The newspapers were full of it — except La Roche’s tabloid chains — and Frank was looking forward, like many others, to seeing La Roche put away. If La Roche had been locked up for what he’d already done against some of the underage boys and girls he’d had picked up to perform oral sex on him as well as beating them up he would the in jail. So far, however, his money and influence had thwarted any such charges. But now they had him cold on the selling of weapons to the PLA through his Hong Kong front men, one of the Hong Kong Chinese having “spilled his guts,” in La Roche’s words, in return for not being prosecuted and being under the protection of the government witnesses program.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Pave Low’s blades chopped the air, its FLIR-forward-looking infrared sensor — guiding it over the corrugations that on the radar were the ridges radiating out of the Hentiyn Nuruu Mountains fifty miles northeast of Ulan Bator. The helicopter’s vibrations could be felt in the bone. Aussie Lewis and Salvini were asleep, Aussie snoring so loudly that, because of the Pave’s relatively quiet rotors, he could be heard by the others.
David Brentwood and Choir Williams were reassured by their colleague’s apparent cool, but David had seen it often enough before — something that civilians never believed, how men, going into harm’s way, in this case flying over hostile territory, about to land on a dangerous mission, could manage to fall asleep. But they did. For like mountain climbers who were sometimes able to strap themselves to the pitons on a narrow ledge and take a nap, their nervous energy had been exhausted by the meticulous preparation, the adrenaline put in reserve as the body demanded rest before the final push. David had seen SAS and Delta commandos catnapping with only a few minutes before the descent or the drop. David shook the Australian awake, then Salvini.
“What time is it?” Aussie asked.
“Oh four hundred hours,” David said. “Dark as pitch. No moon. Pilot must be sweating it.”
Aussie Lewis began strapping on his gear: haversack containing his Mongolian herdsman’s outfit, two three-and-a-half-pound Claymore mines, ten top-feed mags of 5.7mm ammunition for the P-90, a canteen of water, six hand grenades, folding spade, and furled “washing line” satellite antenna. They were still on radio silence and would remain so until they accomplished their mission and/or were back at the insertion point. Should their mission have to be aborted, a radio burst — an SOS giving their position — condensed into a fraction of a second would be permitted, plus any information on Siberian troop movements into Mongolia. The latter, often called the sixteenth Soviet republic, still had Siberian advisers and their units along the railroad from Ulan Ude near Lake Baikal south to Ulan Bator, the rail being a branch off the Trans-Siberian.
The stony terrain being too risky for a landing at night, the Pave Low would hover as Brentwood, Salvini, Aussie Lewis, Choir Williams, and Jenghiz fast-roped down with their heavy packs. Aussie Lewis was putting on rubber gloves to prevent rope burn.
In preparation for the mission that would take them through the foothills and down to the pasture-rich plain before Ulan Bator, none of the men had been permitted to wash or shave for several days, and the air in the chopper was, as Aussie Lewis put it, “like a bloody parrot cage.” But better this than the smell of aftershave, which could cost them their lives. Jenghiz swore that a plainsman could smell foreigners a mile off. The cabin’s red glow gave way to an eerie green, and the Pave Low’s ramp opened, the rope uncoiling fast like a huge snake frantically descending into the abyss.
Jenghiz was the first to touch ground, and the dusty smell of cold wind and of a few spring bushes that had flowered high in the Hentiyn Nuruu, together with the rushing sound of water nearby, flooded him with a nostalgia that brought tears to his eyes.
“Right,” David Brentwood said as they all regrouped. “Jenghiz, lead the way.”
“Okay, roger,” Jenghiz said cheerfully. David had told him several times that the double affirmative wasn’t necessary, that either “okay” or “roger” would suffice, but Jenghiz would simply smile and still say, “Okay, roger.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Praporshnik—or Warrant Officer — Petrov, in charge of the seven-man Spetsnaz commando team, checked his gear: an AKS-74 5 .45mm with noise suppressor, front pouch magazines, half a dozen RGD-5 grenades and five F-1 grenades, an RR-392 VHF transceiver, a “Dozhd” air mattress, ten-power B-N1 night binoculars, gas mask, canteen, map case, and 9mm Makarov pistol. Finally he checked his MR-1 throwing knife attached to his calf.
Next he turned to his radio operator, helping him to check his R-357 high-frequency burst transmission radio, AK-74, 9mm Makarov pistol, and RPG-22 antitank grenade launcher. The third man in the seven-man Spetsnaz commando team carried a 7.62 SVD sniper rifle along with 12cm-diameter contact-fused PMN antipersonnel mines. Like the other six members he also carried one of the MON-50 trip wire fragmentation mines that could destroy anything up to 150 feet away and which were now being collected in the middle of the squad.
The MON-50s would be used to “square off” the area where the transmitter had first indicated the American helicopter had stopped, either by hovering or landing to let off the four SAS/D commandos. Whether or not the American chopper had actually touched down, the Spetsnaz couldn’t be sure, only that the transmitter had indicated the zone exactly. It had all been easier to arrange than anybody at the Glavnoye Razvedyvatelnoye Upravleniye — GRU — or military intelligence quarters — had had any right to expect. The guide, Jenghiz, was well known in Khabarovsk for his knowledge of eastern Mongolia and so his relatives in Ulan Bator were just as easy to trace. He had been given a simple choice by the GRU: Take the cigarette-lighter-size transmitter they gave him, or “we’ll kill all your relatives.” Praporshnik Petrov joked how he wished he’d been given the same chance to be rid of his mother-in-law.
The Spets had been worried that because of the rugged, mountainous area north of the capital the transmitter would at times be “blinded” by the natural terrain. For a while this had happened, but then they’d been in luck and picked it up again.
The seven-man Spetsnaz squad’s orders were specific, for the guide Jenghiz did not know the purpose of the SAS mission, acting as guide only. The Spets had opted not to use their Hind A helicopter to overfly the SAS/D group, as this would only create a firefight, and the purpose of the SAS/D mission might the with the firefight between Spets and the SAS/D. GRU HQ had ordered Warrant Officer Petrov to take at least two of the SAS/D alive — if not all of them. Petrov, however, and the six men in his squad agreed that the only way you were going to take an SAS/D man alive was to get him in his sleep — overpower the guard and be onto him before he had a chance to know what was happening. For this too a chopper was ruled out — it could only be used at night, but even then only when the SAS/D team was far enough away not to hear its approach. The Spets were not worried about the SAS/D getting out, for when the American helo came back, in two or three days or whenever, it would set off the trip wire once it landed, the resultant fusillade of fragmentation pieces from the MON-50s’ explosions so deadly that the American helo would look like a sieve.
As the Spets chopper, carrying only two Spets, rose then banked to fly due north for ten miles toward the map reference that marked the SAS/D drop-off zone from which the transmitter was now moving and where the Spets would plant the mines, the other five Spets spread out following Petrov, whose radio operator was locked onto the transmitter signal. The SAS/D commandos would almost certainly stop to hide and rest just before dawn rather than risk being seen approaching the capital in daylight.