by Peter Nealen
Both flashlights spun crazily to the floor and were still. One lit up the green-clad body of the leading Kokang soldier, who was still rolling feebly on the floor of the tunnel, groaning. Blood was pumping out of a ragged hole in his throat. He didn’t have long.
Brannigan waited for a moment, to see if there was anyone else coming up the tunnel. But it stayed still, as the dying Communist’s groans faded, and his struggles eventually ceased.
He glanced down the main passage, then back up the right-hand tunnel as he quickly reloaded. They might not have all that much time, but thoroughness was going to be important. They had to check out that tunnel. He pointed, and Flanagan drew back to let him past, as he started up the side passage.
***
Park and the ragged remains of his platoon of advisors had reached the central bunker, just above and east of the central cluster of houses in the village. It had been a struggle to get there; the tunnel system was swarming like a disturbed anthill, especially as the ground was beginning to shake under the hammering of the Army’s mortars. They were caught between two pincers, and the Kokang Army was scrambling to defend their bastion. At least, Cao’s battalion was. Park suspected that most of the rest of the Kokang rebel forces were hunkered down elsewhere around the Kokang SAZ, hoping to go unnoticed until the Army got bored and backed off. It had worked before.
Park shouldered past a Kokang lieutenant, who was yelling at the little knot of ten- to fifteen-year-old boys with rifles that were running toward one of the western passages, and saw Cao in the center of the room. The bunker was roughly the size of a warehouse, and had been started long before Park and his men had arrived in northern Burma.
The Kokang general was haranguing his subordinate commanders in rapid-fire Mandarin. He was talking so fast that Park wasn’t able to understand all of it; he spoke Mandarin with some fluency, but it was still very much a second language to him. He could understand enough to know that Cao was issuing a “do or die” speech, demanding that, for the sake of the Kokang people and the Revolution, they must repel the Army and the paramilitaries at all costs.
Cao barked a final order, and the group of Kokang officers scattered, running to round up their men and get them to their new defensive positions in the tunnel complex. Shouted commands and summons echoed through the underground passages.
Park drew closer to Cao, who looked at him with a frown. “Zhong Wei Park,” Cao said, “what are you doing here? Were you not going to go hunting for the paramilitaries that you insisted were the greater threat to us than the Army?”
“I decided that since they came to us, and have routed your exterior security,” Park replied, “that we needed to fall back and discuss our next move.”
“Our next move is to buy time for the cause,” Cao said. “I have dispatched the bulk of my forces to hold the ends of the tunnel system, while we secure the remainder of our assets and fall back to the Chinese border. We will fade into Yunnan until the Army returns to their base, and then re-marshal our strength for the next phase.”
Park glanced over Cao’s shoulder, to where over a dozen men were stacking bulging backpacks next to the entrance to the escape tunnel, that led nearly a kilometer higher on Pingshan Mountain, to a camouflaged exit overlooking the Chinese border. He suddenly understood what Cao’s plan was. He was throwing as many bodies at the attackers as possible, while he tried to escape with as much of the heroin and methamphetamine as he could carry.
“You should bring your men with us,” Cao said, a sly look in his eye. “We will still need your advice and support to come back from this disaster.”
“Of course,” Park said, as if it was a matter of ideology, and not the realization that he needed to stay as close to that pile of narcotics as possible. He would not put it past Cao to try to leave him and his men to the mercy of the Burmese and take all the drugs for himself. That would leave Bureau 39 without its cut, and would also mean that Park had, ultimately, failed in his mission.
“Give me a moment to gather my men and what equipment we will need,” he said, keeping his face carefully blank. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Comrade Baek standing and waiting, lit by the gas lanterns, his magnified eyes behind his thick spectacles staring hard at Park and Cao.
Cao waved impatiently at him. “Hurry,” he said. “We are outnumbered and fighting on two fronts. We do not have much time.”
Park stepped over to the little bureaucrat from the State’s organized crime syndicate. “We must secure that product, Chungwi,” Comrade Baek said. “If this entire operation is going to collapse, we need that shipment. It will go a long way toward helping the Supreme Leader continue to build our defenses, despite the imperialists illegal sanctions.” It was a mark of Park’s own conditioning that he did not find the Commissar-like parroting of Party agitprop coming from the little bureaucrat’s mouth the least bit strange.
Park risked a glance over his shoulder at Cao, who was paying attention to the porters and the packs full of drugs. “Cao may not be willing to part with much of it,” he said slowly. He was already planning what needed to be done. Cao probably would not be willing to part with any of it. But Park’s duty was to the Supreme Leader and the Workers’ Party of Korea, not to Cao and his Kokang Army. If they became an obstacle, no amount of Communist solidarity would suffice.
But Baek did not know Park’s mind, and said, “Then he must be made to part with it. All of it, if possible.”
“Trust me, Comrade Baek,” Park said, as he signaled to Lau and the rest of his surviving troops to get ready to move out. “We will be able to present the entire shipment to the Supreme Leader.”
***
The side tunnel was curving off to the northwest as Brannigan proceeded up it. It was narrower than the main passage, and he was momentarily grateful that, despite his size, he wasn’t claustrophobic. He realized that he didn’t know if any of the men he’d brought down there were or not, but if they were, they were keeping it together well. He wasn’t hearing any freak-outs behind him.
There was a glow ahead; at first he wasn’t sure if he was seeing backscatter from their IR illuminators, or if he was looking at a light, but as they got closer, it became evident that there was a lantern or something somewhere ahead, around the curve of the passage. He still kept his NVGs down. He’d just have to be careful not to stare directly at the source of the light.
The glow intensified as he continued, his back starting to cramp from the hunched-over crouch he needed to maintain to move through the tunnel. Then he could see the edge of an opening ahead, and the brighter glow of what must have been a gas lantern of some sort.
He paused, sinking to a knee and listening. There was clearly a room ahead. He lifted his rifle and eased around the corner.
It was a bunkroom, or the closest to one that could be found in an underground bunker complex. The walls were lined with sleeping mats, and there was a single gas lantern burning atop a crate in the middle of the packed-dirt floor.
He stepped through, finding to his relief that the ceiling was slightly higher than in the passage, and shifted to his left to clear the way for Flanagan. It was just like clearing any other room, only underground.
At least, until the opposite opening was suddenly full of figures in green fatigues, all carrying weapons.
The lead soldier was a fresh-faced kid who looked about sixteen. Which, given the living conditions in northern Burma, probably meant he was closer to twelve. Every gray hair on Brannigan’s head rebelled at the thought of gunning the kid down, but he was armed, and as he registered the two men in tiger-stripe camouflage, with their faces hidden behind the alien-looking lenses of NVGs, his eyes widened, his mouth opened to yell, and he started to bring his AK to bear.
Brannigan cut him down with two fast shots. Compared to the echoes in the passages, the noise of the muzzle blast sounded almost quiet in the larger chamber. Then there was nothing to do but blast away into the knot of enemy fighters pouring into the room.
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Both men sidestepped away from the entrance, shying toward the corners to clear the way for Gomez and Childress behind them. Flame coughed from muzzle brakes as they dumped rounds into the opposite doorway as fast as they could pull their triggers. Bullets smashed through ribcages, faces, and anything else in their way, as the Blackhearts kept their fire tightly focused on the “fatal funnel” of the doorway.
They didn’t stay still, but drove toward the door and the enemy, each man hunched forward to control the recoil of his weapon. The sheer shock of the attack so deep in their stronghold, the rapid gunfire, the noise, the falling bodies of the lead soldiers, and the sight of the advancing, almost inhuman figures in the dim light served to break the Kokangs’ morale in moments. Soon the only survivors were running back down the tunnel the way they’d come, yelling in alarm, some falling as more bullets followed and found their marks. Gomez and Childress were both still pouring fire down the tunnel, even as the angles had cut off Brannigan’s and Flanagan’s lines of fire.
With no more targets visible, Gomez ceased fire, followed a moment later by Childress, who dropped his muzzle before looking down at the far-too-young corpse at his feet. “These fucking bastards,” he rasped. “What kind of fucking monsters use kids this way?”
“The kind who don’t give a damn,” Brannigan said grimly. He felt faintly sick, himself. The floor in front of the entryway was strewn with blood-splashed bodies, many of them far too small. Some of them were still twitching. “The kind who will use anyone and everyone to meet their goals, regardless of the cost.” He spat on the floor. “Life is cheap in this part of the world.”
“No kidding,” Flanagan said. His jaw was set and tight beneath his beard. “I don’t even give a damn about the money right now. I just want to find the sonsofbitches who threw these kids at us and skin ‘em alive.”
“Well, if we follow them,” Brannigan said, nodding toward the retreating figures down the passage as he reloaded, “I think we’ll find their bosses. Presuming their bosses don’t kill ‘em all for retreating. The Kokangs are supposed to be Communists, you know. That probably means they’ve got Commissars.”
None of the others had any further comment, but their fury was now a tangible thing, a brooding force that lent a new tension to the air in the tunnel. Brannigan understood their rage; he shared it. The Kokang’s “leaders” had put weapons in the hands of kids and thrown them at the Blackhearts, while staying safe in the bunkers behind them. He and his men had had no other choice, under the circumstances, but to gun the child soldiers down, but they now owed the Kokang leadership a debt that could only be wiped out in blood. And they would collect.
Ducking his head to get through the doorway, Brannigan led the way again.
The tunnels were now starting to slant upward, as if climbing the hill. He was no longer sure how deep they were, or just where they were in relation to the ground above. He just followed the tunnel, turning his IR illuminator back on to light the way.
Another faint glow appeared ahead, and he slowed, then stopped. He couldn’t see anything amiss; the tunnel was empty for as far as his IR light could reach. But he had a hunch. There had to be another chamber up ahead, and since he couldn’t see any more side passages, then their fleeing opponents had to have gone into it. He couldn’t see any of them, but if there had been anyone with half a brain left, they were probably barricaded on that doorway, waiting for him and the rest to come through.
The opening was about twenty yards away. He frowned as he took a knee again and studied the problem. Charging in there was more than likely going to get at least one or more of them killed. He was acutely aware of the frags tucked in pockets on his vest, but was hesitant. An explosion would, at the very least, get funneled through the passages. At worse, it could very well bring the mountainside down on top of them.
But as he thought, he shifted his knee to get it off a rock, and had a sudden idea. He didn’t dare use grenades down there, but the enemy didn’t know that.
It took some work to pry the rock out of the packed dirt, but he finally had a stone about the size of a baseball in his hand. Up ahead, he could hear whispers and the occasional faint clink of equipment and weapons. There were definitely enemy fighters up there, waiting.
He hefted the rock as he shifted his rifle out of the way. It was going to be tricky; there wasn’t a lot of room. He got lower to give himself more room to wind up, then fastballed the rock toward the opening ahead.
He knew he didn’t have quite the arm that Hancock did; Roger could launch a rock or a baseball at blistering velocity. But it was enough. The rock sailed through the doorway and into the cave beyond, hitting the dirt floor with a soft thump that he might not be able to hear, but the fighters inside could. And they wouldn’t know for sure that it was a rock, not at first.
As he’d hoped, there was a yell of alarm, and then he was sprinting as best he could for the doorway, footsteps pounding behind him as the rest of the team followed.
He burst into the cave, to find the handful of green-uniformed Kokangs who had thrown themselves flat to avoid the “grenade” detonation starting to roll over and push themselves to their feet. It was too late. The Kokang soldiers were out of position, and there wasn’t a single rifle pointed at the doorway.
He shot the first one that was almost directly underfoot as he came through the doorway and hooked left. Then, to be sure, he stomped on the smaller man’s throat as he stepped over him, bringing his muzzle to bear on the next one. He fired as soon as the red dot got within the vicinity of the young Kokang’s chest, following up with a second shot as he dragged the barrel past his target and toward the next.
Behind him, Flanagan had gone right, and Gomez and Childress had flowed in behind him. They were raking the room with gunfire, the thunder echoing and reverberating as bullets pierced flesh and bone, spattering the dirt floor and the crates that lined the walls with blood. It was fast, desperate shooting, but sheer habit and conditioned reflex made each man sure that he had a target before squeezing the trigger.
In seconds, every Kokang fighter in the cave was dead or dying.
Brannigan reloaded, acutely aware of how few magazines he still had left. They had to finish this soon.
“Notice something?” Childress asked. “There aren’t any Norks in this bunch.”
Brannigan let his eye rove over the bodies. Childress was right. They knew from the first camp how the North Koreans had been dressed and equipped, and none of the corpses they’d seen for a while had been wearing the camouflage or carrying the Type 88 rifles that the Norks had been. They were all wearing the plain green Kokang fatigues and carrying Type 56s or some other AK clone. The Type 88s were blockier than the normal AKs, being a native North Korean development of the AK platform.
“That just tells me that they’ve convinced the Kokangs to do most of the fighting,” Brannigan said grimly. “They’re just ‘advisors,’ remember? Probably don’t want to risk taking any more casualties after we mauled them when they tried to take their camp back the other night.”
“What if they’ve cut and run?” Childress asked.
“Run where?” Brannigan countered. “Recon didn’t see anything that suggested they had any other backup compounds, and they seemed to be joined at the hip with the Kokangs.” He took a deep breath and immediately regretted it. The cave stank of gunsmoke and death. “We’ve got no other choice now, anyway,” he said. “We’re committed. Besides, if we gut their patrons, the Norks won’t have a source of drugs to draw on for their funding anymore, anyway. Mission accomplished.”
Childress shrugged. “You’re in charge, sir,” he said. “We’ll follow where you lead.” Coming from Childress, who had been somewhat notorious for disrespecting superiors when he’d been in the Marine Corps, that was saying something.
Brannigan just pointed, brought his rifle back to his shoulder, and plunged through the opening on the far side of the cave.
CHAPTER 20
Cao
already had the porters, backpacks loaded with narcotics, starting up the escape tunnel when the faint reports of gunfire rolled up the passageway from the east. All eyes in the central bunker momentarily turned that way. That had sounded close. Far too close for comfort. The Army was still far enough to the west that they could be expected to take several hours to make it to the central hub, if they even discovered the tunnels. But the paramilitaries, or whoever they were, were in the tunnels and chewing through the defenders like a buzz saw.
Cao yelled in Mandarin at the porters, then at his bodyguards, before grabbing his own satchel and disappearing into the escape tunnel after the porters. The bodyguards were standing warily around the tunnel entrance, nervously clenching their hands around their AKs.
Park started toward the tunnel, his remaining men at his back, his own Type 88 in his hands. He wasn’t watching the tunnel that the gunfire was coming from; he was watching Cao’s bodyguards. If the Kokangs were going to turn on them, this was probably going to be the time.
But the bodyguards simply turned and hustled up the tunnel after their commander. Park watched them with slightly narrowed eyes as he followed. In a way, he wished that they had tried to stop him. It would have been easier to do this in the cave, rather than in the closer confines of the tunnel later on.
***
Resistance seemed to have melted away as Brannigan pushed up the tunnel. There were occasional flickers of movement up ahead, but they never materialized into a coherent defense. No one seemed to be willing to stand and fight anymore. The surviving Kokangs were fleeing ahead of the advancing Blackhearts.
