Ian Slater - Asian Front

Sergei Marchenko’s reputation in Siberia as the Ubiytsa yanki— “Yankee Killer”—ace came with him, though in Beijing he was called the cat man, the man of many lives. Whatever he was called he was held in awe, for despite the fact that he was a long-nose — a Caucasian — the Chinese pilots knew they had a lot to learn from his experience. And even if he was aloof and sometimes distant toward his PLA hosts, his ability to take the Fulcrum into a hammerhead stall/slide — to go into a near vertical climb, reduce the thrust of the twin 18,300-pound augmented bypass turbojets, and then let the plane slide earthward, all under 2,600 feet — was legendary. And when the Chinese saw how this maneuver could play havoc with enemy radar — which because of the lack of relative speed momentarily lost the Fulcrum from its screen — Marchenko’s skill was greeted with gasps of admiration.

Politically speaking, Marchenko, a Russian, son of the one-time STAVKA, or High Command, member Kiril Marchenko in Moscow, had no particularly strong beliefs one way or the other about the Chinese, the Siberians — or the Americans for that matter. But he was a Russian, proud of it, and, like Shirer, all he cared about was flying. If this involved killing Americans, so be it. All he wanted to do was to maintain his reputation as the top ace, and he was somewhat chagrined by the fact that unless the Americans crossed the Manchurian border in significant numbers of aircraft, it didn’t seem as if he’d be doing any more than training Chinese pilots as part of the fifty-plane deal.

The fact that their journey to Ulan Bator had been on one of the nights of the baraany zah— the weekly three-day open-air market — meant it had been easier for the SAS/D four to escape the indeterminate boundaries of the flat city where the round, pointed-roofed, canvas-and-felt tent houses, or ghers, inhabited by the Mongolian herdsmen, stood next to modern buildings, the culture of the plains meeting, but not yet quite intermingling with, that of the city.

As Aussie Lewis quickly made his way past the new Mongolian stock exchange building on Sukhbaatar Square, he saw there were not as many Mongolian regulars roaring by in trucks as there were Siberians. It was stark enough evidence of Freeman’s view that the Mongolians were caught in a squeeze between the Han Chinese to the south, whom they detested, and the Siberians, whom they were more fond of but not friendly enough toward to want to be dragged into a war by proxy because of them.

Even so, the political views of the soldiers hunting you, Aussie knew, didn’t make any difference. A bullet from a Siberian AK-74 could kill you as easily as a bullet from the older Mongolian AK-47. His adrenaline up, Lewis didn’t notice the cold until he was well beyond the city’s limits, the khaki color of his blue-silk-lined del making him invisible against the dark foothills of the Hentiyn Nuruu.

By avoiding the main roads, such as they were, one leading south to Saynshand and China and the other east to Choybalsan, Lewis followed the course of the Tuul River for a few miles south, then headed due east, figuring that by skirting the base of the six-thousand-foot mountain he could be at the rendezvous point between it and the higher mountain to the north within the thirty-hour deadline.

All his senses were heightened, more intense, and he could smell the sweet spring grass and feel the cold that was now invading the warm wrap of the del and, as it had done with Salvini, was turning his perspiration to ice. He slowed the pace and got his second wind. He heard a truck coming in his direction about a mile behind him on the rolling grassland of the foothills, much of them still crusted here and there with patches of snow.

Often drivers on the steppes didn’t bother about a road as such, the land being so amenable to vehicular traffic, even in the stonier southern regions of the Gobi, that a driver, providing he had a good compass and/or good sense of direction, could easily make his own road. In doing so, he scarred the topsoil for decades. The earth was so porous, the hold of the grass so tenuous, that once driven over it took decades to heal.

The truck, its headlights two dim orange blobs, was off to his left, following the course of the river, probably heading for some gher settlement of a few nomadic herder families. Often herders were told when and where to move to better pastures by the party, whether they liked it or not. Suddenly something moved in front of him. His hand dove for the 9mm but in a vibrant moonlight he saw it was a tarbagan, a marmotlike animal, scuttling down toward the river. It was then he heard the feint but distinctive wokka-wokka of a helo coming eastward from the city.

He scanned the sky for any sign of a chopper’s searchlights, but in the cloudless black velvet sky of Mongolia, where stars were so clear that they seemed to spangle just above his head, he could see nothing.

He heard the helicopter sound the away and felt reassured by the feet that the SAS/D’s greatest weapon was that they were moving south from the city to escape, before turning east. It was the exact opposite of the direction someone heading out of the city would take if he wanted to head back toward the Hentiyn Nuruu, closer to the Siberian-Mongolian border. All logic would tell the Spets to head north, into the mountains, to where the SAS/D had been inserted, and not to head south, away from the Siberian-Mongolian border.

There was only one hitch, however, to the fallback extraction point east of the city: Jenghiz had been given it, too. After he’d handed the message “prayer” to the president, had he betrayed the extraction point, or had he only had time to say a few words as he’d fingered Aussie Lewis and the other three SAS/D troopers before Aussie had shot him dead?

If Aussie was a betting man, and he indubitably was, then he would say Jenghiz hadn’t had a chance to say anything else. But the thing that made gambling gambling was that you could never be sure. The outside chance was always lying in wait for you. Would the Spets be waiting? If Jenghiz had talked, though Aussie would still bet dollars to donuts that he hadn’t, Aussie, Salvini, Brentwood, and Choir Williams would be hurrying into a trap — which might explain the present lack of local activity. The Spets wouldn’t want to give their hand away. On the other hand, there might be no local activity because Jenghiz hadn’t a chance to say much else.

In Ulan Bator the president was still badly shaken. This “business at the temple,” he nervously joked with his advisers, “is what becomes of converting from the party to Buddhism. You go to the temples and you get killed.” They all laughed at the irony of their chief, who, like so many others in the Communist world, had suddenly become a religious convert after perestroika and glasnost. On a more serious note, the aides pointed out that if the SAS/D men had wanted to kill him, he would have been dead. “They shot the man Jenghiz because he betrayed them, Mr. President.”

“Yes,” the president conceded. “You are right, comrade. I was not the target.”

“Have you shown the Siberians your request from the American general?”

“No.”

The aides understood the president’s wisdom in this. If they gave it to Marshal Yesov’s HQ, the Siberians would want to move even more Siberian divisions into Mongolia.

“But we have to give Novosibirsk something,” another aide put in. “There were Spets in the temple. They saw the guide hand you the prayer strip. You cannot tell them it contained nothing. They won’t believe you, and their suspicion could do more damage to us than—”