The train carrying the State Council and the remainder of unit 8431 looked no different from any of the other trains that had left Beijing in time, and already two had been stopped by the SAS/D helos and inspected by Aussie, Salvini, Choir, and Brentwood, but had yielded nothing.
The first pass by the A-10 was ignored by the next train’s engineer and only caused his assistant frantically to shovel in more coal. And so on the second pass, the pilot of the A-10 gave the engine a burst. It exploded not with a bang but rather a sound like hundreds of snakes hissing, its perforated boiler rapidly losing power, the train dying quickly.
When the train stopped, no one got out, and from the air it looked to Aussie Lewis like a short, headless snake. He counted three cars and shouted above the rotor noise, “Not exactly hauling freight, are we?”
“Two bucks!” Salvini yelled. “That Humpty-Dumpty’s on the second car.”
“So who’s on first?” Brentwood put in. Aussie Lewis and Choir Williams didn’t get the joke.
“Fucked if I know,” Aussie said, moving the clip of his HK MP5 for full automatic and easing his Browning pistol up and down in the holster. “My guess is Cheng and Co. are in number two — bad bastards in one and three, protecting them.”
The Comanche escorted the Huey, the attack helicopter’s chin-mounted Gatling gun arcing left and right as the copilot followed the readouts of his HUD. But their job wasn’t to kill the State Council — especially not Cheng, who, though commander of the PLA, was not in Freeman’s view your typical dyed-in-the-wool Red Communist but rather a professional soldier. The Comanche had already dropped more of the surrender leaflets. Anyone who held one up in the air and put down his weapon would be taken prisoner and accorded—
“Hey, they’re coming out!” Choir said. “Cars one and three.” They were laying down their AK-47s in the yellowish grass by the railway tracks, the engine still groaning like some primitive beast of burden slowly giving up its ghost in thin curlicues of steam, the riddled boiler making lonely clanking noises.
“Didn’t think they’d chuck it in so quickly,” Salvini opined.
“Balls!” Aussie said. “They know I’m here. No fucking about with colonials, right, Choir?”
“I hear your wee lassie’s train’s been stopped at Qinhuangdao.”
“What?”
“All right, we’re going down,” the Huey pilot informed them.
Aussie was looking over at Williams. “How do you know?”
“Haven’t you been listening to the radio traffic, boyo? Local MFDs”—he meant movements for democracy— “stopped a train at Qinhuangdao. She’s on it.” Choir shook his head. “No BS, boyo. She’s there.”
Aussie nodded. “Thanks.” By now, fifty yards away from the train, the helicopter’s prop wash was flattening the dried grass in shivering waves as the four SAS men got out into a small depression as other Hueys could be seen garnering westward, apparently manned with regular U.S. Army cavalry troops who’d been dispatched to the area to help out.
There was a noise like the crack of a dry stick, and the Huey copilot slumped, blood running down his right arm, his cursing drowned by the sound of the engine. There was another crack, another bullet ripping into the chopper. The cloying smell of gasoline. With that the pilot yelled, “Get aboard!” but the SAS in the depression waved him off, and even as he rose, obscuring them in dust, they were firing at the troops who had suddenly picked up their arms, several of them falling in the SAS’s first volley.
The Huey, limping but still aloft and still under fire, came in sideways, its rotor howling, the Chinese soldiers diving under the train cars for protection, but the chopper stayed there for thirty seconds, creating a veritable whirlwind of grit and dust that didn’t inconvenience the SAS troops with their masks but played havoc with the Chinese who were blinded by the grit that filled the air like insects, causing the Chinese to lose the initiative.
Aussie Lewis and Salvini gave full automatic covering fire to Williams and Brentwood as they moved in, with Williams and Brentwood repaying the favor and killing another six Chinese. Choir Williams collapsed, rolling about in a terrible agony, the 7.62mm bullet having smashed the tibia in his right leg.
The Chinese had withdrawn from under the rail cars beyond to a gradual drop-off from the tracks to get away from the Huey blinding them. Lewis and Salvini took the second car, one each end. “Go!” Aussie shouted as he took the steps two at a time.
“Roger!” he heard Salvini reply as he too took the steps at his end of the carriage two at a time, his MP5, like Aussie’s, on full automatic to clear anyone from the doorway, the glass on the carriage being a smoky one-way mirror for the VIPs and making it difficult to see the whole car. As Aussie and Salvini threw — not tossed — in their stun grenades, the explosion not only concussed every VIP in the railway car but also blew out the windows, several antimacassar embroideries from the velvet seats following.
As Aussie and Salvini came around each end door of the carriage, they could see the stunned, bovine look on each man, Cheng’s cap blown off, his hair mussed, while Chairman Nie sat shaking his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ear. From outside Lewis and Salvini could hear the deadly rattle of the Comanche’s Gatling gun, called in by the Hueys to finish off the last elements of unit 8431.
“It’s over!” Salvini said.
One ChiCom stared stupidly at him and lunged. Salvini clubbed him. “It’s over!” Salvini said angrily. “Look!” He waved the muzzle of his submachine gun in the direction of the broken windows. Outside no surrenders had been taken after the little trick that unit 8431 tried to pull a few moments ago, holding up their pamphlets until the Hueys came low enough to shoot at. Now they all lay dead or wounded, the choppers finishing what the SAS/D had begun.
Aboard the train the State Council had been the first to know they were beaten, and they had been the first to flee the Zhongnanhai under Nie’s order as supreme member of the council. Cheng had not been happy about it and had not wanted to leave Beijing, but given the direct order by Nie he had little option, though his heart wasn’t in it, for as a soldier he had lost face and he knew it and had no fight in him. Nie, however, was full of indignation, refusing to accept the fact that he had lost utterly until Aussie Lewis told him to shut up or he’d shoot him right there and then.
“That is against the Geneva Convention!” Nie fumed.
“Well we’re not in fucking Geneva.”
To the east, from the direction of Qinhuangdao, there was a moving mass of people aboard a train that was shunting backward, festooned with red flags and with goddess-of-democracy motifs in white crudely painted in the middle of the red flags. It reminded Aussie of pictures he had seen of Mao’s triumphant entry into Beijing half a century ago. Even before the train stopped, people were jumping off, and Alexsandra Malof was out on the rear platform waving a quickly made Stars and Stripes at the Americans.
“Hey!” Aussie said, cuffing each of the prisoners with tape as Salvini guarded them. “How about a bloody cheer for Aussie and the Brits?”
“You’ll get your cheers, buddy. She’ll—” Before he could finish, Alexsandra Malof had hopped down from the train and onto the one containing the State Council with a gun in her right hand. She looked across at Aussie. There was a wan smile and a chill in the air, despite the dust-dancing sunbeams that pierced the broken windows of the VIP car and gave the illusion of warmth. She walked along the row of prisoners and stopped at Nie, one of those prisoners who had not yet been tied and who was still stunned enough that he didn’t quite recognize who she was at first, especially out of prison garb. Then, with the carriage absolutely quiet despite the roar of voices outside, he slowly began to realize who she was.
She seemed to be weighing everything in the balance— sheer terror, the hundreds of murders that this man had perpetuated as the most feared man in China. She turned away from him, then suddenly turned back and shot him point-blank, his brain splattering over the antimacassar behind him.
“Jesus!” Aussie had snatched the gun from her, but Nie was dead. She leaned against Lewis as Salvini, equally shaken by her sudden action, started the train of prisoners walking, or rather shuffling, out of the door toward waiting Hueys to take them back to Beijing. On the way Salvini got express radio directions from Freeman, telling Cheng that all of Nie’s political prisoners, including the SEAL, Smythe, must be released immediately. And then Cheng was told exactly how his formal surrender to the U.N. would take place the next day.
It was just on dusk as they landed on the helo pad atop the Great Hall of the People.
When Freeman heard about Nie — about Alexsandra Malof’s shooting him — he said, “Accidental discharge I suppose,” looking at Aussie.
“Yes, sir.”
“Thought so. Case closed. Now, Dick, bring me these two foxhole ‘gentlemen.’ I want to nip this in the bud before a reporter even gets wind of it. Then bring me Cheng.”
“Yes, sir.”
Normally, disciplinary measures in homosexual cases might go to battalion or brigade level, but when Freeman, who everyone knew would go ballistic when he heard of the case, decided to deal with the matter himself, he was determined to thwart a huge, divisive press story. The two men were marched in.
“Which one of you was screwing whom?”
“We weren’t screwing anybody, sir,” Sperling said.
Freeman looked down at the report. “Oh — yes.” He pushed the folder away. “Well you listen to me, both of you. I don’t care if you fuck sheep — long as you’re reasonably gentle with the sheep and on your own time — and so long as it doesn’t bother anyone else. But for Chrissake, in a battle! Do you have to do it in a battle?”
“That’s when it’s best—sir!” Sperling said.
Freeman read Sperling’s name off his shirt strip. “I don’t care what turns you on, a battle’s no time to be flashing your dick — unless you think it might frighten the Chinese.”
Norton couldn’t suppress a smile. Young Danny — name strip Ricardo, D. — looked the most miserable PFC Norton had ever seen.
“What’s your story, son?” Freeman asked. “Did he make you — force you?”
“No, sir.”
“That true?” Freeman asked Sperling.
“Yes, sir.”
Freeman turned to Danny again.
“Never threatened you?”
“General, he—” Sperling began.
“Shut your mouth!” It was Freeman. He wasn’t loud, he wasn’t going ballistic, but he sounded cold as steel. “I could have you taken out and shot right now for cowardice.”
Norton said nothing. It would be more complex than that: a pile of paperwork, courts-martial, lawyers, arguments, counterarguments, the New York Times.
Freeman turned his attention back to Danny Ricardo— age eighteen.
“Ricardo, you did this of your own free will?’
Danny nodded, and for the first and only time during the interview his eyes met Freeman’s. “I like it, sir.”
Freeman sat back, shaking his head. There was a long silence. “Well, I’ve got a billion Chinese to worry about, so you gentlemen’ll have to forgive me if I move right on along here. I’m not going to court-martial either of you, but if I allowed every individual to indulge his or her sexual preference whenever they felt like it we’d be overrun in a week. Now you two and a few others from Charlie company are going out on mopping-up operations. There’s the odd red Chinese holdout who needs his ass kicked while I’m trying to fashion something workable here in Beijing. I fully expect both of you to distinguish yourselves by closing with the enemy. You start playing hide the wiener and open a gap in our defensive line and I’ll personally see you get shot. And I don’t want anybody talking to the media. Sons of bitches’ll turn it into a circus. I don’t want to end up on the ‘Larry King Show’ arguing the whys and wherefores of poontang. Understand?”
“Yes, sir,” Sperling assured him.
Freeman looked at Danny. “File says you’re a good marksman, Ricardo.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, we need men like you at the front. You leave right away.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Sperling, you too. You’ll both be assigned for DMZ duty also.”
“Yes, sir.”
Suddenly Freeman asked Sperling, “Were you wearing a condom?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s damn irresponsible. Norton?”
“Sir?”
“I want them tested for HIV before they go.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Dismissed. Now, Dick, bring me Cheng.”
Ricardo and Sperling both had the test and an hour later were in action along the new DMZ mat ran east-west, south of Beijing.
Danny Ricardo was killed by a mortar shell from one of the last ChiCom units to hold out. Recommended by Freeman, Sperling won the Bronze Star for going out under heavy fire and bringing Danny in. Medics had to wait a quarter hour before the distraught Sperling would give up the body.
The USS Reagan was at four hundred feet when Captain Robert Brentwood heard, “Sonar contact, possible hostile submarine, bearing one three two! Range, eleven miles.” Brentwood stepped calmly up onto the attack island. “Very well. Man battle stations.”
“Man battle stations, aye, sir,” a seaman repeated, pressing the yellow button, a pulsing F sharp sounding throughout the ship.
“Diving officer, periscope depth,” Brentwood ordered.
“Periscope depth, aye, sir.”
Brentwood’s right hand reached up, taking the mike from its cradle without him even looking at it. “This is the captain. I have the con. Commander Rolston retains the deck.”
Beneath the greenish light over the sonar consoles the operator advised, “Range ten point seven miles. Possible hostile by nature of sound.”
“Up scope,” Brentwood ordered. “Ahead two-thirds.” He wanted to make sure that the possible hostile sub did not have any surface companion, though he should have heard them on sonar by now unless they were absolutely still in the water.
“Scope’s breaking,” one of the watchmen reported. “Scope’s clear.” Brentwood’s hand flicked down the scope’s arms, and he seemed glued to the eye cups as he moved around with the scope. On the COMPAC screen Rolston could see the dot, moving at about twelve knots.
Brentwood could see nothing topside — no surface ships. “Down scope.” He turned to the sonar man. “Range, sonar?”
“Ten point nine miles,” the reply came.
“Range every thousand yards.”
“Range every thousand yards, aye, sir. Range nineteen thousand yards.”
“Nineteen thousand yards,” Brentwood confirmed. The possible hostile sub was well within firing range. “Officer of the deck, confirm MOSS tube number.”
“MOSS in aft tube five, sir.”
“Very well. Angle on the bow,” Brentwood said, “starboard four point five.”
“Check,” the confirmation came.
“Range?” Brentwood asked again.
“Eighteen thousand five hundred yards.”
“Eighteen thousand five hundred yards,” Brentwood repeated. “Firing point procedures. Master four three. Tube one.”
“Firing point procedures, aye, sir. Master four three. Tube one, aye… solution ready… weapons ready… ship ready.”
“Fire MOSS.”
“MOSS fired and running, sir.”
“Very well.” Now the MOSS, the torpedo that was rigged to give off a sound signature like a submarine, might or might not draw the fire of the other submarine, which, after Brentwood had checked what sub should be in what area, he knew must be hostile.
“He’s fired,” sonar reported. They had a fix, as the other submarine fired at the Reagan’s MOSS. Brentwood didn’t hesitate. “Fire tubes three and four.”
“Three and four fired and running, sir.” After a few minutes the torpedo officer reported, “Wire disengaged,” advising Brentwood that the Reagan’s torpedo was in automatic homing mode. ‘Three thousand yards.. two thousand yards to go… veering… veering…” There was a violent hiccup on the sonar screen, telling them that the MOSS had been hit, but in taking time to fire its torpedoes against the MOSS the Chinese sub had made a fatal mistake and given away its exact position. “Five hundred yards…” This time sonar put the impact through the public-address system and they could hear the wallop of the Mark 48 torpedo hitting the Chinese sub and then a sound like a popcorn maker as the enemy’s bulkheads crumpled one by one and the Perch sank, accelerated in its death dive by water pressure to an impact speed of over a hundred miles per hour.
Thousands of miles to the southwest on the high plateau that was the Chang Tang, Major Mah of the People’s Liberation Army had exited a cave and looked about for the soldier who was nowhere to be seen. Mah suspected that the man, afraid to enter even the shallowest of caves without a flashlight, was simply sitting somewhere in an entrance, waiting till Mah was finished. He saw something move, and it was the soldier ambling around a rock pile. “Didn’t find anything in there,” he said.
“Did you go all the way in? There’s enough daylight— most of them are only about ten, twelve feet in.”
“I went all the way in, Major.”
Mah didn’t believe him, walked over, and thrust out his flashlight. “Here, take it and make sure you go all the way in. I’ll ask for it back if I come across a deep one.”
The soldier was clearly much relieved. “Inspect that one over there,” the major ordered. “It looks deeper than most. I’ll check out these shallower ones.”
“Yes, Comrade Major.”
Once again Mah drew his Russian Makarov 9mm pistol and started in.
The soldier, with the new confidence the flashlight gave him, had already disappeared into the deeper cave, and almost immediately he heard a sound, like a run of stones. He put the AK-47 off safety and swept his beam about but could see nothing, the sound now further back around the bend in the cave.
He saw a pair of eyes, fired, but was too late, the snow leopard already upon him, teeth sunk deep in the man’s neck, already crunching bone, the man’s eyes bulging in the flashlight’s beam.
Mah heard the burst and came running out of the cave he was in, saw a blur of crimson on white, the big cat disappearing over the snow into the mist surrounding the rocky outcrop.
Mah was shaking. “Comrade Li!” he called, his throat parchment dry. “Li… Comrade Li!”
The wind howled afresh and filled Mah with foreboding as he approached the cave. He hesitated at the entrance. What if its mate was still in there?
“Li!” he called again, his voice echoing shakily in the bend of the tunnel. He could smell excrement. Gripping the Makarov, he reminded himself he was an officer and went forward, stopped, and almost ran but stood his ground, forcing himself to look down in the light of the flashlight on the floor at the blood-soaked body of Li, the man’s eyes bulging out of their sockets, frozen in fear.
Mah picked up the flashlight and, reminding himself again that he was an officer and picking up the AK-47, holstered his Makarov and made his way forward around the bend. He found nothing but the dried bones of small animals.
As he started out of the cave, a fury of panic and hatred filled him, panic that before he got out the snow leopard would return to reclaim his trespassed territory, and fury at the American pilot who, to his mind, was responsible for Li’s death and the fear that he, Mah, had undergone — was undergoing. There were only two caves remaining that he thought were deep enough to investigate. He entered the first one full of apprehension that he might come face-to-face with another wild animal.
When Julia heard the faint tear of a machine-gun burst it sounded further away than it really was. Who were the Chinese — she presumed it must be Chinese — shooting? Was it the old man who had helped her? Had he come back, or was it someone else? Had another pilot been downed? Unlikely, she thought, but why were they shooting? Whatever the reason, it prompted her to try to be especially alert, difficult with the skull-pounding headache that still had her in its grip. She moved the Nuwick candle further toward the entrance so as to see the first bend in the S-shaped tunnel that led to where she was.
The wall on one side, her right, was shiny with water seeping from the top of the cave; the other side, on her left, was drier but, as she was left-handed or, as her male colleagues would call it, a southpaw, it would be the wetter side of the cave she’d have to use to lean on to get a better shot if anyone came in. Perhaps they weren’t searching the caves at all. Then what was a machine gun doing out in this godforsaken place?
For several minutes she heard nothing but the wailing of the wind. But there was a definite footfall at the entrance of the cave about twenty feet from the S-bend. She blew out the candle, bracing herself against the wet wall of the cave, waiting. There was a pause and then a beam of light cutting the misty air, a glimmer of it playing about the bend, and she could hear someone breathing. Was it the old man returning after having heard the machine gun? — if they had heard it in the nomad camp, in which case it might be another member of a Chinese patrol. But — her head was throbbing like a pulse gone mad — the Chinese wouldn’t have had time to—
In the corona of faint light behind the center of the flashlight she saw the outline of Mah’s uniform, a faint red star, and fired four times, killing him with the first shot.
The noise reverberating in the cave sounded to her like cannon when in fact the cave muffled the sound. Still it was heard, albeit faintly, in the nomad camp.
There was a furious debate going on in the camp between the Chinese patrol that had just followed the tracks back to camp and the Chinese soldiers who had been left there originally by Mah. They were arguing about whether the patrol that had been out with Mah should backtrack and investigate the shots. It was decided that two of them should go back to the rocky outcrop. As they left, the old man asked if he could be of assistance.
When the three got to the rocky outcrop and saw the blood marks on the rock, traced them back to the cave and found Li, they didn’t need to be told that Li had been attacked by an animal — a snow leopard, the old man said— and one of the two soldiers was suddenly sick to his stomach and they went out.
The old man, in an awkward pantomime of hands and grunts, asked them if they wanted to look for the major, too. They both stared at him as if he were mad and quickly followed their own footprints back to the camp. The others, on hearing the story, needed no enticement to head back to base immediately.
Julia Reid was shaking. She could hear more footsteps, but these were heavy, more distinct, as if they wanted to be heard.
“America!” a voice said. She was sure it was the old nomad, but the headache was distorting her senses.
“Chin-eze dead!”
The relief that passed through her was like a warm shower on a bitterly cold day. Her headache instantly became less intense, and when she saw the old man, his large frame bending over Mah’s body, stripping it of the Makarov, ammunition pouches, and Chinese money, she could have kissed him.
Her hands still shaking, she relit the candle. She heard a rustle behind her and turned. In the soft flickering light she saw an extraordinary sight the old man, apparently not so old, was standing, his pants down, his erection casting a huge shadow on the wall as he smiled down at her.
“My God!” she heard herself say. “No!”
The old man looked crestfallen. “No?” He shook his head, his scarf down about his throat, his smile toothless. “No?” he repeated.
“No way,” she said.
He shrugged nonchalantly and, with some difficulty, put it away. He offered her his hand instead. She hesitated for a moment, then took it, and he led her out of the cave, helped her on the yak, and began the trek back to the encampment. He pointed to a cave. “Chin-eze dead!”
She couldn’t have cared less. For two days she’d felt as if she’d been on another planet. All she wanted was for the headache to subside — which it did as they went lower toward the encampment. On the way back she was astonished to see the old man putting in the earpiece of what must have been a Walkman in his pack. At one point he turned about with a huge grin. “Chin-eze dead! Many Chin-eze!” Though she didn’t realize it then, he was listening to the BBC Tibetan-language world service reporting the end of the war, and she didn’t know that within the week she would be taken to Lhasa by truck and would be free.