Asian Front

“Trainor — cancel all my appointments in the morning.”

“Wha— Ah, yes, Mr. President,” Trainor answered, embarrassed at being caught daydreaming, his attention having momentarily been drawn to the crumbling symbolism of logs collapsing in the fire.

Suddenly there was a bang. The door flew open, the two Secret Service men already either side of Mayne, one of them his Uzi drawn, the other knocking the president to the floor, crouching protectively over him. “Everyone down!”

Somebody in the marine corps detachment guarding Mount Weather had goofed and inadvertently thrown a couple of cypress logs in the stack of firewood, a knot in the wood having exploded.

“Enough!” the president said. “Damn it!”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Taiwan

In his home port of Kaohsiung on Taiwan’s far southwest coast, Admiral Kuang was waiting. He had been waiting for twenty years, and another few weeks here or there didn’t matter if his dream of personally leading an invasion across the straits came true, after which he would personally go to Hangchow — which Marco Polo believed to be the most beautiful place on earth — and there cross the West Lake to raze Mao’s hallowed villa to the ground.

But Kuang knew that in Taipei the War Council would not release him until they saw the American Freeman was fully committed to an attack from the north. Kuang knew his lieutenant had promised the American general his full support when the time came, but it was a half truth — a promise based on the assumption that Freeman would lead off and so draw the bulk of Cheng’s army northward away from the Straits of Taiwan.

But now Kuang’s agents had told the admiral about the ChiComs’ sabotage via the Southern Star on the American west coast, which would seriously delay resupply for Freeman. Kuang was anxious. It involved his word as an officer to help Freeman. He had, as the Americans would say, stuck his neck out, knowing that only if Taipei was willing to move could he. Had the admiral known, however, the full measure of the growing pressure against Freeman by Cheng’s northern buildup in Manchuria, he would have relaxed. For Freeman, in the face of Cheng’s buildup, would have to do something, and quickly, or be crushed by the Manchurian colossus. Still Freeman, in view of the sabotage on the United States, particularly that on the West Coast delaying his sealift, might be tempted to hold back. Kuang sent an encoded signal to Freeman’s HQ that, decoded, read simply “mercury.”

Freeman could move or not, but Kuang’s message would tell him the ROC navy was ready to invade the beaches of Fukien, and thus take pressure off Freeman. After Freeman read the message there were tears in his eyes. He pulled out a tissue and blew his nose hard. “Damn dust in this hut! Doesn’t anybody clean it?”

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

“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.”