Edge of War

by Larry Bond

  “Yes,” said Jing Yo. “But he is not there.”

  The Frenchman rattled off a list of other hotels. He seemed to need to talk. His fluency in English grew as he drank a second brandy, though his accent thickened. Jing Yo had to listen hard to understand the words.

  “There are a lot of people at Hotel Nikko,” said the man. “Mostly Asian, though. The airport is closed. There’s a train south to the coast, but everyone says it is foolish to take it—it’s sure to be bombed.”

  “So are you going to stay here then?” Jing Yo asked.

  “I’m getting out as soon as I can.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m a businessman, not a warrior. I sell toiletries.” The Frenchman smiled awkwardly. “Another drink?”

  * * *

  Hyuen Bo was waiting for Jing Yo at the small café where they said they’d meet, sitting at a table on the sidewalk, protected from the street by an iron rail. She lowered her gaze as he approached. He sat without greeting her. He was angry with himself for involving her, even though she had the potential to help.

  “The agency has given up keeping track of the foreigners,” said Hyuen Bo.

  “I understand.”

  The waiter came. Jing Yo ordered cha ca, a casserole made from fried fish.

  Hyuen Bo ordered nothing.

  “I have to get back to work,” she told him. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go,” said Jing Yo softly.

  She looked at him, then rose.

  “Tonight?” she asked, touching him.

  Jing Yo didn’t reply. He didn’t want to see her. And yet of course he did, more than anything in the world.

  She bent quickly and kissed him.

  * * *

  A knife, plunging past his mouth.

  Jing Yo lost his breath, and sat in shock—not at the kiss, though that had been unexpected, but at the flush of heat it left.

  * * *

  After lunch, Jing Yo remembered the list of the hotels the Frenchman had given him and began systematically checking them, going to each in turn. By the third hotel his pattern was perfected. There was no great trick to it. Jing Yo went in the front door—only the Hilton, it turned out, was carefully guarded—and looked for groups of foreigners, first in the lobby, then in the bar. Because he looked Vietnamese, they took him as a potential source of information and tried to befriend him. They asked about possible evacuation routes, about how close the Chinese were, whether the army was collapsing. Jing Yo answered as optimistically as he could. This cheered them up and made his own questions easier.

  He was looking for an American who worked for the UN, he would say, and from there add whatever details seemed helpful.

  There were some recommendations, some hints, but it was clear enough that no one he spoke to had seen Joshua MacArthur. An announcement had been made that power would be turned off at 6 p.m., and this spurred considerable concern, distracting most of the people he spoke to. Few thought it would be turned back on again.

  One man offered him ten thousand American dollars to get him safely out of the country.

  “I heard the trains are still running,” said Jing Yo coldly.

  By four thirty, Jing Yo realized that if he was in Hanoi at all, the scientist had decided to avoid the most obvious hotels. A hotel that completely catered to Vietnamese would not be a good choice, as he and whatever security was with him would stick out. But hotels on the edges of the tourist area, or ones whose primary guests were foreigners but not Americans—those were the places Jing Yo should look at.

  I have underestimated him, Jing Yo told himself. That was a serious mistake.

  The scientist would choose a hotel that could be guarded. Or, lacking that, one where lookouts could be posted and an easy escape planned.

  There were many hotels in that category. Jing Yo remembered the Hotel Nikko and went there. But it was difficult to strike up a conversation. A man mentioned that there had been several Americans there earlier. He described a woman—tall, blond—and a man who might be the American Jing Yo wanted, or might not. He hadn’t spoken to either.

  No one at the desk knew him.

  Jing Yo left the hotel and began walking toward Hyuen Bo’s apartment. He had resolved not to return, but he was doing it anyway.

  He remembered the kiss, still felt her lips and the warmth.

  * * *

  She met him at the door. She wore a long silk chemise, a Western-style gown so thin her body seemed to flow through it. His resistance, bare as it was, melted completely. Hyuen Bo pulled him inside and pushed her mouth to his. As their lips touched, Jing Yo gave up everything—not merely his honor or his commitment to duty, but his will and his life.

  They made love on her cot on the floor. The war did not exist. He pushed gently into her, and then he did not exist.

  * * *

  Jing Yo was starting to doze when the sat phone rang. He’d left it in the pocket of his pants, a world away.

  Hyuen Bo grabbed at his chest as he started to get up.

  He pushed her away gently.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Hanoi’s Finest Hotel.” The voice spoke calmly but mechanically. “Soldiers are escorting them. But we believe they may have left to go south. The airport is open at Saigon. We have people looking there.”

  “Are you sure they have gone there?” asked Jing Yo.

  “We have nothing else. We will call at six tomorrow.”

  The phone circuit died.

  Jing Yo sat at the edge of the bed. He was at the precipice, teetering between everything he believed in, everything he was, and Hyuen Bo.

  Several of his mentors among the monks used to say that voices came to them at times of stress, apparitions that seemed to float from the mountain where they lived and trained. They guided them back to the path, clearing their minds the way a rising sun burns off mist.

  No such voice came to Jing Yo now, though he longed for it. Never had he felt so alienated from himself. The decision to leave the monastery and accept his commission in the army was, by contrast, the decision between different flavors of ice cream.

  “Jing Yo?”

  Hyuen Bo put her hand on his back.

  “I have to go,” he said, standing.

  “Where?”

  She reached for him as he stood, her hand slipping down his naked back.

  “I need to go to Ho Chi Minh City. Tonight,” he added. “Are the trains running?”

  “The army commandeers them. Spies are suspected of using them.” She stopped, suddenly aware of what she had said—aware of which side she was on, he thought. “There was—an accident on one today.”

  “What kind of accident?”

  “Some soldiers were killed. They think it was a deserter.”

  In that moment, Jing Yo knew. He knew both that his quarry had been on that train, and that he would follow him. There was no logic to his knowledge—and yet he knew it.

  “Where was the train going?”

  “Ho Chi Minh City.”

  Jing Yo turned and looked at her. He wanted a last glimpse before he left. For he had to leave.

  “I’m going with you,” she told him.

  “Your mother’s memorial is the day after next.”

  “I’m going with you,” she said.

  “Take me to the train station.”

  “I’m going with you.”

  15

  Northern Vietnam

  Mara reached over and hit the radio’s Scan button as the station faded, hoping to find something else. Several Vietnamese stations were still broadcasting; she didn’t know whether it was because the Vietnamese were resourceful in keeping them on the air, or if the Chinese were allowing them to continue for some reason that suited their purposes, such as sending messages along their spy network.

  She got a pop music station; the radio stayed there for a moment, then scanned again, then found the same station. She punched the button to keep the music there, then put her full attention back
on the road. It was dark, and to help avoid detection they were driving without lights. She needed to stay as focused as possible.

  Josh was sleeping, slumped over toward Squeaky. She could feel the heat coming off his body. He was burning up.

  His getting sick was one thing she hadn’t counted on. The Chinese blockade—and Washington politics—were two others.

  But they’d be out of here soon. Get to the airport, get the plane—she’d be due for a long vacation.

  “How we doing for time?” asked Squeaky. He was drifting in and out of sleep.

  “We’re getting there,” said Mara.

  “Lucky we haven’t hit any checkpoints.”

  “That’s not a good sign.”

  “Why not?”

  “There should be troops all over the place, rushing to defend the country,” said Mara. “The Chinese are going to roll all over them.”

  “As long as we’re out of here first, who cares?”

  “They won’t stop with Vietnam,” said Mara.

  Squeaky didn’t answer. Mara didn’t feel like talking geopolitics with him anyway. She fiddled with the radio again as the pop station faded. It scanned and scanned. Finally she turned it off.

  “I’d kind of like to take a leak soon,” said Squeaky. “You think it’s okay to pull over?”

  “I’ll find a place,” Mara told him.

  She tapped her brake gently, signaling to Kerfer, then eased off onto the shoulder. There wasn’t quite enough to hold the entire truck off the pavement, but it had been a while since they’d seen another vehicle, and straddling the line didn’t look like it would be a major problem. Mara turned off the ignition to save gas, then got out, stretching her arms and back in the damp night air.

  “What’s going on?” asked Kerfer, who’d stopped behind her. They’d switched off the team radios to preserve the batteries, planning to use them only when they were closer to Saigon, or in an emergency.

  “Potty time,” said Mara sarcastically. “And I gotta call home. How’s Mạ?”

  “Sleepin’ like a SEAL. She lost her doll,” added Kerfer. “We’re gonna have to get her a new one.”

  “I’ll put you in charge of that.”

  Beyond the shoulder of the road the ground sloped downward to a field. Mara picked her way down, but in the dark sidestepped into a ditch filled with water. She climbed out on the other side, muddy to her calves.

  Wheat stalks brushed at her legs, about a month from harvest. Even five years ago, the field would have been fallow, the crop not even a figment of the local farmers’ imaginations.

  Mara pulled her sat phone from the sling bag, took a breath, then turned it on.

  Jesse DeBiase, the deputy station chief in Bangkok, answered the duty line. “Well, hello there, sweet thing,” he drawled. “I was starting to worry about you.”

  “Hi, Jess.”

  “Using proper names. Aren’t we formal?”

  Mara, like everyone else who worked with him, usually called DeBiase by his nickname, Million Dollar Man. But she was in no mood for the usual kidding and bantering, good-natured as it was.

  “I’m wondering what the road situation is,” she told him.

  “I’m looking at an image right now. You’re five miles north of the Vietnamese Second Regiment. They have two checkpoints along the highway. If you detour east at your next macadam road, you’ll miss them completely.”

  “Thanks.”

  “They’re sending random patrols farther south. I’d like to call you to warn you if I see something.”

  “I don’t trust leaving the phone on,” said Mara.

  “Well now, darlin’, you’re going to have to trust something.”

  “Where are the Chinese?”

  “They don’t know you exist.”

  “Says you.”

  “True. The nearest Chinese units are stalled at the reservoir west of Hanoi. They look as if they’re going to try making an end run through Laos and Cambodia. Or maybe wait for a beach invasion to the east. In any event, you have nothing to worry about from them.”

  “I’m glad you’re so confident.”

  “The Vietnamese can’t track your phone, Mara. You can leave it on. The Chinese know we have people in country, and they’re not going to come for you. You don’t have to worry.”

  “You’re not paranoid enough, Jesse.”

  He didn’t answer for a moment. Mara knew that he was simply trying to be as encouraging as possible, even if that meant overselling how safe they were.

  “What’s going on at Langley?” asked Mara.

  “I would use very strong words if I were not on the phone with a woman.”

  Mara laughed. She could see DeBiase smiling as well. He loved playing the old-school southern gentleman, the pontificator and professor. He also loved to complain about a dozen different things, starting with a hernia he always claimed he was going to get fixed. But he also had a great deal of experience, and she knew he could be counted on in a crisis.

  “You’ll be better off with the phone on,” said DeBiase. “I can’t help you if I can’t talk to you.”

  “All right,” she told him. “I’ll leave it on.”

  “Thank you.”

  “We’re going to need a doctor in Saigon,” Mara added. “Josh is sick.”

  “What’s he got?”

  “A fever. Stomach trouble. It hurts when he pees.”

  “I hope it’s not catching,” said DeBiase.

  “I think it’s something he ate. Uncle Ho’s revenge.”

  DeBiase wasn’t put off so lightly. “When did he get sick?”

  “This morning it started coming on.”

  “Did you tell Peter?”

  “I didn’t talk to Peter. I talked to a communications specialist and I wasn’t about to unload.”

  “Communications specialist. Hmmm.”

  “Hmmm, what?”

  “Just hmmm.”

  “There’re no curse words with that?”

  “Too many to report.” DeBiase laughed. Mara sensed that the fact she’d spoken to a low-level operator rather than a supervisor troubled him, even though it was far from unusual. But all he did was change the subject. “Are those SEALs treating you right?”

  Mara knew she had to tell someone about what had happened on the train. But this wasn’t the time or the place. And besides, she already knew what DeBiase would say … something along the lines of, for every omelet, a few eggs get broken.

  Which, ultimately, was probably the right response. But she had to think about it first.

  “They’re good.”

  “Shoot ’em if they get fresh. Remember what I said about keeping the phone on.”

  16

  Hanoi

  The Chinese had sent their two aircraft carriers into the Gulf of Bac Bo, ostensibly to blockade the northern ports of Vietnam; additional ships, mostly destroyers and a single cruiser, were working their way south to complete the blockade. As Zeus saw it, though, the primary purpose of the fleet was to secure a path for an invasion force, which U.S. satellites showed had been gathered on the large island of Hainan, which on the map looked like a fist about to punch northern Vietnam. The bulk of the force was located at Sanya, a civilian port and tourist city at the southern end of the island. The military facilities to the east of the city center—ordinarily used only by ballistic-missile submarines—were so crowded that ships were docked temporarily outside them.

  They would be an easy target from the air, but Vietnam’s air force, ragged to begin with, was now essentially wiped out. And a sea attack seemed suicidal. The Chinese had plenty of air bases on the island, so that even without the aircraft carriers and their escorts nearby, the attackers would be in mortal danger. The shallow waters around the island made a mass submarine attack less than attractive as well—and since Vietnam didn’t have any submarines, it wasn’t even a possibility.

  Actually, Vietnam did have two submarines—ancient North Korean death traps masquerading as m
idget submarines, so decrepit that they would surely sink if their lines were cut from the Hai Phong dock where they were berthed.

  Which gave Zeus an idea. An incredibly risky, unorthodox, outrageous, and even ridiculous idea—but one he thought might work.

  Albeit, with a great deal of luck.

  “See, the thing is, the Chinese don’t think the Vietnamese pose any threat to the invasion force. Zero threat. Nada. Look at how these ships are aligned.” Zeus went over to the wall of the command bunker, where the images from his laptop were being projected onto the whitewashed cement. There were a dozen Vietnamese generals gathered around the conference table, but he was really talking to only one man: General Minh Trung, the head of the army.

  Trung was the oldest person in the room. Zeus wasn’t sure exactly how old he was, but he would not have been surprised to learn that Trung had fought against the Japanese during World War II.

  “The Chinese plan rests entirely on the belief that they cannot be harmed,” continued Zeus. “It’s more than a feeling of superiority. It’s like the belief in gravity. Everything is based on the invincibility of the force at Hainan. So if we do something to disrupt that belief, they’ll have to change their plans. Or at least postpone them,” added Zeus. “And every day we can get them to delay is another day we have to prepare.”

  For the inevitable defeat, probably, but Zeus didn’t say that.

  “So how do we fool them?” continued Zeus, now in full lecture mode. “We attack them at their base, and in the process, make them think Vietnam has a large force they don’t know about. It’s a classic commando raid. Except we make it look like something else.”

  The first step was to make sure the Chinese saw the midget submarines—and a lot of them. Then they’d have to disappear. Then there would be a SpecOp attack on the ports that would look as if it had been launched by the submarines.

  “The Chinese will put two and two together and come up with four,” said Zeus. “Or better yet, four hundred.”

  He looked at the translator, who stared blankly at him.

  “It’s a joke,” Zeus told him.

  The translator explained. The Vietnamese generals didn’t seem to know what to make of it. They looked at one another, but said nothing. Finally, Trung got to his feet. He walked to the projection of the island on the wall, studying the satellite image.