The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [493]
"There they go again," Major Tucker said, seeing the plume of diesel exhaust followed by the lurching of numerous armored vehicles. "About six kilometers from your first line of tanks."
"A pity we can't get one of these terminals to Sinyavskiy," Bondarenko said.
"Not that many of them, sir," Tucker told him. "Sun Micro Systems is still building them for us."
"That was General Ge Li," Luo told the Politburo. "We've had some bad luck. General Peng is dead, killed by a sniper bullet, I just learned."
"How did that happen?" Premier Xu asked.
"Peng had gone forward, as a good general should, and there was a lucky Russian out there with a rifle," the Defense Minister explained. Then one of his aides appeared and walked to the marshal's seat, handing him a slip of paper. He scanned it. "This is confirmed?"
"Yes, Comrade Marshal. I requested and got confirmation myself. The ships are in sight of land even now."
"What ships? What land?" Xu asked. It was unusual for him to take an active part in these meetings. Usually he let the others talk, listened passively, and then announced the consensus conclusions reached by the others.
"Comrade," Luo answered. "It seems some American warships are bombarding our coast near Guangszhou."
"Bombarding?" Xu asked. "You mean with guns?"
"That's what the report says, yes."
"Why would they do that?" the Premier asked, somewhat nonplussed by this bit of information.
"To destroy shore emplacements, and—"
"Isn't that what one docs prior to invading, a preparation to putting troops on the beach?" Foreign Minister Shen asked.
"Well, yes, it could be that, I suppose," Luo replied, "but—"
"Invasion?" Xu asked. "A direct attack on our own soil?"
"Such a thing is most unlikely," Luo told them. "They lack the ability to put troops ashore in sufficiently large numbers, America simply doesn't have the troops to do such a—"
"What if they get assistance from Taiwan? How many troops do the bandits have?" Tong Jie asked.
"Well, they have some land forces," Luo allowed. "But we have ample ability to—"
"You told us a week ago that we had all the forces required to defeat the Russians, even if they got some aid from America," Qian observed, becoming agitated. "What fiction do you have for us now, Luo?"
"Fiction!" the marshal's voice boomed. "I tell you the facts, but now you accuse me of that?"
"What have you not told us, Luo?" Qian asked harshly. "We are not peasants here to be told what to believe."
"The Russians are making a stand. They have fought back. I told you that, and I told you this sort of thing is to be expected—and it is. We fight a war with the Russians. It's not a burglary in an unoccupied house. This is an armed contest between two major powers—and we will win because we have more and better troops. They do not fight well. We swept aside their border defenses, and we've pursued their army north, and they didn't have the manhood to stand and fight for their own land! We will smash them. Yes, they will fight back. We must expect that, but it won't matter. We will smash them, I tell you!" he insisted.
"Is there any information which you have not told us to this point?" Interior Minister Tong asked, in a voice more reasonable than the question itself.
"I have appointed Major General Ge to assume command of the Thirty-fourth Shock Army. He reported to me that Twenty-ninth Army sustained a serious air attack earlier today. The effects of this attack are not clear, probably they managed to damage communications—and an air attack cannot seriously hurt a large mechanized land force. The tools of war do not permit such a thing."
"Now what?" Premier Xu asked.
"I propose that we adjourn the meeting and allow Minister Luo to return to his task of managing our armed forces," Zhang Han Sen proposed. "And that we reconvene, say, at sixteen hours."
There were nods around the table. Everyone wanted the time to consider the things that they'd heard this morning—and perhaps