Asian Front

“Give him at least twenty yards,” Norton advised them. “Otherwise he’ll start giving you the gears for being goddamned nannies. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. Ah, Colonel Norton, sir?”

“Yes?”

“I sure hope he thinks of something to get us out of this—”

A clump of needle ice crashed from a pine onto the roof of a Humvee.

“So do I,” Norton said.

Freeman hadn’t even turned at the ice smashing on the Humvee; he was already doing what Norton called his “Napoleon”: head down, walking stick behind him, trudging through the crisp spring snow. The PLA was south and east of him along the Manchurian hump, and no word yet from the SAS/D team he’d sent in to sound out the Mongolians’ disposition.

* * *

East of Nalayh, over four hundred miles south of the confluence of the Manchurian-Siberian-Mongolian border, the wind was increasing and Aussie Lewis, after having floated down into the gritty dust storm, had to rely entirely on his GPS to know exactly where he was. He lost sight of the Talon completely, hearing only its fading roar as it, together with its fighter escort, withdrew, heading back north to Second Army’s territory.

Aussie wasn’t bitter — had he been David Brentwood he would have done the same thing, ordering the Talon to withdraw, not having enough time to try another FUST.

As Aussie unclipped his chute, the head herdsman moved quickly over to him, yelling excitedly. Perhaps he had heard a chopper, but no, now the Talon had gone, the dogfights had ended, and all he could hear was the banshee howl of the wind. Then he saw it, suspended by two parachutes, a blurred orange image at first in the dust but its archetypal image more definite now as it struck the ground, bounced, and flipped on its side.

“You bloody beaut!” Aussie shouted, immediately running to and unharnessing the Talon’s farewell gift. It was no guarantee he’d get away, but at least there was a chance. The headman recognized it of course as a motorcycle, but he had only seen some of the motor and sidecar units of the Chinese army in earlier skirmishes with the PLA over southern borders — not one like this.

“You bloody beaut!” Aussie repeated. It was a khaki-painted Kawasaki-250D8, which had won out against the Harley-Davidson and Yamaha for the marine corps and army contract. Used mainly in Desert Storm for recon and courier service during radio silence among the most forward units, the Kawasaki had performed well. Aussie cut the chute straps with his ankle K-bar knife, heaving the 296-pound bike up onto its stand, and could hear the tight slosh of a full tank, another jerrican of gas strapped to the left side of the pinion seat, a carbine in a right hand reverse cavalry leather holster.

With a liquid-cooled engine, the Kawasaki could give him eighty-plus miles per hour over the rock-strewn plains, the motorcycle modified for the army so as to have wider, better-grip tires, especially in sand, with a forty- six-tooth rear-tires sprocket, giving it two better than the standard forty-four and so reducing its gearing. And the biggest plus of all, given Aussie’s position, was that the Kawasaki had a liquid-cooled engine. This made it not only more environmentally friendly in reducing fuel emission but more importantly for Aussie made it about the quietest bike in its class.

Aussie figured if he could average fifty miles per hour through the dust storm that had now enveloped him and the enemy alike and could drive on through the night, he could make the border in eight to ten hours. But first he went back to the bullet-riddled Spets chopper and helped himself to a Makarov pistol, an AK-74 with six clips, and a dozen Spets F-1 grenades. He stuck two of them in the pockets of his del and the others in the right saddlebag with a water canister and the dried camel meat the herdsmen had given him.

Using a canvas strap from the parachute he made a sling for the AK-74, the Makarov 9mm in his belt beneath his del, a pair of ten-power night-vision binoculars around his neck, and packed on — or rather, packed around — the pinion seat more cargo from the immobilized chopper, namely an RPG-7D antitank rocket launcher with five rockets. Then, courtesy of the dead Spets chopper pilot, he took off the man’s Spets uniform, including the telltale blue-and-white-striped T-shirt, rolling it into a bundle that he stuck between the seat and gas tank. The herdsman was grinning appreciatively and shook Aussie’s hand vigorously as if it were a water pump.

Two minutes later, Aussie was lost to the herdsmen’s view in a muffled roar as the Kawasaki headed east from the gher caravan that itself was already on the move. Checking his GPS, Lewis knew exactly where he was within ten meters because of the satellite triangulation. What he couldn’t tell was what he’d meet along the way, and soon he was too far from the ghers to see what happened a half hour later when a Spets chopper out of Nalayh blasted the moving caravan of ghers to a stop, then landed and took prisoners.

In the swirling dust storm they asked them which route me American had taken and how was he traveling — by camel, by foot — how! The Siberian fighters, probably Fulcrums, though having driven off the Americans, had reported the three dirigibles that were part of the single-line extraction technique. Where was the fourth? Was he heading north or east for the border — along the Indermeg road or even further east towards Choybalsan on the Herlen River before turning north?

The terrified Mongolians reminded the Spets that the Mongolian People’s Republic was a friend of the Siberians and told the Spets that they did not know what direction the fourth American took. The Spets loaded them all aboard the Hind, flew it to two thousand feet above the dust cloud, where it looked like a huge, bug-eyed dragonfly, and threw all of them — seven adults and three children — out, then headed toward Choybalsan. Flying through the dust storm they could see nothing, but one never knew — a sudden shift in the wind here and there might suddenly reveal a break.

The Spets were in no mood for any more noncooperation, especially by Mongolians whom they no longer thought of as the master race that had terrorized and subdued their world under Genghis Khan but as there lackeys of Siberian will. They glimpsed another gher village during a break in the dust cover, landed, and asked about the Americans. The herdsmen, eleven of them, had nothing to tell them and were quickly shot. Then two Spets held the youngest female — a girl of about thirteen — while a third Spets raped her by locking his arms about her neck, barely able to enter her because she was bucking so much, the other two Spets laughing until finally she was exhausted and groaning like a wounded animal, bleeding, having no option but to submit to his will. Then they shot her.

It was clear they’d get no information from the Mongolians, who were obviously more favorably disposed to the Americans, but at least from now on word would spread quickly through the ghers that if the Spets wanted information you’d better give it to them. The Hind took off through the dust cloud. “What are we looking for?” the Spets pilot asked. “Is he on a camel, horseback, walking, or what?”

“We don’t know,” the praporshnik, an Afghanistan veteran, snapped. “We’ll shoot anything that moves. Anything. Understood?”

“Da!”

* * *

Frankly, Aussie told the wind, he would have preferred a Harley MT-350cc — better suspension. Besides, he’d always fancied himself a bit of a rake on an Electra Glide in blue and like Fonda — not his commie fawning sister — out on the road on the old Harley-Davidson. Still, the Kawasaki’s whine was just fine and, head down, goggles firmly attached, he was making good time, though learning that driving virtually blind — visibility down to fifteen feet — took more courage than he’d thought. Man, if his Olga by the Volga with the big tits could only see him now — whoa! Through the dust he could see a darker dust, looking like a huge scab, a stationary Soviet-built armed personnel carrier — a BMP-1.

Aussie knew the odds immediately: a crew of three, three passengers with assorted nasty small arms, a main turret gun—73mm, killing range twenty-five hundred yards. Also armed with a coaxial 7.62mm and antitank guided weapons. Stifling inside, most of its infantry resting outside. Its hull armor plus or minus 19mm. Only thing in his favor was that the Kawasaki was almost twice as fast as the BMP-1, and if they’d seen him, by the time they’d loaded up with their full complement of infantry, he’d be a quarter mile ahead anyway.

“Say bye-bye to Ivan!” Aussie told the Kawasaki and gave it full throttle. The next minute he was airborne, the bike skidding furiously in front of him, the right side of his del shredded to pieces by the gravel rash, the spill driving the Makharov hard into his groin. He had the bike up, its wheels still spinning, and was resaddled in a matter of seconds, pride a little punctured, the earth exploding about him with small-arms fire.