Shock of War (16 page)

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

Washington, D.C.

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, M
ạ
, 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

On the border of China and Vietnam

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.