by Larry Bond
Mara smiled.
“Speaking of Peter,” added Grease. “Before you go up to see him, there’s a company I wanted to ask you about: Maccu Shang Shipping. A Philippine company. Sorry about the cramped space.”
The room was tiny, with a bare desk, a pair of computer terminals, and two steel-and-vinyl chairs. Mara and Grease were sitting almost knee to knee.
“I know Shang,” she told him. “The Philippines is a front. They’re Chinese.”
“You’re positive? The evidence looks a little ambiguous.”
“They’re definitely Chinese.”
“Five ships leased to the company left Macau last night and headed for Zhanjiang. Southern China. Big navy port.”
“See?”
“Turns out some of our friends at the agency that doesn’t exist happened to be tracking an army unit that was just sent there, real fast. Seems like they’re in the port, waiting for something.”
The agency that doesn’t exist was Grease’s quaint way of referring to the NSA, or National Security Agency, which specialized in eavesdropping. His pseudonym came from a popular nickname for the agency, formed from its initials: No Such Agency.
“They’re getting on the ships?” asked Mara.
“Don’t know. I have to check back in. They may be there already. A lot of things to keep tabs on. That one just happened to catch my interest.”
“Shang Shipping brought all sorts of stuff into Malaysia,” said Mara. “A lot of different things.”
“Troops?”
Mara wasn’t sure about that. The Chinese had smuggled some paramilitary and guerillas into the country as advisers, but most of their help to the rebels had been in the form of equipment. The ships had filed manifests that said they were shipping food to Burma—as unlikely an arrangement as Mara had ever heard of.
The Chinese unit’s identity interested Grease—they were commandos, not regular army, and apparently not assigned to the amphibious assault that was to have been launched from Hainan.
“My question is where would they go?” said Grease.
“Could be anywhere,” said Mara. “Vietnam has a long coast.”
“The NSA suggested Hai Phong. Someone attached to the unit apparently gathered some sort of electronic information—I’m guessing that it had to do with a GPS system. But you know them. They won’t admit they know anything.”
“Did they have assault ships?”
“No,” said Grease. “I’m wondering if they might just try sailing into the port.”
“Do the Vietnamese still hold Hai Phong?”
“They do. Were you there?”
“No, we didn’t get that far west.”
Grease asked her a few more questions about the status of things in Vietnam. He commented that the country seemed surprisingly calm for one under siege. Mara wasn’t so sure about that; in her experience, sanity and insanity mixed all the time.
“You going upstairs?” asked Grease, glancing at his watch.
“Yeah.”
“Well, come on. I’ll escort you. We want to get up in time to see your boyfriend testify before the Senate.”
“My boyfriend?”
“Looks like I hit a nerve,” said Grease, opening the door. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of red on you cheeks before.”
“Grease—”
“It does suit you.”
3
The Gulf of Tonkin
Commander Dirk Silas edged his finger along the manual focus ring of his glasses, trying to will something out of the dark night before his ship. The moist air pulled a fog from the ocean, reducing the gear’s effectiveness.
The Chinese were still there, six miles off the port bow. The frigate was the closer of the two; the cruiser’s captain used the smaller boat as a shield and a prod, sending it close, only to have it tuck away. Right now it was doing the latter, sailing into what its captain probably supposed was safe murk beyond Silas’s immediate vision.
Ha!
The communicator on the destroyer captain’s belt buzzed and vibrated with an incoming message. The wireless system allowed Silas to communicate with all departments on his ship without having to be tethered to a physical control panel. He could switch from voice or text messaging by pressing a small button, changing channels and issuing simple commands such as “save” via voice.
In this case, the message referred him to a longer transmission from his fleet commander via video; he retreated to his cabin to view it.
Admiral Roy Meeve’s stone countenance filled the screen. The message had been recorded; it wasn’t live. The admiral’s face seemed almost gray. That wasn’t a function of the video mechanism—if anything it cast it a little more fleshlike.
“Dirk—we’ve confirmed now the Chinese have canceled their plan to ship the landing force from Hainan. Continue your patrol in the area. Maintain a course in international waters. Do not provoke or engage. Do not withdraw.”
Don’t engage, but don’t withdraw? Should I just let the bastards run over me?
Silas flipped the video off with disgust and went to find a cup of coffee.
4
Washington, D.C.
Josh sat in the small room in the Senate office building, running his thumbnails together. The next-to-last thing in the world he wanted to do was walk from this room into the large conference room next door. He was going to do it, though, because the last thing he wanted to do was let these bastards call him a liar.
The door opened. Josh started to rise, then saw that it was only Jablonski.
“There you are. Ready?” asked the political troubleshooter.
“No.”
“Come on now. You have to have a positive attitude.” Jablonski somehow managed to look disheveled in a bespoke black suit. Maybe it was his purple tie, which despite a perfect knot at the top was a fraction of an inch too long at the bottom. Or perhaps it was the creases in his white shirt, which suggested the pattern of a psychotic snowflake. “You’ll do fine. Senator Grasso loves you. He owes you his life.”
“He owes Mara his life. She’s being smeared, too.”
“We’re not going to mention Mara at the hearing. Okay?”
“Mmmm.”
“How’s the suit? Still fit?”
“It fits.”
Jablonski had had the suit made for him in New York. Josh had worn it for the UN speech; it was still a bit dirty from the attempt on his life before the speech but there’d been no time to have it dry-cleaned.
“Tailor’s father fought with Chiang Kai-shek,” said Jablonski. “Interesting life story. Long struggle.”
The door opened again. One of Grasso’s aides, a young man about Josh’s age, came in. “Ready, Mr. MacArthur.”
“It’s Dr. MacArthur,” said Jablonski.
“Oh, right, I’m sorry.”
“It’s Josh.” He got up and followed the aide into the conference room. It was jammed with aides and seemingly every foreign-interest lobbyist in town. They all wanted to see Josh in person.
Half were undoubtedly spies, Josh thought.
The press was gathered along the far wall of the room. Bulbs flashed and TV lights came on as Josh walked in. He walked stoically to the table opposite the dais and sat down.
Senator Grasso, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on affairs with China—double entendre be damned—sat at the center of the long, courtroomlike platform at the front of the room. He had a grim face—much grimmer than Josh remembered from when they had met in New York. He gave Josh a serious, portentous nod, then leaned back to whisper to one of his aides.
Josh grimaced as a photographer came and took a picture of him. Several more followed. He didn’t even try to smile.
Grasso gaveled the session to order. Or at least attempted to—another senator began speaking immediately, saying something about how he wanted to make sure proper procedure was followed.
“The committee will come to order,” said Grasso, rapping sharply. “These hearings a
re being conducted to review the President’s request for immediate military aid to be given to Vietnam in light of the gross violation of—”
The senator on Grasso’s left pulled his microphone forward to interrupt. “Mr. Chairman, I have a request—”
“Requests will be handled at the proper time,” said Grasso. “The chair will make the opening statement.”
As seen in television reports, congressional hearings seemed at least somewhat organized, with direction and occasional sparks of order. From Josh’s vantage, this one was three-ring chaos, with the senators talking to aides and correspondents at the back of the room doing brief broadcasts. Josh heard the loud clatter of laptop keys; the session was being live-blogged on at least half a dozen sites.
He was completely ignored for a few minutes as Grasso made a statement about searching for the truth, then corralled the rest of his subcommittee into agreement that they would shut up while he swore Josh in.
“Will the witness rise?” asked Grasso finally.
Josh put his hand on a Bible and swore that he was going to tell the truth.
“Absolutely,” he added.
Jablonski had coached him to read a prepared statement that was essentially an edited version of the one he had given the UN the day before. As he sat down, he took it from his jacket pocket and folded it out on the table in front of him. The cameramen rose, poised to take his picture as he read.
“Dr. MacArthur,” said Senator Grasso. “Do you have a statement you’d like to make?”
“Yes, Senator, I do,” said Josh.
His tongue suddenly stuck in his mouth. He looked down at the pages, filled with words Jablonski had written. They weren’t his. He couldn’t read them.
Everyone waited. The cameras clicked away.
“I … A few days ago, I returned from Vietnam after witnessing a massacre.” Josh pushed the paper to the side. “Innocent people were killed. I testified about it at the UN yesterday morning. I brought back a video. In the hours since, I’ve been called a liar. I’m not a liar. I’m a scientist. I know what I saw. The Chinese are murderers. They killed innocent people. It was despicable. It is despicable.”
There was collective gasp at the word murderers. Jablonski had specifically coached him not to say that. You’re a scientist, he’d said. Be scientific.
But how the hell could you be scientific when you’d seen what he’d seen? And when people called you a liar?
The photographers began taking pictures furiously. Josh looked at Grasso. He had a worried frown on his face.
“Order,” said Grasso, pounding the gavel.
“Mr. Chairman, I must demand that our witness apologize for his intemperate remarks,” said Senator Galveston, who despite his name represented Minnesota. “The Chinese are our allies and our business partners.”
“I don’t see how you can call them our allies,” said the senator on Grasso’s right.
Something between a discussion and pandemonium followed, as the senators argued back and forth about decorum and adjectives. Josh was shocked—not only did one of the senators want him to issue an apology, that seemed to be the majority view on the panel.
Josh knew that standing up to China was unpopular—the President himself had told him that—but he had thought that his speech and the images he’d presented at the UN had shown Americans, if not the world, what was going on.
Maybe it wasn’t fair to call the Chinese murderers. Certainly not every Chinese citizen was in the army, and maybe most wouldn’t support the war. Certainly, they wouldn’t be in favor of killing innocent civilians. But the Chinese government was another story. And their army had definitely done this.
“Mr. Chairman, I ask for a vote of censure on the witness,” said the senator from Minnesota.
“That’s preposterous!” said Grasso. He pounded his gavel.
More discussion. Josh glanced toward the door to the small room where he had left Jablonski. But the door was shut. Most likely the political operative was at the back of the room somewhere, but Josh didn’t want to give the reporters back there the satisfaction of his turning and looking at them.
Grasso finally gaveled his committee back to order. There would be no demands on the witness, and no further statements from the witness. Instead, he would answer questions posed by the senators.
It was less a Q&A session than an excuse for pontificating. First up was the senator on Grasso’s right, who asked Josh if it was true that he had been near the Chinese border when he witnessed the slaughter, and then after getting a “yes,” launched into a denunciation of China as the enemy of the free world. The senators were on a time limit, as Grasso noted not once but twice before tapping his gavel lightly to cut off a man who was clearly his ally.
Next up was a member of the opposition party, who sat at the far end of the dais. He asked Josh what his qualifications were.
“I’m a biologist,” said Josh. “My specialty is studying the effects—”
“You’re a biologist? I thought you were a climate scientist.”
“Yes. You see, there’s an overlap. In that I study the effects of rapid climate change on biological populations. Now, in Vietnam—”
“So excuse me,” interrupted the senator, in a voice that implied no apology whatsoever. “You’re not a trained observer? You’re not a medical doctor. You know things about the weather.”
“Of course I’m not a medical doctor.”
“I see,” said the senator, his tone triumphant. “And this tape you brought back—”
“Actually, it was a video stored on—”
“The recording,” continued the senator, annoyed at being interrupted. “Who gave it to you?”
“No one gave it to me.”
“Your CIA handler didn’t give it to you?”
“I don’t have a handler.”
The senator frowned.
“Sixty seconds,” said Grasso. His tone made it clear that that was all the senator was getting. He was looking directly at his watch, and his gavel was poised to strike.
“Mr. Chairman, I want to submit that we cannot, and should not, take action based on ephemeral information from a possibly biased source, who may or may not have witnessed an isolated incident in an obscure—”
“Time.” Grasso pounded the gavel.
But while the chairman could keep the speakers to their time limits, he had no control over what they said. As the session went on, it became clear that the majority on the committee was unwilling to take any action against China, and would certainly not authorize aid to Vietnam. One said that he would be in favor of aid if the UN passed a resolution condemning China. As China was able, as a member of the security council, to veto any resolution—and already had twice—this was tantamount to saying that he would never support aid, except that he phrased it in a way that made most people think he might.
Josh, thinking of the dead people he’d seen, of the buried hand of the corpse he’d dug up, of the girl, Mạ, whose parents had been killed and whose village had been wiped out, felt sick to his stomach.
At least none of the senators called him a liar. As the meeting went on, Josh tried to lengthen his answers so that they contained actual information. But the senators were on to that ploy, and soon began simply to ignore him, pontificating at will without bothering to ask a question or even glance in his direction. One or two made conciliatory gestures in his general direction—one even said he had been very brave to have escaped the war—but for the most part he was an accessory at best, and a potted plant at worst.
Finally, the ordeal was over. Grasso, clearly worn by the proceedings, thanked Josh for his time and “your unselfish devotion to our country.” With a loud clap on the gavel, some of the longest and certainly most frustrating hours of Josh’s life came to a close.
5
On the border of China and Vietnam
Zeus saw the Chinese soldier stop, push his head down as if in disbelief, then start to raise his rifle.
/> From that point, the world became a gray funnel. He couldn’t see or hear.
He could feel. And what he felt was his body rushing through the night, legs and arms pumping. He leapt onto the soldier’s chest. They fell to the ground.
Zeus let go of the explosive as he rolled to his right. He dropped the plunger. In the same motion he flailed at the soldier’s chin and neck, smashing them first with his forearm, then his fists. The gray funnel became a black ball, a hard knot of fury.
He didn’t breathe. His heart didn’t pump. He just punched.
Something grabbed his back. He spun, ready to strike his second assailant.
It was Christian. He just barely stopped himself from punching him.
“He’s down. He’s down.”
Zeus leapt to his feet, grabbed the explosive pack and the detonator mechanism up. Meanwhile, Christian grabbed the Chinese soldier’s legs and pulled him under the nearby APC.
“Take his pistol!” hissed Zeus, grabbing the soldier’s assault rifle.
“No other guards,” said Christian. “Think they heard?”
“Too late to worry about,” said Zeus. He pointed to the right. “We can crawl around that little mound to the truck.”
“I don’t think I can do it.”
“Come on, Win. You got this far.”
The men who were loading the fuel tanks were about fifty feet away. Zeus heard them talking as he crawled forward.
He stopped when there were just two trucks between him and the pump apparatus.
If he could make it to the other side of the apparatus without being seen, he could plant the bombs right on the machinery itself. The explosion would very likely take out the tank below.
One of the trucks he had passed began to move. Zeus dropped to the ground.
The men waved it forward. Zeus watched as it was filled. A red light came on near the pump. There was a shout. The light went off. Another truck started up.
He wasn’t going to get any closer than this, and if he waited too much longer, he’d be found.