The Chinese Agenda (22 page)

Dmietriev and then Stowe flashed past. Leycock started to swing to a stop beside him but Gillon waved him on, shouting for him to go further up the slope. Then he dropped to one knee, unslung his carbine and checked to see that the magazine was fully loaded and the two spare magazines handy in his zipped parka pocket. Then he waited, his hands shaking badly with the cold and tension for the leading Chinese troopers to come into range. If he was lucky, in the gusting snow and his white coverall, they might not have seen him stop.

But whether they did or not, they came on as if convinced of their invincibility. Gillon raised the carbine, steadied the sights on the leading figure and squeezed off a shot. The range was still too great and he lowered the carbine and waited a moment before trying again. The second time, he missed again. The third time, he saw the man's hood snap off his head but still he came on, probably not even aware that he was under fire. Pick one and keep shooting until you hit him, he had been taught, and he raised the carbine again and squeezed off the fourth shot. This time, the man went

down abruptly, disappearing into a rolling flurry of snow. Gillon shifted to the next figure and was surprised to see just how close he was. He took a deep breath and fired and missed. The second shot, however, must have hit the man low in the leg, because he crashed downward, somersaulted with his momentum and lay still for a moment before crawling rapidly away from the line of fire. The rest of the soldiers were now too close and to discourage them before they ran right over him, he flicked the selector lever to full automatic and as he came to his feet, sprayed the carbine at the four leading men. One went down and the other three dove off to the right, kicking up flurries of snow, and dropped to the ground. Behind him he heard Leycock's carbine start up and not waiting to see its effect, he began side stepping up the slope as fast as he could move.

Several hundred feet higher he passed Leycock, lying prone in the snow, firing carefully and calmly. Gillon went past a few hundred feet further and stopped, reloaded his carbine and yelled for Leycock to get moving. The nearer line of troopers had all dropped down into the snow and were firing steadily up the slope but in the wind and snow their shooting was anything but accurate.

Gillon looked for Stowe and Dmietriev as Leycock went past and spotted them near the crest, but still a hundred yards below the tree line. Dmietriev was waving down and Gillon waved back, fired a fast clip and followed Leycock once more. Snow swirled around them in gusty blasts completely hiding them from the troopers below for minutes at a time. It was only a matter of time until somebody was hit. The slope, which had looked so gentle from a distance, was treacherous; it was steep and covered with bare outcroppings of rock that were hidden in the general whiteness; all of this was now painfully apparent. What was worse, none were suitable for cover, but all imposed obstructions. The gusty wind and whirling snow were for Gillon almost heavensent. Racing up the slope, he came level with Leycock and

shouted for him to stay where he was. Gillon jammed his carbine butt first into the snow and stripped off his skis. He broke them down and slipped them into the straps on his pack. It took only a few seconds to don the snowshoes, even while struggling in the snow to maintain his balance.

`Get your snowshoes on,' he yelled to Leycock; and snatched up his carbine and fired a burst downslope to discourage any pursuit that he could not see. Leycock did as he was told and a minute later was half shuffling, half running toward the crest as the wind died as suddenly as it had begun and the snow's curtain lifted for a second. A thin whine, outraged screams of anger rose fitfully from the clustered soldiers as they caught sight of Ley-cock racing up the slope, and Gillon smiled for the first time in days. The troopers' rage told him that they had only skis; skis that forced a sidestepping climb up a slope, a slow and exhausting gait. Leycock had reached Stowe and Dmietriev and the three of them began to fire downslope to cover him.

The leading trooper was barely visible in the heavy snowfall less than fifty yards distant when Gillon slung his carbine and started up the slope after Leycock. Snow spurted around him twice and, so encouraged, he sprinted away on a long reach diagonally up the slope, directly under the fire from above. Within a few minutes, his overtaxed lungs were at the bursting point and he was gasping deep, sobbing draughts of air. Blood pounded so hard in his temples that he wondered if he were on the verge of a stroke, but even so, he dared not slow. Gillon knew that he had cut the margin too fine and now he was going to pay for it; it came to everyone sooner or later, he thought, sooner or later all of the chances, all the miscalculations caught up with you and combined into one overriding mistake and you bought it. He had experienced this feeling twice before, on the Laotian border and in the delta off the African coast. Both times something had intervened to cancel the mistake . . . luck. If you were good in this business of war and violent death, and Gillon knew he was, you fought against it right down to your dying breath and then some, if you could manage it, because luck was just that and no more. The probing fingers of rifle fire began to search again and tiny spurts of snow plumed around him. The roar in his ears was so loud that the sounds of both firing and wind were completely obscured. For some reason, he thought of Jones. Jones had been a professional, a better one than he, and yet he had been shot dead in one of those situations that no one could have foreseen, a million to one odds that those troops had come on them in the middle of the forest ... a forest several thousand square miles in extent.

Then as suddenly as it had begun, the firing stopped and Gillon realized simultaneously that he no longer knew where he was. He crouched down, gasping the thin air while he stared around at the swirling wilderness of white. The snow had thickened until it had closed right down, obscuring everything beyond a few feet. As the pounding in his ears began to die away, he heard the high-pitched whine of wind increasing in force. The world had suddenly been reduced to this narrow circle of white barely ten feet in diameter. Once he thought he heard a shout, a high-pitched voice far down the slope, and groggily he pushed himself to his knees and struggled upright onto the snowshoes. The Chinese troopers would be spreading out in a long skirmish line across the face of the slope. They would move straight up the ridge toward the crest, expecting any moment to be fired upon and therefore ready for the first sign of movement. Gillon forced himself to move upslope as fast as his aching lungs and the terrible stitch in his side would allow. The high blood pressure induced by the heavy exertion had left him with a raging headache and nausea.

It took Gillon nearly an hour to climb the remaining four hundred feet to the top of the ridge, a terrible hour of stumbling over hidden obstructions, avoiding snow-covered boulders and brush that clutched at the frames and webbing of the snowshoes; an hour of pain and nausea in the thin, cold air. Intermittently, he heard shouted orders and once the sound of a whistle as troops

were mustered, but all sounds came from below. He still had the advantage of snowshoes over their skis and he could move twice as fast, but as exhausted as he was, he knew that they were about even.

Gillon reached the top of the cliff by the simple expedient of tripping on the abruptly level ground. He rested where he had sprawled for several long minutes before the iron bite of the cold and the snow drove him to his feet. He had no idea where he was in relation to the others. When the snow had closed down, he had been moving diagonally across the slope and now he was unsure whether or not he had passed their last position. He knelt in the snow and listened intently for several minutes but only the steady keen of the wind was audible.

A figure materialized suddenly, carbine swinging toward his face. Gillon stumbled aside on the snowshoes, 'and fended the blow on his right arm, left hand snatching the knife from the sheath behind his neck. Before he could strike, he was face to face with Stowe. Stowe fell back and lowered the carbine.

'For God's sake, we've been searching all over hell for you . . .' Stowe shouted to make himself heard above the wind. 'We thought those bastards had gotten you.'

Gillon shook his head. 'Not yet . . . where are the rest?'

Stowe took him by the arm and led him along the rim of the canyon to where Leycock and Dmietriev were sheltering just inside the fringe of pines. A hurried discussion of the position convinced them that they did not stand a chance if they remained where they were. It would not be long before the Chinese troopers gained the top. In the brief argument over which direction to take, for once Gillon found himself in agreement with Stowe. They must head back into the mountains as quickly as possible. Liu and his people had not kept either rendezvous and so it was a safe bet that the Chinese had intercepted them.

Either way, all ideas of completing the mission were now irretrievably lost; on that they all agreed. Their overriding concern was now to get themselves out alive, a feeling to which Gillon heartily subscribed. Roped

together once more to avoid losing each other in the heavy snow, the four men headed in the direction of the Khalik Tau.

Gillon led them deeper and deeper into the forest as the hours lengthened. The ground had begun to slope steadily downward toward the first of the low-lying river valleys well to the east of the rendezvous locations. Occasionally they crossed wide clearings in the trees but could see nothing but swirling snow around them. Not once did the snow ease and Gillon knew that the snowfall of the night before had only been a prelude to this blizzard. He was also aware that they were now down to one final day's rations and unless the snow let up soon there would be no chance of getting a plane in to pick them up tonight. If that happened and the Reds picked up their trail again, they stood a good chance of never leaving the Tien Shan alive. Only once during the long afternoon did they stop and then only long enough for Leycock to rig the radio and Dmietriev to report to Ala Kul that Rodek had been killed and that they were being driven eastward by Chinese ski troops. Of the last, Gillon had absolutely no doubt. The Chinese, now that they had been seen, would never end the hunt until they were killed or captured. Gillon knew that they would certainly guess they had gone over the ridge and into the valley rather than attempt to skirt the ridge above the canyon and double back. It was the only way open that allowed even the meagerest chance. Even now, he was sure that at least one party of Chinese troops was pushing on fast to be down into the valley ahead of them when the snow should let up. He also knew that as soon as the weather moderated, more troops would be parachuted in to surround them. They were, in effect, in the center of a slowly tightening noose and their only hope was to outrun the far side. Dmietriev signed off and while Leycock replaced the radio, Dmietriev translated the message.

`There has been no word at all for two days from our contact. Moscow reports that a battalion of ski troops has been moved into this area and that a second battalion is also being brought in.'

'Oh, Christ,' Gillon muttered.

'The weather report is equally bad. That high pressure area has moved down out of the Arctic sooner than they had anticipated. We can expect snow and blizzard conditions for at least another two days. They suggest that we hide somewhere until the snow stops.'

'Nuts,' Gillon snorted. 'We do that and with one whole battalion already looking for us . .

. we wouldn't stand a chance.'

Dmietriev shrugged. 'Perhaps . . . but then, in this snow, they will not find us anyway.'

Stowe had been listening to the argument and now he leaned forward and stared hard at Gillon. 'Dmietriev is right. We need to find somewhere to camp . . . the gooks won't be able to find us in this snow.'

'You keep thinking of them as gooks and we'll be dead before you know what's happened,' Gillon snapped back. 'These aren't guerrilla soldiers, half-starved and as much concerned with finding something to eat and a place to sleep as finding us. These are trained mountain troops. You saw how neatly they sprang that ambush on us a couple of hours ago . . . they may not be able " to track us during the blizzard, but it won't take them long to find us after the snow stops. If we don't get as far away from this area as possible, we'll never get out alive.'

'He's right,' Leycock said unexpectedly. 'Don't forget one thing. No one has heard from this mysterious contact we are supposed to meet. In both Moscow and Washington . . . and probably Peking, and every other goddamned capital in the world . . . they know by now that there was no one at either rendezvous site to meet us. As far as they are concerned, the mission is a failure. And if you think they are going to exert themselves to get us out ... you're crazy.'

'That's nonsense,' Stowe interrupted. 'The last thing in the world the United States wants is for us to be caught here ...'

'Exactly,' Gillon interrupted in turn. 'Think it out, man! We've failed, the mission has failed. No one gains anything? Of course the United States doesn't want us caught . . . but the Russians, there's another matter. If the Chinese take us, then the Russians have a propaganda victory at least. Americans captured by Chinese soldiers while on espionage mission in Chinese territory. Think how that'll sound. The Russians will have gained, even if no one else does.'

'Wait just a moment .

Dmietriev began angrily.

`Shut-up, Colonel . . . can't you see it? You are as expendable as the rest of us. There never was a Colonel Andre Dmietriev with the GRU . . . or at least there isn't now. If we don't get out of here alive or without being captured . . . you have suddenly become one very un-person.'

Gillon watched the Russian's face, as he spoke, go from anger to thoughtfulness to apprehension. Certainly well acted, Gillon thought. And he had no doubt that if things worked out as he had just described, that Dmietriev had already thought them through and arrived at the same conclusion . . . in fact, Gillon suspected, Dmietriev's orders probably covered just such a contingency. But he wondered. Just what arrangements had the Americans made to counter any such Soviet duplicity? There was no honor among thieves, or among governments who thought they were competing for survival, for that matter. Whatever the arrangements were, they had died with Jones. A heavy silence fell over the four men as they considered the implications of the latest turn of events. The snow swirled wildly through the trees in time to the wild keen of the wind. It settled on the folds of their snowsuits and the mounds of their-packs, on their carbines and faces until eyelashes and eyebrows, moustaches and beards were covered with white frosting.