by Larry Bond
There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Zeus sat down in muddy sand, and took off his shoes.
“We’re swimming?” Christian asked.
“Unless you got a better idea.”
The oily film on the water made Zeus decide he’d keep his pants and shirt on. He put his shoes on a rock, thinking he’d come back for them, then he put the gun there, too.
The mud and weeds were soft, like a carpet thrown beneath the water. The first few yards were almost flat; the angle was very gradual after that.
Zeus got within arm’s length of the nearest boat when the depth suddenly dropped off. He reached out with his arm and grabbed the side of the boat, kicking his feet free of the muck.
Long and narrow, the wooden-hulled craft looked more like a racing shell than a fisherman’s boat. It was propelled by two long oars, one at the bow and one at the stern. A tiny, open-sided canvas tent sat just aft of the midway point, its stretched fabric bleached and brittle from the sun.
“Front or back?” said Christian, working through the water behind him.
“You take the bow.”
Zeus pulled the long oar from the bottom of the boat and positioned it in the yoke.
The boat was tied to a stick that poked out of the water on the starboard side. Christian unleashed it, then moved up to the bow.
“We’ll go back for our shoes,” Zeus told him. “We may need them.”
In water this shallow, the oars were better used as poles, and they were much easier to manipulate standing up. But it took Zeus several minutes to realize that, and several more to master the technique well enough to get them close to the shore. Finally Christian jumped off, waded through the muck, and came back with the shoes and gun.
“Who do you think owns the boat?” he asked as he plunked Zeus’s shoes down.
“Somebody.”
“Maybe we should leave some money in the other boat.”
It wasn’t a bad idea, but Zeus ended up vetoing it. They might still need Chinese money they had—eighteen yuan from the trucker’s envelope. And leaving the American money might give anyone looking for them too much of a clue.
They headed toward the city’s shore, trying to skirt the Chinese warship by the widest margin possible. The wind began picking up when they were roughly halfway across; Zeus found it harder and harder to steer them in a straight line. By the time they got across they had been pushed back almost to the barges.
“We’re beat,” said Christian. “We really need sleep.”
“We gotta keep going,” insisted Zeus.
He tugged harder on the oar, angry with Christian even though he was only stating the obvious. They started doing better, then caught a break as the wind died.
“Look for a motorboat,” Zeus told Christian. “We’ll trade.”
“Yeah, anybody would take that deal.”
Zeus laughed. It was the first time he’d laughed in quite a while. It surprised him.
It felt good, shaking his lungs and clearing his head. They made it past the city peninsula, then began crossing a wide expanse of water toward an area of beaches. In happier times—only two years earlier—the beaches were popular with regional tourists. Now they were abandoned, flooded about halfway up, and cluttered with debris and seaweed.
No motorboats.
They kept going. The sun was high enough now to hit Zeus in the corner of his eye, the sharp edge of a nail in the flesh between socket and lid. He squinted against it, angling his head away as much as he could while still keeping his gaze on the direction he wanted to go.
Except for the glare, the sun was welcome. It felt warm rather than hot. The day turned pleasant, with just enough breeze to scatter the flies and mosquitoes.
An idyllic day, except for where they were.
Zeus saw that Christian wasn’t paddling anymore.
“Christian?” said Zeus. “Christian?”
He slid his oar against the side of the boat. He should go check on his companion.
Later. . .
~ * ~
With both men asleep, the boat drifted toward shore. Pushed by the current, it ran aground in a twisted maze of debris and muck on one of the small islands southeast of port. Zeus slept on, oblivious to everything around him-—the seabirds, the stench, the two large but half-empty grain carriers passing up the channel a few miles away. The water lapping against the side of the boat entered his dreams as a gentle sound, its monotonous beat reassuring and adding to his ease.
But eventually his dreams took strange shapes, past mixing with present. He was back in the plane when the attack on the dam began. The flight morphed into part of the war simulation as they looked at the shape war in Asia would take. He was driving the truck. He was shooting the guard in the airport.
He hadn’t shot the guard in real life. But he was powerless to prevent it from happening in the dream.
In the dream, he shot the man who came for them in the hallway, then stood over him, pistol pointing at his forehead, daring him to move, even though the man was already dead. Blood began to spurt from the dead man’s right eye, then his left. It started to pour from his nose and his mouth and his ears.
The hallway filled with blood. It flooded, rising to his knees, his stomach, his elbow. Zeus’s hand was wet with it.
Then finally he woke up.
~ * ~
He was hanging half out of the boat, his arm deep in the murky water. He pushed himself upright, nearly losing his balance and flipping the craft over.
Or so it seemed.
Christian was huddled in the front. A rasping noise came from his chest. He was snoring.
Zeus stretched his back muscles, turning left and right slowly, his joints cracking. Perhaps they’d be better off staying here until nightfall. They’d have more strength.
On the other hand, a moving fishing boat was a lot less conspicuous than one hung up in the weeds.
By his reckoning, the border with Vietnam was no more than forty miles away.
Zeus crawled forward in the boat to wake Christian. But when he reached him he decided to let him rest. Better that one of them would have full strength, or as much as a few fitful hours of sleep would get him.
He went back and took the oar, pushing the boat backward out of the weeds. For a moment, he lost his balance and the boat tipped hard to the side. Zeus just barely managed to stay upright. He knelt for a moment, hunkered over to catch his breath. Then he rose and began to make his way.
The current flowed gently southward, which made it much easier to paddle. Zeus concentrated on making perfect strokes—long, powerful, with a subtle movement at the very end to correct his course. Inevitably, he tired of this, finding perfection unachievable. He began to concentrate instead on everything around him: the open water to his left; the succession of ragged, battered beaches and flooded swamps on his right.
Farther inland, up in the inlets and on the other side of man-made dykes, were pens for fish farms. Given the horrible smell and the waste that he saw along the shoreline, he wondered what sort of poisons the fish would contain.
~ * ~
The sun was nearing the horizon on his left when he spotted a Chinese naval vessel about a mile south. This one was much closer to shore than the one they’d skirted early in the day. It was smaller, with machine guns fore and aft.
It was infinitely more dangerous than the other one, Zeus realized; this was the sort of craft that would take an interest in him. Its guns could easily chew through the wood of his purloined boat.
Zeus decided he would slip toward shore and wait a few hours until sunset. It would be easier to get by then, and in any event, he could use a rest.
But as he edged the oar forward to act as a rudder, he saw the bow of the patrol boat tuck down, as if swallowed by a sudden wave. The flag on the mast shot to the left. The boat was turning. They’d already spotted them.
~ * ~
15
The White House
The past few presidents
had gotten away from using the Oval Office as an actual working office, preferring the nearby study and even space upstairs in the residence, part of a trend toward demystifying and relaxing the presidency. But Greene liked the Oval Office for precisely the reason the others didn’t—he wanted the gravitas of the place to impress everyone on how important their work was.
And to emphasize the fact that he, George Chester Greene, was the president.
Not that it was working all that well this morning. Not that it ever worked all that well with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Matthews.
Matthews was enumerating, for perhaps the hundredth time since the crisis with China began, the dangers inherent in bringing a full carrier group into the Gulf of Tonkin.
The Army chief of staff, Renata Gold, shifted in her seat. The Army general—the first woman to hold the post—had been in favor of intervention early on, but lately had come under so much criticism that she seemed now cautiously opposed.
Caution being the watchword of the day.
“You’ve made your point about the aircraft carriers,” Walter Jackson, the National Security director, told Matthews. “But let’s cut to the quick: could they defeat the Chinese naval forces?”
“Absolutely,” said the admiral.
Jackson glanced toward Greene. The NSC head had a triumphant smile on his face.
“Good,” said Greene, reaching for his coffee.
“But that’s not an argument to intervene,” added Matthews hastily.
“Noted,” said Greene. “Now, about General Harland Perry’s plan. Two divisions—”
“Impossible,” said Matthews sharply. “We can’t commit ground troops. Congress won’t back intervention.”
“If I might continue, Admiral,” said Greene. “Perry has suggested two American divisions could win back the gains the Chinese have made in the west. But he also notes that’s unrealistic, and I concur.”
That was a sop to Matthews. All Greene got from him was a tight frown.
“The goal, as I see it, should be simply to contain the Chinese,” said Greene. “We bring the A-10As there to stop the Chinese armor. That would be a first step. Then, establish a no-fly zone over the peninsula. F-22s and F-35s.”
Greene glanced at Tommy Stills, the Air Force chief of staff and the one solidly hawkish member of the joint chiefs. He was nodding vigorously.
“The thing I need to be assured of,” added Greene, “is that this works. Is it doable? Do we stop the Chinese?”
“There can be no assurances,” said Matthews. “You’re asking for the impossible.”
“I think it has a reasonable chance,” said Stills.
Greene turned to Gold. “General?”
“Better than fifty-fifty,” she said.
“We can’t commit forces without congressional approval,” insisted Matthews. “Not on this scale.”
“I’ll worry about Congress,” said Greene.
There was a tap on the door. One of Greene’s schedule keepers was prompting him for his next appointment: breakfast with a group of senators currently opposed to his measure to aid Vietnam.
“I know everyone is on a tight schedule,” said Greene, rising. “Thank you for your input. I’ll keep you updated.”
The chiefs and their aides filed out. Greene was feeling optimistic about the meeting; it had gone better than he had imagined.
Until he spotted Walter Jackson’s frown.
“You think you have an agreement, don’t you?” said Jackson after the military people had gone.
“You heard them: they agreed Perry’s plan will work.”
“No, they said if it was politically feasible. If. You don’t have the votes in Congress. Matthews won’t stand by idly if you send the troops on your own authority. It’ll be leaked within an hour of your giving the order. Probably within the minute. The admiral’s probably setting up an anonymous Twitter account to take care of it right now.”
Greene looked over at his chief of staff, Dickson Theodore. Theodore had said nothing during the session. “Walter’s right. All the admiral’s talk about aircraft carriers? It’s code for keep us out of it.”
“The Air Force is gung-ho,” said Greene.
“The Air Force alone isn’t enough,” said Jackson. “And what do you think will happen the first time an airplane is shot down? It’ll be broadcast on the cable networks immediately.”
“Congress will have a fit,” added Theodore. “Troops—even airplanes— violate the neutrality act.”
“We’re not violating it,” said Greene. “We’re working around it. Allies are exempted. If we have a pending treaty with Vietnam, then by executive order they’re an ally.”
“You’re starting to sound like a lawyer,” said Theodore.
“That’s my degree over there,” said Greene.
“We can’t get Congress to approve intervention,” said Jackson. “We took our best shot with Josh MacArthur.”
“Maybe we should push for a vote,” said Theodore. “We do have the child. We could have her talk to the Senate.”
Theodore meant the Vietnamese refugee they had rescued, Ma.
“No. I’m not going to use her,” said Greene. “She’s just a kid. Besides, if Josh’s images don’t do it, nothing will. Senator Grasso’s hearing should swing some votes.”
Theodore’s eyes widened: Don’t count on too many.
“We can’t just let the Chinese roll over the country,” said Greene.
“We can keep working covertly,” said Jackson. “Until we can get public opinion on our side.”
“Covertly isn’t going win the war,” said Greene.
The Chinese might be stopped temporarily by judicious strikes and against-all-odds operations, but eventually their superior firepower would win the day.
Still, what were his other options?
None.
“We can at least ship them some weapons,” said Jackson.
“Granted,” said Greene.
That, too, was a problem—the neutrality act passed a year before forbade any outright sale or gift of weapons to any country in Asia, including allies.
“Has to be Russian weapons,” said Theodore. “Through another country.”
“Russia has been unwilling,” said Jackson. “The Vietnamese don’t have the money. And the Chinese are already giving them some good business. State has already made some backdoor inquiries.”
“They’re just not talking to the right people,” said Greene. He looked over at his appointment sheet for the next two days, then picked up his phone. “Marlene, that reception at the Polish embassy tomorrow night. Could you find out somehow if the Russian ambassador is expected to be there?”
“You’re not going to ask the Russian ambassador to supply the Vietnamese, are you?” asked Jackson when Greene hung up.
“No,” said Greene. “You are.”
~ * ~
16
Off the south China coast, near Vietnam
“Christian! Christian! Wake the fuck up!”
Zeus pushed on the handle of the long oar, aiming the boat in the direction of the shore. There was no question that the patrol boat was coming in their direction—it seemed to have grown twice its size in just a few moments.
“Up, Win, up!”
Christian showed no sign of stirring. Zeus kept pushing with the oar, his muscles straining. Adrenaline flushed through his body. Everything went into the oar, every ounce of energy, every sensation. He could feel the ocean pushing back, trying to tackle him, but he wasn’t giving in—he was a quarterback in high school again, pushing through the line, squeezing for the last inch to make the touchdown.
The patrol boat’s bow was head-on in their direction. Any moment now, he expected the forward gun to fire.
Push, his body told him. Push!
“Win, get your ass up!” Zeus yelled. He pushed harder. The muck gave way as he paddled, dirt and seaweed parting then pushing back.
The vegetation
was thick, but not enough to hide them. The thing to do was reach shore and run.
Run!
The word rumbled from his muscles, his legs twitching with it. Zeus pushed the oar until the boat hung up on a cluster of sand-encrusted rocks. Christian still hadn’t stirred in the bow. Zeus leapt forward into the water. He pushed the boat deeper into the weeds, then grabbed Christian’s shoulder. He didn’t try to rouse him; instead, he curled him over his back, hoisted him up, and staggered onto firm land.
