“Mobility — survivability!”
“Seven?”
“Air defense!”
“Eight?” Aussie shouted.
“Best of fucking luck!”
Brentwood grinned. “Now our short-range fighter-bombers and Wild Weasel jammers will penetrate as deeply as they can at points all along the line to simulate full frontal attack. Main battle tanks will go in where possible with Bradley fast-fighting infantry vehicles behind and with Apache helos as antitank cover. This will be followed by Hueys— eleven men apiece, some helos carrying a one oh five millimeter howitzer and crew. Now behind all this there’s the Patriot missile defense should we be bothered by anything from Turpan. But remember, the Patriot is great but is overestimated. Unless it hits the enemy missile’s warhead and explodes it midair, it simply blasts the body of the incoming missile, and the warhead still comes down. It isn’t a great deal of help to us — no matter what you read in the papers. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Now,” Brentwood continued, “there’ll be SAS/D-Green Beret, Special Operations squadrons hitting Fuyuan near Khabarovsk, another SAS/D team hitting at Heihe— halfway along the Amur, a third commando force targeting Shiwei, and the fourth team, us, will be paying a return visit near our old friend A-7.”
There was a groan from several of the veterans who had vivid memories of the fighting atop the 3,770-foot mountain just north of Manzhouli in the Siberian Argunskiy range. It marked the most northwesterly point or corner of the Manchurian arc defense line that stretched from Khabarovsk up around Never-Skovorodino and down into western Manchuria. A-7 had been the very spot where the war had started before the so-called cease-fire, and so would now be heavily fortified, its high ground having a commanding view of the American side of the line.
“Don’t worry,” David said, anticipating his men. “A-7 will be left to our air force.”
“And about time,” Choir Williams quipped.
“So give us the bad news,” Aussie said.
“We’ll be going southeast beyond A-7 into Manzhouli,” Brentwood answered. “Just east of Manzhouli. We’re to secure the railhead there so Cheng can’t move troops west out of northern Manchuria and hit Freeman’s left flank.”
“Old Cheng won’t have to move anything,” Choir Williams said, “if those chink missiles aren’t taken out in Turpan.”
“That’s the air force’s job,” David said.
“Well they better get on with it, boyo, or else we’ll be in range while we’re in bloody Manzhouli.”
“Question!” It was from one of the young American SAS/D troopers. “Look, I know our short-range bombers can’t take out Turpan, it’s just too far west, but why cant we use them against Manzhouli? I mean, just go in and blow up the tracks?”
David gave a wry smile — the trooper was one of the latest recruits, not yet blooded. “If we’d been able to blow up train tracks and trails we’d have won the Vietnam War in the first two years. Only way to make sure that railway stays ours is to go into Manzhouli. There are a hundred different ways of the enemy making it look as if you’ve destroyed their train lines from the air and the next morning they’ve passed a thousand tons of munitions over it. Only way is to go in on the ground and make sure. Besides, they’ve got a communications tower there so we’ll have to hit it with C charges. Aussie, that’ll be your troop’s job.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Well, hell, Aussie, you can’t ask for everything,” someone shouted.
“Jesus, I wish I was with that Fuyuan crowd.”
A few of the newer men didn’t understand and weren’t as confident as veterans like Aussie or Brentwood, Salvini or Williams in knowing there was no shame in saying you’d rather be somewhere else.
“Ah,” Choir Williams said, nodding his head toward Aussie. “Pay him no mind, lads. He misses Olga, he does. He likes the titty!”
“Bloody right I do,” Aussie said.
“Why are we all black?” Aussie asked. His question wasn’t meant as any kind of joke, for normally SAS were allowed some leeway in the choice of uniform, but all black— antiterrorist — usually meant close-quarter combat.
“Freeman doesn’t want Manzhouli bombed, so if we’re to clear it it’ll be house to house,” Brentwood said tersely.
“Right,” Aussie said, quickly exchanging an M-16 for a stockless Heckler & Koch 9mm MP5K submachine gun. You aimed it by jabbing it toward the target and adjusting your aim according to the hits.
The last thing that every man checked was the black gloves, for quite apart from the rappelling down and climbing up that might be necessary, word had come down that it would be a “fast rope” descent from the helos. H hour was set for 0500 hours; the pilots aboard the Pave Lows would be flying on night vision and by hover coupler, which would orchestrate gyroscope, radar, altimeter, and inertial guidance system readouts to keep the helo steady and very low.
“Apart from anything else,” Salvini reminded one of the newcomers, “the SAS black antiterrorist uniform is meant to frighten the enemy.”
“You don’t need one then, Sal,” Aussie quipped. “You’re ugly enough already. We show them Salvini and it’s instant fuckin’ surrender!”
“Up yours!” Salvini told Aussie.
“Promise?”
“All right, you guys,” Brentwood said. “Let’s move out. Four of you attach yourselves to myself, Lewis, Williams, or Salvini.”
“Hey, Davey,” Aussie asked Brentwood as they went out onto the Chita strip. “What’s all this crap about Freeman not wanting to bomb the towns and villages?”
“Don’t know, Aussie. Part of the strategy.”
“He gone soft in the head or something?”
“Freeman? I doubt it.”
“So do I. So why the hell—” Brentwood couldn’t hear Aussie’s last word as a brisk wind was blowing east off of Lake Baikal, a bitter edge to it as the Pave Lows began warming up, their stuttering now a full roar, their warm wash felt through the all-black uniforms.
As those sectors of Freeman’s forces designated to simulate an all-out attack on the Manchurian front started to move out, Freeman received word that at long last the Labour opposition in Britain had conceded to the B-52 overflight over Britain. France still wouldn’t agree, however, and this would mean a diversion around Spain, but at least the mission of the big bombers was on. The problem was, would it come in time? Yet he could wait no longer with the north Chinese buildup of men and materiel about to burst upon him from the Manchurian fastness. Besides, Admiral Huang would tie up the southern forces.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
As he climbed into the rear barbette of the lead B-52, Sergeant Murphy, or “Pepto-Bismol,” as he was now known, was very unhappy and festooned with packets of the “new and improved” antacid tablets.
“Crabbing it,” their wheels angling into the crosswind, compensating for their natural tendency to drift to one side on takeoff, the nine B-52Gs forming the nine-plane wave of Stratofortresses from the Forty-second Wing of the U.S. Sixty-ninth Bombardment Squadron thundered along the runway and roared into the night sky over southeastern England. Each of the eight thirteen-thousand-pound-thrust Pratt-and-Whitney jet engines on the Big Ugly Fat Fellows was in high scream as the bombers, tops painted wavy khaki green, undersides white-gray, headed across the channel at the beginning of their 4,700-mile mission half a world away to attack the missile sites at Turpan.
