by Larry Bond
“General, I have another idea,” Zeus told Trung. “The Chinese haven’t taken Route 109 behind the airfield at Na San. You could get the hills back, and they’d be sitting ducks down there. Just like the French.”
Trung smiled faintly. “Diem lost the battle at Na San.”
“Only because the French could bring in reinforcements and supplies from Hanoi and farther south. Look how far the Chinese will have to come. And you could sit in the hills with shoulder-launched SAMs.”
Trung nodded. It was hard to tell, though, if he was just being polite.
As the Vietnamese staff’s discussion grew louder and more animated, General Perry rose. “General, it would appear that your staff would like to work on these problems without us,” Perry told Trung. “Perhaps my major and I could go and get some dinner.”
“By all means.”
~ * ~
“Put yourself in their position. Would we be taking advice from an old enemy?” Perry asked Zeus as they made their way back to the jeep.
“They already did,” said Zeus. “They should hit the airstrip. And cut off 113. They have to harass the enemy, hit his supply lines—”
“One thing I would guess about the Vietnamese,” said Perry. “They know how to run that sort of war. They did it before.”
“They haven’t been on this side of it. And the intelligence is a hell of a lot different now. Communications—”
“War’s war, Major.” Perry stopped in front of the jeep. “You’re a damn bright kid. I wish I was half as smart as you. But I’ll tell you something—Trung has the whole thing in his head already. I could see it in his eyes. You have to learn to read people. Especially if you’re trying to help them.”
A few blocks from the embassy, Zeus saw a red glow to the north of the capital. The Chinese had struck at the airport again, this time starting a fire in the underground fuel storage tanks.
The embassy perimeter was guarded by Vietnamese soldiers as well as American marines, and even though Perry and Zeus were in uniform, they had to show their IDs to three different people before being cleared into the compound itself. By then Perry was in a bad mood, and Zeus thought he was going to bite the head off the Marine sergeant who came up to the jeep. The marine calmly explained that he was under orders to make a positive, personal identification before allowing anyone through.
“Is this positive enough for you?” asked Perry, leaning from the vehicle and putting his face into the marine’s.
The sergeant stepped back and snapped off a salute, waving them in.
Major Christian met them in the vestibule. “General, I need to talk to you.”
“Talk.”
Christian glared at Zeus, clearly not wanting to say whatever it was he had to say in front of him. Zeus decided he’d hold his ground; he’d had enough of the jackass.
“The CIA has a problem, sir. They need to get a truck up to Tuyên Quang.”
“Where’s that?” asked Perry.
“I know where it is,” said Zeus.
Tuyên Quang was about seventy-five miles north of Hanoi. Still controlled by Vietnam, the city had not been bombed or attacked by the Chinese.
The truck, Christian explained, was needed to rendezvous with a group of SEALs who were helping an American scientist and a CIA officer escape from behind enemy lines. They were supposed to be there by dawn or a little after.
On bicycles.
“Bicycles?” asked Perry.
“Dumbshit SEALs,” said Zeus.
The others looked at him.
“I’m sorry, sir. When I was in Special Forces, I mean—they were always pulling some idiotic stunt. Why don’t they just take a helicopter? Or motorcycles?”
“We have a truck?” Perry asked.
“We have a panel van,” said Christian. “But we don’t have a driver. Uh, using one of the locals is a real bad idea.”
“What about the marines?” asked Perry.
“There are only six and—”
“I’ll drive,” said Zeus quickly.
“Actually, I was going to volunteer,” said Christian.
Perry wasn’t particularly keen on either of them going, even though the city was clearly in Vietnamese control. But Christian had already been asking around. The marines were short of the people they needed for security, and if he—or Zeus—didn’t take the van, they’d have to give the job to one of the civilian embassy employees. Or the Vietnamese.
“See the thing is,” Christian explained, “this has to be as quiet as possible. They don’t want the Vietnamese involved, if possible. Because the person who’s coming back has sensitive information. The Vietnamese aren’t supposed to know he’s out there. Or the CIA agent—they didn’t tell even me that much.”
“All right,” said Perry. “You and Zeus head up there. Report in every half hour.”
“Every half hour?” said Zeus.
“Try every fifteen minutes,” answered the general.
~ * ~
22
Northern Vietnam
Late that evening, China declared northern Vietnam a no-fly zone for commercial aircraft, complicating the SEALs’ game plan. They hastily switched from the original blueprint, which called for a jump from the rear door of a leased 727 flying at thirty-five thousand feet, to a contingency plan using a Hercules MC-130J at very low altitude. Before approaching the Chinese early-warning radars near the Vietnamese border, the Hercules would dip low to the ground, allowing it to escape detection in the ground clutter. As far as the SEALs were concerned, the switch was no big deal.
For everyone else though, it was a hassle. Besides making the flight considerably more difficult for the pilots-—even with their automated gear, following the country’s ragged terrain was no picnic—it also scrambled the arrangements Lucas had made for the bicycles, since they were originally sent to the commercial airport the SEALs were going to use.
The net result was that the SEAL drop was delayed for several hours. Mara kept checking in for updates every fifteen minutes, severely depleting the battery in the satcom, until it gave way just after midnight. Crouched near the edge of the large field on the east side of the bam, she opened the battery compartment and reseated it, but that had no effect.
She leaned back, shifting her feet so she was sitting. The night had cooled. She figured it was in the mid-seventies, a perfect temperature under other circumstances. She stared at the clouds moving in. They looked like sheep, trotting across the moon and stars.
She’d hear the MC-130 just before the drop. If it followed the usual pattern, it would approach at something like fifty feet above treetop level, then pop up at the last moment to give the SEALs a little more cushion for the jump. Once they went out the door, they’d hit the ground in a matter of seconds.
She’d made two of those jumps herself, not counting the dozen or so in training. They were tougher than the high-altitude ones, at least in her opinion. When you went out at thirty-five thousand feet, you always felt like you had more time to do things. A low-altitude jump meant you made the right decision right away—or you never made any more.
She liked the challenge. They’d trained by going off bridges. Jump, pull, land. Bing, bang, boom.
Who used to say that?
Kevin, the instructor she’d had a crush on at Langley. Bing, bang, boom. One of his favorite sayings.
He was a good-looking guy. And sweet, too.
Nothing had come of the attraction. Too many rules about fraternizing with the students.
She would have gone out with him. Definitely.
Josh kind of reminded her of him. Very different guy, though. Josh had a bit more of an edge. Which was surprising, because Kevin had been a Ranger, and those guys were supposed to be all edge.
Maybe it was just that she didn’t expect him to have an edge. You heard scientist and immediately you thought, cushy. Egghead.
Not necessarily wimp, but the jury would definitely be out.
Josh had something very
tough inside him, though. Not just anger.
He was prejudiced toward action, the way she was.
She admired the way he wanted to protect the little girl. It wasn’t just a case of him thinking she was going to tell the world what was going on—she wasn’t part of a job. He felt he had to keep her safe.
God, I’m a sucker for the old he-man cliché, she told herself.
Mara sat up with a jolt. She heard an aircraft in the distance. She looked at her watch. Barely ten minutes had passed since the battery died while she was talking to DeBiase. At that point, the SEALs had just taken off.
It wasn’t an airplane, it was a helicopter.
The Chinese.
~ * ~
Trying to keep Mạ occupied and kill his own boredom as they waited, Josh tried teaching the girl to play tic-tac-toe. She seemed familiar with it at first, but kept losing.
“You get three in a row to win,” he told her. “You go first.”
She took the stick and put an X in the corner. Josh went, she went, then he went, this time leaving an opening for her.
She didn’t take it.
“Look, put your X here. You win.”
She looked at him blankly.
“You want me to win, is that it?”
Mạ yawned. She didn’t want him to win. She just didn’t get the point of the game. Not at all.
“Sleep,” he said, mimicking a pillow with his hands. “Go ahead.”
She curled up around him and started to doze. Josh felt his own eyelids getting heavier. Why not sleep? he thought. We’ll be out of here soon. It’s just a question of time.
Mara pushed open the door and slipped into the barn. “Kill the lamp,” she hissed.
Josh pulled it over and cranked down the wick. Mạ didn’t stir. “What’s going on?”
“Helicopter,” said Mara.
“I thought the SEALs were parachuting in.”
“They are.”
“Shit. Should we stay here? Are we safe?”
“I don’t know.”
~ * ~
23
Northern Vietnam
Jing Yo bristled as the infrared operator repeated the scan.
“Looks like it’s just embers, Lieutenant. Like I said, you burned it down pretty well.”
They were looking at the remains of one of the small settlements they had searched earlier in the day.
“Why are some spots hotter than others?” Jing Yo asked, letting the suggestion that he had burned down the village pass.
“It depends on what burns. Different materials produce different hot spots. We haven’t trained with building fires,” added the operator, “but the principle is the same.”
Jing Yo watched as he switched to a wide view, scanning the fields again. The lieutenant noticed something on the corner of the screen.
“Did that move?” he asked.
“Which?”
“Back here—the building. Inside.”
The operator returned the screen to close-up mode of the area. “No. The building’s warm. That building is almost intact. A lot more to burn there. We’re seeing individual parts of the fire, I believe. Look at these ruins. You can see the shape of the embers. Really hot spots blow out the resolution and we back it down like this.”
“Okay,” said Jing Yo.
“This looks interesting, though,” added the operator, switching back to the earlier screen. “This out in the jungle. If we could get the pilot to change course, I think you might want to get a much closer look at this.”
~ * ~
Josh and Mara kept their eyes pointed toward the ceiling as the helicopters moved away.
“What do you think?” asked Josh.
“If they move off, it’ll be okay.”
They waited. The sound faded but didn’t die.
“They’re hovering nearby,” said Mara. “About a mile. A little more.”
“Is that too close for the SEALs to parachute in?”
“Too close.”
“Maybe we should go farther east. Take the road.”
“The road goes south.”
“It’s still away from the helicopters. I think we should do it.”
Mara looked at her watch. The SEALs should be roughly thirty minutes away, perhaps a little more. “If we move, they won’t be able to find us,” she told him. “We don’t have a phone, remember? The battery is dead.”
“We have mine.” He dug the sat phone out of his pocket.
“The Chinese can track that. Besides, it’s not on the same circuit the SEALs will use.”
“It’s better than nothing. Peter will hear it. He has before.”
“It’s a good backup,” said Mara. She wasn’t sure that Bangkok would still be monitoring the frequency, or how long a delay there would be before Lucas got the information. “I think we should wait and see if they move off.”
~ * ~
Jing Yo leapt from the helicopter as it touched down, running quickly to catch up with Sergeant Wu and the rest of the squad. The operator had spotted an overturned truck on a rutted farm road. The engine was slightly warm—an indication that it had been driven or at least turned on within the past three or four hours.
And there was a man, or maybe two, near the side, partly hidden from the scanner by the body of the truck.
Wu saw him coming and waved for him to get down; Jing Yo bent toward the ground but kept coming, sliding on the hard-packed dirt as he slipped in next to his sergeant. They were at the edge of a fallow field; the truck was ahead on the road, which lay just beyond a narrow band of trees.
“Somebody there, definitely,” said Wu. “I have Ai Gua going around the side. When he’s in position, we can close in.”
The truck looked like a hazy gray box in Jing Yo’s night goggles. Was that an arm curled around the side of the steering wheel—or part of the dash that had pulled away in the crash?
Jing Yo moved to his right, crying to get a better view through the trees. The front third of the truck was in the shallow ditch at the roadside; the rest of the vehicle angled back on the road. The cab was wedged into some brush, which made it hard to see the top and side.
“One person, maybe two,” said Jing Yo. “Close to the side of the truck.”
Ai Gua flashed a signal back through the squad members that he was in position across the road. The truck was now surrounded.
“Let’s move in,” Jing Yo told Wu.
They rose. Guns pointed at the truck, they moved forward.
The brush near the truck rustled.
“Watch out!” yelled Wu.
Jing Yo saw it for only a split second before he fired—the dark shadow of the devil, leaping at him.
The three rounds from his rifle hit the tiger in the head and neck, severing several arteries. But the beast had built up considerable momentum, and it crashed onto the road, still alive, leaping at its target.
Jing Yo stepped to his left, all trained instinct now. He wheeled. The gun became a pointed spear that slammed into the animal’s rib cage.
The tiger lashed at him as it fell to the ground. It rolled back, ready to fight, spurred by pain. It shoved its fury forward, teeth bared, claws wide. Jing Yo’s rifle smashed the top of its skull, breaking the bone and sending the animal to the ground, gurgling its last breath.
“Lieutenant?” said Wu, standing a few feet away. He seemed to be in shock.
Jing Yo looked at him, then turned his attention back to the truck. He moved quickly around the side, wary.
Ai Gua had heard the commotion and come running through the trees. He was standing a meter from the truck, gazing at the body the tiger had been eating when they arrived. It was a gory mess.
Jing Yo knelt next to it. The animal had mauled the corpse so badly that it was impossible to tell if it belonged to an Asian. The clothes looked Vietnamese.
He’d have to see if there was identification.
“Search the vehicle,” Jing Yo told the others. “I’ll attend to this.
”
~ * ~
At least one of the helicopters was in the air north of them, a mile or two. It was too close—the SEAL aircraft would be spotted almost immediately.