Shock of War

by Larry Bond

  “What the hell happened?” demanded Zeus. “Why did you fire?”

  “Major Murph!” said one of the team leaders, a sergeant. “Major Murph, you found us.”

  “Why did you shoot them?”

  “Chinese.”

  “Yeah, but they were surrendering. Did one of them fire?”

  The sergeant looked at him as if he didn’t understand. Maybe he didn’t.

  “You killed them when they were surrendering,” said Zeus.

  The man shook his head lightly, not comprehending. It was possible someone had gotten nervous and pressed his trigger. Maybe there were other extenuating circumstances. It was too late to undo now.

  Zeus felt his stomach grip him from the inside.

  “How many of us?” he said, struggling to stay calm. He raised his hand and made a circular gesture. “How many?”

  The sergeant said something in Vietnamese.

  “Is this all?” Zeus asked. He circled again with his hand.

  “All. Yes.”

  “We have a man in that house, over there.” Zeus pointed beyond the field. “Our man.” He tapped his chest. “Do you understand?”

  “Our man. One.”

  “Right. Hook up with him, and meet me near the road,” said Zeus. He tried miming it with his hand. “Okay? I’m going down to the water and see if I can find anyone else. Where is Major Chaū?”

  “Chaū?” The sergeant shook his head grimly.

  “By the road. Meet me. Don’t kill our guy.”

  “Yes,” said the sergeant.

  * * *

  The field was separated from the stream by a row of trees and submerged rocks. Zeus slipped through the trees, trying to see where he was.

  A boot floated in the water nearby. It turned on the current, revealing the hacked edge of a lower leg.

  Zeus steeled himself, balancing amid the trees. He could see the semisubmerged hulk of the PBR ten yards away, on his left. Two bodies floated in the water near it.

  Both sailors.

  Slinging his rifle over his shoulder, Zeus shimmied up one of the trees, trying to get a better view. He could see at least one other body beyond the PBR. It was a soldier’s.

  Chaū?

  Zeus hugged the tree and turned in the other direction, looking for the Stolkraft. He found it grounded on some debris about thirty yards downstream. A shell blast had broken the hull in two, and the sides bowed up, as if the boat were a deck of cards waiting to be shuffled.

  Zeus counted three bodies on the deck. Several missile containers, and ammunition boxes were there as well. A few were stuck in the mud nearby. They could all be salvaged.

  Zeus pushed himself higher on the tree, looking toward the opposite shore. He saw no sign of the Chinese there. There was a rise a little more than a mile beyond. He guessed that there was a roadway through or near the swamp, and that the Chinese had gathered their tanks there. A scout near the water would have seen the boats, and sent back information about them. Or maybe he’d just fired to provoke the Vietnamese and alert the tanks.

  The theory gave him a working target. They’d move up in that direction and look for the tanks—or whatever it was that had hit them.

  Zeus shimmied down the tree trunk, his legs and palms scraping though the trunk was smooth.

  As he started back up through the field, he heard the whine of vehicles moving in the distance. He put his head down and started to run. He crossed to the right side of the house, running past the bodies of the Chinese soldiers, who’d been left where they fell.

  A mistake, thought Zeus. If the Chinese saw them, they’d know exactly what had happened.

  But there was no time to do anything about it. The ground was shaking with the approach of the armored vehicles, moving on the dirt road in the field beyond the houses. Zeus ran up along the woods to the opening where he had crossed earlier. He was about five or six steps away when he heard the swoosh of a Kornet missile streaking across the open yard.

  A loud crack followed, as if lightning had hit a massive redwood and felled it with one burst. A second missile zipped into the air, but this time there was no explosion. Instead, a Chinese ZTZ99’s 120 mm began to fire, tossing shells in the direction of the house where Zeus had left the soldier.

  Another missile—an explosion, small-arms gunfire, a shout and a scream.

  The air reverberated, the ground shaking as the Vietnamese engaged the force of tanks that had moved down the road. Zeus, realizing that he would not be able to run across to the buildings without being caught in the crossfire, changed course and headed toward his left, hoping to come up around the Chinese force.

  He remembered the crates of missiles lying back at the shore, and considered going to grab them, but it would take considerable time to fish out even one, and he might be more useful in the meantime. At a minimum, he had to know what he was up against.

  Zeus sprinted across the field, crossed a muddy lane, then circled around a small shed that bordered the road before finally reaching a point where he could look in the direction of the firefight. Four Chinese tanks, very closely packed together in a column, sat in front of the house. Smoke billowed from the lead tank. Black smoke and gray steam furled behind it, from at least one other Z99 that Zeus couldn’t see. The others were firing their machine guns in a steady hail, the sound a kind of steel-tap chorus.

  The house was engulfed in flames and smoke.

  Zeus laid down flat and began easing across the field on his belly, trying to get a better angle. After about ten yards of crawling through the mud he came to a water-filled ditch. Slipping into it, he found himself in water almost to his neck. Holding his rifle just above the surface of the water, he followed the ditch as it slanted behind the tanks’ position, moving away as it drew parallel to them. The depth of the ditch decreased as he went, until finally when he was even with the tanks he had to kneel to avoid being seen.

  One of the four tanks was still firing. The empty building was on fire as well. If the Vietnamese were still alive, he couldn’t see them, or hear their guns.

  More vehicles were moving in the distance, on his left, coming to join the fight.

  The smartest thing to do at this point—aside from running away—was to backtrack, get some of the missiles, and get into position to either take this tank out or, more likely, ambush whatever was coming up as reinforcements. Zeus turned and looked back down the trench, calculating whether it might not be easier to back out here and make a wide circle back.

  It would certainly be drier. Zeus looked back to make sure the Z99’s turret was buttoned up. When he didn’t see anyone on the machine gun, he climbed out of the ditch and crawled straight back, aiming for a row of foliage separating the field from another. He reached the bushes and turned around, got his bearings again, and started to run along the brush to angle back toward the water. He kept his eyes on the tank and the road some fifty or sixty yards away.

  He’d gone no more than a few steps when the top of the tank popped open. Zeus dropped down immediately. By the time he looked up, the tank commander had grabbed the machine gun on the turret and begun firing toward the two burning houses.

  If he was thinking logically, Zeus might have seen this as an opportunity to get away—the man was focused on a target one hundred and eighty degrees in the other direction.

  But Zeus wasn’t thinking logically. Instead, he saw a threat to the men he’d been with, and he reacted instinctively, jumping up through the brush and starting across the field. With a different, more familiar weapon, he might have fired from the brush itself—fifty yards was not a particularly difficult shot with an M-16 or even an AK-47 for that matter, so long as the shooter was used to the weight and pull of the gun, and the weapon itself was in good repair. But Zeus had little experience with an AK, and he’d already seen that the weapon could be unreliable except at very close range.

  He stopped ten yards from the tank.

  The Chinese tank commander hunkered over his machine gun. T
he man ceased firing and straightened, looking over the field to see where his enemy was hiding.

  Now, thought Zeus. He dropped to his knee, almost too close to have an angle.

  But he did have an angle, and he did have a shot, dead-on in the middle of the iron sights.

  Zeus pressed the trigger.

  Nothing happened.

  He tried again. The gun had been fouled in the water.

  He cleared, tried again. Nothing.

  In the next second, the sound of a steam engine about to blow rose in his ears; the noise merged into a loud screech and boom. One of the Vietnamese had fired an AT-14 at the tank.

  * * *

  By the time Zeus heard the noise of the missile strike on the tank, he’d already pitched to the ground. The AT-14 hit the bottom of the turret on the left side of the tank, away from Zeus. The missile half-penetrated the armor as it exploded, rocking the top upward as if it were bottle opener popping a soda can that had been in the sun all day.

  Steam exploded from the fissure. The lower half of the tank thumped down hard against the ground, shaking it in a rumble that reverberated through Zeus’s chest. The top of the tank peeled back, metal spitting off.

  The tank commander was blasted into pieces. His right hand and forearm flew in a somersault across the air, landing a few inches from Zeus’s face. Zeus saw the fingers in front of him, extending from the palm as if beseeching God for mercy.

  He jerked his head away, closing his eyes involuntarily.

  Someone shouted behind him. He was caught off guard, still stunned from the vision of the hand.

  They shouted again. He didn’t know what they were saying.

  Was it Vietnamese, or Chinese?

  Only when Zeus closed his hand did he realize he didn’t have his gun; he’d lost it when he threw himself down. It would have been useless anyway.

  He started to spread his arms. Someone shouted, then kicked him down, face-first into the ground.

  He rolled to his back, raising his arms to ward off another blow. A rifle was in his face.

  A Chinese rifle. The soldier, uniform battered, helmet missing, yelled something in Chinese. Zeus shook his head, trying to show that he didn’t understand.

  The man thrust the rifle barrel at Zeus. If he’d had a bayonet, he would have pierced him in the heart.

  Zeus started to push himself backward, not sure what the man wanted him to do. The Chinese soldier screamed at him again. Blood trickled from the man’s temple. His face was bright red, as if he’d been burned, as if he was still burning. His eyes were wild and open; he could have been a caricature of hell.

  “Séi!” the soldier yelled in Chinese.

  He continued, telling Zeus that he was a dead man, that there was no hope or escape. He screamed the same word over and over, but the one word was an entire paragraph, a long demand.

  “Séi!”

  He wanted to see Zeus’s fear. He wanted him to run before he killed him. For it wasn’t Zeus he was going to shoot; it was his own terror and dread. The horror of battle had unnerved him.

  Zeus had no way out. The Chinese soldier prodded Zeus with the barrel of the gun, smacking it against his chin.

  If he tries it again, I can grab it, he thought.

  But there was a second thought: Maybe he wants me to stand so he can take me prisoner.

  He knew from the man’s expression that this couldn’t be true—the man was possessed, acting according to some logic only his unhinged mind understood. But even so, Zeus wanted the second idea to be true—it offered some hope.

  The man yelled his word again. Losing hope that Zeus would do what he said, the soldier drew back his gun and aimed at the American.

  “Séi!”

  There was loud crack, a single shot.

  To Zeus’s amazement, the Chinese soldier fell down to his right, so close to him that blood splattered across his face.

  “Major Murphy,” croaked Chaū in his hoarse voice, running up and standing over him. He was huffing. “I am glad you are still alive.”

  17

  Mariveles, the Philippines

  Ric Kerfer folded his arms in front of his chest and took a step backward. In all his time in the Navy, he had never seen so many goddamn weapons gathered in one place before. The dock was literally overrun with boxes and crates, and the warehouse behind it was already half-packed. All manner of Russian ordinance was stacked all over the pier. There were bullets and shells and seven different varieties of antitank weapons. There were AT-14 missiles and jellied petroleum for flame-throwers. There were five-hundred-pound bombs, and cases for SA-7s. Most the munitions were older than he was, but the sheer amount of them was damn impressive.

  Too impressive. He only had the single C-130 to get all this crap to Vietnam.

  What to do?

  The Filipinos he’d recruited as stevedores looked at him anxiously.

  It would have helped if someone told him what the damn priorities were. Good ol’ Braney hadn’t given him a clue.

  He’d taken antitank weapons on the first trip. But you could never have too many.

  Kerfer began walking down the row of crates. He’d elected to study Russian at one of his schools way back when, but the truth was, he didn’t remember crap from those days, and the Cyrillic letters might just as well have been inkblots.

  Besides, they all claimed to be things they weren’t, like kitchen utensils. One of the Russians had given him a sheaf of papers with the key, but it was all confused.

  Kerfer stopped at a crate he thought held more AT-14s. When he opened it, he saw Boltoks—missiles that were launched from tanks.

  “Take these for the plane,” he told his stevedores. “Two boxes, no, four. We’ll keep the numbers even.”

  A little bit of everything. That was the key. Definitely throw in some artillery shells. Army guys always like that.

  And as soon as he had everything picked out, he’d call for another plane.

  Or maybe twenty.

  18

  Inland from Halong Bay

  Chaū had been separated from the others when the boats were hit, falling into the water and then swimming or floating—he wasn’t sure which—north. By the time he got himself together, the other firefight was already underway. He slipped down through the fields, arriving at the houses after they had been destroyed. There he’d found Sergeant Angkor hunkered over the last missile, waiting for the smoke to clear so he’d get a shot. They’d stalked the tank, then found Zeus by accident.

  “There are more tanks coming,” Zeus told Chaū. “Hear them? Do you have more missiles?”

  “That was the last,” said Chaū.

  “There are more cases by the water,” said Zeus. “Let’s get them.”

  He started to run, then looked back when he realized they weren’t following.

  “What’s wrong, Chaū?”

  “We have wounded.”

  “We’ll come back for them,” said Zeus. “We’re not leaving them.”

  Chaū and Angkor began talking, apparently debating what to do. Zeus didn’t wait. He started trotting again, then running, crossing the field and heading back toward the shore where he had seen the floating boxes. He was soaked, his uniform and face covered with mud and blood.

  As Zeus approached the shoreline, he noticed a narrow lane running to the water, which he hadn’t seen before. It took him a little to the east, out of his way, but the path was high and mostly dry all the way out to the water. There it gave way to boulders and carefully positioned logs.

  Three of the missile cases had washed in. Zeus grabbed them, sliding them onto the path. There were four other boxes nearby, all half-submerged in the water. He took a step toward the closest, and immediately felt his leg sinking. He pushed back and fell rump first onto the rocks.

  The rocks extended in a kind of submerged ledge to the left. He stepped out on it tentatively, then worked his way sideways a few feet until he was almost parallel with one of the boxes. He reached out
and dragged it up through the water, pulling it to land.

  He was eyeing another when Chaū burst onto the shoreline through the weeds about thirty yards on his left. Zeus yelled to him, and waved, signaling that he should loop around and come up through the path.

  “There’s a path,” he said. “Come out this way; it’s drier.”

  Zeus went back to work, fetching out two more boxes by the time Chaū reached him.

  “Where’s the sergeant?” Zeus asked.

  “With the men. We must go back.”

  They had five missiles, but no launchers, and no launcher boxes that he could see. Zeus went back out onto the small ledge, but couldn’t reach the other two boxes. He waded into the muck, then stepped forward onto one of the boxes. He pulled the other out and gave it to Chaū. The one beneath his feet was too embedded to retrieve.

  “There aren’t any more launchers,” Zeus told the major. “We’re going to have to go back to the houses to get one.”

  “Yes,” said Chaū, his voice still hoarse. “That’s where Angkor is.”

  Zeus opened the boxes and, by stripping away some of the protective interior material, managed to get three in each box. That gave them only one box to carry apiece.

  “It would be better to attack the tanks from the far side of the road,” said Zeus. “We can move back a lot easier. But we need a launcher.”

  “Maybe we should not attack them,” said Chaū. “We are so outnumbered.”

  Chaū’s point was utterly logical, yet it caught Zeus by surprise. The only options he was even considering involved the location of the attack.

  “What happened to your phone?” Chaū asked.

  “I lost it in the water. We’re not getting any help here anyway.” Zeus pointed in the direction of the smoldering ruins. “Where is Angkor and the launcher?”

  “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.