“You dumb bastard!” Aussie castigated himself in the near-dawn light. He was less than a hundred miles from the border and was ready to use the beeper to bring in an E VAC when he heard the ominous chud-chud-chud of a bug-eyed Hind coming from behind him to the south.
It had been the cross probably. A Spets chopper or ground patrol for that matter had probably come across the cross and then, once alerted, they might have seen the leftovers and signs of his raft making. In any case, he told the Kawasaki they were in deep shit and he’d have to think fast. He picked one of the narrow gullies up ahead that went into an S-curve, probably following an old, dried riverbed, given the size of the boulders and sand dunes between them. He pulled the Kawasaki into the gully, laid it down on its side, took off his del, scooping sand underneath it, quickly sculpturing it into a body shape by the collapsed motorcycle, sweat streaking his blue-and-white Spets undershirt as he pulled out the fifteen-pound RPG-7 and two of its five-pound rounds and scrambled further down into the gully amid a small island of dunes and boulders scattered along its base.
The chud-chud-chud of the five-rotor chopper not yet visible was coming closer, and then suddenly its shadow passed over the gully and went into a turn. The pilot, no doubt having seen the splayed figure by the bike and realizing that the gully was too narrow to land, turned the helo about, coming down as close as he could to inspect the scene in the indistinct light, the rotors blowing sand every which way, obscuring his view.
The chopper suddenly rose, turned abaft, further away from the fallen Kawasaki, then lowered its rope ladder. Two Spets, AK-74s slung across their backs, were already descending.
Aussie knew the RPG-7 well enough from enemy arms training. He knew there’d be no backblast to give him away as he moved behind the rocks further away from the Kawasaki. With the chopper about 170 meters away, he was well within range of the RPG-7’s five hundred meters.
Unlike with the controls of the Sagger or Spigot antitank weapons, he would have no toggle by which to steer either horizontally or vertically. It was strictly line of sight: aim-hit or miss. The chopper was drifting now about 180 meters away.
Leaning against a boulder, Aussie inhaled, exhaled half his breath, held the rest to subdue any nerve tremor, saw the lower Spets about to jump from the ladder, and fired, feeling the strong jerk backward. The pilot must have seen something coming at him and banked hard right, but with the warhead traveling at two hundred meters per second, the helo couldn’t escape the antitank round hitting it below the left engine intake, the Hind exploding like some huge airborne animal, pieces of shard metal, much of it aluminum, looking like flaccid skin as they flew through the air, falling to the earth like so much tin among the stones, then the deafening roar of me gas explosion spewing out bodies like toys.
The man who had been at the bottom of the ladder had been blown to the ground by the downdraft and was now walking, or rather stumbling, around, holding his head. Aussie immediately raced forward. The man saw him coming and fumbled for the AK-74, but Lewis had three shots off, each one hitting the Russian. The man was still alive when Lewis reached him, holding his head as if in pain, as Lewis pumped another into him. “That’ll cure your headache!” Aussie said. “And this one’s for those kids back there in the pit. You bastard!”
Aussie was back on the Kawasaki and took off, pushing the beeper, mad at himself again. He should have been able to fell the Spets with one shot and not got mad when he was doing it. His old instructor in Hereford would have chewed him out for that, but then the old instructor wasn’t dog tired and on the run.
“No excuses!” he told himself. “No bloody whining, Lewis. Now come on, you air cav. Where the fuck are you?”
They — two Blackhawks — were locked onto the beeper via an AWAC feed, and they were coming in low over the Mongolian sand with.50s nosing out the doors and four F-15 Eagles flying cover, and within eleven minutes a Blackhawk’s rotor was stinging Aussie with small stones the size of marbles.
“Jesus Christ!” he complained as he jumped aboard. “Fucking near stoned me to death!”
“Welcome aboard,” the corporal said.
“Thanks, mate,” Aussie said, shaking his hand. “You saved my bacon.”
The corporal, shouting over the roar of the rotors as they headed across the DMZ to the U.S.-Siberian territory east of Baikal, handed Aussie two envelopes. One was from Freeman’s headquarters, telling him to report there to Major David Brentwood immediately upon his return. The second was from Salvini and Brentwood. The note was terse: “You owe us a bundle. We were hoisted aboard Talon quicker than you.”
“Bastards!” Aussie said.
“Who?” the corporal yelled, his voice barely audible.
“My mates,” Aussie answered.
David Brentwood had suggested to Freeman that Aussie Lewis be excused participation in “Operation Front Door.”
“He wounded?” Freeman asked.
“No, sir, but he’s been on the run for—”
“Then he’ll have his second wind,” Freeman said. “This isn’t a lunch break. Operation’s so important, every man designated is needed, especially with a commando’s experience. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well I want you to go over the plan once more — fill in Lewis once he gets here or en route to the target. I’ll leave the decision to you. He’ll have six hours to sleep before the mission.”
David Brentwood was about to say that Aussie would appreciate that but his discretion got the better part of cheekiness with Freeman. One thing you couldn’t fault Freeman for: work. And one thing that drove Washington up the wall was the general’s determination to lead his own men into action. He’d done it at Pyongyang, over Ratmanov Island, at Nizhneangarsk, and now he was willing to do it again. Like Patton, Rommel, and MacArthur before him, he had a fatalism in the face of fire that either awed men or struck them as bone stupid.
When Aussie Lewis showed up, his blue-and-white Spets shirt was filthy, torn to shreds; also his del was missing.
“What happened to your dress?” Choir asked.
“Yeah,” Salvini said. “You can’t come like that.”
“I can come anywhere,” Aussie said. “Where we goin’?”
“Little job on the old rampart,” Salvini answered.
“What fucking rampart?”
“Genghis Khan’s, you ignorant man,” Choir said. “Not the Great Wall — another one in Manchuria. Only a couple of hours flying from here.”
“Christ, I haven’t had breakfast!” the Australian replied.
Choir Williams tut-tutted. “It’s breakfast he wants. Should’ve kept up with us then, boyo—’stead of playing silly buggers on that bike.”
“Yeah,” Salvini added. “And you owe me five bucks.”
David Brentwood smiled inwardly at the esprit de corps among the commandos, at the unemotional emotion of welcoming Aussie back.
“All right,” Lewis said, as someone threw him a towel and a bar of soap. “What’s it this time? Mongolian gear or Wall Street bankers?”
“In our own kit, mate,” Choir Williams said. “Full SAS.”
Aussie was impressed. “Must be serious then.”
“It is,” Brentwood confirmed, pointing down at the computer-enhanced, three-dimensional map of northern Manchuria. “Simulated attacks all along the line.”
“Simulated?” Aussie asked. “You mean we just yell out at them? Frighten ‘em a bit?”
“Real attacks,” David answered. “Half a dozen places, from Manzhouli in the west to Fuyuan in the east near Khabarovsk. Right across the Manchurian front.”
“But if we go full frontal—” Aussie began.
“That’d be crazy,” David Brentwood finished for him.
“Agreed,” Aussie said.
“The general knows that,” Brentwood assured him. “What we have to do is create so much racket — make it look like a full frontal attack — do more than yell at them, Aussie. Tie down Cheng’s troops all along the Manchurian border so that our Second Army can make its dash south of Manzhouli into the Gobi where Freeman can hit them on their left flank.”
“If it works,” Sal said, “we’ll be halfway to Beijing before Cheng wakes up and can withdraw any of his forces from the north to reinforce his left flank.”
“All right,” Aussie said, “but how are we going to convince the Chinese it’s a full-out attack when it isn’t? Don’t you think they’ll twig to that?”
David Brentwood looked up from the three-dimensional mock-up. “You know Freeman goes to sleep reading Sun Tzu.”
“Who the hell’s Son Sue?”
“An ancient Chinese general,” Brentwood said. “Very big on the art of war. Very big on deception.”
“Right,” Aussie said. “I don’t suppose it occurred to any of you blokes that old Cheng might read this Son Sue — you know, being Chinese and all that.”
Salvini looked worried.
“I think,” Brentwood said, “that when you have the chance to see the plan in detail you’ll see how Freeman’ll outfox Cheng.” David Brentwood paused. “By the way, Aussie, everyone is to bring a lighter with him — there’s a box of Bics over on the counter — and one quart bag of this.” He nodded toward a cardboard box packed with quart-size plastic bags, each bag filled with what looked like gray powder.
“What the hell’s that?” Aussie asked.
“Wolf dung,” Brentwood answered matter-of-factly.
“Don’t bullshit me!” Aussie riposted.
Brentwood shook his head at Salvini and Williams. “He’s a hard man to convince.”
“Ten bucks it’s wolf dung,” Choir Williams proffered.
Salvini couldn’t suppress a snort of laughter. Aussie eyed them suspiciously. “What are you bastards up to?”
“Go on,” Brentwood told him. “Clean up, have breakfast, and hit the sack. We’ll fill you in en route.”
“All right,” David Brentwood said, “it’s AirLand battle, right?”
“Right!” came the chorus of twenty SAS/D troopers. There were a million details for any AirLand battle, and for the twenty men to be led by David Brentwood, the first was weapon selection and uniform. Weapon selection was very much an individual affair among the commandos, but the uniform wasn’t — not on this predawn attack that hopefully would penetrate the ChiCom line in enough places to convince Cheng that a full-scale frontal attack was in progress.
There would be many more SAS/D troops along the Amur together with regular elements of Second Army involved. Most of the SAS elected to arm themselves with the American 5.56mm M-16 rifle rather than the three-pounds-heavier British 7.62mm, particularly with the M203 grenade launcher fitted beneath the barrel of the M-16 rifle.
Others, like Brentwood, who had seen Freeman in action on Ratmanov Island, opted for the military-modified Winchester 1200 riot gun with five shotgun shells, one up the spout, four in the tubular magazine, the pumping effected by the forestock going back and forth, the range of the shotgun increased from 150 to 900 yards by fléchettes, twenty high-quality steel darts. Lead-slug shells were also carried, these being capable of passing right through an engine block at over fifty meters or blowing a door out of its frame. And almost every man carried at least several “soup cans”— smoke grenades — and the smaller palm-size SAS special, the stun grenade. But because it would be an attack in darkness and could well be at close quarters in the town of Manzhouli, the uniform was the all-black SAS antiterrorist gear, including the SF 10 respirator in case the Chinese used gas, black leather gloves for rappelling down or climbing up the Genghis Khan wall, or any other wall for that matter, Danner lightweight firm-grip boots favored by U.S. SWAT teams, and each man’s black belt kit holding magazine pouches and grenades and thirteen rounds of 9mm for the Browning automatic.
“All right, fellas, now let’s go over the AirLand prayer. One?”
“Maneuver!” the chorused reply came.
“Two?”
“Fire support!”
“Three?”
“Command and control!”
“Four?”
“Intelligence!”
“Five?”
“Combat service support!”
“Six?”
“Mobility — survivability!”
“Seven?”
“Air defense!”
“Eight?” Aussie shouted.
“Best of fucking luck!”
Brentwood grinned. “Now our short-range fighter-bombers and Wild Weasel jammers will penetrate as deeply as they can at points all along the line to simulate full frontal attack. Main battle tanks will go in where possible with Bradley fast-fighting infantry vehicles behind and with Apache helos as antitank cover. This will be followed by Hueys— eleven men apiece, some helos carrying a one oh five millimeter howitzer and crew. Now behind all this there’s the Patriot missile defense should we be bothered by anything from Turpan. But remember, the Patriot is great but is overestimated. Unless it hits the enemy missile’s warhead and explodes it midair, it simply blasts the body of the incoming missile, and the warhead still comes down. It isn’t a great deal of help to us — no matter what you read in the papers. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Now,” Brentwood continued, “there’ll be SAS/D-Green Beret, Special Operations squadrons hitting Fuyuan near Khabarovsk, another SAS/D team hitting at Heihe— halfway along the Amur, a third commando force targeting Shiwei, and the fourth team, us, will be paying a return visit near our old friend A-7.”
There was a groan from several of the veterans who had vivid memories of the fighting atop the 3,770-foot mountain just north of Manzhouli in the Siberian Argunskiy range. It marked the most northwesterly point or corner of the Manchurian arc defense line that stretched from Khabarovsk up around Never-Skovorodino and down into western Manchuria. A-7 had been the very spot where the war had started before the so-called cease-fire, and so would now be heavily fortified, its high ground having a commanding view of the American side of the line.
“Don’t worry,” David said, anticipating his men. “A-7 will be left to our air force.”
“And about time,” Choir Williams quipped.
“So give us the bad news,” Aussie said.
“We’ll be going southeast beyond A-7 into Manzhouli,” Brentwood answered. “Just east of Manzhouli. We’re to secure the railhead there so Cheng can’t move troops west out of northern Manchuria and hit Freeman’s left flank.”
“Old Cheng won’t have to move anything,” Choir Williams said, “if those chink missiles aren’t taken out in Turpan.”
“That’s the air force’s job,” David said.
“Well they better get on with it, boyo, or else we’ll be in range while we’re in bloody Manzhouli.”
“Question!” It was from one of the young American SAS/D troopers. “Look, I know our short-range bombers can’t take out Turpan, it’s just too far west, but why cant we use them against Manzhouli? I mean, just go in and blow up the tracks?”
David gave a wry smile — the trooper was one of the latest recruits, not yet blooded. “If we’d been able to blow up train tracks and trails we’d have won the Vietnam War in the first two years. Only way to make sure that railway stays ours is to go into Manzhouli. There are a hundred different ways of the enemy making it look as if you’ve destroyed their train lines from the air and the next morning they’ve passed a thousand tons of munitions over it. Only way is to go in on the ground and make sure. Besides, they’ve got a communications tower there so we’ll have to hit it with C charges. Aussie, that’ll be your troop’s job.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Well, hell, Aussie, you can’t ask for everything,” someone shouted.
“Jesus, I wish I was with that Fuyuan crowd.”
A few of the newer men didn’t understand and weren’t as confident as veterans like Aussie or Brentwood, Salvini or Williams in knowing there was no shame in saying you’d rather be somewhere else.
“Ah,” Choir Williams said, nodding his head toward Aussie. “Pay him no mind, lads. He misses Olga, he does. He likes the titty!”
“Bloody right I do,” Aussie said.
“Why are we all black?” Aussie asked. His question wasn’t meant as any kind of joke, for normally SAS were allowed some leeway in the choice of uniform, but all black— antiterrorist — usually meant close-quarter combat.
“Freeman doesn’t want Manzhouli bombed, so if we’re to clear it it’ll be house to house,” Brentwood said tersely.
“Right,” Aussie said, quickly exchanging an M-16 for a stockless Heckler & Koch 9mm MP5K submachine gun. You aimed it by jabbing it toward the target and adjusting your aim according to the hits.
The last thing that every man checked was the black gloves, for quite apart from the rappelling down and climbing up that might be necessary, word had come down that it would be a “fast rope” descent from the helos. H hour was set for 0500 hours; the pilots aboard the Pave Lows would be flying on night vision and by hover coupler, which would orchestrate gyroscope, radar, altimeter, and inertial guidance system readouts to keep the helo steady and very low.
“Apart from anything else,” Salvini reminded one of the newcomers, “the SAS black antiterrorist uniform is meant to frighten the enemy.”
“You don’t need one then, Sal,” Aussie quipped. “You’re ugly enough already. We show them Salvini and it’s instant fuckin’ surrender!”
“Up yours!” Salvini told Aussie.
“Promise?”
“All right, you guys,” Brentwood said. “Let’s move out. Four of you attach yourselves to myself, Lewis, Williams, or Salvini.”
“Hey, Davey,” Aussie asked Brentwood as they went out onto the Chita strip. “What’s all this crap about Freeman not wanting to bomb the towns and villages?”
“Don’t know, Aussie. Part of the strategy.”
“He gone soft in the head or something?”
“Freeman? I doubt it.”
“So do I. So why the hell—” Brentwood couldn’t hear Aussie’s last word as a brisk wind was blowing east off of Lake Baikal, a bitter edge to it as the Pave Lows began warming up, their stuttering now a full roar, their warm wash felt through the all-black uniforms.
As those sectors of Freeman’s forces designated to simulate an all-out attack on the Manchurian front started to move out, Freeman received word that at long last the Labour opposition in Britain had conceded to the B-52 overflight over Britain. France still wouldn’t agree, however, and this would mean a diversion around Spain, but at least the mission of the big bombers was on. The problem was, would it come in time? Yet he could wait no longer with the north Chinese buildup of men and materiel about to burst upon him from the Manchurian fastness. Besides, Admiral Huang would tie up the southern forces.