The marine nodded. “Thank you, sir.”
“Anytime, mate.” Aussie could see, however, that the young marine was abnormally strung out with anxiety. “Listen, press your tongue hard up against your palate. It forces you to breathe deeply. You’ll relax.” Aussie paused. “They teach you that at Parris?”
“I wasn’t at Parris, sir,” the youngster said, almost apologetically.
“Oh,” said Aussie. “So you must live west of the ole Mississippi. “You were trained at Point Loma then?”
“Yes, sir. I’m a — I’m a ‘Hollywood Marine.’” He tried to smile.
“So, did they teach you that trick?”
“What — oh, about pressing—”
“Yeah, pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, what the fuck did they teach you?” said Aussie, smiling. He turned to Melissa Thomas, who was helping to clean up the mess. “Did you learn that at Parris?”
“I’m not sure,” she answered, embarrassed by the sudden attention.
“Not sure? Hey!” Aussie yelled so loudly he startled young Kegg. “You marines! Listen up. A tip from Uncle Lewis. On long op flights, or short ones, in any sticky situation, you press your tongue hard up against your palate. You will get more oxygen. It helps, believe me!”
“Who are you?” demanded a marine.
“Grandstander!” offered another.
Aussie ignored them and winked at Melissa, who was helping him and who, unlike some of the others, understood that Aussie Lewis was only trying to boost morale, distracting them from the horror that had been visited upon them by the anti-aircraft fire.
“You’ve seen this stuff before,” Aussie told Melissa.
“I was a nurse’s helper in an ER for a while,” she replied. “Before I joined the corps.”
“Good for you, marine,” said Aussie.
Melissa returned the smile which, given the bloody circumstances aboard the Super Stallion, struck some of the marines as disrespectful at best, at worst, obscene, in the presence of the dead marine. But Melissa couldn’t help her response to Aussie; it was the first time since Parris that a man, and a renowned SpecWar warrior at that, had said something so warmly to her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“He made a pass at you?” taunted one sullen marine as Melissa returned to her seat at the rear of the helo and buckled up.
“No,” she replied. “He said something nice to me.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Hey, Thomas,” asked a marine who was nursing a SAW. “This Aussie. Isn’t he the guy who coldcocked that A-rab fanatic?”
“All A-rabs are fanatics,” proffered a mortar squad loader.
“Bullshit!” said another marine.
“Whatever he used,” said the SAW marine, “that’s him. Right? That’s Aussie Lewis?”
“Yes,” said Melissa. “That’s him.”
“My old man told me ’bout that convoy,” put in another marine. “The A-rab was belted and was using a baby as cover, tryin’ to blow up the whole fuckin’ convoy when Thomas’s boyfriend here wasted the fucker. So, technically, he didn’t coldcock him. He used a shotgun.”
“Horseshit!” argued another. “The Aussie took him out with a piece.”
“I heard the crazy bomber was a woman,” said the mortar loader.
“Whatever he used,” repeated the SAW marine, “that’s him. That’s Aussie Lewis.”
“What happened to the baby?” another marine inquired.
“Who knows?”
“Probably died,” concluded the loader. “Either that or he’s a martyr by now, ready for all those virgins.”
Melissa saw something move up forward in the semidarkness and instinctively gripped her rifle. It was the crew chief checking his watch against the speed indicator, his sudden movement unnerving her, everyone on edge. “Twenty minutes to amber,” the chief announced.
“Twenty minutes?” growled one of the SAW gunners. “Feels like we’ve been up here twenty hours.”
Choir Williams was looking pale again. The fact that he had never complained about his motion sickness was one of the things Freeman admired most about the warrior.
The general moved down the lines, chatting with the marines. It was hard physical work talking against the racket of the three engines, the rotors, and the bone-juddering vibrations that followed the AA fire. But he kept at it, exuding confidence and strength, talking casually to the troops about anything, surprising them with his grasp of detail, as when he passed Melissa Thomas, explaining to her how the end of the Cold War had spawned two Russias: On the one hand there was the affluent, technically savvy Russia, and on the other, the outmoded but still politically powerful Communist Russia. They were in fierce opposition, jockeying for who would rule in the twenty-first century. “The Russians, like us,” he pointed out, “like any sensible army, don’t go into a fight advertising who their officers are. Hell, their Spetsnaz — SpecWar troops — don’t wear any insignia at all. But you can tell who’s in charge.” The general looked at Melissa and her squad. “Anyone know how?”
“Because,” said a loader, “they’re the ones yelling at everybody.”
Freeman laughed easily. “Maybe, but the surest sign is that they’re the best dressed. Lot of them are still like the British officers in past wars. If they can afford it, they have their combat fatigues as well as full-dress uniforms made on Nevsky Prospect.”
“Where’s that, sir?”
“St. Petersburg,” said Freeman, glancing at the airspeed indicator. The Super Stallions were capable of around 170 m.p.h. but with a load of fifty marines and because fragments of the AA hit had bled off some hydraulic lines, they were down to 141 m.p.h. Even so, the warning amber light would be coming on soon. Someone asked Freeman how it was that the terrorist H-block had been missed by satellite surveillance for so long.
“It’s cold,” Melissa Thomas ventured. “Wouldn’t show up on the infrared?”
“No,” said Freeman. “Buffalo’s cold in winter too, but SATPIX’ll pick up any building in Buffalo because of all the heating vents. They show up beautifully on the IR cameras. So our best intel guess is that the terrorist tech wizards have designed a thermoslike roof shield so that the H-building shows up as a thermos, without giving us any idea of what’s inside.” The moment he said this, Douglas Freeman felt an ice-cold tremor run through him. What if the soil analyses, et cetera, were wrong, and the damn place was an empty shell, a trap? He was determined to keep the possibility to himself. His job now was to keep morale as high as possible. “So,” he told Melissa and every other marksman, which, given the marines’ standard, meant every man on the helo, “you should look for the bastards with the best-pressed battle fatigues and shoot them first. I hope you notice that I, on the other hand, am no better dressed than any of you. I’m indistinguishable from any of you, ’cept for my big mouth.” More laughter, more confidence-building after the bloody disaster that had just taken place aboard this, the marines’ second helo. Huey One, carrying Tibbet and his HQ communications group, was a half-mile ahead.
“Ten to amber!” came the crew chief’s voice. Freeman was wondering what had happened when the Harriers dove on the AA position. Had it been completely destroyed, its guns as well as its crew? Or would it be re-crewed and play havoc with the second wave? As so often happened, those in the middle of the action were the least able to discern exactly what was transpiring. He thought of Hitler again and the dark room. The Nazi Führer had been right about that.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The loud “boom” that reverberated across the frozen marshlands and savannahs and through the woodland of Lake Khanka was unmistakably that of an anti-personnel mine exploding. Normally neither Abramov, Beria, nor Cherkashin would have bothered even looking up from their respective offices in the H-block, but this morning was different. With a marine expeditionary unit known to be en route to the complex, the detonation caused each general to immediately check the computer-controlled security display on his monitor. The half-mile-wide perimeter that ran around the ABC complex was mined and patrolled by Beria’s motorized rifle company’s amphibious BMPs, Boyevaya Mashina Pekhoty, infantry fighting vehicles. The BMPs, traveling between dug-in squads of eight men, maintained a 24/7 perimeter watch, while a mobile “Animal Squad” on standby was ready to dash out from the H-complex and replace any of the mines. There was eager competition for the night shift because deer were the most probable trespassers, and the commanding officers, for all their missile-made money, couldn’t get a steady supply of venison due to past overhunting either by the Chinese, who worked the rice fields west of the lake, or by the Russian population east of Lungwangmia.