The First End

by Victor Elmalih

  Chapter 14

  Bill’s flight from the UAE got rerouted in midair. No explanation was given except that information would be forthcoming once he landed in Kuwait. The plane landed on an American military base, a left over from the first gulf war and now used as a staging area for operations in Afghanistan. The moment his plane touched ground, a slack-jawed, gangly corporal stuck his head inside and yelled, “Is there a Bill Gardner on board?”

  Bill was the only one on board other than the pilots. “I’m Gardner, son,” he said to the young man.

  “Your presence is requested at the CP.”

  Sighing, Gardner got out of his seat and followed the corporal to the Command Post. Inside, a thin faced man, wearing a moustache too large for him, glanced up from a computer. “Gardner? I’m Colonel Robbie Bush. Everyone just calls me CR. I have General Hynes standing by. He wishes to speak to you.”

  “Of course he does,” Bill muttered. CR got up from the chair and left without any further conversation. Sitting down, Bill saw the face of General Hynes as he talked to someone just out of camera view. “I’m here, General.”

  Hynes looked into the camera and grunted. “So you are. Look, Captain. We have reasonable intel that Iran has purchased the Chinese fighter. Did you place the tracker.”

  “Yes, sir. Besides getting cancer, we should be able to track it, if we get close enough.”

  “You won’t die, son.”

  That’s debatable, he said to himself. “You want me to go to Iran?”

  “No. You wouldn’t last long there. We want you to go to China and blow the thing up before it can be delivered to the Iranians.”

  “China!”

  “That’s correct Captain. China.”

  “I thought you said that it would be guarded too closely for a saboteur to be of any good.”

  “That was when it was a small component and hidden in one of their top secret facilities. Now it is in a fighter plane. There are only so many places they can conceal that. Besides, all you have to do is blow it up in transit. That should be much easier.”

  “Yeah, I can see how easy it will be,” Gardner said, rolling his eyes. “Do I get back up?”

  “Sorry, we still can’t afford to pull any regular military units out for this. We cannot afford to have anything traced back to our government. Destroying the component on Chinese soil could be construed as an act of war. No, you will go in as an independent agent, working for Wastend to clean up their mess. Is that clear?”

  “I don’t like this, General. I don’t calculate my odds of surviving to be going up much. It wasn’t my fault that the part went missing. Why take it out on me?”

  “Sorry, son. I’m not. You just happen to be the only asset in place to get the job done.”

  Something felt off about the entire explanation. Bill didn’t understand the politics involved or necessarily how decisions were made at the top, but he still felt like an undue amount of pressure was being put on him to accomplish this mission alone. Surely they had top secret units who specialized in what they were asking a retired military captain to do. So why me? he asked himself silently. Despite his reservations, he still knew that he would go. His own patriotism and sense of duty demanded nothing less from him.

  “I’ll go, General. But I still don’t like it. I wasn’t trained for this type of mission—at least not alone. I haven’t been active in years. Isn’t this a job for the CIA or something?”

  “It’s your job now, Captain. And going isn’t a request. It is an order.”

  “Yes, sir!” Inside, Bill heaved a silent sigh. This would be a much more dangerous mission than the other two he had already taken. A lot more dangerous. He felt apprehension begin to intrude on the fringes of his mind. He had gotten out! Why couldn’t they just leave me alone! “Anything else, sir?”

  “You will be ferried about to confuse anyone watching, but eventually you’ll be taken to Hanoi, Vietnam. From there, travel to Haiphong and look for a man by the name of Nao Hu. You will be equipped there and assisted across the border into China.”

  “Why there?”

  “It is the best place to smuggle someone into China.”

  That seemed rather unlikely, but he wasn’t about to tell the General that. “What then?”

  “You need to make your way to Beijing. We believe the plane will be transported over land somehow, through Afghanistan to Iran. You need to take it out before they get to Afghanistan.”

  “Why not just fly the plane there and then ship the pilot home?”

  “They fear it would be our best chance to shoot it down. We still have troops in Afghanistan. If they fly it over, we can ‘accidentally’ shoot it down. But if a large Chinese convoy travels across the country with diplomatic immunity granted by the Afghan government, anything we do to it will be construed as an act of war.”

  Although the explanation made sense—at least on the surface—Gardner still had an uneasy feeling that he wasn’t being told everything. “Very well, General.”

  “Get going, son.”

  The line went dead.

  As if that singled his doom, the corporal appeared as if by magic. “Your plane is waiting, Captain.”

  Heaving a worried sigh, Bill got up and left with the earnest young man.

  The route taken to Hanoi was indeed convoluted. To avoid Iranian airspace, they flew south to a remote British Island known as Diego Garcia Island. He changed planes and flew northeast to Singapore, and then on to Hanoi. Each time he switched planes, but each time the airplane was a Wastend company jet. If they were trying to keep a low profile, they failed miserably. He suspected they just wanted to keep anything he did firmly attached to the Wastend company. Bill idly wondered how many lives had been lost all for the gain of plausible deniability. Way too many, he decided.

  Two days later, he touched down in the hot, steamy city of Hanoi, Vietnam. The place had changed significantly since the Vietnam War in the 1960’s and the border war with China in the 1970’s. For the first time in decades, Hanoi was on friendly terms with the United States. Recently, an exchange of information as to the fate of many missing American soldiers had been released, finally putting a period at the end of the lives of many people.

  The primary result for Bill was that he wasn’t regarded with outright suspicion and hostility. His white skin, brown hair, and height made him somewhat of a novelty to the shorter, dark-haired, darker skinned Vietnamese. Unfortunately, that didn’t bode well to stay incognito. He stuck out like a sore thumb. He was so obviously American that he began to wonder what General Hynes was thinking. No, he began wondering if the general was even sane! This was an impossible mission!

  With nothing more than a backpack meant to aid in his survival of the jungle-like terrain, he wondered how he was going to find a bus headed to Haiphong. His lack of knowledge of the local languages seriously handicapped his endeavors in this capacity. Good grief! He didn’t even know Chinese all that well. How was he supposed to operate in China? He began to think that Hynes was not crazy after all. The man was plainly deranged.

  Bill walked slowly off the tarmac, still wondering how he was going to get to Haiphong. He heard that a billion people in Asia were trying to learn English. Hopefully, one of them worked at the ticket booth at the bus station.

  It never came to that. A man in a matchbox looking van slid to a stop in front of him and a man, looking more Chinese than Vietnamese, stuck his head out. “You Bill Gardner?”

  Gardner’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s me.”

  “Good. You get in. We go now.”

  The man wore pajama like clothing, a light colored fabric that held up well in the sweltering heat and humidity. A pointy straw hat tied loosely under his chin seemed to be more a part of him than a mere accessory. Bits of dark hair stuck out from underneath the hat, and he wore the widest grin Bill had ever seen.

  “Uh…where?” he asked, taken back.

  “Haiphong. You come with me. We friends.”

&nb
sp; Bill didn’t know how true that last statement might actually be, but he opened the driver side door—the handle consisted of a rusty wire strung through the equally rusty sickly green door panel—and sat down on a metal seat. Great, he sighed to himself. This is bound to be the bumpiest ride in human history.

  He wasn’t far wrong. Apparently the van had no shocks or struts to speak of.

  “I am Nao Hu,” the short Asian man said, grinning ear to ear. “I your friend.”

  “Yeah, friends…um, look, Nao Hu, you aren’t Vietnamese are you?”

  “No. Chinese. You American.”

  “Yeah. What are you doing here in Hanoi?”

  “I am…what you say…fugitive.”

  That sounded ominous. “What happened?”

  Nao Hu’s smile disappeared as if it had never existed. “Two years ago, Chinese government took my mother. Political. I try to get her out. I fail. Come here.” The man then launched into a long dialogue in his native tongue. Bill had no idea what he was saying and could only pick out a word here or there. But it didn’t matter; he got the gist of the story from the few English words that the man had spoken. Hu’s mother had been kidnapped for political reasons and was being held in some communist jail. His failure to free his mother meant he had to live in exile. Bill understood immediately why this man had been selected to help Bill get across the border. He had clearly done it before, and Gardner suspected more than one time.

  The road they travelled upon twisted and turned through the choking jungle underbrush. At times, the trees were so thick that Bill could barely distinguish the road from the jungle. And bouncy! After just the first mile, Gardner felt as if he had undergone a beating from an angry Sumo wrestler. Everything hurt, and there was absolutely no way to make the hard metal seat any more comfortable.

  After Hu’s first initial conversation, the man had lapsed into silence, his smile seemingly gone. Not that Bill was interested in conversation. His full concentration had to be on trying to prevent a bump from slamming his head into the roof of the small van. He already had several bruises from not being quick enough.

  About three hours later, Hu looked over. “We almost there. Soon.”

  “And then what?”

  “We wait one day. Go north. Cross border. I help.”

  “You’ll help me with my mission or just across the border.”

  The small man shrugged. “Fate knows.”

  That also sounded ominous.

  Soon they came to a small hut built into a clearing somewhere outside the city limits of Haiphong. Getting out of the van proved to be a challenge. Every muscle and bone ached with a persistency he had not experienced since a mission to South America years ago. That time, he had contracted malaria. He cursed the abominable car and silently vowed never to step foot in the beast again.

  Hu, on the other hand, jumped out of the van as fresh and spry as anyone Bill had ever seen—and he had made the trip along that cursed road twice! Hu motioned towards the shack. “My home. Come.”

  They entered the small single room hut. A cot, looking as if it was wilting in the heat and humidity, sat in one corner. A single table with a radio, some paper, and a dirty bowl of left over rice sat in another corner. The dirt floor looked clean enough, if one discounted the sprouts in the corners, and a single wood shuttered window faced north.

  There was no second cot.

  The only other distinguishing feature was a large chest situated at the foot of the cot. Hu went over to the cot and chest, tossed his ballcap onto the bunk and flung open the chest. “Come. Your equipment.”

  Bill walked over and glanced into the chest. He picked up a .45 auto, four extra clips, a large knife, boots that could be used for both in and out of the city, and a heavy bag. Glancing in the bag, he raised an eyebrow and looked at Hu. “C4?”

  The man grinned. “Big boom!”

  “Sure is.” Bill didn’t relish carrying around this much explosive. He quickly calculated, and had enough to destroy a good size warehouse with everything and everyone inside. Ouch. And they expected him to waltz all over China with this stuff! Insane. “Look, Hu, I got to talk to General Hynes. Can you contact him?”

  “No. Radio receive only.”

  “How do you…” Bill trailed off, realizing the futility of trying to figure this all out. Hu reminded him of those weirdo survivalists who loved to rough it just to prove how tough they were. Though Hu may have a different reason, he certainly didn’t seem to mind his sparse living circumstances.

  “Tomorrow, we go. We get sleep now.”

  Looking out the window, Bill realized that night was falling. Somewhere, a large cat screamed his anger at missing a kill. More ominousness. With another sigh, he looked at the cot. “Who gets the cot?”

  Sometime before the sun came up, Bill found himself in the van once more. The road they followed north winded and crept through the underbrush. For whatever reason, the route proved to be less bumpy than the first road from Hanoi. Neither did Hu seem particularly interested in getting to their destination in a hurry.

  “We cross border fifty kilometers east of Lang Son.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. I go with you.”

  Bill breathed a sigh of relief. He didn’t relish trying to move about a country when he didn’t even speak the language. The few words he did know amounted to swear words. He would need a guide, someone who spoke the language, and someone who knew how to hide. Hu, hopefully, could provide that and if not, maybe he knew who could.

  “Isn’t it dangerous for you in China?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you are going anyway?”

  He shrugged. “It dangerous here too. I go with you. Help you. American government free my mother.”

  “They promised to free your mother?”

  Hu licked his lips and said nothing. He didn’t need to. The doubt and hope that warred over his features told the true story. The US government wouldn’t dare risk an international incident to rescue one woman who held no political clout. They had merely hinted to Hu, stringing him along with the hope that if he helped the US, they would in turn rescue his mother one day. Bill knew it to be an empty hope at best, maybe not…Nao Hu probably did too, but this was his mother. He would not give up hope.

  Gardner admired the man and felt sorry for him all at the same time. He couldn’t guess the man’s age. The man’s face was lined, but the lines seemed more stress lines than age lines, and though his lack of English and large grin made him seem rather backwards, a simmering intelligence lay just below the surface. Gardner had no doubt that if push came to shove, this would be a very dangerous and cunning man.

  “What is the plan?” he asked.

  “Wait.”

  The lawyer took the hint and settled back to wait. He spent the time trying to figure out how he would possibly get to Beijing, even if they managed to sneak across the border without being spotted or detained. No doubt Nao Hu could contrive of a way, but the mission seemed ill planned and ill conceived. How could one man who barely spoke the language infiltrate and destroy a Chinese plane, no doubt protected by some of the most sophisticated equipment the Chinese had? He looked at the satchel containing the C4 explosives. Just being caught with that would mean either a death sentence or the rest of his life in a secret military prison.

  Something wasn’t right about this entire mission, but he just couldn’t put his finger on what it might be. He trusted General Hynes, but he seriously doubted his ability to succeed. Sighing, he shoved these unproductive thoughts aside and focused on the next step. One step at a time, he decided—just take things one step at a time.

  Sometime later, Hu pulled the van off the road and into a thicket of trees. “Come,” he said, jumping out of the vehicle. Bill followed suit and found the smaller man rounding the van with a machete in his hands. “Cut branches and hide van,” he instructed.

  Shrugging, Bill took the machete and set about cutting down large branches to conceal the van f
rom prying eyes. Hu pulled two packs out of the van and began stuffing supplies into each. Gardner noted that the man had no weapons, nor did he add any to the bag. Bill frowned at that, but said nothing. When the van was sufficiently hidden, Bill retrieved the satchel of explosives and put them into his own bag.

  “Where do we go from here?” he asked as the slighter man shouldered his pack.

  “Follow. I show.”

  They marched for thirty minutes through the thick terrain until they emerged on a high bluff that revealed a treacherous landscape of canyons and mountains. Hu pointed to a gorge below them. “We go there.” He pointed to the top of the mountain that the gorge bisected. “Border there. No one know we cross.”

  Gardner considered. “How long will this take?”

  “Four days to Ningming. We take train there.”

  Bill looked perplexed. “Four day hike?”

  Hu shrugged. “Not know this word.”

  “Four day walk?”

  Hu’s eyes lit up. “Yes. Good walk.”

  Gardner sighed. He wasn’t going to like this, not one bit. “Are there any dangers?”

  “Always dangers.”

  “I mean human dangers. Are there any Vietnamese or Chinese we need to worry about once we get down in the gorge?”

  “Yes.”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes.” Hu shrugged. “Chinese have…how you say…post down there.”

  Bill considered. “How many men are likely to be there.”

  “Three.”

  “Okay. Great. Glad to have everything cleared up then. So what are we waiting for? Let’s go.”

  Grinning from ear to ear, Nao Hu began the descent into the gorge.