cost them a full regiment of fighters to fail in that mission. But enough’s enough. I want to go after their radar sites, and I want to do some offensive counter-air.”
“Gus, the thinking here is that we want to commence offensive operations in a systematic way for maximum psychological effect. That means more than just knocking some antennas down.”
“General, I don’t know what it looks like over there, but right here it’s getting a little exciting. Their army is advancing rapidly. Pretty soon our Russian friends are going to have to make their stand. It’ll be a whole lot easier if the enemy is short on gas and bullets.”
“We know that. We’re trying to figure a way to shake up their political leadership.”
“It isn’t politicians coming north trying to kill us, General. It’s soldiers and airmen. We have to start crippling them before they ruin our whole damned day.”
“I understand that, Gus. I will present your position to the President,” the Chairman promised.
“Do that, will ya?” Wallace killed the transmission, wondering what the hell the lotus-eaters in Washington were thinking about, assuming they were thinking at all. He had a plan, and he thought it was a pretty good systematic one. His Dark Star drones had given him all the tactical intelligence he needed. He knew what targets to hit, and he had enough ordnance to do the hitting, or at least to start doing it.
If they let me, Wallace thought.
Well, it wasn’t a complete waste,” Marshal Luo said. ”We got some pictures of what the Russians are doing.”
“And what’s that?” Zhang asked.
“They’re moving one or two—probably two—divisions northeast from their rail assembly point at Chita. We have good aerial pictures of them.”
“And still nothing in front of our forces?”
Luo shook his head. “Our reconnaissance people haven’t seen anything more than tracks in the ground. I have to assume there are Russians in those woods somewhere, doing reconnaissance of their own, but if so, they’re light forces who’re working very hard to keep out of the way. We know they’ve called up some reserves, but they haven’t shown up either. Maybe their reservists didn’t report. Morale in Russia is supposed to be very low, Tan tells us, and that’s all we’ve really seen. The men we captured are very disheartened because of their lack of support, and they didn’t fight all that well. Except for the American airplanes, this war is going extremely well.”
“And they haven’t attacked our territory yet?” Zhang wanted to be clear on that.
Another shake of the head. “No, and I can’t claim that they’re afraid to do it. Their fighter aircraft are excellent, but to the best of our knowledge they haven’t even attempted a photo-reconnaissance mission. Maybe they just depend on satellites now. Certainly those are supposed to be excellent sources of information for them.”
“And the gold mine?”
“We’ll be there in thirty-six hours. And at that point we can make use of the roads their own engineers have been building to exploit the mineral finds. From the gold mine to the oil fields—five to seven days, depending on how well we can run supplies up.”
“This is amazing, Luo,” Zhang observed. “Better than my fondest hopes.”
“I almost wish the Russians would stand and fight somewhere, so that we could have a battle and be done with it. As it is, my forces are stringing out somewhat, but only because the lead elements are racing forward so well. I’ve thought about slowing them down to maintain unit integrity, but—”
“But speed works for us, doesn’t it?” Zhang observed.
“Yes, it would seem to,” the Defense Minister agreed. “But one prefers to keep units tightly grouped in case there is some contact. However, if the enemy is running, one doesn’t want to give him pause to regroup. So, I’m giving General Peng and his divisions free rein.”
“What forces are you facing?”
“We’re not sure. Perhaps a regiment or so could be ahead of us, but we see no evidence of it, and two more regiments are trying to race ahead of us, or attack our flank, but we have flank security out to the west, and they’ve seen nothing.”
Bondarenko hoped that someday he’d meet the team that had developed this American Dark Star drone. Never in history had a commander possessed such knowledge as this, and without it he would have been forced to commit his slender forces to battle just to ascertain what stood against him. Not now. He probably had a better feel for the location of the advancing