Larry Bond’s Red Dragon Rising: Blood of War

by Larry Bond

  “The chopper’s going to be here in ten minutes,” Kerfer told Setco. “I’ll meet you in Da Nang. I have to see how my friend Major Murphy is doing. I’ll pick up weapons and other gear while I’m in town. I should be able to find a warehouse while I’m there.”

  “We don’t need to rehearse,” answered Setco. “We’ve done this sort of thing before.”

  “Right. We’ll rehearse it anyway.”

  * * *

  Topside, Kerfer waited against the railing, watching the sky above the low shadow of land off the starboard side. The helicopter was behind schedule—not good, he thought.

  Setco had always been somewhat difficult to deal with before a mission. Once things got rolling, though, he was completely professional. Sometimes he was even pleasant.

  Something about his mood bothered Kerfer, though. Kerfer was considered by some of his peers to be rather dark and cynical, but compared to Setco he felt he was Mister Optimism. And tonight, Setco had the look of a man who’d decided he was going to die.

  Not the kind of person Kerfer wanted to trust with an op, let alone his own life.

  The sound of the helo rose above the cranky churning of the ship’s engines. Kerfer strained to see it in the distance, finally spotting it just above the waves a few hundred yards out.

  His sat phone rang as the helicopter angled for the temporary landing pad on the deck. He took out the phone and held it to his ear, cupping his hand against the roar of the chopper.

  “Kerfer.”

  “Ric, it’s Peter Lucas. I have something important I need done.”

  “Like?”

  “Where are you? I’m having a hard time hearing you.”

  “I’m on Setco’s yacht.”

  “What?”

  “Hold on a second,” Kerfer yelled. “Just hold on.”

  He ducked his head—it was reflex—and ran across the narrow decking to the ladder down to the deck where the helo landed. Pushing his head forward against the wind of the chopper blades, he made his way to the rear door, then realized the pilot was alone in the cockpit. He changed direction and climbed in the front. The helo began to rise as soon as he was in the seat. He looped the seat belt on and continued his conversation.

  “Yeah, so I’m good,” Kerfer told Lucas. “Can you hear me now?”

  “It’s a little better. We need you to check some material out east of Hanoi.”

  “What do you mean, check some material out?”

  “I’m going to have Mara explain.”

  “Listen, I’m pretty damn busy with this trip north, if you get my drift.”

  “This is more important. Forget the trip north. Roth can handle that.”

  Thinking Lucas was just trying to make the mission an entirely agency affair, Kerfer started to object. Lucas cut him off.

  “I don’t have time, Ric,” snapped Lucas. “This is more important, believe me. You’ll understand when Mara explains it. Stand by.”

  38

  North of Malipo, China

  Zeus sat with his legs curled against a rock to keep himself steady. He had his head in the control unit—it seemed almost to swallow it, the screen extending around the sides of his face.

  The Chinese Type 96 tank appeared, climbing up the road a half mile away.

  It was easy—he didn’t hesitate, he didn’t agonize, he simply zeroed the cursor and fired.

  The missile popped from the launcher, almost stumbling into the air. Then the main stage caught and it was gone in a rush.

  Zeus was back to himself, back to fighting—it was so clear and simple now, just fight. Kill the enemy. He didn’t have to worry about people lying to him or trying to use him; didn’t think about love or even hate, for that matter: he just fought.

  And he was good at it.

  “Missile! Missile!” he called, as if he were back at Fort Benning, in the last exercise, pounding away at pretend targets instead of the real thing here.

  One of the Vietnamese soldiers stepped over—Zeus helped him load the launcher as the ground rumbled with a secondary explosion.

  He’d hit the second tank in the column, reasoning that it was the one that would cause a bottleneck—it was close to a rock formation, making it hard to squeeze around. Now he aimed at the first tank, which seemed completely oblivious to the attack. He continued on his viewscreen as if it were part of a training exercise—no, an asset in an arcade game, stumbling forward.

  “Firing,” said Zeus as the missile popped from its tube. Again, a slight hesitation was followed by a rush of exhaust. The rocket shot upward, a blur vanishing into the darkness. Then the night flashed, a white circle of heat and melting metal appeared on the far side of the mine as the warhead pummeled its way into the top of the Chinese main battle tank, striking between the two open hatchways and instantly killing the crew.

  A third tank appeared on the far right, coming up from the side of the road. Zeus got the launcher loaded as the tank stopped, either confused about what was going on or trying to help its companions. He lifted the viewer, steadied and fired. The tank began to move as the missile left the tube, but it was too late; the Javelin had no trouble adjusting, tucking downward directly behind the 125 mm gun.

  A machine gun began firing. Two more tanks appeared, rounding up the hill and drawing parallel to the last one Zeus had destroyed.

  “Missile, give me another,” said Zeus. The two soldiers were crouched next to him, each with a Javelin in his hand. As Zeus turned to get one loaded, one of the tanks fired its main gun. The shell flew overhead, well into the distance, landing somewhere in the rocks and jungle so far off that Zeus couldn’t even feel the ground shake with its thud. The tank’s muzzle and turret glowed hot in his screen as he pulled the weapon back onto his shoulder. He locked and fired.

  The ground shook as his missile hit home, the Javelin igniting a violent secondary explosion. Zeus turned to get another missile, then felt himself sliding down the side of the hillock where he’d been sitting. He felt rain falling, thick drops pummeling him. Then he was tumbling.

  Another of the tanks had fired, this time at the rise. Two shells had struck the ground directly in front of the hill, pounding into the dirt and sending geysers of stone into the air. Zeus flew backward through the air, landing on his stomach and losing the launch tube. He was lucky that the shells had hit the ground in front of him, but his head was scrambled and he couldn’t find his bearings.

  “Up, up,” he told himself, pulling his arm under his chest and then pushing up. There was so much dust in the air he started to choke.

  Heavy machine-gun rounds were flying overhead. Zeus found the launcher but he didn’t have any missiles.

  “Joe!” he yelled. “Load me! Missiles!”

  He looked around for his escorts but couldn’t see them. He couldn’t see the BJ, either.

  Damn.

  Zeus turned back toward the hill, thinking he would retrieve one of the missiles there. As he did, another shell hit the ground, farther away than the others, but still close enough for the shock to knock him backward. He hit the ground so hard his head rebounded upward.

  Damn.

  Another round flew by. Zeus felt himself moving—one of the Vietnamese soldiers had grabbed him under the armpits and was dragging him backward.

  “Shit,” Zeus told him. “We have to get the tanks. I need the radio—I need to call General Trung.”

  The explosions and gunfire drowned out his voice. Another set of hands grabbed him by the legs and Zeus was shoved into the backseat of the BJ. They were moving—both soldiers were firing their AKs, the world reverberating with the loud, hard reports and the ground bashing shells exploding somewhere to Zeus’s left.

  He struggled to get his bearings. He had to call Trung and warn him. He had to stop the Chinese tanks.

  Zeus grabbed onto the back of the seat in front of him. He pulled himself up between the driver and one of his escorts.

  “Swing around to the west,” he yelled. “We have to
get to the west.”

  The driver yelled to him, then motioned with his hand. Zeus couldn’t understand.

  They’d piled the rest of the missiles into the backseat and onto the floor of the front. The two demolitions experts were clinging to the sides of the truck for dear life as the driver drove in reverse toward a copse of trees at the edge of the cleared field.

  He needed to find Trung.

  The BJ pulled into a U-turn, then bounced along the road away from the strip mine, winding down the hill. Zeus reached down between the crates for his pack, trying to get his GPS. When he looked up, he saw something coming toward them.

  A vehicle.

  The BJ jerked to a stop. Zeus threw himself forward, grabbing for his gun in the well in front of the seat. He was going out shooting—not because he wanted to be a hero, but because the shame of having given the Chinese a dozen or more antitank missiles would be too humiliating to bear.

  Just as his fingers touched the gun, someone pulled him back. Zeus swung his elbow back, trying to break free.

  “Major! Major! Stop! Stop!”

  Zeus jerked around. Colonel Dai, the officer who had given him the jeep and the men, was leaning into the vehicle over him.

  “The Chinese are coming from the northwestern end of the mine,” Zeus told him.

  “Yes, my scouts saw them.” The colonel extended his hand. “Hurry, we haven’t much time.”

  39

  Da Nang

  Ric Kerfer didn’t like being talked down to by anyone. But it really torqued him to be talked down to by a supervisor in the CIA. While there were exceptions, the agency bosses were a collection of pansy-assed pretty boys and the occasional tomboy out to prove they were smarter than anyone else. They drove their best field people crazy or out of the profession.

  Usually both.

  So he wasn’t in the best mood to take Mara’s call, especially when she missed the appointed time. He had half a mind to just turn his sat phone completely off and ignore her and her boss. Instead, he went to a bar on the waterfront in Da Nang’s tourist center, commandeered a table in the corner, and ordered a beer. He’d already finished his chores, arranged for the airplane and turned everything over to Setco. The CIA para wasn’t exactly broken up by the change in plans.

  “Fine,” was the entirety of his response.

  The war had thinned what would have been a healthy late-night crowd in the hotel bar, a fancy penthouse affair overlooking the ocean. Only three other tables were occupied in the room, one by an older woman who seemed to be British, and the others by pairs of middle-aged Asian men who cast occasional nervous glances in Kerfer’s direction but otherwise kept to themselves.

  Kerfer had spent more than his share of time in countries at war. They all shared certain qualities, most especially a hollowness that came from staving off despair. Unlike in the movies, visible panic was rare, certainly in the absence of actual gunfire or bombs. But fear was nonetheless a permanent condition in such places, barely kept hidden by the usual conventions of booze and drugs. Cynical sneers and nervous laughter were mostly Western devices; in Asia, feigned stoicism and forced indifference were the general shields.

  Thus the waiter with the very stiff gait stood at precise attention when Kerfer asked if he could have a Guinness, which was advertised by a small plate on the tap at the bar. The waiter nodded and left without a word, only to return a short time later to tell him there was no more.

  It was a fact he had undoubtedly known, though he played out the charade as if life were normal and all of the taps full.

  “What do you have?” asked Kerfer. “Just tell me.”

  The only beer they had was Chinese beer—the waiter said the words very quickly, without naming the beer.

  “Tsingtao?” asked Kerfer.

  “Chinese,” said the waiter.

  It didn’t matter what it was, if it was the only choice.

  “That’ll be fine,” Kerfer told the man, who bent his head ever so slightly and left.

  Kerfer took his phone from his pocket and put it on the table. He gazed out the window. It was late. He should try to sleep.

  As if that were possible. He laughed at himself, a little too loudly—everyone else in the room glanced at him, then looked away as he turned in their direction.

  Kerfer smiled. Anyone seeing him would surely think he was a spy. There was no way to alter their impressions—after all, why would a foreigner stay in a country about to be overrun?

  And who were they? Probably spies themselves. Desperados of some sort or another.

  He thought of checking in with Zeus and telling him what had happened, but that was Setco’s job now. It was always best to divorce yourself from the mission if you were pulled off it; he’d learned that long ago. This was true even if you had planned it, even if you were the one who’d sweated all the details out and plotted every step.

  In that case, you were in a truly suckful position. You were likely to be blamed for everything that went wrong, and receive exactly zero credit if it went well. Keeping tabs on it was only a way of torturing yourself. Taking a knife and stabbing your thigh until you passed out was easier, quicker, and had about the same effect.

  He envied Zeus in one respect:

  Kerfer could never imagine loving a woman enough to risk his life for her.

  He’d saved several women in the course of his career as a SEAL, and his life had certainly been in the balance each time. But those situations were different—he was acting on impulse, moving quickly to take a civilian out of the line of fire. Once he had rushed into a building literally as it fell to the ground, pummeled by a rebel mortar attack. Another time he’d dashed across a street being laced by gunfire so close, the rock splinters tore up his pants—a fact he didn’t realize until he got her out to safety.

  But none of those times had anything to do with love. Those were things you did as a SEAL. Those were things you did reflexively. You were selected and trained to be like that. People thought of it as being a hero, but to Kerfer it was no more a heroic act than shooting a gun was. It was a warrior reflex, and while the people who didn’t have it didn’t understand, the people who did have it rarely cared to think about it, let alone analyze it.

  But loving a woman, and letting your emotions guide your actions—letting that emotion guide your actions?

  It was something Kerfer found foreign. Worthy, but foreign.

  He’d been with plenty of women. Sex remained his favorite pastime, outside of war. But it was sex.

  Fun. Pleasant. But no more than that.

  He was on his second beer when Mara finally called back.

  “What took you?” he asked, without saying hello.

  “There’s a mountain area east of Hanoi. It’s a place called Yen Tu. There are a number of old shrines there, and some mining. Are you familiar with it?”

  “Not really. I assume I can find it.”

  “Can you get there?”

  “Eventually.”

  “Soon enough to inspect and possibly laze a site twenty-four hours from now? Maybe sooner?”

  As soon as he heard the word “laze”—slang for shining a laser designator at a bombing target—Kerfer’s entire mental state changed. It was as if he had been struck by lightning. He was charged with energy, primed for action.

  He tried not to show it outwardly; he reached over for his beer and nonchalantly leaned back in his seat. But he was charged.

  You didn’t laze insignificant targets. You went and had a look at something important, then you shone the light on them while all hell broke loose above.

  “I’m arranging for a designator,” Mara continued. “Are you familiar with the SOFLAM?”

  “That’s an old unit,” said Kerfer. The SOFLAM–Special Operations Force Laser Marking Unit—had been issued in the 1990s. It looked like a very blocky set of binoculars. “I may have used one in training, but come on. I need a newer unit.”

  “Ric, you’re in Vietnam, remember? We need yo
u to move right away. This is going to be the best I can do on short notice,” said Mara. “The alternative will be a commercial laser pointer. So this is by far the better choice. Either way, I’ll have it available for you at the embassy.”

  “Where am I taking it?”

  “I told you.”

  “That sounds like a pretty wide area.”

  “It is. That’s why you’re going. I’ll give you approximate coordinates when you’re in the vicinity,” added Mara. “But you’re going to have to eyeball the place. We need you to find the actual target.”

  “Which is what?”

  “A missile in a hidden bunker. With a dirty warhead. Probably as many as a dozen of them.”

  And you want me to laze the motherfuckers?

  “You better leave now,” added Mara. “The Chinese are massing for a fresh attack. We think if the Vietnamese feel Hanoi is threatened, they’ll launch.”

  “Where’s the downside in that?” said Kerfer, softening his voice to a hoarse whisper. “We don’t like the Chinese.”

  “Ric, I’m sure you understand the implications. They’ll retaliate. And all Indochina will be a waste dump for the next thirty years.”

  “It already is,” said Kerfer, hitting the End button to kill the conversation.

  40

  Gulf of Tonkin, South China Sea

  As soon as it was clear the Chinese ships would not take any further action, Silas went to school on the engagement. Ever since McCampbell had spotted the two warships, he had imagined how they might act in battle. He had theorized how they would fight, how they would move. Now he had something tangible to work with.

  His crew had already drilled for a series of engagements over a range of distances. With Li and the department heads, Silas set up new drills, honing his own strategy in light of what he had seen. In theory, there was little to fault the Chinese frigate captain for. He and his crew had won the engagement handily. His tactics were by the book, taking advantage of his ship’s strengths against a much weaker opponent.