the sleepers, amplified by the toilet tube, became a sustained roar.
On his way back to his seat he knew the police would be there. Perhaps he could sit away from her, but the train was full. He passed several families who had already opened glass jars of tea and were eating cold slices of fatty meat. As he made his way further down the aisle he was struck by people’s mouths moving and he unable to hear them for the roar of a large goods train passing them toward Beidaihe. Perhaps he was going deaf.
“Feel better now?” Alexsandra asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m sorry for being so rude with you. I’m afraid I need more sleep.”
“Ha, ha,” he said, and this time it meant, I wish you would and give us both some rest. She had closed her eyes but was kept awake by more troop trains roaring by. “Tickets?” came a conductor’s voice.
“You show them,” Alexsandra said.
“Yes,” the student said, but he found his hand was trembling. She took the tickets from him. “I’ll do it.” He was alarmed — if the conductor questioned the ticket purchase she would probably shoot him.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Julia felt herself manhandled off the yak and carried from the whiteness of the hailstorm into the blackness of a cave in the rock ridge.
What she didn’t realize was that the old man had been carrying her on a circuitous path on the rocky ridge so that any pursuers following the snow tracks would come to a dead end on that part of the bare ridge in the lee of the wind where only hail and not snow had become wedged in the fractures.
When the old man put her down by the cold remains of a fire she ached in anticipation, but there wasn’t to be the slightest sign of smoke — worse still, the faintest whiff of it and the Chinese would be on them. Her headache was bad, utterly untouched by aspirin. She toyed with the idea of a morphine shot in her small first-aid kit but didn’t like the idea of it doping her out so that, along with the pain, she’d be of little use to the old man should the Chinese come upon them.
The old man left her yogurt, butter, cheese, and
“I go,” the old man said as he tapped his watch. “Come back.” She nodded that she understood he would return. Before he left, he bent down behind her, and she could feel the rough skin of his herder’s hands biting deep into the back of her skull. Stiffly resistant at first, she now relaxed, surrendering to the old man’s deep massage. From the small first-aid book that came with her pack, Julia knew that the nomads had much more hemoglobin in their blood than others, which protected them from altitude sickness, so that she doubted whether the massage would do any good. Surprisingly, however, though it didn’t take the pain away, it reduced it to a more bearable level, and she could think straight enough to be concerned that his long fingers were now reaching the top of her breasts. Was this part of the
Five minutes had passed when she heard footsteps again, faintly at first but then growing, making a crunchy sound on the pebbles that had accumulated in the cave. Whoever it was was not yet around the S and so remained hidden. She drew out the .45 and moved to a kneeling position, her hands shaking not only from fear but from the mountain sickness. She released the safety.
Running the half mile west along Changan Avenue — the Avenue of Eternal Peace — for the Zhongnanhai, Aussie and his reconnaissance patrol caused no interference but only drop-jawed stares of the early-rising citizens of Beijing as they bicycled down the avenue, there being fewer than usual about at this time of the morning because of the rain that had followed the monsoon’s tail and that was still falling.
Then from up ahead there came two short cracks and more. Immediately Aussie signaled the reccy patrol to split — five on the southern side of the meridian, his group of four on the right-hand side, both groups moving toward the Zhongnanhai Gate from where the shots had come and where the two guards were lying down for better aim in front of the high, varnished red gates.
Aussie called to the others across the street to take them out with the SAW — squad automatic weapon. The SAS/D trooper stopped, the sling belt of the SAW over his right shoulder, the twenty-two-pound machine gun pumping out a burst of 5.56mm that silenced the two guards.
People were fleeing in all directions, but in a strangely almost habitual way as if this had been a weekly occurrence. The other part of Aussie’s patrol crossed the road and joined his foursome.
Someone was clapping and several others joined in. An old man, a red armband to show he was one of the elder brigadesmen — or rather, local snoops — called out angrily, waving his fists, telling those who were clapping that these were “foreign devils,” to which the first clapper told him to go to the night cart in his
At the gate one SAS/D man braced himself against the wall, and Aussie Lewis took a run up and in one jump, using the man’s cupped hands as a stirrup, he put his other foot on the broken glass top a fraction of a second before he jumped down on the other side. He landed on the edge of a pebbled path leading in from the gate, but at the guardhouse inside, which was deserted, he couldn’t understand any of the Chinese signs. Not wanting to waste time calling over for the Chinese interpreter, he pressed every button he could. A siren sounded and died, but by then he’d pressed another button and the Zhongnanhai Gate opened.
The moment it was open the remaining nine members of the reconnaissance patrol came in, fanning left and right, two men designated by Aussie Lewis to take the left footpath and check out the little pavilion in the center of the round southern lake, the rest of the patrol running northalong the cobblestone pathways to the apartments and bungalows of the elite.
Even from the pathways it was difficult to see the extent of the buildings, as they were carefully hidden by meticulously attended shrubbery, trees, and gardens that followed the contours of the elite’s houses. There was no sign of the downed Comanche in the south lake. As they went into one door after another, the signs of a hasty retreat were everywhere, from unfinished tea to meals half-eaten, and in another building, the heat still on.
It wasn’t until the ninth or tenth apartment that they saw the stepladder that had been used by the State Council to climb over the wall and vacate the Zhongnanhai via row-boats over to the Forbidden City across a moat a hundred and seventy feet wide, a moat that flowed around the Forbidden City.
Aussie reached the top of the wall on the aluminum step-ladder, and all he could see was the dark green moat, then the sandstone-colored wall on its far side, and behind the wall the rusty red of the walls of the Forbidden City.
“How’d they get over the moat?” the SAW operator asked.
“That bridge down there has been blown,” another SAS/D pointed out.
“Probably had boats lined up ready,” another began, poking his head up over the wall. “See, down by—”
He didn’t finish, his body knocked from the ladder as if struck by a lance from a horse, the crack of the rifle shot that hit him reverberating against the moat and throughout the great squares of the Forbidden City. The radio “receiving” light came on, and the recon radio patrol operator snatched up the hand-piece. “Recon leader to—” and all he could hear was firing and static on the line. “Say again!”
“… everyone will proceed to the lounge bar.”
“Roger,” the recon operator said, knowing that this message was most likely being listened to by the Chinese. “Lounge bar” was the designated code name for the Forbidden City. Not that anyone had thought they would be using it. And “everyone will proceed” meant that the recon patrol, like everyone else, was expected to
