by Larry Bond
Across the way from the communications area was a battery of mobile antiaircraft missiles. Unlike the armored personnel carrier, the missiles were among the latest in the Chinese inventory: HQ-9s, sometimes known in the West at FT-2000As. The battery had eight TELs or transporter erector launchers—truckbeds that raised the missiles to fire. There was also a search radar and a tracking radar, along with a trailer used as a command center. A generator truck and a few smaller trailers for personnel rounded out the battery.
“Tempting target,” said the black man. His name was Robbie, and he had an accent from the American south.
“Tempt not, want not,” said Roo.
“We’ll have to leave it be,” said Setco. “We’re not getting bonus points this time around.”
The missile unit was separate from the surrounding army base, operating under a different chain of command. As such, it had its own security. While Setco didn’t consider it too formidable, it was nonetheless not to be taken lightly—the facility would be heavily mined, and there were typically two dozen soldiers available as guards. He expected at least a third would be on duty, walking the perimeter and manning a light machine gun post near the entrance. They were trained to remain at their posts, a plus for the attackers in this operation.
“Best thing to do as far as they’re concerned is ignore them. Shoot right by,” said Setco. “No pun intended.”
Finally, there was the headquarters building. This would have two men at the front door, along with two men patrolling the corridor inside. He expected there would be no external security because of the fact that they were inside the base. Still, they couldn’t count on that entirely.
“They’re not in the reconnaissance twenty-four hours ago,” said Zeus.
“I’ll remember to tell them that if they show up,” said Setco. “It’s not the past but the future we’re dealing with here. The general’s office will be in the middle of the building,” he said, continuing. “Far end of the building are conference rooms. Bunkers and situation rooms are downstairs. Lay everybody out, no prisoners,” added Setco.
“We’re not going to take the boss?” said one of the white soldiers. He had an Australian accent. “Big propaganda, no?”
“Can’t use it,” said Setco.
“Let Zig and Squirt take him,” said the Australian. “Blindfold him, knock him out. Won’t know there’s any Yanks involved.”
“Or any ’roos,” said Robbie.
They all laughed.
“It’s a shame, but he’s not worth the hassle.” Setco glanced at Zeus. “Right, Major?”
“We’d have to kill him in the end anyway.”
“Better to keep it simple,” said the Australian. “Dead for one and dead for all.”
“Even Roo comes around in the end,” said Robbie. “As long as there’s killing involved.”
There was less laughter this time.
Setco went over more of the layout, then made assignments. If the vans weren’t there, they would take three cars at the airport—military vehicles if they could find them. Setco had already identified the locations from the satellite images.
“We should have real time pictures just before we land.” Setco checked his watch. “Anything else?”
“What do we do if we’re stopped at the airport?” asked Robbie.
“We won’t be,” said Setco.
“You’re guaranteeing that?”
“I’m guaranteeing that.”
To Zeus’s surprise, no one snickered.
“Play it by ear,” said Setco. “If things start going to shit, we shoot our way out, take the headquarters down, then do our best to get back.”
“Same ol’, same ol’,” said Robbie.
If he meant it as a joke, it fell flat. No one laughed, or even grinned.
“All right, let me go check with the pilot.” Setco looked at his watch. “Anyone needs to take care of business, you got five minutes. After that, we leave without you.”
Zeus went forward with Setco into the cockpit. The two Vietnamese pilots who’d come up with the other plane were going over a checklist. Setco interrogated them in rapid-fire Vietnamese. The pilots seemed nervous to Zeus—not a good sign. Finally, Setco pointed to his watch, then left the flight deck.
“What was that about?” Zeus asked.
“I don’t like the way they fly. I need them to go faster. Frickin’ Chinese are freaking me out they’re so quiet. They may be expecting us.”
“Expecting us?”
“Relax, Murph. They’re not. I just want to move. They’ll hit Malipo pretty soon. They’re going to want it back. If they weren’t such pussies they would have attacked already.”
Setco took a seat in the first aisle, propping his feet up on one of the duffel bags. Zeus slid into the seat next to him. He glanced out the window but it was pitch black.
“So you’re the guy that stopped the tanks going to Haiphong, huh?” asked Setco.
“We were pretty far north of that.”
“I heard you shot up an airport in China.”
“Not really. We had a little, uh, misunderstanding and had to leave.”
Setco smirked. He thought Zeus had been downplaying what they’d done, but in reality he was telling the truth—it had been an accident. But finally Setco seemed, if not impressed, at least mollified.
“Do you have a uniform for me?” Zeus asked.
“Nothing that’s going to fit.”
“I need a jacket or something.”
“You’ll do fine if you stay down. Your face isn’t going to fool anyone, no matter what you wear. You just stay cool and keep moving. You’re sure you’re in?”
“I’m in.”
Setco stretched in his seat, sliding down slightly. Zeus looked at his profile and realized the CIA officer wasn’t nearly as old as he’d thought; he very possibly was younger than he was. But he wore the world and all that he’d done in it like a blanket made of age. Every year of his life in the agency, Zeus guessed, was like ten or twenty outside of it.
“What do you think of Kerfer?” asked Setco.
“He’s OK.”
“Fuckin’ SEALs are always full of themselves,” said Setco. “He did save my ass.”
“That’s good.” Zeus didn’t know what else to say.
“And I saved his. He didn’t tell you that part of the story, right?”
“He didn’t tell me any part.”
“Hmmph.” Setco shifted around in his seat. “What you doing in Vietnam, Major?”
“I was assigned and—”
“You’re like a ghost from the past, right? Materializing to help us get it right this time? Except it doesn’t really work that way. Because the Vietnamese are on our side now, and we’re on theirs. We’re the Viet Cong. At least as far as the Chinese are concerned.”
“Maybe more like the Russians.”
“You know your history.”
“Why are you here?”
“Because they won’t send me any place where there’s too much of a chance I’ll come out of it alive.”
* * *
They took off a few minutes later, the aircraft slipping so smoothly off the runway Zeus wasn’t sure it was airborne until he saw shadows below his window. Right up until takeoff, there had been murmured conversations and occasional laughter, but now the talk was gone, the only sound the drone of the engines.
Kunming was roughly two hundred miles from Malipo by air. The An-24, however, had to take a roundabout route so that it would appear that it was a Chinese aircraft coming from the north. The pilot first flew northward toward the peaks of the Dalou Mountains in the Guizhou region. During this portion of the flight, the plane flew only fifty feet above ground level, hugging the contours of the mountains and valleys. It was tedious yet difficult work, the pilots struggling to anticipate the upcoming terrain without the benefit of advanced radar systems or satellite-generated maps. Several times they had to jerk upward at the last moment, engines straining.
> It took nearly two hours to reach the area of Zunyi, a major city on the Xiang River barely three hundred miles north of the airport. At that point, the aircraft banked sharply and began to climb, exploiting a gap in the Chinese civil and military radar coverage. Setco went into the cockpit with Zig, who spoke excellent Chinese with a Beijing accent, to make sure the proper transmissions were made to the controllers.
By this point, the long flight was wearing on Zeus. He wanted to be there already. He wanted it to be over.
He wanted to see Anna.
Setco came out of the cockpit and stood at the front of the aisle. “We’re twenty minutes out,” he announced. “Everything is set. Get yourselves ready.”
The men started shifting around. The three Vietnamese soldiers had donned the Chinese uniforms and shirt. They sat near the rear door with a Taiwanese member of the team nicknamed Longjohn, who drilled the translator on the proper responses if challenged.
Most of the rest of the men double-checked their gear and weapons, getting ready.
Zeus took his gun from the pack.
“What you packing there, Murph?” asked Setco.
Zeus glared at him. Setco smiled—clearly he got a kick out of riling him with the nickname. The para took the rifle, looked it over quickly, then gave it back.
“Nice. You sure you’re coming with us, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
“Duty? Or adventure?”
For just a moment, Setco’s face seemed to soften. It was as if he’d been wearing a mask, and it instantly dissolved. But then he started to frown, and it was back, hard, cold, uncaring.
Is that how I look? Zeus wondered.
“You figure it’s your duty to go ahead with this,” said Setco, no longer asking a question. “So you want to see it through.”
“Something along those lines.”
Setco nodded. He looked at his watch. “We’re on the tarmac in fifteen. I’ll be up front.”
47
Kunming
General Li Sun paced the conference room, anxious. He’d spent the entire morning and afternoon fuming, urging his forces to move, and ultimately raging at the vast gap between his men’s promises and their performances.
Ordered to mount a counterattack no later than noon, General Fan at 12th Armored had reported that he was still organizing his units. Meanwhile, neither of the infantry battalions Li Sun had ordered to break off and accelerate their march had reached the division.
Malipo itself was silent, a mountain city cut off from the world. Li Sun had persuaded a family friend of his at the 11th Air Surveillance Squadron to fly reconnaissance flights over the area—and more importantly to be quiet about it. The most recent images, a few hours old, showed military vehicles along the main street of Malipo. These could only be Vietnamese.
The force appeared to be small. Word had not yet reached Beijing, a minor miracle, but surely would by the time the next flyover data from the infrared satellite covering the area was processed—not more than two hours from now. And that was if word from the reconnaissance flight didn’t filter back through the chain of command.
When it did there would be hell to pay. Malipo might be a distant, insignificant outpost, but it was Chinese territory. Word of this disaster would not only raise his uncle’s wrath, but might very well threaten the government’s existence—the people would hardly listen to a premier who could not keep a puny enemy like Vietnam in line.
Before it came to that, Li Sun himself would be gone, his body dragged by dogs through the streets of the worst provincial slum.
The city had to be retaken immediately. That was the only possible hope. It had to be secured, and then his army had to march directly into Vietnam—he could not stop until he was in Hanoi.
Only if he was the victor of such a battle could his uncle forgive him.
And the only way he was going to win that battle was if he was there personally. General Fan was not capable of organizing his units quickly enough. And Fan was his most aggressive general—the infantry leaders were undoubtedly far worse.
Li Sun went to the door. “General Chan!” he bellowed. “General!”
His aide ran from his office, his face stricken. The man had not slept in over twenty-four hours.
“Has General Fan attacked?”
“He is planning to move against the city at nightfall.”
“He was supposed to strike at noon!”
“General, his forces were in disarray. I’m not making excuses for him,” added Chan, “I am just relaying what he told me.”
“The sun is down. Has he attacked?”
Chan shook his head.
“I will go to the 12th Armored myself. You will stay here and be in communication with me at all times. I will take Niu with me.”
“General, if Beijing—”
“When Beijing contacts you, tell them I am in the field and left strict orders for you to refer them to me.”
“But—
“We don’t have an alternative, General,” said Li Sun. “We will tell them that we have been fighting this battle back and forth. I am going to make my way to Hanoi. I will either walk through the streets there as a conqueror, or you will never see me again.”
“Sir, let me go.”
“It’s our only hope.” Li Sun shook his head. “I won’t fail. Have a helicopter from 23rd Aviation meet me at the airport. Two of them—I’ll take some of our guard detail. Maybe they will be useful in the fighting, if only to lend me their weapons.”
48
Approaching Kunming airport
Good SpecOp missions always had a touch of the surreal.
An aircraft that not only looked like a Chinese army transport but was an army transport landed at an airport used by civilians and military flights all the time …
The aircraft taxied to a spot on the tarmac near the military area but not quite inside it …
A group of men in Chinese army uniforms filed down the rear of the aircraft to a pair of civilian vans waiting nearby. Four men took up positions around the plane, QBZ-95 assault rifles ready …
It all looked extremely ordinary, and yet it was exactly the opposite, a rash gamble that could fall apart at any moment.
Zeus, head lowered to stay as inconspicuous as possible, trotted from the plane toward the vans. Setco had given him a bulletproof vest and a soft black campaign cap; from a distance at least, he looked like he belonged.
There were two vans waiting, as promised. Zeus started toward the second, then realized he’d been assigned to the first. He changed course, hopping in behind one of the Koreans. He squeezed into the middle row of the three bench seats right behind Setco.
There was a driver at the wheel, dressed in the uniform of a Chinese army private.
It took a moment, but then he realized that the private was a woman.
And one he knew: Solt Jan.
“You,” said Zeus. “Solt.”
“And you,” answered the Vietnamese agent. “Major.”
“You got out of China?” Zeus asked.
“We are still in China.”
Solt had helped Zeus fool the Chinese amphibious force off Hainan into thinking that the Vietnamese were mounting a major attack on them. They had become separated as they escaped through mainland China.
“You never got out?”
“I was more useful here. What happened to your companion?”
Zeus shook his head. “He didn’t make it.”
“That is too bad.”
“You two have met?” said Setco. There was no surprise in his voice.
“We worked together,” said Zeus.
“You get around, don’t you?” said Setco.
He started speaking to Solt in Vietnamese. Zeus studied her face as she responded. She had a thin, soft face, and looked almost waiflike in the soldier’s uniform.
She looked like Anna. Her hair was wrong, close cropped in a men’s cut, but her face was definitely feminine. She took her hat from t
he dashboard in front of her and put the van into gear.
Everyone in the team had a short-range radio, a high-tech discrete burst rig tuned to a shared frequency. Setco spoke into his, telling Zig in the second van to follow them out. Solt was alone; how she had managed to get both vehicles here was the least of the questions Zeus wanted to ask her.
They circled around the back of the plane and headed for a road that led to the terminal area. The An-24 would wait exactly two and a half hours for them; if they weren’t back by then, the pilots and the security team would leave.
“No ifs, ands, or buts,” said Setco.
The terminal was well lit; while the airport wasn’t extremely busy—there were only four jets at the passenger gates—there was certainly no sign of a blackout or other precautionary steps that might be taken because of the war. There were no extra patrols, and the controller hadn’t even questioned the aircraft once it gave its actual Chinese registration. No one at Kunming felt they had anything to fear from the Vietnamese.
In fact they didn’t. Only the men at the headquarters south of the city did. And their assailants weren’t even Vietnamese.
A pair of Harbin Z-9 helicopters—license-built Chinese versions of the French Dauphin—took off from the base of the runway as the vans came around. The rear wheels of the first helicopter seemed perilously close as it passed.
“Watch it,” barked Setco.
Solt responded in sharp Vietnamese.
“Where are you going?” asked Setco as Solt turned to the right. “Go out the front gate.”
“They have a security team checking vehicles.” Solt was speaking English now, with only a bare accent; she was fluent in several languages.
“What? They’re stopping people going out?” asked Setco.
“The local police,” said Solt. “They’re looking for smugglers. Some Chinese think they’re going to set up business in Vietnam once the war is over, and they’re bringing down currency and gold. Lots of it.”
“Are you kidding?” asked Zeus.
“It’s a gold rush,” she answered bitterly.
Lights off, Solt sped past a 757 being refueled, then threaded her way through the tank farm area and reached a small cluster of buildings where the emergency vehicles were based. The highway was only a few yards away, separated by a fence. Zeus braced himself, thinking she was going to ram through the chain links. Instead she veered right at the last possible moment, continuing along a ramp used by military aircraft en route to the runway. The fence was to their left, just across a narrow strip of grass about three feet wide. Cars sped by on the highway, a steady stream.
