Shock of War (18 page)

Christian sounded a little drunk, if only on the memory. They talked like that for a while, the way friends would talk if they had no cares in the world, if they were in a distant city on a convention, enjoying an easy evening. It was a surreal moment, full of contradictions.

Zeus tried to think of a story he could tell, but came up empty.

They'd fallen silent again when they came across another dirt road, this one not much wider than a bike trail.

“This way's south.” Zeus angled his thumb as if he were a hitchhiker.

Vegetation teased at the sides, at times swallowing the path whole. It took only a few minutes for them to reach the fence.

“Another dead end,” said Christian.

“Wait.” Zeus stared at the ground to the east of the path, then walked to the other side.

“What?”

“There. Come on.” He led Christian past a few bushes to a well-worn spot about thirty feet west of the path. There was a hole cut in the fence at the bottom; some of the metal was pushed back.

“Damn small hole,” said Christian, squeezing in behind him.

Christian started past him. Zeus grabbed him.

“Wait,” he said. “There's a sign over there.”

The sign was posted on a pole about chest high ten or twelve yards away, just visible in the moonlight. He couldn't see its face from where he was standing, but suspected that was immaterial—more than likely it was in Chinese.

Besides, he could guess at what it said.

“Minefield?” said Christian.

“Shit.” Zeus dropped to his haunches. He leaned out, and tentatively groped the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“There's a path. You can see how the grass is parted.”

“You're out of your mind,” said Christian. “This is a minefield.”

“People go through here a lot,” said Zeus, pushing out a little farther. He knew he was right—it was a smuggler's path.

“No way.”

“Any place where there aren't mines, there are going to be guards. It's the only way.”

“God, Zeus. What if we get all the way to the other fence and we find there's no hole there? What then?”

“There'll be a hole. I'm telling you. People go through here all the time.”

“Crap.”

There was a hole, though it was a little tricky to spot. The fence was bent toward the China side, and obscured by a clump of grass and a scattering of rocks. Zeus's shirt caught as he slipped under. It ripped; the fence scraped his back. It hurt like a hot knife.

“I just want to get the hell home,” said Christian, falling in behind as Zeus found the trail into the jungle.

*   *   *

The trail led to a wide
but unpaved road. The road twisted east and then back north, and at first Zeus was afraid he'd gone the wrong way, but then it took a sharp turn south.

The sun had just begun to rise when they came to another road, this one macadam. They walked parallel to it for a few dozen yards, until they heard the sound of a truck approaching.

“Chinese?” asked Christian.

Zeus listened, trying to decide what direction it was coming from. Finally he realized it was behind them.

“It's coming from the north,” he said, ducking down.
“Chinese.”

Christian flopped down beside him. Zeus angled himself so he could see the vehicle as it passed. Every ounce of his body began to ache. He could feel his eyelids hanging down, the eyeballs themselves sagging.

The truck rumbled closer. Zeus spotted the olive drab fender moving toward him.

An older truck. He leaned forward, trying to get a glimpse of the insignia. But he couldn't see it.

An open truck. People standing in the back.

They were wearing peasant pajamas.

Vietnamese home guards. He spotted the star on the cab.

Zeus jumped to his feet.

“Wait!” he yelled, crashing through the brush toward the truck. “Wait!”

He reached the road a few yards after the truck had passed. He yelled loudly, waving his arms.

“Wait! Wait!”

The people at the back of the truck stared at him. They were dressed in dull green uniforms.

“Wait!” he yelled, starting after them.

He'd taken only three or four steps when he tripped, his legs simply too tired to remain coordinated. He tumbled down, barely able to get his hands out in time to break his fall.

Zeus heard the truck stop. By the time he managed to get himself upright, two of the people in the back of the vehicle had run to him.

They were women. They had AK-47s. Pointed at him.

“I need to get to General Minh Trung,” said Zeus. “You must take me to General Trung. To General Trung. Right away.”

8

The Gulf of Tonkin

The Gulf of Tonkin
was a veritable bathtub filled with Chinese rubber duckies, the biggest of which were two Chinese aircraft carriers. The carriers were not, strictly speaking, in the same class as American supercarriers.

Silas told his number two, Lieutenant Commander Dorothy Li, they weren't even the match of the Italian ship
Garibaldi,
which the
McLane
had maneuvered with in the Philippines not six months before.

The assessment was grossly unfair. The
Garibaldi
was a capable ship, but she was much smaller than the Chinese vessels. While packing quite a wallop for her size, the Italian vessel was primarily an antisubmarine helicopter ship with an attachment of Harriers to extend its mission to air strike and defense.

A better comparison was the French carrier
De Gaulle,
a ship Silas had never seen. Displacing around 40,000 tons, the Chinese carriers carried the new Chinese J-15 Flying Shark, among the most capable naval combat aircraft in the world; and considerably more capable than the Harriers. While the Chinese vessels were conventionally powered, they boasted forty aircraft apiece (including helicopters). Together they had nearly the same punch as a larger U.S. supercarrier, though with a shorter reach and somewhat less efficiency. Their sensors and defenses were not up to American standards, but they were operating so much closer to their homeland that any disadvantage was marginal.

Their aircraft would give the
McLane
a difficult time. It was conceivable, in fact, that if properly handled, the Chinese fighters could sink the American destroyer, though Silas was loath to admit it.

And, of course, they would do so only over his dead body.

The carriers were a good distance away, nearly ninety-five miles by the last plot. Closer and of more immediate concern was the cruiser and her frigate.

Named the
Wen Jiabao
after a recently deceased premier, the cruiser was the refitted
Moskva,
a Russian ship sold to China ostensibly as scrap two years before. At one hundred and eighty six meters long and nearly twenty-one meters at beam, it was a good bit larger than the
McLane
. The
Wen
carried at least thirty-two long-range YJ-83 antiship missiles, each with a range of roughly two hundred kilometers.

Nasty things, those.

“Cap, have you had a look at the weather report?”

Silas looked over at his chief aerographer's mate, Petty Officer Jondy Moor, who'd just come out on deck. Moor, who had a background as an aviation warfare specialist, had completed training for the meteorology specialty just before joining the
McLane
.

“What do we have?” asked Silas.

“Nasty storm brewin', Cap. It's gonna be a bitch.”

Moor had a satellite image with him; it showed a classic tight pinwheel with a dot at the center.

“Category 5 typhoon. Or it will be,” said Moor. “That is the real deal.” A Category 5 typhoon—the Pacific version of a hurricane—could have winds in the area of 136 knots, generating storm surges over eighteen feet. The storm was a monster.

“It's coming our way?” asked Silas.

“In this general vicinity. Absolutely, Cap.” The petty officer began regaling him with possible storm tracks and percentages, talking about probabilities and the difficulty of really knowing which way the wind was blowing. “We'll have a better idea in twenty-four hours,” said Moor. “Any way you look at it, Cap, the seas'll be ultra heavy. Even if it veers off, we get a lot of rain. Gale winds. Gonna be a bitch no matter where it goes.”

“Good job,” Silas told him. “Keep me informed.”

“Aye aye, Cap.” Moor glanced over Silas's shoulder. “Chinese still out there?”

“Just over the horizon,” Silas told him.

“We oughta kick 'em in the balls before they get a chance to kick ours,” said Moor.

“Not up to us,” said Silas. “Though I have to say, you have the right idea.”

9

Alexandria

Josh's appearances at the UN
and before the Senate committee made him a popular “get” for the network and cable talk shows. The only problem was that he didn't want to be a “get.”

His experiences since returning to the U.S. had so completely depressed him that he didn't want to do anything, not even eat. Much of it was simply fatigue—he was still hungover, physically and mentally, from his ordeal in Vietnam. Nothing in America could quite match the adrenaline rush of what he'd been through, the triumph as well as the fear. But most of what he felt was utter contempt for his fellow human beings, who were simply too selfish to understand what was really going on. They closed their eyes to the outrage, trying to wish it away in hopes that it wouldn't affect them.

But eventually it would.

Jablonski had set himself up as Josh's media broker, and he gave Josh a long list of possible interviews. Josh turned them all down.

“It's completely up to you,” said Jablonski. “But it would be in your best interests to take a few. Just a few.”

“
My
best interests?”

The political op stared at him.

“I'm going home,” Josh said.

“I'll give you a ride to the hotel.”

The hotel wasn't what Josh meant. He wanted to go home home.

The problem was that he didn't have one: the Vietnam field work was supposed to have lasted six months, with research following in Australia. So Josh had given up his apartment. He didn't even have a storage locker: postgrad, his entire accumulation of worldly goods amounted to three boxes of clothes and six boxes of books, all of which were donated to a Goodwill outfit in Kansas where he'd been staying with his cousin's family before leaving for Asia.

He could go back to the farm. His cousin had invited him in their brief phone call right after the UN talk.

Where else would he go?

*   *   *

Josh was still brooding
when he returned to the hotel. He started to turn on the television, then realized it would only depress him further. Instead, he started to pack, pulling together all of his borrowed clothes.

He had to talk to Mara, say good-bye.

She was the one thing keeping him here, or keeping him around. He didn't want to leave her.

But that was silly. They weren't boyfriend-girlfriend. She'd been doing her job. It was time to go.

He pulled everything together in less than five minutes, checked the bathroom twice, and left the room.

“Hey, champ, where we going?” asked the marshal. By now Josh was calling him Tex, which he didn't seem to mind.

“Home, Tex.”

“Home?”

“You can ride with me if you want. But I'm going.”

“Where's that?”

“Tex, you don't have that in your little earphone there?”

“Come on now, Doc. I'm on your side, right?”

“I'm going home.” Josh walked to Mara's door and knocked, even though he knew she wouldn't be there. He knocked twice, called her name, then decided it was time to leave.

He wanted to see her. He wanted more than that. But it was time to move on.

Tex trailed him down the hall to the elevator.

“I'm not sure about this,” said the marshal.

“I'm not under arrest, right?”

“Well, no, of course not.”

“Then I'm going home.”

10

Aboard the
McLane

“Five merchant ships.
They sailed out of Zhanjiang a few hours ago,” the communications officer told Silas. “Fleet wants them checked to make sure they're not running guns to the Vietnamese.”

“Well, that's bullshit. They're not going to sail from China to Vietnam to deliver weapons.”

The communications officer gave Silas an embarrassed look. Obviously, he had no idea what fleet was up to.

“All right. I'll talk to them from my quarters. Where is Lieutenant Commander Li?”

“She was in the Command Center when I left, sir.”

“Very good.”

Silas went into his cabin, secured the door, and then flipped on his secure link to fleet. The satellite system provided an encrypted, real-time link to practically every Navy command in the world, all the ships at sea, and the Pentagon. It was a double-edged sword, as it gave those sailing the desks back home considerably more opportunity to interfere with the captains on the front line.

In Silas's opinion, of course.

“There are you are, Silas,” said Captain Mortez. He was Admiral Meeve's chief of staff.

“What's the story on these merchant ships. Why am I supposed to intercept them?”

“We think they're carrying Chinese troops.”

“What? According to this, the ships are registered in the Philippines.”

“Don't believe everything you read. Can you get to them?”

“Depends where they're headed. In the meantime I've got a hurricane blowing up my fantail.”

“I've seen the weather reports. Can you stop those ships?”