Shadows of War

Move more quickly, he told himself. But just as quietly.

He took two steps, then panic finally won its battle, and he began to run.

* * *

It was not sound but smell that gave their prey away. The smell was odd, light and almost flowerlike, an odd, unusual perfume for the jungle, so strange that Jing Yo thought at first it must be a figment of his imagination.

Then he realized it was the scent of Western soap.

He turned the rifle in the scent’s direction, then heard something moving, stumbling, running.

He rose. A body ran into the left side of the scope, a fleeting shadow.

It would not be useful to kill him, Jing Yo thought. But before he could lower his rifle, a shot rang out.

* * *

The bullet flew well above Josh’s head, whizzing through the trees. There was another, and another and another, just as there had been that night when he was a boy.

He’d had many nightmares of that night. His sleeping mind often twisted the details bizarrely, putting him in the present, as a grown man trying to escape, changing the setting — often to the school or even his uncle’s house, where he’d gone to live — and occasionally the outcome: once or twice, his father and mother, both sisters, and his brothers survived.

But Josh knew this wasn’t a dream. These weren’t the two people who’d chased him when he was ten, and he wasn’t able to end this ordeal simply by screaming and opening his eyes. He had to escape. He had to run!

He bolted forward, tripping over the rocks, bouncing against a boulder that came to his waist and then rebounding against a thick tree trunk. Somehow he stayed on his feet, still moving. There were shouts, calls, behind him.

Panic raged through him like a river over a falls. He threw his hands out, as if he might push the jungle away. A tree loomed on his right. He ducked to his left, hit a slimmer tree, kept going. He pushed through a bush that came to his chest.

More bullets.

A stitch deepened in his side. His chest tightened, and he tasted blood in his mouth. The trees thinned again, and he was running over rocks.

Run, his legs told his chest, told his arms, told his brain.

Run!

* * *

Sergeant Fan had fired the shot that had sent their quarry racing away. Jing Yo yelled at him, calling him an idiot, but then immediately regretted it. Upbraiding an inferior before others, even one who deserved it as Fan did, was not his way.

“Don’t let him escape,” said Jing Yo, springing after the runner. “But do not kill him either. We want to know what he knows.”

The forest made it hard to run. Jing Yo realized this was a problem for the man they were pursuing as well as for them, and conserved his energy, moving just fast enough to keep up. Ai Gua and Private Po had moved to the flanks; they had good position on the man if he decided to double back.

He wouldn’t. He was panicked, a hare racing from the dragon’s claws.

An odd man, to be able to move so quietly, under such control at one moment, only to panic the next. Jing Yo could understand both control and panic, but not together.

His own failing, perhaps. A limit of imagination.

Sergeant Fan fired again. Jing Yo turned to confront the sergeant. This time there was no reason not to speak freely; on the contrary, the circumstances called for it, as the sergeant had not only been careless but disobeyed his direct order.

“What are you doing?” demanded Jing Yo.

“I had a shot. He’s going — ”

Jing Yo snapped the assault gun from the sergeant’s hand. Stunned, and wheezing from his exertion, Fan raised his hands, as if to surrender.

“Sergeant, when I give an order, I expect it to be followed. We want the man alive. I said that very specifically. When we return to camp, you will gather your things and report to division. Understood?”

Without waiting for an answer, he spun back to the pursuit.

* * *

Josh didn’t hear the water until he was almost upon it. His first thought was that he would race through it — the soft sound made him picture a shallow brook coursing down the side of the mountain. Then he thought he would wade down it, throwing the men off his trail.

With his second step, he plunged in above his knee. Josh twisted to the left, but he’d already lost his balance. He spun and landed on his back. Everything was a blur. This was no gentle, babbling brook. Josh fell under the water, bumped back to the surface, then found himself swirling out of control in the current. He flailed wildly, rolling with the water, spinning and alternately sinking and rising up, thrown into a confused maelstrom, gripped by the ice-cold water. He felt dead; no, beyond dead, sent to the frozen waste of some Asian afterlife as a doomed soul forced to endure eternal tortures.

* * *

Jing Yo pulled his handheld from his pocket and punched the GPS preset. The stream did not exist on the map, the cartographers not able to keep up with changes wrought by the rapid climate shifts. Snow in these mountains was a rare occurrence as late as 2008, when a one-inch snowfall in February made headlines. Now the mountain averaged nearly a foot and a half in winter, most of it in late January, a product of shifting wind, moisture, and thermal patterns. The snowmelt produced the stream, and Jing Yo supposed that the streambed would be rock dry or at best a trickle within a few weeks.

Right now, though, it was as treacherous as any Jing Yo knew from his native province of Xinjiang Uygur, where such seasonal streams had existed since the beginning of time.

“He fell in,” said Ai Gua. “He is a dead man.”

Between the swift current and the frigid temperature, Ai Gua’s prediction was probably correct. On the other hand, it was just possible that he had made it to the other side.

Jing Yo turned to Sergeant Fan. “Sergeant, take Ai Gua with you and head upstream. See if you can find a good place to cross. Then come back west. Private Po will come with me. This time, do not fire except under my direct order. No one is to fire,” Jing Yo repeated. “No one.”

Jing Yo began walking to the west, paralleling the bank of the stream. The water cut a haphazard channel, at some points swallowing trees, giving them a wide berth at others. It moved downhill, curving into an almost straight line within thirty meters of the spot where they believed their target had gone in.

Jing Yo took the rifle from Private Po, then stepped into the current where he could get a good view downstream. Ignoring the chill that ran up his legs, he moved carefully in the loose stones and mud. Within three steps the water came to his knees. Its pull was strong, trying to push him down; he tilted his entire body against it as he raised the rifle and its sight to see.

The heat of a body should show up clearly if on the surface of the water, but only there. There was considerable brush on both sides of the stream as it continued downward.

Nothing.

Jing Yo nearly lost his footing as he turned to come back out of the water. Only the sense of balance built up by years of practice saved him. He moved silently forward, climbing up the short rise to where Private Po stood.

“Perhaps he is dead already,” said Po as he handed back the rifle. “I hope so.”

“Do not wish for a man’s death, Private.”

“But he’s an enemy.”

There was no difference between wishing a man’s death and wishing one’s own, but there was no way to explain this to the private in terms that he would understand. Telling the enlisted man about Ch ‘an was out of the question; were the wrong official to find out, even such a simple gesture could be