Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  He found an excuse to come back the next day, telling her that he was confused about whether he was assigned to the right class. There was no mistake, of course, and she looked at him oddly.

  Raised in the cloistered monastery, Jing Yo had always been shy with women. With Hyuen Bo he was beyond awkward. But his attraction was so strong that he delayed his plans to travel to Saigon. He went to class a third day, and afterward went to the registrar, determined to see her again, though even as he came through the door he didn’t know what excuse he would invent.

  Another woman was in her place.

  All the blood seemed to drain from his head. He had faced gunfire more times than he could count, but the fear he felt at the possibility of never seeing the girl again was more palpable than anything he had felt during war.

  The woman at the desk explained that Hyuen Bo had been given a new job. She was due to start in the central ministry as an aide and translator within a few days. The office had given her the rest of the week off as a reward for her good service.

  Jing Yo managed to get her address. He went directly to the house. Hyuen Bo wasn’t there. He waited, sitting on the pavement in front of the door as the afternoon grew into evening. When darkness fell, he began to feel sick to his stomach—the only reason she could be staying out this late, he reasoned, was that she must be seeing a boyfriend.

  Hyuen Bo’s neighbors watched from a distance. He could see them stealing glances, but none approached. He would have ignored them if they had.

  Jing Yo sat cross-legged near the door to the house, sitting and staring into the growing blackness. He emptied his mind. He had done the same thing at the monastery for years and years, and so it did not feel overly difficult or boring. But his stomach continued in turmoil.

  And then finally a cab pulled up, and Hyuen Bo stepped out.

  Jing Yo felt his heart stop.

  She started to walk right by him. He couldn’t say a word.

  “You want something?” she said, turning her head.

  “It’s me, the student, Jing Yo. I heard you are gone from the college.”

  “I. . . What are you doing here?”

  He rose. His tongue felt frozen but he forced it to work.

  “I wanted to ask you to go out with me,” he said.

  “A date?”

  “Yes.”

  She stared at him. “When?”

  “Now. Or another time. Now would be better,” he added, feeling his heart would never work again if she didn’t say yes.

  “We could take a walk,” she said finally.

  And so they did.

  ~ * ~

  “Why are you here?” Hyuen Bo whispered as he pushed her gently away from him.

  “I have to find an American,” he told her.

  “What?”

  “Is there anyone in your apartment?”

  “No. Come on in, yes. You don’t want anyone to see you.”

  The small apartment was exactly as he remembered it. Two thinly upholstered chairs dominated the front room. A table sat to one side. A stereo rested on the top, an MP3 player connected by a snaking wire to his USB port.

  “Do you want some tea?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  Jing Yo sat in the chair closest to the door. It was one he’d always sat in. If he closed his eyes, he might wake up and find out that everything that had happened since he had been here eighteen months before was a dream.

  Hyuen Bo came back with a cup of tea.

  “China has invaded Vietnam,” she said accusingly as she gave him the cup. “Why?”

  Jing Yo shook his head.

  “They are claiming Vietnam started the war,” added Hyuen Bo.

  Jing Yo said nothing. There was no way to justify the actions of the government, and even if there were, he would not have expected Hyuen Bo to understand or accept the logic.

  She knelt down at his feet, putting her head on his right knee. “Why have you returned now?”

  “I have a mission,’’ he said softly. He leaned down, covering his face with his hands. They were barely inches away, their breaths intertwined. Yet he suddenly felt the separation of time and distance as an immense, uncrossable border. “There is an American agent.”

  “Where?”

  “He has come to Hanoi. I’m not yet sure where.”

  “And you want my help?”

  “Yes,” answered Jing Yo, though at that moment his mission was the furthest thing from his mind.

  It was a moment of temptation—weakness. But what he wanted was not duty, not even adherence to the Way. He wanted her.

  “My superiors would want to know why I was asking questions,” said Hyuen Bo.

  Jing Yo steeled himself.

  “A friend might be looking for him,” he said. “It’s not a lie.”

  A tear slid from the corner of Hyuen Bo’s eye. A second and then a third followed.

  “Why are you crying?” Jing Yo asked.

  “Chinese bombs killed my mother at the theater the other night,” she told him, raising her face to gaze into his eyes.

  Jing Yo didn’t know what to say. The woman had always been kind to him. She lived around the corner, with Hyuen Bo’s sister and brother-in-law and their children.

  “I’ll help,” said Hyuen Bo. She collapsed onto his lap, shaking.

  Jing Yo put his hand on her back.

  “Tell me what to do,” she said between her sobs.

  ~ * ~

  9

  Washington, D.C.

  President Greene hated videoconferences, especially when he took them downstairs in the National Security Council facilities. The larger-than-life screens made them feel like television talk shows, and there was always a certain amount of preening for the camera. Even one-on-one they seemed fake, promising intimacy and subtlety but ultimately failing to deliver.

  But he couldn’t very well fly to Vietnam to hear what General Harland Perry had to say. Nor did he want Perry to leave Hanoi just then. So this would have to do.

  “The attack on the reservoir stalled them, temporarily at least,” said Perry, speaking from the secure communications room of the U.S. embassy. “They didn’t anticipate it. They’ve sent some units on probing attacks to the east. So far, the Vietnamese have turned everything back.”

  Greene leaned his chin on his hand, his elbow resting on the large table that dominated the conference room. Besides the president and the communications specialist handling the gear, the only other person in the room was the national security adviser, Walter Jackson. Washington and Vietnam were twelve hours apart—when it was 11 a.m. in Vietnam, as it was now, it was eleven at night in Washington.

  “How long do you think they can continue to hold the Chinese back?” asked the president.

  “Yes, sir, good question.”

  Which was Perry’s way of saying he had no way of knowing.

  “The Vietnamese are shelling them from across the reservoir,” continued the general. “The Chinese haven’t dug in. That means they’re going to move again. If I had to guess, I’d say there’ll be a new push in a few days.”

  “Which way?”

  “If they’re planning an invasion from the coast, they’ll try to come east,” said Perry. “They’ve got to. Going into Laos now will slow them down. That’s what Major Murphy thinks.”

  “His track record is pretty good,” said the president. He remembered Zeus—the major had correctly predicted the route of China’s surprise charge into Vietnam. “So how do we stop them from going east?”

  “Short of deploying the Twenty-fifth Infantry in the highlands north of Da Bac, I don’t know that we can.”

  The Twenty-fifth was an American light infantry unit stationed in Japan. There was no chance it was going to be thrown into the battle, even if it were able to get there.

  “What’s your wonder boy say?” Greene asked.

  “Zeus is looking to punt.” Perry grinned. “I think he’d like to see the Twenty-fifth Infantry he
re, too.”

  “Not going to happen, General. The Vietnamese are going to have to hold them themselves.”

  “We’re working on it, Mr. President. We are. But if there’s an invasion along the coast, the Vietnamese are going to have to withdraw some of the forces in front of the Chinese to deal with it. Once that happens, their line will be so thin a breakthrough will be inevitable. Frankly, sir, I don’t know how long they can hold out.”

  “Understood. Keep doing your best. My best wishes to all your men.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  The screen went blank. Greene turned to Jackson.

  “What do you think, Walt?”

  “‘The Chinese have a lot of troops there. If they land near Hue they’ll cut the country in half. They can skip Hanoi if they want. They’ll go down the coast, take the oil fields, then get the rice. Hanoi will have to surrender. Then, as soon as they’ve got Vietnam under control, they go into Thailand. After that, maybe they show their teeth in Malaysia.”

  “I would look at Japan,” said Greene.

  “No food in Japan,” said Jackson. “Besides, Russia will have something to say about that.”

  “Russia will say go ahead.”

  Greene walked back and forth in the room, his energy getting the better of him. He was overdue for his evening workout, but it was too late for it now. He still had to call the education secretary to discuss strategy on the new education bill.

  “Russia and China will clash eventually,” said Jackson. “They’re natural enemies. Maybe we can encourage that. Maybe the Russians will go along with us in the UN.”

  “The first thing we have to do is stop the landing,” said Greene. “We need ships there.”

  Jackson’s silence spoke volumes. The national security adviser was hardly a dove, but clearly he thought the situation was hopeless. There were only two American ships in the general vicinity. Both were too far south to confront the Chinese aircraft carrier and destroyers that had steamed into the Gulf of Bac Bo and the waters off northern Vietnam. USS Kitty Hawk and her battle group were nearly two thousand miles away. And the Joint Chiefs of Staff were arguing vociferously that the carrier be kept there.

  “I know, I don’t ask for small miracles,” said the president finally. He turned to the communications specialist. “See if you can get General Perry back on the line.”

  “What are you thinking?” asked Jackson.

  “If I’m going to ask for a miracle, I ought to talk to the miracle man, right?”

  ~ * ~

  10

  Hanoi

  Half a world away from Washington, Zeus Murphy was waiting for General Perry to finish briefing the U.S. ambassador on the latest developments before going with him to the Vietnamese army headquarters. While he faced a long afternoon working the Vietnamese through the latest U.S. intelligence, Zeus wasn’t thinking about the language problems or the difficult tactical situation the Vietnamese found themselves in. He was worried about his Corvette back home in the States, debating whether to have his brother put it in storage in his garage. Which would necessitate allowing his brother to drive it—never a good idea, given his driving record.

  One of the embassy employees, a Vietnamese woman in her early twenties, came down the stairs. She was thin, dressed in a skirt whose looseness somehow managed to emphasize the narrow contours of her body. Very pretty, yet brittle-looking at the same time.

  “Major Murphy?” she asked.

  “Call me Zeus.”

  She smiled. Zeus wondered if there was some sort of rule against fraternizing with embassy employees, and if there was, whether she’d be worth breaking it.

  Almost certainly.

  “The general would like to see you upstairs.”

  “Great. After you,” said Zeus.

  She blushed, actually blushed—Zeus knew opportunity when he saw it. But before he could take advantage, before he could even admire the rise of her hips up the steps, he was rudely interrupted by Major Win Christian, who shouted from the front hall behind him.

  “Yo, Zeus—we leaving today or what?”

  “Ask your boss,” said Zeus.

  “My boss. Yeah.” Christian walked to the foot of the steps, lowering his voice. “You’re his golden-haired boy.”

  Christian was Perry’s chief of staff, and resented Zeus’s inclusion as Perry’s special adviser in Hanoi. Zeus had never been too crazy about Christian, though his opinion had warmed ever so slightly during their mission together to help the SEALs and Josh MacArthur. They’d taken a van and driven past an enemy ambush to grab them.

  “The general just asked me to come and talk to him,” said Zeus. “He’s on with the president.”

  Zeus didn’t actually think the president wanted to talk to him; it was just a way of tweaking Christian. He jogged up the steps, looking for the staffer with the magic hips. Instead he found one of the American employees, a middle-aged male CIA officer who naturally claimed not to be a CIA officer. The man led him to the secure room.

  Zeus was surprised to find that General Perry was still on the line with the president, and even more surprised when Perry put him on the line.

  “Mr. President,” said Zeus.

  “You need to push to talk, Zeus,” said Perry. “And tone down the exuberance a bit. It’s not quite professional.”

  “Yes, sir.” Zeus found the button. “Mr. President?”

  “Major Murphy, good to talk to you again,” said Greene. “Nice work with our scientist friend. Excellent.”

  “I just drove the van, sir.”

  “Here’s why the general and I wanted to talk to you. Everyone agrees that the Chinese are going to launch a sea assault on Vietnam’s eastern coast.”

  “Yes, sir. They have all those landing ships on Hainan, the island to the east. And meanwhile, their carriers—”

  “Your job,” said President Greene, not allowing himself to be interrupted, “is to stop the invasion.”

  “Um, stop it?”

  “Yes. Come up with a plan to stop it. Then get the Vietnamese to implement it.”

  “I’m not sure it can be done, sir. The Vietnamese—their navy is, uh, tiny to nonexistent.”

  “Then use something different.” The president sounded like a high school football coach, telling him to find a way around the blitz. “Think outside of the box. That’s your job. You’re good at it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You figured out how to stop the ground advance,” added Greene.

  “Well, temporarily.”

  “Come up with something for the ships.”

  “I’ll do my best, sir.”

  “That’s all we ask. General?”

  “I’m done on my end,” said Perry.

  “Very well. Keep up the good work, Zeus,” added President Greene. “We’re counting on you.”

  The screen went blank. Zeus looked at Perry.

  “It’s kind of impossible,” said Zeus.

  “I thought it’d be better if you heard it directly from him,” said the general.

  ~ * ~

  11

  Hanoi

  A certain amount of paranoia was absolutely essential to succeed as a covert agent. The problem was figuring out exactly how much was the right amount.

  Mara had arrived in Vietnam knowing the CIA station in Hanoi had been compromised, so the theft of the money shouldn’t have come as much of a surprise. And the fact that the box was actually where it was supposed to be could be interpreted as a good sign. Since her goal was simply to get out of Vietnam, whatever else was going on didn’t really matter. She’d learned long ago to focus on the goal rather than the messy stuff it took to get there.

  Still, despite the fact that the U.S. was now covertly supplying advice and aid to Vietnam, she’d been told explicitly not to rely on the Vietnamese for help, not even transportation. The implication wasn’t simply that they had a different agenda than the U.S. did: the Chinese were legendary in their ability to penet
rate Asian governments and their militaries, as Mara had learned to her detriment time and again in Malaysia. Asking the Vietnamese for help might very well be the same as asking the Chinese for help.