by Larry Bond
“Find out what the situation is,” he told the private. “Get division to talk to the helicopters. Where is our enemy?”
“There are soldiers in the jungle near the hill,” Ai Gua said a few minutes later. “And near the trucks.”
“We take the trucks first,” said Jing Yo.
Disoriented and still weak, Josh followed Mara out of the cave. She was a big woman, nearly as tall as he was, and dressed like a Chinese soldier. But what she’d said had to be true—if she was on the Chinese side she’d have killed him by now.
“My people are down by the road,” she told him, holding out her hand to stop him as he followed. “Wait.”
Josh heard the pop-pop-pop of automatic weapons as he squatted down. Little M clung to his back, her body trembling.
“I’m Mara, by the way,” said the CIA officer, holding out her hand. “Mara Duncan.”
“Josh MacArthur.”
“Yeah, I know. You have video, right?”
A twinge of suspicion came back. He patted his pocket. “Yeah, I got it.”
“Who’s the girl?”
“M.”
“Who is she? Was she on the expedition?”
“No, she found me. She was tracking me through the woods, and then the Chinese soldiers grabbed her. They would have killed her.”
“You saved her?”
“Yeah, I saved her.” Josh felt his face flush. “I haven’t eaten or slept that much in a couple of days. Otherwise I would have pounded your head into the ground. You’re damn lucky.”
“Then you’re lucky, too,” said Mara mildly. “But I don’t know that we have much more luck than that.” She looked at the girl. “Tên em là gì?”
“M.”
“Mara.”
She held out her hand, but M wouldn’t take it.
“You have bullets in that gun?” she asked Josh.
“It’s empty.”
Mara put her hand to her ear, cupping an earpiece for her radio.
“Right,” she told whoever was on the other end. Then she pulled a pistol from beneath her tac vest. “Take this. I hope you’re a better shot in the daylight. Come on. We have to move.”
Josh scrambled to follow her as she ran down the trail. He felt angry—she was treating him like he was a jerk, or worse.
She stopped near the road, catching him as he ran up.
“Hold, hold,” she said. “Easy.”
He flicked her hand away and slid next to a tree, gun ready. When M finally reached them, she threw herself over Josh’s back as she had before. It felt somehow reassuring, though his ego was still deeply bruised.
“Our trucks are just up the road. My guys will drive down this way in a second,” added Mara. “Take the girl when they come. I’ll cover you.”
As she said that, gunfire sounded up the road.
Jing Yo split his small squad in two, sending Wu and three others across the road while he worked up the near side with the rest. They came under fire before they were in sight of the trucks, bullets splashing into the macadam and the trees behind them. Chest pressed against the side of the road, Jing Yo caught a glimpse of someone retreating near the command vehicle. He wore black clothes—clearly not a Chinese soldier.
Jing Yo turned to Ai Gua. “Tell the helicopter to destroy the trucks. The troop truck first.”
Mara heard the truck rumbling toward her and got ready to launch herself into the road. She glanced to the right, looking at Josh and the girl, M. The girl was another complication, but it was very possible that she would be a valuable one—not only did they have an eyewitness and video footage of China’s brutality, but they also had a victim. It would be a PR jackpot.
Assuming she got them back to the UN safe and sound.
Jimmy Choi and one of his men started laying covering fire from across the road. The bumper of the truck appeared as it rounded the bend.
“Let’s go,” said Mara, starting into the road.
A helicopter’s heavy rotor pounded the ground. Mara stopped and turned back, looking for Josh. He was still by the trees, picking up the girl.
“Come on!” yelled Mara. She stepped toward them. “Come on!”
Something flashed behind her. Mara felt herself thrown forward. Then everything went black.
Electronics Giant Stai-On Declares Bankruptcy Amid Japan Electronics Downturn
TOKYO, JAPAN (World News Service)—Japanese conglomerate Stai-On today officially filed for bankruptcy protection.
“This move will allow us to reemerge as a stronger, though smaller company,” said Masura Takai, company spokesman. “We expect to continue operations through this difficult period.”
The chairman of the company was found dead in his Tokyo apartment last week. Police have not revealed the cause of death. Rumors continue to circulate that he committed suicide in the face of the company’s financial crisis.
Stai-On, known for its exports of electronic consumer goods, has been in trouble since worldwide exports declined in 2009. Until then, Stai-On was the number one electronics exporter in Japan, besting the Sony Corporation by about $3 billion in exports annually.
Electronics purchases declined sharply in the U.S. beginning with the 2008-2009 recession. While sales were essentially flat in 2010 and 2011, an even sharper decline in 2012 drove many companies into financial disarray. Among the firms …
Congo Brushfire Spreads; Smoke Plume to Affect Climate Through Rest of Year
BUMBA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO, CENTRAL AFRICA (AP-Fox News)—Firefighters reported today that two wildfires previously thought to have been brought under control have spread past firebreaks and are now racing toward the Congo River.
Approximately five thousand square kilometers of savannah and forest have been burned so far. Smoke from the fire now covers much of western Africa and is expected to linger in the atmosphere for several months.
Joseph Kituba, a local fire warden, said that the spread of the fires was fanned by unexpected winds that reached upwards of sixty kilometers per hour overnight.
“Under normal weather conditions, we would never see something like this,” said Kituba. “But the weather that we have had here the past few years has been anything but normal …”
Survivor
1
Northwestern Vietnam
The explosion threw Josh forward, tumbling him over M into a heap of dirt at the side of the road.
It was too much, all too much.
For a second he gave up, capitulated to despair. He was dirt, dust—he lay there helpless, ready to let the Chinese take him, let them chew him up like everything else they were chewing up. He gave up completely, utterly.
Then M moved beneath him, whimpering. He heard her, and for a moment he became the boy who’d run from the murderers at roughly her age—the scared, desperate little boy.
And then in the next moment he became the scientist again, and more. He became the man who was going to tell the world what was going on, who was going to help keep people from dying.
Josh pushed himself to his feet, aching, weakened by hunger and fatigue, by a thousand cuts and bruises. M scrambled to her feet beneath him. He saw her face, the question in her eyes she didn’t have the words to ask.
“We’ll make it,” he told her.
He turned around. The truck was on fire. Mara lay in the road. The explosion had torn into the small rucksack on her back, battering the contents. Josh tore the pack off, looking for wounds. The mangled gear had apparently saved her life, preventing any of the shrapnel from entering her back.
Heavy gunfire ripped through the other side of the road only a few yards away. He bent and put his shoulder into her side, lifting her upward. He staggered under her weight, but made it to the side of the road.
M was waiting.
“Take the gun,” he told her, letting go of Mara just long enough to point to the rifle on the ground.
The girl hesitated, then scooped up the weapon from the ground as if it were a piece of poisoned fruit
. Josh started up the road, Mara on his back.
She groaned.
“Jesus you’re heavy,” he complained, still moving, but just barely, as he went up the incline. A few yards past the path to the mine he spotted another old, overgrown road. He kept going, pushing his legs forward despite the burn that spread from his thigh muscles to the rest of his legs. The mine was a trap; the Chinese would look there first.
He continued, moving slower and slower, until he spotted a narrow culvert running under the road. The cement pipe below contained a stream, which ran southward after crossing beneath the roadbed.
Josh veered toward the shallow embankment, heading toward the creek. Within three steps he lost his balance and fell on his side, slipping down into the water and losing Mara in the process.
M ran to him to see if he was all right.
“Yes, yes, I’m all right,” he told the girl. “It’s okay.”
“God,” groaned Mara on the ground a few feet away. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what the hell?”
Josh got to his knees and splashed water onto his face. Then he cupped his hands and took a few sips before rubbing the water on his eyes.
Mara remained dazed on the ground. The gunfire continued in the distance. Josh got to his feet and went to her.
“We have to keep moving,” he said. “Come on.”
“What the hell?” Her voice was a mumble, far away. “My bag? Where’s my bag?”
“It got blown up,” he said.
“God, my back hurts.”
“You’ll be all right. You’re not even bleeding.”
“Yeah.”
Josh took the gun from M’s hand.
“If you could walk, it would be really good,” he told Mara. “I don’t think I can carry you anymore.”
“Walk,” she repeated as he helped her to her feet.
Mara was shaky, but she kept her balance as they started down the stream. Josh took the rear, figuring that was where the threat would come from.
“Where are we going?” asked Mara.
“We’re just going,” said Josh. “Keep moving. Go!”
2
Northwestern Vietnam
The tracers flying out from the edge of the jungle told Jing Yo several things, the most important of which was that they were not fighting Vietnamese soldiers, or at least not regular soldiers. The gunfire was much more carefully aimed and coordinated, the shots purposeful even when they missed. The tracers weren’t being used to help the soldiers aim; rather, the rounds told the gunner he was nearing the end of his box. As he stopped to reload, another took up the fire, so that there was never a break in the gunfire that could be exploited.
The sound of the weapons was also telling—it was tinnier than an AK-47’s. Yet it was deeper than the slish-slish a SCAR would make—an indication, Jing Yo thought, that these men were not Americans.
Perhaps not, though they had at least one thing in common with the American SEALs Jing Yo had briefly trained with at the start of his career—they were turning an incredibly minute tactical advantage into a commanding position. They had the road completely covered, yet Jing Yo believed they had no more than six men, and most likely only four. They even used the destruction of their vehicles to their advantage, using the covering smoke to launch brief feints to stall a counterattack.
The helicopter gunships were impotent. The enemy force was so close to Jing Yo’s men that they couldn’t fire their rockets without either exposing themselves to more grenade fire or risking a miss that would kill their own troops.
“Couple of grenades there and we can push whoever’s holding that spot back,” said Sergeant Wu, crouching near Jing Yo. He pointed left to the north side of the road, where a slight rise gave the enemy just enough of a vantage to keep the commandos in place. “We can gang up on them. Sweep around once we’re on that side of the road and beyond their trucks.”
“Hmmm.”
The gunfire continued, controlled bursts plowing through the jungle anytime Jing Yo’s men tried to move.
“We get that side, we can roll them up,” said Wu, elaborating on his plan. “We push them back from the road. Helicopters can come in and pick up the wounded from the crash.”
Jing Yo didn’t answer.
“You want to wait until the reinforcements get here?” Wu asked. Soldiers from the unit that had been at the farm had landed up the road and were marching up the road. “They’ll be here in five minutes. That’ll work, too.”
“Why do you think the enemy is still firing?” Jing Yo asked his sergeant.
“What do you mean?”
“If we were holding that position, we would have moved back by now. We would try to get away before our enemy could bring in many reinforcements. We would expect reinforcements.”
“Maybe they don’t. Or maybe they’re stupid.”
“They’re not stupid.” Jing Yo shifted his rifle. “They are covering a retreat.”
“All right. But we can’t deal with that until we deal with them.”
“Yes.”
The soldiers must have gotten the scientist; it was the only reason they could be here.
Which way was he going? Directly behind them? Or somewhere else?
There was no way to know. The safest line of retreat would be behind the defenses. Jing Yo would have to try that way first.
The enemy would naturally expect the attack the sergeant had suggested, since they would know or at least suspect that was the direction the reinforcements would come from. He would therefore pretend to launch the assault there, but instead come up from the other side, the southwestern corner, across the road. The defenders would either retreat immediately, or be caught in place as the reinforcements arrived.
“I will take Ai Gua and Private Kim with me,” Jing Yo told Wu, outlining his plan. “We will circle around and launch an attack from the southeast, behind the position at that point in the road.”
“The jungle is pretty thick there.”
“Yes, they may be counting on that. You will launch your grenades at the northern point, and make them think we are concentrating on them there.”
Sergeant Wu nodded.
“Take the radio from Ai Gua. Have the helicopters take some of the regular troops to the farming area beyond the jungle,” Jing Yo told Wu. “And tell them to continue patrolling above. Give us ten minutes to get into position, then launch your attack.”
As Jing Yo leaped up, a fresh fusillade of bullets crashed into the jungle near him, forcing him to dive headfirst into the brush to his right. He crawled nearly ten meters on his belly before rising again, running in a crouch as he started to arc into position.
Ai Gua and Kim, meanwhile, withdrew from their spots near the shoulder of the road. They met Jing Yo about fifteen meters from the curve just opposite the enemy’s southernmost position. They moved another fifty meters farther west, crossing the road near a stream culvert.
Jing Yo slid down into the crevice cut by the stream. The streambed formed an easy path southward, keeping the brush at bay. He trotted down it for twenty meters, then went up the embankment, leading his men into the jungle at a slow but steady pace. They could hear the enemy gunner firing his rounds, but the vegetation was so thick they couldn’t see him.
Both men were on his left, Ai Gua a few yards away, Kim closer to the road. Jing Yo signaled to them to stay put, then began slipping forward through the brush, moving as quietly as he could. Stealth was an animal virtue; he imagined himself a tiger, passing through the stalks and branches with less sound than a raindrop slipping between the leaves of a tree.
The gunfire was very close.
A dark shadow shifted on his left, moving ever so slightly.
The enemy, twelve yards away, temporarily protected by a tree.
Wu’s grenades exploded to the north near the road. The gunfire stoked into a thunderstorm.
Jing Yo waited for the shadow he was watching to move. He didn’t, nor did he fire.
Very disc
iplined.
Sergeant Wu’s attack continued with a fresh round of grenades. Jing Yo heard the man near him say something, undoubtedly speaking into a radio, and start to move to his right.
Jing Yo raised his rifle, then fired a three-shot burst into the middle of the moving green blur. It didn’t stop.
Bulletproof vest.
Jing Yo adjusted his aim lower, but there was so much vegetation and debris that he couldn’t be sure of what he was aiming at. The soldier crashed farther into the jungle, moving eastward.
The others were, too. Jing Yo got up to start after them, then realized the danger.
“Down!” he yelled as loud as he could, hoping his voice would reach not just Ai Gua and Kim but Wu and the others. “Down!”
His warning was cut off by a tremendous explosion. The enemy had planted an IED or improvised explosive device at the edge of their position, exploding it to cover their trail.
“Come on!” he yelled to Ai Gua and Kim. “They’re running away!”
3
En route to Thailand
Only a few airports in the world could handle the U.S. Air Force’s RT-1, the official designation of the hypersonic transport. None of them were in Vietnam.
The airport at Bangkok in Thailand had a long enough runway and was relatively close to Vietnam, but was known to be under surveillance by Chinese agents. So was the airport at U-Tapao, the Thailand naval air base that doubled as a sparsely used international airport. But U-Tapao’s regular military use made it a little easier to camouflage the ultimate destination of the plane’s passengers, and so it was chosen as the RT-1’s destination.
Zeus Murphy had never been aboard the hypersonic aircraft. Though the outer hull of the plane was large—lengthwise, it rivaled stretched versions of the 747—the interior cabin was about the size of a corporate jet. It was nowhere near as luxurious. While the Air Force used the RT, as everyone called it, exclusively as a VIP transport, Congress had severely limited the amount of money that could be used for the aircraft’s amenities. That meant the cabin looked a lot like what would be found in the first-class section of a circa-2000 Boeing 777. Not bad by any means, but not ultrafancy.