Читать книгу China Rising - Alexander Scipio - Страница 4

West of Quetta, Pakistan

Thursday, 11 April, 11:00 hours GMT (16:00 Local)

At the bottom of the narrow canyon, Colonel Li Dao Zhen of the People’s Republic of China, nodded to the Korean soldiers, silently ordering them to begin.

The half-dozen armed men wearing the field uniforms of Special Forces soldiers of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea went to work. They untied and pulled to the sand-and-gravel floor of the remote canyon the tarpaulins draped over high steel hoops of the six heavy-transport trucks. Then they unbolted the hoops, unceremoniously tossing them onto the tarpaulins.

No longer covered to protect them from weeks of slow transport via rail and road, a schedule designed to avoid prying eyes that might become aware of large loads transported more quickly, and through hundreds of kilometers of weather and dust, the deadly cargoes of the six trucks stood revealed in the lengthening twilight shadows.

Another four DPRK Special Forces operators stood armed and watchful between their comrades working behind them, and the armed Arabs sixty meters down the narrow canyon before them.

The loads uncovered, each of the six men working at the trucks pulled a lever on his assigned vehicle. The low whine of hydraulics spread with the soft breeze across the winding desert canyon, fading to nothingness within one hundred meters.

Nearby a tall, thin Arab watched. A small smile broke across his face for an instant before he was able to hide the emotion from his men, the smile disappearing in his dark brown beard. Allah be praised!

You may have killed my father, but he was growing old and beginning to stand in the way anyway. Now we shall attack as we should have years ago!

Behind the Arab, staring toward the men and trucks, thirty of his fighters watched six flat-black, medium range ballistic missiles rise from their horizontal transport cradles to their vertical launch positions. The eyes of the men shifted furtively between the missiles and their leader.

The first missile clicked into place. As the men watched, the other missiles continued moving upward.

The fighters had known and honored his father for many years. With his death, the eldest son had taken-charge, assuming the nom de guerre “Prince of Terror.”

Many of the followers of the father were unsure as to the suitability of the son, but those men now ranged around him facing the Koreans across the canyon floor had decided to follow the son of the one who had proved the strongest horse in recent memory. Perhaps he, too, would lead them forward against the Great Satan? Tonight he would prove – or not – his readiness for the task.

The last missile reached vertical and clicked into place.

The whine stopped. Silence filled the canyon.

One hundred meters up the canyon in a makeshift brush-and-rope corral, a young boy herding a dozen donkeys stepped backward, staring. Losing his footing, he stumbled and dropped into a sitting position, never removing his awe-struck gaze from the missiles.

Standing in a group close to the Arab were several dozen better-dressed men. These men formed the leadership council of the Baluchistan Taliban movement within Pakistan, the most powerful Taliban organization in existence, headquartered in Quetta, several kilometers east of the canyon.

Next to them watched another few dozen leaders of Islamist movements from neighboring Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Chechnya. What the son was doing was of deep interest to them all.

Cut over fifty meters deep by the erosion of the occasional but intense thunderstorms over millennia, the canyon was like uncounted others pointing south from the mountain ranges dividing Pakistan and Afghanistan, toward the Arabian Sea 500 kilometers distant.

From the corner of his eye the Arab noticed the Chinese colonel turn from the missiles.

Nodding to himself, Colonel Li looked across the men under his tactical command spread in a defensive line across the canyon floor. Ten fully-armed Special Forces operators of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, all combat veterans of various small wars or of infiltration missions to their sister country.

Before the Koreans: many times their numbers of equally battle-hardened warriors.

Behind the Koreans: six armed missiles poised for flight from their road-mobile launch vehicles.

Li’s watchful eyes swept expressionlessly across the Arab and his men. He had to deal with these people. He did not have to trust them.

Leading the team of DPRK Special Forces at the direction of the General Staff of the People’s Liberation Army of China, acceded to by the North Korean Head-of-State, Colonel Li held the responsibility for the final three steps of the unprecedented transaction: Delivery, targeting and launching of these six missiles and their thermonuclear warheads.

Needing the targeting coordinates to complete his mission, Li turned and walked toward the Arab.

The missiles had been sold by the leader of North Korea for desperately-needed cash to which the Arab had access in abundance. The People’s Republic of China had mated the warheads to these missiles. Even had the Prince of Terror known, he would not have cared about what the Chinese - Korean joint effort may have foreshadowed; strategic thinking was beyond him.

The Arab turned his back to the approaching officer. He had to deal with infidels in order to remove their stain from his native lands, from the lands of the Prophet, as was necessary to advance Jihad and achieve the Caliphate. But he also must show that he was their superior. Especially he must show to the older men watching that he and he alone, was the leader here.

Soon, very soon, the Prince of Terror thought, the infidels will be removed from the rightful lands of Arabia, from the presence of the followers of Muhammad. Across the world infidels will take their places as slaves to those who understand the glory of Allah. Or, as throughout history and as Muhammad commands, they will die.

Tonight it would begin!