“Morning,” Murphy said when there was a moment of quiet. “Anything exciting happen while I was away?”
“We have no lift,” Gurt said before squeezing off a few rounds. “I’ll need to milk the cyclic to get us off the ground.”
The Chinese troops had stopped advancing. Now they were digging in to make their kill shot.
Murphy slipped between the seats into the rear and yanked open both cargo doors. “Quit firing and take us up, Gurt. I’ll handle these boys.”
Milking the cyclic is bad for helicopters. It consists of jamming the cyclic from side to side while pumping up and down on the collective. It can create lift when there is none—but it can also easily cause the mast that supports the rotor to bump against other parts of the helicopter. Then you run the risk of a nick or a fracture in the mast.
Lose the mast and you’ve lost the helicopter.
The firefight had erupted so quickly that the Chinese tank commander had little time to rally his men. Now that he’d had a few minutes to prepare and his troops were dug in to the snow, he began to shout orders that would concentrate the fire in the right direction.
Gurt slammed the cyclic from one side to the other and the 212 began to rise slowly.
Right at that instant, the Chinese commander screamed for his men to advance, and the front line rose. At the same time, Murphy triggered the grenade and it left the launcher with a whoosh and a burning smell that filled the cabin. The round landed six feet in front of the lead soldier and exploded. Murphy followed that up with a complete clip from the M-16. He replaced the clip and prepared to fire again.
Just then, Gurt got the Bell off the ground and struggled to turn away from the firefight.
They were a hundred feet away from the Chinese troops when Murphy blew through the second clip and the bloody snow where the Chinese troops lay began to fade in the distance. He quickly replaced the clip, set the M-16 to one side and reached for the remote detonator.
The C-6 erupted with a force equivalent to ten thousand pounds of TNT. A slab of snow was ripped from the side of the hill and raced down the slope, covering the Chinese troops. Then the slide raced across the road with a wall of snow and ice twenty feet high. In sympathy, smaller slides broke loose from the opposite hillside from the shock wave that trembled through the rock and soil. These slides added another eight to ten feet to the mess already created. The few Chinese troops still living after the firefight were buried beneath the wall of snow.
42
THE pilot of the Gulfstream stared at his navigation screen carefully. The route he was taking did not allow much margin for error. He was flying above a small corridor of Indian airspace that jutted between Bangladesh and Nepal. The surface area was but twenty miles in width at the smallest point. The land below was hotly contested by all three countries.
Slowly he steered the Gulfstream in a sweeping turn to the left.
“Sir,” he shouted to the rear cabin, “we’re through the worst of it.”
The Gulfstream was now above the wider strip of land between Nepal and Bhutan.
“How long until we reach Tibetan airspace?” Cabrillo asked.
The pilot stared at the GPS screen. “Less than five minutes.”
Juan Cabrillo should have been bone-tired, but he was not. He stared out the window at the mountainous terrain below. The rising sun was blanketed in a glow of pinks and yellows. Tibet was directly ahead. He reached for the secure telephone and dialed.
IN Beijing, Hu Jintao was awakened early. The actions in Barkhor Square had not gone unnoticed. Jintao quickly rose from his bed, washed his face, and went downstairs, still dressed in his nightclothes.
“What’s the situation?” he asked a general without preamble.
“It’s all fluid, Mr. President,” the general admitted, “but the Russian tank column has started moving into Mongolia. Their ambassador assures us the movement is just an exercise between their country and Russia. However, at the speed they are moving, they could enter China across the Altai Mountains into the Tarim Basin anytime in the next few hours.”
“What about aircraft?” Jintao asked.
“They have several paratroop units at the staging area inside Russia,” the general said. “Our satellites have detected transport planes moving on the tarmac. As of right now, nothing has left the ground.”
Jintao turned to the head of foreign relations. “We don’t currently have any dispute with Russia,” he said. “What possible reason would they have to launch an attack on our border?”
“At the moment, our relations are peaceful.”
“Most odd,” Jintao said.
“The Russian ambassador has asked for a meeting at ten A.M. this morning,” the man added. “The request came overnight through a priority channel.”
“Did he disclose the nature of his request?” Jintao asked.
“No,” the foreign relations head said.
Jintao stood quietly for a moment, thinking.
“Mr. President,” the general said, “there’s more. We just received reports from the capital of Tibet that a protest has formed in one of the main squares inside the city.”
“What’s the chairman of the region say?” Jintao asked.
There was a pause before the general answered. “Well, Mr. President, that’s the problem. We have been unable to reach Chairman Zhuren.”
“DAMN, Gurt,” Murphy said. “That was close.”
“I think one of the rounds hit a hydraulic line that controls our forward pitch. As for me, I was hit in my left shoulder.”
“How bad is it?” Murphy said quickly.
“She’ll fly,” Gurt noted, “but it’ll be a little hairy.”
“I mean you, Gurt,” Murphy thundered. “How bad are you hit?”
Gurt was steering the Bell down the slope leading off the pass through a thick cloud cover. The helicopter’s nose was pointed down and both men’s bodies were tight against the seat harnesses.
“Hang on,” Gurt said. “I’ll lean forward so you can check.”
Gurt moved his upper torso away from the seat back and Murphy leaned over and looked. Then he reached over with his hand and felt around. A second later he pulled a flattened slug from inside the foam of the seat.
“The round passed clean through and was stopped by the metal back plate on the seat,” Murphy noted, “but you’re losing blood.”
“It wasn’t hurting until now,” Gurt disclosed. “I think I was on such an adrenaline high I didn’t really notice it much.”
“I’m going to need to bind the wound,” Murphy said. “Hold on a minute—let me make a call.”
He reached for his portable radio and called the Oregon.
“WEDGE it in there,” Gunderson said, “but make sure the spent cartridges have a way to blow out the side door. I don’t want any live rounds cooking off inside the cargo area.”
The Dungkarsoldier assisting Gunderson nodded. Ten minutes earlier, they had yanked a rapid-firing antiaircraft gun from its mount on the border of Gonggar Airport. Now they were fitting it to the cargo plane to make a crude gunship. The soldiers worked quickly, as did those at the other end of the hangar.
George Adams watched as the Dungkartroops filled the fuel tank on the attack helicopter. For the last ten minutes, he had climbed around inside the ship in an effort to determine the controls and weapons systems. At this instant, he was convinced that he could probably fly the bird—making the weapons perform as desired was a little iffier.
“Welcome to the DungkarAir Force,” Gunderson said, walking over. “We fly, you die.”
“How’s it going over there?” Adams said, smiling.