will, not subject to some order from a totalitarian regime where terrorists such as the Taliban ruled.
Forcing himself back to the task at hand, the general felt for the det cord again, resumed his crawl, and, after a few more yards, realized why half of what had earlier been a more or less continuous line of terrorist bodies was now partially obscured: A crate of heavy MANPAD parts had fallen in the melee from the top of a stack of crates that had been piled high in the middle tunnel, the impact of the crate’s sharp edge against the metal grid severing the det cord. He pushed the box of MANPAD parts off the det cord, then, using his knife, he quickly cut the cord and overlapped the two ends by about a foot and attached det cord clips. He then took out his time-delay pencil initiator and crushed the vial, releasing the acid that in five minutes would eat away a thin restraining wire that would in turn release the spring-held firing pin, the pin then striking a percussion cap which would initiate the final sequence in the explosive train.
The general now quickly moved back toward the exit. His NVGs picked up a speckled bloom of light, caused by still-falling dust particles whose radiant heat from the tank round was still enough to faintly illuminate the exit stairs. Suddenly he felt, then heard, the earth trembling above him. It was the forty-seven-ton T-90, crewless except for the driver who was screaming in agony from a bullet-smashed right hand.
With three minutes to go in the tunnel, Freeman easily cleared the body of a terrorist whose flashlight was still on, the general then crashing into a folding card table that against all odds was still standing, albeit with one severed leg. But the general was up and running, with two minutes to go. As he reached the last five stairs to the top of the exit he was aware of a flash of light “blooming out” his NVGs with overload. Though virtually blind for the next few seconds, he felt the wet draft of air on his hands and on the skin between his battle jacket and the bottom of the gas mask. He remembered to turn hard left away from the mined area, running into an uneven patch of tank-mashed reeds, falling, getting up, his feet unable to gain purchase, the ground shifting, then he heard the “whoomp,” the roiling of the explosion knocking him off his feet. As if a ballistic missile had been launched from its silo, a huge V of dirt and debris shot out and up from the exit toward the higher ground, falling near the edge of the wood where he’d last seen Melissa Thomas. But now all was a cloud of dark gray dust over sodden earth, the clouds of burned chemicals and noxious fumes from the incinerated terrorists’ dungeon now spreading out.
Unable to see more than a foot in front of him, all Douglas Freeman could identify with certainty was the eardunning sound of the Cobra gunships’ chain guns, the Cobras’ tracers, if his sense of direction was intact, streaming toward the H-block. It was a maelstrom of fire, being delivered as punishment for the terrorists having violated the twenty-four-hour agreement, a venting of the Americans’ outrage against what the gunships’ pilots had clearly seen themselves and heard from rescued marine stragglers who had alerted the marine forces to the presence and activity of the T-90 tanks.
Freeman flicked on his mike to contact the pilots, but he could tell immediately that that bastard Murphy had struck again. All he could hear was static. And he was worried about Melissa Thomas.
At least the rain was easing, and a fragrant wind was rushing in from the Wanda Shan to replace the harsh, hot air of the detonation, an explosion which Freeman knew had completely destroyed the three tunnels, assembly lines, and the terrorists’ entire stock of shoulder-fired MANPADs, hypersonic small rounds, and torpedo prototypes. Boosting the general’s weary, yet decidedly effusive, mood, was the rapid withdrawal of the T-90 that had fired point-blank into the exit and was now paying for it by being attacked by the Cobras, who had initially come into Khanka as nothing more than escorts for the evac Stallions. The general’s celebratory high was quickly punctured, however, by his growing concern for Melissa Thomas. With the radio out, no flare gun, and the air around him thick with debris, how could he communicate his and her situation to the mission’s air arm? “Wait a minute,” he scolded himself. “Run, you bastard, run out of this crap cloud. No one can see you here. Run!” And he did, until he saw the two dead tank crewmen, whom he immediately checked for flares. Nothing. He ran on until his knees seemed to be on fire and he burst out into relatively clear air and the reeds. The choppers were gone, their gas tanks’ loiter times exhausted.
The general morphed into an angry savage, cursing with such force and volume that he dared any damned Russian terrorists who hadn’t had enough to show themselves and he’d personally shoot them. And when he ran out of ammunition he’d go strangle the bastards with his bare hands. Battle fatigue, he told himself. He saw a white blur coming at him and fired two quick shots. It was a small, man-sized parachute, one of half a dozen dropped either by either the unseen Cobra gunships or the Super Stallions.
“They’re message chutes. I’ve opened one.” He swung around, startled by her voice. Relieved, fatigued, and enormously embarrassed for having been caught firing at a parachute, and a small one at that, Freeman hurried over to the voice and found Melissa Thomas shivering violently, whereas he was perspiring profusely underneath the layers of Kevlar and battle tunic, with heat to spare. He embraced her in a bear hug.
The message in the milk-pail-sized canister attached to the chute was
ENCLOSED INFRARED X FOR SATELLITE OVERFLIGHT STOP MOTHER WILL THEN EXECUTE STAR STOP GOOD LUCK
“I’ve—” She was shivering so badly she could hardly speak. “—spread — the X over there.” Her hand shaking, Melissa was pointing to a flattened area of reeds. Freeman could see her face was tinged with the telltale bluish hue of impending hypothermia.
She pointed to the word STAR. “I — haven’t — a clue what—”
“Don’t talk. You’ll waste energy,” he advised her, while simultaneously trying not to show his alarm at the gross violation of operational procedure exhibited by whomever it was who had sent a
Once in the driest, least bloodstained clothes he could bring her, dressing himself only after he’d helped her, they set up an improvised machine gun nest just in from the tunnel’s exit, he dragging in the dead T-90 captain and crewman to use as an ad hoc barricade on which to rest his AK-74 and her sniper rifle, he down to his last clip of thirty rounds. He embraced her with his left arm, leaving his right holding the Kalashnikov, ready to fire. “No time to be shy, Marine,” he told her. “I’m old enough to be your grandfather!” he joked. “Come in close. I’ve got enough hot air to thaw a frozen turkey.” She tried to smile, but her mouth wouldn’t respond, her teeth literally chattering, but she did feel a suggestion of warmth.
As Freeman held the young woman, like other soldiers who had saved their comrades in the same manner from perishing of cold, he became aware of a smell other than their body odor and the reek of charred equipment and burnt flesh in the tunnels. It was the faint but very definite smell of a woman, and he thought of his first wife, Catherine, and Margaret. It was so distant, as if their love-making had been a dream long ago.
“Don’t you ever tell anyone,” he told Melissa, “that I shot at a damned parachute.” She said nothing, barely hearing him over the soft moan of the China wind whistling about the tunnel exit, the warmth of his closeness seeping into her. No one at Parris would believe it, and she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell anyone for the sake of both their reputations. She felt the general start. Something had spooked him.
“What is it?” she whispered.
“A vehicle,” he answered. “Maybe a truck.”
“Not the plane?”
“No. If—
Although warming, Melissa still felt desperately cold. It was as if the cogs in a wheel in her brain had slowed with the precipitous drop in her temperature. For a moment she was confused by him mentioning “our pickup.” She thought he’d mentioned a plane, not a pickup truck.
It
