Shadows of War - [Red Dragon Rising 01]

by Larry Bond

  Josh felt his chest tighten into a knot, the muscles stretched across his rib cage. He knew better than to give in to the pain—he had to flee, escape whoever was pursuing him. The sound of the bullets slashing through the air, the metal thump that shook both sides of his skull, had turned him into something less than human: an animal, scared; a rabbit or something smaller, a mouse.

  He ran and he ran, maybe in circles, pushing through the thick brush without a plan. He pushed through thin stalks of growing trees and wide fern fronds, jostling against thicker trees. The pain in his chest spread inward, gripping his lungs, squeezing until he couldn’t breathe.

  And still he ran.

  The ground tipped upward, sloping in the direction of the mountains. Somewhere beyond Josh the rain forest gave way to bamboo, the elevation climbing to 2,400 meters. But the jungle still ruled here, and the thick, closely spaced trees would have been a hazard even in full daylight. Josh hit against them repeatedly, bouncing off mostly, pushing to the right or left, until inevitably he fell, his balance and energy drained. He rolled on the jungle floor, the cold, damp earth seeming to climb around him.

  His heart pounded furiously. He gulped at the air, desperate to breathe. He tasted the leaves and thick moss deep in his lungs. His eyes watered and his nose was full, but he managed to keep himself from sneezing until he could raise his arm to his mouth and muffle the sound with the inside crook of his elbow. He coughed and wheezed, rising to his haunches. Sweat ran down both temples, and his back was soaked. It felt as if every organ, every blood vessel inside his body, had given way, the liquid surging through his pores.

  And then he began to retch.

  ~ * ~

  For Jing Yo, each step was critical. To move through the jungle—to move anywhere—was a matter of balance. The difficulty was to make each move lead to another, to choose a step that would lead inevitably to the step ten paces later. When Jing Yo was moving properly, this was how he stepped; when he went forward with the proper discipline, the hundredth step was preordained.

  He had spent years mastering this, learning with his mentors as his practice of self-awareness in the days before his induction into the army.

  The trouble was not moving through the dark, but moving with the other men, who knew little of balance, let alone Ch‘an or the Way That Guides All, often known as kung fu outside China. The commandos on his team were elite soldiers, carefully selected and trained to be the country’s best warfighters, but even so, they were not Ch‘an monks nor indoctrinated like them. They walked as soldiers walk, not as ghosts balancing on the edge of the sword.

  Jing Yo was the fourth man in the team, the center of a triangle, with Ai Gua at point fifty meters ahead, Sergeant Fan to his left, and Private Po directly behind him. This was not commando doctrine—a spread, single-file line was preferred in this circumstance—but Jing Yo had his own way for many things.

  Ai Gua stopped. Jing Yo froze as well, then turned and held out his hands, trying to signal to Po, who didn’t see him until he was only a few meters away; at that point the private fell quickly—and noisily—to his knees.

  “Wait,” Jing Yo whispered. “Quietly.”

  He slipped forward to Ai Gua. Raised in southwestern China, Ai Gua had hunted from a very young age, and had the judgment of a much older man.

  “In that direction,” said Ai Gua, pointing to his right. “Going up the slope.”

  “How many?”

  “I cannot tell. Just one, maybe. But a noisy one.”

  Jing Yo stared at the forest. One man could be more difficult to apprehend than an entire squad.

  Sergeant Fan crept close on Jing Yo’s left.

  “Where?” Jing Yo asked.

  Ai Gua pointed. The sergeant adjusted his night-vision goggles as he scanned the area.

  “I see nothing,” he told Jing Yo.

  “They are there,” said Ai Gua.

  Without even looking at him, Jing Yo knew the sergeant was frowning. In his midthirties, a career soldier from a poor family, Sergeant Fan was a practical man, skeptical by nature.

  “Sergeant, take Ai Gua and move in this direction. Private Po and I will go this way and flank our prey.”

  “Yes, Lieutenant.”

  “Remember, we want them alive.”

  “Alive?”

  “Until we get information from them, yes.”

  ~ * ~

  Josh steadied himself over the small pool of vomit and mucus. He’d finally caught his breath, but his heart still raced and his whole body shook.

  He knew he had to move. He pushed himself upright, then rose unsteadily.

  Move! he told himself. Move! You’re not a five-year-old anymore. These aren’t the people who killed your parents. Go! Go!

  They weren’t the same people, but they were just as dangerous— different incarnations of the same evil, he thought to himself as he started to move.

  The memory of his childhood horror—never fully repressed, never fully confronted—rose from the dark recesses of his consciousness. He tried to ignore it, focusing on the forest before him, feeling the leaves that snapped and slashed at his fingers as he started to move again. He heard a noise behind him, below—he was running upward, he realized for the first time, climbing the mountain.

  They were after him.

  The boy whose family had been murdered hadn’t panicked, entirely; in the end, he had acted very rationally—and very much like a boy. He had started running out of fear. But then something else took over, something stronger. He began to act as if he were a character in one of the games he often played, Star Wars Battlefront.

  He became a clone trooper on Dagobah, dodging through the dense swamp and jungle as he hid from the crazy men who’d come to shoot his family. The cornfield, its stalks bitten to the earth by the harvester, became the large swamp at the center of the battlefield. Old Man’s Rock— the marker at the corner of their field and the neighbors’—became the landing port for the Federation reinforcements. And the Johnsons’ cow field became the portal he had to escape to.

  It was not like the game, exactly; he had no weapon, nor options to alter his character. But the boy became the player, dodging through the field, careful to get away. As long as he was the player, rather than the boy, he could survive. He’d done it before, countless times, playing with his older brother.

  And he did it again.

  Josh slowed, began to walk rather than run. Running only helped his pursuers—it made him easier to hear. His steps became quieter, more purposeful. His breathing slowed. His eyes, nearly shut until now, opened and let him see as well as any cat.

  Gradually, a strategy occurred to him, coalescing around questions that began to form in his mind.

  How many are after me?

  It couldn’t be many, because they were difficult to hear.

  Which direction are they coming from?

  The camp, now to his right. Southeast.

  Did they see me, or only hear me running through the forest?

  It must have been the latter; if they’d seen me, they would have shot immediately.

  The questions continued, as did the answers. Josh moved very slowly now, so slowly that at times he felt that he was sleeping standing up.

  What do I have with me? A weapon?

  Nothing of use. He had the little Flip 5 video camera in his pocket, left there after the evening campfire when he’d amused his colleagues by interviewing them. He had a lighter, Tom’s, which he’d used to light the lantern and failed to give back. He had a guitar pick, from Sarah, a token of good luck she’d slipped into his hand at the airport.

  No weapon, no gun.

  The noises he’d heard drifted away. But he sensed they were still hunting him, just as long ago the killers had followed. They had wanted to kill him not because he was a witness; their twisted minds didn’t care about that. To them there was no possibility of being caught, let alone punished. They wanted him the way a hungry man wants food. Killing his family had
whetted their appetite, and now they were insatiable.

  He saw rocks ahead. Slowly, he walked to them.

  The outcropping was just at the edge of a slope of bamboo stalks.

  Hide in the bamboo?

  No. It was too thin—someone with a nightscope could see him.

  Move through it. There would be another place to hide somewhere.

  Josh began moving to his left. There was something to his right, something moving.

  He lowered himself to his haunches slowly, crouching, not even daring to breathe.

  Perhaps I’m already dead, he thought. Perhaps these are the last thoughts that will occur to me.

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo stopped and turned to Private Po, waiting for the rifleman to catch up. While splitting his small team up made tactical sense, it carried an inherent risk. There was no way for the groups to communicate with each other. Like in every other unit in the Chinese army, none of the enlisted men were supplied with radios.

  Officially, this was due to equipment shortages. The real reason was to make it more difficult for the enlisted men to organize a mutiny. The fear was well warranted; Jing Yo had heard of two units rebelling against their commander’s orders over the past few months. One of these actions amounted to only a few men who balked at being transferred from the northern provinces where they had been stationed for years. The other was much more serious: two entire companies refused to muster in protest of their failure to get raises. Both cases had been dealt with harshly; the units were broken up, with the ringleaders thrown into reeducation camps.

  Their officers suffered more severe punishment: execution by firing squad.

  “Our quarry has stopped somewhere,” Jing Yo told Private Po. “See what you can see in that direction there.”

  The private raised his rifle and looked through the scope. The electronics in the device were sensitive to heat, and rendered the night in a small circle of green before the private’s eyes. Unfortunately, the thick jungle made it difficult for him to see far.

  “Nothing,” whispered Private Po.

  Jing Yo became an eagle in his mind’s eye, rising above to view the battlefield. The mountain jutted up sharply ahead; the jungle diminished, leaving vast swaths of bamboo and rock as the only cover. A skilled man trying to escape them would stay in the deep forest.

  But was their quarry skilled? There were arguments either way. On the one hand, he had made enough noise for an otherwise incompetent soldier to hear him. On the other, he had left no obvious trail in the thick brush, and was now making no sound that could be heard.

  There is no silence but the universe’s silence.

  His mentors’ words came back to him. On the surface, the instruction was simple enough: One must learn to listen correctly; hearing was really a matter of tuning one’s ears. But as with much the gray-haired monks said, there was meaning beyond the words.

  “Are we in the right place?” asked Private Po.

  “Ssshhh,” replied Jing Yo.

  His own breath was loud in his ears. He slowed his lungs, leaning forward. The jungle had many sounds—water, somewhere ahead, brush swaying in the wind—a small animal—

  Two footsteps, ahead.

  Barely ten yards away.

  “Your rifle,” Jing Yo said to the private, reaching for it.

  ~ * ~

  Josh tried to hold his breath as he slipped forward. They were very close, close enough for him to have heard a voice.

  He stepped around a low rock ledge, edging into a thick fold of brush. He wanted to move faster, but he knew that would only make more noise. Stealth was more important than speed. If he was quiet, they might miss him.

  Something shifted nearby. A cough.

  They were much closer than he’d thought—ten yards, less, just beyond the clump of trees where he’d paused a moment ago.

  Move more quickly, he told himself. But just as quietly.

  He took two steps, then panic finally won its battle, and he began to run.

  ~ * ~

  It was not sound but smell that gave their prey away. The smell was odd, light and almost flowerlike, an odd, unusual perfume for the jungle, so strange that Jing Yo thought at first it must be a figment of his imagination.

  Then he realized it was the scent of Western soap.

  He turned the rifle in the scent’s direction, then heard something moving, stumbling, running.

  He rose. A body ran into the left side of the scope, a fleeting shadow.

  It would not be useful to kill him, Jing Yo thought. But before he could lower his rifle, a shot rang out.

  ~ * ~

  The bullet flew well above Josh’s head, whizzing through the trees. There was another, and another and another, just as there had been that night when he was a boy.

  He’d had many nightmares of that night. His sleeping mind often twisted the details bizarrely, putting him in the present, as a grown man trying to escape, changing the setting—often to the school or even his uncle’s house, where he’d gone to live—and occasionally the outcome: once or twice, his father and mother, both sisters, and his brothers survived.

  But Josh knew this wasn’t a dream. These weren’t the two people who’d chased him when he was ten, and he wasn’t able to end this ordeal simply by screaming and opening his eyes. He had to escape. He had to run!

  He bolted forward, tripping over the rocks, bouncing against a boulder that came to his waist and then rebounding against a thick tree trunk. Somehow he stayed on his feet, still moving. There were shouts, calls, behind him.

  Panic raged through him like a river over a falls. He threw his hands out, as if he might push the jungle away. A tree loomed on his right. He ducked to his left, hit a slimmer tree, kept going. He pushed through a bush that came to his chest.

  More bullets.

  A stitch deepened in his side. His chest tightened, and he tasted blood in his mouth. The trees thinned again, and he was running over rocks.

  Run, his legs told his chest, told his arms, told his brain.

  Run!

  ~ * ~

  Sergeant Fan had fired the shot that had sent their quarry racing away. Jing Yo yelled at him, calling him an idiot, but then immediately regretted it. Upbraiding an inferior before others, even one who deserved it as Fan did, was not his way.

  “Don’t let him escape,” said Jing Yo, springing after the runner. “But do not kill him either. We want to know what he knows.”

  The forest made it hard to run. Jing Yo realized this was a problem for the man they were pursuing as well as for them, and conserved his energy, moving just fast enough to keep up. Ai Gua and Private Po had moved to the flanks; they had good position on the man if he decided to double back.

  He wouldn’t. He was panicked, a hare racing from the dragon’s claws.

  An odd man, to be able to move so quietly, under such control at one moment, only to panic the next. Jing Yo could understand both control and panic, but not together.

  His own failing, perhaps. A limit of imagination.

  Sergeant Fan fired again. Jing Yo turned to confront the sergeant. This time there was no reason not to speak freely; on the contrary, the circumstances called for it, as the sergeant had not only been careless but disobeyed his direct order.

  “What are you doing?” demanded Jing Yo.

  “I had a shot. He’s going—”

  Jing Yo snapped the assault gun from the sergeant’s hand. Stunned, and wheezing from his exertion, Fan raised his hands, as if to surrender.

  “Sergeant, when I give an order, I expect it to be followed. We want the man alive. I said that very specifically. When we return to camp, you will gather your things and report to division. Understood?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he spun back to the pursuit.

  ~ * ~

  Josh didn’t hear the water until he was almost upon it. His first thought was that he would race through it—the soft sound made him picture a shallow brook coursing down the side o
f the mountain. Then he thought he would wade down it, throwing the men off his trail.

  With his second step, he plunged in above his knee. Josh twisted to the left, but he’d already lost his balance. He spun and landed on his back. Everything was a blur. This was no gentle, babbling brook. Josh fell under the water, bumped back to the surface, then found himself swirling out of control in the current. He flailed wildly, rolling with the water, spinning and alternately sinking and rising up, thrown into a confused maelstrom, gripped by the ice-cold water. He felt dead; no, beyond dead, sent to the frozen waste of some Asian afterlife as a doomed soul forced to endure eternal tortures.