Subterrene War 03: Chimera (22 page)

“I’m serious. Like she knows who you are and what you do for a living.”

“She knows what we are because we’re wearing modern US armor and stick out like a sore thumb. So sure. If that’s your definition of psychic.”

He motioned with his carbine at the entrance. “We’ll have to go in there, Bug. Once they’ve finished shifting supplies.”

“I know.”

“I’m just sayin’. Don’t freak out or anything.”

The tunnel was like none I’d ever seen, and it struck me as blasphemous that they’d bored through such an ancient structure, a tremendous monument consisting of eight-foot rock slabs that interlocked seamlessly; much of the temple had become so overgrown with vines that it seemed to have sprung from the earth as half tree and half stone, belonging there, and even the patches that weren’t shrouded in stranglers had gone black with mold. Then again, tunneling through it made perfect sense. To the satos, the
temple
would have been blasphemous, a monument to their God’s competitor, and so taking a fusion borer and watching it melt its way through the stone would have brought smiles to their faces, and for all I knew it was why the one watching me was so happy right now.

When the trucks finished unloading, the troops loaded back into their vehicles, which managed to turn around and head back onto the road that had brought us.

“I thought they’d stay here for the night,” said Jihoon.

“Guess the lieutenant would rather risk going over a cliff or getting ambushed than spend a night with these chicks.”

“Or in this
place.
”

“And I can’t say I blame them.” I slung my carbine and headed toward the tunnel entrance, just as the barrage started again, bringing shells closer this time. The girl stopped us before we could enter.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“American advisers. We’re supposed to report to Major Remorro.”

She didn’t say anything at first and just stared some more. Then the chick ground her cigarette on her armored
forearm and motioned with her carbine that we should walk ahead. “We’ll see.”

Jihoon cleared his throat, and I tried sending him a psychic message to just shut up but knew it wouldn’t do any good.

“What’s your name?” he asked. When she didn’t answer, he tried again, but the chick wasn’t about to talk with us, and it pissed me off.

“I think I recognize her, Chong.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. She looks just like a hundred other engineered betties I’ve wasted.”

But she was cool. The girl never even breathed faster as far as I could tell and just kept walking behind us, staring beyond and in front, her eyes not needing infrared or light amplification to see in what must have been near total darkness. Our feet splashed in a shallow stream of water that grew deeper as we advanced, the tunnel floor sloping downward so that with each step it was as though the pressure increased, rock overhead getting thicker and heavier. Finally, the main tunnel opened into a large chamber—a hangar—and overhead lighting forced our vision kits back to normal.

Before I knew what had happened, the sato behind me pushed us to the ground while six others jumped out on either side, stripping us of our weapons and pressing their carbines against the back of my helmet so that I couldn’t move my head.

“What is this?” I said, getting even more pissed off. “We’re here on orders to meet with a Major Remorro.”

I couldn’t see the girl who answered. “You’re Special Forces.
American.
”

“So?”

“So we can’t use you here.”

I closed my eyes. It was funny, but at that moment when I thought it was over, there wasn’t any fear but there wasn’t any peace either, just a sense of amazement because it had all happened in a few seconds and left me wondering: Would it hurt? What did dying
feel
like? I sensed that the girls had all tensed in preparation to squeeze off bursts into our heads, but then someone ran up to us shouting.

“They’re here to see me,” the guy pleaded, but I couldn’t see him. “Jesus, do we have to go through this every time one of my guys shows up? They’re number one, not here for genetics; number one, I swear to God.”

“Don’t say
God
ever again,” the one behind me said.

“OK, but I swear these guys are number one; they’re not here for you or your sisters.”

Silence. I lifted my head, pushing against their carbines so I could get a better look, but one of them kicked me, jamming my faceplate into wet rock, after which they let us up. I watched as the group sauntered away in silence with carbines perched on their shoulders. The man who’d saved us helped me to my feet, then waited for Jihoon and me to collect our gear before shaking hands.

“Major Remorro, Special Forces adviser to the Thai Army.”

I pulled my headgear off and grinned. “We always get such a warm reception up here?”

“This?” The major glanced at the girls and whistled. “That was nothing. You should see them when they capture a Mimi.”

“Mimi?” Jihoon asked.

“Myanmar troops,” Remorro explained. “The Burmese Army, the Tatmadaw.”

Major Remorro was tall and so thin that with his helmet off it looked as though he could wriggle out of his armor through the neck ring, and you almost heard his arms and legs thumping against the insides of his carapace. He looked like he was in pain. A thin beard grew from his face, and his head was bald, shaved, so that my focus shifted to the eyes, a pair of glassy ones that saw everything and around which dark circles had formed to make the guy look half–beaten up. It was a vacant look I recognized at once—either he was sick, exhausted, or mentally gone, and maybe all three.

“Follow me,” the major said. “And hurry up before they change their mind.”

He led us through the hangar, where we wove our way through countless APCs covered with dust from never having been used, and stacks of crates and supplies took up every spare inch so that we had to wriggle our way between them before the major led us to a wide exit tunnel leading deeper under the mountain. Deeper into rock. On our way we passed more of the
Gra Jaai
. The dim blue of combat lights made their faces look pale, but most of them were men with a few Asian women, and all had dark stains on their chins. They spat on the tunnel floors. Their eyes were half-glazed and watched us with a passing interest that showed no understanding of who or what we were.

“What’s wrong with them?” I asked.

The major glanced at one. “A lot of the
Gra Jaai
take drugs in addition to chewing betel nut. To get closer.”

“Closer to what?” asked Jihoon.

“To her. To perfect. Who the hell knows for sure, but welcome to the world’s deepest crap hole because you’ve stepped into it now.”

I glanced at another one, a Japanese-looking woman who smiled up at me as she sprawled along the tunnel floor, half submerged in the stream of water and waste that ran down its center. “Closer to Margaret?”

The major shook his head. “To Catherine the Eternal, the maker of the one path. You assholes have a lot to learn. Now shut the hell up before you get us all killed.”

The deeper we went, the tighter I wound, and soon water dripped from above, pattering on our helmets so that it sounded like rain; at the same time it made our footing slippery and the walls glistened in the dim lighting. This was like no tunnel I’d seen. While on the one hand everything looked disorganized and filthy, on the other you could tell that this was the look of war, of a place and people who had lived with it for years, and so while filth accumulated, it was a sign of having decided to spend time on more important things instead of cleaning up. I warned myself not to underestimate the inhabitants. We were rubes here, and my face was hot with shame—of having thought that I had known the bush. I did know it. But since then the bush had married with subterrene, and this was their deformed child, a kind of mutant and decrepit earthworm that had swallowed me whole, and this was its guts.

Eventually the major led us into a bunker, through a one-meter tunnel that forced us to crawl for at least five minutes, and by the time we exited, my knees ached to the point where I had trouble standing. With the exception of us and the major, the bunker held one occupant—just as skinny and pale as Remorro.

He grinned at us from around a long clay pipe, its thick smoke filling the tiny area. “Welcome to our little corner
of hell, Lieutenants. I’m Captain Orcola. You two can have the top racks.”

The major collapsed on one of four bunks without removing his armor. Other than racks the room held a pair of chairs and a desk, on top of which lay computer after computer, and multiple video screens that showed views of the jungle somewhere far above. Jihoon peeled his helmet and hood off and glanced at me. We stood there for a moment, the artillery above shaking tiny clouds of rock dust from ten feet overhead.

“There’s no exit tunnel,” I said. “Nothing except the one we came in.”

Remorro nodded, his eyes already shut. “Yeah.”

“So what if it collapses behind us?”

“Then it collapses. Now if you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I’d like to get some shut-eye. There’s plenty of time to get acquainted in the morning.”

“If there is a morning,” Orcola added.

Jihoon and I stowed our gear in a corner, and when he began peeling off his armor, I stopped him.

“Why?” he whispered.

“Because we’re on the line now. Jack into the waste port every few hours and you never take it off from here on out, except your helmet.”

“That’s right,” said Orcola. “Last night we had about a hundred Burmese infiltrators make it almost all the way to our command bunker, about half a klick from here. It’s not a great war, but—”

“It’s the only one we’ve got,” Remorro finished. It sounded as if he had spoken the words in his sleep, and Jihoon rubbed his hand through his hair, wiping off the water that had already dripped onto him from the leaking roof.

“How are we supposed to sleep on the top racks?” I asked. “The mattresses are soaked, and this whole place leaks.”

“Ain’t this five star?” Orcola asked, laughing. He finished his pipe and knocked it against the metal bunk, dropping the ashes to the floor where they hissed in a puddle. “Wear your helmets or use a poncho. Two ponchos work better, though: one to rest your head on and the other to cover it so you don’t get wet or gnawed by rats.”

“Rats?” Ji asked.

“Some people call them rats.” Orcola rolled over so we couldn’t see his face and then pulled a dark green plastic sheet over his head. “Others call them dinner. You get used to the taste eventually.”

Jihoon glanced at me once more, and I grinned. “We don’t want to go back to those days.”

Ji shook me awake the next day. By the time I got my helmet off, the room had filled with so much tobacco smoke that it was difficult to breathe let alone see, but I lit up a cigarette anyway to get rid of my last dream—that I’d lain in bed forever, eaten by fungus and mold as warm water dripped over my chest and legs.

Major Remorro turned on a holo map and pointed at it with a clay pipe, identical to the one the captain held. “We’re here,” he said, pointing to a green dot in the middle of a long line of green dots; solid or dashed lines connected each one. “And this is the Thai border defense network, which consists of underground strong points and bunker complexes like this one, connected in some places by trench lines.”

“So the border is completely defended,” said Ji. “How are infiltrators making it through?”

“Don’t kid yourself; it’s a long border, and I said they were only connected in
some
places. Most of the gaps are filled with cameras, motion sensors, and basically anything electronic we could put in there to detect it when the Mimis try to cross. But there are gaps wide enough for a division to move through.”

“What’s the main Burmese objective?” I asked.

“Up until recently, they wanted this.” He punched at the map controls so another dot appeared to our south and within Thailand, just a few kilometers from the Burmese border. “A minor gold and copper mine with some trace metals. It’s one of the few working mines in southeast Asia with decent reserves.”

“And now?”

Remorro clicked the map off and pulled at his pipe before answering. “Now they’re getting bolder. That ambush you encountered a couple of days ago never would have happened last month, and it looks like they’ve decided to ignore the Thai mine completely. With the arrival of a Chinese expeditionary force, we’re guessing that they’re planning on an eventual invasion.”

I nodded and thought about what I’d seen, realizing that if the Chinese ever concentrated at a single point, the line would be almost useless. With so few underground complexes and so much unprotected border, the Chinese would almost be able to choose their entry and stroll through without having to worry about resistance until reaching the secondary defense line we’d encountered on our way up.
But,
I thought,
has that even been occupied?

“Who’s manning the line?
Gra Jaai
and Thai Army?”

Both men laughed before the major leaned forward and blew smoke in my face, grinning as he spoke. “Thai Army? Who’s that?”

“Listen,” Orcola explained, “you have to understand something. Not everybody in Bangkok shares the King’s love for satos and the
Gra Jaai,
especially generals in the Thai Army who used to be the royal favorites—if you catch my drift. In fact, the American advisers to the Royal Army HQ have one job as their primary mission: to try and screw the satos over and find a way to make the King hate them.”