The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [410]
"Getting some resistance now," Wa told Peng. "There are Russian positions on the southern slope of the second ridge. We're hitting them now with artillery."
"Losses?"
"Light," the operations officer reported, listening in on the tactical radio.
"Good," said General Peng. His attention was almost entirely on the river. The first bridge was about a third complete now.
"Those bridging engineers are pretty good," General Wallace thought, watching the "take" from Marilyn Monroe.
"Yes, sir, but it might as well be a peacetime exercise. They're not taking any fire," the junior officer observed, watching another section being tied off. "And it's a very efficient bridge design."
"Russian?"
The major nodded. "Yes, sir. We copied it, too."
"How long?"
"The rate they're going? About an hour, maybe an hour ten."
"Back to the gunfight," Wallace ordered.
"Sergeant, let's go back to the ridge," the officer told the NCO who was piloting the UAC. Thirty seconds later, the screen showed what looked like a tank sunk in the mud surrounded by a bunch of infantrymen.
"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 sea coast, 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 guns 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