by Larry Bond
Hand pressed against Kieu’s neck, she walked next to the stretcher as they climbed up the slope and walked south to a barely discernible path at the edge of the field. The path twisted around thick clumps of trees, the jungle growing darker and darker until it seemed as if the sun had fallen. Finally, a pair of twists brought them to a clearing; a small village was visible at the far end.
The hamlet consisted of a dozen small huts and two farm buildings. All but one of the huts were made of bamboo topped by a thatched roof. The exception was made of scrap metal and wood; some of the slats at the front had originally come from vegetable boxes and still had markings on them. The farm buildings were made of corrugated steel. Yellowish red rust extended in small daggers from most of the screws and bolts holding them together; the roofs’ white coating was peeling, and large flakes fluttered in the soft breeze.
They took Kieu to a thatched hut at the very entrance to the settlement. The interior was larger than Mara had expected, and divided into several rooms. The front room functioned as a sitting room, with cushions scattered on the straw floor, and a brand-new Sony portable radio on a small table at the side. As Kieu and his stretcher were lowered, Mara knelt next to him, her hand still pressed against his wound.
An old man came in from one of the back rooms. Gaunt and tall, he had a sparse goatee and a wreath of very fine white hair starting at the temples. He bent over the stretcher, stared for a moment, then retreated without saying a word.
“Is he a doctor?” Mara asked the others, but they continued staring at her as if not yet sure she really existed.
The old man returned with a purple cloth bag. He set it down opposite Mara, then slowly lowered himself next to the stretcher. He took a blue bottle from the bag and opened it; a bitter smell immediately wafted through the room. The next thing he removed from the bag was a gauze pad wrapped in sterile paper; he pulled it open, daubed it with the clear liquid from the bottle, then reached with one hand to Mara’s and gently-pushed her fingers away from the shirt she’d used as a bandage. He pulled up the shirt, then began to clean the wound, very lightly at first, his strokes gradually growing longer and more forceful.
The wound was nearly two inches long, but very shallow. A black L sat at its center. At first Mara thought it was a bone, but as she looked she realized it must be the piece of shrapnel that had caused all the damage. The old man studied it, both with his eyes and the tips of his fingers, probing ever so gently. Then he took the bottle and tipped a bit of liquid into the wound.
Kieu jerked his body violently. The old man stopped pouring, waiting for him to settle. Then he poured again. Kieu jumped once more.
“You’re hurting him,” Mara said in Vietnamese.
There was no sign that the old man understood or even heard what she said. He capped the bottle, then opened his bag once more. He took out a small set of forceps.
“You’re not going to sterilize it?” asked Mara.
He ignored her. Bending over the wound, he lowered the tips of the forceps, maneuvering the instrument as he sized up how he would remove the metal. Then he sat back, and once more reached into the bag on his lap. This time he removed a Bic lighter and used it to heat the very end of the forceps.
When the metal glowed red, the old man took a very long breath, the sort one uses when meditating. Then he pointed at Kieu, motioning with his hands.
“You want me to hold him,” said Mara, using Vietnamese but miming to make sure she was understood.
The old man nodded. As soon as Mara’s hands were on Kieu’s shoulders, he scooped the forceps down, retrieving the shrapnel. Kieu screamed and bucked. Mara pushed her weight against his, easily holding him down, though there was no way to stop the awful sound coming from his mouth.
The old man cleaned and inspected the wound, which was bleeding again. He took new gauze, daubed it in his solution, and began soaking up the blood. As he did this with one hand, he reached with the other into his bag and removed a jar and a steel rod not unlike a knitting needle. Once again using his Bic lighter, he fired the edge of the rod and cauterized the wound, Kieu screaming the entire time. After dressing the wound with a large piece of gauze and tape, he moved on to the smaller one at Kieu’s back, just cleaning and bandaging this one.
Gesturing with his hand, the old man told Mara to roll Kieu over. The poor pilot screamed even louder, his feet jerking violently.
“Ssssh,” said the old man kindly, putting his hand under Kieu’s head. “Sssh.”
He took another bottle from his bag. He told Kieu something in Vietnamese that she couldn’t understand, then held the bottle to the wounded man’s lips. Kieu made a face and backed away. The old man held still for a moment, then pressed the bottle against his lips again. Kieu resisted; the old man tilted the bottle up and forced some of the liquid into his mouth. Then he clamped Kieu’s mouth closed, making him swallow.
Mara looked up. The men who had come here with her were gone; the room was empty except for her and the old man.
The old man lowered Kieu’s head back to the stretcher, then looked up at Mara. He pointed to her chest.
“What?” she said. Glancing down, she realized her shirt was soaked with blood. “It’s all from him. I’m fine.”
The old man stared at her, as if he didn’t believe what she was saying.
“It is. Look,” she said, unbuttoning the top button and pulling her shirt to the side. She didn’t feel like giving the old man a peep show, and stopped at her bra strap.
Her satellite phone rang in her pocket; she’d forgotten to call DeBiase back.
“Excuse me,” she told the old man, rising.
She was surprised to find a tight circle of children and older women gathered just outside the front door. She slipped through them, then walked the few yards toward the clearing before answering the phone.
“Are you all right?” DeBiase asked.
“I’m hanging in there. There’s some sort of local medicine man or doctor, I don’t know. He helped Kieu.”
The sound of jets streaking nearby split the air. Mara looked upward but couldn’t see them.
“What’s going on?” asked DeBiase.
“Jets going somewhere. Fighters.”
“Chinese?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any means of transportation there?”
“I just got here, Jess. I don’t know.”
Mara turned back toward the village. It didn’t look like the sort of place where you’d find a car in every garage — especially since there weren’t any garages.
Maybe there were farm vehicles in the barns. Worst case, she could walk up to Nam Det.
“How far am I from Hanoi?” she asked.
“Almost two hundred kilometers. But distance isn’t the problem. The Chinese have launched a major offensive, Mara. They may be in Hanoi by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“The way things are going, they may be there now.”
5
Carlisle, Pennsylvania
“R.32.14a — Traditional enemies. Start of the simulation. It’s right there.” Zeus Murphy tapped the keyboard, scrolling through the rule that allowed the game to start with an attack by “a traditional regional enemy.”
“Vietnam would never attack China,” said Christian. “That’s just not going to happen.”
“It’s not necessarily China,” said Rosen, who was suppressing a grin. “It’s Red Force.”
“Come on. First of all, the simulation calls for China to attack first — ”
“Wait a second — that’s not in the rules.”
“China always attacks.”
“But it’s not in the rules. Not specifically.”
“A Vietnamese attack would be suicide.”
“Not necessarily. And there’s plenty of historic precedence,” said Zeus. He turned toward Colonel Doner, who was standing at the head of the war room projection table. “Is it allowable?”
Doner furled his
eyebrows, then glanced over at General Perry, whose expression mixed anger, frustration, and surprise. Before the general could say anything, Christian leaned back and whispered something to him. Perry shrugged. He was a short, skinny man; Christian towered over him. Still, Christian had adopted so many of his mannerisms that they looked like father and son.
Brow knotted, General Perry glanced over his right shoulder toward the smoked-glass panel of the observation room. The VIP Colonel Doner had mentioned was the assistant national security adviser/Asia, Sara Mai, who’d arrived at the base with three Pentagon handlers and a staff person who looked barely old enough to shave his pimple-filled face. Mai stood stiffly and nodded to Zeus when they were introduced, rather than extending her hand; Zeus guessed that her ice-cold manner had Perry confused.
“Oh, why not start out that way,” said the general. “If the young major wants to replay the Vietnam War, why not?”
Actually, the model Zeus had in mind was the 1979 conflict between China and Vietnam, which had ended in a confused stalemate. Not that he modeled his strategy on the conflict, which had seen China attack over the border in retaliation for Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.
On the contrary, he wanted China to attack in the west. And it did, launching a counterstrike in the tracks of the Vietnamese assault on the northwest border. That led Red to funnel its forces into the northwestern valleys near Cambodia and Laos, precisely what Zeus was counting on.
The situation ratcheted up quickly — Christian had obviously whispered that the Chinese could invade along the former Ho Chi Minh Trail, sweep into southern Vietnam, and force a quick Vietnamese surrender. Such a strategy made a great deal of strategic sense for Red, since it would position its forces to isolate Blue’s ally Thailand and provide a jumping-off point for the Malaysian oil fields, a high-point prize in the simulation.
But Zeus had no intention of letting Red get that far. Having identified several choke points where the Chinese advance could be slowed, he waged a series of campaigns along the Da River. The Vietnamese forces were overwhelmed each time, but Red had to spend considerable resources to gain those victories. Meanwhile, Zeus parceled out his meager American forces — two battalions of Special Forces and some SEALs — leveraging their effect. Fortunately, the rules provided that the special operations units increased in power and influence as the game went on.
The critical point came at Dien Bien Phu, as Red swung west on the open plain. Perry — and probably Christian, who was responsible for most of the general’s strategy — was clearly hoping to get the Vietnamese into a set-piece battle there, just as the North Vietnamese rebels had done to the French. Red even sent several units along the same route the French had taken, clearly trying to entice a North Vietnamese counterattack along the lines the great North Vietnamese general Giap had used. The difference, of course, was that the Red army was considerably larger than the force the French had had, and enjoyed overwhelming air superiority as well. Rather than trapping China as the North Vietnamese general had done to the French, the Vietnamese themselves would be swept up and overrun.
It wasn’t difficult to foresee this. What was tough was to make it seem as if he hadn’t. Zeus had Rosen feint all along the Da River and fall back toward Dien Bien Phu; at the same time, he maneuvered other units to make it seem as if he were rushing reinforcements. Perry attacked in force, and succeeded in taking Dien Bien Phu — but the Vietnamese army turned out to have only a hundred men in the area, and most of them escaped.
Then Zeus went for broke. He used his Special Force troops to lead an attack on Lao Cai, the border city at the head of the Hong River, well east of the Chinese breakthrough into Vietnam. Red began rushing forces south from Gejiu and east from Xin Jie to meet the new threat — only to have them cut off at critical river crossings by SEAL attacks on highway bridges obviously believed too far from Vietnam to warrant guarding. The Red army was now caught in two separate pockets, unable to defend against an all-or-nothing missile attack that used American ATACMS ground-to-ground missiles secretly brought to the Vietnamese in the early rounds of the simulation.
“Where did those friggin’ missiles come from?” said Christian as the attack unfolded on the simulation screen.
It was the high point of the session. Zeus didn’t have time to look up from the computer to see General Perry’s face, but he knew it wouldn’t be smiling. Red Force in Vietnam was now effectively cut off from its supply line; the army would have to be resupplied by air until Red could regain territory. That was doable — Red still had an overwhelming advantage over Vietnam — but it would take time. Enough time under the rules of the simulation that Blue had achieved a military stalemate without Red’s achieving any of its goals — in other words, a win for Blue, the first ever recorded in Red Dragon War Simulation Scenario 1.
Zeus expected General Perry to rush from the session before it ended just to miss the handshake that had come to mark the close. That had been Perry’s MO as Blue commander — he was a sore sport and sourpuss who hated to lose to a junior officer.
Or so Zeus thought. Not only did Perry stay this morning, but he gripped Zeus’s hand strongly, smiled, and congratulated him.
“Good work, Major. Good, good work,” he said before sweeping out of the room.
Christian looked like he’d been shot in the gut — a familiar look during the sessions. He shook tepidly, then followed his mentor.
“You got any fingers left?” asked Rosen as they secured their laptops.
“Perry’s got a hell of a grip,” said Zeus.
“A Mafioso grip. I’d watch my back.”
“He almost seemed happy.”
“Contemplating his revenge.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“You’ll know when your next assignment takes you to Partial, North Dakota.”
Zeus laughed. “Lunch?”
“Thought you’d never ask, sweetheart,” said Rosen in his best Humphrey Bogart voice.
His best wasn’t very good, but Zeus let it pass. Gear packed, he started out of the room, nearly bumping into Sara Mai.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said as she jerked backward.
One of her Pentagon escorts stopped short behind her, setting off a chain reaction of aides in the hallway. Under any other circumstances, it would have been hilarious, but Zeus felt the temperature in the entire basement suddenly shoot up.
“That’s all right, Major,” said Mai, straightening her skirt. Knee length, it was a blue pinstripe that matched her double-breasted top; if she’d had glasses, she would have looked like a stereotypical librarian. “That was quite an interesting performance. How often have you taken Blue’s position?”
“First time.”
“Interesting. Why focus on Vietnam?”
Zeus shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you do, Major. It wasn’t an accident.” Her voice was harsh; she was scolding him, which made Zeus angry.
“You’re right. I considered it carefully.” He held her stare. Mai was only a few years older than he, with the slightest hint of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She was tall for a woman, five ten, though he still towered over her. “I needed a country China would attack. And one that I could use to stall for time. In that scenario, it’s the only way to win.”
“People playing the simulation for the first time normally defend Taiwan,” said Mai. “You left almost no forces there.”
“Yeah.”
“Why not?”
“I used what resources I had.”
He shrugged again. She was right — but how did she know?
Christian, probably. Trying to show off.
“Besides, China wasn’t going to attack there,” he said.
“No?”
“Doesn’t make strategic sense.” Zeus shook his head. “They wouldn’t in real life either. They see Taiwan the way they see Hong Kong. Estranged brothers who will return to the fold in time. They attack their enemies.
Japan I could see. Vietnam looks weak. They’ll go right after Malaysia one of these days. I’m surprised they haven’t already.”
“So you picked Vietnam completely on your own?”
“What do you mean?”
“Because it was a traditional enemy and could attack?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve had no access to an outside telephone line since you reported for duty this morning?”
“Huh?”
“Have you made any phone calls, Major?” Mai’s tone was sharp, almost dismissive.
“No.”
“You haven’t used a phone?”
“There are no external lines downstairs because of security.” Zeus felt himself getting angry. “Listen — ”
“And your cell phone?”
“In my car,” he snapped. “Why?”
“I’d like you to come to Washington with me, Major.”
“Washington? Why?”
“Because roughly an hour ago, the Chinese invaded Vietnam. From what I’ve been told, their plan sounds very much like what you did today in the simulation. We leave in ten minutes.”
6
Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
With Jing Yo’s men at the lead, the soldiers formed about a 250-meter search line and began walking through the jungle. It took them nearly an hour to work their way east into and then beyond the area where the enemy plane had been reported shot down. With no wreckage in sight, Jing Yo waited until they had gone about a kilometer beyond the point marked by Colonel Sun before calling a break. At that point, he conferred with Sergeant Wu and the regular army captain, Captain Lai Wi, to expand the search area.
The captain was still brooding from the way he had been treated, and sulked as Jing Yo went over the area with his handheld GPS device.
“We can move up the hill another half kilometer,” said Jing Yo. “At that point, we’ll reach a road. One group will pivot around on the north, the other on the south, and work back to the highway.”