by Larry Bond
He remembered the crates of missiles lying back at the shore, and considered going to grab them, but it would take considerable time to fish out even one, and he might be more useful in the meantime. At a minimum, he had to know what he was up against.
Zeus sprinted across the field, crossed a muddy lane, then circled around a small shed that bordered the road before finally reaching a point where he could look in the direction of the firefight. Four Chinese tanks, very closely packed together in a column, sat in front of the house. Smoke billowed from the lead tank. Black smoke and gray steam furled behind it, from at least one other Z99 that Zeus couldn’t see. The others were firing their machine guns in a steady hail, the sound a kind of steel-tap chorus.
The house was engulfed in flames and smoke.
Zeus laid down flat and began easing across the field on his belly, trying to get a better angle. After about ten yards of crawling through the mud he came to a water-filled ditch. Slipping into it, he found himself in water almost to his neck. Holding his rifle just above the surface of the water, he followed the ditch as it slanted behind the tanks’ position, moving away as it drew parallel to them. The depth of the ditch decreased as he went, until finally when he was even with the tanks he had to kneel to avoid being seen.
One of the four tanks was still firing. The empty building was on fire as well. If the Vietnamese were still alive, he couldn’t see them, or hear their guns.
More vehicles were moving in the distance, on his left, coming to join the fight.
The smartest thing to do at this point—aside from running away— was to backtrack, get some of the missiles, and get into position to either take this tank out or, more likely, ambush whatever was coming up as reinforcements. Zeus turned and looked back down the trench, calculating whether it might not be easier to back out here and make a wide circle back.
It would certainly be drier. Zeus looked back to make sure the Z99’s turret was buttoned up. When he didn’t see anyone on the machine gun, he climbed out of the ditch and crawled straight back, aiming for a row of foliage separating the field from another. He reached the bushes and turned around, got his bearings again, and started to run along the brush to angle back toward the water. He kept his eyes on the tank and the road some fifty or sixty yards away.
He’d gone no more than a few steps when the top of the tank popped open. Zeus dropped down immediately. By the time he looked up, the tank commander had grabbed the machine gun on the turret and begun firing toward the two burning houses.
If he was thinking logically, Zeus might have seen this as an opportunity to get away—the man was focused on a target one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction.
But Zeus wasn’t thinking logically. Instead, he saw a threat to the men he’d been with, and he reacted instinctively, jumping up through the brush and starting across the field. With a different, more familiar weapon, he might have fired from the brush itself—fifty yards was not a particularly difficult shot with an M-16 or even an AK-47 for that matter, so long as the shooter was used to the weight and pull of the gun, and the weapon itself was in good repair. But Zeus had little experience with an AK, and he’d already seen that the weapon could be unreliable except at very close range.
He stopped ten yards from the tank.
The Chinese tank commander hunkered over his machine gun. The man ceased firing and straightened, looking over the field to see where his enemy was hiding.
Now, thought Zeus. He dropped to his knee, almost too close to have an angle.
But he did have an angle, and he did have a shot, dead-on in the middle of the iron sights.
Zeus pressed the trigger.
Nothing happened.
He tried again. The gun had been fouled in the water.
He cleared, tried again. Nothing.
In the next second, the sound of a steam engine about to blow rose in his ears; the noise merged into a loud screech and boom. One of the Vietnamese had fired an AT-14 at the tank.
~ * ~
By the time Zeus heard the noise of the missile strike on the tank, he’d already pitched to the ground. The AT-14 hit the bottom of the turret on the left side of the tank, away from Zeus. The missile half-penetrated the armor as it exploded, rocking the top upward as if it were bottle opener popping a soda can that had been in the sun all day.
Steam exploded from the fissure. The lower half of the tank thumped down hard against the ground, shaking it in a rumble that reverberated through Zeus’s chest. The top of the tank peeled back, metal spitting off.
The tank commander was blasted into pieces. His right hand and forearm flew in a somersault across the air, landing a few inches from Zeus’s face. Zeus saw the fingers in front of him, extending from the palm as if beseeching God for mercy.
He jerked his head away, closing his eyes involuntarily.
Someone shouted behind him. He was caught off guard, still stunned from the vision of the hand.
They shouted again. He didn’t know what they were saying.
Was it Vietnamese, or Chinese?
Only when Zeus closed his hand did he realize he didn’t have his gun; he’d lost it when he threw himself down. It would have been useless anyway.
He started to spread his arms. Someone shouted, then kicked him down, face-first into the ground.
He rolled to his back, raising his arms to ward off another blow. A rifle was in his face.
A Chinese rifle. The soldier, uniform battered, helmet missing, yelled something in Chinese. Zeus shook his head, trying to show that he didn’t understand.
The man thrust the rifle barrel at Zeus. If he’d had a bayonet, he would have pierced him in the heart.
Zeus started to push himself backward, not sure what the man wanted him to do. The Chinese soldier screamed at him again. Blood trickled from the man’s temple. His face was bright red, as if he’d been burned, as if he was still burning. His eyes were wild and open; he could have been a caricature of hell.
“Séi!” the soldier yelled in Chinese.
He continued, telling Zeus that he was a dead man, that there was no hope or escape. He screamed the same word over and over, but the one word was an entire paragraph, a long demand.
“Séi!”
He wanted to see Zeus’s fear. He wanted him to run before he killed him. For it wasn’t Zeus he was going to shoot; it was his own terror and dread. The horror of battle had unnerved him.
Zeus had no way out. The Chinese soldier prodded Zeus with the barrel of the gun, smacking it against his chin.
If he tries it again, I can grab it, he thought.
But there was a second thought: Maybe he wants me to stand so he can take me prisoner.
He knew from the man’s expression that this couldn’t be true—the man was possessed, acting according to some logic only his unhinged mind understood. But even so, Zeus wanted the second idea to be true—it offered some hope.
The man yelled his word again. Losing hope that Zeus would do what he said, the soldier drew back his gun and aimed at the American.
“Séi!”
There was loud crack, a single shot.
To Zeus’s amazement, the Chinese soldier fell down to his right, so close to him that blood splattered across his face.
“Major Murphy,” croaked Chaū in his hoarse voice, running up and standing over him. He was huffing. “I am glad you are still alive.”
~ * ~
17
Mariveles, the Philippines
Ric Kerfer folded his arms in front of his chest and took a step backward. In all his time in the Navy, he had never seen so many goddamn weapons gathered in one place before. The dock was literally overrun with boxes and crates, and the warehouse behind it was already half-packed. All manner of Russian ordinance was stacked all over the pier. There were bullets and shells and seven different varieties of antitank weapons. There were AT-14 missiles and jellied petroleum for flamethrowers. There were five-hundred-pound bombs, and cases for SA-7s.
Most the munitions were older than he was, but the sheer amount of them was damn impressive.
Too impressive. He only had the single C-130 to get all this crap to Vietnam.
What to do?
The Filipinos he’d recruited as stevedores looked at him anxiously. It would have helped if someone told him what the damn priorities were. Good ol’ Braney hadn’t given him a clue.
He’d taken antitank weapons on the first trip. But you could never have too many.
Kerfer began walking down the row of crates. He’d elected to study Russian at one of his schools way back when, but the truth was, he didn’t remember crap from those days, and the Cyrillic letters might just as well have been inkblots.
Besides, they all claimed to be things they weren’t, like kitchen utensils. One of the Russians had given him a sheaf of papers with the key, but it was all confused.
Kerfer stopped at a crate he thought held more AT-14s. When he opened it, he saw Boltoks—missiles that were launched from tanks.
“Take these for the plane,” he told his stevedores. “Two boxes, no, four. We’ll keep the numbers even.”
A little bit of everything. That was the key. Definitely throw in some artillery shells. Army guys always like that.
And as soon as he had everything picked out, he’d call for another plane.
Or maybe twenty.
~ * ~
18
Inland from Halong Bay
Chaū had been separated from the others when the boats were hit, falling into the water and then swimming or floating—he wasn’t sure which— north. By the time he got himself together, the other firefight was already underway. He slipped down through the fields, arriving at the houses after they had been destroyed. There he’d found Sergeant Angkor hunkered over the last missile, waiting for the smoke to clear so he’d get a shot. They’d stalked the tank, then found Zeus by accident.
“There are more tanks coming,” Zeus told Chaū. “Hear them? Do you have more missiles?”
“That was the last,” said Chaū.
“There are more cases by the water,” said Zeus. “Let’s get them.”
He started to run, then looked back when he realized they weren’t following.
“What’s wrong, Chaū?”
“We have wounded.”
“We’ll come back for them,” said Zeus. “We’re not leaving them.”
Chaū and Angkor began talking, apparently debating what to do. Zeus didn’t wait. He started trotting again, then running, crossing the field and heading back toward the shore where he had seen the floating boxes. He was soaked, his uniform and face covered with mud and blood.
As Zeus approached the shoreline, he noticed a narrow lane running to the water, which he hadn’t seen before. It took him a little to the east, out of his way, but the path was high and mostly dry all the way out to the water. There it gave way to boulders and carefully positioned logs.
Three of the missile cases had washed in. Zeus grabbed them, sliding them onto the path. There were four other boxes nearby, all half-submerged in the water. He took a step toward the closest, and immediately felt his leg sinking. He pushed back and fell rump first onto the rocks.
The rocks extended in a kind of submerged ledge to the left. He stepped out on it tentatively, then worked his way sideways a few feet until he was almost parallel with one of the boxes. He reached out and dragged it up through the water, pulling it to land.
He was eyeing another when Chaū burst onto the shoreline through the weeds about thirty yards on his left. Zeus yelled to him, and waved, signaling that he should loop around and come up through the path.
“There’s a path,” he said. “Come out this way; it’s drier.”
Zeus went back to work, fetching out two more boxes by the time Chaū reached him.
“Where’s the sergeant?” Zeus asked.
“With the men. We must go back.”
They had five missiles, but no launchers, and no launcher boxes that he could see. Zeus went back out onto the small ledge, but couldn’t reach the other two boxes. He waded into the muck, then stepped forward onto one of the boxes. He pulled the other out and gave it to Chaū. The one beneath his feet was too embedded to retrieve.
“There aren’t any more launchers,” Zeus told the major. “We’re going to have to go back to the houses to get one.”
“Yes,” said Chaū, his voice still hoarse. “That’s where Angkor is.”
Zeus opened the boxes and, by stripping away some of the protective interior material, managed to get three in each box. That gave them only one box to carry apiece.
“It would be better to attack the tanks from the far side of the road,” said Zeus. “We can move back a lot easier. But we need a launcher.”
“Maybe we should not attack them,” said Chaū. “We are so outnumbered.”
Chaū’s point was utterly logical, yet it caught Zeus by surprise. The only options he was even considering involved the location of the attack.
“What happened to your phone?” Chaū asked.
“I lost it in the water. We’re not getting any help here anyway.” Zeus pointed in the direction of the smoldering ruins. “Where is Angkor and the launcher?”
“We were right in front of the smaller house,” said Chaū. “There was a ditch.”
“All right. We’ll come up from behind the houses.”
Zeus led the way back toward the smoldering ruins. The air smelled like burning wood and dead fish.
The tanks had stopped, somewhere up to the right, out of sight around a bend. It was impossible to tell from the sound exactly how far away they were, though Zeus assumed they were very close.
“We have to watch for scouts,” Zeus told Chaū. “They have infantry with them. Where’s Angkor?”
“He was to meet me here.”
“Angkor!” Zeus yelled. “Sergeant Angkor!”
He turned to Chaū.
“Can you call him?”
Chaū tried, but his voice was still far too hoarse.
“Give me the words,” said Zeus.
“Just say his name.”
Zeus tried again, but he got no answer.
“He must have moved to a safer spot when he heard the engines,” said Zeus.
Passing the hovels, Zeus saw two bodies lying a short distance from it. He veered in their direction, dropping to one knee to stop next to them. Both men were covered with blood, their eyes glazed.
He wanted a gun. Neither man had one.
Back on his feet, he started after Chaū. Something moved on the other side of the road, a short distance from one of the blown-out tanks. It looked like a gust of wind, knocking through the tall weeds. Zeus eyed it as he ran, mind and sight not entirely coordinating. Green materialized beneath the weeds as they popped up: Chinese soldiers, wearing the equivalent of gillie suits.
One of them started firing. Zeus leapt the rest of the distance into a ditch near the road, clutching his missile case to his chest like a gigantic football. He twisted on his shoulder as he went in, spinning and landing sideways.
Chaū and Angkor were already there, about ten yards away. Angkor fired a single burst, then another. The Chinese responded with a full fusillade as Zeus scrambled over.
“How many?” he asked.
Chaū shook his head. The ditch was wide but shallow, with a foot and a half of water at the bottom. It ran a few feet from the road, possibly to help drain it during heavy rains. Two wounded Vietnamese soldiers sat against the side to the left. One looked as if he had already died; the other didn’t look too far behind.
Besides a single AT-14 launcher, they had Angkor’s AK-47 and a box of ammo—nowhere near enough to hold off the soldiers across from them, let alone whatever vehicles were around the bend, waiting for these guys to tell them what was up.
Zeus leaned against the side of the ditch, trying to gauge the distance from where it ended to the nearest tank. The vehicle was perhaps ten yards from the shallow end.
“What?” asked Chaū. But Zeus had already started away, leaving his missiles. He scrambled until the ditch became too shallow, then crawled on his side, making sure he didn’t rise high enough to be seen. He glanced back, and gave Chaū a thumbs-up.