by Ian Slater
“Gold Leader to Ebony Leader. Acknowledge.” The lone plane in Purple also acknowledged.
“Radar nav,” Ebony Leader called. “You read me? We drop on your call and your call only. Okay?”
“Affirmative, Skipper!” But the air commander had difficulty hearing him over the thundering of the engines and more hammering as the bandits’ cannon tore into several of the other B-52s, the latter continuing to jettison flares, radar-emitting dummies, and chaff to foil the MiGs’ heat- or radar-seeking missiles.
“Bogeys closing…” Ebony One’s electronics warfare officer yelled. “Splitting. Two for our nose, two for the tail. Get ‘em, Murphy!” The tails of six of the remaining seven B-52s seemed to explode, tracers arcing out from them in long, easy, orange curves, the curves closer now in a cone of fire against the oncoming ChiComs, one barbette out of action, its gunner dead.
Then the bombers were out of cloud again.
“Angels — five o’clock! Angels five o’clock! Harriers!”
“ ‘Bout fucking time!”
Far below, the pilots could see the rugged, deep defiles of the Tien Shan Mountains, crooked-edge wedges of black, fringed with ice cream snow, the silver streaks of streams seen one moment, lost the next, then flat, mustard-colored desert terrain far to the northwest around Turpan, the four MiGs making another turn.
At 0753 plus eleven seconds, the SAM missile radars-twenty miles away around Turpan — were picked up by Ebony’s EWO. The fighters were coming in from the starboard side from a distance of four miles, firing air-to-air missiles, the slower but higher Harriers coming down to meet them. Ebony One’s copilot took over chaff and flare control, Thompson, as air commander, keeping Ebony One steady, leading the rest of his wing, flashes of light all about him, and the powerful stench of sweat.
At 0753 plus sixteen seconds Ebony One’s navigator informed the radar navigator, “Final GPI — counters are good.”
“Roger.”
The navigator checked his indicators. “A half mile off jack, pilot. Make five-degree S turn to right.”
“Roger, navigator,” Thompson acknowledged. “Taking five degrees S turn right.” They felt the plane suddenly buffeted, momentarily rising in a gust, and thought they’d been hit, but it was the shock wave of the explosion of Ebony Three, hit by an Aphid, the flares it had dropped for decoy degenerating in the cold, fleeting cloud. Either that or the flares had malfunctioned. That left six planes out of the original nine.
“FCI… is… centered,” Thompson advised, his voice vibrating along with the rest of Ebony One, the aircraft having been hit somewhere on the starboard tail plane near the actuators.
“Stand by for initial point call,” the navigator announced. There was a burst of orange light — a Harrier gone. Ebony One’s navigator had the infrared scope on the area just south of Turpan where the missiles were supposed to be. For a moment he thought they weren’t there, but the next second saw them coming within range, spread out over a wider area than the Israeli satellite photos had indicated but still in the “target grid” that was two miles long by a quarter. The navigator waited, waited, then centered for the initial point call. “IP — now, crew.”
Ebony One’s navigator grabbed the stopwatch, index finger resting on the stop button as he heard the air commander “Stand by, timing crew. Ready… ready… ready… hack!”
The radar navigator pressed the button on the stopwatch, the navigator, trying to keep his voice as calm as possible, reporting, “Watches running.” A computer could suddenly go on the fritz in the melee of electronic war — a stopwatch was preferred.
It was 0754. “Time till release, three minutes twenty seconds. Captain to Nav. Understand. Three minutes twenty seconds.”
“Cross hairs going out to target area,” the radar navigator advised, watching the cross hairs of his sight flicking in and out, then in, in, in, closing over the target area like a rapid slide show, each slide showing more detail as Ebony One, still shaking, closed distance south of Turpan, the desert around the Turpan depression being held at bay here and there by orderly oases of irrigated reforestation.
They heard a muffled explosion nearby, their cockpit momentarily lit up as brilliantly as if a flashbulb had gone off. The captain made a mental note to check out why the flares and chaff hadn’t worked as well the second time around— though he suspected that it was due to the four MiG-29s, probably the only four Fulcrums in all western China, coming in behind the B-52s’ engines’ exhaust, risking the 12.67mm fire from the barbettes in hopes of getting a lock-on with heat-seekers.
There were five B-52s remaining, and no matter what the MiGs did, Thompson had irrevocably committed all remaining B-52s to the bomb run. The only good thing, he thought, was that there’d be no SAMs coming his way as long as he had the fighters mixing it up, trying to bring the five bombers down. Then again—
“Sixty seconds gone!” he announced.
“Target area,” the radar navigator reported, “at zero one niner degrees, twenty-eight point one miles.” A scream all but jolted Thompson out of his seat, but by the time he’d intuitively grabbed for his volume control the scream had gone and in its wake he could hear the crackling of fire aboard the stricken B-52 off to his right, and through the headphones a dull, persistent hammering of 30mm raking it before the fighter was over them, already a mile off to the port side, Murphy trying without success to nail him.
“Looks good direct,” the captain’s voice came to the radar navigator.
It was 0754 plus forty-eight seconds, ninety-three seconds still remaining until the air commander could give the TG— to go — signal, at 0756 plus twenty-one.
Suddenly they had lost the fighters.
“You bastards!” Murphy yelled excitedly. “Too good for ya!” But nobody paid him any attention, and three seconds later they saw the first white trails of the “telephone poles” becoming silvery in the moonlight, the first of the SAMs climbing toward them now the fighters had gone. Earlier the Wild Weasels, F-4G Phantoms, had taken out their share of SAM radar sites, but there were too many clustered about Turpan for the Phantoms’ Shrike air-to-ground missiles to get all of them. Besides which, the Phantoms were now mixing it with the ChiCom MiG-29s, getting the worst of it, so much so that soon all four Phantoms were gone, either blown up in midair or crashed — no chutes visible.
The two wingmen of the four remaining B-52s started to rail away, one to starboard, one to port, amid a static-broken stream of orders, the other two B-52s above going into sharp banks, one to the right, the other to the left, below Ebony One. They didn’t bank too quickly, otherwise the SAMs would have time to change course, and not too slowly or the SAMs would hit, but in any case both of them acting as bait for the ChiComs’ surface-to-air 12A missiles — four of which, “pairing,” were streaking up for the lowest aircraft.
Ebony One’s radar navigator reported, “I’m in-bomb now, pilot. Center the FCI.” He meant the aircraft-to-bomb site director system.
“Roger. FCI centered.” In a sudden gust Ebony One yawed then slipped to port before Thompson got it back on track. The radar navigator was now speaking to the navigator. “Disconnect release circuits.”
Suddenly Thompson saw the “tents,” the missile silos, bright as day, lit up by one of the two flaming B-52s as it exploded, without sound, over fifteen thousand feet below. “Release circuits disconnected,” the radar navigator confirmed. “Connected light on… ‘on.’ Light on…” Now they heard the noise of the exploded B-52 reaching them.
“Bomb door control valve lights?” the navigator asked.
“Off,” the radar navigator said, the electronics warfare officer ready to drop more flares should the bandits return.
“To go,” Thompson called. “Driving one two oh seconds.”
The navigator was checking me Doppler as the plane rose slightly then settled down, the radar navigator waiting anxiously till zero minus fifteen when he would take up the final count. He heard Thompson counting: �
��One one five to go… one hundred TG… seventy-five TG… sixty TG… fifty TG.. thirty TG… FCI centered.”
“Bomb doors coming open,” the navigator called, me radar navigator now hunched over the visible sight, oblivious to me buffeting of increasing AA fire and taking up the count. “Fifteen seconds… thirteen… twelve… eleven…”
The plane rose sharply again, this time the result of a wind gust in the bomb bay.
“Nine… seven…”
Thompson flicked up the safety cover on the bomb button, hearing the navigator: “Four… two…”
Thompson pressed the button. “Pickle! Pickle! Pickle!”
There was another explosion as a SAM, its electronics successfully interfered with by Ebony’s EWO, detonated somewhere off to their left even as Thompson heard his counterpart in the remaining B-52 releasing his load.
The bombs released, Ebony One rose like a thing suddenly freed from bondage, the bay door closing. It was only several minutes later that they could see the roiling fires and enormous shock waves moving through the explosions that made the land look as if it were boiling. Along with destroying a line of missiles, the bombs had more importantly for Freeman’s Second Army also wiped out the Turpan missile control center. But as the two huge bombers turned, the three remaining Harriers above them, they knew that the ChiComs might yet come after them — or would it be that because fuel was so precious to the ChiComs they wouldn’t waste it on a pursuit? The two EWOs scanned their scopes. All they could see was the three Harriers and each other. They thought they might escape any further enemy interdiction.
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
La Roche wanted Francine and fast. He rang down to the D Trovatore bar. “Get up to the penthouse,” he told her.
“I’m wanted upstairs, Jimmy,” she informed the barman.
“Be a good girl,” he said. What he meant was, do as you’re told if you don’t want trouble.
When she arrived the air was cloying with the perfume of roses, as if a bucket of it had been spilled, and he was already in his robe, flashy gold silk with dragons rampant.
Wordlessly, roughly, he walked up to her, pulled off the tight black blouse and, taking the knife from his private bar, he cut the bra off her. The first time he’d done it she’d frozen in panic, but now she knew it was part of the ritual. “You bitch!” he told her, pulling the bra off and throwing it to the floor. “You’re all the same, right? You all want it. Go on!”
It was her cue, and wordlessly she slapped her hands beneath the folds of his robe, grabbing it firmly, pulling him gently toward her, her tongue wetting her lips.
“That’s enough!” he commanded, and told her to get into the bedroom where she could see the strap and photograph of his estranged wife, Lana Brentwood, on the side table. Francine hated this part, but she feared La Roche more. She doubled the strap over and almost lethargically smacked his buttocks. She would have to wait until he told her to do it harder.
“More,” he commanded, lying facedown on the Chinese brocade bedspread, his hands clenching and unclenching as her whipping aroused him. “Come on!” he called urgently. “Come on!” Quickly she dropped the strap and felt under him. “Now!” he told her, and she brushed her hair quickly aside as he rolled over on his back and she went down on him, her tongue flicking back and forth then sucking and flicking back and forth again and all the time him gasping, “Lana…Lana…”until his back arched and fell, arched again and again in spasm, his whole body shaking until he was satiated. He lay there, exhausted, arms out, staring at the ceiling.
“Get me a beer!” he ordered. “Then clean me up!”
As he held the beer, Francine, in order to complete the routine, had to take off her panties and lick him dry.
“A new deal?” she ventured. She’d been with him long enough to know that the routine, his fantasy of being back with Lana Brentwood, was always triggered by some financial orgasm he’d had, but she’d never asked him anything until after — otherwise he wouldn’t pay her the five hundred on top of her weekly take at the bar.
“A new deal!” he said. “No, sweetie, it’s an old order that was renewed three hours ago. We’re rushing it in from Hong Kong to my benefactor, Mr. Cheng. Jesus, three million — just like that!”
“For what?” she asked idly.
“For what? Hey, Francine, what are you — fucking cub reporter?”
“No, I was just wondering—”
“Well don’t. It’ll hurt that pretty little head of yours.” He took another long pull at the beer, then arched his back again in the ecstasy of her tongue between his legs darting in and out like a snake. It wasn’t just the money she did it for— Francine liked the sense of power, however transitory, it gave her.
“Cheng’s gonna have a big surprise for that fucking Freeman, I can tell you that.”
She didn’t press for details. Besides, she’d learn about whatever it was when the time was right; the La Roche tabloid chain would spread the word from coast to coast and overseas of any great American defeat.
She had asked him one time, when she was a little drunk, whether it bothered him that what he did was against the law.
“Fuck the law. That’s why I’ve got lawyers.”
“No,” she’d said, “I mean against — you know — against our boys. Against our country.”
“Fuck the country. What’s it done for me? When are you gonna learn, Francine, that you have to look after number one?” He’d paused, a slatternly look on his face, as he’d raised himself on his elbows from the bed. “In your case that means looking after me — right?” She had nodded obediently.
Now he ordered, “Give me the donut. Nice and slippery.”
She rounded her lips into the shape of an O and worked it back and forth on him, careful that her teeth didn’t touch.
“Oh Christ, that’s good. You’re a good kid, Francine.” He reached down and tousled her hair.
* * *
By midmorning Freeman’s advance column, his logistical tail following, was seventy miles south of Lake Nur, having now crossed the blunt arrowhead of Manchuria that sticks out into Mongolia, taking the vital sixty-to-seventy-mile shortcut across the Mongolian territory, swinging to his right, southwest toward the desert regions of the Gobi rather than due south, which would have led the columns into the swamps of Huolin Gol on their left flank.
The only report Freeman received that morning apart from Washington’s insistence, which he ignored, that he not be at the head of his troops but back at headquarters where he belonged, was an intelligence report that the Jewish underground, led by the woman Alexsandra Malof in the Jewish Autonomous Oblast near Khabarovsk, had been waging a pitched battle with ChiCom regulars. They were trying to sabotage their own flatcars near Khabarovsk so as to deny Freeman transfer of the hundreds of lighter, automatic-loader 3 block M1A2 tanks en route from the United States but held up because of the SS Southern Star’s delaying tactics of having mined the seas off the West Coast’s bases.
“How’s this Malof lady doing?” Freeman asked Norton, who had come up alongside in a Bradley IFV. Sometimes Freeman’s phrases—”this Malof lady”—conjured up an old world charm that seemed strangely arcane coming from a general of high tech ordnance. Norton liked it.
“Pretty well, General. You remember she’s one tough lady.”
“Remember?” Freeman asked, nonplussed, his face now a mustard color from the fine dust.
“Yes, sir, she was the woman the Siberians arrested in Khabarovsk early in the war and shipped out to Baikal. When we hit Baikal before the cease-fire she escaped. Wound up in Harbin for a while where she got the message through to us about Cheng moving everything over the Nanking Bridge.”
“Ah!” Freeman said in happy admiration. “I remember. We decorated her!”
“Yes,” Norton confirmed, “but I ‘d have thought that after what they did to her at Baikal then at Harbin she would have had enough.”
“Woman after my own heart,” Freeman sa
id, his goggles now completely coated by dust so that he had to take them off, the dirt caked about his mouth and eyebrows. Only his gentian blue eyes seemed visible. “Onward and upward! Right, Norton?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, tell our boys to give her underground lot what support we can, and tell that new logistics wizard, Whitely, at Chita that no matter how many tanks get through to Chita I want them shipped down via Borzna and Manzhouli ASAP!”
“Yes, General.”
“Norton,” Freeman added, “keep close liaison with all those logistic boys. I’ll need up-to-the-minute estimates of just how far back our tail is. I don’t want it too stretched out and have to do what the damn Siberians do — follow their supplies. We don’t go to our supplies — they come to us. Understood? I want our ammo to be near my tanks wherever the tanks are.”
“Yes, sir,” Norton yelled out from the cupola of the Bradley. “I’ll tell them.”
“Make sure that Whitely knows he mightn’t get enough flatbeds coming from Khabarovsk if the Jewish underground can’t stop the Chinese sabotaging those flatbeds. He’s to use his initiative.”
“Will do, sir.”
“How about those light fast attack vehicles?” Freeman asked.
“The FAVs are three miles back, General, with the SAS/D teams if we need them.”
As Norton’s Bradley fell back to convey the general’s orders, Freeman began “coattailing,” sending a dozen twenty-three-ton Bradleys running out at thirty-five to forty miles per hour either side of the main column, creating a huge dust wail like a smokescreen, certain to obscure the column and creating the impression of having much more armor than they actually had. No Chinese had been spotted so far. Indeed, there was nothing ahead but the long, pebbled semi-desert, taking on a brief, luxuriant green color here and there from the spring runoff. But beneath the light cover of grass the dirt was like talc powder and the further south they would go, the hotter it would get. Everything seemed to be going well, and it made Dick Norton nervous.