Ian Slater - Force of Arms

Aussie could hear the high whine of the hydraulics lifting the big missile to the vertical position, as he breathed in slowly, trying to ignore the adrenaline rush, exhaled only half the air he’d taken in, and squeezed rather than pulled the trigger. The crack of the Haskins, no more than a finger-snapping noise within the sustained roar of battle between the Chinese and SAS/D troops, would not be heard till after the bullet struck its target. Aussie did not take his eye off the telescopic sight and was first to see the small glow, like a dandelion shedding its seeds, yellow suddenly filling the scope, and then a crimson red flash. “Jesus Christ!”

The base of the missile, not yet free of the gantry but still manacled to it, shot out, or rather blew out sideways after trying to shoot up from the cradle. Instead it ripped the gantry to pieces like a wild animal tethered to its cage. Ignited fuel spilled, roared in a river of fire, surging about the base of the great sliding door, buckling the ball-bearing runners, the warhead section of the rocket tumbling to earth amid snow and boulders like some huge cone, and then the feral roar of the second stage fuel igniting filling the air, its hot blast dry as the Gobi Desert. Several Chinese were aflame and screaming horribly until taken out either by SAS fire or their own comrades.

Brentwood fired a green flare, and his and Salvini’s troops formed one line, making their way quickly, snaking through the boulders while Aussie Lewis’s and Choir Williams’s troops formed the second line of advance, but they were not firing, conserving ammunition for the next overwatch if there was going to be one, unless Brentwood thought enough damage had already been done. Brentwood signaled to his troop to continue covering fire and ran fast on a curving track through the boulders till he reached Aussie Lewis.

“Congratulations!” Brentwood said.

“Haskins are beautiful, aren’t they?” Aussie said, patting the weapon like an old friend.

“Yeah, but d’you think it was enough?”

Aussie Lewis wanted to shout yes, of course it was enough. He wanted to break radio silence and ask for the pickup by the helos that the U.S.-led forces had acquired with some arm-twisting on the border of India after the SAS mission had already left. He wanted to say yes and get back as fast as possible and do what he could for Alexsandra. “No,” he said, “it’s not enough. If they have a spare gantry inside, behind that bloody great door, they could be back in business in a day or two.”

“Well, if we went forward and blew up the rail lines?”

“Same thing, Dave — they could replace it in a matter of hours. Besides, there’s got to be a whole bloody store of missiles inside somewhere. We’ll have to go in.”

David Brentwood nodded his head. “You’re right I guess. But we’d better do it fast before they move in troops from Damquka on the other side of the mountain range.”

“Right,” Aussie said, and took aim at the nearest T-59’s infrared searchlight mounted to the right of the cannon. He blew it apart, then did the same with the other two.

“Why the hell didn’t you do that before?” someone asked.

“I’ve got two mags of point fifty sniper rounds, buddy. Missile had the first priority.”

“All right let’s go!” Brentwood said, and with that he returned to his men and another green flare shot in the air as a signal, not as a light, for the commandos had all the illumination they wanted in front of them in the burning fuel whose flames were silhouetting the Chinese as they dashed from boulder to boulder. Even so, the SAS lost another three men in a fifty-yard dash, and counting the four still missing since the drop they had seventy-one out of the original eighty.

A half mile from the roof exits high on either side of the door and back in the snow, much of which had been melted to ice by the fuel fire, the SAS/D saw more Chinese coming out — shot two of them, which kept the others’ heads low.

“Let’s concentrate on one exit!” Brentwood yelled.

Aussie disagreed. “You and Sal take the left — Choir and me the right.”

“Roger!” Brentwood acknowledged. “But be damned careful of shooting our lot once we’re inside.”

“You too,” Aussie said, and the seventy-one men split into two groups of thirty-five and thirty-six. All they were waiting for was to take out the three tanks.

Young Brooklyn had got to within a hundred yards of the nearest T-59, and he lifted the French-made Arpac, steadying its small tube against a rock, waited till the T-59 filled the peep sight, inhaled, held his breath, and fired. The sliding barrel recoiled, and the missile’s motor blasted from the tube at 247 feet per second without any telltale flash. The tank exploded. Again Aussie almost wished he’d told Brentwood that one DF5 missile blown up was enough, for he knew that in this close, the fighting must soon be hand to hand, and even veterans had no stomach for that.

In Lhasa it was dark and still snowing, despite the fact that it was officially spring. This was not that unusual for the Tibetan capital, nor were the wild dog packs that were congregating about the base of Iron Mountain. Its radio mast, which had received the signal that told the major that the attack on the missile site was taking place, was no longer visible in the snow, and the guard wasn’t sure whether the Dutchman was suffering from hypothermia or whether his shivering was because of the beating. A bit of both, he thought.

As the snow eased, more Tibetans could be seen emerging from their cluttered buildings onto the street. The major told the guard that Hartog was free to go. The guard prodded him with his bayonet and Hartog half fell, half scrambled down the stone steps. The dogs had not eaten, for the human feces they often lived on were covered by snow, and instead it was the smell of the Dutchman’s wounds that drew them, slowly at first, but then when the curs realized no Tibetan would help the downed man — the Chinese squad ready to deal with anyone who would try — the dogs moved in and tore the Dutchman to pieces, his screams drawing a large crowd, the placard proclaiming that he was an enemy of the people sodden and torn asunder by the dogs in their frenzied attempt to get at his vitals. A Tibetan monk was objecting, lecturing the Chinese on nonviolence until the major drew his pistol, and the monk’s colleagues hurried him away.

Despite the flares’ flickering light, mistakes were bound to be made by both sides in similar-looking white camouflaged overlays. The problem for the SAS/D— Brentwood’s troop on the left and Aussie’s on the right— was to climb up the flanks of the door to get on top of the cave. This meant that they would first have to negotiate the piles of snow-covered debris that was the excavated soil either side of the cave and then somehow climb almost sheer cliffs of over a hundred feet that stood like ramparts either side of the door, ramparts that were ChiCom high ground protected by at least four machine gun nests. The 7.6mm guns were set back from the cliff edge out of direct sight from below, but not so far back that they couldn’t rain down their fire on most of the boulder-strewn apron that spread beyond the railhead where the mangled gantry now sat, still so hot that it was vaporizing the snow falling on it.

“One, two for me!” Aussie yelled to Brentwood, indicating the two machine gun posts atop the left side of the cave and the door, and “three, four, for you,” pointing to the two 7.6mm nests atop the right-hand side of the cave.

“Roger!” Brentwood answered, and the two lines of commandos moved forward.

With the element of surprise expended, the SAS/D troopers understood and accepted, however reluctantly, that speed — dashing out, guns blazing in the boulder-strewn area about the cave entrance — would only bring certain death. But to go too slowly would give the ChiCom battalions at Damquka time to reach the cave — then the SAS/D would find itself sandwiched between two ChiCom forces. Immediately, however, both Aussie Lewis and Brentwood saw that for the four enemy machine gun posts there would be a “no-fire” zone of about twenty yards or so directly beneath the top of the door, the ChiCom machine gunners unable to depress their weapons at a more acute angle. It was this ground that the SAS/D force would have to reach and hold.