by Larry Bond
Pingxiang was the largest Chinese city in the area, and it was ringed by sophisticated air defenses.
“Have you seen what you want?” added Thieu.
“I guess.” Zeus hadn’t seen much.
Thieu kept the Albatros pitched about thirty degrees after they came out of the turn. The Vietnamese city Lang Son was ahead, on their right as they approached the border. The entire area around the city was well developed—until the war, the area had been popular with Chinese men looking for a very quick vacation from their wives. It was like a Vietnamese version of Las Vegas: what happened there, stayed there. A good portion of the businesses there were owned by Chinese businessmen—obviously the reason it hadn’t been attacked.
“Fly over 1A, will you?” asked Zeus, naming the major road south.
They angled eastward. There were patrols and emplacements all along the highway. They flew over the road at about six hundred feet, following the highway for about ten minutes until black puffs appeared in front of them. Thieu laid on the fuel, deepening the angle right as he took a very sharp turn and began to climb.
“They think we’re Chinese,” he said.
“Can we go back east?” said Zeus. Now that it was light, he wanted to see where the armored brigade General Tri commanded was.
“I will have to go north,” said Thieu. “It will take a few minutes.”
“North? Why?”
Thieu didn’t answer.
“Thieu?”
“Restricted. We cannot fly the area.”
Zeus reached to the pocket on the leg of his flight suit and took out the map, folding it open on his lap. What were they avoiding?
They’d flown south of the Yen Tu Mountains on the way out, and were now flying north of them. Was that the Luc Nam River below?
Zeus studied the map, trying to triangulate their position by what they had passed.
Why would the mountains be restricted? It wasn’t part of the defense zone around Hanoi.
“We are ten minutes from Tien Yen,” said Thieu.
“I wanted to be farther north, along Route 4B,” said Zeus, turning his attention back to the armored brigade.
“Ah.”
Thieu immediately began a turn. Within a minute or two, Zeus spotted a highway clogged with traffic—it was the armor brigade and part of the infantry division, rushing toward the battle at Tien Yen.
They turned and followed the highway back in the direction of Lang Son. There were two columns of vehicles along the road, then nothing.
Now would be the time to attack Lang Son. Blow through the crust of the defenses, then sweep down the roads parallel to IB.
Except the Chinese saw no reason to destroy a city they in effect already owned.
Of course, that also meant that they were not on their guard here. They thought so little of the Vietnamese.
Not without reason, Zeus reminded himself.
“Our fuel becomes low,” warned Thieu.
“I’ve seen enough,” said Zeus. “We can go back whenever you want.”
“Very good, Major.”
Thieu bent the nose of the plane upward. Zeus felt his blood rushing from his head. How did pilots learn to live with this?
As they leveled off, an alarm began to blare. The plane jerked hard left, then pointed toward the ground.
“Major, we are being tracked by Chinese fighter,” snapped Thieu. “Watch out!”
Before Zeus could reply, the warning tone went two octaves higher.
“Launch warning!” intoned an English voice.
The Chinese fighter had fired a pair of missiles at them.
~ * ~
21
Beijing
“We can crush the American destroyer offered Lo Gong, the defense minister. “If that is what you wish.”
Cho Lai put his hands together on the desk. Yet another move by the American President to thwart him.
This one he should have anticipated. But it was ingenious—the American ship would claim it was inspecting cargo. It was a matter of enforcing neutrality—a position China itself had encouraged. The fact that the ships were registered in the Philippines—what could the Chinese possibly object to?
Simple, yet ingenious. And of course, as soon as the Americans went aboard the ships, they would see they were filled with Chinese soldiers.
And so what? Besides a public relations coup, what would the Americans win, exactly?
Public support to interfere. That was Greene’s real aim.
If they stopped the ships, that would be disastrous. That would ruin the plan to take Hai Phong.
Sink the destroyer and be done with it. That was Cho Lai’s true wish. But it would invite open conflict with America. A shooting war. And if his generals and admirals were timid now, what would they do against the Americans?
It would be a fiasco.
Time. He needed time. Eventually, the Vietnamese would collapse. And eventually, his generals would gain the confidence they needed.
“The destroyer seems very far from the ships,” said Cho Lai.
“On the present course and speed, the ships will beat the destroyer to Hai Phong,” said the defense minister. “But that assumes the drive in the east will proceed on schedule.”
“You told me it is ahead of schedule,” said Cho Lai.
“It is.”
“Well, then, there is no problem,” said the premier, somewhat more relaxed. “The ships will beat the destroyer to the port, and that will be the end of it.”
“And if something delays them or the operation?”
Cho Lai ground his back teeth together. Now he was the one being forced to act as a coward. But he must take the long view. He must take the long view.
“Make sure that it doesn’t,” he said darkly. “Take Hai Phong. And make sure those ships return with rice.”
Lo Gong bowed his head.
~ * ~
22
In the air over northern Vietnam
Zeus lurched against his restraints as Thieu threw the Albatros toward the earth, trying desperately to lose the missiles on their tail. Buzzers and bleeps and voices warned of their impending doom. Zeus felt as if his stomach and lungs were being torn into several pieces inside his body. Gravity crunched against his chest, and his face mask felt as if it were edged with a steel knife, cutting deeply into his face.
The Albatros jerked right, heading straight for a huge rock outcropping. Then it spurt back left. Something popped behind Zeus. He thought they’d been hit. But as the plane hurtled ahead, he realized Thieu had launched decoys—”tinsel,” or chaff, the pilots called it, pieces of metal shards that confused radar.
The Albatros shot straight up, then turned upside down. Zeus caught a red flash in the corner of his eye—one of the missiles that had been chasing them, blowing up harmlessly a mile or more away, suck-ered by the decoy.
The other missile mysteriously vanished, just gave up as its radar lost contact. The cockpit went silent.
But not for long.
“Bandit, ten o’clock!” said Thieu. “Hang on, Major!”
If air combat had ever held any fascination for Zeus, it was lost in the sharp plunge the Albatros took as it knifed away from its attacker. Zeus saw a yellowish triangle moving through the valley at his left. It was the Chinese aircraft—a Jian-10B multirole aircraft, a plane Zeus knew only from the dry specs in the Red Dragon war game simulator he had used back in the States. The aircraft bore a striking resemblance to the Israeli Lavi, not exactly a coincidence or accident, as the Israelis had helped the Chinese develop the plane.
Having already fired its radar-guided missiles, the Chinese plane had to maneuver into position to use its heat-seeking missiles. In practical terms, this meant it had to get behind the Albatros, something that Thieu aimed to prevent, jinking back and forth sharply and staying low to the ground.
“Look for his wing mate!” said Thieu over the plane’s interphone. “He should have a wing mate. He is not on my radar.”
Zeus searched the sky for a second airplane. He couldn’t see any aircraft, not even the one that had attacked them.
The Albatros pushed hard to the right, seemingly bending itself in half. Zeus saw fire on his left as they bounced back around
Decoy flares, launched by Thieu.
There was a low rumble. The plane bucked up and down. The engine seemed to stutter behind him, as if choking. They slid down on their left wing. Then Zeus felt a shake from the center line of the aircraft—the cannon strapped to the forward underside began firing.
More flares filled the air, this time directly from the Chinese plane, its pilot apparently fearing the Albatros had a missile similar to its own.
And then it was gone.
The whine of the Albatros’s engine dropped a dozen decibels. The plane slowed and banked eastward. Zeus thought for a moment that they had been hit again, or had run out of fuel. But Thieu was only recognizing that the fight was over. The Chinese pilot had laid on his afterburner and was rocketing away. The Albatros lacked the speed to catch up, and was low on fuel besides.
“We gave him a good fight!” yelled Thieu.
“Oh yeah.”
“What do you think of that, Major? We have chased off a bigger plane. Do you think we damaged him?”
“I’m sure of it,” said Zeus.
~ * ~
23
Suburban Virginia
As an institution, the CIA had almost unlimited resources for finding someone.
As an individual, a CIA officer was surprisingly limited. He—or in this case, she—couldn’t simply type in a name into a computer bank and receive reams of information on the person, even if the information was stored in the agency’s computers. There were protocols and safeguards and procedures that had to be followed.
Assuming they were followed.
Within a few minutes of deciding that she really, really did want to find out, Mara knew exactly where Josh was headed. The problem was deciding what to do about it.
What she wanted to do was hop on a plane and fly out to the cousin’s farm. She could get there before he did; he was driving, which meant it would take probably another half day if not a full day.
But doing that would be messy. Doing that meant she had to tell him that she was in love with him.
And if she told him, then what happened? Obviously he wasn’t in love with her, because he wouldn’t have left the way he did.
He had kissed her. But it was just a kiss, a good-to-be-alive kiss, nothing more.
A nothing kiss, in the end.
She’d go there, and be rejected; he’d look down at the ground and stammer. What the hell was the sense of that?
How the hell could she have let herself fall in love with him? She was such a goddamn girl.
Be a woman, Mara.
Oh, but the woman in her wanted him as well. The woman in her— the woman who knew that she was no great beauty, but that she was, and could be, a good companion, a good lover, someone who would hold a man and make him whole—the woman pined for him as well.
In the end, she decided to call the marshal.
“Terrence, this is Mara Duncan,” she said when he answered the phone. “Where the hell are you guys?”
“Ms. Duncan.” The marshal’s Texas accent blossomed. “We’re in a car. He wanted to go back to his family place. I’m watchin’ him. You don’t have to worry.”
“I understand that. Let me talk to Josh.”
“He’s kinda sleeping right now. In the backseat.”
“Terrence, are you lying to me?”
“No,” he said. There was enough surprise in his voice for her to believe him.
“I’m supposed to be watching him,” she said. It was lame, but it was all she could manage.
“I have it covered. He hated that hearing,” added the marshal. “That guy Jablonski keeps calling. Josh doesn’t want to talk to him.”
“Tell him he didn’t do as badly as he thinks.” Mara wanted to keep talking; maybe Josh would wake up and take the phone. “He gets . . . Josh gets too down on himself. You have to tell him that things are going okay. Not great, but okay. He just loses perspective. We’ve been through a lot.”
“Hey, you want me to wake him up or something?”
She did. She definitely did.
“No,” said Mara. “It’s all right. You take care of him. Have him call me. I’m ... I have some things I have to do. But you have him call me. You have my number, right?”
“It’s right here on the phone.”
“Okay. Have him call me.”
“Got it.”
She hung up, wishing she hadn’t repeated her plea to have him call.
~ * ~
24
Hanoi
After they landed on the patched tarmac of Hanoi Airport, Zeus and Thieu examined the fighter. A good portion of the tail had been eaten away by ground fire and the exploding head of one of the missiles that had just missed them.
Thieu gestured at the damaged aircraft with a laugh, and shouted something at Zeus. A jet landing nearby made it impossible to hear, but Zeus guessed that it was some sort of boast along the lines of, Is that the best they can do?
“Do you think we shot the other plane down?” he added, his voice a little stronger as the other plane’s roar subsided.
Zeus had seen it fly off and knew they hadn’t come close to hitting it, let alone shooting it down. Yet somehow it didn’t feel right to let him down.
“It’s a very good chance,” Zeus told him.
Thieu patted him on the back.
~ * ~
An hour later; Zeus waited outside an office at the U.S. embassy to talk to General Perry. He was beyond exhausted. The injuries he’d received in his foray behind the lines, though minor, screamed at him. Even the spots on his chest where the restraints had pressed against him during the flight hurt.
He thought of Anna. She’d be on shift now. He wanted to take her in his arms and fall into her bed, sink past the war, sink past everything for a week, a month, forever.
God, she was beautiful. He could feel her lips on his.. . .
“You sleeping, Major?”
Zeus jumped to his feet. A woman in her early thirties was standing a few feet from his chair in the hallway, suppressing a smile.
Barely.
“I’m s-sorry,” stuttered Zeus. “I haven’t gotten much rest lately.”
“Join the club.”
If she was tired, it didn’t show in her face. She wore a long white sweater over black pants, very basic, yet flattering. Anna was prettier, but the woman in front of him was no slouch.
“I’m Juliet Greig,” she said, holding out her hand. “Acting Consul General. We haven’t met.”
“No. I’m sorry.”
“You’re here to see General Perry?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am.”
She smiled indulgently at the word ma’am.
“He’s in with the ambassador and would like you to address them both. They’re downstairs. If you’ll follow me.”
She led Zeus to the secure area of the embassy, where a suite of rooms were protected from electronic eavesdropping. Greig stopped in front of a thick door. She drew a magnetic card from her pocket and ran it through a reader, then pressed her thumb against a flat plate of glass beneath the card slot.
The lock snapped open. Greig and Zeus entered a small, narrow vestibule covered in what looked like cork. There was a second door, this one operated by a numerical keypad.
“Please don’t peek,” said Greig over her shoulder.
Zeus stepped back.
“It was a joke,” she said as the door unlocked. “Peeking wouldn’t help you—the combination changes every hour.”
She pushed open the door, then stood to the side as Zeus entered. He brushed against her arm ever so gently, catching a whiff of her perfume.
It made him think of Anna.
General Perry and Ambassador Behrens were on ph
ones at the far end of the table that dominated the room. Behind them were a pair of boxes that looked as if they were part of a very upscale home entertainment system. Blue lights flickered on both. A single laptop sat on the table.