Shadows of War (7 page)

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Authors: Larry Bond

BOOK: Shadows of War
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Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
To Lieutenant Jing Yo, the Chinese army seemed
both fitful and petulant, often harsh, and even, at times, maddeningly paranoid. But it could be benevolent and even generous as well—was not the breakfast it was issuing to him this morning an emperor's feast? Hard-boiled eggs, a large piece of bread, fresh cheese, two apples—a poor man in the countryside could live a week on such a meal.
The cook had apologized that there was no rice. He had done the same the day before—and the day before that, and the week before that. The apology had become a pro forma ritual, repeated every morning.
Rice was an incredibly expensive commodity, far too precious to be given to common soldiers in the field—let alone soldiers who'd been assigned to a dangerous mission outside the country and might never return.
Jing Yo couldn't remember the last time he had had rice, except when visiting Beijing. China without rice—the very notion seemed impossible. And yet it was now a fact of life.
“Lieutenant, you are lingering when there is work to be done,” said Colonel Sun behind him.
Jing Yo rose silently, leaving his half-finished meal on his plate.
“The matter last night?” said the colonel.
“Completed.”
“Good. You believe there are others?”
“Certainly.”
A dozen different regular army companies, most without direct supervision, were operating in the area, securing it or preparing for the mission. The troops had been taught to hate all enemies, but especially the Vietnamese, considered a mongrel race.
Sun frowned. He did not harbor any particular compassion toward the Vietnamese; his concern was only for the operation.
“Further steps?” asked the colonel, in a tone that sounded like a warning.
Jing Yo considered how to answer. There really was no easy way to deal with the problem, short of recalling all of the troops, and that wasn't going to happen.
“I believe the general's order will be sufficient,” he said finally.
Sufficient to prevent further massacres? Or to cover up those that had already occurred but not been seen by Sun?
Most likely the latter rather than the former, but Sun did not ask for elaboration.
“Finish here. Then move on,” said the colonel. “I must return to the task force. You deal with division and the staff there as necessary. If there are further problems, report to me.”
Jing Yo bowed his head, and turned to go to work. As he walked down the path from the mess area, he fixed his gaze on the far hill. They held the hill, as well as the one beyond it to the east. There were a few scattered Hmong settlements in the valley, but otherwise no Vietnamese.
At least not alive.
The sun bathed the jungle in bright golden light. Jing Yo followed the path downward, leaning slightly to keep his center of gravity
positioned properly. Though not trying to be quiet, he walked so silently by habit that he surprised Sergeant Wu, who was leaning against a tree lighting a cigarette instead of supervising a nearby work detail. Wu, the commando platoon sergeant, wore the look of mild disdain typical of commando noncoms, but otherwise would not have fit the stereotype—he was on the short side, a little heavy. His chin was in need of a shave. Unlike most commandos, he had been born in Shanghai, the son of a relatively well-off father and mother whom he never spoke of or to.
Wu's service record, on the other hand, was the envy of the regiment; he had been in Malaysia, though not at the same time or place as Jing Yo.
“Sergeant,” said Jing Yo, nodding as he stopped.
“Have a good breakfast, Lieutenant?”
Jing Yo ignored the question, and its implied criticism of the privileges an officer was afforded. The enlisted men were issued only two meals a day—a small roll in the morning, and a bigger one at evening. Sometimes meat was added.
“So, Sergeant Fan is no longer with us?” asked Wu.
“The sergeant had difficulty following orders,” said Jing Yo.
Wu was not a friend of Sergeant Fan's—in fact, Jing Yo suspected he could not stand the other commando. Another man in his position might have said something flattering to Jing Yo, earning easy points at his enemy's expense. But Wu was not like that. If anything, Jing Yo suspected his opinion of Fan had changed because of his conflict with his commander.
“Have the things from the science camp been gathered?” Jing Yo asked.
“They've already started to bury them.”
“Bury them?”
“Captain Ching said Colonel Sun wanted his people to get rid of them. I sent Po and Ai Gua down to watch the donkeys and make sure they get it right.”
“Did
I
tell you to bury them?”
Wu pursed his lips. Shaking his head, Jing Yo started away, jogging a few steps before breaking into a run.
Privates Po and Ai Gua were about a hundred meters away, watching as a pair of regular army soldiers dug a trench on a flat rift in the hill. They had not gotten very far; the dirt was filled with roots and stones. The items from the camp they had overrun the night before, including
the clothes the dead men had been wearing, were piled on the other side of the dirt.
“Help me with this,” he told Po and Ai Gua. “Look through the clothes. See if there's information that will be of use.”
The two privates went to the clothes and began rifling through them. Jing Yo looked at the soldiers who were digging the ditch.
“You'd be better off putting the dirt on that side there,” he said, pointing. “It will be easier for you to push these things in. You won't have to climb over the rocks and soil.”
The men looked at him as if he had just described the formula for solving binomial equations. They nodded, then went back to work.
Jing Yo walked to the pile of equipment and began looking through it. Colonel Sun had considered salvaging the gear and selling it in Shanghai. But Jing Yo had pointed out that the equipment was bound to be traceable, and if it ever turned up on the world market—something almost sure to happen if it was sold in Shanghai—very possibly their mission would be compromised. The colonel's face had shaded pale, and he had quickly agreed it should be buried with the rest of the remains from the camp.
There were several boxes of instruments, most of which could be only vaguely identified. The expedition had been gathering soil and vegetation samples, and had placed a number of rain gauges near their camp. The documents on their laptop computers—none protected by passwords—indicated that they were studying changes in the climate and local plant and animal life.
“Hey, Lieutenant, look at this,” said Private Ai Gua, holding up a satellite phone. “It was in a pocket.”
Jing Yo walked over and took the phone. They had found three the night before; all had already been crushed.
“Why did we miss this?” he asked.
“
We
didn't miss it,” said Sergeant Wu, answering before Ai Gua could open his mouth. Jing Yo turned to him. Wu's cigarette had been replaced by a smug look Jing Yo associated with most veteran commando noncoms, who generally felt superior to any officer they served under. “The donkeys searched the tents.”
“We should have searched them ourselves,” said Jing Yo.
Wu scowled. It was obvious what he was thinking: they couldn't be everywhere, or do everything that needed to be done.
Jing Yo turned on the phone. Like the others, it required a PIN. He tried a punching a few buttons in sequence—0-0-0-0, 1-2-3-4, 9-8-7-6—before getting a message saying he was locked out for too many failed ID attempts. Disgusted, he held the phone in his hands and snapped it in two.
Ai Gua whistled. Wu tried to hide his surprise with a frown.
The phone was small and well constructed, but snapping it in two was merely a matter of leverage, a parlor trick as far as Jing Yo was concerned. Any of the novices who had trained with the monks could have done the same in their sixth month there.
“Make sure the clothes are checked carefully,” Jing Yo said. “If there are any more phones, they must be destroyed before being buried. Anything with an identity must be burned.”
Jing Yo walked to the pile himself and began sorting through the things patiently, holding each piece for a moment as he considered what it told him before putting it aside.
Trousers
—a fat, short man.
Thick fabric
—a man of reasonable means.
Frayed at the heel
—a man who held on to comfortable clothing, possibly out of frugality, but more likely out of habit.
“Are you looking for a new wardrobe?” asked Sergeant Wu behind him.
“If you want to know a man, start with his tailor, then go to his laundress,” said Jing Yo.
It was a maxim one of his teachers had taught him, but Wu thought it was a joke and laughed. Jing Yo continued sorting through the pile. Each item varied from the others as its owners had varied in life, and yet they told a single story: Westerners, men of learning, trying to understand something in a country foreign to them.
It was regrettable that they had had to die. But at least their deaths had been swift.
The clothes told more. The scientists were well off, able to afford sturdy wear. They were also relatively well fed, thicker around the waist than even the older officers in the army.
So what the premier said in his speeches
was
true—the West was hoarding the planet's food, depriving China and the rest of the world of its share. Jing Yo regretted the deaths a little less.
“Something wrong, Lieutenant?” asked Private Ai Gua.
“Maybe he saw a ghost,” said Sergeant Wu, laughing.
Neither private joined in. Both men, Jing Yo knew, were deeply superstitious.
“The Westerners are enjoying the fruit of our labors,” he told them. “They do not have to struggle as we do for food. This war will restore balance and equity. Bury everything well.”
Northwestern Vietnam, near the border with China
The huts had dried
meat and some stores of vegetables, but the only food Josh trusted was the potatoes. He considered cooking them, but dismissed the idea as too dangerous. They tasted horrible raw, but he ate them anyway, devouring them as he walked up a path that started at the field above the hamlet and cut north, paralleling the road at the valley's base. Going north made the most sense, he reasoned, because there would be soldiers at the border with China who would be able to help him. The border was only a few miles away, a day or at most two of walking.
The winding trail moved in and out of the jungle, cutting back against the slope as it went. Josh thought he would find a vantage at the top where he could look out over the surrounding countryside and get his bearings, but he was disappointed; the hill was dwarfed by its neighbors on all sides except the east, and there the trees were too narrow to support him as he climbed. After a few minutes, he couldn't even see down to the village, let alone the road below.
Josh found another path heading east at the top of the hill. As he began down it, a large animal darted to the left, running through the trees into a small meadow about twenty yards from the path. He followed, thinking the animal was part of a grazing flock, maybe a small oxen or goat. Josh stepped warily, slipping among the trees as he got close to the field. There were three animals, about the size of deer though fatter, and with straight horns like goats might have—
saolas
, or Vu Quang oxen, native to northern Vietnam.
They looked at him warily, certainly aware that he was there, but apparently not afraid of him. When at last he rose and took a step from the woods, they darted away.
Back on the trail, Josh began thinking of the others on the expedition. He hadn't known any of them for very long, but now they seemed like close friends. He thought of Ross, and Millie, the girl who was helping Dr. Renaldo. Fleming, the Belgian with the loud laugh. Phillip, a Chinese-American who preferred Scotch to beer and had taught him several Chinese curse words during a long night at a bar while trying to prove his point.
Dr. Renaldo himself, slightly cantankerous, especially in the morning before his third coffee—he always had four—yet generous to a fault.
All dead.
Grief rose in his chest, a physical thing, pain that eroded his bones and pricked at the underside of his skin.
How can I go on without them?
It was his parents he thought of, not the other scientists. He was a child again, afraid without his mother and father, alone.
No time for grief. Time for action. Move.
The pain was so intense Josh had to stop for a moment. He forced himself to move again, stopped, felt tears streaming down his cheeks.
I've gone through this already
, he told himself.
I will survive.
He tried to distract himself by repeating the facts he knew about Vietnam's weather. He recounted, by rote, the average rainfall, and high and low temperatures of each month. He considered what the consequences of these were, as if he were delivering a lecture or discussing the matter with his doctoral advisers.
 
 
Sometime in late afternoon,
with the sun sinking below the hills, Josh heard a helicopter. The sound shoved his thoughts about science away. His first reaction was to hide: he plunged into the jungle beyond the road, taking cover between the trees.
As he crouched against a trunk, he realized that hiding was not the thing to do. On the contrary, whoever was in the helicopter would probably help him, perhaps even fly him to safety. But he stayed back.
His sense of danger increased as the rotor of the chopper pounded heavier and heavier toward him. Finally it appeared, streaking down from
the north, a long, dark machine, with a black cockpit and a thick tail. Missiles were stacked beneath the stubby wings, and a large round disk sat atop the rotor. To Josh, the aircraft looked like an American Apache, with a gun hanging beneath its pointed nose. But a star was painted in dull red on the side of the fuselage, faint but still visible to the naked eye.
The chopper skimmed so close to the trees that Josh thought it was going to crash. It thundered past, shaking the ground for more than a minute.
The path looped out of the trees onto a ridge. As he walked along it, Josh could see across to the hills on the other side. He continued a little farther and saw the road below—
the same road I was on earlier
, he thought, though of course now he was several miles farther north.
He could also see a faint glow in the distance where the road curved into the hills.
A village.
He wanted to run, but the glow was too far away to make that worthwhile. Instead, Josh picked up his pace, moving quickly, trying not to get too anxious.
His pants began to sag at his waist. He put his hands in the loops and held them as he went.
The path looped back into the jungle. The sun had gone below the ridge, and the ground before him was gray, filled with shadows. Josh kept moving, bending forward a bit and rehearsing his small store of Vietnamese.
The jungle became darker with each step, until finally he couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him. The winding lane dipped to the left, then climbed so sharply that Josh had to use his hands to help him scramble upward. Finally it leveled out, and the thick jungle canopy gave way to a purple-blue sky. Once again, Josh picked up his pace, moving along the edge of the trail as it skimmed yet another ridge.
A highway came into view down to his left. Nearly straight ahead, about a half mile away, he spotted a double fence topped by barbed wire. Lights played on the fence, cutting through the growing shadows.
It was the Chinese border.

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