by David Poyer
Desperately thirsty. Dizzy. Out of injectors now. But they had to keep moving. As soon as the shelling lifted he grabbed the Papuan and a couple others, pulled them to their feet, shoved them forward. Dismasked troops lay convulsing, unpupiled eyes staring up sightlessly as they died. Hector ignored them. He couldn’t help. The others staggered out of the depression after him, their harsh agonized breathing snoring through the masks.
A brick building lay ahead. It was on fire. Smoke blew across a freshly mowed lawn. No … there was a soccer net. Not a lawn. A playing field.
The grass was soft under their boots, powdered with a light coating of gray dust. His breath rasped in his mask, buzzed in his ears. Perspiration fogged his lenses. The cicada chirruped, chirruped.
A body, torn and bleeding. Indo uniform. A pistol in the outstretched hand. The captain. Hector stepped over him and trudged on toward the building. Keeping the sun on his right. It shone ruddy and baleful through the drifting smoke. No one was firing at them. Press on. To the road. Hold the road. No entrenching tools, he hadn’t seen one since the beach, so they’d have to make do with rifle butts and hands. He glanced back, alert for more of the spidery stalkers, but the smoke eddied past blank and ashen in opaque curtains. Tracers arched above it like blazing softballs. The stalkers were loose back there.
The Papuan buckled like a collapsing tower. He lay with chest heaving. Hector grabbed him by the web gear and pulled him to his feet again. Weepy brown eyes, terrified behind plastic. The other Indos stared at Hector. They were clumping up again. Making targets. He motioned spread out with an angry abrupt gesture.
They reached the red-brick building and took cover, crouching under the windows. Smoke blew across the field and blotted out the goals. Hector liked brick. Brick would stop a bullet. His mouth was stuffed with steel wool. Each time he tried to breathe powerful fists twisted his chest. The cicadas buzzed, panicked, dying. He didn’t want to leave cover. But they had to press on. He let them rest for a couple minutes, then crept along the wall.
A bus was parked in front of the building. A bright orange bus with yellow and black piping. The engine was running but no one was around. No. A woman was slumped in the driver’s seat. Motionless. Unmarked.
Hector followed his rifle’s muzzle around the front fender. The grass between the bus and the school was … carpeted. For a moment he couldn’t see anything but a patchwork quilt. A parti-colored rug unrolled on the gray grass.
Then he made out faces.
They were very small. He stared confused before his slowed brain assembled the colors into what they really were.
The children lay in windrows, ragged lines, as if they’d been in queues when they fell. Some were holding hands. All black-haired. Wearing colorful rain slickers. The boys were in blue. The girls in pink. By then he was walking in among them. The bodies crunched and yielded under his boots. He stepped on a pastic pencil box with a colorful cartoon. They all had the same pencil boxes. The Papuan was whimpering under his mask, making mewling sounds. The cicadas chirruped, chirruped.
Meat.
Robots.
No. Children.
What had killed them? Gas, or the violet shells?
He didn’t know. Didn’t care.
Do you hate the Chinese? The twisted, raving face of his boot camp DI. Brady. Do you hate the Chinese, Private Ramos?
I hate the fucking Chinese, sir.
I will stick my bayonet into them and blow their guts over my boots.
Some of the kids had been carrying plastic water bottles. Hector bent to scoop one up. The bottle sloshed half full. Other than raging thirst, he didn’t feel anything now. Just an immense blankness. A void. The total absence of fear. Of terror. Even of rage. He pushed up the mask and sucked at the red plastic bottle.
He was a CHAD now. Autonomous. A mechanism. Hollow. Filled with swirling smoke. Assembled of muscle and bone and blood that very soon now would stop operating. The only meaning lay in the phase line. Bullet. Phase Line Bullet. Ahead. Reach it.
The cicadas chirruped, chirruped. He resealed his mask and threw the empty bottle away. The world darkened, tilting through dirty lenses. His lungs warped in his chest. He drooled and gagged and sweated. His bowels and bladder loosened and released.
He reeled forward over the carpeted dead, through the blowing smoke, gaze nailed to the axis of advance.
They passed the still idling bus and left the school behind. Trotting through streets now. Hector threw flankers out. Small houses. Tile roofs. All deserted. Corpses sprawled near the doors. One lay tangled in a toppled bicycle. Some of the houses were on fire. Others looked undamaged, pristine. Modest homes with little neatly kept gardens.
He led his improvised squad in slow staggering dashes from house to house, scanning behind and around them for the machines, for hidden snipers, machine guns. But aside from the spiders there was no resistance. Just smoke. And gas. As if the enemy had pulled back. Were refusing combat.
More bodies. These white-haired, spindly-legged, tumbled in a hedge, savagely torn, as if minced by huge blades while trying to run. Battle rumbled all around the horizon, hidden from the marines by a shifting curtain of smoke. Violet flashes deep in the murk.
Hector feels nothing. His chest is cast of solid pain. His eyes stream. He spits drool from a scorched mouth. Shapes shift within the smoke, striding about. They cast long mucus-yellow shadows from the bloody sun. A loose formation of silvery disks whirrs over a hundred feet up. He looks for cover, but they hum on inland, ignoring them. Far above, contrails scar the sky.
He stumbles across a lifeless land. Desolate, numb, hollow, still gripping his rifle, coughing and sobbing into his mask. And the cicadas chirrup, on and on, without pause.
20
The Pentagon
HER office was on the E Ring, considered the most prestigious. But she was on an upper floor, and the windows faced inward. All she could see was a wall, the offices of the next ring in, and the asphalted road between.
But since the war had started, Blair hadn’t had much time to enjoy views anyway.
She was wrapping a meeting with her staff, and getting the ominous feeling Plans and Policy was being outrun by events. A television in her outer office was on 24/7. The screen on her desk linked direct to the “War Room”—formally, the Alert Center for Intelligence Fusion in the National Operations and Intelligence Watch Officer Network. Every half hour, the watch officer came on for an update. Even on a fast day, she was at most only fifteen minutes behind the White House Situation Room.
“Overall, it reminds me of the defeat of the Qing in the Opium Wars,” one of her staffers was saying.
“The Opium Wars,” she said flatly.
He nodded. “From 1839 on. Britain and France attacked in south China to protect their sales of opium. Which Peking was trying to stop. Ultimately, they invaded. China was forced to accede to unequal treaties, and cede land to the colonial powers.”
“And this was a good idea?” she said. Humiliation often seemed like justice to the victors, but seemed rarely to lead to lasting peace. Reconstruction and Versailles, as examples. “All right, thanks for the update. Next issue—oculars?”
Another staffer unlimbered her tablet. “Ma’am. The enemy employed a vehicle-mounted pulsed ocular interruption system in Vietnam and Taiwan. The Army reports over four thousand troops blinded in Taiwan. We don’t have Vietnamese figures. A 50-kilowatt-class unit was captured south of Hanoi and shipped to ARL. R&E contracted with General Atomics, Electromagnetic Systems Group, to reverse-engineer it into a squad-based system. It’s completed tests and gone to contract award.”
Four thousand blinded … she blinked, and forced her mind back to specifics. “The contract? And how soon can we field these systems?”
“Three hundred million with options up to nine hundred million, for fifty systems initial buy. First delivery in two months.”
Two and a quarter million each, to blind enemy soldiers. She massaged her forehead. �
��Don’t we issue some kind of goggles, something to protect the troops?”
The staffer said the Marines had fielded a cumbersome system adapted from a German welding mask, but the British had come up with a better one, polycarbonates coated with a dye that absorbed light in certain wavelengths. “They can be tuned for the precise frequencies the enemy system uses. It’s effective, but at night it’s like wearing sunglasses. And that’s when the Chinese have been beaming our troops.”
“We need something better, then. Ping DARPA, see if it’s on their agenda. Anything else?”
They shook their heads. She nodded and thanked them. Her people flipped binders closed, slid tablets into briefcases. She waited until her door closed. Then shut her eyes and sank back into the padded chair with a sigh. Four thousand blinded … over fifty thousand Allied casualties taking back Taiwan, with no count at all yet on civilian deaths and woundings. Thirty thousand dead and wounded so far for the invasion of Hainan. A national debt so high it was a state secret.
The cost of war. And what had this one started over? Hardly anyone remembered now. A terror attack in Mumbai. Or had it been the shootdowns of satellites? Then Zhang’s invasion of Taiwan. Like a greased slide downhill, rather than the single blazing jolt of Sumter or Pearl Harbor or 9/11. Some said it had been inevitable, the predestined conflict of a rising power with a legacy one. A clash as old as Athenians versus Spartans, as described by Thucydides.
But just now, there might be a lull. A hiatus as the scales vibrated, so delicately balanced a breath could disturb them.
“Dr. Titus? Call for you. From Europe.”
Probably the Swedish defense ministry. They were worried about Russia again. Indications seemed to foreshadow some kind of military move. From time to time someone would call her, either from their Defense Commission or Parliament, and try to find out what the Americian reaction would be if the Russians came across the border. Or, more generally, asking about “coordinating defense plans,” which amounted to the same thing. Each time she told them that if they wanted joint planning, they’d have to bite the bullet and join NATO. The EU Defense Community was great, but if they wanted security, NATO was where they wanted to be. Article Five would protect them. The EU might not.
What she left unsaid were her own doubts about how much the US could help in Europe, given that ninety percent of American forces were already engaged or on-call in theater in case the Hainan invasion turned into a disaster.
She picked up the phone. “Blair Titus.”
“Blair. Liz McManus here.”
She glanced at her door. Still closed, but she turned her chair away from it and the window anyway. “Um, Liz. Hello. What time is it in Dublin?”
“I’m actually in Tangier at the moment, but I wanted to let you know, your friends from Zurich want to talk again.”
“Friends from Zurich” would be the Chinese. She glanced at the door again. “Um, I don’t know how we could—”
“They’re willing to undertake more substantive discussions. Would your Dr. Petrarka be available to talk?”
She hesitated, confused. There was no “Dr. Petrarka.” Then she realized who they meant.
General Ricardo Petrarca Vincenzo.
“I think, um, Dr. Petrarka would be open to … a conversation,” she said cautiously. “When would they like to call?”
“As soon as possible.”
“It will take a little time to set up.” She had Vincenzo on her cell, but maybe it wouldn’t be smart to give it out over the phone. “Can I have a number?”
McManus supplied one, but said again that they wanted a swift response. Blair said she couldn’t promise anything but would try. They chatted for fifteen more seconds, then McManus rang off.
Blair stared down at the phone, then hung up slowly. She looked at her cell again. Then thumbed up the contact for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
* * *
VINCENZO was in the J-3 spaces. Yes, he could make himself available to take an important call. She wondered, as she walked the corridors toward the NMCC, why the Chinese had decided to approach via the US military. But the question answered itself. The clique trying to negotiate were military themselves. This was a generals’ revolt. Though the deputy minister for foreign affairs seemed to be involved too.
Reaching out must take brass balls, as Dan would have said. Zhang had ordered generals shot for much less.
Regardless, this was a huge development. She just had to make sure it didn’t get derailed somehow.
Vincenzo was in short-sleeved greens. When he threw a beefy arm over Blair’s shoulders his breath smelled of Tic-Tacs. “A huddle. Okay, what’s going on?”
As she explained in terse sentences his eyes narrowed. “You’ve been doing this offstage? Who else knows? SecDef? CIA?”
“The national security advisor’s in the picture. State knows a little. No one else.”
“Not SecDef?”
“Not that I know of. It was important to—”
“I get it. The fewer ears, the fewer leaks.” He drew back and regarded her quizzically. “But it could’ve been risky for you. Could still be, actually.”
“I had to take the chance.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
A colonel stuck his head in. “General? Call for you. From Zambia.”
They exchanged glances. “Zambia?” Vincenzo muttered. “What the—”
“—Sorry, sir; correction; from the embassy of Zambia in Beijing.”
A DIA officer spoke up. “China has significant investments in Zambia, General. A special trade and economic cooperation zone.”
“They’re using an embassy phone. From a friendly ambassador,” Blair said. “To avoid the official networks.”
The stocky general stood immobile for at least four seconds, frowning down at his hands. He glanced at the clock, then headed for the door. “In the annex,” he snapped. “I’ll take it in the MOLINK room. Get the translators. The J-2. The congressional liaison. Get the command historian in here too.”
“We may not need translators,” Blair told him. “If it’s the contact I talked to, he speaks good English.”
“I’d rather have the backup. Just in case. And yeah, get the JAG in on this too.” He rounded on the astonished staffers. His shout “Let’s go, people!” sent them into a flurry of activity.
The Moscow Link room was a walled-off cubicle with a table, one chair, and a dedicated computer for the old DC–Moscow hotline. One whole wall was stacked with bulging red-striped burn bags. Obviously, its main function these days was storage. A colonel said anxiously, “Shouldn’t we call the White House, General? If they—”
Vincenzo hand-chopped him into silence. “I don’t have anything to tell NCA yet. Let’s see what they want first. But yeah, call the duty officer at the Sit Room and ask him—or her—to stand by.” The colonel stood back after fussily centering a phone on the table. “This isn’t a covered circuit, is it?” the general asked, grabbing the single chair.
“No sir. UNCLAS mode.”
“Can we record this?”
“Already set up, General.”
Vincenzo studied the phone, then the wall clock. He glanced around at the others crowding into the room. “Clear out,” he snapped. “Ms. Titus, DIA, J-2, and JAG when she gets here. Everybody else, vamoose. And close that fucking door!”
When the chairman pressed a button for speakerphone the labored breathing of whoever was on the other end filled the little room.
“General Ricardo Petrarca Vincenzo here,” Vincenzo said, enunciating clearly and speaking slowly.
A heavy deliberate voice came on the line. “This is Deputy Minister Chen Jialuo.”
Vincenzo shot Blair a raised eyebrow. Shielding her mouth, she whispered, “The principal to the UN conference. We had a shouting match with him in Dublin. He ignored us in Zurich. Sent a junior guy to talk to me. But I think he’s who we’re dealing with. Or the channel to them, anyway.”
Vincenzo
nodded. A woman came in, looked around, and leaned against the wall. Air Force blues, with the silver-scales-and-laurel-wreath insignia of the Judge Advocate General Corps on her chest. “A reachout from China,” the chairman told her, covering the mouthpiece. Then said into the phone, “Good morning, Deputy Minister. How can I help you?”
“Chairman Zhang has asked me to gain some idea of mutually acceptable terms.”
Blair suppressed a gasp. Maybe she’d been wrong all along, about Yun fronting a resistance faction. Maybe he represented Zhang himself. But in the next moment she realized that couldn’t be right. If so, why was he calling from a foreign embassy? Keeping this conversation from the rest of the governmental apparatus? Something wasn’t kosher here.
Vincenzo glanced at the JAG rep, who shook her head, frowning.
He said slowly, “This is General Vincenzo. I certainly do not want to be negative, sir. We would welcome any chance to talk. But shouldn’t such an approach be made through diplomatic channels? Rather than the Joint Chiefs. We try to keep military and political separate here.”
Blair noticed the gleam of perspiration on Vincenzo’s thick neck. The strain had to be terrific. One wrong word could derail the exchange. Extend the war. Cost hundreds of thousands more lives.
The lawyer was scribbling on a scratch pad. She shoved it in front of him. He frowned and nodded curtly. Pushed it away.
“Deputy Minister Chen here. Yes, I understand unorthodox way to contact. But necessary. China will never surrender. Invade, and you will lose millions of troops. Your country is riven by strife. Rioting. You cannot continue this war much longer. Again, what terms?”
Vincenzo took a slow deep breath; his shoulders rose and fell. But his voice remained steady. “Sir, your country is bleeding too. Allied terms were set out by the Jakarta Declaration. I have no authority to modify it. If I may, I would like to transfer this call to the White House.”