Bombs Away (34 page)

“Because there are swarms of them. It's the same trouble we had in Korea facing the Communists from the North and the Red Chinese,” Truman snapped. “We cut our military to the bone after we whipped the Germans and the Japs. Joe Stalin didn't. We probably put too much faith in the power of our atom bombs, and didn't look for the Russians to build theirs as soon as they did. We can see all that now. We couldn't then, no matter how much I wish we'd been able to. Hindsight is always 20/20.”

Behind him, Joe Short had to be pained. To a press secretary, admitting you'd made a mistake was an unpardonable sin. Truman couldn't see it. The
Führer
was always right. He'd said so, repeatedly. Teachers had taught German schoolkids to believe it. Stalin was the same way—Mao, too.

Hitler hadn't turned out so well. Stalin and Mao killed anybody who dared disagree with them. Truman had wanted to punch a reporter in the nose a time or three, but that was as far as it went. He knew damn well he wasn't always right. The people deserved to know he knew it.

“Will we drive them back?” Mr. Yellow-and-Orange Necktie persisted. “Why can't we smash their army with more A-bombs?”

“Because that army is on the soil of a land we're allied to, a land we're committed to defend,” Truman said. “We use atomic weapons as a last resort, not as a first one. We don't want to wreck our own friends.”

Another reporter found a different kind of question for him: “Do you think anybody in the whole country will want to vote for you in 1952 after…this?” His wave took in all of shattered Los Angeles and, by extension, all of the shattered country.

“I don't know. I don't care. I'm not worrying about it right now,” Truman answered. They'd proposed the Twenty-second Amendment, limiting a President's tenure to two terms of his own and half of a predecessor's minus one day, in 1947. They'd got enough states to ratify it just weeks earlier. But it didn't apply to the President in whose administration it was ratified. If he could get people to keep reelecting him till 1976, it would be legal.

For now, though, he tended to agree with the snoopy reporter. He'd have a hard time getting elected dogcatcher next year, let alone President. That didn't necessarily prove anything. A lot could change in a year and a half. The USA might have won the war by then.

Or the Russians might have dropped one on the White House, the way the United States had dropped one on the Kremlin. The American effort hadn't got rid of Stalin, which was too bad.
Maybe the Russians won't get me, either,
Truman thought. If they did, the USA would have an easier time going on than Russia would without Uncle Joe. If the United States could get along without Roosevelt, it could definitely get along without Truman.

He held up both hands. “Boys, I didn't come to chew the fat on the runway,” he said. “I came to see what Los Angeles looks like now, and how we can get it back on its feet as soon as possible.” He'd also come to eat rubber chicken at a banquet that would swell Democratic coffers, but he didn't mention that.

He'd hoped for a convertible so he could see better, but they put him into a sedan. The fan was uncommonly noisy. That turned out to be because it wasn't just a fan. “This car has an air-conditioning and filtering system, sir,” explained the Air Force colonel who played tour guide for him. “Some of the dust in the air is still radioactive in the damaged regions. We don't know how much long-term harm it can do, and we don't want to experiment on the President.”

“No, eh?” Truman said. “Well, thanks for that much.”

In the air-conditioned car, he got close to ground zero. Nothing much stirred there. The area had been comprehensively flattened. But a crow hopped around on the glassy ground before flying off in search of a place that offered better eating. The bird didn't worry about radioactivity.

The bird also didn't have to decide whether and when to launch new strikes against the Soviet Union. All it worried about were cats and hawks. It didn't know how lucky it was.

Cade Curtis watched the distant plumes of black exhaust heading his way. Sure as hell, more T-34/85s had made it into Korea. Tanks with diesel engines had all kinds of advantages over ones powered by gas. They went farther on the same amount of fuel. They were easier to maintain. If hit by an AP round, they were far less likely to explode into flame.

But they didn't run clean. You could see them coming if they moved by day. You could, and Cade did. He went down the trench to the radioman. “Let division know we've got half a dozen tanks coming toward us,” he said. “An air strike would be nice, or some artillery if they can't do that.”

“Yes, sir,” the kid with the heavy backpack said. Some kid—he was likely a year or two older than Curtis. He hesitated, then asked, “What if they can't do it?”

“Well, in that case we just have to figure out something else, don't we?” Cade hoped he sounded more cheerful than he felt. They did have a couple of bazookas, but no foot soldier relished the prospect of taking on tanks without help.

“Right.” The radioman sure didn't relish the prospect. He got on the horn with divisional headquarters. He did look happier when he took the earphones off his head. “They say they can give us some air, but they'll need half an hour—maybe a whole hour.”

“Better than nothing, I guess.” Cade stuck his head up for another look at those oncoming smudges of diesel smoke. They weren't going to wait an hour, or even thirty minutes. He tried for a nonchalant chuckle. Whether he succeeded, he wasn't sure. “Well, we'll just have to keep the Indians busy till the cavalry rides over the hill, that's all.”

“Right,” the radioman said again. By his tone, whatever Cade had managed, nonchalant wasn't it.

He had no time for another rehearsal. He hurried through the trenches, saying, “They'll have infantry with them. If we can knock those guys over or make them take cover and not come forward with the tanks, we've got a better chance.” That mostly meant there wouldn't be so many enemy foot soldiers to shoot at the American bazooka teams.

A bazooka round could kill a T-34/85 from a hundred yards, maybe from a hundred fifty. Past that, you'd probably miss. The tank could shell a bazooka team out of existence from better than half a mile if its crew knew where the men were.

Along with the bazooka tubes, Cade had a couple of machine guns, one with a bipod that could go anywhere and the other on a heavy tripod in a sandbagged nest. “Fire one burst, then take it off the tripod, get the hell out, and use it as a light gun,” he said.

“We have a lot more accuracy with the tripod, sir,” said the sergeant in charge of the gun. He was old enough to be Cade's father, and spoke as if he expected Cade to take his advice.

Not this time. “Do what I tell you, O'Higgins,” Cade said sharply. “How long do you think this position will stand up to shelling?”

Bernie O'Higgins scowled. In spite of his name, he looked more like a dago than a mick. Thick black stubble rasped under his fingers when he rubbed his chin. “Awright, Lieutenant, you got a point,” he allowed. “We'll play it your way.”

Lou Klein nodded when Cade said what he'd done about the machine-gun nest. “Good job, sir,” the staff sergeant said. Then he spoiled it by adding, “I woulda talked Bernie around if he kept giving you grief.”

No doubt he would have, too…which had nothing to do with anything. “It's my company,” Curtis said. “I'm supposed to be in charge of it.”

“People are supposed to do all kindsa things they can't always handle. Sometimes they need a little help—uh, sir.” Klein paused, eyeing the young officer. “You've seen more and done more'n most guys your age, ain't you?” He paused again, this time for a smoke. “Tell you what. If we're both alive a coupla hours from now, we can talk about it some more. How's that sound?”

“Works for me,” Cade said.

Mortar bombs started whistling down. The Red Army had always been in love with them. It passed on its doctrine—and a bunch of tubes—to the North Koreans and Red Chinese. The company had an 81mm mortar, too. Cade also liked it. How could you not like portable artillery? It fired back. If he got very, very lucky, a bomb would come down on a T-34/85's turret top, where the armor was thinnest, and brew it up. That kind of luck, he didn't have. But the mortar rounds would maim some of the enemy troops and make others take cover. They could do that from longer range than machine guns.

As soon as O'Higgins' gun started hammering away, the approaching tanks stopped. Their turrets swung toward the sandbagged nest. Taking out protected enemy machine guns was one reason tanks had been invented, half a lifetime ago now. After four or five hits, not much was left of the nest. Not much would have been left of the machine-gun crew, either, had they stuck around. But the gun, now on a bipod and much more portable, had already escaped.

Another reason tanks had been invented back during the First World War was to clear paths through the bramble patches of barbed wire both sides strewed about with such abandon in front of their lines. Less wire than Cade would have liked stood between him and the enemy. He wanted the T-34/85s to come flatten it, though. That would get them closer to his position, and give the bazooka men better shots at them.

Unfortunately, the tank commanders weren't so dumb. They stayed back and lambasted the American trenches with shells and with bursts from their machine guns. Cade wondered if they were Russians. The Koreans who'd crewed tanks in the earlier days of the fighting wanted to get as close as they could to whatever they were attacking. They seemed to think squashing a foe flat was the best way to dispose of him.

A shell slammed into the dirt ten yards in front of Cade. Fragments whined overhead. He got mud in the face, harder than somebody would have thrown it at him. He spat and blinked and rubbed his eyes, trying to clean the crud out of them.

Wounded soldiers yelled for corpsmen. Standing up on the fighting step and looking out to see what the enemy foot soldiers were up to was asking to get shot in the face. He knew the bastards were moving forward, but what could he do? Men popped up for a few seconds, fired half blindly, and ducked down again, with luck before they got hit themselves. The machine guns delivered quick bursts.

One of the bazooka men launched a rocket at a T-34/85. It fell well short. All the same, it warned them not to get too cute. And it made them send some heavy fire toward that part of the trench. By the time they did, the guy with the sheet-metal launcher had prudently vacated.

Cade stuck his head up to spray some bullets around with his PPSh. He was alarmed to see some Chinese soldiers—or maybe they were Koreans—close enough for him to hit. He fired a couple of short bursts. The PPSh pulled up and to the right like a son of a bitch if you just squeezed the trigger and let 'er rip. The enemy soldiers shrieked and went down. Maybe he'd hit them. Maybe he'd just scared the shit out of them. That would do.

A distant buzz in the sky swelled to a deep-throated roar. Four Navy Corsairs zoomed low over the little battle, ripple-firing rockets and blazing away with the .50-caliber machine guns in their wings. Cade whooped and waved. Those inverted gull wings were the most gorgeous things he'd ever seen. In Europe, they'd be obsolete. They held their own here. This was a long way from MiG Alley, and a Corsair stood a good chance against anybody's prop job.

They made four passes in all. By the time they waggled their wings and rode off into the sunset, three tanks were on fire and the other three on the run. The foot soldiers who'd advanced with them decided they didn't want this stretch of American line all
that
much, either. They fell back with the surviving T-34/85s.

Some of the dead in front of the trenches would have ammo Cade could feed to his Russian-speaking submachine gun. He'd go out and scrounge…eventually. Now he turned to Lou Klein and said, “Made it through another one.”

“Yeah, we did,” the veteran agreed. “Another million to go and we win the fuckin' war.”

“Think anybody back home'll give a good goddamn?” Cade asked. Klein shook his head.

Air-raid sirens woke Daisy Baxter out of a sound sleep. They hadn't sounded when the Russians bombed Norwich. If this wasn't a drill or a mistake, the enemy was hitting somewhere closer to Fakenham now.

“Sculthorpe!” Daisy gasped, and jumped out of bed. She hurried down to the cellar, trying not to break her neck on the dark stairs. Whether going down there would do any good if an A-bomb hit the air base, she didn't know. She didn't see how she could be any worse off, though.

Antiaircraft guns began to hammer. Sculthorpe lay just a couple of miles from Fakenham. If an A-bomb did hit there, this little town would catch it hard.

Explosions thundered. The Owl and Unicorn shuddered above Daisy's head. She whimpered like a terrified animal. If the pub fell down above her and blocked the stairs, would she have to stay here till she starved or suffocated?

Explosions, she realized. Plural. With an atom bomb, there'd be only one. But watch out for that first step—it's a dilly!

So the Russians were dropping ordinary high explosives on Sculthorpe. They didn't think the airfield was important enough for fancy, expensive atomic weaponry. Fakenham wasn't in danger unless they missed badly—which, from everything she'd heard about bombing last time here and in Germany, they might well do.

But, unless the Owl and Unicorn took a direct hit, it wouldn't collapse like that. She breathed easier. She also hoped that whatever the Reds were dropping, it would miss the runways and Nissen huts—the Yanks called them Quonset huts—to the west.

The sirens wailed for about fifteen minutes. No new bombs had fallen for some little while when the all-clear finally warbled. Daisy went up to the ground floor, opened the door, and looked around. Not much to see, not when Fakenham was blacked out. A couple of other people were also peering about.