Shock of War

by Larry Bond

  A shipment of Russian AT-14s was expected soon. General Tri wanted to take the weapons and use them against the tanks. But Zeus had a different idea: hit the infantry coming to support them instead.

  “The tanks will be ready for an attack,” he explained. “And they’re not going anywhere. You can keep pounding them with artillery.”

  There was a shortage of armored-piercing shells, Tri’s logistics officer explained. They were trying to get more to the front, but there was no guarantee that they would be successful.

  “You have to find them,” said Zeus finally. “And anyway, you’re not getting AT-14s to take out all of those tanks. You’re going to have to leverage what you got.”

  Zeus’s idea of leverage was to strike the mechanized infantry as it came south in its APCs, striking from the east rather than the west. He wanted the Vietnamese to organize themselves into three-man teams that would set up multiple ambushes. The Chinese commander was conservative, and would be even more so after having had his nose bloodied with the tanks. He’d be bound to slow down his offensive.

  That would give Tri time to stiffen his defenses. He could bring the rest of his tanks down from Tien Yen. If more Russian munitions arrived, they could take on the tanks.

  The idea was to slow the Chinese assault in the east for a week. It would take them that long to maneuver the rest of their Group Army—and perhaps bring a second one to reinforce the attack.

  “Delaying them is useful,” said Trung, speaking for the first time. “But it is not a substitute for victory.”

  “No,” said Zeus. “The idea is to stop their offensive completely. To do that, you have to do something very bold.”

  “And what is that?” asked Trung.

  “Attack China.”

  * * *

  China had obviously prepared for an offensive war. They had made their calculations and moves, and while there were still some big mysteries—Zeus still wondered why they hadn’t attacked in the Lang Son area, for example—the overall shape of their strategy was clear: basically they were going to roll over Vietnam.

  Since Vietnam couldn’t really prevent that, the only way to upend that strategy was to get China to reevaluate it. And the only way that was going to happen was if China saw a threat to their own homeland.

  “Hit Nanning with your mobilized division, and the war will grind down to a stalemate,” said Zeus. “The Chinese will panic and pull back. Look at the satellite photos—there’s nothing in their way. You get through the border defenses, and you have a clear drive. It’s a hundred and twenty miles; you’ll be there inside a day. Maybe two.”

  Trung appeared stunned. He looked at each of his commanders in turn, then at Zeus.

  “The major has a provocative idea. It will be discussed. In the meantime, we will arrange for the strikes against the mechanized infantry, as you suggested. If time can be bought, it will be useful. Major, I am told the missiles are to arrive at Hanoi Airport within the hour. Can you retrieve them and instruct the men in their use?”

  “My pleasure,” said Zeus.

  * * *

  The plane was a C-130 that belonged to the Philippines army, an old “slick” as the Air Force might have called it. It landed fast on the Hanoi runway, bouncing hard on the fresh patches covering the results of earlier Chinese bombing raids.

  Zeus waited near the terminal building as the plane came across the long cement apron. The storm had passed to the north, leaving humid, heavy air and a light wind in its wake.

  The aircraft pirouetted around and the rear ramp slowly lowered. The pilots clearly weren’t being paid by the hour.

  Zeus turned to Major Chaū. “Have two of the crates carried into the hangar so I can check the weapons,” he told him. “Pick them from the middle. In the meantime, load everything into the Ilyushin as fast as you can. These guys are going to want to get out of here real quick.”

  Zeus gestured toward the propeller-driven cargo plane sitting in the drizzle a few yards from the hangar. The Ilyushin IL-14 was a Thai commercial cargo carrier that had had the misfortune of landing in Hanoi just a few hours before the war began. Grounded during the first air raid, it had been commandeered by the Vietnamese military; it was about to be used on its first mission, delivering the antitank missiles to General Tri’s men.

  Watching from the hangar, Zeus saw a tall, athletic figure dressed entirely in black amble down the ramp. It was too dark to get a good view of who it was, yet the figure was familiar.

  “Ah for Christ’s sake, it is a small goddamn world,” said the man, his voice loud enough to carry over the whine of the engines and the howl of the wind. “Let’s see—you are Major Murphy. No relation to the infamous maker of the universal law governing how often shit rolls down in my face.”

  Zeus held out his hand to Ric Kerfer, the SEAL officer he’d met helping Josh MacArthur escape from Vietnam some days earlier.

  “You got the money?” Kerfer sneered, looking at the hand.

  “Money? I thought it was all paid for.”

  “It is, Major. I’m janking your chain. What the hell are you still doing in this shithole of a country, huh?”

  “My duty.”

  Kerfer laughed. “You’re outta your fuckin’ mind.”

  “Is everything here?” Zeus asked.

  “How the hell do I know? You think they tell me?” Kerfer walked into the hangar. The large expanse was lit by dim red lights. “Yeah, yeah—it’s all here. Ninety-six AT-14Es. All with HEAT warheads. Bang-bang. What are you thinking of doing with these?”

  “Blowing up some APCs,” said Zeus.

  “You know you gotta get pretty close.” Kerfer’s voice was suddenly all business. That was the way he was, Zeus knew—a cynical, screw-the-world type until things got serious. Then he was the one man you wanted watching your back. “Even with a personnel carrier. You’re not going after tanks?”

  “Not if we can help it.”

  “That’s good. Because these things ain’t as powerful as they claim. They’ll go through some tanks. Chinese X99s?” Kerfer shrugged. “Fifty-fifty.”

  “I know they work,” Zeus told him.

  “You’ve used them before?”

  “Once.”

  Kerfer scoffed.

  “And you’ve shot them a lot?” retorted Zeus.

  “More than you. Shit. Once.”

  Kerfer looked at the Vietnamese soldiers carrying in the two boxes for Zeus to examine. They were men in their fifties and sixties, and they strained mightily to get them inside.

  “These aren’t the guys using them, I hope,” said Kerfer.

  “No. We’re taking them east.”

  He gestured toward the plane. Kerfer looked over.

  “Fuckin’ plane is older than you. Older than me,” said Kerfer. “What the hell is it? A DC-3?”

  “No. It’s Russian.”

  “Fuckin’ Russians. They’re makin’ a mint on this war.” He looked at Zeus. “Tell you what, Major. Why don’t you tell me what the plan is, and I’ll shoot holes in it for you. Before the Chinese do.”

  * * *

  Actually, Kerfer was surprised at the plan, because while not necessarily the most innovative in the world, it wasn’t half bad for a blanket hugger. Leaving the tanks alone made some sense, and not just because he personally doubted the effectiveness of the Russian weapons. The Chinese would be expecting the attack there, and would undoubtedly be better prepared than the infantry supposedly running to its rescue.

  But there were two big problems with Zeus’s strategy. First of all, getting the teams into place to use the weapons wasn’t exactly a gimme—the forces were currently southwest of the Chinese troops; Zeus wanted them northeast.

  More important, the Vietnamese soldiers hadn’t been trained to use the weapons.

  “The ragheads used these weapons against M1s in Iraq,” Kerfer explained. “They worked at night, mostly, and they had night goggles, the whole deal. Supposedly, they trained for years. What I heard is
that most of the weapons were fired by Russian mercenaries who knew what they were doing. Which we ain’t got.”

  “I don’t think these weapons are hard to handle at all,” said Zeus. He hadn’t heard that mercenaries were involved, and doubted it. “They’re point and shoot.”

  “They’re point, shoot, and shit,” said Kerfer. “You have to sit there and keep your sight on the target. The missile follows a laser. So you have to keep beaming the bad guy. Even when they shoot at you. You need a clear sight, straight line to the target. You need balls to use it right.”

  “They got them. I’ve seen them work basically suicide attacks without flinching.”

  “Hmmmph.”

  “Listen, it’s their best shot,” said Zeus. “I agree with you against the tanks. But I think they can take on the APCs. The armor’s a lot lighter.”

  He walked over to the pile of crates. They were made of wood, and had Russian lettering on them.

  “Says ‘kitchen utensils,’” said Kerfer. For once he wasn’t joking.

  “You check them out?”

  “You think the ‘S’ in SEALs stands for stupid? Of course I looked at them. They’re all there.”

  Zeus wanted to see anyway. He went over to the side of the hangar to look for a crowbar. By the time he came back, Kerfer had already pried open the crate using a combat knife. The missiles were packed into large cases that looked like oversized suitcases made of aluminum and plastic. Kerfer laid one on the floor.

  “Go to it.” He gestured.

  Zeus snapped open the case. He’d never actually assembled one of the weapons—the only time he had used one was during a weapons familiarity training course, and they had already been put together and mounted. Fortunately, they were made to be assembled quickly and easily in the field. The mechanism consisted of a tripod mount, a large box that had the sights and laser beam mechanisms, and the missile tube itself. The device was aimed by peering through a large optical sight tube attached to the lower tripod area.

  “Careful,” said Kerfer. “That launch tube comes with a missile in it.”

  “It’s safed.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’d trust that shit. This is a Russian weapon, remember? Always remember, Amerikanski,” he added, using a hackneyed Russian accent. “We win cold war.”

  “I think the Vietnamese can handle them,” said Zeus.

  “Maybe.”

  “If you got a better idea, I’m all ears.”

  “Yeah.” Kerfer frowned. “My idea is to bug the hell out of here.”

  The Vietnamese soldiers brought over the last crate. There were a total of ninety-six missiles, with an even dozen launchers. It was far less than Zeus had hoped for.

  “What you need is a training session with your guys, then set them out on their own,” said Kerfer. “But you got less than a hundred missiles. So you really can’t afford to lose any.”

  “Yeah.”

  “You’re not thinking of shooting them yourself?”

  “I might.”

  Kerfer frowned.

  “You want to help me?” asked Zeus.

  “I would,” said Kerfer. “But suicide is against my religion. Besides, I gotta go pick up more weapons.”

  “Where?”

  “Jesus, blanket hugger. I tell you that, I’m going to have to kill you.”

  “You bringing back artillery shells? That’s what they need.”

  “Not my call.” Kerfer shrugged. “If you’re going to get out there before daylight you better get moving. And tell those guys they’re not hauling rocks. I’d be a hell of a lot more gentle than that.”

  Kerfer watched Zeus and the Vietnamese interpreter wrangle their Vietnamese helpers. His plan wasn’t a bad plan at all—if it were being done by SEALs.

  But with untrained troops? They might be dedicated, they might even be suicidal, but ninety-odd missiles against a division’s worth of APCs? To say nothing of the odd tank or two that might show up.

  Kerfer couldn’t help but admire the major a little. He’d changed somewhat in the days since Kerfer had seen him. Or maybe just more revealed: harder, determined.

  Too determined, maybe. He was sliding down a hill Kerfer himself had gone down many times.

  Not this time.

  Kerfer started to turn back for the C-130, which was waiting for him to take off. He stopped and called to Zeus.

  “Hey, Major—”

  “Yeah?”

  “You mind if I give you a little friendly advice?”

  “Shoot.”

  “This isn’t your war.”

  Whatever Major Murphy had been expecting to hear, it wasn’t that. He gave Kerfer a puzzled look.

  “It’s not your war,” repeated Kerfer. He turned and began walking to the plane, knowing his words would be ignored.

  11

  CIA headquarters, Virginia

  Before she could figure out who the traitor was in Hanoi—and even if there definitely was a traitor, as opposed to a more run-of-the-mill thief—Mara Duncan needed to familiarize herself with what was going on in the country. To do that, she spent her time sitting at a computer in a secure room reading and reviewing data from a wide range of sources.

  The room looked very much like an ordinary office suite, with partitions and desks clustered in different areas. Two sections were partitioned off by thick glass from the rest, which made it easier for the people inside to have conversations, though generally they didn’t.

  Three analysts and Grease were using the room as well. Grease was the only one who took notice of Mara when she came in, and he barely nodded before going back to his screen.

  After clearing her security code and putting her thumb on an ID pad, Mara punched in a temporary password. Within seconds, she was scrolling through a list of recent situation reports and analyses. She started by looking at the news reports that had been filed online over the past twelve hours. It was always best to start with fantasy before proceeding to real life.

  The disconnect between reality and what was reported wasn’t surprising, of course, though she hadn’t quite realized how strong the sentiment against Vietnam was in the U.S., let alone realized how it colored the news reporting.

  Josh’s revelations hadn’t had much impact. Just within the hour, a statement had been released by several retired generals urging the U.S. to remain neutral.

  The statement was a dead giveaway that the highest ranks of the Army were adamantly opposed to any involvement. They couldn’t say that publicly, of course, but it was very unlikely that these retired generals would have gone public without at least some backing at the Pentagon.

  Mara moved from the press reports to diplomatic cables, and then on to Army and Pentagon intelligence assessments and estimates. From there it was on to the other agencies, starting with the NSA. Somewhere in the middle of looking at the eavesdroppers’ updates and estimates, she realized the Vietnamese were limiting the movements of their armies in an unusual way.

  Several decrypted communications between different Vietnamese commands indicated that a no-travel zone in the north was to be strictly enforced at all costs. At first Mara thought this related to the area south of Hanoi proper, where the command bunkers were, but it turned out to be a large swatch of the Yen Tu Mountains.

  An armored brigade being rushed to meet the Chinese advance in the east had been warned away from the area. Which didn’t make a lot of sense.

  She pointed it out to Grease.

  “Yen Tu Pagoda is very sacred, not just to Buddhists but to all Vietnamese,” he told her. “That was where a famous uprising against the Chinese was centered historically. You can see the symbolic significance.”

  “The pagoda is nowhere near the roads they were warned away from,” said Mara.

  “Tanks would never make it up those mountain roads,” he said. “They were probably just being practical.”

  But a no-fly zone as well?

  “Huh,” said Mara out loud. She went back to the computer and started read
ing more.

  12

  Outside Hai Phong

  The Ilyushin couldn’t handle the weight of all the missiles, and so a second plane was pressed into service. The jet, an old 727 airliner, nearly ran off the end of the short Hai Phong runway as the pilot tried to brake on the wet pavement in the dark. Its tail swung hard to the left, threatening to spin the aircraft onto the grass infield. When it finally came to a stop, one set of wheels was off the runway.

  By the time Zeus got there with Major Chaū, the platoon of soldiers detailed by General Tri to unload the weapons had managed to push the plane back onto the runway apron. The missile crates had been stacked in the aisle between the seats, wedged sideways so they couldn’t move. Thanks to this, all were intact. Major Chaū gave the order to have them unpacked as quickly as possible.

  Drawn from volunteers in his regular division, General Tri’s strike force had been assembled at the airport. There were exactly twenty-four soldiers, ranging in age from eighteen to forty-three—a fact that somehow seemed significant to the youngish-looking captain named Kim who led them. He told Zeus proudly that every man had heard of the Americans’ glorious victory against the tanks, and was hoping to live up to his inspiration. General Tri had told them personally that Zeus was one American who would never desert the Vietnamese, and he had proven that with his blood.

  Zeus glanced at Major Chaū as he finished translating.

  “He’s sincere,” said Chaū. “They all feel that way. We all do.”

  “All right. The first thing we do is divide everyone up into three-man teams,” said Zeus.

  “Already done,” said Chaū. Captain Kim had even managed to divide the teams up so that at least one man on each team had had some training with antitank missiles.

  Zeus showed the men how to set up the launcher. Ideally, he would have had each squad assemble the missiles on their own and take a practice shot before setting out. But there wasn’t enough time for the former, and not enough missiles for the latter. They’d have to learn in the field.