CHAPTER FORTY
The navigator in Ebony One informed Air Commander Thompson, the pilot of Ebony One, “We’re coming up on Büyuk Agridome. Otherwise known to you peasants as Mount Ararat.”
“Which one?” the radar navigator asked, crammed in next to him. “There are two peaks.”
“The big one, dummy,” the navigator replied. “The ‘dome’ is a sixteen-thousand-foot massif, the twelve-thousand-foot twin is four miles to the southeast. Four point two to be exact. Iraq and Iran to your right.”
“How far to target?” Ebony’s captain asked as he glanced out to try to pick up the two arrowhead formations of Purple and Gold, assuming they were carrying out precisely the same computations, but not absolutely sure as all cells were on interplane radio silence, the only conversations allowed being those within each aircraft.
“Damn!” Thompson said.
“What’s up?” his copilot asked.
The captain was looking out the port side. They were out of cloud, though mountainous cumulonimbus was all around them, the captain indicating the long contrails that in the moonlight had taken on a sheen that could be seen for miles as the three cells progressed in perfect formation. “Should be cloud pretty soon,” the copilot said reassuringly. He’d barely finished speaking when the entire wave was swallowed up by more cumulonimbus as they approached the mountains of northern Iraq and Iran. “What’d I tell you, Cap?”
“Yep. God’s on our side, Captain,” cut in Murphy, at the rear gun controls.
“Never mind that, Murphy,” Thompson responded. “Keep your eyes peeled. Radar nav — anything on the scope?”
“Just our eight compadres, Captain. A milk run.”
“Right,” Thompson said, encouraged by the esprit de corps after his concern about the contrails. As air commander as well as captain, he shouldn’t have said anything about the vapor trails that might have induced anxiety in his crew, but this was his third combat tour and sometimes he just felt jumpier than others. Besides, like the other fifty-three men in the wave, he had an abiding hatred and fear of the religious fanatics who inhabited so many of the Islamic countries over or near which they would be flying.
One of the most vivid memories of his childhood was the nightly broadcasts of the Iranian-held American hostages, and even though he was too young then to fully understand what was going on he well understood the humiliation of the blindfolded and tortured Americans as they were daily taunted and paraded before the world. His great-grandfather had told him the Iranian fanatics reminded him of Hitler’s SS — they weren’t simply fanatical but were fierce fighters, and their hatred of America knew no bounds.
So intense were the crews’ feelings about falling into the hands of Muslim fundamentalists that everyone aboard Ebony One had opted to carry “the pill” in his first-aid kit just in case.
“Hey,” Murphy said from the rear barbette control above and aft of the swivel-mounted cannon. “Ara— Whatsit?.”
“Ararat,” the navigator told him.
“I’ve heard that somewhere before,” Murphy said.
The electronics warfare officer leaned forward over his plot, shifting his canvas-holstered service revolver further around on his belt to keep it from digging into his pelvis.
“Yeah,” Murphy said eagerly. “Ararat — isn’t that where they had some winter Olympics?”
The navigator drew a line on his plastic overlay from Ararat to the Hindu Kush and from there to the Turpan depression, a red circle the size of a dime on Ararat. “Olympics?” the gunner responded. “Not unless Noah was a hotdogger!”
“Noah?” Gunner Murphy said. “Noah who?”
“For Chrissake—” the copilot chuckled.
“You know, Murph,” the radio nav cut in. “Noah — Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
“I saw that,” Murphy triumphantly said. “I don’t remember any Noah.”
“You jerkin’ us off, Murphy?” the copilot asked.
“What? No,” Murphy said. “Why?”
“He’s jerking us off,” the EWO said. “Right, Murph?”
Freeman waited for word that Cheng had fallen for the bait and was now moving the Shenyang army and other northern reserves up to the Amur front. Once this happened, if it happened, Freeman could launch his armored attacks south across the Chinese nose that poked into Mongolia, then across the eighteen miles that comprised the Mongolian toe of land that likewise stuck into Manchuria, and then onto me semidesert plains of the Gobi and China’s Inner Mongolia.
With the B-52s having taken off from Lakenheath and traveling around six hundred miles per hour, depending on the altitude, it would take them seven and a half hours before they hit Turpan, and Freeman knew that if he was to take advantage of faking out Cheng by his Amur front deception he might have to order his armor south before the missiles at Turpan were taken out. What was it the British had said to him during the battle of Ratmanov Island between Alaska and Siberia? That “it might be a near run thing!” But before it could be anything, Cheng had to take the bait.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
“Aussie!” Brentwood whispered hoarsely. “You got the bag?”
“Got it!” Aussie answered, referring to the plastic bag of wolf dung.
“He’s full of it,” Salvini joked. Brentwood ignored him. “Choir, you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Salvini?”
“Here.”
It was in that order that if Aussie was hit, the wolf dung would be passed. It was not to be lit before dawn — about a half an hour away — and in Freeman’s words, “God help the son of a bitch who doesn’t keep it dry!”
The advantage of the ChiComs having seen the Pave Lows come down was offset now by the fact that as the PLA company spewed out across the rail line and briskly made its way toward the areas where it thought the three choppers had landed, the SAS/D teams were invisible in their black uniforms against the dark forest. And the ChiComs were making the mistake of bunching up, a natural tendency of men facing danger, and their harder, cruder boots made more noise on the ties.
David Brentwood, his ear to the rail, having picked up the first movement of men coming toward him, quickly had the SAS/D team fan out left and right of the tracks. The natural move for him was to have his commandos melt into the woods either side of the track; but he resisted the temptation because it would mean the danger of them crossfiring into their own men, and so they went to ground instead and stayed there, those closest to the rails packing C charges against the rails wherever they could, waiting. Then everything went wrong. They heard the whoosh. Night became day, the line of SAS/D men exposed in flare light showing up like slugs against the patches of snow. Immediately the rattle of AK-47s filled the air, snow flicking up like a swarm of white insects.
“The trees!” Brentwood shouted, and as he did so crushed the acid timer ampoule for the nearest C-4 plastique charge. The bravery of neither the ChiComs nor the SAS/D troops was in question, but Captain Ko’s decision with an advantage of six to one that offense was in this case the best form of defense overlooked a vital component: that once in the trees the SAS/D commandos became the defenders and Ko’s men were exposed. In order for Ko’s men to uproot the commandos, who, as well as having the natural defense of the woods, were still making their way through the woods either side of the railway up to the rail yard and control hut, Ko’s men would have to go in after them.
“Scopes only!” Brentwood yelled, and a burst of AK-47 fire erupted in his direction, shredding some pine bark. It was an order that referred only to those SAS/D troops who had longer rather than shorter range submachine guns, the longer range weapons having been allocated infrared night-vision scopes. With only scopes firing, “blue on blue,” or, in other words, being shot by your own men in the dark, could be avoided. It was a classic case of the Americans adapting to new circumstances quickly, and in the process suddenly turning a dangerous situation to their advantage.