Shadows of War

“You must know him pretty well.”

“Well enough.”

“He your boyfriend?”

Mara laughed. “Oh, God no.”

“I didn’t mean to make you laugh.”

“That’s okay. If you knew the Million Dollar Man, you wouldn’t even ask.”

“He’s rich?”

Mara explained where the nickname had come from. Josh told her that he had never really followed wrestling.

“Really?” said Mara. “I used to watch it all the time when I was little. My brothers got me hooked. Triple H, Batista, Rey Mysterio, all those guys.”

“Why would you watch wrestling?”

“If I have to explain it, you won’t understand it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“What’d you do? Watch The Magic School Bus?”

“I loved those shows.”

Mara laughed. She’d loved them, too.

“Science was a way for me to deal with the world,” said Josh. “It kept things… ordered.”

“And you wanted that.”

“I needed that.”

He leaned closer to her. Mara waited for him to explain what he meant, but instead he stopped short.

“Is that the airplane?”

She stopped and listened. For a second, she thought it was. Then the sound became much more distinct.

“The helicopters are coming back,” she said. “Let’s get into the trees.”

* * *

The helicopters were ninety seconds from landing when the infrared operator raised his hand, signaling Jing Yo over. “There’s something about two kilometers south of the village, near the road but in the jungle. Warm bodies.”

Jing Yo leaned down, looking at the blur. He’d already told the pilots to land, and had given up his headset so he could jump quickly from the chopper.

“What is it?”

“We’ll have to get closer to find out. It may be another tiger or some other animal. Or a person.”

“Not in the village?”

“We’re still a little far away.”

“Let me see the village.”

Jing Yo waited while the technician readjusted his screen. He was starting to feel tired, worn down by the last several days.

If he felt that way, then his men would feel even worse. But they had a mission to complete.

“Here, Lieutenant. This is the village.”

The screen looked similar but not exactly the same as it had earlier. The technician explained that the fires, having mostly burned themselves out, were continuing to cool, and so looked different to the sensors.

“Wasn’t this building on fire before?” said Jing Yo, pointing to the southernmost barn in the center of the hamlet. It was the one they had searched earlier.

“Uh, I’m not sure.”

“It was mostly intact, remember?” said Jing Yo. “There was heat on one side, and you thought the fire was spreading up the wall. But now the wall is not burned down.”

“Okay.”

“It’s cold. Why would that be if there had been a fire there?”

The operator shook his head. Jing Yo went to tell the pilots to change course.

* * *

The jungle was so thick and the night so dark that Josh simply couldn’t see where he was going. He carried M? with him as he pushed slowly ahead, partly guided by Mara’s tug. The helicopters were getting closer.

“Which way are we going?” he asked Mara finally

“We just have to get distance from the road.”

They pushed on, stumbling between the bushes and trees. M?, her face pushed tightly into Josh’s shoulder, groaned as the branches slapped across her back.

“Once they’re on the ground, they’ll have a hard time finding us. Even if they have night glasses. Goggles won’t be able to see through all of this brush. We’ll get in deeper and keep moving toward the drop area. Just be calm.”

“I’m calm,” he told her. “You stay calm.”

“I’m calm,” said Mara. Her voice was a tight rasp.

“We’re going to be okay,” Josh told M?. “We just keep moving. We’ll make it.”

“There!” Mara stopped short.

“What?” asked Josh.

“That sound — hear it? It’s the MC-130,” she said, pointing to the south. “With the SEALs. Come on, let’s go.”

* * *

Jing Yo grabbed the back of the pilot’s seat, steadying himself as the helicopter turned sharply over the jungle.

“The trees are too thick near the road to land on here,” the pilot told him. “The best we can do is the edge of that field a half kilometer away.”

“Let’s do that.”

“Lieutenant — there’s a plane — it’s just ahead,” sputtered the copilot. “A large plane.”

“Evasive maneuvers!” yelled the chopper pilot, jerking the aircraft hard to the left.

“Get us down,” said Jing Yo. “Get us down now!”

26

Northern Vietnam

Ric Kerfer’s rucksack hit the ground about a quarter second before he did, telling the SEAL lieutenant he was about to touch down. The warning was just enough to relax Kerfer’s leg muscles in time to avoid serious injury, but the landing still hurt — he rolled on his right shoulder, hitting at exactly the angle that a linebacker had taken to smack him down in high school some ten years before.

Which hurt.

The linebacker had gone on to the NFL; Kerfer had lost out on a possible athletic scholarship to college and ended up going to Navy ROTC, became an officer, and joined the SEALs. He figured that he had gotten the better end of the exchange. Still, it hurt goddamnit, and put him in a lousy mood.

Then as now.

“Come on, you sissy boys,” he growled, jumping to his feet and un-snapping his parachute harness. “Stevens, take the point. The Commies are in those choppers there. Move!”

Within seconds, one of his team closer to the road began firing toward the helicopters. Kerfer slipped on his night goggles, then got his bearings. As the last man out of the plane, he had hit farthest from the road; the other seven members of the squad — there were two fire teams — were scattered ahead, between him and the two Chinese helicopters that had been prowling the area.

The helos continued to press. Scumbags weren’t easily intimidated.