Violent Peace: The War With China: Aftermath of Armageddon

by David Poyer

“Yes, sir. Chinese,” one of the sergeants said.

  “What’re they doing there?”

  “Not sure. No movement since I picked them up, but IR shows engine heat.”

  Zein pulled her own screen back and panned up and down the highway, which was empty except for one truck far to the west. She panned back.

  “Change,” the dark-skinned sergeant to the right said.

  Zein toggled to the other feed, apparently from another camera on the same drone. A cloud of exhaust, or maybe dust, was spewing out behind the armor, spreading slowly and silently across the sand. Expanding, like ink from a disturbed octopus on the ocean floor.

  “Engine temp rising … they’re on the move,” the sergeant said.

  On the screens, the green rectangles began rolling forward. Toward, Andres saw, an exit from the shallow depression they were hidden in. Headed down, toward the river. And the highway.

  The sergeant on the left whispered something. “A-ha,” said Zein triumphantly. She toggled back to the highway.

  Seven vehicles were making what looked like good speed down the center of the previously empty four-laner. Headed east to west. Coming down the road.

  Right toward where the gray-green tanks were rumbling down out of the hills.

  * * *

  THE man who’d once been Master Chief Teddy Oberg sat up awkwardly, shoving a leg out in front of him, tucking the other under one buttock. He held the binoculars with the tips of his fingers, peering up the valley, then down. Beside him Jusuf was intent on the radio, head cocked, listening. Finally the big muj muttered, “From Guldulla, sir. They are in sight.”

  “Okay, great. Get that armor moving out. And torch the car.”

  “It is moving, Lingxiu. Tokarev gave the order.”

  “Avtomobil yonib ketganligiga ishonch hosil qiling. Make sure they’re burning the car,” Teddy said again, but he felt fidgety. His hands and arms tingled. He kept wanting to spit. Wanted some more of that poppy tea. Where the fuck was Dandan? He glanced at the carbine beside him, leaned against one of the flat rocks. Shit, what was he doing up here? Then he reminded himself. Above the battle. Stay in command. Manage, don’t lead.

  He blew out and waggled his head. “Shit, shit, shit,” he muttered.

  “Are you all right, Lingxiu?” Dandan, sinking to her knees beside him. The stocky Han girl unwrapped a clay pot. “This very hot. You need to drink. Need to eat something.”

  He drank off the tea without looking at her, absentmindedly feeling up her butt as she stood beside him. He bolted a hard candy from his pocket, and shifted again where he sat. Finally he held up both arms. Jusuf grabbed one, Dandan the other. They hoisted him to his feet and he hobbled back toward his pony.

  Jusuf followed. “Lingxiu, where are you going?”

  “We’re not close enough,” he said in what he hoped was passable Uighur. But sometimes he’d use words he was pretty sure were right, and they just stared at him, or worse, tried to hide a smile at something stupid he’d apparently said instead. Which was why he issued orders via Jusuf when he could. “I can’t see shit from up here. We need to shift our overwatch.”

  “The closer we get, the harder it will be to avoid the counterstroke. When their QRF arrives.”

  “Gotta take chances in war, amigo.” Teddy grabbed the pommel and hauled on it. A sizzling hot flash of pain jolted all the way up his leg and into his spine as they rushed over to boost him, and he gasped. “Fuck. Fuck!”

  “You are all right, Lingxiu?”

  “God is great. God is great,” he hissed through gritted teeth. “Let’s take the battle to the enemy.”

  He hauled awkwardly on the reins and the pony tossed its head, wheeling reluctantly, as if affronted at his lack of riding skills. Teddy didn’t like being this high off the ground, not with all these rocks, and a bum leg, and he’d never been much of a horseman. But the animal was surefooted, and when he kicked it into a downhill trot the pony picked its way without further direction.

  As always before an action, he’d memorized the topography, picked routes of retreat, and set fallback points. As he climbed again on the far side, a plume of ocher dust smeared the sky ahead, where the river cut through a mountain ridge. The highway lay on the far side of that ridge. It would probably be visible now if he used the binoculars.

  Yeah, he’d set up way too far back. Getting cautious in your old age, Teddy? He grinned fiercely. A mistake that could be remedied. He spurred down the slope, the pony’s hooves slipping and clicking on the loose moraine, then up the next. From behind him came curses and a rattle of loose pebbles as someone went down, then the scream of a frightened or injured horse. Teddy didn’t look back. He rose in the stirrups and slapped his mount’s neck with the reins, urging it forward.

  When they descended the last slope their armor was wheeling into position along the highway, spewing plumes of sooty high-sulfur diesel exhaust and yellow dust. Four huge machines, not quite as large as main battle tanks, but thirty tons each of steel and ordnance. Their drivers still seemed tentative, uncertain, gunning and braking to straighten the line.

  Out of nowhere he remembered facing a Soviet-era BMP years before. In Afghanistan? Funny, he recalled it clearly, but not where it had taken place. The amphibious tank had suddenly burst out of a walled compound, and he’d had nothing in his hands but an RPG that wouldn’t penetrate its frontal armor. Only the fact the driver had been terrible at his job had saved Teddy’s ass then.

  “Training, that’s what wins battles!” he yelled over his shoulder to Jusuf, who was just pulling up next to him, his pony huffing, white foam dripping from its mouth.

  “Truly yes, Lingxiu,” he panted out, wiping his face with the colorful tie-dyed scarf most of the rebels wore, pulling them up over their faces shemagh-style when the dust blew.

  Teddy half rose in the stirrups again, blinking at the blinding pain in his leg, to focus his binoculars. Then lowered them. They were close enough now he didn’t need them.

  Close enough to see his prey.

  They were distant specks on the far highway. Descending a hill, so he could count their numbers and see what he was getting his people into. A dull green truckish thing he made as a Dongfeng, a light recon vehicle. The Chinese version of an uparmored Hummer. Maybe a second one behind it. They usually carried either machine guns or an automatic grenade launcher in a turret mount. Mine resistant, with enough armor to withstand bullets.

  But not tank shells.

  Behind them trailed four black SUVs, followed by another recon vehicle.

  He lowered the binoculars, then lifted them again, one eyepiece to his live sight, the other to his patch, clicking to a lower power, searching the sky. For an instant he thought he glimpsed something; a tiny glint high up, very high up, very very small. But even when he switched the glasses to high magnification he couldn’t find the gleam again. It couldn’t be a drone; his sensor operators, spotted two miles in every direction and linked to Jusuf’s radio, would have warned him.

  Probably he’d imagined it, or it was merely a speck in his eye. So, no air cover? No helicopters? He grinned again. The marshal didn’t expect to be bushwhacked.

  Then he sobered. Either that, or Dewei Chagatai wasn’t in the convoy. Far more cunning than the enemy’s generals, maybe he’d learned about the ambush somehow, like last time, and prepared a devastating counterstrike.

  Teddy worried about that for about a second, then shoved the doubt aside. They wouldn’t know until it was too late to pull out anyway. So he’d just better be alert. Until then, he’d proceed as planned.

  And anyway, whatever happened was in the hands of Allah. “Tell Guldulla: get his people out there, cut the road behind them,” he told Jusuf.

  His assistant murmured into the radio. Teddy hesitated again, uncertain once more as to his own role in the action. Obviously at this point he belonged up here, out of the scrum, where he could better maneuver his limited forces. Maintain situational awareness. See any threat early.


  Yeah. That would be the wisest course of action. No question.

  Instead, he kicked his horse in the ribs and rode forward again.

  * * *

  THE storm whispered and howled outside. The trailer’s metal walls vibrated to the gusts. The walls thrummed and hissed, abraded by sand.

  Andres took a sip from the plastic water bottle and leaned forward. The sergeant kept moving the screen, following the white square to reveal the terrain around it. From time to time she toggled to 3-D, overlaid by topo, so he could see the lay of the land. The armor had moved out of the arroyo and formed up in a rough line facing the highway.

  He felt oddly remote from it all. An onlooker. Almost, a voyeur. Even though he knew many of the people who moved busily about far below. A thousand miles away, but he was looking down on them, as if he were an eagle soaring high above.

  “Convoy,” Zein said suddenly. “Look at that. Two light armor lead, four passenger vehicles, light armor in trail.”

  “HVT convoy,” the sergeant said. “High-value target.”

  “Looks like it,” the major agreed. “But who?” She spun on her chair and consulted another computer. “Intel has … nothing. No movement scheduled. At least that we know of.”

  “Chinese?”

  “ITIM doesn’t run convoys. They’re still pretty much mountain infantry, donkey logistics, a few horses for the leadership elements.”

  They watched the convoy proceed steadily along the highway, smoothly as blood corpuscles flowing along an artery.

  Until the other sergeant cleared her throat. “Uh, I’m picking up other activity. Two klicks to the east.”

  Zein put it up on the central screen. Perhaps two dozen small figures were scrambling down out of the rocky overlook above the highway. Several carried what looked like heavier weapons, though the resolution wasn’t sharp enough to identify them.

  “Cutting off the convoy’s retreat,” Andres said.

  “Yeah. Nice.”

  The sergeant said, “Look at that. They’re laying IEDs out in plain sight.”

  “Because the real ones are already dug in,” Andres said. “If they’re doing this right, they planted the live ones last night, or the night before. Those are dummies. Decoys, to channel any survivors into the kill zone.”

  They all three looked to him. “We could throw a wrench into the works,” Zein said tentatively. “We don’t have a lot of ordnance on station, but we could give that convoy a warning. Take out some of the hostiles.”

  Andres shook his head. “Those ‘hostiles’ fought the war on our side.”

  “ITIM? I heard they were, but … the armistice?”

  “It’s complicated,” he said, and sighed. Chugged the rest of the bottle of water and set the empty aside.

  The major opened her mouth as if to ask something more, then didn’t, turning back to the screen instead. Obviously figuring this was Agency business and not hers.

  Which was exactly right … He passed a hand over his hair, feeling sweat prickling his scalp, even though the air-conditioning was on full blast, the hum and whoosh fighting the sibilant sizzle of the storm outside. Yeah, sure, they could warn the convoy. Maybe save whoever was in it.

  But that wasn’t his mission today.

  * * *

  THE convoy didn’t seem to be slowing, though they must have seen the smoke. A small party of mujs had set a car on fire by the side of the road. Black smoke billowed from the now fiercely burning sedan, which had been crammed with old tires. The black column braided with the white smoke from a few antitargeting grenades, rising and spreading to blanket the valley and obscure all vision. So that even with IR sights, the oncoming vehicles couldn’t pick up the waiting armor.

  Until it was too late.

  The tanks were almost in position. Still sitting his pony, Teddy pulled his gaze from the complexly billowing smoke. He hefted the radio, which he’d taken from Jusuf. He had to get this done. But he couldn’t rush it, or they’d lose everything.

  If they missed this guy now, after the armistice, Chagatai would roar back with enough fresh divisions to rake these mountains with a deadly comb equipped with tungsten teeth. He’d stamp a bar code on every rock and send a teleoperated battlesnake into every hole big enough to shade a fox.

  But if they could put the marshal down now, ITIM might even get a seat at the peace table.

  The convoy neared. He hadn’t expected it to slow for the wreck, and it didn’t. Just steered over to the outside lane, and maybe speeded up a little. It came on. Closer. Closer …

  He drew a slow deep breath and squinted up, casing the sky once more just to be sure. Still nothing but blue, and puffy white clouds, and the streamers of smoke between him and the high mountains glittering in the sun. Strange. Maybe, now that the big war was over, the Allies had imposed something like a no-fly order.

  He spread his arms, overwhelmed suddenly with the beauty of it all. The valley, the mingling smoke. The gleaming ribbon of highway. The lush green fields beyond.

  And suddenly he grasped once more, for a moment, what he’d witnessed high on a mountain that freezing night years before. Wrapped in his tatty POW blanket beside a dying fire, afraid, starving, huddled under the stars.

  The very rocks had glowed from within, their component atoms milling and scintillating like clouds of fireflies.

  And now, the bearded muj beside him, the stocky, faithful Dandan a few yards back—he could see into their minds. Into their souls.

  Human beings were just as dazzling as the rocks and sky.

  All was created, all one. All was understood, with enormous compassion.

  You have always done My will.

  It hadn’t been an order, the command of some implacable tyrant.

  The words had been said as gently as a lover’s. As a parent’s. As the words of the One who knew all, yet forgave all, with compassion and mercy toward all the creatures He had ordained to be, and suffer, yet be welcomed home at last.

  “I do Your will again today,” he said to the unknowable unimaginable he had glimpsed that night and always regretted losing. The Whole he was a tiny fragment of. One tiny colored tile, one chipped and faded cube that was still an irreplaceable part of an immense and incredibly beautiful, perfectly designed, everlasting mosaic.

  “Lingxiu,” Jusuf said urgently, tugging at his sleeve.

  Teddy forced himself back from the beauty and the wonder to lift his binoculars again. To see that, yes, the lead vehicles were coming into range. Yet still he forced himself to say, as calmly as he could, “Wait.” Counting the seconds off each by each to the hammering of his unruly heart.

  Three.

  Two.

  One.

  He lifted his radio. “This is the Lingxiu. Okay, boys, light ’em up.”

  Then he waited. And waited …

  “Crap,” he grunted. “How the fuck long are they going to—”

  The barrel of the lead tank recoiled in a flash of flame and smoke, and it rocked back on its tracks. The penetrator round lashed out arcless, flat, an instantaneous line drawn across grit and sand and scrub, ruler-straight. Dust sprang up along its track until it barreled directly over the lead vehicle, missing it by a good five yards.

  Teddy opened his mouth to shout a correction but the second tank fired at that instant and the second round unzipped the desert too, the dust-trail and smoke obscuring what, if anything, had happened when it hit. No, it was a miss too; the impact burst the ground apart far downhill, half a kilometer off the highway on the other side.

  “Fuck me,” he groaned. Were the wheels going to come off his whole plan just because his deserters couldn’t shoot straight?

  Then the third and fourth tanks fired, nearly simultaneously. Those projectiles arrowed across the gravel and sand too blindingly fast to follow and both slammed directly into the trailing Donfeng, blowing it apart so violently the vehicle lifted off its wheels, spun in the air, and crashed down inverted on the far berm, where it in
stantly burst into flame. He couldn’t make out what happened after that, the smoke was too thick, but it would be a miracle if anyone crawled out of that inferno.

  The right-flank tanks fired again, bucking back as the hypervelocity projectiles tore out, but he couldn’t see. He couldn’t see. “They’ve got to get in closer,” he shouted, handing back the radio. “Jusuf! Tell them. Get in close, finish them off.” He had another IED team up the road, but if the lead recon vehicles and the SUVs got through that way, some might well escape.

  And if any got away, you could be A-fucking-sure the marshal would be in the one that made it.

  The reprisals would be terrible. Chagatai didn’t just shoot hostages. He gassed whole villages, evacuated and leveled whole towns, imprisoned and starved whole provinces.

  Teddy gripped his carbine, wanting to shout orders. To kick everyone into action. No. He wanted to be down there himself, riding those tanks. Pushing them forward, laying the guns, forcing them nose to nose with the enemy, even if they had to run over them and crush them under the tracks.

  No, he told himself. This is your post, right here. Where you can see what’s going on, as much as anyone can, anyway, in the growing haze, the blowing smoke. Nobody else was going to herd these cats.

  He should. Sure. Should stay right here.

  But he wasn’t going to.

  The leader had to lead.

  He shrugged his threadbare blanket off his shoulders and pulled his carbine out of the scabbard. Seated the mag, and charged the rifle. Full mag in the well. Six more, fully loaded, in his drag bag. Gas mask to hand, check. Makarov, check. Knife, the heavy Uighur blade he’d taken off Hajji Qurban, secured in its sheath at his belt.

  “What is going on? Lingxiu?” Jusuf, looking anxious.

  Teddy grinned at him, and heel-kicked his pony down the hill. The big muj whirled for his own mount, looking surprised. Behind them, the others began mounting up too. Lifting rifles. Unfurling flags, the black squares with their white calligraphy rippling in the wind.

  A sharp slope ahead. His pony’s hooves slipped and skidded on the stones, and it lurched and nearly fell. Teddy grabbed for its mane, tensing for a spill. But it scrambled to recover and then lunged forward, gathering speed, pounding downhill at a breathtaking gallop as the rocks gave way to loose gravel and even here and there a little patch of dusty grass. He heeled it in the ribs again, and it didn’t hurt, even his bad leg didn’t stab him now. He yelled aloud, a formless incomprehensible howl that halfway through he modfied into “Allahu Akbar!” Behind him the other riders picked it up, and shots cracked out, even though he’d told them again and again never to waste ammo firing into the air.