Shock of War

by Larry Bond

  The truck rumbled closer. Zeus spotted the olive drab fender moving toward him.

  An older truck. He leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the insignia. But he couldn’t see it.

  An open truck. People standing in the back.

  They were wearing peasant pajamas.

  Vietnamese home guards. He spotted the star on the cab.

  Zeus jumped to his feet.

  “Wait!” he yelled, crashing through the brush toward the truck. “Wait!”

  He reached the road a few yards after the truck had passed. He yelled loudly, waving his arms.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  The people at the back of the truck stared at him. They were dressed in dull green uniforms.

  “Wait!” he yelled, starting after them.

  He’d taken only three or four steps when he tripped, his legs simply too tired to remain coordinated. He tumbled down, barely able to get his hands out in time to break his fall.

  Zeus heard the truck stop. By the time he managed to get himself upright, two of the people in the back of the vehicle had run to him.

  They were women. They had AK-47s. Pointed at him.

  “I need to get to General Minh Trung,” said Zeus. “You must take me to General Trung. To General Trung. Right away.”

  8

  The Gulf of Tonkin

  The Gulf of Tonkin was a veritable bathtub filled with Chinese rubber duckies, the biggest of which were two Chinese aircraft carriers. The carriers were not, strictly speaking, in the same class as American supercarriers.

  Silas told his number two, Lieutenant Commander Dorothy Li, they weren’t even the match of the Italian ship Garibaldi, which the McLane had maneuvered with in the Philippines not six months before.

  The assessment was grossly unfair. The Garibaldi was a capable ship, but she was much smaller than the Chinese vessels. While packing quite a wallop for her size, the Italian vessel was primarily an antisubmarine helicopter ship with an attachment of Harriers to extend its mission to air strike and defense.

  A better comparison was the French carrier De Gaulle, a ship Silas had never seen. Displacing around 40,000 tons, the Chinese carriers carried the new Chinese J-15 Flying Shark, among the most capable naval combat aircraft in the world; and considerably more capable than the Harriers. While the Chinese vessels were conventionally powered, they boasted forty aircraft apiece (including helicopters). Together they had nearly the same punch as a larger U.S. supercarrier, though with a shorter reach and somewhat less efficiency. Their sensors and defenses were not up to American standards, but they were operating so much closer to their homeland that any disadvantage was marginal.

  Their aircraft would give the McLane a difficult time. It was conceivable, in fact, that if properly handled, the Chinese fighters could sink the American destroyer, though Silas was loath to admit it.

  And, of course, they would do so only over his dead body.

  The carriers were a good distance away, nearly ninety-five miles by the last plot. Closer and of more immediate concern was the cruiser and her frigate.

  Named the Wen Jiabao after a recently deceased premier, the cruiser was the refitted Moskva, a Russian ship sold to China ostensibly as scrap two years before. At one hundred and eighty six meters long and nearly twenty-one meters at beam, it was a good bit larger than the McLane. The Wen carried at least thirty-two long-range YJ-83 antiship missiles, each with a range of roughly two hundred kilometers.

  Nasty things, those.

  “Cap, have you had a look at the weather report?”

  Silas looked over at his chief aerographer’s mate, Petty Officer Jondy Moor, who’d just come out on deck. Moor, who had a background as an aviation warfare specialist, had completed training for the meteorology specialty just before joining the McLane.

  “What do we have?” asked Silas.

  “Nasty storm brewin’, Cap. It’s gonna be a bitch.”

  Moor had a satellite image with him; it showed a classic tight pinwheel with a dot at the center.

  “Category 5 typhoon. Or it will be,” said Moor. “That is the real deal.” A Category 5 typhoon—the Pacific version of a hurricane—could have winds in the area of 136 knots, generating storm surges over eighteen feet. The storm was a monster.

  “It’s coming our way?” asked Silas.

  “In this general vicinity. Absolutely, Cap.” The petty officer began regaling him with possible storm tracks and percentages, talking about probabilities and the difficulty of really knowing which way the wind was blowing. “We’ll have a better idea in twenty-four hours,” said Moor. “Any way you look at it, Cap, the seas’ll be ultra heavy. Even if it veers off, we get a lot of rain. Gale winds. Gonna be a bitch no matter where it goes.”

  “Good job,” Silas told him. “Keep me informed.”

  “Aye aye, Cap.” Moor glanced over Silas’s shoulder. “Chinese still out there?”

  “Just over the horizon,” Silas told him.

  “We oughta kick ’em in the balls before they get a chance to kick ours,” said Moor.

  “Not up to us,” said Silas. “Though I have to say, you have the right idea.”

  9

  Alexandria

  Josh’s appearances at the UN and before the Senate committee made him a popular “get” for the network and cable talk shows. The only problem was that he didn’t want to be a “get.”

  His experiences since returning to the U.S. had so completely depressed him that he didn’t want to do anything, not even eat. Much of it was simply fatigue—he was still hungover, physically and mentally, from his ordeal in Vietnam. Nothing in America could quite match the adrenaline rush of what he’d been through, the triumph as well as the fear. But most of what he felt was utter contempt for his fellow human beings, who were simply too selfish to understand what was really going on. They closed their eyes to the outrage, trying to wish it away in hopes that it wouldn’t affect them.

  But eventually it would.

  Jablonski had set himself up as Josh’s media broker, and he gave Josh a long list of possible interviews. Josh turned them all down.

  “It’s completely up to you,” said Jablonski. “But it would be in your best interests to take a few. Just a few.”

  “My best interests?”

  The political op stared at him.

  “I’m going home,” Josh said.

  “I’ll give you a ride to the hotel.”

  The hotel wasn’t what Josh meant. He wanted to go home home.

  The problem was that he didn’t have one: the Vietnam field work was supposed to have lasted six months, with research following in Australia. So Josh had given up his apartment. He didn’t even have a storage locker: postgrad, his entire accumulation of worldly goods amounted to three boxes of clothes and six boxes of books, all of which were donated to a Goodwill outfit in Kansas where he’d been staying with his cousin’s family before leaving for Asia.

  He could go back to the farm. His cousin had invited him in their brief phone call right after the UN talk.

  Where else would he go?

  * * *

  Josh was still brooding when he returned to the hotel. He started to turn on the television, then realized it would only depress him further. Instead, he started to pack, pulling together all of his borrowed clothes.

  He had to talk to Mara, say good-bye.

  She was the one thing keeping him here, or keeping him around. He didn’t want to leave her.

  But that was silly. They weren’t boyfriend-girlfriend. She’d been doing her job. It was time to go.

  He pulled everything together in less than five minutes, checked the bathroom twice, and left the room.

  “Hey, champ, where we going?” asked the marshal. By now Josh was calling him Tex, which he didn’t seem to mind.

  “Home, Tex.”

  “Home?”

  “You can ride with me if you want. But I’m going.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Tex, you
don’t have that in your little earphone there?”

  “Come on now, Doc. I’m on your side, right?”

  “I’m going home.” Josh walked to Mara’s door and knocked, even though he knew she wouldn’t be there. He knocked twice, called her name, then decided it was time to leave.

  He wanted to see her. He wanted more than that. But it was time to move on.

  Tex trailed him down the hall to the elevator.

  “I’m not sure about this,” said the marshal.

  “I’m not under arrest, right?”

  “Well, no, of course not.”

  “Then I’m going home.”

  10

  Aboard the McLane

  “Five merchant ships. They sailed out of Zhanjiang a few hours ago,” the communications officer told Silas. “Fleet wants them checked to make sure they’re not running guns to the Vietnamese.”

  “Well, that’s bullshit. They’re not going to sail from China to Vietnam to deliver weapons.”

  The communications officer gave Silas an embarrassed look. Obviously, he had no idea what fleet was up to.

  “All right. I’ll talk to them from my quarters. Where is Lieutenant Commander Li?”

  “She was in the Command Center when I left, sir.”

  “Very good.”

  Silas went into his cabin, secured the door, and then flipped on his secure link to fleet. The satellite system provided an encrypted, real-time link to practically every Navy command in the world, all the ships at sea, and the Pentagon. It was a double-edged sword, as it gave those sailing the desks back home considerably more opportunity to interfere with the captains on the front line.

  In Silas’s opinion, of course.

  “There are you are, Silas,” said Captain Mortez. He was Admiral Meeve’s chief of staff.

  “What’s the story on these merchant ships. Why am I supposed to intercept them?”

  “We think they’re carrying Chinese troops.”

  “What? According to this, the ships are registered in the Philippines.”

  “Don’t believe everything you read. Can you get to them?”

  “Depends where they’re headed. In the meantime I’ve got a hurricane blowing up my fantail.”

  “I’ve seen the weather reports. Can you stop those ships?”

  “I can sink them.”

  “Dirk, why do you give me a hard time?”

  “Because you know and I know they should be sunk if they’re Chinese.”

  “Even if I agreed with you—which I’m not saying I do—that isn’t the admiral’s order. You board them under UN sanction 2014-3-2 and search them. All right?”

  “What if they don’t want to be boarded?”

  “We’ll deal with that when we get to it. The admiral will want you to be in communication at that point anyway.”

  “Doesn’t trust me?”

  “You’re busting my chops.”

  “You’ve been ashore too long, Tommy.”

  “I’m not disagreeing with you. Contact us every hour to let us know what’s going on.”

  No way, thought Silas. But he didn’t say it.

  “Are our carriers moving in my direction?”

  “Not at the present time,” said Mortez. “Everything else is staying near Taiwan. You’re on your own. You don’t think you can handle it?”

  “I can handle it,” said Silas. He reached for the kill button. “McLane out.”

  11

  Hanoi

  Zeus woke to a buzz of voices.

  Nurses, doctors, and attendants flitted around his bed. He had trouble opening his eyes. When finally they opened, the light was so intense he had to close them again. He gasped for air, struggled, then breathed as if for the first time.

  When he finally managed to keep his eyes open and focused, he found General Harland Perry standing next to his bed. To the general’s right was Melanie Behrens, the American ambassador to Vietnam.

  “Major, are you with us?” asked Perry.

  “Sir, I’m good.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Perry gave him a broad smile. “Doctors claimed you’d sleep for a month.”

  “Nah, I’m awake.”

  “Maybe you should rest,” said Ambassador Behrens. “They said you were dehydrated.”

  Zeus pulled himself upright. He felt a little woozy.

  “How’s Major Christian?” he asked.

  “Already checked out,” said Perry.

  No way Zeus was staying in bed now. He looked around the ward. It was a large room with space for about a dozen beds. Those across from him were packed closely together, the space between them barely enough for a nurse or doctor to edge into. His own bed had three times as much space around it—a gesture toward VIP status, he guessed.

  Little else about his immediate surroundings could be considered exclusive, however; there were no monitors, and the saline drip was hung from the ceiling by a thin metal chain, which ended in a blunt, oversized fishhook. There were carts of equipment parked near the foot of the bed next to him, and more extensive equipment a little farther down to his left.

  “General, the Chinese have tanks on the border,” Zeus told Perry. “They’re ready to come across. They must already be across. There was a bunker…”

  “We know all about the bunker,” said Perry. “And the fuel accident.”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” said Zeus.

  “Major, I believe you are mistaken,” said Behrens. “You may have a fever. You are in no position to know what is happening on the Chinese side of the border.”

  Behrens was a small, petite woman; barely five foot. But she had the voice of a tigress, sharp and commanding. It brooked no discussion, let alone argument.

  Perry smiled down at him.

  “See you when you’re rested up,” said the general, starting away with Beherns.

  “I’ll be in soon,” said Zeus.

  When they were gone, he took stock of his situation. He pulled up the tight pajama shirt they’d dressed him in. The left side looked fine, but there were several large welts on the other. Oddly, he felt pain only on the right side.

  A mystery of medical science.

  His right knee felt a little funny. It was slightly swollen, but not really painful. There were numerous scratches and tiny cuts along his lower legs, and his arms looked like they were crisscrossed with graffiti.

  All things considered, he was in good shape. The only possible complication was the bag of saline hanging from the ceiling. Zeus looked at the needle taped into his arm, then followed the rubber tubing back up to the bag. The drip wasn’t surging through his body—obviously they’d given it to him because they thought he was dehydrated, a problem that could have been solved by just giving him a few gallons of water, for cryin’ out loud.

  The easiest way to deal with these things was quickly: he pulled off the taped bandage holding the tube in place, then, with a good tug, removed the needle.

  Saline poured all over his hand, running down to his arm. He swung his legs off the bed and got up, a little unsteadily. His head cleared as he tied the tube in a knot.

  He couldn’t get it quite tight enough to stop running. He reached the tube up over the bag, hooking it into the chain. Gravity 101, but he was quite proud of himself for realizing it.

  Now where were his clothes?

  One of the nurses rushed over as he looked for them at the end of the bed. He didn’t understand what she was saying, but knowing the exact words was unnecessary; she was speaking universal nurse-patient language, saying something roughly along the lines of: What are you doing out of bed?

  “Hey, I’m okay. Thanks,” Zeus told her.

  She looked at him with the outraged stare nurses are trained to use on noncompliant patients. Zeus had seen that stare plenty of times from his mother, herself a nurse, so he simply smiled.

  “You have any idea where my clothes are?” he asked.

  The nurse threw up her hands, adding gestures to her verbal admonitions. She
pointed at his arm where the IV had been.

  It was bleeding slightly.

  “You could give me a bandage,” said Zeus. He pushed down the pajama sleeve to staunch the bleeding.

  “What are you doing from bed?”

  Zeus looked up and the met the green eyes of the most beautiful woman he had seen in years, if not his entire life. Her dark-skinned face was framed by black hair that was pulled back behind her head into a long ponytail. Her bleached white smock hung loosely off a narrow frame over baggy blue pants. A stethoscope was strung around the back of her neck.

  “I’m okay, nurse,” Zeus told her. “I’ll just be going now.”

  She smiled broadly. “Oh, are you now?”

  “Yeah, all I have are a couple of bruises and stuff,” said Zeus.

  “Bruises.”

  “I used to play football,” said Zeus. “I had a lot worse than this after a typical practice.”

  “Your head?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Concussion?” asked the woman.

  “Nah.”

  God, she was beautiful.

  “Your knee?” she asked.

  “Banged it up, but look.” He put his weight on it, walking out from around the bed. “Not a problem.”

  “No pain?”

  “Just feels a little weird. You know what’s wrong with it?”

  “Hyperextended it,” she said. Even her slight mispronunciation and unsteady grammar were endearing.

  “You think so?” Zeus asked.

  He looked into her eyes. They were definitely the highlight of her face, and her face was extremely attractive without them. The irises were almost incandescent—he’d seen hazel before, but these were more green.

  Jewel-like.

  So that wasn’t a metaphor. It was how some women’s eyes really were.

  “I am a little hungry,” Zeus told her. “What about you?”

  “Me?”

  “We could get something to eat,” said Zeus. “I don’t know any places around here. I’d need a guide.”

  She smirked.

  “No no, not like that,” said Zeus. “Just to, you know, show me around.”