“I don’t know.”
“Do you have any means of transportation there?”
“I just got here, Jess. I don’t know.”
Mara turned back toward the village. It didn’t look like the sort of place where you’d find a car in every garage — especially since there weren’t any garages.
Maybe there were farm vehicles in the barns. Worst case, she could walk up to Nam Det.
“How far am I from Hanoi?” she asked.
“Almost two hundred kilometers. But distance isn’t the problem. The Chinese have launched a major offensive, Mara. They may be in Hanoi by tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?”
“The way things are going, they may be there now.”
5
“Vietnam would never attack China,” said Christian. “That’s just not going to happen.”
“It’s not necessarily China,” said Rosen, who was suppressing a grin. “It’s Red Force.”
“Come on. First of all, the simulation calls for China to attack first — ”
“Wait a second — that’s not in the rules.”
“China always attacks.”
“But it’s not in the rules. Not specifically.”
“A Vietnamese attack would be suicide.”
“Not necessarily. And there’s plenty of historic precedence,” said Zeus. He turned toward Colonel Doner, who was standing at the head of the war room projection table. “Is it allowable?”
Doner furled his eyebrows, then glanced over at General Perry, whose expression mixed anger, frustration, and surprise. Before the general could say anything, Christian leaned back and whispered something to him. Perry shrugged. He was a short, skinny man; Christian towered over him. Still, Christian had adopted so many of his mannerisms that they looked like father and son.
Brow knotted, General Perry glanced over his right shoulder toward the smoked-glass panel of the observation room. The VIP Colonel Doner had mentioned was the assistant national security adviser/Asia, Sara Mai, who’d arrived at the base with three Pentagon handlers and a staff person who looked barely old enough to shave his pimple-filled face. Mai stood stiffly and nodded to Zeus when they were introduced, rather than extending her hand; Zeus guessed that her ice-cold manner had Perry confused.
“Oh, why not start out that way,” said the general. “If the young major wants to replay the Vietnam War, why not?”
Actually, the model Zeus had in mind was the 1979 conflict between China and Vietnam, which had ended in a confused stalemate. Not that he modeled his strategy on the conflict, which had seen China attack over the border in retaliation for Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia.
On the contrary, he wanted China to attack in the west. And it did, launching a counterstrike in the tracks of the Vietnamese assault on the northwest border. That led Red to funnel its forces into the northwestern valleys near Cambodia and Laos, precisely what Zeus was counting on.
The situation ratcheted up quickly — Christian had obviously whispered that the Chinese could invade along the former Ho Chi Minh Trail, sweep into southern Vietnam, and force a quick Vietnamese surrender. Such a strategy made a great deal of strategic sense for Red, since it would position its forces to isolate Blue’s ally Thailand and provide a jumping-off point for the Malaysian oil fields, a high-point prize in the simulation.
But Zeus had no intention of letting Red get that far. Having identified several choke points where the Chinese advance could be slowed, he waged a series of campaigns along the Da River. The Vietnamese forces were overwhelmed each time, but Red had to spend considerable resources to gain those victories. Meanwhile, Zeus parceled out his meager American forces — two battalions of Special Forces and some SEALs — leveraging their effect. Fortunately, the rules provided that the special operations units increased in power and influence as the game went on.
The critical point came at Dien Bien Phu, as Red swung west on the open plain. Perry — and probably Christian, who was responsible for most of the general’s strategy — was clearly hoping to get the Vietnamese into a set-piece battle there, just as the North Vietnamese rebels had done to the French. Red even sent several units along the same route the French had taken, clearly trying to entice a North Vietnamese counterattack along the lines the great North Vietnamese general Giap had used. The difference, of course, was that the Red army was considerably larger than the force the French had had, and enjoyed overwhelming air superiority as well. Rather than trapping China as the North Vietnamese general had done to the French, the Vietnamese themselves would be swept up and overrun.
It wasn’t difficult to foresee this. What was tough was to make it seem as if he hadn’t. Zeus had Rosen feint all along the Da River and fall back toward Dien Bien Phu; at the same time, he maneuvered other units to make it seem as if he were rushing reinforcements. Perry attacked in force, and succeeded in taking Dien Bien Phu — but the Vietnamese army turned out to have only a hundred men in the area, and most of them escaped.
Then Zeus went for broke. He used his Special Force troops to lead an attack on Lao Cai, the border city at the head of the Hong River, well east of the Chinese breakthrough into Vietnam. Red began rushing forces south from Gejiu and east from Xin Jie to meet the new threat — only to have them cut off at critical river crossings by SEAL attacks on highway bridges obviously believed too far from Vietnam to warrant guarding. The Red army was now caught in two separate pockets, unable to defend against an all-or-nothing missile attack that used American ATACMS ground-to-ground missiles secretly brought to the Vietnamese in the early rounds of the simulation.
“Where did those friggin’ missiles come from?” said Christian as the attack unfolded on the simulation screen.
It was the high point of the session. Zeus didn’t have time to look up from the computer to see General Perry’s face, but he knew it wouldn’t be smiling. Red Force in Vietnam was now effectively cut off from its supply line; the army would have to be resupplied by air until Red could regain territory. That was doable — Red still had an overwhelming advantage over Vietnam — but it would take time. Enough time under the rules of the simulation that Blue had achieved a military stalemate without Red’s achieving any of its goals — in other words, a win for Blue, the first ever recorded in Red Dragon War Simulation Scenario 1.
Zeus expected General Perry to rush from the session before it ended just to miss the handshake that had come to mark the close. That had been Perry’s MO as Blue commander — he was a sore sport and sourpuss who hated to lose to a junior officer.
Or so Zeus thought. Not only did Perry stay this morning, but he gripped Zeus’s hand strongly, smiled, and congratulated him.
“Good work, Major. Good, good work,” he said before sweeping out of the room.
Christian looked like he’d been shot in the gut — a familiar look during the sessions. He shook tepidly, then followed his mentor.
“You got any fingers left?” asked Rosen as they secured their laptops.
“Perry’s got a hell of a grip,” said Zeus.
“A Mafioso grip. I’d watch my back.”
“He almost seemed happy.”
“Contemplating his revenge.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“You’ll know when your next assignment takes you to Partial, North Dakota.”
Zeus laughed. “Lunch?”
“Thought you’d never ask, sweetheart,” said Rosen in his best Humphrey Bogart voice.
