Shock of War

1

The jungle had turned into a melange of grays, with the occasional splash of brown and black. Zeus couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, and what he did see was jagged and chameleonlike, altering shape as he approached. He found the gully by accident, stumbling into it and sliding down into the water. That hadn’t been his plan, but it worked just fine. The ankle-deep water swelled his shoes; he felt his way along the side of the crevice and worked his way slowly toward the bridge.

“Christian, where are you?” he asked when he cleared the water.

“Up here.”

“We can walk through this channel and we’ll be right under the bridge.”

“Yeah. And get soaked at the same time.”

Zeus kept going. The plan was still only vaguely formed, but it wasn’t the logic of it that drove him — it was the feeling, the emotion, that he had to do it. He had to stop these tanks somehow. He was just going to, whatever it took. Because not doing anything felt like a sharp stab to his stomach.

The shallow ravine widened as he walked. Water squished from his shoes. Something shot overhead, close, in the trees — a bird? A monkey?

Just the wind?

Zeus forced his eyes to focus in front of him. He couldn’t afford other thoughts or distractions.

The noise from the camp seemed louder. They’d be planning on moving out in a few hours. There must be a large infantry concentration somewhere; you couldn’t move tanks through a jungle like this without infantry supporting them.

Maybe they were coming down the road, meeting with the tanks. The crews didn’t seem to be there, either.

He had to stay alert. Apprehension stoked his adrenaline and pushed him on. The overpass loomed ahead.

It was dark underneath, extremely dark. Zeus found the first charge by feel, a blind man slowly groping along the steel. He began collecting them.

In the demolition course he’d taken — that was three, four years ago now? — the instructor had had them assemble and disassemble simple charges in the dark.

That was child’s play compared to what he had to do now. He’d been in a room with dummy charges, his feet dry and stomach full. No one was going to die if he screwed up. There was tension, sure, but it was child’s play.

After they were done, they’d hit a bar.

Two bars, as he recalled.

He followed the wires to the second, then to a third.

“Where are you?” called Christian in a stage whisper.

“Here. The north end. Go the south.”

“All right.”

“You know what you’re doing?”

“I know how to wire them. It’s the dark I have trouble with.”

They had to find the detonators. Zeus suspected there would be at least two, one on each side of the bridge.

Of course, it was possible there would be only a receiver — or worse, bare wires, waiting to be hooked up to the controller or timer.

“I don’t know how the Chinese arrange their demos,” said Zeus.

“Yeah, me neither.”

“Be careful with the wire.”

“You think they booby-trapped it?”

“No,” said Zeus, though in truth he had no idea. “There’d be no reason for that. It wouldn’t be logical.”

“I hope these guys are big on logic.”

Zeus laughed.

He found two more charges, tracing the wire along. Whoever had set up the demolitions had used far too much explosive — a common failing.

“Hey, look at this,” said Christian from the other side.

Zeus made his way over. Christian had found a small mechanical hand unit wired in as a back-up detonating device, a slightly more modern version of the old-fashioned plungers used to ignite TNT in thousands of old Western movies.

“They’re making it easy for us,” Zeus told Christian, feeling his way to the wire connections.

“Can you see what the hell you’re doing?”

“No. You?”

“I can see the screws with the wires and your fingers are nowhere near them.”

Zeus stared down at his hands.

“You can see that?” he said.

“Here,” said Christian, putting Zeus’s fingers on the contact.

“Thanks.”

“You going blind?”

“I didn’t have my carrots today.”

“Always with a joke.”

“I’m rubbing off on you,” answered Zeus. “You’re making them yourself.”

They pulled eight more charges off the bridge. There were probably more, Zeus thought, but they couldn’t carry them.

There were certainly enough explosives to blow a tank, perhaps two or even three, depending on how they were situated.

The moon poked back through the clouds as they walked, sending silver slivers through the trees.

“What’s the plan?” asked Christian when they reached the fence.

“I’m not sure yet.”

“That’s not a plan,” said Christian.

“I’m going to have to improvise something. We’ll put the charges under a tank, come back, blow it. We don’t need more of a plan than that.”

“What good is blowing one tank?”

“We can get two.”

It did seem like a pathetic gesture — where was the wild man who’d just inhabited Christian?

But it might delay the Chinese even so. They’d think they were under attack. Even a few hours might help the Vietnamese.

“We string the wire as far back as we can, we blow it, and move back here,” said Zeus, sketching the route with his finger in the air. “We go that way. We get as far from the camp as we can, then cross over into Vietnam.”

“That’s a bullshit plan.”

“You got something better?”

“I’m not going to be a martyr for Vietnam.”

“Just wait here.”

Zeus stuck his elbow under the fence, then pushed himself through.

He didn’t bother looking back, crawling on his belly through the weeds.

Something was better than nothing.

What if he blew the entrance to the tunnel? Could he get close enough?

Doubtful.

He could string the explosives together, push them down the air tube.

That might work.

He started crawling in that direction.

“Where are you going?” hissed Christian in the darkness behind him.

Startled, Zeus stopped. “Where are you?”

“Jesus, I’m right here. Two feet away.”

“I thought you were staying back,” said Zeus.

“What’s the plan?”

“I’m not sure yet. There are air vents — ”

“I have an idea,” said Christian.

“Okay.”

“They won’t get very far if we blow up their fuel.”

“Their tanks must be underground.”

“They have some trucks lined up near the personnel carriers. Didn’t you see them before?”

It was a brilliant, logical, simple plan. But the most amazing thing was that it had come from Christian.

“Show me,” said Zeus.

They didn’t see the guard walking along the line of tanks until he was less than ten yards away. Fortunately, the man was looking toward the fence line, and Zeus was close enough to the armored personnel carriers to cut between them and hide. Christian followed.

“Guard,” whispered Zeus as he squatted.

“Yeah.”

Zeus waited, chest tight.

They’d take the guard if he came this way. Zeus put the charges down, ready to leap out.

The man didn’t appear. Finally, Zeus leaned forward and looked around the end of the vehicle.

The soldier was gone.

“Stay here,” Zeus told Christian. “I’m going to scout ahead. I want to make sure we won’t be seen”

“Go.”

There was no light in the compound, but the moon was strong enough for him to see fairly well. The row of APCs gave way to tanks. As Zeus reached the back of the second tank, he saw the fuel trucks off to the right. Two were parked next to a pile of bulldozed debris, dirt, tree trunks, and rocks in a long mound. The fence cut toward the mound, running along to the right as far as Zeus could see.

He made his way to the mound, crawling along the side nearest the fence. There were more fuel trucks — a half dozen. Another row behind that.

Blow up one with each charge. Shrapnel from the blast might damage others. In any event, it would slow their advance considerably — the tanks could only go so far without topping off.

How many trucks were there? He lay at the top of the hill, staring.

Two dozen.

What was the ratio the Chinese used? God, that he should know — that was a factor in the game somewhere.

Five tanks to one truck?

Six?

No. Three?

It had to be more than three, or there were more trucks.

He couldn’t think. And what did it matter now? Just blow the damn things up and be done with it.

Voices came to him as the wind shifted. Belatedly, Zeus realized there were men on the far side of the trucks all the way to his right.

He slid closer, trying to see.

Gradually, he realized what they were up to — filling the tankers with fuel from an underground tank.

He slipped back to Christian.

“They’re putting fuel in them now. Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Come on.” Zeus shoved the demo packs back into his pockets. “Come on.”

“What do we do after we plant the charges?”

“Go back the same way we came.”

Zeus leapt up, heart pounding in his chest. He was suddenly on an adrenaline high, feeling no pain, completely focused on his mission. He rounded the corner of the APC. The moist jungle air felt heavy in his chest, thick.

Zeus glanced up, trying to gauge how far he was from the pile of debris. As he did, he saw the soldier he’d spotted earlier come out from behind the truck, then look directly at him.

2

Mara was on her way upstairs to see Peter Lucas when she decided to take a detour to Starbucks. The coffee shop, located on the ground floor of the CIA’s main building at Langley, was reputedly one of the busiest Starbucks in the country. Mara could agree with that — the place was always jammed. She took her place in line.

“Well, speak of the devil and she appears,” said a voice behind her as she debated whether to go for a regular or a latte. She’d moved about two feet in five minutes. “Mara Duncan, I hope you are well.”

Mara turned and saw Jimmy “Grease” Parnel standing with his arms folded in front of his chest. The ceiling lights glared off his bald head, and his round face sported a wide smile. Grease had earned his nickname long ago, when he’d been able to make things happen: “greasing the wheels of progress” as he put it when he deigned to explain where the name had come from.

“Grease,” said Mara. “How are you? I thought you were retired.”

“No kiss?” He offered his cheek. She snorted in derision. “You don’t know what you’re missing,” he said.

“Ignorance is bliss.”

“I can vouch for that.”

The line shifted. Mara moved with it. Grease took a spot near the back.

Grease was retired — he’d been shot up badly a few years while helping the Philippines government. Grease had spent somewhere over thirty years working in various places in Asia. He’d even been in Malaysia, briefly, when Mara was there, which was how she knew him.

She got her coffee — just a regular — and moved around toward the end of the line. Grease was chatting up two young — and pretty — office workers. Add their ages together, and they’d still come up more than a few years shy of his.

“Ask this one,” he told them, nodding toward Mara. “She’ll tell you.”

“Tell them what?”

“How good I am in bed.”

“He’s good, all right,” said Mara. “Loudest snorer in the bunch.”

“Only after a full meal and extra dessert,” said Grease. “And I don’t mean ice cream.”

The two women exchanged a glance, then did their best to ignore them.

“You’re going to get written up for sexual harassment,” said Mara.

“That’s the beauty of being a contract worker,” said Grease. “I can’t be fired.”

“They can terminate your contract.”

“For flirting? If I knew it was that easy, I would have tried it years ago”

“I wouldn’t elevate what you do to the status of flirting,” countered Mara.

“Be kind.” Grease winked at her. “Hang on for a minute, will you? I have to get my caffeine fix.”

Grease ordered an Americano — a shot of espresso in water, so that it had the flavor of a very strong coffee.

“Reminds me of the coffee machine in the Bangkok office,” he said, putting a top on the cup.

“I doubt that,” said Mara.

“How is Bangkok?”

“Still there, last I saw.”

Grease smiled. They walked out into the hall. “You coming in to see Peter?”

“Something like that.”

“I’m working for him,” said Grease. “Come on.”

They walked past the glassed-in courtyard and across to a staircase, taking it down three flights. That was Grease — pushing seventy, with more replacement parts in him than a used car, and he still preferred what he called “the juice of the dance” to being carried.

He told Mara that he had been called back “to take a look at things” in Vietnam and China.

“A lot going on,” he said as they cleared the second landing and headed for the third. “This Cho Lai — he’s some piece of work.”

“The Chinese were desperate for a strong leader,” said Mara.

“They got that in spades,” said Grease. Downstairs, they passed a security point, then entered a part of the building strongly shielded against eavesdropping equipment. Grease buzzed them through a door into a secure hallway with a series of small offices. These were temporary workplaces, where temporary assignees like Grease could hold conversations and work with sensitive material. He paused in front of an office door.

“You left your cell phone upstairs, right?” asked Grease. “No electronics.”

“I know that.”

“Just checking.”

He smiled, punching the combination into the lock.

“I heard somebody blew your cover,” Grease told Mara inside.

“You know who?”

“Obviously it was the Chinese. Question is how long they’ve known.”

Mara had been wondering that herself. It could very well have been back in Malaysia, given all that had gone down there. But there were also problems with the Hanoi station, and Mara strongly suspected a double agent there had passed along the information.

“You think this kills me?” she asked.

“Hell no. You know how many times the Russians figured out who I was? Five or six different incarnations. Nothing stops the Peter Principle,” Grease said. “You’ll rise to your appropriate level of incompetence, I guarantee. You have a long way to go.”

Mara smiled.

“Speaking of Peter,” added Grease. “Before you go up to see him, there’s a company I wanted to ask you about: Maccu Shang Shipping. A Philippine company. Sorry about the cramped space.”

The room was tiny, with a bare desk, a pair of computer terminals, and two steel-and-vinyl chairs. Mara and Grease were sitting almost knee to knee.

“I know Shang,” she told him. “The Philippines is a front. They’re Chinese.”

“You’re positive? The evidence looks a little ambiguous.”

“They’re definitely Chinese.”

“Five ships leased to the company left Macau last night and headed for Zhanjiang. Southern China. Big navy port.”

“See?”

“Turns out some of our friends at the agency that doesn’t exist happened to be tracking an army unit that was just sent there, real fast. Seems like they’re in the port, waiting for something.”

The agency that doesn’t exist was Grease’s quaint way of referring to the NSA, or National Security Agency, which specialized in eavesdropping. His pseudonym came from a popular nickname for the agency, formed from its initials: No Such Agency.

“They’re getting on the ships?” asked Mara.

“Don’t know. I have to check back in. They may be there already. A lot of things to keep tabs on. That one just happened to catch my interest.”

“Shang Shipping brought all sorts of stuff into Malaysia,” said Mara. “A lot of different things.”

“Troops?”

Mara wasn’t sure about that. The Chinese had smuggled some paramilitary and guerillas into the country as advisers, but most of their help to the rebels had been in the form of equipment. The ships had filed manifests that said they were shipping food to Burma — as unlikely an arrangement as Mara had ever heard of.

The Chinese unit’s identity interested Grease — they were commandos, not regular army, and apparently not assigned to the amphibious assault that was to have been launched from Hainan.

“My question is where would they go?” said Grease.

“Could be anywhere,” said Mara. “Vietnam has a long coast.”

“The NSA suggested Hai Phong. Someone attached to the unit apparently gathered some sort of electronic information — I’m guessing that it had to do with a GPS system. But you know them. They won’t admit they know anything.”

“Did they have assault ships?”

“No,” said Grease. “I’m wondering if they might just try sailing into the port.”

“Do the Vietnamese still hold Hai Phong?”

“They do. Were you there?”

“No, we didn’t get that far west.”

Grease asked her a few more questions about the status of things in Vietnam. He commented that the country seemed surprisingly calm for one under siege. Mara wasn’t so sure about that; in her experience, sanity and insanity mixed all the time.

“You going upstairs?” asked Grease, glancing at his watch.

“Yeah.”

“Well, come on. I’ll escort you. We want to get up in time to see your boyfriend testify before the Senate.”

“My boyfriend?”

“Looks like I hit a nerve,” said Grease, opening the door. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen that shade of red on you cheeks before.”

“Grease — ”

“It does suit you.”

3

Commander Dirk Silas edged his finger along the manual focus ring of his glasses, trying to will something out of the dark night before his ship. The moist air pulled a fog from the ocean, reducing the gear’s effectiveness.

The Chinese were still there, six miles off the port bow. The frigate was the closer of the two; the cruiser’s captain used the smaller boat as a shield and a prod, sending it close, only to have it tuck away. Right now it was doing the latter, sailing into what its captain probably supposed was safe murk beyond Silas’s immediate vision.

Ha!

The communicator on the destroyer captain’s belt buzzed and vibrated with an incoming message. The wireless system allowed Silas to communicate with all departments on his ship without having to be tethered to a physical control panel. He could switch from voice or text messaging by pressing a small button, changing channels and issuing simple commands such as “save” via voice.

In this case, the message referred him to a longer transmission from his fleet commander via video; he retreated to his cabin to view it.

Admiral Roy Meeve’s stone countenance filled the screen. The message had been recorded; it wasn’t live. The admiral’s face seemed almost gray. That wasn’t a function of the video mechanism — if anything it cast it a little more fleshlike.

“Dirk — we’ve confirmed now the Chinese have canceled their plan to ship the landing force from Hainan. Continue your patrol in the area. Maintain a course in international waters. Do not provoke or engage. Do not withdraw.”

Don’t engage, but don’t withdraw? Should I just let the bastards run over me?

Silas flipped the video off with disgust and went to find a cup of coffee.

4

Josh sat in the small room in the Senate office building, running his thumbnails together. The next-to-last thing in the world he wanted to do was walk from this room into the large conference room next door. He was going to do it, though, because the last thing he wanted to do was let these bastards call him a liar.

The door opened. Josh started to rise, then saw that it was only Jablonski.

“There you are. Ready?” asked the political troubleshooter.

“No.”

“Come on now. You have to have a positive attitude.” Jablonski somehow managed to look disheveled in a bespoke black suit. Maybe it was his purple tie, which despite a perfect knot at the top was a fraction of an inch too long at the bottom. Or perhaps it was the creases in his white shirt, which suggested the pattern of a psychotic snowflake. “You’ll do fine. Senator Grasso loves you. He owes you his life.”

“He owes Mara his life. She’s being smeared, too.”

“We’re not going to mention Mara at the hearing. Okay?”

“Mmmm.”

“How’s the suit? Still fit?”

“It fits.”

Jablonski had had the suit made for him in New York. Josh had worn it for the UN speech; it was still a bit dirty from the attempt on his life before the speech but there’d been no time to have it dry-cleaned.

“Tailor’s father fought with Chiang Kai-shek,” said Jablonski. “Interesting life story. Long struggle.”

The door opened again. One of Grasso’s aides, a young man about Josh’s age, came in. “Ready, Mr. MacArthur.”

“It’s Dr. MacArthur,” said Jablonski.

“Oh, right, I’m sorry.”

“It’s Josh.” He got up and followed the aide into the conference room. It was jammed with aides and seemingly every foreign-interest lobbyist in town. They all wanted to see Josh in person.

Half were undoubtedly spies, Josh thought.

The press was gathered along the far wall of the room. Bulbs flashed and TV lights came on as Josh walked in. He walked stoically to the table opposite the dais and sat down.

Senator Grasso, who chaired the Senate subcommittee on affairs with China — double entendre be damned — sat at the center of the long, courtroomlike platform at the front of the room. He had a grim face — much grimmer than Josh remembered from when they had met in New York. He gave Josh a serious, portentous nod, then leaned back to whisper to one of his aides.

Josh grimaced as a photographer came and took a picture of him. Several more followed. He didn’t even try to smile.

Grasso gaveled the session to order. Or at least attempted to — another senator began speaking immediately, saying something about how he wanted to make sure proper procedure was followed.

“The committee will come to order,” said Grasso, rapping sharply. “These hearings are being conducted to review the President’s request for immediate military aid to be given to Vietnam in light of the gross violation of — ”

The senator on Grasso’s left pulled his microphone forward to interrupt. “Mr. Chairman, I have a request — ”

“Requests will be handled at the proper time,” said Grasso. “The chair will make the opening statement.”

As seen in television reports, congressional hearings seemed at least somewhat organized, with direction and occasional sparks of order. From Josh’s vantage, this one was three-ring chaos, with the senators talking to aides and correspondents at the back of the room doing brief broadcasts. Josh heard the loud clatter of laptop keys; the session was being live-blogged on at least half a dozen sites.

He was completely ignored for a few minutes as Grasso made a statement about searching for the truth, then corralled the rest of his subcommittee into agreement that they would shut up while he swore Josh in.

“Will the witness rise?” asked Grasso finally.

Josh put his hand on a Bible and swore that he was going to tell the truth.

“Absolutely,” he added.

Jablonski had coached him to read a prepared statement that was essentially an edited version of the one he had given the UN the day before. As he sat down, he took it from his jacket pocket and folded it out on the table in front of him. The cameramen rose, poised to take his picture as he read.

“Dr. MacArthur,” said Senator Grasso. “Do you have a statement you’d like to make?”

“Yes, Senator, I do,” said Josh.

His tongue suddenly stuck in his mouth. He looked down at the pages, filled with words Jablonski had written. They weren’t his. He couldn’t read them.

Everyone waited. The cameras clicked away.

“I… A few days ago, I returned from Vietnam after witnessing a massacre.” Josh pushed the paper to the side. “Innocent people were killed. I testified about it at the UN yesterday morning. I brought back a video. In the hours since, I’ve been called a liar. I’m not a liar. I’m a scientist. I know what I saw. The Chinese are murderers. They killed innocent people. It was despicable. It is despicable.”

There was collective gasp at the word murderers. Jablonski had specifically coached him not to say that. You’re a scientist, he’d said. Be scientific.

But how the hell could you be scientific when you’d seen what he’d seen? And when people called you a liar?

The photographers began taking pictures furiously. Josh looked at Grasso. He had a worried frown on his face.

“Order,” said Grasso, pounding the gavel.

“Mr. Chairman, I must demand that our witness apologize for his intemperate remarks,” said Senator Galveston, who despite his name represented Minnesota. “The Chinese are our allies and our business partners.”

“I don’t see how you can call them our allies,” said the senator on Grasso’s right.

Something between a discussion and pandemonium followed, as the senators argued back and forth about decorum and adjectives. Josh was shocked — not only did one of the senators want him to issue an apology, that seemed to be the majority view on the panel.

Josh knew that standing up to China was unpopular — the President himself had told him that — but he had thought that his speech and the images he’d presented at the UN had shown Americans, if not the world, what was going on.

Maybe it wasn’t fair to call the Chinese murderers. Certainly not every Chinese citizen was in the army, and maybe most wouldn’t support the war. Certainly, they wouldn’t be in favor of killing innocent civilians. But the Chinese government was another story. And their army had definitely done this.

“Mr. Chairman, I ask for a vote of censure on the witness,” said the senator from Minnesota.

“That’s preposterous!” said Grasso. He pounded his gavel.

More discussion. Josh glanced toward the door to the small room where he had left Jablonski. But the door was shut. Most likely the political operative was at the back of the room somewhere, but Josh didn’t want to give the reporters back there the satisfaction of his turning and looking at them.

Grasso finally gaveled his^-committee back to order. There would be no demands on the witness, and no further statements from the witness. Instead, he would answer questions posed by the senators.

It was less a Q&A session than an excuse for pontificating. First up was the senator on Grasso’s right, who asked Josh if it was true that he had been near the Chinese border when he witnessed the slaughter, and then after getting a “yes,” launched into a denunciation of China as the enemy of the free world. The senators were on a time limit, as Grasso noted not once but twice before tapping his gavel lightly to cut off a man who was clearly his ally.

Next up was a member of the opposition party, who sat at the far end of the dais. He asked Josh what his qualifications were.

“I’m a biologist,” said Josh. “My specialty is studying the effects — ”

“You’re a biologist? I thought you were a climate scientist.”

“Yes. You see, there’s an overlap. In that I study the effects of rapid climate change on biological populations. Now, in Vietnam — ”

“So excuse me,” interrupted the senator, in a voice that implied no apology whatsoever. “You’re not a trained observer? You’re not a medical doctor. You know things about the weather.”

“Of course I’m not a medical doctor.”

“I see,” said the senator, his tone triumphant. “And this tape you brought back — ”

“Actually, it was a video stored on — ”

“The recording,” continued the senator, annoyed at being interrupted. “Who gave it to you?”

“No one gave it to me.”

“Your CIA handler didn’t give it to you?”

“I don’t have a handler.”

The senator frowned.

“Sixty seconds,” said Grasso. His tone made it clear that that was all the senator was getting. He was looking directly at his watch, and his gavel was poised to strike.

“Mr. Chairman, I want to submit that we cannot, and should not, take action based on ephemeral information from a possibly biased source, who may or may not have witnessed an isolated incident in an obscure — ”

“Time.” Grasso pounded the gavel.

But while the chairman could keep the speakers to their time limits, he had no control over what they said. As the session went on, it became clear that the majority on the committee was unwilling to take any action against China, and would certainly not authorize aid to Vietnam. One said that he would be in favor of aid if the UN passed a resolution condemning China. As China was able, as a member of the security council, to veto any resolution — and already had twice — this was tantamount to saying that he would never support aid, except that he phrased it in a way that made most people think he might.

Josh, thinking of the dead people he’d seen, of the buried hand of the corpse he’d dug up, of the girl, Mạ, whose parents had been killed and whose village had been wiped out, felt sick to his stomach.

At least none of the senators called him a liar. As the meeting went on, Josh tried to lengthen his answers so that they contained actual information. But the senators were on to that ploy, and soon began simply to ignore him, pontificating at will without bothering to ask a question or even glance in his direction. One or two made conciliatory gestures in his general direction — one even said he had been very brave to have escaped the war — but for the most part he was an accessory at best, and a potted plant at worst.

Finally, the ordeal was over. Grasso, clearly worn by the proceedings, thanked Josh for his time and “your unselfish devotion to our country.” With a loud clap on the gavel, some of the longest and certainly most frustrating hours of Josh’s life came to a close.

5

Zeus saw the Chinese soldier stop, push his head down as if in disbelief, then start to raise his rifle.

From that point, the world became a gray funnel. He couldn’t see or hear.

He could feel. And what he felt was his body rushing through the night, legs and arms pumping. He leapt onto the soldier’s chest. They fell to the ground.

Zeus let go of the explosive as he rolled to his right. He dropped the plunger. In the same motion he flailed at the soldier’s chin and neck, smashing them first with his forearm, then his fists. The gray funnel became a black ball, a hard knot of fury.

He didn’t breathe. His heart didn’t pump. He just punched.

Something grabbed his back. He spun, ready to strike his second assailant.

It was Christian. He just barely stopped himself from punching him.

“He’s down. He’s down.”

Zeus leapt to his feet, grabbed the explosive pack and the detonator mechanism up. Meanwhile, Christian grabbed the Chinese soldier’s legs and pulled him under the nearby APC.

“Take his pistol!” hissed Zeus, grabbing the soldier’s assault rifle.

“No other guards,” said Christian. “Think they heard?”

“Too late to worry about,” said Zeus. He pointed to the right. “We can crawl around that little mound to the truck.”

“I don’t think I can do it.”

“Come on, Win. You got this far.”

The men who were loading the fuel tanks were about fifty feet away. Zeus heard them talking as he crawled forward.

He stopped when there were just two trucks between him and the pump apparatus.

If he could make it to the other side of the apparatus without being seen, he could plant the bombs right on the machinery itself. The explosion would very likely take out the tank below.

One of the trucks he had passed began to move. Zeus dropped to the ground.

The men waved it forward. Zeus watched as it was filled. A red light came on near the pump. There was a shout. The light went off. Another truck started up.

He wasn’t going to get any closer than this, and if he waited too much longer, he’d be found.

Zeus crawled under the truck he’d been hiding behind. He rolled onto his back. He’d plant the charge against the chassis, and hope that the explosion was large enough and close enough to affect the pumps.

Blood rushed to his head as he flipped around. A wave of blackness shot through his brain and body.

Get through this, he told himself. But his brain remained in the dark static.

Zeus breathed slowly, willing his full consciousness back, but unable really to effect that — unable really to do anything but lie on his back in absolute darkness. The machinery hummed nearby. The ground vibrated. A few voices, nonchalant still, punctuated the deep hums.

Beyond that were the noises of the jungle: cricks and creaks and carrumphs, the soft whisper of water much farther off behind them all.

Christian, of all people, brought him back.

“Where do we plant these?” he asked, tapping Zeus’s side.

“Under the center of the trucks,” said Zeus. “Or else near the gas tank — the truck’s gas tank. Whatever you can get to.”

“One apiece?” asked Christian.

“Yeah. They’re awful close,” said Zeus.

“They all went over to that truck at the far side,” said Christian. “They’re grabbing a smoke.”

Zeus turned his head. He didn’t see anyone nearby, and assumed Christian was right.

“String the wire back toward the berm where we can hide,” he told Christian. “You know how to connect them?”

“Yeah. Same way they were, right?”

“Exactly.”

Zeus scolded himself. He should have laid this all out before they started. He was flying too much by the seat of his pants — a good recipe for disaster.

“You take the two trucks to the left of us,” Zeus told Christian. “I think your wires will reach. Two charges per truck.”

“Two?”

“I don’t think we better risk doing more than that,” said Zeus. “Their break isn’t going to last forever. And that missing guard is going to be a problem. I’ll get this truck, and maybe two others. Anything happens, get the hell out of here.”

“No shit.”

Zeus could see again. Gray shades mostly in the dark, but it was something.

He went to work. Setting the charges was easy — Velcro straps were fixed to each, the ultimate in user-friendly destruction. He twisted the wires out, made sure of the connections — the terminals had jumpers so that the bombs were set in parallel rather than series, ensuring the others would blow even if one failed.

He crawled across to the next truck. He had four more packs. He set two, then crawled to the side, gathering his strength before pushing over to the next and last vehicle.

Just as he was about to get up, he heard the rough cough of a truck engine starting above him. He pulled back, centering himself, worried that he would be run over. In the next moment he realized the engine had been started on the next truck over, the one he’d been about to climb under. He watched the wheels move, the vehicle being maneuvered out of its spot.

This is as far as you should go, he told himself.

A second later, another truck pulled alongside the vacated space. He caught a strong whiff of diesel — the truck had just been freshly loaded.

He’d do one more.

The truck stopped and the driver hopped out of the cab. Zeus bellied across the open space to the other truck. His fingers fumbled for the explosives, made the connections, unraveled the wire. There was a knot — he ignored it, stringing back to the other truck, pushing now, careless and frantic, even as a voice inside his brain told him to calm down, to go slow and not leave himself so vulnerable to stupid mistakes and the great weight of chance and disaster that accompanied them.

Christian was waiting for him back at the berm. Zeus took his wires and wordlessly connected them to the plunger, moving quickly.

“When are we going to detonate it?” asked Christian.

Zeus’s answer was to press the plunger. In the next moment, the night exploded, a fireball rushing like a volcano across the Chinese fuel trucks.

6

Mara leaned back in the seat, watching the C-SPAN feed on Peter Lucas’s office television. The committee meeting had been a fiasco. Josh looked even more worn than the day she’d rescued him.

“Well, that’s the last nail in that coffin,” said Lucas, turning the television off with his remote control.

“What’d you expect? Damn China lobby’s been working overtime,” said Grease. “Half the people on that committee are in Beijing’s pocket. Greene is never getting a bill through Congress. He’s lucky he won’t be impeached for suggesting it.”

Lucas fiddled with the Coke can on his desk. It was empty and slightly dented, kept there as a toy. He looked at Mara. “Maybe we can open up the old Sky Acres Express.”

“I’m sure it’s possible,” she said. “If you can get the money.”

Sky Acres was the name of an air transport company Mara had used to bring Russian weapons into Malaysia. The company — actually a pair of pilots who would kill their grandmothers if the price were right — had flown a wide variety of gear to the forces fighting the Chinese-backed insurgency. Using Sky Acres had allowed the agency to move much quicker than it might have. More important, it made possible deals with middlemen that might have been embarrassing or even impossible through regular channels.

“You’ll never get a go-ahead,” said Grease. “Not legal.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” said Lucas. “Frost has already floated the idea.”

“This is different than Malaysia,” said Green. “You have a moratorium you have to deal with.”

“The director is working on that,” said Lucas.

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Grease.

“You didn’t.”

The moratorium — actually a law banning American participation in weapons sales to a long list of countries — was stringent enough to forbid the indirect sales covered by Sky Acres, according to every agency and administration lawyer who had gone over it. That was largely because, while it was never publicized by the congressional aides who drew it up, the law was a response to the shipping of the Russian weapons into Malaysia, which had made use of a loophole in previous export controls.

“They need a lot of help,” said Grease. “A lot of it. This isn’t Malaysia. The sort of things Vietnam is going to need are big. Hell, they’re a third-world country facing a first-world army. They need a lot of weapons. Antitank missiles, SAMs.”

“I don’t know if we could find that kind of materiel,” said Mara. “We tried to get antitank missiles to use against bunkers.” She shook her head. “I don’t think we could find more than a half-dozen antitank missiles from Syria, or even Iran. Not even if we paid through the nose.”

Lucas rolled the can across the desk, catching it with his right hand, then sending it back across to his left.

“You know, bottom line here, Peter,” said Grease, “the Vietnamese don’t have a chance in hell. They’re going to be overrun in a week’s time. We’d be better off shoring up Thailand.”

“How do you do that once Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia are gone?” asked Mara. “They won’t stand a chance.”

“Well, that’s your answer right there,” said Grease, getting up. “I’ll be upstairs if you need me.”

“So, what now?” Mara asked after Greene had left. “For me.”

“Play it by ear.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Let’s see what shakes out. Officers get outed all the time, Mara. It’s not the end of the world. Focus on the job — there’s plenty to do. You’re still with Josh?”

“What do you mean?” she asked, surprised at the question.

“With protective services. The marshals or whatever.”

“I came down to D.C. with them, yes. They got us a hotel in Alexandria.”

“You can let them take it from here.” Lucas picked up his soda can and put it in the middle of the desk. He started to lean back, in his chair, then almost sprung forward. Mara pictured a thought developing in his head, physically prodding him. “You’re not sweet on him, are you Mara?”

“Sweet?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“My job was to get him here.”

“Yeah, but… you guys aren’t… you know?”

“Would that be any business of yours if I was?”

“I, uh… I wouldn’t think he’d be your type.”

“Why?” Mara shot back. “Too smart for me?”

Mara could feel her ears starting to warm with the blood rising to them. She got up to go.

“Hey, listen, seriously,” said Lucas. “The marshal service has it from here. You need a place, right? In D.C.”

“I’ll get a place.”

“Don’t be like that. Take one of the Tysons Corner apartments. Kevin can work that up for you. Go talk to him.”

“Smith?”

“Yeah, he’s handling that sort of stuff these days.”

What a comedown, she thought. He had once been one of the agency’s top people in Europe.

God, was that her fate?

No — her career in the field hadn’t been a tenth as long as his.

“Mara?”

“I’ll go see him. Thanks.”

7

They didn’t stay to see the rest of the show.

“We shouldn’t run,” said Zeus.

But they did run, first to the fence and then on the other side, racing to the shadows of the trees and brush beyond the camp perimeter. They ran as quickly as they could, stumbling along the uneven ground. Floodlights came on, augmenting the red glow of the fire behind them. The lights showed where the sentry posts were — four of them, all along the fence on the Vietnamese side of the border.

Zeus headed west, continuing past the fenceline as it turned. Crashing through the fronds and branches of the low brush, he came to a thicket of trees, five trunks growing from a single hump, a fist of wood jutting from the ground. He slipped as he veered around it to the left. He grabbed one of the trees and spun down, landing on his butt. He collapsed backward, spent but exhilarated — happy and triumphant, as if he’d just accomplished a Herculean task.

And he had.

They had.

Christian collapsed next to him. “God, we’re lucky.”

“Damn straight,” agreed Zeus.

“I thought we’d be blown up, too. Did you see how far the blast threw us?”

“It didn’t throw us.”

“Hell, yeah, it did. Ten feet at least. Against the fence.”

Zeus blinked. He had no memory of that. Had it thrown them?

No.

“Look at that goddamn fire,” said Christian. He got to his feet as a fireball rose in the air. The ground shook.

Zeus took hold of the tree trunk and pulled himself up.

“Shit,” he said.

“Hot damn!” yelled Christian. He started to laugh. “Hot damn!”

“Ssssssh,” said Zeus. But he laughed, too.

They were lucky. Very, very lucky.

And now they had to get back.

Silently, without another word to each other, they started walking.

They walked for what they reckoned was a little more than an hour — both of their watches had stopped, Zeus’s because the crystal had been shattered, Christian’s for some unknown reason. The clouds parted and the moon moved over them as they walked, showing the way. The Chinese had undoubtedly sent patrols to find the saboteurs; they could hear occasional gunfire in the distance. But the patrols had apparently gone, understandably, in the direction they thought the attackers had traveled, directly across the border.

Zeus and Christian, by contrast, were walking farther into China, though they didn’t realize it. They came to a hard-packed dirt road and began following it southward until it ended abruptly in a bulldozed berm. They got their bearings with some difficulty, moving first east and then southward, walking for a few more minutes before Christian spotted a row of cement fence posts on a hill about forty yards ahead. The hill had been stripped of trees; their carcasses lay among the weeds.

“We’re still in China,” said Christian dejectedly. “I thought we were in Vietnam.”

“We can get through here,” said Zeus.

“There’s barbed wire on top.”

“Razor wire.”

“That makes a big difference,” said Christian sarcastically.

It did — it made it harder, the wire more likely to slice them into pieces. The bottom of the fence was buried in the ground. And there was a second fence farther down the hill, which looked to be configured exactly the same.

“We ain’t getting across here,” said Christian. He put his hands against the wire. His whole body drooped.

“There’ll be an easier place,” said Zeus. “Come on.”

“I don’t think I can walk another mile,” said Christian, but he started walking anyway.

As the euphoria of setting off the explosion faded, Zeus thought of starting a conversation to take their minds off their fatigue and hunger. But even that seemed to take more strength than he had. Subjects occurred to him — they could talk Army football even, which was about as safe and invigorating a topic two West Point grads could ever find. But his mouth stayed closed.

Walking parallel to the fence, they reentered the jungle after about a half mile. Zeus’s knee was giving him problems; it didn’t hurt but felt as if it had swollen somehow. Yet when he touched it, it felt exactly the size as the other one.

“More woods,” grumbled Christian as they treaded into them.

“Gives us cover.”

“The only cover I want is on a bed.”

“Yeah. A blonde would be nice.”

“Blondes aren’t cover.”

There was a joke in that somewhere, but Zeus couldn’t find it.

“I think the most beautiful girl I ever saw,” said Christian after a while, “was at a Yankee game.”

“You’re a Yankee fan?”

“Hell no. But she was… I think. She had a Yankee cap on. So I guess she was a Yankee fan. But for her, I’d make an exception.”

“Good looking?”

Christian made a whirling sound. “Good looking isn’t the start of it. Blond hair. With like this little brownish streak. Not brown, just a little darker blond.”

“A highlight.”

“And she had a skirt.”

“Skirts are always good.”

“At a baseball game? They’re incredible.”

“A tight skirt, or a loose skirt?”

“Like a silky skirt. Very short.”

“She had a boyfriend, right?”

“Of course. Otherwise I’d be married right now. To her. Absolutely.”

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 poll 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 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 off 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 pin-wheel 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

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

“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, realtime 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?”

“I can sink them.”

“Dirk, why do you give me a hard time?”

“Because you know and I know they should be sunk if they’re Chinese.”

“Even if I agreed with you — which I’m not saying I do — that isn’t the admiral’s order. You board them under UN sanction 2014-3-2 and search them. All right?”

“What if they don’t want to be boarded?”

“We’ll deal with that when we get to it. The admiral will want you to be in communication at that point anyway.”

“Doesn’t trust me?”

“You’re busting my chops.”

“You’ve been ashore too long, Tommy.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you. Contact us every hour to let us know what’s going on.”

No way, thought Silas. But he didn’t say it.

“Are our carriers moving in my direction?”

“Not at the present time,” said Mortez. “Everything else is staying near Taiwan. You’re on your own. You don’t think you can handle it?”

“I can handle it,” said Silas. He reached for the kill button. “McLane out.”

11

Zeus woke to a buzz of voices.

Nurses, doctors, and attendants flitted around his bed. He had trouble opening his eyes. When finally they opened, the light was so intense he had to close them again. He gasped for air, struggled, then breathed as if for the first time.

When he finally managed to keep his eyes open and focused, he found General Harland Perry standing next to his bed. To the general’s right was Melanie Behrens, the American ambassador to Vietnam.

“Major, are you with us?” asked Perry.

“Sir, I’m good.”

“Glad to hear it.” Perry gave him a broad smile. “Doctors claimed you’d sleep for a month.”

“Nah, I’m awake.”

“Maybe you should rest,” said Ambassador Behrens. “They said you were dehydrated.”

Zeus pulled himself upright. He felt a little woozy.

“How’s Major Christian?” he asked.

“Already checked out,” said Perry.

No way Zeus was staying in bed now. He looked around the ward. It was a large room with space for about a dozen beds. Those across from him were packed closely together, the space between them barely enough for a nurse or doctor to edge into. His own bed had three times as much space around it — a gesture toward VIP status, he guessed.

Little else about his immediate surroundings could be considered exclusive, however; there were no monitors, and the saline drip was hung from the ceiling by a thin metal chain, which ended in a blunt, oversized fishhook. There were carts of equipment parked near the foot of the bed next to him, and more extensive equipment a little farther down to his left.

“General, the Chinese have tanks on the border,” Zeus told Perry. “They’re ready to come across. They must already be across. There was a bunker…”

“We know all about the bunker,” said Perry. “And the fuel accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” said Zeus.

“Major, I believe you are mistaken,” said Behrens. “You may have a fever. You are in no position to know what is happening on the Chinese side of the border.”

Behrens was a small, petite woman; barely five foot. But she had the voice of a tigress, sharp and commanding. It brooked no discussion, let alone argument.

Perry smiled down at him.

“See you when you’re rested up,” said the general, starting away with Behrens.

“I’ll be in soon,” said Zeus.

When they were gone, he took stock of his situation. He pulled up the tight pajama shirt they’d dressed him in. The left side looked fine, but there were several large welts on the other. Oddly, he felt pain only on the right side.

A mystery of medical science.

His right knee felt a little funny. It was slightly swollen, but not really painful. There were numerous scratches and tiny cuts along his lower legs, and his arms looked like they were crisscrossed with graffiti.

All things considered, he was in good shape. The only possible complication was the bag of saline hanging from the ceiling. Zeus looked at the needle taped into his arm, then followed the rubber tubing back up to the bag. The drip wasn’t surging through his body — obviously they’d given it to him because they thought he was dehydrated, a problem that could have been solved by just giving him a few gallons of water, for cryin’ out loud.

The easiest way to deal with these things was quickly: he pulled off the taped bandage holding the tube in place, then, with a good tug, removed the needle.

Saline poured all over his hand, running down to his arm. He swung his legs off the bed and got up, a little unsteadily. His head cleared as he tied the tube in a knot.

He couldn’t get it quite tight enough to stop running. He reached the tube up over the bag, hooking it into the chain. Gravity 101, but he was quite proud of himself for realizing it.

Now where were his clothes?

One of the nurses rushed over as he looked for them at the end of the bed. He didn’t understand what she was saying, but knowing the exact words was unnecessary; she was speaking universal nurse-patient language, saying something roughly along the lines of: What are you doing out of bed?

“Hey, I’m okay. Thanks,” Zeus told her.

She looked at him with the outraged stare nurses are trained to use on noncompliant patients. Zeus had seen that stare plenty of times from his mother, herself a nurse, so he simply smiled.

“You have any idea where my clothes are?” he asked.

The nurse threw up her hands, adding gestures to her verbal admonitions. She pointed at his arm where the IV had been.

It was bleeding slightly.

“You could give me a bandage,” said Zeus. He pushed down the pajama sleeve to staunch the bleeding.

“What are you doing from bed?”

Zeus looked up and the met the green eyes of the most beautiful woman he had seen in years, if not his entire life. Her dark-skinned face was framed by black hair that was pulled back behind her head into a long ponytail. Her bleached white smock hung loosely off a narrow frame over baggy blue pants. A stethoscope was strung around the back of her neck.

“I’m okay, nurse,” Zeus told her. “I’ll just be going now.”

She smiled broadly. “Oh, are you now?”

“Yeah, all I have are a couple of bruises and stuff,” said Zeus.

“Bruises.”

“I used to play football,” said Zeus. “I had a lot worse than this after a typical practice.”

“Your head?”

“Nothing.”

“Concussion?” asked the woman.

“Nah.”

God, she was beautiful.

“Your knee?” she asked.

“Banged it up, but look.” He put his weight on it, walking out from around the bed. “Not a problem.”

“No pain?”

“Just feels a little weird. You know what’s wrong with it?”

“Hyperextended it,” she said. Even her slight mispronunciation and unsteady grammar were endearing.

“You think so?” Zeus asked.

He looked into her eyes. They were definitely the highlight of her face, and her face was extremely attractive without them. The irises were almost incandescent — he’d seen hazel before, but these were more green.

Jewel-like.

So that wasn’t a metaphor. It was how some women’s eyes really were.

“I am a little hungry,” Zeus told her. “What about you?”

“Me?”

“We could get something to eat,” said Zeus. “I don’t know any places around here. I’d need a guide.”

She smirked.

“No no, not like that,” said Zeus. “Just to, you know, show me around.”

He touched her elbow. The slightest frown came to her face.

“Your English is very good,” he told her. “Is your accent British?”

“I went to school in Australia.”

Zeus looked around. The nurse who had scolded him had gone off to see another patient. Two attendants were watching from the far end of the room. The patients in the beds across from him were too sick or injured to pay much attention.

A real shame, Zeus thought. Every eye in the place should be on this nurse.

“Where are my clothes?” asked Zeus.

“You must be released by the doctor to leave. Then you can get clothes.”

“Good, let’s find him.”

“You feel okay?”

“Sure. Absolutely. I could do a dance or something.”

She smiled, this time amused.

Finally.

“Come this way,” she told him.

“I’m Zeus, by the way. Zeus Murphy. Zeus is an unusual name in America. My father was Irish. My mom Greek. Zeus is an ancient god of Greece.”

He babbled on, knowing he wasn’t making much sense, but not really caring. Maybe they had doped him up.

A pair of metal desks sat at the end of the ward, pushed together to form an L. Folders and papers were stacked high at the one close the door; the other was covered with small wooden baskets that were filled with rubber gloves and common medical supplies like bandages and shrink-wrapped syringes. A stern-faced man in a pin-striped black business suit sat behind the desk, looking over the material in one of the folders — a patient’s chart, Zeus assumed. He was about fifty, and even seated looked tall.

The expression on his face could have soured milk.

“Hey, Doc,” said Zeus. “I’m good to go.”

The man looked up at him. He wasn’t wearing a tie, but his Western-style button-down shirt was cinched so tightly at the collar that Zeus wondered how any blood got to his head.

“I’m ready,” said Zeus. He made a motion with his thumb, then pretended to scribble. “Can we sign out?”

The man frowned at him and started speaking in Vietnamese. The woman responded.

“Tell him I’m good to go,” said Zeus. “Right?”

Neither paid any attention to him. Zeus thought of slipping away, but the idea of leaving the woman’s side voluntarily seemed… foolish.

Finally the man behind the desk reached to the pile of folders, took the top one, and slid it across the desk. Sighing, he handed the woman a pen. She jotted something in the top corner, and handed it back.

“You’re coming with me, right?” Zeus asked her. “For dinner?”

She shook her head. “Much work.”

“But you have to have dinner with me. To eat. For my strength.”

She frowned, but not in a mean way.

“And my clothes,” added Zeus. “You’re going help me with my clothes.”

“Clothes are at the desk, the hall end,” she said, pointing. “To the right.”

Zeus leaned out the wide doorway. There was a cage at the end, with a person working behind it.

“I can do that,” he said. “When are we having dinner?”

She tilted her head slightly, looking him over though her gaze never moved from his eyes.

“Please,” said Zeus. “Tell me when you get off.”

“Midnight.”

“That’s when I’ll be back,” he told her. “Where should we meet?”

“I…” She smiled. “I will meet you upstairs.”

Zeus hadn’t realized until then they were in a bunker. They went down the hall, where an older woman sat behind floor-length bars that blocked off part of the hall and a side room. She had white hair, sunken cheeks, and a deep frown. Her arms were covered with large liver spots. Before Zeus could say anything, she got up from her chair, said a few words in Vietnamese, and went into the room.

“She’ll get your clothes,” said the woman.

“Your name,” said Zeus. “So I know who to ask for.”

“Doctor Anway.”

Of course she was a doctor, not a nurse. Duh.

“Doctor,” said Zeus, bowing his head.

She smiled, shaking her head — not quite a laugh, but certainly amused.

The matron found army fatigues about an inch too tight in the crotch and two inches too short everywhere else. But they were the best she had. The clogs she gave Zeus were a little undersized as well, but better than walking in bare feet. Making his way up the large flight of stairs at the opposite end of the hall, Zeus felt as if he were a character in a play — an elementary school play, the unlucky child who had to play a forest tree in a costume a size and a half too small.

He went up four flights, stiff-legged, clogs clunking the whole way. A guard stood at the top of the last flight. He wore a helmet and a flak vest, and stared at the wall opposite him, unsmiling, his hand near the trigger guard of his AK-47. He said nothing as Zeus passed.

The doors at the end of the landing opened into a large, dimly lit space that smelled like damp concrete. Zeus shuffled toward a red light at the far end, where another stairway led upward. The top of that landing was guarded by two soldiers, who snapped to attention as soon his feet clapped on the first tread.

Zeus walked past them into the ground floor of a building that at first glance seemed entirely abandoned. The wide hall before him extended some twenty feet, where it opened into a wide room of desks and low partitions. The overhead lights were off, but sunlight flooded through from the left side of the building. The air smelled like dust and ozone, as if there had been an electrical fire. When Zeus reached the open area, he saw rubble to the right; two more steps and he realized that the far side of the building had collapsed.

A woman in a light-brown khaki uniform stood at the far end of the room. She was talking on what looked to Zeus like a cordless phone. Looking up, she gestured to him, signaling for him to approach as she continued her conversation.

The floor tiles had been freshly mopped. Aside from the crumbled stone that had been part of the building wall, there was no other sign of wreckage or destruction — no scattered papers, no debris or refuse. The desks Zeus passed were immaculately clean.

“You are the American,” she said, still holding the phone. It was a satellite phone, an older model.

“Yes,” said Zeus.

“Go through the door that way,” she said, pointing to Zeus’s left. There was a large red door that opened outward. “That is the exit.”

“Is this building okay?” he asked.

“Go through the door to the left,” she repeated.

She looked at him, obviously expecting an answer.

“All right,” he said. “Okay.”

She resumed her conversation on the phone as if he weren’t there.

The crash bar on the door gave way reluctantly. Zeus had to muscle the door open, the edges chafing against the sides.

The door opened into a concrete courtyard. The sunlight was intense, washing out his view. Piles of stone and construction rubble lined both sides of the space. A gray-brick building rose some fifty feet away. There were no windows, just a blank wall of bricks.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, Zeus saw that the opposite wall had the outline of another structure — the building, or part of one, that until very recently had stood where the courtyard was. It had been reduced entirely to rubble by the raid.

Zeus found a path to the street. Two troop trucks idled next to the sidewalk, but there were no soldiers nearby.

He had no idea where he was. He was about to go back and ask the woman to get him a ride when a boy of twelve or thirteen called to him from across the street.

“Joe, you need ride?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I need a ride,” Zeus answered.

The boy turned and darted to his left. The buildings across the street were three stories high, storefronts topped by apartments. All were intact, though the closest one to the right had large boards covering what had been plate glass windows. As he stared, Zeus noticed that some of the apartment windows had been blown out; curtains poked through the empty spaces, fluttering with the light wind.

A bicycle rode up to his left. It was the boy who’d called to him.

“Where you go, Joe?” asked the kid.

“Hanoi’s Finest Hotel,” said Zeus. It wasn’t a description — that was the name of his hotel.

“Very good. Five minutes.”

“How?”

The boy started describing the directions, speaking in a mixture of Vietnamese and English.

“No,” said Zeus. “I mean, where do I get the taxi?”

“No taxi. No more. I ride you.”

“On this bike?”

“Very strong.” The kid rattled the bike, as if its sturdiness were the actual issue. “It hold you good.”

“There’s only one seat. Where are am I going to ride?”

The boy stood over the frame; Zeus would sit on the seat while he pedaled.

“I’ll pedal,” said Zeus.

The kid made a face.

“What’s your name?” Zeus asked.

“Lincoln.”

Clearly, that wasn’t the case. But it made Zeus smile. He took the bike, positioned himself over the seat and the pedals, then told the kid he could sit on the handlebar.

“You pay first,” said the kid. “Five dollars.”

“Five dollars?”

“Three good.”

“I don’t have any money with me,” said Zeus. “I’ll pay when we get to the hotel.”

“No pay, no ride,” said the boy, grabbing the bike with both hands. His look was so ferocious Zeus laughed.

“I’ll give you ten when we reach the hotel,” said Zeus. “Okay?”

“Deal, Joe. You pedal.” He climbed up on the front of the bike.

“Where’d you learn English?” Zeus asked.

“School.”

“Just school?”

“Internet. Very good teacher.”

“I guess. Tell me when to turn.”

Zeus struggled to get his balance and to get going — the tight pants and clogs made it difficult. He finally kicked off the clogs and managed a steady pace.

The boy began talking, showing off how much he knew about America. His name was Linkin, not Lincoln; he had adopted it not from a study of American presidents but from Linkin Park, the rock bank, which apparently he knew from YouTube. He described a video of the latest Transformers movie, punctuating his enthusiastic review with directions to turn.

It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the hotel, which was guarded by a platoon of Vietnamese soldiers. Zeus had to argue with the platoon commander to get him to allow the kid to come into the hotel so he could be paid. The boy’s English was better than the lieutenant’s.

When Zeus had been here last, the hotel lobby and bar had been filled with foreigners. Now they were empty except for a desk clerk and four security officers. The security men, all in their mid-fifties, refused to allow the boy upstairs. Zeus told him to wait by the elevator and he would get his money.

“No no,” said the kid fearfully. “You leave, Linkin out.”

“You think they’ll kick you out?”

“You leave, Linkin gone.”

Zeus glanced at the guards. The kid was undoubtedly right. He walked over to the desk clerk.

“Major Murphy,” said the man brightly. “We are glad you have come back to us.”

“I need to pay my friend here,” Zeus said. “He gave me a ride.”

The clerk glanced at the boy, then made a face.

“You have ten bucks?” Zeus asked.

The clerk began scolding the boy in Vietnamese. The boy answered back, defending himself.

“It’s all right,” Zeus told the clerk. “I have it upstairs. I’ll pay you right back.”

“I do not have any money to lend,” said the clerk.

Zeus knew the hotel did keep small sums of money, both American and Vietnamese, at the desk; Perry had borrowed some a few days before to pay a local driver.

“Can’t you just lend it to me for a minute?”

“These children are thieves,” said the clerk, getting to the heart of the problem. “You pay, it encourages them.”

“Zeus, what are you doing out of jail?”

Zeus turned around and saw Christian striding out of the elevator.

“Hey, you got ten bucks?” Zeus asked.

“Ten bucks?”

“Kid gave me a ride. I gotta pay him.”

“Get outta here.”

“Come on, Christian. I’m good for it.”

Christian pulled out his wallet. “All I got’s a twenty.”

“That’ll do.”

Zeus took it and gave it to Linkin. The worried look immediately vanished.

So did the twenty.

“You need help, you ask for Linkin,” he said. “Linkin best guide to Hanoi.”

The boy turned and ran from the lobby, undoubtedly escaping before the hotel people could intervene.

“You owe me twenty,” said Christian.

“And you owe me your life,” said Zeus. “How come you’re not in the hospital?”

Christian shrugged. “I’m tougher than you.”

Zeus laughed. “Your problem, Win, is that you believe it.”

12

Mara knew something was up when she didn’t see the marshal in the hotel hallway. She knocked on Josh’s door anyway, then called his room from hers. There was no answer.

After changing, she went down to the lobby and sat on one of the plaid-fabric couches next to the plastic ficus tree to wait for him. There was a television in the corner of the room, tuned to CNN. Mara went over and changed the station to a sports network showing a tennis match.

An hour later, when he still hadn’t come in, she knew he had left.

Without saying good-bye?

Impossible.

She waited another hour. She had no way of contacting him — she didn’t even have the marshal’s cell phone number.

She could get it from the marshal’s service.

Mara held off, thinking it would seem too… what, exactly? Like she was worried about him? Or infatuated with him.

More the latter. Which she wasn’t. Except she was.

Finally, after she’d been sitting for nearly three hours, Mara’s cell phone rang. She nearly jumped from the couch.

“Hello?”

“Where is he?” demanded Jablonski.

“What?”

“Mara, where the hell is Josh?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

“The marshal service says they’re taking him home. What the hell is going on?”

“I have no idea what’s going on. You’re supposed to be helping him. Why did you let him go before that committee? They made him look foolish.”

“They’re the ones who look foolish. I told him not to say anything about the Chinese,” Jablonski added, flustered. “I specifically told him not to call them murderers. I told him not to use that word.”

She clicked off the phone and got up. Time to get something to eat, she decided. And think.

13

“They’re too far away.”

Silas looked at the image on the computer screen. The McLane’s present course was plotted against the expected course of the merchant vessels he’d been assigned to intercept. The line ended at Hai Phong — about ten miles shy of the vessels.

“That’s at flank speed,” added Lt. Commander Li. “And it assumes the merchant ships will continue moving slowly. They’re only doing about six knots.”

“We need to go faster,” said Silas.

He turned and looked around the destroyer’s combat information center, or CIC. Stuffed with data screens and high-tech gear, the space was the McLane’s nerve center, literally the brain and spine of the vessel’s warfighting ability.

Long before Silas’s time, a destroyer’s chartroom served as a primitive information center, in some ways as much a library as think tank. But the advent of sensors such as radar and sonar greatly increased the size and function of the combat information center, and by World War II, the CIC was the most important compartment on the ship, with due respect to the bridge. Its function since then had not so much changed as it’s been refined and expanded with advances in technology. The destroyer’s sensors — and the information beamed from elsewhere, generally via satellite — put unparalleled intelligence at the commander’s beck and call.

The downside of all of this information was that it had to be processed, which meant not only machines but people who could help make sense of what the instruments told them, and not bombard the captain or weapons officer with isolated bits of intel. The modern CIC — also known by the more modern names of Combat Display Center and Combat Direction Center — was as high-tech as the bridge on a fictitious starship, and in her own realm just as dangerous.

“Commander, with due respect, we’re moving as fast as we can,” said Li.

“Good,” said Silas. “Find me a few knots more. Let’s get to those merchant ships before the storm hits.”

14

In the first hours of the war, the Chinese planes and theater-launched conventional missiles had been aimed primarily at radar, SAM, and antiaircraft sites, following the time-honored strategy of reducing the enemy’s ability to contest control of the skies. But with most of those sites neutralized, and the Vietnamese air force a marginal factor, the Chinese had intensified their attacks on the Vietnamese command and control centers. This meant a step up in their attacks on government buildings, including the one in Hanoi whose basement housed the hospital ward where Zeus had been treated.

Vast swaths of the capital had been struck over the past two days as part of this campaign. The accuracy of the bombs and missiles was impressive — for the most part, they had avoided the area of west Hanoi where foreigners had their embassies and hotels like the one where Zeus stayed were located. And where they hit, the damage was generally contained to the actual target, as Zeus had seen leaving his building.

The effect of this was to make the war seem almost bizarre. One could go several blocks with everything looking normal, then suddenly come upon a street where half the buildings were reduced to rubble. After the first raids, the authorities immediately mobilized and organized relief parties to clear the debris and restore some sense of order. But now the workers, who were mostly volunteers, were tired. Their work dragged, and the continued onslaught was wearing the city down.

A few bombs, apparently strays, had struck the Old City in the center of Hanoi during the day. Fires continued to burn there, smoke wafting over the city. The smell in the air changed from that of an electrical fire to something sweeter, an incenselike aroma of charred, ancient wood.

The city’s businesses had largely shut down, with their workers recruited for the country’s home guard, or organized into volunteer brigades for various chores. The regular army soldiers who had been manning checkpoints just a few days before had been moved on to more important tasks. Many of their posts were now abandoned, though sandbags and barrels they left behind still slowed traffic. Others were manned by men who had served in the army earlier, primarily during the early stages of the war with America. They were gray, frail figures, more ghostlike than soldierly, dressed in ragtag combinations of military and civilian clothing. Still, motorists obeyed them, stopping and explaining their business, often asking for directions around the streets that had been barricaded due to the strikes, and exchanging information and rumors about the war.

Rumors were a great currency. Information about a pending attack, no matter how far-fetched, could get a citizen very far, opening the doors of shuttered shops and even obtaining extreme discounts in price for necessities.

Hoan Kiem Lake, the romantic soul of Hanoi just east of the now devastated Citadel, was a rallying point for the brigades that were organizing citizen volunteers for the defense. This was at least partly for symbolic reasons — the lake commemorated a successful uprising of the Vietnamese against the Chinese in the fifteenth century, when General Le Loi received a divine sword from a golden turtle there and used it to rout the Ming Dynasty rulers from the country. The park around the lake was overwhelmed by the outpouring of citizenry. Crowds overflowed into the nearby streets, completely choking off traffic.

The necessary detours sent Zeus and Christian wending their way through much of the rest of Hanoi as they headed toward the Vietnamese command bunkers south of the city. Most of the streets were deserted, the residents either enrolled as volunteers or hunkering down in basements and other places thought to be safe. In a few cases, they were still working — a barbershop overflowed with customers, two men shared a single cup of tea at a table in front of a cafe.

At the start of the conflict, the Vietnamese military command had moved its operations to a set of bunkers south of Hanoi. The bunkers had escaped the opening rounds of the Chinese attack, but now were a primary target. They were very deep underground; Zeus believed they could only be taken out with American-style bunker busters, which the Chinese were not believed to have.

The Chinese had nonetheless made a considerable effort to destroy them. The radio towers that marked the northern fringe of the compound area had been destroyed in one of the first attacks. The small airstrip at the western end of the reserve area had been bombed until it looked like the far side of the moon.

The Vietnamese had moved some antiaircraft guns and missiles into the area before Zeus and Christian left on their mission to Hainan. All were now twisted wrecks, mangled metal arms and flattened torsos dotting the distance. The security fences tilted and swooned in different directions, and the road leading into the complex was so cratered that a new path had been marked with cones. Only the deepest potholes had been filled in; the jeep bounced back and forth as the driver did his best to navigate through the shallowest ones.

The bunker entrances were contained in low-rising buildings hugging the field. The nearest one to the road had been hit by a succession of bombs. It had not been totally destroyed, but the Vietnamese had opted not to use it until their engineers could examine the overhead concrete that covered the stairs to the doorways. Following a set of gray cones, the driver took Zeus and Christian around to the next one. It had survived a near miss that had gouged about ten feet of earth away from its northern end.

There were no guards aboveground. Zeus, who’d been in the bunkers several times now, went down the stairs to the ramp that led to the first security area. He nodded at the soldiers who came to meet him, holding out his arms so they could perform the mandatory weapons checks. He and Christian were wearing civilian clothes, as they had for most of their stay here; the presence of American soldiers in Hanoi, even as advisers, was still top secret.

“You notice there are fewer sentries,” said Christian as they were cleared to enter a second hallway.

“Need them to fight the war,” answered Zeus.

“Or they got killed in one of the attacks.”

“Or that.”

The floor they were on had been used for a meeting when the Americans had first arrived. But the actual Vietnamese command offices were lower, and the Chinese attacks had convinced the Vietnamese to close off these conference rooms. There were no elevators down to the lower level — in fact, there were no elevators in the complex at all. Zeus and Christian walked down the long hallway to a wide green door. Though the soldier here had seen the man at the other end check them, he nonetheless looked at the IDs they had been issued before stepping aside.

The door led to a stairway lit by battery-powered red lights. After descending two flights, the stairwell stopped at a steel door. They went through that door and descended another set of steps, repeating the process two more times. The offset shafts were designed to make it difficult for an enemy to send a missile down to the command area.

The door to the last stairwell opened on to a ramp similar to the one they had started on. The walls and ceiling were made of concrete, polished smooth. The floor was covered with a thin industrial carpet. The lighting fixtures embedded in the ceiling were low-powered LEDs, and shaded the corridor with a dim yellow light.

The Chinese attacks had damaged one of the venting units, and the Vietnamese had shuttered it to make repairs. This made the air even staler than it had been, to the point that Zeus felt his lungs were being pressed in his chest.

A young woman in civilian clothes met them a short distance down the hall.

“Major Christian?” she said.

Christian nodded.

“I’m Major Murphy,” said Zeus.

The young woman flushed, and bent her head.

“We are most grateful for your brave gallantry,” she said softly. Her English pronunciation was impeccable. “You will please come with me.”

They followed her past a few closed doors to a small conference room. General Perry was hunkered over some reports at the far end of the table that dominated the room. He was all alone. They had to squeeze past the chair backs to get close to him.

“The Chinese have moved a fair-sized force into the border area where you were last night,” said Perry. “I have the morning satellite images. I’d welcome your opinions.”

Zeus struggled to fit into the seat.

The images showed the situation in western Vietnam about where they had left it; the Chinese forces were arrayed along the flooded Song Da lake area. But Zeus immediately noticed a key change: the water had retreated by nearly 50 percent. It surely wouldn’t hold the Chinese back much longer.

He paged through the images. They were raw, without notations or accompanying explanations. The Chinese had moved their tanks and many of their troops to the northwest area of their assault, taking them out of range of the Vietnamese artillery. There were concentrations near Moc Chaū, Doan Ket, and farther north at Bac Yen.

If this were the war game simulation, Red Dragon, Zeus would launch a counterattack from the area of Yen Bar, or even farther north through one of the passes in the Hoang Lien Son Mountain Range. It would break the strength of their drive.

Of course, he’d also have American troops to do that with. Very big difference.

The Vietnamese had launched their own strikes on the flank, but the effect of these was negligible. They didn’t have the firepower to push across the Da River, let alone blunt the offensive.

“This is where you were,” said Perry, handing over another series of images. “The division commander is a fellow by the name of Ho. You should make some sort of gesture of thanks. He contacted his headquarters right away, and they got an ambulance up to evac you. You don’t remember any of it?”

“No,” said Zeus. “I guess I slept the whole way down.”

“I don’t blame you,” said Perry.

The marshalling area was clearly delineated in the photos. A huge black crater sat where the tank farm had been. There were a dozen vehicles, including APCs, that had been hit by the explosion; even at the scale of the photo the damage was visible. Several other vehicles nearby had probably been damaged as well.

There was a large concentration of tanks, close to fifty, about thirty miles farther north into China. A short distance away was a collection of APCs and trucks, about twice the size.

“You stopped them for a day, maybe more,” said Perry. “We’ve been preparing the defenses.”

“That’s a huge force,” said Christian. “Assuming a three-to-one ratio of infantry to armor.”

“I think it’s safe to say there’ll be more than that,” said Perry. “The highways are being booby-trapped and mined. The road net through the mountains is sparse. The Vietnamese have a chance.”

“They’re going to isolate Hai Phong,” said Zeus. This major port on the Pacific was some fifty-five miles east of Hanoi, and another hundred or so south of the border.

“Why bother if they’ve got it blockaded?” asked Christian.

“Because they want to use the port,” said Zeus. “They can land troops there. And more important, ship material out. Which is really the reason they’re attacking like this. They want to get it intact. That’s why they’re coming along the coast.”

“Could be,” said Perry. “It hasn’t been bombed or mined. Which would tend to prove your theory.”

Zeus looked at the images from the Gulf of Tonkin and the rest of the waters off Vietnam. The Chinese invasion force was still gathered at the southern tip of Hainan Island. The Chinese aircraft carriers remained close to the western side of the island — roughly where Zeus had seen one of the ships from the window of the airliner.

There was another force, three destroyers and a Corvette-sized craft, steaming south.

“They’re thinking of taking the oil platforms,” Zeus told Perry, pointing to the destroyers.

“Possibly,” said Perry, reaching for the images.

“This is an American ship,” said Christian, pointing to the destroyer tagged as McLane. “What’s it doing up here all by itself?”

“Testing the blockade,” said Perry.

“It’s not going to take on the carriers, is it?” asked Zeus. “If they come west?”

Perry made a face. “He’s under orders to avoid conflict.”

Zeus knew from the simulations that the Chinese ships were not as potent as their American counterparts — a Chinese aircraft carrier couldn’t hope to project the sort of power an American carrier did, and one Chinese destroyer or light cruiser was no match for the USS McLane. But even an American destroyer would be overmatched by the carrier’s planes; a coordinated attack would send it to the bottom.

Especially if the destroyer wasn’t allowed to fight.

“He’s got two Chinese warships tracking him,” added Christian, looking at the map. “One of them’s a cruiser.”

A good match, Zeus thought. The American should win, but…

“We’ll let the Navy worry about their assets for now,” said Perry. “The first problem is how to stop those tanks.”

“The Chinese are making a mistake using the heavy tanks that close to the coast,” said Christian. “There are only a few highways. Route 18’s their main route — take that out and they’re stuck. We dynamite a couple of bridges, and they grind to a halt.”

“They don’t think the Vietnamese can stop them,” said Zeus. “And they’re right.”

“There’s a possibility we’ll get American assets to fight them,” Perry told them, his voice hushed. “We’re working on it.”

“A-10s?”

Perry nodded. Zeus realized that meant he had approved the force plan they’d been working on before the mission to Hainan. He wondered, though — the politics back home did not favor intervention.

“Proceed as if they’re not coming,” Perry added. “Figure out a way for the Vietnamese to stop the tanks, if possible.”

“Prayers?” quipped Christian.

“Hopefully, a little more than that,” said Perry as he rose from his chair. “I’m meeting with the Vietnamese commanders in an hour. I need ideas by then.”

“They’re aiming at Tien Yen” said Christian. He pointed to a small city a few miles from the coast in northern Vietnam. “It’s a crossroads. From there they have a couple of ways to get to Hai Phong.”

Zeus nodded. It would be a good first-day goal, reachable within hours; they could even bypass any strong points without losing access to the roads. Once that was taken, they could stay on 18, which became a coastal highway farther south, or they could move inland and take Hai Phong that way. The Yen Tu Mountain Range would push them eastward, but also cut the Vietnamese options for attacking their flank.

“The first line of defense is to blow up the bridges on both parts of National Road 18,” continued Christian, referring to the branches of the highway that ran along the Tien Yen River and the other farther east. Again, this was a no-brainer, very basic strategy that would slow the Chinese advance, not stop it — none of the bridges were very steep or long. Still, it could delay them by more than a day.

Whether that would be enough was an open question.

The Vietnamese army had ten armored brigades. On paper at least, this was a considerable force — there were over 1,300 main battle tanks alone, with an assortment of light tanks and fighting vehicles to complement them.

But the bulk of the Vietnamese tanks were T-54s and T-55s, excellent tanks in their day… which had ended somewhere during the late 1960s or early ‘70s. They were no match for the Chinese 99s, or even the lighter tanks in the Chinese army. The heavier T-62s the Vietnamese had were every bit as vulnerable, though they had better guns.

There were three armored brigades in the north. One was dedicated to Hanoi and would not be taken from the city for any reason. Both of the others were in Lang Son, the province to the west of the area where the Chinese tanks had been spotted. It was far too late to get either brigade into place to meet the advance at the border.

The obvious thing to do would be to slow the Chinese advance with the forces in place. As the Chinese advanced, a counterattack might be organized to cut behind the spearhead, striking at its flank. There was a certain amount of wishful thinking involved in such a strategy, even though it wasn’t exactly radical — it presupposed that the Chinese flank would be weak enough to hit.

Slowing the advance was itself problematic. The infantry forces in place consisted of one Vietnamese regular division, just called to regular strength, and two regional divisions — militia units that had been promoted to regular status under the Vietnamese mobilization system. None were equipped to deal with the sort of armored assault the Chinese were about to launch.

The regular division had a smattering of Russian antitank weapons, including a few vehicle-mounted AT-2s and man-portable AT-3s. Neither missile could be counted on to penetrate the Chinese tanks, though lighter vehicles such as APCs would be vulnerable to well-placed fire. The AT-2s were older, line-of-sight missiles; the AT-3 was wire-guided. Both could be fired from a little over a mile away, though in practice much closer ranges were greatly preferred.

Unless you were the operator under fire, of course.

The steeps hills and slim road net suggested that land mines would be particularly useful, but Zeus knew from their earlier briefings that most of the mines the Vietnamese had were ancient, a good number left from the American war, and were mostly of the antipersonnel variety, useless against heavy armor. Squad-level antitank weapons were virtually nonexistent — primarily RPGs that would bounce off the hulls of the Chinese main battle tanks and even some of the infantry fighting vehicles Zeus had seen.

Experience had shown over and over that a determined enemy could improvise tactics to defeat tanks if they had enough time and the right weapons. Typically, armor became more vulnerable as it slowed down and lost its advantage of mobility and speed.

But where would they get the weapons?

Zeus stared at the map. He’d concentrate on the time element first.

Maybe if you blew all of those bridges, it would take longer than a day. There hadn’t been bridging equipment in the depot they’d attacked, and none had been spotted in the last set of reconnaissance photos.

The tanks could ford some of those crossings. Maybe all of them.

The Chinese were cautious, though. He’d seen that in the west.

Blow the bridges. That meant two days’ delay, more if you could set up additional traps near them.

Highway 4A cut straight down from Lang Son. If the Vietnamese sent one of their tank brigades in that direction, then swung the second down and around so that it blocked off the approach to Hai Phong, they might have a chance at a flank attack.

Not really, thought Zeus. Their weapons would be hopelessly outmatched.

They could get more artillery into the area. Once the tanks stopped, the artillery fire could take at least a few out.

He sketched the ideas out for Christian. They weren’t much; even Christian could see through them.

“Look, if we blow up every bridge, that’s still only a few days at most,” he told Zeus. “A few days. I can’t imagine it taking a whole week to get to Tien Yen, even without the bridges. You get there on Day Three, you have the whole rest of the coast open to you. South of Dam Tron, everything really opens up — you don’t have to be Patton.”

Zeus stared at the map. If he were using that route, he would count on the bridges being blown, and use much lighter vehicles.

“If I were the Chinese, I’d welcome a counterattack,” added Christian. “It’d make them easier to kill.”

Zeus knew he was right. Still, there must be something here, something else they could use.

He straightened, and walked across the room. Put the attack in perspective, he told himself. What is the goal?

Hai Phong. Had to be.

Nothing else?

Hai Phong was more than enough.

How did it fit with the rest of the strategy? The main attack was in the west. It was an armored strike, a lightning move designed to get deep into the country. They would be moving south and east soon, cutting the country in half.

You took Hai Phong and the northern coast, and the capital would be completely cut off.

And yet, something about it didn’t completely ring true. There were better roads farther west, and a decently wide valley if you were pushed off it.

“There’s going to be another attack somewhere,” said Zeus. “This has to be setting something else up.”

“Besides the amphibious landing?” asked Christian. “That must have been part of the plan.”

Zeus nodded. That was the context to see this in — it should have been launched with the attack they’d forestalled.

Too much fatigue, too much pressure. Zeus sat back in the seat, moving forces around in his head. There was always a danger of overthinking things. A lot of times you gave your enemy too much credit. Hell, he’d done that against Christian during Red Dragon.

Zeus watched Christian prepare some notes. He had to admit that Christian was holding up far better than he thought he would — that, in fact, Christian had changed over the past few days and had become much stronger, while he had become weaker, or at least felt weaker.

Zeus’s eyes started to close. The air was fetid down here. He could use a nap, or a walk to the surface.

A knock on the door stopped the downward drift of his eyelids. Two Vietnamese officers entered the room. They were the staff translators. One was a major, the other a captain.

“We are ready?” asked the major.

“Good to go,” said Christian.

The captain looked blankly at Zeus.

“Yes, we are ready,” said Zeus. “Can we get some coffee?”

“There will be tea. Apologies; it is all we have.”

Zeus and Christian rose as the Vietnamese generals and their staff officers came into the room. They reshuffled the chairs, moving around so that the Americans were on the right side of the room. Zeus wasn’t sure if this was a feng shui thing or related to some sort of ritualistic honor he wasn’t aware of.

Or maybe they just wanted to keep them far from the door.

General Perry came in, his face grave. He’d gone back to the embassy to talk with Washington; obviously he didn’t like what he’d heard.

The last person to enter the room was General Minh Trung. Except for the army uniform — which was the plainest available, baggy at the knees and sides, with no ribbons and no insignia — Trung could have looked like one of the Buddhist priests conducting ceremonies in the orientation film Zeus had seen on the way over. He was several inches taller than Zeus, a veritable giant in Vietnam, but thin. His neck and forearms were sinewy; he stood extremely straight, his posture textbook perfect.

He nodded to Zeus, a smile appearing at the corner of his lips, then took his seat at the head of the table.

A colonel began the meeting by lowering a screen from the ceiling opposite Trung. One of the other officers opened a laptop on the table and took out a small digital projector. Flashing a situation map on the screen, the colonel gave a brief summary of the situation. He spoke in Vietnamese, stopping every so often to let the translators explain what he was saying. He ended with the sighting of the tanks and the action by the Americans.

“A most valuable contribution,” said the colonel, looking over at Zeus and Christian. “We are very grateful for all your help.”

“Several times now,” added Trung. They were the first words he had spoken.

The Vietnamese colonel turned back to the map. He predicted that the Chinese would launch their assault down the east coast by dawn. He swept his pointer downward, showing the projected path.

The Vietnamese had arrived at roughly the same conclusion Zeus and Christian had: The attack would come down the coastal road, aimed first at securing Tien Yen, then sweeping southward toward Hai Phong. The tank brigades would be rushed to that area.

“How do you plan to stop them?” Perry asked.

The colonel seemed a bit put off by the question, and began answering in Vietnamese even before the translator translated.

“We will fight with conviction for our homeland,” he said, using English.

“I know,” said Perry. “But the rounds in the T-55s aren’t going to penetrate the Chinese armor.”

“We have strategies.”

“What are they?” asked Christian.

The Vietnamese were not completely unrealistic, Zeus thought; there must be some reason for their confidence. He took a guess at it.

“How many Boltoks do you have?” he asked. Turning to Perry, he explained. “Missies. For the tanks.”

The Boltoks were missiles that could be fired from the T-55’s gun; they would also fit in the 100 mm smoothbores of the ancient SU-100s the Vietnamese had as well. They were relatively expensive missiles, manufactured by Russia. As far as Zeus or anyone else in the States had known until now, Vietnam did not possess any.

The Vietnamese colonel turned pale as Zeus’s comments were translated. He turned to Trung.

“The major is, as always, knowledgeable and prescient,” said Trung from the end of the table. “You will understand, Major, that the existence of this weapon is, of course, a state secret.”

“I do understand,” said Zeus. “But I also have to tell you, they’re not necessarily going to stop the Type 99s. The latest versions can penetrate armor to 850 millimeters. The tanks you’re coming up against are thicker than that.”

“We will adapt to the realities of the battlefield,” said Trung. “The difficulty is to slow the tanks down. Our forces need time to prepare.” “General, if I might interject,” said Perry. “We can be of most use if we know exactly what the situation is. Not informing us of your weapons is your prerogative, but it does hamper our ability to help you.”

“An oversight,” said Trung.

The meeting resumed. The Vietnamese colonel outlined a plan of harassment and delay, hoping to stall the Chinese drive long enough to launch a counterattack. Christian offered a few technical points. Zeus listened silently, taking stock of the Vietnamese. Not telling them about the antitank weapons was counterproductive and petty. More important, though, it indicated that some of the Vietnamese on Trung’s staff didn’t trust them.

Ridiculous at this point, but there it was.

The Boltoks alone wouldn’t overcome the Chinese offensive. There were just too many Z99s. After the first blow, the Chinese would adapt their tactics. They’d concentrate on the T-55s if they hadn’t already. In a war of attrition, the Vietnamese would inevitably lose.

They moved on to the other fronts: the preparation for the amphibious attack, which the Vietnamese now believed would come near Hue if it came at all, and the dagger that was stuck deep in its western side. In both cases the Vietnamese seemed to be optimistic, placing a great deal of faith in the ability of the reserve troops — the older men and women who formed what would be colloquially termed a home guard. The colonel spoke of guerilla attacks against Chinese pickets as if they were major victories. Blowing up a troop truck here and a depot there were certainly good for local morale, but they were pinpricks against the Chinese juggernaut.

Zeus suggested a spoiling attack against the Chinese before they moved across the swollen water in the west. If placed properly, it might provoke the Chinese into shifting their forces once more away from the offensive. But the Vietnamese didn’t have the troops to pull this off, and the colonel told him that they were quite content with their “defensive posture.”

The meeting lasted two hours, a relatively short time given the gravity of the situation and the amount that was discussed. Zeus began to look forward to his dinner with Dr. Anway.

He pictured her again, this time trying to replace the medical clothes with something more attractive.

“You have done us great service,” said Trung as the session closed. “We are deeply in your debt.”

Christian grinned like a stuffed pig.

“Thank you,” said Zeus.

Trung nodded at Perry, then left. The rest of the Vietnamese officers filed out.

“What’s up, General?” asked Zeus when they were alone.

“Trung wants to have a word,” he said. “He wants you and Christian to talk to his troops. It’s voluntary.”

“Sure.”

“He also wants to thank you personally. It’s the least he can do,” added Perry, with just the slightest hint of sarcasm. “Good work figuring out what they were thinking.”

“They don’t trust us, do they?”

“Not completely. How potent are the missiles?”

“Depends on how many they have. In the end…”

Perry nodded.

“I don’t know that we’re getting outside help,” he told him. “We may be it.”

Zeus had feared as much.

“They’ll get their asses kicked,” said Christian.

“Yes, Win, that does seem likely.”

“If the goal is to slow them down, they might let them get south a bit before attacking,” said Zeus. “The Chinese stop when they’re surprised — it’s a pattern. They get overconfident, then once they run into something they didn’t expect, they stop and look around. They’re really cautious.”

“What are you thinking?” asked Perry.

“Let them get down to Tien Yen. The armor moves quick — they’ll stretch out, the tanks ahead of the infantry units. Just like they did in the west. We make the attack behind the forward units. Hit them really hard.”

Zeus laid out his plan. They would concede territory initially, and at the end of day, the Chinese would be in control of Tien Yen and possibly farther south. But if things went well, that force would be cut off.

“But you give up Tien Yen,” said Perry.

“True.”

“Why would they stop there?” asked Christian. “If you’re going to hit them, why not get them at the border?”

“Because they expect resistance at the border, and all the way down to the city. It’s the unexpected that throws them. They don’t adapt quickly. That’s really the key. Their generals are too cautious.”

“Tell Trung,” said Perry. “And what he’s asking is purely voluntary. You’ve been through enough already. I’d send you home if I could spare you.”

Trung spoke without an interpreter.

“We are very grateful for your heroic efforts,” he told Zeus and Christian. “You have done much for the Vietnamese people.”

Zeus bowed his head slightly, in the Vietnamese way.

“Many of the commanders have heard of your achievements,” continued Trung. “If you were to speak to their troops before the battle, it would be a very good for them. Their bravery would be reinforced.”

“It would be an honor,” said Christian.

“Thank you, Major,” said Trung. He turned to Zeus. “Your wounds?”

“I’m fine,” said Zeus. “Sure, we’ll talk to your men. If it’ll help.”

“Major Chaū will be your guide,” said Trung, nodding to the senior translator. “He will see to your needs.”

Trung started to leave.

“I did have an idea, General,” said Zeus. “A way that you might be able to slow the Chinese down for a while.”

Trung turned back to him. Their eyes met, as if the older man was studying the younger.

“Tell me,” said Trung.

Zeus sketched the strategy. As he spoke, he realized that it implicitly assumed that the Vietnamese were overmatched and desperate — a realistic assumption, though certainly not one that the commander of their forces would want to hear. Trung said nothing. He seemed barely to hear what Zeus said at all.

But he did, in fact. When Zeus was finished, Trung turned to the translators and spoke in Vietnamese. Chaū nodded.

“Please, Major Murphy, go with Captain Nuhn to General Tri and explain your idea to him,” said Trung. “Tri is in charge of the corps defending the area. Major Christian, if you would proceed with Major Chaū, it would be greatly appreciated.”

15

“I’m ready for my daily dose of bad news, Peter,” said President Greene, spotting CIA director Peter Frost as he walked down the hallway. Frost was standing near the wall where visitors typically queued to go into the Oval Office; it was a little too early in the morning for a line, or Frost would have been at its head.

Greene was on his way to NSC chairman Jackson’s office. He had just come from an early video recording in the Rose Garden for the morning-news programs, with a quick stop in the kitchen for a doughnut and coffee. He’d finished his doughnut; the coffee was about half done.

“Come with me,” he told Frost.

“They say you have a lot of appointments this morning,” said Frost apologetically.

“I do,” said Greene cheerfully. He took a sip of coffee. It was cold, but some days that was the best he could manage. Today was going to be one of those days.

Walter Jackson’s secretary had not yet arrived for work. Jackson was inside, on the phone.

“I think he was born with a phone attached to his ear, don’t you?” asked Greene, winking at Frost as he took a seat.

Jackson’s office was small to begin with, but it was made even tighter by the presence of large bookcases that lined three of its four sides. The shelves overflowed with books, papers, and journals. There was also an old, well-oiled catcher’s mitt, alleged to have belonged to Yogi Berra — an interesting artifact, given that Jackson claimed to be neither a baseball nor a Yankee fan.

“Arghhh,” said Jackson, hanging up the phone. “Mr. President.”

“Problem, Mr. Director?”

Jackson frowned. ‘‘Have you read the morning briefing?”

“Of course.”

“The Chinese are preparing a second offensive down the east coast of Vietnam,” said Jackson.

“I read that,” said Greene. “I also read an assessment that said this was a particularly poor area for them to try to attack through. Very limited road net.”

“General Perry’s assessment is considerably more pessimistic than the Army’s,” said Jackson.

“What do you think?” Greene asked Frost.

“I’d stick with Perry,” said Frost. “The five merchant ships that are mentioned in this morning’s briefing. We’re pretty sure now that they’re heading for Hai Phong. It could be to hook up with the attack down the coast.”

“The Navy is supposed to check them out,” said Greene.

“The destroyer is too far away to reach them in time,” said Frost.

“Why the hell wasn’t I told about that?” said Greene. The coffee shook in his hand — he reached over and put it on the edge of Jackson’s desk.

“Operational detail,” said Jackson drolly.

“Your only option may be to blow them out of the water,” said Frost.

“We can’t do that,” said Greene. “What if we’re wrong?”

Frost nodded. “I’m just saying, it may be too late to get in there.”

“Even if the McLane did get close,” said Jackson, “they’re being shadowed by a cruiser and frigate. They might interfere.”

“I need that damn vote,” said Greene.

He glanced over at Jackson. The national security director was silent, his expression neutral, but Greene had no trouble reading his mind: You’re not going to get it.

16

General Tri was the army commander responsible for the defense of the three northeastern provinces, including Quàng Ninh, where the Chinese were expected to make their attack. He had moved his headquarters from Bac Giang city to be closer to the expected fight.

The new command post was in Tien Yen.

Zeus and his guide flew there in a Mi-24 Hind, a Russian-made helicopter that was half-transport, half-gunship. This particular aircraft was somewhere in the area of thirty or forty years old, and it bore a number of scars, including a set of patches in the side and floor that Zeus imagined covered bullet holes older than he was.

The exterior of the helicopter was freshly painted in a jungle camouflage scheme. The interior, however, showed its age. Many of the metal surfaces were worn bare and shiny. A pair of simple metal benches had been welded into the center of the hold. These, too, were worn, with silvery spots showing where passengers typically sat. The aircraft smelled of oil and exhaust.

Captain Nuhn sat next to Zeus for the flight. Outside of headquarters, Nuhn had proved to be a jovial guide, friendly and talkative. His English was as good as his jokes were bad. But the Hind was far too loud for a conversation. Zeus spent most of the flight on the bench staring at the floor.

The helicopter landed in a bulldozed field about three miles south of Tien Yen. Zeus ducked as he stepped out, instinctively flinching as the blades spun overhead. Nuhn came out after him, trotting away from the helicopter with a childish gait, pumping his arms energetically. The Hind’s rotors revved and the helicopter pitched forward, scattering large clods of mud as a farewell.

“This way, Major!” shouted Nuhn, leading him toward a path at the edge of the bulldozed field.

General Tri had established his command post in a copse of trees on a hill above the field. The post was remarkably simple.

Two trucks, both canvas backed and both built before 1960, were parked wedged between the trees at the top of a winding trail. An open-sided tent dominated the small clearing behind them. This was the general’s office, with his staff performing their various functions around a pair of small tables beneath the canopy. A thick set of wires ran across the clearing and up the hill; Zeus guessed there was an antenna or a satellite dish, or more likely both, on the opposite slope. A pair of Honda electric generators were clunking away a few feet from the tent; jerry cans containing their fuel lined the northern edge of the clearing, guarded by a lone soldier. Two other soldiers, both armed with AK-47s, were pulling security duty nearby. A handful of privates, all very young, were standing at the opposite edge of the clearing, near a pile of bicycles.

General Tri was speaking on a field phone as they approached. While Zeus couldn’t understand what he was saying, Tri’s manner made it clear he was giving orders. His right hand tapped the table as he spoke, unconsciously emphasizing what he was saying. He spoke in sharp, hard tones.

Nuhn waited at the edge of the table without speaking. The others continued to work over their maps and papers, taking no notice of them. Zeus wasn’t surprised; they undoubtedly had a great deal to do.

Tri finished his call with an emphatic slap against the table. He slid the phone onto the cradle of its field pack, and said something to Nuhn.

Whatever he said made Nuhn feel uncomfortable. The captain started to answer, but Tri cut him off. The two men began arguing. It was one-sided; Nuhn strained to be polite while making his point. Finally, General Tri ended the conversation by picking up his phone.

“What’s up?” Zeus asked his guide.

Nuhn shook his head. General Tri, meanwhile, began a conversation with one of his officers, once more giving orders and making his points with the help of his fingers.

When he was done, Nuhn began speaking to him again. Or trying to — General Tri rose from his seat, pointed his finger at Zeus, and began speaking very sharply.

Zeus imagined he was being called several names at once, none of them flattering.

“General Trung told me to come here,” Zeus said. “It wasn’t my idea. If you don’t want my advice, that’s fine.”

Tri turned to Nuhn and began berating him even more harshly than before.

“Hey, don’t pick on him,” said Zeus. “We’re going. Come on, Captain.”

Nuhn seemed a little shell-shocked.

“Major,” said Nuhn. “General Trung has ordered you to give your advice.”

“General Tri doesn’t want advice. Why waste his time?”

“Major, we must.” Nuhn caught Zeus’s arm as he started to leave. He turned back to Tri and started to talk to him again, this time his voice very soft.

“Không!” said Tri adamantly. Even Zeus understood this meant no.

The general turned and called to one of the men at the bicycles. Ignoring Nuhn and Zeus, he took a piece of paper and wrote something on it. Folding it, he handed it to the man with a brief set of directions. The man immediately set off on his bike.

The rest of his staff, meanwhile, kept their eyes fixed on their work, steadfastly refusing to look in their direction, let alone get involved.

“Come on, Captain,” said Zeus. “I’m tired.”

He went back down to the field, admiring the bright-green fields and hills in the distance. It was a peaceful, near idyllic scene — one that would shattered soon.

Nuhn followed a few minutes later.

“I apologize deeply for the insult,” said the captain.

“It’s not a problem. He probably wouldn’t have liked what I was going to suggest anyway.”

“He should have listened. It is an insult to you and General Trung.”

That was the real problem, Zeus knew. Nuhn now had to go back and tell the supreme commander that the general he was counting on to hold this sector was insubordinate.

An isolated incident? Or a sign that Trung was losing his grip on his army?

“We will find a ride in Tien Yen,” Nuhn told him. “But we have to walk there.”

“To the city?”

“I guarantee we will find a ride,” said Nuhn. “I am sorry — the helicopter was needed elsewhere.”

Evening was settling over the hills, but the weather was mild. Though Zeus’s legs were tired, he had no trouble keeping up with Nuhn, whose pace slowed as they went.

In the States, Nuhn would be considered a little overweight, though not portly. By Vietnamese standards he was Falstaffian. Though it was doubtful he had any idea who Shakespeare’s hero-clown was, his swinging arms and cheerful manner amused Zeus, easing some of his fatigue. Nuhn’s smile returned little by little.

“We have a lovely day for a walk,” said Nuhn. “A lovely day.”

Zeus asked the translator where he had learned English. It turned out that Nuhn had two brothers who were born in America, though both had returned to Vietnam just before he was born.

“I am the baby of the family,” he said, detailing a Nuhn family tree that had eight members in the present generation. Originally from the Central Highlands, several members of the clan had left for the U.S. just before the collapse of South Vietnam. These included Nuhn’s father and mother, along with a hodgepodge of uncles and aunts. The family owned two restaurants in Los Angeles, but Nuhn’s mother had been homesick and the family had made its way back to Vietnam clandestinely about a year before Nuhn was born.

“English was always my best subject in school, even better than math,” said Nuhn. “No one knew why.” He laughed.

“I’m sorry the general gave you such a hard time,” said Zeus.

“He’s a fool,” said Nuhn. “But we are stuck with him.”

The road they were walking on had been made from hard-packed gravel coated with oil. It was about three car-widths wide. The sides fell off sharply into fields that seemed fairly wet. If the soil held the Chinese battle tanks at all, it wouldn’t let them move very quickly.

About a mile after they started walking, the road intersected with a highway. This was made of thick asphalt, and was wide enough that two columns of tanks could easily travel down it, with space for other vehicles to pass. A hill rose sharply on the left, but on the right the fields were green and level. Water was channeled across by a pair of deep ditches; tanks would have no trouble getting through here.

You could ambush the Chinese from the hill, come at them from the trees at the far side as well. They’d never expect an ambush from the Vietnamese on the open plain like this, not so close to the city after just having taken it.

If you hit them hard quickly, they might fall back to the city. But ideally you would want them to move even farther south, hopefully along this road where they could be bottled up.

Zeus tried to turn off his brain. There was no sense thinking of this. The commander didn’t want help. He had better things to do.

Give speeches. See the doctor.

Not in that order.

“You know a good restaurant in Hanoi that’s still open?” Zeus asked as they walked.

“A restaurant?”

“I want to thank the doctor who worked on me,” said Zeus. “I thought I would take her someplace nice.”

“Ah, a lady doctor. I understand,” said Nuhn. “You want to impress the lady.”

“Something like that.”

“Then she will fall into your arms,” joked Nuhn.

“That’d be nice.”

“Before the war, there were many places,” said the captain. “Now, you would be best in the hotel area. You will do best finding a place for tourists.”

“My hotel looked deserted.”

“That is not bad for you, is it?”

Zeus nodded. It might not be bad at all.

“We will find you some flowers,” added Nuhn enthusiastically.

“Great idea.”

“I have often impressed women with flowers,” said Nuhn confidentially. “They are like magic.”

He sunk into full Falstaff mode, regaling Zeus with a story of how he had wooed a woman in Saigon some years before. He had found a perfect flower — he couldn’t translate the Vietnamese word, hoa cruc, but the description made it sound like a mum to Zeus. He brought it to her at work just before she was due to take lunch. This scandalized her, as she had been avoiding him for weeks. But her boss insisted on her going to lunch with him, and they ended up having a love affair that lasted for months.

“Lucky for you the boss was on your side,” said Zeus.

Nuhn winked. “Ten dollars American makes many friends.”

The war had upended Tien Yen, even though the fighting hadn’t reached there yet. A good portion of the population had been moved by the government or fled on their own. Most of the people who remained were working on various defenses, filling sandbags and posting them on street corners, erecting barricades, preparing gun positions. Twisted pieces of metal intended as tank obstacles were piled on one side street, waiting to be deployed. There weren’t many troops in the city; most were north, waiting warily for the Chinese attack.

A company of home guards were being drilled on one of the side streets as Zeus and Nuhn passed. Nuhn told Zeus to wait at the intersection and trotted over to speak to the captain who was supervising the drill. A few minutes later he appeared with a member of the guard in tow. The man was well into his fifties, and nearly as chubby as Nuhn.

“This is Uncle Vai,” said Nuhn, introducing the soldier. “He will drive us to Hanoi.”

Uncle Vai was a farmer who lived at the edge of the city. He led them back the way they had come, turning northward near the center of town and then wending through a series of narrow alleys behind a warren of tiny houses. Zeus was beginning to feel a little dizzy when finally Uncle Vai reached over a gate and undid the wire holding it in place. He led them into a narrow yard between two brick garages. Both buildings pitched toward the yard; it wouldn’t take much to knock them down.

A small truck was parked behind one of the buildings. The hood and windshield were covered with a tarp. Zeus and Nuhn helped Uncle Vai remove the tarp, following his directions to fold it carefully so it could be tied beneath a pair of large ropes on the flat back of the vehicle. Then they stepped out to the small alley and waited as Uncle Vai maneuvered the vehicle from its parking spot.

At some point in its life, the vehicle had been a panel van, the sort used to deliver goods to small shops during the 1960s and ‘70s in Europe. The rear compartment had been removed, replaced by planks to make a flatbed. If the condition of the planks was any indication, this had happened many years ago.

The front of the van had been altered as well. The original seat had been replaced by one slightly larger; the edges of the seat stuck out into space where the door closed, so that when Zeus got in on the passenger side he had to slam the door several times before he could get it to latch. About half of the dashboard was missing, leaving Zeus with an open space in front of him — a blessing, really, since it left him more room for his feet. The vehicle had a manual transmission, mounted on the floor. Nuhn had to pull his legs back and hold his breath every time Uncle Vai shifted.

How could a country whose cars and trucks were falling apart hope to hold off the Chinese?

More to the point, why would anyone want to take them over?

The answer to the second question was in the fields they passed as they drove back to Hanoi. The generously watered crops would feed a good portion of the Chinese population in the south, particularly hard hit by the climate shifts over the past few years.

There was no good answer to the first question.

Nuhn had Uncle Vai stop by the Nhat Tan flower market when they arrived in Hanoi. It was well after nine o’clock. All the shops in the district had been closed for hours. But that didn’t deter Nuhn. As Zeus waited with the truck, he ran around the corner, promising to return with “something special.” A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying a long branch of blossoms.

“Your doctor will be very impressed,” he told Zeus.

Zeus stared at the blossoms. He’d never seen flowers this beautiful before. He barely thought of flowers as pretty — they were gifts, accessories. He felt as if he were seeing flowers for the first time.

His mind drifted from the flowers to the doctor.

“Major, this is you!” said Nuhn cheerfully.

Zeus looked up. They had reached the checkpoint to his hotel.

“Right.” Zeus squeezed his hand into the door latch. The door sprang open, a bird released from its cage. “Thanks.”

Nuhn slammed the door behind him, then opened the window and leaned out.

“Good luck!” shouted the captain cheerfully.

The men at the barricade pretended not to be watching Zeus as he walked past them. They didn’t bother checking his identification; the fact that he was a westerner was ID enough.

There were more people inside than there had been that morning. Even so, the lobby was hardly full. Zeus walked to the elevators, curious about who might be still in the city, but not wanting to talk to anyone. He pushed the button and stepped to the side, waiting.

He had a few hours before she got off. The first thing he was going to do was take a shower. After that…

After that he had to make sure he didn’t fall asleep. His body was starting to droop.

A man in his twenties came up next to him, tapping the elevator button even though it was already lit. He gave Zeus a sideways glance, then an embarrassed smile.

“Never trust them,” he said in English. His accent seemed British.

The elevator doors opened a second later. Zeus let the other man go in first, then got in himself. They were headed for the same floor.

“Nice flowers,” said the man as the doors closed.

Zeus glanced down at them. “Yeah.”

“Do you think the hotel is safe?”

“Probably as much as any place.”

“Bret Cannon.” The man stuck his hand out. “AP.”

“Uh, Zeus Murphy.” Zeus shook hands awkwardly.

“Been here long?”

“Few days. What’s AP?”

“Associated Press.” Cannon smiled again, this time looking like a man who had just confessed that he had inherited a great deal of wealth. “I’m covering the war.”

“I see.”

“You?”

“I work for the embassy.” He didn’t say U.S.; it would be obvious.

“Ohh,” said Cannon knowingly.

“I’m not actually a spy,” added Zeus, “but it does sound more romantic if I leave it open-ended.”

“What do you do then?”

“I’m not really supposed to say, but basically I keep machines working.”

“A copy machine repairman, eh?”

“Pretty much.”

Cannon gave him a smirk. He thought they were playing a game — that by saying he wasn’t a spy, Zeus had in fact admitted that he was. Zeus didn’t mind that; spies were expected. What he didn’t want to do was let on that he was here as a military adviser.

“How long do you think the Viets can last?” Cannon asked.

“Got me. A long time, I hope.”

“I give them a week. At most.”

The doors opened. “See ya around,” said Cannon, stepping out. “I’ll buy you a drink sometime.”

“Sure.”

Zeus thought of stepping back into the elevator and going downstairs; he didn’t want Cannon to know which room was his. But it would be a waste of time; anyone with ten bucks could probably bribe a hotel worker for the information.

Inside his room, Zeus peeled out of his clothes, then tried to take a shower. The water trickled from the spout, and it was cold. He washed anyway.

How long can the Viets last?

Not long. A week wasn’t a bad estimate.

There was a knock on the door as Zeus toweled off. He thought of ignoring it, sure it must be Cannon. But where was the sense in that?

“Yeah?” he yelled.

“It’s me,” said Christian.

“Hang on.” Zeus wrapped a towel around his waist, then went to the door, undoing the lock.

“What’s up?” he asked as Christian came in.

“Jeez, you got water?”

“A trickle.”

“Across the hall there’s nothin’.” Christian plopped down in one of the chairs. The bottom of his jeans was crusted with mud. “God, put some clothes on, would you?”

“I wasn’t expecting company.” Zeus pulled some underwear and a fresh pair of pants from the dresser. He was getting low; pretty soon he’d have to resort to his BDUs.

“So they go for it?” Christian asked.

“The general wouldn’t even see me.”

“Figures. I don’t know what it is with these guys. Inscrutable Asians. And we saved their butts. You and I.” Christian got up and went to the minifridge. “All they got here is Chinese beer.”

“That stuff costs a fortune.”

“I wouldn’t sweat it. They won’t be around to collect. Bar is crawling with reporters,” added Christian. He held out a bottle for Zeus.

“I better not. I don’t want to fall asleep.”

“Why, you got a date?”

Zeus started to grin.

“You do have a date. What the hell, Murph? With who?”

Zeus shrugged.

“I’ll find out if you don’t tell me. I’ll have you trailed.”

“The doctor who worked on me. A woman.”

“Yeah, no shit?” Christian took a slug of the beer. “I think I know who you’re talking about. Good choice. That’s what the flowers are for, huh?”

Zeus looked at the branch of blossoms on the dresser. He should probably put it into water.

“We went to eight different units. Eight,” said Christian, leaning back in the chair. “They’re going to get their asses kicked. I don’t think I saw one weapon less than twenty years old. You really think they have Boltoks? Or was that a pipe dream?”

“Probably a few.”

“A few won’t do it.” Christian took another slug. “Hell, those aren’t going to go through a 99 anyway. Unless you get a really good hit. The damn tank was designed to deal with that crap.”

Being outgunned didn’t necessarily mean that you would lose an engagement, let alone a battle. During World War II, the main American battle tank was well overmatched both in firepower and armor by the German Panzers. But the Americans were able to develop tactics to overcome that disadvantage.

Not easily. And generally those tactics relied on numerical supremacy, something they didn’t have here.

“But what the hell are we supposed to do, right?” continued Christian. “Tell them to give up? I wouldn’t give up.”

“You wouldn’t?” It was halfway between a question and a statement.

“No way.”

That was one thing about Christian — even when his ass was being kicked in the simulations, he kept fighting to the bitter end.

Stupidly, since it meant they’d usually missed the start of happy hour. Probably not a concern for Christian, as Rosen and Zeus had never invited him.

“I met a reporter in the elevator,” said Zeus.

“No shit.”

“He asked why I was here. I told him I was a repairman for the embassy.”

“No more trade specialist?” That had been the suggested answer.

“I don’t think he’d believe that shit.”

“And he believed you’re a repairman?”

“No. He thinks I’m a spy.”

Christian drained the rest of his beer, then went back to the minifridge. “Sure you don’t want one?”

“I’m sure.”

“The women always liked you. I can understand that.” Christian twisted off the top, took a swig, then sat back down. “It was Rosen I can’t understand. How the hell did he get women?”

Zeus shrugged.

“I mean, could there be a more obnoxious wise ass in the army? And he was nothing to look at. At least, not that I could tell. Not that I would know. But… the women. Cripes! What did he do, make some sort of deal with you to take the rejects?”

“They did go for him, didn’t they?” said Zeus. “Hard to explain.”

“You know, I have a different opinion of you over here,” confessed Christian.

“Huh?”

“You used to be an asshole. War brings out something better in you.”

“Gee, thanks,” said Zeus.

“No, I mean it. You’re a lot more humble. No more big head, no more ‘I got the solution to the world’s problems.’ You’re very focused. It’s good.”

Look who’s talking about having a big head, thought Zeus.

“What time’s your date?” asked Christian.

“She gets off at midnight.”

“Midnight? Hell, you better get over there. It’s quarter of.”

There was a curfew, but it could be broken for official business.

Which translated into a bribe, both for the driver and anyone who happened to stop them.

Zeus was surprised that there was a line of cars waiting near the street, a product of the hotel’s sudden popularity with foreign correspondents. The driver used a variety of backstreets, wending his way around checkpoints and blocked streets. The Chinese had not bombed Hanoi so far that night. Zeus wondered if they were saving their ammunition for the assault in the north.

Despite all the detours, they managed to get to the square near the building a minute or two before midnight. Zeus practically leapt from the car.

“Wait!” yelled the driver, chasing after him. “You will call me.” He handed Zeus a card with a cell number. “I cannot stay for you.”

“All right. I’ll call when I need you.”

“You call,” said the man.

Zeus crossed the street, walking briskly toward the battered building where the hospital was located. But when he found the door he’d come out of, he discovered it locked. He pounded on it, but no one came to answer.

He took a few steps back, surveying the area, looking for another entrance. There had to be another entrance.

On the block behind the building, he realized. He must be at the back.

Zeus started running. It occurred to him that he probably shouldn’t run — a soldier seeing someone running might easily draw the wrong conclusion. But it was hard not to. He dropped to a trot, then walked, then trotted a bit.

When he reached the front of the building he managed to slow to a deliberate walk. There were people ahead, a half dozen about a third of the way down the street on the right. He picked up his pace, then slowed down, nonchalant, trying to relax. He scanned the faces, but didn’t see her. She must be inside.

Two soldiers stood near the door. One raised his hand as Zeus approached.

“I’m here to see Dr. Anway,” he told them.

Neither man said anything. Zeus took a half step toward the door. The soldier who had raised his hand moved in front of him.

“Dr. Anway,” Zeus said. “I’m here to meet her. The doctor.”

Zeus held up the branch of blossoms.

“I have to see Dr. Anway.”

The soldier on the right said something in Vietnamese. His voice was soft; the words came slowly and distinctly, but of course Zeus didn’t understand what he said.

“I’m an American,” he said, though this would be rather obvious. He reached into his pocket and took out his passport.

The soldier who had barred his way took it, leafing through slowly.

“Dr. Anway?” said Zeus hopefully.

The other soldier said something in Vietnamese.

“I’m sorry but I don’t understand. I was told to meet her here.” Zeus glanced back at the people on the street. None of them seemed to be paying any attention to him.

“Does anyone speak English?” he asked.

No one responded. Zeus turned back to the soldier who had the passport.

“Dr. Anway,” said Zeus, pointing to the flowers.

The other soldier reached over for the branch. It wasn’t a violent gesture; Zeus thought he was offering to take them to her.

“I want to give them to her myself,” said Zeus, holding them.

The other soldier handed his passport back.

Zeus started for the door, but the soldiers immediately raised their rifles to bar him.

“Does anyone speak English?” asked Zeus loudly. He turned and repeated the question.

One of the men on the street looked back at him.

“Do you understand?” Zeus asked.

“No to go inside,” said the man. “Only worker.”

“I’m supposed to meet someone,” Zeus explained.

Just then the door opened. Two older Vietnamese men came out. Both were dressed in button-down Western-style shirts, and wore well-tailored trousers and dress shoes. Zeus guessed they were doctors.

“Excuse me,” he said. “Do either of you know Dr. Anway?”

“Anna?” said one.

“Yes,” said Zeus, guessing that was her first name.

“She left hours ago. Her shift ended early. We sent her home. She needed rest.”

Zeus felt as if his lungs had collapsed.

“Oh,” he managed.

“You should check in the morning,” said the man. “She will be here by eight.”

“Thank you.”

The man glanced at the flowers in Zeus’s hand and smiled. He and his colleague stepped over to the knot of other people. A van was just driving up the street.

“The van will take you to your hotel,” said the man who’d been speaking with him.

“No, that’s all right. I have another ride.”

“You should be careful,” warned the man.

Zeus walked to the corner, dejected. He fished the card out from his pocket, and took out his satellite phone. Then he put both back — he’d rather walk. It would do him some good.

He dropped the flowers on the ground. He should have known.

A bell rang behind him. It was an odd sound in a war, a light ring.

When he was younger, he thought of war and peace as two very separate things, different parts of the universe. Now he knew they were entangled, shards of each poking through the fabric of the other.

The bell sounded again, louder. Zeus turned to see a bicycle bearing down on him. He hopped back as the bicyclist pulled up.

It was Anna.

Anna.

“I am sorry to be late,” she said, sliding down off the seat.

“Anna.”

“Yes?”

“I… they didn’t let me in. Someone told me you had left.”

“Yes. I was able to get out. Come.”

She turned the bicycle around.

“I can call a cab,” Zeus said. “A taxi.”

“It is only a short way.”

“Oh… great,” said Zeus, starting to follow.

They came to the flowers. Zeus scooped the branch up and handed it to her.

“I… I got this, but I dropped it.” He winced, suddenly realizing he was underlining his loss of faith.

“It’s very beautiful,” she told him.

“Like you.”

“Hmmmm.”

Was she blushing? He couldn’t tell in the dark.

“You speak English so well,” he told her.

“I left Vietnam as a child. My parents sent me to Australia. Where I went to school.”

“Why did you come back?”

“I was always to come back,” she said, as if the question were odd. “Vietnam is my home.”

They walked past the street where the hospital was. Zeus felt his energy coming back.

“Do you like being a doctor?” he asked.

Another dumb question. Where is my brain?

“I like helping people.” She glanced up at him. “Do you like being a soldier?”

“Sometimes.”

“We are very grateful for your help. I have heard of your sacrifices. You destroyed enemy tanks.”

“Actually, the trucks that would supply them. We blew up their fuel.” “Ah.”

“Where’s the restaurant?” asked Zeus.

“I have made dinner,” she told him. “At my apartment.”

“Oh,” he said. “We can do that, too.”

Anna’s apartment building had so far escaped damage. Eight stories high, it was a plain, boxy building, the sort of nondescript structure that would have been anonymous in the West and even in most of Asia. Here, however, the newness and size of the apartments made it a place of luxury. Little cues signaled its status: a black wrought-iron fence around the small courtyard, a well-tended if small garden at the front, a fancy plaque that held the address.

Anna used a key to open the building’s front door. Zeus held it for her as she wheeled her bike into the darkened foyer.

“The electricity has been turned off,” she explained. “The city has to conserve.”

“Sure.”

“I’m at the top.”

“I’ll take your bike,” he told her, picking it up. “Show me the way.”

The bicycle was heavier than he expected, and by the first landing Zeus felt the strain in his arms. But pride kept him going. A skylight at the top of the stairwell supplied a faint grayish light, making it easier to see the steps as he worked his way up behind her.

“Here,” she said, putting her bike next to the door of the apartment at the end of the hall. “Wait.”

Anna put her key in the lock. A yellow glow spilled into the hallway as she opened the door.

“Candles,” she told him.

The door opened into the kitchen. A pair of candles sat on the stove. A table was pushed against the opposite wall, with two places set. The appliances were all new. Zeus recognized an LG logo on the refrigerator.

“Sit, sit,” Anna told Zeus.

Zeus watched her bend down in front of the oven and gingerly touch a covered casserole dish inside, testing with her fingers to see if the handles were still hot.

They were. She straightened, retrieved a pair of pot holders from the nearby counter.

Zeus admired the curve of her body as she squatted back down in front of the stove. She removed the pot with the grace of a dancer, pulling it out and setting it in on the table, deftly maneuvering the pot holders so that they formed a place mat for the dish. She went to the refrigerator and took out a small plate of sliced garnishes: bean sprouts, radishes, and bits of lime.

“This is pho,” she told him, lifting the cover of the dish. “Noodle soup.”

She’d forgotten that the top was hot. It dropped from her hand. Zeus jumped up, grabbing not the pot but her.

“Are you okay?” he said, holding her protectively.

“I’m — ” She turned toward him.

Time melted away. Their eyes met, and they were kissing.

If there was anything beyond that kiss — a room, a war — Zeus didn’t know it. If there was pain or fatigue or fear — if there was courage or foolish bravery, thought or planned — it evaporated in the warm press of her lips.

Their lips. It was an infinite moment, a sensation of grace or bliss, of nothingness beyond the moment.

He held her for a long time, his arms pressed against her as gently as he had ever held anyone, or anything.

“I — ” He tried to speak, but couldn’t.

“We should eat,” she said finally, easing away.

How that moment occurred, or why it occurred, was inexplicable to Zeus. It was not lust, or at least not solely lust. If he were to analyze it, the only words he could have used would have come from the language of religion. It was a feeling he had never had before, through countless encounters and relationships, with past loves and flings. If it was not perfection, then he had no possibility of ever understanding the term.

They ate mostly in silence. Zeus used chopsticks, fumbling a bit though he was used to them. The pho was excellent, spicy and exotic. Anna had only water for them to drink, but it was just as well; alcohol would have gone to his head. He luxuriated in every sensation.

“So you studied in Australia,” he said when he’d finished eating.

“I went to school there. Yes. And my residency. First year.”

“It must have been difficult, leaving your home.”

She smiled faintly. “I went to study. It was good to have few distractions.”

Anna reached her right hand to the side of her face, where a few hairs had fallen. She swept them back into place. Zeus had never seen such a graceful gesture.

“I always knew I wanted to be a doctor,” she said. “To help other people.”

“And you are.”

“Yes. Though I was trained to work with children.”

“You don’t do that now? Because of the war?”

It had nothing to do with the war. Anna explained that the state, which had paid for her education, had initially assigned her to work with older people. Grandmothers, she said.

Two months before, she had been called to Hanoi to help open a clinic for older people. She dealt largely with women, since the men tended to be shy of a lady doctor. The first night of the war, the clinic had been destroyed, apparently by an errant bomb.

“No injuries. We were lucky. But there has been much work since then.”

“So you were assigned to the hospital where I was.”

“Yes. It is more a special clinic than a hospital. As you can imagine, we are stretched thin.”

Anna’s voice trailed off. She got up and began clearing the table.

“And you… Why did you come to Vietnam?” she asked, taking her plate to the sink.

Zeus rose to help. “I was assigned. It’s not really much of a story. I, uh…” He stumbled, not sure exactly how much he should say. “I’m like an adviser. I know a little bit about Chinese tactics.”

“They are very evil.”

“They’re not nice,” said Zeus. He didn’t see them as particularly evil; they were simply trying to win the war.

“They don’t care who they kill.”

Part of Zeus wanted to tell the truth: killing was what war was, ugly and ruthless. The Chinese were not purposely targeting civilians, but no matter their intentions, innocent people would die.

The greater part of him didn’t want to talk about it at all.

“What part of Vietnam does your family come from?” he asked.

“Yen Bai Province. Many of my relatives are still there. We lived in Hanoi when I was small. My father is with the government.”

Yen Bai was in the west, part of the area the Chinese had already overrun. It wouldn’t be pleasant for anyone there.

“Now my father is in the south,” Anna continued. “Ho Chi Minh City. Saigon to Americans. To everyone. It is an ancient name.”

She began running the water to clean the dishes. Then suddenly she stopped.

“We should conserve water,” she said, turning off the tap. “I forgot.”

Zeus reached to touch her.

She started to object.

“I don’t think — ”

“It’s okay,” said Zeus.

He put his hand on her arm, gently running it down past her elbow to her forearm, to her finger. She closed her eyes.

His satellite phone began to buzz. Zeus ignored it for another moment, his fingers lingering on hers.

“Your phone,” she said.

“Yes,” he said finally, pulling his hand away reluctantly.

“Where are you?” demanded Christian as soon as the line connected.

“Why?” said Zeus.

“Trung needs us right away. The Chinese have launched their attack.”

“I don’t know — ”

“Jesus, Zeus.”

Zeus glanced at Anna. Her eyes were wide, searching him.

“Zeus! I have a driver. We’ll pick you up.”

“Do you know the hospital where they took me?” Zeus said finally. “Meet me there in an hour.”

“An hour! No — right now.”

“Ten minutes, then,” said Zeus. “I need ten minutes to get there.”

17

Commander Silas put the night glasses to his eyes. The ocean was already heavy, even with the storm front some hours away. The waves had white crusts; the bow of the McLane crashed hard against them.

The Chinese cruiser Wen Jiabao loomed on his starboard side, pushing through the waves in a blatant attempt to cut the McLane off. She had her lights blazing, spotlights playing across the American destroyer.

Silas was strongly tempted to shoot them out.

“Steady as she goes,” Silas told the helm. “We’ve played this game before.”

“Aye, Captain.”

Bearing long, classic lines, the Wen extended some six hundred and ten feet, a good hundred longer than the McLane. When she’d sailed in the Russian navy, her decks were littered with unsightly ash-can tubes for missiles. The Chinese had replaced those with modern four-pack YJ-83s. The deck was still crowded, but the newer, more potent missiles added an ominous beauty.

She was a pretty ship, Silas thought. The Wen displaced in excess of 11,500 tons — again, a good deal more than the McLane or her sister Arleigh Burkes. The additional bulk did not slow her down; on the contrary, she was capable of mustering a knot or two more than the American destroyer, at least on paper.

At the moment, she had an angle on the McLane. One of the ships was going to have to turn off soon, or there would be a collision.

These weren’t a pair of canoes. Even a glancing blow would do considerable damage to both vessels.

“So, tell me, Captain,” Silas muttered to himself, as if speaking to the master of the Chinese vessel. “What will happen to you if your beautiful ship comes back to port with a big gash in her bow? Do they still hang captains in the Chinese navy?”

The only answer was a howl in the wind. Silas could see across to the ship’s lighted bridge, though he couldn’t quite make out the captain.

He couldn’t afford a collision, either. Not only was the McLane likely to sustain more damage, but any damage would undoubtedly mean that he wouldn’t reach the merchant ships before they got into Hai Phong, if that’s where they were going.

The Wen closed in.

“Hard right rudder,” said Silas suddenly.

“Starboard, Captain?”

“Aye, into the bastard,” he told helm. “Don’t worry. We’re cutting inside him.”

The destroyer began to pivot. As she turned in the choppy water, Silas gave another order to cut their power. The heavy waves quickly tugged at their momentum. The big Chinese ship continued past. The McLane’s bow came within a few yards of clipping the cruiser’s stern. If the Chinese had been towing an array, it would be Silas’s now.

Advantage mine, Captain, Silas thought. Your move.

The McLane turned smartly, straightening her course back to its original mark. The Wen, meanwhile, slowed. Silas watched for another few minutes — she drew to a parallel course aft, unnerved perhaps by the close call.

“Helm, if you need relief, holler,” said Silas.

“I can do this all day and all night,” said the man at the wheel.

“You may have to.”

18

Zeus walked from Anna’s apartment in a hollow, silent fugue, everything outside him numb and his own mind blank. He was not so much smitten as consumed, absorbed in what he felt for her.

Under ordinary circumstances, such a sensation would have shocked, if not repelled him. Zeus had always compartmentalized his life, carefully separating his feelings into easily handled boxes, partitioning love affairs far from his everyday life.

And certainly from work.

But this was not an ordinary time.

He found the street. He was about halfway to the hospital when a yellow light swept up across the pavement behind him. He turned and saw a large, black Hyundai sedan approaching, using only its running lights to illuminate the roadway. Christian opened the rear window.

“Hey, lover boy — sorry to interrupt your date.”

Anger snapped Zeus out of his fog. He jerked open the door and grabbed Christian by the neck of his open-collar shirt. He pulled him from the car, holding him close to his face.

“I’ll break every fucking bone in your body,” growled Zeus.

“Major!”

It was Perry: he was in the back, on the other side.

Zeus released Christian, who tumbled down out of the car and onto the sidewalk. Zeus ignored him. He pulled open the front door and got in. He could feel the heat rising to his head. He knew his face would be beet-red.

They drove in silence to the bunker.

The Chinese advance had begun an hour and a half after midnight, along exactly the lines the Americans had predicted.

Which was not surprising. The night attack was a page directly out of the American Army playbook, doctrine the Chinese had thoroughly dissected and learned following the famous Shock and Awe campaign during the Second Gulf War. The advances during that war, using a force much smaller than the enemy’s but highly leveraged by technology, had shocked the Chinese. Until that point, Chinese military doctrine had been based on the idea of numbers: vast numbers of soldiers, using relatively simple but dependable weapons, could defeat any enemy. It was an idea not all that much different from Soviet doctrine during World War II, or Chinese doctrine during the Korean War. In both contests, the superior technology (and, at least arguably, superior soldiers and leadership) of the enemy had been overcome by the sheer size of the victorious army. While there were contradictions — the American counteroffensive in Korea, for example — by and large the philosophy behind the doctrine had seemed stable throughout the postwar period.

But the ease of the American advance during the Second Gulf War showed that the time had passed for that strategy. An overwhelming attack leveraging technology could produce such destruction in the opening phase of a campaign that numbers became meaningless.

So the Chinese went to school. The most obvious lesson they had learned was that their technology had to be improved. They didn’t necessarily have to exceed the U.S., but they had to close the gap to an acceptable level, at least close enough so that numbers could once more make the difference.

There were many other lessons. One was that certain “environments” enhanced the power of technology. That was what fighting at night was all about. Nighttime gave a technologically superior army a clear advantage over a poorer one, since it had sensors (and extensive training) that turned the night into day. The Chinese had installed infrared sensors in their tanks, and had trained to attack in darkness.

In that context, waiting an extra twenty-four hours to launch the tank attack made sense. Though they had lost strategic surprise, the Chinese still hoped to press their technological advantage. Choosing the exact timing of the attack preserved, to some slight degree, a narrow tactical advantage. And since the attack on the fuel depot would have taken several hours to compensate for under the best of circumstances, waiting a full twenty-four hours to attack would make sense.

And yet, the slavishness of the original plan — or what Zeus interpreted as the original plan — spoke volumes as well. If you had such little regard for the Vietnamese, why not simply launch the attack as soon you were ready? What was it that the darkness gave you, really?

“The beauty of waiting twenty-four hours is, you don’t change anything, just the calendar,” said Zeus when Perry remarked that the timing seemed to coincide with what had been planned the night before. “D + 1 is now D. All the times, etc., are the same.”

The mood inside the command complex was glum. Perry left them, presumably to talk personally to Trung. Zeus sat next to Christian, but made sure to keep his eyes fixed in the other direction.

Perry and Trung weren’t there for the start of the staff briefing. A Vietnamese colonel gave a situation report with only a large map for a reference. In Zeus’s experience, intelligence briefings of outsiders fell into one of two categories:

1. The superoptimistic kind, like the one telling Custer there were a few Indians ahead, and

2. The seriously pessimistic kind, where Sitting Bull’s ancestors’ failure to make the proper prayer to a minor god several eons ago would hang heavy over the battlefield.

This briefing was a fine example of category one. The forces under General Tri, said the briefer, were resisting fiercely. No inch was being given freely. The Chinese were stalling all along the roads they had taken.

That was the strategy? Fight for every inch? They were just making it easier to be annihilated.

Zeus walked over to the side of the room as the officer continued. There was a large steel pot of tea there. He would have greatly preferred coffee, but at this point any caffeine would do.

“Do you agree with this interpretation?” asked the interpreter.

Zeus looked over and realized that everyone was looking at him. “I’m sorry?”

“The assessment,” said the interpreter.

“The Chinese are attacking as we predicted,” said Zeus. “They’ll be at Tien Yen by morning.”

“We will stop them beforehand,” answered the briefing officer, using English and not bothering to wait for the interpreter. “The attack will wither and die.”

There was no sense arguing with the man. He seemed genuinely to believe what he was saying.

Christian asked a few questions, trying to get some information about the Chinese infantry units that were accompanying the armor. The Vietnamese couldn’t give detailed answers, another bad sign.

Zeus blew on his tea to cool it. He thought of Anna, then pushed the image away.

Briefing over, the Vietnamese officers left.

“You still mad?” said Christian when the room was empty.

Zeus just stared at him.

“Look, I was out of line,” said Christian. “I apologize.”

God, he really has changed, thought Zeus.

“It’s all right,” he told him.

Christian got up and went to get himself some tea.

“Thanks for getting us out of China,” he said.

“Yeah.”

Christian grimaced. “That… I screwed up. I lost my head. I was tired; I felt like I was possessed or something. I’m sorry… I just about got us killed.”

“Yeah.”

“I’m glad we got through it. Thanks.”

Zeus nodded.

“This tea sucks,” said Christian. “We should find some coffee.”

“I’m for that.”

They sat silently until General Perry came in a few minutes later.

“Lost in thought, gentlemen?” said the general.

“Trying to figure out where we can get some coffee,” said Christian.

“Well at least you’re not fighting,” said Perry with a sour face. “We’re making progress.”

“Sir, that was my fault,” said Christian. “I was an idiot.”

“It wasn’t anything,” said Zeus softly. “I was a jerk, too.”

“Vietnam may be lost, but there’s hope for the U.S. Army,” said Perry. His tone remained stern, sour even. “Zeus, General Trung would like to speak to you. I think he wants to apologize for yesterday.”

“He doesn’t have to apologize.”

“He knows that. Be gracious.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What’s our next move, General?” asked Christian.

“Watch and wait,” said Perry. “If they want our advice, they’ll ask.” “How about the A-10As?” asked Zeus.

“Even if they were coming, which they’re not, it may be too late,” said Perry.

General Trung met Zeus in a small office on the lowest level of the complex. It was bare, even by Vietnamese standards. There was nothing on the cement walls, and the only furniture was a solitary wooden chair. Trung stood behind it as Zeus entered. His eyes had deep rings below them, circular welts that seemed to penetrate far into his face.

“General Tri was in error,” Trung told Zeus. “I deeply apologize.” He bent forward.

“General, there’s no need to apologize,” said Zeus. “I wasn’t offended. I understand the stress very well.”

Trung straightened.

“We’re guests here,” continued Zeus. “Some people may not want our help. It’s not a problem.”

“Thank you, Major, for your understanding.”

“General, I have a question,” said Zeus. “Do you believe the Chinese are aiming at Hai Phong?”

“It would seem a logical conclusion.”

“Why did you put your forces in Son Duong then?”

“Do you have a better suggestion?” asked the general.

“I certainly don’t know the tactical situation of your forces and bases as you do,” said Zeus. “I was just curious. You have a large force there, and it’s going to waste.”

A faint smile appeared on Trung’s lips, but it slipped away quickly.

“Curiosity in a commander is always a good thing,” said Trung. “I wonder, Major, would you like to tour the battlefield? By plane, I mean.”

“I’d like to, yes.”

“I would be grateful for additional insights. Captain Thieu will be your pilot.”

Thieu had taken Zeus west to scout the Chinese advance in a jet trainer a few days before. He was an excellent pilot. His plane, though, was a little shaky.

“I’d be happy to fly with him,” said Zeus.

“It will be arranged for first light,” said Trung.

19

Harland Perry was too young to have fought in Vietnam; his introduction to combat came as a very green lieutenant in the Kuwait War conducted by the first President Bush. But the Army that he joined had been molded by men who had been through Vietnam and the dreadful years immediately afterward. Many of their lessons stayed with him, including one about how easy it was to get sucked into a conflict you had no intention of fighting.

Like this one.

Perry’s original mission of fact-finding made enormous sense; by offering advice to the Vietnamese, he had in turn been granted an inside look at the country’s military situation. What he had seen firsthand pretty much jibed with the intelligence reports he’d read and viewed before coming: Vietnam had an earnest and courageous force that was thoroughly outnumbered and ill-prepared to fight in the twenty-first century.

If there was a surprise, it had come from the Chinese. Their equipment was better in many respects than had been predicted, but their leadership was much worse. The generals running the war had been more timid than Perry expected, shutting down drives when dealt the slightest setback.

On the one hand, this was a valuable psychological insight: it told Perry that the Chinese army had quite a distance to go before it would truly achieve its potential. On the other hand, it was the sort of flaw that might be reversed quickly, if the right general were found to lead the charge and then clean house. But whether a Chinese Ulysses S. Grant emerged or not, the advantages the Chinese held over the Vietnamese were so extensive that even a McClellan would win this war in a matter of weeks.

Which brought Perry to the question of what the U.S. should do.

The United States could defeat China in a head-to-head battle. No war was easy; Perry knew from his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan that even a lopsided battle brought heartache and pain to the victor. But defeating China in Southeast Asia was possible. The key was acting quickly and decisively, with massive amounts of force.

A-10As and Apaches were only the tip of the spear as Perry saw it. He needed a lot more force. And he’d asked for it.

The idea wasn’t simply to stop the Chinese and get them out of Vietnam. They had to be soundly defeated — a strong punch in the nose that sent them to the mat. Such a strike would convince their army that the Americans weren’t to be messed with. Better, it would undermine China’s premier. And that was the key to a peaceful future: ousting Cho Lai from power.

The Chinese had seen decades of wise leaders. While they certainly hadn’t always acted in America’s best interests, they had recognized the importance of peace to their, and the world’s, prosperity. Cho Lai was a different character entirely, a throwback to times when brutality ruled. That approach would eventually be disastrous for everyone; the sooner he was removed, the better.

So, massive involvement by the U.S. now made a lot of sense… but what if that wasn’t possible? What if the best the U.S. could do were wing-and-a-prayer operations along the lines that Major Murphy had undertaken against Hainan?

By conventional measures, the operation there had been a success — the Chinese had completely overreacted, apparently scrapping all plans for a seaborne assault, at least in the near term. But that had had minimal impact on the longer term. The war continued and would continue, as the new assault proved.

While certainly valuable from the Vietnamese perspective, such small tactical victories would not change the overall outcome of the war if the U.S. stayed out of it.

They were poisoned victories from the American perspective. For one thing, the longer the war went on, the more likely a Chinese Grant would emerge. The longer the Chinese army fought, the more experience their “middle managers” — the NCOs and junior officers — would gain for the future.

If the U.S. was eventually going to have to fight China, and couldn’t (or wouldn’t) do it now, then it was definitely in America’s best interest to have the PLA as inexperienced and even overconfident as possible. In that sense, small setbacks aided them immensely.

Perry also feared that any revelation that the U.S. was involved would provoke a severe reaction among the American public. Everyone he spoke to at the Pentagon made it clear that public sentiment was against intervention. Throw in a congressional investigation and a bunch of headlines about dead Americans in Vietnam, and they might turn against the Army itself.

The longer the war in Vietnam continued, the more tempting it would be for the president — any president — to continue adding troops and support on a piecemeal basis. Perry could frame the argument himself: Look at what Zeus Murphy had accomplished with a handful of men, most supplied by Vietnam. What might an entire SEAL team and an attachment of Rangers, a few Delta boys, and some clandestinely inserted CIA paramilitaries accomplish?

And once they were there, the logic for more would be inescapable.

Incrementalism killed you: put a full force in at the very beginning, and you could win. Play into battle piecemeal and watch yourself get ground down. That was a basic lesson of just above every battle in history.

Harland Perry stood at a crossroads. The President — who happened to be a personal friend- had sent him here for advice.

He had made a suggestion for extreme force, and been rejected. Not yet in so many words, but the delays showed Greene lacked enough public support to commit troops.

So now Harland Perry had to make another recommendation. His advice would be to withdraw completely and quickly — to simply stand aside.

It was almost certainly not what the President wanted to hear. And while it was extremely logical, it went against Perry’s own wishes and emotions — his instinct was to fight, and much better sooner rather than later.

But emotions didn’t win battles; logic did. And it was his duty and responsibility as an officer to present the President, most especially this President, with the best recommendation he could make.

20

It had been about a week since Zeus had seen Captain Thieu and his Aereo L-39C, a small jet trainer used by the Vietnamese for a variety of tasks. In the interim, Thieu had flown several sorties a day, and the plane bore the scars. The little warbird had been hit by nearly a hundred rounds of ground fire, including a few from Vietnamese guns. Fortunately, the bullets had been both small and unlucky, missing the Aereo’s vitals. The majority of holes had been patched, though there seemed to be a few perforations in its rear belly from the most recent mission — a quick hop north to check on the Chinese formations a few hours earlier.

If the rings under his eyes were any indication, Thieu had had less sleep in the past twenty-four hours than Zeus. Yet he seemed energetic as he walked Zeus around the aircraft prior to their takeoff. A quartet of small bombs had been fastened to the wings; they supplemented the 23 mm twin-cannon mounted beneath the fuselage. Aircraft were so precious that even his recce mission would be combined with an attack sortie.

“Think those holes will be a problem?” Zeus asked, pointing to a few fresh notches in the belly.

Thieu laughed. “Ha-ha, Major Zeus, always making jokes.”

“Those are holes,” said Zeus.

“No worry. Board now.”

The Albatros was a two-seater, and Zeus sat in the rear. He had a flight stick and throttle, and Thieu insisted on giving him a quick orientation on how to use the controls if something happened.

“This way, if I am shot, you will land,” said Thieu over the plane’s interphone circuit. “Plane is very valuable.”

“What makes you think they’d get you and not me?” said Zeus.

“Ha! You are very lucky man, Major Zeus. The captain is very lucky to be flying with you today.”

“Oh yeah. I’m just oozing luck.”

The oxygen pumped into his mask gave Zeus a jolt of energy. Having flown with Thieu before, he had skipped breakfast — a decision vindicated by the roller-coaster takeoff that buried his stomach somewhere behind the tailplane.

“See — we miss all potholes!” said Thieu triumphantly as they climbed out.

The sun wouldn’t rise for another half hour. The dim sky and darker ground made it hard for Zeus to orient himself. The course Thieu laid out was due east to the sea, then north along Route 18 in the direction of Tien Yen.

Zeus strained to see out the sides of the cockpit, looking for lights or other signs of life. But there was nothing, just shades of gray.

“Do you prepare for bombing?” Thieu asked.

“I’m sorry?”

“We will drop our bombs first, then make our observations,” said the pilot.

“Are we that close to the lines already?” Zeus glanced at the compass for the heading. They were still going east.

“We turn and be prepared,” answered Thieu. “Ready?”

“Anytime.”

The plane took a slow bank. They were traveling just under seven hundred kilometers an hour by the plane’s gauges — in the area of 375 knots, or nautical miles an hour. That put them a little more than five minutes from the front line, by Zeus’s calculation.

Something red sparked in the distance. Zeus stared at it, unsure what it could be. It looked like a splash of paint on a photograph, something that didn’t belong.

More red appeared, a line of splashes.

Tracers!

They were a lot closer to the front than he’d thought. The Chinese were at Tien Yen already.

“Gunfire ahead,” said Thieu.

“Ours or theirs?”

“No matter.”

Zeus heard Thieu speaking to someone over the radio. The aircraft took a sharp bank to the left, then swung its nose back northward. The altimeter indicated they were at five thousand feet above ground level — well within the reach of whatever was firing ahead.

Probably Vietnamese antiair, thought Zeus. But what were they shooting at? Not them.

Zeus saw the answer in a string of black dots behind the flashes.

Chinese helicopters. Two of the dots were flying to the right, the others were slightly behind in echelon.

The dots at the right glowed red. They were firing rockets or something at the ground.

The antiaircraft fire intensified. Yellow-red streams leapt from the ground, bullets hosing the air. One stream turned black; another died. The ground flashed. A fire erupted.

“Hold on, Major,” said Thieu. “Our fun begins.”

The jet suddenly twisted on its wing, pushing down to Zeus’s left. The nose angled down, gently at first, but then in a flick of the pilot’s wrist almost ninety degrees. The plane became a dagger aimed at the earth. Zeus felt his stomach push toward his spine.

The left wing lifted; the nose swung hard to Zeus’s right. He strained to see, raising his head over the side of the cockpit, but gravity pushed him back down into his seat. The plane shot upward — straight up it seemed, though by this time Zeus was so dizzy he had no real idea of the direction they were going. His head slammed back against the rest. The engines surged behind him.

“I think we got him!” yelled Thieu. He could have been at a baseball game, cheering a grand slam.

“What?”

“The tank,” said Thieu. “You see it?”

Zeus struggled to look out the canopy. The ground was dark. If there was smoke or fire from the explosion it was lost in a blur of shadows as they zoomed away.

“I don’t know,” said Zeus.

“Look on next run. Will be to your left.”

“You didn’t drop all the bombs?” Zeus asked, but his words were swallowed by the engines as the pilot coaxed more power for another plunge toward the battlefield.

Everything outside the canopy blurred. The Albatros was not a particularly fast aircraft as jet fighters went, yet it seemed to be flying at the speed of thought.

Fingers of red fire appeared at the side, uncurling from black fists. Angry hands grabbed at the plane. The jet bucked ferociously as the pilot neared his target.

Crap, thought Zeus. Let’s get this over with.

He glanced at the handle he was supposed to pull if they needed to bail out. They were so low here… Would he even survive to be captured?

Hoo-rah.

They pulled up sharply, the aircraft gaining several hundred feet as the bombs were dropped. Zeus strained to keep his head where he could see outside the cockpit. There were black boxes on the ground — armored personnel carriers, he guessed, not tanks.

Or maybe they were tanks, or armored cars, or infantry fighting vehicles, or just trucks — it was too dark and they flitted by so quickly, who could tell?

Something hit the right wing. Zeus heard a screeching sound, something like metal being torn in two. The plane bucked for a moment, then righted itself. He pushed himself up against the restraints, craning his neck to see the wing, but he couldn’t quite see anything.

“Close one, Major,” said the pilot.

“Were we hit?” asked Zeus.

“Two bullets, maybe. Nothing. It would take many to harm us.”

Zeus doubted that. Just one bullet in the right place would surely be enough.

“Now we ready look on your mission,” said Thieu. His English got shakier as he became more excited, and he was clearly in the middle of an adrenaline rush at the moment. “We go to north.”

“More to the northwest, right?”

“Oh ho, Major, you are remember your compass.”

Thieu sounded absolutely high, as if he were stoned on cocaine. It was just adrenaline — and the excitement of survival. Some men pressed down under the continuing strain. For others, the stress became a drug, something you almost lived for.

Had Zeus been craving that high when he decided to take on the tanks at the border?

“Are you still with me, Major?” asked Thieu.

“I’m here.”

“Do you see the river on the right? That is Ky Cung.”

Zeus looked out the side of the cockpit. The sun was just below the horizon, and the ground still blurred into different shades of gray. But as his eyes adjusted and his mind focused, the dark blotches turned into colors, the shapes into objects that he had some hope of recognizing. He saw hills first, then a road they were passing, and finally the river, a surprisingly straight slit of black almost parallel to the aircraft’s path.

The Chinese border lay a few miles beyond the river. Zeus stared from the aircraft, straining to see activity.

“I am going to fly up Highway three-one,” said the pilot. “We will see what we can see.”

Zeus held his breath as the plane turned almost ninety degrees in a matter of seconds. Thieu dropped lower, edging the plane down toward the mountain that the highway ran through. This wasn’t so Zeus could get a better look — the lower the plane was, the harder it would be for any Chinese patrols or radars to spot.

The road tucked left and right, disappearing under the canopy. Zeus examined the terrain, trying to get a feel for how it would be to run a division through it. This was the real reason he’d come — it was one thing to stare at satellite photos and Global Hawk images, and quite another to see the land in person, even from three or four thousand feet.

What puzzled him was the fact that the Chinese had not come through here. But now it was clear. If you attacked on this route, you would be limited to the main road. The road net was limited and the sharp terrain made it exceedingly difficult to find an alternate route. Unlike the area farther east, there were no interconnected farm fields that could be used as temporary passages.

“Border is near,” said Thieu. “We may have shots.”

The pilot laughed. The aircraft had been steadily slowing; they were now doing only a bit more than a hundred knots, closing in on the plane’s stall speed — the speed at which it stopped staying in the air. But the low altitude made it appear as if they were going much faster.

There were houses ahead, on both sides of the road. The war seemed not to have reached here; smoke curled in thin lines, breakfast fires only.

Jungle.

Thieu raised his nose slightly. Zeus saw a line ahead — a fence, he thought, but it turned out to be a power line, or maybe telephone wires.

More houses, buildings. There was a barrier in the road.

“Guns on the right,” said Thieu.

Zeus raised his head, staring. He spotted what looked like tanks on a hilltop. They were ZSU-57-2s, ancient Russian-made antiaircraft guns. They didn’t fire. The Albatros continued northward, deeper into China. Its straight-line path took it away from the road, which curved left.

The ground was thick jungle, a deep green that undulated with the hills. Just as they started to bank westward, the color changed from green to a dark brown. The trees were dead, killed by a three-year drought — the rainfall pattern changed dramatically on the other side of the hills.

A good place to stage armor for an attack, Zeus thought. But he couldn’t see any.

“Uh-oh,” said Thieu.

“Problem?”

One of the warning systems began to bleat.

“They are finding us on their radar. No worry,” said Thieu.

Zeus’s stomach jumped very close to his mouth as the pilot put the plane into a sharp dive and turn. The sensor stopped beeping.

“We have to turn south,” said Thieu, reluctance creeping into his voice. “Pingxiang is ahead.”

Pingxiang was the largest Chinese city in the area, and it was ringed by sophisticated air defenses.

“Have you seen what you want?” added Thieu.

“I guess.” Zeus hadn’t seen much.

Thieu kept the Albatros pitched about thirty degrees after they came out of the turn. The Vietnamese city Lang Son was ahead, on their right as they approached the border. The entire area around the city was well developed — until the war, the area had been popular with Chinese men looking for a very quick vacation from their wives. It was like a Vietnamese version of Las Vegas: what happened there, stayed there. A good portion of the businesses there were owned by Chinese businessmen — obviously the reason it hadn’t been attacked.

“Fly over 1A, will you?” asked Zeus, naming the major road south.

They angled eastward. There were patrols and emplacements all along the highway. They flew over the road at about six hundred feet, following the highway for about ten minutes until black puffs appeared in front of them. Thieu laid on the fuel, deepening the angle right as he took a very sharp turn and began to climb.

“They think we’re Chinese,” he said.

“Can we go back east?” said Zeus. Now that it was light, he wanted to see where the armored brigade General Tri commanded was.

“I will have to go north,” said Thieu. “It will take a few minutes.”

“North? Why?”

Thieu didn’t answer.

“Thieu?”

“Restricted. We cannot fly the area.”

Zeus reached to the pocket on the leg of his flight suit and took out the map, folding it open on his lap. What were they avoiding?

They’d flown south of the Yen Tu Mountains on the way out, and were now flying north of them. Was that the Luc Nam River below?

Zeus studied the map, trying to triangulate their position by what they had passed.

Why would the mountains be restricted? It wasn’t part of the defense zone around Hanoi.

“We are ten minutes from Tien Yen,” said Thieu.

“I wanted to be farther north, along Route 4B,” said Zeus, turning his attention back to the armored brigade.

“Ah.”

Thieu immediately began a turn. Within a minute or two, Zeus spotted a highway clogged with traffic — it was the armor brigade and part of the infantry division, rushing toward the battle at Tien Yen.

They turned and followed the highway back in the direction of Lang Son. There were two columns of vehicles along the road, then nothing.

Now would be the time to attack Lang Son. Blow through the crust of the defenses, then sweep down the roads parallel to IB.

Except the Chinese saw no reason to destroy a city they in effect already owned.

Of course, that also meant that they were not on their guard here. They thought so little of the Vietnamese.

Not without reason, Zeus reminded himself.

“Our fuel becomes low,” warned Thieu.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Zeus. “We can go back whenever you want.”

“Very good, Major.”

Thieu bent the nose of the plane upward. Zeus felt his blood rushing from his head. How did pilots learn to live with this?

As they leveled off, an alarm began to blare. The plane jerked hard left, then pointed toward the ground.

“Major, we are being tracked by Chinese fighter,” snapped Thieu. “Watch out!”

Before Zeus could reply, the warning tone went two octaves higher.

“Launch warning!” intoned an English voice.

The Chinese fighter had fired a pair of missiles at them.

21

“We can crush the American destroyer offered Lo Gong, the defense minister. “If that is what you wish.”

Cho Lai put his hands together on the desk. Yet another move by the American President to thwart him.

This one he should have anticipated. But it was ingenious — the American ship would claim it was inspecting cargo. It was a matter of enforcing neutrality — a position China itself had encouraged. The fact that the ships were registered in the Philippines — what could the Chinese possibly object to?

Simple, yet ingenious. And of course, as soon as the Americans went aboard the ships, they would see they were filled with Chinese soldiers.

And so what? Besides a public relations coup, what would the Americans win, exactly?

Public support to interfere. That was Greene’s real aim.

If they stopped the ships, that would be disastrous. That would ruin the plan to take Hai Phong.

Sink the destroyer and be done with it. That was Cho Lai’s true wish. But it would invite open conflict with America. A shooting war. And if his generals and admirals were timid now, what would they do against the Americans?

It would be a fiasco.

Time. He needed time. Eventually, the Vietnamese would collapse. And eventually, his generals would gain the confidence they needed.

“The destroyer seems very far from the ships,” said Cho Lai.

“On the present course and speed, the ships will beat the destroyer to Hai Phong,” said the defense minister. “But that assumes the drive in the east will proceed on schedule.”

“You told me it is ahead of schedule,” said Cho Lai.

“It is.”

“Well, then, there is no problem,” said the premier, somewhat more relaxed. “The ships will beat the destroyer to the port, and that will be the end of it.”

“And if something delays them or the operation?”

Cho Lai ground his back teeth together. Now he was the one being forced to act as a coward. But he must take the long view. He must take the long view.

“Make sure that it doesn’t,” he said darkly. “Take Hai Phong. And make sure those ships return with rice.”

Lo Gong bowed his head.

22

Zeus lurched against his restraints as Thieu threw the Albatros toward the earth, trying desperately to lose the missiles on their tail. Buzzers and bleeps and voices warned of their impending doom. Zeus felt as if his stomach and lungs were being torn into several pieces inside his body. Gravity crunched against his chest, and his face mask felt as if it were edged with a steel knife, cutting deeply into his face.

The Albatros jerked right, heading straight for a huge rock outcropping. Then it spurt back left. Something popped behind Zeus. He thought they’d been hit. But as the plane hurtled ahead, he realized Thieu had launched decoys — ”tinsel,” or chaff, the pilots called it, pieces of metal shards that confused radar.

The Albatros shot straight up, then turned upside down. Zeus caught a red flash in the corner of his eye — one of the missiles that had been chasing them, blowing up harmlessly a mile or more away, suck-ered by the decoy.

The other missile mysteriously vanished, just gave up as its radar lost contact. The cockpit went silent.

But not for long.

“Bandit, ten o’clock!” said Thieu. “Hang on, Major!”

If air combat had ever held any fascination for Zeus, it was lost in the sharp plunge the Albatros took as it knifed away from its attacker. Zeus saw a yellowish triangle moving through the valley at his left. It was the Chinese aircraft — a Jian-10B multirole aircraft, a plane Zeus knew only from the dry specs in the Red Dragon war game simulator he had used back in the States. The aircraft bore a striking resemblance to the Israeli Lavi, not exactly a coincidence or accident, as the Israelis had helped the Chinese develop the plane.

Having already fired its radar-guided missiles, the Chinese plane had to maneuver into position to use its heat-seeking missiles. In practical terms, this meant it had to get behind the Albatros, something that Thieu aimed to prevent, jinking back and forth sharply and staying low to the ground.

“Look for his wing mate!” said Thieu over the plane’s interphone. “He should have a wing mate. He is not on my radar.”

Zeus searched the sky for a second airplane. He couldn’t see any aircraft, not even the one that had attacked them.

The Albatros pushed hard to the right, seemingly bending itself in half. Zeus saw fire on his left as they bounced back around

Decoy flares, launched by Thieu.

There was a low rumble. The plane bucked up and down. The engine seemed to stutter behind him, as if choking. They slid down on their left wing. Then Zeus felt a shake from the center line of the aircraft — the cannon strapped to the forward underside began firing.

More flares filled the air, this time directly from the Chinese plane, its pilot apparently fearing the Albatros had a missile similar to its own.

And then it was gone.

The whine of the Albatros’s engine dropped a dozen decibels. The plane slowed and banked eastward. Zeus thought for a moment that they had been hit again, or had run out of fuel. But Thieu was only recognizing that the fight was over. The Chinese pilot had laid on his afterburner and was rocketing away. The Albatros lacked the speed to catch up, and was low on fuel besides.

“We gave him a good fight!” yelled Thieu.

“Oh yeah.”

“What do you think of that, Major? We have chased off a bigger plane. Do you think we damaged him?”

“I’m sure of it,” said Zeus.

23

As an institution, the CIA had almost unlimited resources for finding someone.

As an individual, a CIA officer was surprisingly limited. He — or in this case, she — couldn’t simply type in a name into a computer bank and receive reams of information on the person, even if the information was stored in the agency’s computers. There were protocols and safeguards and procedures that had to be followed.

Assuming they were followed.

Within a few minutes of deciding that she really, really did want to find out, Mara knew exactly where Josh was headed. The problem was deciding what to do about it.

What she wanted to do was hop on a plane and fly out to the cousin’s farm. She could get there before he did; he was driving, which meant it would take probably another half day if not a full day.

But doing that would be messy. Doing that meant she had to tell him that she was in love with him.

And if she told him, then what happened? Obviously he wasn’t in love with her, because he wouldn’t have left the way he did.

He had kissed her. But it was just a kiss, a good-to-be-alive kiss, nothing more.

A nothing kiss, in the end.

She’d go there, and be rejected; he’d look down at the ground and stammer. What the hell was the sense of that?

How the hell could she have let herself fall in love with him? She was such a goddamn girl.

Be a woman, Mara.

Oh, but the woman in her wanted him as well. The woman in her — the woman who knew that she was no great beauty, but that she was, and could be, a good companion, a good lover, someone who would hold a man and make him whole — the woman pined for him as well.

In the end, she decided to call the marshal.

“Terrence, this is Mara Duncan,” she said when he answered the phone. “Where the hell are you guys?”

“Ms. Duncan.” The marshal’s Texas accent blossomed. “We’re in a car. He wanted to go back to his family place. I’m watchin’ him. You don’t have to worry.”

“I understand that. Let me talk to Josh.”

“He’s kinda sleeping right now. In the backseat.”

“Terrence, are you lying to me?”

“No,” he said. There was enough surprise in his voice for her to believe him.

“I’m supposed to be watching him,” she said. It was lame, but it was all she could manage.

“I have it covered. He hated that hearing,” added the marshal. “That guy Jablonski keeps calling. Josh doesn’t want to talk to him.”

“Tell him he didn’t do as badly as he thinks.” Mara wanted to keep talking; maybe Josh would wake up and take the phone. “He gets… Josh gets too down on himself. You have to tell him that things are going okay. Not great, but okay. He just loses perspective. We’ve been through a lot.”

“Hey, you want me to wake him up or something?”

She did. She definitely did.

“No,” said Mara. “It’s all right. You take care of him. Have him call me. I’m… I have some things I have to do. But you have him call me. You have my number, right?”

“It’s right here on the phone.”

“Okay. Have him call me.”

“Got it.”

She hung up, wishing she hadn’t repeated her plea to have him call.

24

After they landed on the patched tarmac of Hanoi Airport, Zeus and Thieu examined the fighter. A good portion of the tail had been eaten away by ground fire and the exploding head of one of the missiles that had just missed them.

Thieu gestured at the damaged aircraft with a laugh, and shouted something at Zeus. A jet landing nearby made it impossible to hear, but Zeus guessed that it was some sort of boast along the lines of, Is that the best they can do?

“Do you think we shot the other plane down?” he added, his voice a little stronger as the other plane’s roar subsided.

Zeus had seen it fly off and knew they hadn’t come close to hitting it, let alone shooting it down. Yet somehow it didn’t feel right to let him down.

“It’s a very good chance,” Zeus told him.

Thieu patted him on the back.

An hour later; Zeus waited outside an office at the U.S. embassy to talk to General Perry. He was beyond exhausted. The injuries he’d received in his foray behind the lines, though minor, screamed at him. Even the spots on his chest where the restraints had pressed against him during the flight hurt.

He thought of Anna. She’d be on shift now. He wanted to take her in his arms and fall into her bed, sink past the war, sink past everything for a week, a month, forever.

God, she was beautiful. He could feel her lips on his….

“You sleeping, Major?”

Zeus jumped to his feet. A woman in her early thirties was standing a few feet from his chair in the hallway, suppressing a smile.

Barely.

“I’m s-sorry,” stuttered Zeus. “I haven’t gotten much rest lately.”

“Join the club.”

If she was tired, it didn’t show in her face. She wore a long white sweater over black pants, very basic, yet flattering. Anna was prettier, but the woman in front of him was no slouch.

“I’m Juliet Greig,” she said, holding out her hand. “Acting Consul General. We haven’t met.”

“No. I’m sorry.”

“You’re here to see General Perry?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled indulgently at the word ma’am.

“He’s in with the ambassador and would like you to address them both. They’re downstairs. If you’ll follow me.”

She led Zeus to the secure area of the embassy, where a suite of rooms were protected from electronic eavesdropping. Greig stopped in front of a thick door. She drew a magnetic card from her pocket and ran it through a reader, then pressed her thumb against a flat plate of glass beneath the card slot.

The lock snapped open. Greig and Zeus entered a small, narrow vestibule covered in what looked like cork. There was a second door, this one operated by a numerical keypad.

“Please don’t peek,” said Greig over her shoulder.

Zeus stepped back.

“It was a joke,” she said as the door unlocked. “Peeking wouldn’t help you — the combination changes every hour.”

She pushed open the door, then stood to the side as Zeus entered. He brushed against her arm ever so gently, catching a whiff of her perfume.

It made him think of Anna.

General Perry and Ambassador Behrens were on phones at the far end of the table that dominated the room. Behind them were a pair of boxes that looked as if they were part of a very upscale home entertainment system. Blue lights flickered on both. A single laptop sat on the table.

Perry gestured to Zeus, indicating he should sit down on one of the chairs scattered nearby. They were folding chairs, the sort you would see in a church basement.

“Yes, sir, Mr. President,” continued Perry. “I understand.”

He frowned, and glanced at the ambassador.

“We will,” she said, and hung up.

“How was your flight, Major?” said Perry, placing the phone on the receiver.

“It was… interesting,” said Zeus. “We, uh… we got fired on a couple of times.”

“No damage?”

“Plane got banged up, but we got home. The Chinese are moving past Tien Yen,” he added. “The Vietnamese were overrun farther north. Part of the armored brigade hasn’t even reached the city yet.”

“Are they going to launch a counterattack there?” asked Perry.

“It didn’t look like they were organized at all. Frankly, hitting the city now would be a waste of time. They’d have to get farther north if they wanted to cut off the Chinese supply lines.”

“Or go farther south if they want to confront the spearhead,” said Perry.

“Could you show me where we’re talking about on the map?” asked Behrens. She touched a few keys on the laptop and pushed it over toward Zeus.

Zeus showed her.

“There’s vacuum north of Lang Son,” he told Perry. “You could attack north and get pretty far.”

“The Vietnamese can’t even defend their own soil,” said Perry, with some disgust.

The general pulled the laptop closer to him. Zeus noticed his arm brush against Behrens’s; he wondered if they were lovers.

Certainly not. They pulled their arms away almost instantly.

He was seeing sex in everything because of Anna.

“There’s something else,” Zeus said. “The Yen Tu Mountains are a no-fly zone. Why do you think that is?”

“What do you mean?” asked Perry.

“We couldn’t fly over the area,” said Zeus. “We detoured around it the whole flight. I definitely got the impression that I wasn’t supposed to see something there.”

“Show me,” said Perry.

Zeus pointed out the area over the mountains. It was a large swatch east of Hanoi.

“Could that be where the government is going to evacuate to?” the general asked Behrens.

“I doubt it. Their bunkers are all in Hanoi and to the south, where the military headquarters are.”

“Well, something’s there,” said Zeus. “Can I get a look at the satellite data?”

“Absolutely,” said Perry, rising. “They’re in the other room. Come with me.”

Zeus didn’t know exactly what he hoped to find in the satellite imagery of the Yen Tu Mountains in Quàng Ninh Province. But whatever it was, he didn’t find it. The mountains looked like crusty patches of tan and green, crisscrossed by strings of blue. These were intersected by a spider web of gray lines — small local roads.

The sheer number surprised Zeus. Some were related to the Yen Tu Buddhist relic, a holy place marked by a massive bronze statue and surrounding pagodas. The ancient Vietnamese king Tran Nhan Tong was said to have sat in meditation at the spot in the mountains. Located about midway through the range, the relic was popular with pilgrims and hikers.

Away from the relic, the mountains were heavily mined, with coal and bauxite among the more plentiful minerals. Titanium, chromium, copper, and tin were also found there, as were rare earth metals.

Temples and mines were hardly a reason for a no-fly zone. Zeus studied the images, looking for signs of a bunker that might serve as an emergency retreat for the Hanoi government. But if it was there, it wasn’t obvious. The mines were almost exclusively open pits: big holes in the ground where mountain peaks had once stood. Nor were there defenses ringed around them.

“It doesn’t make all that much sense,” Zeus told Perry. “A no-fly zone over a bunch of mines?”

“Maybe they’re not hiding anything at all,” Perry suggested, rubbing his eyes. “Maybe they’re worried about damaging the pagoda.” “There are shrines all over the place. Dau Pagoda’s just outside Hanoi. That’s not a no-fly zone.”

“This one’s more important.”

Zeus wasn’t convinced, but he had no other explanation. And there were other problems to worry about.

“If you were the Vietnamese,” said Perry, “what would you do?”

“Assuming they’re heading toward Hai Phong? I’d swing down here and try and trip them up. Separate the armor from the infantry. It’s almost hopeless, though.”

“What if it weren’t? Where can you stop them?”

Zeus tapped the area near Dam Trong, west of Cai Bdu Island. It was an area made for ambushes, with small bridges and a myriad of irrigation ditches feeding the inland rice fields that had been built in the past two or three years.

“Slow them down here,” added Zeus. “Maybe you can get the infantry units that retreated to hit their rear.”

“Will it work?” asked Perry.

“If those A-10As were here.”

“Forget them.”

“More weapons. I don’t know.”

Perry shook his head. “See if you can figure out a place for an ambush, even if it’s hopeless.”

“All right.”

Zeus pulled over the magnifying glass and started going over the images and maps. A buzzer sounded; Perry went to the door near the intercom.

“Yes?” asked Perry.

“It’s Juliet Greig. I brought you some coffee, General.”

Perry unlocked the door from the inside. Greig was standing with a tray holding a carafe of coffee, milk, sugar, and two large white cups.

“Ms. Greig, thank you very much. You know Major Murphy?”

“I showed him in earlier.” She smiled at Zeus. “Coffee, Major?”

“Sure.”

Greig put the cups down at the far end of the table, then poured the coffee.

“General, the ambassador asked me to remind you that the meeting with the premier and General Trung is a half hour from now. She wanted to make sure you had time to get ready.”

“Yes, of course.” Perry rubbed his chin, whose stubble hadn’t been trimmed in nearly two days.

“You want me to come, General?” asked Zeus.

“No, I think I can handle this on my own, Zeus. Listen, it’s possible… we may…”

His voice trailed off. Zeus guessed what he was going to say from his eyes — it was possible they were going to bug out. They didn’t want to get caught in Hanoi, which could happen if the tanks came far enough south and the offensive in the west started up again.

“I’ll be ready,” Zeus told him.

Perry nodded. “Why don’t you get some sleep?”

“I’m okay.”

The general turned to Greig. “Ms. Greig, would you do me a favor?”

“General?”

“See that Major Murphy gets a ride back to his hotel, would you?”

“Absolutely. I’ll tuck him in if you want.”

She smiled, then left. Zeus packed everything up. He was surprised to find her out in the hall when he came out.

“All done?” she asked.

“I didn’t realize you were waiting,” he said.

“That’s my life. Don’t worry about it. Where’s the coffeepot?”

“Oh, I forgot it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry. They’ll get it later. You want me to take those?”

She pointed at the folders with the photos and map.

“I have to check them back in,” he said.

“I’ll do it for you if you want.”

“No, that’s all right.”

She gave him another of her indulgent smiles, as if she were sharing a private joke with someone.

“I’ll see you, Major. Unless you do want me to tuck you in.”

“That’s all right.”

“The offer stands,” she said before going upstairs.

Zeus had the driver take him to the hospital. The Vietnamese soldiers on the day shift seemed to recognize him; as he reached for his American ID, they nodded and waved him inside. No one seemed to notice him as he walked through the battered interior of the building.

Anna was looking over a patient’s chart about midway down the room where he had woken up. Zeus stepped up to the wall, watching her for a moment as she worked. She was as pretty as he remembered. Even the most mundane acts — jotting a note, closing a folder — were things of beauty.

The nurses watched her intently, as did the nearby patients. It seemed to Zeus that every eye in the place was watching her. And why shouldn’t they?

Anna glanced in his direction as she finished. A smile broke across her lips.

Zeus started to push away from the wall to go toward her. She made the slightest motion with her head, telling him not to. Then she pointed at a patient next to the bed she had just checked — one more, she was telling him, then they could be together.

He understood perfectly. It was as if their minds were already joined.

There was a commotion out in the hall, people arguing. Zeus stepped around and looked out the door to see what was going on.

Two men in hospital scrubs were wheeling a gurney quickly down the hall. A third chased after them, his white lab coat flying open. He was angry, his face red. A patient lay on the stretcher, a bag of plasma on his chest. He was moaning, covered with blood.

The men rushed past. A nurse came out of the room behind him. Then Anna, her perfume sweet and pungent in the air. She passed as if she didn’t notice him, walking briskly after the others.

They all went into a room a few doors away across the hall. Zeus followed in time to see the nurse who’d come from the ward bending over the patient. The angry man in the lab coat yelled something; the nurse stepped back. Everyone except Anna froze. Anna, glancing at the man who had yelled, stepped over and lifted the sheet from his midsection. He was covered in blood.

The angry man took hold of Anna’s arm. Pain seized her face.

Zeus sprang forward, grabbing the man’s shoulder so hard he let go of Anna and started to fall. Zeus spun him around and held him upright.

The angry man looked up at Zeus.

“Leave her alone,” said Zeus sharply. “Don’t touch her.”

The man began stuttering something. Zeus let go, pushing him back as he did. The man stumbled but caught his balance. He backed out of the room.

“Please, you must leave,” Anna told Zeus.

By the time he turned to look at her, she had gone back to work on the patient. She spoke quickly in Vietnamese to the nurse, who went to a side cabinet and began pulling out packages of gauze and other items.

Another nurse rushed in, wheeling a tray of instruments. Another came in, pushing a machine. The room suddenly smelled of rubbing alcohol and antiseptic.

Anna continued to work, hands moving swiftly and surely. The others moved around her frenetically, but she stayed calm, completely in control.

Zeus backed against the wall, mesmerized. A heart monitor was hooked up. The machine beeped erratically. Zeus noticed the man had his boots on — he was a soldier, in a dark green uniform.

Not Vietnamese. He must be a Chinese prisoner.

An airman, maybe. His uniform was baggy — a flight suit.

Footsteps clicked down the hall, then into the room. The angry man had returned. He had an officer with him.

The angry man in the lab coat began haranguing Anna. Zeus started to go forward, determined to pull him off again.

The officer stepped up next to the man in the lab coat and raised his arm. He had a pistol.

Two shots echoed in the small room. The noise was the loudest Zeus had ever heard, louder than any explosion, louder than any shout or scream. Before he could react, before anyone could react, the officer turned on his heel and left the room.

The man on the gurney was dead, the top of his head blown away.

25

Walter Jackson hated going to diplomatic receptions for a host of reasons. Now President Greene had given him a fresh one — he had to speak pleasantly to the Russian ambassador, a man he loathed. It didn’t help that the end result of the conversation might or might not be legal, in his opinion. The fact that it would help a country he’d never been particularly fond of was icing on the cake.

But such were the riddles and twists of national security in the twenty-first century. Greene needed someone at a very high level to push through the deal, someone he could trust if things went wrong.

Jackson had studied the Nixon presidency for his doctorate. He had been deeply ambivalent about Henry Kissinger, whose Realpolitik had opened China to the West and balanced it against the USSR, contributing greatly to the eventual end of the cold war.

Kissinger had also overseen a policy toward North Vietnam that was an utter failure.

And here it all was again: same players dancing in different roles.

The crisis helped Russia in several ways. The price of oil had skyrocketed. Meanwhile, they were selling a good amount of weapons to China, and to other countries — notably India — anxious about China. At the same time, the conflict was absorbing China, a neighbor they increasingly worried about.

The longer China’s war in Vietnam went on, the better for Russia. So it was in their interest to help Vietnam, as long as it could be done covertly.

Things could be worse, Jackson told himself as he stepped from the back of the town car that had taken him to the embassy. The reception could have been black tie.

Jackson ran the gauntlet of the reception area, bowing to the hosts and a few celebrity guests, a smile pasted firmly on his lips. Inside the nearby ballroom, a band that didn’t look particularly Polish played light jazz. Guests mingled in front of easels of abstract landscapes said to be inspired by the Polish countryside. To Jackson’s jaundiced eye, they looked more like nightmares of color, with purple being a particular favorite.

He moved with purpose toward the bar at one side of the large ballroom. A broad-shouldered man with a Fu Manchu mustache greeted him.

“Would you be able to make a Manhattan?” Jackson asked.

“Of course,” said the bartender.

“Good. Then hold the whiskey, and just give me a sweet vermouth.”

Fu Manchu smirked and reached back for the vermouth. “Rocks?”

“Yes.”

“With a cherry?”

“Hold that.”

Jackson took the drink and stepped aside. As he lifted the glass to his lips he was shocked to see a former student standing in front of him. He recognized him a second before he could put a name to the face, then suddenly it came back: James Ferico.

“James?” said Jackson.

“Professor?”

They exchanged the mandatory how-are-you’s and why-are-you-here’s. Ferico knew Jackson’s answers, but Jackson was surprised and somewhat cheered by his former student’s: he had just published a biography that the Polish ambassador, for some unknown reason, had read and liked; the ambassador was so taken with it that he had invited him to the reception.

“Trying to pad the crowd, probably,” said Ferico self-deprecatingly. “Maybe the first set of guests saw the paintings beforehand.”

Jackson smiled. “I didn’t know you published a book.”

“I’ll send you a copy.”

“No, I insist on buying one,” said Jackson. “Then you’ll have to autograph it for me. Tell me, what else are you doing?”

Ferico was working as a “creative” with a Madison Avenue advertising company. “A little art, little video, sometimes writing.”

“No foreign policy?” said Jackson.

Ferico laughed. “Not if I can help it.”

They refilled their drinks. Jackson was having such a good time talking to him that he almost forgot why he came. But then he saw the Polish ambassador, holding court on the other side of the room. He excused himself after extracting a promise from Ferico to have lunch.

“I am surprised to see you here, Dr. Jackson,” said Gregor Goldenachov after Jackson sidled over. “Usually you do not join the social swirl.”

“I make exceptions.”

“An art lover,” the ambassador told the two women hovering next to him. Jackson calculated that, if their ages were added together, they would still be about a third short of Goldenachov’s.

“It is a lovely night,” said Jackson.

“Indeed.”

“A good night for a stroll.”

Goldenachov raised his eyebrow. “Perhaps you would care to share a cigar,” he suggested. He reached into his pocket. “Cubans.”

America still had a ban against certain Cuban exports — including cigars. Technically, Jackson was violating the law by smoking one.

The things one was forced to do in the name of national security.

“I suppose I might,” said Jackson, taking the long Figurado.

Goldenachov turned to the women. “If you would excuse me for a moment, we are going to pollute the air.”

President Greene was sitting up in bed, one eye on the television, the other on a briefing paper relating to suggested changes in the upcoming health care legislation. It was almost 11:30. He’d switched off the Lakers game — they were being pummeled — and was waiting for Jon Stewart to come on. Even though Stewart rode him unmercifully, his show was a secret pleasure.

A top-secret pleasure. But damn, the guy was just funny. And Greene’s wife was away, which meant she wouldn’t needle him for watching it.

The phone rang. The White House operator told him Jackson was calling.

“Put him through.”

His National Security adviser’s voice boomed in his ear a second later. He sounded out of breath.

“Good evening, Mr. President. I’m just on my way back from the reception.”

“Walter, how did we do?”

“It’s set. We’ll use the arrangements we used in Malaysia. The sales will appear to come from Georgia through Syria. The agency can go ahead.”

“Were there complications?”

“The only serious ones were to my lungs,” said Jackson.

“To your lungs?”

“I’ll explain tomorrow.” Jackson started to say something, then stopped.

“What is it?” asked Greene.

“I don’t know that this is a good idea.”

“Stopping China?”

“Working with the Russians.”

“It’s a terrible idea, Walter. But at the moment, it’s the best one we have,” said Greene. “Excellent. I’ll call Frost at the CIA in the morning and have him make the arrangements. Good work, Walter. Have a good sleep.”

“I’ll try,” said Jackson. “First, I’m taking the world’s longest and hottest shower. I may even douse myself with disinfectant.”

26

It was Anna who moved first. Everyone else in the small hospital room was frozen in place. She took a step back from the man she’d just been working to save, turned, and walked from the room.

Zeus had trouble getting his legs to work. He’d seen plenty of deaths before, had killed more than his share of men. It was a necessity, a duty, a job in war.

This was different.

He pushed his feet to move, shuffling at first, then striding, moving purposely. He went out of the room and turned into the hall, looking for Anna.

She’d disappeared. He walked quickly to the large ward room and looked inside. She wasn’t there. His eyes met the gaze of a nurse, who was looking at him for an explanation: What had the shot been about?

He broke her gaze quickly and hurried down the hall, looking in each ward. He went to the end of the hall, where the woman who had given him clothes the day before looked at him with a blank, shocked expression.

“Where did Anna go?” he demanded. “Dr. Anway?”

But of course the woman didn’t speak English. She could only stare, uncomprehending, speechless. Zeus turned and went up the stairs, trotting, then running.

He caught up to her on the sidewalk outside, near the end of the block. She was still wearing the gloves she’d had on in the hospital room. Blood had splattered on her.

Spots stained her face.

Zeus reached to wipe them off, and she collapsed in his arms.

He found her apartment without difficulty. She didn’t have her keys, but the lock was easily forced with the help of Zeus’s identity card.

He carried her into her room and put her on the bed. Then he went to her kitchen and looked for the kettle to make some tea.

There was no running water. Zeus opened the refrigerator, and found there was no light — the electricity was off as well.

A jug of water sat on the counter. He poured some into the teapot, then went to the stove. There was still gas, and there matches at the side. The burner lit with a loud pul-ufff.

The sound was odd — Zeus’s ears were still shocked from the sound of the gun.

God, why had they had killed the man? Because he was Chinese?

I should have stopped him. But how? It was over before I realized what was happening. I never expected it.

The kettle began to shake. Zeus started looking for tea.

He found a canister on the counter filled with loose tea leaves. He looked through the drawer for something to hold them in, but all he could find was a strainer in the sink washboard. Examining it, he vaguely remembered what Anna had done the other night — the loose tea went directly into the kettle, and was strained when the liquid was poured into the cups.

How much should he use?

Zeus poured water into two cups, then dumped what was left into the sink. Belatedly, he realized he should have poured it into another pot, saving the water — who knew if it would come back on? But it was too late for that now.

He poured the hot water back into the kettle, measured out two spoonfuls of tea, and dumped it in. He stirred it around, and watched it steep.

The result looked too weak. He added a third spoonful.

Zeus maneuvered the pot and strainer carefully, filling the cups.

Anna met him at the door to the bedroom. She wasn’t wearing any clothes.

“I — ” The words died on his tongue. She took his arm and tugged him toward the bed, wordlessly asking him to join her there.

Zeus put the cups down on the floor, and did as she asked.

27

The phone seemed to weigh twenty pounds. General Perry pressed it harder against his ear as he spoke.

“Mr. President, if we’re not all the way in, we should be all the way out. As I’ve said.”

“You’re saying, give up,” responded Greene.

“I’m saying, we have to play our cards wisely. It’s a long game.”

“You sound like a defeatist, Harland.”

Perry was surprised by Greene’s tone. He’d disagreed with him countless times before; almost always he had been logical, willing to at least listen to the argument. Now it was clear his mind had already been made up.

“Doing something is better than doing nothing,” continued Greene. “You have to agree.”

“Not necessarily. And not in this case, if we take the long view.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Harland. I think we can give them enough of a bloody nose here that they’ll be deterred. It’s in our best interests to drag it out. I’ll bring Congress around eventually. You needed more weapons; here they are. You don’t think Russian equipment is good enough?”

“George, history suggests — ”

“History is on my side, Harland. Look at the Russians in Afghanistan. What happened there? Carter and Reagan helped the rebels. They drew it out. It helped collapse the Soviet Union.”

“I don’t know that that conflict is a good example,” said Perry.

Greene didn’t respond for a moment. Perry saw him shaking his head, squeezing his lips together. His mind was definitely made up; he was dealing with a recalcitrant subordinate.

“I always follow orders, Mr. President,” said Perry. “My orders here, your orders, were to give you my opinion without prejudice. And that’s what I’ve done.”

“Yes.” Greene was silent again for a few seconds — a very long few seconds. “I’ll consider your advice,” he told Perry. “In the meantime, tell the Vietnamese their weapons are on the way. Someone will forward the details.”

28

Greene held the phone for several long moments after General Perry had hung up. He couldn’t remember a time when he had disagreed with Harland on anything more substantial than the probable outcome of a baseball game.

Perry was telling him to stop helping Vietnam — now, rather than later.

Was that really the wise thing to do? If they didn’t get some weapons, they had no chance of surviving. There were downsides, certainly. And real intervention — real assistance — was the right approach. But when you were President, you had to compromise. A lot.

He put the handset back, then immediately picked it up.

“Get me Peter Frost, please.”

Frost came on the line moments later. He was still at home.

“Peter, I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No, sir, Mr. President. Just about to head in.”

“The project we spoke of regarding the Russian arms — let’s move ahead.”

“Uh, yes, sir. Of course.”

“Problem?” asked Greene, noting the slight hesitation.

“I did take the precaution of having the legal review so we could expedite things.”

“And?”

“Divided opinion.”

“That’s fine.”

Legal reviews had been de rigueur at the CIA for some time. There were more lawyers involved in some operations than officers.

“I should tell you, even Bindi’s opinion was borderline,” added Frost. “And that was our lone positive.”

Bindi was a CIA attorney known for taking very pro-administrative stances. Frost was telling Greene that the weapons procurement and transfer would be on extremely shaky ground legally.

“The nonaggression law of 2011 specifically outlawed third-party sales to allies,” Frost explained. “The three negatives pointed that out.”

“Vietnam is not an ally,” said Greene, switching into his own lawyer mode. “Congress’s refusal to authorize the bill to enter into a treaty with Vietnam proves they’re not an ally. So the law doesn’t apply to them.”

“That was Bindi’s position.”

“Slam dunk. I like that man.” Greene chuckled. “It’s fine, Peter. Don’t worry about it. I take full responsibility.”

“Mr. President…”

Greene waited for Frost to complete his thought. Instead, Frost took a deep breath.

“We’ll make it happen, Mr. President.”

“Very good, Peter. I’m counting on you.”

29

Zeus woke with a start.

He was in Anna’s apartment, in her room, in her bed. It was nighttime. She wasn’t there.

He got up slowly, body stiff from his ankles to his neck. He turned his head against a knot in his neck, teasing against the pain.

His first step was a stumble, feet moving awkwardly. Zeus pushed his arms back, gathering himself. He was in a fog, his mind in cotton, distant from his body.

Where was Anna?

Zeus stooped down and picked up his clothes from the floor. He dressed awkwardly, off-balance. With each piece of clothing, he regained more of his equilibrium, became more of himself. By the time he buttoned his shirt, all of his senses had returned. He was a soldier again, at least most of him was… Some part remained with her, with Anna, resting in a dream.

Zeus walked into the kitchen. A single candle on the stove provided light. She wasn’t there.

“Damn,” he said to himself. He rubbed his eyes, then the top of his head.

What should he do? He had to get back —

Just then, there was a sound at the door: a key placed into the lock. The door opened; Anna came in with a bag of food. She pushed the door closed behind her, slipping in quietly without looking, so that when she finally turned back and found him staring at her across the kitchen she was startled.

“I got some things,” she said, her voice a soft whisper.

“Good,” said Zeus.

He took a half step to hug her, but she was in motion, moving around the kitchen. Zeus retreated to a nearby chair, pulling it out to sit on and watching as she lit the burner.

Anna put the tea kettle on the burner, then lit another candle, putting it on the table. Zeus caught her hand as she placed it down. She turned and gave him a look of such sadness that he felt as if his heart had been stabbed.

“Are you all right?” he asked.

She managed a smile, then slipped her hand away. She got out two cups, and retrieved a small bottle from her bag.

“I found you coffee,” she told him, holding up a jar of instant. “Good?”

“Thanks.”

She put the groceries away.

“What time is it?” Zeus asked, though he had a watch.

“Eight.”

“God, I slept all that time.”

“You are very tired.”

Anna poured the water, then sat. She blew gently on her tea.

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No,” said Zeus. “Are you?¹”

She shook her head.

“My legs feel restless,” Zeus told her. The aroma of the coffee reminded him of soggy cardboard. He hated instant, but he treated the liquid as if it were the most precious in the world, nursing the cup in both hands, the steam rising against his face. “Do you think we could go for a walk?”

She answered with a question. “When do you have to be back?”

“Eventually.” He took a tentative sip. The liquid was still very hot. “What happened in there?” he asked. “At the hospital. Who was the man who was shot?”

She looked straight down at her tea. Her features seemed to harden, the soft frown she’d worn turning into a grimace.

“Can you tell me?” Zeus asked gently

“He was a Chinese pilot. A bandit. The director’s family had been killed by a bomb two days before.”

“Who was the officer who shot him?”

She shook her head.

“I’m sorry,” said Zeus. “Bad things happen in wars.”

“My grandfather was killed by bombs in the American war. And two of his brothers.”

She stared at him for a moment, then sipped her tea in silence.

“Let’s try that walk,” he told her finally. “Come on.”

There had been no attacks on Hanoi that day, no bombings. But the quiet only increased the tension. Smoke curled in the far distance, the remnants of fires that the emergency crews had not yet succeeded in putting out. Zeus felt torn — his place was at the battlefield, but he wanted to be with Anna as well.

“I saw the bombs fall the first night,” she told him. “I was standing at my window. There was a floodlight in the sky. Sticks fell through it. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes.”

Distance grew between them as they walked shoulder to shoulder, her arm occasionally jostling against his. The closeness that he’d felt in bed, making love, sleeping next to her, dissipated. His mind pulled toward duty. It was like gravity.

She stiffened when he took her hand.

“I want to see you again,” he said.

“In Vietnam, it is not usual to hold hands in public,” she said in a voice so faint that he barely heard.

“It’s dark. The streets are deserted.” He squeezed her fingers, looking down into her face. “Okay? You’ll see me again?”

“Yes.”

He leaned down and kissed her softly, gently, on the lips. She hesitated but then surrendered, her lips meeting his. It was a tantalizing shadow of what he had felt earlier, being pulled into bed.

But just a shadow.

When they turned the block on the way back to Anna’s house, Zeus saw a Honda Accord sitting in front of her building. He kept walking, hoping it wasn’t waiting for him.

But of course it was.

“Where the hell have you been?” demanded Christian, opening the door and getting out as he approached.

“Taking a walk,” said Zeus.

“All night?”

“Major Christian, this is Anna Anway,” said Zeus. Anna stiffened. She held her arms close to her body, as if she were trying to present as tiny a front to the world as possible.

“Hi.” Christian nodded, then frowned as he turned back to Zeus. “We gotta go. Perry’s going to have a cow.”

“He told me to get some rest.”

“Yeah, well, he thought you disappeared. You weren’t answering your phone.”

Zeus had left it upstairs. Christian had used the GPS tracking function to find him.

“I knocked on every door,” Christian told him. “Nobody answered.”

Upstairs, after he retrieved his phone, Zeus told Anna gently, “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” She gazed into his face, then took both of his hands and squeezed.

Their bodies were about a foot apart, an immense distance.

“Will you be at work tomorrow?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“I’ll get there. Somehow.”

She nodded, then closed her eyes as he kissed her.

“She’s a dish,” said Christian as they drove away. He was sitting in the front seat, next to a driver hired by the embassy. Zeus sat in the back. “What a babe.”

Ordinarily, Zeus would have been angered by the comments, but he felt immune to them now. Immune to Christian.

“You know Perry was trying to get A-10 Warthogs here?” asked Christian.

“Huh?”

“There was a wing in Korea, already on the way. Some sort of political deal crushed it. Now we’re on our own.” Christian’s voice had a note of disgust in it as he continued. “I talked to these commanders yesterday. Pep talks? What a waste of time.”

“What’s the military situation?” asked Zeus.

“Chinese consolidated around Tien Yen during the day. Some of the Vietnamese armor’s engaging them outside the city. Thinking is they move farther south tonight. Probably already started by now.”

“Any action near Lang Son?”

“Lang Son?” asked Christian.

“The place on the border I showed you.”

“Nothing going on there that I heard,” said Christian.

The driver took them to Trung’s bunker. The general was in a conference with his commanders, but he smiled when Zeus came in. Perry was sitting in the corner, grave-faced.

“Our American friends have arrived,” said Trung. “Just in time to hear of the bad weather.”

The others smiled, as if this was some sort of inside joke. And perhaps it was; Zeus still felt a little off balance.

“A typhoon is approaching,” explained Major Chaū, the senior translator who had led Christian around on his tour of the Vietnamese troops. “The estimate is that it will strike the coast in less than twelve hours. The path is unpredictable, but it is highly likely to make landfall.”

Zeus looked over at Perry. “I didn’t think this was typhoon season.”

Perry nodded as the translator explained that while typhoons were rare in February, they were not entirely unknown, averaging one every other third year prior to 2005. Over the past few years, the frequency had increased, possibly, though not definitively, as a result of global climate change.

This was a reasonably strong storm, with winds up to 125 knots projected. Rain was falling at over two inches per hour near the center. Total rainfall in the path of the storm would depend on its route, but could be anywhere from a “scant” ten inches to fifty and beyond.

Zeus realized the implications immediately.

“We can use it to stop the Chinese advance in the east,” he said. “As long as we can keep them near the coast. Once they get west, they’ll be free.”

Trung nodded. The situation was somewhat more complicated than that, not least of all because the typhoon would affect the Vietnamese as well as the Chinese. Still, it was an extremely fortunate development, one that could be capitalized on. The generals had been examining topographical maps in the area of the Chinese advance. The area in the vicinity of Dam Tron would be flooded early during the storm.

The only problem was that the lead elements of the Chinese advance were only a few miles north of it.

“It’s better if it floods behind them,” said Zeus. “We let the lead elements get beyond it, then cut them off.”

The battle materialized in his mind as he looked at the map. He pictured the area he had seen the other day from the plane — long fields of rice, which would be easily washed over.

“We keep them close to the coast,” said Zeus. “We mine the roads to the west, and ambush the forces that reinforce the spearhead. At some point with the rains, they start to bog down. We attack them during the storm.”

“The major has never experienced a typhoon,” said one of Trung’s generals dryly, using English.

Besides the ferocity of the weather, the strategy to slow the Chinese advance along the coast faced numerous obstacles, not least of which was the disorganization of the Vietnamese forces. The armored brigade that had approached from Route 4B was now engaged outside Tien Yen. Entered into combat piecemeal as Zeus had feared, the T-55 and T-54 tanks had been outgunned by a handful of Chinese main battle tanks and infantry manning the outer defenses. To the east, the battered remnants of General Tri’s infantry division had failed to reorganize themselves. Some were fighting on the city’s outskirts. A few had gone south along Highway 18. Still others were in Ha Duong and the other small port villages nearby.

General Tri had offered his resignation, but Trung had refused it. There was no sense in changing commanders in midbattle, especially given that he had no suitable replacement.

The Vietnamese asked if Zeus could help formulate the defense plan. Perry, who said little during the session, agreed.

When the meeting ended, Trung asked if Zeus could come with him to his office for a moment.

“I apologize again for the other day,” Trung told Zeus. “You will not be treated as you were. Your advice will be followed.”

“Okay.”

“You look more rested,” added Trung, his tone lighter. It was almost fatherly.

“I got a little sleep.”

“Sleep is an important ally.”

“I’ll help with the plans, General,” said Zeus. “But I have to say that the situation is not a very positive one. Your forces are very much outnumbered.”

“We have always done much with little,” said Trung. “It is our way.”

30

The hot water came full force out of the showerhead, a fire hose compared to what Mara had been used to in Asia. She turned her back to the flow, letting it pound into her skin, soaking her muscles in warmth. She bent slightly, letting the water massage her lower back and then her thighs and calves. It splashed against her side and then her breasts; she arched backward and let it hit her stomach, the front of her legs.

God, it felt good. But she had to get to work. She was already late.

The only shampoo in the apartment was a supermarket special, a rip-off of a boutique brand that Nara had never heard of. It glopped into her hand like granulated maple syrup. Glancing at it dubiously, she ran it through her hair cautiously, not entirely trusting that it wouldn’t leave her bald.

Her hair felt short — short and thin. Long hair was a pain in the field, but if she was going to be in the States for a while, then she was going to let it grow past the shoulder length she had it at now.

In the States for a while. Send that idea away, she told herself. She was getting the hell out of here as soon as possible.

Dressed, she checked her phone.

Still no call from Josh.

Downstairs, she hunted through the kitchen cabinets for coffee. She found two choices: Maxwell House and New England. Neither particularly appealed to her, but she needed caffeine.

She had to use a paper towel for a filter. Mara flipped the TV on while she waited for the coffee to brew. The cable news anchors were talking about the latest charges from China that the American CIA had helped Vietnam stage the photos and incident. Josh MacArthur, said a reporter on a remote in front of the capitol, had gone into hiding.

Draw your own conclusions.

Mara flipped the television off.

Grease was waiting for Mara when she came in. He took her downstairs and explained that the Vietnamese needed Russian weapons, that the conduit was to be the same as she had used in Malaysia, and things had to move as quickly as possible.

“And it’s been authorized on the highest level,” Grease added.

“Peter signed off?” said Mara, meaning Peter Lucas.

“Much higher than that,” said Grease. “Make it as long an arm’s length as you can.”

The key to the arrangement was a man named Sergei, whom Mara knew and loathed from her days in Malaysia. Sergei traveled extensively, and Mara never really knew where he might be. She had only met him twice, both times in Paris. The last had been in an after-hours sex club, an experience imprinted on neurons she’d never use again.

She left Langley and bought a cell phone specifically for the purpose of contacting him, using an agency-supplied ID and credit card. She found a coffee shop and placed the call. Not surprisingly, she remembered the number by heart.

An answering machine picked up on the second ring.

“Leave a message,” said a mechanical voice.

“This is Turpentine.” Mara winced at the ridiculous code name he’d picked for her when they’d started. “There are some new arrangements. I need to work quickly. Call this number.”

She hung up. Sergei’s system would have this number, so there was no need to leave it.

He called back ten minutes later, before she’d even finished her coffee.

“This is Mara.”

“You have a Washington number. Is that to be trusted?”

“I doubt it’s to be trusted,” Mara said. “But if you mean, am I in D.C., the answer is yes.”

“Then for lunch, Union Station. There is a bar there. I like the fries.” Sergei hung up before she could ask what time to be there. With nothing better to do, she headed into the city.

Mara killed time in the bookstore and some of the other tiny shops before going over to the restaurant, which opened at eleven. She nursed a light beer for forty-five minutes before ordering a second. She was halfway through that one when Sergei showed up.

“The beautiful but volatile Miss Turpentine,” said Sergei, far too loudly as he pulled a chair away from the table to sit down.

Intentionally or not, Sergei projected the image of a Russian fat cat, complete with the macho assumption that every woman he met was cast instantly under his spell. This might actually have been true when he was younger — there was a certain twinkle in his eyes, and his face was not unpleasant to look at. But he was past fifty now, and not aging particularly well, with a full paunch and a rather odd balding pattern on the top of his head. The leather jacket he wore looked almost comical. But at least he didn’t smell of cologne.

“So, it is a pleasure to be working with you again, Turpentine,” he said brightly as the waiter approached. “Such a pleasure.”

The restaurant was located in the center of the station, which didn’t bother Mara as much as Sergei’s booming voice. She’d taken a table off to the side, with no one else around. Still, a modicum of discretion was in order.

But discretion wasn’t Sergei’s style.

“I will have a vodka gimlet,” he told the waiter. “You will use Standard.”

The waiter nodded.

Sergei looked at Mara. “You are wondering why Standard? It is the best.”

“I was wondering if your voice had a lower volume,” said Mara.

“But if I am too quiet, your microphones can’t hear me.”

“I’m not miked.”

Sergei smiled and gave a little knowing laugh. Mara caught a glimpse of a nondescript, middle-aged man taking a seat not too far away.

One of his bodyguards, she guessed.

“So. You have wishes, yes?” asked Sergei.

“Yes.”

Mara saw the waiter heading toward their table. They ordered — she asked for a Caesar salad with grilled tuna, Sergei a burger with cheese and bacon, along with a double order of fries.

“And, I will take beer,” said Sergei. “You have this Boston Ale.”

“Pint or glass?” asked the waiter.

“The pint.”

“It’s not ‘this,’ “ said Mara when the waiter left.

“This?”

“You said, ‘this Boston Ale.’ You don’t know the adjective… just say, ‘Boston Ale.’ “

Sergei smiled. “Ah, Turpentine. It is always an education to be working with you. Now you will correct my grammar. When will you allow me to teach you Russian?”

“We need antitank weapons,” she said softly. “Big enough to take out main battle tanks.”

“Hmmmm. Very expensive.”

“I understand. We need Kornets.”

“I could get, perhaps, the Konkurs,” he said, referring to a Russian wire-guided missile that could penetrate about 800 mm of armor — not enough to deal with the Chinese tanks the Vietnamese would be facing.

“Kornet or nothing.”

“Miss Turpentine, so crass today. Vietnam was not agreed with you.”

The waiter appeared with their orders. Mara asked for another beer.

“You know, it is not always easy to find what you wish,” said Sergei offhandedly. “Have you considered the Sheksna? Very nice.”

Mara made a face.

“You would refer to it as AT-12. This good weapon.”

“Sergei. Really. Just get what we need. Okay?”

“So we work on your request. What else?”

Mara worked down the list. Sergei was relatively agreeable, even when it came to spare parts for the Vietnamese MiGs.

The price, of course, was ridiculous. But Mara agreed, as long as delivery could be arranged within hours.

Sergei, much to her surprise, agreed.

“Some things already on way to Manila,” he told her. “From there, your problem.”

This had been approved at the highest levels, Mara realized. The Russians clearly wanted the Vietnamese to give the Chinese a bloody nose.

Good for business? She wondered what else was involved in the deal.

“We’ll confirm through the usual channels,” she said, getting up.

“What? You don’t stay for lunch?”

“I have to put things in motion,” she said. “Leave a good tip.”

31

They played cat and mouse with the Chinese cruiser for several more hours, the night growing darker and the weather growing stormier as they went. The merchant ships were almost in Vietnamese waters now — which was fine with Silas; he could board them more easily there.

What wasn’t fine was that they were still a good two hours away — that would put them in Hai Phong before he could get there.

Though given the intensity of the storm, maybe not.

The cruiser was faster than the McLane, but it was clear that her captain was not willing to actually risk a collision. The first encounter had been the closest; since then, the captain had taken a few feints, but hadn’t presented an outright threat.

He might have been more willing to risk his frigate escort, but the smaller ship couldn’t keep up her speed. She fell farther and farther behind in the heavy seas.

“She’s turning off!” yelled one of the extra lookouts Silas had posted. “Turning to port.”

The synthetic radar plot confirmed it. The Chinese captain was giving up, battening down to cope with the storm. Now was their chance.

A strong wind echoed through the ship. The gust pushed the McLane down against the water. A white cloud of ocean rose, enveloping her from bow to amidships.

The typhoon was faster than them all.

“Captain, should we come about and face into the wind?” asked helm.

“Belay that,” said Silas, as if it had been an order rather than a question. “Steady on course.”

The ship rose from the fantail and crashed forward. The wind howled over the deck, the hush of a ghost clawing at the bridge’s glass.

“Steady!” repeated Silas. “We’ve got to intercept them.”

A hard roll sent him to the deck.

“Steady!” he repeated, climbing back to his feet. “Keep me steady!”

32

Peter Lucas was surprised that Mara had made the arrangements so quickly, even though he tried not to show it. He pressed his lips together and nodded solemnly as she filled him in on the details.

“How do I get to Manila?” she asked.

“Manila?”

“The first shipment should be there in a few hours. I should be there already.”

“You’re not going.”

“What?”

“We’ll find someone else to take care of this.”

“Why?”

“For one thing, you’re now world famous. Your videos on YouTube are up to a million hits apiece. Give it a rest, Mara,” he added with a bit of an edge. “You’re going to have to accept that you’re in a new phase of your career.”

Mara had half-convinced herself that Peter would let her go. In fact, more than half-convinced: she felt honestly disappointed, and angry.

“I don’t see, after everything that’s happened, why I can’t get a break,” she told him. “I think I’m owed a break.”

“You’re not thinking rationally. Come on.” He picked up his empty soda can, twirling it between his fingers. “I want you to look over the material that’s coming in from Vietnam. I want to figure out who the mole is.”

“What’s Grease doing?”

“Grease has different priorities,” Lucas answered. “I want you to look at everything. I need a second set of eyes to go through it. You’re the best we’ve got. Really.”

Mara didn’t want to concede.

“Who’s going to handle this?” she asked.

“Don’t worry about it.”

“Well, I can give them a heads-up. If it’s somebody from Thailand — ”

“It won’t be from in-house,” he told her. “I have somebody in mind.”

“Do you want me to talk to him?”

“No. That’s all right.”

“You don’t trust me?”

“Jesus, come on. You’re taking this whole thing way too hard. Way, way too hard.” He put down the can and frowned at it, as if it had somehow crossed him. “We’ll figure something out together, all right? When this… passes, we’ll sit down and think about where you can go next. It’s not going to hurt you, believe me.”

“Passes — like a kidney stone.”

A faint smile came to Lucas’s lips.

“It’ll pass,” he told her. “Go upstairs and get up to date. I’ll arrange things for you in the vault. All right? Somebody took your money in Hanoi, right? That should be your focus.”

“You think I can figure that out from here?” she asked sourly.

“I think you can do anything.”

33

The helicopter that took Zeus and Christian east to General Tri’s headquarters was even older than the Hind they had flown in the other day. It was an Mi-8 Hip that had belonged to Poland and was sold secondhand. Though it had been transferred at least a decade before, the outlines of the Polish insignia still peeked through the hull paint.

The Russian-made aircraft wheezed and whined as it made its way eastward, flying over Route 18 — avoiding the mountains as the Alba-tros had, though in the case of the helicopter it could be argued that the altitude would have presented a hazard.

A more immediate problem was the fact that the pilot had only the most primitive navigation instruments at his command. He lacked night-vision gear, and “GPS” was just a set of letters in an unfamiliar language. He put his forward light on and flew low to the highway, following the roads to General Tri’s command post.

The headquarters was now in a field outside Vu Oai, an agricultural settlement along Route 18. General Tri was some ten miles west of the intersection of Route 18 and 329, a critical intersection the Chinese would undoubtedly attempt to seize.

The search beam caught a large farm building as they turned toward the CP. The helicopter pilot pulled up suddenly, barely missing a power line, then settled into a field about twenty-five yards from the road. A pair of old American tanks, M48s Zeus thought, were set up on a slight rise, guns pointed east. The rest of the headquarters sat behind them.

General Tri was working in the barn. The space dwarfed his table, which had seemed so large when Zeus saw it outside earlier. The general and three staff officers were poring over a set of maps when Zeus and Christian entered.

Tri rose and stood stiffly at attention as Major Chaū announced them. The general turned his gaze silently from Major Chaū to Zeus, fixing him with the rigid stare Zeus might have expected from a newly minted private.

The gaze made Zeus uncomfortable. The only thing he could think to do was salute, but this was a mistake — Tri held his hand at his forehead, waiting for Zeus to lower his — another sign of submission.

“General.” Zeus leaned toward Tri, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “I’m not here to give orders. I’m just an adviser. I want to help you, not command you.”

Tri stared at him, stone-faced. The three Vietnamese staff officers — two colonels and a major — remained frozen at attention next to him.

“Maybe we should discuss the situation,” said Zeus. Major Chaū, rather than translating, pulled out a chair. Tri only sat down when Zeus did.

The general’s G-2 began pointing out the disposition of the forces, speaking in haltering English though occasionally glancing at Chaū when he hit a hard word. He knew English reasonably well, and Zeus had no trouble with his accent.

The situation was a little worse than Zeus thought. The spearhead of the Chinese force was about twelve miles north of the highway intersection. Harassed by stragglers from the overrun division, the PLA forces were dropping off infantry units to control their flanks. This was a positive, if only a small one — the more stretched out the Chinese became, the better the odds of slicing a gap through their line.

Christian had brought the latest Global Hawk imagery with him. The staff officers grabbed at them like kids reaching for goody bags at a birthday party. They laid them on the table, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese.

“General, could you and I speak privately for a second?” said Zeus.

Tri rose and walked with him toward the back of the barn. Chaū stayed with the others.

“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” said Zeus. “I know this is a difficult situation for you.”

Tri didn’t answer.

“I’d suggest that we let the Chinese get past the intersection. Entice them… make it look as if we have a major force that they can engage. The faster they go, the better off we are.”

Tri took a long, slow breath.

“My commander is trying to find more antitank weapons,” said Zeus. Tri did speak English — he had at their first meeting — but did he understand it well enough to know what Zeus was saying? “Once the bulk of the storm hits, the Chinese tanks will have to stop. The farther they are from the rest of their force, the better. Once they’re on the defensive, we can pick them off.”

“You are a young man,” said Tri finally.

“Yes, sir, I am.”

“Your father fought in our war?”

“No, sir.”

“You have studied Vietnam?”

“Mostly the Chinese.”

“You know it is a diff-i-cult — ” Tri stumbled over the word, finding it hard to pronounce. “A diff-i-cult position. They outnumber us greatly.”

“Yes.”

“You will desert us when the battle goes poorly.”

Was it a statement or a question? Zeus wasn’t sure.

“I’m not going to leave you,” said Zeus. “I’ve already fought against their invasion force. And the tanks. I’m not a coward.”

Tri nodded.

They went back to the table and mapped out a plan. Zeus wanted the armor brigade to disengage in the north and come south, where it might be more useful. But the only good route was on the roads already held by the Chinese.

“Use bad roads,” said Christian when Chaū told him the problem. “They’re useless up there. They’re getting cut to pieces. At least save them so we can use them against their infantry, for Christ’s sake.”

They found a succession of mining roads that might be used, but the travel would take considerable time — the tanks wouldn’t be available until after the storm hit. But this was better than having them waste themselves against the Chinese at Tien Yen.

One of the Vietnamese officers objected. He worried that the people in the city, seeing the fighting stop, would think that they had been abandoned.

“We can’t worry about what people think,” said Christian. “We need to win the fight.”

“Don’t let them think it’s over,” said Zeus. “Leave a small force to engage the Chinese. That’s better in any event. The Chinese will stay there.”

Zeus’s ideas were not particularly foreign to the Vietnamese, who realized the Chinese became more vulnerable the faster their tanks moved. The roads and surrounding areas were already mined. The home guard was dug in. The situation was far too dire to be optimistic — that would have been foolhardy. But as a long shot, it was at least doable.

The storm would arrive, and the Chinese advance would slow by necessity. After that, who knew?

At the end of the session, Zeus volunteered to go with one of colonels visiting a battalion directly in the Chinese path, a little north of the intersection.

“I’ll go, too,” said Christian.

“One of us probably ought to stay here,” Zeus told him.

“Hell no, I’m not missing the fun,” said Christian.

Chaū reluctantly agreed to go with them.

They hopped into the bed of a Toyota pickup that had been requisitioned from a civilian several days before. Zeus had to insist that he didn’t want to sit in the front seat, claiming to the translator that he had a problem with his legs and needed to be able to stretch out.

Glad to have ducked the privilege of squeezing four across in the front of the truck, Zeus checked in with Perry.

“Major?”

“General, I’m sorry to bother you. I didn’t know if you were still sleeping or — ”

“No, no, just having something to eat.” Light music was playing in the background; Perry had gone to one of the Hanoi hotels. “Give me a minute to get somewhere secure. I’ll call you back.”

Zeus turned the phone off, holding it in his lap. Christian was curled against the side of the pickup, trying to catch a quick nap despite being constantly jostled. Chaū stared at the road behind them, lost in his thoughts.

Zeus’s sat phone buzzed a few minutes later.

“What’s the situation?” said Perry as soon as the connection went through.

“Not the best, but not lost, either.” Zeus told him about the plans. “How about the Stabbers?” he asked Perry after his brief. “They have some T-55s and T-54s. We could possibly get a volley or two, take out the first Chinese tanks.”

“We’re arranging weapons,” said Perry. “I wouldn’t count on much within the next twenty-four hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

Perry told him that artillery was being brought in from the south. But even that seemed tenuous.

“Latest figures are thirty-eight tanks in the lead group coming down the highway,” said Perry. “Another eighteen about five miles behind. The Chinese are running them without infantry.”

“Interesting,” said Zeus.

“They may know about the storm and are trying to get to Hai Phong ahead of it. Or else their infantry is just slow. Take your pick.”

Tanks without troops around them were vulnerable. Though it was not necessarily easy to convince a soldier facing them of that.

“Zeus, before you sign off…”

“Yes, General?”

“Things get sticky up there, you and Christian are to bail out. You understand me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No ‘yes, sir’ bullshit, Murphy. You understand what I’m telling you? You’ve taken far too many risks — far, far too many. Do you understand? I want you back here in one piece.”

Zeus suddenly felt his throat tighten. He remembered his promise to Tri.

“Yes, sir,” he told the general.

“You bug out before the Chinese tanks get there. That, Mr. Murphy, is an order. And I’ll court-martial your ass if it’s not followed. Assuming I can find an ounce of it left to court-martial.”

“Understood.”

Zeus clicked off the phone.

The Vietnamese battalion was scattered along a bend in the highway where the road dipped through a run of reclaimed marshes. It was an excellent spot for an ambush.

The problem was, their biggest caliber weapons were rocket-propelled grenades and man-portable mortars — nothing big enough to take out a main battle tank.

Zeus and Christian walked along the highway with the commander of the company charged with facing the Chinese at the road itself. This was the hardest task, and the best troops had been assigned to it.

A drizzle started as they set out. A light, on-and-off spritz, it seemed almost pleasant. The wind, not yet that strong, felt warm and tropical.

The company’s entire store of antitank mines — a dozen — had been placed about a half mile from a small bridge crossing. Vietnamese sappers were installing demolitions on the bridge when they arrived.

“Better to put the mines in the ravine,” suggested Zeus. “Blow the bridge when the lead tank gets to it. Then the tanks are likely to hit the mines once they try to cross.”

The commander agreed. Christian went to inspect the engineers’ work, then came back with an idea.

“They’ve got some explosive left over,” he said. “We can make an IED.”

They drove the truck across to the other side of the bridge and arranged it to look as if it had been abandoned. Christian loaded the explosives in the cab. Meanwhile, Zeus and the company commander moved the infantry back, trying to get them hidden so they could fire at the tanks from behind once they were stopped. If there had been support vehicles with the tanks, the ambush would have made more sense, providing them with easier targets. Zeus thought the grenades would simply bounce off the tank’s thick skin.

There was a second bridge about a half mile farther west. When Zeus went to inspect it, he found a trio of young soldiers crouched at the edge of the ravine. Each had two grenades in his hand. When the tanks stopped, they would run behind them, climb up, and drop the grenades in the open hatches.

The plan bordered on suicidal. Two more teams were similarly armed and prepared on the other side of the road.

“This doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of working,” whispered Christian as they walked back to the small rise where the platoon commander had stationed himself. “Maybe they knock out six tanks.”

“Better than nothing,” said Zeus, though in fact he wasn’t sure it was.

There’s wasn’t time to come up with a better plan — the sound of approaching tank engines rose above the growing howl of the wind.

34

The sea crashed heavily over the bow, spraying clear to the bridge. This was nothing, just the spray ahead of the storm. The typhoon itself was still several miles behind the McLane.

It was coming. The darkness seemed to focus its intensity. The deck hurled upward and down, again and again, the hard hand of Poseidon slamming against the waves.

“Captain, we’re still five miles from the nearest merchant ship,” said Lt. Commander Li. “But the storm — we can’t keep moving this way much longer.”

“We have to get between them and the port,” said Silas.

“Captain, even the Chinese warships have moved off. We have to head into the storm.”

“We can take hundred-knot winds,” said Silas. He meant they could take a wind that strong at the side without rolling over.

“These winds are one-twenty, one-thirty!” The howling outside the bridge was so loud Li had to shout to make herself heard.

“We’re going to do it,” said Silas calmly. As if to mock him, a heavy gust bit at the ship, pushing her over a good ten degrees. “Helm! More power.”

“She’s to the limit now, Captain.”

“Pour it on!” insisted Silas. He looked at Li. He knew what she was thinking. “I know the ship, Dorothy. We’re not capsizing. We’re going to accomplish our mission.”

She grit her teeth, then nodded.

“Steady!” yelled Silas as the vessel lurched again. “Steady!”

35

Zeus pushed himself into the wet grass, waiting for the first tank to come around the bend. The rain had picked up to the point where it interfered with his night glasses.

Good. The tanks’ infrared sights would be useless as well.

He thought of Anna, remembered her body pressing against his.

The first Chinese tank came around the turn, gun pointed toward the hill where Zeus was lying. In the dark, it looked exactly like an M1A1, the low silhouette grinding through the night.

“Come on, baby,” muttered Zeus.

A second tank came around the bend, about ten yards behind the first. A third followed almost on its bumper, with a fourth right behind that.

Zeus turned toward the bridge. Would the engineers be patient enough to let the first tank pass? If they were, they could get three in one shot.

Perry’s warning and orders came back to him. But there wasn’t time to bug out. The Chinese had come down too quickly. It wasn’t his fault.

The first tank rumbled onto the bridge. It paused for a moment, then burst across toward the pickup truck on the far side. The second tank moved onto the bridge, then the third and fourth.

Blow it now, thought Zeus. But nothing happened.

36

The wind and water worked together, sliding a long hand beneath the stern of the McLane and then dashing her into the ocean like a fly caught in a stabber. The vessel rolled forty-five degrees, staying there for a long moment.

Silas realized he had erred, gravely. He had thought he could best not simply the Chinese but nature. It was a foolish, fatal bit of egotism, the hubris of an idiot — and too late to be retrieved.

The vessel smacked back upright. He had two men on the helm now, and another to help if either needed relief, but they were nothing against the storm. The McLane, for all her dash and technology, was not the equal of God. Nor was she intended to be.

A new wave sent him to the deck. The pit of his stomach opened. He felt nauseous — something he hadn’t felt even as a freshly minted ensign. He began to get sick; in an instant, vomit spewed from his mouth, over his shirt.

It was the ultimate humiliation for a captain. He cowered on the deck, humbled.

Now, he told himself, now that you are stripped of all your dignity, now that you stand before your crew exposed as a fool — now you must decide what you will do.

Will you stay at the deck like the broken dog you are? Or will you rise and scream against the wind, take one last stand, even if futile?

Every muscle, every bone in his body screamed for the deck, for oblivion. Only the voice in his head remained defiant.

“Into the wind, mister!” he said, voice so faint the wind kept even himself from hearing. “The wind!”

The lights blinked, went out, came back. Silas grabbed onto a piece of the forward panel and pulled himself up. There was no one at the wheel — his men had tumbled to the deck, one unconscious, the other moaning with a hand clapped to his bloody scalp.

Silas leapt up and took the wheel.

“We’re into the teeth of it!” he yelled, talking not to his crew, not even to himself, but to his ship. “Steady against the waves! Steady!”

The wind whipped hard against the McLane’s side, and she rolled hard with a strong swell.

“Into the storm. The teeth of the storm!” said Silas, checking his bearings as best he could as the ship lifted and turned at the same time.

He had her. He had her.

“I feel the wind at my face,” he said, reciting an old sailor’s poem as the rain pelted the bridge windscreen. “Come around, come around, there’s fight in us yet!”

37

Zeus held his breath. The first tank was now beyond the pickup truck that had been fashioned into an IED. The second tank was just reaching the end of the bridge. The third and fourth were about midspan, bumper to bumper.

The night cracked. Zeus thought it was thunder from the storm. Then there was a flash from the road — the truck being detonated.

Then a louder, deeper explosion, and a rumble that felt as if the ground were being pulled away. The bridge went down, taking two tanks with it.

Shrapnel and dirt flew in the air. Zeus pushed his head down. He smelled wet grass and metal.

Two more tanks came around the bend. There was a whistle in the air — mortar fire.

The shells popped around the two tanks, black hammers pounding through the dark curtain of rain. One hit against the hull, but did no damage. One of the tank commanders began firing his 12.7mm gun, though he couldn’t possibly have a target.

More mortar shells. More tanks. The ground rumbled with explosions.

Zeus raised his head. The platoon commander had been a short distance away on his right. As soon as the bridge exploded, he had jumped up with one of his men and run down to a position near the road, covering the ravine where the tanks had fallen in.

“Zeus, we gotta get across to the other side!” yelled Christian behind him.

Another tank came around the bend. The tank commander in the turret was firing his 12.7mm machine gun, spraying the road near the blown-out bridge. He was firing blindly, but the spray of bullets was deadly nonetheless.

A line of mortar shells walked up toward the tank. There was a flash and a puff of smoke; an acrid smell filled the air.

The tank stopped dead. One of the mortar shells had struck the top of the open turret, scoring a direct hit inside.

“The Vietnamese are damn good with those mortars!” yelled Christian. He tugged at Zeus’s arm. “Come on! Back!”

Zeus turned and ran back up the hill. Three tanks seemed to burst around the corner. The mortar shells rained down; the tanks continued forward. Two entered the ravine. There was another explosion — one had hit a mine.

Zeus slipped and fell. A tank round whipped through the air. It didn’t land anywhere close — the large shell cleared the hill and traveled several miles — but the sound was frightening, as if the air was splitting wide open. He was wet, drenched; the rain pounded him.

Zeus struggled to his feet. He started moving again, toward what he thought was the ravine, only to realize he was moving toward the road. He slid down on his butt, freezing in place as he tried to make sense of the scene before him.

He was supposed to cross the ravine and the creek at its bottom about seventy-five yards from the bridge, well away from the antitank mines. He began moving backward, then turned and finally found the edge of the drop. He ran alongside it for a few strides, then slipped and fell, tumbling down toward the water. Along the way he hit his head on a rock, smacking it hard enough to hurt, though not enough to do any real damage.

Thunder cracked overhead, and the sky flashed with lightning. In the flash he saw that he was still close to the bridge — not more than twenty yards away.

He stood, then saw the leading edge of a tank coming straight for him.

Zeus threw himself down as the ZTZ99 loomed overhead. The driver attempted to steer through the ridge at a right angle, but either the wet grass or his own lack of skill made that impossible.

There was a roar. Exhaust and mud packed into Zeus’s face and body.

He thought he would be run over, but in fact the tank missed him by six or seven yards. He lay there for a moment, stunned, unsure exactly what had happened. Then something took hold of him, something deep in his soul. He got to his feet and began running after the tank as it climbed the other side of the ravine. It was in its lowest gear, sure-footed against the mud and rocks. Zeus grabbed onto the light at the right rear, pulling himself onto the back of the tank.

There was a rail at the back of the turret. He took hold and hung on as the tank stood nearly straight up, rising up the side of the ravine. The angle was so severe he thought the tank would fall off backward, and he would be crushed beneath it, this time for real. But it pitched down sharply as it neared the top of the ridge, gravity helping it over the summit.

Zeus pulled himself forward to the hatchway. It was closed, the tank buttoned down.

“Open up, you bastard,” he screamed, pounding on the hatchway.

He’d lost his mind. It was worse than when he’d been at the border, when they’d attacked the depot. He was completely insane, rain pounding through him.

And yet he was confident he was going to take this tank. He was going to wait until the hatch opened, and pull out the man who popped up, kill him, and then take the tank. He pushed over to the side, grabbing the machine gun, steadying himself as the tank rumbled across a patch of rocks and uneven ground.

Something moved behind him.

Zeus turned, saw two men leaping upward. Thinking they were Chinese soldiers, he started to swing the gun around, then realized they were part of the antitank team — the volunteers with the grenades.

One of them gave him a raised fist, recognizing him.

“The hatch is locked!” yelled Zeus.

Neither man made any sign that they had heard him. Instead, one placed a charge on the hatchway. His companion pulled Zeus off to the side.

The charge exploded as they hit the ground. As Zeus rolled down, the Vietnamese soldiers sprang to their feet. Already the third man in the team, who’d been running alongside the tank as they set the charge, had scrambled to the top. He had a long pry bar, and in one smooth motion, pushed the damaged hatchway far enough aside to squeeze in a grenade.

He jumped, then all three men on the team ducked down, signaling at Zeus to do the same.

There was a barely audible pop. The tank stopped moving.

Zeus followed the Vietnamese soldiers as they ran back toward the second bridge. The mortars had stopped firing. The tanks were launching their own shells, though all seemed to be aimed too far away.

Christian met him a few yards from the bridge.

“What the hell happened to you?” he shouted into Zeus’s ear.

“I went crazy.”

“You look like it. Come on.”

The Vietnamese engineers were still configuring the explosives under the structure. Though six or seven tanks had been destroyed, the Chinese had found a route across the ravine. They mustered the tanks on the road near the burned out shell of the pickup and the Z99 it had damaged.

“They won’t go over the bridge,” predicted Christian. “They’ll be too careful now.”

“That’s fine with us,” said Zeus. “We want them to stop.”

The company commander was in a small building about a hundred yards from the bridge. Zeus and Christian ran across the open field toward it. With every step, Zeus was sure the tanks would spot them and begin firing.

When they made it to the building, they saw the CO standing in the front room behind the blown out window, gazing intently at the bridge with his binoculars.

“You can’t stay here!” yelled Zeus. “The Chinese will blow up any building they can see.”

The commander gave Zeus a puzzled look.

“You gotta get out,” said Zeus. He motioned with his hands and arms.

The commander stayed put.

“Where the hell is Chaū?” asked Zeus.

“Damned if I know,” said Christian. “I thought he was with you.”

“Out,” said Zeus. “We gotta get out.”

Two of the Chinese tanks had been sent down the road as scouts. They drove at about five miles an hour. Both commanders had their tops open and were scanning the ground ahead, firing their machine gun indiscriminately. They couldn’t have many targets — the rain was heavy and the Vietnamese ambushers were well hidden.

There were several more tanks behind them. A few had lights, but the others had either been damaged or turned off by the crews, who realized they were helping the Vietnamese attack.

The two lead tanks stopped.

“Out of here now!” shouted Zeus.

He grabbed the Vietnamese commander and dragged him shouting from the building. One of his men jumped on Zeus as he pulled him out of the door, and they collapsed in a tumble. Christian threw himself against the scrum, trying to push the men away from the building.

The first round from the tanks missed very high, whipping well overhead. But that was enough to convince the Vietnamese that Zeus’s idea was the right one. They stopped fighting and scrambled away from the building.

The next round from the tank shot clear through the front of the wooden structure. The shell, designed to pierce a tank, exploded halfway into the field.

The third obliterated its target. By that time, Zeus and the others had joined the two-man demolition team behind some rocks thirty yards from the far end of the bridge.

“Ten bucks says they stop right there,” said Christian, watching the Chinese tee off on the few splinters that were left of the building.

Zeus raised his head as high as he dared, looking at the area. The surrounding marsh was relatively deep and muddy; even without more rain the tanks might not be able to make it through.

Assuming the bridge was blown.

There was a loud clap overhead.

“Is that them or thunder?” asked Christian.

“I think it’s thunder,” said Zeus.

“Man, we are soaked.”

“We need all the rain we can get.”

“They’re moving!” said Christian.

The Vietnamese commander had apparently seen it as well. He huddled next to the engineers.

The tanks moved forward slowly. They must be blind, or nearly blind; in this downpour, their infrared sensors would be useless, and it was a good bet that their optical sights were fogged and cloudy as well.

But obviously they’d been given orders to advance. Did they realize that was a bridge they were coming close to? In the rain, the guardrails didn’t look like much.

First one, then the other went onto the bridge. When the first one was about halfway across, the commander raised his hand and gave the order to blow the bridge. The engineer pushed the detonator.

Nothing happened.

They tried again. Twice. Nothing. The first tank reached their side.

“Shit!” yelled Christian, rising.

“Where the hell are you going?” said Zeus.

“You’re not the only nut!”

Christian started running for the bridge. One of the engineers joined him.

Zeus stared for a moment, then got up and followed.