Cheng, nonplussed by reports of sightings of Freeman’s forces attacking both at the dunes to the east and regrouping in the tunneled area, had to decide now whether to rush down more troops from the northern armies on the Manchurian front. This attack of Freeman’s might well be a feint like that used against Hussein in ‘91, with the main body of the U.S.’s Second Army’s AirLand battle strategy yet to strike all across the Manchurian border as Freeman had done before shifting his attack south.
It was then that Cheng decided he needed more up-to-date intelligence, and the truth was General Cheng believed that no one could deduce more from interrogation than he could; this Malof woman, for example, the Russian Jewess who had led the underground resistance in the Jewish autonomous region on the Manchurian border and who had just been recaptured north of Harbin after several months of freedom following the cease-fire. She had been a great help to the Americans with her band of Jewish bandits harassing China border traffic all along the Black Dragon.
Whether or not this harassment was itself part of a larger set piece in the Americans’ overall battle plan would tell Cheng a great deal about Freeman’s strategy. Cheng knew that they also had, in Beijing Jail, an American SAS/D trooper, Smythe, who might be of use as well, knowing how the SAS/D worked as auxiliaries to main attacking forces. Accordingly, he ordered them both rushed to the Orgon Tal railhead with any other prisoners who had been captured within the last week or two. By four p.m. he should have at least sixteen POWs — mostly Chinese June 4 or Democracy Movement members — and saboteurs caught around Harbin, including the Russian Jewess.
Meanwhile he assumed Freeman was attacking on two fronts locally: upon the dunes to the east of Orgon Tal and through the sandstorm-blasted corridor, and accordingly gave the order that his heavy guns, especially the towed M 1955 203mm with its eleven-mile-range, 2,200-pound shells, his three-mile-range Attila Mk11 multiple rocket launchers and his D4 122mm seventeen-mile gun with its rate of fire of six to seven rounds per minute, be moved as fast as possible into the middle of the southern end of the corridor. Cheng’s troops positioned the guns on an east-west axis atop a hundred-foot tongue of clay that ran east to west for several thousand yards a few miles north of Orgon Tal railhead, so that the artillery and the railhead line formed a rough T, the artillery in effect protecting the railhead.
Cheng envisaged his trap now as a dragon’s mouth. The teeth would be the mine fields atop the network of tunnels that the American tanks would have to negotiate first, while at the back of the dragon’s mouth came the flame of the artillery, the latter’s mobile dish radars sitting like clumps of high ears atop the ridge not visible beyond thirty feet in the dust storm.
Cheng entered the Orgon Tal railway station’s waiting room, as bare of human comfort as anyone could imagine, looking more like a barrack that had been opened to the searing breath of the Gobi. But at least it afforded some shelter from the storm. The sixteen prisoners were told to stand. They ranged from a small, wiry student, shaking so much Cheng could actually hear his teeth chattering, to an old man in his seventies, his face creased like leather.
“It’s hot in here!” Cheng told the student contemptuously. “Why are you shaking?”
“I’m cold,” said the boy, about fourteen years old.
“You’re guilty!” Cheng said, his arm and hand rigid, fully extended, tapping the boy’s shoulder with such single-minded and increasing force that the boy looked as if he would collapse. The boy had already wet himself in fear.
“You are all guilty!” Cheng said, looking about like an angry schoolmaster. In his experience it was the best possible way to break down a prisoner’s resistance. Criminal or not, everybody was guilty of something, all the way from murder, to petty theft as a child, to sexual fantasies they could not possibly confess to those they loved, to resentment of the party. Yes, they were all guilty.
“You!” Cheng said to a man in his mid-forties, a worker in a fading blue Mao suit. “What instructions do you get from the Americans?”
“None, Comrade General.”
Cheng looked at him and believed him, but it didn’t matter. Often they knew more than they realized. Cheng was still unsure if this corridor attack was merely a feint to hide the fact of a massive U.S. attack south from the Amur to grab all Manchuria. He walked behind the prisoners.
“Look to your front!” a major bellowed. There was a shot — a worker’s face exploding like a melon, parts of his grayish brain scattered on the sandy wooden floor.
One prisoner, the boy, gave a moan and collapsed. Cheng pushed him gently with his boot. “Wake up. Get up!”
The major kicked the boy. “Get—”
“No!” Cheng told the major. “Don’t hurt him. Help him to his feet.”
The boy tried to get up but dry-retched and stayed on his knees, looking strangely like a wet cat. There was another shot, and the boy’s torso crumpled and seemed to melt into his arms before he fell sideways with a bump into a pool of his blood.
It was imperative to Cheng to be unpredictable in such circumstances. This held more fear than most people could bear. “I will return in a half hour. I want to know what your orders were from the Americans. Tell the major — word for word. If you tell the truth you will receive reduced prison sentences. Whatever you say will be carefully checked, and if it is found that the information you have given is incorrect, you will die — more slowly than these two.” He indicated the worker and the student.
As Cheng walked out he told the major, “I want those reports in half an hour.”
“Yes, Comrade General.”
The major had only four guards and so asked who of the prisoners could read or write.
A man in his late fifties, though he looked much older, and Alexsandra Malof indicated they could.
“Very well,” he said to Alexsandra. “You take half the group — the old man the other six. Take their statements including your own.”
“I have no pen or paper,” the old man said.
“Neither have I,” Alexsandra said.
The major ordered one of the guards to go to the nearest HQ tent along the rail line and get pen and paper.
“Major,” Alexsandra asked, forcing a smile despite the grim circumstances, “may I confer with the old man as to how we might—”
“No.” The major looked at her, the hostility in his eyes so intense that she fully expected him to slap her. “You think that I am an idiot?”
“No,” she said, feigning surprise.
“You are awarded the Medal of Freedom by the Americans and you think this will protect you?” he asked bitterly.
“No — I just thought it might be helpful if—”
“You thought,” the major said, “that you could influence the old man and the others.”
“No, I—”
“Be quiet!” The major strode out of the room quickly, looking for the guard he’d sent. Alexsandra coughed and tried to say something to the next prisoner, but her beauty, her dark, silken hair, dark eyes, and a figure whose curves not even a Mao suit could hide intimidated the prisoner, another young male student.
All four of the guards were staring, gawking, at her. “Nimen hui shuo Yingwen ma? You speak English?” she asked them pleasantly. They shook their heads. Still looking at them, she made a writing motion against her hand, but she was talking to the prisoners either side of her. “This is the only American attack. They won’t attack along the Amur,” she said, still looking and smiling at the guards. “This is the real attack here. If anyone in the line speaks English pass the message down. The Americans aren’t going to attack from the Amur. This is the real attack.”