Melissa Lange was one of Pacific Northwestern’s brightest and most beautiful, her swept-back ash-blonde hair and wide, sensitive eyes turning heads wherever she went on campus. She didn’t flaunt it, but she knew she had it, which made it doubly hard for her to understand why David Brentwood, down to his candy-cane-striped shorts, was standing in the middle of the room, glued to the TV, its bluish aura intensified by the soft peach lighting of the room and the heavy drapes shutting out the morning sun. “You’ll catch cold,” she said.
“They can fight, the bastards,” he said. “Got to give ‘em that.” Behind ABC’s Sam Donaldson there was a gray high-relief map of South Korea, four wide red arrows curving down from the DMZ converging on Seoul.
“Holy Cow!” said David, shaking his head. “Look at this!” There were pictures, very shaky, bad sound tracks, of the bridges being blown, the air full of black smoke and dirt-cored waterspouts. Then a very wobbly shot, as if the cameraman had stumbled, of the bridges, the Songsan’s span now V-shaped, some of the spans of the Chamshil Iron Bridge still standing, others simply not there, the smoke from it strangely yellow, the explosions having set afire a nearby barge of sulfur. Melissa was out of bed, pulling on her panties. Tongjak Bridge was the next to go, the TV screen going fuzzy, interspersed with thousands of flickering dots. “Jesus!” said David, pointing at the set. “They’re people!” He moved closer.
At first Melissa didn’t answer, her arms reaching behind her and up, clipping her matching black bra against her milk-white skin, but David was now on one knee, fiddling with the controls. “They’re people, Mel.”
“They can’t be,” she said, glancing over. Suddenly her anger at his inattention to her paled against what was happening on the screen. A commercial came on for Australian beer, “the golden throat charmer.” Only now did David see that Melissa was dressing. “Hey, Mel, what’re you doing?”
“What’s it look like?”
“Hey, no, honey. Listen, I just wanted to — my brother’s out there with the Seventh Fleet.”
“Men and war,” she said. “You love it.”
“No I don’t.”
“Yes you do. That’s why you’re in the reserves.”
“Come on, Mel. I’m sorry.” His hands extended, palms up. “Hey, you’re more important to me than any damn war.”
“Hmm—”
He hit the “off” button and went down on his knees.
“You idiot,” she said.
“At your service, ma’am!”
“Well—”
He clapped his hands together, then opened them wide. “Without you I die.”
“Without me you’d watch TV. Lounge lizard!”
He rose and reached over the bed, taking her hand. “Love you, babe.”
“I’ve got geography at one-thirty. Have to prepare for it. Last summer school class.”
“What’s to prepare?”
“Answers. Spot quiz.”
“Ask me. Go on.”
“Hindu Kush?”
“What about it?” He pulled the sheets up about them.
“Where is it?”
“Asia.”
She punched him softly on the arm. “Big help. Where in Asia?”
He slid his hand over her buttocks, reveling in their firmness, and when it happened, he knew they’d be tighter than this, tight as a basketball.
“Where in Asia?” She pushed his hand away.
“In the mountains. India.” He was nibbling the lobe of her ear.
“I thought you poli sci majors had all the answers,” she said.
“We do. I’m giving you one now.” He slid his left hand between her thighs, pressing into her. “Means killer,” he said. “Hindu killer.”
“Are you serious?”
“Dead serious.”
“Go on.”
“All the way?” he asked.
“No—”
“Why not?”
“I promised Daddy.”
“I could have a talk with him. Make it official.”
“Not till we finish school. Remember — it was your idea. Till then, frottage. Don’t you like it?”
“Sure.” He slid his right hand behind her to unclip the bra. “But I’d like to have it all.”
“When we finish schoo—”
“Damn thing’s caught,” he said.
She arched her back, unclipped it for him, and dropped the bra to the floor.
“Oh God,” he said, seeing her breasts, closing his eyes and opening them again — as if it had all been illusion. She laughed and began stroking his hair, lowering her body slowly on his. When he came up for air, gently rolling her over to her side of the bed, his face was flushed with excitement. They kissed hard and longingly and he rolled on his back so she could sit astride him, her breasts firm yet pendulous above him. She leaned forward, gently rocking side to side, her long ash-blond hair falling down like warm rain.
“Mogul emperor—” he said, “in 1672.”
She giggled and sat up, blocking his hands with hers, their fingers intertwined, she fending him off. “What about 1672?” She kissed his hand.
“Mogul emperor — sent in forty thousand troops — through the Khyber Pass. Only five came back. That’s why they call it Hindu Kush.”
“That’s awful,” she said, sitting up, pushing her hair back.
“Yeah.”
“See? I told you. Men love war.”
“I’m just trying to help—” His mouth went dry just looking at her. “Any more questions?” he asked raspily. Her nipples were engorged and he felt hard as concrete between her legs. A frown swept over her face and she sat upright, flicking her hair back, a bobby pin in her mouth. “You don’t think there’ll be a war, do you?”
“What — oh, in Korea. There’s already a war.”
“No, I mean a world war?”
“No chance. Nuclear weapons’ll stop it.”
“Nuclear weapons could start it.”
“No, before that they would have to — hey, is this a seminar or what?” He pulled her down to him, running his fingernails gently over her back, dragging them lightly back up to her shoulders and down along her outstretched arms, her murmurs of pleasure making him happy. “Love you, babe,” he said.
“You, too,” she said, and began doing the same for him. He slipped off his watch, hearing it drop softly to the floor. Now she lay down full length on him, moaning softly as he began to move, arching his back, lifting her, all the pressure in her groin. She kissed him wetly, hard, tongue thrusting hard for his. “Don’t — don’t leave me, Davy,” she called softly, gently, lonely as a child in the night.
“I won’t,” he said.
Now he could feel her buttocks, the hard, rounded silkiness rousing him so he doubted he could hold out much longer. She stopped, perfectly still, sensing his razor-edge excitement as he calmed down. Her smell was overwhelming him, and now for a moment, a man possessed beyond his years, his vision blurred, she came back into focus, and he could feel the blood pulsing through him. She raised herself above him using her elbows and began moving rhythmically again side to side, his mouth like a fish gasping for water. She laughed and it relaxed him, his shoulders slumping back, falling on the pillow. She had to be careful — sometimes the slightest giggle could make him angry, as if he thought she was laughing at him instead of with him — for him.
“You’re going—” he stopped to get his breath “—to be late for class.”
“Yes,” she smiled.
“Sweetie — let’s get married now. Today. This afternoon.”
She placed her forefinger gently on the tip of his nose. “No. After we graduate.”
“That’ll be — hell, that’ll be the end of next term. Christmas. I can’t wait that long. I’ll go nuts.”
“No. “
“You’re a hard woman, Melissa Lange.”
“I’m old-fashioned.”
“This isn’t old-fashioned.”
“How do you know? Maybe your parents and mine did it.”
“My dad?” he said disbelievingly. “You’re joking. Mom would never have let him.”
“Oh — they didn’t have sex in the navy?”
“Shore leave,” he said.
“Oh Lord!”
“What?”
“I promised Rick I’d loan him my notes.”
“Stacy? Let him make his own.”
“He was sick last week with the flu.”
“He’ll be all right.”
“What time is it?” she said. She reached over and picked up the watch. “Oh Lord! He’ll be waiting for me at the Student Union Building.”
“Let him wait.”
“I promised, Davy,” but she could see he was getting mad. “You know how you are about promises, Davy.”
“For Stacy?”
“Oh, come on.” She shook his shoulders. “You’d go.”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“You know you would.” She hopped off the bed. “I’ll make it up to you, sweetie. Promise.”
“Why don’t you make it up with Stacy?”
“Davy.”
He slumped back in the bed, throttled a pillow, relaxed his grip, then threw it across the room.
“Listen,” she said, getting dressed as quickly as she could. “Who was the one watching the TV?”
“That was only a minute. You were watching it, too.”
“I certainly was not.”
“The hell you weren’t! You were asking me if they were people.”
“After I’d been waiting for you to come.”
“Don’t be dirty,” he said. “I don’t like it when you talk like that.”
“What? — oh, for Heaven’s sake. You’re the limit. You’re the one with the dirty—”
“All right, all right. Forget it.”
“Okay, I will. See you around. When you grow up.”
He flung the bedding aside. “Fucking Stacy. I’d give him notes. Right in the face.”
“Well, if you’re going to use that language, David…” She was tucking her shirt into her jeans.
“Oh Jesus,” he said, “Little Miss Muffet.”
“You’re so stupid,” she shot back. “There’s nothing between Rick and me.”
“God, you’re blind. I can’t believe it. He wants your notes. You really think that’s all he wants?”
She grabbed her satchel. “Well, if you keep this up, Bub, he might just get it.”
“You—”
“Go on, say it.”
“Nevermind—”
“Say it.”
“Bitch!”
“All right, buster,” she said. “That’s it! See you around.” She stopped at the door and swung about. “And those shorts,” she said, glancing contemptuously down at the red and white striped underpants. “You look like a barbershop. Never seen anything so ridiculous.” She walked out and slammed the door.
“You hear the news?” asked Rick Stacy, a fourth-year student majoring in commerce and international relations. “What news?” asked Melissa. “The fighting in Korea.”
“Yes,” she said. “Well, now I know how wars start.”
“What do you mean?” he said as he gathered up his things from the plush but grubby Student Union sofa.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Here are my notes.”
“Oh, I already got them from Linda. Thanks anyway.”
“I could strangle you, Richard.”
“What?” he asked, alarmed. “What’d I do?”
“You started a war.”
“Uh-oh. Davy Brentwood. Right?”
“Right.”
“Hey, don’t sweat it. Really. I’ll have a talk with him. Set him straight. I am in IR.”
“What?”
“International relations. Conflict resolution. My specialty.”
“Maybe we should send you to Korea.”
“Aw, they’re just trying it on,” said Stacy.
“You see the news this morning? Looked pretty bad to me.”
“Sure it does. Right now. Surprise is with the North. Always is with the attacker. You’ll see. It’ll be over by Christmas. Not like it was back in the fifties. Caught the South napping, that’s all. President’ll mobilize the reserve maybe — that sends the message to Moscow and China real quick. End of series. They don’t want a war.”
“Neither did South Korea, but they’re getting it.”
“Stop worrying. It always takes us a little time to react, but when we do, it’s game over. Moscow’ll tell them to get their ass out of there. Russia’s got enough to worry about. Estonia, Latvia-”
“You think the president will mobilize the reserve?” asked Melissa.
“No question. Doesn’t want to seem too weak — not with old Leyland breathing down his neck in the polls. But doesn’t want to be seen as a warmonger. But he won’t send troops in. Happens all the time, Melissa. You call up the reserve or hold maneuvers—that’s another good one. Sends the right messages to Beijing, Moscow.”
“What if they call our bluff?”
“Hey! Are you serious? China’s on overtime just trying to feed itself, and Russia’s had one of the worst harvests in years.”
“Where have I heard that before?” she said, frowning, unable to pin it down exactly.
“What?” asked Stacy as they walked over past the library to the cedar-hidden geography building. Stacy thought for a minute. “Bastogne?” he proffered. “Thought we had it all wrapped up and bam! Out come the Panzers. But we beat them.”
“No,” said Melissa, “it was in Korea. MacArthur or someone said it would be over before Christmas. Then the Chinese came in.”
“History,” said Stacy.
“And history repeats itself, right?”
“Up to a point. That’s an old wives’ tale. It’s always different really.”
“Then it’ll be different now,” she said. “If the president mobilizes the reserve, maybe it won’t work.”
“Listen, Melissa — and don’t take this the wrong way — I’m no male chauvinist.” They kept walking toward the quadrangle, the smell of the cedars strong in the high humidity. “But putting an M-1—that’s a tank—”
“I knew that, Richard.”
“Well, what I’m saying is that putting our M-1s up against what the North Koreans have — hell, like a heavyweight boxer against a bantamweight. No hay compracion. No contest.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Bet you dinner. The Steakhouse,” said Stacy.
“Okay,” she answered, knowing the moment she’d accepted, she shouldn’t have. It would only antagonize David further, but— dam it, his final words had hurt. The ingrate. Anyway, it would probably be weeks before the Korean business was over. She never did see why so many Americans had to stay there — it was up to the South Koreans to protect themselves. Well, in a few weeks everyone would have cooled off. David would have simmered down — he wanted her as much as she wanted him — they both knew that. And Richard would probably win his bet about the Korean thing being over by Christmas and impress his international relations seminar. She’d gladly pay for the steak dinner and invite David to keep the peace.
From his well-camouflaged revetment area, six miles south of Uijongbu, tank commander Lieutenant Clemens no longer felt the slightest pity for the men he was sure he was about to kill. News of the atrocities found its way into the crackle of radio traffic. One of the four who had been beheaded had been from one of the dual-based mechanized infantry support companies out of California, Clemens’s own state. On hearing the news, Clemens steeled himself for vengeance. Now he could see the first of an NKA battalion of PC-76 tanks, the “tin cans,” emerging like parts of a long, segmented green snake on the rain-polished highway. His laser range-finder told Clemens that the distance between his six American tanks and the NKA’s sixty-four was exactly 1,203.4 meters, well within the M-1’s four-thousand-meter range, the range confirmed by the additional thermal sight used in bad weather or at night.
Clemens, elbow resting on the cupola’s 12.7-millimeter machine gun, could also see NKA infantry moving up alongside the dark green PT-76s, the ceremonial red stars normally visible on the turrets painted over with slightly darker green camouflage paint. Clemens gave his orders quietly and unhurriedly to the loader and gunner, the gunner’s integrated computer display verifying the elevation of the 105-millimeter gun and compensating for crosswind and rain-caused deviations as the M-1‘s four-man crew waited patiently for the enemy’s lead PT-76 to come to a thousand meters so that the whole column would then be within killing range. Clemens’s thumb was rubbing the steel guard, ready to press the computerized fire control system that was even now compensating for the effects of wind drift, barrel bend, temperature, and humidity. Clemens had to make the decision whether, at the moment of firing, the tank would be “buttoned up” or he would do what the four men in his tank and the other two tanks of his platoon called an “Israeli,” standing up, his head and shoulders out of the turret. Despite the tank’s state-of-the-art CO2 laser range finder, driver’s thermal viewer, and the rest of it, an “Israeli” would afford him a better all-round view of the road and surrounding paddies. And so Clemens kept standing, careful not to make any move that would shake the camouflage netting around the fifty-four-ton tank, quietly telling his driver the fallback position once the tank’s initial rounds gave its present position away to the enemy column.
The USS Blaine was in condition five, its top readiness alert. On its radar the swarm of white dots within the white rectangles that had signified unknown surface ships had now become white squares, hostile ships, identified now as three 180-foot-long Nanuchka and fourteen Shershen-class fast-attack torpedo boats armed with four twenty-one-inch torpedoes and four twin thirty-millimeter machine guns. The Shershens, originally moving at thirty-eight knots, were the faster boats but now held back, knowing the U.S. frigate’s more sophisticated electronic defenses could better be penetrated by the Nanuchkas, which were now closing in the rolling fog banks.
“Missile incoming!” shouted the Blaine’s OOD, and the Phalanx Mark-15 close-in radar and weapons system with its twenty-millimeter gun opened up together with the seventy-six-millimeter gun aft of the multiple target radar.
“Hard right five degrees,” ordered Brentwood.
“Hard right five degrees.”
The Blaine was now bow on to the oncoming swarm, attempting to deny the NKA boats a wide broadside target in or out of the fog as she “ghosted,” projecting fake radar images of herself to decoy the attacking boats even while her six-barrel Gatling gun, with a sound like linoleum, was spitting out a hail of depleted uranium bullets at over three thousand rounds a minute. Any one of the bullets, twice as dense as the normal steel-jacketed kind, was capable of deflecting, or causing detonation of, incoming missiles.
“We’ve been locked on,” shouted the electronics warfare officer, indicating one of the Nanuchkas’ “fishbowl” radars had switched to fire control mode. Immediately the Tactical Action Office ordered “chaff” and the torpedo launcher shot out a cloud of fine aluminum chips to hash the incoming missile’s radars. Another high tone from the Blaine’s SLQ-32 radar indicated another missile had been fired at the Blaine. Seconds after Ray Brentwood ordered the four antiship Harpoon missiles fired from the launcher forward of the bridge, he felt a slight tremor from the back-blast and at the same time received confirmation that the Blaine’s two LAMPs — light airborne multipurpose helicopters — had taken off within seconds of each other from the stern pad armed with clusters of air-to-ship rockets. The next minute he heard two thumps that reverberated through the frigate as the Blaine’s two triple-tube torpedo launchers discharged four MK-48s into the swarm now closing at less than two nautical miles.
There was a bright orange flame forward of the starboard beam about three hundred yards into the fog, an enemy missile hit, and a second later the crash of a destroyed Nanuchka came rolling over the ship. At the same time the TAO reported, “Bogey missiles destroyed.” There was a cheer in the combat information center, cut short by the TAO’s command to the radar operators to compensate for clutter caused by the Blaine’s own chaff and the increasing chop caused by the wash of the remaining sixteen NKA boats. A sharp pulse of light on the radar and seconds later the sound of an explosion told them another Nanuchka had been hit, but Brentwood was worrying about the changing positions of the two remaining Nanuchkas. To maintain flank speed would mean entering the swarm sooner, but to slacken off would give him less maneuverability — the fact that the two Nanuchkas were slowing down didn’t abate his fears as they had separated to form the two tips of a bull’s-horn formation. Meanwhile the armored shell of the Blaine’s combat information center being below the bridge, Brentwood and the others were only dimly aware of the cacophony of firing outside as the Shershen attack boats coming at him broadside opened up with thirty-millimeter fire and began launching their torpedoes from staggered overlap tubes, the bull’s-horn-like formation of fast boats now becoming a rough semicircle of a half-mile radius, launching twenty torpedoes at the Blaine.
“Fish incoming!” called one of the radar operators. “Bearing—” The operator stopped.
Brentwood swung around, saw the problem — there were so many, a single bearing wouldn’t help. “Hard left ninety!” he ordered, reducing the sector of the torpedo attack to a quarter instead of a half circle and hoping to outrun the incoming torpedoes now coming at him from abaft the starboard beam but also putting the Blaine broadside to the extreme left half of the semicircle; the lead boat, a Nanuchka, closest to him, he now engaged with another two Harpoon missiles. The blip that was the Nanuchka amid the dancing fuzz of chaff and other clutter suddenly grew very bright on the screen, then disappeared.
“Hard right, ninety degrees!” he shouted, anticipating a cheer or two from the CIC crew, but now everyone was silent, only the hum of the electronics and that tattoolike din outside faintly audible above the radio crackle of the two helicopters, one pilot yelling at the other, “Two o’clock, two o’clock!” and they actually heard the sound of a missile passing one of the helos. In quick succession another three torpedo boats blossomed on the screens and disappeared, taken out by the helos, but now they could hear the scream of the electronics warfare officer aboard one of the choppers as he was hit by machine-gun fire. Seconds later they heard the bang of the helicopter hitting the water, followed by the rattle of machine-gun fire— the attack boats raking the Blaine’s starboard side.
“Fish incoming starboard quarter!”
Brentwood knew he could do nothing, the torpedo-tracking radar and digital sonar now malfunctioning, and knew that either hard right or hard left would expose his stern to the torpedoes racing toward him at over fifty miles an hour. Two torpedoes went past, whitish-gray streaks in the fog, the startled starboard lookout informing the bridge a second later.
A machine-gun burst hit the Blaine’s stack, puncturing it but doing no more damage as the ship’s Gatling gun swung sharply, continuing to fire, causing another missile to explode within a few hundred yards of the ship, but now the Blaine’s Phalanx radar was in danger of “fuzzing up” from overload. The sonar operator, ignoring all else, carefully monitored the sea bottom, alert for the telltale ping of mines, while his colleague on the 225-mile-range air-search radar informed the tactical action officer that the radar’s dish, between the bridge and the satellite communications dome, was out. Brentwood knew that of all the battle group ships on forward screen for the carrier Salt Lake City, the Blaine, like her sister ship the USS Des Moines, forty miles to the east and closing to assist the guided missile frigate, had never been designed to go it alone in such outnumbered circumstances. The frigate’s weapon system had been designed primarily for medium-range escort duty, for what the Pentagon had designated a “low-threat” environment. And the Sea of Japan had been just that — until the NKA had crossed the DMZ.
“Sir!” the surface radar operator began, but then checked his excitement. “Enemy disengaging.”
No one in the CIC or anywhere else on the ship eased off, knowing it could be a sucker ploy. But the operator proved right; after losing six patrol boats and only damaging the American warship, though they had downed one of its helicopters, the NKA naval force, it seemed, had had enough. Still, Brentwood kept everyone at their stations, despite their fatigue and the stench of perspiration thick in the air. Even as the enemy was retreating, he ordered another four Harpoons “onto the rails,” and in the bowels of the ship the loader pressed the button for the automatic feed, quipping, half in relief, half in celebration, “ Four pack to go.” Brentwood made an immediate note to enter into the ship’s log, together with the tape that, like a civilian aircraft’s black box, was set to start recording the moment a U.S. Navy vessel went on “Action Station Alert,” how astonishingly ineffective the Nanuchkas’ missiles had been. Now it seemed all the peacetime speculation was over. The suspicion among the experts that quantity rather than quality was the central theme of the NKA’s, that is, the Russians’, strategy seemed confirmed.
“Inbound missile, inbound missile!” All the lookout saw in the fog was a blue sphere of light the size of a basketball, the sixteen-hundred-pound Exocet skimmer coming in amid the radar clutter, hitting the Blaine amidships on the starboard side, ripping open the three-quarter-inch armor plating like a fist through glass.
Six miles south of Uijongbu, Lieutenant Clemens saw the line of sixty-four green PT-76s halt. Through his binoculars he could see the enemy tank commander emerge, wearing the Russian-style leather helmet, looking a little like a World War II pilot, big bumps over the earpieces.
“C’mon,” said Clemens, “c’mon. God, make him…” Then Clemens saw the NKA commander thump the cupola, and the tank, its gravelly roar giving off a thick, bluish exhaust, moved forward again, leading the column.
When the lead PT-76 was well within the one-thousand-meter range, Clemens gave the order to fire. The M-1’s gunner pushed the ranging button, activating the split-second computerization, then squeezed the trigger. There was the thud of the recoil, but the M-1 hardly moved because of the superb suspension of the seven-road wheels sprung on each side on torsion bars. The HESH, or high-explosive squash head, round did its job, hitting the PT-76’s sloped glacis plate with such force that it blew off scabs of red-hot steel inside the PT-76, creating a lethal shrapnel. Within seconds the PT-76 slewed to a stop, three figures, all on fire, tumbling out of it, the driver trapped in his hull seat beyond the turret. Soon the whole tank was engulfed by fire, the molten scabs of white-hot shrapnel igniting the tank’s oil reservoir, creating a thick, billowing cloud of black smoke. To Clemens’ dismay the smoke was widening and flowing back over the column in as effective a smoke screen as he’d ever seen laid, many of the PT-76s now adding to it by popping off clusters of smoke grenades left and right of the road. Within minutes the entire tank column was enveloped, hidden from the view of the two American tank platoons, in all six tanks, that were situated in strategic firing positions under camouflage nets either side of the road behind a rise that was now only nine hundred meters in front of the NKA armor. But Clemens and two other M-1s fired at the second and third PT-76s, the HESH rounds stopping them, too, dead in their tracks, littering and blocking the road with their burning wreckage. But though the Americans had stopped them, the PT-76s immediately behind the gutted hulls kept returning fire.
Within fifteen seconds Clemens’s M-1 as well as the other five tanks that had also fired into the column and so revealed their positions to the NKA were also under mortar fire from NKA tank support infantry situated in the flooded paddies and from the shoulders of the road. Clemens’s M-1 was retreating down a shallow depression to its next selected firing position on a hillock two hundred yards farther back, still on relatively higher, dry ground above the road. The aim of the return fire from the up-gunned PT-76s’ 105-millimeter cannons, shooting solid APDS — armor-piercing rounds with discarding sabot — was poor, and even when struck, the tank easily deflected two rounds, the M-1’s turret armor so sloped as to deny a “flat-on” impact. Still, the fact that the rounds were coming close told Clemens that the five American M-1s were being sighted through the thick pall of smoke by either laser or thermal imaging, reflecting the NKA’s, that is, the Russians’, military strategy of equipping tanks, even the older models like the PT-76s, with nighttime ranging capability. It was another indication of Soviet military thinking, their belief that their best chance in any battle with the West was a quick win, which meant keeping your crews fighting twenty-four hours a day before the United States had time to rally the political will to reinforce their troops or others in the Western alliance.
The sound inside the M-1 as it geared down, breaking its speed as it approached the tall bamboo, was like some enormous earth mover. But to the few ragtag platoons of supporting U.S.-ROK infantry outside, the M-1 sounded remarkably quiet, not much noisier than a growling pickup as the fifty-four-ton tank moved at over thirty miles per hour across a corrugated stretch of ground, its gun steady and maintaining its six rounds of accurate fire per minute even as it geared up, heading at full speed, over forty miles per hour, toward the heavy stand of bamboo overlooking a curve on the Uijongbu-Seoul road.
“Incoming missile!” shouted the gunner, Clemens dropping down the hatch, which was seated and secure in a second. It was not a round from any of the PT-76s, which were now breaking left and right of the blocked road as the five American tanks opened up from the bamboo and surrounding hills, but a relatively slow, Russian-made antitank “Spiral,” coming in at 560 meters a second, less than half the speed of a tank round. It struck the M-1’s turret, exploding against the two-hundred-millimeter-thick sloped armor, failing to penetrate, the shock wave quickly dissipating throughout the composite, or layered, SPC armor. But it caused a ringing that, even through the crew’s protective earphones, was so intense that along with all the other internal noise of the fifteen-hundred-horsepower gas turbine, controlling gun elevation and depression, the constant hum of the computers and the steady blowing of the air conditioner, the fume sleeve halfway down the barrel evicting noxious gases from the exploded powder, none of the tank’s crew could hear anything on the radio for at least ten seconds. And so they didn’t hear the warning transmitted from the other two tanks in Clemens’s platoon. A second antitank missile, wire-guided, had been fired at them from ten o’clock, from a fringe of smoke fifteen hundred meters away in the paddy off the left-hand side of the road. The Russian-made Sagger, moving at under five hundred meters a second, came through the black and white smokescreen rolling over the paddies, hitting the right track of Clemens’s M-1 as it was nearing the bamboo thicket. There was a muffled explosion, more sound shock, and then a clanking sound, like chains unraveling from a snow tire.
“Damn!” shouted Clemens’s gunner as the tank crashed into the bamboo thicket, the top of which rose a good six feet above the hillock immediately to the right of them, blocking them from the NKA tanks’ view and placing them in a perfect position for defilade fire, providing the driver could manage to turn the fifty-four tons using only the intact left track and what was left of the right.
“Can you do it, Johnny?” shouted Clemens.
“It’ll take the right track off, Lieutenant.”
“Do it!”
The M-1 shuddered right, then the driver, in his forward hull semireclining position, used all the skill he had been taught at Fort Hood, coaxing, talking to the twenty-five-foot-long, eight-foot-high tank, as a cavalry man of old might have cajoled his wounded battle horse, to climb that few feet more up the reverse incline of the bamboo hill to the defilade position. In the lowest gear the tank gave a throaty roar, inching forward on the slippery cane of the bamboo almost to the summit of the hill. Here, given the light rain that was now falling and the smoke, the tank was barely visible, and here its gun, the product of the best engineering in the world, could lay down fire with minimum silhouette. The enemy could return effective fire only if the M-1 could not withdraw before the NKA range finders picked it up. With the right track off, Clemens knew he couldn’t fire and withdraw with any speed and so asked his wingmen, the other two tanks in his platoon, to “overwatch” him, to feed his tank information about any advancing NKA infantry with antitank weapons or PT-76s looking for a lucky shot from the paddies.
On one hand Clemens felt trapped because it would take several hours at least to fix the unraveled track, if they could do it at all in the field. And yet he was in a perfect position with a wide down angle of fire across the paddies now stretching fifteen hundred to five thousand meters in front of him. He was waiting for the smoke to clear. One of the other two tanks he’d requested help from didn’t answer. Whether it was hit hard and out of action or whether its radio had packed it in, Clemens didn’t know. In any case, the other tank gave Clemens the happy information that Cahill had released a full batallion of M-1s, thirty-five tanks in all, which were now rolling up Unification Highway. Within twenty minutes they’d be in the area, engaging the remaining sixty lighter-armed and lighter PT-76 tanks now presumably scuttling across the paddies either side of the road under cover of the smoke, trying to find whatever defensive positions they could. In the interim, Clemens decided to save what was left of his original fifty-five rounds until the smoke curtain cleared.
“How many shots we got left, Luke?”
“Forty-two.”
“What we got on the menu?”
“Ribs, lobster.”
“Never mind the shit — what’ve we got?”
“Shoes, twenty, HE, ten, and twelve HESH.”
It told Clemens he had twenty rounds of solid-shot armor-piercing, ten high-explosive shells, and twelve high-explosives with squash heads.
“Well,” said Clemens, trying not to sound too satisfied up against the PT-76 tin cans. “That should hold us awhile.”
“I reckon,” said his gunner.
As General Kim in his headquarters six miles east outside Uijongbu was informed of the M-1 spearhead rapidly approaching, his face remained impassive, even as his infantry commanders worriedly reminded him of the cardinal rule: that while it was permissible for tanks to move without infantry, this was only wise when you were advancing and using the infantry as your eyes and ears, but in this situation, with a long line of American M-1 tanks, the NKA armored column would quickly be thrown on the defensive, the supporting regiments behind the NKA tanks slaughtered by the cannon and machine-gun fire of the formidable M-1s unless they were withdrawn. Radio intercepts, Kim’s officers pointed out, already confirmed that the M-1s, their laser range finders thwarted by neither rain nor smoke, were less than twenty minutes away. And, after the executions at Panmunjom, the migooks would surely show no mercy, and would fight eye to eye with the PT-76s. Kim merely nodded. He was already quite aware that he was about to engage in the first massed tank battle since the days of the Israeli-Arab wars.
One of the infantry commanders, a colonel, Russian-trained and in charge of one of the crack NKA Sapper units, had, as Kim ordered, already gone ahead of the beleaguered PT-76 column and blown a huge hundred-yard gap in the road, in effect creating an enormous tank ditch which no tank, including the M-1, could ford. But this, the colonel pointed out to Kim, could only be expected to delay the Americans for at most a quarter hour. And it would not be long, he told Kim, before the American fleet in the East Sea would be near enough to launch aerial antitank attacks. This was dangerous for any tank, the top of the turret being the least-armored part of the vehicle, but for the relatively light-armored PT-76s, it could mean annihilation.
Kim did not respond.
As Kim left the headquarters tent, walking across the squishy ground to his private quarters, two of his chief staff officers tried to fathom Kim’s intent. “Perhaps he thinks,” proffered a battalion commander, “that once the M-1s engage our tanks, they will be too close. Any aerial bombardment would also destroy any American tanks nearby. I think Kim has something up his sleeve.”
“Why?” asked the colonel.
“He did not seem overly concerned about the M-Is. Didn’t you notice?” asked the battalion commander.
“I noticed. That is what bothers me. He does not fully comprehend this situation.”
“You can’t tell with Kim,” said the colonel. “He is known for not divulging his tactics till the last minute. Fears a security leak. I’ve no doubt he’s studying the situation carefully. He’s up against the American, Cahill. Kim hates him.”
“So do I,” said the other officer. “But hating is not enough. Hate will not stop an M-1.”
“No,” agreed the colonel. “But it will help.”
“How?”
The colonel shrugged. “In-close armored fighting is not something the Americans—”
“You think Americans are no good at this? Don’t you remember Patton?”
“Yes, of course,” said the colonel. “But that was a long time ago.”
“And what happens when Washington sends reinforcements?” pressed the infantry commander.
The colonel laughed. “They won’t.”
“If they do?”
“We will have over half the South before they get here. The Americans love to argue. Their democracy,” said the colonel contemptuously, “is all talk. They talk big.”
‘“They have big tanks.”
“They have big egos,” countered the colonel. “Remember Vietnam, my friend. Once their ego is punctured, they become very depressed, the Americans.”
“First,” said the infantry commander, “I’d prefer to see the M-1s punctured.”
“Be patient,” said the colonel.
The infantry commander looked at his watch. “It won’t be long. They will be entering the area within five minutes.”
“Then,” said the colonel, “we don’t have long to wait, Comrade. I think we are about to make history.”