Shadows of War (11 page)

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Authors: Larry Bond

BOOK: Shadows of War
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Footsteps approached. Men were walking a few yards away, coming up the road, talking.
He lay in the bushes, trying not to breathe. The men continued by, walking north on the road about twenty more yards before stopping. They spoke in low whispers. Josh couldn't have understood what they were saying in any event, but their voices gave him something to concentrate
on. He listened as they turned and started walking back toward him, then past again.
They'd been gone a good seven or eight minutes before he sat back upright. He'd have to stay off the road, he decided, at least for a while. The jungle was comparatively sparse here, easier to move through than what he'd passed earlier in the day.
Though no longer cramped, his leg remained stiff as he slipped through the jungle, pushing the brush away branch by branch. He moved uphill, passing through a stand of waist-high ferns turned silver by the moonlight angling down through the gaps in the trees. Despite the slope, the ground was soggy; an underground stream pooled up nearby, running off toward the road.
The wet ground made a sucking noise as he lifted his boots. He had to walk ever slower to keep quiet.
Finally he managed to get beyond the pool, tracking almost due west, walking away from where he thought the road was. But soon the sounds of the trucks he'd heard were closer, straight ahead—the road, he realized as he stopped and listened, must join with the highway here.
There weren't many highways in this part of Vietnam, and Josh thought this must be the same road the expedition had camped along. If that was true, he could simply follow it and find his way back. It would be a long journey, but doable.
The small burst of optimism faded quickly as he heard voices ahead. They were shouting and arguing.
Josh got down, hiding behind the trees.
If it's my time
, he told himself,
I won't go like a coward. I won't beg for my life.
A truck engine revved. There were more shouts. Then he heard vehicles moving away.
Finally, with the sound gone, the jungle seemed to move back in as it left, as though the insects and animals had been waiting for the humans to leave.
I'm safe now
, Josh thought to himself.
Whoever they were, they're gone.
I'm safe now. For a little while at least.
That was the last conscious thought he had for several hours, as he slipped off to sleep while sitting against the trees.
Beijing, China
Premier Cho Lai folded his arms.
Vietnam lay before him, its lush, fertile valleys marked prominently on the large map spread over his desk.
Many centuries had passed since the land had been a Chinese kingdom. Soon it would be one again.
Vietnam's oil, located mostly in the southern coastal waters, would be an immediate prize. Even more important were their rice paddies and fields, so lately favored by the weather. But what Cho Lai truly craved was the accomplishment of cutting down the haughty Vietnamese, leaving them groveling at his feet.
Just a month before, they had rejected the Chinese premier's proposal of a mutual economic zone, an arrangement that, while tilted in China's favor, would have been far better for them and their people than war.
Idiots.
Taking Vietnam would not be difficult. The army had studied the possibilities for years, modeling their present plan partly on America's burst through Iraq in 2003.
The occupation, of course, would be different. The Americans had foolishly tried to use a light hand, where nothing but an iron fist would do the job. That, too, would be easy—anyone who did not like China's benevolent rule could leave the country. As a corpse.
The trick would be keeping the rest of the world on his side long enough to at least prevent a military backlash. China's investments in Europe, the Third World, and most especially the United States were a powerful argument for them not to interfere. But Cho Lai knew blackmail would not suffice. Weak as they were, the Westerners needed to feel as if they were doing the right thing.
Hence tonight's operation. The world would soon be convinced, and remain convinced, that he was acting righteously.
And after that—Japan. Korea. The rest of Indochina. Malaysia would finally be dealt with openly. The Philippines. He'd leave Australia—it was a dowdy, useless country.
The deal Vietnam had rejected would be offered to each of them.
They would see the wisdom of agreeing. Or be crushed. And then Cho Lai would be free to concentrate on his real goal: America.
There was a delicious irony in starting here, in Vietnam. He would succeed where the Americans had failed. It would be the first thing historians would notice when they wrote of his exploits in a thousand years.
The premier looked up from the map. His generals stared at him, waiting.
“Give the order to proceed,” he said. “And do it quickly, exactly as we have planned.”
Hanoi
Mara took a nap at the minihotel she'd
called Bangkok from, then went back to the Star to shower. As she toweled off she checked the TV and the Internet connection. There was nothing on China, and the only hint she could find on the Google News Asian page—heavily censored, not just in Vietnam but throughout Asia—was a story from China quoting the premier on “outside aggressors,” but not mentioning Vietnam specifically.
It was still too early to get breakfast at the Star buffet, or at any restaurant catering to foreigners for that matter. A few blocks from the hotel, Mara found a man with a small cart of breakfast items; better-off locals would stop there on their way to work.
She waited her turn amid the small cluster of men, smiling but politely insisting that they take their turn instead of letting her jump ahead. She wasn't just being polite; she was mentally practicing her Vietnamese.
When it was finally her turn, she repeated what the man before her had ordered. Her pronunciation was a bit stiff, and when the man asked her to repeat what she wanted, Mara simply pointed. She got a piece of meat tucked into a half roll of freshly baked French bread.
The meat looked like chicken but tasted gamy, overwhelming the jamlike sweet sauce spread like mayonnaise around it. Maybe it hadn't been her pronunciation that bothered the vendor, but her choice of food.
Mara walked halfway down the block, then dumped the meat into the gutter. Then she began looking for a taxi.
“Airport?” she asked when she finally flagged one down.
The man looked puzzled.
“San bay,”
she said in Vietnamese. “I need to go to the airport.”
“Yes, airport. I understand,” said the man, speaking in English. “But—bags?”
“I have business there,” she told him, getting in.
As they drove, Mara opened her pocketbook and took out one of the “clean” SIM cards she'd brought. She pried it into her cell phone and tried calling the scientist again. Once again she got his voice mail.
The UN agency that had sponsored the expedition was located in Brussels. Mara called the liaison officer there, claiming to be a relative trying to get in touch with the scientist. The man who answered had heard nothing from the expedition for more than two weeks. This wasn't unusual, and he gave her the name and number of a Vietnamese government official who was supposed to be in contact with the scientists.
It was still two hours before the government offices would officially open, and though she tried the number, Mara wasn't surprised when the official didn't answer his phone. He didn't have voice mail.
If Fleming was simply a day behind schedule, he'd expect to meet her at the restaurant tonight. In the meantime, she was going to go look for him—and see what was going on up near the Chinese border.
Assuming she could find a way to get up there. Driving would take too long. The distance itself wasn't that far—roughly three hundred kilometers as the bird flew—but the roads were winding and notoriously bad; even with a skilled driver leaving at first light it could easily take all day just to go one way.
Flying was a much better option, but it was bound to be difficult. While Vietnam was no longer the strictly run authoritarian state it had once been, renting a plane or helicopter was still not an easy task. The first problem was language. Generally, this could be overcome by enough money, but while Mara practically cleared out an ATM inside the airport terminal, the thick wad of bills she flashed in front of the man inside the office of Pearl Air Surveying seemed only to confuse him.
“I'm looking for a scientific expedition,” she told him, speaking as slowly and as clearly as she could. “They may be in trouble. No one has heard from them. They're west of Sapa.”
The man shook his head. “No fly.”
“Why?” she asked.
He shrugged instead of answering. If he'd been ordered not to by the Vietnamese, this would be an important piece of information—a possible confirmation of the Chinese charges.
“Please,” said Mara, pressing. “They may in great trouble. I need to get there. Isn't this enough money?”
The man shrugged.
“Do you speak French?” she asked.
“Parlez-vous français?”
Her own French wasn't that good, and she felt almost relieved when he didn't react to the words.
“Maybe Chinese?” Mara suggested.
“The problem isn't the language.”
Mara turned around. A short, dark-skinned man dressed in mechanic's coveralls leaned against the wall near the door, arms folded.
“What's the problem then?” she asked.
“Too far for a helicopter. At least any of the helicopters you could get here.”
“It's only three hundred kilometers.”
“You have to factor in the altitude. And the linger time.”
“Can't it refuel?”
“Not out there. There's also the red tape.”
He pushed off from the wall and started speaking in Vietnamese to the man behind the desk. The other man responded in a quick, almost nervous voice, speaking so quickly that Mara had no chance to decipher what he said. She watched the mechanic talk—clearly he had some sort of solution in mind.
But he wasn't going to share it in front of the other man.
“No,” he told her finally. “It's not possible with these helicopters. The range is too far.”
“Where can I go to find one that has the proper range?” she asked.
“You can't.”
“I need to find them,” she insisted.
“How badly?”
“Badly.”
Their eyes met.
“Twenty thousand, U.S.”
Mara laughed. “Not
that
badly.”
The mechanic folded his arms.
“Five hundred dollars,” she said.
“Five hundred won't even pay for the fuel.”
“It will pay for the aircraft as well as the fuel.”
“In your dreams. All you Americans think we're stupid. The Vietnamese are poor, so they must be stupid.” The man's English had a slightly British accent. Mara guessed it originated in Hong Kong.
“I don't think that. But not all Americans are rich, as many Vietnamese seem to think,” she told him. “I can pay you five hundred. Plus fuel. With a card.”
“A thousand in cash. With fuel. Plus the landing fee and lunch.”
“And lunch. If we're back in time.”
“We buy it and eat in the plane.”
 
 
The man's name was Ky Kieu,
and though he was Vietnamese, his grandfather had been an American soldier who abandoned his child—or probably never even knew he had one—after the war. Kieu's father had grown up on the streets, but had managed to save enough money—Kieu didn't say how—to send his son to Hong Kong and Australia, where he learned to fix airplanes.
Most important as far as Mara was concerned, he was a pilot and owned an aircraft—though not the type Mara thought.
“That's not a helicopter,” she said when he led her out to the parking area beyond the passenger hangars.
“I explained that a helicopter hasn't the range.”
“It's a biplane.”
“So?”
“A biplane?”
“It can do just about anything you would want a helicopter to do, except hover. The fact that it's a biplane makes it maneuverable. I can land on a road if I want. If you want to pick up your party, they'll fit. And you're unlikely to find another private aircraft in Hanoi. Your CIA friends generally have to travel to Saigon to lease one.”
Mara's expression must have remained doubtful, since he added that there was no other way to get where she wanted to go except by truck.
“It's sturdier than it looks,” he said, pounding his fist against the side of the aircraft. “It's been around.”
The plane was a Chinese-made Yunshuji-5, a license-made copy of the Russian PZL Mielec An-2 Colt older than its owner. A fat engine sat at its nose, fronting a two-level, fully enclosed cabin. A dozen people
could crowd into the passenger space, and the plane could carry roughly five thousand pounds, not quite in the range of a small, two-engined, commercial turboprop, but close.
The cockpit looked as if it hadn't been altered since the day it rolled off the line. The black paint on the metal control panel had been worn down to steel gray in all but a few spots.
“How old is this plane?” Mara asked as she sat in the copilot's seat.
“Age isn't important.”
“Do you even have radar?”
“Would it make a difference? Sit for a minute. We have to taxi over for fuel. There's a food stall behind the fuel farm where you can buy our lunch.”
The Colt vibrated like an unbalanced washing machine. Its engine missed badly on the way over to the fueling area.
“You sure this thing is going to make it?” Mara asked Kieu.
“It's fine.”
“It's running rough.”
“It always does in the morning.”
The pilot didn't seem to be making a joke. Mara climbed down off the wing, nearly losing her balance because of the wash from the prop. She found the food stall behind an abandoned aircraft tug on the other side of the tank area. An irregular circle of white plastic picnic chairs circled a woman squatting between two large baskets and a pair of hibachi charcoal grills. The woman spoke no English, but Mara's Vietnamese and a little bit of pointing did the job. She fished noodles from a pot, and what looked like potatoes from one of the baskets, placing them in a pair of boxes. Then she added some fried fish and a tangle of greens.
“Cha ca,”
said Kieu when she returned to the plane, which was still being fueled. “Good choice. We eat now. Maybe later we don't have a chance.”
“Listen, for real—is this airplane going to make it?”
“Do you think I'd go if it didn't? We don't have parachutes. If you die, I die.”
The engine settled down with the full tank of fuel. It roared as Kieu brought it up to takeoff power, pushing from the patchwork concrete at the edge of the ramp to the main runway as soon as he got clearance. It rose immediately, the doubled wings eager to get into the air.
Sapa was a little less than three hundred kilometers away; the Colt
cruised around 185 kilometers an hour, or roughly a hundred knots—the speed some planes landed at.
It looked like a handful to fly. The plane was unpressurized, but they stayed relatively low, skimming over the city, rice paddies, and eventually the jungle at a few hundred feet.
“When we get closer, you'll need to wear the mask,” the pilot told her after they'd been in the air for a while. Kieu hadn't given her a headset. He had to shout to make himself heard over the engine. “In the mountains. I'll tell you when.”
“Is it safe?”
“Plenty safe. Just high. Even in the valleys.”
“All right.”
“So, why is the CIA interested in scientists?”
She'd let the first reference go as if she hadn't heard it, but now felt compelled to reply.
“I'm not a spy. I'm a journalist. I'm doing a story on the expedition.”
Kieu laughed. “You expect me to believe that?”
“I don't care what you believe,” said Mara.
“All Americans in Vietnam are spies,” said Kieu.
“You don't honestly believe that.”
“The government does. And maybe I am a spy myself.”
“Maybe you are.”
People were always accusing Americans in Asia of being spies. Mara knew from experience that if she offered a reasonable alternative, most people would accept it at face value, repeating it to the authorities if asked. What they truly believed was another story, of course. For some, thinking that they were working with a spy was attractive—they liked the idea of danger, even if it was far removed from reality.
“What are these scientists doing? Looking for more oil?” asked Kieu.
“They're studying climate change.”
“Ha! They should cool the sun if they want to be useful.”
“I'm sure they would if they could.”
“It's always been hot in Vietnam. My grandfather sweated the minute he got off the plane, and he landed in December.”

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