Shock of War

by Larry Bond

  Zeus crawled under the truck he’d been hiding behind. He rolled onto his back. He’d plant the charge against the chassis, and hope that the explosion was large enough and close enough to affect the pumps.

  Blood rushed to his head as he flipped around. A wave of blackness shot through his brain and body.

  Get through this, he told himself. But his brain remained in the dark static.

  Zeus breathed slowly, willing his full consciousness back, but unable really to effect that—unable really to do anything but lie on his back in absolute darkness. The machinery hummed nearby. The ground vibrated. A few voices, nonchalant still, punctuated the deep hums.

  Beyond that were the noises of the jungle: cricks and creaks and carrumphs, the soft whisper of water much farther off behind them all.

  Christian, of all people, brought him back.

  “Where do we plant these?” he asked, tapping Zeus’s side.

  “Under the center of the trucks,” said Zeus. “Or else near the gas tank—the truck’s gas tank. Whatever you can get to.”

  “One apiece?” asked Christian.

  “Yeah. They’re awful close,” said Zeus.

  “They all went over to that truck at the far side,” said Christian. “They’re grabbing a smoke.”

  Zeus turned his head. He didn’t see anyone nearby, and assumed Christian was right.

  “String the wire back toward the berm where we can hide,” he told Christian. “You know how to connect them?”

  “Yeah. Same way they were, right?”

  “Exactly.”

  Zeus scolded himself. He should have laid this all out before they started. He was flying too much by the seat of his pants—a good recipe for disaster.

  “You take the two trucks to the left of us,” Zeus told Christian. “I think your wires will reach. Two charges per truck.”

  “Two?”

  “I don’t think we better risk doing more than that,” said Zeus. “Their break isn’t going to last forever. And that missing guard is going to be a problem. I’ll get this truck, and maybe two others. Anything happens, get the hell out of here.”

  “No shit.”

  Zeus could see again. Gray shades mostly in the dark, but it was something.

  He went to work. Setting the charges was easy—Velcro straps were fixed to each, the ultimate in user-friendly destruction. He twisted the wires out, made sure of the connections—the terminals had jumpers so that the bombs were set in parallel rather than series, ensuring the others would blow even if one failed.

  He crawled across to the next truck. He had four more packs. He set two, then crawled to the side, gathering his strength before pushing over to the next and last vehicle.

  Just as he was about to get up, he heard the rough cough of a truck engine starting above him. He pulled back, centering himself, worried that he would be run over. In the next moment he realized the engine had been started on the next truck over, the one he’d been about to climb under. He watched the wheels move, the vehicle being maneuvered out of its spot.

  This is as far as you should go, he told himself.

  A second later, another truck pulled alongside the vacated space. He caught a strong whiff of diesel—the truck had just been freshly loaded.

  He’d do one more.

  The truck stopped and the driver hopped out of the cab. Zeus bellied across the open space to the other truck. His fingers fumbled for the explosives, made the connections, unraveled the wire. There was a knot—he ignored it, stringing back to the other truck, pushing now, careless and frantic, even as a voice inside his brain told him to calm down, to go slow and not leave himself so vulnerable to stupid mistakes and the great weight of chance and disaster that accompanied them.

  Christian was waiting for him back at the berm. Zeus took his wires and wordlessly connected them to the plunger, moving quickly.

  “When are we going to detonate it?” asked Christian.

  Zeus’s answer was to press the plunger. In the next moment, the night exploded, a fireball rushing like a volcano across the Chinese fuel trucks.

  6

  CIA headquarters, Virginia

  Mara leaned back in the seat, watching the C-SPAN feed on Peter Lucas’s office television. The committee meeting had been a fiasco. Josh looked even more worn than the day she’d rescued him.

  “Well, that’s the last nail in that coffin,” said Lucas, turning the television off with his remote control.

  “What’d you expect? Damn China lobby’s been working overtime,” said Grease. “Half the people on that committee are in Beijing’s pocket. Greene is never getting a bill through Congress. He’s lucky he won’t be impeached for suggesting it.”

  Lucas fiddled with the Coke can on his desk. It was empty and slightly dented, kept there as a toy. He looked at Mara. “Maybe we can open up the old Sky Acres Express.”

  “I’m sure it’s possible,” she said. “If you can get the money.”

  Sky Acres was the name of an air transport company Mara had used to bring Russian weapons into Malaysia. The company—actually a pair of pilots who would kill their grandmothers if the price were right—had flown a wide variety of gear to the forces fighting the Chinese-backed insurgency. Using Sky Acres had allowed the agency to move much quicker than it might have. More important, it made possible deals with middlemen that might have been embarrassing or even impossible through regular channels.

  “You’ll never get a go-ahead,” said Grease. “Not legal.”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Lucas. “Frost has already floated the idea.”

  “This is different than Malaysia,” said Green. “You have a moratorium you have to deal with.”

  “The director is working on that,” said Lucas.

  “I don’t want to hear it,” said Grease.

  “You didn’t.”

  The moratorium—actually a law banning American participation in weapons sales to a long list of countries—was stringent enough to forbid the indirect sales covered by Sky Acres, according to every agency and administration lawyer who had gone over it. That was largely because, while it was never publicized by the congressional aides who drew it up, the law was a response to the shipping of the Russian weapons into Malaysia, which had made use of a loophole in previous export controls.

  “They need a lot of help,” said Grease. “A lot of it. This isn’t Malaysia. The sort of things Vietnam is going to need are big. Hell, they’re a third-world country facing a first-world army. They need a lot of weapons. Antitank missiles, SAMs.”

  “I don’t know if we could find that kind of materiel,” said Mara. “We tried to get antitank missiles to use against bunkers.” She shook her head. “I don’t think we could find more than a half-dozen antitank missiles from Syria, or even Iran. Not even if we paid through the nose.”

  Lucas rolled the can across the desk, catching it with his right hand, then sending it back across to his left.

  “You know, bottom line here, Peter,” said Grease, “the Vietnamese don’t have a chance in hell. They’re going to be overrun in a week’s time. We’d be better off shoring up Thailand.”

  “How do you do that once Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are gone?” asked Mara. “They won’t stand a chance.”

  “Well, that’s your answer right there,” said Grease, getting up. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

  “So, what now?” Mara asked after Greene had left. “For me.”

  “Play it by ear.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Let’s see what shakes out. Officers get outed all the time, Mara. It’s not the end of the world. Focus on the job—there’s plenty to do. You’re still with Josh?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, surprised at the question.

  “With protective services. The marshals or whatever.”

  “I came down to D.C. with them, yes. They got us a hotel in Alexandria.”

  “You can let them take it from here.” Lucas picked
up his soda can and put it in the middle of the desk. He started to lean back, in his chair, then almost sprung forward. Mara pictured a thought developing in his head, physically prodding him. “You’re not sweet on him, are you Mara?”

  “Sweet?”

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  “My job was to get him here.”

  “Yeah, but … you guys aren’t … you know?”

  “Would that be any business of yours if I was?”

  “I, uh … I wouldn’t think he’d be your type.”

  “Why?” Mara shot back. “Too smart for me?”

  Mara could feel her ears starting to warm with the blood rising to them. She got up to go.

  “Hey, listen, seriously,” said Lucas. “The marshal service has it from here. You need a place, right? In D.C.”

  “I’ll get a place.”

  “Don’t be like that. Take one of the Tysons Corner apartments. Kevin can work that up for you. Go talk to him.”

  “Smith?”

  “Yeah, he’s handling that sort of stuff these days.”

  What a comedown, she thought. He had once been one of the agency’s top people in Europe.

  God, was that her fate?

  No—her career in the field hadn’t been a tenth as long as his.

  “Mara?”

  “I’ll go see him. Thanks.”

  7

  On the border of China and Vietnam

  They didn’t stay to see the rest of the show.

  “We shouldn’t run,” said Zeus.

  But they did run, first to the fence and then on the other side, racing to the shadows of the trees and brush beyond the camp perimeter. They ran as quickly as they could, stumbling along the uneven ground. Floodlights came on, augmenting the red glow of the fire behind them. The lights showed where the sentry posts were—four of them, all along the fence on the Vietnamese side of the border.

  Zeus headed west, continuing past the fenceline as it turned. Crashing through the fronds and branches of the low brush, he came to a thicket of trees, five trunks growing from a single hump, a fist of wood jutting from the ground. He slipped as he veered around it to the left. He grabbed one of the trees and spun down, landing on his butt. He collapsed backward, spent but exhilarated—happy and triumphant, as if he’d just accomplished a Herculean task.

  And he had.

  They had.

  Christian collapsed next to him. “God, we’re lucky.”

  “Damn straight,” agreed Zeus.

  “I thought we’d be blown up, too. Did you see how far the blast threw us?”

  “It didn’t throw us.”

  “Hell, yeah, it did. Ten feet at least. Against the fence.”

  Zeus blinked. He had no memory of that. Had it thrown them?

  No.

  “Look at that goddamn fire,” said Christian. He got to his feet as a fireball rose in the air. The ground shook.

  Zeus took hold of the tree trunk and pulled himself up.

  “Shit,” he said.

  “Hot damn!” yelled Christian. He started to laugh. “Hot damn!”

  “Ssssssh,” said Zeus. But he laughed, too.

  They were lucky. Very, very lucky.

  And now they had to get back.

  Silently, without another word to each other, they started walking.

  * * *

  They walked for what they reckoned was a little more than an hour—both of their watches had stopped, Zeus’s because the crystal had been shattered, Christian’s for some unknown reason. The clouds parted and the moon moved over them as they walked, showing the way. The Chinese had undoubtedly sent patrols to find the saboteurs; they could hear occasional gunfire in the distance. But the patrols had apparently gone, understandably, in the direction they thought the attackers had traveled, directly across the border.

  Zeus and Christian, by contrast, were walking farther into China, though they didn’t realize it. They came to a hard-packed dirt road and began following it southward until it ended abruptly in a bulldozed berm. They got their bearings with some difficulty, moving first east and then southward, walking for a few more minutes before Christian spotted a row of cement fence posts on a hill about forty yards ahead. The hill had been stripped of trees; their carcasses lay among the weeds.

  “We’re still in China,” said Christian dejectedly. “I thought we were in Vietnam.”

  “We can get through here,” said Zeus.

  “There’s barbed wire on top.”

  “Razor wire.”

  “That makes a big difference,” said Christian sarcastically.

  It did—it made it harder, the wire more likely to slice them into pieces. The bottom of the fence was buried in the ground. And there was a second fence farther down the hill, which looked to be configured exactly the same.

  “We ain’t getting across here,” said Christian. He put his hands against the wire. His whole body drooped.

  “There’ll be an easier place,” said Zeus. “Come on.”

  “I don’t think I can walk another mile,” said Christian, but he started walking anyway.

  As the euphoria of setting off the explosion faded, Zeus thought of starting a conversation to take their minds off their fatigue and hunger. But even that seemed to take more strength than he had. Subjects occurred to him—they could talk Army football even, which was about as safe and invigorating a topic two West Point grads could ever find. But his mouth stayed closed.

  Walking parallel to the fence, they reentered the jungle after about a half mile. Zeus’s knee was giving him problems; it didn’t hurt but felt as if it had swollen somehow. Yet when he touched it, it felt exactly the size as the other one.

  “More woods,” grumbled Christian as they treaded into them.

  “Gives us cover.”

  “The only cover I want is on a bed.”

  “Yeah. A blonde would be nice.”

  “Blondes aren’t cover.”

  There was a joke in that somewhere, but Zeus couldn’t find it.

  “I think the most beautiful girl I ever saw,” said Christian after a while, “was at a Yankee game.”

  “You’re a Yankee fan?”

  “Hell no. But she was … I think. She had a Yankee cap on. So I guess she was a Yankee fan. But for her, I’d make an exception.”

  “Good looking?”

  Christian made a whirling sound. “Good looking isn’t the start of it. Blond hair. With like this little brownish streak. Not brown, just a little darker blond.”

  “A highlight.”

  “And she had a skirt.”

  “Skirts are always good.”

  “At a baseball game? They’re incredible.”

  “A tight skirt, or a loose skirt?”

  “Like a silky skirt. Very short.”

  “She had a boyfriend, right?”

  “Of course. Otherwise I’d be married right now. To her. Absolutely.”

  Christian sounded a little drunk, if only on the memory. They talked like that for a while, the way friends would talk if they had no cares in the world, if they were in a distant city on a convention, enjoying an easy evening. It was a surreal moment, full of contradictions.

  Zeus tried to think of a story he could tell, but came up empty.

  They’d fallen silent again when they came across another dirt road, this one not much wider than a bike trail.

  “This way’s south.” Zeus angled his thumb as if he were a hitchhiker.

  Vegetation teased at the sides, at times swallowing the path whole. It took only a few minutes for them to reach the fence.

  “Another dead end,” said Christian.

  “Wait.” Zeus stared at the ground to the east of the path, then walked to the other side.

  “What?”

  “There. Come on.” He led Christian past a few bushes to a well-worn spot about thirty feet west of the path. There was a hole cut in the fence at the bottom; some of the metal was pushed back.

  “Damn small
hole,” said Christian, squeezing in behind him.

  Christian started past him. Zeus grabbed him.

  “Wait,” he said. “There’s a sign over there.”

  The sign was posted on a pole about chest high ten or twelve yards away, just visible in the moonlight. He couldn’t see its face from where he was standing, but suspected that was immaterial—more than likely it was in Chinese.

  Besides, he could guess at what it said.

  “Minefield?” said Christian.

  “Shit.” Zeus dropped to his haunches. He leaned out, and tentatively groped the ground.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “There’s a path. You can see how the grass is parted.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” said Christian. “This is a minefield.”

  “People go through here a lot,” said Zeus, pushing out a little farther. He knew he was right—it was a smuggler’s path.

  “No way.”

  “Any place where there aren’t mines, there are going to be guards. It’s the only way.”

  “God, Zeus. What if we get all the way to the other fence and we find there’s no hole there? What then?”

  “There’ll be a hole. I’m telling you. People go through here all the time.”

  “Crap.”

  There was a hole, though it was a little tricky to spot. The fence was bent toward the China side, and obscured by a clump of grass and a scattering of rocks. Zeus’s shirt caught as he slipped under. It ripped; the fence scraped his back. It hurt like a hot knife.

  “I just want to get the hell home,” said Christian, falling in behind as Zeus found the trail into the jungle.

  * * *

  The trail led to a wide but unpaved road. The road twisted east and then back north, and at first Zeus was afraid he’d gone the wrong way, but then it took a sharp turn south.

  The sun had just begun to rise when they came to another road, this one macadam. They walked parallel to it for a few dozen yards, until they heard the sound of a truck approaching.

  “Chinese?” asked Christian.

  Zeus listened, trying to decide what direction it was coming from. Finally he realized it was behind them.

  “It’s coming from the north,” he said, ducking down. “Chinese.”

  Christian flopped down beside him. Zeus angled himself so he could see the vehicle as it passed. Every ounce of his body began to ache. He could feel his eyelids hanging down, the eyeballs themselves sagging.