Shadows of War

by Larry Bond

  “Shit!” yelled Christian, raising his rifle and returning fire over the top of the cab.

  Zeus hit the starter and the truck grumbled back to life. He overrevved it, spinning and kicking mud as he backed up toward the road. He threw the clutch in, jerked the tranny into first, then overrevved it again. The truck lurched and moved forward very s-l-o-w-l-y.

  Low gear was very, very low.

  “Get us the hell out of here!” screamed Christian, ducking as fresh bullets hit the vehicle, spitting through the canvas back.

  Zeus slammed the shifter into second and then third, grinding the gears. As the truck gained speed, he hit the corner of the van and pushed it out of the way. He continued up the hill, building speed.

  “Go! Go! Go!” yelled Christian.

  “You think you can do better, come inside and try,” muttered Zeus.

  Two Chinese soldiers stood at the side of the road, not sure what was going on. Zeus popped on the headlights and saw them. Stepping on the gas, he swerved to the side as he passed, knocking one over and sending the other running for cover.

  He strained so hard to see if he’d gotten him that he nearly ran off the road.

  “You’re going to get us killed,” hissed Christian, still hanging on outside.

  “Stop whining.”

  “Stop so I can get in.”

  “Not until we put some distance between them and us.”

  “One of these days, Murphy, you’re going to get what’s coming to you.”

  “I already have.”

  Zeus stopped a half mile down the road. Christian climbed in the cab.

  “I know what they’re doing,” Zeus told him. “We blocked them off, so now their flank is vulnerable. They have to come down Route 70, shut off all the little routes west. Their flank is even weaker than I thought. They’re adapting.”

  “Wonderful. Can we get the hell out of here?”

  Zeus started moving again, this time beginning in second gear rather than first. It didn’t seem to mind.

  “The satellites and UAVs probably haven’t seen the advance because of all this rain,” said Zeus. “Call Perry and tell him what’s going on. The Vietnamese may want to pick off some of these units. They should get them now, while they’re still weak.”

  “Are you out of your mind? The first thing he’ll do when I tell him that is ask how I know. We’re not supposed to be here, remember?”

  “Call him.”

  “No f’in’ way. You call him.”

  “Give me the satcom.”

  Christian held it out to him. He started to take it, but Christian pulled it back.

  “I’ll talk to him. You’re a pain in the ass, Zeus. You’ve always been a pain in the ass.”

  Perry took the news calmly—or at least didn’t raise his voice loud enough for Zeus to hear as Christian explained what was going on.

  “We’re less than a half hour from the pickup, General. Then we’re on our way back,” he said. “Piece of cake … birthday cake … Yes, sir … . Oh, yes, sir … . I will … . No, sir. Absolutely not.”

  “Absolutely not what?” Zeus asked when the radio call was over.

  “I told him it was a piece of cake.”

  “And?”

  “He said don’t let the Chinese blow the candles out.”

  30

  Northern Vietnam

  Mara was the first to hear the helicopter, and began shunting the others to the side of the road before its search beam came into view. The light seemed to cut physically into the rain, pushing it aside with a burst of steam that fell back as it flew. The chopper passed over the road very slowly, only a few feet over the treetops, moving so slowly an octogenarian could have kept up.

  “I got it,” said one of the SEALs, loading up the grenade launcher on his gun as they crouched a few feet from the roadway.

  “No,” said Mara sharply. “If you shoot them down, they’ll know exactly where we are. No way.”

  “The spook’s right,” said Kerfer. “Hold your fire. Let them pass.” They waited as the floodlight approached.

  “You sure about this?” whispered Josh, sidling next to Mara. “They found us before.”

  “If they were using an infrared system,” she answered, “they can’t right now because of the rain. See how low they are? They’ll pass right by us.”

  “Okay.”

  The helicopter seemed to pause as it came closer to them. Mara tucked her elbows in against her sides, holding her breath.

  The chopper kept moving. No one said anything for a few minutes. Then Kerfer rose and went out into the road.

  “It’s heading south,” said the SEAL. “Let’s get moving. Geek boy, you okay with that kid?”

  “Fuck yourself,” said Josh.

  “Fuck yourself back. Scientists.”

  Josh’s legs ached from his hips to his ankles. He felt as if his bones had been replaced with stiff metal rods, and his muscles were battered rubber bands, overstretched and unable to keep his joints together.

  M had grown unbearably heavy. Finally she began to slide down, out of his grip; he leaned forward, barely able to deposit her on the ground before dropping her.

  She clung to him, unwilling to walk.

  “I can take her,” said one of the SEALs.

  M grabbed Josh’s leg more tightly as the SEAL gently touched her shoulder. Josh felt bad for the sailor.

  “It’s okay, M,” he told her, dropping down. “We’re all friends, honey.”

  She said something in Vietnamese, then buried her head in his leg.

  “Her whole village was wiped out by the Chinese,” Josh explained. “I think she’s just afraid of anybody in a uniform.”

  “Poor kid. Crap. What bastards.”

  “Are you coming with us?” barked Kerfer.

  “Man, he’s a jackass,” muttered Josh under his breath. He nudged M, moving his leg to get her to walk with him.

  “Ah, his bark’s worse than his bite,” said the SEAL.

  “I heard that, Little Joe,” snapped Kerfer. “My bite is worse than my bark. You got that, kid.”

  “Bite me,” said Josh.

  The SEALs cracked up. Even Kerfer laughed.

  “Good one, geek.” He came over and punched Josh’s shoulder, nearly knocking him over. “Now keep your ass moving. The Commies are still looking for us.”

  “I think I hear the truck,” said Mara.

  The SEALs peeled off to the side, leaving her in the road. Kerfer took her gun and went by the shoulder, kneeling as he aimed his own weapon at the space in front of her.

  “Remember to get out of the way if he doesn’t stop,” said the SEAL lieutenant. “Get far away, because we’ll blow the crap out of him.”

  “Thanks,” said Mara.

  “Don’t mention it.”

  Mara turned around. “You okay, Josh? You got the girl?”

  “We’re fine.”

  The rain was starting to let up. Mara remembered what DeBiase had told her—it would probably end just as the van came.

  A pair of lights appeared around the bend. Mara took a breath, trying to relax herself.

  It was their ride. Finally.

  “Hey,” yelled Kerfer as the truck pulled around the corner. “That’s no van. That’s a Commie troop truck. Look at the lights.”

  Mara froze. She didn’t know if Kerfer was right, but it was too late to run anyway.

  She put up her hand to signal them.

  She’d throw herself to the left, roll in the mud. The SEALs would take care of the truck and whoever was in.

  The vehicle wasn’t stopping.

  Damn.

  The headlights blinded her.

  Mara tensed her legs, swinging her hip to the right to act as a counterbalance. The truck began to skid. The tires screeched as they held, lost their grip, then held again. It stopped about six feet from her.

  The driver’s-side window rolled down. A man stuck his head out—a big target for the SEALs, Mara hoped.


  “Hey!” he yelled. “I hope you’re Mara.”

  “I am!”

  “I’m Zeus Murphy, U.S. Army. This is Major Christian. Where the hell are your SEALs?”

  “Errp, errp,” said Kerfer, stepping from the shadows as his men surrounded the truck, brandishing their weapons. “You’re our ride?”

  “You got it.”

  “What do you say we get the hell out of here?”

  “Fine with me,” answered Zeus. “I have to pay double if it’s not back in Beijing by sunrise.”

  31

  Northern Vietnam

  Jing Yo folded his arms before his chest, watching the road as the helicopter swung through the valley. They’d been searching now for over an hour; clearly, they were not going to find the scientist like this.

  The rain was letting up, but without the infrared detection gear, he and whoever was helping him could easily hide in the jungle when the helicopter passed. But searching on the ground would be almost impossible—there was just too much territory to cover.

  He was beaten.

  “We have thirty more minutes of fuel, Lieutenant,” said the pilot. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Keep searching on this road,” said Jing Yo. Reaching for the radio, he called into the division headquarters, looking for the intelligence officer who was acting as a liaison. “Have there been any more transmissions from that satellite phone?”

  “No,” said the officer. “We are monitoring.”

  “What about other transmissions? American transmissions on their military band?”

  “Their radios are very difficult to detect,” said the officer.

  Then an idea occurred to Jing Yo, so simple that he wondered why he hadn’t thought of it before.

  “The satellite phone that the scientist used—is there a way to get its number?” he asked.

  The more he drove the truck, the more Zeus felt comfortable with it. It wasn’t very fast—the speedometer claimed ninety kilometers per hour, but that was clearly wishful thinking. Still, it was very sure-footed, easily moving through the muddy road and deep puddles along the creek. The rain had almost entirely stopped, but the downpour had flooded the waterway, and it overlapped much of the road. Sections of the highway were completely covered by running water, which fought against the wheels as they started up the mountain.

  “We’re going to need some way around that intersection where we left the van,” Zeus told Christian. “Find me some little village or something to get through.”

  “I’m telling you, there are maybe three roads out that way, and they’re all within one kilometer of each other. The mountains block everything off.”

  “Can we go south on 151?”

  “You have to go back almost to the van to get there. You want to risk that?”

  “It’s either that or we backtrack to the spot where they had that firefight,” said Zeus. “You want to do that?”

  The SEAL commander had told him everything that had happened. He also assured him that they’d have no trouble rushing past any Chinese soldiers they came across.

  Easy for him to say; he was sitting in the back with the others.

  “There’s some little village here we might be able to get through,” said Christian. “A couple of klicks from here. Maybe there’s a road through it that isn’t on the map.”

  There were plenty of uncharted roads. The problem was, they generally went nowhere, which was why they were uncharted.

  “Maybe. We’ll decide when we get there,” said Zeus. “Keep watching.”

  Sitting against the side of the truck, Josh let his body go slack. It was over. He was going home.

  It didn’t seem so much like a bad dream as like a piece of his imagination. Time had been balled up incredibly, twisted around.

  But it was real. He had the digital camera to prove it.

  Josh reached into his pocket and took out the camera. Mara jostled against his side. She’d nodded off practically the moment they’d climbed in. M, who was tucked around him on the other side, had too.

  He flipped the switch to play and watched the screen. There was the village; there were the bodies, and the time stamp. It was all evidence.

  They might not believe him. They might think he’d made it up. But this was indisputable.

  “What are you looking at?” asked one of the SEALs across from him.

  “The Chinese destroyed a village. They murdered everyone there. I got a video. Here, take a look.”

  Josh’s sat phone began to ring as he handed the camera to the SEAL. He reached into his pocket and, without thinking, hit the button to receive the call. “This is Josh.”

  The person on the other side of the line didn’t answer.

  “This is Josh,” he repeated. “Who is this?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” barked Kerfer.

  “I just—”

  “Turn it off.”

  Josh hit the Kill switch. Kerfer grabbed the phone, glanced at it for a second, then flung it out of the back of the truck.

  The location was near a road and a creek that ran east-west. He was moving, trying to get into the mountains.

  Jing Yo did have luck with him after all. He leaned into the space between the two pilots, explaining where he thought their target was.

  “We’re about ten kilometers from there,” said the helicopter pilot. “North of them. We can be overhead in a few minutes.”

  “Can you make the helicopter quieter?”

  “I’m sorry, Lieutenant. There’s no way to do that.”

  “Switch off the light at least.”

  “You sure? They’ll hear us coming anyway.”

  “Switch it off. Take us higher. Make a pass as if we’re not interested, as if we’re going somewhere else.”

  “Why not go around then?”

  “I want to see what it looks like. We’ll spot it, then we’ll set an ambush.”

  The village Major Christian had spotted on the map turned out to be two farm buildings at the edge of a field. Zeus found a path behind them that led in the proper direction, but after driving down it for two hundred yards, they discovered that the path ended in a pond. He had to back up all the way to the road.

  Kerfer jumped from the back as he reached the blacktop.

  “What’s our sitrep?” asked the SEAL lieutenant, climbing up on the side of the truck.

  “I thought we had a shortcut to 151,” said Zeus. “But it looks like the only way back is through that intersection where the Chinese were.”

  “No sweat. We can handle them.”

  “There may be more troops there by now,” said Zeus. “They’re moving down the mountain range to make sure their main force doesn’t get attacked from the side. There could be a lot of troops there by now.”

  “The UAVs told you this?”

  “No, the clouds are still too thick. There won’t be data for another half hour at least.”

  “So you know that how?”

  “I know what they’d do. I’ve war-gamed it.”

  “War-gamed it. Shit.”

  “Hey, screw you, Lieutenant,” said Christian. “If it wasn’t for us, you’d be walking home.”

  Kerfer snorted. “Me and one of my guys will ride in the cab,” he said. “If there’s any trouble, we’ll take care of it.”

  “There’s no room,” said Christian.

  “You ride in the back with the rest of the luggage.”

  “I’m the navigator.”

  “He doesn’t need a navigator. He’s going back the way he came, right? Besides, he’s got me.”

  Chinese troops had burst through Lao Cai and were spreading down the eastern side of the Con Voi mountain range, aiming to prevent the Vietnamese from attacking on the northeastern flank and cutting off supply lines south. Jing Yo could see the first advance groups of vehicles along the road as the helicopter headed eastward. The campaign was going well; the Vietnamese would soon be vanquished.

  But the victory w
ould be like eating ashes at a New Year’s feast if he did not accomplish his mission.

  The clouds were drifting east, allowing the moon and stars to light the ground below. Seeing detail was out of the question, but there was enough light to see vehicles.

  “Troop truck,” noted the pilot as they came through a valley just below Route 151.

  Jing Yo leaned closer, looking out the window.

  “One of ours,” said the copilot as they passed it. “Probably reinforcing that checkpoint ahead.”

  “Find a place to land near the checkpoint,” said Jing Yo, pulling up his radio to get division to alert the checkpoint to what was going on.

  Zeus had a simple plan for getting past anyone he came to—hit the gas, duck down, and pray.

  And run them over, if possible.

  The problem was, he had to make a fairly sharp turn right before he got to the intersection, which meant slowing down.

  His fingers tightened on the wheel as he climbed up the hill. The truck’s speedometer read thirty, but that felt optimistic.

  “Maybe we should stop down the road,” he told Kerfer. “You guys go through the field and surprise them.”

  “Too much trouble. Let’s just get across.”

  “Listen, if they blocked the road—”

  “No shit, Major. I talked to the head spook before I came up here. They have their UAVs back on line, and he says the only vehicle there is your shot-up van. So just play through. All right? Fuckin’ relax. You’re with the Navy now.”

  Zeus took a breath.

  “Intersection in like zero-two minutes,” said the other SEAL, studying his GPS.

  “Better kill your lights,” said Kerfer.

  “I can handle it.”

  “Relax, Major. I’ve done this before.”

  “So have I.”

  Kerfer gave him a skeptical look.

  “I was in Afghanistan just last year,” said Zeus. “I commanded a Special Forces A team.”

  “Then untwist your panties, loosen your grip, and get this thing moving a little faster.”