Hong Kong (49 page)

The only ray of sunshine in this miasma of doom was the certain knowledge that the huge Chinese army, armed with weapons featuring the latest technology—some of it purchased from the Russians and the rest stolen from the Americans—would in the fullness of time crush these rebels like a tidal wave coming ashore, overwhelming all in its path.

Six robots? Untrained civilians with captured rifles and limited ammunition? Amateur officers? They didn't stand a chance.

The sky to the east was pink with the coming dawn when Colonel Soong faced the brooding governor.

"The base is surrounded," the colonel said. "The rebels have completely encircled the perimeter of the base."

Sun got out of his chair and made his way to the map table. Grease marks on the map told the story.

"I have been begging Beijing to launch an air strike," Sun said. "Perhaps our comrades will deliver us."

The colonel didn't reply. He was fed up with wishful thinking.

"Will they attack?" Sun asked, referring to the rebels.

"Unless we surrender."

"Surrender?"

"They have not yet demanded our surrender, but we must consider it. They may attack without asking, or they ask and attack if we refuse."

"Why not use your artillery? You know where they are—hammer them into the earth."

"While we are hammering they will attack. There are too many people out there, Governor, for us to stop them."

Sun was incredulous. "What? A few thousand armed civilians against your trained soldiers?"

"We have about three thousand fighting men left on the base, counting every able-bodied man. My officers estimate there are more than two hundred thousand people outside the fence just now. Even if we

set about slaughtering them with machine guns and artillery, they can push the fence down and overwhelm us before we kill them all."

Sun didn't believe it and said so. Soong took him to an observation tower to see for himself.

With the sun peeping over the earth's rim, Sun forced his tired legs to climb the stairs. From three stories up on the open-air platform near the parade ground—a structure normally used to train paratroops and review military parades—one could see the main gate and the road beyond and several hundred yards of the base fence.

The situation was as the colonel had presented it. Sun found himself staring at a sea of humanity. The people weren't under cover—they were standing and sitting almost shoulder-to-shoulder. People! In every direction, as far as he could see.

A soft moan of despair escaped the governor. He closed his eyes, swayed as he hung on to the railing.

He took time to compose himself, then said, "It would be a political and propaganda disaster if the rebels were to capture me. We mustn't take that risk. Order a helicopter warmed up."

"Governor, I don't think you understand. The rebels have the base completely surrounded. Yesterday they fired missiles at the helicopter you were in. If you try to leave, Governor, they will shoot you down."

A breathless messenger from the command center brought a ray of hope. "Bombers are inbound, sir. They have radioed for instructions. What targets do you wish them to attack?"

"The rebels around the army base?" The pilot of the leading Sian H-6 bomber asked this question of his radio operator.

"Yes, sir. That is the order. Here is the chart." The radio operator passed it forward to the copilot, who held it so the pilot could see.

The Sian H-6 was a twin-engine subsonic medium bomber, an unlicensed Chinese version of the Russian Tupolev Tu-16 Badger. First flown in 1952, the Badger was used only as a target drone or engine test bed in Russia these days. However, in China the H-6 was still a front-line aircraft in the air force of the PLA. This morning four of them were on their way to Hong Kong.

"The rebels are just outside the base perimeter," the radio operator said.

As the implications of the target assignment sank in, the pilot and copilot looked at each other without enthusiasm. To ensure the bombs fell on the rebels and not inside the base, they would have to bomb from a very low altitude. Since the navigation-bombing radar was useless at low levels, the bombardier at his station in the glass nose would merely release the bombs as the plane flew over the enemy. As long as the rebels lacked antiaircraft missiles or radar-directed artillery, the bombers should be able to strike their target. If the weather was good enough.

"What did you tell the base commander?" the pilot asked the radio operator.

"That we would try for the assigned target, sir."

"Tell the other airplanes to follow us in single file. We shall make a pass to locate the target, then bomb on the second pass."

"Yes, sir."

"We should be bombing on the first pass," the copilot objected on the ICS.

"I want to see what's there."

"We have been ordered to bomb—a first pass without bombing will merely wake up the rebels."

"When you are the pilot in command you can do it your way. Today we do it my way."

After he squashed the copilot, the pilot reminded his gunners to keep a sharp lookout. Alas, the Sian H-6 lacked a radar-warning receiver. The plane contained a single forward-firing 23-millimeter cannon and three twin 23-millimeter mounts: a remote on the top of the fuselage, one on the belly, and a manned mount in the tail. Only the tail turret was aimed by a fire-control radar.

The bombers were three miles high when they flew across the city of Hong Kong and turned eastward, out to sea, still descending. No low clouds this morning, the pilot noted, visibility five or six miles. He and the bombardier stared down into the haze as the planes flew over the city.

"I see the base," said the bombardier on the intercom.

"They should have sent fighters to escort us," the copilot said nervously as he searched the wide, empty sky.

"They did!" the tail gunner sang out. "At four o'clock, high."

The pilot looked in the indicated direction with a sense of foreboding. The briefing officer had specifically said there would be no escorting fighters. Rumor had it that the fighter pilots were politically unreliable. A civil war, the pilot told himself, was mankind's worst fear realized.

"Shengyang J-lls. Two of them." The tail gunner again.

"Uh-oh," said the copilot, who had also been told that the J-11 squadron at Hong Kong had joined the rebels. "What do we do now?"

"Those fighters may be hostile," the pilot told the tail gunner. "If they shoot a missile or line us up for a gunshot, be ready."

"Aye," said the gunner, his voice rising in pitch. Like everyone in the bomber, he knew he had little chance of hitting an incoming missile with his gun. In fact, he had never been allowed to fire his gun with real ammunition.

Ensuring he was out of 23-millimeter range, Major Ma Chow turned to get behind the four bombers, which were strung out in trail. His wingman stayed in a loose cruise formation several hundred feet behind Ma and slightly above the plane of Ma's turn.

Ma Chow was well aware of the fact that the bombers were defenseless against the two fighters, each of which was armed with four air-to-air missiles and one hundred and forty-nine 30-millimeter cannon shells. The fact that each plane was flown by a crew of his fellow countrymen also weighed heavily on him.

"What do we do?" his wingman asked over the radio.

"Let's try the radio," Ma Chow replied.

"Think they know we're back here?"

"If they don't, we'll tell them." The radios in Chinese warplanes could transmit and receive on only four frequencies, so it was a simple matter to try each of them.

Making a long, slow, descending turn in smooth air, the bombers dropped to a thousand feet above the water before they began their run westward toward the army base. Once in level flight the four bombers descended still farther, until they were only four hundred feet above the water.

Ma Chow locked up the trailing bomber with his radar and readied a missile.

"Bomber lead over Kowloon, this is fighter lead, over." The pilot and copilot of the H-6 heard the call in their headphones.

"What do we do?" the copilot asked, panic evident in his voice. "If we talk to them the authorities will call it treason."

"Bomber lead, this is fighter lead. If any of the bombers open your bomb bay doors, we will shoot you down. Please acknowledge."

The bomber pilot didn't know what to say, so he said nothing. He led the bombers around an island, then they straightened on course for the army base.

They crossed the waterline at about two hundred fifty knots, four hundred feet high.

There was no flak, of course, and no missiles. The planes flew in and out of splotchy sunshine over an immense, sprawling city. Ma Chow and the bomber pilots each wondered what the other would do as the tension ratcheted tighter and tighter.

"Target one mile," the bombardier of the lead bomber sang out on the ICS. He readied the bombsight so that he could designate his aim point as he passed over it; the sight would track that location mechanically and give him steering back to it.

Crossing rooftops, racing along a few hundred feet up with the rising sun behind them and the buildings casting long shadows ahead, the string of planes thundered toward the army base. Automatically the pilot retarded the throttles slightly, causing the speed to bleed off still more.

Then they saw the people. A horde of people, an endless sea of humanity extending for miles completely surrounded the base.

"Those must be the rebels," the bombardier said disgustedly as the lead plane swept overhead. "They aren't even armed."

"A few of them are," the copilot offered.

The pilot, also looking, said nothing. He had never seen so many people in one place at one time in his life.

When they were past the base the pilot trimmed the nose a bit higher and pushed the power levers forward. With the two engines developing ninety-five percent r.p.m., he stabilized in a cruise climb. Passing three thousand feet, he said to the copilot, "I think it's time we went home."

"They will shoot us for disobeying orders," the copilot objected.

"I saw no rebels, merely civilians."

"Those
were
the rebels," the copilot said obstinately. He was something of a fool, the pilot thought.

"You would bomb them, would you?"

"I have a wife and son at Quangzou," the copilot replied, naming the town near the airbase they left before dawn.

"Life is full of shitty choices," the pilot shot back. "Are you suicidal? If we open the bomb bay doors those fighters will swat us out of the sky."

Before the copilot could think of an answer to that verity, the tail gunner sang out on the ICS, "Number two has dropped his landing gear! He's turning out of formation. And there goes number four! They must be going to land at Lantau."

There it is!
the pilot told himself.
Make up your mind.

He retarded the throttles; with the nose in a climb attitude, the speed bled off sharply. Now he reached for the gear handle and moved it to the down position. As the hydraulics hummed and the gear extended, the pilot said to the copilot, "Better hope it's a short war."

Three of the bombers dropped their landing gear and turned for the airfield at Lantau. Only one continued to climb away to the northeast. Ma Chow's wingman went with the landing bombers while Ma Chow followed the one climbing out. As it passed twenty thousand feet he broke away.

He did a large 360-degree turn while he watched the lone H-6 disappear into the haze. When it was completely gone, he checked his compass, then dropped the fighter's nose.

Down he went toward the city below, accelerating rapidly. In seconds the plane was supersonic. He kept the nose down, let it accelerate.

Passing five thousand feet, Ma Chow engaged his afterburners. The airspeed slid past Mach two.

The tail of the fighter was hidden by a moisture disk condensing in the supersonic shock wave as Ma Chow flew across the PLA base below a thousand feet. Then he lifted his fighter's nose and rode his afterburner plumes straight up into the gauzy June morning.

Wu Tai Kwong and the members of the Scarlet Team were standing outside the closed main gate in plain sight of the PLA troops behind the gate and perimeter fence and in the observation tower when the shock wave of the racing fighter hit them like an explosion. When the crowd realized what it was, they cheered lustily.

Every person in the crowd looked up to watch the fighter disappear into the haze over their heads.

Wu listened to the fading roar of the engines and glanced at the hands of his watch, which were creeping toward seven o'clock.

At two minutes before the appointed hour, Wu nodded at Virgil Cole, who had a portable York control unit hanging from a strap around his neck. He used the unit to walk Alvin York forward and stop it next to Wu, who examined the robot with interest. This was the first time he had seen a York up close in the daylight.

When the Scarlet Team had looked it over, they stood aside, giving the soldiers on the other side of the fence their first good look. Cole walked the York to the closed metal gate, stopping it just a few feet short.