by Larry Bond
For everyone else though, it was a hassle. Besides making the flight considerably more difficult for the pilots—even with their automated gear, following the country’s ragged terrain was no picnic—it also scrambled the arrangements Lucas had made for the bicycles, since they were originally sent to the commercial airport the SEALs were going to use.
The net result was that the SEAL drop was delayed for several hours. Mara kept checking in for updates every fifteen minutes, severely depleting the battery in the satcom, until it gave way just after midnight. Crouched near the edge of the large field on the east side of the barn, she opened the battery compartment and reseated it, but that had no effect.
She leaned back, shifting her feet so she was sitting. The night had cooled. She figured it was in the mid-seventies, a perfect temperature under other circumstances. She stared at the clouds moving in. They looked like sheep, trotting across the moon and stars.
She’d hear the MC-130 just before the drop. If it followed the usual pattern, it would approach at something like fifty feet above treetop level, then pop up at the last moment to give the SEALs a little more cushion for the jump. Once they went out the door, they’d hit the ground in a matter of seconds.
She’d made two of those jumps herself, not counting the dozen or so in training. They were tougher than the high-altitude ones, at least in her opinion. When you went out at thirty-five thousand feet, you always felt like you had more time to do things. A low-altitude jump meant you made the right decision right away—or you never made any more.
She liked the challenge. They’d trained by going off bridges. Jump, pull, land. Bing, bang, boom.
Who used to say that?
Kevin, the instructor she’d had a crush on at Langley. Bing, bang, boom. One of his favorite sayings.
He was a good-looking guy. And sweet, too.
Nothing had come of the attraction. Too many rules about fraternizing with the students.
She would have gone out with him. Definitely.
Josh kind of reminded her of him. Very different guy, though. Josh had a bit more of an edge. Which was surprising, because Kevin had been a Ranger, and those guys were supposed to be all edge.
Maybe it was just that she didn’t expect him to have an edge. You heard scientist and immediately you thought, cushy. Egghead.
Not necessarily wimp, but the jury would definitely be out.
Josh had something very tough inside him, though. Not just anger.
He was prejudiced toward action, the way she was.
She admired the way he wanted to protect the little girl. It wasn’t just a case of him thinking she was going to tell the world what was going on—she wasn’t part of a job. He felt he had to keep her safe.
God, I’m a sucker for the old he-man cliché, she told herself.
Mara sat up with a jolt. She heard an aircraft in the distance. She looked at her watch. Barely ten minutes had passed since the battery died while she was talking to DeBiase. At that point, the SEALs had just taken off.
It wasn’t an airplane, it was a helicopter.
The Chinese.
Trying to keep M occupied and kill his own boredom as they waited, Josh tried teaching the girl to play tic-tac-toe. She seemed familiar with it at first, but kept losing.
“You get three in a row to win,” he told her. “You go first.”
She took the stick and put an X in the corner. Josh went, she went, then he went, this time leaving an opening for her.
She didn’t take it.
“Look, put your X here. You win.”
She looked at him blankly.
“You want me to win, is that it?”
M yawned. She didn’t want him to win. She just didn’t get the point of the game. Not at all.
“Sleep,” he said, mimicking a pillow with his hands. “Go ahead.”
She curled up around him and started to doze. Josh felt his own eyelids getting heavier. Why not sleep? he thought. We’ll be out of here soon. It’s just a question of time.
Mara pushed open the door and slipped into the barn. “Kill the lamp,” she hissed.
Josh pulled it over and cranked down the wick. M didn’t stir. “What’s going on?”
“Helicopter,” said Mara.
“I thought the SEALs were parachuting in.”
“They are.”
“Shit. Should we stay here? Are we safe?”
“I don’t know.”
23
Northern Vietnam
Jing Yo bristled as the infrared operator repeated the scan.
“Looks like it’s just embers, Lieutenant. Like I said, you burned it down pretty well.”
They were looking at the remains of one of the small settlements they had searched earlier in the day.
“Why are some spots hotter than others?” Jing Yo asked, letting the suggestion that he had burned down the village pass.
“It depends on what burns. Different materials produce different hot spots. We haven’t trained with building fires,” added the operator, “but the principle is the same.”
Jing Yo watched as he switched to a wide view, scanning the fields again. The lieutenant noticed something on the corner of the screen.
“Did that move?” he asked.
“Which?”
“Back here—the building. Inside.”
The operator returned the screen to close-up mode of the area. “No. The building’s warm. That building is almost intact. A lot more to burn there. We’re seeing individual parts of the fire, I believe. Look at these ruins. You can see the shape of the embers. Really hot spots blow out the resolution and we back it down like this.”
“Okay,” said Jing Yo.
“This looks interesting, though,” added the operator, switching back to the earlier screen. “This out in the jungle. If we could get the pilot to change course, I think you might want to get a much closer look at this.”
Josh and Mara kept their eyes pointed toward the ceiling as the helicopters moved away.
“What do you think?” asked Josh.
“If they move off, it’ll be okay.”
They waited. The sound faded but didn’t die.
“They’re hovering nearby,” said Mara. “About a mile. A little more.”
“Is that too close for the SEALs to parachute in?”
“Too close.”
“Maybe we should go farther east. Take the road.”
“The road goes south.”
“It’s still away from the helicopters. I think we should do it.”
Mara looked at her watch. The SEALs should be roughly thirty minutes away, perhaps a little more. “If we move, they won’t be able to find us,” she told him. “We don’t have a phone, remember? The battery is dead.”
“We have mine.” He dug the sat phone out of his pocket.
“The Chinese can track that. Besides, it’s not on the same circuit the SEALs will use.”
“It’s better than nothing. Peter will hear it. He has before.”
“It’s a good backup,” said Mara. She wasn’t sure that Bangkok would still be monitoring the frequency, or how long a delay there would be before Lucas got the information. “I think we should wait and see if they move off.”
Jing Yo leapt from the helicopter as it touched down, running quickly to catch up with Sergeant Wu and the rest of the squad. The operator had spotted an overturned truck on a rutted farm road. The engine was slightly warm—an indication that it had been driven or at least turned on within the past three or four hours.
And there was a man, or maybe two, near the side, partly hidden from the scanner by the body of the truck.
Wu saw him coming and waved for him to get down; Jing Yo bent toward the ground but kept coming, sliding on the hard-packed dirt as he slipped in next to his sergeant. They were at the edge of a fallow field; the truck was ahead on the road, which lay just beyond a narrow band of trees.
“Somebody there, definitely,” said Wu. “I have Ai Gua going a
round the side. When he’s in position, we can close in.”
The truck looked like a hazy gray box in Jing Yo’s night goggles. Was that an arm curled around the side of the steering wheel—or part of the dash that had pulled away in the crash?
Jing Yo moved to his right, trying to get a better view through the trees. The front third of the truck was in the shallow ditch at the roadside; the rest of the vehicle angled back on the road. The cab was wedged into some brush, which made it hard to see the top and side.
“One person, maybe two,” said Jing Yo. “Close to the side of the truck.”
Ai Gua flashed a signal back through the squad members that he was in position across the road. The truck was now surrounded.
“Let’s move in,” Jing Yo told Wu.
They rose. Guns pointed at the truck, they moved forward.
The brush near the truck rustled.
“Watch out!” yelled Wu.
Jing Yo saw it for only a split second before he fired—the dark shadow of the devil, leaping at him.
The three rounds from his rifle hit the tiger in the head and neck, severing several arteries. But the beast had built up considerable momentum, and it crashed onto the road, still alive, leaping at its target.
Jing Yo stepped to his left, all trained instinct now. He wheeled. The gun became a pointed spear that slammed into the animal’s rib cage.
The tiger lashed at him as it fell to the ground. It rolled back, ready to fight, spurred by pain. It shoved its fury forward, teeth bared, claws wide. Jing Yo’s rifle smashed the top of its skull, breaking the bone and sending the animal to the ground, gurgling its last breath.
“Lieutenant?” said Wu, standing a few feet away. He seemed to be in shock.
Jing Yo looked at him, then turned his attention back to the truck. He moved quickly around the side, wary.
Ai Gua had heard the commotion and come running through the trees. He was standing a meter from the truck, gazing at the body the tiger had been eating when they arrived. It was a gory mess.
Jing Yo knelt next to it. The animal had mauled the corpse so badly that it was impossible to tell if it belonged to an Asian. The clothes looked Vietnamese.
He’d have to see if there was identification.
“Search the vehicle,” Jing Yo told the others. “I’ll attend to this.”
At least one of the helicopters was in the air north of them, a mile or two. It was too close—the SEAL aircraft would be spotted almost immediately.
She checked her watch. They should be over the area in roughly fifteen minutes.
“If they see the helicopter in the area, will they still parachute?” asked Josh.
“Depends,” said Mara. “It’ll be up to them.”
Most SEALs would. But that wouldn’t necessarily be a good idea. A firefight would be counterproductive. The helicopters would call in reinforcements quickly.
“I wonder if we could walk back to the spot where I was in the preserve,” she said. “They could jump near there.”
“How far is it?”
“A few kilometers.”
“We could make it.”
“We could walk by the side of the road and hide from the helicopters,” said Mara. “The trees are pretty thick.”
Mara tried to repicture the area. Was there a place where the SEALs could parachute in?
There had been a field nearby. They could use the highway intersection as a meeting place.
Yes, it was a better plan. But was it worth the risk of using Josh’s phone?
Yes.
“Call,” she told him. “Then wake up M. We’ll meet them near the reserve.”
“Let’s let her sleep. I’ll just carry her.”
“It’s a couple of miles.”
“She needs to rest,” he said, handing over the phone after punching the emergency number.
“I can’t hear anyone.”
“No, you just talk. That’s how we’ve done it. He calls back.”
“This town is too crowded. We’re going to the place where Jimmy and I slept,” said Mara, trying to word the message in a way that would confuse the Chinese. “Tell the Million Dollar Man we’ll meet where the devil played.”
She clicked off the phone and followed Josh out of the barn.
There was no identification in the dead man’s clothes, and while there were papers in the truck, they were in the glove compartment and probably belonged to the truck’s owner, not necessarily the driver.
The tiger had eaten a good portion of the man’s face, along with much of his torso and legs. Jing Yo thought there was a very good possibility there was another animal nearby, though if so it hadn’t shown itself.
The mauling made the men jumpy, and so Jing Yo decided they would bug out as soon as possible. He had Ai Gua fetch a body bag from the helicopters, which were idling in the nearby field. The private looked pale when he returned, clearly not relishing the task.
“We will do it together,” said Jing Yo. “It is an act that must be performed.”
He remembered the first time he had touched a dead man—Brother Fo, an older member of the monastery who had died in his sleep the night before Jing Yo arrived. Jing Yo had helped another monk remove the body from his cell. Seeing his discomfort, the other man had explained the necessary cycle of all things, how death fit into the cycle. When his training was done, said the monk, he would no longer fear death.
Another monk in the hall overheard them. As they passed out, he whispered to Jing Yo, “For some of us, training never ends.”
He meant that among even the most devout, death was never fully accepted. It was a lesson Jing Yo valued greatly, but it was not a story to share with Ai Gua.
They completed their task quickly. Remains packed in the helicopter, they took off, Jing Yo once more in the helicopter with the IR sensors.
The operators were just beginning their recalibration routine when a message came in from division intelligence. “The scientist’s cell phone has been active again,” said the major relaying the information. “Very close to your position. We have the coordinates.”
Even as he transferred them to the GPS, Jing Yo realized they were at the village they had flown over earlier.
24
Northern Vietnam
Zeus and Christian didn’t find out that the SEALs’ plane had been delayed until an hour after they had arrived at the rendezvous point just north of Tuyên Quang. Christian, who hadn’t said much the entire ride, cursed as soon as he put the satcom radio down.
The stinking Navy, he said, could never get anything right.
“It was probably the Air Force,” said Zeus. “They fly the planes.”
“Whatever. Now we have to sit in this damn truck for another four hours at least.”
“We can go back and check out the town.”
“Give me a break.”
“It didn’t look that bad.”
“Yeah, for Vietnam. It’s not like there was a McDonald’s on the edge of town.”
“Maybe a little restaurant.”
“Hell, Zeus, we went right down Main Street. There was no place open. And I wouldn’t have trusted them if they were.”
Zeus took out his map. They were roughly 140 miles from the province where the SEALs were going to land; that was nearly ten hours of biking, maybe more, since they’d be going over the mountains. The delay meant that they’d have to do a lot of it during the day.
Not a great idea.
“Maybe we should get closer to where they’re going to land,” suggested Zeus. “At least get into the mountains there.”
“Where?”
“The Con Voi range.”
“That close to the Chinese?” said Christian, his voice rising an octave.
“They’re not that far south or east.”
“You’re out of your idiot mind.”
Zeus sighed and began folding the map back up.
“You think just because you served in Special Forces that you’re Mr
. Gung Ho,” said Christian. “And that you’re a goddamn genius.”
“I don’t think I’m a genius.”
“Perry does. Which is what counts, right?”
Zeus shrugged.
“You better tell them what the hell we’re doing,” said Christian, starting the truck.
25
Northern Vietnam
They walked along the road, staying on the shoulder and moving as quickly as they could. Mara, in the lead and holding the rifle, had to concentrate to see the path ahead. The clouds had thickened and the night was dark; it was hard to see more than a stride or two ahead.
“Can you hold up a bit?” said Josh.
“You want me to take her?” asked Mara, turning around.
“No, just slow down. She’s still sleeping. Kid must be exhausted.”
He walked up next to her, his shoulder brushing against hers. “Okay,” he said.
“Come on,” said Mara, hooking her arm through his. “We’ll walk together.”
They walked together in silence for a few minutes before Mara asked if M was getting heavy.
“It’s all right,” he told her.
“That was a hell of a story she told.”
“What’s going to happen to her?”
“I don’t know,” said Mara. “They’ll probably try and find a relative. When it’s all over.”
“Might be going on a long time.”
Not the way things are going, Mara thought, but she kept that to herself.
“How long can the Vietnamese hold out?” Josh asked.
“I don’t know. Watch the curve coming up.”
They walked in silence again for a few minutes.
“What was it you said about where the devil played?” asked Josh.
“The message was confusing.”
“The person I was talking to is a Charlie Daniels fan. We were talking about a song just before I came here. He knows that means a crossroad. At least I hope he does.”
