The chud-chud-chud of the five-rotor chopper not yet visible was coming closer, and then suddenly its shadow passed over the gully and went into a turn. The pilot, no doubt having seen the splayed figure by the bike and realizing that the gully was too narrow to land, turned the helo about, coming down as close as he could to inspect the scene in the indistinct light, the rotors blowing sand every which way, obscuring his view.
The chopper suddenly rose, turned abaft, further away from the fallen Kawasaki, then lowered its rope ladder. Two Spets, AK-74s slung across their backs, were already descending.
Aussie knew the RPG-7 well enough from enemy arms training. He knew there’d be no backblast to give him away as he moved behind the rocks further away from the Kawasaki. With the chopper about 170 meters away, he was well within range of the RPG-7’s five hundred meters.
Unlike with the controls of the Sagger or Spigot antitank weapons, he would have no toggle by which to steer either horizontally or vertically. It was strictly line of sight: aim-hit or miss. The chopper was drifting now about 180 meters away.
Leaning against a boulder, Aussie inhaled, exhaled half his breath, held the rest to subdue any nerve tremor, saw the lower Spets about to jump from the ladder, and fired, feeling the strong jerk backward. The pilot must have seen something coming at him and banked hard right, but with the warhead traveling at two hundred meters per second, the helo couldn’t escape the antitank round hitting it below the left engine intake, the Hind exploding like some huge airborne animal, pieces of shard metal, much of it aluminum, looking like flaccid skin as they flew through the air, falling to the earth like so much tin among the stones, then the deafening roar of me gas explosion spewing out bodies like toys.
The man who had been at the bottom of the ladder had been blown to the ground by the downdraft and was now walking, or rather stumbling, around, holding his head. Aussie immediately raced forward. The man saw him coming and fumbled for the AK-74, but Lewis had three shots off, each one hitting the Russian. The man was still alive when Lewis reached him, holding his head as if in pain, as Lewis pumped another into him. “That’ll cure your headache!” Aussie said. “And this one’s for those kids back there in the pit. You bastard!”
Aussie was back on the Kawasaki and took off, pushing the beeper, mad at himself again. He should have been able to fell the Spets with one shot and not got mad when he was doing it. His old instructor in Hereford would have chewed him out for that, but then the old instructor wasn’t dog tired and on the run.
“No excuses!” he told himself. “No bloody whining, Lewis. Now come on, you air cav. Where the fuck are you?”
They — two Blackhawks — were locked onto the beeper via an AWAC feed, and they were coming in low over the Mongolian sand with.50s nosing out the doors and four F-15 Eagles flying cover, and within eleven minutes a Blackhawk’s rotor was stinging Aussie with small stones the size of marbles.
“Jesus Christ!” he complained as he jumped aboard. “Fucking near stoned me to death!”
“Welcome aboard,” the corporal said.
“Thanks, mate,” Aussie said, shaking his hand. “You saved my bacon.”
The corporal, shouting over the roar of the rotors as they headed across the DMZ to the U.S.-Siberian territory east of Baikal, handed Aussie two envelopes. One was from Freeman’s headquarters, telling him to report there to Major David Brentwood immediately upon his return. The second was from Salvini and Brentwood. The note was terse: “You owe us a bundle. We were hoisted aboard Talon quicker than you.”
“Bastards!” Aussie said.
“Who?” the corporal yelled, his voice barely audible.
“My mates,” Aussie answered.
David Brentwood had suggested to Freeman that Aussie Lewis be excused participation in “Operation Front Door.”
“He wounded?” Freeman asked.
“No, sir, but he’s been on the run for—”
“Then he’ll have his second wind,” Freeman said. “This isn’t a lunch break. Operation’s so important, every man designated is needed, especially with a commando’s experience. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well I want you to go over the plan once more — fill in Lewis once he gets here or en route to the target. I’ll leave the decision to you. He’ll have six hours to sleep before the mission.”
David Brentwood was about to say that Aussie would appreciate that but his discretion got the better part of cheekiness with Freeman. One thing you couldn’t fault Freeman for: work. And one thing that drove Washington up the wall was the general’s determination to lead his own men into action. He’d done it at Pyongyang, over Ratmanov Island, at Nizhneangarsk, and now he was willing to do it again. Like Patton, Rommel, and MacArthur before him, he had a fatalism in the face of fire that either awed men or struck them as bone stupid.
When Aussie Lewis showed up, his blue-and-white Spets shirt was filthy, torn to shreds; also his del was missing.
“What happened to your dress?” Choir asked.
“Yeah,” Salvini said. “You can’t come like that.”
“I can come anywhere,” Aussie said. “Where we goin’?”
“Little job on the old rampart,” Salvini answered.
“What fucking rampart?”
“Genghis Khan’s, you ignorant man,” Choir said. “Not the Great Wall — another one in Manchuria. Only a couple of hours flying from here.”
“Christ, I haven’t had breakfast!” the Australian replied.
Choir Williams tut-tutted. “It’s breakfast he wants. Should’ve kept up with us then, boyo—’stead of playing silly buggers on that bike.”
“Yeah,” Salvini added. “And you owe me five bucks.”
David Brentwood smiled inwardly at the esprit de corps among the commandos, at the unemotional emotion of welcoming Aussie back.
“All right,” Lewis said, as someone threw him a towel and a bar of soap. “What’s it this time? Mongolian gear or Wall Street bankers?”
“In our own kit, mate,” Choir Williams said. “Full SAS.”
Aussie was impressed. “Must be serious then.”
“It is,” Brentwood confirmed, pointing down at the computer-enhanced, three-dimensional map of northern Manchuria. “Simulated attacks all along the line.”
“Simulated?” Aussie asked. “You mean we just yell out at them? Frighten ‘em a bit?”
“Real attacks,” David answered. “Half a dozen places, from Manzhouli in the west to Fuyuan in the east near Khabarovsk. Right across the Manchurian front.”
“But if we go full frontal—” Aussie began.
“That’d be crazy,” David Brentwood finished for him.
“Agreed,” Aussie said.
“The general knows that,” Brentwood assured him. “What we have to do is create so much racket — make it look like a full frontal attack — do more than yell at them, Aussie. Tie down Cheng’s troops all along the Manchurian border so that our Second Army can make its dash south of Manzhouli into the Gobi where Freeman can hit them on their left flank.”
“If it works,” Sal said, “we’ll be halfway to Beijing before Cheng wakes up and can withdraw any of his forces from the north to reinforce his left flank.”
“All right,” Aussie said, “but how are we going to convince the Chinese it’s a full-out attack when it isn’t? Don’t you think they’ll twig to that?”