and to return the goddess of democracy to her rightful place. That’s powerful stuff for people, especially the younger ones, who still remember the massacre by their own troops in eighty-nine in Tiananmen Square.
“Intelligence indicates we have a virtual underground army waiting for the means and help to overthrow the detested old men like Chairman Nie. But what the regular army will do we don’t know. That’s why I want the whole military commission captured as soon as possible. After that I don’t know what will happen — we could get a backlash of patriotism despite the hated Communist rule.” Freeman paused. “For that reason this is a purely voluntary mission. It’s risky — a dice throw — but if we can pull it off—”
“Sir?”
“Yes?”
“You mentioned Admiral Kuang during the first briefing. Do we know for sure that he’ll attack across the strait and tie up the southern forces which would otherwise be used against us? And how will he know that we’re attacking?”
“Hopefully he’ll attack,” Freeman answered, “and as to your follow-up question, the moment our armor hits Badaling he’ll know. So there it is in overview. Anybody want out?”
No one did. Freeman nodded knowingly. “Didn’t think so. I can promise you this, boys. If we pull this off it’ll be one hell of a coup! You’ll read about yourselves in the history books!”
“If we’re alive to read any,” one of Aussie’s group murmured.
“Well,” Salvini said, “you going to bet on this, Aussie?”
Aussie said he wouldn’t. He was a gambler, sure, but he wasn’t a fool. Freeman’s plan was brilliantly conceived, but absolutely too close to call.
In the wind-riven high country of the Chang Tang, Julia was obliged to stay with the nomads three days before she could move, or rather had to move. She had been suffering from hypothermia when she had reached the nomad’s tent and sat down to warm up by the dung fire, the smoke exiting from the smoke hole high up in the dark yak-hair tent looking like a rectangular marble column, its boundaries sharply defined by the sunlight flooding the smoke hole. But the presence of the sun did not carry any promise of warmth, for outside a blizzard had been sweeping across the snow-covered pass between the mountains whose summits had been lost to a swirling mist created by the howling winds.
Everyone had sat smiling, the man in his fifties perhaps and a woman whom Julia took to be his wife in the same kind of dirty sheepskin coat that so many of the Tibetan nomads wore. And two children, around ten or twelve, she guessed, their noses running from the cold and open-mouthed at the arrival of the stranger whose flight suit seemed nothing less than miraculous. But the gun she wore — or rather had now taken off and put by her side— the gun put her in perspective. They had seen guns before, of course, but mostly the old flintlock muskets that were still used by the nomads. The kind of gun and the pouch she wore, however, were like those the Chinese had brought up and down the Lhasa road.
They offered her yogurt and tea with
After unzipping her flying jacket, she had pointed to the sewn-in panel of cloth made up of the American flag and beneath it, sewn-in printing in several languages — most East European, the panels having been made during the old cold war period. Translated, the panels asked all the nationalities represented to assist the wearer of the panel back to the United States forces and promised a thousand-dollar reward for doing so. It had been one of Freeman’s ideas put to use earlier in the war, but the languages included only three Asiatic tongues: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. The Languages of South Asia, from India to Bhutan, had been omitted.
On the third day an elderly man — in his late sixties or early seventies, Julia guessed — came into the hut but ignored her and sat down by the fire and began fanning it with goat skin bellows that squeaked each time he pumped. Grateful to have found warmth and food, Julia was nevertheless anxious to be getting on, to get out of Tibet and China somehow, but she knew the Chinese were everywhere in Tibet, that it was a political fiction to pretend Tibet had any autonomy. The Chinese were here to stay.
The old man, whom Julia took to be one of the grandparents, said something to the younger. The younger man nodded agreeably, and pulling up his sheepskin jacket, he pointed to his watch, which read 5:00 p.m., and held up his fingers to denote twenty more hours, and by a mixture of smiles, head shakings, and grunts of approval managed to convey the message that someone would be here in twenty hours who would speak her language. At least that’s what she thought he meant. Or perhaps he meant something entirely different.
The frustration of her predicament was made worse by the strong probability that she had been reported as MIA— for when her chute had opened she’d not seen any trace of her wingman in the thick cloud. If they thought her dead, then why send anyone else out to look for her? Deciding she could do no more, she curled up on the sheepskin mats and went to sleep — at least confident that she was among friends. She pulled the gun under the sheepskin rug.
When next she woke she heard the straining of ropes against the tent. All the others were asleep except the tent’s owner who had first welcomed her. The fire cast a flickering glow across the man’s face, one minute hiding him in shadow, the next revealing his smiling teeth. Cocking herself up on one elbow, she saw by her watch that it was 8:00 p.m. — which meant she had to wait another seventeen hours before the arrival of the man — she presumed it would be a man — who could speak English. Or perhaps he spoke only Chinese?
Lying down to sleep again, she was aware of something crawling over her skin beneath her breasts. She turned, now facing away from the fire, and peered down her khaki T-shirt to see if she could see any bug on her. She couldn’t, but still felt itchy. She tried not to scratch, tried to think of something else to take her mind off it, off everything for a while. Was it lice? Could they live in such cold?
It was then, as she reached under the sheepskin, down further about her feet, up higher, both sides of her, that she realized the gun was gone. She turned about abruptly and looked straight at the tent’s owner sitting by the fire, but he was nodding off to sleep. Or had he simply closed his eyes?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The Air Force brass disagreed strongly with Freeman’s refusal to bomb Beijing into submission, and Freeman was appalled by the air force’s narrow view.
“My God,” he told the air chief, “we want to
Turning to die map, he pointed to the Bo Hai Gulf. “And as for the possible launching of Tomahawk cruise missiles from off the coast, the problem there is that the Chinese, learning from the mistakes of Saddam Insane, have put up tents and huge cutouts from the Peking Opera throughout the Zhongnanhai compound and the main square. This is to confuse cruise missiles’ terrain-contouring programs, which are made up from recent SATRECON shots. And if a cruise is confused about its target it’s likely to hit anywhere in a city, killing civilians.
“Hell, the Beijing Hotel is only a five-minute walk up Changan Avenue. Not a very good policy,” General Freeman told his air chief, “to litter a place with dead civilians then tell the rest we’ve come to liberate them.”
The nurse due to go on duty at Beijing Number One jail’s hospital from midnight to dawn cleaned her desk, or
