— the weapons selected were the 2.75-inch-diameter free-flight rockets, carried in pods on the Apaches’ stub wings. Three of the section of five handled the initial firing run, with two in reserve should the unexpected develop. They burned in low, so as to conceal their silhouettes in the hills behind them, and opened up at two hundred meters. The first salvo of four blew up the guard shack and its two sleepy guards. The noise would have been enough to awaken those in the barracks building, but the second salvo of rockets, this time fifteen of them, got there before anyone inside could do more than blink his eyes open. Both floors of the two-story structure were hit, and most of those inside died without waking, caught in the middle of dreams. The Apaches hesitated then, still having weapons to fire. There was a subsidiary guard post on the other side of the building; COCHISE LEAD looped around the barracks and spotted it. The two soldiers there had their rifles up and fired blindly into the air, but his gunner selected his 20-mm cannon and swept them aside as though with a broom. Then the Apache pivoted in the air and he salvoed his remaining rockets into the barracks, and it was immediately apparent that if anyone was alive in there, it was by the grace of God Himself, and whoever it was would not be a danger to the mission.
“COCHISE Four and Five, Lead. Go back up Crook, we don’t need you here.”
“Roger, Lead,” they both replied. The two attack helicopters moved off, leaving the first three to look for and erase any signs of life.
Crook flight, also of five Apaches, smoked in just ahead of the Blackhawks. It turned out that each silo had a small guard post, each for two men, and those were disposed of in a matter of seconds with cannon fire. Then the Apaches climbed to higher altitude and circled slowly, each over a pair of missile silos, looking for anything moving, but seeing nothing.
BANDIT Six, Colonel Dick Boyle, flared his Blackhawk three feet over Silo #1, as it was marked on his satellite photo.
“Go!” the co-pilot shouted over the intercom. The RAINBOW troopers jumped down just to the east of the actual hole itself; the “Chinese hat” steel structure, which looked like an inverted blunt ice-cream cone, prohibited dropping right down on the door itself.
The base command post was the best-protected structure on the entire post. It was buried ten meters underground, and the ten meters was solid reinforced concrete, so as to survive a nuclear bomb’s exploding within a hundred meters, or so the design supposedly promised. Inside was a staff of ten, commanded by Major General Xun Qing-Nian. He’d been a Second Artillery (the Chinese name for their strategic missile troops) officer since graduating from university with an engineering degree. Only three hours before, he’d supervised the fueling of all twelve of his CSS-4 intercontinental ballistic missiles, which had never happened before in his memory. No explanation had come with that order, though it didn’t take a rocket scientist-which he was, by profession-to connect it with the war under way against Russia.
Like all members of the People’s Liberation Army, he was a highly disciplined man, and always mindful of the fact that he had his country’s most valuable military assets under his personal control. The alarm had been raised by one of the silo-guard posts, and his staff switched on the television cameras used for site inspection and surveillance. They were old cameras, and needed lights, which were switched on as well.
What the fuck!” Chavez shouted. ”Turn the lights off!” he ordered over his radio.
It wasn’t demanding. The light standards weren’t very tall, nor were they very far away. Chavez hosed one with his MP-10, and the lights went out, thank you. No other lasted for more than five seconds at any of the silos.
We are under attack,” General Xun said in a quiet and disbelieving voice. ”We are under attack,” he repeated. But he had a drill for this. ”Alert the guard force,” he told one NCO. ”Get me Beijing,” he ordered another.
At Silo #1, Paddy Connolly ran to the pipes that led to the top of the concrete box that marked the top of the silo. To each he stuck a block of Composition B, his explosive of choice. Into each block he inserted a blasting cap. Two men, Eddie Price and Hank Patterson, knelt close by with their weapons ready for a response force that was nowhere to be seen.
“Masks!” he told everyone on the radio… but there was no vapor coming off the fueling pipes. That was good news, wasn’t it?
“Come on!” Eddie Price yelled at him. The three men, guarded now by two others, looked for the metal door into the maintenance entrance for the silo.
“Ed, we’re on the ground, we’re on the ground,” Clark was saying into his satellite phone, fifty yards away. “The barracks are gone, and there’s no opposition on the ground here. Doing our blasting now. Back to you soon. Out.”
Well, shit,” Ed Foley said in his office, but the line was now dead.
What?” It was an hour later in Beijing, and the sun was up. Marshal Luo, having just woken up after not enough sleep following the worst day he’d known since the Cultural Revolution, had a telephone thrust into his hands. ”What is this?” he demanded of the phone.
“This is Major General Xun Qing-Nian at Xuanhua missile base. We are under attack here. There is a force of men on the ground over our heads trying to destroy our missiles. I require instructions!”
“Fight them off!” was the first idea Luo had.
“The defense battalion is dead, they do not respond. Comrade Minister, what do I do?”
“Are your missiles fueled and ready for launch?”
“Yes!”
Luo looked around his bedroom, but there was no one to advise him. His country’s most priceless assets were now about to be ripped from his control. His command wasn’t automatic. He actually thought first, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter how considered his decision was.
“Launch your missiles,” he told the distant general officer.
“Repeat your command,” Luo heard.
“By your command,” the voice replied.
Fuck,” Sergeant Connolly said. ”This is some bloody door!” The first explosive block had done nothing more than scorch the paint. This time he attached a hollow-charge to the upper and lower hinges and backed off again. ”This one will do it,” he promised as he trailed the wires back.
The crash that followed gave proof to his words. When next they looked in, the door was gone. It had been hurled inward, must have flown into the silo like a bat out of-
– “Bloody hell!” Connolly turned. “Run!
Price and Patterson needed no encouragement. They ran for their lives. Connolly caught them reaching for his protective hood as he did so, not stopping until he was over a hundred yards away.
“The bloody missile’s fueled. The door ruptured the upper tank. It’s going to blow!”
“Shit! Team, this is Price, the missiles are fueled, I repeat the missiles are fueled. Get the fucking hell away from the silo!”
The proof of that came from Silo #8, off to Price’s south. The concrete structure that sat atop it surged into the air, and under it was a volcanic blast of fire and smoke. Silo #1, theirs, did the same, a gout of flame going sideways out of the open service door.
