Jeff Edwards
Sword of Shiva
DEDICATION
To my mother, Mary Bowers, who infected me with the reading gene almost before I could walk. For years of wonderful stories, for pinching pennies to buy me my first typewriter, and for having the vision to see my future as a writer before I saw it myself.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following people for their assistance in making this book a reality:
Rear Admiral John J. Waickwicz, USN (Retired), former Commander Naval Mine and Anti-Submarine Warfare Command, for his excellent technical and editorial advice; Lieutenant Commander Loren “Alien” DeShon, USNR (retired), for technical advice about Navy F/A-18s, aircraft carrier landing procedures, and fighter combat tactics; Commander Cliff “Poker” Driskill, USNR (retired)/former Top Gun instructor, for patiently explaining (and then re-explaining) the intricacies of aerial combat maneuvering; Peter Garwood of the Balloon Barrage Reunion Club (www.bbrclub.org), for permission to use his excellent photograph of a Nazi V1 Rocket on its launch rail; Brenda Collins, for her superb research and editorial assistance; FTG2(SS) Bill Blanchard for talking me through anti-submarine warfare and anti-surface warfare engagements from a submariner’s point of view; and my crew of advance readers, for catching many (many) of my blunders before they reached the final page.
I’d also like to thank the contributors who are not named here, either by their own choice, or through accident on my part. The information I received from these people was consistently excellent. Any inaccuracies in this book are either the result of deliberate artistic license, or my own mistakes. Such errors are in no way the fault of my contributors.
As always, I would like to thank my editor, Don Gerrard, for more than a decade of guidance, sterling advice, and true friendship.
EPIGRAPH
If the radiance of a thousand suns
Were to burst at once into the sky,
That would be like the splendor of the mighty one.
I am become Death,
The shatterer of worlds.
PROLOGUE
Jampa flattened his body against the half-frozen earth, and felt the rumble of the oncoming train resonate through his ribcage. His stomach was a knot of nervous tension. The pounding of his heart threatened to drown out the roar of the approaching locomotives.
This was the part he hated — the waiting. Later, after the attack had begun, there would be no time for fear. He would be too busy carrying out the plan. Trying to stay alive, and escape. All doubts would be shoved aside by the need for action and speed. But in these last few moments of inactivity, his mind had time to dwell on all the things that could go wrong — all the ways that he and his men could die — or worse, be captured.
He had chosen this position carefully. The tracks were twenty meters away. The train would pass at a safe distance. Even so, he couldn’t shake the notion that the great mechanical beast was racing straight toward them.
The vibration grew stronger, rising through the icy ground to rattle his teeth, and make his ears throb. Jampa imagined the train rearing up off the tracks like a giant steel dragon. He fought the urge to lift his head — to sneak a look at the on-rushing machine — to be certain that it had not somehow left the track, that the heavy steel wheels were not surging forward to grind him and his men into the permafrost.
He kept his cheek flat against a tuft of shriveled winter grass, and reached for the 80mm rocket launcher lying next to his hip. The fiberglass firing tube was smooth and cold under his gloved fingers.
The weapon was a PF89 anti-armor infantry rocket, built as a tank-killer for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. It had been purchased on the black market from a profiteering PLA supply officer. There was something karmic in the knowledge that it would now be used to destroy a train carrying Chinese soldiers.
A few meters to Jampa’s right lay Nima and Sonam, the other two men assigned to his three-man strike team. If they were following orders, both men would be lying flat, using their rough-woven cloaks to camouflage their profiles against the withered grass of the Tibetan plateau.
Nima wasn’t the problem. The old man was a drokpa, one of the nomadic herders who roamed the high grasslands and the foothills of the Himalayas, tending yaks and sheep, and wresting a meager existence from this place that foreigners called the roof of the world.
The old shepherd’s iron character had been forged by a lifetime of hardship. He had patience, and he could follow instructions. Jampa had no doubt that Nima was lying perfectly still, maintaining concealment until he received the order to attack.
Sonam was not as disciplined, or as predictable. He was a good fighter, but he was young, and too headstrong to follow orders reliably. He might be lying flat right now, as Jampa had commanded. Or he might already be on his feet, eager to get in the first shot at the target.
Sonam had grown up in the refugee city of Dharamsala, on the Indian side of the mountains. He had spent his entire life in exile. For him, Tibet was not home. It was a cause.
He fought fearlessly against the Chinese intruders who occupied the land of his fathers. Perhaps a little too fearlessly. Sonam wasn’t just ready for combat. He welcomed it. He wasn’t satisfied with being a raider. He wanted to be a warrior, and his eagerness for battle made him reckless.
There were more than two-hundred soldiers aboard that train, and despite Sonam’s frequent claims to the contrary, the People’s Liberation Army was disciplined, well-trained, and dangerous. More than likely, some of those soldiers would survive the crash. It wouldn’t take them long to come hunting for their attackers. The best chance of getting out alive was to hit the train hard, without warning, and disappear before the enemy had a chance to regroup.
If Sonam followed his orders, the chances of escape were about fifty-fifty. If the young fighter did something stupid, the odds might drop to zero.
Jampa had gone to great pains to make Sonam understand how easily this raid could go astray, if everyone didn’t stick to the plan. He hoped that some of it had penetrated Sonam’s thick skull, but there was no way of knowing.
Jampa had to resist the temptation to lift his head and check. If Sonam broke cover early, they’d just have to deal with the consequences. Jampa could not improve the situation by violating his own order, and breaking cover himself.
The metal thunder of the train grew louder. Jampa waited with a patience he didn’t feel. There would only be one chance at this. If he misjudged the timing…
The noise seemed to hit a peak, the rushing sound somehow synchronized with the mad racing of his pulse. The first of the train’s three locomotives should be passing him now. Not yet. Not… yet…
He maintained cover for the space of a half dozen more heartbeats. And… Now! He threw the heavy cloak aside and leapt to his feet, swinging the Chinese rocket launcher up, even as he shouted, “Shi yag!”—death.
He caught brief images of motion as Nima and Sonam tossed back their own cloaks and scrambled into firing position, but he was not watching his men. He had the tube of the rocket launcher over his right shoulder now, his right hand wrapped around the pistol-shaped firing grip, and the flexible cup of the optical sight pressed against his right eye.