Ian Slater - Asian Front

Colonel Soong, hero of the A-7 capture — A-7 being a mountain on the Siberian side of the Chinese-Siberian border that he had overrun earner in the war — was honored to be placed in the breach at Poyarkovo. Cheng knew that Soong was under no illusion about the Americans. It was popular in Beijing to decry them as capitalist degenerates turned soft by a consumer-crazed democracy, and while this might have been true for some of the conscripts at the war’s beginning, it no longer held for the soldiers of Freeman’s Second Army. For the most part they had already been blooded from the landings at Rudnaya Pristan on the coast to the battle for Lake Baikal, and their SAS/D troopers were the jin rui bu dm— the elite. Had there been more SAS/D troops atop A-7, Soong knew it would have taken another battalion as well as his own to dislodge them. And Soong knew that it was because of his experience with the SAS/D commandos that General Cheng had placed him at Poyarkovo, for the Americans, as the Iraqi War had shown, were prone to using their Special Forces as the tip of the spear. It was a spear Cheng wanted to first blunt then smash.

Nearing the rendezvous point in the valley between the two mountains east of Ulan Bator, Aussie paused to get his bearings with the hand-held Magellan GPS — global positioning system—2000. Using the folds of his del to hide even the faint greenish luminescent glow as one hand held the small, fat, cigar-size aerial, the other the GPS, he saw on the computer dial:

USING BATT POW

SELECT OP MODE

QUICK FIX

And within seconds, via the GPS’s MGRS, or military grid reference system, he had a readout and knew he was barely a half mile—867.3 yards, to be exact — away from the rendezvous point in the valley between the peaks. Suddenly there was an approaching thudding sound, and he dove to the ground, whipping out the Browning 9mm, swinging it in the direction of the noise, only to see a ghostly apparition as three shaggy wild horses, manes flowing, were momentarily and beautifully silhouetted against the cutout-moon sky above the steppes. They headed down into a depression off to his left. The thing that struck him was how these wild, semidesert Przhevalsky horses, as the briefer at Freeman’s HQ had described them, had been spooked quickly, either by him or someone else already in place.

He donned the night-vision goggles, which, contrary to public belief, were not easy to wear — indeed they were notorious for giving the men, especially the pilots, who had to use them severe headaches from eyestrain, but at least now they were smaller and easier to carry than earlier models.

Aussie had no sooner put them on than he heard the distant drone of a plane, and above it a higher-toned sound of fighters. Obviously Salvini, Brentwood, and Choir Williams had already reached the rendezvous or perhaps, more accurately, were about to do so, having sent the SOS-AEP — alternate extraction point — burst radio transmission. Whether the AWACs had picked it up before Second Army signaled HQ, Aussie didn’t know and didn’t care. “You beaut!” was the only whispered comment he allowed himself as he made his way toward the pickup point. Then, dimly at first, he saw two shadowy figures moving about a hundred yards ahead of him. He went to ground, wondering if they’d seen him, and in that moment, for a reason he couldn’t explain, he became acutely aware of the sweet smell of the early spring grass sprouting up between the ice crystals of crusty snow.

As his senses were on high alert again, an alert downgraded when he thought one of the figures was Choir Williams. It wasn’t a front-on view he had, but it was one of those moments in which you recognize someone you know from the back. Choir had a lazy monkeylike slouch when he was in the head-down position, a slouch that Aussie unmercifully teased him about during maneuvers. Then both figures disappeared beneath a knoll.

Cautiously Aussie made his way forward, 9mm at the ready, toward the knoll. He had gone about thirty yards when his throat was so dry it felt like leather, a manifestation of his almost obsessive fear of being a victim of what the SAS called “blue on blue”—or friendly fire.

“Aussie bastard!”

It was said in a hoarse whisper, and he swung about to see a figure behind him and heard another voice in front. “Where the fuck you going?”

“Shit!” Aussie whispered in a surge of relief, the heavy, pulsating drone of a big plane — he guessed an MC-130 Talon — drawing closer. “You bastards frightened the friggin’ life out of me.” For a moment he felt the adrenaline draining out of him, a flood of weak-kneed relief passing over him as he gestured skyward with the 9mm. “Am I right? That the cavalry coming?”

“Sure is, boyo,” Choir said cheerfully.

“Where’s Sal?” Aussie asked.

“Up yonder!” Choir said, pointing to a sharp rise about sixty yards away and fifteen feet above the level grassland. “He’s signaling the big bird — penlight code. How come you got lost in the temple?”

“Lost, my arse!” Aussie responded, still keeping his voice low. “I just got out o’ there faster than you three.”

“Can it!” David ordered. “Let’s get ready for the FUST.” He meant the highly dangerous but last-ditch STAR, or more correctly Fulton STAR, surface-to-air recovery technique, used only by commandos and SEALs, the pilot of the MC-13 °Combat Talon on night vision devices, as were the SAS/D. Aussie of course called it the FUCK technique— the Fulton cock killer!

“We’ve been waiting for you for hours,” Williams teased Aussie.

“What d’ya mean?” Aussie retorted, the drone of the plane making it safe to talk, albeit in low tones.

“Got a truck, boyo,” Williams explained, “with a long bloody Ack Ack gun on it. Just drove straight out of the city and you, you poor sod, on your Paddy Malone.”

Aussie now realized that it had probably been their truck he’d seen earlier. “And I had to bloody hoof it,” Aussie quipped. “You bastards!”

The planes — the Combat Talon and fighter escort — were closer, but now there was another sound. At first it was as if firecrackers were going off, but it rose to a crescendo and the sky lit up, revealing the MC-Talon and fighter escort caught in the glare of a high flare, red tracer lazily crisscrossing the sky, seemingly filling the night with red and white dots.

“To the truck!” David Brentwood yelled, realizing that the attempted FUST rescue was over, the STAR technique dangerous enough when everything was going right. In this melee, it would be impossible.

It was David’s quick thinking that saved them, for once they were in the truck, a Zil-151, he ordered them to fire the twin 37mm AA gun at an acute angle skyward, its spitting flame masking it for the Spets or whoever else had reached the pickup point, making it seem as if it were a friendly vehicle, a truck manned by Mongolian regulars perhaps, trying to aid their Siberian friends in trying to deny the SAS/D troop, wherever it was, any possibility of rescue.

Aussie was on me machine gun, Salvini driving, with Brentwood and Choir Williams feeding the 37mm that was spitting out eighty rounds a minute to a height just under ten thousand feet. Aussie’s aim was well away from the U.S. aircraft yet in the general direction — enough to fool anyone watching nearby. But his tracer made an F-16 pilot mad enough to peel off and come at them with his 20mm rotary cannon blazing and dropping two of his six five-hundred-pound bombs from two hard points under the wings, the bombs whistling down into the night. Fortunately they were not laser guided, and exploded wide, but their combined shock wave almost knocked the truck over as me Zil jumped, sped up a small hillock, and came rattling down on the other side, the F-16’s cannon unzipping the earth in a furious run, churning up clouds of dust behind the truck, dust that was now mingling with the enormous dirt cloud thrown up by the bombs, which in turn obscured the truck from the Spets who were firing with everything they had at the American planes.