"Pull up alongside the reconnaissance track," he ordered his driver.

Who the h.e.l.l is this?" Captain Aleksandrov wondered aloud. "Four big antennas, at least a division commander," Buikov thought aloud. "My thirty will settle his hash."

"No, no, let's let Pasha have him if he gets out."

Gogol had antic.i.p.ated that. He was resting his arms on the steel top of the BRM, tucking the rifle in tight to his shoulder. The only thing in his way was the loose weave of the camouflage netting, and that wasn't an obstacle to worry about, the old marksman was sure.

"Stopping to see the fox?" Buikov said next.

"Looks that way," the captain agreed.

Comrade General!" the young lieutenant called in surprise.

"Where's the enemy, Boy?" Peng asked loudly in return.

"General, we haven't seen much this morning. Some tracks in the ground, but not even any of that for the past two hours."

"Nothing at all?"

"Not a thing," the lieutenant replied.

"Well, I thought there'd be something around." Peng put his foot in the leather stirrup and climbed to the top of his command vehicle.

It's a general, has to be, look at that clean uniform!" Buikov told the others as he slewed his turret around to center his sight on the man eight hundred meters away. It was the same in any army. Generals never got dirty.

"Pasha," Aleksandrov asked, "ever kill an enemy general before?"

"No," Gogol admitted, drawing the rifle in very tight and allowing for the range. . . .

Better to go to that ridgeline, but our orders were to stop at once," the lieutenant told the general.

"That's right," Peng agreed. He took out his Nikon binoculars and trained them on the ridge, perhaps eight hundred meters off. Nothing to see except for that one bush . . .

Then there was a flash- "Yes!" Gogol said the moment the trigger broke. Two seconds, about, for the bullet to- They'd never hear the report of the shot over the sound of their diesel engines, but Colonel Wa heard the strange, wet thud, and his head turned to see General Peng's face twist into surprise rather than pain, and Peng grunted from the sharp blow to the center of his chest, and then his hands started coming down, pulled by the additional weight of the binoculars-and then his body started down, falling off the top of the command track through the hatch into the radiofilled interior.

That got him," Gogol said positively. "He's dead." He almost added that it might be fun to skin him and lay his hide in the river for a final swim and a gold coating, but, no, you only did that to wolves, not people-not even Chinese.

"Buikov, take those tracks!"

"Gladly, Comrade Captain," and the sergeant squeezed the trigger, and the big machine gun spoke.

They hadn't seen or heard the shot that had killed Peng, but there was no mistaking the machine cannon that fired now. Two of the reconnaissance tracks exploded at once, but then everything started moving, and fire was returned.

"Major!" General Ge called.

"Loading HEAT!" The gunner punched the right b.u.t.ton, but the autoloader, never as fast as a person, took its time to ram the projective and then the propellant case into the breech.

Back us up!" Aleksandrov ordered loudly. The diesel engine was already running, and the BRM's transmission set in reverse. The corporal in the driver's seat floored the pedal and the carrier jerked backward. The suddenness of it nearly lost Gogol over the side, but Aleksandrov grabbed his arm and dragged him down inside, tearing his skin in the process. "Go north!" the captain ordered next.

"I got three of the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds!" Buikov said. Then the sky was rent by a crash overhead. Something had gone by too fast to see, but not too fast to hear.

"That tank gunner knows his business," Aleksandrov observed. "Corporal, get us out of here!"

"Working on it, Comrade Captain."

"GREEN WOLF to command!" the captain said next into the radio.

"Yes, GREEN WOLF, report."

"We just killed three enemy tracks, and I think we got a senior officer. Pasha, Sergeant Gogol, that is, killed a Chinese general officer, or so it appeared."

"He was a general, all right," Buikov agreed. "The shoulder boards were pure gold, and that was a command track with four big radio antennas."

"Understood. What are you doing now, GREEN WOLF?"

"We're getting the f.u.c.k away. I think we'll be seeing more c.h.i.n.ks soon."

"Agreed, GREEN WOLF. Proceed to divisional CP. Out."

"Yuriy Andreyevich, you will have heavy contact in a few minutes. What is your plan?"

"I want to volley-fire my tanks before firing my artillery. Why spoil the surprise, Gennady?" Sinyavskiy asked cruelly. "We are ready for them here."

"Understood. Good luck, Yuriy."

"And what of the other missions?"

"BOYAR is moving now, and the Americans are about to deploy their magical pigs. If you can handle the leading Chinese elements, those behind ought to be roughly handled."

"You can rape their daughters for all I care, Gennady."

"That is nekulturniy, Yuriy. Perhaps their wives," he suggested, adding, "We are watching you on the television now."

"Then I will smile for the cameras," Sinyavskiy promised.

The orbiting F-16 fighters were under the tactical command of Major General Gus Wallace, but he, at the moment, was under the command-or at least operating under the direction-of a Russian, General-Colonel Gennady Bondarenko, who was in turn guided by the action of this skinny young Major Tucker and Grace Kelly, a soulless drone hovering over the battlefield.

"There they go, General," Tucker said, as the leading Chinese echelons resumed their drive north.

"I think it is time, then." He looked to Colonel Aliyev, who nodded agreement.

Bondarenko lifted the satellite phone. "General Wallace?"

"I'm here."

"Please release your aircraft."

"Roger that. Out." And Wallace shifted phone receivers. "EAGLE ONE, this is ROUGHRIDER. Execute, execute, execute. Acknowledge."

"Roger that, sir, copy your order to execute. Executing now. Out." And the colonel on the lead AWACS shifted to a different frequency: "CADILLAC LEAD, this is EAGLE ONE. Execute your attack. Over."

"Roger that," the colonel heard. "Going down now. Out."

The F-16s had been circling above the isolated clouds.

Their threat receivers chirped a little bit, reporting the emissions of SAM radars somewhere down there, but the types indicated couldn't reach this high, and their jammer pods were all on anyway. On command, the sleek fighters changed course for the battlefield far below and to their west. Their GPS locators told them exactly where they were, and they also knew where their targets were, and the mission became a strictly technical exercise.

Under the wings of each aircraft were the Smart Pigs, four to the fighter, and with forty-eight fighters, that came to 192 J-SOWs. Each of these was a canister thirteen feet long and not quite two feet wide, filled with BLU-108 submunitions, twenty per container. The fighter pilots punched the release triggers, dropped their bombs, and then angled for home, letting the robots do the rest of the work. The Dark Star tapes would later tell them how they'd done.

The Smart Pigs separated from the fighters, extended their own little wings to guide themselves the rest of the way to the target area. They knew this information, having been programmed by the fighters and were now able to follow guidance from their own GPS receivers. This they did, acting in accordance with their own onboard minicomputers, until each reached a spot five thousand feet over their designated segment of the battlefield. They didn't know that this was directly over the real estate occupied by the Chinese 29th Type A Group Army and its three heavy divisions, which included nearly seven hundred main-battle tanks, three hundred armored personnel carriers, and a hundred mobile guns. That made a total of roughly a thousand targets for the nearly four thousand descending submunitions. But the falling bomblets were guided, too, and each had a seeker looking for heat of the sort radiated by an operating tank, personnel carrier, self-propelled gun, or truck. There were a lot of them to look for.

No one saw them coming. They were small, no larger, really, than a common crow, and falling rapidly; they were also painted white, which helped them blend in to the morning sky. Each had a rudimentary steering mechanism, and at an alt.i.tude of two thousand feet they started looking for and homing in on targets. Their downward speed was such that a minor deflection of their control vanes was sufficient to get them close, and close meant straight down.

They exploded in bunches, almost in the same instant. Each contained a pound and a half of high-explosive, the heat from which melted the metal casing, which then turned into a projectile-the process was called "self-forging"-which blazed downward at a speed of ten thousand feet per second. The armor on the top of a tank is always the thinnest, and five times the thickness would have made no difference. Of the 921 tanks on the field, 762 took hits, and the least of these destroyed the vehicles' diesel engine. Those less fortunate took hits through the turret, which killed the crews at once and/or ignited the ammunition storage, converting each armored vehicle into a small manfabricated volcano. Just that quickly, three mechanized divisions were changed into one badly shaken and disorganized brigade. The infantry carriers fared no better, and it was worse for the trucks, most of them carrying ammunition or other flammable supplies.

All in all, it took less than ninety seconds to turn 29th Type A Group Army into a thinly spread junkyard and funeral pyre.

Holy G.o.d," Ryan said. "Is this for real?"

"Seeing is believing. Jack, when they came to me with the idea for J-SOW, I thought it had to be something from a science-fiction book. Then they demo'd the submunitions out at China Lake, and I thought, Jesus, we don't need the Army or the Marines anymore. Just send over some F-18s and then a brigade of trucks full of body bags and some ministers to pray over them. Eh, Mickey?"

"It's some capability," General Moore agreed. He shook his head. "d.a.m.n, just like the tests."

"Okay, what's happening next?"

Next" was just off the coast near Guangszhou. Two Aegis cruisers, Mobile Bay and Princeton, plus the destroyers Fletcher, Fife, and John Young, steamed in line-ahead formation out of the morning fog and turned broadside to the sh.o.r.e. There was actually a decent beach at this spot. There was nothing much behind it, just a coastal-defense missile battery that the fighter-bombers had immolated a few hours before. To finish that job, the ships trained their guns to port and let loose a barrage of five-inch sh.e.l.ls. The crack and thunder of the gunfire could be heard on sh.o.r.e, as was the shriek of the sh.e.l.ls pa.s.sing overhead, and the explosions of the detonations. That included one missile that the bombs of the previous night had missed, plus the crew getting it ready for launch. People living nearby saw the gray silhouettes against the morning sky, and many of them got on the telephone to report what they saw, but being civilians, they reported the wrong thing, of course.

It was just after nine in the morning in Beijing when the Politburo began its emergency session. Some of those present had enjoyed a restful night's sleep, and then been disturbed by the news that came over the phone at breakfast. Those better informed had hardly slept at all past three in the morning and, though more awake than their colleagues, were not in a happier mood.

"Well, Luo, what is happening?" Interior Minister Tong Jie asked.

"Our enemies counterattacked last night. This sort of thing we must expect, of course," he admitted in as low-key a voice as circ.u.mstances permitted.

"How serious were these counterattacks?" Tong asked.

"The most serious involved some damage to railroad bridges in Harbin and Bei'an, but repairs are under way."

"I hope so. The repair effort will require some months," Qian Kun interjected.

"Who said that!" Luo demanded harshly.

"Marshal, I supervised the construction of two of those bridges. This morning I called the division superintendent for our state railroad in Harbin. All six of them have been destroyed-the piers on both sides of the river are totally wrecked; it will take over a month just to clear the debris. I admit this surprised me. Those bridges were very st.u.r.dily built, but the division superintendent tells me they are quite beyond repair."

"And who is this defeatist?" Luo demanded.

"He is a loyal party member of long standing and a very competent engineer whom you will not threaten in my presence!" Qian shot back. "There is room in this building for many things, but there is not room here for a lie!"

"Come now, Qian," Zhang Han Sen soothed. "We need not have that sort of language here. Now, Luo, how bad is it really?"

"I have army engineers heading there now to make a full a.s.sessment of the damage and to commence repairs. I am confident that we can restore service shortly. We have skilled bridging engineers, you know."

"Luo," Qian said, "your magic army bridges can support a tank or a truck, yes, but not a locomotive that weighs two hundred tons pulling a train weighing four thousand. Now, what else has gone wrong with your Siberian adventure?"

"It is foolish to think that the other side will simply lie down and die. Of course they fight back. But we have superior forces in theater, and we will smash them. We will have that new gold mine in our pocket before this meeting is over," the Defense Minister promised. But the pledge seemed hollow to some of those around the table.

"What else?" Qian persisted.

"The American naval air forces attacked last night and succeeded in sinking some of our South Sea Fleet units."

"Which units?"

"Well, we have no word from our missile submarine, and-"

"They sank our only missile submarine?" Premier Xu asked. "How is this possible? Was it sitting in harbor?"

"No," Luo admitted. "It was at sea, in company with another nuclear submarine, and that one is also possibly lost."

"Marvelous!" Tong Jie observed. "Now the Americans strike at our strategic a.s.sets! That's half our nuclear deterrent gone, and that was the safe half of it. What goes on, Luo? What is happening now?"

At his seat, Fang Gan took note of the fact that Zhang was strangely subdued. Ordinarily he would have leaped to Luo's defense, but except for the one conciliatory comment, he was leaving the Defense Minister to flap in the wind. What might that mean?

"What do we tell the people?" Fang asked, trying to center the meeting on something important.

"The people will believe what they are told," Luo said.

And everyone nodded nervous agreement on that one. They did control the media. The American CNN news service had been turned off all over the People's Republic, along with all Western news services, even in Hong Kong, which usually enjoyed much looser reins than the rest of the country. But the thing no one addressed, but everyone knew to worry about, was that every soldier had a mother and a father who'd notice when the mail home stopped coming. Even in a nation as tightly controlled as the PRC, you couldn't stop the Truth from getting out-or rumors, which, though false, could be even worse than an adverse Truth. People would believe things other than those they were told to believe, if those other things made more sense than the Official Truth proclaimed by their government in Beijing.

Truth was something so often feared in this room, Fang realized, and for the first time in his life he wondered why that had to be. If the Truth was something to fear, might that mean they were doing something wrong in here? But, no, that couldn't be true, could it? Didn't they have a perfect political model for reality? Wasn't that Mao's bequest to their country?

But if that were true, why did they fear having the people find out what was really happening?

Could it be that they, the Politburo members, could handle the Truth and the peasantry could not?

But then, if they feared having the peasantry get hold of the Truth, didn't that have to mean that the Truth was harmful to the people sitting in this room? And if the Truth was a danger to the peasants and workers, then didn't they have to be wrong?

Fang suddenly realized how dangerous was the thought that had just entered his mind.

"Luo, what does it mean to us strategically," the Interior Minister asked, "if the Americans remove half of our strategic weapons? Was that done deliberately? If so, for what cause?"

"Tong, you do not sink a ship by accident, and so, yes, the attack on our missile submarine must have been a deliberate act," Luo answered.

"So, the Americans deliberately removed from the table one of our only methods for attacking them directly? Why? Was that not a political act, not just a military one?"

The Defense Minister nodded. "Yes, you could see it that way."

"Can we expect the Americans to strike at us directly? To this date they have struck some bridges, but what about our government and vital industries? Might they strike directly at us?" Tong went on.

"That would be unwise. We have missiles targeted at their princ.i.p.al cities. They know this. Since they disarmed themselves of nuclear missiles some years ago-well, they still have nuclear bombs that can be delivered by bombers and tactical aircraft, of course, but not the ability to strike at us in the way that we could strike at them-and the Russians, of course."