by Larry Bond
“I really don’t know what’s going on here,” said Zeus.
“You’re being detailed to work with Lieutenant Kerfer. They won’t tell me why, but I can guess.”
“Sir—”
“Get the hell out of my sight,” said Perry. “Go.”
“General.”
“It’s not whether the idea was a good or bad one, though you know what I think about it,” said Perry, only slightly calmer. “It’s going around me that I can’t abide.”
“I didn’t.”
Perry frowned and shook his head. “Good-bye, Major.”
Shell-shocked, Zeus walked out of the room. Kerfer was waiting at the end of the hall.
“General’s pissed?” said the SEAL.
“He thinks I went around him.”
“Screw him. He’ll get over it.”
“I didn’t—”
“You gonna worry about that, or are you going to focus on our real problems?”
“I just don’t want to piss him off.”
“You start worrying about who you piss off, and you’ll never get anything done. Let’s take a walk.”
* * *
In Ric Kerfer’s experience, ops were of one of two types: carefully planned for months, with preparations that bordered on the pathologically anal, or completely winged, thrown together not only at the last minute but with the wildest and most outlandish expectations.
This was definitely the latter.
“I been thinking about how to run this,” he told Zeus as he led him out of the embassy. “Easiest way is to fly in and out on a Chinese military plane.”
“Yeah, sure. That’s gonna happen.”
Kerfer reached into his pocket and pulled out a piece of paper, unfolding it as he handed it to Zeus. It was a satellite image of a scratch airfield, bulldozed in the nook of a valley. The ground around it seemed to have been stripped as well.
“It’s an air base at Malipo. We fly into there, refuel, then go from there into Kunming. Assuming your man Trung can take the city.”
“He should be able to.”
“Should be isn’t going to be good enough. He has to get the city. The airfield’s only a couple of miles away.”
“Why can’t you fly straight in?”
“I don’t think I can get an aircraft that will get far enough and still have fuel to return,” said Kerfer. “And I know I can’t get a helicopter that far. Whatever I use is going to have to be able to take off from a pretty broken up runway down here. That limits the options to a small plane. Or a helo. This base helps a lot.”
“Looks like a little dinky terminal and a couple of hangars.”
“As long as there’s gas there, it’s fine. You helping or you’re not?”
“I’m in.”
“Good. Let’s go pick up some gear, then we both got a lot to do.”
19
Washington, D.C.
“You.”
Greene looked up from the floor of his cell. The guard stood just outside the door, inserting a key into the lock.
There was no sense in resisting; it would simply add a beating to what was to follow. Still, Greene never moved quickly off the deck. It was his way of preserving a scrap of dignity.
Like all of the others, he had held out as long as he could before breaking. He had weathered multiple beatings, several water dunkings, and two sessions with a cattle prod. They had taken off his fingernails. He had passed out countless times, and not told them more than he was required to—his name, his rank, his serial number. He added a few useless details, but didn’t give them what they so dearly wanted: a “confession” that he had killed innocent Vietnamese without provocation.
A lie, of course. He resisted it with all his might.
And then one day he simply could resist no longer. It was toward the middle of the second week, or maybe the beginning of the third; he’d lost track of time. They pulled him from the cell, and on the way to the room, he heard someone scream. He thought he recognized the scream; he thought it was the man who had been in the cell next to him. They’d only communicated by taps to that point, but he was sure somehow it was him.
When he heard that scream, his legs gave way. Greene was dragged into the interrogation room. The session started with a punch to the head—that was the way it often started with this interrogator, a sadist they called Igor. Greene closed his eyes and started talking about his assignment to bomb a military base just north of the Demilitarized Zone between the two Vietnams.
He’d been wrong about who screamed—it was actually a new prisoner he hadn’t met—but by then it didn’t matter.
“You will write about this,” said the interrogator.
“Yes,” answered Greene, giving in for the first time.
From then on, he had cooperated reluctantly, sometimes hesitantly, but always in the end giving in to avoid the worst punishments. It was what they all did.
The guards took him, one on each side, and marched him down the hall.
Why?
To write a letter claiming he was being well treated.
No, to write his “confession” that he had killed innocent women and children.
No, no, he was going to be released …
* * *
Greene woke with a start. He’d been dreaming—or rather, reliving the nightmare of his captivity. He’d nodded off reading in his chair.
It was very late. By rights, he should go to bed. But there was much to be done. He retrieved his book from the floor where it had dropped, placed it on the nearby desk, then went to find himself some coffee in the White House kitchen.
20
Hanoi
Kerfer took Zeus to a safe house that he’d established on the north side of Hanoi. There he gave him a Teton hiker’s pack, a civilian model that was roomy enough for two laptops, a pair of secure satellite radios, and a short-barreled AR15. The gun looked almost like a toy, with only a seven-inch barrel and sliding stock. It was, however, an extremely potent weapon, with a red-dot laser sight and half a dozen 30-round mags for 5.56 × 45 ammo.
“Call me when everything’s set,” Kerfer told Zeus, dropping him off at his hotel.
Zeus went upstairs to shave and shower before going back out. He had more than two days of stubble on his chin, and his disposable razor was now well past its prime. It snagged against his nascent beard, tearing and pulling.
A shower was impossible; so little water trickled from the faucet that it wasn’t worth the effort. He changed to fresh clothes instead, putting on his last pair of clean underwear, pulling on a pair of black jeans and a thick, plain gray T-shirt. He tucked his Beretta into its holster, leaving it under his untucked shirt but making sure the bottom was visible. Making it clear you were armed was now a good thing in Hanoi.
Dressed, he went downstairs. Even as late as yesterday, there had been drivers milling in or near the lobby offering to take visitors by taxi or bicycle to various spots in the city. But this evening the lobby was deserted, and Zeus had to walk a few blocks before he found a ride.
His storm of indecision had passed; he knew what he was going to do: He was going to help the Vietnamese, and they were going to release Anna.
He called Major Chaū from the cab, telling him only that they had to talk. Chaū gave him an address; Zeus changed the number, directing the driver several blocks away.
There were few people on the street. There were no streetlights. A few, very dim lights shone from inside storefronts, but the night itself was bright. The earlier clouds had cleared and the moon hung large over the city. It was one of those moons that conjured the image of a face, and though Zeus was hardly in a mind to fantasize, he felt as if it were a person watching him walk.
He circled the block, turned around in an alley, then went into the backyard of what looked like an old office building but which turned out to be a tenement: dozens of eyes peered out at him as he climbed onto the back railing of a fire escape and clambered to the roof, past several families c
amped out on the gratings. Most turned their heads as he climbed; the rest stared.
It was a surreal moment: trying to escape notice he’d blundered into a crowd.
The roof, at least, was empty; he went across to the front and looked down, making sure he wasn’t being followed, then did the same on each side. He jumped to the next roof, only a foot or so away and nearly at the same level; he ran across two more until he reached an alley, and went down from there, once again sheepishly skirting the living quarters of a few families.
Major Chaū was waiting on the street when he arrived, leaning nervously against the fender of a Hyundai Sonata.
“Where’d you get the car?” asked Zeus. The Sonata was a large car in Vietnam, and a comparatively expensive one as well.
“Government,” said Chaū quickly. “Come.”
Zeus slid his pack off his shoulders and slid it into the car. Then he followed.
“General Trung has moved with the army north,” said Chaū. “He would welcome information on the disposition of the enemy.”
“Of course.”
“Do you need time or—”
“I have everything I need. How long to reach Trung?”
“Two hours. Three at most.”
“OK.” Zeus unzipped the backpack, took out the rifle, then removed one of the laptops. Propping the rifle next to his leg, he booted up the laptop, and waited for the password screen. He’d memorized the passwords, which would only be good for twenty-four hours; if he needed the computers after that he’d have to obtain new codes.
The laptop took a while to work through its startup routines. When it finally finished, he opened a program that looked like a Web browser, typed two more passwords, then waited as the machine made a connection through the stubby satellite antenna plugged into the port at the side.
Kerfer had arranged for a direct link to CIA resources, which meant that he could get real-time images from one of several UAVs being used to cover the Vietnamese area. While he’d had access to the imagery earlier, he had been working through army intel specialists and received them with notations indicating what he was seeing and its significance. The CIA imagery was raw, with no attempts at interpretation. On the other hand it was also instantaneous: he could see things exactly as they were happening. There was typically a few hours lag with the Army data, as the intel people had to agree on what it meant before passing it to him.
Zeus saw the forward edge of the Vietnamese forces heading toward the border—a few vehicles driving at the very side of the road, trying to take advantage of the vegetation to stay sheltered from the Chinese reconnaissance aircraft and drones.
The Chinese might see them as well. Would they tip them off?
No. A force this small would not be seen as a threat. And a Chinese commander—any commander—would logically think that it was heading to reinforce the border.
Zeus scanned northward, moving the screen up to check on the Chinese positions. Even with the encryption, the feed was quick—two or three times faster than a normal 4G connection—but there was so much data in the image that it seemed to come in one line at a time, nearly overwhelming the video card in the laptop.
The largest Chinese formation close to the target area was holding the highways north of Lao Cai on the Chinese border some one hundred kilometers to the west. The force, roughly a division’s worth (it had some attached units and armor), was scattered through the area in defensive positions—the tanks were in bulldozed redoubts; the troops in foxholes, trenches, and the like.
Lao Cai was not far away and would have been an easy place to assault, but aside from a few scouting missions and random shelling, had so far been left alone. The Vietnamese believed this was because Chinese businessmen owned so much of the city, which before the war had been a popular “rest area” for Chinese in the region, a kind of Asian version of Las Vegas, only with a bit more vice—what happened there, stayed there.
Zeus slid the map farther north, tracking the Chinese supply lines through a series of depots and truck stops. If America was involved in the war, that line would be broken within a half hour—between Tomahawk strikes and a few fighter sorties, the supplies would be destroyed and the roads blocked. But this wasn’t a war with America, not officially anyway. The Vietnamese had no way of striking that deep behind the lines. And so the Chinese operated with impunity, and a lax attitude that would be criminal under any other circumstances.
All of which would help at Malipo and again at Kunming—the Chinese would be secure in their complacency.
The two attacks had to come relatively close together. Otherwise they might be ready for the second.
Even two hundred miles away.
Zeus slid the map west, looking at Malipo. Clinging to the top of a ridge, it formed a sloppy L surrounded by strip mines and vast stretches of forest. The tiny Chinese force was spread out. The largest portion—a half-dozen armored personnel carriers—were parked together east of the city, down the hill from it. There were tents and temporary buildings nearby, but according to the signals intelligence, the division headquarters was in a building about a kilometer away at the southern end of town. There were two military trucks, similar to Humvees, in front of the building, with an armored car about twenty meters away at the edge of the road.
The rest of the force—far less than a battalion, though called a battalion in the American intelligence briefings—was scattered in the mines and along the roads.
Zeus started to doubt his plan. Would an attack on such a small force really worry the Chinese? Wasn’t it likely that they had sent one of their most inconsequential units here? Why would they care if it was pushed aside?
How much easier this would be if he were planning an American assault. Rather than sneaking across mountain roads and mounting what was essentially a large commando raid, Zeus could lead a lightning assault right through several Chinese divisions, ripping them to pieces as he went. Blow out the command and control, flatten the armored and mechanized units, just keep moving—Patton would have been proud.
He moved the map around, then back over toward Malipo. His finger slipped, and the map shot up two quadrants, along Highway S210.
A dark blur filled the road. At first glance, he thought it was a malfunction, a shadowy artifact induced by his moving the screen too quickly.
Then he touched the zoom and realized what he was seeing.
“How long will it take us to get to General Trung?” Zeus asked Chaū.
“Two hours, at least—”
“We need to go faster,” said Zeus. “As fast as you possibly can.”
21
Washington, D.C.
“All right. Everyone leaves. Even you, Mr. Kittle.” President Greene smiled at the Secret Service agent who had accompanied him into the secure communications room in the White House bunker.
“Mr. President—”
“Really, Jack, do you think the equipment is going to assassinate me?”
“Well, no sir, but—”
Greene cocked his head. The Secret Service agent nodded, then after the rest of Greene’s aides and the technical people had left, followed them out and closed the door.
Alone for the first time that day, Greene took off his jacket and then his tie. He slid into the office chair behind the com station.
“All right, General,” he told Perry. “Just you and me now. What is it you want to say, Harland?”
“Chet, this is the biggest mistake you’ve ever made in your life. We can’t start a war with China.”
“I’m trying to avoid war.”
Perry, grim faced, shook his head solemnly. He seemed to have aged ten years since Greene sent him to Vietnam. That country did it to you.
“You’re not fooling anyone,” said Perry. “Taking the Vietnamese side? It’s insane.”
“Letting China run over Southeast Asia is insane. What happened, Harland? I thought you agreed with me when I sent you?”
“I had an open mind,” said Perr
y. “I told you I would come to look at the facts, and I have. I don’t think the Vietnamese are worth the effort, frankly. There’s nothing here to convince me that they would be worth spilling American blood over.”
“The question is, how to avoid it being shed in the future. More of it, that is.”
Perry’s face darkened. The lighting in the embassy secure room wasn’t that good, but Greene guessed that he was flushed. He had lost one of his aides in the fighting, and Perry was not the sort of commander to take that lightly.
“You sent me to give you my opinion,” said the general. “That’s what I’m doing.”
“You were to help the Vietnamese as well,” said Greene. “And obviously you’re no longer in a position to do that.”
“I—”
“Harland, I appreciate the work you’ve done. I put you in a difficult position. I know that. I’m not going to keep you there. I want you out on the next available flight.”
“Yes, Mr. President.”
“Oh, don’t give me that ‘yes, Mr. President’ shit.” Greene folded his arms. For the first time since they’d started speaking, he was genuinely annoyed. “What kind of jackass would I be to keep you in Vietnam when you don’t believe in what you’re doing? And I understand you’ve ordered all your aides to leave.”
“I told Zeus Murphy to go home because he’s been through enough,” said Perry. “And now that you bring that up, I resent his going over my head.”
“As I understand it, the CIA asked for him,” said Greene. “The Vietnamese did as well. And State.”
“That may be. But he deserved to leave if he wanted.”
“Did he want to?”
Perry said nothing. Greene rose. He couldn’t sit when he was agitated; it was too difficult.
“Chet?”
“Hold on. My legs are getting cramped. Damn it.” Greene pulled the chair back and sat down again. “Have you heard what’s going on back here?”
“Congress wants to impeach you.”
“That’s right. I expect they’ll subpoena you.”
