His best wasn’t very good, but Zeus let it pass. Gear packed, he started out of the room, nearly bumping into Sara Mai.
“Oh, jeez, I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said as she jerked backward.
One of her Pentagon escorts stopped short behind her, setting off a chain reaction of aides in the hallway. Under any other circumstances, it would have been hilarious, but Zeus felt the temperature in the entire basement suddenly shoot up.
“That’s all right, Major,” said Mai, straightening her skirt. Knee length, it was a blue pinstripe that matched her double-breasted top; if she’d had glasses, she would have looked like a stereotypical librarian. “That was quite an interesting performance. How often have you taken Blue’s position?”
“First time.”
“Interesting. Why focus on Vietnam?”
Zeus shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“Oh, I think you do, Major. It wasn’t an accident.” Her voice was harsh; she was scolding him, which made Zeus angry.
“You’re right. I considered it carefully.” He held her stare. Mai was only a few years older than he, with the slightest hint of wrinkles at the corners of her eyes. She was tall for a woman, five ten, though he still towered over her. “I needed a country China would attack. And one that I could use to stall for time. In that scenario, it’s the only way to win.”
“People playing the simulation for the first time normally defend Taiwan,” said Mai. “You left almost no forces there.”
“Yeah.”
“Why not?”
“I used what resources I had.”
He shrugged again. She was right — but how did she know?
Christian, probably. Trying to show off.
“Besides, China wasn’t going to attack there,” he said.
“No?”
“Doesn’t make strategic sense.” Zeus shook his head. “They wouldn’t in real life either. They see Taiwan the way they see Hong Kong. Estranged brothers who will return to the fold in time. They attack their enemies. Japan I could see. Vietnam looks weak. They’ll go right after Malaysia one of these days. I’m surprised they haven’t already.”
“So you picked Vietnam completely on your own?”
“What do you mean?”
“Because it was a traditional enemy and could attack?”
“Yeah.”
“You’ve had no access to an outside telephone line since you reported for duty this morning?”
“Huh?”
“Have you made any phone calls, Major?” Mai’s tone was sharp, almost dismissive.
“No.”
“You haven’t used a phone?”
“There are no external lines downstairs because of security.” Zeus felt himself getting angry. “Listen — ”
“And your cell phone?”
“In my car,” he snapped. “Why?”
“I’d like you to come to Washington with me, Major.”
“Washington? Why?”
“Because roughly an hour ago, the Chinese invaded Vietnam. From what I’ve been told, their plan sounds very much like what you did today in the simulation. We leave in ten minutes.”
6
The captain was still brooding from the way he had been treated, and sulked as Jing Yo went over the area with his handheld GPS device.
“We can move up the hill another half kilometer,” said Jing Yo. “At that point, we’ll reach a road. One group will pivot around on the north, the other on the south, and work back to the highway.”
“Three kilometers,” groused the captain.
“You don’t have to walk it with your men,” Jing Yo told him.
Captain Lai frowned, shook his head, then went off to see his sergeants.
“Bad case of red butt, huh?” said Sergeant Wu.
Jing Yo didn’t respond. It wasn’t his place to encourage disrespect for another officer, even if the officer was a jerk.
“You think we’ll find the plane?” asked Wu.
“If it went down here, we’ll find it.”
“You don’t think it went down here, though. Do you, Lieutenant?”
“I think it’d be fair to say that the coordinates we were given were in error,” answered Jing Yo.
Wu smirked.
“Let’s continue the search,” said Jing Yo, “since those are our orders.”
Sergeant Wu appreciated the fact that Jing Yo wouldn’t directly comment on orders he didn’t like — Sergeant Wu would have done the same with a subordinate. Order had to be maintained.
Of course, that theory barely applied to the stuck-up regular army captain whose troops they had commandeered. The captain wasn’t countermanding their orders — he was too much of a wimp to do that — but he wasn’t exactly helping the search effort either. He’d told his noncommissioned officers to check with him before carrying out the slightest “request” — his word — from the commandos, meaning that every time Sergeant Wu told them to do something, they had to check back with him. It was more a pain than anything else, since the captain was too cowardly — or realistically worried about his own behind — to do anything but rubber-stamp what Wu said. Still, it was an unnecessary bit of officer bullshit, which annoyed Wu no end.
The regular unit’s sergeants were sitting with Corporal Li and Private Ai Gua, sharing a pair of cigarettes that were being passed around commune-style. Ai Gua’s wrist, either sprained or broken in the accident the night before, was wrapped in a heavy bandage. The private had bruises up and down his side and leg. But he had not complained, nor asked to be relieved from duty as a regular soldier would have.
Excellent. So they had at least one real commando among the untested greenies in the platoon.
“Hey, are you ready to go?” barked Wu.
“Sergeant, you should hear the stories,” said Li, looking up from the log where he was sitting.
Wu put his hands on his hips.
“Their old man’s a drunk,” added Li.
“All right, that’s enough,” said Wu. “Lieutenant wants us to move on. Let’s do it.”
Li rolled his eyes but got up. Wu explained how the forces were to be divided, then sent the army sergeants
