by Larry Bond
Christian groaned on his right, near the back of the bus.
“How the hell did you get back here?” Zeus said, crawling toward him. “Win, come on. We gotta get out of here. There’s a road.”
Christian raised his head and turned toward Zeus. He blinked his eyes.
It wasn’t Christian—it was the bus driver.
Shit, thought Zeus, backing away.
“Christian?”
“I’m here.” Christian rose from the stairwell near the driver’s seat. “What the hell?”
“Yeah, what the hell. That’s my feeling exactly.”
“Where are we?” muttered Christian.
“In deep shit, and headed deeper,” said Zeus. “Come on. We gotta get out before they find us.”
“Where?”
“There’s a road up there. We’ll find someplace to hide or something.”
Zeus waited by the open window as Christian clambered toward him.
“Here’s your gun,” said Christian, handing over the pistol. He’d found it on the way.
Zeus grabbed it. “You’re lucky I don’t shoot you with it.”
~ * ~
Zeus left the driver—there was nothing he could tell the authorities that they wouldn’t already know.
They crossed the highway, walking in the direction of lights about a mile farther north. Zeus had only the vaguest idea of where they were, and no real plan on what to do next. They had no equipment, no phones, no GPS, no secret decoder ring’s or Enterprise communicators that would beam them up to safety.
Beijing and the embassy was probably their best bet, but getting there would be next to impossible. They had their passports, but those would surely identify them as the criminals who had caused such havoc in Beihai. They had only American money, and not all that much of that. Neither Zeus nor Christian spoke Chinese, and from what he’d heard and had seen already, it was unlikely they’d find many people who spoke English, at least until they got to a large city.
“You think we can find a car or something at one of those houses?” asked Christian as they got closer to the lights.
“I dunno,” said Zeus.
“Can you hot-wire a car?”
Zeus could hot-wire a car, as a matter of fact, bypassing the key solenoid; it wasn’t that hard on most cars. At least not on the older cars that he had worked on and restored since he was thirteen. But could he do it to whatever little econobox rice-burner they found? And could he do it in the dark, without anyone seeing them?
Those were the more pertinent questions, and Zeus had no answer to them.
Stealing a car made sense, or would have, if there had been cars near any of the three houses and two farm buildings clustered around a fork in the road. The only vehicles they could find were bicycles, parked neatly against the side of the smallest of the three houses. Christian complained about his ankle, wondering if it would be up to pedaling.
“Suck it up,” said Zeus, whose entire body was covered with bruises and welts. He took one of the bikes and pushed it as quietly as possible from the house toward the road. Christian eventually followed.
They rode along the dirt road for a few miles, moving roughly north. After about fifteen minutes, Zeus spotted a long highway overpass ahead. The highway crossed over the local road, veering through the hills. He rode under and beyond it, vainly hoping there would be an access ramp. When he realized there wasn’t, he turned and went back to the stone and rubble embankment below the overpass. There he got off the bike and began hauling it up the hill toward the highway.
The bicycle was a heavy Chinese model, built to withstand the rugged roads of the Chinese countryside and small cities; it was not light. Christian groaned as he slipped sideways up the hill.
A truck whizzed by as Zeus reached the top. The highway was a two-lane national road, recently repaved. There was a wide shoulder next to the guardrail, and at the moment at least no other cars or trucks in sight. Zeus put his bike on the pavement and began pedaling.
“Are we allowed to ride on this?” said Christian, huffing as he caught up.
Zeus didn’t answer.
“Hey, are we going to get stopped?”
“Do I look like a traffic cop?” snapped Zeus.
“I’m just asking.”
Zeus concentrated on pedaling, pushing down his legs in long strokes. His kneecap was feeling odd. Not hurt, exactly; it was more like someone had taken it off and put it back on wrong.
After they had been riding for about ten minutes, they saw the glow of lights in the distance. Zeus lowered his head and began pedaling in earnest, pumping his legs and ignoring as much as possible the stitch developing in his side. He focused only on the pavement immediately in front of him. The world narrowed to the rush of wind around his head. Finally, the pain at his side was too much. He eased his pace and looked up, gazing into the distance at his goal.
It wasn’t a city as he had thought. It was a pulloff, a truck stop, similar to those in the States. A small, well-lit building sat on a slight rise to the right in front of a sea of cement. Brightly colored fuel pumps stood like buoys near the building.
Four semitrailers and six large, open, and canvas-covered trucks were idling at the side of the road.
Opportunity knocks, Zeus thought.
Zeus rode along the side of the road until just short of the rest stop. Gliding to a stop, he picked up the bike and dropped it over the rail into the scraggly grass on the other side of the shoulder. He glanced back and saw Christian, puffing with exertion, some thirty yards away.
There was no reason to wait. Half-crouching, half-trotting, Zeus went to the last truck in the line. He climbed up on the running board, and put his hand to the door. It was locked. And not only that: the driver was dozing behind the wheel.
Zeus dropped quickly to the ground, bumping into Christian and knocking him to the pavement.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Sssshhh.”
Zeus checked each of the trucks. The drivers were sleeping in all of them. Dejected, Zeus trotted went back to his bike.
“My leg is killing me,” said Christian, trailing him. “I think my ankle’s going to fall off.”
“You’ll live.”
“No, look at it.” He held his right leg up. Even in the dim light Zeus could tell the ankle was swollen. “I don’t know how much farther I can go.”
“Damn.”
“I know. It sucks.”
More than you’ll admit, Zeus thought, considering this mess is all your fault. But he kept his mouth shut; the last thing they needed now was another outburst of insanity.
“We’ll hitch a ride on one of the trucks,” said Zeus.
“What about carjacking one?”
Zeus considered the possibility.
“I don’t know,” said Zeus. “If we keep the driver with us, he’ll be a problem. If we kick him out, he’ll be sure to call the police.”
“Just shoot him.”
“For Christ’s sake.”
“Fuck him. This is a war.”
“We’re not at war, Win.”
“Like hell we’re not! We just blew up some of their landing ships. And a patrol boat.”
“He’s a civilian.”
“Crap. What do you want to do? We can’t just walk to Beijing. Why don’t we just turn ourselves in and let them shoot us as spies?”
“You’re the one that screwed this all up,” answered Zeus. He began to seethe. “You snapped. You’re an asshole.”
“Don’t call me an asshole.”
“You are. You’ve always been an asshole. At school. At the com—”
Zeus stopped midsentence, ducking back as Christian threw a haymaker in his direction. Failing to connect, Christian crumbled as his ankle gave way under the weight of his swing.
“Asshole,” said Zeus. “Proves my point.”
Christian began pounding the ground. Zeus, disgusted, shook his head. Then he realized his companion was crying.
<
br /> “I am an asshole,” Christian sobbed. “I screwed everything up. I’m a wimp. I’m no good. I’m useless.”
All true, thought Zeus. But this was one hell of a time for such a revelation.
He squeezed his fingers against the corner of his temple. They were coming apart—Christian obviously, but he was, too. He already had. The fatigue of the last few days, the stress of the mission, and then the danger behind the lines: they’d reached their breaking point.
God, was it this easy to crack?
Zeus had heard dozens of lectures about battle stress and fatigue and posttraumatic stress, but in every story, the flash point had come after real duress: guys being shelled for hours on end, or marching through jungles for days, getting bombed by their own planes.
What the hell had he been through? One mission.
Actually, several. And getting to Hainan Island had been an ordeal in and of itself. But still, it shouldn’t have been enough to break him.
It wasn’t. He was a goddamn, well-trained soldier, for Christ’s sake—a freakin’ major.; a MAY-JOR, not some skinny pimple-faced skateboarder tossed into his first firefight without a weapon or a radio.
Goddamn.
“Pull yourself together,” he said, addressing himself as much as Christian. “We gotta get our butts out of here.”
Christian didn’t answer. But his back stopped heaving, and he slowly rose from the ground.
“We’ll hide in one of the trucks, and go as far as he takes us,” Zeus said. “Come on.”
He walked back to the line of trucks. He decided it would be better to hide in one of the smaller vehicles, since they wouldn’t have to worry about opening the rear door. But the cargo area of the first truck was jammed tight with canisters that appeared from the colors to be acetylene and oxygen, and there was no room except on the top of them. The second was only half full: some furniture and boxes were secured in the front, leaving a good space on the bed. The truck was a flatbed with sides made of wooden staves, covered by a canvas tarp. Lying on his belly, Zeus could see off the sides as well as the rear, while from the distance he figured he would look like one of the furled rugs poking between the cab and the boxes.
“Say nothing,” he whispered to Christian as he slid into the back.
Christian, head hanging down, complied.
~ * ~
A week before, Zeus would have enjoyed seeing Win Christian crumble. The truth was, he hated the son of a bitch with a passion. He’d been an obnoxious, holier-than-thou type at West Point, and had gotten worse as time went on. Most recently, he had been Zeus’s main antagonist at the Red Dragon computerized war simulations, cocky and full of himself before the simulations, brimming with unjustified overconfidence. Cutting him down in the sims—Zeus had won every confrontation—had been the highlight of his posting.
But now Zeus only felt disgust at himself, not Christian. Because, if the truth be told, he suddenly felt just as weak. He should have stopped Christian from going nuts back at the airport. That was his responsibility, wasn’t it? He’d known Christian was getting edgy. He could make excuses, explanations—he was damned tired himself—but what did they matter? They were where they were because he hadn’t done anything to fix it.
Kill a civilian?
That was murder, pure and simple. Even if they were at war, it was wrong. Wrong. He had been trained, taught, better than that.
Much better. Zeus had served as a captain in Special Forces. He’d seen combat, real combat; not as much as a lot of other guys, including most of the men he’d led, but enough to have been tested and survived. And now he was falling apart without anyone even firing at him.
The truck rocked on its springs. Zeus turned back to Christian, ready to punch him for moving. Then he realized it was the driver in the cab. He’d woken up.
Zeus put up his finger and held it to his lips. Christian nodded.
They waited for a minute or two, lying silently on the bed of the truck. Finally, Zeus realized that the man had gone back to sleep. He curled back and put his face close to Christian’s ear.
“We have to just be patient,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“We’ll get out of this.”
One of the tractor-trailers ahead of them rumbled to life. The motor was loud, and the vibrations from the tailpipe so strong that the bottom of their truck rattled.
Zeus squirreled himself around, trying to make himself more comfortable. He also took the gun from his belt, keeping it ready in his hand.
He didn’t want to kill civilians. But if it came down to it, if it was him or them, what would he do?
He’d always thought kill-or-be-killed was an easy question. But now he wasn’t sure. Was survival more important, or surviving as a moral man?
If you believed in eternity, if you believed in God and heaven, then surely being a moral man was more important.
But hell, he was Catholic. He could always confess his sins.
The irreverence struck him as funny, and it was all he could do to keep himself from laughing.
There was more shifting in the cab. The truck started. Its muffler was shot, and the whole vehicle vibrated with the engine’s loud, uneven rumble.
The truck backed up slightly, then eased out onto the highway.
Zeus tried to quiet his mind. The jumbled emotions were due mostly to fatigue. He could get out of this—he would get out of this. All he had to do was keep his head.
They had driven for about twenty minutes when the truck began to slow down, then pulled off to the side. Zeus pushed himself tight against the boxes, holding his breath. He felt the gun in his hand.
Zeus caught a glimpse of the driver as he got out and went around the back of the truck, continuing into the nearby field. He was taking a leak.
Now’s our chance.
Zeus slipped quietly along the truck bed, and climbed down. Glancing back, he saw Christian’s eyes open, watching him. He motioned with his hands: Stay there. Quiet. Then he ran around to the front of the truck.
Zeus still had the gun in his right hand. He took it in his left, then quietly opened the driver’s side door. But as he started to climb up into the cab, he saw that the keys weren’t in the ignition.
Cursing to himself, he slipped down and gently closed the cab door. He took a deep breath, then another.
Come on, he told himself. Get to it.
Zeus slipped along the front of the truck, hiding behind the hood. He couldn’t see the driver. It made more sense to wait for him to come back, but Zeus’s adrenaline was rising. The urge to go and grab him was irresistible. He started to rise—and was startled to see the driver just turning the corner of the truck, not three feet away.
Zeus threw himself forward, striking the man awkwardly with his left fist. Had the driver been less surprised than Zeus, or perhaps a larger man, he would have been able to easily parry the blow; it was delivered off-balance, and Zeus was wide open for an easy counterpunch. But the last thing the man expected was to be confronted by a thief, and his eyes widened as Zeus’s blow landed. Zeus swung the pistol toward his head, catching him at the side of the temple. The man collapsed on the pavement, his eyes shut.
Zeus dropped to his knees, anxious. The man was still breathing, but he was unconscious.
The keys were on a long chain at his belt. Zeus unhooked them, then dragged the man off the side of the road.
“What are you going to do with him?” Christian asked, limping around from the back.
“Just get in the truck,” said Zeus.
“You gonna kill him?”
“Get in the truck.”
Christian blinked, then did as he was told.
Zeus dragged the man about twenty yards from the road. He bent down, making sure one last time that he was still breathing, then ran back to the cab.
~ * ~
There was a large map among the papers in the cab’s glove compartment. Between the map and the large compass on the dashboard, they figured
out that they were headed toward National Road 325, headed for Qinzhou.
The map could get them all the way to Beijing, but they’d need to stop for fuel several times; they had barely a half a tank. Zeus unfolded the map and held it over the steering wheel, thinking how he might get fuel without only American money. Fifty dollars might very well cover a full tank—he had no idea what the price would be, let alone whether a station out here would even accept American money.