With each man carrying a hand-held, calculator-size GPS, none of them had any doubt about finding the place; the GPS could get you within fifty feet of a grid reference. The problem was, would they get there alive? And if they got there, would they get there in time? Their “window,” or time frame, was thirty hours. It was far too deep in enemy territory for a helo pickup, and so it would have to be a fighter-protected STAR — surface to air recovery — pickup. If they weren’t picked up first by the Spets seen at the monastery.
It was only then that Aussie realized that it hadn’t been a deer tripping the wire at all. It had been Jenghiz. All he’d needed was a piece of string, the resulting explosion no doubt pinpointing their position, whereas a transmitter would have been boxed in by the boulders. But right then neither Lewis, Salvini, Choir Williams, nor David Brentwood was burning with the rage of betrayal — survival being first and foremost in their minds.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Meiling hadn’t found anything in the briefcase of any interest except a Xeroxed sheet notifying Brenson of a shadow cabinet meeting on the “China question.” The problem was, what China question? Was it confirmation of one of Beijing’s biggest fears: the possibility of a Taiwanese invasion on its east flank while the Americans invaded Manchuria? The PLA, with over four million in arms, counting the reservists, could more than cope with two fronts — could in fact turn them into victory. But its Achilles’ heel was what foreign businessmen like Jay La Roche had euphemistically called its “internal distribution system,” by which they meant a bad road system — one that was prey to monsoons much more than to enemy action.
In short, the difficulty for Beijing was transporting troops quickly from one part of China to another. Before the ceasefire, the double-decker road-rail bridge across the three-mile-wide Yangtze at Nanking had been hit by some of Freeman’s commandos — SEALs — and the result was a catastrophic bottleneck on the southern shore of the Yangtze that had extended as far south as Wuhan. It had been the biggest single factor forcing Cheng to sue for a cease-fire.
Now the bridge was repaired and the waters about it thoroughly mined, patrolled by Chinese frogmen, the bridge itself ringed by a thicket of AA missile batteries and by two squadrons of Soviet-built MiG-29 Fulcrums. But this kind of protection could not extend to all of the convoy’s rail links, and, taking heart from the resumption of the hostilities between the American U.N. line and China, the underground Democracy Movement was increasing its sabotage.
Cheng needed to know how deep they had infiltrated the party structure and what else they were planning to sabotage should the opportunity present itself. It was particularly important that his agent in London find out what it was about the China theater of operations that was preoccupying the British political parties. Oh of course, he told his comrades, it would most probably be an air attack if the British were involved — a European overflight perhaps, which would mean the attack would come from the west. But where along the thousands of miles to the west? Or perhaps it was to be a flight further north to sever the Trans-Siberian that forked off at Ulan Ude to become the Trans-Mongolian — to bomb it, hoping to thwart any Siberian assistance from the north. But railways were notoriously difficult to keep out of action for long by air attacks. Fake rails and quick mending by ground crew could make it a losing proposition for the enemy.
It might, of course, be an air attack on the missile complex at Turpan, but Cheng had to be sure. If he had to move fighters west, away from the east coast, this would weaken his coastal defenses. Once again he was struck by the fact that you could have all the SATRECON reports, have all the experts and all the computer enhancements you liked, but there were times when there was no substitute for a beautiful woman who was prepared to go to bed with the enemy, especially the ones like Lin Meiling who enjoyed it. She pretended, of course, that she was not promiscuous, and this only made the men more anxious to conquer her. Cheng sent a message to London that Meiling was to find out precisely what the Chinese question was, and to this end she must do whatever was necessary.
This time as Brenson was having a shower, Meiling drew the translucent shower curtain aside. Brenson’s naked body was steaming, filling me bathroom with a dense fog. “Are you finished?” she said slowly, disappointedly. “Already?”
“I’m in a hurry,” he replied, grinning, flicking the towel behind him, ready to dry his back.
“You sure you’re clean?” she asked him cheekily. She had the cake of soap in her hands and caressed it and squeezed it, producing a ring of suds around her forefinger and thumb. “You need someone to wash you,” she said, smiling. Demurely she got into the tub and, pushing herself into him, began massaging his buttocks, kissing his chest, sucking on him before her soapy hands slid between his buttocks, pulling him even closer against her damp, scarlet lace panties.
“Undo me,” she whispered, and in a second the scarlet bra fell to the side of the tub, her breasts rising, pressing-lunging forward.
“Aren’t you going to turn the water on?” she inquired.
“What — oh — yes, of course. Oh, Meiling, you don’t know how much—”
“Shh—” she whispered, and now a gossamer spray of warm water cascaded over them, washing away the soap as, one arm about her, Brenson slid down, licked her, and with the other arm pulled the suction rubber that down from the side of the bath. “Don’t want to break our necks,” he said.
“Or something else,” she giggled.
“Oh Lord — Meiling—”
Suddenly she stepped out of the tub, jerked the long fluffy towel off the bar, and wrapped it about her, prancing out to the living room, her panties still about her thighs where he’d pulled them down in eager anticipation. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Teasing,” she shot back, giggling, pulling her panties up so high they seemed to be cutting into her.
“Why — you little slut,” he yelled boyishly. “Wait till I get you.”
“Have to catch me first!” She was glad to see him fully aroused. At his most vulnerable she would ask him…
There was no time — he took her hard and fast and rolled off her, satiated and silent.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
When the CIS — Commonwealth of Independent States, or what used to be the Soviet Union — was desperately short of cash in 1990, it sold a twenty-four-plane squadron of Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-29 Fulcrum jet fighters to the German Luftwaffe. The Germans, Americans, and others had seen the highly rated Soviet counterair fighter performing at air shows with its computer-controlled maneuvering flaps and the canton lever structure of its twin-finned tail unit demonstrating its agility.