Ian Slater: Force of Arms

There was a noise like the crack of a dry stick, and the Huey copilot slumped, blood running down his right arm, his cursing drowned by the sound of the engine. There was another crack, another bullet ripping into the chopper. The cloying smell of gasoline. With that the pilot yelled, “Get aboard!” but the SAS in the depression waved him off, and even as he rose, obscuring them in dust, they were firing at the troops who had suddenly picked up their arms, several of them falling in the SAS’s first volley.

The Huey, limping but still aloft and still under fire, came in sideways, its rotor howling, the Chinese soldiers diving under the train cars for protection, but the chopper stayed there for thirty seconds, creating a veritable whirlwind of grit and dust that didn’t inconvenience the SAS troops with their masks but played havoc with the Chinese who were blinded by the grit that filled the air like insects, causing the Chinese to lose the initiative.

Aussie Lewis and Salvini gave full automatic covering fire to Williams and Brentwood as they moved in, with Williams and Brentwood repaying the favor and killing another six Chinese. Choir Williams collapsed, rolling about in a terrible agony, the 7.62mm bullet having smashed the tibia in his right leg.

The Chinese had withdrawn from under the rail cars beyond to a gradual drop-off from the tracks to get away from the Huey blinding them. Lewis and Salvini took the second car, one each end. “Go!” Aussie shouted as he took the steps two at a time.

“Roger!” he heard Salvini reply as he too took the steps at his end of the carriage two at a time, his MP5, like Aussie’s, on full automatic to clear anyone from the doorway, the glass on the carriage being a smoky one-way mirror for the VIPs and making it difficult to see the whole car. As Aussie and Salvini threw — not tossed — in their stun grenades, the explosion not only concussed every VIP in the railway car but also blew out the windows, several antimacassar embroideries from the velvet seats following.

As Aussie and Salvini came around each end door of the carriage, they could see the stunned, bovine look on each man, Cheng’s cap blown off, his hair mussed, while Chairman Nie sat shaking his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ear. From outside Lewis and Salvini could hear the deadly rattle of the Comanche’s Gatling gun, called in by the Hueys to finish off the last elements of unit 8431.

“It’s over!” Salvini said.

One ChiCom stared stupidly at him and lunged. Salvini clubbed him. “It’s over!” Salvini said angrily. “Look!” He waved the muzzle of his submachine gun in the direction of the broken windows. Outside no surrenders had been taken after the little trick that unit 8431 tried to pull a few moments ago, holding up their pamphlets until the Hueys came low enough to shoot at. Now they all lay dead or wounded, the choppers finishing what the SAS/D had begun.

Aboard the train the State Council had been the first to know they were beaten, and they had been the first to flee the Zhongnanhai under Nie’s order as supreme member of the council. Cheng had not been happy about it and had not wanted to leave Beijing, but given the direct order by Nie he had little option, though his heart wasn’t in it, for as a soldier he had lost face and he knew it and had no fight in him. Nie, however, was full of indignation, refusing to accept the fact that he had lost utterly until Aussie Lewis told him to shut up or he’d shoot him right there and then.

“That is against the Geneva Convention!” Nie fumed.

“Well we’re not in fucking Geneva.”

To the east, from the direction of Qinhuangdao, there was a moving mass of people aboard a train that was shunting backward, festooned with red flags and with goddess-of-democracy motifs in white crudely painted in the middle of the red flags. It reminded Aussie of pictures he had seen of Mao’s triumphant entry into Beijing half a century ago. Even before the train stopped, people were jumping off, and Alexsandra Malof was out on the rear platform waving a quickly made Stars and Stripes at the Americans.

“Hey!” Aussie said, cuffing each of the prisoners with tape as Salvini guarded them. “How about a bloody cheer for Aussie and the Brits?”

“You’ll get your cheers, buddy. She’ll—” Before he could finish, Alexsandra Malof had hopped down from the train and onto the one containing the State Council with a gun in her right hand. She looked across at Aussie. There was a wan smile and a chill in the air, despite the dust-dancing sunbeams that pierced the broken windows of the VIP car and gave the illusion of warmth. She walked along the row of prisoners and stopped at Nie, one of those prisoners who had not yet been tied and who was still stunned enough that he didn’t quite recognize who she was at first, especially out of prison garb. Then, with the carriage absolutely quiet despite the roar of voices outside, he slowly began to realize who she was.

She seemed to be weighing everything in the balance— sheer terror, the hundreds of murders that this man had perpetuated as the most feared man in China. She turned away from him, then suddenly turned back and shot him point-blank, his brain splattering over the antimacassar behind him.

“Jesus!” Aussie had snatched the gun from her, but Nie was dead. She leaned against Lewis as Salvini, equally shaken by her sudden action, started the train of prisoners walking, or rather shuffling, out of the door toward waiting Hueys to take them back to Beijing. On the way Salvini got express radio directions from Freeman, telling Cheng that all of Nie’s political prisoners, including the SEAL, Smythe, must be released immediately. And then Cheng was told exactly how his formal surrender to the U.N. would take place the next day.

It was just on dusk as they landed on the helo pad atop the Great Hall of the People.

When Freeman heard about Nie — about Alexsandra Malof’s shooting him — he said, “Accidental discharge I suppose,” looking at Aussie.

“Yes, sir.”

“Thought so. Case closed. Now, Dick, bring me these two foxhole ‘gentlemen.’ I want to nip this in the bud before a reporter even gets wind of it. Then bring me Cheng.”

“Yes, sir.”

Normally, disciplinary measures in homosexual cases might go to battalion or brigade level, but when Freeman, who everyone knew would go ballistic when he heard of the case, decided to deal with the matter himself, he was determined to thwart a huge, divisive press story. The two men were marched in.

“Which one of you was screwing whom?”

“We weren’t screwing anybody, sir,” Sperling said.

Freeman looked down at the report. “Oh — yes.” He pushed the folder away. “Well you listen to me, both of you. I don’t care if you fuck sheep — long as you’re reasonably gentle with the sheep and on your own time — and so long as it doesn’t bother anyone else. But for Chrissake, in a battle! Do you have to do it in a battle?”

“That’s when it’s best— sir!” Sperling said.

Freeman read Sperling’s name off his shirt strip. “I don’t care what turns you on, a battle’s no time to be flashing your dick — unless you think it might frighten the Chinese.”

Norton couldn’t suppress a smile. Young Danny — name strip Ricardo, D. — looked the most miserable PFC Norton had ever seen.

“What’s your story, son?” Freeman asked. “Did he make you — force you?”

“No, sir.”

“That true?” Freeman asked Sperling.

“Yes, sir.”

Freeman turned to Danny again.

“Never threatened you?”

“General, he—” Sperling began.

“Shut your mouth!” It was Freeman. He wasn’t loud, he wasn’t going ballistic, but he sounded cold as steel. “I could have you taken out and shot right now for cowardice.”