Force of Arms

Julia started out and anticipated feeling nauseated from altitude sickness until she got used to the relative lack of oxygen at fourteen thousand feet But whether it was her training in the centrifuge, the tight compression at high Gs, or the fact that she was in superb physical condition, she experienced little of the shortness of breath that they’d been briefed about before the mission.

She still couldn’t tell what the black dot was, only that it must be moving away from her at the same rate she was following it.

For minutes at a time the dot was completely lost in the sudden windstorms of snow and even hail that beat down, then just as quickly disappeared to reveal the denuded landscape of Tibet’s Chang Tang, a land of sky-blue lakes and vast green treeless grassland, pierced here and there by precipitous treeless mountains of somber, mustard-hued beauty.

The black dot seemed to break into several parts, and she could see it was two or three animals, stopped now, and another figure — a man — possibly walking with them. Should she wave or not? Would they be Chinese or Tibetans?

Most Tibetans, Julia knew, hated the Chinese since the PLA’s takeover in 1950 and the fleeing of the Dalai Lama nine years later. After the Red Guards’ mad “Cultural Revolution” was over, after they’d murdered monks, forced them into labor camps, and destroyed over fifteen hundred Buddhist monasteries, there was a legacy of oppression that ran deep. Julia knew if it was a group of Tibetan nomads or drokba who lived from one campsite to another on the seventeen-thousand-foot-high plateau that was the Chang Tang, or north plateau, then she might be lucky. The drokba had suffered as much as any of the Tibetans in Lhasa and the towns. Often they’d fared worse, the Chinese insisting that Tibet was theirs, forcing many of the nomads into communes and confiscating the yaks, goats, sheep, and pasture grounds upon which the drokba had traditionally depended for their livelihood.

As she got closer to the yaks she saw smaller animals, sheep probably, and some goats milling about — now about half a mile away down the road. It had not been a heavy snowstorm, and the black coats of the yaks had only a dusting of snow, as if someone had thrown talcum powder over them, and they were mostly still, nuzzling through the light spring snow, eating the rich grass below.

Whether it was her anxiety about just what kind of reception she’d get — some of the poorer nomads had collaborated with the Chinese and become richer — the shoulder holster holding her service .45 was rubbing against her bra and she had to loosen the shoulder strap. She prayed she wouldn’t need the gun but that if she did, she wouldn’t hesitate, she would fire it the way she flew — with total concentration, the kind of concentration that had made her the first American woman fighter pilot to down two of the enemy: a Chinese Shenyang and a MiG Fulcrum.

None of the male pilots in Khabarovsk had taken any notice of her downing a Shenyang, common opinion being that if you couldn’t down a Shenyang with one eye closed you were a piss-poor pilot. The Fulcrum — well that had made the boys sit up and take notice. Not many had downed the brilliant Chinese-bought CIS fighter.

She had heard, “Bogey five o’clock!” and made the first cut hard left, she dropping speed, he increasing, till for a second they were all but parallel. Then she was climbing and started a barrel roll right, going for the Fulcrum. Next minute she couldn’t see him in front, the next they were in rolling scissors. She had him in her sights for less than a second and had the tone from the Sidewinder. It was all she needed — releasing the missile, the latter streaking forward with its nose locked onto the Fulcrum’s exhaust.

The Fulcrum tried to drop fast and outturn the Sidewinder, but the missile disappeared up his exhaust, blowing the Fulcrum apart in a yellow sheet of flame — no chute.

It had lasted less than a minute, but after her downing of the Fulcrum, the ribbing suddenly ceased. And if in the world of split-second, fly-by-wire warfare she could get another three enemy fighters she’d be an ace. Some of the guys she knew would celebrate her; some would be eaten away by jealousy. Tough. But before any of that could happen she had to get back, and next to the north and south poles, she was in perhaps the harshest place on earth, where you could experience the four seasons in one day, so unsettled and everchanging was the weather on the roof of the world.

Now she could see that several yak-hide tents had been put up, and already there was smoke wafting above them, the yak-dung fires giving off an unexpectedly pleasant odor. She went through her emergency pack again, looking under the wafer-thin but highly absorbent tampons to the phrase book. Unfortunately it had only Chinese — Mandarin and Cantonese — phrases. If none of the nomads spoke English it would all have to be done with sign language.

As she approached the nomads’ camp, several naki— sheep dogs — began barking, their bluish black coats in marked contrast to the light dusting of snow, and several children in filthy clothes gathered around one of them while staring at this apparition — this long, lithe Westerner that might well have come from one of the mountain gods. One of the children, looking at her fixedly, called out, presumably to someone in the tent, but Julia couldn’t tell for sure as the child’s stare had been unbroken while he ate what looked to be a kind of yogurt from a small, decorated bowl.

Then abruptly the child went inside, followed by one of the dogs, and a man dressed in trousers whose bottoms were sewn into a pair of Reebok shoes and whose torso was covered by a dirty sheepskin jacket, wiping his nose on the sleeve, came out of the yak tent, smiled, and waved her inside, saying something in Tibetan that she hoped meant “You’re welcome.”

* * *

“What the—”

‘The general wants to see you, Harvey.”

“You know what time it is?”

“I do. The general still wants to see you.”

Harvey Simmet could barely raise himself from his bunk. “What does he want?”

“Don’t ask me, sir. I’m just the gofer.”

Harvey almost left the tent without his helmet.

“Better put it on, sir,” the duty officer told him. “The general has a standing order about that — even have to wear them in…”

“… When we go to the latrines. Yes, I know. Eighty-dollar fine, right?”

“Right, sir.”

As he bent his body against the Gobi wind, Harvey was wondering what was so urgent that the general had to dig him out of a warm bed at this ungodly hour.

“Ah, there you are, Harvey. Hope I didn’t wake you up. Coffee?”

“No — yes, sir. Coffee, yes.”

“Clear the cobwebs out, Harvey,” Freeman said, handing his meteorological officer a steaming mug. “Spring has sprung and we’ve work to do, gentlemen.”

“What do you want to know, General?” Harvey asked.

“First things first, Harv. This dust storm from the Gobi. Will it be short?”

“Could last for days. Bad for our air cover.”

“And theirs, Harvey.”

“True.” Harvey was starting to come round with the coffee. “I’d guesstimate three to four days.”

“After that?” the general asked.

“It’ll settle down. You’ll have your close air support again. Warthogs can prowl at will.”

“Perhaps, but that’s no consolation if Cheng’s troops start using that goddamn smoke cover again. Impossible to make IFF.”

‘True,” Harvey said, pulling the blanket around him.

“So it’s three to four days’ dust we have.”

“Yes — maybe longer, but three to four I’d figure.”

“Now, Harvey, this is important. How strong is the wind going to be?”

“Thirty, maybe forty miles per hour. Forty at the outside.”

“It’s more than that out there now.”

“You’re right, General, but it still sounds worse than it is. In any case it’ll be down around thirty miles per hour in four days — maybe less.”

“ ‘Scuse me, sir, Major Norton.” It was the duty officer.