"Brown, Dale - Fatal Terrain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

of the People's Liberation Army of the People's Republic of
China, was standing in the forward section of the cargo plane
as the temperature of the cargo hold, already below freezing,
suddenly dropped nearly fifty degrees almost in the blink of
an eye. The ice-cold wind swirled around the huge cargo hold,
tugging at legs and arms as if trying to pull the humans out

into the frigid sky. Yes, it was mid-May over the generally
warm, relaxing South China Sea, but at 30,000 feet just before
midnight, the air, rushing into the plane at over a hundred
miles an hour, was still bone-snapping cold. The roar of the
Y-8C's four Wojiang-6 turboprops, at 4,250 horsepower per
engine, was deafening even in the thin air.
The senior naval officer, like the other engineers and tech-
nicians in the cargo bay, was dressed in a sub-Arctic snowsuit,
layered over an oceangoing exposure suit that was required to
be worn anytime they were flying outside,, safe gliding range
of land. Sun also wore a fur-lined aviation helmet with an




12 DALE BROWN
oxygen mask and cold-weather anti-fog goggles. Sun marveled
at some of the soldiers working on the cargo inside the plane
they wore parkas and boots but no gloves, and they took only
occasional gulps of 100-percent oxygen from the masks dan-
gling down on the sides of their faces as they worked. These t
men, obviously born in the punishing cold and high altitudes
of Xizang and Xinjiang Provinces of western China, were very
accustomed to working in cold, thin air.
Sun Ji Guorning was one of a rare breed in the People's
Liberation Anny-a young, intelligent officer with vision. At
the age of only fifty-three, Admiral Sun, known as the "Black
Tiger" because of his noticeably darker, almost Indian-like
complexion, was by far the youngest full flag officer in the
history of the People's Republic of China. He was at least
fifteen years younger than any other member of the Central
Military Commission and thirty years younger than his supe-
nor officer, General Chin Po Zihong, the chief of staff. Sun's
family were high Party officials-his father, Sun Ran, was
minister of the State Science and Technology Commission, in
charge of restructuring and modernizing China's vastly out-
dated telecommunications infrastructure.
But Sun had not earned his post merely by his family's
powerful Party connections, but by his utter devotion to the
Party and to its leadership, first as commander of the South
China Sea Fleet, then as former hard-line premier Li Peng's
military advisor, then as chief of staff of the People's Liber-
ation Army Navy (PLAN), and now as first deputy chief of