Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  He had learned to be patient in the monastery by spending whole days sitting outside the prayer hall, waiting for the monk he was assigned to accompany. During this phase of his training, the monks were completely unpredictable. They would arrive before morning prayer; they would not come until nightfall. This was all absolutely intentional—they had perceived in Jing Yo a weakness for action. They interpreted this as impetuousness, a vice. Not trained, the tendency could overcome careful thought. And so they had taught him to harness it, first by teaching patience, and then by instructing him in the physical skills of kung fu.

  The rain made it harder to see in the distance, and Jing Yo nearly missed the intersection where he needed to turn. He braked a little too hard and the bike began to slide to its left. He let off on the brake, shifted his weight. It was all automatic; he had his balance before he could even open his mouth to warn Hyuen Bo. But the incident warned him against his wandering thoughts. He needed to concentrate and focus on what he was doing.

  A truck blocked the highway about two miles later. Jing Yo slowed gently, easing the brake against the wheel. The truck was a civilian vehicle, and it was parked on a diagonal, nose facing south. As he came close, Jing saw that he could slip around on the left shoulder. As he did, two men came out from behind the truck. They had guns. He pushed down toward the handlebars and accelerated, trying to speed past.

  One of the men lurched at them. He hit Hyuen Bo and spun the scooter into a skid.

  Jing Yo fell away from the vehicle, tumbling across the pavement into the ditch beyond the shoulder. In the dark night with the rain he was momentarily blind, his bearings scrambled.

  Caught by surprise, Hyuen Bo fell with the scooter, landing at the edge of the road.

  “We will take your bike!” yelled one of the men. “We will take your money as well.”

  “This one’s a girl,” said the man who had lurched at the scooter. “We’ll have her.”

  “They’re both girls, I’ll bet,” said the other. “Put her in the truck while I get the other.”

  Jing Yo scrambled to his feet.

  “Come on and don’t make this hard,” said the other man, unsure in the darkness where Jing Yo was. “You’ll escape with your life, and be glad for it!”

  Jing Yo’s eyes focused on the shadow, barely ten feet away on his right, up on the road. The man had a rifle in his hand.

  “Come on,” said the man, who still hadn’t seen him. “Don’t make me shoot you!”

  The man squared as if to fire, though it was clear from his aim that he didn’t know where Jing Yo was.

  “You’d best shoot then,” said Jing Yo, taking a step and throwing himself feetfirst at the man.

  The gun went off as they went down, a loud, violent rattle in the rain. Jing Yo landed square on the man’s chest, knocking him down. He sprang up, then went down into the man’s side, knee-first.

  The man bashed his rifle against Jing Yo’s head, hitting him just above his eye. As he reared back to strike again, Jing Yo grabbed the gun and rolled forward with him, both men holding the rifle as they went down the embankment.

  His enemy’s face pressed against his as Jing Yo fell beneath him. The man’s breath smelled of rotten fish. Jing Yo started to push to the left, trying to slip out from under him. The man raised his skull, then smashed it into Jing Yo’s forehead. Jing Yo hit him on the temple with his left fist. Still the man fought back, hitting him with another head butt.

  Both were still holding the rifle between them. As long as they did that, neither would have an advantage. But to let go of the gun was to risk giving the other an insurmountable edge.

  When his punches failed to move the man off him, Jing Yo grabbed the man’s hair and tried to pull him down. But his enemy’s bulk protected him, and he was able to push back and attack with another head smash.

  I must take the risk, Jing Yo thought.

  He pushed the rifle against his enemy’s chest. The sudden change in direction caught him off guard. As the man fell back, Jing Yo pitched his elbow and forearm up, smacking the rifle into the man’s face and striking his eye. The man winced, instinctively ducking back and loosening his grip on the gun.

  That was all the advantage that Jing Yo needed. He tossed the rifle aside, and with his upper body free, his hands flew to the man’s head, his knee up into his groin. With one hard twist, the man’s neck was broken.

  Jing Yo threw him to the side and scrambled for the gun.

  The man’s accomplice was by the truck, shouting. Jing Yo grabbed the rifle, then threw himself flat, unsure where the other man was.

  “Pean!” the man yelled to his companion. “Pean! What are you doing? Where are you?”

  Jing Yo crawled up the side of the ditch, willing his eyes to focus. He saw two shadows near the cab of the truck. The man had Hyuen Bo.

  “Pean!” he called again. “Where are you? Should I kill the girl?”

  Jing Yo raised the rifle. He wasn’t sure when of the shadows was the man, which was Hyuen Bo.

  She was behind the man, very close, held around the neck.

  Ten yards. An easy shot.

  Jing Yo pressed the trigger. The AK-47 clicked. It had run out of bullets.

  “Pean!”

  “Drop the girl and I’ll let you live,” said Jing Yo.

  “Who are you?” yelled the man.

  “Let go of the girl.”

  Jing Yo heard her struggle. The man twisted around, pulling her in front of him.

  “You think I’m a fool?” said the other man. “Where is Pean?”

  “You’ll meet him soon enough if you don’t let her go.”

  “Perhaps I’ll shoot her.”

  “Then I’ll eat your heart while you’re still alive,” replied Jing Yo.

  The man began edging toward the scooter. Jing Yo rose.

  “I see you!” shouted the man. “Any closer and she dies.”

  “Let the girl go, or you will die.”

  “Not today.”

  As the man reached the scooter, Hyuen Bo started to pull away. The man let go of her and fumbled for the ignition. Jing Yo launched himself, flying to his back as the motor caught. They both went over the handlebars, the scooter’s engine catching.

  Three hard punches to the back of the man’s head rendered him unconscious.

  Jing Yo struggled to control his anger. He rose, wanting nothing else but to tear the man’s head off his body. He picked up the man’s rifle, placed it next to his skull, and fired once, killing him.

  It was an act of mercy, compared to what he wanted to do.

  In the meantime, Hyuen Bo ran to the scooter and righted it.

  “We should go,” she said as Jing Yo stood over the body.

  “They’re soldiers,” said Jing Yo, pointing at the men’s uniforms. They’d pulled their patches from their shoulders. They were deserters. “They may have something we can use.”

  “Come on, Yo.”

  Jing Yo stared at her. In his heart he wanted her to go, to just leave, to save herself from the future she would he trapped in.

  “They may have something useful,” he said, pulling the man he had just killed off the road and starting to search their pockets.

  ~ * ~

  The rain eased as Jing Yo searched the dead men’s truck, which was more than likely stolen. There were a few extra rounds for the rifles, but nothing else of value, not even a few crumpled banknotes.

  This was the army they were fighting against? An army of cowards without even enough sense to steal a vehicle that had gas? Without even a thousand dong in their pockets?

  His true enemy was somewhere on the road south, getting farther away with each moment he dawdled.

  “Are you sure you are okay?” Jing Yo asked Hyuen Bo when he returned to the scooter.

  “I’ve had much worse.”

  “There will be much worse to come.”

  Hyuen Bo said nothing, tightening her grip around his waist as he took the scooter once more b
ack on the road.

  ~ * ~

  22

  Hue, Vietnam

  It was nearly dawn when Mara and the others reached the outskirts of Hue. The Vietnamese army had two camps along the Hue City Bypass immediately to the west of the city, and DeBiase told Mara the easiest and fastest way would be to take Route 1, which cut down the side of the Citadel, the core of the old French city. A thick mist hid the landmarks, even the flag gate.

  Squished between Mara and Squeaky, Josh felt as if he were wrapped in a sweaty blanket. Mara was driving; Squeaky had dozed off next to him.

  The headlights were on. The light filtered through the droplets of water, reflecting off the sides of the buildings that lined the road. There was traffic, cars and trucks coming with supplies and workers for the day. There weren’t a lot of vehicles, but there were certainly more than he’d seen before falling asleep.

  “How far are we from Ho Chi Minh City?” he asked.

  “We should be there by nightfall,” said Mara. “We still have a ways to go. How are you feeling?”

  “My insides kind of hurt. I must have eaten something bad.”

  “You have a fever.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mara put her hand up to his forehead. Her hand felt cool and soft, the touch gentle.

  “We’ll see a doctor as soon as we get to Saigon,” she told him. “I don’t want to stop.”

  “I’m okay,” said Josh. “Maybe . . .” His voice trailed off.

  “Maybe what?” Mara asked.

  “Maybe we could stop and I could . . .” He couldn’t find a delicate way to say it.

  “Take a whiz?” asked Mara.

  “Yeah.”

  “Once we’re across the Perfume River, we’ll stop,” said Mara. “We’ll get some breakfast.”

  “Is it far?”

  “It’s just ahead.”

  “How’s Mạ?”

  “She’s with the SEALs. They have a little more room. Don’t worry; they seem to be taking good care of her.”

  “I know. They bought her a doll. We lost it. . .”

  Josh’s voice trailed off. All he could think about was the blood in the train car.

  There was a train bridge. The road turned sharply to the east, following the river. Finally the bridge loomed from the fog. Mara crossed over, checking her rearview mirror to make sure that Kerfer and the car were still behind her.

  “You really know your way around,” said Josh.

  “Not really,” said Mara.

  “You’ve been here before?” he asked.

  “Couple of times. To get an idea of what was where. I like to travel,” she added. “It’s interesting.”

  “Yeah.”

  “We don’t have time for sightseeing, or we could have gone into the Citadel,” said Mara. “The Forbidden City has some restored ruins. It’s very pretty.”

  “Forbidden City?”

  “It’s like the city within the city.”

  “Why is it forbidden?”

  “It was the emperor’s home. It’s like in Beijing. It’s actually not that old—1805 or something like that. Hue was a provincial capital, and the French helped the emperor or encouraged him to build the Citadel as a fort. The Forbidden City is within the Citadel, which itself is a city within a city. A lot of it was destroyed during the war,” she added. “There was a huge battle here during the Tet Offensive. The Communists took over the city. When the Marines finally drove them out, they discovered mass graves. The Communists had massacred, like, six thousand people. Some they just buried alive.”

  “And now we’re trying to save them from the Chinese,” said Josh.

  “Something like that,” said Mara.

  ~ * ~

  They ate at a noodle shop. Josh didn’t have anything, his bowels and bladder still on fire. While he suffered from a variety of allergies, he’d been lucky with his health otherwise, and this was one of the worst sicknesses he’d ever had, or at least that he could remember. He joked with the SEALs that it was like having a hangover without the good part, but it wasn’t much like that at all.

  “There’s no gas in the city,” Mara told the others after talking to the shop owner and some of the other locals. “Everyone claims there are stations with gas on the roads farther south. The south hasn’t been attacked.”

  “That won’t last for long,” said Kerfer. “Assuming it’s true.”

  Squeaky claimed he was rested from his nap and told Mara that he would drive for a while. She agreed. When Josh got up to leave, Mạ clung to him, so he carried her with him, even though his arms felt like lead weights. She slipped in between Josh and Mara, draping her arms across Josh. She was asleep before they started.

  “Just stay on Route One to Da Nang,” Mara told Squeaky. “We’ll take that as far south as we can.”

  “No more roadblocks?” asked Squeaky.

  “I wouldn’t count on there being no more roadblocks,” she said. “But things should be easier. We only have to get to Saigon. We should be there by dark.”

  A half hour later, they were at Da Nang, climbing past the crowded city. There were no troops on the roads, no fortified strongpoints, not even a stray tank at the turnoffs. It seemed like another country.

  The airport came into view as they climbed and turned toward the coast. It was a long, wide expanse of black just to the west of the city’s most populated areas.

  “Why don’t we just take a plane from here?” asked Squeaky.

  “Good question,” said Mara. “They don’t think it’s safe.”

  “And driving all the way down the country is?” said Squeaky.

  “The Chinese control the air,” said Mara. “Supposedly they cratered the runway the other day.”

  “Send a helo.”

  “I ain’t arguing,” said Mara, though she suspected that the limited range of helicopters would have made that difficult.

  They had gone no more than a quarter mile when the ground on their left exploded, a volcano appearing before their eyes. The ground shuddered and the car lurched to the right.

  “Stay on the road,” said Mara, reaching across Josh for the wheel.

  “I got it, I got it,” said Squeaky. “Relax.”

  Another bomb landed ahead, a few hundred yards to the left— not quite close enough to do any damage, but it certainly got their attention.

  “Keep going,” Mara ordered.

  “I ain’t stoppin’,” said Squeaky.

  Josh saw something fly across the sky in front of them. At first he thought it was a large bird, a vulture swooping toward the road to pounce on a carcass before the cars mangled it further. Then he saw a splatter of white and black and red, splinters flying—a second shell struck a row of houses.

  “Bombs,” he said.

  “They’re shells,” said Squeaky. “There must be ships offshore. All right, so now I see why we can’t take a helo.”

  “We have to cross the bridge before they hit it,” said Mara.

  “How do you know they’re aiming at the bridge?” asked Squeaky.

  “Go faster!” Mara shouted.

  Mạ jerked up in Josh’s lap. He put his hand over her eyes as a shell flew down to the right, east of the bridge as they started across. Water exploded in a geyser. The right half of the bridge, which was used by trains, was covered in steam.

  A train had just started across from the other side. As it pushed forward, a spray of water came up and splashed the lead engine. As it emerged from the geyser, the train seemed to duck, as if afraid of another shell. One of the shells had twisted away the support for the track, which collapsed under the weight of the engines.

  It was too late for the train to stop. Josh watched the cars tumble forward, driving mostly straight ahead, doomed by their connection to each other. They kept coming, and falling, one after another.

  Then a geyser exploded ahead to the left.

  Mạ screamed.

  “It’s okay,” said Josh, holding her tighter. “It’s all ri
ght.”

  “Faster!” yelled Mara. “Go! Go! Go!”

  The riverbank in front of them turned black. Their pickup truck jerked upward. Josh’s head flew backward, then whipped forward, his chin clunking onto Mạ’s head. The truck veered right, moved sideways, then straightened.