by Larry Bond
The strike on his headquarters had been bold and daring—far beyond anything Li Sun imagined the Vietnamese capable of. For that reason alone, he suspected that the Americans were behind it. He might in fact be fighting them now; he would have to proceed with caution.
Some caution. In order to live—in order to survive what he knew would be his uncle’s wrath and backstabbing from other generals—he would have to take Hanoi. He fully intended to.
Or die. There were no other options. Beijing was already trying to contact him to find out what was going on.
The smell of burnt metal and flesh drifted in his direction.
An idea occurred to him: He would find the commander of this unit and kill him personally to avenge Chan’s death.
“General, the tanks are ready to proceed,” said Zhi. “The Vietnamese positions have all been silenced.”
“Proceed colonel.” Li Sun motioned over his radio man and spoke to the commander of the lone infantry battalion accompanying the 12th Armor’s attack.
“Move ahead,” he told him. He picked up his night glasses to follow the progress.
A few minutes later, infantrymen began swarming down from the western hill. Li Sun had sent the infantrymen there to surprise the Vietnamese, attacking their flank as the tanks came in on the main front. In that way, he hoped to spare a few of the buildings—but he was prepared to demolish them all if necessary. He would blame it on the Vietnamese.
At the center of town, the tanks moved slowly—a little too slowly for his liking—but steadily. They made it past the burned-out hulls where the mines had been laid. One tank nosed into the dead hulk of a Vietnamese Type 54 and began pushing it aside. An RPG flew out from one of the buildings and exploded against the reactive plates at the side; the tank kept moving. Meanwhile, the tank behind it leveled its gun at the building the RPG had been fired from. The building disintegrated even as Li Sun heard the clap of the shot.
This was more like it.
Vietnamese soldiers began running from the buildings and yards on the west side of the town, chased out by Sun’s infantry. They were cut down by the Type 96s’ machine guns. The armor began sallying down the middle of the town, machine guns blazing.
It was the start of a rout. Finally.
He would tell Beijing that he was alive and proceeding. He would tell them that the Americans had launched a sneak attack and helped the Vietnamese. He would claim he had evidence—by the time they began asking questions, he would be in Hanoi.
Two days. Less if he could manage it. He must get the infantry moving.
“Colonel, what is our progress?” asked Li Sun.
“Moving forward, General.”
“Shouldn’t you be leading them?”
Zhi stiffened. “I am about to go down.”
“We’ll go together,” said Li Sun. He wanted to savor the victory.
“Send a message to all units,” he told his radioman as he strode to the command car. “Tell them that I prefer the Vietnamese officers captured alive if possible. I want the commander of this force brought to me.”
“For intelligence, General?”
“I want to shoot him with my own gun,” replied Sun. “I will watch him die slowly, and as painfully as possible.”
62
Malipo
Zeus stayed by Trung’s side as the general moved up the hill to get a better vantage of the battle. They were dangerously exposed, with heavy machine-gun fire tearing through the street less than fifty yards away, and shells from a second wave of tanks falling on the buildings nearby.
“It’s time to retreat, General,” Zeus told him. “You have to order a withdrawal while there are still people who can follow it.”
Trung didn’t answer. Two radiomen and two other aides, both majors, had come down from another room inside the building and joined him; they formed a loose circle around Zeus and Trung as the general picked his way through a backyard to a wide ledge that had an unobstructed view of the street. The two soldiers who had been guarding the entrance to his headquarters trudged up the hill behind them.
The flashes from the tanks painted the center of the town the way a set of strobe lights would, illuminating the battle in ferocious installments. The Vietnamese had by now fired all of their major antitank weapons; there was little they could do to stop the Chinese armor. The tanks fit roughly two abreast on the wide street; as they pushed past the obstructions at the north end of the city and moved south, they came in a staggered but tight formation. They appeared to have a minimal infantry screen with them, but that was immaterial now, because the Vietnamese were too thin and poorly armed to mount a defense, let alone a counterattack.
Trung watched stoically as his forces on the west side of the street tried to retreat from an infantry attack there, but got cut down by the tanks. The Vietnamese were in chaos. The battle was clearly lost.
There was an explosion on the hull of one of the lead tanks—a hand grenade or some improvised device had blown up. The tank behind it turned its gun and fired point blank into a building. When it fired again, the flash was nearly obscured by the thick brown and black dust in the air.
The first tank never stopped. The explosion hadn’t even slowed it.
Trung was speaking with his radiomen, relaying orders. Zeus saw a wedge of men coming up from the south. They were met with heavy gunfire from the tanks.
The Chinese Type 96s now began widening their killing field. One rammed into a building on the west side of the street, backing up under an avalanche of bricks. A flare shot up from the Vietnamese side, illuminating the sky. But it did nothing except make it easier for the Chinese to see their victims. The Vietnamese fire was drowned out by waves of fire from the tanks. There were now a dozen crowding onto the main street, and more behind them.
An artillery shell whistled overhead and exploded in the middle of the tank advance. The shell didn’t hit any of the tanks, but the explosion stopped them nonetheless. Another shell came over, and this one hit a tank on the far right side of the street. The tank’s turret popped up; smoke flew from the vehicle.
If the Vietnamese had had more ammunition, an artillery barrage at this point might have stopped or at least slowed the onslaught. A dozen shells expertly placed, and the Chinese once more would have had their noses bloodied badly enough to convince them to regroup. But only two more shells fell in the next minute and a half; neither one did any good. By then, Chinese artillery had started to answer, lobbing charges back at the howitzers, which were parked about a mile south along the road. The Vietnamese fired twice more. One shell hit the front of one of the gutted tanks; the other landed in one of the buildings. Then the Vietnamese heavy guns fell silent, either destroyed or out of ammunition.
More Chinese appeared on the street. Vietnamese soldiers came out to meet them, but were cut down quickly.
“General,” said Zeus. “It is time to escape.”
“Your woman has been freed,” Trung told him. “Chaū will take her to the embassy in Hanoi.”
“We have to go.”
It was already too late. The two soldiers down the hill dropped into firing positions.
Trung’s aides began yelling at him to join them. Trung started toward them, then turned back and walked to the soldiers crouching at the edge of the small plateau where he’d been observing the battle. Zeus and one of the majors followed.
“You, give me your weapons. Save yourself,” Trung told his guards in Vietnamese. “Both of you—go. Save yourselves.”
Zeus tried to intervene. “General.”
“You go, too, American,” said Trung sharply. “You have done much for us. Too much. Save yourself now. If you can.”
The last words were nearly drowned out by the sound of machine-gun fire on the street. Zeus ducked as bullets whizzed up the hill. One of the soldiers began returning fire. The other fell nearby. As Zeus picked up his rifle, a shell or a grenade flew nearby. Zeus started to duck but slipped and fell facedown, spilling across th
e hill and then sliding away from the explosion when the grenade skipped into a small culvert.
He tried to get up. A fusillade of bullets rioted around him, chewing up pieces of rock from the nearby ledge. Zeus scrambled blindly for cover. He saw a wall on his right. He pushed toward it, rising but quickly diving back down, practically swimming in the dirt, moving to the house.
Another grenade landed, this one further away but still close enough for the air-shock to slam him against the wall, knocking him out.
63
Forthright, Ohio
“Heading into town,” Josh yelled to his cousin’s sister. “See ya later.”
He was almost to the car when she opened the front door and shouted to him.
“Can you swing by the supermarket and get that ice cream for Chrissie’s birthday party?”
“Sure. What flavor?”
“Vanilla’s fine. Nothing fancy.”
“You got it.”
Josh started up the car. As the price of gas had begun to increase dramatically, his cousin had looked into alternative fuels. Ethanol mixes were popular with farmers here, as were hybrids. This car had an all-electric engine, built by a car mechanic who moonlighted as a tinkerer and inventor. It was a fine vehicle as long as you didn’t want to go fast or very far, but you had to be very careful about checking the gauge at the bottom of the dash that showed the battery charge. You needed at least three bars to get into town and back.
He had five. Good to go.
* * *
Sitting in his perch in the trees behind the house, Jing Yo saw the vehicle starting out of the driveway. Unable to see who was in the vehicle, he debated what to do.
By his count, there had only been two people in the house. One was Josh MacArthur; the other a female relative. He’d only seen the woman driving before.
If Josh was in the house, why not take him there now? It would be quickly accomplished, a knife across the throat.
Jing Yo strapped the gun to the tree and shimmied down, angling to the far left of the woods to decrease the likelihood that he would be seen from the back of the house. He hadn’t spotted the scientist in the woods or even the back of the house since his first day, when he wasn’t ready to shoot. It was a disappointment. He was tiring of the assignment, starting to think about what else he would do, what he would do next.
That was dangerous, for it divided his attention.
He wouldn’t go back to China. Even if he made it there, he would surely be seen as a liability.
He would sneak out of the States, to Mexico maybe, and then from there, to a place where China’s reach didn’t extend.
Difficult to find.
Jing Yo focused his thoughts as he left the woods, sprinting in the direction of the barn.
He’d examined the house the previous night without going in. Now he retraced his steps, moving to the back kitchen door. He guessed from what he had seen that this was never locked during the day, and he was right: he put his hand on the small brass knob, turned it quickly and quietly, and he was inside the house.
There was a small vestibule between the kitchen and the outside where people hung their coats and left their boots. The interior door had a large glass window. Jing Yo leaned toward it, saw that the kitchen was empty.
In an instant he was inside.
This was a very different room than the American kitchens he’d been in before. It was several times the size, with a large table filling a long section of the space in front of the windows. There were a dozen seats with plenty of room for people to sit without crowding.
Jing Yo stood near the large white refrigerator. Next to him was a stove with six large burners, the sort of appliance he thought was used only in restaurants. There was a sink next to it with two very deep basins, and another sink, only slightly smaller, opposite it on an island counter. Pots hung from a board over the stove, and from a bar in the middle of the room. The place smelled of coffee and chopped onions.
Jing Yo stepped toward the hallway door opposite the table. He couldn’t quite picture the layout of the house in his mind; it was as if he had entered a dark jungle where any shape or configuration was possible.
The hall was dim, without its own light. There were small rooms on either side, doors closed. A little farther down, Jing Yo saw larger openings, square archways into other parts of the house. There was a set of stairs perpendicular to the hall; he could see only the landing and a small part of the first tread.
Jing Yo took a quiet step, then another. He was almost at the stairway when he heard footsteps above, coming in his direction.
He reached his hand to the knife at his belt. It was a large Bowie knife, purchased at the gun shop where he’d bought the rifle.
“Damn, I forgot,” said a woman’s voice. “Josh, did you leave yet?”
Jing Yo hesitated, then stepped backward. He thought of going into the kitchen, but then realized the woman was most likely heading there, in search of Josh. He continued down the hall to the door on the left, opened it, and stepped in.
“Josh?” said the woman, coming down into the hallway.
Jing Yo controlled his breathing so that it was nearly silent. He stood against the inside of the door, waiting and listening. The woman walked down the hall and into the kitchen as he had guessed, calling after her cousin.
Then she came back into the hall and started in Jing Yo’s direction.
Jing Yo pressed his fingers against the hilt of the knife. He exhaled slowly.
The woman walked past the room, stopping at a closet at the end of the hall. She got something out, then turned around and went upstairs, whispering softly to herself.
Jing Yo turned around after she had gone up the stairs. He was in a child’s room, a girl’s—the walls were a shade of pink, and there were dolls lined up along the dresser.
He thought of Hyuen Bo, his dead lover. She had kept one doll from childhood, an American Barbie, slightly battered, procured from God knew where.
Jing Yo went to the dresser and stared at the dolls. This child had four different Barbies, all in far better shape than Hyuen Bo’s.
He could wait inside the house for the scientist to return. He would catch him by the door, take him then.
No. There was no reason to rush. He could set the assassination at the time and place of his choosing.
Not here. Not inside the house. He would take his prey, discharge his duty, but kill no one else.
It was not within the way to kill an innocent person.
Leave.
Jing Yo glanced at the window, noticing it was unlocked, then decided it was smarter to go back out the way he came.
64
The South China Sea
As the initial excitement of the clash with the Chinese vessels dissipated, Silas felt his body begin to sag. He hadn’t had more than two hours of sleep in row for a few days, and he couldn’t remember having had more than four in a row for at least two weeks.
If he was tired, his crew must be even more exhausted. As the situation stabilized—the Chinese kept to themselves, the freighter moved off, no other civilian vessels came within radar range—Silas decided to make a tour of his ship.
Nearly every young naval officer who fanaticizes about being a ship’s captain sees himself in his dreams walking across the deck to the great admiration, and even the occasional applause, of his crew. Reality, or perhaps cynicism, soon sets in, and by the time that officer in fact reaches command rank, he knows that even a commander such as Nimitz would be hard-pressed to attract more than a sustained shrug from his people most days.
Silas was as idealistic as any commander in the navy, but his experiences before joining the military had always tempered his expectations. He had watched his father struggle to run a small mechanical construction business, and he knew full well that having your underlings like you was often the starting point for failure. So Silas had set out not to be liked but respected, focusing on results rather than people. He’d never gone out
of his way to antagonize the crew, but he’d certainly come down on the side of discipline at every turn. It was to this, he felt, that he owed the success they had just achieved.
Walking through the ship now he fought against two impulses. One was an I-told-you-so smugness, a sense that their victory had been due to his being a hard-ass from the moment he took the bridge. The other was an impulse to bask in the victory’s glory, to raise his hands—figuratively, not literally—in a champion’s arm pump.
The victory, he realized as he moved down through the ship’s various compartments, was not about him, or the way he had treated and trained the crew. The exchange had come as the culmination of millions of separate actions, not just by McCampbell but the Navy and Department of Defense, the manufacturers and the designers.
His crew was good, true, but his ship was also much better than her opponents, and the combination had been unbeatable. Such a notion could be taken too far, but keeping it in mind added a note of humility to Silas’s stride that hadn’t been there before the conflict.
It was a heady thing, being captain of a ship. Even with the entanglements of modern communications and the constant and irritating interference of supervisors whose own experiences and intelligence were sorely lacking, commanding McCampbell was the nearest thing to being a god any mortal man, especially Silas, could experience.
Yet somehow today he felt not his power but his limitations. He was dependent, utterly, on his machinery, his technology, and his crew. And it made him admire them—even wretched Greg in the galley with his pimple-torn face, who couldn’t even brew a decent cup of coffee if his life depended on it.
The CIC broke into applause when the ship’s captain entered, and for the first time since he had come aboard McCampbell, Silas felt embarrassed. His first reaction was to scold them.
“Now, now, we’ve got a lot of work to do yet,” he said gruffly. “Pipe down, pipe down.”
