said. “When the enemy moves their armored force ten kilometers into the bulge, I’d like your permission to have the entire brigade’s worth of HIMARs launch their antitank rockets. Saturating the enemy advance with hundreds of 227mm rockets will hammer them right before I unleash my ambush.”
Looking at the map, and at the units he had available for this coming battle, General Wilde nodded in agreement again. “I think that’s a good plan. Once the enemy armor has spent themselves, we’ll need to go on the offensive, and this still keeps that battalion close enough to the front, so they can catch up when we advance and still provide good artillery coverage.”
General Wilde signaled for his Air Force liaison officer, or LNO, and his Army aviation LNO to come join them at the table. He addressed the Air Force LNO first. “Colonel, it’s going to be imperative that you flyboys keep the Indian fighters and ground-attack aircraft off our backs during this battle. I’ve heard nothing but good things about those Jaguar aircraft, and that is the last thing we need hitting our tanks. Plus, if you can’t keep the skies clear, I can’t make heavy use of our own Apache helicopters and the handful of A-10s. Do you foresee a problem with being able to keep the skies open?”
When the US Seventh Fleet had moved to the South Pacific along with the Marines, it had placed a much larger burden on the Air Force to provide air cover for the Allied forces. Fortunately, a Japanese squadron of F-15s had joined them in Russia, but what they really needed was a couple of squadrons of F-22s or F-35s—two aircraft that were in hot demand all across Europe and Asia.
“We’re going to do our best, General. We’ve got the Japanese tasked with high-altitude combat air patrols while a squadron of F-16s will handle the Jaguars. The best news I can give you is that the two squadrons of aircraft we have assigned for this battle are at 100% strength and have combat experience against the Russians,” the Air Force colonel offered, trying to reassure everyone present that they would do their part.
Sighing, Wilde reached down, grabbed his mug of coffee and took a couple of gulps. “This is going to be a tough battle, gentlemen, but it’s one we can win. The enemy may outnumber us, but let’s not forget, they’re largely using older-model Russian equipment—equipment we know we can defeat. Our soldiers are better trained, better equipped and highly motivated to go kick some butt. Take some time and go over the plans with your own staffs. This offensive will get underway in a couple of days,” Wilde concluded.
Once they all left the room, the planning officers and division commanders went about implementing the plan they had just discussed. Wilde was hopeful, but he was also hedging his optimism with a heavy dose of realism.
*******
Tarbagatay, Eastern Siberia
Brigadier General Todd Jackson was taking a few minutes to be alone in his tent before the day went into full gear. It was his twelve-year-old son’s birthday in ten days, and he wanted to make sure he took some time out of his day to write a personal letter, just in case something did happen and he didn’t make it back home. Pulling his pen out of his breast pocket, he wrote:
Son,
You are growing into a wonderful and strong young man. I know the past few years have been tough on you with our recent move, but I need you to be strong for your mother and your sister.
There’s so much I want to tell you, and I promise when I return home from this war, we’ll take a few days for just you and me to talk. We’ll go to Grandpa’s cottage and do some fishing. No phones, no emails, no work, just the two of us.
I hope you enjoy your birthday party with your friends. I wish I could be there for it. Turning thirteen is a big milestone. You’re now a teenager, and I couldn’t be prouder of how well you’ve turned out. I brag about you as often as I can to my friends here and tell them all about that huge fish you caught last summer at Grandpa’s place. I can’t wait to see pictures of your party when Mom posts them on Facebook.
Stay safe, and go easy on your mom and sister. This has been hard on them as well. I love you, more than you will ever know.
Love, Dad
Placing his pen down, he gently folded the piece of paper and placed it in an envelope he had addressed earlier. After he peeled the self-adhesive strip and sealed it up, the letter was ready to send back home.
It was now 0530, time to get some breakfast before the division pulled up stakes and headed toward the first major battle of US and Indian forces in the two nations’ history. Walking into the field kitchen, he got in line with the others for so
me morning grub. “Ah, the smell of fresh bacon, biscuits n’gravy, and black coffee…this is the best part of being a soldier in the field,” he thought. Well, that and shooting tanks at the range.
Prior to the beginning of hostilities, he had planned to retire in December after twenty-eight years of military service. He had risen to O-6 colonel and commanded an armor brigade. When the war had started, his retirement papers had been withdrawn, and he’d been told he would be given his first star. He was to command a large armored force in Korea, as part of I Corps, moved to the Korean Peninsula in preparation for the Second Korean War.
That was eight months ago. Now his division had moved from Korea to the Russian Far East. Never in a million years had he thought he’d be leading an armor division into Russia-Siberia, but here he was, preparing for a massive tank battle that would take place near a small Russian village he hadn’t known existed just a few weeks ago. The battle, of course, had been brewing for some time as the three factions maneuvered their forces, angling to find the right ground from which to do battle.
Walking into the back of his command vehicle, General Jackson looked for his operations officer, a charismatic young lieutenant colonel who had risen quickly through the ranks of the Minnesota Army National Guard. In the private sector, the man worked for Amazon as an operations manager. Thus far, he had proven himself to be an adept operations staff officer.
“General, here’s the latest intelligence report on the enemy troop movement,” said the colonel. “They’ve moved their armor and supporting units to the exact location you said they would. The enemy has deployed their formations and should be advancing to meet ours within the hour.”
