Asian Front wi-6

by Ian Slater

  “Oh—” he said. “Yeah — sure. I thought you meant—” He pointed to what he meant, and, hand before her mouth, her eyes averted shyly, she gave the most delightful giggle, and obviously thought it not at all surprising that a private would be carrying a sidearm.

  “Come,” she said, extending her hand.

  “Not too quickly, I hope,” he said.

  “Sorry — I do not under—”

  “It’s okay.”

  “I have surprise for you,” she said softly, her tongue wetting her dark, cherry-red lips as she extended her hand demurely and led him into the next room, which was redolent with sandalwood incense and illuminated by a pale golden flickering lantern. Seated in the nest of silk-lace-bordered pillows was another girl, her legs drawn coquettishly, her nakedness partially hidden by the pillows. The soldier’s mouth went dry, and in a cracked voice he said, “I can’t pay another fifty for—”

  “No bother,” Spring Blossom said. “She wishes to learn. Do you mind?”

  He could barely speak. “Oh, man. No, I don’t mind.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  Monterey, California

  “Damn it! He’s done it again,” Freeman said, his general’s stars catching the light as he pointed the TV’s remote control and zapped CBN.

  “Done what again, Douglas?” Marjorie Duchene, his sister-in-law, asked from the kitchen.

  “That CBN clown calling APCs tanks.”

  “What’s an APC?” Marjorie asked.

  “Please don’t bait me, Dory — Marjorie.” He’d used his deceased wife’s name, for, though he’d loved her, she’d had the same habit of teasing him.

  “I’m not baiting you, Douglas dear. I’ve no idea what an APC is — some truck or other I suppose.”

  “Armored personnel carrier,” Freeman grumped. “Goddamn education in this country’s going to hell in a handbasket.”

  “Please don’t swear, Douglas. I know it’s rough and ready in the army, but now you’re home.”

  “You mean put out to pasture. Those congressional sons of — those ‘gentlemen’ in Washington recalled me from Siberia for ‘consultation.’ Haven’t called me in for a week, but I know when I go there they’re going to give me a ‘special’ assignment. What they mean is they don’t want me in command of Second Army.”

  “Well, the war is over, Douglas.”

  “War’s never over, Marjorie — just interrupted now and then by peace. Good God, in over five thousand years of history we haven’t had three hundred years of peace. You realize that?”

  “You should go for a walk,” Marjorie said. “The tide’s out. Rock pools’ll be beautiful.”

  “You know what happens in rock pools,” Freeman said, invoking an image that had never ceased to arrest him. “One creature’s fighting the other for food and space. To the death.”

  “Oh, Douglas, that’s a forlorn way of looking at the world.”

  “It can be a forlorn world, Marjorie,” Freeman responded. “Second Army lost the best part of four thousand men to Yesov’s hordes on Lake Baikal. And that’s not counting the casualties inflicted by the Chinese when they attacked us from the south. So what happens when I counterattack, make up some lost territory, and start taking prisoners? Beijing and Novosibirsk sing in unison for a cease-fire, and those — those ‘fairies’ back in Washington gave it to them.”

  “We want peace, Douglas,” Marjorie said.

  “Hell — we all want peace. Problem is, how to secure it. You don’t think those ‘comrades’ in Beijing would roll up their blankets do you? This is a breathing space for them. Time to build up their forces again for another northward push. And what if they attack again? We’ve got a supply line stretched over four thousand miles of ocean between here and Siberia. Manchuria’s their backyard. They’re going to want to grab as much territory along the Amur River valleys as they can. Siberians and Chinese have been fighting over it for more than a hundred years. Only reason they formed an alliance against us was to try and push our Allied force into the sea. Then without any U.N. overwatch they could carve one another up.”

  “Then why didn’t we just let them do it?” Marjorie said ingenuously.

  “Because if we let them at it, once they’d exhausted their conventional forces we’d be in an ICBM war, and pretty soon everyone else around them, from Kazakhstan to Southeast Asia, would have to choose sides. We’d have a world war that you couldn’t put out, Marjorie. Hell — that’s why the U.N. sent us over there. To keep the peace. But I’m telling you, this cease-fire isn’t keeping the peace — it’s just time out for Cheng and Yesov to rearm, resupply. Meanwhile their ‘diplomats’ are yakking away with our diplomats. Well, you know what Will Rogers said about diplomacy.”

  “No, I don’t,” Marjorie said.

  “Diplomacy’s saying ‘Nice doggie’ till you can find a rock. That’s what they’re doing, Marjorie — getting the rocks ready for their slingshots.”

  “Oh, I’m sure Washington knows what it’s doing.”

  “Marjorie, the last time Washington knew what it was doing was when it declared war on Saddam Insane.”

  “Go for a walk, Douglas. It’ll do you good.”

  He did, and it didn’t. All he could think of was Norton’s call that morning about the air-conditioning units.

  In Hong Kong, La Roche Industries had received a fax— an order from General Cheng in Beijing, C in C of the People’s Liberation Army, two and a half million strong. The order was for everything from American-made Gore-Tex sleeping bags to five thousand air-conditioning units of the kind used by heavy-haul refrigerator trucks. Though Hong Kong was now firmly in PLA hands, it was still used by Beijing, as in the days when the colony had been British, as a capitalist outpost for trade with the West. Chinese-born agents loyal to Britain were still at large in the former British colony, and along with everything else they heard they passed the information about the La Roche order to the American Second Army’s headquarters at Khabarovsk via the Harbin-Manchurian underground Democracy Movement. From Khabarovsk, Colonel Dick Norton had called Freeman, careful to bill it as a personal and not an official call.

  “These air-conditioning units,” Freeman asked. “They portable?”

  “Didn’t say, General.”

  “Find out, Dick. Call me back. Ten-to-one they’re portable.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Freeman had sat impatiently reading the lives of Sherman and Grant, Norton rang back. “You’re right. They’re portable, sir. How did you—”

  “Thank you, Dick.” When he put down the receiver, Freeman began to pace back and forth in the lounge room, talking to himself.

  “What’s that, Douglas?” Marjorie called from the kitchen.

  Suddenly Freeman had stopped. Now in late March, the spring thaw was in full swing along the Siberian-Chinese-Manchurian border. “Why on earth — summer! That little turd is going to launch a summer offensive!”

  “Where?” Marjorie said, rushing in. “What? You saw a little tern? Where?”

  “What-ah, no. I—”

  “Oh dear. They’re such beautiful birds.”

  * * *

  Striding along the beach, Freeman was buffeted by a chilly wind, and unusually wracked by doubt. Was he overreacting? No, that damn Cheng was up to something. It aggravated Freeman so much he felt his skin itch here and there and had to shift the 9mm Sig Sauer Parabellum he always carried further along his waistband so that he could scratch the offending part.

  The sea crashed in wildly along the ribbon of sand that was Monterey’s beach. He couldn’t help but hear the sounds of Second Army’s III Corps floundering in the crashing waters of Lake Baikal, Yesov’s heavy artillery chopping up the ice, cutting off III Corps’s retreat, and the Siberians’ Spets and OMON commandos butchering die retreating Americans, the ice floes smeared with Americans’ blood. For a while he thought he was alone on the beach, mistaking the lone figure further up for a piece of rock. He or she seemed to be waiting for him. Bu
t as he went past the man who was too far up on the dunes for his features to be clear, the man turned and walked away. As the general headed back to the house, his general’s thoughts were back along the Amur.

  Now he was convinced more than ever that it was a summer offensive. Cheng doesn’t want to make the same mistake the Arabs did against the Israelis, he thought. Half the Arab tank crews were prostrate with heat exhaustion. Got to over a hundred and twenty degrees inside those T-72s. Hell, it was so bad Sadat thought the Israeli’s MOSSAD had issued the Israeli pilots some new kind of debilitating gas bombs. Wasn’t gas, it was the goddamn heat. It would be easy to mount the air-conditioning units on me rear of the T-59s and T-72s, right near the extra gas drum. He’d equally want his lead tanks cool for a long-reaching preemptive strike. July or August! There could only be one place: the Gobi Desert, bypassing the Manchurian mountain chain on his, Cheng’s, right flank, driving into the heart of the American-controlled DMZ along the Amur.

  Next question — the big question — was, would the Mongolian Communists come in on the Chinese side? To find out, he began formulating what he would call “preventive medicine,” and he did not mean his advice to his soldiers to practice safe sex.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The two PLA guards snapped to attention, the red flag fluttering stiffly in the breeze as Captain Lee, aide to General Cheng, chief of the two-and-a-half-million People’s Liberation Army, arrived at the Xinhuamen — the Gate of New China — the southern entrance to the Zhongnanhai compound off Changan Avenue. Here a short distance west of the Forbidden City, the party’s top officials resided and had offices behind a high wall and around two lakes. Lee had been raised on the discipline of the Tao, his mind resolved never to show his emotions to anyone, and certainly not to his enemy. But this morning he knew he could not contain himself. Besides, General Cheng was no enemy. Lee told the general they’d pulled it off.

  “Are you sure?” Cheng inquired impassively.

  “Yes, Comrade General. Almost as soon as we placed the order for the air-conditioning units one of the British spies in Hong Kong sent a message north to Khabarovsk via the Manchurian route.”

  “The Harbin Democracy Movement cell?” Cheng proffered.

  “Yes, General.”

  Cheng’s fingers carefully squeezed the end of his Camel cigarette to a point and pushed it with a twist into the end of his Persian blue cloisonné cigarette holder. “And Freeman has received the information personally?”

  “Yes, General — a phone call from his Khabarovsk headquarters.”

  “Are you confident of this?”

  “We’ve had two men watching his house — one equipped with a multidirectional aerial. The transmitter is inside his sister-in-law’s house. He will no doubt think we will attack in the summer.”

  “Good. Freeman has no doubt alerted the Pentagon to this, and his Second Army will be so advised. And then to prevent him from second-guessing us any further, we will kill him.”

  “But General,” Lee began, clearly perplexed, “you said our embassy in Washington has it that he is to be relieved of command of Second Army. Sent back to Fort Ord. He won’t be any danger to us there.”

  Cheng turned to the window overlooking the two lakes, sugary-looking ice still clinging to the banks. “You’ve not fought against Freeman?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He is formidable. Did you know he keeps a copy of our Chinese general Sun Tzu’s The Art of War next to his Bible? He well understands Sun Tzu’s maxim that ‘all war is deception.’ “

  “Yes, General, but—”

  “He may discern my trap if he is given time to think about it. We will not give him that time.”

  “So long as our agents are discreet,” Lee suggested. “When the Siberian Spets tried to—”

  “When the Siberian women tried to kill him he was not on his home ground. He was in Khabarovsk. More alert. In California there is a large Chinese population — it would just seem like another citizen approaching him.”

  “When will it be done?”

  Cheng inhaled, and then seconds later smoke came out in voluminous clouds of bluish gray that rose and spilled down off the ancient roof, Cheng’s silence his answer. Cheng had risen fast through the party’s ranks to head the PLA not only because he was a brilliant strategist but also because he was able to keep secrets, never tempted to tell subordinates more than they needed to know about any operation.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  In Washington, where great faith had been put in the cease-fire, the buds on the Japanese cherry trees — the trees a gift of the Japanese government long ago — were seized on by the media as symbols of promise and reconciliation between two other disputants, Japan and the U.S., after the mutually draining trade wars of the 1980s and 1990s.

  It wasn’t clear whether the symbolic importance of cherry blossoms prompted the president and/or his advisers to turn their thoughts to what more Japan might give the United States to make up for the bruised relationships of the trade war and the American and Allied disgust with Japan’s checkbook participation, or rather nonparticipation, in die Gulf War with Iraq.

  In any event, Harry Schuman, national security, adviser, saw how Japan might make a conciliatory move. He pointed out how, in order to bolster the idea of building up a multinational peacekeeping force along the Siberian-Manchurian border like the force they’d sent to fight Saddam Insane, the Japanese should be invited to contribute not just yen to offset the huge American contribution but men as well. It was true that under Article 99 of the Japanese constitution, the JDF— Japanese Defense Force — in order to allay old and persistent fears in Asia of a resurgent Japanese militarism — was permitted to send only a maximum of two thousand military personnel at any one time. Furthermore, the two thousand could only carry arms for self-defense. Nevertheless, it was felt in Washington that the presence of an active Japanese contingent would be a welcome addition in bolstering the multinational aspect of the peacekeeping force. In the same way as the smaller Arab nations were asked to be part of the U.S.-led Allied force in Kuwait in order to show Saddam that it wasn’t simply the U.S. desire that he vacate Kuwait, it was felt that a contingent from an Asian power, Japan— albeit a tiny contingent — would sustain the idea of a multinational force and so would help deter Novosibirsk and Beijing from any further aggression.

  The president liked the idea and put it to the Japanese prime minister, who put it to the Diet, and after “lively” debate the motion was passed, a precedent having already been set by the Japanese Diet sending a peacekeeping contingent to Thailand in October 1992. And so — for only the second time since World War II — Japanese forces were deployed overseas.

  It was a colossal blunder, and when Freeman heard the news flash from CBN he was shaving and almost cut himself. He still used a cutthroat razor, believing a man must have a weapon at hand even in his toilet kit. He walked to the bathroom door and stood glowering through the hallway at the CBN reporter. “Well — now it’s official,” Freeman rumbled. “Washington’s a lunatic asylum!”

  “Asylum?” It was Marjorie.

  “Good God!” Freeman proclaimed, standing in his khaki trousers, suspenders down at his sides, razor being used as a pointer. “Don’t they know — don’t they realize that the one thing the Chinese’ll never stand for is Japanese on Chinese soil? Chinese’ll buy Japanese Hondas, but this is a different ball game. By God, the Chinese hate the Japanese.”

  “Isn’t it time for your morning run?”

  “Japanese occupied Manchuria for thirteen years — even changed its name to Manchukuo. Then there was the Rape of Nanking — butchering people right, left, and center — and then—” The razor flew out at the screen to illustrate the point for Marjorie. “—Japanese had a biological and chemical warfare unit — used Chinese and some of our boys as guinea pigs. Injected them anthrax and all kinds of diseases as well as gassing them. Chinese have a long memory. By God—”

  “I wish you wouldn
’t use that language, Douglas,” came Marjorie’s unruffled tone from the kitchen. “Aren’t you going for your run soon?”

  “Marjorie, Beijing’ll see this as a provocation.”

  “What — you jogging? I shouldn’t think so, Douglas.”

  * * *

  But even Freeman had underestimated the ferocity of the Chinese reaction. To Beijing it was clearly a test by the West to see what China would do when faced with the fact that the Japanese had been invited by the Americans and had accepted. It was proof positive to General Cheng and other members of the Central Committee that Japan, with U.S. backing, was testing the waters, returning to its old obsession, Manchuria — to its old dream of possessing untold oil and mineral wealth that would make Japan independent of other countries for raw materials and make her an even greater industrial powerhouse than she was already.

  * * *

  In the golden light of the brothel, the air redolent with incense and the smell of rice cooking downstairs, Spring Blossom had prepared her surprise well. No sooner had she led him into the other room than Summer Flower, even more beautiful than Spring Blossom, dressed in nothing but a scarlet V-kini, took him by the hand. After they had undressed him and he lay naked except for his dog tags, Summer Flower knelt before him on the floor mattress, her legs straddling his chest, her hands behind his head, swaying gently back and forth over him one second, offering her pendulous breasts to suck, the next moment all but sitting on his face while Spring Blossom moistened her lips and went down on him. He was in such ecstasy he neither saw nor heard the Chinese youth who came in and took the .45’s holster and belt.

  * * *

  Arriving in his chauffeur-driven Red Flag at the Great Hall of the People, which bordered Tiananmen Square, for the meeting with the all-powerful Central Committee under Chairman Nie, Cheng received further news of the Japanese intervention and his second shock of the day. Chairman Nie, a painfully cautious man who knew how to play both sides against the middle and who normally questioned the other members until they were numb with fatigue, now quickly concurred with Cheng and the rest of the committee that the Japanese had obviously thrown in their hand in order to qualify for the lucrative kind of capitalist contract feeding frenzy that followed the Gulf War. Then Nie did something that for the premier was extremely difficult — he surprised General Cheng by demonstrating a cunning that even the strategist Cheng had to admire.