Despite the flares’ flickering light, mistakes were bound to be made by both sides in similar-looking white camouflaged overlays. The problem for the SAS/D— Brentwood’s troop on the left and Aussie’s on the right— was to climb up the flanks of the door to get on top of the cave. This meant that they would first have to negotiate the piles of snow-covered debris that was the excavated soil either side of the cave and then somehow climb almost sheer cliffs of over a hundred feet that stood like ramparts either side of the door, ramparts that were ChiCom high ground protected by at least four machine gun nests. The 7.6mm guns were set back from the cliff edge out of direct sight from below, but not so far back that they couldn’t rain down their fire on most of the boulder-strewn apron that spread beyond the railhead where the mangled gantry now sat, still so hot that it was vaporizing the snow falling on it.
“One, two for me!” Aussie yelled to Brentwood, indicating the two machine gun posts atop the left side of the cave and the door, and “three, four, for you,” pointing to the two 7.6mm nests atop the right-hand side of the cave.
“Roger!” Brentwood answered, and the two lines of commandos moved forward.
With the element of surprise expended, the SAS/D troopers understood and accepted, however reluctantly, that speed — dashing out, guns blazing in the boulder-strewn area about the cave entrance — would only bring certain death. But to go too slowly would give the ChiCom battalions at Damquka time to reach the cave — then the SAS/D would find itself sandwiched between two ChiCom forces. Immediately, however, both Aussie Lewis and Brentwood saw that for the four enemy machine gun posts there would be a “no-fire” zone of about twenty yards or so directly beneath the top of the door, the ChiCom machine gunners unable to depress their weapons at a more acute angle. It was this ground that the SAS/D force would have to reach and hold.
Quickly Aussie and Brentwood passed the word — no more flares, wait till all flare light had subsided, then attack, home plate being the front of the cave’s closed door.
But the ChiComs weren’t cooperating, still sending up flares from behind boulders, and the flames from the burning hulks of the knocked-out T-59s were lighting up the area. Brentwood knew that to rush out would be to have his men mown down. And so once again, all the SAS/D could do was wait, yet to wait was to give the Damquka garrison more time to respond. In civilian life it was called being between a rock and a hard place. Brentwood turned to his runner. “Tell Salvini and Choir to spread out far right flank, far left. Mimic a charge and maybe we can get the ChiComs to use all their flares.”
The messenger nodded, repeating the order. “Simulate flank attacks to dummy Chinks into using up flares.”
“You’ve got it,” Brentwood said. “Go!”
Rosemary had made sure that all the windows were latched as well as having slipped the dead bolts, and had been sitting, sipping her tea in the kitchen, when she’d heard the dolphins squeak. Vibrations from the wind. She wanted to throw the blasted dolphins away. No, she couldn’t. Robert had bought them for her — well, for the baby really. And besides, dolphins were the submariners’ logo. It would soon be dawn, but it was still dark outside. The important thing, she told herself, was not to let her nerves get on edge now she was so close to having “toughed it out,” as Robert would say. By herself. She hadn’t panicked — well, a little, and she may have lifted up the phone, but she hadn’t used it, that was the point. And she knew it was precisely these little victories that gave one the courage to see it through — well, Andrea would accompany her to the hospital when the baby’s time came. But what would happen if Andrea couldn’t — if her child was sick?
“Then, my dear,” she told herself aloud, “you’ll just have to do it solo.”
“What the hell you on ‘bout?”
She had tried to yell, but no sound would come — only a gasp as if she’d been completely winded. He was big — over six feet, black, and the knife blade caught the living room light. “You scream, I’ll cut your fuckin’ head off, lady. You unnerstand me?”
“Yes,” she said, sitting on the edge of the chair, her knuckles white with fear. “I haven’t got any money—” she began, her throat so dry she couldn’t finish.
“Don’ you give me that shit, lady. Old man’s credit cards.”
“He has them,” she said.
“Oh sure. Listen — don’t leave home without ‘em!”
“Th-that’s right,” she said.
“Where’s he gonna use ‘em lady — bottom of the fuckin’ sea?”
“I’m telling you the truth — truly—”
“Then give me yours, honey.” He was so close now she could smell him — cigarette smoke and beer — but she didn’t think he was drunk. He moved too quickly for that. “Gimme yours,” he told her. “Hurry up!”
“They’re in my bedside drawer.”
“Well what the fuck you standin’ here for? Go get ‘em! I want your bank cards and your secret little number.”
She heaved herself out of the chair, heard the dolphins squeal. “I’ll get them,” she said.
“That’s right, momma, you get ‘em.”
As she walked through the door from the kitchen into the hallway toward the bedroom, she remembered what Robert had told her: Try to get your breathing under control — if it isn’t, your aim will be off. You’ve got to hold the gun steady enough. She knew he would kill her if she didn’t get him first. She knew it — not because she knew credit cards would be of no use if she were left alive to talk, but because she’d seen it in his eyes. And all this time she’d been worrying about the Chinese sending agents to eliminate or terrify the wives and families of—
“Move yo’ ass!” he said.
By the time she reached the bedroom she was perspiring heavily, her hand on the metal knob of the bedside table. She suddenly became ice cold, focused on what she had to do.
The phone rang.
“Fuck — you got a message machine?”
“No,” she said.
“Shit — how come you got no fuckin’ machine?”
“I’ve — we’ve just moved onto the base. I haven’t—”
“Shut up. You answer. Say you’re in the bath. You’ll ring back.”
“A bath?” she said. “At five in the morning?”
“Shit — shit—”
The phone stopped ringing.
He was staring at it, went over to rip it out, then changed his mind. “Fuckin’ phones. If it rings again—” He wasn’t sure how to play it. “Just hurry up. C’mon — cards — and gimme that fancy ring on your finger.”
She still had her hand on the cool metal handle and opened the drawer. She made a quick move with her right hand and froze.
“This what you lookin’ for, honey?” He pulled the gun from his hip pocket and with one swipe, pistol-whipped her to the bed, blood running down from her cheek. He kicked at her legs. “You fuckin’ bitch — stay on the bed.” She was on her stomach, and he grabbed her by the hair, the gun in one hand, the knife in his pocket so he could clout her about the head a couple of times, she whimpering in fear and trying to cover her face from the blows. He reached over, tore open her nightdress, grabbed a breast, and squeezed it roughly. She gasped in pain.
“You like that, huh?” he said, his breath all over her. “You makin’ me hard, white trash. You want it, huh — you askin’ for it?”
“No, no, I — please, the baby!”
“Fuck the baby. Fuck you, little smart ass. Now you got five seconds to get your cards else I’ll kick you right in the gut. How’s that? You like that?”
She heaved herself off the bed, went to the closet, and was barely able to reach a shoe box.
“Hey,” he said, “wait!” But it was too late. The lid was on the floor and the box’s contents spilling out. He started in fright, but there was no gun, only traveler’s checks.
He picked up a wad of five-hundred dollars in American Express. He saw they were the double signature types either spouse could sign. “Hey, Rosemary, now we’re cookin’.” She was slumped by the closet, barely able to stay upright, he standing in the doorway between the bedroom and the hallway. Rosemary was trying to hold up the top of her nightdress, and he was staring at her breasts rising and falling with fear. He pocketed the gun and, after picking up the checks, started to fondle her breasts, and she was stiff with fear. She knew without the slightest doubt that he was going to kill her. What use was the robbery to him if he could be reported?
“Hell,” he said, “you ugly everywhere else with that bun in the oven, honey, but you got nice tits. Kneel down in front of me. Here, I’ll sit on the bed, tell you what we’re gonna do—”
The shot crashed through glass and hit him in the left shoulder, flinging him toward the bedstead. For a split second Rosemary saw the gun sticking out of his back pocket and grabbed it. She fired once, twice — she fired till the chamber was empty, the bed and wall splattered in blood and bits from his head, an artery gushing blood like a burst pipe. She dropped the gun and didn’t hear the knocking till a few seconds later. When she let Andrea in, the second mate’s wife looked calmly at the carnage. “Good girl, Rosie. That’s the way. You killed the bastard.”
“No!” It was a scream of pain from Rosemary, the service .45 she had been holding dropping to the floor.
Andrea embraced her. “Now, honey, you have a damn good cry. I’ll call the MPs. You sit — c’mon in the living room.”
“How did you know?” Rosemary began as Andrea dialed.
“Easy. Couldn’t sleep. Usual, first few nights after they go out. Saw your lights go on and phoned. No answer and I just knew there was trouble. You did good, Rosie — don’t worry about it.”
For some inexplicable reason, Rosemary, the English teacher, almost corrected Andrea—”You did well.” She hated the ungrammatical “did good” when they meant “well.” She said nothing, still shaking. “Andrea?” she called.
Andrea was on the phone.
“Andrea!”
“What is it?”
“The baby — I think—”
“Uh-oh — you better hurry with that ambulance, ma’am. I think we’ve got a premature baby on the way. What? Yes, ma’am, a mother in premature labor. And she’s in shock. So you hurry!”
Rosemary had never felt as ill as she did now — pain from the blow to her cheek and so sick in the stomach she just wanted to pass out, but she didn’t and could hear the ambulance siren wailing in the distance.
The flares were finished and it was down to killing by moonlight because there was no place to run — a hundred yards here, a hundred there, and then there would be a collection of new boulders. And in the darkness atop the cave a few triple A guns brought forward so they could be depressed to shoot down in front of the missile cave couldn’t do so for fear of hitting their own troops with ricochets.
The Chinese were brave. Ordered out to hunt down the SAS/D, they couldn’t contain the American and British commandos, whose morale, fitness, and equipment were superior. As the SAS/D shot their way past the tanks, the range was often point-blank, and here the small, thirteen-inch-long HK MP5 submachine guns firing at nine hundred rounds a minute were better than the longer AK-47s, pumping out two hundred rounds in less than a minute. Some SAS, however, carried AK-47s, it always being useful to have the enemy’s 7.62mm ammo as well as your own at your disposal.
More than a dozen Chinese were felled by the chest-sheathed knives of the SAS/D teams, and several of the SAS/D troopers had the Browning High Power 9mm pistol as a backup, the magazine holding thirteen rounds of hardhitting Parabellum. In the din of the battle, huge, flickering shadows crisscrossing the boulders could be seen as a result of the light from the missile’s dying fuel fire. Now and then a scream would pierce the air as another SAS/D chest knife found flesh and bone. Even so, nine more SAS/D were cut down, reducing the original force of eighty to sixty-two, counting the four who had not made the rendezvous after the jump.
Aussie Lewis’s and Salvini’s men were first to reach the open ground before the cave, the ground now littered with the smashed gantry, looking like some monstrous metallic stick insect that had crashed and fallen amid the flames, exposing its ribs.
Unhesitatingly Aussie Lewis began scaling the rocky cliff by the base of the door off to the left, searching for finger holes or anything that would help propel him up and lead him to the exit from where he’d seen the Chinese come.
“Hey,” someone said in an urgent but subdued voice. “Use the bloody ladder.”
Lewis dropped to the ground, catlike, and on the swing around, his infrared picked up a long, white blob, a Browning 9mm High Power preceding it, on the rungs of a ladder cemented into the sheer wall, previously hidden by the snow. Then he heard the rip of an AK-47—Chinese or SAS/D he didn’t know until he saw the blur of the 9mm Browning dropping after its owner to the ground, and above the blur a bold white stick pointing out and down: the barrel of an AK-47. Aussie sprayed nine millimeter at the stick and lobbed a stun grenade up and over.
There was a tremendous metallic crash as the grenade exploded, and in the five seconds it took Aussie to get up the ladder and spray over the top before he had his foot on the last rung, the Chinese was on his knees, appropriately stunned. Lewis kicked him in the head, then with one swift movement, his Browning High Power in his left hand, he pulled the soldier to the edge of the thirty-foot cliff and pushed him off.
“Jesus, Aussie!” It was Salvini below, trying to get up the ladder, only to feel a close rush of air as the body passed him. “Don’t recycle the bastard!”
“Sal?” Aussie called.
“Yes?”
“I can see the exit.” What he meant was mat he couldn’t actually see it but rather its heat signature — obviously it served as an air intake as well for the cave. But when they got there, he and four other SAS/D men following, two turning to take up the rear defensive position, Aussie failed to move the exit cover by pulling on its ring bolt. “Fucking thing’s closed from the inside.”
“Blow it!” Sal said, and in seconds a whole seam was packed with donutlike C4.
“Everybody back!” he yelled before he detonated the plastique. There was a tremendous explosion, shards of ice and small pebbles bouncing off the boulders below, and from those that the men on top had used for cover. When they went back the seam had been ruptured here and there, but it still held.
“Shit!” Aussie declared. “Okay — let’s go again.” But as no one in the small group had any more of the explosive, he yelled, “Plastique! Left exit!” A volley of fire erupted from below as five Chinese around the burned-out shell of a T-59 fired in the Australian’s general direction. It was a bad mistake, as the volley of fire they got in return from the flanks and above killed all five.
“Room service!” Salvini yelled, helping three members of his troop up the ladder and sending them and their plastique over to Aussie.
The second charge exploded, the exit’s seams now turned up and curled back, blackened and scarred like chapped lips, but the steel core of the exit still held, though Aussie could see through a crack about three inches wide down into the cave and could feel the freezing air being sucked down into the mountain’s interior where he saw panic— blur upon blur of men trapped — and though some of them were undoubtedly among some of the most brilliant nuclear scientists in the world, they had no idea what to do about their predicament.
“Right!” Aussie said, hunched over the edge of the exit’s twisted steel. “Won’t take the fucking easy way then we’ll do it the hard fucking way. CS tear gas rounds — quickly!”
Each man pulled out two or three 37mm black rounds of CS gas from the thigh loops on his uniform and gave them one by one to Aussie, who put them in the baton stick and tired them, or rather dropped them, into the huge interior through the three-inch hole, finally plugging the hole with his white overlay hood, which he cut off with the knife. “Let’s see how the bastards like that.”
Suddenly a giant tremor, shook the mountain.
“The door!” Salvini said. “They don’t like that CS.”
“Aw, shit!” a trooper said in mock sympathy. “And they wanted to have more fun with their missiles. Aren’t we fucking awful!”
“Jesus,” one of Salvini’s troop cut in. “Does this mean we have to go down that friggin’ wall again?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Aussie answered, seeing David Brentwood’s troop over to his right fighting it out halfway up that side of the door. “Choir’s troop’ll take care of the ground floor and—” Aussie stopped speaking, then ran to the edge of the cliff, shouting down, “Hold your fire! Let ‘em go, Choir! Hold your fire!”
The Chinese — most of them in heavy, padded Mao suits — were streaming out, choking from the gas, tears running down their cheeks, handkerchiefs over their faces then putting their hands up one or two at a time, whatever they could manage. Only a few, realizing precisely what was going on, were able to lose themselves amid the boulders either side of the rail track that extended out from the cave.
These were the men, scientists mostly and some soldiers, who knew that if any shots penetrated the liquid fuel tanks stored inside, then the whole mountain cave would become an inferno, consuming them. The warheads would probably not go off, but the rocket fuel surely would.
Choir was tired of searching the evacuees for arms, but those who had surrendered had to be checked out as a matter of routine.
Aussie, two of his troopers, and two of the prisoners donned their S6 gas masks and made their way back to the cave, Aussie ordering the Chinese prisoners to show them the door controls. When they found the wall panel that operated the door, they began to close it again until there was only room for one man to slip in or out at a time. The sky began to pass from blackness to a moonlit, suffused gray, and Aussie knew that dawn would soon be on them and it was still a three-mile trek to the lake for the helo pickup that Brentwood had ordered.
Having reached the right top exit-cum-air intake, Brentwood had followed Aussie Lewis’s method of dropping down CS canisters. Aussie and Salvini volunteered to stay behind until everyone was out of the way. Then Aussie with the Haskins — Salvini to provide covering fire if necessary — would finish the job, after which they would make for the lakeshore.
There was to be a delay, however, for Salvini, further in the cave than Aussie, had made a gut-wrenching discovery. Deeper in the mountain, beyond the stand of half a dozen missiles, the huge cave narrowed like the interior of a goat’s horn, this secondary cave much smaller in diameter, but one along which a narrow-gauge rail track ran, disappearing into the dark bowels of the mountain. Salvini had ventured only thirty feet into the tunnel when he saw the first storage room filled with fuel drums and a row of lights that seemed to go on forever inside the mountain.
Soon Aussie and two other troopers joined him. Following the rails for another hundred yards, Aussie experienced a gnawing apprehension that around the next bend in the tunnel they would find more Chinese regulars. They didn’t, but they did discover dozens of storage rooms hewn out of the rock, and that the railway line snaked around several sharp S curves that acted as blast protectors.
To ensure maximum destruction, Aussie saw that they’d have to jury-rig an explosive line of gasoline drums so that an explosion at the cave mouth could in fact negotiate the S bends and take out the string of thick-walled storage rooms of fuel, ammunition, food, and rocket supplies as well.
From one such gasoline dump — drums stacked to the ceiling — Aussie ordered two troopers with him and Salvini to puncture as many drums as they could and to roll these down along the narrow-gauge rails toward the cave’s mouth, the gasoline spilling between and around the tracks. In addition, he ordered some drums to be rolled down to ether, nonfuel, storage rooms, punctured there, and rolled in and out of the other rooms so that finally he had created a gas-sodden path along the rail track toward the cave’s mouth several hundred yards on as well as having created gas-sodden tributaries, as it were, from the main line into each storage room. When he and the other troopers, five of them, emerged from the cave mouth, the others, as agreed, had already left for the lake.
“All right,” Aussie said, “let’s head into those boulders — ’bout three hundred yards from the cave.”
“Roger!”
A quarter mile beyond the missile complex, Aussie looked up through a gap in the clouds to see a sparkling array of stars, then they were gone. He had no need of starlight, however, nor did he want to risk using a flare anywhere near the mouth of the cave. Through the infrared scope on the Haskins he could see the racks of missile fuel clearly enough, standing up at the rear of the gargantuan interior like huge stovepipes. He pulled back the bolt and fired an incendiary.
The explosion was immense, bigger than he or Salvini had ever seen — like a sudden sunburst, its feral roar escaping the cave in a one-hundred-yard-wide dragon tongue of flame, the ensuing rivers of flame issuing forth from the secondary storage explosions.
“Chri-i-st!” Salvini said, looking back at the sight, but Aussie couldn’t hear him, for the noise of the explosion had been so loud it left the Australian’s ears ringing. He tapped Salvini’s S6 filter as Salvini stood mesmerized by the spectacle. “Come on, let’s go to Lake Nam.”
“I don’t like that name,” Salvini said. He had to say it again before Aussie could hear him.
“Why?” the Australian asked.
“Reminds me of Vietnam.”
“So?”
“Spooky, man.”
“Bullshit. It’s a salt lake in the middle of nowhere.”
“Right,” Salvini said, and they set out — neither walking nor running but in that slow, commando jog that wouldn’t exhaust them yet would get them, they hoped, to the lake in time for the pickup.