by Larry Bond
“He might seem French.”
“Don’t know. Your bag?”
“The airline lost it. I have to pick it up in the morning.”
The clerk’s expression made it clear he didn’t believe her. Mara shrugged.
“That’s what they told me,” she said.
“Maybe it will come.”
The room was smaller than even the bathroom at the Star, but it was clean, and the bed had fresh sheets. Mara checked for bugs. When she didn’t find any, she sat in the creaky wooden chair and took out her sat phone.
To her surprise, Jesse DeBiase, the Million Dollar Man, picked up. “Well, hello, darling,” he answered her. “About time you checked in.”
“I was looking for the duty officer.”
“Found him.”
“This late?”
“I’m a night owl.”
“You’re doing real work for a change?”
“Will wonders never cease? I expect pigs to be flying next,” he said. “Actually, I’m listenin’ to Charlie Daniels,” he added conspiratorially. “He’s gonna fiddle with the devil at the crossroads for his soul.”
“There’s a contest you’d win.”
“You assume I have a soul he’d be interested in. So how is Mr. Fleming?”
“Didn’t show.”
“Hmmmm.”
“‘Hmmmm’ as in something? Or are you humming a song with Charlie?”
“Neither one. Listen, darling, something may be going on.” The Million Dollar Man’s voice shifted slightly; though his tone was still light, Mara knew he was suddenly much more serious. “We’ve heard reports that the Vietnamese are testing the Chinese borders.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t make any sense,” added DeBiase quickly. “But the rumors are flying. Several of our people in Beijing have heard it.”
“Beijing?”
“Something to be aware of. You haven’t heard anything?”
“Not a peep.”
DeBiase was silent for a moment. Talking to the scientist was now ten times more important than it had been that morning; Mara worried that they would decide to send someone more experienced to deal with him.
Not better—just more experienced. That’s how Lucas would put it.
“Are you staying at the Star?” said DeBiase finally.
“I am. I’m not calling from there, though. The room is bugged.”
“Of course. Make sure we can contact you.”
“Obviously.” She felt a surge of relief—she wasn’t going to be replaced. At least not yet.
“Don’t take any unnecessary risks, darling,” DeBiase added. “Stay close to the hotel. I wouldn’t want you getting hurt. There’d be no one left to enjoy my coffee.”
“You’re sweet.”
“Not really. I’m a lecherous old man. But harmless, at least until my hernia is fixed.”
They both laughed uneasily, then hung up.
14
Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
Josh’s first impulse was to tear through the jungle straight at the border, but in the dark that would be foolish. Much of the land close to the fence was mined—he could easily blow himself up in the dark. Besides, he didn’t want to climb the fence; he wanted to find someone near it who could help him, soldiers or a customs official. They’d be near the road.
He took a few steps sideways along the trail, keeping the fence in view, until finally he couldn’t see it. Turning and walking properly, he followed the path as it swung across a cleft in the mountain and met a narrow and uneven ancient road. Though used by traders and travelers for millennia, the roadbed had never been paved, and over the last forty or fifty years had seen less and less traffic. The hard-packed dirt and rocks had nonetheless successfully held off the jungle, trees and brush clustering at its edges but getting no farther.
As Josh began walking along the road, he heard a chain saw start up and buzz in the distance. The sound baffled him: who would be using a chain saw after dark?
There were dozens, if not hundreds, of potential answers, but before he could think of any, the road before him began to glow with approaching headlights. Josh stepped to the middle of the road, but as the lights grew stronger he remembered how he had blundered dangerously into the village. Rather than taking a chance on the truck, he decided to stick with his original plan of looking for a border guard, and so he slipped back into the nearby woods.
The lights grew stronger. So did the noise of the truck’s engine. There was more than one; he could hear at least three or four, maybe many more.
They seemed to take forever to arrive. The first plodded along at barely five miles an hour, going so slowly that Josh felt as if he were watching a slow-motion replay of reality. The second followed almost on the other’s bumper, without lights, its driver clunking the gears as he shifted to take the incline. Then came the third truck, and for the first time Josh noticed the yellow star on the door panel. They were military trucks—identical, in fact, to the trucks that had taken the scientific team out from Hanoi.
That couldn’t be, though—the trucks were coming from China; they must be Chinese.
But the insignia on the doors, the yellow star in a red field, was absolutely Vietnamese. China’s army used a red star. These had to be Vietnamese.
What would they be doing in China? And why didn’t they have their headlights on?
Twenty trucks passed, kicking up a cloud of thick dust in the night. Then the road was empty, and silence gradually returned to the countryside.
Jing Yo saw the headlights of the first truck as it wove down the old mountain trail roughly ten kilometers from the border. Immediately he felt a surge of anger—strict orders had been given for the vehicles to move south without using their lights.
The lieutenant could not let this pass by. He strode to the middle of the road and raised his arm as the vehicle approached.
The truck jerked to a stop so close to him that its bumper grazed his leg. Jing Yo walked around to the driver’s side, where a nervous private had rolled down the window. Like everyone else, including the commandos, he wore a Vietnamese army uniform, but was in fact Chinese.
“What are you doing?” Jing Yo asked the driver, keeping his voice even.
“Excuse me, Lieutenant.” Jing Yo’s ersatz uniform included his proper rank. “I didn’t see you in the shadows.”
“You should not have had your lights on. That was the order, was it not?”
The driver didn’t answer.
“Private—you should not have had your lights on,” repeated Jing Yo. “What is your explanation?”
“Without the lights, I would not have seen you at all.” The man’s voice cracked.
Without the lights, Jing Yo would not have been in the road. But explaining that was a waste of time. Jing grabbed hold of the door handle and pulled himself onto the running board. The driver recoiled.
“Turn off the lights, and drive on,” said Jing Yo.
He glanced at the line of trucks behind them, then tightened his grip as the driver put the vehicle in gear.
“There’s a switchback to the right in another ten meters,” Jing Yo warned the driver as they approached it. “The road drops sharply to the left. Be very careful.”
“Yes, Lieutenant. Thank you.”
The driver moved the truck so far to the right side of the lane that brush scraped against the fender, then lashed at Jing Yo’s side. He held on silently, concentrating on the view ahead. The moon was full and the sky clear, but even the comparatively light jungle canopy did a good job blocking out the light. Jing Yo strained to see.
Before he had begun to train at the monastery, Jing Yo had heard stories of monks who could see through blindfolds. Like much of what was said of Ch’an, the tales were apocryphal; the adepts were human, not gods. But a man could see many things others missed if he trained his eyes to observe, and his other senses to do their jobs well.
“Slow down,” Jing Yo told the driver.
“The highway is just ahead.”
The truck jerked as the driver downshifted. Two of Jing Yo’s men—Privates Po and Ai Gua—stood on the highway, waiting.
“Halt!” yelled Po. He raised his rifle.
Jing Yo jumped off the running board as the truck ground to a halt, its brakes squealing as furiously as a stuck pig.
“Is there traffic on the road?” he asked Ai Gua.
The private grinned. “Nothing, Lieutenant.”
“Get in the cab and guide them up to the staging point,” Jing Yo told him. He looked over at Po. “Go to the tenth truck back,” he said. “Sit with them and guide them if they get lost. And make sure they don’t use their headlights.”
“They’d have to be imbeciles to be lost here,” mumbled Po, but he did as he was told.
Jing Yo walked to the highway. Sergeant Wu stood in the middle of the road with an unlit cigarette in his mouth. He was watching a signal light flashing from the scout team about a kilometer down the road.
“All clear,” said Wu. He took a lighter from his pocket and lit the cigarette.
Jing Yo waved the truck onto the road. It climbed up over the drainage ditch at the side, across the shoulder, and onto the macadam. The driver turned the wheel so hard as the tires reached the pavement that the truck tipped. For a moment it hung in midair, suspended. Then it flipped onto its side.
Jing Yo sprang into motion, running forward. Wu, throwing the cigarette from his mouth, was right behind.
Fearing the truck would burst into flames, Jing Yo jumped onto the frame and grabbed at the door handle. He pulled the door up on its hinges; Sergeant Wu grabbed it and held it open behind him. Jing Yo threw his hand against the roof and leaned inside, reaching to kill the engine. He got it off, then curled his head back, looking for the buckle on the driver’s seat belt so he could unhook it. But the man hadn’t been wearing the belt. The accident had thrown him across Private Ai Gua, who was wedged against the opposite window. Jing Yo turned himself around, draping his legs over the windshield, then reached down into the cab. He could smell gasoline.
“Take my hand,” he told the driver. “Hurry—before the truck catches fire. The explosives will blow us all up.”
The driver was in shock and didn’t react
“Come,” Jing Yo told him, leaning in farther. He grabbed the driver by the back of his shirt and raised him straight out, snatching him like an apple from the bottom of a barrel. He pushed him over to Wu, then reached back in for Ai Gua. The commando, still dazed, apparently didn’t remember that he had his seat belt on and flailed against it.
“The belt, Private,” said Jing Yo, reaching for the buckle. He unlocked it, and helped Ai Gua climb up over him, getting several bruises in the process. Then he pulled himself out of the truck and jumped down. Ai Gua was already staggering up the embankment to the road.
“You idiot! Months of preparation, ruined by your carelessness!” Sergeant Wu had pulled the driver away from the truck and begun berating him in the middle of the road. “You are an imbecile. I should shoot you right here.”
“I don’t disagree with your assessment of his intelligence,” Jing Yo told the sergeant. “But this is not the time to share it. And your solution is not useful.”
“He is an ass.”
“Very truly. We have to get these trucks past quickly.”
“The explosives!” said Sergeant Wu. “Shit.”
He left the driver and ran to the trucks stopped behind the one that had crashed, waving at the men who’d gotten out to see what was going on.
“Get back in your trucks!” yelled the sergeant. “Get going! Go, come on. Get on the highway! Quickly.”
The charges, rigged to make the vehicle look as if it had been destroyed in a firefight, were not yet connected to their detonators, and it was obvious to Jing Yo that they were safe—otherwise they would already have gone off. But he let Wu go.
“Are you all right?” he asked Ai Gua.
“Yes.”
The commando, a blank look on his face, held up his right wrist. Jing Yo took hold of the hand gently. Fixing his eyes on Ai Gua’s face, he began to squeeze the wrist, twisting slightly as he increased the pressure. Within a second or two, the private winced, though he did not call out.
A sprain, most likely. Not worth going back to Beijing for—especially since the injury would result in his being removed from the commando corps.
The second truck slipped past the rear wheels of the one that had flipped, the driver gingerly finding the road.
“Try not to use it,” Jing Yo told Ai Gua. “Go with the driver. Make sure he wears a seat belt.”
The private went to the truck without saying anything else.
They stopped the last truck to use it to right the crashed vehicle. Sergeant Wu rigged a chain to the rear axle, then stood back with Jing Yo as the driver maneuvered to give his vehicle a good foothold. The slight scent of an orange mingled with the harsher smells of sweat and cigarettes on Wu’s uniform. He mumbled something to himself as the truck started.
“Faster,” he said finally. “Move!”
The fallen truck rose back up about fifteen degrees before the wheels began to slide. Something from the side caught against the pavement and began to screech. The driver in the vehicle with the tow line jammed on his brakes. The truck yawed to the side, the upper frame bending under its own weight.
“He should have jammed the pedal, not stopped,” said Sergeant Wu disgustedly. “These drivers know nothing.”
Jing Yo walked over to the truck, straining against the chain. Something clicked—Jing Yo sprang back just in time as one of the links gave way and the truck fell back over.
“Let’s try this again,” said Jing Yo.
They needed to attach the chain to a higher spot. The only thing strong enough looked like the A-pillar at the side of the windshield. Coiling his leg on the bumper, Jing Yo hopped up to the roof of the truck; there, he composed himself for a moment before whirling down to the hood, kicking out the windshield in the process. He cleared the glass—it was bound by a layer of plastic, and came off in a panel—then took the chain from Sergeant Wu and tightened it around the pillar.
“One more thing,” he said to Wu. “Help me with the tree trunk.”
Jing Yo had seen the trunk on the ground earlier. About a half meter in diameter and nearly two meters long, it was heavy and difficult to carry between them. Wu told him he needed to let go and rest when they reached the road.
“We’ll just roll it from here,” said Jing Yo, and they let it drop.
Jing Yo rigged the tree at the corner of the rear wheel, hoping to use it as an anchor or fulcrum, fixing the lower half of the vehicle in place so it could be pulled upward. It was only partly successful—the vehicle dragged against the pavement as the other tugged. Still, the truck began to tilt.
“Go!” Sergeant Wu said to the driver. “Give it gas.”
The driver did—but too much. His motor stalled. The vehicles strained against each other, as if playing tug-of-war.
“I’ll do it,” said Wu, his disgust as evident as his impatience. He climbed up into the cab, shoving the driver aside. After starting the engine, he gunned the truck forward, then jammed on the brakes. The other truck jerked back onto its tires.
“See if it will start,” Jing Yo told the driver who’d crashed it originally.
Until now, the man had stood, frozen and silent, at the side of the road where Sergeant Wu had left him earlier. Now, sensing that he might win a reprieve, he sprang forward. Inside the cab, he pumped the gas a few times, then turned the engine over. It whined, but didn’t start.
“You’re flooding it,” said Sergeant Wu.
“Private, relax,” said Jing Yo, walking to the cab. “Take your foot off the gas.”
“It always needs a pump.”
“You’ve pumped it plenty already, idiot,” said Sergeant Wu.
“Let it rest for a moment,” said Jing Yo calmly.
&nbs
p; He waited for a full minute, staring at the driver the entire time. The man held his gaze for only a few seconds before turning away.
“Now try. Gently. Do not pump the gas.”
The engine caught, ran fitfully for a few moments, then suddenly backfired and gave up.
“Once more,” said Jing Yo.
The battery was starting to go. The starter whined as it tried moving the pistons without the proper voltage behind it.
“Now you can pump it,” said Jing Yo. “A single tap.”
Once again the engine caught, this time solidly. The driver revved it, not entirely trusting it to run on its own. Before Jing Yo could tell him to do so, he put the truck in gear and set off in the direction the others had taken. Sergeant Wu waved the other truck after him.
“Idiot peasants,” said Sergeant Wu. “They’ve never driven. But they’re the ones chosen to drive the trucks.”
“Which requires more skill, Sergeant? Combat, or driving a truck?” asked Jing Yo.
“Combat, of course.”
Jing Yo nodded. “And which is more difficult—fighting an enemy, or delivering supplies?”
“I can’t fight without bullets. But I get your point.”
Sergeant Wu reached into his pocket for his cigarettes. He shook the pack, then handed it toward Jing Yo. It was the first time he had ever offered one.
“Cigarette, Lieutenant?”
“No thank you.”
Wu lit up, then took a long drag from the cigarette. He released a cloud of smoke when he exhaled.
“Brave of you, running over to grab Ai Gua out,” said the sergeant. “Considering the way the trucks are rigged with explosives.”
“He is my soldier. He should expect nothing less.”
Sergeant Wu smiled, amused, though Jing Yo did not quite understand why. It was his duty, as an officer, to look out for his men the way a father would watch his sons.
He hadn’t thought of his duty at the moment, just understood it the same way his legs understood how to walk.
“What was that thing you did with your foot?” asked the sergeant. “On the windshield.”
“The kick? So we could rig it properly? The windshield won’t matter—it will be blown up in a few hours.”