Shadows of War - [Red Dragon Rising 01]

by Larry Bond

  Ai Gua cursed—he could not get his launcher loaded correctly.

  Han fired, but his grenade flew wide, exploding harmlessly on the runway in front of the ZSU-23-4. The antiaircraft gun raked the tower a second time, this time shattering the glass above them.

  Ai Gua continued to curse. Han fired again. His grenade hit the front of the antiaircraft truck, just below the turret. The gunfire stopped.

  They had only a few seconds to catch their breath. The two track-mounted ZSU-23-4’s at the far end of the runway swung their guns in the tower’s direction and began firing. Tracers flew through the air wildly, well above the tower and several degrees left and right, but Jing Yo realized it would take only a few moments for the gunners to adjust.

  The ground team wasn’t close enough to get the trucks yet. They’d have to take them from here with the RPGs.

  Jing Yo went to Ai Gua just as the private finally managed to get his grenade inserted. He stopped short, waiting for the customary hiss as the rocket shot from the launcher.

  He didn’t hear it. The weapon began to smoke, but the grenade remained attached.

  “Throw it down,” yelled Jing Yo.

  Ai Gua remained in his firing position, stunned. Jing Yo reached for the barrel of the weapon. His hand seemed to catch on fire—the propellant was burning and the barrel hot—but by the time the sensation of pain had reached his brain the launcher had struck the ground and exploded.

  Han fired again, hitting the antiaircraft gun on the left straight on. The other one stopped firing.

  “Help Han,” Jing Yo told Ai Gua, who was staring at him.

  “Your hand.”

  “Help Han.”

  Ai Gua jumped up, scooping his ammo case along as he went to his comrade.

  A second later, a fresh rocket flew from the tower, knocking out the last antiaircraft truck.

  “Remain vigilant,” Jing Yo told the two privates before going back inside.

  “Force is on its way,” Wu told him. “Leading helicopters are about ten minutes off.”

  “The antiair guns have been disabled.”

  “What the hell happened to your hand?”

  Jing Yo held out his right hand, looking at it. It was bright red. The left seemed unscathed, its throbs duller.

  “The weapon misfired,” he said. “How far away are our troops?”

  “Someone get the lieutenant a burn kit. He needs attention.”

  “How far away are the troops?” Jing Yo asked.

  “Twenty minutes.”

  “The fighters should have been here by now.”

  “They’re always late,” said Wu.

  Jing Yo wrapped his hand with ointment, gauze, and a pair of cold packs, diminishing the pain. By the time the bandages had been taped, the control tower had come under small arms fire from the north. Bullets flew through the now battered windows and ripped into the metal below. The area around the control room just below the window was armored, so they were not in immediate danger. But it was impossible to return fire from inside.

  “Aircraft inbound!” announced the controller.

  “About time,” said Wu. “Damn air force is always late.”

  The aircraft were a pair of MiGs assigned to shoot up the defenses.

  “Make sure they know we took out the antiaircraft guns,” said Jing Yo. “Tell them to concentrate on the barracks.”

  There was a flurry of gunfire outside. The Vietnamese had launched a counterattack against the tower.

  Ignoring the pain in his hand, Jing Yo went back out on the catwalk. He got about two steps from the door before a hail of bullets forced him to dive face-first on the grillwork.

  “Grenade!” yelled Han.

  Jing Yo wasn’t sure whether he was warning about an incoming grenade, or one he was dropping. An explosion settled it—the private had targeted a knot of Vietnamese soldiers below.

  Jing Yo’s bandages made it impossible to hold a gun in his right hand, but he could drop grenades easily enough with his left. He pulled one of his Type 82-2 grenades from his vest. Holding it against his chest, he slid his finger up the seam, undid the tape that held the plunger, and with the pin out and grenade armed, dropped it over the side.

  There was a small explosion, followed by a much larger one, then a second and a third—incoming artillery shells, fired by their own forces. The last was so strong it pitched Jing Yo back against the rail; he just barely managed to keep his balance before turning and racing inside.

  “Those are ours!” shouted Wu.

  “Tell them to stop firing at us!” Jing Yo screamed.

  “I’m working on it,” said Chen. He was on his hands and knees, talking on the sat radio with division. Chen unleashed a string of curses at whoever was on the other end of the line.

  The shelling continued for a few more rounds, then began retreating to the west. Jing Yo heard the first helicopters approaching. Down on the far end of the runway, the team that had been tasked to hit the antiaircraft guns went to work on their secondary mission, marking the landing zone with red smoke, indicating that the helicopters would be landing under fire.

  The pain in Jing Yo’s right hand flared. He tried to force it away as he went back to the door. He stopped short at the threshold—the walkway had broken and was hanging down off the tower to the left. He leaned out to look for his two men, then threw himself back into the control room as bullets began hitting into the side wall.

  “We’re going to have to close that door,” said Sergeant Wu. “They get a grenade in here, we’re done.”

  There was no panic in Wu’s voice. There was no emotion at all. Closing the door meant stranding the two men outside, but Wu was right— unless the armor-paneled door was put back in place, they were all vulnerable. More important, their goal of keeping the tower intact would fail.

  Jing Yo went to the door and closed it himself.

  Red smoke drifted upward from the runway. The first helicopter was landing.

  The tower shook violently. There was an explosion below—inside the tower.

  “They’re coming up!” someone yelled.

  Jing Yo bit the bandage holding the ice packs onto his burned hand and then tore it off. One of the large windows shattered. The tower smelled as if it was on fire, the stench a sickly mix of metal and tar or very heavy plastic.

  Where was his rifle? Someone had taken it from him earlier, but he couldn’t remember where they had put it.

  Jing Yo saw a gun on the floor. He grabbed it, fingers screaming with pain, then ran to the stairwell.

  Wu leaned over the rail, firing madly.

  “I see the little bastards,” yelled the sergeant. “Watch out for their grenades.”

  Wu fired a fresh burst. There didn’t seem to be any return fire, though it was difficult to tell with the rattle of the bullets striking the outside of the building. Unlike the control area, the stairway section was not reinforced with armor, and the bullets punctured the thin aluminum as if it were paper.

  Wu reached for a grenade from his vest.

  Jing Yo grabbed his arm. “What if our men are down there?”

  “They’re dead by now, Lieutenant.”

  They stared into each other’s eyes for the briefest of moments, though it was an eternity under the circumstances.

  “Do it,” Jing Yo said.

  Behind him, Chen crouched at the console, using the satcom radio to talk with a communications aircraft above. Every so often he would raise his head, peeking at what was going on outside before ducking back and continuing his conversation. Private Wing, trained to watch the radar and report to Chen and Geijui, had his hand over his forehead, shading himself from the glare—though it looked as if he was actually trying to avoid looking at what was going on outside.

  Corporal Chen was on the satcom, talking to the division communicator, who in turn was speaking with the commander of the troops now hitting the field. Geijui half kneeled, half crouched at the console, watching what was going on in the
field and describing where the Vietnamese forces were, using their circuits to talk to the Chinese air force.

  Ignoring the bullets still sporadically flying through the window, Jing Yo climbed onto the console shelf, gripping one of the CRTs as he scanned the airport. Four helicopters disgorged troops at the southern end of the runway. The men ran off into the grass, disappearing from view momentarily before emerging on the far taxiway. Vietnamese soldiers were scattered around the airport grounds in small knots. Their resistance did not seem coordinated—a concentrated attack on the runway might have caught the helicopters on the ground or at least contained the troops there. But there was plenty of gunfire, and Jing Yo knew the battle’s outcome was far from determined.

  Black smoke rose in a tight curl from a small transformer shed near the far end of the runway. Jing Yo’s men were supposed to move into that area after laying down the smoke, but he couldn’t see if they were there or not.

  The artillery shelling had stopped to allow the helicopters to land. As soon as the first wave of choppers was off, it began again, concentrating on the barracks area and the defensive positions near the highway. The barrage was intended to make it hard for the Vietnamese to rush their troops over to the runway area, preventing them from reinforcing the men who were protecting the hangars and the aircraft. But the firing was less than precise, and the main effect of the shells was to add to the monumental sense of chaos and confusion.

  A big part of the problem was the lack of team radios and the insistence that all information be funneled through the division communicators, a remnant of old army doctrine modeled on the centralized Soviet concept. In modernizing the Chinese army over the past decade, the general staff had picked the early stages of the second American war in Iraq, the so-called Shock and Awe phase, with its lightning attacks and generous use of tanks and airborne elements. But the generals were reluctant to loosen their grip on the lower commanders, diluting the relative effectiveness of the attack by making it difficult to coordinate its elements.

  “They’re coming again!” yelled Wu from near the stairs. “I need more grenades!”

  Jing Yo jumped from the console and took a grenade from his vest with his left hand. He hopped down the two steps to Wu, put his right hand around his shoulder, then dropped the grenade. As soon as it left his hand, he pulled backward, yanking the sergeant back as well.

  The grenade bounced down the steps, rebounded off the wall, then exploded in the stairwell. The firing below immediately stopped.

  Jing Yo felt Wu’s weight as he rolled off him. The sergeant grunted, then helped him up.

  “They’re concentrating their attack here,” said Wu. “If we don’t get some relief, we’ll run out of ammunition eventually.”

  They had practiced the operation countless times. Jing Yo always understood that his men would be hard-pressed if the assault did not go well. But he had also believed that once the helicopters were landing, the enemy would either concentrate on them or retreat, leaving the tower alone.

  He’d been wrong.

  The problem was to pressure their attackers somehow. He needed someone to hit them from the side or behind, take their attention away.

  Jing Yo hoisted himself back up onto the console. The assault team was fanning out at the southern end of the complex. There were several knots of Vietnamese between them and the tower; he could not expect them to reach him very quickly.

  They would have to supply the counterattack themselves.

  “Private Wing, help Sergeant Wu,” said Jing Yo. He opened the med kit on the floor and rewrapped his burned hand in gauze and tape, leaving his finger free to fire.

  “What are you going to do?” Wu asked.

  “Provide a diversion. Open the door to the catwalk for me.”

  Wu frowned, but followed him to the side and put his hand on the handle.

  “I hope you aren’t thinking of jumping,” said Wu.

  “Not today.”

  Rifle slung over his shoulder, Jing Yo put his left hand on the side of the frame and steadied himself. If he’d had two good hands, he would have climbed upward and used the roof as a vantage point. But with only his left hand really able to grip, he could only work with gravity, not against it. He swung his weight to the side, then let go of the frame.

  The catwalk gave way as Jing Yo landed, swinging down as it tore two more of its anchors. He grabbed hold of the rail with his left hand and the trigger finger of his right, scrambling forward and up. Jing Yo managed to push along the grate for about three meters before reaching part of the deck that was still level. Then he crawled toward the ladder that ran down the side of the tower.

  As he neared it, a head popped out from around the bend. Thinking the Vietnamese had come up with roughly the same idea he had, Jing Yo swung his rifle up to fire. He stopped at the last second, recognizing Ai Gua.

  “Private!”

  “Lieutenant!”

  “Where is Han?”

  Ai Gua pointed up toward the roof. After the catwalk had failed, the two men had climbed up onto the roof, trying to hold off the Vietnamese from there. Seeing that wasn’t working well, Ai Gua had just climbed down the work ladder, hoping to attack the Vietnamese from the side.

  “Good idea,” Jing Yo told him. “Come on.”

  “Your hand.”

  “I’m fine. Let’s go.”

  As they started for the ladder, the tower rocked with a pair of small explosions. Han had tossed a pair of grenades down to the ground, hoping to give them some cover.

  Any relief the explosions had provided was temporary—bullets began slicing into the tower skin when Jing Yo was about halfway down the side.

  It was too high even for Jing Yo to jump. He continued downward, another four or five rungs before one of the bullets caught him in the back, slamming into his bulletproof vest.

  While the vest absorbed the bullet and much of the impact, the force felt like a horse’s kick in the ribs. Jing Yo’s grip loosened on the rungs. Feeling himself falling, he pushed out with his legs, centering his balance as he plummeted the last twelve feet to the ground. He hit evenly, legs and spine loose as he had been taught, and rolled off to the side, tumbling over and coming up on his knee.

  Ai Gua was in the grass nearby, firing toward the other side of the parking lot. Shaking off the shock of the impact, Jing Yo got up and ran to him. He tapped him on the head, indicating he should follow, then ran to the side of the tower, beginning to circle around toward the door area.

  An armored personnel carrier moved down the access road toward the tower. Jing Yo fired a few shots at it, trying to hit the gunner sitting in the upper hatchway. His aim was off, and all he succeeded in doing was drawing the gunner’s attention—the man swung his heavy machine gun around.

  As the first bullets began to rake the concrete, white smoke blossomed from the gun. There was a white flash, followed by a volcanic eruption of fire—Han had hit the APC with a rocket-propelled grenade from above.

  Jing Yo took two steps out from around the side of the building. Men lay everywhere. A few moved. Others were frozen in position, dead.

  On the access road, soldiers filed beyond the APC, two abreast, trotting toward the building. He laced them with bullets, sweeping his automatic rifle front to back. The men twirled and fell like rag dolls, caught completely unaware.

  As the APC smoldered, Jing Yo ran to it, crouching at the side as he fired into the small wedge of men near the door to the tower. One or two managed to get off shots at him as they fell; most simply went down. He tossed his magazine and continued to fire until no one moved.

  Ai Gua ran up behind him.

  “Two more APCs coming up the road,” said the private.

  The two vehicles crossed through a field of high grass. Their machine guns were already zeroed in on the tower.

  “Come on,” he told Ai Gua, jumping up. “Quickly.”

  They made it across the parking lot without being shot at. Once in the grass, Jing Yo be
gan circling to the left of the approaching armored vehicles. The soldiers who had been mounting the attack on the tower knew they were there and, apparently realizing what they were up to, began firing into the field. But the grass hid Jing Yo and Ai Gua well enough that they realized it was a waste of ammunition.

  The APCs, meanwhile, continued in a long arc designed to take them around to the Vietnamese; once there, they would undoubtedly lead another attack on the building. Both vehicles were only equipped with heavy machine guns, but they would provide plenty of cover for a new charge.