by Ian Slater
“Christ, if I’d known that,” Stefan complained, adjusting the porkpie corduroy hat that made him look strangely elfish despite his height, “I could have met you at Eighty-fourth Street.”
“I like to walk,” Alex said, and offered Stefan a chestnut — maybe that’d help his breath.
“No thanks — makes my throat itchy. Listen, I know this is it, but which one do we take care of? Eeny, meeny, miney, mo?”
“What do you care?” Alex asked, unsmiling. “All you need to know is how to work your end.”
“Don’t worry about me, Alexi,” Stefan said. “Could do it with my eyes closed. Just like to know how many are going down, that’s all. We’re lucky Johnny Ferrago didn’t get to tell them anything.” Ferrago had been the foreman of another cell. They’d done their job poisoning the New York water supply earlier in the war, but Ferrago had ended up being taken out in a SWAT team firefight.
Alex quietly stepped to his left on the pathway to let a weaving ghetto blaster with skateboard attached fly through them. Closing the gap, he told Stefan, “All four of ‘em,” his tone unchanged. “Rush hour’s the best time for eeny. Meeny, early morning between two and three. Miney and mo anytime after that. Have you got the rats ready?” he asked Stefan.
“Yeah. Listen, Alex — you sure all four are going down? I mean — man, it’s gonna be an asylum.”
“Well,” Alex said, watching another ghetto blaster approaching, “it wasn’t meant to be a tea party, was it?” Not waiting for an answer, he continued. “By the book, remember. None of your families leave. That’s the first thing they’ll be looking for — a sudden move to another city. All you’ve gotta do is just follow the instructions to the letter and you’ll be okay.”
“Alex?” It was Mike, trying not to look as worried as Stefan, but he was bothered, too. It had come as a bit of a shock. They’d been living with a secret for so long that by now they’d stopped worrying about it ever getting out. And now suddenly they were going to do it. Their lives would never be the same — not after a job this big.
They were approaching Bethesda Terrace, the sun already lost to the skyscrapers. “It’d sure help to know there were others in the same boat,” Mike said. “I mean, I know— yeah, sure we shouldn’t ask.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Alex said. “Are you nuts? Christ, it’s basic. Right, Stefan? Only one of us knows two others— ever. That way we could lose a cell but not the whole group.” Alex cupped his hands to warm them against his mouth. “What is it?” he asked them, sensing a sudden reluctance. “You all want to hold hands? Your wives? You going soft!” He was looking at both Stefan and Mike. “We’ve had perfect cover for over fifteen years, and now you’re going slack-ass on me? Like Gregory?” Gregory was the floater whom the police had found in the East River. “Too old for it?” Alex pressed. “Is that it? Mommy’s boys?”
“Jesus—” Stefan said. “Jesus, Alex. It was — we were only asking.”
Alex turned on him. “Well don’t. Just do your fucking jobs. Or I can send your request for ‘layoff’ to Cheerio.” “Cheerio” was the name they used for Chernko. “He’s got the master list. Knows where everybody lives. We can replace you two quick as I did Gregory. You aren’t the only fish in the tank. We’ve got understudies all me way.”
“Okay, Alex,” Mike said. “Relax. We’re ready to go. No problem.”
“Stefan?” Alex snapped.
“Yeah. Fine, no problem.”
Alex was so angry with Stefan he was about to tell him to clean his goddamn teeth.
When they reached Bethesda Terrace, where the footpath they were on, an extension of East 72nd Street, wound westward, a silence reigned over the three as they approached the winged statue fountain, the water falling from the tapered tier in an uninterrupted veil, the air remarkably clean, a small boy kneeling, trying to crack a thin crust of ice at the edge to put in a sailboat. Alex watched him, automatically looking for any sign that the older man reaching down holding the boy’s jacket was carrying a parabolic pickup mike, using the kid as cover. Even though he knew Mike was carrying a detector, there was always the possibility that its batteries were on the fritz. But then he realized his sudden anxiety was merely a result of Mike and Stefan asking too many questions.
“This is the last meet,” he told them quietly. “After it’s done you fade back into the woodwork.” He told them, if they hadn’t already seen it for themselves, that the ad, like the one for a man in his “early thirties desiring a live-in companion, sexual preference not important, must like cats-no Republicans,” which had activated the Ferrago cell earlier in the war, was now appearing in every major newspaper across the United States. It was Chernko’s “go” signal for Spets “sleepers,” who had so easily infiltrated the U.S. during the KGB’s vershina—”high summer”—of the West’s honeymoon with Yeltsin and the CIS.
Before they parted, they spoke a little longer about incidental family concerns, Alex trying to ease things up a little, showing he understood how they felt, complaining about his kids’ dental bills. “Christ — they’ll break me,” he said, smiling.
“You’d be covered by the Con Ed benefits?” Mike said.
“Yeah but not ‘preexisting conditions.’ “
“What the hell does that mean?” Mike asked.
Alex shrugged. “Anything they don’t want to pay for, I guess.”
Stefan nodded toward the boy across the pool. “That kid’ll fall in if he’s not careful.”
“The weather should help us,” Alex said. “They say there’s a cold front moving down from Canada.”
He was half right. There was a cold front moving down from Canada, but it was the storm brewing over Virginia and moving up the coast that would help them most of all to shatter American morale.
“Oh shit,” Stefan said, and started off around the edge of the pool — the kid with the boat having fallen in and the old man frantically reaching for him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Over three thousand miles away, on the other side of the world, the old Mongolian herdsman entered his gher, reached down toward the four sleeping SAS/D men, first grabbing David Brentwood by the collar, then shaking Choir Williams, Aussie Lewis, and Salvini. Instantly Aussie slipped his hand beneath the del for his pistol. The Mongolian stopped him. “Dogs,” he said quietly.
“Dogs?” Brentwood asked sleepily. “What do you—”
The old man put his finger to his mouth and motioned to listen. “We tell you dogs. They are—”
“Jesus!” Salvini said, whipping the sheepskin cover off him. “Tracking dogs.”
It wasn’t yet dark — no way could they risk a daylight trek from the gher through the desert.
“How far away?” David asked.
The old man made a circling motion with his hand. “Helos. Minutes.”
“Bastards are probably searching every settlement,” Aussie said.
“Right,” David instructed. “Sal, get on your blower and call in our map reference for a FUST — we’ve got no choice. We’re in too far for our helos to help.”
Within a minute Salvini had his whip aerial up through the gher’s smoke opening and broke radio silence, giving their position for a FUST.
“Choir,” Brentwood instructed. “You go first.”
“Ta!” It was an ironic Cockney thank-you.
“Aussie, you and I’ll provide covering fire if any Spets show up to intercept. Sal, you stay here. Aussie and I’ll fan out outside the gher and see whether we can spot them first.” Suddenly Brentwood turned to the old man. “How do you know there are helos and dogs coming?”
The old man was astonished that the American didn’t know. “Herdsmen,” the old man explained — one camel herdsman told another and so on. Then the old man had a stroke of genius for Aussie and Brentwood if they were to make a reconnaissance outside the gher. Camels.
Dressed in their dels high atop the animals, they would be able to see for miles across the plain toward the mountains, and this way eve
ryone else could stay under cover in the gher. Salvini was inside the gher, manning the radio. He’d only used a burst message, and hopefully there had not been time for any enemy intercept to backplot him. No sooner had Brentwood and Aussie mounted their respective camels than a bulbous-eyed Hind E passed low overhead, heading further to the northeast, Aussie waving up at them.
“Silly bastard!” Choir called out.
“Gotta play the part, ‘aven’t we, squire?” Aussie said.
“What are you going to do,” Choir asked, “when they come back and let out some dogs sniffing for us? Thanks to that bastard Jenghiz they’ll have scent from stuff we handled back at the drop-off.”
“Not to worry, sport,” Aussie said flippantly. “The old CT’ll be here in a jiff.” He meant the Combat Talon aircraft.
But for all of Aussie’s patter, they knew it was more bravado than certainty. The “old CT” or MC-13 °Combat Talon wouldn’t be over them in a jiff, and the best hope they had now was the low-flying F-15 Eagles coming in in fluid four formation, screaming low overhead to avoid radar, the first pair closer together than the second pair, the wingman further apart, all four releasing four packs from their hard points.
As quickly as they had appeared over the Mongolian desert, the Eagles were gone in a screaming U-turn, with the high Hentiyn Nuruu as a backdrop. Only when the Mongolian herdsmen from the ghers had retrieved the four drum-size packages and like excited schoolchildren were feeling the silk canopy of the bundles did Brentwood think they might have a chance. Problem was, you didn’t even get a chance to practice a FUST it was considered so dangerous — it was only ever used as a last resort. The best they could do in training was to use dummies to show you how it should be done.
“Go check the helium tanks!” Brentwood called out to Choir amid the excited chatter of the Mongolians as they gathered around to see what was inside the cylindrical-shaped helium canisters. One canister was already open, a FUST harness spilling out. Afraid that some of the FUST tackle might get tangled in the herdsmen’s excitement, Brentwood asked the old man to call his herdsmen off. It took one command, the headman smacking the butt of his slung rifle for emphasis, and they were gone, leaving only Aussie and Brentwood, still on the camels, as Choir checked the packs.
“Bloody lovely in’t it?” Aussie complained. “Bloody lovely. There they are, opening the packs, and I’m stuck up ere having my ass reamed out by this bloody great beast while Sal’s inside having a cuppa!”
“Looks like you got a bum rap!” Brentwood jousted.
“Oh, very droll. Very fucking amusing I’m sure. Let’s see what your ass looks like after—” He stopped as Salvini burst from the gher to tell them the fighter-escorted Talon would be there in twenty minutes.
“You beaut!” Aussie said, slapping the camel’s rump in his excitement, the animal immediately taking off, throwing Aussie two feet in the air before he came crashing down and saw three specks coming out of the eastern sky: Spets helicopters, one of them probably the one that had previously passed overhead. The enemy helos looked to be losing altitude, coming straight for the ghers.
“Only one chance,” Aussie said, calling out to Brentwood, who had just spotted the approaching helos.
Within minutes Aussie and Brentwood, devoid of the dels, showing only their light SAS/D camouflage drill uniforms, were tied together as the headman waved at the three helos. One helo peeled off, the other two fanning out toward other settlements some miles to the south of Nalayh. As the helo came down, blowing up dust of such intensity it was as if the whole settlement had been momentarily obliterated, Aussie could barely see the black rotor spin of the Hind.
The headman holding on to the rope that was tied to Aussie and Brentwood waved up again at the Spets pilot, who saluted back and who could see several of the other herdsmen now jeering at the two Americans, one of the herdsmen throwing patties of camel dung at the two bound SAS/D men.
As the high whine of the Spets chopper’s two 2,200 SHP turboshafts decreased, making a chunky sound in the gritty sand cloud, Aussie could hear the rear door opening where the eight-man assault squad would be soon filing out to take aboard their prisoners and setting loose the dogs. As the door was opened, the head herdsman, in a swift movement that belied his age, shot the pilot point blank with his range rifle, while Brentwood and Aussie, with one pull on the bowline knot that bound them, quickly tossed six stun grenades into the rear cabin. The explosion was loud, yet the sounds of the dogs and men screaming and dying was muffled as if inside a great boiler.
The rotors began to cough to life, but not before the headman had also taken out the copilot, the undernose 12.7mm multibarrel rotary machine gun immobilized by a maneuver that would have done any American rodeo proud, as ropes from two camels, one pulling hard left, the other hard right, prevented it from moving, even if the operator above was still functional enough to try for a traverse. Aussie, David, and Choir went inside the cabin, where four of the Spets were already dead from the concussion, the others in such a state that they fell quickly beneath the enfilade of small-arms fire.
“Bloody waste!” Aussie said, reloading the Parabellum mag, then grabbing a fire extinguisher to put out a small electrical fire that had started up forward. “And a bloody shame none of us can drive one of these friggin’ things.” It was a singular deficiency that none of them had ever thought much about before. They were men who had been trained to survive in the harshest environments in the world, wherever they were dropped, and it was a matter of no small pride that at least one of them could get by in the local language, but piloting a chopper had not yet been added to the course, and for a moment they all felt less for it. But if that was the case, they would soon have ample opportunity to show what they were made of should the Combat Talon and its fighter escort appear.
Already Salvini had received a burst message that ChiCom fighter units were being scrambled to intercept the incoming American F-15 Eagles. And it was only now that Aussie Lewis and the others realized what an extraordinary sacrifice the Mongolians had made for them and how it answered Freeman’s question about whether or not the Mongolians would stand in his way if Freeman drove south. Everything the SAS/D team had seen showed clearly that the Mongolians had no intention of trying to stop the Americans from reaching Mongolia’s hated Chinese neighbors.
* * *
For Freeman, however, this might not be that much help after all, for he could not move south with any confidence so long as the missiles in the Turpan depression in western China were still intact. The British Labour party was playing blackmail with the Tories: We’ll support an overflight if you will agree to higher capital gains tax. It was a question of who would give in. Meanwhile Frank Shirer was being summoned to the wing commander’s hut at Lakenheath. Here a Captain Fowler-Jones, from the British navy air arm, was accompanied and introduced by a Captain Moore of the USAF. Fowler-Jones did most of the talking.
“So you’re not satisfied?”
Frank was taken aback — wasn’t the British officer corps supposed to be known for its polite reserve?
“Haven’t time to waste, old boy,” Fowler-Jones pressed. “You’re not satisfied flying the big jobs?” Fowler-Jones indicated the nine B-52s on the rain-slick tarmac.
“Well,” Shirer began tentatively. “I’d rather be flying Cats.”
“He means Tomcats,” Captain Moore put in.
“Yes, yes, I know. F-14s. Good plane, but we have all the fighter pilots we need, at least for that caliber weapons platform.”
There was a long pause.
“Shot down, weren’t you?” Wing Commander Fowler-Jones said bluntly, opening a file and studying it. “Twice.”
“Yes, sir.”
He looked up at Shirer. “Learn anything?”
Shirer shrugged. “A MiG-29’s a lot better than we thought it was. In the stall slide it can—”
“Yes, quite, but your nerves, and I want gospel on this. Up to snuff?”
“Yes, sir —
I believe so.”
“Believe so? Know so?”
“Know so.”
“Well then,” Fowler-Jones said to the U.S. captain. “That’s that.”
“May I ask—” Shirer began.
“Harriers!” Fowler-Jones said. “We’re very short of men on Harriers. Vertical takeoff and landing. Old carrier pilots like yourself often get quite good at it in a short time. Short takeoff and landing, that is. You game?”
“Yes — yes, sir.”
“You sound hesitant!”
“No, sir, I’m just—”
“Yes, yes, I know. You just expected a top-of-the-line combat fighter. Well I’ll tell you this, Shirer, we need good Harrier men right now. Can’t go into all the whys and wherefores at this time. Need to know. Follow me?”
“Yes, sir,” Shirer lied. The man talked like a telex machine.
“Quite frankly they’re the only aircraft in any supply we have left in this theater. Idea is that if this mission to China goes off then we could give Harrier escort. In-flight refueling of course.”
The Harrier, Shirer thought. Jesus — it might be better than jockeying the Big Ugly Fat Fellows, but it had always been the ugly duckling of production lines with its funny ferry tips or swivel jet nozzles at the end of each wing that made it look more like an aspiring fighter blighted by dropsy than a revolutionary new aircraft.
“Not the new Harrier Two, mind you,” Fowler-Jones explained, to show there was no misunderstanding. “It’s the Harrier One. Single-seater job we’re offering you people.”
“People?”
“Yes,” Captain Moore put in. “The idea is to put in a flight or two of Harriers to go in with the B-52s.”
“Yes,” Fowler-Jones cut in. “Riding shotgun, I believe you chaps call it. If we get the word go, it would mean two Harriers per bomber. As I say, in-flight refueling — in Pakistan before you go over the Hindu Kush to join the big chaps on the raid in. I assume you’re in-flight qualified?”
Shirer still hadn’t shown the kind of enthusiastic response Fowler-Jones had been looking for, and he snatched up his cap and gloves. “Well of course if you’d rather not. I just thought that some of you people were itching—”