Sword of Shiva - Страница 9

Desert Storm was the first battlefield demonstration of the extraordinary power of smart weapons. The government and military of Iraq were completely unprepared for the accuracy and power of America’s latest tools of war.

As public awareness of these weapons spread, several new pieces of terminology began to filter into the common lexicon. Phrases like Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM), and Digital Scene-Matching Area Correlation (DSMAC) — while not exactly the stuff of everyday conversation — became generally recognizable components of the technical jargon surrounding next-generation military hardware.

In the years since Operation Desert Storm, the multitude of available media images — reinforced by animated television news diagrams and a sprinkling of explanatory terminology — may have given the average man on the street a false sense of comprehension for cruise missile technology. At the risk of sounding elitist, the core knowledge of many laymen might be summed up in three brief statements:

(1) Cruise missiles can be launched from a variety of vessels, vehicles, and aircraft at targets over 1,000 miles away.

(2) Due to their ground-hugging flight profiles and evasive maneuvering capabilities, cruise missiles are difficult to detect and track by radar, and even more difficult to intercept.

(3) These amazing weapons are the recent result of cutting-edge technological breakthroughs.

The first two of these assumptions are essentially correct. The third statement, as obvious and unassailable as it might seem, is false.

Although the cruise missile has inarguably benefited from refinements made possible by contemporary science, the core technology is not at all a recent development. In fact, the history of the cruise missile dates back at least as far as the First World War.

For all of its exceptional capability, this so-called next generation weapon of the modern age was a century in the making. And the tale of its gestation is almost as strangely compelling as the weapon itself.

CHAPTER 7

WESTERN YUNNAN PROVINCE, SOUTHERN CHINA

SATURDAY; 22 NOVEMBER

8:30 PM

TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

A micro switch clicked shut somewhere deep in the electronic belly of the launch computer, channeling power to the firing circuits. Approximately two milliseconds later, the protective membrane at the rear end of the missile launcher was incinerated by a white hot stream of exhaust gasses. With an ear-splitting roar, the missile blasted through the weatherproof cover at the forward end of the launch tube, casting a brief flare of harsh red light against the dark hillside as it hurled itself into the night sky.

For a moment, the big eight-wheeled launch vehicle was wreathed in the smoke left behind by the receding missile. The brisk mountain winds began to shove the smoke cloud aside, but not before the elevated launch tubes spat two more fiery missiles into the cold Chinese night.

The vehicle’s mission was complete now. All three of its launch tubes were empty. It had no more threat to offer, no more messengers of death to release into the darkness. But the vehicle was not alone.

There were thirty-five of them in all. Thirty-five Wanshan WS2400 transporter erector launchers, deployed in a staggered formation about a thousand meters west of the road. The matte colors of their camouflage paint schemes blended well with the scrub grasses of the local terrain, but any chance of concealment was stripped away by the roaring streaks of fire unleashed by these strange vehicles.

The launches came in rapid succession, missile after missile climbing away, and vanishing toward the west.

By the time the rising three-quarter moon broke over the foothills of the Himalayas, the area was deserted. The vehicles were gone, their passage marked only by scorched ground, and the tracks of their enormous tires.

Somewhere in the darkness, one hundred and five cruise missiles were hugging the torturous contours of the mountains, following carefully-plotted digital elevation maps toward their mutual target — a small village on the Indian side of the Himalayas.

CHAPTER 8

GEKU, NORTHERN INDIA

SATURDAY; 22 NOVEMBER

7:17 PM

TIME ZONE +5 ‘ECHO’

Jampa stood in the open doorway of the shepherd’s house, the soft golden light of the oil lamps at his back, his face turned outward — toward the crisp gloom of the evening. He knew that he should close the door; the heat from the little fireplace was escaping past him, into the night. But he stood for a moment longer, enjoying the sting of the cold air against his cheeks and admiring the soothing near-darkness of the moonlit street.

The village of Geku lay spread out before him, an almost haphazard scattering of small houses and buildings under the emerging stars. It was a beautiful place, this frigid little paradise carved into the mountains on the roof of the world. Harsh. Difficult. Sometimes brutal. But always beautiful.

Most of the inhabitants were already settling down for the evening. The people here led full, but uncomplicated lives. Jampa envied them.

Here, on the Indian side of the Himalayas, there was freedom. Not boundless liberty, but at least the locals could go about their daily lives without fear that their homes would be raided by truckloads of Chinese soldiers. Their schools and their temples would not be burned, or crushed under the boot heels of an occupying nation.

Jampa felt his eyes drawn toward the east, where his own country was hidden behind the rising peaks of the mountains. The Chinese called it the Tibet Autonomous Region, which was a typical trick of communist propaganda. There was no autonomy for the people of Jampa’s homeland. There was no freedom for them. Not for more than half a century, since the ironically-named People’s Liberation Army had surged across the Jinsha River in 1950, to seize control of Tibet.

It had taken the Chinese invaders only thirteen days to conquer the vastly-outnumbered Tibetan defenders. Thirteen days, for one of the most ancient sovereign nations on the earth to become just another oppressed province in the Chinese empire.

Of course, the Chinese were somewhat more subtle about things these days, at least to outward appearances. The brute force of China’s military occupation was giving way to something more devious. The Qinghai railway was hauling in trainloads of Han Chinese, to claim and settle the land, forcing the native people into an artificial minority. If no one stopped this unnatural migration, the Tibetan people could be squeezed out of existence in just a few decades.

The ghost of a smile crossed Jampa’s lips. He had stopped it, for a while at least. He, and Nima, and Sonam had stopped the accursed train. They had blown the mechanical beast right off its tracks.

The smile faded as Jampa remembered staring into the eyes of the young PLA soldier, just before pulling the trigger of the stolen Chinese rocket launcher. The scene flooded into his mind again, the roiling ball of flame, the black smoke, the shriek of rending metal as the wounded train tore itself apart.

Jampa hadn’t wanted to kill the young soldier. He hadn’t wanted to kill anyone. He had only wanted to destroy the train, to stop the never-ceasing influx of Chinese invaders.

He felt a stab of regret, but it was quickly driven out of his thoughts by the memory of another fire. The smoke rising from the ruins of his little school in Amchok Bora. The faces of Dukar, and Chopa, and his other young students as the villagers had pulled their charred forms from the burning wreck of the school.

Jampa had been a teacher, back then. An educated man. A man of science in a land where academic learning was far too rare.

The villagers in Amchok Bora had treated him with respect. He had been regarded as a man of wisdom and enlightenment.

Jampa did not feel enlightened now. He felt angry, and tired. If there truly had been any wisdom within him, it had long since fled, replaced by a single purpose — to free his land from the Chinese oppressors.

He wondered where Sonam was now. He felt guilty about leaving his wounded team member behind after the attack on the train. He hoped — for Sonam’s sake — that the young freedom fighter had died from his bullet wounds before the Chinese had gotten their hands on him.

Jampa had a brief image of what the ruthless bastards might do to make Sonam talk. His shudder was amplified by a shiver from the cold evening air.

The shiver was followed by a yawn, and then another one. Jampa tried to push all thoughts of Sonam’s capture from his mind. Nothing could be done to help Sonam now. Either the man was already dead, or the Chinese had him in one of their interrogation cells. Either way, coming to Sonam’s aid was far beyond the resources of Jampa, or anyone else in the Gingara organization.

Jampa yawned again, and made another attempt to force his thoughts away from the fate of Sonam. There was time for a bit of reading before bed. Tomorrow, perhaps he and Nima could begin planning their next strike against the oppressors.

He started to swing the door closed, and then paused with it still half open. What was that noise?

Jampa tilted his head, and struggled to concentrate on the sound that hovered at the lower edge of his hearing. The noise started softly, but grew louder rapidly. It reminded him of an odd combination of an arrow in flight, and the hissing of a kettle just coming to a boil.

The sound, strange as it was, did not seem completely unfamiliar. He had heard that sound before, or something very much like it.