by Larry Bond
“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.
“I have an idea,” he told Chaū. “Start firing when I’m at the far end of the ditch. Get their attention.”
“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.
Angkor began firing. Zeus waited until he heard the Chinese respond, then threw himself forward, sprinter style, from a four-point stance. He ran behind the tank and sprawled on the ground, unsure whether he’d been seen.
The gunfire died. Zeus curled himself as tightly as possible and scurried around to the second tank, reasoning that it would be harder for the Chinese to see him there. He slunk around the side, then climbed gingerly up to the tank’s turret, crouching by the side.
The hatchway was still locked though the front of the tank had been destroyed. He reached across for the machine gun, but couldn’t quite reach it from behind the turret without exposing himself to fire.
One of the soldiers popped up in the field and took aim at Angkor and Chaū. Zeus boosted himself upward, grabbed the gun, and swung the barrel in the man’s direction. He stabbed his finger at the trigger and fired. The gun jumped as the bullets flew from the barrel, flying high and wide from their intended targets. Zeus pulled himself up behind the machine gun, bracing his knees against the turret. He fired again, this time lacing the field where the soldiers were. Mud and bits of green and brown leaves flew into the air.
He let off the trigger, waiting for the soldiers to show themselves amid the thick grass and weeds.
Something moved about thirty yards ahead. Zeus swung the barrel over and began firing again. The stream of bullets seemed to just start when suddenly the gun snapped and the stream ended — he’d run out the belt.
He couldn’t see another. He raised himself higher, looking for an ammo box.
Something flew from the area he’d been firing at.
A grenade.
Zeus dove forward between the two tanks as it sailed overhead. The grenade landed behind the third tank, which had stalled crosswise in the road. It didn’t explode at first, and for that long second Zeus considered whether he should have tried to grab it and throw it back. Then there was a sharp boom and a flash, most of the explosion muffled by the tank.
As Zeus hunkered down, he glimpsed a boot a few yards away. One of the Chinese tankers had fallen there; a gun poked its nose out from under his body.
The gun was a small Chinese Type 79. Intended mostly for internal security forces, it was a 7.62 lightweight submachine gun occasionally used by tank crews as an emergency weapon. Its small box was full.
Another grenade sailed through the air. This one, too, overshot. Zeus pulled the submachine gun next to his chest and ran from the tanks into the field behind the Chinese soldiers. The grenade exploded as he ran. He counted to three, then belly flopped to the ground inelegantly but in time to avoid being seen.
He could hear the Chinese talking. They were between ten and fifteen yards away, to his left.
Throw another grenade, boys. Throw one.
They obliged. Zeus saw the soldier rise, then drop down immediately as it left his hand. Like most soldiers, he was inordinately fixed on the device’s explosive power, and took no chances once he let it go.
Zeus figured he was ten yards away at most, and directly ahead of him.
As the grenade exploded, Zeus jumped up and began firing. Sweeping three quick bursts into the grass, he ran to the spot where the soldier had ducked down.
Someone moved. Zeus fired another burst, then went down as gunfire erupted on his left. He pulled his legs under him, curled on the ground, and waited.
He wasn’t sure how many bullets he had left in the gun, but it couldn’t be many.
Someone groaned a few feet away. It must be the grenade thrower, Zeus thought. He scanned through the weeds, not sure where the others were. He tried to quiet his breath, listening, but he could get no clue either from sound or sight.
Slowly, Zeus shifted his weight in the direction of the man he had gunned down. He leaned forward onto his elbows and knees, crawling in the man’s direction.
The groans got louder. There was another — there were at least two men wounded here.
Farther back in the field, someone shouted something in Chinese. The moaning got louder, but there was no answer.
Zeus pushed through the weeds until he saw a dark-green blotch in front of him — one of the soldiers. The man was sprawled on the ground, eyes gaping. Zeus’s bullets had caught him in the throat. He’d drowned in his own blood.
The soldier had a Type 95 assault rifle still in his hands. Zeus pried it from his fingers, then pulled two spare magazines from his belt. Stuffing the boxes into his pants, Zeus crawled away. He held the rifle in his left hand, the submachine gun in his right.
The groans were getting louder. But now there was a new sound: tanks again, engines revving.
Huddling against the wet weeds, Zeus crawled in the direction of the nearest moan. It was the grenade thrower, who’d been hit in the side of the face and arm. He lay on his back, blood seeping around him in a pool. He blinked his eyes
when he saw Zeus.
Zeus crawled next to him. He couldn’t see the man’s rifle, but he had a sidearm in a holster. Zeus, covering him with the rifle, let go of the submachine gun and reached to the holster. He undid the catch and pulled out a small semiautomatic pistol.
The man tried to speak, but the only sound he could manage was a choking cough. There was a green canvas bag a few feet away. It looked almost like a shopping bag, bulging slightly with fruit.
There were three grenades inside.
There were several Chinese soldiers still alive nearby, scattered in the field, but Zeus wasn’t exactly sure where, and without getting up and drawing their fire — a dubious proposition if they were close — he had no way of finding out. He decided to simply throw the grenades in a spread left to right.
Someone whispered in Chinese on his right. Zeus tried to guess at the words. Was the man calling to a comrade? Or was he talking to someone next to him?
The man whispered again, a little louder.
Zeus groaned in response. The whisperer said something else, a little more urgently.
Zeus didn’t answer. The brush nearby rustled — the soldier was crawling toward him, assuming he was a fallen comrade. He was very close — only a few feet away.
The man’s face poked through a clump of tall strands of grass. He wore small round glasses barely large enough to cover the whites of his eyes.
He had a pistol in his hand.
He tilted his head, puzzled when he saw Zeus.
Zeus pressed on the trigger of the submachine gun. It flew upward, his one hand not sufficient leverage against the blowback. Several bullets passed into his enemy’s forehead.
Caught between surprise and understanding, the man seemed to hover in the air a moment before collapsing, dead.
Zeus dropped the submachine gun and the rifle, and grabbed a grenade. He pulled the pin — it was smoother than he thought — and threw it to his left, arcing it upward as if throwing a long pass downfield. He grabbed a second and did the same.
The pin on the third stuck. He pulled but it wouldn’t budge. He tried again, then ducked as the first grenade exploded. Letting go of the grenade, he took hold of the rifle as the second exploded. He rose to his knee and doused the field with the entire contents of the magazine. His fingers fumbled over the unfamiliar weapon as he changed the box. Slamming it home after what seemed hours, he poured on the gunfire, once more running through the magazine.
There was no return fire.
Zeus rose tentatively, looking over the field. He stood, then turned slowly.
“Chaū!” he called.
“Down!” came a voice. It was Angkor’s.
Zeus started to turn toward it, then realized what the warning meant: an armored vehicle was rounding the corner ahead on the left. It was a Type 77-2, a tracked armored personnel carrier.
A missile shot from the ditch where Angkor and Chaū were hiding. The front of the troop carrier vanished in a cloud of smoke and dust. Zeus stared at it, forgetting for a moment where he was, let alone understanding that the shrapnel from the hit could kill if it reached him. The vehicle slumped behind the cloud, smoke furling to either side. Finally Zeus remembered the danger, and pulled up the assault rifle, ready to shoot at the soldiers escaping. But there were none — the missile had penetrated the interior and detonated inside, obliterating the passengers.
A second vehicle appeared behind the first, to its right, moving up the shoulder of the road. Zeus retreated to his left, back into the field. He threw himself down as he heard the whiz of the missile leaving the trench. The AT-14 hit home before he reached the ground, crushing through the front of the carrier with an unworldly sound.
There were more vehicles behind them. Two troop trucks — Zeus could hear the engines revving as the vehicles went off the road, trying to avoid the broken APCs.
He’d thrown himself down near the body of one of the soldiers he’d killed earlier. An ammo box sat a few feet away.
It held bullets for a machine gun. Zeus couldn’t see the weapon until he noticed a thick clump of grass about five feet away. The grass was camouflage, wrapped around the barrel and the main works.
He turned the weapon on its tripod, bringing it to bear on the troop trucks clearing the APCs. Situating a belt of bullets into the feed, he sighted and began firing. He was too low at first, then overcorrected, spewing bullets wildly around the field. Letting off the trigger, he pulled his body closer to the weapon and tried again. This time he was accurate enough to get a stream of slugs into the engine compartment of the lead truck. It continued a short ways, coasting on momentum until suddenly it stopped and began rolling backward down the slight incline it had climbed. By that time, Zeus had laced the rear of the truck with bullets and put a few into the cab of the second vehicle.
The belt ran through. Zeus fumbled with the cocking mechanism, trying to pull up the cover assembly to accept a new belt. The troops who’d been in the trucks were peppering the field with gunfire. A burst hit only a few inches away. Zeus left the gun and pushed himself face-first into the ground as bullets hit all around him.
Still under fire, he crawled next to the machine gun, reaching up and trying to reload it blind. Finally, he gingerly fit a round against the stop and got the cover down. But a fresh volley of bullets made him lurch backward.
An AT-14 spit from the ditch across the way. It slammed home into a vehicle Zeus couldn’t see, though he heard the explosion.
The launch gave the Chinese soldiers a new target. As soon as Zeus realized he wasn’t being fired at anymore, he pulled himself back to the machine gun. He laced the field, covering it with bullets.
Either one of the Chinese soldiers set off a smoke grenade for protection or one of the tracer rounds in the machine gun set fire to the grass. Smoke began rising from the Chinese position, a thick curtain of it.
Something moved at the far edge of the smoke on Zeus’s right, near the bend in the road. Zeus aimed and began firing; within a few shots the machine gun choked, jammed. Reaching to clear it, he felt something slice against his neck, hot and sharp. The next thing he knew, he was on his back, bullets whizzing overhead.
He didn’t realize he’d been shot until he felt something wet drip across his neck bone. He reached and touched it, then brought his hand close to his face. His fingers were black with dirt and the oil and grime from the gun. The blood was black as well, a strange shade of grim.
He put his fingers near his neck gingerly, then pulled them away as soon as he felt the sting.
I’m not really hurt, he told himself. It’s like sunburn.
19
Beijing
Cho Lai could barely contain his anger as the report continued. The plan to sneak troops into Hai Phong harbor had been thwarted by a single American destroyer, which had outmaneuvered one of the best ships in the Chinese fleet and managed to call the Chinese bluff. Meanwhile, the assault down the eastern coast of Vietnam, designed to reach the harbor at the same time the ships did, had stalled because of the storm. They might not reach the city for days.
The premier rose from the briefing table. The general at the podium stopped talking in mid-sentence. Cho Lai glared at each man in turn.
“We have stalled because of incompetence and cowardice!” he thundered. “I will have a new commander!”
He turned to his defense minister.
“Get my nephew from the front.”
“Colonel Sun is only a colonel,” said Lo Gong softly. “If he were put in charge — ”
“I have work to do,” said Cho Lai. He waved his hand. “You are all dismissed. Leave!”
20
Inland from Halong Bay
A train rushed over Zeus, the undercarriage and all its connected pipes and wires whipping a few inches from his face. A jet followed, wheels an inch from his brow. The world stormed by, flashing its color and speed.
He smelled the earth, the water, the thick brown soil around him. He smelled the soldiers
he’d shot, lying dead or dying nearby.
It’s just sunburn, he told himself, reaching again for his wound.
Just sunburn. Get up.
Get up!
He turned slowly onto his elbow, pushing up and looking for his machine gun. Something grabbed him and threw him down, twisting him over.
It was Chaū.
“Major Murphy — stay down!” gasped Chaū, his voice even hoarser than before.
“Okay,” Zeus muttered.
Angkor was nearby, rifling through the bodies of the Chinese for ammo. He yelled something to Chaū, who rose, then lobbed a grenade.
It didn’t explode. There was a hissing sound instead.
Smoke.
“Come on!” barked Chaū in his hoarse voice. He grabbed at Zeus and started pulling him. “Stay low.”
Fresh automatic rifle fire filled the air. But it was off the mark, closer to the road and the ditch. They were moving to the west, toward a line of trees.
“When we make the jungle, we can rest,” said Chaū.
“Okay,” said Zeus, pumping his legs as his strength returned.
* * *
“Major, are you with us?” asked Chaū.
Zeus, resting against a tree, looked up. “Yeah.”
“Your neck is bleeding.”
Chaū bent over and pulled the collar of Zeus’s uniform away. The wound had already scabbed, the blood coagulating with the cloth, and it stung.
“Ah — it’s okay, stop,” said Zeus.
“Sorry.”
“Is the bullet in there?” asked Zeus.
Chaū leaned close. “I don’t think so. It’s all red.”
Another close call. Sooner or later, his luck was going to run out.
Angkor had a small first-aid kit in one of his pants pockets. They took a large gauze bandage that came packed with ointment and taped it to Zeus’s neck. The collar pulled some skin with it as they got the bandage in place. Blood trickled from the wound.
“I’ll be all right,” said Zeus.
“What should we do now?” asked Chaū.