by Larry Bond
“It’s not ‘this,’ “ said Mara when the waiter left.
“This?”
“You said, ‘this Boston Ale.’ You don’t know the adjective… just say, ‘Boston Ale.’ “
Sergei smiled. “Ah, Turpentine. It is always an education to be working with you. Now you will correct my grammar. When will you allow me to teach you Russian?”
“We need antitank weapons,” she said softly. “Big enough to take out main battle tanks.”
“Hmmmm. Very expensive.”
“I understand. We need Kornets.”
“I could get, perhaps, the Konkurs,” he said, referring to a Russian wire-guided missile that could penetrate about 800 mm of armor — not enough to deal with the Chinese tanks the Vietnamese would be facing.
“Kornet or nothing.”
“Miss Turpentine, so crass today. Vietnam was not agreed with you.”
The waiter appeared with their orders. Mara asked for another beer.
“You know, it is not always easy to find what you wish,” said Sergei offhandedly. “Have you considered the Sheksna? Very nice.”
Mara made a face.
“You would refer to it as AT-12. This good weapon.”
“Sergei. Really. Just get what we need. Okay?”
“So we work on your request. What else?”
Mara worked down the list. Sergei was relatively agreeable, even when it came to spare parts for the Vietnamese MiGs.
The price, of course, was ridiculous. But Mara agreed, as long as delivery could be arranged within hours.
Sergei, much to her surprise, agreed.
“Some things already on way to Manila,” he told her. “From there, your problem.”
This had been approved at the highest levels, Mara realized. The Russians clearly wanted the Vietnamese to give the Chinese a bloody nose.
Good for business? She wondered what else was involved in the deal.
“We’ll confirm through the usual channels,” she said, getting up.
“What? You don’t stay for lunch?”
“I have to put things in motion,” she said. “Leave a good tip.”
31
The Gulf of Tonkin
They played cat and mouse with the Chinese cruiser for several more hours, the night growing darker and the weather growing stormier as they went. The merchant ships were almost in Vietnamese waters now — which was fine with Silas; he could board them more easily there.
What wasn’t fine was that they were still a good two hours away — that would put them in Hai Phong before he could get there.
Though given the intensity of the storm, maybe not.
The cruiser was faster than the McLane, but it was clear that her captain was not willing to actually risk a collision. The first encounter had been the closest; since then, the captain had taken a few feints, but hadn’t presented an outright threat.
He might have been more willing to risk his frigate escort, but the smaller ship couldn’t keep up her speed. She fell farther and farther behind in the heavy seas.
“She’s turning off!” yelled one of the extra lookouts Silas had posted. “Turning to port.”
The synthetic radar plot confirmed it. The Chinese captain was giving up, battening down to cope with the storm. Now was their chance.
A strong wind echoed through the ship. The gust pushed the McLane down against the water. A white cloud of ocean rose, enveloping her from bow to amidships.
The typhoon was faster than them all.
“Captain, should we come about and face into the wind?” asked helm.
“Belay that,” said Silas, as if it had been an order rather than a question. “Steady on course.”
The ship rose from the fantail and crashed forward. The wind howled over the deck, the hush of a ghost clawing at the bridge’s glass.
“Steady!” repeated Silas. “We’ve got to intercept them.”
A hard roll sent him to the deck.
“Steady!” he repeated, climbing back to his feet. “Keep me steady!”
32
CIA headquarters, Virginia
Peter Lucas was surprised that Mara had made the arrangements so quickly, even though he tried not to show it. He pressed his lips together and nodded solemnly as she filled him in on the details.
“How do I get to Manila?” she asked.
“Manila?”
“The first shipment should be there in a few hours. I should be there already.”
“You’re not going.”
“What?”
“We’ll find someone else to take care of this.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, you’re now world famous. Your videos on YouTube are up to a million hits apiece. Give it a rest, Mara,” he added with a bit of an edge. “You’re going to have to accept that you’re in a new phase of your career.”
Mara had half-convinced herself that Peter would let her go. In fact, more than half-convinced: she felt honestly disappointed, and angry.
“I don’t see, after everything that’s happened, why I can’t get a break,” she told him. “I think I’m owed a break.”
“You’re not thinking rationally. Come on.” He picked up his empty soda can, twirling it between his fingers. “I want you to look over the material that’s coming in from Vietnam. I want to figure out who the mole is.”
“What’s Grease doing?”
“Grease has different priorities,” Lucas answered. “I want you to look at everything. I need a second set of eyes to go through it. You’re the best we’ve got. Really.”
Mara didn’t want to concede.
“Who’s going to handle this?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I can give them a heads-up. If it’s somebody from Thailand — ”
“It won’t be from in-house,” he told her. “I have somebody in mind.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No. That’s all right.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Jesus, come on. You’re taking this whole thing way too hard. Way, way too hard.” He put down the can and frowned at it, as if it had somehow crossed him. “We’ll figure something out together, all right? When this… passes, we’ll sit down and think about where you can go next. It’s not going to hurt you, believe me.”
“Passes — like a kidney stone.”
A faint smile came to Lucas’s lips.
“It’ll pass,” he told her. “Go upstairs and get up to date. I’ll arrange things for you in the vault. All right? Somebody took your money in Hanoi, right? That should be your focus.”
“You think I can figure that out from here?” she asked sourly.
“I think you can do anything.”
33
Quàng Ninh Province, south of Dam Tron
The helicopter that took Zeus and Christian east to General Tri’s headquarters was even older than the Hind they had flown in the other day. It was an Mi-8 Hip that had belonged to Poland and was sold secondhand. Though it had been transferred at least a decade before, the outlines of the Polish insignia still peeked through the hull paint.
The Russian-made aircraft wheezed and whined as it made its way eastward, flying over Route 18 — avoiding the mountains as the Alba-tros had, though in the case of the helicopter it could be argued that the altitude would have presented a hazard.
A more immediate problem was the fact that the pilot had only the most primitive navigation instruments at his command. He lacked night-vision gear, and “GPS” was just a set of letters in an unfamiliar language. He put his forward light on and flew low to the highway, following the roads to General Tri’s command post.
The headquarters was now in a field outside Vu Oai, an agricultural settlement along Route 18. General Tri was some ten miles west of the intersection of Route 18 and 329, a critical intersection the Chinese would undoubtedly attempt to seize.
The search beam caught a large farm building as they
turned toward the CP. The helicopter pilot pulled up suddenly, barely missing a power line, then settled into a field about twenty-five yards from the road. A pair of old American tanks, M48s Zeus thought, were set up on a slight rise, guns pointed east. The rest of the headquarters sat behind them.
General Tri was working in the barn. The space dwarfed his table, which had seemed so large when Zeus saw it outside earlier. The general and three staff officers were poring over a set of maps when Zeus and Christian entered.
Tri rose and stood stiffly at attention as Major Chaū announced them. The general turned his gaze silently from Major Chaū to Zeus, fixing him with the rigid stare Zeus might have expected from a newly minted private.
The gaze made Zeus uncomfortable. The only thing he could think to do was salute, but this was a mistake — Tri held his hand at his forehead, waiting for Zeus to lower his — another sign of submission.
“General.” Zeus leaned toward Tri, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “I’m not here to give orders. I’m just an adviser. I want to help you, not command you.”
Tri stared at him, stone-faced. The three Vietnamese staff officers — two colonels and a major — remained frozen at attention next to him.
“Maybe we should discuss the situation,” said Zeus. Major Chaū, rather than translating, pulled out a chair. Tri only sat down when Zeus did.
The general’s G-2 began pointing out the disposition of the forces, speaking in haltering English though occasionally glancing at Chaū when he hit a hard word. He knew English reasonably well, and Zeus had no trouble with his accent.
The situation was a little worse than Zeus thought. The spearhead of the Chinese force was about twelve miles north of the highway intersection. Harassed by stragglers from the overrun division, the PLA forces were dropping off infantry units to control their flanks. This was a positive, if only a small one — the more stretched out the Chinese became, the better the odds of slicing a gap through their line.
Christian had brought the latest Global Hawk imagery with him. The staff officers grabbed at them like kids reaching for goody bags at a birthday party. They laid them on the table, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese.
“General, could you and I speak privately for a second?” said Zeus.
Tri rose and walked with him toward the back of the barn. Chaū stayed with the others.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” said Zeus. “I know this is a difficult situation for you.”
Tri didn’t answer.
“I’d suggest that we let the Chinese get past the intersection. Entice them… make it look as if we have a major force that they can engage. The faster they go, the better off we are.”
Tri took a long, slow breath.
“My commander is trying to find more antitank weapons,” said Zeus. Tri did speak English — he had at their first meeting — but did he understand it well enough to know what Zeus was saying? “Once the bulk of the storm hits, the Chinese tanks will have to stop. The farther they are from the rest of their force, the better. Once they’re on the defensive, we can pick them off.”
“You are a young man,” said Tri finally.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Your father fought in our war?”
“No, sir.”
“You have studied Vietnam?”
“Mostly the Chinese.”
“You know it is a diff-i-cult — ” Tri stumbled over the word, finding it hard to pronounce. “A diff-i-cult position. They outnumber us greatly.”
“Yes.”
“You will desert us when the battle goes poorly.”
Was it a statement or a question? Zeus wasn’t sure.
“I’m not going to leave you,” said Zeus. “I’ve already fought against their invasion force. And the tanks. I’m not a coward.”
Tri nodded.
They went back to the table and mapped out a plan. Zeus wanted the armor brigade to disengage in the north and come south, where it might be more useful. But the only good route was on the roads already held by the Chinese.
“Use bad roads,” said Christian when Chaū told him the problem. “They’re useless up there. They’re getting cut to pieces. At least save them so we can use them against their infantry, for Christ’s sake.”
They found a succession of mining roads that might be used, but the travel would take considerable time — the tanks wouldn’t be available until after the storm hit. But this was better than having them waste themselves against the Chinese at Tien Yen.
One of the Vietnamese officers objected. He worried that the people in the city, seeing the fighting stop, would think that they had been abandoned.
“We can’t worry about what people think,” said Christian. “We need to win the fight.”
“Don’t let them think it’s over,” said Zeus. “Leave a small force to engage the Chinese. That’s better in any event. The Chinese will stay there.”
Zeus’s ideas were not particularly foreign to the Vietnamese, who realized the Chinese became more vulnerable the faster their tanks moved. The roads and surrounding areas were already mined. The home guard was dug in. The situation was far too dire to be optimistic — that would have been foolhardy. But as a long shot, it was at least doable.
The storm would arrive, and the Chinese advance would slow by necessity. After that, who knew?
At the end of the session, Zeus volunteered to go with one of colonels visiting a battalion directly in the Chinese path, a little north of the intersection.
“I’ll go, too,” said Christian.
“One of us probably ought to stay here,” Zeus told him.
“Hell no, I’m not missing the fun,” said Christian.
Chaū reluctantly agreed to go with them.
They hopped into the bed of a Toyota pickup that had been requisitioned from a civilian several days before. Zeus had to insist that he didn’t want to sit in the front seat, claiming to the translator that he had a problem with his legs and needed to be able to stretch out.
Glad to have ducked the privilege of squeezing four across in the front of the truck, Zeus checked in with Perry.
“Major?”
“General, I’m sorry to bother you. I didn’t know if you were still sleeping or — ”
“No, no, just having something to eat.” Light music was playing in the background; Perry had gone to one of the Hanoi hotels. “Give me a minute to get somewhere secure. I’ll call you back.”
Zeus turned the phone off, holding it in his lap. Christian was curled against the side of the pickup, trying to catch a quick nap despite being constantly jostled. Chaū stared at the road behind them, lost in his thoughts.
Zeus’s sat phone buzzed a few minutes later.
“What’s the situation?” said Perry as soon as the connection went through.
“Not the best, but not lost, either.” Zeus told him about the plans. “How about the Stabbers?” he asked Perry after his brief. “They have some T-55s and T-54s. We could possibly get a volley or two, take out the first Chinese tanks.”
“We’re arranging weapons,” said Perry. “I wouldn’t count on much within the next twenty-four hours.”
“Yes, sir.”
Perry told him that artillery was being brought in from the south. But even that seemed tenuous.
“Latest figures are thirty-eight tanks in the lead group coming down the highway,” said Perry. “Another eighteen about five miles behind. The Chinese are running them without infantry.”
“Interesting,” said Zeus.
“They may know about the storm and are trying to get to Hai Phong ahead of it. Or else their infantry is just slow. Take your pick.”
Tanks without troops around them were vulnerable. Though it was not necessarily easy to convince a soldier facing them of that.
“Zeus, before you sign off…”
“Yes, General?”
“Things get sticky up there, you and Christian are to bail out. You understand me?”
&nbs
p; “Yes, sir.”
“No ‘yes, sir’ bullshit, Murphy. You understand what I’m telling you? You’ve taken far too many risks — far, far too many. Do you understand? I want you back here in one piece.”
Zeus suddenly felt his throat tighten. He remembered his promise to Tri.
“Yes, sir,” he told the general.
“You bug out before the Chinese tanks get there. That, Mr. Murphy, is an order. And I’ll court-martial your ass if it’s not followed. Assuming I can find an ounce of it left to court-martial.”
“Understood.”
Zeus clicked off the phone.
* * *
The Vietnamese battalion was scattered along a bend in the highway where the road dipped through a run of reclaimed marshes. It was an excellent spot for an ambush.
The problem was, their biggest caliber weapons were rocket-propelled grenades and man-portable mortars — nothing big enough to take out a main battle tank.
Zeus and Christian walked along the highway with the commander of the company charged with facing the Chinese at the road itself. This was the hardest task, and the best troops had been assigned to it.
A drizzle started as they set out. A light, on-and-off spritz, it seemed almost pleasant. The wind, not yet that strong, felt warm and tropical.
The company’s entire store of antitank mines — a dozen — had been placed about a half mile from a small bridge crossing. Vietnamese sappers were installing demolitions on the bridge when they arrived.
“Better to put the mines in the ravine,” suggested Zeus. “Blow the bridge when the lead tank gets to it. Then the tanks are likely to hit the mines once they try to cross.”
The commander agreed. Christian went to inspect the engineers’ work, then came back with an idea.
“They’ve got some explosive left over,” he said. “We can make an IED.”
They drove the truck across to the other side of the bridge and arranged it to look as if it had been abandoned. Christian loaded the explosives in the cab. Meanwhile, Zeus and the company commander moved the infantry back, trying to get them hidden so they could fire at the tanks from behind once they were stopped. If there had been support vehicles with the tanks, the ambush would have made more sense, providing them with easier targets. Zeus thought the grenades would simply bounce off the tank’s thick skin.