Arc Light (75 page)

“They're comin' up on the left too!” another yelled. “Oh, Jesus. Oh,
Mother-of-God-Je-e-e-esus!” What's it gonna feel like?
Monk wondered. He cut the first men over the hump to pieces as he heard the thump of Mouth's grenade launcher and then the boom of its grenade almost simultaneously on his left.

The cherry about ten meters away on the left pulled out of his fighting hole and scrambled back over the trunk of the tree into the middle of the small group.
It hurt like shit when my ribs got busted,
Monk thought, but he remembered the agony of the wounded and
knew it would be worse. His panic vibrated through him, his body shaking uncontrollably. He tried to swallow, but there was no moisture to be found in his parched mouth.

“They're all over the place!” somebody else yelled from in front as Monk fired down the slope and saw two men tumble.

“Sarge! What the hell's gonna . . . ? Oh, man,
S-a-a-r-ge!”

“Shit!” Mouth screamed over the din from behind Monk. “We done bought it now, T Man! We in this shit too
deep,
man!”

Two grenades exploded almost at once from just in front of the hill, and Monk heard the screaming of one of his men.
“Red's hit!”
somebody yelled. Russians poured over the rise to Monk's right, and he sprayed the air with bullets from a weapon now shaking noticeably in his quaking hands.
Our Father, who art in Heaven
 . . . Monk loosed a long burst as one of the men in front kept up a running commentary on “Red.”

“Oh, shit, Sarge, he's hit bad! He needs help, man!” . . .
hallowed be Thy name.
Wood splinters sprayed Monk's back and cut into his neck. Mouth's gun fell silent.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done
 . . . Monk spun the SAW over the trunk. Mouth lay in the branches pawing wordlessly at his flak jacket, jagged holes ripped up the front. Monk blasted the Russians who rose to creep closer. He glanced back down at Mouth, who seemed unable to seize the grip to unzip his jacket, clawing at the zipper instead and staring up at Monk with glassy eyes. . . .
on earth as it is in heaven.

Russians poured over the hill right in front, and Monk raised his SAW and let go a long burst, emptying his magazine. He fell to the ground to reload. Whole sections of wood along the trunk shattered with loud claps, and bullets buzzed by Monk's ears like angry bees.

“Oh, God,” Monk said as his hands fumbled with the heavy magazine and he began to cry. “Please help me! Please, God! Ple-e-ease!” The magazine wouldn't seat in the SAW, and his eyes were too blurred by the tears to guide it home. A fierce storm of bullets filled the air all around and tore through the branches of the trees as finally he felt the magazine connect with the weapon. Someone grabbed his legs. He looked up to see one of the cherries, the one who had left his hole, crying in agony.

“Oh, God, o-o-o-h Go-o-od it hu-u-u-rts!” His face was contorted by sobs, and his legs and pelvis were splotched and sopping wet with angry red smears.

Monk loosed a panting, tearful shout and raised his weapon just as the back of the cherry's head was cleaved off right in front of his eyes, splattering Monk in gore. A split second later, a sledgehammer blow shook his right thigh. Monk's SAW fell to the ground as he
seized the burning hot fire that shot through his leg and let loose a scream of pain. The world spun and blackened, and he coughed—warm liquid surged through his sinuses and out his nose. Holding his leg tightly, the agony ripped at his senses. He hurled vomit that rose to burn its way up from his stomach to clear his air passages with a long grunt.

He battered the back of his head against the ground as the pain shot through his nervous system like electric fire, crowding out all of his senses. First searing hot, then burning cold, Monk struggling to get breath into his heaving chest and with each draw panted a short scream, pausing only to heave as his stomach emptied and then just cramped violently. He felt a thousand pinpricks spreading across his skin as he broke into a sweat. The cold slick fabric of his trousers and the warm spurt of blood through his fingers as his heart pumped connected despite the pain.
I'm gonna die.

He reached up to rip the first aid pouch off its familiar place on his belt. Without being able to see through the narrowing tunnel of his vision, he grabbed the thick packet inside. His hands slipped several times before he was able to tear open the slick cover.

His head wobbled and he dropped it back to the ground. With hands shaking wildly, he pressed the bandage to the spurting blood and began to wrap the gauze around and around his thigh, careful to cover both the entry and the exit wound, which he found with his fingers through the rips in his pants leg. His hands shook so badly that he almost couldn't pull open the adhesive end.

When he'd done all he could, he collapsed back, his skin clammy from head to toe. His shoulders began to quake, the first of the shakes that quickly seized his entire body with a cold so complete that he thought he would freeze to death. He couldn't remember what had happened. Pain, he remembered pain, but he couldn't feel it as he drifted in and out of consciousness.

He shook hard from side to side. A large figure blotted out the sky above Monk. Monk flinched as he felt drops of liquid fall to his face. Focusing as best he could, Monk saw Bone shouting, one hand pressed to his neck, which dripped blood through his fingers, the other grabbing Monk's flak jacket and shaking as he hovered over Monk's face.

“Corpsma-a-n!”
Bone yelled as he stared down at Monk. “You're gonna be okay, man,” Bone said, followed by something else. Monk shook again and he opened his eyes. “Stay with me, buddy! You gotta stay awake!
Co-o-o-rpsman!”

At the top of the hill behind Bone, Smalls shouted, “First Squad! Advance by Fire Teams! Alpha, let's go!” and then he waved his arm forward and disappeared.

Bone kept up a constant chatter. “ . . . go home now,” Bone said, followed by
“Corpsman!
Where the fuck are you,
God-dammi-i-i-it!”
The ground gave way beneath Monk's back and he spiraled through, only to be caught by Bone and shaken awake again, and again, and again.

I'm so tired
, Monk tried to say.
Lemme go, man. Lemme go.
Monk never felt the moisture from Bone's tears that fell onto his face or heard the wail of the big man's anguished cry.

General Thomas took to the podium in front of the large crowd of officials, and Lambert listened as the dozens of conversations in the room died down. It was only the second major briefing of the war, and everyone was tense.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” General Thomas said. “I would like to welcome all of our foreign guests from the coalition countries to these new and somewhat more plush accommodations.” There was a buzz of nervous laughter, and Lambert looked around at the hardwood floors, chandeliers, and ornate crown molding, which truly stood out in stark contrast to the spartan underground bunker from which they had emerged ten days earlier.

“When Operation Avenging Sword began seventeen days ago, the plan for our principal attack in Europe was to advance along two parallel and supporting drives into Ukraine. As you all know, the Southern Prong's attack was spoiled by a cross-border incursion of Russian motorized infantry troops, the last pockets of which inside Slovakia surrendered three days ago. What that spoiling attack has done, however,” Thomas said as he looked up, “together with the remarkable success of VII Corps and I British Corps in the north is to force us to rethink our early campaign strategy.” There was a slight stir in the crowd.

Thomas walked to the map and pulled his laser pointer from his jacket pocket. Thomas's aides pulled the curtain back, revealing a huge wall map. There were gasps, and the red dot from Thomas's pointer flashed onto the map of Ukraine, a huge arrow sweeping from the south and meeting the Northern Prong. “Three days ago, V Corps was passed through VII Corps' lines to merge the old Northern and Southern prongs into one main thrust.” Thomas waited a few moments for the commotion to die down. “The
results . . .
have been spectacularly successful.”

There was an outpouring of noise—some laughter, some applause as confusion reigned. “From the point at which VII Corps—the old Northern Prong—crossed the Polish border into Ukraine, Moscow lies six hundred and thirty-five miles as the crow flies. In road miles along the intended route of advance, Moscow is about seven hundred and forty miles. Assuming a general ten-miles-per-day rate of advance through Ukraine and Byelarus, we had anticipated crossing the Russian border at approximately H plus fifty-two, or on August sixteenth, a little over one month from now.”

Again General Thomas paused for effect, and Lambert turned to see the President wink back at him from across the aisle. “Last night, lead elements of the U.S. Army's 2nd and 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiments and 4th Mechanized Infantry Division crossed into Russia west of Novozybkov.” Cheers rose from many of the nearly two hundred people present. Some actually stood on their feet, and the military men seated around Lambert and even Lambert sitting in the front row had their backs slapped by the Congressional leadership in the row just behind. Costanzo rose and waved his clasped hands in the air in victory as if the applause was for him, and the crowd settled slowly into a mere buzz of conversations as Thomas held his hand up for quiet.

“Having averaged not ten miles per day but twenty-five, we have achieved rates of advance we had not dreamed possible before the war. With the advantage of superior mobility, we have managed to achieve local superiority on the ground in almost every engagement. In every major engagement, in fact, except in yesterday's Russian counterattack in the Dnepr-Sozh Triangle along the Russian-Byelorussian border.”

There was a stir from the crowd as everyone expected the proverbial “but” to drop from the story of success to date. Again Lambert looked at Costanzo, who was agitated and searching the front row for one of the cognoscenti with whom to exchange significant looks. Again he winked at Lambert, who smiled back. “Unbeknownst to us, the Russian High Command had managed to conceal a rather sizable maneuver force, something on the order of five divisions of tanks and mechanized infantry, just north of Dobrush, Byelarus.” The agitation in the crowd was palpable now, and Lambert had to smirk at the way the poker-faced Thomas played the stunning victory they had just achieved for all it was worth. “The forces had largely remained in place under simple physical concealment—netting and the like—and they achieved a surprise crossing of the Sozh in the early morning hours yesterday. The Russian forces struck a thin screen of V Corps' 2nd Armored Cavalry Regiment,
which we were resting after almost a full week of action, and achieved a breakout.”

Thomas did not let the commotion deter him from continuing. “They were met by fresh units of the just-arrived 4th Mechanized Infantry Division from the old Southern Prong”—the crowd fell quiet again—“and were routed in a counterattack so successful that it has become our main line of advance. The Russians gambled, and now they are suffering the consequences.”

Only now did Thomas get applause, the crowd's comprehension of what would probably be the greatest victory of the war having been slow to develop. “Because of those successes,” Thomas said, shifting gears and sifting through the papers atop his podium, “our planners have rapidly accelerated the objective timetables. The toughest stretch of the road still lies ahead. We have met the Russian Army in noncombatant countries, and the results to date are encouraging. But there are many factors working against us as we continue our advance. Our supply lines grow longer and theirs shorter, which will translate into more and longer pauses for resupply. In addition, the Russians will have had the time to prepare their defenses with Provisional Troops, and major river crossings and reductions of city garrisons loom as increasingly daunting tasks.

”As a result of the lengthening of our lines of communication and the expected increase in Russian Army and irregular resistance upon crossing into Russia proper, our estimates are for only a twelve-and-one-half-mile-per-day rate of advance until we reach Tarusa, sixty-five miles south of Moscow. There we will hit the tougher, denser defenses currently being erected, and the rate of advance is then projected to slow to about two and one half miles per day, which, together with a six-day hold at the capital's outskirts, would put us another month away from finally assaulting Moscow. In conclusion, ladies and gentlemen, what we're looking at is about one month to get to Tarusa, and a final month to encircle and attack Moscow proper, which puts us in mid-September.”

“Isn't the one-prong advance risky?” Lambert heard called from the row behind him. There was a stirring in the audience as Lambert turned to see the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. “I mean, I thought the whole point behind having two prongs was to keep from being blindsided by a Russian attack. Won't this mean that single prong has to watch out on both flanks, will leave both flanks totally undefended?” Lambert glanced back at the President, who stared at the floor as if not listening.
Public support for the war slips to sixty percent and out come the sharks,
Lambert thought.
The honeymoon with Congress is over.