gunners. They were forced to abandon their heavy two hundred — round box magazines in an attempt at retreat. The sickly sweet stench of the ChiComs burning alive mixed with the smell of incinerated equipment.
At the same time, billions of the ubiquitous black insects swirling skyward to escape the smoke that covered the island began to explode, the resulting rapid firecracker noise mistaken by younger soldiers on both sides for the sound of the ChiComs’ lightweight CQ automatic rifles. It was a burst from one of these rifles, known among U.S. and other NATO forces as a 7.5-pound M-16 “rip-off,” that felled Corporal Ahmao Pan, the youngest son of Moh Pan, as he led his rifle section against a ChiCom sapper unit that had quickly braved an intense, overlapping field of ROC mortar fire near the ROC’s big bunker near Pupien on the island’s northern side. The impact of the 3.56 gram bullets, their muzzle velocity among the highest in the ChiComs’ armory of infantry weapons, blew away Pan’s chest and stopped what up till then had been his section’s spirited charge against the enemy sappers.
The pause enabled the ChiCom engineers to place satchel charges against the bunker. The detonations failed to wreck the bunker but created such enormous and simultaneous concussions that the bunker’s ROC defenders were so badly disorientated that they failed to prevent two hundred ChiCom marines from rappelling ashore from Mikhail-B heavy transport helos. The Communist marines captured the huge bunker complex with virtually no opposition.
Within minutes another fleet of Mikhail heavy transport helos arrived, flying at no more than a hundred feet above an increasingly choppy sea that presaged the coming onslaught of Typhoon Jane. The transport helicopter pilots carefully watching the precipitous fall in barometric pressure had already seen satellite pictures showing the towering green columns of rain and debris that were picking up speed after having been initially slowed from 135 miles per hour to 100 mph as they passed over islands in the Philippine Sea. “Jane” had sucked up houses, entire villages, and automobiles two days before in Luzon, spitting them down miles away as the massive weather disturbance, siphoning off the power of smaller systems, continued its destructive course toward Taiwan. The CNN anchor, Marte Price, echoing reports from the East Asian network, announced that Taiwan was reportedly in for what the Chinese traditionally called a “
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Douglas Freeman heartily despised the media in general, regarding them in an infamous address to a graduating class at Emory as “a bunch of lily-livered liberals” who should be told about wars only when they were over. On CNN, Marte Price had reported his comments as an “antiliberal tirade,” noting that he’d been booed by the student body. The general laughed it off. He and Marte were old friends, though diametrically opposed politically. As he once commented to Norman Raft, his 2nd Army quartermaster, with uncharacteristic embarrassment, he and Marte Price, who had been a reporter in the field during several of his wars, were “what you might call, ah, chemically aligned.”
“What the hell’s that mean, Douglas?” Raft replied. “You screwed her?”
“Damn woman was going to write some nasty stuff about my Sea Air Land Emergency Response Team,” Freeman said, “and for reasons of national security, I had to launch a, ah …”
“Preemptive strike.”
“There you go. For the good of the Army.”
“Was she a good fit?” asked Raft.
“Like a 105 in the breech.”
“A
“Metaphorically speaking,” Freeman responded.
“Oh, then it was more like small caliber—”
“That’s enough, Norman. Don’t you have to order some water pumps?”
It was an old joke between them, a reference to the tragic failure of a five-dollar cooling component in the British army’s tanks during the initial and disastrous campaign against Rommel in the Western Desert. The small, defective part had been responsible for terrible losses as overheated engines conked out and became sitting ducks for the Afrika Korps 88s. It was one of the reasons that Freeman, to the disapproval of fellow senior commanders past and present, occasionally sported his distinctive khaki Afrika Korps cap — the swastika removed. The cap reminded him of the two vital attributes of any country’s great lieutenants: first, the ability to get inside your opponent’s head, to think like him tactically as well as strategically; and second, to remember that God
But now it was time to get a detailed map of the area and to call the team — or, as he liked to refer to them, the old Special Forces “gang.” There would be no small talk now that Freeman was sure that the Navy — indeed the United States — was in even more danger than it feared.
Aussie Lewis in Los Angeles was the first to get the call.
“You in for a job?” Freeman asked him.
“Location?” replied the laconic Aussie Lewis, refusing as always to admit surprise.
“Washington State,” Freeman said. “Picking apples. You fit?”
“A mile with full kit, in under ten. How’s that?”
“Adequate.” It was part of the code. “Now this is crucial: What’s your current waist?”
“Thirty-one. Thirty-two after lunch at Hooters.”
So he
“I’m waiting.”
“Will Mommy let you go?”
Lewis ignored the taunt. “When?”
“Tomorrow, 1600. You have your own Draeger?” He meant the special chest-mounted rebreather unit and air tank which, unlike other diving gear, would not release telltale bubbles that could betray your position to the enemy.
Next, Freeman called Sal Salvini in Brooklyn, asking the same question. The answer was, “I’m packing now.”
Choir Williams, who had settled in the quiet little town of Winthrop, nestled in eastern Washington’s Cascades, the wilderness mountain chain that ran south of Mount Baker near the Canadian-U.S. border, received the last call. But by the time the general dialed him, the Welsh-American who’d never lost his accent had already been contacted by Aussie Lewis.
“Williams here!” he answered the phone. “A fine lick of a lad I am. Fit as a rugby fly-half and a devil with the ladies!”
There was a polite pause. “Mr. Williams. It’s Pastor Keenheart here. Perhaps I’ve caught you at a bad time?”
“Ah yes — well, ah, no — Pastor.”
“The choir at Winthrop St. Andrews wondered if you’d be so kind as to lend us your fine eisteddfod tenor voice for our Thanksgiving service.”
“Ah yes, of course. Sorry, Pastor, I thought — I thought you were an old pal of mine. Yes, of course I’d be happy to assist, though I could be out of town.”
“Oh, that’d be a pity, because two of our soprano ladies wanted you to bang them!”
Choir answered Freeman’s questions, including giving his waist size, and as he had with Aussie and Salvini, Freeman told him to bring “Draeger” along, as if the latter were a person. Choir inquired about David Brentwood, the other member of the old team. Would he be going also?
“No!” It was so emphatic that Choir was taken aback — they had always worked as a team. He didn’t press further. And, being a single man, there was no “Mommy” consideration for Choir.
When Eleanor Prenty heard a message on her answering machine from Freeman—“I know what’s going on”—she called him immediately, her earlier reluctance to return his calls or seek his advice having vanished in light of — or rather, the darkness of — the
