The Claymore’s ear-stunning blast echoed throughout the foothills, its eight hundred steel ball bearings screaming out at supersonic speed — the equivalent of over eighty shotguns fired simultaneously, deadly to anything within four hundred feet of the perimeter. The deer was momentarily lost to view, shrouded in clouds of gritty dust that looked like yellow smoke, the sound continuing to roll down through the foothills and back up into the mountains. In an instant Brentwood and Choir Williams were awake. Salvini, still open-mouthed at their bad luck, was staring at Aussie. “Holy—”
David Brentwood, his eyes temporarily blinded by the dust particles, staggered up, dabbed his shirt tail with his canteen, and wiped his eyes. “What the—”
“Fucking deer!” Aussie said. “Must’ve tripped the wire.”
“Let’s go!” Brentwood ordered, and within two minutes they’d broken camp, each man carrying a cigarette-pack-size GPS — geosynchronous positioning system — his Browning high-power 9mm pistol, and pack, Salvini humping the radio. All of them moved briskly, despite their heavy packs and the unfamiliarity with their dels, the ankle-length, silk-lined tunics of the Mongolian herdsmen. The echoes of the explosions alone alerted everything and everyone within miles to their presence.
Ulan Bator lay ten miles, several hours, ahead, and it would be dark if and when they arrived there. In the daylight they could be seen moving in the direction of the capital. Jenghiz, however, Aussie noticed, looked strangely elated. It was almost as if the explosion had been received by him as a good omen, or perhaps his bright-eyed expression was nothing more than a sudden surge of fear.
Five miles behind, the Spets praporshnik was hurrying his men from their position and cursing his luck. Now the SAS/D team would know that someone would come to investigate the explosion and so they would be doubly vigilant. But then he slowed his pace, the small avalanche of rocks he was starting slowing to a trickle as another realization swept over him — namely that perhaps part or all of their equipment had accidentally exploded and wiped out the SAS/D troop, ending whatever mission they had been on. Nevertheless, he resumed his steady gait, the seven Spets hurrying down beneath the ridge line of one of the foothills. Whatever the situation, he had to make sure. And in any case there was still no reason for the enemy commandos to expect anyone so close on their heels. If anything the SAS/D team would probably expect a Mongolian-forces helicopter to investigate the explosion, and for a moment he was tempted to call the Hind now returning from setting the mine trap at the enemy’s insertion point and have it sent south. But then he decided against it. The absence of a helo would give the Americans a false sense of security — just what he needed to catch up to them.
“Speshi! — Hurry up! We want to be close to them by dark — before they get into Ulan Bator.”
Lin Meiling loved the storms in England. Some of her fellow Guo An Bu agents who, like her, also used the jobs at the Taiwanese consulate as the perfect cover for their PRC activities, complained unendingly about the weather, about the ever-changing skies, governed so much by the English Channel. And why the English Channel? they asked. Why not the French, the Dutch, or European Channel? But Lin Meiling cherished the eccentricity and the vicissitudes of England, though in the larger sense she detested its political system.
The party had given Lin Meiling everything, including her university education in Marxism-Leninism and her unshakable belief in communism despite the vicious attacks from the running-dog lackeys in the Commonwealth of Independent States. Once these had been a brotherly Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, now long betrayed by Gorbachev and Yeltsin and the others, delivered up to the altar of western capitalism.
Oh, they—the West — had tried to topple the party, too, through the agents provocateurs in the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989 when the goddess of Democracy was paraded by the degenerate counterrevolutionaries down Changan Avenue. Well, the party had flexed its muscle and shown who ran China after all. It was flexing its muscle now against the criminal Freeman and his gang. And the party would flex it against any lackeys in England who dared to undo the work begun by the great helmsman, Chairman Mao.
One could see the chaos created in England by the capitalists. The problem was too much freedom — the English and American disease that so affected the young. It even affected Trevor Brenson, who called himself a leftist. The British Labour party was about as leftist as a Tibetan monk. They had no fiber, no toughness to clamp down on the religionist disease, on the free-thought disease of degenerate democracy. Self-indulgence was what they wanted. Trevor Brenson, the Labour party’s much-touted shadow “defence minister,” still claimed he was “socialist,” said he greatly respected Mao, and yet in the bedroom his religion too was self-indulgence.
The party had warned Lin Meiling of what might be required of her to extract information from such a man as Brenson who, despite his Labour party protestations of brotherhood with the workers, was at heart a capitalist lackey. A woman to a capitalist was merely another thing, a plaything, and Trevor Brenson liked to play disgusting games, games that Lin Meiling was sure the great leaders of the party in Beijing would never indulge in. To have sex with Brenson it was necessary to remind herself that she was doing it for the party and greater socialism. If she could find out from Brenson what the Americans were up to in this war, then she could do the party a great service, and no matter her personal sacrifice.
He was late this evening and had rung to say he would not be back at the flat till ten. Liar! He pretended he was hard at work in the shadow cabinet when he was no doubt seeing his wife — the other thing he used from time to time.
Meiling undid the box he had sent her from Harrods — the great socialist store, no doubt. She brushed aside the soft, rustling tissue wrapping, as thin as rice paper, and saw a scarlet bustier and matching scarlet lace panties. He had signed the card, “To M, love T,” careful, as usual, not to use his full name and to write in a hand distinctly unlike that which he usually used — in the event that she might accidentally leave the card around the flat. No doubt the people’s store had thought he was buying the lingerie for his wife, and he would have been sure to pay in cash — no credit card traceable should he be under surveillance by the Tories or MI5. She shrugged off her status as one of his two women— or did he have more? — as easily as she crushed the tissue paper into a tight ball, pushing it into the recycling bag. He was very big on recycling. Well, Lin Meiling determined that when she got what she wanted she would recycle him. It was ten after nine.
When he walked in at ten he smelled roses and saw her sitting, legs drawn up seductively on the sofa beneath a low, soft lamp that turned the scarlet bustier and panties blood red, her long black hair combed forward, draped over the bustier like a tantalizing curtain. Beside her she had a tall drink, her fingers trailing up and down the frosted glass, her lips parting for a moment over the cherry, sucking it, caressing it with her tongue.
He dropped the briefcase and all but tore off his rain-splattered mackintosh, walking toward her, unzipping himself as he approached.
“No,” she said, and turned away.
“Please!” he urged.