by Larry Bond
A solid artillery barrage at that point might have cut the Chinese attack off completely, stranding the tanks and resealing the bottleneck. But there were only two howitzers, and neither had more than a handful of shells. As soon as these ran out, the Chinese attack regained strength. The Vietnamese were soon outgunned by the tanks, and once more began falling back into the jungle.
With the Chinese starting to gain momentum, the command post itself came under heavy fire. Zeus was knocked off his feet by a succession of rounds exploding nearby.
The Type 96s raised their guns and began firing into the trees, cutting them down so that the Vietnamese had no more cover. Dai tried rallying his men, but his force was overwhelmed. They were out of Javelins and the rest of their antitank weapons. The battlefield was littered with Chinese machinery, but other assets kept squeezing into the fight to replace them.
“You’re going to have to retreat!” Zeus yelled, finding Dai shouting instructions into a radio handset. “Move down to the ridge above Malipo. You may be able to string the attack out.”
A loud whistle drowned out Colonel Dai’s answer. Zeus started to cover his head.
In the next moment he couldn’t hear and his upper body felt numb. A shell from one of the tanks had exploded nearby in the trees. The shock threw everyone down and splintered wood in every direction.
One of the Vietnamese staff officers had fallen on top of Zeus. Crawling backward, Zeus freed himself. He reached for the man, then saw that his chest was covered with blood. A large piece of wood had spiked into the man’s face, striking through his right eye and impaling itself as if it were a spear.
Zeus looked away.
A group of Chinese were rushing toward the lip of the strip mine, guns up but not firing. Zeus scooped up what he thought was his rifle and pointed it in their direction. Only when he went to fire did he realize he’d grabbed an AK-47. He fumbled with it, then fired, quickly shooting through the magazine.
Another tank round passed overhead. Zeus moved through the wrecked foliage and charred bushes on his left and found his gun and pack. He picked up the rifle and hooked his arm into the backpack loop.
Dai was hunched over nearby. Zeus dropped to a knee next to him, and gingerly touched him—he wasn’t sure if he was alive or how badly he had been hit.
The Vietnamese colonel shook his head and said something in Vietnamese.
“You have to fall back,” Zeus told him. “You’re about to get overrun.”
“Yes,” repeated Dai, though he didn’t move.
Zeus pulled him to his feet. The colonel had been hit by something; his eyes were dazed, as if he might have a concussion.
“Back to the road,” Zeus told him. He hooked his shoulder under Dai’s arm. A Vietnamese soldier came over and took Dai’s other side, and together they started away.
What had been thick jungle just a few minutes before had been laid low by several tank blasts. The trees were scattered like the pins in a bowling alley; they had to pick their way through. There was plenty of light from the flares, at least. Zeus could see not only to the trail but to a road about fifty yards farther down the hill.
Two vehicles were parked there; as Zeus and the others came down, a pair of soldiers ran up and took the colonel.
“Fall back to the ridge over the highway,” Zeus told them, but he had no idea if they understood.
Turning to go back up the hill, he heard fresh automatic-rifle fire above, then a machine gun. If he dropped his pack, it would be much easier to climb the hill, but the gear was too valuable. He swung his rifle up and ran, feet digging into the soft, peat-mossy ground.
Tracers flew violently overhead. Zeus angled to his right, head low. Suddenly the foliage in front of him gave way and he could see the open area of the strip mine before him. Chinese troops were spread out across the plain. Two APCs and a tank were leading them.
One of the tanks that had breached the Vietnamese line on the west had been disabled, leaving only two tanks to fight there. They were moving slowly along the rim of the mine, stopping every few feet. The tops were open; their commanders were deluging the area with machine-gun bullets. More flares had been fired overhead, and the night was now white with light
A body loomed in front of him. Zeus looked toward the man’s head. He was wearing a helmet with an ear flap.
Chinese.
He fired, catching the man in the chest. The soldier was wearing armor but they were so close that the bullets pushed him down easily, and may in fact have penetrated the plate they hit. Zeus fired again as the man fell, this time at his head.
This wasn’t the place to take chances.
Dropping to his knee, Zeus looked down the slope, but didn’t see anyone else coming up. An APC moved to the edge of the clearing. The vehicle was a sleek Type 85, a tracked wedge of steel topped by a turret with twin 14.5 mm heavy machine guns. Its guns weren’t firing, and there were no infantrymen on the ground behind the vehicle.
As Zeus watched, an RPG round flew from the jungle and struck the side of the Type 85. The round struck the armor and bounced away, unexploded. A second round hit the tracked assembly and the vehicle stopped, though it wasn’t clear if it had been damaged. The turret swiveled, and the guns began firing in the direction of the RPG launch.
Zeus slid back between the trees, hunkering against a trunk as the Chinese machine gun blistered the foliage. As he waited for the bullets to subside, he saw someone moving to his right. Thinking it was another Chinese soldier, Zeus took aim. Just before he pressed the trigger he realized the man was Vietnamese.
The soldier was carrying an RPG. The man glanced in Zeus’s direction, then pirouetted down to the ground, hit by a bullet from the side.
Zeus threw himself down as a fresh volley of lead flew through the air. He crawled on his belly to the soldier. As he got close, he saw two helmets bobbing up the hill. He pulled his rifle back and, as the faces and chests of the Chinese infantrymen appeared, fired into their faces. Both men fell.
He waited for others to appear.
Tufts of smoke drifted across the battlefield. Light and dark battled with each other, exchanging positions, casting the plain and then the rim in darkness, illuminating the Vietnamese and then the Chinese, then neither.
Finally confident that no one was following the two men he’d shot, Zeus crawled over to the Vietnamese soldier who’d been carrying the RPG. Thick bullets from a heavy machine gun had practically severed the man’s head; it hung off his body at an angle.
Zeus reached for the grenade launcher. He unhooked it gingerly, afraid that if he moved the man too harshly his head would roll off. The weapon had a grenade loaded.
Launcher in hand, Zeus moved back to the edge of the trees. The APC had rolled up to the edge of the remaining woods and was starting to angle down toward the trucks where Zeus had left Dai. Zeus moved in that direction, half-crouched, his heart pounding. He climbed up a rise, moving above the Chinese vehicle.
The Type 85’s armor was 24 mm thick; in theory it could be pierced by an RPG, assuming the shell was fired from relatively close range and hit at a good angle. But Zeus had already seen that theory and practice were two different things.
I have to get close, he told himself.
The turret swiveled. Zeus threw himself down, expecting a hail of bullets, but none came. The vehicle continued to move, edging down the side of the hill on a diagonal path that took it to Zeus’s left.
As Zeus raised his head, the war seemed to shift away from him. Only he and the APC existed. The bullets and heavy shells that had been exploding only a few seconds before mysteriously disappeared.
The back quarter of the Type 85 moved below him, twenty-five yards away.
Zeus felt his throat constrict. He ignored it, rising with the launcher on his shoulder. His rifle slid on its sling down to his elbow just as he was about to fire. Zeus caught himself, stopped his finger—had he fired at that moment, the grenade would have sailed high.
Ca
lm and fire. Calm and fire.
The APC continued to move. He had a point-blank shot at the rear compartment just behind the turret, not thirty yards away.
He pulled the trigger.
The rocket struck the hull.
For a split second, Zeus thought the grenade had merely flattened itself against the metal body of the vehicle. Nothing seemed to happen. The vehicle continued to move. Then Zeus felt a low thud, and jerked his arm up to protect himself from the blast shock.
Smoke poured from the vehicle as it continued down the slope, derelict, its crew dead.
Zeus found himself on his knees, unsure exactly how he had gotten there. He dropped the now empty launcher. He pulled his rifle up so he could use it. A squad of Chinese soldiers were charging forward, trying to catch up with the APC. He fired at them. They started falling, caught by surprise.
Out of bullets, Zeus slapped a new magazine into the gun. As he did, he felt a heavy rumble under his knee.
One of the tanks was moving along the ridge in his direction. He started to slide down the hill, but stopped as a fusillade of bullets came up from that direction—some of the Chinese soldiers he’d been firing at had slipped down the hill. He looked right, thinking he would run that way.
He couldn’t. An APC was moving in his direction across the field, twin guns winking in his direction.
He was trapped.
Zeus closed his eyes for a moment, gathering himself. He had two more boxes of bullets, then he’d be down to his pistol.
He should trash the gear.
He’d do it with the pistol.
He thought of Anna, then pushed her away—too seductive, too much distraction.
He opened his eyes and started calculating his attack. He would go down the hill, attack the men. He might get one of their weapons.
Hunched against a tree, Zeus did his best to control his breathing, trying to calculate when it was best to charge. The Chinese soldiers had stopped firing in his direction; possibly they thought he was dead.
He couldn’t see exactly where they were. He rose slowly behind the tree, then stepped to his left, wedging his foot into the slope. He moved down left.
A dark figure passed in front of him, ten yards away, maybe less. He had a Chinese helmet.
Zeus leveled his gun and fired. Almost immediately, someone started returning fire on his right. He saw a muzzle flash and fired in that direction.
Conserve your bullets.
A shell whizzed overhead. The ground rumbled. The APC was firing again in his direction.
He saw a muzzle flash down the hill from him. He brought his gun up and fired directly into it.
Zeus started to move to his left. He took one step, then tripped and fell, tumbling against a tree trunk. Three, four Chinese ran at him from the side, shouting and firing their guns. But the fall had left him below their aim. They ran past, above him, screaming and yelling.
Up! Up!
He pushed himself around, trying to fire at the backs of the Chinese, but it was too late; they were lost in the trees and shadows. The ground shook fiercely. Zeus turned back around and saw a tank up on the narrow road, pushing aside the brush. It was a Chinese Type 85, slightly older than the others but just as deadly.
The long barrel of its gun poked through the foliage. It blew back—there was a concussion, a hard thud as the gun fired.
This is what death looks like, Zeus thought.
In the next moment, the tank turned white. The earth seemed to implode around it, and Zeus’s nose was filled with sulfur and metal oxide.
The tank had been hit by a Javelin fired by the last third of Dai’s battalion. The last claw of the trap had finally been sprung.
42
Ohio
American foods intrigued Jing Yo. There was a seemingly endless supply and variety.
On his first day in town, Jing Yo ate at a McDonald’s. He was of course familiar with the worldwide franchise, though he had not eaten the food more than once in China, and never in America. Used to meals with a lot more vegetables and centered around rice, he was both intrigued and slightly revolted. The French fries were good; the meat less so.
The next day he decided to try someplace different. He felt a little more comfortable talking now; his accent was thick but not unintelligible, and while his vocabulary was still lacking, pointing to items on a menu was easy. There was a small restaurant diagonally across from the motel where he’d gotten a room. The clerk had pointed it out when he registered, and so he decided to try it.
There were plenty of empty tables. He glanced around, then walked to the side of the room and sat down.
“Didn’t ya read the sign?” asked a middle-aged woman walking toward him from the back. She was dressed in a white uniform, and he assumed she was a waitress. “Wait to be seated?”
Jing Yo, surprised by her scolding tone and not really sure what she meant, shook his head.
“Oh, don’t worry, honey, I’m only pulling your leg.” The woman laughed. “You can sit anywhere you want. Coffee?”
“Tea?” asked Jing Yo.
“Lipton’s OK? It’s all we got.”
Jing Yo nodded. Since it was all they had, why even ask? he wondered.
He watched the woman go to the other two tables where there were customers. She talked to each one, bantering.
“Here’s the menu, hon,” she told him when she returned, menu and cup in one hand and a pot of water in the other. Under her arm she had a newspaper, which she flipped out as soon as she had put the menu down. “And the paper. Do you like milk or lemon?”
“No milk, no lemon,” said Jing Yo, not entirely sure he understood.
“Sugar’s on the table. You’re Chinese?”
“Chinese-American,” said Jing Yo.
“Visitor?”
“I have business in the area,” said Jing Yo.
“What sort of business?”
Jing Yo had worked out a cover story, but the woman’s inquisitiveness bothered him.
“I am looking for property for a corporation in New York,” he told her. “Farm.”
“Mmmm, won’t find any farms around here.” She looked at him seriously for a second, then began laughing. “Well, you came to the right place, hon.”
She put her hand on his shoulder and paused, waiting for something.
“Tom is my name,” he told her, guessing at what she wanted. It was one of the names on the credit cards.
“And I’m Muriel. Check the menu and I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jing Yo examined the plastic-coated card. There were small pictures next to most of the dishes. One had pancakes; he ordered them when she returned.
He started scanning the newspaper. There was a story on the front page about Congress wanting to investigate the president. His vocabulary wasn’t rich enough to make a lot of sense of the article, but it seemed critical of President Greene’s support of Vietnam. Curious, Jing Yo struggled to read it, but couldn’t get much out of the first few paragraphs and finally gave up.
The other stories seemed a bit simpler. One was about a fire, another about a youth basketball team. He put the paper aside when his food came and began to eat.
The restaurant began filling up. Another waitress joined Muriel. They seemed to know most of the customers and joked with them all.
The place was not that unlike some of the provincial towns in China where he had been stationed. The people were a little more friendly toward strangers, perhaps—Muriel came back twice to check on his tea and see if he needed more water or a new teabag. But it seemed remarkably similar.
A pair of policemen came into the restaurant as Jing Yo finished his pancakes. He eyed them curiously as they took seats at a table near the counter area. They seemed little different than the police officers he’d observed in China—undisciplined, too friendly with the populace.
The waitress came over and handed him the check. “You pay at the register,” she said, gesturing to the front. “How was
breakfast?”
“Breakfast was very good.”
“Glad you liked it. Try us for lunch and dinner.”
Her expression was sincere. Jing Yo was surprised. He had heard and always believed that Americans did not like Chinese people. Maybe it was just part of her job to pretend.
“Thank you,” he said.
Jing Yo got up and went over to the register. As he waited, one of the policemen glanced at him, then got up. He braced himself for a confrontation.
He was unarmed, but his skills as a fighter would easily overmatch the man. The only question would be what to do next. His rental car was in the lot behind the motel; it would take him quite a while to reach it.
Escape!
“Excuse me,” said the officer.
Jing Yo turned to him.
“The newspaper on the table,” said the policeman. “That yours?”
Jing Yo looked over. “Uh…”
“Mind if I have a look?”
“You want the paper?”
“Yeah, if you’re leaving it. Otherwise—”
“No, no, take it. Please. My gift.”
“Thank you.” The officer gave him a smile and went over to the table.
Interesting place, America, thought Jing Yo as he left the restaurant.
43
North of Malipo, China
The late arrival of the last group of the Vietnamese attackers caught the Chinese off-guard. The Vietnamese first bottlenecked the armor already in the strip mine by disabling a tank near the entrance. The infantrymen then went to work on the force in the open area, disabling as many as possible with the rest of their missiles and picking off their crews and infantry support.
Two T-54 tanks, which would have been completely outclassed by the Chinese tanks, bypassed the strip mine and ran into a column of Chinese armored personnel carriers rushing to join the fight. These were easy targets for the Vietnamese, and the two T-54s went to town, destroying six of them before the others began to retreat.
The heavier Chinese main battle tanks came up to return fire, destroying one of the T-54s. But it was too late to turn the battle; with the mechanized infantry now cut off from the tanks in the strip mine, the Chinese forces began to panic. Harassed by Vietnamese RPGs and machine guns, they tried to rally together on the ridge. But they were thrown into further chaos when the Chinese up the road began peppering the area with tank shells.