“It’s possible,” the pathfinder conceded. A rest on the ridge, inside one of the caves perhaps, would certainly explain the freshness of the new hoofprints. Mah looked about at the caves. What would he do if he’d found the pilot and wanted to hide him? The caves. But the longer they stayed to investigate the dozen or so caves, the less likely they would be able to find the hoofprints again, as it was still snowing. Mah decided to cover both possibilities: the caves and the new hoofprints they’d found. He told the patrol to move on, following the tracks, and kept one man to stay with him to have a quick look in the caves. The two of them would then follow the tracks of the patrol after they’d finished.
As the twelve men continued following the yaks’ hoofprints, unknowingly heading back to the camp, Mah, taking out his Shanghai black, a .38 revolver, pointed to one of the deeper-looking caves. “You take that one,” he ordered the soldier. “I’ll go over here. I’ll meet you back here in five minutes. It shouldn’t take us long.”
The soldier, unslinging his AK-47, didn’t look too happy about his assignment. He had a distinct aversion about going into dark places — and no flashlight, of course. Mah had one, but then majors in the People’s Liberation Army did have a lot more than those who served under them. To hell with the major, thought the private. He’d go into the cave a few yards or so, and if he didn’t see or hear anything then he’d come straight out.
Mah went into a cave whose entrance was no more than five feet wide. He heard the slow drip of melting snow, shone his flashlight inside, and looked along the beam of light before he advanced any further. The cave took several twists and turns and then ended abruptly, its walls seeping with moisture.
When he reemerged into the outside light he saw the soldier waiting. “Anything in there?” Mah asked him.
“Nothing, Comrade Major,” the soldier replied. “It’s hard to see without a flashlight.”
Mah grunted. “Your eyes get used to it. Wait a few minutes when you enter, then go on.”
“Yes, Major.”
“All right, comrade, you take that one — it looks fairly shallow. I’ll take the one over there. Looks deeper.”
“Yes, Major.”
As Aussie Lewis, David Brentwood, and thirty other SAS/D men prepared for the second and final rush on the north side of the Hall of Preserving Harmony situated atop a flight of long marble stairways, Choir Williams, Salvini, and Freeman, leading thirty-five commandos in all, ran around the front to the south side and began their attack from the marble stairs that flanked the long, stepping-stone motif of dragons among clouds. Immediately twelve members of unit 8431 opened fire, some of them taking cover behind the balustrade and long flight of steps that bracketed the carved dragons.
A ricochet hit Freeman’s Kevlar vest and fell down the marble steps like a pebble as he crouched and steadied himself and used a slugging shell in the Winchester 1200, its impact such that it blew the door to the Hall of Preserving Harmony wide open, the unhinged door flying back and knocking over a Chinese commander.
The next four cartridges Freeman fired were fléchettes, all eighty of them, and they could be heard like a hum of bees. At this short range they penetrated the steel helmets of the Chinese defenders, and Freeman could hear them screaming, a dart embedded in one man’s eye. The Chinese soldiers lost all control for a moment as Aussie Lewis, Salvini, and Choir Williams came in with three-round bursts from their Heckler & Koch submachine guns. Again, as in the field, it was the combination of guts and good gunnery that won the day for Freeman’s SAS/D force.
Suddenly it was over, and Freeman could see the civilians — seven, or was it eight? — CS smoke still thick in the air — staggering around, hands up, and two members of the PLA.
“Congratulations, sir!” Brentwood said.
“Yes, sir,” Salvini and Choir Williams added — Aussie Lewis and four other men quickly getting the prisoners in a straight line up against the wall. They were all in tears from the CS gas, if not from the defeat, and for fresh air Aussie Lewis obligingly smashed out an ornate window dating back to the Ming dynasty.
“Jesus Christ!” It was Freeman, sounding like an enraged bull, his voice clearly heard in the Hall of Preserving Harmony above the footsteps of thousands now that the students had penetrated the Forbidden City and were gathering like a great blue-and-gray sea about the Forbidden City, around Freeman, the conqueror of Beijing.
It was confusion again, with some of Salvini’s men looking around at the huge crowd forming outside, and even though they were obviously friendly, with the goddess of democracy statue carried bobbing and wobbling among them, the noise of the cheering was drowning almost anything that was said in the Hall of Preserving Harmony, so that Freeman had to thunder out his discovery.
“Where’s Cheng? Nie? The State Council?”
“You mean—” Aussie began. “Bloody hell!”
“Bloody hell is right!” Freeman thundered. “The bastards were never in the Forbidden City. Son of a bitch—” He grabbed one of the civilians, one of the officials who had stood in for the State Council members, drew his 9mm Browning, and stuck it in the man’s mouth, the man almost collapsing in fright. “Where are Cheng and Nie and all the rest?’ he yelled. “Interpreter!” But there was no need for interpretation, for at least two of the eleven captured officials spoke English, and with the crowd swirling about them they didn’t see why they should be the only ones to take the heat.
“General Cheng has gone,” one trembling official said, “with our commanders. And Nie. All the State Council. The soldiers. On the train — the airport has been bombed and—”
“Where?” Freeman demanded, pulling back the hammer.
“Gone,” the official repeated. “To — to Tanggu.”
“Where the hell’s that?” Salvini cut in.
Freeman reholstered his pistol, his hands now on his hips. “Son of a bitch and his guards are on the way by train to Tanggu. Closest port to here. A fast boat trip across Bo Hai Gulf to North Korea no doubt. Goddamn it!” Freeman, his head down, began pacing up and down as the smoke was clearing, and outside the crowd was growing even larger, all cheering his name. Suddenly Freeman stopped and looked at Williams, Salvini, and Aussie. “I’m getting on the radio and we’re gonna stop that damn train. If it ever left Beijing. Yes, sir, we’re gonna stop every goddamn train out of Beijing.” He then turned to the operator, giving him the necessary orders for the A-10s and Comanches — who by now had neutralized all airports and runways in the Beijing area — to stop any train from leaving Beijing, but particularly those bound southeast of the city toward Tanggu.