Wall of Night

by Grant Blackwood

  Beskrovny pointed to several spots on the map. “Here—the foothills of the Hingann mountain range. They have air bases at Gulian, Changying, Pangu, and Ershizhan.”

  “Four air bases.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How far from our border?”

  “The closest is forty kilometers; the farthest, seventy.”

  “Excellent!” Bulganin replied. “Well within range.”

  Fedorin said, “Of what, Mr. President?”

  “An air strike of our own, of course. Four strike groups, four weapons. General, I’ll leave the details to you, but I imagine air-launched cruise missiles are the best approach. Only one has to get through, after all. Our fighters can slip into their airspace, launch the missiles, then slip out again.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ivan Nochenko asked.

  “Ivan, haven’t you been paying attention? These four air bases are the crux of the problem. As long as they’re allowed to operate, the attacks will keep coming. Once they’re gone, the Chinese attack will be toothless. We’ll have the upper hand.”

  “And how do you plan to do this?”

  “Very simple. Four bases, four tactical nuclear warheads. We’ll blot them off the map.”

  73

  Chono Daal

  The signal the Chinese commandos had been awaiting came shortly after dawn.

  Cahil and Skeldon were sitting on their log, putting the finishing touches on the sixth and final charge when the team’s radioman leapt up and began chattering excitedly. The rest of the paratroopers crowded around as the colonel received the report. After a brief celebration of backslapping and smiling, the colonel ordered them back to their tasks. He walked over to Cahil and Skeldon.

  “Doner?” he said.

  “Yes,” Bear replied.

  The colonel called two paratroopers over, who picked up the charge and carried it to where the others lay. “We leave in twenty minutes,” he told them. “Be ready.”

  With that, the colonel turned on his heel and began barking orders. Two paratroopers stood up. One of them hoisted a charge over one shoulder, a roll of detonation cord over the other, while the second man shouldered the remaining two charges. They filed out of the camp and down the trail in the direction of the mine.

  “What the hell is this?” Cahil whispered to Skeldon.

  “Don’t know.”

  Much of their plan depended on them moving as a group to the mine and then setting the charges. The night before, Skeldon had managed to steal a chemical detonator from one of the crates, providing them the final piece for their own charge—the six-ounce chunk of C4 they’d culled in bits and pieces from the main charges. Cahil could feel the disk of plastique pressing against the skin of his belly. He resisted the impulse to finger the detonator in his pocket.

  As the three commandos disappeared down the trail, he felt his heart sink. Stupid, Bear. Never assume. With three of the charges already set and the commando team split, would they be able to reach the wall in time?

  “That’s a problem.”

  “Big problem,” Skeldon agreed. “You think they’ll come back?”

  “I doubt it. That radio call means they’re on a deadline now.”

  Which meant that whatever else the Chinese had planned for Siberia was probably under way. What about Briggs? Cahil wondered. As had been the case the year before during the Beirut operation, he had no way of knowing what was happening to his friend. The feeling of helplessness tore at his heart. Was Briggs alive, dead, or a prisoner of the Guoanbu!

  He’ll make it, Bear told himself. And so will you. There was just one more hurdle to cross: take on six heavily armed commandos, stop the dam’s destruction, then get out of the mine alive and find a Russian who wouldn’t shoot him on sight. Simple.

  “By the time we get there,” Cahil told Skeldon, “the first three charges will be primed.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “Stick to our plan and pray.”

  Nakhodka-Vostochny

  As Cahil and Skeldon were readying themselves for their do-or-die gambit, 1500 miles to their southeast, Sconi Bob Jurens and his SEAL team were preparing to make their own move.

  Two hours before dawn, still hidden in their blind above the Federation Army roadblock, Jurens decided it was time to move. Throughout the night, reinforcement troops had been pouring into the area. In the space of an hour, he’d watched five trucks pass through the roadblock, each one loaded with a squad of soldiers. In the distance, he could hear voices calling to one another in Russian. Twice, foot patrols passed so close they’d heard the hiss of radio static and the crunch of footfalls.

  Sooner or later a patrol would stumble upon their position and the mission would in an instant turn into a full-fledged firefight with several hundred Federation soldiers. Given such an inevitability, Jurens decided he’d rather join the battle on his terms. If they had any chance of escaping this, it would be by fire-and-maneuver tactics. Hit hard and disappear like ghosts.

  He scanned the terrain through his Night Owls. Cape Kamensky was rugged and hilly, dotted with boulders, scrub pines, and slopes of loose slate and gravel. The roads wound around and up the peninsula like stripes on a barber pole, finally ending at the junction below them. To their southeast he could make out the small fishing pier Smitty had found on his reconnoiter the previous day. Jurens counted eight boats: six fishing trawlers and two skiffs.

  Watching them roll with the swells, Sconi felt that old familiar draw: Water was safety; water was cover. Most of all, water was their way home.

  He lowered his binoculars and wriggled back into the blind. Smitty, Zee, and Dickie gathered around him. Sunil Dhar sat a few feet away, arms wrapped around his knees.

  Jurens pulled out his map and clicked on his hooded pen-light. “Smitty, that fishing pier—what d’you think? Three miles?”

  “Give or take.”

  Jurens nodded. “That’s where we’re headed. We’ll move fast and straight. Unless we have no choice, we’ll bypass any patrols.”

  “And if we can’t?” Dickie asked.

  “Then we take them out. Shoot-and-scoot; we can’t give them time to get coordinated.” With only four of them, any patrol they might encounter would likely have them outnumbered. “Either way, we need to reach the pier, snag a boat, and be on the water while it’s still dark. If we don’t make it into international waters before daylight, we’ve got problems. Any questions?”

  There were none.

  Jurens turned to Dhar. “Nobody’s gonna stop you if you run. I assume you’d rather go with us than take your chances with the Russians?”

  Dhar nodded vigorously.

  “Then keep up. We’ll try to protect you, but if you fall behind, you’re on your own.”

  “I understand.”

  Jurens folded up his map. “Zee, get on the Satcom and call home; give them our plan, tell them we’re on the move.”

  USS Columbia

  ​“Conn, Engineering.”

  Archie Kinsock keyed the squawk box. “Go ahead, Chief.”

  “We’re all set down here, Skipper. Just finished the last diagnostic check on the maneuvering thrusters. Everything reads green. You give the word, and we’ll have them powered up in thirty seconds.”

  “Good. How about our leaks?”

  “Under control.”

  “And if I need to put a little depth under us?”

  “I’ve got men stationed at each location; we’ll do our best to stay on top of them.”

  “Conn, aye. Stand by for my order.”

  Kinsock and MacGregor leaned over the chart table. Their position beside the continental shelf was circled in red; south of them, also marked in red pen, was the International Waters boundary.

  “Fifteen miles,” Kinsock muttered.

  “Long way at four knots,” MacGregor replied. “Even if we catch a current, we’re looking at four hours. A lot of tim
e to attract attention.”

  “Well, jeez, aren’t you a ray of sunshine,” Kinsock said with a grin.

  “I try my darndest.”

  “We’ll take our time. As long as we can get moving and stay at zero bubble, we can drift our way out. Four hours or four days, it’s better than sitting here waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

  Saying the words, Kinsock felt another pang of guilt. The idea of leaving behind Jurens and his team grated on him, but his first responsibility was to Columbia and her crew. He had no doubt that given a choice his men would vote to try and rescue the SEALs, but the bird on Kinsock’s collar didn’t allow him the luxury of risking a hundred men to rescue four.

  Pete Cantor, one of Kinsock’s first COs, had been fond of telling his junior officers that “the obligations of command and the comfort of personal conscience are often at odds.” It was, Archie thought now, a fancy way of saying, “You don’t have to like it; you just have to do it.”

  As if reading his mind, MacGregor said, “I hope to God they’re okay.”

  “Amen,” Kinsock murmured. “Okay, let’s get to it.” Kinsock reached up and keyed the squawk box. “Sonar, Conn.”

  “Sonar, aye.”

  “How’re we looking, Chief?”

  “Five surface contacts on passive: The two hospital ships that came into port last night haven’t moved from their anchorages. As for the other three, I make them a Krivak and two Osa patrol boats, but they’re a good twelve miles to our northeast. As long as they stay there, we should be okay.”

  “Any subs in the area?”

  “Not for the last four hours, but I wouldn’t swear on anything.”

  Kinsock understood. Simply by the nature of its propulsion and engineering systems, a surface ship twelve miles away was easier to detect than a sub lurking a mile away. “What’re the maneuvering thrusters going to do to your ears?”

  “We’ll be deaf while they’re running. If you can shut them down occasionally—”

  “That’s my plan.”

  “Then we’ll keep listening.”

  “Conn, aye.”

  Kinsock grabbed the handset and switched to the ship-wide IMC. “All hands to general quarters. We’re going to make our move, gentlemen. It’s time to head for home.”

  74

  China

  Hoping to pull off one last bit of illusion, Tanner ordered the pilot to climb to two thousand feet and head southeast toward Mudanjiang, the last major city before the Russian border and Vladivostok. The Russian port was, he thought, the most logical destination for someone trying to flee China in a hurry.

  “We can’t outrun the Hind,” the pilot said. “They’ve got forty knots of airspeed on us.”

  “I know,” Tanner said. Despite that, he felt light, almost buoyant, and it took him a moment before he realized why: He was alive—they were alive, and with each passing minute their chances of staying that way improved. Whether they would make good their escape was another matter, but this certainly was better than being hunted like an animal through the wilds of Heilongjiang Province.

  “Why don’t you just give up?” the pilot asked. “If you know you can’t make it—”

  “I’m a cockeyed optimist,” Tanner said. “Keep flying.”

  Once sure they were headed in the right direction, he called Hsiao to the cockpit to watch over the pilot, then went back into the cabin. Tears streaming down his face, Han Soong sat on the floor with his daughter wrapped in his arms.

  He reached out a hand to Tanner. “Thank you, Briggs. Words can’t describe my gratitude.”

  Briggs gripped his shoulder. “No need, old friend. I’m just sorry it took me this long to get here. Lian, are you okay?”

  She raised her head from her father’s chest and nodded. “I can’t believe this is real. Are we really free?”

  “Almost, but not quite.”

  “How long?”

  “With a little luck, two hours.”

  With a lot of luck, Briggs thought.

  Once they were fifty miles from the camp, Tanner returned to the cockpit. “How’re your night-flying skills?” he asked the pilot.

  “I’m fully qualified.”

  “Night vision?”

  “I have a headset, but …”

  “But it’s scary as hell.”

  “Yes.”

  “Sorry, but you’re gonna have to get used to it. Put them on, then shut off your navigation lights and descend to thirty feet.”

  “Thirty feet!”

  Tanner nodded. “Don’t trim any trees.”

  Once the pilot had donned his headset and began his descent, Tanner reached over to the IFF—Identification Friend or Foe—unit on the console and flipped the power off.

  “What’re you doing?” the pilot cried. “They’ll shoot us down.”

  “That’s a very real possibility,” Tanner said.

  Regardless of nationality, all military aircraft carry some type of IFF unit designed to transmit a coded ID signal when interrogated by friendly units. By shutting down the unit, Tanner had not only turned them into an unidentified aircraft eligible for attack, but he’d made them virtually invisible to commercial airport radars that track by IFF tag rather than radar return. By ordering the pilot to hug the earth, he was hoping to also slip beneath the radar coverage of nearby military bases and get lost in the ground clutter.

  If Tanner had any luck left at all, Xiang would use the Hoplite’s last known IFF position and course as the starting point for his search.

  “Thirty feet,” the pilot called. “It’s too low … I can’t keep this up.”

  “What’s your speed?”

  “One-fifty.”

  Tanner took a moment to study the map and make a few rough calculations. “Cut back to one-twenty and turn northeast … make it course zero-three-five. Once you find the Songhua River, turn north. Stick to it and stay low.”

  Delayed by a refueling stop at an airstrip outside Fangzheng, Xiang’s Hind was thirty miles to Tanner’s southwest, but the Hind’s greater airspeed was steadily cutting the gap. In the cabin under the glow of red lights, Shen and his platoon of twenty-four paratroopers were checking their weapons.

  “Director Xiang?” the pilot called.

  Xiang knelt in the cockpit door. “You have the beacon?”

  “No, sir, nothing yet. We just got word from Fangzheng Control. They have an IFF tag matching the Hoplite. It’s on our zero-seven-one, about thirty miles away.”

  “Course and speed?”

  “One-six-zero, speed one hundred fifty knots—almost red-line for a Hoplite.”

  “He’s running. What’s in that direction?”

  “Changting, Mudanjiang, then the border.”

  “Vladivostok?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nearest major civilization, Xiang thought. It made sense. “How long before we intercept?”

  “Twenty minutes.”

  Ten minutes later: “Director Xiang, we’ve got a problem.”

  “What?”

  “Fangzheng reports the Hoplite stopped squawking and dropped off the radar.”

  “Which means?”

  “It means he’s gambling,” the pilot replied, then explained Tanner’s gambit. “If the pilot’s any good, he might be able to pull it off.”

  “And if he doesn’t?”

  “They’ll either crash or pop up on radar.”

  “Keep heading toward their last known position. What are the biggest commercial radars in the region?”

  “Tieli, Jiamusi, and Hegang.”

  “Can they track by return?”

  “Yes.”

  “Contact them and have them look for a target without IFF.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Xiang walked back into the cabin and sat down. Turn on the beacon, damn you …

  To his credit, the pilot had nerve, Tanner decided.

  Hands white aro
und the collective and cyclic controls, sweat rolling down his neck, the pilot kept the Hoplite at near wave-top height over the Songhua River, winding northeast up the valley, dodging trees and slipping past cliff faces.

  The lights of early morning fishing boats slipped beneath the windscreen, appearing and disappearing in the same second. On either bank of the Songhua, Tanner could see the twinkling of distant lights and he tried to match them against the towns on the map: Qinghe, Hongkeli, Yongan …

  Occasionally the Hoplite’s ESM panel would chirp, indicating they’d been painted by a random radar wave, and Tanner would wait, breath held, hoping against hope the tone didn’t change to a steady “lock on” pulse.

  A few miles north of Jaimusi, Tanner had his head in the map when the pilot suddenly cried out.

  “Oh, God!”

  Tanner looked up. Before the windscreen, a massive rock spire jutted from an island in the middle of the river. The pilot banked hard. Tanner lurched against his restraints. The Hoplite’s engines roared in protest, the rotors beating the sky to gain altitude. The ESM panel began chirping. At the last moment, the pilot rolled the helo nearly onto its side and the spire flashed past the windscreen.

  Tanner glanced at the altimeter: 200 feet. “Dive, dive!” he ordered. “Back on the deck!”

  Once they were back at treetop height, the pilot said, “Sorry, sorry. I just.…”

  “Forget it. How’s our fuel?”

  “Not good. Two hundred kilometers, give or take.”

  Tanner eyed the ESM panel. Had they raised any flags? “Go to full throttle,” he ordered.

  Orbiting in a fuel-saving hover eighty miles south of Tanner, Xiang’s pilot called out, “Contact! We’ve got contact! Jiaumsu Control reports unidentified aircraft just popped up on their radar!”

  “How far away?”

  “A hundred and thirty kilometers—about ninety kilometers south of the Birobijan border. They’re smart; they’re sticking to the river valley.”