by Ian Slater
“Sir?” the intelligence officer pressed, unsure as to whether Freeman had heard him.
“I know!” Freeman growled up at him. “You’re telling me the Country Market team’s been discovered?”
“Well yes, sir, but we’re not sure about both boats. We think this photo is definitely of one boat, but there’s a chance the second is still operational.”
“So, they’re in trouble,” said Freeman curtly. “Can’t do anything about it from here. Right?”
“No, sir. But whether they blow it or not, there’s the problem of getting them out. ChiComs are sure to be looking for them around the bridge.”
“Well, we sure as hell can’t leave them there.”
“No, sir.”
“They issued an emergency call?”
“Not yet, sir. Extraction’s scheduled in ninety minutes.”
“What do you suggest?”
A line of Siberians, dripping wet, some shivering so much from the cold that Freeman could actually hear their teeth chattering, was passing them under guard. One man saw him and saluted. Solemnly, the general rose and returned the salute, hearing the small arms fire in the background at the edge of the taiga a half mile to the east. Freeman knew he had a formidable problem either way. If the SEALs didn’t blow the bridge, there’d be no hope of contesting the invasion by the northern ChiCom armies. If there were some SEALs still alive and they did blow the bridge, chances were their original drop-off point would no longer be usable, ChiComs now searching upstream from whence they’d come.
“Any suggestions?” Freeman repeated.
“Well, sir, Tom Pierce, the Pave Low commander on Salt Lake City, says that if his helos went in under the radar undetected, they can go in — and out — again. Problem is, there’ll be absolutely no chance of even a touch-and-go extraction on the riverbank mud. Apart from possibly bogging down if that chopper landed, the ChiComs’d swarm all over ‘em.”
“Is there any other way?” asked Freeman.
“Well, sir, Pierce says it’s possible. SEALs carry an IFF — friend-or-foe identifier. Pierce thinks he could try a STABO link — if you approve.”
Freeman raised his eyebrows, watching Norton coming to, the colonel having involuntarily soiled his pants in the shock of getting hit. The general nodded to his G-2 that they should move away, give the medic room.
“First problem those SEALs’ll have,” the general told the G-2, “is that damn bridge. Whether it goes or not, they’ll know any attempted pickup’ll have to be made soon as possible after. We’d have to have those helos from Salt Lake City in the air pretty damn fast. Have ‘em almost to the China coast.”
A Siberian officer, an American army blanket clutched around his shoulders, his face covered in oil, stumbled by, toward what he obviously thought was a vision or the grandest American invention since the Model T — the paratroopers’ portable MUST, already inflated, taking in wounded, its sterile air filter unit humming a soft song in the din of battle.
“Well, you’d better get everything ready, son,” Freeman told his G-2. “Use Black Hawks for that?” He meant one of the ubiquitous Utility-60 helos of Vietnam fame, the best for a STABO pickup.
“Pierce thinks the Pave can handle it, sir. He’s all set to go.”
“What’s the SEALs’ emergency call?”
“Mars.”
“All right. Have those Paves airborne soon as you can.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And lieutenant…”
“General?”
“You tell those big, ugly Paves to add some firepower.”
“Yes, sir.”
Freeman’s use of the phrase “big, ugly Paves” momentarily reminded him of the big, ugly, fat fellows — the B-52s he had ready at Nayoro should the weather ever clear over the Black Dragon River. With Americans and Chinese so close together in such foul weather, not even the B-52s’ pinpoint bombing could avoid killing as many Americans as Chinese.
“Lieutenant…”
“Sir?”
“SEALs carry that STABO stuff?”
“No, sir, it’s dropped.”
“All right, you attend to that. I’ll see if our navy boys on Salt Lake City can give us a few strikers offshore if we need them.”
“I hope those SEALs blow that bridge, sir.”
“They don’t, son,” Freeman called out, “you’re gonna miss the World Series.” He bent down again next to Norton, who was now sitting up, having his head bandaged. “And we, my friends,” he told the medic and Norton, “will be up shit creek without a paddle.”
“You think they’ll—” began Norton, then stopped, feeling the bump of the bandage over his eye. He was having trouble seeing with his right, and it felt as if his head would fall off. He began again quietly. “You think Yakutsk will hit us from the north? I mean, the weather’s still pretty bad for us having any hope of air cover. They might try it.”
“They might,” said Freeman. In the presence of wounded men, he always tried to sound confident, reassuring.
It was a commander’s job. It was also a commander’s job to look facts square in the face, and if he was the C in C of Yakutsk, and American cover was socked in, then he’d go for broke: release his armor and attack the railhead. Overwhelm it with armor. Still, Freeman didn’t regret having brought his airborne to Nizhneangarsk, for it had achieved its aim of stalling Yesov’s eastern advance and given him time to move his M-1s west to Nizhneangarsk. The next move was Yesov’s — to stay put or…
“Maybe,” said Norton, his voice dry, groggy from a shot of Demerol, “maybe they’re already on the move.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Looking up from thirty feet below the river’s surface, Robert Brentwood could see a tan-colored sheen— moonlight on the water — which would make it easier for him and his co-diver, Dennison, and for the other Echo One pair: Smythe and young Rose. But Robert Brentwood also knew that it would be welcomed by the ChiComs, the better to see anything moving on the river. Already the Chinese were holding up traffic on the right-hand channel off the eastern bank, not allowing any vessel under the bridge. Brentwood estimated he and Dennison were now two hundred yards from the bridge. Smythe and Rose, though farther out in the river, were presumably about the same distance away from the piers. For a moment he toyed with the idea of using his penlight on the handheld GPS affixed to his weight belt to get their exact position, but decided that even at this depth it was too much of a risk with the ChiComs up and about. He and Dennison would have to reorientate themselves visually regarding pier four in a minute or so, the current moving them more swiftly now that the river was narrowing from three and a half to three miles wide as it approached die straightway leading into the big left-right hook of river that lay beyond the bridge.
Dennison’s mask was misting up as he closed his eyes, fighting the temptation to scratch an indescribable itch that was moving malevolently up from his testicles to his backside, where the friction caused by the heavy flippers and explosive loads was exacting its toll. Or maybe it was something he was allergic to — something he ate on the Salt Lake City before the mission. The carrier was a world away, and he yearned for the safety of it, even though he’d joined the SEALs precisely to get away from the bigness of the surface fleet, where you were lucky to get to know your own section, let alone anyone else in the five-thousand-man crew. Or rather any of the five thousand men and women aboard, now that Congress had empowered females, including those in the air arm, to be combat soldiers. He wouldn’t mind one of them scratching the itch. It was crazy thinking about that at a time like this, but it drained off some of the tension. Still, unable to resist the itch now spreading up his loins like spiders, he was careful to use his right hand rather than the left. One hard jerk of the latter on the feel line would have signaled to Brentwood they were under attack. Yet despite Dennison’s precautions, Brentwood felt the tension on the line increase, and swam closer in the pitch-blackness, only to be reassured by the okay squeeze signal
ed on his upper arm by Dennison. Brentwood signaled him in return that it was time to go up anyway — this being as good a moment as any in Brentwood’s estimation to reorientate themselves.
When they saw it, silhouetted by moonlight, both men’s pulses quickened. You could practice all you wanted in Pearl, stare for hours at a scale model with wall-sized SATINT blowups, planning just where and how you were going to place the charges, but the Nanking Bridge, standing proud over two hundred feet high and over four miles long, its two decks separated and held in position by enormous X-shaped trusses, was massively impressive.
Only a hundred yards from it now, Brentwood and Dennison could quite clearly hear the movement of traffic, the faint sing of tires and boom-boom sound of wheels crossing the join grates between each section of the eight spans supported between the nine piers. The lower— railway — deck was see-through for a second, bathed in moonlight that silhouetted the crisscross trusses beneath it. Then suddenly it was blacked out by a long goods train, its boxcars traveling right to left across the moon, heading northward, carrying much-needed supplies for Cheng’s army. From the mission briefing, Brentwood knew they could expect another train within the next half hour.
Off to the right, from whence the train had come, he and Dennison could see bright dots of lights, searchlights, starting to probe from atop the ancient city’s wall. The beams were still concentrating on sweeping the eastern half of the river downstream from where Echo Two had been hit. For this reason the searchlights didn’t worry Brentwood now as much as earlier, and besides, the mist coming down from farther upstream, caused by the smoke from the factory, was spilling over both banks from flooded levees, helping to protect them. Brentwood was confident that unless they were actually caught, fully illuminated in the beam’s circle — the latter a hundred feet or so across — there was a good possibility of avoiding detection. And even if you had your head out — provided you stayed absolutely still in the light and betrayed no motion — you would stand a fifty-fifty chance. In any case, much better to have the searchlights up on the wall, if you had to have them at all, rather than farther down on the bridge itself. Now that they were on the surface and could see no immediate danger, Brentwood tapped Dennison’s shoulder and whispered, “When we get to the pier, we’ll wait till another train starts across to place the charges.”
“Copy,” acknowledged Dennison, and, discarding the feel line, they disappeared once more beneath the muddy water, the current having moved them to within fifty yards of the pier, stratus cloud sailing across the moon, obscuring more of it by the second. It was now that Brentwood saw how the tragedy of Echo Two had unwittingly helped him and Dennison, for while the ChiComs had been concentrating on searching closer to the right bank, their searchlight beams faded in the mist over about a quarter mile on the three-mile-wide river, and so had given the remaining SEALs time to get nearer the bridge.
Brentwood’s shoulders were already aching from the weight of his minigun and the heavy pack of his two eighteen-pound, champagne-bottle-shaped charges, detonating cord, waterproof tape, grappling tackle, stable blasting cap, and timers. He knew that the big problem for the two two-man teams now, providing Smythe and Rose hadn’t been picked up, was the question of the delay fuse timer. With the Chinese already aroused, it couldn’t be too long, but time enough to permit them to make their extraction point downstream. Brentwood decided that if he and Dennison were lucky and managed to place the charges as he’d planned, he’d be able to use a short-time ACAT — a ten-minute acid ampule timer. He had to trust that Smythe and Rose would do the same, “short fuse” being standard procedure when any member of the mission had been discovered and might jeopardize the remainder. He turned his immediate attention to two things: first, where exactly he would place the earmuffs on the pier, which was growing by the second as he and Dennison neared it; and second, how he would set the yellow-dyed and Play-Doh-like C-4 plastique between the flanges of two crisscross girders. The C-4 explosive would have to be fairly high up in order to literally cut through the girders with the heat generated by the explosion rather than by the explosion itself.
Brentwood felt two sharp tugs — for danger — on his weight belt, and immediately put his arms into a reverse breaststroke position, his long flippers kicking hard against the current to brake his forward motion, his backpack now coming forward, thumping into his upper back.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
“Wake up, you Aussie bastard!” said Salvini. “You owe us money.”
Aussie was already awake, but lying dead still from habit, as any SAS/D man did — not moving before you knew exactly what the situation was. “First, put your brain into gear,” he could hear his instructor telling him. “Before you move.”
“Aussie! C’mon, get up.” Now he recognized Salvini’s voice — knew where he was — safe in a warm kip at Rudnaya Pristan’ after the abortive A-7 raid. His left foot was throbbing. “What’s up, Sal? What money?” Outside it was still pitch-black.
“Yeah. Big-time spender,” said Sal. “Let’s go. Briefing in five minutes. We’re outta here in twenty.”
“A mission?” Aussie was sitting up on the edge of the palliasse, the SAS/D teams preferring the straw-filled hessian bag to regular Special Forces foam-rubber issue. Salvini, who had been on the eight-to-midnight watch, was handing him a steaming cup of coffee. “That SEAL outfit,” said Salvini, “one Davey’s brother’s in…” He glanced about to see whether David Brentwood was nearby. “Well, SATINT shows at least one of the two Zodiacs bought it. We’re on standby for assist. And you, sweetheart, owe me and Choir some bread!”
This jolted Aussie more than the coffee. “Hey, hey, fucking hold on there, Sal. Just hold on a mo. This just happened, right? Out of the fucking blue, right?”
“Yeah — so?”
“So this had nothing to do with any friggin’ rumor. You and Williams here made up that bullshit!”
Choir was filling a C-mag for his squad automatic weapon. “That’s right, boyo. We were just guessin’. Playing the odds. There’s a war on, you know.” He smiled across at Salvini, then down at Aussie. “Fact is, Mr. Lewis, sir, you owe us fifteen ‘In God We Trust.’ “
“All right, all right,” said Lewis. “What a pair of bloody bushrangers.”
“He means holdup men,” Choir told Sal.
“I mean fucking con men,” said Aussie good-naturedly. “All right, I’ll pay you when we get back.”
“I’d like mine now, please,” said Choir, giving Salvini the nod.
“Oh, thank you, Choir,” replied Aussie Lewis over his steaming coffee. “Thank you for your wonderful display of confidence in your mate. Think I’m gonna buy it ‘fore I can square accounts, that it?”
“Had occurred to me, boyo.”
“Jesus!” retorted Aussie, fixing Sal in his gaze. “Doesn’t he take the fucking cake?”
“I’d like my ten, too,” said Sal. “Now.”
“Oh, I get it. It’s fucking gang-up time on old Lewis, is it? All right, sticks and stones’ll break my bones but names — I’m gonna report you fuckers to Davey.”
“What for?” joshed Salvini, gathering his kit.
“For being assholes — detrimental to my morale.” Suddenly Lewis remembered David Brentwood’s brother. “Did his brother cop it?”
“Don’t know,” said Salvini. “Can’t tell from the satellite pix.”
“What’s the problem? POE out?” He meant the point of extraction.
“Yeah. Freeman’s HQ says the second team, if they’re still alive, probably hid their kit a few miles upriver, and ChiComs’ve probably found it by now. So if there are any SEALs left, they won’t be able to use the Zodiac to get to the original POE.”
“How do we know they’re still alive?” asked Lewis.
“We don’t. But we will if the bridge goes,” chipped in Choir. “Make one bloody great splash for a satellite picture, it will.”
“A satellite’ll be overhead, then?” pressed Lewis
.
“Don’t know,” said Choir. “We’d probably find out via Chinese underground radio, anyway. Same outfit in Harbin that put us in the know about the bridge.”
“Yeah,” added Salvini. “They tell us the poor bitch who passed it on to us is now in a Harbin lockup.”
Choir made a face. “Chinese jail. Wouldn’t change places with her, boyo.”
“Well, she’s not goin’ to be much friggin’ good there,” said Lewis. “She’s not gonna see whether the bridge goes down or not from fuckin’ Harbin.”
Sometimes Salvini got teed off with Aussie’s insensitive streak. Still, it also was what made him a good man in a tight spot.
“No,” agreed Salvini. “But Choir’s right. We’ll hear through the Harbin underground if anything happens in Nanking.”
“So what’s the plan?” said Lewis, draining the coffee. He saw David Brentwood come in. “Sorry to hear about your brother, mate.”
David nodded. The fact was, he was trying to push any thought of Robert out of his mind by thinking only of the plan. That it was family made all the difference, but it couldn’t make any difference. If you were going to let it get in the way of a good, clear, standby plan, you might as well withdraw. He motioned down at Aussie’s bandaged foot, the iodine stain now a dark saffron on his left ankle and arch. “You up to it, Aussie?”
“Don’t be bloody silly,” answered the Australian. “Got to help a mate out, right?”
David Brentwood could feel his throat constricting with emotion. The simplicity and spontaneity of the Australian’s response to go so willingly into danger — though it was the same quality he himself had — momentarily threatened to overwhelm him. It was an unspoken pride they all shared, and he wondered whether anyone outside could ever fully understand. But perhaps they did. It had often struck David that there was many a civilian in the suburbs of America who, like the Chinese underground, carried on an everyday life with an unspoken commitment — to an aged parent, a handicapped child — with the same kind of devotion, and no one knew what it took. He thought of what his brother Ray had gone through after being so terribly burned aboard the USS Blaine; of his own wife, Georgina; and Robert’s wife, Rosemary. And his sister Lana, still bound to La “Creep” Roche. They, too, had to cope with unspoken fears and the absence of loved ones.
