South China Sea

Marte Price was having a war of conscience about whether or not to file her fax report on Freeman’s mercy killing and his use of “Japs” instead of “Japanese,” when she saw the two Vietnamese guides talking fast and gesticulating wildly, looking down at and up from the dead men in the black-pajamas-cum-uniforms. She knew, then, she had a really big story: two legendary old foes — the United States and Vietnam— represented by Freeman and Vinh, both commanding “specialist forces,” had screwed up.

Marte Price’s story about “friendly fire” would be avidly picked off the wire service by hundreds of newspapers in the U.S. But it was CNN, with its four phone and “umbrella” antenna, that almost instantly sped the pictures of the American dead to its billions of viewers all over the world via satellite.

Both Freeman and Vinh refused to be photographed for what they both — Freeman vociferously, Vinh less so but just as firmly — referred to as propaganda for Beijing. And they were right. The blue on blue or “friendly fire” episode that had killed the four Vietnamese gave way to charges by GIs that yet another Army situation was definitely FUBAR — fucked up beyond all recognition.

Other mild pejoratives, courtesy of CNN, rained down from U.S. soldiers and Chinese alike, and for the first time since the terrible tank battles at Skovorodino in another U.N.-sanctioned intervention, General Douglas Freeman, though still not knowing who had fired the first shot, took full front-on responsibility for the debacle. In private he was fuming, knowing that his overall command of the U.S. forces in Vietnam was in jeopardy.

The only good news he received that day was the ringing endorsements of his corps commanders of Second Army, now en route to Vietnam from Japan. Many of them had been with him at Skovorodino in Siberia, where his armor was lured into a trap by “false” tanks that U.S. aerial reconnaissance had spotted, and those in Second Army who remembered the humiliation also remembered Freeman’s audacious comeback in some of the largest tank battles since Kursk.

In Washington there were congressional calls for his, Freeman’s, removal as C in C of the U.N. force, but the President and Joint Chiefs held firm. All of them knew the pitfalls of command — particularly the huge psychological bridge that had to be crossed by old foes, such as Vinh and Freeman suddenly having to form a coalition.

Vinh was hardly criticized at all by the American left, the latter’s venom directed almost solely on Freeman, whom the left saw as a warmonger who “must surely harbor old antagonistic feelings toward the Vietnamese people.” General Vinh immediately came to Freeman’s defense, saying that mistakes had no doubt been made “by both sides,” adding that the fault lay with the “aggressive imperialist” policies of Beijing, whose determination to “steal” Vietnamese territory in the Spratly and Paracel islands and whose claim of ownership of the whole of the South China Sea started the conflict in the first place.

And in one of the strange paradoxes of modern politics, General Vinh — who had fought so hard as a young man against the Americans, in particular the American Division in the Vietnamese War — was now welcomed aboard by Rush Limbaugh and others on the political right of the media, and within days Vinh’s defense of Freeman was used to batter the democratic left into virtual silence. But Greenpeace complained that the U.S. transport ships carrying Second Army toward Vietnam were flushing out their bilges at sea and thereby endangering the delicate sea life ecosystem in the waters off the China coast.

Freeman, who was clearly meant to be cowed by this second public salvo against him, responded via Marte Price, that Greenpeace’s complaint sounded like a lot of “bilge” to him and that Greenpeace might better occupy itself with concerns about the “delicate ecosystem of human beings in and around Lang Son” who lay dead and dying as a direct result of the worst pollution of all — invasion by what was now over ten divisions — over 130,00 °Chinese shock troops.

“How do we know they were shock troops. General?” press officer Boyd asked afterward.

“Because,” Freeman replied, “they gave us a hell of a shock, that’s why.”

“Yes, sir,” said Boyd.

“Another thing, Captain Boyd.”

“Sir?”

“I want you to find a few good stories about the flagrant Chinese violation of the environment laws — in particular the violation of the law prohibiting the killing and or transport of wild animals. You know the sort of thing I mean. Believe eating crushed-up tiger’s balls’ll give ‘em a dick big as a tiger’s.”

Boyd blinked. “Ah… I mean, sir — you sure about that?”

“ ‘Course I’m sure. Anyway, you can flesh out the details. Make sure it gets on CNN. Get the bastards working for me for a change — instead of all those damn fairies and Commie fellow travelers in State.”

“Ah, General, the Vietnamese are Commie—”

Freeman waved the objection aside. “Not like the Chinese they aren’t. You get that story out, hear me? I want those animal rights people raising shit, with Greenpeace moaning about the damn fish our supply line ships are supposedly traumatizing. Take the heat off us.” He winked at Boyd. “Can you handle them?”

“I think so, sir.”

The general smiled. “Do so, Captain — or I’ll fire you. And Boyd?”

“Sir?”

“I want that report in an hour.”

“Yes, sir.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Tokyo

Henry Wray wouldn’t have beaten the North Korean prisoner — at least not as badly — but the man had said “Migook!”—American — and spat at him. With his overtime robbing him of sleep, and contrary to all the rules and practices for self-control he’d learned at Langley, Wray snapped and punched the Korean off his haunches, the man falling over, crashing into the two-foot-high wall of cardboard that had formed the “disciplinary square” about him. At this, the Japanese interrogator went wild, kicking the man in the head twice before Wray, his hands trembling with the strain of the war between the anger and common sense raging inside of him, yelled, “That’s enough!” at his JDF colleague. But the North Korean spat again and Wray lost it. Besides, what was it that detective used to say on “NYPD Blue”? he thought afterward. At some point in the interrogation room you take off your belt and leave the Constitution outside.

Wray and the JDF agent had gotten each other going, and once or twice their blows coincided, they were so frantic to give it to him. Little bastard was probably holding the key to an attack on the Second Army convoy, which was now out over the Macclesfield Bank, 350 miles east-southeast of the PLA’s Yulin naval base on Hainan Island.

“Who did you contact?” Wray yelled. “Who did you call?”

The North Korean either couldn’t or wouldn’t talk.

That night, Wray signed out and faxed Langley that he was ill and would have to be relieved from — in effect taken off— Songbird.

He went home and opened a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black Label, an expensive escape in Japan, and drank long into the night, occasionally flipping channels but mostly watching CNN for up-to-date news of the war. He saw a raging argument going on among demonstrators of various political stripes in the front of the White House, then a zoom shot showing the state of play between a Greenpeacer and an animal rights advocate. The animal rights lady, who looked remarkably like a cat — where did CNN get this stuff, he wondered, from some casting agent? — was complaining loudly about the barbaric practices of the Chinese, their crimes against animals, and the Greenpeacer was arguing just as loudly about how Greenpeace was for animal rights too, but that the animal rights issue was a red herring put out by the fascist administration in Washington to divert all attention away from the real war — against the environment.

“If this was a fascist administration—” said the woman.

“It is,” the Greenpeacer charged.

“If it was,” the woman replied, “the police would be dragging you away right now.”

“They’ll be here. You wait.”

Another demonstrator, an unkempt redhead, shoving her way into the fray proclaimed, “It’s not the Chinese