Edge of War

by Larry Bond

  The boat jerked forward. Zeus reached for the line, but couldn’t find it. He started to swim for the tire on the side, but after two strokes he realized it was too late; the boat was moving too fast.

  Just as the patrol boat’s bow came into view, two marines ran to the stern of Zeus’s boat and jumped into the water near him, splashing and hooting. Solt stood above, yelling in Chinese for them to act their age.

  The Chinese sailors on the patrol boat waved and shouted at them.

  One of the marines grabbed hold of Zeus. “Okay,” said the marine. “It okay.”

  “Okay,” replied Zeus. “Okay.”

  Back aboard the fishing boat a few minutes later, Zeus thanked the marine captain for sending the marines in.

  “Not my idea,” he said. “Ms. Solt’s.”

  “Thanks,” Zeus told her.

  “The Chinese were surprised there were so many men aboard,” she told him. “I told them they were relatives, and had to earn their keep. But they were not fishermen, and most of the time they were lazing around, or swimming. Then I sent them into the water when I realized the boat would see you.”

  “I thought you didn’t speak much English,” said Zeus. “It sounds pretty good to me.”

  Solt shrugged.

  “You know, you got a hell of a bruise on your forehead,” said Zeus. “Are you okay?”

  “I said before, I’m fine.”

  “Are your ribs okay?”

  “Eh?”

  “Your side.”

  “You want me to take my shirt off?” She shook her head. “No. Not so easy.”

  “I’m not trying to see your tits,” said Zeus. “Come on. Let’s see your ribs.”

  Solt hesitated. Slowly, she put her hand on her shirt and rolled up the side.

  “God, that looks like hell,” said Zeus. He put his finger on the large purple blotch. Solt winced.

  “It’s got to be broken,” he told her. “How far up does it hurt?”

  She shook her head. He eased his finger up. Two of the bones seemed to have snapped; she must be in terrific pain.

  “Do they have morphine or something like that in their med kits?” he asked her.

  “If I take that, my head will be cloudy,” she told him. “I am fine.”

  “It’s got to be killing you.”

  “I am grateful for your saving my life,” she said.

  “Yeah, but that’s not what we’re talking about now. Can you cough?”

  “Cough?”

  “Yeah. What happens with those is your lungs get screwed up. Cough for me.”

  Solt coughed. Even puzzled, she looked beautiful.

  “All right. Can you breathe okay? Big breaths.”

  She was breathing fine. So it was just a question of managing pain.

  “If you won’t take morphine, at least take some aspirin,” he told her. “Your head will be clear.”

  “I took some earlier. I am not a fool for pain.”

  He smiled at the expression; it seemed pretty poetic.

  “Why haven’t you been speaking English?” Zeus asked.

  “I had nothing to say.”

  “Mr. Quach says you don’t speak it at all.”

  “He said I do not speak it well.”

  “Sounds pretty good to me.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You afraid of him? Your boss?”

  Solt frowned, but said nothing.

  Zeus went and changed in the forward cabin. When he emerged, he found Solt and the marine captain standing at the stern, arms folded, worried looks on their faces.

  “What’s going on?” Zeus asked.

  Solt pointed to the patrol boat, which was about a half mile away.

  “They boarded Quach’s boat,” she said. “They’ve been there a long time.”

  “How many sailors were on the patrol boat?” Zeus asked.

  “Eighteen,” said the marine captain.

  “They are working with small crews,” said Solt. “They have trouble feeding their sailors. The ones who came aboard were skinny. And they asked about food. We gave them some rice we had.”

  “How many went aboard the fishing boat?”

  Neither the captain nor Solt had seen. Six had come aboard theirs.

  “We can take it,” said Zeus. “If we go now.”

  * * *

  The two keys to the operation were speed and taking out the Chinese patrol boat’s radio.

  That task was assigned to the marine crouched just aft of the cabin, holding his RPG launcher below the gunwale. He had to strike the radio mast dead-on, preferably without taking apart the bridge below.

  The Chinese were either so focused on Christian’s fishing boat or so shorthanded that they didn’t bother posting lookouts on the stern or port side of their ship. It wasn’t until Zeus and the marines were ten yards away that someone emerged from the superstructure aft of the bridge and turned in their direction, spotting them.

  The timing was nearly perfect.

  “Fire!” yelled Zeus. “Board them!”

  The grenade hit the antenna mount and exploded. A second grenade struck the forward gun mount, shattering the side armor, killing the gunner stationed there and destroying the gun mechanism as well.

  The boat crashed into the side of the Chinese patrol craft. Zeus stumbled to his knees as he leapt across, his balance upset by the rocking waves. He got up, fixed his grip on his AK-47, then glanced to his right to make sure the rear gunner’s station was still unmanned. With that clear, he left it for Solt to take the gun as planned and started forward.

  The machine gun on the starboard side had already been secured by one of the Vietnamese marines, who was using it to pepper the Chinese boarding party. Zeus ran past to the ladder, thinking he was trailing the main boarding party. But instead he ran into three Chinese sailors. Two bursts from his AK-47 took them down. Then something pushed him to the deck, hard—the air shock from an explosion.

  He rolled up in time to see the Chinese captain and his helmsman running past him, trying to escape. Zeus cut both of them down, his bullets hitting them in the legs and dropping them like the teeth of a chainsaw gnawing saplings in the woods.

  Inside the bridge, he went to the control board and made sure the ship’s engines were still on idle. Then he went back out to the deck, passing the marine who’d been assigned to secure the bridge.

  “Keep us close,” said Zeus.

  Down on deck, the marines were pulling out bodies from the cabins directly below the bridge. Zeus looked over at Christian’s fishing boat. The marines there had taken out their weapons. Two Chinese sailors were on the deck near the wheelhouse, their hands high.

  “Christian? Win? You all right?” yelled Zeus.

  Christian and Quach came out of the wheelhouse. Zeus went over to help them aboard.

  “You all right?” Zeus asked.

  “I’m good, I’m good,” said Christian, who looked more than a little shaken up.

  “Very risky thing,” said Quach. “But thank you.”

  “It looked like things were getting out of control over here,” Zeus told him. “What happened?”

  “They found one of the bags,” said Christian. “Quach told them we’d fished it from the water. I don’t think they were buying it.”

  “Did they radio that in?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Quach went up to the bridge to check on the radio. Solt was already there. With the radio out, they couldn’t be certain that the Chinese hadn’t broadcast for help; they hadn’t heard anything on their radios, but there was always a chance they had missed it.

  Only one marine had been injured in the takeover; he’d fallen and broken his arm. Zeus took charge of immobilizing it with a splint and fashioning a sling. When he finished, he came out on deck just in time to see Quach take a pistol and hold it to the head of the one of the two Chinese prisoners. Before Zeus could say anything, both men were dead.

  “Why the hell did you do that?” yell
ed Christian, clambering up from the fishing boat where he’d gone for his gear. “Those men were prisoners.”

  “They were liabilities,” said Quach calmly. “We can’t keep them. And we can’t take them back to Vietnam. They’d do the same to us.”

  “Damn,” said Christian.

  He looked at Zeus. The truth was, Quach was right, as unpleasant as that was to face.

  “Let’s get everything together,” said Zeus. “We have a long way to go.”

  20

  New York City

  Josh stood at the edge of the airstrip, the helicopter poised in midair behind him. His AK-47 was out of bullets. Kerfer and the other SEALs were in the grass somewhere, down.

  He was all alone, surrounded by Chinese soldiers. He kept firing at them, but they didn’t die. They were like zombies, standing in the field, on the runway. The wash of the helicopter’s blades swirled dust around him. He turned, just in time to see the chopper taking off.

  Then he woke.

  It was five past five.

  Josh jumped out of bed and took a shower, finishing just as the water began to turn off. There was a small coffeemaker with a package of premeasured grounds on the bathroom counter. He poured in a cup of water and turned it on.

  The coffee surged through the machine while he got dressed. The first sip was terrible; the second, worse. He left the room, determined to find something better.

  Broome was out in the hall, sitting on a chair and leaning against the wall.

  “You’re back,” Josh told him.

  “Like a bad penny,” said the marshal. “So whatcha doin’?”

  “I need some real coffee.”

  “Me, too. Hey—mind if I use the john? I gotta pee bad.”

  Josh let him in. At least he didn’t smell like Mexican food this morning.

  They found a coffee place down the block. Broome groused about the high prices—eight dollars for a medium cup of coffee. Five years before, it had been two, and even that was considered outrageous.

  “No wonder there’s so many people in the streets,” he said as they walked back to the hotel. “Coffee bankrupted them. Look at this—they’re two deep over there. And you need guards all over the place. And New York ain’t even that bad,” continued the marshal. “You should see Atlanta. L.A. L.A. is a pit. It was never that good to begin with.”

  “You think there’s going to be a war?” Josh asked.

  “How’s that?”

  “With China going into Vietnam?”

  “Nah. They’re just kicking their butts around for a bit. That’s not a real war.”

  “You don’t think we’ll be involved?”

  “Nah. Besides,” added Broome, “who the hell cares about China and Vietnam? Let them do what they want. It don’t affect us.”

  “Yeah,” said Josh.

  * * *

  Josh found breakfast with Jablonski nearly unbearable. The food itself, served in the back room of a fancy restaurant about a block from the hotel, was excellent. But the work was tedious. The speechwriter had him go over the same points several times, each time telling him to say less and less. Josh resisted, but only to a point. He was so tired of hearing himself that he wanted to cut it short as well.

  “So what’s the president going to do with this?” Josh asked finally.

  “He wants a resolution condemning China.”

  “And then what? Do we intervene?”

  “Maybe,” said Jablonski cautiously. He glanced at Mara, who’d been sitting silently through the entire session. “What do you think about that, Josh?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Chinese want to take over Asia, Josh,” said Mara. She leaned across the table. “You’ve seen how ruthless they are.”

  “I don’t know if they want to take over all Asia.”

  She shook her head. “They do.”

  “Kerfer thinks it’s just for the oil.”

  “Kerfer’s wrong. You said so yourself.”

  “Maybe I was wrong.”

  “I think we probably all need a little bit of a break,” said Jablonski. “I have more phone calls. I’m still trying to nail down the senator.”

  “Why don’t we do some sightseeing?” suggested Mara. “How about the Statue of Liberty?”

  “What about Central Park?” said Josh. “I just want to walk.”

  “We can do that.”

  * * *

  The last time Mara had been to New York, there was no charge to go into Central Park. Now it was five dollars. The sign said that it was a “requested donation,” but everything about the entrance suggested it was mandatory, with elaborate pay booths and policemen watching the large chain-link gate topped with barbed wire.

  Another sign explained that the charge was due to the city’s “ongoing fiscal crisis.” The mayor hoped to rescind it soon.

  It was midmorning, but it was already sixty-two degrees. Mara took off her light sweater and tied it around her hips. The trees had started to bud. It seemed closer to April or May than February. Josh started talking about the trees, identifying different species and talking about how they were doing.

  The main effect of the rapid climate change had been to increase the amount of rainfall. The wetter growing season had encouraged more disease, Josh said, and he pointed out different kinds of blight as they walked down a path from the entrance. In theory, the longer growing season would also strain the nutrients in the soil, though this wouldn’t be obvious for some time. Meanwhile, bushes and the grass were doing better than ever, thanks to the wet weather.

  “And weeds. All sorts of weeds,” said Josh. “It’s a great time to be a dandelion.”

  “Damn things are all over my lawn,” said Broome.

  “What do you do with them?” asked Josh.

  “Pull them the hell out.”

  “You ought to think about eating them. They’re supposed to make a great salad.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “The climate change isn’t all bad,” said Josh. “It has a lot of different effects. We just have to adapt to them.”

  “Yeah, like buy a lot of umbrellas,” said Broome. “I can deal with the warmer weather. That’s good.”

  “I wouldn’t get too used to it,” said Josh. “This hot right now might just be a temporary aberration. Using the averages—it’s very misleading. The actual programs that model climate change have a vast amount of variables, but even then they’re really just sophisticated guesses. Hell, if you put the right formulas in, you see that the world will cool down.”

  “So what’s the point, doc?” said Broome. “We just tough it out?”

  “Maybe. We can slow it down—”

  “It’s that old saying, Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.”

  They stopped at a hot dog vendor for lunch, then walked in the direction of the Metropolitan Museum, passing behind the large white building and continuing toward the lake at the center of the park. At the north side, Mara saw a large area of what looked like old ruins, with boards and metal scattered in heaps, and small mounds of dirt and debris in low piles like pimples dotting the barren ground. She thought it was a temporary dumping area, a place appropriated by a city tight on space. But that wasn’t the case.

  “Squatter’s field,” explained Broome. “People lived here last winter. A lot of people, when the prices started shooting up. They didn’t want that happening again. That was the real reason behind the fee. So they could kick people out.”

  “Where’d they go?” asked Josh.

  “There’s plenty of shelters and stuff. It was just temporary for most of them anyway,” said Broome. “We should start heading back. This isn’t the best area anyway. Even in daytime.”

  They turned around and headed across the park in the direction of Columbus Circle. The skyline loomed in the distance. Sleek high-rises peered over the older buildings close to the park’s edge. The clouds had thickened, and the tops of the towers were festooned w
ith gray and black wreaths.

  They were nearly at the southeastern corner of the park when the first drops of rain started to fall. The rain felt different here than in Asia, Mara thought. A little sparser, more welcome in a way. It didn’t have the acidic smell or taste it had in Malaysia.

  “We should get out of this, because it’s going to be a downpour,” said Josh.

  “How can you tell?” asked Broome.

  “Look at those clouds.” He pointed to a series of dark black clouds on the horizon.

  “The subway’s over there,” said Mara, pointing.

  Broome wasn’t sure about the subway, but as the rain began to pound heavier, he relented, ushering them toward the entrance. A flood of people had the same idea, and there was a long line for the fare cards. Only one machine was working.

  “Twenty dollars for a single fare?” said Mara, reading the sign.

  Someone nearby snickered. “Frickin’ mayor,” he said. “Like all the rich bastards, stick it to the little guy.”

  Broome just shrugged. He bought two cards because rules prevented more than two swipes at a station.

  “It’s kind of a rip-off,” said Broome. “And they expire pretty quick, too. But the city needs money.”

  Broome suggested they go down to Little Italy and Chinatown. Mara thought of vetoing Chinatown, expecting trouble, but when they emerged there were no protests or any other outward signs of the trouble in Asia, just tourists walking along Canal and the side streets, gaping at the stylized storefronts. The stores had about as much connection with China as with the King of England, and a good portion of the employees looked to have come from Central and South America, not Asia.

  They had an early dinner, finding an Italian restaurant—Mara insisted on Italian—in the small stretch on Mott Street that remained of Little Italy. By now, Josh had become extremely quiet, and Mara wondered if he was brooding over what he was supposed to say tomorrow at the UN, or worried about Mạ.

  Jablonski had called twice to say that he was still working on finding a good time to hook up with the senator, but Mara was starting to doubt that the meeting was going to come off. Just as well, she thought. What Josh really needed was a long break, a vacation somewhere safe—somewhere cold, maybe, far away from anything that would remind him of Vietnam. What he’d been through must surely be taking a toll. He needed to decompress.