Shadows of War

“Did Sun release you?” asked Wang.

“I need to talk to him?”

“Did he release you?”

Lai was forced to answer that he had not.

“Then you will continue on the mission until you hear from me. I will see what I can do.” But don’t count on miracles, suggested Wang’s voice. “Really, the best thing you must do, from now on — is to stay away from the commando. From any commando.”

Wonderful advice, thought Lai as he returned the radio to his belt. But he wasn’t the one who had placed his unit so close to the spearhead of the attack in the first place.

“I’m going to scout up the way here,” he said aloud, though none of his men were nearby. “I’m going to find a good place for a command post.”

He hated the army. But it was his penance — if he had not drunk so much as a young man, his father would never have insisted that he join. He would be working now in the company with his brother.

The army could be a terrific opportunity for the right man. The right man could make use of the power and connections it afforded to advance. Even now, with the hard economic times, the right man in the army had less trouble than most.

Lai, however, wasn’t the right man.

Perhaps he could be. If he got through today.

The captain walked slowly uphill through the jungle, picking his way through the trees as they began to thin out. The vegetation amazed him. Much of southern China, where he’d spent the last lonely year and a half, was arid wasteland. Yet here, only a few kilometers over the border, plants of all sorts grew with abandon.

It was as if there were a curse on Chinese land. Or maybe the Americans and their agents had poisoned the Chinese countryside secretly, perhaps years or even decades before. The American war with Vietnam could easily have been just a pretext; while the two countries pretended to be at arm’s length now, everyone knew the Vietnamese were simply monkeys in the West’s employ. That was the way the Americans operated — lazy themselves, they got someone else to do the work for them.

As he started picking his way around the rocks, the captain heard a pair of voices talking in the distance below. Their voices were hushed — so soft, in fact, that at first he thought he was imagining them. He held his breath, listening as carefully as he could.

They were real voices, he decided: men talking about something back at home, talking about a son, a newborn, a child he had had to leave.

Lai took a tentative step in their direction, moving quietly. As far as he knew, there were no other units in the area. But the men had to be Chinese — they were speaking Chinese.

Right until the moment he saw them, sitting on the ground against a large rock not twenty yards from where he had climbed up, the captain refused to believe that they were his soldiers. His entire unit should have been in front of him, stretched out through the jungle conducting the search. To find two men huddled here, far from where they were supposed to be and goofing off besides — the idea did not even seem possible.

And yet it was. They were so engrossed in their own conversation and the cigarettes they were smoking that they didn’t hear him until he was only a meter or two away. By then it was too late — the captain pushed aside a large fern and stood two arm’s lengths away.

“Captain!” said the man on the right, jumping up.

Startled, his companion jerked to his feet as well. As he did, he dropped a phone he’d been holding.

Incensed, Lai reached to his belt and took out his pistol.

“You have disobeyed your orders,” he told them, struggling to control his emotions. The words sputtered from his mouth, his anger twisting his tongue. “What are you doing here?”

“Captain, we needed a rest and — ”

“Silence!” Lai pointed the pistol at them. “You rest when you are given the order to rest. What’s that mobile phone doing?”

Neither man spoke. Mobile phones and other communications devices were strictly prohibited to most of the Chinese army; even an officer like Lai was not allowed a personal phone and had to account strictly for his use of the satellite radio.

“The cell phone!” repeated Lai. He pointed the gun at the man who had dropped it.

“Captain, it is a satellite phone,” stuttered the man. “It doesn’t — it-it —.” He cut himself off in midsentence and dropped to his knees, begging for his life.

The captain’s anger only grew. He extended his arm, the pressure growing in his finger to fire. Finally, he did — and only a last-second force of will pushed the aim of the barrel straight up, sending the bullet harmlessly into the sky.

“Why do you have the phone?” said Lai after the shot finished echoing against the hillside.

The man on his knees could not respond, so Lai looked at his companion.

“We — we found it, c-clearing the d-dead with the commandos. Y-yesterday. It doesn’t work, Captain. There is a code — it won’t come to life. He just wanted to talk to his wife about his n-new son.”

“The commandos took satellite phones?”

For a brief moment, Lai’s spirit soared — here was something he could use to get back not just at the uppity lieutenant who had commandeered his men, but at Colonel Sun himself. But the look on the private’s face quickly brought him back to earth.

“They d-d-didn’t see,” answered the private. “We — ”

“Weren’t you ordered not to take anything?” asked the captain, not quite ready to give up the possibility of revenge.

“Y-y-yes.”

“Get down the hill both of you,” Lai told them. “Find your sergeant and find your right places in the search. Go. Go now! Before I change my mind!”

The man who had fallen to his knees now dropped on his face, tears flowing from his eyes in gratitude. He began to babble about his son — the newborn they had apparently been speaking of earlier — and how the captain’s name would be added to the child’s.

“Go!” said Lai sharply.

The other man dragged him down the hill.

Lai waited until they were out of his sight, then picked up the phone. His first thought was to chuck it into the trees. But someone might find it there, and it would easily be traced back to his unit. If he was going to dispose of it, he would have to find a much better place.

Maybe there was still a way to use it to discredit the commandos. Perhaps an idea would occur to him. He tucked it into his belt and began walking back to the crest of the hill.

Lai would have been fully within his rights as captain to execute both men. If anything, it was his decision to show the men mercy that might be questioned. They had not only disobeyed his orders for conducting the search, but disobeyed general orders in possessing the phone — a much graver matter.

He was fairly certain that neither man would speak of the incident, but if they did, Lai might get the reputation of being a “soft” commander, and one who did not care whether his orders were followed or not.

Being a drunk was not necessarily something that would bar one’s promotion; being soft was.

He hated the army.

* * *

Josh had been sitting on the rock for nearly an hour when he heard the soldier making his way up through the jungle toward him. His first thought was that he had been surrounded, and that the man below was trying to flush him out. Then he realized that was unlikely. Whoever he was hearing was moving slowly, not walking directly toward him but following the channel the water had made.

Josh slipped off the rock and moved to a nearby cluster of chest-high bushes, ducking behind them.

The soldier’s head appeared above the rocks. He climbed up onto the rock where Josh had been sitting, then leaned back, resting.

Josh sprang forward. He started to bring the rifle up to use as a club, but the man began turning in his direction.

Josh lowered the rifle and slid his finger into the trigger.