Ian Slater - Asian Front

Apart from the chance of a resupply drop to aid a possible escape, the SAS/D’s only confidence lay in what they’d been told about Mongolian herdsmen at Second Army’s HQ briefing. For the Mongolian, long used to the vast emptiness and often rocky harshness of the steppe, to refuse a stranger hospitality was to be regarded as a cur — not fit for the company of humans. The problem, as Aussie Lewis reminded the others, was that in every group there was the possibility of a cur, or, as he more colloquially put it, the danger that some “son of a bitch” who’d had a “bad day on the range” might take his frustration out on the strangers rather than on the expensive camel or mare who’d kicked him. Or, if any one of the herdsmen was a good party man, he might saddle up and bring down the wrath of the authorities on the small group of long-noses.

The four men were now half a mile from the gher, walking down a ridge, careful to avoid its summit lest they silhouette themselves against the brightening dawn. A gust of wind quickly gathered itself into a spiraling eddy like a miniature tornado and David Brentwood hoped it wasn’t an omen, like the first trickle of a grain of earth that starts a smothering avalanche.

He tried to dismiss his fear as unworthy of the SAS/D team, but he remained distinctly uneasy, and as if to confirm his suspicions, spiraling clouds of dust could be seen weaving their way through the knee-high spring grass with surprising speed, lifting the topsoil with them, at times hiding the ghers from view. Brentwood hoped he hadn’t made a mistake, that soon they would be safe and he could have Salvini send a transmit requesting a drop.

If Brentwood hadn’t made a mistake, Freeman had. Assuming that Cheng’s orders for the air conditioners indicated a summer, not a spring, offensive, Freeman had allowed a battalion of lighter, tougher Block 3 M1 tanks with their new gun and modular armor to be given a lower priority on his Sea-Lift resupply convoys, so that the newest and latest tanks were only now leaving the U.S. west coast for the Siberian and Manchurian theaters.

Meanwhile, Freeman knew Cheng would be building up his echelons of tanks, Freeman’s G-2 estimating the Chinese T-59 to American M1 ratio at four-to-one. There was no doubt that the M1 was the superior weapons platform, with its see-through smoke and laser range finders, but no matter how good a range finder was against a T-59 and no matter how much better me M1’s 120mm cannon was against the T-59’s 105mm, the best tank commander in the U.S. Army knew that if you had to kill four tanks against the enemy killing just one of yours just to stay even, you were in deep trouble.

But first the M1s had to come up to strength, which meant the convoys had to get through unmolested. This was considered a cinch — after all, while the Chinese had seventy-five submarines, only two were nuclear. Besides which the U.S. SOSUS — sound surveillance system — underwater microphone network along the U.S. coasts could, it was said, pick up a whale’s fart and classify the whale by species, which was a gross exaggeration, but was a measure of the confidence the Pentagon had in the SOSUS. It could certainly classify any ship from a threat library of known prop cavitation sounds in the same way a mechanic could tell the make of a car by its engine sound printout.

Manhattan’s lights spread out below his penthouse like spangled jewels, Jay La Roche was celebrating his court victory — already drunk on champagne and ordering one of his covey of lawyers to go get some “chicken,” by which La Roche meant young boys whom he could play around with later.

Francine, who’d started as a bar girl in La Roche’s D Trovatore and who had been “promoted” to his stable of “fillies,” as he called them, wasn’t amused. It wasn’t that she cared much one way or the other about the kids that La Roche would be having it off with, but she saw his request as a rejection of her that night. She knew that for her it was a love-hate thing with La Roche, but she couldn’t help it. The things he made her do sometimes turned her stomach, but for the security his money and position brought her, she figured being humiliated every time they had sex — he’d urinate on her — was a temporary inconvenience. Animal that he was, he was the one man who was untouchable in the city — as in the way his lawyers had beaten the “treason” charge, for example. However cruel he was, and he was, if you were with Jay La Roche you were protected from “out there.”

Now Jay, slowing down his drinking, eyes bright from a snort or two of angel dust, was announcing a new plan to the assembled party. He was atop the grand piano, boasting that La Roche Industries was going to go ahead and do what it had intended to do before the “buffoons” from Washington “falsely accused me”—that La Roche Industries wasn’t going to be put off going to visit the guys and gals at the front to show La Roche Industries’ continued support for the American war effort. There was a lot of yahooing and clapping. Francine noticed a face in the crowd that she’d seen in the newspapers — some politician or other. She remarked on the fact to Jimmy, the barman, who was wrapping a towel around another bottle of champagne.

“What’s that senator doing here?” she asked.

“Congressman,” Jimmy corrected her, running the bottle along a line of sparkling tulip glasses. “He wants to be seen with Jay. Don’t we all.”

Francine still didn’t get it. Oh, she didn’t mind what Jimmy was doing with Jay La Roche, ready to go up and have it off with La Roche whenever La Roche rang for him, but she told Jimmy she didn’t know the congressman was gay. He wasn’t, and Jimmy was shaking his head at her. Francine was an all right kid but naive as a babe — mostly about herself. More than once, as when Jimmy had to go up to the penthouse when La Roche had pulled a knife from the drawer and cut off her bra, it had taken him half an hour to calm her down before he realized that she sort of liked it. The danger, not knowing the rules, somehow made it more exciting.

“Isn’t he running a risk?” Francine said. “What if he’s photographed by—”

“Don’t worry,” Jimmy assured her, his voice all but drowned out by the party. “The congressman won’t get his picture in the paper. See that gorilla by the door?”

Francine sipped some champagne. “Yeah.”

“Wears size thirteen — D. Specializes in stomping on cameras. Congressman’s safe so long as he does what he’s told. Votes the way La Roche tells him to and as long as he keeps La Roche’s wife stationed up in Alaska.”

“He can do that?” Francine asked.

“Jesus Christ, Francine. When you gonna learn La Roche has these guys’ IOUs all over the friggin’ place. Remember that guy—” A hand came out of the crowd and snatched four glasses of champagne without a word.

“And thank you, dear—” Jimmy said. “That congressman who shot himself.” Jimmy reminded her. “Hailey— ‘bout a year ago?”

“No.”

“Hey, Francine. You stoned or what? Anyway this congressman was asked to do La Roche a big favor. Congressman didn’t want to do it, so La Roche showed him a few Polaroids of the congressman with a page boy.” Jimmy paused, pouring the champagne. “Pretty, too. Anyway, the congressman was caught between a rock and a hard place as they say. Couldn’t pull off the favor. Couldn’t bear the photos coming out for all his kids in college to see. So bang! Funny thing is, La Roche’s papers gave him the front page: ‘Tragic Death,’ blah, blah, blah!”

Francine wasn’t listening. She was anxious to get to the powder room to take another snort. It made it easier to go down on him and lick him behind, which is what he really liked after he got his load off. He was still up on the piano, singing “North to Alaska,” the flunky congressman standing in the crowd of flunkies with that fixed “I’m-having-a-great-time-Mr.-La-Roche” stare on their faces. Reelection cost ten million these days, and without La Roche Industries it would be a near impossible run.