Force of Arms

“Yes, Major?”

“Photo recon boys are here.”

“You have that computer model ready yet?” Freeman cut in.

“Working on it, sir.”

“What the hell does that mean? Is it ready or not?”

‘They’re working on it, sir.”

Suddenly Freeman slammed his fist against the map, knocking off several armored divisions. “Goddamn it! What’s the matter with you people? You think it’s time to sleep?” He was so loud he even drowned out the radio babble outside his room. “We haven’t got time to sleep! We’re going to counterattack! We are going on the offensive, gentlemen. And I don’t mean holding our positions. We are going to eat Chinese alive.”

“That’s no good,” Harvey Simmet whispered to the duty officer. “Eat a few and you’re hungry again.”

“Is that clear?” Freeman bellowed. “I want this team to think attack. Defeat starts in the mind and I won’t allow it!”

Harvey Simmet took another sip of coffee. He wasn’t in the mood for Freeman’s Follies. Damn generals were all the same — except that George C. Scott here did have one quality that always earned him a lot of forgiveness. He was prepared to be out on the point with his men when it counted, and he had proved it from Korea to Ratmanov Island to the Never-Skovorodino road.

Freeman put everyone in the tent on a need-to-know status. He didn’t want anything to get out, otherwise the entire operation would be jeopardized. He decided to do the mock-up himself. Computing three-dimensional stereoscopic printouts was fine, but to see it actually built in front of you — something you could touch, move things around a bit — was the best. Besides, the truth was, Freeman wasn’t all that good on a computer — strictly a two- finger basher. “Slow as a wet week,” as someone had said. With Play-Doh he was adept and fast.

* * *

When they played taps for the five-man crew of the Pave Low and the seventeen SAS/D men aboard it who had gone down over Lake Nam, as well as the pilot of the F-15C — no chute had been seen — Freeman’s eyes flooded with tears, for he was as moved by the death of those who served under him as he was proud of them in battle, and it wasn’t until ten minutes later, when he had time to compose himself, that he had the remaining thirty SAS/D men into his headquarters hut.

Thirty out of eighty. A unit with that kind of loss was usually taken off the board, but Freeman had work for them to do. He expected no complaint and received none. Aussie Lewis, slightly wounded in the butt from the ChiCom grenade, Salvini, Choir Williams, and Brentwood told him they were ready. Aussie was still thinking about the fact that had he not had the Haskins sniper rifle and waited till last to climb aboard, he would have been in the first chopper — the one that went down. He knew it was illogical, but this knowledge made him feel that he owed something special to the unit, to the men who had gone down.

“Gentlemen,” Freeman told the thirty SAS/D men, “you’re going to be up to full strength again and then some. Eight squadrons in all, a hundred and sixty of you. You lot have done a magnificent job at Lake Nam, but we have to capitalize on that victory now. We can’t assume that your action will stop the missiles for more than two weeks or so before they rebuild.”

He stopped and decided to illustrate his point with a true story of how the Chinese in the Sino-Japanese War sabotaged a train track. “Now we use explosives,” Freeman said. “But back then the Chinese didn’t have enough and so they brought out a whole town. Thousands of them. Every man, woman, and child stood in a long line, and then at one command they all upended the track by its sleepers so that it just buckled and pushed right over. We don’t even think like that because we’ve never had that kind of population. But they can — they’ve got the manpower — so we can’t assume that now we’ve given them a black eye at Nam they won’t be ready to go again with more missiles in a few more weeks. Which is why it’s imperative that we act within the next ninety-six hours. That should give you time to re-equip and learn your part till you think and breathe it. Harvey Simmet guarantees a break in the winds on the fourth day. We’ll move out at twenty-three hundred hours the night of the third. We’ll chute in at plus or minus zero one hundred hours. In the first place they won’t expect us, and even if they did, they would figure dawn, not pitch darkness, as the time of attack.”

When he pulled the cloth off from the Play-Doh model everyone knew what it was immediately. Freeman was either bonkers or brilliant.

“We’re going for the brain, gentlemen — we’re going to paralyze their central nervous system. Without that, the body politic will have no center and we’ll see not one China but many who will join us to throw out Nie and the whole State Council.”

The SAS/D team gazed down at the model. Freeman had even found a small newspaper photo of Mao and had put this at the entrance to the Forbidden City, looking out from on high over the vastness of Tiananmen Square, the largest square in the world.

A few blocks further west along Changan Avenue, well to the left of Mao’s picture, Freeman had sculpted out the Zhongnanhai compound where the State Council members, and, most importantly, the entire military commission, were housed and guarded.

“Everything,” Freeman said, “depends on our speed and ferocity. Simultaneously we will be launching the biggest counterattack yet along the Orgon Tal-Honggor front. But it’s here — in the heart of Beijing — where we must succeed. If we seem to be winning there, we’ll have others follow— the Malof guerrillas up north, the Democracy Movement in the south, and, if we’re lucky, Admiral Kuang in Taiwan will move across the straits. If that happens the ChiComs’ll have a two-front war into the bargain.”

Most of them were still watching the mock-up of downtown Beijing — the sheer audacity of Freeman’s plan only now sinking in.

“We go right into the square. Fan out from there from the Statue of Heroes of the Revolution. We’ll keep ferrying in more troops as we can, but our one hundred and sixty will be the point.”

“Our?” Aussie Lewis said. “Are you coming, General?”

“Unless,” Freeman replied, “anyone has any objections.”

The effect on the men’s mood was instantaneous.

“Lewis.”

“Yes, sir?”

“Your troop with me. We’ll hit the Zhongnanhai compound. Capture who we can, shoot who we can’t. Williams and Salvini.”

“Sir?”

“Great Hall of the People. Brentwood.”

“Sir.”

“Underground railway — including the secret escape line they don’t think we know about that runs from the Zhongnanhai compound to Xishan military base.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Right. You’ll form the core, and with the replacements we’ll gather strength. Choir, I want you to take charge of the radio tower, or rather what’s left of it.” Choir was about to interject, but Freeman stopped him. “Not now. I’ll go into more detail in the final briefing later on. Meanwhile I’ll leave choice of weapons up to the individual, but remember, it’ll be short-range for most of it but I’ll need twenty snipers to spread about. Take some Haskins.” For Freeman it would be the Winchester 1200 with flechette-packed cartridges. The enormous implications of Freeman’s plan excited Aussie Lewis. He turned to Brentwood. “Say what you like, the old man’s got balls.”

“Lewis!”

“Sir.”

“Over here.”

“Sir.”

“Lewis, I don’t want to hit this one too hard, but intelligence reports tell us that Miss Malof is in the same Beijing jail as Smythe. Soon as we take the square, you take a squad to liberate it.”

“Bloody right,” Lewis said.

“General?” Salvini asked. “How about the Chinese garrison? Beijing has the Thirty-first Army ready.”

“Not in the middle of the city — on the outside perimeter. They’re expecting an armored thrust through the Great Wall. We’ll feint there of course, but our main force’ll leapfrog the son of a bitch.”