Asian Front wi-6

by Ian Slater

  The La Roche reporter was licking his lips nervously. Suddenly one of the two side-by-side doors in the long trailer opened and shut. In that moment Choir had seen the dull, bloodred glow from the interior, and through the infrared sight could see a hot, white stream coming from the man who, facing away from the FAV, was urinating. When the ChiCom turned, shaking himself, buttoning up his fly, he looked over at the motorcycle and sidecar.

  Intuitively, Aussie waved. The man waved back and reentered the control center. But a second later both doors opened and David could see the orange spit of a submachine gun, its bullets chopping up the dirt around them. Aussie pulled the trigger and gave the longest burst he could remember, and bodies were toppling from the trailer.

  They were only fifty yards away now, with tracers arcing over from Choir’s position off to the left, ripping and thudding into the trailer until the motorcycle and sidecar were only twenty feet from it. But then the door of the mobile radar hut three hundred yards away atop a dune flung open, and several troops came out firing. Choir swung his fire across toward them. The door closed, but he could see figures moving outside in the dark, their bodies, warmer than the air, giving off an ample heat signature. He fired two bursts, saw one drop and another two scuttling under the van.

  In the trailer it was chaos — men shouting, wood and aluminum splintering from Aussie’s and Salvini’s machine gun fire at what was virtually point-blank range. Brentwood tossed in two grenades and covered his ears. The explosions totaled the trailer, fire and smoke causing the remaining Chinese, about six of them, to come out, one firing a pistol, the other falling, another on fire, and Aussie felt himself slammed back into the sidecar seat, his left shoulder warm and wet. David could now see the motorcycle and sidecar tracks leading from the RAM-C to the radar van and within a minute was over by it, Aussie giving all the weight from his right shoulder to the machine gun’s stock and spraying the hut, one man falling down the stairs, dead before he hit the ground, another coming out from beneath the hut, his hands up, frantically yelling.

  Salvini kept his Heckler & Koch on him while Brentwood tossed in two more grenades. The hut boomed and issued forth a rancid electrical-fire smell, smoke pouring through the shattered door seams.

  Salvini told Brentwood to take them up close to the radar van, then pulled a pin out of the grenade, stood back, counted one, two, threw it at the radar mast, and quickly dashed under the van. There was a bluish purple flash above them, and then the mast was nothing more than a forlorn and tangled web of heat-fused steel, still standing, remarkably enough, but in no shape for reuse.

  “What do we do with him?” Aussie said, indicating the Chinese soldier, his hands still thrust up high in the air, standing about six yards from them. “Can’t shoot the bastard. Can’t take him back.”

  “Let him go!” Brentwood said.

  “Vamoose!” Salvini said to the Chinese soldier.

  “Go on!” Aussie added. “Piss off!”

  The man took off in panic, glanced back briefly, and kept running.

  “Oh, shit!” Aussie said, but he was too late, a mine exploding so powerfully that all Aussie could see in his night-vision goggles was a fine spray like a reddish fountain blown awry in the wind. It was the man’s blood vaporized by a mine that Freeman’s troops called “pink mist.”

  As they were tracing their way back, Choir got on the radio network, informing Freeman’s HQ that “Mount Rushmore is ours. Repeat, Mount Rushmore—”

  “No it isn’t — goddamn it!” Freeman’s loud reply came. “We’re still getting radar signals from the same damn sector.”

  “Maybe so, General,” Brentwood reported, “but they’re not able to send their reports to any RAM-Center because—”

  “Goddamn it!” Freeman shouted. “I called in TACAIR and we’ve lost three Thunderbolts already.”

  It was at that moment that Brentwood, looking at Aussie, experienced a sinking feeling.

  “Jesus!” Aussie said. “It’s in the forest. That trailer we shot up must’ve only been a relay. The friggin’ radar management center is in the bloody forest.”

  “Then,” Freeman shouted, “take it out!”

  With that, Freeman was off the air and silence reigned over the most embarrassed SAS/D troopers in all of Second Army, until Aussie proclaimed, “Must have land lines.”

  “You’re right,” Brentwood said. “Fiber-optic probably. To stop our aircraft jamming their communication they’d have to use land lines running to a central control.”

  “From that trailer we shot up,” Salvini put in.

  “You see any?” Aussie asked. “Anyone?”

  There was no answer.

  “All right, let’s go back,” Aussie said.

  “You’re wounded,” Brentwood said.

  “Nah — just a nick in the shoulder. I’ll be all right. You coming with us, CBN?” Aussie added.

  “I stay here,” the reporter answered.

  “Can the bike and sidecar unit carry four of us back there?” asked Choir.

  “Piece of cake,” Aussie said. “Come on.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

  “So,” Jay said, watching Lana looking at the crushed ice like a crystal ball, turning the glass, her mind obviously not with him. “Tell me about this Shirer guy.”

  “He’s a pilot,” she said, taking another sip. “I met him at-”

  “I know when you met him. What’s he like?”

  “Kind, considerate.” She touched the glass, tracing a line with her finger across the condensation. “He’s nice.”

  “Well,” Jay said, with an air of magnanimity, “I hope it works out.”

  “Thanks.”

  “To—” Jay hesitated. “What’s his first name?”

  “Franklin,” she said.

  “Frank!” The glasses clinked again. “Sure you don’t want anything to eat?”

  She was sorely tempted by the lobster cocktail. “No— I’m—” She yawned. “I’m fine.”

  “Fine! You’re beautiful. If you’d have me back, babe, I’d—” He fell silent. She’d speared the olive with the swizzle stick and he watched her take it to her mouth, leaning forward, her breasts the more tantalizing for being hidden in the uniform, the uniform that carried with it the suggestion of regulations, conformity — the very things that excited him to violate. “God but you’re beautiful. Now don’t get mad. Just a compliment.”

  “I’m not mad,” she said, taking another sip then sitting back against the plush padded wall of the booth. She looked around. It was the first time she’d been to the Davy Jones Restaurant. “It’s not as bad as I thought,” she said.

  “Huh — oh. Thought you’d been here before?”

  “No. Just heard of it. Navy lieutenants can’t afford eating out. Not in restaurants anyway.”

  “Then have dinner. Come on, relax. I’m not trying to hit on you. You believe that?”

  “I don’t know anything about you,” she said, her finger trailing the edge of the glass. “I thought I did once but I don’t.” She took another sip.

  “You think I’m an animal,” he said.

  “Not all the time.” She looked around the restaurant. “When are those papers coming?”

  “Any minute.”

  Before she could ask him any more questions about the papers he rambled on, “Told them to take them up to my room, but I can see now there’s no way you’d come up to sign them.”

  Lana’s smile was a worldly one — a world away from the shy virgin that Jay had married and debased until she’d fought her way back to self-respect. Her look now told him, “Come on, Jay — you take me for a fool?”

  “So,” he said. “I’ll get someone over here from the Excelsior. If you don’t mind a lawyer sitting in.”

  “Why should I?” She took another sip, visibly more relaxed and feeling more in control of the situation.

  “Okay,” he said, lifting his drink. “To a civil parting of the ways. No hard feelings.”

&nb
sp; She sighed, and he saw her eyes going out of focus.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes.” She yawned. “Why-?”

  “I dunno — you don’t look so good. I told you, they work you too hard at that—”

  The thud of her head knocked over the glasses, and Jay was by her side in two seconds. “Hey, babe—”

  The barman came over. “Is there anything wrong, Mr. La Roche?”

  “No,” Jay said sarcastically. “She’s fine. Loves crashing on tables.”

  “Should I call a doctor?”

  “No — she’s got low blood pressure. Happens all the time. She’ll be right in a few minutes.”

  A man appeared from one of the booths, looking concerned, coming over to see if he could help. Jay was lifting her up, putting her over his shoulder. “Better send dinner up to the room,” he told the maitre d’-cum-manager.

  “Certainly, sir. Should I ring a doctor?”

  “No, I told you it’s just a bit of low blood pressure. She’ll be right as rain in a little while. You could give us a hand up on the elevator.”

  “Of course,” the maitre d’ said. “Marge, you clean up the table.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  * * *

  Up in Jay’s room the manager was still fussing.

  “She’ll be fine,” Jay told him for the third time in as many minutes. “But listen, maybe you should hold off on the meal. I’ll call down when we’re ready.”

  “Yes, Mr. La Roche. Of course. Anything…”

  Not long after the manager had gone, Jay heard the phone ring. It was his lawyer downstairs who had been sitting a few booths away.

  “Everything okay?” Jay asked.

  “No problems, Mr. La Roche. They cleaned up the booth real nice.”

  “You switch her glass with mine?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. La Roche. Be through the washing machine in a few minutes anyway.”

  “Fine. Now I don’t want any interruptions for at least half an hour. I’ll call down when I want you. When I call, get your ass up here quick. I want you here when she wakes up. Right?”

  “Of course, Mr. La Roche.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

  When they returned to the dune overlooking the shot-up trailer there was an eerie silence due to the wind having dropped considerably in the last quarter hour. They found a clump of land lines leading into the reforested area and heard voices coming from the direction of the willows.

  Aussie estimated there were about six ChiComs, and that was the number he tapped out on Brentwood’s sleeve. The SAS/D withdrew a hundred yards back up the dune, and Brentwood had his night-vision binoculars resting on the crest. For five long minutes he watched as the ChiCom patrol emerged and walked around the trailer, assessing the damage but careful not to go too near the mine field. Even when Chinese whispered it seemed to be at about thirty decibels. The SAS/D group by instinct and training knew what to do — follow the patrol back from whence it came. Brentwood took the point.

  Aussie, holding back for minute, taking the tail end position, gave himself a jab of morphine. It wouldn’t last long, but hopefully long enough.

  * * *

  As the Chinese returned to the forest, the SAS following them — the infrared footprints an easy pickup with the SAS’s night-vision goggles — not a word was said. From here on in through the willow trees and if necessary deeper into the poplar, not a sound would be made, everything done by feel and by a touch code very much like that used by me SEALs when they too went “in-country.”

  Brentwood, following the fiber-optic line, was sure of only one thing, and that was that for ease of repair, should a break appear in the line, the ChiComs would not have mined the area either side of the land line, as it ran parallel to a line of poplars deeper into the man-planted forest, the ChiCom patrol, by Aussie’s reckoning, no more than five minutes in front of them.

  The four SAS/D men did not rush but used their weapons as one would use a stick to sweep either side of the fiberoptic line to make sure there were no trip wires from ankle to neck height. Had it not been for the infrared goggles that the SAS/D were equipped with, the ChiComs would have vanished from view, but the residual body heat of the six-man ChiCom patrol was visible — at least for a while — and then, suddenly, all trace of them, infrared or otherwise, was gone.

  Brentwood took out his K-bar knife and soon, joined by the other three, was probing the ground for any unnatural seam that would be formed by a trapdoor or tunnel entrance, concentrating on the area where the optic line ended and suddenly plunged underground. That the radar management center was immediately below them they had no doubt, but where the trapdoor was they still couldn’t tell, until by virtue of moonlight that had penetrated the dust beyond the great tank battle, Salvini was able to spot a rather jerky infrared camera ten feet up the poplar as a squiggle in his infrared goggles, the heat caused by the friction of the camera moving so often.

  * * *

  The Chinese officer of the day, his red armband signifying that he was in charge of the first night watch, was watching the four SAS men on the video feed from each of the four poplar-mounted cameras. He saw the six-man patrol come in and asked them, “Were you followed?”

  “No,” the NCO replied confidently. “Not a sound.”

  With that the officer of the day nodded to the video screen, the heat lines of the four SAS commandos plainly visible on the closed circuit.

  Immediately the NCO apologized and offered to take his patrol back up — take care of them right now.

  “Oh yes,” the OOD said, “and what will they be doing in the meantime? You go up the steps, open the double-blackout trapdoor. I don’t want a firefight up there or anything else that will draw any more attention to the forest. They picked up radiant heat from down here seeping up through the trapdoor.” Gently, noiselessly, the SAS/D team was quickly sliding its knives along the seam of the outer trapdoor. The NCO had lost face and begged to go.

  “Very well, Comrade. Redeem yourself, but I don’t want any firing up there,” the OOD insisted. “We don’t know how many other Americans could be in the area or if any of Freeman’s Bradleys will hear a firefight on the perimeter and come to investigate. We risk revealing the whole complex. But I confess I don’t want that SAS/D team up there to get back to tell Freeman where we are. Use your knives or bayonets and go through the trapdoor they haven’t yet discovered. Remember it’s about thirty feet away to the east so you should have ample time to come up behind them and kill them all. No firing. Understand?”

  “Yes, comrade.”

  The OOD enjoyed the irony of it as the ChiCom patrol readied to make its way up again, the fact that the very land lines — fiber-optic cables that were far less vulnerable to EMP or other jamming from the Wild Weasels, etc. — were American made. General Cheng had purchased the best cable you could get from La Roche Industries.

  Up above, Brentwood tap-signaled Aussie, Salvini, and Choir to back off, and having been alerted to the one TV camera by Salvini, his infrared goggles picked up the other three that made a square, and the four SAS/D men went beyond this square so they were no longer visible to the monitoring eyes on the four poplars that served as markers. What the SAS/D men had no way of knowing was that the alternate entrance and exit to the underground complex was not in the more or less cleared square area bordered by the four poplars but was some twenty to thirty feet deeper in the wood, so that despite the SAS/D precaution of moving beyond the cameras, the Chinese patrol would nevertheless be coming up behind them.

  But then everything went crazy. The earth began to tremble, two enormous trapdoors were thrown open from the hydraulic pressure, and up from the thirty-square-yard piece of ground bounded by four of the poplars a thing began rising from the forest floor, looking for all the world like a great bat-eared beast, four radar dishes atop a steel girder tower ascending into the night.

  Below, the Chinese OOD bellowed his orders — the American general had launched another TACAIR ov
er the battlefield a few miles off and Cheng had ordered the camouflage mast radar be put up immediately so as to throw up a radar net that could serve the deadly ChiCom triple A anti-aircraft fire, which included SAMs.

  The six Chinese rushed forward toward the SAS/D team, but Aussie and Brentwood were already to ground, having heard the ChiComs the moment they’d started to run, and in a deadly burst of Heckler & Koch nine hundred rounds per minute of 9mm Parabellum, Aussie and Brentwood cut down two of the Chinese less than thirty feet from the edge of the radar mast’s well. A boomp! erupted from Choir’s Winchester 1200 riot gun, sending a cloud of perfectly aerodynamically constructed darts or fléchettes cutting through poplar and willow leaves like a scythe and taking out another two attackers.

  “Aussie, take the tower — Sal, you and Choir cover him!”

  Before Brentwood had finished speaking there was another boomp! from the shotgun and one more member of the Chinese patrol fell, propelled backward, screaming and clasping what remained of his face. Choir fired yet another fléchette round down into the retractable radar tower’s well to keep Chinese heads down. He had the high ground advantage like the other three members of the SAS/D troop, and, like two men guarding a narrow bridge, they only had to stop a few who were trying to run up from the well on two narrow stone stairways.

  He was reloading when he saw Brentwood using his Heckler & Koch as a staff, smacking aside a ChiCom bayonet and clubbing the man in the face with the H & K’s steel butt. It was in moments like these that the SAS/D men’s extraordinarily tough physical training stood them in good stead. The man went down, but to make sure Brentwood gave him a bone-crunching kick in the head.

  “Come on, come on!” Aussie hissed. He was talking to the tower, willing it up faster so that he could jump one of the girders of the triangular construction. He had to wait for the bat ears to go well beyond him before he could step aboard the tower as one would an elevator as it passed your floor. The Chinese had fired no flares so as not to pinpoint their position for TACAIR.