by Larry Bond
“Ba,” said Zeus, using the number for three and pointing. Finally, the engineer in the back leaned forward and told the man where to go. He must have warned him that they were running out of time, for the man sped recklessly. Even with the wide roadway and apron, they barely avoided sliding into a set of boulders at the far end of the turn.
Zeus gripped the GPS unit in his left hand, holding on to the BJ with his right. His pack was wedged between his feet, the rifle stock visible and easily reached through the unzipped top.
“Here,” said Zeus. “Stop.”
The BJ nose-dived to a halt. Zeus got out again. Worried that the Chinese would be getting closer, this time he took his weapon as well as the GPS.
The bridge was a simple structure with trusses below, and nothing above. While he was confident that he had enough explosives to blow it, he was worried that it would be an obvious sign of sabotage.
Would that tip the Chinese off that something was up?
It absolutely would.
He looked around at the nearby landscape. The waning moonlight cut it into a succession of shadows and angles, small trees and jagged hills.
Zeus walked across the bridge, debating. The road narrowed just ahead—could he set charges in the rocks and tumble enough down to block the bridge?
He trotted up to take a look. The problem was that he didn’t have enough experience with explosives to know exactly what to do. Unlike the other area, where the rocks were loose, here the wall seemed solid.
Zeus suddenly felt defeated, as if the Chinese had already swept past. He fought against it, looking around. There were trees on the other side of the road. He could set charges there.
He could blow up the bridge and make small potholes—he could make it look like artillery shells hit somehow.
He ran back to the truck. The Joe who was the mining expert pointed down at the bridge. They had worked out how to blow it up.
“I need it to look like an accident,” Zeus tried to explain. The soldier listened, then shaking his head, he waved—was he saying it wasn’t important? Or it couldn’t be done?
Then the man pointed at the trees.
They had the same idea he did—to make it look like an artillery attack or a bombing run gone bad. Zeus nodded.
“Good,” he told the men. “Let’s go.”
They began setting the charges. After making sure the others had enough explosives, Zeus took several bricks of explosives and ran across the bridge to a spot where the slope started. He climbed up to a thick, knotted trunk leaning down toward the bridge and taped a charge to the trunk. Then he inserted the long, thin cap that would detonate the plastic explosive. He strung some of the wire, using both his combat knife and his teeth in lieu of the wire cutters, which he’d forgotten to fish from the box in his haste.
There is a science and an art to blowing things up, and while Zeus had taken two classes on using explosives, he was not anywhere near expert enough to be able to gauge either the absolute best place to put the charges or how much to use. All he could do was use a lot of explosives. He sensed that he was putting in too much, but at this point he knew it was more important to simply get it laid out. He finished the first set and looked for another tree.
About five yards farther up he found another with a curved trunk leaning downward, and went to work. He connected the wires, made sure his connections were good, then slid down and put a few charges in the rocks.
He’d wired in four charges with caps and was starting back for more explosives when he heard a noise in the distance. It was faint, barely audible above the steady grunt of the nearby BJ, and it took Zeus a moment before he was sure what it was—the lead vehicles in the approaching column.
How far away? It was impossible to tell in the hills.
“They’re coming!” he yelled, starting down.
The others shouted to him. He guessed from their gestures that they wanted him to fix the wires. He started grabbing them, pulling them together and working his way back toward the truck.
Sweat poured from his hands. As soon as he had sorted the wires at the detonator box, he realized he didn’t hear the vehicles any longer. He set the wires, made sure they were ready to be connected, then took some more caps and bricks of explosive to finish the job on the other side.
He went out under the bridge and helped the man who’d worked in the mine. Together they taped a pair of bricks onto a beam. Joe tucked a little slot in the bottom charge, then slipped a slim detonator inside.
Sweat poured down the side of the man’s face. They were both nervous, working quickly and trying not to show their fear.
As soon as he was on the embankment Zeus heard the vehicles again, much louder.
“Damn. They’re coming. Come on!”
Zeus pulled the wires together and worked his way back with the reel, trying not to trip in his haste.
It was like a case of déjà vu—he’d done almost the same thing a few days before, destroying a bridge as the Chinese attacked. But this time everything was a little off—it was darker and more desperate somehow. Yet how could that be? He’d been fired at the last time, and blown it up with …
With what? He couldn’t even remember what he had done. He couldn’t remember anything. It was like a scrambled dream, or nightmare.
Stay together!
Keep your head on. It’s panic, and it’s messing you up.
He gave them a pep talk, even though they couldn’t understand what he was saying. It was more for him anyway—something to keep his mind moving in the right direction.
“We have to get it done before they’re close enough to see. We have to get this going.”
The sound was loud. Was it enough to cover the explosion?
It was immaterial now.
“Pack up! Get the boxes back in the truck. Go! Go!”
Zeus wired the detonator switch box, a small, battery-powered device with a pair of switches—a charging button that needed to be pressed and held down for a few seconds to activate the device, and then the actual detonating switch, a simple rocker.
With the Chinese vehicles this close, he was tempted to wait until they were on the bridge to detonate the charges. But the last image he had seen showed that the lead vehicles were light Humvee-like trucks; to do real damage he’d have to wait until the tanks were on the bridge. That would mean he’d get into a firefight with the soldiers in the Humvees who came over first. That simply wasn’t worth the risk.
As he checked his connections, his secure sat radio began buzzing. He had a direct communication—the MC-17 with the antitank weapons was trying to contact him.
Perfect timing, Zeus thought.
He pulled the radio from his pocket. It looked like a standard stat phone with a five-line screen on the face below the earpiece and an extended number pad just below that. He had to tap a code in to unlock it, but momentarily blanked on what it was.
The vehicles were getting closer. Finally Zeus got the combination right and was connected to the copilot of the aircraft, who was handling the communications.
“Looking for Zeus,” said the air force captain. There was only the slightest bit of tension in his voice.
“I’m going to need to give you new coordinates,” Zeus told him, without even bothering to identify himself. “But I need five minutes. Maybe ten.”
“Ah, yeah, all right. Roger that. We have a rough location and—”
“It’s gonna be north of that.”
“North?”
“Just hold on and I’ll get back to you.” Zeus cut the communication.
He glanced behind him, made sure that the others were behind the truck, then pushed down on the charge button, arming the detonator switch.
I’m too close, he thought, even as he flicked the switch to blow the charges.
A long second followed. Nothing happened. Zeus thought he had screwed up the wiring somehow. He glanced down at the connections.
Then the world in front of him exploded.<
br />
Most of the force of the blast was contained by the embankment and the metal and concrete of the bridge. Even so, it threw him back. The side of the hill crumbled—trees, rocks, and dirt falling in an avalanche. A thick cloud of pulverized rock and wood filled the air.
* * *
Warmth swelled over him. Zeus felt Anna, lying next to him, her arm draped over his chest.
“Anna,” he whispered.
She nuzzled next to him. He smelled the light scent of her perfume mixing with the faint sweetness of his own sweat. They were together and he would never have to leave her again.
* * *
Zeus began to choke. His lungs felt as if they were filled with rocks.
Something scraped his back. It was like a knife, dragging down from his shoulder blades to his rump to his leg. It kept cutting, the pain extending itself somehow.
He was being dragged.
Where am I going?
Zeus finally regained consciousness as he was pulled up into the cab of the BJ.
“The box, the box, we need the box of explosives,” he said, half stumbling into his seat. “The box.”
The two men pulling him shouted at him. Zeus realized he couldn’t hear.
“The box.” He gestured, trying to get them to understand. They lifted him up and shoved him into the truck.
“The explosives,” said Zeus. “The boxes?”
“We go now!” shouted the driver. The ground was vibrating with the sound of the heavy armor approaching.
“Go,” said Zeus. “Go, yes, go. OK. Before it’s too late. Get us back east—take us to the road east.”
They backed around and sped off. Zeus turned and tried to look back, but couldn’t see anything.
“My radio,” he said aloud, reaching into his pocket. “I have to talk to the pilot.”
33
Kunming
General Li Sun sat down in the well-padded office chair in front of the long table in his command post’s communications center, waiting while the aide made the connection with the 12th Armor Division. The unit had just stalled above Malipo, due to a damaged bridge.
Undoubtedly destroyed erroneously by Chinese bombers earlier in the war, thought Li Sun, then covered up by the area commanders. Such incidents had been rife, enabled by the informal networks among the different generals, who covered for each other.
While he waited for the connection to be made, Li Sun opened his briefing folder and looked at an area map. The highway snaked through the hills and mines around Malipo; there was only one real alternate south, a mining road that had been installed in the bed of an older passage. The surface was rough, but the bed had been reinforced for mining vehicles and it could easily bear the weight of the Chinese main battle tanks.
“General, the connection with General Fan Shen has been made.” The aide held out the handset.
“General Fan, explain your situation,” snapped Li Sun, his voice brisk. “What is going on?”
“There was a rock slide on the road below Piaopiao Dazhai,” replied the general. “It demolished the bridge. We will have to go back and proceed on the highway to the east. I believe—”
“A rock slide, General?”
“It may have been a guerilla strike. We’ve seen some damage that looks—”
“Guerillas? Vietnamese? That far into China? That’s not possible.”
“I … didn’t mean—”
“It’s impossible. The Vietnamese can’t even protect their own border.”
“I realize it is unlikely, General. As I said, it appeared to be a rock slide. But there may have been explosives.”
“It’s more likely to have been one of our own bomb strikes,” said Li Sun. “Or our missiles.”
Fan didn’t answer. That confirmed it for Li Sun—the general must be protecting whatever unit had been involved.
“Is this delaying your offensive?”
“We are taking an alternate route. It won’t delay us.”
The general told Li Sun that the division would now take the highway directly into the town, swinging east through a hamlet known as Moshan Xiazhai. While the surrounding area had once been lush high jungle, it was now mostly barren because of the changing weather patterns and strip mines. Many of the poor farmers who had lived there had gone north or east, seeking factory jobs; the region had about a twentieth of the population it had had some ten years before.
“If you take that road near the mines, your unit will bunch up in the hills,” said Li Sun, consulting his map. “You can avoid the problems by going straight through the open mines near Songshanpo. You then come back west through the valley and rest below the town. By daybreak, we will have a better idea how much progress the infantry will make. That will determine the timing of our next move.”
“Yes, General.”
“I would prefer to put you directly into action,” added Li Sun. “I would prefer to have you attack across the border as soon as you can organize your tanks.”
“General, we will group ourselves to strike as soon as we reach Malipo. This will not slow us down.”
Li Sun handed the handset back to his aide and rose from the console. He was surprised to find General Shaun, his chief of staff, standing behind him.
“Do you feel that the Vietnamese could possibly have blocked the road?” General Shaun asked.
“This far north of the border?”
“There have been incidents to the east,” said Shaun.
“You don’t feel he’s covering up for someone?” asked Li Sun. “Such as the five hundredth and third? Their incompetence was passed off as a Vietnamese artillery assault, when we all know the Vietnamese don’t have artillery in that sector.”
“That incident, yes,” admitted Shaun. “I can check with some of the units.”
“That will only antagonize them.” Li Sun considered the politics. He had little use for the missile forces, but some contacts among the air force he needed to preserve—in fact, he would have to call on them soon. There was no sense making trouble.
Shaun’s eyes rebuked him. He shouldn’t put politics above expediency—and wouldn’t have, just a few days ago. But he was learning the limits of idealism. Word of his decision to “replace” the moribund leadership of the army group had apparently reached some of the dead men’s cronies, and they were starting rumors that Li Sun couldn’t achieve his objectives. He knew from his own sources that questions were being raised about his leadership.
Li Sun wasn’t surprised that the older generation would see him as a threat, or that they would work behind his back to undercut him. He had to be careful in dealing with them—and make friends or at least placate enemies, something he wouldn’t have thought necessary just a few weeks before.
“Most likely it was an errant missile,” Li Sun told Shaun. “But you are right—Fan should be more suspicious. Call me when he reaches Malipo. Who is our commander there?”
“A pensioner,” said Shaun with some derision. “A major named Shang. I would not count on him for much.”
The fact that the command was held by a major, and an older one at that, indicated how small the force was. Clearly, the landslide or whatever it was that had blocked the road was the result of their own attack: if the Vietnamese wanted to attack somewhere, surely they would have struck the city, blowing up the police station or some other symbol of authority.
“We won’t count on him then,” said Li Sun. “But have Fan talk to me when he is in the city. I want him to move south as quickly as possible. And you might remind him that speed is of the essence, if you have cause to talk to him before I do.”
“Yes, General.”
“All of our people need a little push,” Li Sun said. “Give it to them.”
34
Northwest of Malipo, China
The aircraft’s copilot had been trying to reach Zeus for several minutes when Zeus finally made the connection and acknowledged.
“There you are, Major,” said the man. “We’r
e only zero-two to the drop point.”
“No, I have new coordinates,” said Zeus. “I need you to come northwest. Stand by.”
“Northwest how far?” answered the copilot.
“Stand by.”
“Major, northwest is pretty damn close to Chinese territory. If not over it.”
“I need you to go over it. I’m working on it.”
The copilot was silent.
Zeus studied the paper map. The only good spot for a drop was in the large strip mine where he planned the ambush. Anywhere else would either take too long to get to or run the risk of losing the gear to a bad drop.
Zeus checked himself with the GPS, then looked at the MC-17’s likely course. The aircraft was cutting north through a valley at very low altitude, about a hundred miles south of Zeus and roughly sixty miles from the border. The Chinese defenses weren’t sophisticated enough to detect it, as long as it stayed in the carefully calculated flight path and didn’t go too much farther north.
He read the coordinates for the strip mine to the copilot.
“Major, our orders are to stay in Vietnamese air space,” said the copilot.
“You copy those numbers?”
“Oh yeah, roger, I copy them all right. That isn’t the problem, sir.”
“That’s where I need those crates.”
There was another pause, then a new voice came on the line. It was a woman’s.
“Major Murphy, this is Lt. Colonel Baum. I’m the flight commander and pilot.”
“Listen, I need you to come north. The situation is desperate. Beyond desperate.”
“I know what you need. Do you realize what you’re asking us to do?”
“Affirmative. Listen, I’m not going to tell anyone about it. I’m just asking because—”
“Is there a marker?” she asked, cutting him off.
“Excuse me?”
“Have you set up navigational aids?”
“Negative. I don’t have time. I just need you to drop it on that spot.”
“We’re flying over a jungle. In the mountains. My gear is good, Major, but—”
“The coordinates are in a strip mine. It’ll be at the northwestern end. There’s a mining road there. If you miss there’s plenty of leeway.”
