Edge of War - [Red Dragon Rising 02]

by Larry Bond

  She ran to Kerfer, who was lying faceup. There was blood all over his chest.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Come on.” Mara reached down and tried to pull him up, but Kerfer didn’t budge.

  “Go. Get the hell out of here.”

  Mara grabbed his submachine gun.

  “Come on,” she told Kerfer. “On my back.”

  “Ain’t worth it, spook lady. Go!”

  Mara reached down and scooped him up as one of the SEALs started firing again. She ran a few yards toward Little Joe, intending to help him up as well, but as she got close, she realized he wasn’t getting up—the exploding grenade had blown his leg off, leaving his body in a pool of blood. His eyes were closed, as if in sleep, but it was clear he was already dead.

  “To the helicopter!” she yelled. “Go! Go!”

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo raised his head, then quickly ducked back as the Americans began firing again.

  There were more grenades in the case. He needed them.

  The gunfire stopped. He grabbed the box, opened it, then reached for his launcher. But when he tried putting the grenade in, he saw that the barrel had been hit by bullets. It wouldn’t accept the grenade.

  He’d have to take them with the submachine gun.

  He punched out the old magazine, even though it was half full. Slamming a new box in, he grabbed two more, then jumped up and began running toward the helicopter.

  ~ * ~

  Josh turned a few feet from the chopper, looking back for the others. He saw Mara, dragging Kerfer on her back. Eric ran to her and helped.

  Where was Squeaky? Where was he?

  One of the chopper crewmen jumped to the ground.

  “Take the girl,” Josh yelled, pushing Mạ toward him. “Go!”

  Josh let go of Mạ, then spun and started to run for the others.

  ~ * ~

  Eric took hold of Kerfer as Mara stumbled toward him. Silvestri took the other side. Mara twisted out from under them and spun back.

  The bastard who’d been following them was jumping out of the ditch.

  She squeezed the trigger on Kerfer’s gun.

  He was out of bullets, too.

  ~ * ~

  Josh saw the man in the ditch lowering his gun to fire. He pressed the trigger, but without good aim, his bullets went low, striking the dirt in front of the man.

  But it was enough. He went down.

  “Into the helicopter!” Josh screamed, turning back for the helo. “Into the helicopter!”

  ~ * ~

  Jing Yo collapsed as the ground erupted in front of him. He couldn’t lose now.

  He raised his weapon to fire. But there was someone behind the scientist, a sailor from the helicopter, shooting with an M-4. The fire was so intense he had to stay down. He dug his chin into the dirt, waiting for the fusillade to lift.

  ~ * ~

  Just as he reached the nose of the helicopter, Josh saw something from the corner of his eye. He stopped and turned. There was a small figure with a gun, two guns—a grenade launcher, he thought.

  He raised his weapon. This time his aim was true, striking the figure in the midsection.

  “Into the chopper!” screamed Mara, grabbing his back. “Go! Go! Go!”

  They dove headfirst into the body of the Seahawk. Before Josh could get to his feet, they were off the ground.

  ~ * ~

  28

  Bai Sau Airport

  Jing Yo rose as the helicopter rose, emptying his gun at the fuselage. But the helicopter was charging away, up the runway and back toward the sea. He started to run, screaming at it in frustration.

  And then, with the Seahawk banking hard to the southeast, he saw the body of his lover, prone in the field, hunched over the grenade launcher.

  If he had been truly a man of duty, he would have scooped up the launcher at that moment and tried somehow to down the helicopter, even though it was out of range.

  But he would have had to be a man of stone to do that.

  Jing sank to his knees, bent over Hyuen Bo’s dead body, and wept.

  ~ * ~

  ~ * ~

  Greene Urges Patience on Economy

  Washington (AP-Fox News)—Sounding a theme he has used since taking office, President Greene told a press conference today that he is confident the economy will rebound soon.

  “Sooner, not later,” said Greene. “But we must be patient.”

  Greene made the remarks during a press conference called specifically to discuss the situation in Southeast Asia, where Vietnam has attacked China in a dispute over borders. However, not one reporter asked a question about the conflict; the economy took center stage. . . .

  Solar Panel Blouses Turn Up Heat

  Paris (NBC-Agence France-Presse)—With wearable solar panels all the rage, three French designers today unveiled a new line of shoulder-board blouses they say will power MP3s and cell phones for up to 12 hours.

  They’ll turn up the heat as well, with plunging necklines and see-through fabric that leave little to the imagination…

  ~ * ~

  1

  Washington, D.C.

  “Frost needs you right away,” said Dickson Theodore, sticking his head through the door of the Oval Office. “Line three.”

  President Greene smiled at Cindy Metfort, the MSNBC reporter who’d been interviewing him. “I really do have to take this call.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Greene kept smiling. He didn’t care much for MSNBC, but Cindy was ... an impeachment waiting to happen, probably.

  “I know it’s really late, but I’m afraid I’d like to take this one alone,” he said. “Maybe we can wrap this up tomorrow or sometime next week.”

  He winked at his assistant press secretary, Debra Scacciaferro. Scacciaferro was already at the reporter’s side, ready to physically remove her if necessary.

  That wasn’t necessary, probably to Scacciaferro’s chagrin. She wasn’t a big booster of the cable networks.

  “Of course, Mr. President,” said Cindy, rising. “Tomorrow or next week will be fine. I hadn’t realized how late it was myself.”

  Greene watched her leave. Ah, to be twenty years younger . . . then he’d only be old enough to be her father.

  The president picked up the phone. “This is the president.”

  “We have them,” said the head of the CIA. “They’re en route to the Philippines.”

  “All of them? The little girl, too?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Great.”

  “There’s one thing you should know, George,” said Frost. “Peter Lucas had his people set up something with the captain of USS McCampbell. The destroyer sailed past a pair of Chinese ships and sent a helo through the blockade. There was almost a collision, but no shots were fired. I stand behind Peter one hundred percent,” added Frost. “He did what I would have done.”

  “Then congratulate him,” said Greene. “And get me the name of that destroyer captain. I want him promoted.”

  ~ * ~

  2

  Over the South China Sea

  Josh felt as if a blanket had been thrown over him. His whole body vibrated, and not just from the rotating rotors above the Seahawk. He slipped back on the bench at the side of the helicopter, still stunned and unable to process everything that had happened.

  A Navy corpsman was working over Kerfer on the floor. He had an IV bottle and was poking at his chest. He reached into a box and took out a syringe, then plunged it into the SEAL commander’s rump.

  Mara stood over the corpsman, watching. Eric was next to her, his face white.

  “What happened to Squeaky?” Josh asked.

  No one answered.

  “Squeaky,” he said. He looked at Mara.

  “No, Josh,” she said. “He and Little Joe are dead.”

  Josh exhaled slowly.

  “We didn’t get them out of there,” said Stevens loudly. “We should have gotten them out of there.”
/>   “We needed to get ourselves out,” said Mara.

  “We should have gotten them the hell out of there.” Stevens whirled and put his fist into the frame of the helicopter. He punched it hard, then punched again. Tears streamed down the sides of his face.

  Josh stomped his feet, sharing Stevens’s anger and frustration. He’d liked both of the SEALs, Squeaky especially—a big bear of a guy with a stupid little girl’s voice.

  “Damn,” he said, pounding the floor.

  Mạ grabbed his side in fright. The medic looked up at him. One of the Navy crewmen put his hand on his shoulder.

  “Sir,” said the sailor. “Please. Calm down. You saved the chopper. You did your best.”

  “I didn’t save the chopper. My friends—they died. They died for me.”

  “You killed the gook with the grenade launcher,” said Eric. “You couldn’t’ve done any more.”

  Stevens came over and wrapped his arm around him. Neither of them spoke.

  The medic continued to work on Kerfer. He had gauze and bandages and tape.

  Did he have magic? Josh wondered. Because that’s what they really needed—magic to get them the hell out of here, to take them back, far back.

  He’d killed the gook with the grenade launcher. Or he’d killed a gook.

  A gook?

  Or a human being?

  Someone who was trying to kill him. That’s whom he’d killed. Someone who wanted him dead.

  “It was a girl,” said one of the crewmen.

  Josh looked up at him.

  “We got it on the chopper video. It was a woman.”

  “I killed a girl?” Josh asked. He sat on the bench. Mạ sat close beside him.

  “You saved our lives, Josh,” said Mara. She came over and kissed him on the cheek. “Thank you.”

  ~ * ~

  3

  Bai Sau Airport

  There is but one purpose. There is but one Way. To forget this truth is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to surrender to the chaos.

  The words of his mentors came to Jing Yo in the fading beat of the helicopter’s rotors. They were fact and recrimination, accusation and inspiration, a call to return from the path where he had strayed.

  Hyuen Bo was dead, killed by the man he had pursued. Her death was Jing Yo’s fault, as surely as if he had put the bullet through her skull himself.

  Her long dark hair, the white skin of her wrist—the image burned into his brain. But already the stench of death had claimed her, the smell of rot and return.

  He despaired.

  There is but one purpose. There is but one Way. To forget this truth is to forget yourself. To forget yourself is to surrender to the chaos.

  “I must move myself,” he said aloud.

  In the next instant, Jing Yo jumped to his feet and began to run. He fled across the field, across the road and through a yard, down the soft green fairways, over the rocks and to the boat. He moved so fast that his conscious thoughts trailed far behind, outpaced.

  By the time his brain caught up to his body he was an hour upstream, nearly out of gas. He found a small marina and would have stolen fuel had a man not appeared on the dock and offered to sell it.

  “You look battered,” said the man. “Were you in the shelling?”

  Jing Yo blinked at him, handing over his spare gas cans.

  “There are rumors that the Chinese attacked the shore,” said the man. “Missiles and artillery from ships. Did that happen?”

  “There was an attack,” said Jing Yo.

  “Where are you going? Saigon?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “There have been attacks there as well. You’re better off in the highlands. They are forming bands of resistance. A young man like you would be of some worth.”

  “That’s where I’m going,” said Jing Yo, not sure what else to say. “To the hills. To fight.”

  “I thought so,” said the man grimly.

  He gave him the fuel for free, then pressed him to take some food and a few thousand dong.

  “We are counting on you,” said the man, tears in his eyes. “Go with our prayers.”

  ~ * ~

  A half dozen plumes of black spiraled from the center of Ho Chi Minh City. Above them, thick piles of black cotton seemed pasted on the sky. A Vietnamese gunboat sat in the middle of the river channel, its gun raised and slightly off center. There were half as many small boats on the river as normal, and their movements seemed slow and tentative, their owners skittish.

  A policeman stood on the first dock Jing Yo passed. There was one on the second as well. Jing Yo continued up the waterway until he found a jetty where no one was waiting to ask questions.

  He had the submachine gun and a half dozen rounds of ammunition in a rucksack. If questioned he planned to say he had been given them by a friend in the militia, for protection; he had no idea if this would be an adequate explanation.

  Soldiers and police guarded the intersections and patrolled in front of storefronts, even in Chinatown. Knots of militia clustered around trucks or kept the curious from smoldering ruins. Last night’s marauders had returned to become the day’s order keepers. Some were cleaning up the mess they or their comrades had made—Jing Yo passed two work crews of militiamen sweeping glass from the streets and replacing broken windows with large sheets of wood.

  They were acting under orders, he was sure. Which would last longer—their hatred for the Chinese, or their respect for authority?

  Getting into the area where Ms. Hu lived was not easy. Jing Yo had to circle around the center of the city on foot. There were several places where he might have slipped across the barriers to take a shortcut, but he decided the risk wasn’t worth it. The police were not bothering people who went about their business, so long as they didn’t go where they weren’t supposed to. And Jing Yo knew that the less he had to explain to anyone, the less chance he had of being apprehended.

  The bicycles and motorbikes were still relatively plentiful on the streets. Their riders seemed more anxious than even on the day before, less willing to yield to pedestrians or change their course as another vehicle approached. Private cars, always a minority in the city, were almost nonexistent, as were commercial trucks.

  Jing Yo walked through the precincts of the city, absorbing not just the sights and sounds, but the jittery emotions of the people. They moved mostly with purpose, not meandering—he guessed they were getting things in order, buying food and water for a siege, making sure they had batteries and other emergency supplies. He saw no one smiling.

  The missiles and bombs had brought a powdery, metallic smell to the air, something close to fire and yet not completely burned. The sun was bright, and the damp air hot.

  Three men in Western jeans and soccer shirts leaned against an old pickup truck on the dirt road near the fuel tanks around the corner from Ms. Hu’s compound. Jing Yo walked toward them, his gaze fixed in the distance. One of the men stepped toward him, hand on the back of his hip. A bulge on the opposite side of his belt betrayed his revolver.

  “I have business with Ms. Hu,” he told the man.

  “Ms. Hu? I don’t believe we know of a Ms. Hu.”

  “Oh,” said Jing Yo, easily guessing this was a lie.

  He took a step forward. The man stepped in front of him.

  “Listen, friend,” said the man. “This is not a good place for you.”

  “Nonetheless, I have business,” Jing Yo told the man.

  If the man had gone for his pistol, Jing Yo would have killed him on the spot. He would have made short work of the others as well.

  In truth, he thirsted for provocation. He wanted to unleash some of the anger he felt. But instead of fighting, the man took out a small radio.

  “Your name?” asked the man.

  “Jing Yo.”

  Whatever the person on the other side said surprised the man.

  “Go on,” he told Jing Yo, holding both hands up as if in surrender.

 
; ~ * ~