wouldn’t they?” said Lewis, his eyes fixed on the iodine. “And all their bloody perks as well.” The medic tipped the amber bottle against a cotton wad and stroked the wound, the astringent odor of the antiseptic rising, seeming to fill the barracks.
“Sting a bit?” Choir asked, poker-faced.
“Nah.”
“Oh well, then, boyo,” said Choir, “you’ll be fit for further service, then.”
“I will,” said Aussie, undaunted, and confident that the SAS/D team would now have a bit of well-deserved R&R. Aussie turned to Salvini and told him he’d now managed to find out the name of the “bird” with the “big nungas” he’d seen in Khabarovsk just before they’d been called for the A-7 mission. “Olga’s her handle,” he explained.
Salvini was cleansing his minigun and looking down each barrel as he did so. He winked across at Choir. “Olga? Sounds like a wrestler.”
“Don’t care, mate,” said Lewis. “She can wrestle me. Smother me to death if she wants.”
“Squeeze the life out of you, I should expect,” said Choir.
Aussie held his hands out, bowl-like, in front of him. “I tell you they’re this big, and I’ve got her address.”
“Ah, wouldn’t get all excited, Aussie, if I were you,” chimed in Salvini. “Might be a while before you see Khabarovsk, let alone any poontang. Rumor is they’re got something lined up for us.”
Aussie Lewis’s glance shot from Salvini to Choir and back again. Lewis could usually tell when they were kidding him, but Salvini looked totally disinterested — as if the rumor was already known by everyone except Lewis.
“Where?” challenged Aussie, suspicious.
“South,” Choir said, nodding in the general direction of China.
Aussie shook his head and immediately relaxed. “Horse shit!”
“No — dinkum!” said Choir, using the Aussie’s own expression for the absolute truth — the genuine article.
The medic taped the bandage and left. The truth was, he was overawed by the men of SAS/Delta. Aussie thanked him, glanced again at Salvini and tore off a piece of cleaning rag to wipe down one of the high capacity C mags. Salvini didn’t have a trace of a smile. He looked bored.
“All right,” said Aussie, standing up, wincing slightly, shifting his weight to his right foot, his grimace quickly replaced by a knowing smile. “You’re tryin’ to take the piss out of me, Salvini. Bet you’re wrong. Two to one on.” It was odds on — you’d have to bet two to win one. You could make money, but you had to be sure of your information. Salvini looked up, shifting the blame to Choir. “Should’ve known Aussie would bet on it — Australians’ll bet against the friggin’ sun coming up. Forty-eight hours without a bet sends Lewis into delirium tremens.”
“Aha!” said Aussie triumphantly, seizing on Choir’s hesitation. “What’s the matter? The cat got your fucking tongue?”
“I’ve never heard you speak, boyo, without a swear word. You always have to swear?”
“Don’t fart round, boyo. Put your money where your mouth is. Is there a mission or not? Pay up or shut up.”
Salvini began “black taping” his Heckler & Koch’s two-notch pistol grip, Aussie squatting down beside him, giving Salvini a friendly elbow nudge that almost toppled him.
“Five bucks, then,” piped up Choir, his tone, however, hardly enthusiastic.
Aussie stood up, mock shock all over his face, looking around the barracks in wide-eyed surprise. “Five whole dollars! Jesus, Choir, don’t go overboard. Salvini — how about you?”
“Five.”
“What a pair of wankers,” Aussie said disgustedly, shaking his head. “Hardly worth making book.”
“Then don’t,” said Choir, which only confirmed Aussie’s suspicion that they’d just made up a rumor.
“Oh I’ll take it,” said Aussie. “A mission south, is it?” He was reaching up for the small, blue, indelible pencil and paper he had tucked under his helmet’s Medevac band.
“Within a week,” said Salvini, upping his bet to add credence. “I’ll bet ten bucks.”
“A week? And a high roller! Okay — a week.” Lewis licked the tip of the indelible pencil, leaving a purple stain on his tongue as he wrote down the two wagers. Next, he cast a glance about the barracks, the rest of the SAS/D team in various stages of undress and/or busy cleaning weapons. “Anyone else?”
David Brentwood declined, as did the rest of the troop.
“Okey-dokey,” said Aussie, slipping the pencil back beneath the helmet band. “The Welsh Wart and the Brooklyn Dodger — five and ten. Done! Takin’ candy from a baby.”
“Better not be so cocksure,” cautioned David Brentwood.
“Don’t worry about my cock. I’ll have fifteen bucks to blow, and she’ll blow me!”
David Brentwood shook his head — the Australian was incorrigible.
“Listen, Davey boy,” said Lewis. “If these blokes are right, I’ll run starkers into Freeman’s HQ!”
“Promise?” someone yelled laughingly.
“Absolutely!” said Lewis.
“You all heard that?” said David.
“Copied!” came back an SAS/D chorus.
The jocular mood died suddenly with the sight of the unit padre walking in with the dog tags of the dead.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“Pele… I am the goddess of fire.”
It was all Robert Brentwood in the bow of Echo One could think of when he saw the fiery, incandescent ball of light, for Pele — played by a Polynesian beauty — had risen from the fake but realistic-looking volcano during a Hawaiian show he’d once seen on Kauai, the waterfall in front of the mountain turning molten red like lava as the lights behind it changed from white to pulsating crimson. Pele’s right hand flashed quickly into the darkness like a karate slice, and a ball of fire — perhaps it had been done by lasers— had shot with incredible speed across from the fake volcano to the rain forest like a bolt of lightning. But the red ball he saw now streaking through the darkness across the river two miles from the Nanking Bridge was no conjurer’s trick. It was the tracer flash of a PLA eighty-two-millimeter 65RPG, a recoilless rifle round, in reality a short-range artillery shell tearing across the Yangtze darkness at five hundred miles per hour, striking Echo Two midships only seconds after her bow had hit a ‘tween channel wire, the sudden increase in tension triggering the RPG. The outboard’s fuel ignited, ammunition was exploding, the boat, its spine broken, in the air, afire and coming apart. Bodies and equipment spilled into the boiling brown water of the Yangtze illuminated by the fire, both sections of the boat still turning in air as if in slow motion, water pouring from one half in a gossamer spray. The acrid reek of burning rubber and cordite floated back to Echo One a hundred yards behind and to the left of what had been Echo Two’s Zodiac.
In that split second of Echo Two being hit, Robert Brentwood had to make his decision: to go and try to save whoever, if any, of the SEALs had survived, or to head immediately left, closer inshore, to avoid the mid-channel trip wire. He told Rose in a harsh whisper, “Hard left!” instructing Dennison and Smythe to man the paddles. Almost immediately he felt the Zodiac picking up speed, water slopping over the gunwales as it moved beam-on to the current, heading at a sharp angle inshore.
Ten seconds later the cold darkness was lit up again as the Yangtze was swept by searchlights, their stalks reaching out like long, white fingers from the right bank, and from the city beyond came the distinctive wails of sirens. Robert Brentwood pulled hard on the front starboard paddle, all the time wishing to God he’d given the order to row to shore a second after the searchlights had appeared; the searchlights would have vindicated his order — his decision not to go looking for the men from Echo Two. Even though he knew he’d made the right decision — that the mission was the thing that counted, that every man knew that — his gut was still in a knot. Machine gun fire was now raking the river at the floating debris several hundred yards ahead of them.
“They’re just guessing,” whispered Dennison.
