by Larry Bond
“You can use that?” Lucas asked. “I can get an expert to walk you through the instructions.”
“It’s all right,” said Kerfer, holding it up. “I’m not going senile yet.”
He’d used this particular model years before and only once, but the device was designed to be relatively easy to operate in the field, and he was thoroughly familiar with the principles. It could range from approximately two hundred to a thousand yards.
He definitely wanted to be at the far end of that range when the bombers came in.
“All right, it’s working,” he announced, finished looking it over. “Battery is charged and everything.”
“I have some contact frequencies for you, and some backups. You’re going to be talking directly to the pilots. They’ll start listening for you in an hour.”
“Gonna take me longer than that to get there.”
“Not too much longer, I hope,” said Lucas. “The Chinese are heading toward the border. The Vietnamese are getting pretty desperate.”
“So am I,” said Kerfer. “Can you get me a map of the area?”
“Use the GPS.”
“I want a paper map. Call me old-fashioned. I like to fold things up and put them in my pocket.”
“All right. I’m sending it on the secure system. Print it, but eat it if you get caught.”
Kerfer stifled a laugh when he saw that Lucas didn’t mean it as a joke.
Spooks.
“Good luck,” said the CIA officer.
The screen blanked.
53
North of Malipo
General Li Sun knew that the situation was worse than he’d suspected as soon as he saw General Fan standing stiffly next to the back of the command building. Fan held his hands at his sides like a chastened recruit.
Fan’s embarrassment pained Li Sun, and not simply because it meant that his own situation was even more perilous than he had supposed. To see any Chinese commander humiliated by a peasant army was heart rending.
On the one hand, Li Sun wanted to pummel him with his bare hands. On the other, he felt … pity at the man’s shame.
“General, we must talk,” he told Fan sharply, striding toward his command post.
Fan followed him into the mobile headquarters. It was a large trailer unit, originally designed as a mobile home and converted for military use. Equipped with communications equipment, computers, and other gear necessary for directing a war, the trailer was divided into three areas. The back, closed off, was an office used by Fan. The section in the middle had a conference table for staff meetings. A U-shaped ring of consoles sat near the front. Men were working over the consoles when they entered, most wearing headsets and hunched forward, peering at screens.
Everyone rose as the generals entered.
“Empty the room,” said Li Sun. His voice was soft, but even the men wearing the headsets instantly complied.
“We were ambushed here,” said Fan, unfurling a map on the table. He pointed to the strip mine pit, and led Li Sun through a brief recitation of the battle.
It wasn’t pretty or flattering. He had moved his units on secondary roads because of the blocked bridge, which he realized now had been destroyed as part of the Vietnamese plan to trap him. He thought his decision to use the strip mine to move his tanks faster had probably helped him—if the Vietnamese had cornered him on the road, they might have bottlenecked his entire force. Still, he had let his tank regiment move without adequate infantry screening. And allowing himself to then be attacked on the flank and nearly surrounded was a critical mistake. He should have withdrawn earlier.
“You should have protected your flank better,” said Li Sun. “You could have turned back the few Vietnamese tanks and still had a victory.”
“There were more than a few,” said Fan.
“The reconnaissance counted less than a dozen,” said Li Sun. “Had you placed a battalion at this spot here, all would have been well.”
Not exactly, since he would still have been ambushed deep in Chinese territory, but at least the Vietnamese would have been defeated.
Fan said nothing.
“Where did these troops come from?” Li Sun asked. “How did they get so far north?”
“They must have been planning this for days,” said Fan.
It was a reasonable theory, Li Sun thought. Perhaps they had even crossed over the border before the actual declaration of war. The old commander’s negligence was now his problem.
“Take me to inspect your troops,” said Li Sun.
Fan complied in silence. The main camps were only a few kilometers away. The ride was slow, and painful.
Li Sun wasn’t entirely sure what he would do with Fan. He was surprised at the amount of sympathy he felt for him. It was especially inexplicable, since Fan’s failures threatened Li Sun himself.
Clearly, the general had to be removed. There was no debating the decision. And yet.…
There were many excuses. First and foremost, he had no one to replace him, or at least no one he trusted.
Li Sun was shocked when they reached the regimental headquarters of the unit that had been battered. The officers looked like walking ghosts. Every man he met seemed to be shell-shocked, flinching as he strode among them.
And well they should flinch. Well they should.
But this would not do in battle.
The regiment’s commander and his second in command had been killed during the ambush. In his place, Fan had appointed a lieutenant colonel from his third regiment. Lt. Colonel Zhi, a fiery officer about Li Sun’s age, had been with his own tanks many kilometers back when the assault began. He had brought up two battalions and gathered the survivors of the first battle, organizing them into a new unit roughly a regiment strong.
“How would you deal with the Vietnamese?” Sun asked him.
“Attack before they have a chance to dig in,” said Zhi without hesitation. “I have seen from the battle at the mines that their antitank weapons are slow to fire. They used them in the beginning, but not at the end. We should have doubled our attack, not retreated.”
Fan tightened his lips at the implicit criticism. It would be easy for a man who had not been in combat to say that.
But Li Sun liked the commander’s aggressive attitude. He would be useful.
I see what I have to do, he said to himself.
They would rebound. The first step was to rally the men.
“Listen to me, you men!” Li Sun walked to one of the dirt-spattered Type 96 tanks, gripped the wire mask over the headlight, and pulled himself onto the hull. “Listen—you have tasted your first blood of battle. You were surprised, and shocked at the reality of it. I know—I had a first battle myself! I was scared, scared beyond belief!”
Li Sun paused. The admission of fear—an emotion he was sure nearly everyone who listened to him had shared at some point in the battle—got their interest. Now it was time to use it.
“They put us back on our heels—they were tougher fighters than we thought,” said Li Sun, his voice starting to rise. “But we fought back. With the right leaders, we fought back. We were able to push the Vietnamese back. Because they were inferior—they were brave when they were winning, but cowards once the battle turned.”
The men closest to him shifted uneasily. They were ready to come with him, he saw, but only with the right push.
“We have a plan to strike back at the dogs,” he thundered. “The Vietnamese animals who were not content to attack tanks, but killed Chinese women and children in Malipo. Prepare yourselves for a great victory! Prepare yourselves for revenge!”
There was silence for a moment, each man looking around to see what his comrades thought before committing. Finally, Zhi raised his fist and yelled. The men followed, still tentative, but loud.
Li Sun hopped down from the tank.
“I will meet you in one hour to discuss the plans for the attack,” he told Zhi.
* * *
General Fan was quiet
as they got into the car and drove back toward the command trailer. Perhaps, thought Li Sun, the general had already come to the conclusion he himself had.
Li Sun leaned forward as the driver turned off the road toward the trailer.
“We will walk,” Li Sun told him. “You go on ahead.”
Li Sun opened the door and got out. Fan slid across to his side and followed. The delay irked Li Sun slightly—the imbecile should have had the sense to move quickly.
The car drove up the road. Li Sun waited until it had gone, then reached to his holster and took out his pistol. He chambered a cartridge, then slid out the magazine, leaving a solitary bullet ready to fire.
He handed the gun to Fan.
“Your family will be provided for,” said Li Sun.
Fan stared at the gun a moment, then took it. Li Sun began walking up the trail.
When General Fan did not fire, Li Sun worried for a moment that he would use the bullet on Li Sun. He braced himself, prepared to die.
Then the sound of a gunshot echoed behind him, louder than he expected. He continued up the trail without looking back, already absorbed in the problems he would have to overcome in the attack.
54
Kunming
Zeus trailed Setco back to the end of the hall where Park, their wounded team member, was lying. He’d been hit twice in the front of his vest. The ceramic plate had shattered, bruising and cutting his chest. But the more serious injuries were to his leg, which had been hit in several places. He’d managed to stop some of the bleeding himself by wrapping a tourniquet around the largest wound, but he was going in and out of consciousness.
Zeus checked on the wounds, then adjusted the bandage, moving it to cover the wound better. He tightened it, hoping the blood would clot.
The lights flickered, went off and then went on. The team members outside had cut the phone line.
“About fuckin’ time,” said Setco. He put his hand to his ear. “Kam, what’s going on out there?”
Solt answered, speaking Vietnamese.
“Right,” said Setco, responding in English. He turned to Zeus and the others. “There are vehicles coming from the camp area. We have to move.”
“I thought the place was empty,” said Zeus.
“Perfect like every intelligence briefing since the world began,” said Setco in a sneer.
“The general—was that Li Sun?”
“I don’t know. It doesn’t matter now. He had a star. We got the ID and we got pictures. The place is clear,” said Setco. “You want to hang around and look for somebody else?”
There was an explosion outside. That put an end to any discussion. Zeus bent to put the wounded man on his shoulder.
Setco grabbed his arm.
“We have to take him,” said Zeus.
“No shit. I got him,” added Setco. He bent down and in a smooth motion hoisted Park onto his back.
Zeus was surprised—not only because he thought Setco would leave the man as he’d left the others, but because Setco was smaller than Zeus, and if logic were involved, Zeus should have been the person doing the carrying.
“Let’s go, let’s go!” barked Setco. If he was straining with the weight, he didn’t show it. “Jooch, you’re point. Let’s go!”
They ran up the stairs, Setco and the wounded man sandwiched between Jooch and Zeus. The other two team members joined them on the main floor, and together they ran outside the building.
Outside, Setco sent Kam back for the dead member of the team.
“I don’t want to leave him here if I don’t have to,” he said.
Kam nodded, then went inside with Squirt to retrieve him.
The gunfire had quieted. Solt was crouched behind the van, eying the interior access road.
“Two trucks came out along the road but stopped,” said Solt when Zeus ran up to her. “You see them over there.”
Zeus could just make them out in the shadows against the other buildings. They were about a hundred yards away, maybe a little more.
“There’re troops in there?” he asked.
“I can’t tell. I didn’t see anything moving. There hasn’t been any gunfire.”
“What’s going on at the missile battery?” he asked. The battery was to their left; if someone started firing from behind its fences, they could be pinned down.
“We took out the two guards at the gate and blew up their machine gun with one of the RPGs. No one inside has peeped since.”
“Let’s get into the van and go,” said Setco.
Zeus and Solt moved up to cover the others as they climbed into the van. Zeus stared at the black hulks of the trucks. They had probably been parked in one of the buildings toward the rear of the complex.
“Come on, come on,” shouted Setco.
Zeus backed against the truck, the hopped on the running board as the vehicle started to move. As soon as he did, a wave of gunfire rose from the field in front of the trucks. Suddenly, he was surrounded by a hail of bullets. Lead flew at him so quickly he couldn’t even answer the gunfire. There was no time and he had no balance; he could barely hold on.
Something popped him in the back, hard. A bullet smacked into the door. The window burst next to him.
A white light blinked ahead.
More gunfire.
Zeus tucked his gun under his shoulder and rolled off the van, landing on his side on the ground. He jumped to his feet and fired two bursts into the area where he’d seen the muzzle flashes.
The van kept moving. Zeus got to his feet and started running after it. The men in the field near the trucks continued to fire at the vehicle. Someone on the other side of the gate began shooting as well. Zeus lowered his rifle, pointing in that direction, but couldn’t see a target and didn’t shoot.
The rest of the small team was firing from the van. Someone fell off—Solt, he guessed. He changed direction, running toward her and yelling her name as the gunfire eased down.
The gates were closed. The van barreled into them, veering right, then jerking left and heading toward the highway. A few soldiers from inside the missile battery fired at it. A light machine gun rattled near the guard post, its violent burst long but futile.
Solt was just getting to her knees when Zeus caught up to her.
“Are you OK?” he asked.
“I think. I don’t know.”
Zeus put his hand to his ear and tried calling Setco on the radio. He couldn’t hear a response.
“Is your radio working?” he asked Solt.
“The earpiece came off.”
Probably they were out of range by now anyway, Zeus thought.
“We have to get out before they start a search,” said Solt, getting to her feet.
“The machine gun,” he told her. “Come this way.”
He tugged her to the right, away from the main entrance.
“The van!” cried Solt.
“They’re out. They won’t wait for us. Come on,” said Zeus.
They ran together for about thirty yards. In the darkness, Zeus didn’t see the wide drainage ditch that ran across the field about fifty yards from the fence. He slipped and fell on his back, skidding down into the muck at the bottom.
“Up, up,” yelled Solt. Now it was her turn to tug him to his feet. They climbed out of the ditch and started running for the fence. As they did, someone in the field near the trucks saw them and began firing in their direction.
Zeus nearly collapsed as he reached the fence. He went down to one knee, catching his breath. Solt huddled next to him.
“We need to get out,” she told him between gasps of air. “We have to get to the highway. We can steal a car.”
“Can you get over?”
She looked up at the fence. It was topped with razor wire. There was a second fence about ten feet beyond it, also topped with wire.
“We’ll be easy targets,” she told him. “We’re better off going through the gate.”
“There’s a machine gun.”
&n
bsp; “They can’t see us from this side,” she told him. “We’re behind them. Come on.”
Zeus followed her, his right shoulder dragging along the fence. He saw something moving near the guard shack but didn’t fire, figuring all that would do was tell them they were coming.
They were still about twenty-five yards from the entrance when Solt reached down to her fatigues and took out a grenade. Running, she thumbed off the tape.
“Let me throw it!” yelled Zeus, but it was too late; she’d already cocked her arm back and let the grenade fly.
“Down!” she yelled, turning back and grabbing hold of him, pulling him to the ground. He crashed on top of her, then cringed, waiting for the explosion. It came a second or two later, a dull crackle nearly lost in the sound of the machine gun starting to fire.
“You got another one of those?” Zeus asked, leaning to the side so she could push out from under him.
“Just one.”
“Give me.”
Her eyes stared at him from the shadow of the fence line. They were beautiful eyes; they reminded him of Anna’s.
“Here.” She pressed the grenade into his hand. “You have to undo the tape.”
“Yeah, I know.”
He took it carefully. The machine gunner was across the entrance road, behind a thick set of sandbags. The gunner’s view across was partly blocked by a set of low cement road barriers and the broken fencing, and as long as they stayed low it didn’t look as if he could get them.
But of course that worked both ways. As long as Zeus stayed low, he couldn’t tell exactly where the gunner was, or how far he had to toss the grenade.
Zeus eased upward against the fence, trying to gauge the distance to the gun. It wasn’t much—thirty yards or so—but plopping the grenade between the sandbags and cement barrier in the dark was going to be as much a matter of luck as skill.
He steadied himself, then tossed the grenade. He lurched forward, swinging up his rifle to fire as he burst out into the open.
He barely heard the explosion. Instead of stopping as he planned, a sudden burst of adrenaline took hold of him and he ran to the concrete barrier nearest the entrance road and leapt over it. He leveled his gun at the machine-gun position and fired, squeezing through the rest of the magazine before he reached the sandbags.
