by Tom Clancy
Clark was shown to a pallet near the cargo door of the plane. On it were several green crates, and John waited until he was alone after takeoff to inspect them. Along with the crates was a bottle of Iordanov vodka and a handwritten note.
Enjoy the vodka as a gift from a friend. The rest… a repayment of a debt. Stay safe, John.
It was signed “Stan.”
John picked up the subtext of the note and the gift. The FSB regarded this assistance as repayment in full for the help that Clark and America had provided Russia on the steppes of Kazakhstan.
The IL-76 transport flight landed in Beijing exactly thirty hours after Clark left Baltimore, and FSB agents at the airport collected the three men and the crates and drove them to a safe house north of town. Within an hour, Sam Driscoll and four men from Pathway of Liberty, the fledgling rebel force, arrived and drove them back to their barn hideout.
Domingo Chavez met John Clark at the door. Even in the low light Ding saw the circles under Clark’s eyes, the discomfort on his face after the long journey and the fight in Maryland. He was a sixty-five-year-old man who had been traveling for more than thirty hours, crossing twelve time zones, and he looked every bit of it.
The men embraced, John took some green tea offered to him by Yin Yin, and a plate of noodles in a salty ground soybean sauce, and then he was shown to a cot in an upstairs loft. The two prisoners were placed in a locked stall in a basement, and two armed guards were set outside.
Chavez looked over the equipment Clark had brought in from Russia. In the first crate he found a Dragunov sniper rifle with an eight-power scope and a silencer. Ding knew this weapon well, and it immediately gave him ideas about the operation to come.
Next he opened two identical crates, each containing a single RPG-26 shoulder-fired anti-tank disposable grenade launcher.
These weapons would be perfect for knocking through an armored car.
There was also a large container with two RPG-9 rocket-propelled grenade launchers and eight finned grenades.
Other crates contained radios with high-tech digital encryption modules, ammunition, and smoke and fragmentation grenades.
Ding knew better than to hand over a grenade launcher or an anti-tank weapon to the Pathway of Liberty. He had quizzed them on their knowledge of their weapons and the tactics they would need to employ in order to use them effectively in an attack, and he decided that the twenty or so young Chinese would best be used either providing security for the escape route after the attack or else making a lot of noise with their guns during the attack.
Chavez discussed the feasibility of the operation to come with Dom and Sam. At first the three Americans discussed whether or not the mission had any chance at all for success.
Ding was not exactly a cheerleader for the exercise. “No one has to go. It’s going to be tough. Hell, we don’t even know how many security will be in the motorcade.”
Driscoll asked, “We’re using them, aren’t we? The Pathway of Liberty kids.”
Chavez did not disagree. “We’re using them to stop a war. I can sleep easy knowing that. I’m going to do what I can to keep them as safe as possible, but make no mistake, if they can get us close to Chairman Su, we take the shot, and then deal with the consequences. None of us will be safe after that.”
They brought the Chinese into the conversation, and when Chavez told Yin Yin that they wanted to try to attack Chairman Su’s motorcade as it came into the city from Baoding, she said she could help with advance information about the route.
They set up a large city map on a table in the barn, and the three Americans and the young rebel girl looked it over.
Yin Yin said, “We have a confederate at the Beijing police department. He is reliable — he has given us information before when we want to target a procession.”
“Information to help you attack?”
“No. We have never attacked a government motorcade, but we sometimes hold signs off the overpass when they come by.”
“How does your guy at the police department know?”
“The Ministry of Public Security is tasked with sending motorcycle police officers to the overpasses, on-ramps, and off-ramps to hold the traffic along the routes. Our man at the police station will be on the detail, along with dozens of other police. They are only told at the very last moment, and there is a rolling system they use where they only are given their next blocking point at the time they are to go there.”
“There must be dozens of options the motorcade could take to Zhongnanhai.”
“Yes, this is true, but that is when they are already in the city. The police traffic blocks start when they hit the Sixth Ring Road, and continue on into the city. We cannot attack them before the Sixth Ring Road, because we won’t know when he is coming. We can’t wait too long after Sixth Ring Road, because then there are too many options. Even if we did know which road he was on, we would not have time to prepare an attack.”
Dom said, “So it sounds like the Sixth Ring Road is where we need to set up the hit.”
Yin Yin shook her head. “No. They will have much security there.”
Driscoll groaned. “Sounds like our options are few.”
The girl nodded. “But that is good. There are only two rational options for the motorcade to take right after passing the Sixth Ring Road. The Jingzhou Road or the G-Four. Once we know which one of these two motorways will be protected by police, we can have time to intercept them before they hit the city road network.”
“Sounds like a crapshoot.”
Chavez said, “It’s fifty-fifty. We’ll have to position directly between them and haul ass to the right ambush point.”
On Wednesday evening the three Americans, Yin Yin, and two young Chinese men went to both locations in a small van with tinted windows. They would have loved to have been able to see the lay of the land in the daylight, but they didn’t find a suitable location on the G-4 until nearly ten p.m., and it was after midnight when they came across a fair ambush point on the Jingzhou Road.
The G-4 location was the more ideal of the two. There was good cover from a tree line to the north, and a quick egress route via a road that led into open farmland and then hit a major intersection on the other side, meaning very quickly after the ambush Chavez and company and the Pathway of Liberty rebels could disperse into the city.
On Jingzhou Road, however, it was more open. Yes, there was a grassy hill that ran along the north side of the straight eight-lane thoroughfare, but the southern side was lower, just above the level of the street, and a congested mass of apartment blocks and streets behind it meant it would be difficult to race away during morning traffic.
Chavez looked over the layout of this potential ambush site and announced, “We can hit from both sides, and put a gun way over on the pedestrian overpass to the north. Someone will need to be on the highway at the rear of the convoy to keep them from backing out through traffic.”
Driscoll turned all the way around to face Ding in the darkness. “I’ve seen my fair share of L-shaped ambushes. Never have heard of an O-shaped ambush. No offense, Ding, but I think there is a reason nobody’s ever done that. It’s so everybody doesn’t shoot each other.”
Chavez said, “I know, but hear me out. We’ll be attacking from all sides, but if we watch our fire we should be okay. The guy on the overpass will be shooting down. The guy to the south on the highway will be firing from a vehicle, shooting below the level of the overpass. The Pathway of Liberty will be on the hill, shooting down into the motorcade, and I’ll be on the other side with the scoped and suppressed sniper rifle, picking off people from the window of one of these apartments.”
“How are you going to get in an apartment?”
Ding shrugged. “Details, ’mano.”
* * *
They returned to the barn to find John Clark awake and examining the weapons he brought in from Russia.
Chavez had planned to leave Clark here at the barn during the attack and not have hi
m there at the ambush site. He had a faint worry that Clark would want to go on the operation, but he told himself that John would recognize that a man his age, with one good hand, could do only so much.
Ding walked up to John while he inspected the row of weapons stacked on their crates. He seemed to take special interest in the two anti-tank weapons.
“How you holding up, John?”
“I’m fine,” John replied as he inspected the rifles leaning against the wall, the wooden cases of grenade launchers, the cans of ammo and grenades.
“What’s on your mind, Mr. C?” Ding asked, suddenly worried Clark thought he could have some role in the action to come. As far as Chavez was concerned, that was out of the question, but he was not looking forward to pulling rank on John Clark.
“I’m wondering where you want me tomorrow morning.”
Chavez shook his head. “I’m sorry, John. But I can’t let you go with us.”
Clark looked at Chavez now, and his eyes narrowed and hardened. “Want to tell me why, son?”
Shit. “It’s going to be a rough one. I know you can hold your own. Hell, you proved that once again the other night in West Odenton against the Divine Sword. But our only shot of getting away from this is to be a fast hit-and-run. You know you can’t run with the rest of us. Hell, I’m too old for this shit.” Ding said the last part with a smile that he hoped would defuse the angry glare he was getting from his father-in-law.
But Clark kept the look on his face as he said, “Who’s going to operate the anti-tank weapons?”
Chavez shook his head. “I haven’t figured that out yet. We’d have to have a shooter a good two hundred fifty yards back at least, and that would take one of our guns out of the fight, so I—”
Clark went from a hard look to a smile. “Problem solved.”
“Come again?”
“I’ll sit back with both twenty-sixes, back up the exfil route, and I will engage on your signal. As soon as I’m done, I’ll head back to the trucks.”
“Sorry, John. The exfil route won’t give you line of sight on the road.”
Clark walked to the map. Looked it over for about ten seconds, five seconds at each of the two circled ambush points. “Well, then. This overpass gets me line of sight on everything if they hit here, and if they hit here, then this hilltop will do the trick.”
Ding saw Clark’s idea instantly, and it was damn good. He was mad at himself for not seeing it, although he suspected he was just predisposed to keeping John out of the fight.
In retrospect, he should have known there was no way Clark would just wait at the barn.
“You’re sure about this?”
Clark nodded; he was already kneeling down to look over the anti-tank weapons. “These weapons might make the difference between success and failure. You need everyone to bail out of the cars in the motorcade. Boxing them in and picking them off with sustained RPG and rifle fire might just make them hunker down and hope their armor can absorb the damage until they are rescued. But if they see a couple of vehicles blown fifteen feet into the air, you can be damn sure everyone will want to get the hell out of their cars and trucks.”
“You can fire it left-handed?”
Clark snorted a short laugh. “I’ve never even fired one right-handed. At least there is nothing to relearn.”
“What about the two Divine Sword men in the basement?” Sam Driscoll asked now.
Clark answered back with a question of his own: “What about them? You’re not getting squeamish, are you?”
“Are you joking? Those two fucks killed Granger and half the security staff. Plus five CIA officers, and they tried to whack Ryan’s girlfriend. I was wondering whether we were going to draw straws or flip for the pleasure.”
Clark nodded. There would be no pleasure in executing the two Chinese special-forces men, but they were the ones who had killed in cold blood.
Chavez said, “Sam, you’ll drive the truck at the rear of the hit. You’ll keep the prisoners with you, shoot them, and leave them in the vehicle.”
Sam just nodded. A couple years earlier he’d gotten in some trouble for shooting men in their sleep, even though it had been necessary. He did what he had to do then, and he’d do what he had to do now.
SEVENTY-FIVE
Fourteen Marine F/A-18C pilots took to the skies over Taiwan at midnight. They climbed into heavy cloud cover over the island and adopted flight paths to appear on PLA radars as if they were heading for regular CAP stations in the strait, just as they had done dozens of times before.
The ROC F-16s on station began leaving their sectors, as if the approaching flights would be relieving them, again to give the appearance to the Chinese that these radar signatures were just fighter planes on fighter missions, protecting the island from centerline incursions.
But not all the jets were flying as fighter planes tonight. Many of them, Trash’s and Cheese’s included, were equipped for a strike mission, and their destination was not a space of cold black sky over international waters.
No, their destination was the Huadu district of Guangzhou.
Fully laden with ordnance and extra fuel, Trash’s F/A-18C weighed more than fifty thousand pounds, and the controls felt sluggish. This Hornet felt like a different species from the nimble dogfighter he had flown when getting his two gun kills, and this plane even felt different from how it did the day before, when he shot down his third enemy fighter, an Su-27, with an AIM-9 missile.
There was no way in hell he could dogfight with all the bombs and fuel; if any J-10s or Su-27s came after his flight, he and the others with a strike loadout would have to dump all the air-to-ground weapons from their pylons and concentrate on their survival.
That might save their lives, but it would also ensure they would fail their mission, and they had been told they would get only one crack at this.
As the fourteen aircraft — flying in flights of two and four — approached the strait as if to go on station, no Chinese planes came up to meet them, as the weather was bad tonight and there would be plenty of opportunities for air-to-air engagements during the day tomorrow.
They met a pair of ROC refuelers over the strait, and this might have seemed to be an anomaly to PLA radar officers, but it would not raise concern. It looked as if this group of flights would just be loitering on their CAPs a bit longer than normal, which would not have triggered any alarms for the Chinese.
Once Trash and the others topped off their tanks, they turned to the south, still looking like most every fighter signature to fly west of Taiwan for the past month.
And then things got interesting.
Trash and the thirteen other planes dove out of thirty thousand feet, down toward the deck, on a heading that took them to the west. Their speed increased, and they tightened up as much as they could in the dark night, and they adopted a heading that took them out into the South China Sea.
Trash and Cheese were two of the six jets on this mission tasked with dropping ordnance on the China Telecom building in Guangzhou, a target that neither of the men understood really, although they had been too busy in the past eight hours since their initial briefing to worry about the larger context of their roles.
Four other Hornets each carried two two-thousand-pound JDAMs, Joint Direct Attack Munitions. These were Mark 84 iron bombs with tailkits that increased the weapons’ accuracy and the distance from the target the pilot could release his payload. The weapons were incredibly accurate, but no one on the flight knew if they would even be employed, as the GPS satellites that flew overhead were flicking on and off like table lamps with shorts in their wiring. The decision was made to outfit the fighters with the JDAMs for the simple reason that the survivability potential of aircraft dropping JDAMs at altitude from distance was better than the other option.
Dumb bombs dropped from low altitude.
That role went to the B-team on this mission, Trash and Cheese. If the first four Hornets could not get a GPS signal to allow them to drop thei
r weapons, then the B-team would dive in. Both F/A-18s carried the two-thousand-pound Mark 84 iron bombs, two on each plane. The Mark 84 bomb had not changed at all since it was dropped by F4 Phantoms over Vietnam nearly fifty years earlier.
Trash found it ironic that with ultramodern aircraft in the U.S. inventory, such as the F-22 Raptor and the F/A-18E Super Hornet, and with ultramodern air-to-ground munitions, such as laser-guided bombs and pinpoint-accurate GPS weapons, he and his flight lead were flying into battle in twenty-five-year-old airplanes that carried fifty-year-old bombs.
In addition to the six planes designated for ground attack, six more had a strictly air-to-air role this evening. They were fully loaded with AIM-9s and AIM-120s, and they would fly out to meet any aggressors that approached the squadron.
The last two planes in the mission were loaded with HARMs, high-speed anti-radiation missiles, to take out enemy SAM sites along the route.
All the pilots wore NVGs, night-vision goggles, which gave them the ability to see both their HUDs and the terrain outside, although they all knew the NVGs brought an additional hazard to their already dangerous operation: if any of the men had to eject, they needed to remember to pull off their NVGs before punching out, as the weight of the device on the front of the helmet would snap their necks during the ejection.
* * *
At one-thirty a.m. the Hornets flew fast and low, screaming over the waves as they headed southwest. By now they all knew the Chinese had scrambled fighters and alerted their coastal defenses, but for a few moments more, at least, the PLA had no idea what the group of planes’ intentions were.
After a heading change announced by the strike leader, the aircraft turned due north as one, directly toward Hong Kong.
Trash was the eleventh of the fourteen planes, and he kept his eyes on his HUD, making sure he didn’t slam into the water or another aircraft as he made his turn at three hundred feet above the surface. With a quick smile he wondered how to say “What the hell?” in Chinese, because he expected the phrase was being spoken in every radar room on every PLA base along the coast to the north.