by Ian Slater
CHAPTER TWENTY
In and around the battle of Port Baikal at the southern end of the lake, American III Corps, reeling from the forward elements of Yesov’s right hook, spearheaded by Minsky’s armored regiments, was rapidly approaching disaster. For the Americans it was a carnage unparalleled in American arms, for not since the marines’ fighting retreat from Chosin Reservoir in the Korean War had there been such a savaging of Americans at close quarters. At one point an entire company, Bravo, from III Corps’ motorized division, was lost within five minutes, disappearing into the lake in a massive sinkhole as the ice, already treshchina-pauk—”spider splintered,” as the Siberians called it — by the pounding of their artillery, suddenly gave way beneath the 103-ton American HETS — heavy equipment transport rigs — and armor that tumbled into the five-thousand-foot deep.
Twenty-three men who had managed to escape the sinking trucks clambered frantically for a grip hold on jagged chunks of car-sized ice floating in the freshwater sea. Other clumps of water-sodden men, having been spilled from the trucks and trailer units as vehicles careened off the ice, were now slithering on the mirrored finish of the floes like so many stricken animals. Many of them died like animals, clubbed to death by OMON and SPETS commandos, who, preferring not to waste ammunition or give their positions away by shooting, moved like ghosts through the blizzard, their white overlays making them indistinguishable from the Americans whom they beat to death, referring to it in their reports to Yesov’s HQ as the reznya tyuleney— “seal slaughter.” To be sure that the American public, especially U.S. students eligible for the draft, got the message, SPETS video close-ups of American dead, though not how they died, were quickly sold to French TV and CBN by Novosibirsk’s Ministry of Information. Within an hour photographs of hideously bluish-black bodies of American dead were flashed around the world, the French TV anchorman, Andre Focault, in Paris, talking “of the unnecessary and undeniable carnage, the direst result of General Douglas Freeman’s violation of the ceasefire… spawned by American arrogance in Asia.”
The La Roche networks and newspapers had a field day with the stills of decapitated Americans littering the blood-smeared floes, the La Roche tabloids calling for Freeman’s “immediate recall.” Only the Jewish lobby, many of whom knew what it meant to live under Siberian domination in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, spoke out against what they called the blatant bias of the networks in showing “such revolting pictures of our dead.”
The networks said they were just reporting the news.
But whatever was said, or shown on the networks, nothing could really convey the full horror of the reality, the smell of disemboweled Americans, or rather what was left of them after the Siberian 203mm howitzers rained down on III Corps’ retreating east flank, a retreat that area commanders were frankly reporting to Freeman was becoming a “rout.” Except for three rifle companies, over three hundred men cut off in the vicinity of S-Three, southernmost of the Siberian breakthroughs, the American line had simply collapsed as men, panicked by the world of shifting, disintegrating ice beneath them, fought each other to get on the few remaining trucks, which in turn were slowed by the necessity of having to put on chains, the blizzard dumping fresh snow on the lake, the ice around and in the corridor marked out for III Corps disintegrating like splintered glass as Minsky’s 203mm kept up their relentless barrage, the OMONs and SPETS on the periphery clubbing and drowning any III Corps stragglers.
North and south of III Corps, the rolling barrages of the Siberian artillery kept up, Yesov’s pincers already beginning to close the trap. Minsky’s guns midway between the north and south pincers “overshot” III Corps, creating a virtual moat between the main body of the retreating Americans and the western shore of the lake, still ten miles eastward. The fury of the Siberian bear, as Yesov was being called, and Minsky’s Slutsk division, was being described by many as unstoppable — the Siberian pincers moving as inexorably as two lava flows of a volcano, “spewing death,” as Iran Radio ecstatically proclaimed, on the Americans, who were “futilely” trying to outrun its fury. In fact more Siberians were wounded, though not as many killed, than Americans. But for Freeman’s III Corps, given the overwhelming number of Siberian divisions — over forty-four in all, versus the Americans’ eleven — it was an unmitigated disaster. The mood was quickly conveyed to everybody else in Second Army, including David Brentwood, who, like his former SAS/D colleagues-in-arms— Lou Salvini from Brooklyn, and the Welshman, “Choir” Williams — was now arriving in Khabarovsk in response to Freeman’s order for the SAS/D team to reassemble. Another comrade of David, the profane Aussie Lewis, was already in Khabarovsk on what he thought was going to be some well-deserved R&R.
David Brentwood was in Khabarovsk less than half an hour before he realized how grim the situation was, how III Corps’ retreat was a humiliation that eclipsed any prior victory by Second Army before the cease-fire. To make matters worse, while temperatures north of the lake around Yakutsk continued plummeting, those around the Amur hump in the areas between latitude forty-two and fifty, covering northeastern China, Mongolia, and southern Siberia, were continuing to rise in Yesov’s favor, as his meteorological offices had predicted. These warmer temperatures were turning the already inadequate sixteen-hundred-mile Siberian Khabarovsk and Baikal roadway into quagmires for the U.S. armor, artillery, and trucks trying to relieve Baikal. The sixty-three-ton M1A1s atop their heavy extractor/transporters, and the eleven-thousand-pound M978 road tankers needed to satisfy the voracious two-gallon-per-mile thirst of the M-1, along with the hundreds of ten-ton trucks hauling vitally needed spare parts, were all bogging down into the “slush stew,” as Norton called it.
* * *
When the survivors of the decimated III Corps began arriving at the naval hospital at Dutch Harbor, Alaska, Lana Brentwood’s fear for Frank Shirer grew proportionately. She thought she had seen it all earlier in the war — the terribly deformed burn victims of ships that had been hit by missiles, resulting superheated temperatures melting faces like wax or suffocating them in toxic smoke. Others, like her brother Ray, were considered the unluckiest of all, having lost part of their face because of either fire or deadly AG — aboveground — submunitions, needle-crammed bomblets detonated while in the air directly over a target. Ray’s face had been partially reconstructed through surgery by laser, the very kind of technology that had ironically allowed enemy pilots like the Siberian ace Sergei Marchenko to have so accurately delivered their laser glide bombs against the American ships.
As Lana saw more and more men being carried in on the stretchers, she felt a growing sense of helplessness, and knew that the lucky ones had been those who had died on the ice floes in hypothermia’s final, perversely warm, sleep. The men being brought in here at Dutch Harbor would have to undergo months of pain-filled surgery during facial reconstruction and limb amputation — if they survived that long. Of course, a few, she knew, would come through it stronger than before — like Ray, who had the “stick-to-itiveness,” as her father used to describe it, to fight the pain as well as the deep depression and, worst of all, the hatred of one’s own image in the mirror. Ray had come back — not merely to survive, but to go on, after being decorated for surface attacks against enemy subs off California. Robert, too, also navy, captain of the USS Reagan, and young David, a Marine Corps graduate now with the joint British/American SAS/Delta commandos, were of the same stuff. Always pushing themselves. Lana was as dismayed by her brothers as she was proud of them. No matter what anyone said, she was convinced there was something very different about men’s and women’s psychological makeup. Even her father, who first wanted Robert to rest on his laurels after winning the Navy Cross for action above and beyond the call of duty in the terrible Arctic Hunter/Killer battles off Spitzbergen Trench, was now speaking admiringly of Robert’s decision, after a near-miss escape from a ruptured SSN during the Arctic sub battles, to volunteer for SEAL duty— considered the toughest in the navy. Not only had Robert up
graded the “escape” drills, but he had submitted his name for the SAL, Special Assignment List.
Young David was no better, Lana thought proudly. Quieter than either Ray or Robert, who was oldest, he’d been bitten by the same warrior bug. All three were married, David just, Ray with two children, and Robert’s wife Rosemary with one on the way. So what made them do it? Hadn’t they done enough? Lana thought, too, of Frank— well, of course he was no better, just as anxious to go off into danger — to prove what? None were fools — all had admitted to her in their different ways, though certainly not among themselves, that their fear in action sometimes all but paralyzed them. So why did they do it? Was it no more than sibling rivalry? Still, that didn’t explain Frank. Her anger at them was her love — for she admired them enormously at the same time, as she did Frank. Whatever the reason, they were brave, and unlike the sleazeballs of Jay La Roche et al., selfishness had no part of it.
* * *
When the young lieutenant from Freeman’s headquarters round the Australian, Lewis, in full winter combat uniform complete with white overlay, his face covered in white camouflage lotion against the reflection of the weak spring sun from the snow, Lewis was perfectly still, the stock of his beloved Haskins M500 single-shot, bolt-action, sniper rifle firm against his cheek as he took steady aim through the rifle’s ten-power scope. Only one of its.50-caliber bullets would be needed to take out a man at a distance of 1.2 miles. An enemy would be hit before he ever heard the sharp crack, the depleted uranium slug exploding his head like a melon. A combination HE and incendiary bullet from the same Haskins was capable of striking a much bigger target, like a chopper, exploding its fuel tank, which Lewis had amply demonstrated against a Hind A gunship when the Siberian chopper had followed the SAS/Delta team during their attack on the midget sub pens.
“Sergeant Lewis?” Freeman’s young lieutenant inquired.
“Who are you, mate?” asked Lewis, not stirring a muscle, the Haskins straight as a die, betraying no movement.
“Lieutenant Stimson, sir, General Freeman’s—”
“All right, all right — shush now, and for Gawd’s sake get yer loaf down. Heard you a bloody mile away. Not exactly Captain Thunderbolt, are ya?”
Young Stimson was nonplussed. “Captain Thunderbolt?” He thought of an A-10.
“Yeah — Thunderbolt,” repeated Lewis, still not moving. “Bushranger — y’know — highwayman back ‘ome. Robbed the bloody government and kept it for himself. That’s the ticket, eh? What’s on your mind?”
“General Freeman’s HQ—”
“Uh-oh,” said Aussie, still not moving. “Bloody trouble…”
Stimson didn’t know whether the Australian was referring to Freeman or his target — whatever it was.
“Ah, I don’t under—” began Stimson.
“ ‘Ere,” said Lewis as he rolled away from the Haskins, slapping out the bipod legs, his impish grin made fierce-looking by the camouflage cream. “Go on, ‘ave a Captain Cook. Polar bears!”
Stimson had heard Australians spoke another language, but he got the gist of it, lay down on the patch of snow and lifted the rifle.
“Fuzz button’s on your right,” instructed Lewis, and in a second the blobs, probably a quarter mile away, suddenly jumped into focus. It was a woman, or rather one part of her, that Lewis had zeroed in on.
“How’d you like to grab onto those, mate?” he asked young Stimson. “Biggest nungas I’ve ever seen. Whadda ya reckon?”
Stimson was stunned by the magnification — the woman’s bust completely filling the scope. Then she turned and he caught a glimpse of her face. The contrast from what he’d expected was so striking, his eye started back from the scope and he looked up incredulously at the Australian. “She’s…” He didn’t know quite how to put it for a second. “Ugly!”
“You reckon?” said Aussie, who in a second was down by the rifle on the offside, using his left eye to sight. “Ah, she’s not that bad, son. Call ‘emselves Polar Bear Club. Skinny-dip through the fucking ice.”
Stimson was standing up, brushing the snow off him. “She’s — She’s got a moustache!”
“Aw, don’t be fussy, mate! Give her a Gillette for a present, I will. Fix her up in a flash. Anyway, it’s not ‘er bloody moustache I’m interested in.” Lewis winked.
Stimson was still trying to regain his composure as an officer and a gentleman.
“Her tits, mate!” said Lewis. “Didn’t you see ‘em? Magnificent. I don’t want one of those skinny birds — fucking model. I want big nungas.” Lewis thrust his hands, bowl shaped, out in front of him. “To here — know what I mean?”
“I get the general idea.”
Lewis bent over, snapped the cover on the sight, and clipped the bipod legs beneath the barrel. “How long you been over here, Stimmo?”
“Two months.”
“Two—no wonder you’re particular,” said Aussie. “Listen, mate — that’s the first bird I’ve seen worth looking at. That Yesov — the bastard — he’s hiding ‘em all somewhere. Shipped all their younger women west. Conscription, you see. You remember that. If we’re heading back into Baikal — you remember that.” The Aussie paused. “ ‘Course, back there big tits probably mean a bra full of hand grenades comin’ at you. Gotta be careful.” He glanced back down the river. “I agree with you ‘bout Olga’s moustache.” He made a face. “Hairy armpits, too — hairy armpits are the limit, Stimmo. Pong too much. Right? Still — all the same in the dark, eh?”
Stimson had never met an Australian before. He’d heard they could be rough, but—
“So what’s Freeman want?”
“Don’t know. I’m just the gofer.”
“No hint?”
“No hint.”
“Well, that’s nice, isn’t it? Here I am, R and R — well-deserved, I might add — and first time Yesov farts, I’m called up. I tell you, Stimmo,” said Lewis, smacking the young American on the back, “it’s diabolical. What’s your first name, mate?”
As a mere lieutenant, Stimson didn’t exactly stand on ceremony, but after all, he was HQ staff and he’d never been so casually addressed by an NCO before. Nevertheless, he found himself answering, “Raymond,” before he knew it.
Grinning, the gregarious Australian put out his hand. “Goodo, Ray. Everyone calls me Aussie.”
Stimson nodded.
“Well, Ray,” said Aussie, “I just hope there are Sheilas wherever we’re goin’.”
“I doubt it.”
“Thought you said you didn’t know?”
“Well, no, I don’t, but I don’t think you’ll be going back home.”
“ Yeah, well — you’ re probably right there.” They walked over the crunching snow toward Stimson’s Humvee. “Another Aussie mate and me were billeted on an English estate,” began Lewis as they climbed in and buckled up. “Before the war — in training down at Hereford. Anyway, this Pommie sergeant — a Brit — tells my mate, ‘You Aussies are too crude. Got no subtlety. Watch me,’ he says. So we watch this Brit Lothario chatting up the lady of the manor, nattering on about nature, the farm, how nature’s grand, hinting that the mating season wouldn’t be far off. So my mate, a corporal from Mundubbera — says he gets the Brit’s message, you see — like you have to sort of introduce the idea of sex more gradual, subtlelike. Talk about nature and stuff— like you just don’t hit it, wham! Right?”
“Right,” said Stimson, driving over the potholes back to Freeman’s HQ.
“Yeah, right,” continued Aussie. “Well, my corporal gets this idea, see — like how to approach the lady more indirectly, see if he could get a bit. So he goes into the barn that night and paints a gee-gee — a horse — green.”
Stimson looked across at Lewis.
“Yeah,” Lewis assured him. “‘Green. Anyway, in the morning everyone gets up for breakfast, wandering down past the manor house. The lady of the manor’s up as usual, smiling and greeting us. My mate watches her go up to the paddock as usual and s
idles up next to her, lights a cigarette as she’s looking out at the animals. ‘Good morning, my lady,’ he says, real polite like — tips his hat.
“ ‘Morning,’ she says, and my mate gives one of our blokes the office.”
“The office?” asks Stimson.
“The office — the signal.”
“Oh—”
“Yeah — so, bam! Barn door opens and out runs the gee-gee. My mate turns to the lady and says, real casual like, ‘Look — a green horse! How about a fuck?’ “
Stimson was appalled. Lewis doubled up, barely able to hold the rifle steady in the Humvee. Stimson was shaking his head. For a few seconds he actually felt sorry for the Siberians. “You’re sick, man.”
“Bullshit!” said Aussie, one hand gripping the roll bar. The Siberian roads were unbelievably bad. “I’m horny.”
Stimson didn’t know what to make of it all, but then he didn’t know what had gone before, the SAS/Delta training quite simply the toughest in the world. In the SAS there were no drill instructors screaming at you; they talked softly — the training did it all. With over an eighty percent failure rate, only the toughest men managed to climb Wales’ Brecon Beacons in gale conditions with ninety-pound packs of bricks, every brick numbered. Only the toughest could survive being forced to live off the land, having to eat rats raw — the slightest smoke, if you cooked them, being a dead giveaway — and learning to live for days in a shallow trench, not moving, defecating by pushing it down slowly to the slightly deeper depression dug in the trench.
The SAS had been unknown until May 6, 1980, when millions sat enthralled before their TV sets all over the world, watching as the SAS commandos stormed the Iranian embassy in London, freeing the hostages in a dazzling, blitzkrieglike display of rappeling, stun grenade and machine gun assault. And yet the SAS ability to immediately distinguish a hostage from a terrorist, the latter often changing places at the last minute in the hope of confusing would-be rescuers, was only one of their skills. In order to merely pass the course, an SAS trooper had to be able to enter a room, shoot, kill, and be capable of rolling, clearing a jammed gun, and come up shooting dead on target within seconds. They were men whose natural dispositions lay in self-reliance, but who paradoxically were required to get along as a team.
