by Larry Bond
“Lieutenant!” yelled Wu. “Lieutenant!”
“Here!” answered Jing Yo, finally allowing himself to relax. “It’s clear!”
“We got two of them,” said Wu when he arrived a few minutes later.
“I have a third,” said Jing Yo.
“Only four men held us off?” said Wu. “There must have been more.”
Jing Yo said nothing. The soldiers had been very skilled. Certainly there must be more, someone with the scientist. But where?
“The scientist has to be farther along,” said Wu. “Should we pursue?”
“Yes,” said Jing Yo, but even as the word left his mouth he realized he had made a mistake. The scientist had escaped down the stream; the enemy had distracted him, and he had done the logical thing, pursuing them rather than his target.
~ * ~
7
Washington, D.C.
The president flipped off the television and turned to his national security director, Walter Jackson.
“I cannot believe such a bald-faced lie can possibly succeed in the General Assembly,” said Greene.
“They’re scared they’ll be next.”
“That’s an excuse for Malaysia, not Germany.”
“It’s not the Chinese they’re worried about. The Russians want Poland.”
“They may get it if the Chinese aren’t stopped.”
“Vietnam is lost, Ches. The Chinese are pouring armies across the border. The Vietnamese don’t know it yet, but they’re toast. We have to face that reality.”
“We have to help them,” Greene told Jackson.
“General Perry should be there shortly. If they take us up on the offer of advisers, we can have people inside the country in a matter of hours.”
“That’s not enough. They need more than pictures and at-a-boys.”
“You want to send troops?” Jackson asked.
“I know I said I wouldn’t.”
“If you do anything sizable, you’ll need an authorization from Congress. They’ll never pass one. God, Ches, you’d be lucky to get half of your own party behind it. Especially after what’s going on in the UN today.”
The phone buzzed, preventing Greene from unleashing his full and candid view of Congress.
“Mr. President, the director of the CIA is on the line.”
“Put him through.”
Peter Frost always sounded a little hoarse when he began a conversation, as if he’d just come inside the building. “Mr. President, there’s something up in Vietnam I think you should know about. Something we’ve been working on.”
“Go on.”
“We have a witness who saw the Chinese staging the attack they used as a pretense to invade Vietnam. He has a video showing the massacre of a village by Chinese soldiers the day before the attack,” continued Frost. “And he saw the Chinese staging the incursion.”
“What?”
The president listened as Frost told him about Josh MacArthur and the scientific team. He told him everything, including the fact that one member of the team—not MacArthur—had been persuaded to spy for the U.S. That fact, if it ever came out, might compromise MacArthur’s testimony. But if he had a video, his credibility would be nearly unassailable.
“We’ve been working on getting him out,” said Frost. “But we’ve run into trouble.”
Greene put the call on speaker. He knew Vietnam well enough to know the area Frost was talking about. It was a very long way from the coast, and sufficiently far from the border with Laos to make retrieval from that direction difficult as well.
And then there was the little matter of the Chinese wanting to keep Josh MacArthur for themselves.
“How do we get him out?” asked Greene.
“I have a CIA officer with him, someone who was in the country already. But to get him out, we’re going to need to take a bigger risk. We need U.S. personnel. It’s the only way now.”
“Do you have a plan?”
“It involves a SEAL team.”
“Do it,” said Greene. “Do it now.”
~ * ~
8
Hanoi
After seeing the spartan bunker where the head of the government was working, Zeus was not surprised to find that General Minh Trung was working in an office that couldn’t have been much more than eight feet wide and ten long.
What was surprising was that he wasn’t in a bunker; instead, his headquarters was in a barracks building in the middle of an army base about a mile from the bunker complex. The general was conferring with several aides when Zeus arrived. The lieutenant who had escorted him from Hanoi directed him to wait in the hallway, then disappeared.
There were no chairs. The door to the office was open, and while the men inside were speaking softly, Zeus could easily hear the discussion. Unfortunately, it was in Vietnamese, and the translator had stayed with General Perry and the ambassador.
Zeus stared at the light gray wall, visualizing a map of Vietnam and the route the Chinese army was taking. The Vietnamese did not have very long to implement his plan; if the Chinese got beyond the reservoir, it wouldn’t work.
They might even be there by now. His last intelligence update was before they left Washington, several hours ago.
Zeus began to pace, trying to conjure a follow-up plan. In Red Dragon, he could have bombed the hell out of their supply line and hit their spearhead with medium-range missiles. But that wasn’t an option for the Vietnamese. They lacked missiles and a strategic bomber fleet. The few MiGs that they could have used as attack aircraft had been heavily targeted by the Chinese already, and the remainder would undoubtedly be shot down if they attempted an attack.
“Major?”
Zeus looked up. General Trung was standing in the corridor.
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Um—I am Major Murphy, sir—”
“I know who you are,” said the general. “Come.”
The general was thin, like many Vietnamese, and very tall—an inch or two taller than Zeus. His close-cropped hair was gray around his temples, but otherwise he looked youthful, even younger than the fifty-one years Zeus remembered from the briefing paper on Vietnam’s military leadership.
“I’m Major Murphy from the U.S.,” Zeus told the officers who were crowded into the room. “I, um, I’m afraid I have to use English, because I can’t speak Vietnamese. My translator is with General Perry.”
Trung nodded.
“I’ve analyzed the intelligence and I have a presentation on my laptop,” said Zeus. As he started to unclasp his briefcase, General Trung put his hand on it to stop him.
“We have no electricity.”
“It’s a laptop. My battery—”
“Tell us in your own words.”
Zeus spotted a map of the country on the wall and walked over to it.
“I admit my intelligence is a few hours old,” said Zeus. “From what I heard last, the Chinese took the airport at Na San and were consolidating for a fresh push—we believe toward Ninh Binh and the south.” He stopped for a moment, locating the point on the map. The Vietnamese characters made it hard to read, but there was only one airstrip in that part of the country He put his finger on it, then traced a path southeastward, following the mountains and river valleys until he came to the massive reservoir.
“We would recommend breaking the reservoir at Hoa Binh and attempting to block their path,” said Zeus. “At that point, they would have to redirect their attack toward Hanoi, and you get a chance to fight them on your own terms. Otherwise they simply take over the rest of the country and bomb Hanoi into submission.”
One of the officers in the room, a colonel, said something to General Trung in Vietnamese. The general held out his hand, encouraging him to speak directly to Zeus.
“Why do we want them to attack toward Hanoi?” said the colonel.
“Two reasons. One, it’s not their plan, and two, that’s where you have your best defenses. If they go south, which is what I believe they’re planning to do, y
ou’ll be swamped.”
“The capital would be destroyed in an all-out attack,” said the colonel. “Our job is to protect it.”
“It will be subject to bombing in any event,” said Zeus. “But you can bottleneck the tanks if you wipe out the reservoir. They’ll have a hard time getting over the Da—you can hit the bridges, try piecemeal attacks. Get them a little at a time. And if you can get them to come after you, you’ll have a chance to use your dug-in defenses. They’re trying to avoid them. They’ve stayed away from all of your serious troop concentrations. This is a game plan straight out of Shock and Awe—our campaign against the Iraqis. They’ve been studying it for years.”
The general’s lieutenants started talking among themselves in Vietnamese. General Trung said nothing. He stood perfectly erect and motionless. While he couldn’t have helped hearing what they were saying, he didn’t react to it in the slightest way.
“What makes you think we could hold out against the Chinese?” asked another of the officers finally.
“I don’t know that you can,” said Zeus. “Maybe not without help. But you did hold out against us forty years ago. You won that one.”
None of the officers smiled. They continued discussing the idea for a few minutes until, one by one, they stopped and looked at the general.
“I have a question, Major,” said Trung. He pointed to the map, running his finger below the reservoir. “The people that die when the reservoir is flooded, the people who live in these villages here—what will I tell their families?”
“They died for Vietnam.”
General Trung nodded. Zeus’s answer had been automatic. In truth, he hadn’t thought of the civilians at all. He just assumed they could be evacuated in time.
Civilians were never a factor in the simulations.
“How soon can you blow up the reservoir?” the general asked.
“Me? The U.S.? I thought your army would—”
“There are no explosives in place, and time is of the essence,” said the general. “How soon can you blow it up?”
~ * ~
9
Western Vietnam
Colonel Sun listened patiently as Jing Yo made the case for adding manpower to his team so he could pursue the scientist. The colonel did not require much persuasion. The premier himself had ordered that the scientist be found, and it would be foolish not to use any resource possible.
But Sun did not think the young lieutenant was heading in the proper direction. He wanted to go south rather than east—away from the path the others had taken, and indirectly toward the Chinese lines.
“You are overthinking this, Jing Yo,” he said finally. “You are acting as if you were facing another commando. You are not. The man you are pursuing is a frightened scientist. He can’t last in the jungle. You should have no trouble finding him.”
“I’m not sure how many people are still helping him,” said Jing Yo. “We’ve killed three and captured one. But there may be more.”
“Yes, yes, you said. Of course you can have the troops. I’ll have some assigned.” Colonel Sun waved at his aide, who was approaching with a fresh round of dispatches. “But you have to search east.”
“I believe—”
“You are thinking too much. Here, let me see my map. He’ll head for the nearest village and look for help there. A Hmong village, I would imagine. Let me see from the reports which ones have not been abandoned.”
~ * ~
10
Washington, D.C.
President Greene leaned his chin on his hand. Though filled, the White House Situation Room was as quiet and silent as it had ever been during his administration.
“Mr. President?”
Greene looked up at the screen at the other end of the room. General Perry was participating in the videoconference from the ambassador’s secure suite at the U.S. embassy in Hanoi.
“You’re asking an incredible thing,” Greene told the general. “Using our missiles to blow up a Vietnamese dam.”
“That’s what they’ve asked us to do, sir. I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“I have been assured by the foreign minister that it is a serious request,” said Ambassador Behrens, who was standing next to Perry. “Time is of the essence, and they don’t have the proper munitions in place.”
“They can’t just put a truckload of dynamite at the base of the dam?” asked the defense secretary.
“I’m told it’s more complicated than that,” answered Perry. “The engineers have called for a set of exact explosions across the dam area. Translating that into Tomahawk hits, I’m told it would take at least six hits to cause a fissure, and at least eight to do the kind of damage that needs to be done.”
Greene leaned back in his seat. Not even in his worst days at the Hanoi Hilton had he contemplated doing something like this. “This is the best military plan we could come up with?”
“Sir, I can call the major over,” said Perry. “He’s working on the details with some of the Navy staff people. But yes, the answer is, this is his plan. I trust him, sir. If you want to talk to him yourself—”
Greene waved his hand, dismissing the idea. There wasn’t time to second-guess the details of the plan. He had to give them either a go or a no-go.
The Vietnamese might very well turn around and use the attack against the U.S. Who would believe that they had requested it themselves? Especially if many of their own people died.
And at least a thousand people lived in the shadow of the dam.
A small number compared to the millions who would die if China continued its onslaught. But still…
“I want the area below the dam evacuated,” said the president. “That is my condition.”
“Sir, to be effective, the attack should be launched immediately. Even then—
“That is my condition,” said Greene. “When it’s done, I will personally give the order to fire.”
~ * ~
11
Northwestern Vietnam
The logging trail followed a seemingly endless series of switchbacks before arriving at a wide, hard-packed dirt road. The road wound through an area of fields, now temporarily fallow, which had been cleared from the jungle only recently. Within a mile, the view opened up, revealing an emerald green valley stretching for miles in the distance. It was a beautiful sight, so pretty Mara felt as if she were walking into a postcard.
The road was made of soft dirt. Mara glanced down and realized little bits of bright yellow clay were clinging to her boots as she walked. Even Mạ left light impressions in the road.
“We need to get off the road,” she told the others, erasing the tracks as best she could before joining them on the shoulder.
After they’d walked for ten minutes, the village came into view. The tin-roofed buildings glinted in the distance, six of them clustered close to the road at the center of the fields. These were large pole barns, open at the bottoms, used by the community to hold crops, machinery, and tools. The houses sat off to the side, on a small rise beyond a circular orchard of orange trees.
Lucas had told her it was unoccupied, but Mara wasn’t about to trust his surveillance. She angled for a wide streambed that ran in a semicircle around the village. Used to irrigate the fields, during the rainy season it was a wide and deep body of water, more a river than a stream. Now, though, the water flowed lazily across the rocks, no deeper than a few inches. Beds of silt were covered with green weeds.
They walked up one of the irrigation ditches toward the field closest to the houses, then crossed into a grove of small orange trees.
Except for a headache, Mara had recovered from the blast. She tried not to think about Jimmy Choi and his people, whom she’d last seen firing at the Chinese from across the road. There was nothing she could do for them now.
The house near the orange grove was small, with a very high-pitched roof. Mara stopped twenty yards away. “Give me your rifle,” she told Josh.
“Why?”
“I want to check out the house.”
“I’ll do it.”
“You’re a scientist. Give me the gun.”
“I can handle a gun.”
“Stop being so damn defensive,” she told him. “Crap, you’d think I was castrating you.”
Josh scowled, then held the rifle out. There were five bullets in the magazine.