“I worry about leaving you here all alone,” he said.
Shoshana walked over to the refrigerator and started to prepare dinner. “I was thinking of telephoning my aunt Lillian,” she said, “and asking her to come over.” Pontowski had met Shoshana’s aunt in Israel and liked the older woman. “She’s been at loose ends since Doron’s death.” Lillian’s husband, Doron, had been killed by a knife-wielding Palestinian teenager in one of the sporadic episodes of violence that swept through Israel.
The phone rang, capturing their attention. He picked it up on the second ring. “Pontowski,” he answered. He listened for a few moments without comment. “I’ll be right there,” he said, and hung up. “That was Waters. The sierra has hit the fan. A congresswoman, Ann Nevers, called a press conference and severely criticized the administration for its policies in China. She’s calling it ‘Chinagate’ and is demanding a full-scale congressional investigation. We’ve been ordered to launch and get the Warthogs into China ASAP. The president wants a done deal before Congress changes its mind.”
Shoshana walked resolutely into the bedroom and helped him pack. Finally, he was ready to go. “I’ll drive you to the squadron,” she said, collecting Little Matt.
Shoshana pulled up to the squadron building and turned to her husband. There was much they both wanted to say, but they only looked at each other. “How come you’re both so brave?” Pontowski asked as he hugged his son.
“In Israel, you learn it as a child,” she answered. “But it’s not bravery, it’s what we must do.” Her voice never broke. “A Spartan woman was brave when she told her man to come back with his shield or on it. But I love you too much to be brave. Just come back.”
Their lips brushed in a light kiss. Then her arms were around his neck and she held him tightly. “I love you,” Pontowski said. “I’ll be back.”
Shoshana put on a brave smile, remembering another war, her war, when he had made the same promise. “I know,” she whispered.
Then he was gone.
PART 2
Excerpt: President’s Daily Brief,
Monday, June 3.
CONSOLIDATION OF MILITARY REGIONS IN SOUTHERN CHINA FINALIZED. The consolidation of the three military regions in southern China into one military region under the command of General Kang Xun will be completed with the relocation of two divisions from their garrison in the city of Wuzhou to small towns in the interior. These moves will increase the visible presence of the central government in Guangxi Province, discourage rebel activity, and decrease armed resistance against the central government.
CHAPTER 9
Tuesday, June 4
Over Hong Kong
The flight attendant moved toward the front of the first-class section and glanced at the sleeping Hazelton. “Miss Kamigami,” he said, “the captain asked if Mr. Hazelton would like to sit in the jump seat on the flight deck for the approach and landing at Hong Kong International.”
“I thought we were landing at the new airport on Lantau Island,” Mazie said.
The young man smiled at her. “We were. But when the captain radioed that we had a special assistant to the president of the United States on board, Approach Control diverted us. They want to know if you have any special requirements?”
An uncomfortable smile flickered across Mazie’s face as she unfastened her seat belt. She glanced at the sleeping Hazelton to continue the charade that he was the special assistant. “I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps you’d like to see the approach, then?” the flight attendant ventured. She followed him out of the first-class section and onto the flight deck. The trip to China had been a revelation for her. She had never traveled first class and been pampered by a system that catered to dignitaries. Dignitaries, she snorted to herself. What makes us so special? Still, she did like the ease and comfort that went along with status.
The extra pilot deadheading into Hong Kong gave up the jump seat and stood beside her, explaining what was happening. They had been stacked in a holding pattern over Lantau Island and were now being given priority for landing at Hong Kong International. He also liked the VIP treatment. The lights of Hong Kong and Kowloon cast a fairytale glow as they flew the dogleg approach into Hong Kong, almost touching apartment buildings on final. She was thoroughly excited by the experience.
A harried young man met the airliner and escorted Mazie and Hazelton through Customs. He explained to Hazelton how the airlift into Hong Kong had strained the system to the breaking point and constantly apologized for their missing escort. After a few phone calls, he discovered their escort was waiting at Lantau Island. Hazelton asked in a haughty manner for a car to take them to their hotel. Mazie wanted to countermand his request, but thought better of it. The young man hesitated. He also preferred that they wait for an armed escort but out of politeness, ordered a limousine to take them to the Peninsula Hotel in Tsim Sha Tsui. It wasn’t worth his job to say no to a dignitary.
Because of the fuel shortage, the traffic was light as the driver headed for the Peninsula. They had not gone a kilometer before they were stopped by a surging crowd at a blocked intersection. The driver looked about worriedly when a gang of young toughs started rocking and beating on the limousine. He panicked, jumped out of the car, and disappeared into the crowd. Both rear doors were ripped open.
“My God!” Hazelton shouted. “What’s happening?” He couldn’t credit how fast a normal ride had degenerated into a nightmare. A hard-looking youth with a red bandana tied around his head reached in and dragged him out of the car.
Mazie recoiled in terror before she realized the gang was ignoring her and focusing on Hazelton. She reached into her bag, pulled out her red address book, jumped out of the car screaming at the top of her voice in Cantonese, and waved the little book as if it were an official document. An older man, the leader of the gang, barked an order and Hazelton was released. He flopped against the car. “Swiss?” the leader managed to say in English.
“Speak French,” Mazie whispered to Hazelton. “I told them you were Swiss—a representative for the International Red Cross.” Hazelton stammered a few words in French. The men spoke in low tones and then disappeared. “Get in,” Mazie ordered. She jumped behind the wheel and started the car.
“I’ll drive,” Hazelton said.
“Special assistants are chauffeured,” Mazie snapped.
“International Red Cross? Very good,” the British naval captain said after listening to Hazelton tell of their narrow escape. The bloody fool, he thought. Special assistant or not, if it hadn’t have been for his quick-thinking interpreter, he would be floating in Victoria Harbor. The captain was resigned to escorting the two Americans from their hotel to the old airfield at Shek Kong Camp that the British had reopened for the emergency. “Ah, here we are,” he said. “The American sector.” The small convoy of two armored cars with a staff car sandwiched in the middle pulled up in front of the building the AWACS crews were using for their operations.
Inside, Major Marissa LaGrange, the detachment commander, was waiting for them with her Intelligence officer. Like the British captain, she pitched her briefing to Hazelton as she explained the AWACS mission in Hong Kong.
When she had finished, Hazelton tried to look important. “As you know,” he said, “we are authorized to task various U.S. government agencies to support the Military Assistance Advisory Group in Nanning.” LaGrange hid her irritation at Hazelton’s pompous manner. To her, he was just another bureaucrat. “We,” Hazelton continued, “are here to liaison and create the control network for your AWACS to provide an early warning function to the American Volunteer Group flying under the command and control of the MAAG.”
LaGrange was tired of Hazelton and had more important things to do than listen to him rabbit on. “Cut to the chase, Mr. Hazelton. What exactly do you want us to do?”
Hazelton blushed and stammered. Mazie opened her briefcase and handed LaGrange a thin folder. “This is what we had in mind.” She waited whi
le LaGrange scanned the contents of the folder.
“We can do some of this,” LaGrange said. “But you are asking for coverage beyond our capability. You need an E8.” The E-8 was a Boeing 707 with J-STARS, the joint surveillance target attack radar system developed by Grumman for the U.S. Air Force and Army. The J-STARS used a highly sophisticated radar that could operate in either an MTI, moving target indicator, or synthetic aperture mode. The MTI meant the E-8 could track any moving object on the ground and the synthetic aperture gave it the capability to find targets. J-STARS could reach out over one hundred miles and monitor enemy activity while still flying behind friendly lines. Under ideal circumstances, it could reach out farther—much farther.
“The E-8 is arriving tomorrow,” Mazie told her.
Neither Hazelton nor the British captain have a clue, LaGrange thought. Kamigami’s the expert. Typical. LaGrange decided to do a little more probing. “JTIDS?” The JTIDS, or joint tactical information distribution system, linked the airborne E-8 with ground commanders, other aircraft, and command and control centers to provide real-time intelligence.
Mazie shook her head no. “We’re only getting one mobile J-STARS module. It should be operational at Nanning within forty-eight hours after the arrival of the E-8.” One J-STARS module meant the airborne system could downlink to one ground station.
“That’s better than nothing,” LaGrange said. “At least one ground commander will know what’s going on. Without JTIDS, everyone else is in the dark.”
“Can you set up a communications protocol between the AWACS and E-8 to relay information?” Mazie asked.
LaGrange shrugged. The J-STARS troops were paranoid about protecting the security of their system. She glanced at the folder and allowed a tight smile. “They’ll be all cooperation after they get caught in a retrograde.” Mazie didn’t understand and said so. “A retrograde,” LaGrange explained, “is a forced withdrawal when a hostile aircraft comes looking to hose your ass out of the sky. You turn tail, beat feet, and get the hell out of Dodge.”
“How will the E-8 know when a hostile fighter is coming after them?” Hazelton asked.
“Only when we tell ‘em,” LaGrange said. “They’ll get real cooperative when they figure that out.” The meeting was over.
The British captain ushered Mazie and Hazelton back to the staff car. He made a mental note to tell the governor the Americans were getting very serious about supporting the rebels in Nanning and playing silly buggers at the same time. The woman was the special assistant.
Thursday, June 6
Pingnan, China
The peaceful languor of xiuxi, the traditional midafternoon Chinese siesta, had settled over the riverfront marketplace in Pingnan. Most of the vendors were asleep behind their stalls, lulled into drowsy stupor by the gently drumming rain on the corrugated fiberglass awning above their heads. Only four black marketeers were eating and doing business at one of the benches in front of the row of noodle stands. They saw Jin Chu the moment she entered the market.
The four women fell silent when Jin Chu paused at one of the stalls to sort through the clothes strung on coat hangers dangling from the pipes that supported the awning. The vendor, now wide awake, was hovering behind his counter, afraid to speak. He couldn’t believe his luck when she started to haggle over the price of a western-style denim jacket. He settled on a ridiculously low price for the knockoff imitation. Jin Chu made small talk with the vendor and then moved on.
“Business will now be good for Kwan Zheng,” Su Yei, the oldest of the black marketeers, observed, thinking about the price a real Levi’s jacket would fetch on the black market.
“We must be careful,” another woman said. “Remember what she did to the rice merchants the first day she was here.” The women all bemoaned their fate, recalling how the young woman had questioned the ho wan, or good luck, of any vendor who charged too much for rice. Within minutes, the rumor had flashed through the marketplace that Miss Li had sent the rice sellers a dire warning of misfortune. Prices fell accordingly.
The four black marketeers gossiped as they marked her progress through the marketplace. Not one mentioned Jin Chu, but each was busy calculating how she could wheedle her way into the young woman’s good graces.
Jin Chu spent over an hour talking to vendors and boatmen before joining the four women. She deferred to their age and made customary small talk until the women returned to their stalls when xiuxi ended. She spoke quietly to Su Yei about her middle daughter.
After Jin Chu left, every merchant she had spoken to enjoyed a brisk business for the remainder of the afternoon. But Su Yei closed her stall and went home early.
Kamigami was mentally exhausted when he returned to the hotel where the First Regiment of the New China Guard had established its headquarters in Pingnan. The responsibilities of command were bearing down and extracting a heavy price. He longed for the physical activity of leading men in the field to break the drudgery that was dragging him down.
The quiet of their suite enveloped him when he entered the door. Jin Chu was there, helping him out of his rain-soaked clothes. He recognized the subtle change in the way she moved and spoke—she would be leaving him again.
“When?” was all he asked.
“Very soon,” she replied.
“You never tell me.”
A confused and worried look spread across her face. Jin Chu was far from being inscrutable. “It is hard for me to explain,” she said. “A feeling comes over me and grows stronger until I answer it.”
He wanted to tell her not to go. But he knew she would not listen to him. She was a flash of light, a warmth of soul, a spirit that was only his to hold for a few moments before she answered that inner voice that drew her from him. “I’ll miss you,” he said. “As always.”
“I was in the marketplace today,” she told him, changing the subject. “I spoke to many merchants and boatmen.” Her confused look was back. “They said that many PLA soldiers are moving from Wuzhou up the Lijiang River toward Majiang.”
It all made sense to Kamigami. The Lijiang was a friendly river that flowed south from the city of Guilin, past the town of Majiang, to Wuzhou where it joined the Pearl. By occupying Majiang, Kang would have a new forward base of operations to the north. “The PLA wants to capture Majiang,” Kamigami told her. “They can use Majiang as a base to push upriver to Guilin. Once they capture Guilin, they will control the northern half of the province.”
The confused look on Jin Chu’s face grew deeper. “The way of the dragon is through here, Pingnan, not Guilin,” she said.
Kamigami shook his head. “For now he’s going after Guilin.” She did not reply and drew a hot bath for him. While he was soaking, he heard a knock at the front door. A few minutes later, the door of the bathroom swung open and a young woman stood there, hesitant to enter. She was older and taller than Jin Chu, but with her lithe body and beautiful, finely drawn features, she could have been Jin Chu’s sister.
“I am May May,” she said, speaking in English. The steam drifted around her, casting a shimmering veil over her beauty. “Miss Li spoke to my mother, Su Yei. It is arranged for me to …” Her hand darted to her face, covering her mouth, while her dark eyes sparkled with amusement at the look on Kamigami’s face. “My Chinglish, it is not good?”
“Your English is perfect,” he managed to say.
Her hand dropped away and she smiled at him. She quickly undressed, slipped into the tub behind him, and washed his back. Her hand reached around and lathered his groin with soap. She massaged until he responded. “We will have dinner later,” she giggled.
“But Jin Chu …” he managed to say.
“Miss Li has gone to Nanning. She said you would understand.” She felt the muscles in his back tense. “Are you angry? Please do not be angry with me because I must tell you what you do not want to hear.”
“I’m not angry with you,” he muttered.
Friday, June 7
Nanning, China
The loadmaster told him the truck would be off the aircraft as soon as it was unchained. Von Drexler found the U.S. Army major in charge of the module and demanded that it be set up and operating as soon as possible.
“General,” the major said, “we’ll be in business as soon. as we get the power cranked and the antenna erected. If the E-8 is up and looking, we’ll have the PLA wired.”
Von Drexler paced the concrete ramp, shouting and threatening until the module was driven off the C-5 and the distinct lollipop antenna erected. The major was sweating from all the attention the general was giving him as the equipment came on line. Before he had a chance to run the built-in tests, an image was appearing on one of the monitors. The E-8 was airborne and transmitting.
A civilian specialist tapped at a computer keyboard, ignoring Von Drexler’s threats. He pointed to a bright image on the monitor. “This is the city of Wuzhou,” the civilian said. “The dark line snaking out of Wuzhou to the west is the Pearl River.” He traced a second dark line that ran to the northwest from Wuzhou. “This line is the Lijiang River,” he explained. “What’s interesting is that all waterborne traffic is going northwest, up the Lijiang. It’s big stuff.” He pointed to a bright string paralleling the Lijiang. “This is heavy equipment moving up a road toward the town of Majiang. Judging by its speed and size, we’re talking tracked vehicles. Probably tanks.”
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