The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [483]
"Well, shall we observe from the front together?"
"Yes!" Ge jumped aboard his own command tank—he preferred this to a personnel carrier, despite the poorer radios, and led the way forward. Peng immediately established a direct radio connection with his subordinate.
"How far to the front?"
"Three kilometers. The reconnaissance people are moving now, and they are another two kilometers ahead."
"Lead on, Ge," Peng urged. "I want to see that gold mine."
It was a good spot, Aleksandrov thought, unless the enemy got his artillery set up sooner than expected, and he hadn't seen or heard Chinese artillery yet. He was on the fairly steep reverse side of an open slope that faced south, rather like a lengthy ramp, perhaps three kilometers in length, not unlike a practice shooting range at a regimental base. The sun was starting to crest the eastern horizon, and they could see now, which always made soldiers happy. Pasha had stolen a spare coat and laid his rifle across it, standing in the open top hatch of the BRM, looking through the telescopic sight of his rifle.
"So, what was it like to be a sniper against the Germans?" Aleksandrov asked once he'd settled himself in.
"It was good hunting. I tried to stick to killing officers. You have more effect on them that way," Gogol explained. "A German private—well, he was just a man—an enemy, of course, but he probably had no more wish to be on a battlefield than I did. But an officer, those were the ones who directed the killing of my comrades, and when you got one of them, you confused the enemy."
"How many?"
"Lieutenants, eighteen. Captains, twelve. Only three majors, but nine colonels. I decapitated nine Fritz regiments. Then, of course, sergeants and machine-gun crews, but I don't remember them as well as the colonels. I can still see every one of those, my boy," Gogol said, tapping the side of his head.
"Did they ever try to shoot at you?"
"Mainly with artillery," Pasha answered. "A sniper affects the morale of a unit. Men do not like being hunted like game. But the Germans didn't use snipers as skillfully as we did, and so they answered me with field guns. That," he admitted, "could be frightening, but it really told me how much the Fritzes feared me," Pavel Petrovich concluded with a cruel smile.
"There!" Buikov pointed. Just off the trees to the left.
"Ahh," Gogol said, looking through his gunsight. "Ahh, yes."
Aleksandrov laid his binoculars on the fleeting shape. It was the vertical steel side on a Chinese infantry carrier, one of those he'd been watching for some days now. He lifted his radio. "This is GREEN WOLF ONE. Enemy in sight, map reference two-eight-five, nine-zero-six. One infantry track coming north. Will advise."
"Understood, GREEN WOLF," the radio crackled back.
"Now, we must just be patient," Fedor Il'ych said. He stretched, touching the camouflage net that he'd ordered set up the moment they'd arrived in this place. To anyone more than three hundred meters away, he and his men were just part of the hill crest. Next to him, Sergeant Buikov lit a cigarette, blowing out the smoke.
"That is bad for us," Gogol advised. "It alerts the game."
"They have little noses," Buikov replied.
"Yes, and the wind is in our favor," the old hunter conceded.
"Lordy, Lordy," Major Tucker observed. "They've bunched up some." It was Grace Kelly again, looking down on the battlefield-to-be like Pallas Athena looking down on the plains of Troy. And about as pitilessly. The ground had opened up a little, and the corridor they moved across was a good three kilometers wide, enough for a battalion of tanks to travel line-abreast, a regiment in columns of battalions, three lines of thirty-five tanks each with tracked infantry carriers interspersed with them. Colonels Aliyev and Tolkunov stood behind him, speaking in Russian over their individual telephones to the 265th Motor Rifle's command post. In the night, the entire 201st had finally arrived, plus Leading elements of the 80th and 44th.