“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
“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 flechettes, 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?”
