Ian Slater: Force of Arms

Mah was shaking. “Comrade Li!” he called, his throat parchment dry. “Li… Comrade Li!”

The wind howled afresh and filled Mah with foreboding as he approached the cave. He hesitated at the entrance. What if its mate was still in there?

“Li!” he called again, his voice echoing shakily in the bend of the tunnel. He could smell excrement. Gripping the Makarov, he reminded himself he was an officer and went forward, stopped, and almost ran but stood his ground, forcing himself to look down in the light of the flashlight on the floor at the blood-soaked body of Li, the man’s eyes bulging out of their sockets, frozen in fear.

Mah picked up the flashlight and, reminding himself again that he was an officer and picking up the AK-47, holstered his Makarov and made his way forward around the bend. He found nothing but the dried bones of small animals.

As he started out of the cave, a fury of panic and hatred filled him, panic that before he got out the snow leopard would return to reclaim his trespassed territory, and fury at the American pilot who, to his mind, was responsible for Li’s death and the fear that he, Mah, had undergone — was undergoing. There were only two caves remaining that he thought were deep enough to investigate. He entered the first one full of apprehension that he might come face-to-face with another wild animal.

When Julia heard the faint tear of a machine-gun burst it sounded further away than it really was. Who were the Chinese — she presumed it must be Chinese — shooting? Was it the old man who had helped her? Had he come back, or was it someone else? Had another pilot been downed? Unlikely, she thought, but why were they shooting? Whatever the reason, it prompted her to try to be especially alert, difficult with the skull-pounding headache that still had her in its grip. She moved the Nuwick candle further toward the entrance so as to see the first bend in the S-shaped tunnel that led to where she was.

The wall on one side, her right, was shiny with water seeping from the top of the cave; the other side, on her left, was drier but, as she was left-handed or, as her male colleagues would call it, a southpaw, it would be the wetter side of the cave she’d have to use to lean on to get a better shot if anyone came in. Perhaps they weren’t searching the caves at all. Then what was a machine gun doing out in this godforsaken place?

For several minutes she heard nothing but the wailing of the wind. But there was a definite footfall at the entrance of the cave about twenty feet from the S-bend. She blew out the candle, bracing herself against the wet wall of the cave, waiting. There was a pause and then a beam of light cutting the misty air, a glimmer of it playing about the bend, and she could hear someone breathing. Was it the old man returning after having heard the machine gun? — if they had heard it in the nomad camp, in which case it might be another member of a Chinese patrol. But — her head was throbbing like a pulse gone mad — the Chinese wouldn’t have had time to—

In the corona of faint light behind the center of the flashlight she saw the outline of Mah’s uniform, a faint red star, and fired four times, killing him with the first shot.

The noise reverberating in the cave sounded to her like cannon when in fact the cave muffled the sound. Still it was heard, albeit faintly, in the nomad camp.

There was a furious debate going on in the camp between the Chinese patrol that had just followed the tracks back to camp and the Chinese soldiers who had been left there originally by Mah. They were arguing about whether the patrol that had been out with Mah should backtrack and investigate the shots. It was decided that two of them should go back to the rocky outcrop. As they left, the old man asked if he could be of assistance.

When the three got to the rocky outcrop and saw the blood marks on the rock, traced them back to the cave and found Li, they didn’t need to be told that Li had been attacked by an animal — a snow leopard, the old man said— and one of the two soldiers was suddenly sick to his stomach and they went out.

The old man, in an awkward pantomime of hands and grunts, asked them if they wanted to look for the major, too. They both stared at him as if he were mad and quickly followed their own footprints back to the camp. The others, on hearing the story, needed no enticement to head back to base immediately.

Julia Reid was shaking. She could hear more footsteps, but these were heavy, more distinct, as if they wanted to be heard.

“America!” a voice said. She was sure it was the old nomad, but the headache was distorting her senses.

“Chin-eze dead!”

The relief that passed through her was like a warm shower on a bitterly cold day. Her headache instantly became less intense, and when she saw the old man, his large frame bending over Mah’s body, stripping it of the Makarov, ammunition pouches, and Chinese money, she could have kissed him.

Her hands still shaking, she relit the candle. She heard a rustle behind her and turned. In the soft flickering light she saw an extraordinary sight the old man, apparently not so old, was standing, his pants down, his erection casting a huge shadow on the wall as he smiled down at her.

“My God!” she heard herself say. “No!”

The old man looked crestfallen. “No?” He shook his head, his scarf down about his throat, his smile toothless. “No?” he repeated.

“No way,” she said.

He shrugged nonchalantly and, with some difficulty, put it away. He offered her his hand instead. She hesitated for a moment, then took it, and he led her out of the cave, helped her on the yak, and began the trek back to the encampment. He pointed to a cave. “Chin-eze dead!”

She couldn’t have cared less. For two days she’d felt as if she’d been on another planet. All she wanted was for the headache to subside — which it did as they went lower toward the encampment. On the way back she was astonished to see the old man putting in the earpiece of what must have been a Walkman in his pack. At one point he turned about with a huge grin. “Chin-eze dead! Many Chin-eze!” Though she didn’t realize it then, he was listening to the BBC Tibetan-language world service reporting the end of the war, and she didn’t know that within the week she would be taken to Lhasa by truck and would be free.

In Tiananmen square it was early morning, the sun rising above the marble-sculpted Heroes of the Revolution.

It was eerily silent, students and workers kept back by barricades along the Avenue of Eternal Peace. For once not even bicycle bells could be heard, and the silence transcended all, the hush broken only by the sound of General Cheng’s footsteps as he emerged, as instructed by Freeman, from the Forbidden City, the very monarchist refuge that the Party had always so decried. Passing through the archway across the algae-polluted moat under the shrapnel-slashed portrait of Chairman Mao on Tiananmen Gate, he continued to walk across the vast square, alone, toward Freeman.

In a propaganda stroke worthy of Mao, though he detested the policies of Mao, Freeman had arranged, via the captured all-China TV and radio headquarters, for all of China to see him now: General Douglas Freeman personally raising the flag, not that of the U.N. or the United States but of the goddess of democracy, above Tiananmen.

Tens of millions of Chinese were watching the scene, glued to their TVs, and they understood immediately. To underscore the point, Freeman then did what he would later refer to as a “Doug MacArthur.” When the two men saluted, Cheng bowed, all of it recorded meticulously by international linkup TV with CNN, Cheng presenting his sword to Freeman. Freeman, not using an interpreter, asked simply, if a little awkwardly, in Chinese, ‘Win shi wei renminfuwu ne, huan shi wei gongchandong fuwu?” —Are you willing to serve the people instead of the Communist party?