by Larry Bond
As recently as 2009, Phulera boasted a population of roughly 25,000. Nearly a decade of drought, however, had provoked an exodus that left it a virtual shell of its former self. Like many towns in the Indian state of Rajasthan, it has been all but abandoned for the past two years.
Scientists warned that Jaipur will be next. Despite widespread emigration from the area, the city remains home to approximately eight hundred thousand people, many of whom fled homes in the countryside over the past four or five years. Jaipur once supported a population above 3.2 million.
“What we are seeing here is a continuing human crisis,” said Kumar Singh, chief scientist for the India Drought Project, a nonprofit scientific group that has monitored India’s water shortage and its effect on population since 2005. “Last year, an estimated two and a half million people died because of the water shortages and the famines they caused,” he added. “This year, the toll will be even worse.”
In the capital, meanwhile, opposition party leaders attempted to blame some of the country’s woes on the failure of the prime minister to provide adequate…
1
Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
The machine-gun fire that woke Josh sounded like the steady tapping of a heavy rain against a metal drum. An aircraft passed overhead, its engine a loud rasp. Josh jumped to his feet, but before he took a step to run, he remembered that he’d been very close to the trucks the night before. He lowered himself to his haunches, listening to the gun and airplane as he scanned the jungle around him.
The gun was behind him somewhere, to the north.
The airplane — he didn’t hear it anymore.
Trucks were moving in the distance. More vehicles, heavy ones, coming toward him.
* * *
Lieutenant Jing Yo tightened his hand on the steel rail at the top of the Chinese ZTZ99 tank, holding on as the tank rolled down the highway, passing the last of the wrecked Vietnamese troop trucks. It was the one that had given them so much trouble after crashing the night before; now its battered fender and windshield fit right in with the rest.
An American surveillance satellite had passed overhead barely an hour before. The optical lens on its camera would have snapped a picture of the line of Vietnamese troops trucks on both sides of the border, poised there, it would seem, following an aborted invasion.
The satellite’s orbit was common knowledge not only to intelligence agencies but to a small community of Internet geeks, several of whom would soon be pressing the Americans to release what they knew as rumors of the battle spread. It was all part of the campaign to make China’s invasion of its neighbor look justified — or at least justifiable enough to keep others from stepping in.
Jing Yo couldn’t have cared less for the international politics involved, but they had nonetheless dictated the schedule of the day’s operation. For the drive south had had to wait for the satellite to pass — proper public relations demanded clear and easily discernible “proof.” A snapshot of Chinese tanks rushing past the alleged bad guys would have made things unnecessarily complicated.
But the delay meant the operation was proceeding in daylight, increasing its danger. Already there had been reports of an aircraft, along with gunfire from units farther back in line.
It was now nearly noon, and it would take at least another hour for the lead elements of the brigade to reach Route 128. From there, it would be another half hour before they made Lai Chau, which sat at the intersection of Routes 127 and 12 farther south. Lai Chau was a key objective, for there was a small force of Vietnamese soldiers there; they were likely to be China’s first real test.
Jing Yo’s radio buzzed. It was Colonel Sun, a kilometer or two farther behind in a command car.
“Lieutenant, what’s going on up there? Are the tanks moving ahead?”
“Yes, Colonel. Good progress.”
“That airplane just now. Did you see it go down?”
“We’ve heard gunfire but saw nothing. The tanks are so loud — ”
“One of the antiaircraft units shot it down moments ago,” said Sun. “Go back with your men and find it. Make sure there are no survivors.”
“Colonel, if it was shot down, it’s no longer a problem. And in any event, its radio would have allowed it to alert the Vietnamese. In daylight, we have no real hope of cover. If I might suggest — ”
“What you would suggest is of no interest,” said Sun, practically shouting into his microphone. “Do as I tell you!”
“Yes, sir.”
“The air force is sending planes. I want that wreckage located so they cannot take credit for once.”
The real reason for Sun’s order — internal politics. Jing Yo should have guessed it.
“As you wish,” he told his commander. “What are the coordinates?”
2
Northern Vietnam
Mara felt her stomach lurch against her ribs as the biplane pitched hard to the left, its wings shuddering under the violent pressure of the maneuver. The hillside was coming up fast.
“Pull up on the wheel,” said Ky Kieu. “Pull with me!”
Mara grabbed the yoke — it looked like a small, slightly squeezed steering wheel — and tried to yank it toward her, mimicking what Ky Kieu was doing. It was like pulling the back bumper of a cement mixer — the pressure against them was immense.
“What’s wrong with this?” she said.
“Pull!” yelled Ky Kieu.
Mara put her right leg up against the instrument panel, using it as leverage. The wheel barely budged. She pulled her left foot up and put it against the other side, pushing with all her might.
Treetops loomed in the windscreen.
Goddamn, she thought. What a place to die.
“Hold on!” yelled Kieu, adding a string of curses in Vietnamese.
The bottom of the fuselage slapped into the very top of one of the trees, which clawed at the plane like a cat raking its nails on a bird taking flight. There was a loud clunk behind them. The plane shook.
Then the sky in front of them cleared. They’d gone over the summit of the mountain.
“Now easy, easy,” said Kieu. “We have to level off. Don’t let go. Work with me.”
“I’m working with you.”
“Work with me. Easy. We turn now.”
Mara wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, except not let go. She eased forward as much as she dared, which wasn’t very much. The nose of the Yunshuji-5 began to come down.
My head feels light, Mara thought.
She looked down, thinking maybe she had been shot and was losing blood. Then she realized they must be so high over the mountains that the air they were breathing didn’t have enough oxygen to sustain them.
She reached for the mask. The plane immediately dipped forward.
“What are you doing?” screamed Ky Kieu.
“I need to breathe,” she said. She reached down and fished the mask from her lap, put it on, and opened the valve. Then she reached over to Kieu, who’d left his around his neck. He was exerting so much pressure on the yoke that his blood vessels looked as if they were going to pop.
“Breathe,” she told him, opening the oxygen.
Kieu began hyperventilating into the mask. Finally his brain caught up with his body, and the breathing began to slow down, approaching something close to normal.
“We need to find a place to land,” Mara told him.
“No shit, CIA.”
“I’m not CIA.”
Kieu said something in Vietnamese. Mara ignored him, putting her hands back on the wheel to help steady it. The plane still wanted to pitch forward, though the pressure wasn’t quite as strong as earlier.
“Do you think you can hold it by yourself for a minute?” asked Kieu.
“I’ll try,” she said, putting her feet back up and tightening her grip.
The aircraft lurched when he let go, but she was able to keep it from plunging into a dive. In the meantime, Kieu rose and pulle
d off his belt. Then he rigged a harness to hold the wheel, strapping it to the seats.
“Let go,” he told her.
“You sure?”
“Let go.”
Mara took her hands off the wheel. Its nose slid down a degree or two, but it remained on course.
“What happened?” Mara asked. She rubbed her arms, which were starting to cramp with fatigue.
“Some of those bullets must have taken out the hydraulic control system.”
“Isn’t there a backup?”
“Yes — brute strength. Just like in the old days.”
The bullets had also presumably chewed up the control surfaces, making even brute strength difficult to apply. Landing safely was now their only goal. Kieu unfolded Mara’s map and examined it.
“There’s a strip near Cham Chu,” he told her. “We’re on almost a direct line. But it’s about a hundred and seventy-five kilometers away. Very long to fly. More than halfway to Hanoi.”
“Can we make it?”
Kieu didn’t answer, but evidently he didn’t think so, as he continued to study the map.
“We look like we’re getting a little closer to the hills,” she said.
He handed her the map, then took the yoke again.
“Help adjust the belt,” he told her.
They slipped the belt slightly higher and, after a little trial and error, had the plane running perfectly level.
“It’s all right,” Kieu told her. “We’ll aim for Cham Chu. When we get close, we’ll decide if we can return all the way to Hanoi.”
“What if we can’t make Cham Chu?”
“Then we’ll look for a road or a field. We don’t need too long a stretch. The farther we go, the easier it will be.”
Mara decided she should call the desk in Bangkok to tell them something was going on. The trick was doing that without blowing her cover.
“I have a friend who’s a pilot in Bangkok,” she told Kieu. “Maybe he knows a place where we could land.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Well, I’ll call him just in case. I’m not doing anything else.”
Mara took her sat phone out of her pocket and called the desk. Jesse DeBiase picked up as soon as the connection went through.
“Jess, how are you?”
“Mara I’m fine — how are you?”
“I’m looking for an airfield in northwestern Vietnam.”
“Good God, girl — what have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Still trying to hunt down that scientist I told you about the other day,” she said. “But you wouldn’t believe what happened to us. There were trucks, and I think some sort of tanks, and they fired at us.”
Mara imagined what a real journalist would say in that situation, pretending to be shocked and maybe a little naive. DeBiase caught on, prompting her with questions as if he were simply a concerned friend, while still pumping her for information.
Their conversation didn’t last long. She hadn’t seen all that much.
“They’re over the line then, the Chinese?” asked DeBiase.
“I couldn’t really say.”
“You mean it’s hard for you to talk, right?”
“Yeah, exactly.”
“But those were Chinese vehicles firing at you.”
“Probably.”
“I’m going to get someone to look for an airstrip,” he told her. “In the meantime — the NSA detected some radars being turned on near the border.” He read from the agency’s secure text communications system. “ ‘The radar profile is generally used in searches, usually coordinated with PLA air force aircraft.’ You may have company, Mara. I’ll get back to you.”
“Fantastic.”
She pushed the sat phone back into her pocket. One consolation — whatever Fleming knew, it was largely obsolete by now. Connecting with him was no longer important.
“What did your friend say?” asked Kieu.
“He knows someone who knows someone. He’s going to call back.”
“Soon?”
“Pretty soon.”
Kieu nodded. His face looked grimmer than before she had called.
“You want me to take over for you?” she asked.
“No. It’s not too bad.” He hesitated. “The problem is our fuel. We’re losing some out of the tanks. I can’t seem to isolate the problem. Each one must be leaking a little.”
Mara raised herself in the seat and began looking at the ground for a road. But the thick jungle made it hard to see.
The sat phone buzzed. Mara was so intent on looking for a place to land that it took her a few seconds to grab it from her pocket.
“There’s a town called Nam Det,” said DeBiase. “Can you find it?”
“Maybe.”
“You want to stay away from Lao Cai,” he added as she looked. “It’s right on the border. We think it will be one of the Chinese’s first targets.”
Mara unfolded the map and found Nam Det, a small dot in Lao Cai Province, twenty-five or thirty kilometers from the border and off the main roads.
“On the south side of the village, there’s a long field. We’ve uh, been familiar with it in the past,” DeBiase told her. “Relatively recently.”
“Okay.”
“The French used it right after World War II,” he added. “Some OSO people took off from there in 1946 on a mission, I’m guessing to China. They used a DC-3. Whatever you’re in should be able to land there.”
He was telling her that so she could share it with the pilot if he had any doubts. OSO was the Office of Special Operations, the interim agency between OSS and CIA.
“I’m looking at a sat photo,” said DeBiase. “There are rice paddies all around it. It stands out. There’s a little hamlet next to it; Nam Det is to the north, a kilometer maybe.”
“We’ll try to stay out of the rice.”
“We have another alert from the NSA. There are Chinese MiGs in the air. Our Air Force intel center confirms it. This is the whole shooting match here, Mara. The Chinese are going into that country.”
“Great.”
“Thought you’d want to know. You want me to stay on the line?”
“We can handle it from here, thanks.”
Kieu turned to her as she put her phone back into her pocket.
“So?”
“My friend says there’s an old field at Nam Det.”
“Nam Det? Where is that?”
She showed him.
“Your friend is sure?”
“His friend was very sure. And he brought an image up on Google Earth. He says a DC-3 could land there.”
“DC-3s haven’t flown for fifty years,” said Kieu. “What is he? Another spy?”
“I’m not a spy.”
“A drug smuggler?”
Mara gripped the handhold on the cockpit’s windshield pillar, peering down at the ground. According to the map they were a little under fifty kilometers away — maybe twenty minutes.
“Help me with the yoke a minute,” said Kieu. “We have to adjust our course to make that airfield.”
Mara put both hands back on the yoke. The aircraft didn’t seem to be fighting them quite as fiercely as it had before. Kieu tipped the wings very gently, steering the plane toward a beeline for the field. When he got on the proper heading, he reset the belt and told Mara she could take a break.
“If you see anything that looks like it might be big enough to land on, straight enough, let me know,” he told her.
“Sure.”
“From here, it would look like about two fingers long,” added Kieu. “Maybe a little less.”
Nothing below looked two fingers long, let alone the occasional squiggles of red and black roads that peered through the jungle canopy. A large portion of western and northern Vietnam had been clear-cut over the past ten years, but from here the terrain looked as thick and jungle-bound as ever.
Kieu’s hair, neck, and shirt were soaked with sweat. His cheeks looked as if they’d b
een sucked inward, and his forehead had furrowed to the point that it looked like a stairway to his scalp. He seemed to have lost about ten pounds and aged ten years in the past half hour. If the flight continues too much longer, Mara thought, he’ll shrivel into an old man.
“How’s the fuel look?” she asked, leaning over toward his side of the dash.
Kieu nodded back in her direction, indicating that the fuel panel was on the right side of the instrument array. She saw round dials with arrows pointing to the left, though with the symbols written in what looked like Chinese she had no idea what she was looking at.
“I’m sure we’ll make it,” she said.
Kieu mumbled something in Vietnamese. She didn’t quite catch the words, but it didn’t sound like “you bet.”
“We can do it,” Mara told him. “Think positive. Cut back on your speed to save gas.”
“The problem is the leak, not the speed,” he said. He reached over and flicked a silver switch on the panel. “We’re leaking at a constant rate. I have to up the speed. That’s our only hope.”
“Go ahead.”
“The engine is already flat out.”
“Don’t give up on me, Ky.”
He looked at her, utter despair in his face.
“We’re going to do it,” she told him. “Tell me how I can help.”
Mara studied him, hoping for some inspiration that might tell her how to buck up his morale — no matter how dire their situation might be, it would be that much worse if he didn’t believe he could deal with it.
“Get the map and let’s check our distance,” he told her. “I’m going to take it lower.”
It wasn’t the most optimistic statement in the world, but it was a start. Mara picked up the map and found Nam Det again.
“Show me,” said Kieu.
She did.
“Twenty-five kilometers,” he declared. “Almost there.”
“See?”
He nodded.
Suddenly, they pitched downward. A black cloud passed over the cockpit as Kieu grabbed the yoke.