Ian Slater - Force of Arms

It was a double shock to most — the announcement and the sound of a woman. Men fell backward hard against their packs, cussing and buckling up again.

‘‘We’re hit!” the woman’s voice came. “We’re going down — hold tight!”

“Hold—” Brentwood began, but whatever he said was lost in the crunch of the chopper buckling over its landing gear.

“Out!” Freeman yelled as the ramp went down, slaming hard on the concrete.

“Terrific,” Brentwood said, his finger on the H&K safety. “No damn ropes.” Last to leave were the chopper crew: the captain, her copilot, and the three gunners.

In the drumming rain of the metallic dawn the sky above them was pockmarked with black smudges of AA fire, and one Chinook, Salvini’s, was ablaze a hundred yards from them. Some SAS/D were fast-roping it as the big, banana-shaped Chinook kept hovering. Only three men made it down, however — Salvini and two of his troopers free of the ropes before the Chinook exploded, breaking in half and spilling men from it like so much burned detritus, their screams heard above the roar of the Comanches attacking every possible AA fire emplacement, one of them sweeping low over the square, flames issuing from its belly and decoying three heat-seeking missiles intended for three choppers now on the ground, fast roping forgotten with surprise having been lost.

Freeman was already in contact with the Comanche’s leader, who had flown over the Zhongnanhai to check for any mortar or heavy machine gun positions. He reported none. Repeat none. He had come in low, his 20mm Gatling gun ready, and had seen no one. Not on infrared, not on Starlite goggles — not that the rain would permit anything much to show up on them — but definitely nothing on infrared that looked like troops.

He banked the Comanche hard right over the vast Forbidden City, ready for another run over the Zhongnanhai, again to match any infrared images he saw with his preprogrammed threat library. Any matchup between the target seen and the target in the computer would automatically tell him what weapons should be used and would also “prioritize” the targets in order of their danger.

He was at five hundred feet above the Working People’s Cultural Palace, then over the Tiananmen Gate as he leveled off from the turn to go over the Zhongnanhai again. Oh, he picked up infrared neutrals — that is, the heat exhaust from the State Council’s furnaces and the like — but there were no guards, no soldiers, a fact he quickly conveyed to Freeman.

“Women and kids are out,” Freeman said. “We know that. Maybe they’re in some underground shelter in the Zhongnanhai,” he posited.

“General, there’s no one — Jesus!” The copilot-gunner saw the rocket streak for him and dropped flare and foil decoys. The missile exploded twenty feet from the chopper, but the missile stabilizers or fins had chopped into the pilot’s four-axis control unit and slashed open a port-side fuel tank beneath the copilot who sat up and behind the pilot. Simultaneously the threat library identified the AA missile as an AA-6RH Acrid. The Comanche’s left-hand-side retractable claws slid out and opened. Within seconds a Hell-fire air-to-ground was selected and fired, not at the Zhongnanhai, for the pilot was right — it had been abandoned. The Chinese ground-to-air missile had come from the Forbidden City!

“Comanche leader to S/D leader. They’re holed up in the Forbidden—” The end of the transmit was swallowed by the explosion of the Comanche as it fell from the sky like a fiery rock into me south lake inside the Zhongnanhai.

“Aussie?” Freeman called.

“Sir.”

“Take a nine-man recon patrol to the Zhongnanhai and see if either of the Comanche crew made it. Brentwood, Salvini, Williams — over here.”

“Sir.”

“They’ve holed up in die Forbidden City,” Freeman informed them.

“Shit!” It was Salvini. “Fucking place has over ten thousand rooms.”

“Nine thousand, to be exact,” Freeman said. “But first we have to get over the moat.”

The second Comanche came on the air reporting that due north of Tiananmen Square past the Tiananmen Gate there was considerable enemy activity inside the Forbidden City. The pilot’s estimate was two to three companies — around 250 to 300 men — most probably, he said, just regular infantry hurriedly trucked in to guard the State Council.

“Hey — you there!” It was a local policeman who had seen them on the outskirts of Beidaihe, the official’s voice full of officiousness before the tourist season had even begun.

“Are you talking to me?” Alexsandra said upon turning.

“Yes, you. You are a foreigner.”

“You’re very observant.”

“Ha, ha!” said the terrified student who had blubbered to her that he had been forced to cooperate with the PSB, his attempt at ingratiating himself with the policeman taking on the tone of “The police love the people and the people should love the police.”

The policeman shot a look at the student that would have silenced an entire cell of students.

“Where are your travel papers?” he demanded of Alexsandra.

“In my bag.”

“You have no bag.”

“I said you were very observant.”

“Ha, ha!” the student said, his tone more groveling than before.

Alexsandra kept looking straight at the policeman. “My bag is back at my hotel.”

“Ah, a hotel — what hotel?”

“Jinshian Hotel of course.” It was the best.

“Your identification then?”

“And yours?” she demanded. The policeman’s face went beet red in vivid contrast to the early morning fog that was rolling in from the sea onto Beidaihe’s Middle Beach. “I demand to see your identification,” she repeated. “Don’t you know who I am?” And she added stiffly, “I am here with important officials.”

“What is your name?”

“Ha, ha!” the student said, knowing the policeman was either going to draw his revolver or whistle for help.

She thought of all the petty harassment and gross humiliations the Chinese and Siberian officials had visited upon her — degradations unimaginable to anyone in the West. “I demand to see your identification,” she repeated, taking out a small notepad from her pocket.

“Ha!” the student said. They were both going to be arrested.

“No!” the policeman said angrily. “You must show me your papers first.” The policeman’s cloudy breath added to the fog.

“Oh all right,” she said, and took her hand out of the coat. “Will this do?” She thrust hard, and the switchblade pierced his heart. He stared, wide eyed, at her, making a half-choking, gargling sound and began to pull the knife out. She then thrust her left hand about his neck as if to kiss him and pushed the knife in further. “Keep it, you little bastard!”

“Oh—” the student said. “This is very bad.”

“Have you still got the tickets?” Alexsandra said.

“Our tickets?”

“Get a grip on yourself. Yes, the tickets to Shanhaiguan.”

“Yes, why?”

“Why? We’re going there, you fool. Come on, get his gun and cartridges and we’ll go to the station.” She knew now that, previous plans notwithstanding, she would have to use Beidaihe station after all to get the train toShanhaiguan.

“Oh!” the student said, shivering with cold and fright.

“I’ve had enough,” she said in rapid Mandarin. “I’ve had all I’ll take. I’m not running anymore.” Which of course is precisely what she was doing.

“Oh — this is tremendous,” the student said, but he had mispronounced the word in his fright. He meant “This is very bad.”