Force of arms wi 7, p.30
Force of Arms wi-7, page 30
part #7 of WW III Series
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.
“You boys,” he told Salvini, Williams, Brentwood, and Aussie Lewis, “aren’t finished yet. I want you to get aboard the first chopper we can get in here. Go to Tanggu and bring back Cheng and Nie. All the State Council if possible but definitely Cheng and Nie. Bring the bastards back in chains!”
* * *
It was simply impossible to get a Comanche, Huey, Chinook, Apache, or any other kind of helo to land in the Forbidden City. It was jam-packed with people. The same was true of Tiananmen Square, and the only way that Aussie, Brentwood, Williams, and Salvini could get out was to climb up a swinging rope ladder to a Huey hovering twenty feet above the roof of the Hall of Preserving Harmony, or what Aussie Lewis, after the battle, called “the Hall of Fucking Disharmony.”
“Christ!” Lewis yelled over the roar of the Huey’s rotors and the crowd below. “I thought we were done for the day. I’m puttin’ in for overtime, mate. No bones about it.”
The other three commandos — Salvini, Choir Williams, and Brentwood — were either too exhausted or deafened by the chopper and the mob scene below, growing bigger as the American tanks from the Marine Expeditionary Force entered the outskirts, to say anything. Besides, they all knew they needed whatever energy they had left for what they hoped would be the end of the war.
They had no way of knowing that within half an hour, when the news of the Beijing collapse got through to the southern beachhead at Xiamen, the southern armies would be recalled by the generals-cum-warlords. The north-south divisions in China were probably the oldest in history, and southern Chinese blood was not about to be spilled in defense of Communist Mandarins in the north who had already fled Beijing, the same Mandarins who had declared it was all right to burn briquettes for warmth in your home if you were north of the Yangtze, but not if you were in the south.
* * *
There were no trains out of Beijing. There were no trains coming into Beijing. Everything had been stopped by the massive uprising of the underground Democracy Movement and workers pouring out into the city now that the top Communist leaders had fled. The only trains moving, in fact, were those that had left Beijing no later than an hour before, one of these having been the train to Qinhuangdao via Beidaihe.
* * *
By now the news of Beijing’s collapse, confirmed by CNN, was flashed worldwide and to all parts of China, where local underground movements seized the moment against local Communist administrations. And it was at Qinhuangdao, en route to Shanhaiguan, that Alexsandra Malof’s train was met by a huge crowd waving banners of revolution, her Chinese student suddenly filled with courage, and confidence and a feeling of some importance that he had been chosen by fate to be escaping with Alexsandra Malof at the very moment of the Beijing clique’s defeat. With an air of authority that surprised even Alexsandra, he bellowed and shouted, making way for her through the crowd at Qinhuangdao, a place that, with its oil refineries and heavy chemical pollution, was probably one of the ugliest and most inauspicious places for such an auspicious event to occur.
* * *
There were Chinese everywhere at Honggor as Cheng’s staff, among them Colonel Soong, continued to fight on in hopes of blunting, if not defeating, the American Marine Expeditionary Force pressing the Chinese right flank. And for several hours at least, with all communications with Beijing cut and by pouring in regiment after regiment of battle-experienced ChiCom troops from Shenyang’s Twenty-fourth Army, Cheng’s staff was not only able to blunt the MEF attack on the right flank but also managed to attack Honggor successfully on the left. It was there, on the left flank, that Cheng’s veteran regiments came upon one of the few unblooded battalions of Freeman’s Second Army, and some of Freeman’s men ran.
It wasn’t picked up by the press because Freeman had done a Schwarzkopf and kept the press well behind his forces. But it was no use, Dick Norton knew, trying to tart up the report to Freeman by saying the men who ran were overwhelmed by the number of ChiComs, which they were, or that they had failed to get proper artillery support or TACAIR — also true — for the fact of the matter was that most of Charlie company—120 men — in Third Battalion broke and ran. What Charlie company’s commander had intended to be a shooting withdrawal was in fact a rout, some men even throwing their weapons away.
And as if a malevolent fate was at work, the old saying that “trouble comes not in ones or twos but in battalions!” had come true. Military police had been sent in to help stiffen the company’s resolve, to help the company find its pride again, but what the MPs found was a thoroughly demoralized force. On walking toward two of the soldiers in a foxhole, in the hope of getting them up and out and back at the front to help stem the ChiCom breakthrough, an MP, a sergeant, heard, “I can’t do it. I can’t—”
“Sure you can,” came another deeper voice. “Just relax, babe. C’mon, Danny.”
“You’ll look after me?”
“Haven’t I always, Danny?”
“Yes, but—”
The MP then heard a low, moaning noise, and when he looked over into the foxhole he saw one of them — the shorter, Danny he supposed — down on his knees, sucking off the bigger, older man.
“All right!” the MP said. “You two faggots are under arrest. Get on outta there — and surrender your arms.”
“You’re just jealous,” the older man said, remarkably unperturbed. “Isn’t that right, Danny?” Danny couldn’t look at the MP.
“So, asshole,” said the tall, hefty one, name strip Sperling, J., zipping up. “When was the last time you got it off?”
“One more word out of you,” the MP said, “and I’ll blow your fucking head off.”
“Nasty, isn’t he, Danny? We should teach the mother some manners.”
In the near distance they could hear Chinese infantry advancing. Danny was already out of the foxhole, having surrendered his rifle. Sperling followed, sneering at the MP, who was terrified the Chinese would come over the ridge any moment. Danny still couldn’t look at the MP sergeant. Instead he just kept walking shamefacedly. Sperling mussed his hair. “Don’t you worry, sweetheart. It’s all right. Be our word against his.”
To the MP’s relief, an MP Humvee came in sight, having gathered up two or three other forlorn-looking soldiers from Charlie company.
“Is this the faggot train?” the first MP asked.
“No, these boys are runners, aren’t you, boys? Yessir, we’ve got four courts-martial already with this bunch.”
“How do you like it?” Sperling asked the driver. “Up the ass?”
“Listen, you fucking queer, get in and behave or I’ll shoot you myself.”
“So what do you boys do?” Sperling said. “Think of little wifey or Playboy and wank off?”
“Maybe,” said the MP who’d caught them in fellatio, “but we don’t do it when we’re supposed to be stopping the fucking enemy from overrunning us.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The train carrying the State Council and the remainder of unit 8431 looked no different from any of the other trains that had left Beijing in time, and already two had been stopped by the SAS/D helos and inspected by Aussie, Salvini, Choir, and Brentwood, but had yielded nothing.
The first pass by the A-10 was ignored by the next train’s engineer and only caused his assistant frantically to shovel in more coal. And so on the second pass, the pilot of the A-10 gave the engine a burst. It exploded not with a bang but rather a sound like hundreds of snakes hissing, its perforated boiler rapidly losing power, the train dying quickly.
When the train stopped, no one got out, and from the air it looked to Aussie Lewis like a short, headless snake. He counted three cars and shouted above the rotor noise, “Not exactly hauling freight, are we?”
“Two bucks!” Salvini yelled. “That Humpty-Dumpty’s on the second car.”
“So who’s on first?” Brentwood put in. Aussie Lewis and Choir Williams didn’t get the joke.
“Fucked if I know,” Aussie said, moving the clip of his HK MP5 for full automatic and easing his Browning pistol up and down in the holster. “My guess is Cheng and Co. are in number two — bad bastards in one and three, protecting them.”
The Comanche escorted the Huey, the attack helicopter’s chin-mounted Gatling gun arcing left and right as the copilot followed the readouts of his HUD. But their job wasn’t to kill the State Council — especially not Cheng, who, though commander of the PLA, was not in Freeman’s view your typical dyed-in-the-wool Red Communist but rather a professional soldier. The Comanche had already dropped more of the surrender leaflets. Anyone who held one up in the air and put down his weapon would be taken prisoner and accorded—
“Hey, they’re coming out!” Choir said. “Cars one and three.” They were laying down their AK-47s in the yellowish grass by the railway tracks, the engine still groaning like some primitive beast of burden slowly giving up its ghost in thin curlicues of steam, the riddled boiler making lonely clanking noises.
“Didn’t think they’d chuck it in so quickly,” Salvini opined.
“Balls!” Aussie said. “They know I’m here. No fucking about with colonials, right, Choir?”
“I hear your wee lassie’s train’s been stopped at Qinhuangdao.”
“What?”
“All right, we’re going down,” the Huey pilot informed them.
Aussie was looking over at Williams. “How do you know?”
“Haven’t you been listening to the radio traffic, boyo? Local MFDs”—he meant movements for democracy— “stopped a train at Qinhuangdao. She’s on it.” Choir shook his head. “No BS, boyo. She’s there.”
Aussie nodded. “Thanks.” By now, fifty yards away from the train, the helicopter’s prop wash was flattening the dried grass in shivering waves as the four SAS men got out into a small depression as other Hueys could be seen garnering westward, apparently manned with regular U.S. Army cavalry troops who’d been dispatched to the area to help out.
There was a noise like the crack of a dry stick, and the Huey copilot slumped, blood running down his right arm, his cursing drowned by the sound of the engine. There was another crack, another bullet ripping into the chopper. The cloying smell of gasoline. With that the pilot yelled, “Get aboard!” but the SAS in the depression waved him off, and even as he rose, obscuring them in dust, they were firing at the troops who had suddenly picked up their arms, several of them falling in the SAS’s first volley.
The Huey, limping but still aloft and still under fire, came in sideways, its rotor howling, the Chinese soldiers diving under the train cars for protection, but the chopper stayed there for thirty seconds, creating a veritable whirlwind of grit and dust that didn’t inconvenience the SAS troops with their masks but played havoc with the Chinese who were blinded by the grit that filled the air like insects, causing the Chinese to lose the initiative.
Aussie Lewis and Salvini gave full automatic covering fire to Williams and Brentwood as they moved in, with Williams and Brentwood repaying the favor and killing another six Chinese. Choir Williams collapsed, rolling about in a terrible agony, the 7.62mm bullet having smashed the tibia in his right leg.
The Chinese had withdrawn from under the rail cars beyond to a gradual drop-off from the tracks to get away from the Huey blinding them. Lewis and Salvini took the second car, one each end. “Go!” Aussie shouted as he took the steps two at a time.
“Roger!” he heard Salvini reply as he too took the steps at his end of the carriage two at a time, his MP5, like Aussie’s, on full automatic to clear anyone from the doorway, the glass on the carriage being a smoky one-way mirror for the VIPs and making it difficult to see the whole car. As Aussie and Salvini threw — not tossed — in their stun grenades, the explosion not only concussed every VIP in the railway car but also blew out the windows, several antimacassar embroideries from the velvet seats following.
As Aussie and Salvini came around each end door of the carriage, they could see the stunned, bovine look on each man, Cheng’s cap blown off, his hair mussed, while Chairman Nie sat shaking his head as if trying to dislodge something from his ear. From outside Lewis and Salvini could hear the deadly rattle of the Comanche’s Gatling gun, called in by the Hueys to finish off the last elements of unit 8431.
“It’s over!” Salvini said.
One ChiCom stared stupidly at him and lunged. Salvini clubbed him. “It’s over!” Salvini said angrily. “Look!” He waved the muzzle of his submachine gun in the direction of the broken windows. Outside no surrenders had been taken after the little trick that unit 8431 tried to pull a few moments ago, holding up their pamphlets until the Hueys came low enough to shoot at. Now they all lay dead or wounded, the choppers finishing what the SAS/D had begun.
* * *
Aboard the train the State Council had been the first to know they were beaten, and they had been the first to flee the Zhongnanhai under Nie’s order as supreme member of the council. Cheng had not been happy about it and had not wanted to leave Beijing, but given the direct order by Nie he had little option, though his heart wasn’t in it, for as a soldier he had lost face and he knew it and had no fight in him. Nie, however, was full of indignation, refusing to accept the fact that he had lost utterly until Aussie Lewis told him to shut up or he’d shoot him right there and then.
“That is against the Geneva Convention!” Nie fumed.
“Well we’re not in fucking Geneva.”
To the east, from the direction of Qinhuangdao, there was a moving mass of people aboard a train that was shunting backward, festooned with red flags and with goddess-of-democracy motifs in white crudely painted in the middle of the red flags. It reminded Aussie of pictures he had seen of Mao’s triumphant entry into Beijing half a century ago. Even before the train stopped, people were jumping off, and Alexsandra Malof was out on the rear platform waving a quickly made Stars and Stripes at the Americans.
“Hey!” Aussie said, cuffing each of the prisoners with tape as Salvini guarded them. “How about a bloody cheer for Aussie and the Brits?”
“You’ll get your cheers, buddy. She’ll—” Before he could finish, Alexsandra Malof had hopped down from the train and onto the one containing the State Council with a gun in her right hand. She looked across at Aussie. There was a wan smile and a chill in the air, despite the dust-dancing sunbeams that pierced the broken windows of the VIP car and gave the illusion of warmth. She walked along the row of prisoners and stopped at Nie, one of those prisoners who had not yet been tied and who was still stunned enough that he didn’t quite recognize who she was at first, especially out of prison garb. Then, with the carriage absolutely quiet despite the roar of voices outside, he slowly began to realize who she was.
