by Ian Slater
There was only one hitch, however, to the fallback extraction point east of the city: Jenghiz had been given it, too. After he’d handed the message “prayer” to the president, had he betrayed the extraction point, or had he only had time to say a few words as he’d fingered Aussie Lewis and the other three SAS/D troopers before Aussie had shot him dead?
If Aussie was a betting man, and he indubitably was, then he would say Jenghiz hadn’t had a chance to say anything else. But the thing that made gambling gambling was that you could never be sure. The outside chance was always lying in wait for you. Would the Spets be waiting? If Jenghiz had talked, though Aussie would still bet dollars to donuts that he hadn’t, Aussie, Salvini, Brentwood, and Choir Williams would be hurrying into a trap — which might explain the present lack of local activity. The Spets wouldn’t want to give their hand away. On the other hand, there might be no local activity because Jenghiz hadn’t a chance to say much else.
* * *
In Ulan Bator the president was still badly shaken. This “business at the temple,” he nervously joked with his advisers, “is what becomes of converting from the party to Buddhism. You go to the temples and you get killed.” They all laughed at the irony of their chief, who, like so many others in the Communist world, had suddenly become a religious convert after perestroika and glasnost. On a more serious note, the aides pointed out that if the SAS/D men had wanted to kill him, he would have been dead. “They shot the man Jenghiz because he betrayed them, Mr. President.”
“Yes,” the president conceded. “You are right, comrade. I was not the target.”
“Have you shown the Siberians your request from the American general?”
“No.”
The aides understood the president’s wisdom in this. If they gave it to Marshal Yesov’s HQ, the Siberians would want to move even more Siberian divisions into Mongolia.
“But we have to give Novosibirsk something,” another aide put in. “There were Spets in the temple. They saw the guide hand you the prayer strip. You cannot tell them it contained nothing. They won’t believe you, and their suspicion could do more damage to us than—”
“Yes, yes, you’re quite right, comrade,” the president agreed at once, full of gratitude, more than he could explain, for the comfort and attendance of his friends after the fright he’d got in the temple. He asked the aide to look at the paper again, at the American general’s request for free passage of American troops across eastern Mongolia should it become necessary. The American general had clearly meant the message to be seen only by the president. But the guide Jenghiz had added something else. At the end of the prayer there was another sentence: “Save my family” followed by seven numbers.
“What are these?” the president asked his aide.
“Coordinates, I believe, Mr. President. Map references.”
The president had a moment of inspiration. “Should we give these to Novosibirsk? Tell them it was an assassination party against me and this is the enemy’s escape plan?”
The aides nodded. They liked the idea. There was a danger of course that if captured, the SAS/D men would be tortured and confess Freeman’s request, but the chief aide said that this was highly unlikely now that the SAS/D and Spets group were on the lookout for one another. There would be no prisoners if they met.
“Yes,” the president said, brightening with me prospect. “Yes. Give the Siberians the coordinates. Let them think the SAS was on an assassination mission. Tell them the bullet was meant for me instead. Whether they believe it or not, they’ll settle for an SAS/D troop. Yesov can do what he likes with them.”
The aide tore off the coordinates and gave them to a messenger. “Have these radioed to Novosibirsk. Immediate.”
* * *
Novosibirsk bounced the encoded signal off satellite, and within minutes the Spets squad was enplaning a Kamov Helix-B chopper armed with a four-barrel rotary 7.62mm gun behind a starboard articulated door and an array of antitank Spiral radio-guided missiles and two 80mm rocket packs on four pylon hard points. The Helix would take them to Nalayh, the extraction point for the SAS/D troop no more than five miles north of Nalayh township’s center.
But even with the Helix-B the praporshnik and his six-man team knew they’d have to hurry, for the SAS/D was as well trained as they were. They knew that for a member of the SAS to be “badged” with the highly coveted Special Air Services beige beret with its cloth insignia of a blue-winged white dagger on a black shield, the SAS recruit had to go through a grueling regimen with everything from crosscountry marches with full packs to the HALO — high altitude, low opening — drop with oxygen mask and full gear.
The SAS/D commando requirement for an “in-house” assault was that a man armed with a submachine gun must be able to burst into an embassy or enemy HQ and mortally wound three opponents using only one magazine from as far away as thirty feet. As with the Spets, no more than three shots were allowed on target, and in SAS close-quarter battle every SAS man, no matter what his previous incarnation— artillery, engineering, catering corps, or infantry — had to be able to achieve “minimum kill,” taking out four men from a distance of sixty feet with no more than thirteen rounds of 9mm from his Browning pistol. If he had to go to a second clip he was disqualified.
Only after they’d finished their course in the Black Mountains on the Welsh-English border where the SAS “Sabre” combat groups were trained — eighty men in a squadron — would they be allowed to graduate with the coveted insignia, “Who Dares Wins.” The Spets leader had studied the SAS minutely. He knew also of their tremendous esprit de corps, how hard they trained to “beat the clock,” for when SAS men were killed in action the regimental tradition called for their names to be carved on the clock at Hereford HQ.
Since 1950, over 270 had died in action — not a lot compared to the casualty list of regular army line units, but for a small, elite unit like the SAS it was heavy enough. And among those had been twenty-one American dead from U.S. Special Forces who had served with and helped train the SAS in “field medicine” and LIT — language immersion techniques.
“Hurry!” the praporshnik told his six-man squad.
* * *
Aboard a Boeing E-3A Sentry AWAC — airborne warning and control aircraft — the thirty-foot-diameter rotodome picked up the green blip of the Helix-B chopper rising from the vicinity of Ulan Bator, and given that this was during the time slot allocated for the SAS/D mission into Ulan Bator, the AWAC crew automatically notified Freeman’s HQ of its presence. But there was nothing more that Freeman, who’d retired for the night, or Colonel Norton, who’d received the “in-trouble” burst transmission from the SAS/D group, could do at this juncture. The drill was straightforward. If something had gone wrong, the radio burst transmission from the SAS/D troop would indicate this and they would have to rendezvous at the backup position near Nalayh. An MC-13 °Combat Talon aircraft with fighter cover would be dispatched for a quick STAR extraction.
Such an extraction, Norton knew, as did everyone else who’d tried it, was highly dangerous. But first the SAS/D team had to reach the emergency extraction point. Norton, wish though he might, could do nothing. They were on their own.
Unfortunately this wasn’t Norton’s only worry. Even if the SAS/D team had got the message through to the Mongolian president, any American drive south in the coming days would be in high jeopardy so long as the Chinese could use their IMF missiles, which Israeli intelligence had confirmed were in the Turpan depression in western Sinkiang. Meanwhile all Norton could do was tell Second Army’s logistics officers in the U.S.-held Siberian zone to get ready with as much matériel as was needed at railheads south of Ulan Ude and Chita, which would be the main supply hubs for any southward drive of Freeman’s.
Meanwhile SATRECON showed the Chinese still massing troops on the border between their Inner Mongolia and Mongolia proper as if rushing to form a reverse-seven defense. Troops on the top of the reverse seven — in its northern sector — p
rotected the Manchurian-Siberian border along the Black Dragon, or Amur, those units constituting the vertical section of the reverse seven forming the PLA’s left flank. Norton could only hope that the new whiz kid, General Jorgenson, a brilliant forty-five-year-old flown out from the States to take over as chief logistics officer after the previous one had died in the action around Poyarkovo, knew what he was doing. Jorgenson had been selected because of his experience in the Iraqi War. Even so, Norton knew that, given the distances and varied terrain here, it would take more than logistical brilliance to sustain an American counterattack either to the south or against the Chinese northern or left flank.
* * *
While General Cheng was taking care not to move his troops before the chaotic small-arms mess was sorted out at the front, he had used the time to bring up ten companies of self-propelled 122mm howitzers mounted on Soviet-style M-1967 amphibious fighting vehicles, twenty companies of Zil-151 launcher vehicles carrying sixteen 132mm rockets apiece with side-mounted reloads, and three hundred sixteen-tube Zil-157 truck launchers for 140mm rockets, along with three hundred of a PLA favorite — the twelve-tube 107mm rocket launcher. At four hundred pounds, the 107mm unit was heavy enough but sufficiently light that it could be manhandled — that is, pulled by a squad of Chinese infantry or, if they were lucky, by a BM-13 truck or mules as they passed through the Manchurian mountains under cover of strato-nimbus cloud that stretched like a thick, gray ceiling all the way to the Sea of Japan.
Colonel Soong, hero of the A-7 capture — A-7 being a mountain on the Siberian side of the Chinese-Siberian border that he had overrun earner in the war — was honored to be placed in the breach at Poyarkovo. Cheng knew that Soong was under no illusion about the Americans. It was popular in Beijing to decry them as capitalist degenerates turned soft by a consumer-crazed democracy, and while this might have been true for some of the conscripts at the war’s beginning, it no longer held for the soldiers of Freeman’s Second Army. For the most part they had already been blooded from the landings at Rudnaya Pristan on the coast to the battle for Lake Baikal, and their SAS/D troopers were the jin rui bu dm— the elite. Had there been more SAS/D troops atop A-7, Soong knew it would have taken another battalion as well as his own to dislodge them. And Soong knew that it was because of his experience with the SAS/D commandos that General Cheng had placed him at Poyarkovo, for the Americans, as the Iraqi War had shown, were prone to using their Special Forces as the tip of the spear. It was a spear Cheng wanted to first blunt then smash.
* * *
Nearing the rendezvous point in the valley between the two mountains east of Ulan Bator, Aussie paused to get his bearings with the hand-held Magellan GPS — global positioning system—2000. Using the folds of his del to hide even the faint greenish luminescent glow as one hand held the small, fat, cigar-size aerial, the other the GPS, he saw on the computer dial:
USING BATT POW
SELECT OP MODE
QUICK FIX
And within seconds, via the GPS’s MGRS, or military grid reference system, he had a readout and knew he was barely a half mile—867.3 yards, to be exact — away from the rendezvous point in the valley between the peaks. Suddenly there was an approaching thudding sound, and he dove to the ground, whipping out the Browning 9mm, swinging it in the direction of the noise, only to see a ghostly apparition as three shaggy wild horses, manes flowing, were momentarily and beautifully silhouetted against the cutout-moon sky above the steppes. They headed down into a depression off to his left. The thing that struck him was how these wild, semidesert Przhevalsky horses, as the briefer at Freeman’s HQ had described them, had been spooked quickly, either by him or someone else already in place.
He donned the night-vision goggles, which, contrary to public belief, were not easy to wear — indeed they were notorious for giving the men, especially the pilots, who had to use them severe headaches from eyestrain, but at least now they were smaller and easier to carry than earlier models.
Aussie had no sooner put them on than he heard the distant drone of a plane, and above it a higher-toned sound of fighters. Obviously Salvini, Brentwood, and Choir Williams had already reached the rendezvous or perhaps, more accurately, were about to do so, having sent the SOS-AEP — alternate extraction point — burst radio transmission. Whether the AWACs had picked it up before Second Army signaled HQ, Aussie didn’t know and didn’t care. “You beaut!” was the only whispered comment he allowed himself as he made his way toward the pickup point. Then, dimly at first, he saw two shadowy figures moving about a hundred yards ahead of him. He went to ground, wondering if they’d seen him, and in that moment, for a reason he couldn’t explain, he became acutely aware of the sweet smell of the early spring grass sprouting up between the ice crystals of crusty snow.
As his senses were on high alert again, an alert downgraded when he thought one of the figures was Choir Williams. It wasn’t a front-on view he had, but it was one of those moments in which you recognize someone you know from the back. Choir had a lazy monkeylike slouch when he was in the head-down position, a slouch that Aussie unmercifully teased him about during maneuvers. Then both figures disappeared beneath a knoll.
Cautiously Aussie made his way forward, 9mm at the ready, toward the knoll. He had gone about thirty yards when his throat was so dry it felt like leather, a manifestation of his almost obsessive fear of being a victim of what the SAS called “blue on blue”—or friendly fire.
“Aussie bastard!”
It was said in a hoarse whisper, and he swung about to see a figure behind him and heard another voice in front. “Where the fuck you going?”
“Shit!” Aussie whispered in a surge of relief, the heavy, pulsating drone of a big plane — he guessed an MC-130 Talon — drawing closer. “You bastards frightened the friggin’ life out of me.” For a moment he felt the adrenaline draining out of him, a flood of weak-kneed relief passing over him as he gestured skyward with the 9mm. “Am I right? That the cavalry coming?”
“Sure is, boyo,” Choir said cheerfully.
“Where’s Sal?” Aussie asked.
“Up yonder!” Choir said, pointing to a sharp rise about sixty yards away and fifteen feet above the level grassland. “He’s signaling the big bird — penlight code. How come you got lost in the temple?”
“Lost, my arse!” Aussie responded, still keeping his voice low. “I just got out o’ there faster than you three.”
“Can it!” David ordered. “Let’s get ready for the FUST.” He meant the highly dangerous but last-ditch STAR, or more correctly Fulton STAR, surface-to-air recovery technique, used only by commandos and SEALs, the pilot of the MC-13 °Combat Talon on night vision devices, as were the SAS/D. Aussie of course called it the FUCK technique— the Fulton cock killer!
“We’ve been waiting for you for hours,” Williams teased Aussie.
“What d’ya mean?” Aussie retorted, the drone of the plane making it safe to talk, albeit in low tones.
“Got a truck, boyo,” Williams explained, “with a long bloody Ack Ack gun on it. Just drove straight out of the city and you, you poor sod, on your Paddy Malone.”
Aussie now realized that it had probably been their truck he’d seen earlier. “And I had to bloody hoof it,” Aussie quipped. “You bastards!”
The planes — the Combat Talon and fighter escort — were closer, but now there was another sound. At first it was as if firecrackers were going off, but it rose to a crescendo and the sky lit up, revealing the MC-Talon and fighter escort caught in the glare of a high flare, red tracer lazily crisscrossing the sky, seemingly filling the night with red and white dots.
“To the truck!” David Brentwood yelled, realizing that the attempted FUST rescue was over, the STAR technique dangerous enough when everything was going right. In this melee, it would be impossible.
It was David’s quick thinking that saved them, for once they were in the truck, a Zil-151, he ordered them to fire the twin 37mm AA gun at an acute angle skyward, its spi
tting flame masking it for the Spets or whoever else had reached the pickup point, making it seem as if it were a friendly vehicle, a truck manned by Mongolian regulars perhaps, trying to aid their Siberian friends in trying to deny the SAS/D troop, wherever it was, any possibility of rescue.
Aussie was on me machine gun, Salvini driving, with Brentwood and Choir Williams feeding the 37mm that was spitting out eighty rounds a minute to a height just under ten thousand feet. Aussie’s aim was well away from the U.S. aircraft yet in the general direction — enough to fool anyone watching nearby. But his tracer made an F-16 pilot mad enough to peel off and come at them with his 20mm rotary cannon blazing and dropping two of his six five-hundred-pound bombs from two hard points under the wings, the bombs whistling down into the night. Fortunately they were not laser guided, and exploded wide, but their combined shock wave almost knocked the truck over as me Zil jumped, sped up a small hillock, and came rattling down on the other side, the F-16’s cannon unzipping the earth in a furious run, churning up clouds of dust behind the truck, dust that was now mingling with the enormous dirt cloud thrown up by the bombs, which in turn obscured the truck from the Spets who were firing with everything they had at the American planes.
“East!” Brentwood yelled to Salvini. “Drive east!”
“I’m going fucking east!” Salvini replied, and then the night turned red, the MC-130 exploding, breaking in half, bodies spilling like black toys into the orange balls of flame, the bodies now afire, screams lost to those below in the flickering shadows of the plain.
The Combat Talon was now nothing but falling pieces of burning fuselage after being hit by a Spets ground-to-air conical-nosed SA-16, one of the Soviet Union’s most portable surface-to-air missiles. The truck with the SAS/D troop aboard, its lights out, continued to race over the flat grasslands, the Spets now being paid back in full by an F-16 dropping a napalm canister that turned the grassland to a long, bulbous rush of tangerine and black, incinerating four Spets, two of them struggling out from the fringes of the fire but so badly burned that the praporshnik drew his 9mm Makarov and shot them. He had no time to waste, for he now suspected that the truck he’d heard, its engine in high whine as it pulled out from the circle of flickering lights from the debris of the downed American plane, might well be carrying the SAS/D troop of which no evidence had yet been found.
