Shadows of War - [Red Dragon Rising 01]

by Larry Bond

  “Are you going to defend your country?”

  “I am not in the army.”

  “Are you going to join?”

  “If the government tells me to join, then I will be in the army.”

  “I would think—I know if America was attacked, I would want to join the army.”

  “You are not in the army?”

  “I’m a journalist,” said Mara, reverting to her cover story.

  The young man nodded, but he didn’t seem convinced. Probably like Kieu, he assumed she worked for the CIA.

  “What do you do now?” Mara asked. “What work?”

  “We farm.”

  “You?”

  “Me, yes.”

  “And you still go to school? You studied English—are you going to move to Hanoi or Saigon when you graduate?”

  The young man explained that the school was more like an American grammar school, and that students there learned French and English by the time they were twelve. At that time, they also generally went to work in their village, which was what he had done. He had not been in a schoolroom for several years.

  “It is not like in the south,” said the young man, who still hadn’t volunteered his name. “Some of the older people—many of the older people—don’t think we should learn English. But it is a necessary language.”

  “What about Chinese?”

  The young man smiled, reeling off a few Chinese phrases so quickly Mara couldn’t decipher them all, though her Chinese was somewhat better than her Vietnamese. It seemed amazing that someone with what amounted to a middle-school education could speak four different languages, but the young man assured her it was not unusual. The Vietnamese people were willing to work hard, he said, to “advance in knowledge.”

  The young man took her to a house that belonged to his uncle, who was one of the village elders. It was larger than the hut where she’d left Kieu, with more furniture and possessions, but there was no mistaking it for a rich man’s home. The only signs of prosperity—indeed, the only things in the house that would not have been there fifty years before— were a refrigerator, which stood against the wall in the front room, and the television, which stood opposite it. The TV and refrigerator could not be on at the same time; her interpreter’s uncle ordered the refrigerator cord pulled from the wall before plugging in the television. The two lights in the room blinked as the set was turned on.

  Mara waited while the picture came up. A picture of dancers dressed in elaborate costumes appeared; they twirled their skirts across the screen.

  “A cultural show,” said the young man.

  The uncle changed the channel. An Indian movie, dubbed into Vietnamese, appeared.

  “Is there a news channel?” Mara asked.

  They put on the “official” government station—the others, though heavily censored and owned by the government, were officially “unofficial.”

  It was showing a travelogue on Ho Chi Minh City.

  “There has to be some news,” said Mara. She asked how the signal came to the sets and learned it was supplied by a satellite. “Can we change the orientation? To get signals from other stations?”

  The uncle’s face grew tense as soon as his nephew explained what Mara wanted to do. The signal came from a satellite dish that he had applied for a license to use. When he was issued the license, he had also been given a descrambler to pick up the allowed signal—and only the allowed signal.

  “The device blocks other signals,” the young man told Mara. “He’s not saying that, but everyone knows it’s true. And there is a wire on the dish mechanism—if it’s moved, the authorities will find out.”

  “A wire? It reports back?”

  “It’s more like a lock.”

  “He can put it back and make it seem as if it hasn’t been touched,” said Mara. “They won’t find out.”

  But the uncle would not be persuaded.

  “Tell him the Chinese are attacking your country,” said Mara. “Tell him it’s important to find out what’s going on, before you are killed.”

  “I tried. He said the government will let us know what needs to be done. We will not be defeated by the Chinese.”

  Frustrated, Mara walked outside for some fresh air. She still had a few minutes before it was time to check in with Bangkok. Rather than calling early, she began walking up the street, looking to see if there were any vehicles she might borrow or, more likely, buy. She could use one to scout around the local roads, checking on the Chinese advance, before whatever Bangkok arranged to get her out.

  Or just drive south to Hanoi and bug out on her own.

  A flatbed truck was parked in a front yard two houses down, so close to the house that the bumper nearly touched the wall. Mara decided she wanted something else—the people here would need it if they had to flee.

  “My uncle doesn’t believe there is a war,” said her translator, jogging up to join her as she stood looking at the truck.

  “Where does he think the MiG came from?”

  “It must have been a government plane, he says, and you are some sort of pirate.”

  “Did he see the markings? It was clearly Chinese.”

  “He couldn’t see the plane from here.”

  “You saw the plane?”

  The young man nodded. “Everyone in my village did. My uncle did, too, I’m sure. He’s just stubborn.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Tom Khiaw.”

  They shook hands, as if meeting for the first time.

  “One of the village leaders was a mechanic for the air force in the American war, and knows the markings,” explained Tom. “But to my uncle, claiming that you are a pirate makes more sense than China being at war with us. You are American.”

  “What will happen tomorrow when the government announces that you are at war?” asked Mara.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not that far from the border. The road network is bad, but still.”

  “I think—we will wait and do as the government says. The old people will listen for what Uncle Ho tells them.”

  Uncle Ho was Ho Chi Minh—Vietnam’s legendary leader, dead now many years. Tom—the name was pronounced as if it had two o’s—saw Mara’s confused expression and tried to explain.

  “Uncle Ho is still with us in a way,” said the young man. “His spirit lives on.”

  He meant that literally; many in Vietnam and in Asia believed that a person, especially one as important as Ho Chi Minh had been, continued to look after people following his death. Having saved the country from both the French and the Americans, he would undoubtedly do the same against the Chinese, who were more ancient enemies.

  There was no sense debating religion. Mara pointed at the truck.

  “Is there something smaller than that? Maybe a motorcycle that I could drive to Hanoi?”

  “I know two people who have motorbikes. They’re at the other end of this street.”

  “I have to make a phone call. You go there. I’ll follow.”

  Mara waited until he was a little ways up the street before taking out her phone. Larry Hammer had taken over for DeBiase, and answered in his undertaker voice.

  “How’s it going?” he asked.

  “All right, considering.” Mara gave him a quick update. “How long before you can get a plane up here? I want to get Kieu out—if the Chinese find him, they’ll probably arrest him.”

  “Why would they arrest him?”

  “For the same reason they tried to shoot us down,” she said. “They just will. All these people are in trouble, but they don’t seem to realize it. Or maybe they do and they don’t want to face it.”

  “Listen, Lucas wants to talk to you,” said Hammer suddenly. “Here he is.”

  “Hey, boss, how’s it hanging?”

  “Mara, we have to talk.” His tone was dead-dirt serious, nearly always a sign of big trouble.

  “Fire away.”

  “It’s going to be a while befor
e we get you out,” said Lucas.

  “How long?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe not until tomorrow or the next night. Maybe longer. At the moment I’m under orders to sit tight.”

  “Things are that bad here?”

  “They’re that confused. We should know a little more by the morning. I want you to stay in touch.”

  She resisted the impulse to give him a wise-ass response. “Tell me where the Chinese are,” she said evenly.

  Lucas sighed. Mara realized he couldn’t—if she somehow fell into Chinese hands, or even Vietnamese, and told them what she knew of the Chinese advance and when she knew it, she would pass on valuable information about the U.S.’s intelligence-gathering capabilities.

  Which meant the Chinese must be very close. Damn close.

  “Should I go back to Hanoi?”

  Lucas hesitated. “I can’t tell you to do that. It may be too dangerous.”

  “More dangerous than here?”

  “Things are moving very quickly. Their intentions are not entirely clear, and our reconnaissance-—” He stopped himself, leaving her to guess what he had decided was too sensitive to share. “All I’m asking is for you to sit tight for now,” said Lucas. “I’ll figure something out.”

  “Like?”

  “I don’t know. I will get you. You can count on that.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “It’s not like Malaysia. I’m not Croton.”

  “Hey, boss, I never said you were. And as far as Croton goes—we all work with what we got, right?”

  “Mara, I promise—”

  “I’m worried about the phone’s battery, boss. I’ll sign back on at 0600 tomorrow. Sayonara until then.”

  ~ * ~

  Peter Lucas handed the communications headset back to Hammer.

  “How’d she take it?” asked Hammer.

  “About what I expected.”

  “She’s going to stay put?”

  “Probably,” said Lucas.

  “If she can get down to Saigon, she can get out,” said Hammer. “Even Hanoi.”

  “She’s okay where she is for now. Farther south, she may run into the Chinese. Until we know exactly where they’re going, I can’t tell her to leave. I may be sending her right into a trap.”

  “She’s in one already if they send more troops through Lao Cai.”

  “Hey, Peter, you may want to look at this NSA summary,” said Gina DiMarco, who was monitoring the National Security bulletins at a nearby workstation. Gina was a cryptography clerk Lucas had pressed into service to help keep up with the data flow.

  “What am I looking at?” he asked, dropping down to one knee to look at her screen.

  “The Chinese started selectively blocking satellite phone communications from the area satellite phone services a few hours ago. AsiaSat2, Iridium—they’ve all been hit. The system is pretty sophisticated—there’s technical information on what exactly they’re doing back in this tab here.”

  She rolled the cursor up and tapped one of the windows. A screen dense with words appeared.

  “Do I need to know how this all works?” Lucas asked.

  “No,” she said, clearly disappointed.

  A strong scent stung Lucas’s nose.

  “What’d you have for dinner?” he asked.

  “Som tam. “ Papaya salad—with chilies. “My breath bad?”

  “It’s sharp, Gina.”

  “Sorry, boss. About an hour ago, a member of a UN science team tried calling out on the emergency line. The Chinese blocked the other side of the transmission shortly after it began. Then they blocked it completely, but he still continued to talk.”

  “He didn’t realize it was blocked?”

  “Apparently you can only tell that you don’t hear someone responding.”

  “They can do that?”

  “They’re using a type of ferret satellite.” Gina rolled the cursor arrow back toward the window with the technical data. “It’s kind of fascinating. They lock onto the bands the commercial satellite is using, and then selectively—”

  “You can explain it to me when we’re past all this,” Lucas said, starting to read the transcript.

  ~ * ~

  10

  Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China

  Among the important first-night targets for the Chinese invaders was an army barracks just north of Lai Chau city. The two companies stationed there represented the only substantial Vietnamese force in the spearhead’s path. Defeating it was therefore important both tactically and psychologically, and Jing Yo’s platoon had been assigned to help secure the victory.

  After being transported into the area with the main force, the commandos would leapfrog the defenses, sabotaging telephone and electric lines as they proceeded to a point southwest of the city where Highways 12 and 6 split. They would secure a small culvert bridge on Route 12 just south of that intersection, holding it to cut off any retreat by the Vietnamese.

  The plan called for them to meet with three platoons of paratroopers, who were to have landed about five kilometers south and proceeded north along the highway. Because of the paratroopers—together the force amounted to about a hundred men—Jing Yo had been given only one of his squads, amounting to eight men, not counting him. The other was assigned to provide protection at the force headquarters, basically operating as bodyguards for Colonel Sun, who was traveling with the main body.

  Jing Yo hadn’t protested when the orders were first drawn up; the paratroopers were well trained, and the force was more than sufficient to hold the bridge. But while racing to rejoin the tanks, the paratroopers had not been able to take off due to problems with their aircraft. That meant he and his eight men, initially assigned as little more than advance scouts, were now expected to do the work of one hundred.

  Colonel Sun, of course, had not mentioned any of this when ordering him to rejoin the force. Jing Yo could only wonder if the colonel was purposely sabotaging him with an eye toward taking him down a peg or two.

  Or maybe he was hoping he’d be killed when his unit was overrun.

  Getting south past the column of rapidly advancing armor and trucks on the narrow Vietnamese highways wasn’t easy. In many cases the two lanes of Chinese traffic completely blocked the road, including the narrow shoulder. So by the time Jing Yo managed to meet up with the vanguard of the assault, they were almost within sight of the barracks’ perimeter. The infantry troops riding with the tanks had already dismounted, preparing for the attack.

  “Through the field, quickly,” Jing Yo told Private Ai Gua, who was driving.

  They veered across the ditch that ran along the highway. The land, tropical forest only a few years before, had been plowed under and turned into a wheat field. It was fallow at the moment; the season’s planting wouldn’t take place for another few months.

  While the moon was very strong, it was difficult to see obstructions in the field without turning their headlights on. Twice Ai Gua barely missed large rocks. When he came to what looked like a path between the fields but turned out to be an irrigation ditch, he was going too fast to stop in time. He tried plunging across. He made it to the other side of the embankment, but then stalled the engine. Jing Yo leapt from the cab and ran to the back, where Sergeant Wu was already mustering the men in an attempt to push the vehicle forward.

  There was only a small trickle of water in the bottom of the ditch, but its shallow sides were soft mud, and it took several minutes before the truck’s wheels finally caught enough hard earth to move forward. Ai Gua revved the engine, spattering mud over everyone, including Jing Yo, as he made it back onto solid ground.

  “Let’s go!” yelled the lieutenant, racing back to the cab.

  He heard gunshots in the distance, the low crack of rifle fire. The assault had already begun.

  “Turn on the headlights,” he told Ai Gua. “Let’s go.”

  Fifty meters farther on, they came to a dirt road that led back in the direction of the highway
. They turned onto it, Ai Gua stomping the gas pedal for all he was worth. But the lane soon angled southward, away from the highway.

  “We need to go west,” Jing Yo told Ai Gua. “Cut across the field.”

  The private did as he was told. The vehicle jerked unevenly, climbing in the direction of the highway.

  “Another ditch ahead, Lieutenant,” said Ai Gua.