“It looks like there was a fire,” said Mara, adjusting the glasses. She could see a campsite, or maybe the remains of one, black blotches in a haphazard circle.
The trucks straddled the border area, some in China, some in Vietnam. Several had crashed into the fence. All seemed to have been destroyed or disabled.
Kieu banked northward again. Smoke rose from beyond the fence. A long gray cloud furrowed in a long line.
Not smoke — dust.
The troop movements.
“Get closer to the border,” Mara told Kieu as he turned south again. “Something is going on.”
“Something is very strange,” said Kieu. Then he said something in Vietnamese, a loud curse word.
As Mara turned to him, something rattled through the floorboard. It sounded like bolts springing upward. Only as the plane pitched on its wing did she realize it was a spray of bullets. They were under fire.
Worse. They’d been hit.
Danger
More Indian Cities Abandoned
MUMBAI, INDIA (World News Service) — India reported today that a further two hundred square miles of countryside east of Jaipur would be abandoned due to the continuing water shortages there. The largest affected city in the region is Phulera.
As recently as 2009, Phulera boasted a population of roughly 25,000. Nearly a decade of drought, however, had provoked an exodus that left it a virtual shell of its former self. Like many towns in the Indian state of Rajasthan, it has been all but abandoned for the past two years.
Scientists warned that Jaipur will be next. Despite widespread emigration from the area, the city remains home to approximately eight hundred thousand people, many of whom fled homes in the countryside over the past four or five years. Jaipur once supported a population above 3.2 million.
“What we are seeing here is a continuing human crisis,” said Kumar Singh, chief scientist for the India Drought Project, a nonprofit scientific group that has monitored India’s water shortage and its effect on population since 2005. “Last year, an estimated two and a half million people died because of the water shortages and the famines they caused,” he added. “This year, the toll will be even worse.”
In the capital, meanwhile, opposition party leaders attempted to blame some of the country’s woes on the failure of the prime minister to provide adequate…
1
The gun was behind him somewhere, to the north.
The airplane — he didn’t hear it anymore.
Trucks were moving in the distance. More vehicles, heavy ones, coming toward him.
An American surveillance satellite had passed overhead barely an hour before. The optical lens on its camera would have snapped a picture of the line of Vietnamese troops trucks on both sides of the border, poised there, it would seem, following an aborted invasion.
The satellite’s orbit was common knowledge not only to intelligence agencies but to a small community of Internet geeks, several of whom would soon be pressing the Americans to release what they knew as rumors of the battle spread. It was all part of the campaign to make China’s invasion of its neighbor look justified — or at least justifiable enough to keep others from stepping in.
Jing Yo couldn’t have cared less for the international politics involved, but they had nonetheless dictated the schedule of the day’s operation. For the drive south had had to wait for the satellite to pass — proper public relations demanded clear and easily discernible “proof.” A snapshot of Chinese tanks rushing past the alleged bad guys would have made things unnecessarily complicated.
But the delay meant the operation was proceeding in daylight, increasing its danger. Already there had been reports of an aircraft, along with gunfire from units farther back in line.
It was now nearly noon, and it would take at least another hour for the lead elements of the brigade to reach Route 128. From there, it would be another half hour before they made Lai Chau, which sat at the intersection of Routes 127 and 12 farther south. Lai Chau was a key objective, for there was a small force of Vietnamese soldiers there; they were likely to be China’s first real test.
Jing Yo’s radio buzzed. It was Colonel Sun, a kilometer or two farther behind in a command car.
“Lieutenant, what’s going on up there? Are the tanks moving ahead?”
“Yes, Colonel. Good progress.”
“That airplane just now. Did you see it go down?”
“We’ve heard gunfire but saw nothing. The tanks are so loud — ”
“One of the antiaircraft units shot it down moments ago,” said Sun. “Go back with your men and find it. Make sure there are no survivors.”
“Colonel, if it was shot down, it’s no longer a problem. And in any event, its radio would have allowed it to alert the Vietnamese. In daylight, we have no real hope of cover. If I might suggest — ”
“What you would suggest is of no interest,” said Sun, practically shouting into his microphone. “Do as I tell you!”
“Yes, sir.”
“The air force is sending planes. I want that wreckage located so they cannot take credit for once.”
The real reason for Sun’s order — internal politics. Jing Yo should have guessed it.
“As you wish,” he told his commander. “What are the coordinates?”
2
“Pull up on the wheel,” said Ky Kieu. “Pull with me!”
Mara grabbed the yoke — it looked like a small, slightly squeezed steering wheel — and tried to yank it
