by Larry Bond
“Just thinking.”
“You shouldn’t do that.”
Jing Yo smiled, thinking it was a joke. Wu was serious.
“If you worry too much about losing men, you can’t do your job,” he said.
Jing Yo nodded.
“They were good, those people,” said Wu.
“Very.”
“Mercenaries. Working for the Americans, I would bet. Or Americans themselves. They’re a mongrel race. You can never tell where they come from.”
The man Jing Yo had wounded was probably back at the medical unit at the forward helicopter base by now. Jing Yo would talk to him eventually. Hopefully after they had apprehended the scientist.
The barn was empty. The commandos moved inside quickly, silently, securing it, then moving on.
“The peasants here make furniture,” said Wu dismissively, surveying the interior. “Cheap furniture for Americans, I bet.”
Jing Yo walked around the interior perimeter, rechecking the areas his men had already looked at. There were no hiding places; it was a plain, simple building without interior walls or a loft.
The next building was a twin of the first, except that it contained piles of rough wood rather than furniture.
If the scientist wasn’t here, then most likely the colonel was right, Jing Yo realized as he surveyed the second barn. He was likely to be cowering in the jungle somewhere, hiding like a scared rabbit.
Overestimating an enemy could be nearly as bad as underestimating him. Because he was an American, Jing Yo was preconditioned to see him as almost a superman, when in reality he was no different from anyone else.
Jing Yo returned to the door. Stepping outside, he caught the scent of burning wood on the wind. He thought for a moment that the village wasn’t abandoned after all, that someone was making dinner. Then he turned and saw that one of the cottages had been set on fire.
They’ve found someone and are smoking him out, he thought.
“This way, quickly,” he called to the others, who were just about to go into one of the smaller buildings nearby.
As they ran across the compound, Jing Yo signaled to them to spread out. Then he noticed that the soldiers nearby weren’t watching the building, but searching the others.
A soldier lit a bundle of dried weeds and held it to the roof of the nearby cottage.
“What are you doing?” Jing Yo shouted. He ran over and grabbed the man’s arm as he tried to light another part of the roof.
“Orders, Lieutenant.”
“What orders?”
“The captain’s.”
“No more fires,” said Jing Yo.
The unit captain was surprised when Jing Yo confronted him. “My invasion orders said I was to fire any building that wasn’t useful,” he said. “So that’s what we’re doing. What’s the problem?”
“Where did those orders come from?”
“Division.”
“I don’t want the house burned,” said Jing Yo. “Don’t burn any more.”
“The order came from division,” said the captain. “That means the general, and your colonel, who’s his chief of staff. If you want to ask them to rescind it, that’s okay with me. But the general has a reputation, and I don’t want to cross him. I’m sure you’re on better terms, being a commando as well.”
Jing Yo knew he could get the order rescinded, but it would take talking to Sun. If he did that, inevitably he would have to say where he was, The colonel would not like the fact that he had disobeyed his orders on where to search.
What difference did it make if the buildings were burned? The people had already run away
“My people will finish searching the houses,” said Jing Yo. “You take the barns. You can burn them after you’ve searched — but only when you’re certain there’s no one inside.”
“I’m not a barbarian,” said the captain, rounding up his men.
* * *
“We’re next!” hissed Josh, running over from the door where he’d been watching the troops search the barn buildings. He dodged the two plows Mara had placed near the opening and ducked onto the steps next to her, sliding the rug over the top of the trapdoor.
“Get down,” she told him. “One, two, three.”
On three, Mara ducked down next to him, closing the door over the space. At the same time, she pulled hard on the rope she had in her hand, dragging the mower over the trapdoor. She had tied a very loose knot, trusting that it would come free as she yanked. The idea was that the mower would roll over the space, making it easy to overlook, just as they had originally.
Except the rope didn’t untie. As Mara flattened herself on the stairs, it got hung up beneath the panel, keeping the door open a crack and practically drawing an arrow toward where they were.
“Jesus.”
Mara put her shoulder against the top of the door and pulled. The mower had rolled over the door, and was just heavy enough to make it impossible to move the rope.
“Here,” whispered Josh, stepping up to help lift the door.
“Easy. We don’t want it to roll off.”
“It’ll be better than what we’ve got,” he said, pushing with his back. The trapdoor went up an inch and a half. Mara pulled again and the rope came free. But now the rug had fallen into the crack.
“Hold the door up just a little,” said Mara, pushing at the rug with her fingers.
“Come on.”
“I’m trying.”
“Give it a good push,” said Josh.
Then he sneezed.
Mara managed to flip the rug out of the space. “Down,” she said.
Josh lowered the door into place, sending them into total darkness. Then he sneezed. Though most of the force was muffled by his arm, it was still loud enough to hear.
“This is a very bad time to sneeze,” she said.
“No shit.”
He sneezed again, then moved down the stairs.
The door to the shed crashed open a few seconds later. The soldiers shouted as they came in, screaming “Surrender or die” in Chinese. Then they went silent, apparently scanning the room.
Mara waited, her finger growing stiff as it hovered above the rifle trigger. The silence extended for ten seconds, twenty thirty a full minute. Then there was another shout — a brief, sharp command — and the floorboards vibrated as the soldiers fanned out around and across the room.
How close were they? Directly above?
She could kill the first one, and the second. If she was lucky, she could grab a weapon.
Still, they’d be overcome eventually. It would probably be more prudent to surrender.
That would just be another way to die. Better to have some say in it.
A heavy heel set down a few feet away, pushing the floor with a squeak. It pounded twice, tapping maybe to see if there was a hollow sound.
Now, thought Mara, getting ready.
The heels moved away. Mara couldn’t believe it — she thought for sure it was a trick of her hearing, her brain unconsciously guilty of wishful thinking.
There was more talk, muffled, indecipherable. And footsteps toward the door.
They’d missed them.
They’d missed them!
* * *
Josh felt as if he were suffocating. He had his nose buried deep in the crook of his arm. He held his breath and bit his lip, doing everything imaginable to stifle his sneeze. But the urge overwhelmed him. He pushed farther into the darkness, past Mạ, hunkering against a crate and the wall and bowing down just as he lost the struggle.
His entire body shuddered with the sneeze. He sneezed again and again, curling his head as far down into his midsection as he could, pressing his arm against his face.
If the door opened now, he’d run up, he’d throw himself at them, he’d do everything he could to try and save the others.
He held his breath again, wiping his nose with his sleeve. He sniffled lightly. As quickly as it had come on, the fit was over.
M
ạ brushed up against him, then curled herself around his side.
He held her for what seemed like a long while, then got up and went toward the front, looking for Mara.
“Ssshh,” she whispered. “I think they left.”
“How will we know it’s safe to go out?” he asked.
“We won’t. We’ll just have to wait as long as we can.”
“Yes,” he started to say, but his nose suddenly began to tickle. He buried his face in his arm a second before sneezing again.
“Are you okay?” Mara asked.
“Smoke,” he said as another sneeze erupted. “I smell smoke.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph — they’re setting the building on fire!”
13
Hanoi
When General Perry offered to let Zeus scout the reservoir, Zeus accepted, not so much because he wanted to get a better understanding of the tactical situation, but because he knew offers from generals were basically orders. In truth, though, Zeus didn’t particularly like planes, especially the small ones typically used for scouting missions. He couldn’t stand helicopters, either. He felt like one good burst of wind or small-arms fire would take them down.
Larger aircraft didn’t bother him, even when he had to jump out of them. Of course, he had closed his eyes on his very first jump, and on every one since. But frankly, he felt a hell of a lot safer under a parachute than in the cockpit of a Blackhawk or, God forbid, a Little Bird.
Of course, as bad as they were, at least they flew relatively slowly. A Navy buddy had once arranged a demonstration flight in an F/A-18 when Zeus was in Special Forces. The idea was to educate the soldier on what pilots did when called in on a ground support mission.
The only education Zeus got had to do with the futility of trying to control certain involuntary bodily movements and reactions, none of them pleasant.
He couldn’t imagine what sort of aircraft the Vietnamese air force would be flying at this point. Probably one of those open-cockpit biplanes.
He braced himself as he was driven to the airport. Civilian traffic was now practically nonexistent, and the road was empty though it was the middle of the day. Some of the fires Zeus had seen on the way into the city were still burning.
The driver worked hard trying to keep the jeep — an old American vehicle — from falling into the worst of the craters on the access road to the military hangar area. Zeus’s teeth rattled as they careened back and forth across the road, the driver occasionally pushing the jeep into the pockmarked infield in an effort to find a smooth path.
A two-engined Russian transport sat at the far end of the apron area, being fueled. It was an An-26 Curl, a member of the turboprop family sometimes compared to the C-130 Hercules. Josh consoled himself with the thought that he could have done much worse as the jeep barreled toward the aircraft. He gripped the side of the dashboard, expecting the driver would slam on the brakes any second. But the jeep only picked up speed, until it looked for all the world that they were going to crash into the plane. At the last possible second, he turned the wheel and hit the brakes. The jeep screeched to a stop a few feet from the plane — and maybe inches from the fuel truck next to it.
“Great. Thanks,” said Zeus, pulling himself out of the vehicle as quickly as he could. Feet shaking, he grabbed his ruck — he had a sweater and a pair of binoculars as well as several maps — and started toward the plane.
The driver began yelling at him in Vietnamese.
“What?” asked Zeus, gesturing.
The man pointed to the right, beyond the oil truck.
“Isn’t this the plane?”
The driver signaled that he had to go farther — around the side of the building.
Zeus turned the corner. An old Cessna sat near the hangar.
It didn’t look like it could possibly fly, especially since the rear quarter of the plane was covered with a tarp. Zeus walked over and put his hand on the wing strut.
Was it his imagination, or did the strut give way as he pulled back and forth?
“Lieutenant Murphy?”
Zeus turned to find a man dressed in a pilot’s jumper grinning at him.
“I’m Murphy.”
“I’m Captain Thieu,” said the man, removing one of his hands from his hips to shake. The accent made his English hard to understand. “Headquarters told me you were on your way. You’re a little late.”
“Sorry.”
“We’re just about ready to take off. I will give you an orientation brief in the hangar. Then we will fly.”
“Okay.”
“Nice old plane, eh?” said Thieu, coming over and rapping his knuckles on the Cessna’s nose. “Old Bird Dog.”
“Yup. It’s nice.”
“It was American,” said the pilot approvingly. “You like these?”
“Uh…”
“Very good plane.”
“I’m sure. Do I get to wear a parachute?”
“Yes, of course.”
At least that was something.
“If we’re tight on time, why don’t we just take off right now,” said Zeus. “You can brief me while we’re in the plane.”
“It will be easier on the ground,” said Thieu. “I have to take a last-minute look at the weather and the other intelligence.”
“All right. What about that tarp?”
Thieu gave him a puzzled look. “What about it?”
“When do you take it off?”
“Oh no, no, no, Lieutenant. We are not taking that plane.”
“Thank God.”
“We’re flying the Albatros. You see?” Thieu pointed across the concrete parking area toward a fighter jet that looked nearly as small as the Cessna. “We’ll go in and out, very fast. Nothing to fear.”
* * *
Twenty minutes later, Zeus was wishing he hadn’t eaten such a big breakfast that morning.
Or any other meal for the past year.
Gravity squeezed him against the rear seat of the Aero L-39C as Thieu rocketed the plane off the runway, pushing the nose up nearly ninety degrees and then twisting onto the proper flight path.
The L-39C was a Czech-built aircraft, intended primarily as a trainer, though used by some Third World countries as a lightweight attack aircraft. Its single engine — there were scoops on either side of the cockpit, but only one power plant — could take it about 755 kilometers an hour, or 408 knots, not supersonic but not standing still either. When it came from the factory, the Albatros did not carry a machine gun or provisions for other weapons; however, the Vietnamese had added a 23 mm twin-barrel cannon to its underside, giving it a limited attack capacity
“Lieutenant, are you with us?” Thieu asked as they cleared through five thousand meters, roughly fifteen thousand feet.
“I’m here.”
“We will be over the reservoir in ten minutes.”
Zeus checked his watch. The Tomahawk missiles traveled at roughly 550 knots; the ships they were aboard were about 220 miles away. Once Zeus gave the okay for them to launch, it would take nearly a half hour for them to arrive. Zeus and Thieu would be circling the whole time.
Loads of fun.
Zeus closed his eyes, willing his stomach to behave as they flew. After a couple of deep breaths, he opened them again and forced himself to look outside the cockpit toward the ground.
The fields below were divided into long rectangles intersected by irrigation ditches. Houses clustered on the high spots, a few hundred or so gathered around the roads. They looked like little metal toys, their steel roofs glittering in the afternoon sun.
The clouds thickened, obscuring much of his view. When they cleared, he saw a large body of water and thought they were over the reservoir, but it was just the Hung River. They still had a good distance to go.
“You like flying?” asked Thieu over the interphone or internal radio.
“Not particularly.”
The pilot laughed. “I love it,” said Thieu. “I learned when I was sixteen. So t
oday I have been flying for half my life. Today is my birthday. Much luck today.”
“That’s good,” said Zeus, struggling to sound enthusiastic. “Happy birthday.”
“Look at the mountains. Very pretty. No?”
They looked like green wrinkles in the earth.
Green wrinkles of…
Zeus took his maps from the leg pocket of his flight suit and unfolded them, trying to correlate what he saw with the ground below. The Tomahawks had three targets: the hydro plant and dam at Hoa Binh, the dam at Suvui, and the bridge below the dam where Route 6 ran south and connected to Route 15.
The Suvui dam was the most important target. Only a few months old, it had been built with the help of the World Bank, which received a good bit of funding from America. Now American taxpayers were going to spend a few million dollars destroying it.
Zeus’s first job was to make sure that the villages along the southern end of the lake had been evacuated. At twenty thousand feet, he could barely make out the houses, let alone tell whether they were empty.
“We need to go down,” he told the pilot when they came over Song Da. “Way down.”
“Oh yes. We go down.”
The aircraft’s right wing rolled and the Albatros began plummeting toward the ground. Murphy’s nausea returned. He clamped his mouth shut beneath the oxygen mask, holding tight as the pilot pushed the aircraft through ten thousand feet. Thieu rolled the plane onto its back, then through an invert, before pushing into a somewhat shallower dive.
Zeus managed to open his eyes. The reservoir’s turquoise blue spread before him. “I need to see the houses on the south side,” he said.
“Oh yes. That’s where we are going,” said Thieu.
Zeus took out the binoculars and began scanning the bank of the reservoir as the plane continued to glide downward. They began slowing down as well, the airspeed dropping through three hundred knots until it seemed as if they were standing still.
He could see a hut, and what looked like it might be a boat, but little else. He followed the road for a while but saw nothing on it.
“Can you get lower?.” Zeus asked.
“Next pass,” said Thieu, banking the plane.
