Shadows of War - [Red Dragon Rising 01]

by Larry Bond

  Jing Yo got to within twenty meters of the lead carrier when he spotted a soldier running alongside it. The lieutenant stopped in the grass, watching as other soldiers appeared—there were at least a half dozen, moving alongside the vehicles.

  “What do we do?” whispered Ai Gua.

  “Go that way.” Jing Yo pointed to his left. “Get around to the other side that they’re taking. In sixty seconds, I’ll begin firing.”

  “Against all those men?”

  “We only have to slow them down until the landing teams can fight their way here,” said Jing Yo. “We just have to get their attention.”

  Ai Gua looked dubious.

  “Go!” Jing Yo reached out his arm and pushed the private. “Go.”

  Ai Gua shoved away, crouching as he ran. Jing Yo hoped to get the Vietnamese in a crossfire, but even if he succeeded, he and his private were badly outnumbered. They were down to their last rounds, without any more grenades.

  The most they could hope for was to delay the APCs. Every minute they won would increase the odds that the men in the tower would survive.

  Jing Yo moved slowly, paralleling the vehicles. He began counting softly to himself, measuring Ai Gua’s pace, waiting for him to get into position.

  When he reached one hundred, he raised his rifle and fired.

  The soldiers near the APCs, at least those he could see, went down.

  But the vehicles didn’t stop moving.

  Bullets began flying around him. Jing Yo hugged the ground, then began squirming around to his left.

  Maybe he could sneak up on one of the Vietnamese soldiers, take his grenades, then force open the hatch.

  The idea formed in his head, not yet a plan. He rose to all fours and changed course, thinking he might have an easier time taking one of the men from the rear. As he got up, a long, shrill whistle vibrated at the back of his skull. Jing Yo threw himself forward instinctually, his muscles reacting before his brain could give the command.

  Incoming!

  The first artillery shell landed almost directly on the APC. A second and third bracketed it, spraying clods of grass and dirt through the air.

  The shells began to fall in a thick rain. Some of the Vietnamese soldiers who had been with the vehicles began to run back in the direction they’d come, trying to escape. Jing Yo watched as they ran through the steady downpour of bombs. For a few seconds, it appeared as if they might escape the onslaught. Then a shell struck near the lead runner. A swirl of dirt enveloped him, and he disappeared like a magician escaping in a cloud sent by heaven. The man closest to him continued to run, apparently unharmed.

  Then the next shell hit. This time, the air seemed to turn red. Four men fell. Another flew into the air, tumbling over like an acrobat as a series of explosions pummeled his lifeless body.

  The artillery fire increased. Belatedly, Jing Yo realized he was in just as much danger as the Vietnamese. He began backing away through the grass, staying as low as possible as the shells continued to fall.

  Several of the Vietnamese soldiers who’d been waiting for the APCs to appear were mesmerized by the shells. They stood watching them land in the field, oblivious to the gunfire a few hundred meters away.

  He had only one magazine left, the one in his gun. Shooting them was a waste, of bullets—they were out of the battle, out of the war. They were useless as soldiers, little more than dead men waited to be buried.

  Jing Yo almost wanted to warn them, to tell them to get down. One by one, they started to go down. At first, Jing Yo thought they had been caught by stray bullets. Then he saw Han firing from the top of the tower, squeezing off single bullets.

  A Vietnamese soldier lying in the field a few dozen meters away rose, bringing up his gun to target Han. Jing Yo aimed his own weapon, taking the enemy soldier in the side of the head.

  Blood spurted as the bone shattered like a piece of overripe fruit.

  The shelling stopped so abruptly that Jing Yo didn’t realize at first what had happened. He turned back, disoriented. Then he remembered Ai Gua. Fearing the worst, he began moving cautiously in the direction where he’d last seen him.

  Someone shouted to him on his left.

  “Halt!”

  The command was in Chinese.

  Jing Yo turned. Four men, guns ready, were standing ten yards away.

  “I am Lieutenant Jing Yo,” he said loudly. “Chinese commandos.”

  “Lieutenant!” Ai Gua rose and waved on his right.

  The four soldiers eyed him warily.

  “We have taken the tower,” he told the men. “Get your commander— the tower is secure.”

  ~ * ~

  6

  Bangkok

  Peter Lucas had met Jimmy Choi only once, and then for only a few minutes in an airport lounge, but the meeting had burned an indelible image of the South Korean mercenary into his brain. He saw him now as Jimmy spoke over the phone, his voice a sharp rasp, his English clipped and slangy. In Lucas’s mind’s eye, Jimmy had a gold buzz cut, a day-old beard, a gold chain dangling over the dragon’s claw tattoo at the apex of his breastbone. He was dressed in a precisely tailored black suit, with an open white shirt, tails out. He was slouching and grinning.

  Jimmy was chewing something—probably a cigar, given his affection for Habanos. He was drinking something too—Lucas had finally tracked him down in a bar in Mandalay, Myanmar.

  “Pete—what can I do to the CIA today?” asked Jimmy.

  “I need help in Vietnam.”

  “Bad place to be right now,” said Jimmy.

  “What are you drinking, Jimmy?”

  “Shirley Temple. Yes?” The mercenary laughed.

  “I have somebody I need to get out. They’re far north, near the border.”

  “Ho-ho—very expensive proposition.”

  “Can you do it?”

  “Where we go?”

  “Up near the Chinese border. Somewhere near Lao Cai. I don’t know exactly where yet. I’ll have the information in the next twenty-four hours.”

  Jimmy didn’t answer for a second. Lucas heard the ice in his glass clinking.

  “Lao Cai very interesting place,” said Jimmy, exhaling as he smoked his cigar. “Too much interest for me.”

  “The person I need to get is not in Lao Cai. He’s in the area near there.”

  “Even more interesting. Ho-ho, Uncle Pete, you have one very expensive problem on your hand.”

  Lucas decided to try a different tack. You couldn’t threaten a man like Jimmy Choi directly; he would surely stand up to anyone who seemed to bully him. But you could hint that his future would become, as Jimmy liked to put it, “interesting” if he didn’t do what you wanted.

  “What are you doing, Jimmy? Working for that drug dealer again?”

  “Ho-ho, I am on vacation.”

  “Yeah, right. Mandalay is quite the vacation spot. Who were you hired to assassinate?”

  “Ha-ha, Uncle Pete, you are so funny. You should come here and keep me company. The tables are hot.”

  “Since when do you gamble?”

  “I gamble every day. Not with money.” Jimmy laughed at his joke and took another draw on his cigar, a long one. Lucas saw him smiling.

  “I can get a plane to meet you in Laos,” offered Lucas.

  “Ho-ho, no thank you. I do my own transportation. I own two planes now.”

  “Business is that good, huh?”

  “Oh, you pay for it. Always pay.”

  He might have added, through the nose. When they got to the point, it turned out Jimmy wanted five million dollars.

  Park had authorized five hundred thousand.

  “I might be able to swing one million,” said Lucas. “But I don’t know.”

  “One million—ha! I cannot find Vietnam on a map for one million dollar. Let alone Lao Cai.”

  “What if we paid it to one of your Chinese bank accounts?” said Lucas. “Denoted in Chinese currency?”

  “China money not very good.
Much inflation. Maybe we try euro?”

  “Inflation is never a problem for a man like you, Jimmy—you spend it before you get it. The equivalent of one million dollars, in yuan, ten percent up front, the rest on delivery.”

  Jimmy Choi laughed. “You hack into account and steal it when we done?”

  “If I did that, Jimmy, you’d never let me sleep in peace.”

  “You got that right, buster.” Jimmy laughed.

  They negotiated a bit more—the mercenary wanted the money figured in euros and deposited in a South African bank, not even admitting that he had accounts in China. He was not particular what currency the transaction originated in, as long as the fee was sufficient to cover any currency charges.

  “And expenses,” said Jimmy just as Lucas was about to conclude that they had a deal.

  “Screw you. Your expenses come out of your share.”

  “Gas very expensive today,” said Jimmy. “I see markets going crazy as we speak. We work out compromise. You give Jimmy your credit card number and everyone relaxes.”

  ~ * ~

  Convincing Park to okay the one million dollars wasn’t easy. Lucas wasn’t sure whether he was really worried about the money—which would have been uncharacteristic—or if he was having second thoughts on the whole enterprise. Finally, his boss agreed.

  “But no results, no money.”

  “That’s why I’m only paying him ten percent up front,” said Lucas.

  “What’s going on in Hanoi?” asked Park.

  Two of the agency’s three officers were in Saigon; the other was filing reports every half hour. Their status—more specifically, the question of who was leaking information to the Vietnamese—had been put on hold temporarily. But Lucas was still being very careful about what information they would receive: they hadn’t been told about the mission, and wouldn’t be.

  “I expect that they’ll find out at some point,” Lucas told his boss. “We may never really know the entire story there.”

  Park said nothing. Lucas knew he was in the process of setting up an elaborate and time-consuming trap to test each officer; it could take weeks or even months to figure out what was really going on. The alternative was to flush all three careers, which Park clearly didn’t want to do.

  “What’s going on in the city?” he asked. “The airport is completely out of commission?”

  “There were still fires burning there fifteen minutes ago. Power is still on, there and down in the capital, but the landlines are down. The cell system is still up; the military is using it as an alternative. They’ve shut down all the servers they know about—the last independent blogger went offline just before I called.”

  “Do you think they can stop China?”

  “How do you stop the ocean?” said Lucas.

  ~ * ~

  7

  Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China

  Josh stayed on the trail for another hour, following it as it twisted up and down the mountainside southward. Finally he spotted some thatched roofs through the woods, peeking between the foliage. Moving off the trail, he made his way slowly toward them, at times walking, at other times dropping to all fours and crawling through the grass.

  The trail swung down a shallow hill and then across a narrow valley to come into the village about a half mile from where he’d first spotted it. Two bamboo huts, both with well-weathered walls and roofs, shouldered against the trail. Beyond them sat three much newer houses made of painted brick and some sort of cement stucco, with metal saltbox roofs slanting backward amid the fronds.

  No one seemed to be in any of the buildings. Josh was ready to step out and have a closer look when a girl of six or seven darted between the houses, running as if she was being chased. He froze, gripping his rifle, expecting to see soldiers chasing her. When none appeared after a minute or so, he realized it was more likely she was playing a game, running from another child. Whatever she was doing, she had moved on, beyond the nearby houses; he could no longer see her.

  Josh crawled forward, driven almost unconsciously by his hunger, a vibrating pit in his stomach and chest. He moved out of the jungle like a tiger, head close to the ground, sneaking toward its prey. He listened for the girl and her playmates, but heard nothing as he stalked to one of the brick structures.

  The walls were painted blue, the color of the sky on a cloudless summer day, so bright that they looked as if they were plastic. Josh rose, holding his breath as he listened to hear if someone was inside. The wall he was near stretched maybe twelve feet. It had a door but no window; small air vents lined the top where a soffit would have been on an American home.

  Josh started to sidle around to the corner, but then decided not to bother—he could be seen from the other house and the clearing beyond, and if he was going to go inside, he was best off going quickly.

  The door had a simple knob without a lock. Josh turned it slowly, then pushed in carefully, pressing himself into the house as his eyes adjusted to the dark.

  It was humid, almost dank, even more than outside. He gripped the gun tightly. A table sat immediately in front of him, anchoring a kitchen area, with a small, simple refrigerator and a stove. Immediately beyond this were mats, piled along the floor. There were no other rooms in the house.

  Sure the house was empty, Josh pulled the door closed behind him. Light filtered in around and through paper shades on a pair of windows to the left, and once more his eyes needed a moment to adjust to the dimness. When they did, he went to the refrigerator.

  His hunger was conscious now, and so overwhelming that everything was blocked out. He pulled open the door to the fridge. There was no light, and when he dropped to his knees he felt barely a chill from the appliance.

  Two bottles of citrus juice sat on the middle shelf. Above them was a covered bowl of some sort of noodle dish; below sat a box of oranges. Josh grabbed two of the oranges and sat down, pulling at the skin, frustrated when it refused to give way in large pieces.

  As soon as he had a hole big enough for his mouth he bit into it. Juice streamed from his mouth. The perfume overwhelmed him; he devoured the orange, turning it inside out as he ate. Slightly overripe, it nonetheless seemed the most delicious thing he had ever eaten.

  He ate the second one just as quickly, almost drunk with it. He got up and tried the noodle dish. It had a sharp, spicy smell, but there was no holding back—he scooped the noodles with his fingers and ate greedily.

  Done, he put the bowl back and took out one of the bottles. The liquid had a putrid fish scent. He quickly lowered it from his mouth and recapped the bottle. He tried another bottle; the smell was even worse.

  Yet he felt an urge to drink it.

  Josh’s hands trembled as he put it back. He had to keep control.

  Clothes were folded neatly on small shelves at the side of the room. There were different piles, most with only two or three items. He found a man’s shirt, a long peasant-style shirt that fell to his knees, and put it on over his own, which by now was torn and muddy.

  Judging from the piles, five people lived here—two women, a man, two children.

  The guess comforted him somehow, as if he’d made some sort of connection with the people, as if they were helping him.

  Judging from the sparse furnishings, the family was poor, but they had a solid, new house. Possibly it had been built by an international aid agency. People like that would be happy to help others. They wouldn’t begrudge him the food and shirt.

  And if they did, so what?

  The thought seemed ugly, almost foreign, but there was truth in it— he would have to do what he needed to survive. Surviving wasn’t only in his best interests. It would help the Vietnamese, ultimately. He would tell the world about what the Chinese were doing.

  Was that why he had to survive? Or was it just that he didn’t want to die?

  Both.

  Which was more important?

  “Neither,” he said aloud. But then he realized that he could no
t, must not, lie to himself. “Living is most important. For now.”

  Josh went back and cracked open the door, peeking through the narrow slit to make sure there was no one watching. When he didn’t see anyone, he pulled it open just barely enough to slip through.

  Josh worked his way over to the older houses, which lay near the road. There were no signs of life; even the little girl had completely disappeared. Again, he found the first door he tried unlocked. Salvaged wood boards of different sizes and shapes were piled inside the building.