Shadows of War

she escaped down the street.

The cover of an aid worker was too good to pass up, and Mara quickly set about shoring up the image. Soon after reaching Route 32 — there were soldiers along the highway, but they weren’t stopping military vehicles — Mara spotted a complex built around a Buddhist monastery. She explained to the monks that she was bringing emergency supplies to Son Tay, a city on the Red River to the west. She offered to take the monks with her, and for a moment worried that one of the kindly brothers might actually take her up on the offer. But the monks were already tending to a number of people left wounded and homeless from the attacks, and instead they offered her some bandages, blankets, and bed-sheets.

Her next stop was in a town about five miles away. Parking the truck, she found a small shop and bought several pairs of men’s clothes and a cap for her hair. She also got two peasant-style dresses, and a basket for lunch. She had just gotten the basket filled and climbed back in the cab when the satellite phone buzzed.

“Hey, Bangkok, how we doing?” she asked, holding the phone against her ear with her shoulder as she put the truck in gear.

“How are you doing, Mara?”

“DeBiase! They have you back on the communications desk, Million Dollar Man?”

“I requested it specifically so I could talk to you,” DeBiase told her. “Where are you exactly?”

“You’re not tracking me?”

“You have to transmit for thirty seconds,” he told her. “But yes, we are. It was mostly a figure of speech, like hello.”

“Hello. I’m near Hoa Binh,” she told him. “I want to stay south of the Red River for a few miles. I think there are more troops on that side of the river.”

“How far north can you be by tonight?”

“China if I have to be.”

“Pick a place farther south, and hopefully a little safer.”

“I was thinking of Nam Det, if there aren’t many troops in the way.”

“Hmmm.”

“Are you looking at the satellites? What do they say?”

“The latest satellite says there are no troops there. The Chinese still haven’t come across the border at Lao Cai.”

“Maybe they won’t.”

“Don’t bet on it. Nam Det…You’d have to go up Route 70.”

“I’d planned on it — if there aren’t a lot of checkpoints.”

DeBiase began clicking through information screens on the computer in front of him. Besides satellite data, the U.S. now had Global Hawk UAVs patrolling to provide real-time information on what was going on.

“There are two points I’d steer you around, darling. One is Phan Luong, which the Vietnamese are using as a mustering point for their reserves in Tuyen Quang. The other is farther north, near the Thac Ba Reservoir. That one’s the problem — there are no alternate roads unless you go through Yen Bar.”

“I can do that.”

“I don’t think so — the Chinese are bombing it right now. The analysts seem to think they’ll attack and occupy it tonight.”

Mara tried visualizing Vietnam in her head. The rivers that cut southward were flanked by mountains; her route back to Nam Det was in the shadow of the Con Voi Mountains, between the Chay River and the Hong. The Da River valley, farther to the west — and on the other side of the Hoang Lien Son Mountains — was the main route of the Chinese advance, though no one expected them to stay there very long.

“I think my best bet will be to BS my way past the checkpoint at Tuyen Quang,” she told him. “The question is when.”

She looked at her watch. Assuming she could keep her speed of fifty kilometers an hour — an iffy proposition, admittedly — she’d be at the checkpoint no later than five p.m., just as dusk was falling.

“Can you get past?” asked DeBiase.

“Sure. I’ve gotten by two already. I just tell them I’m a nun.”

“That works?”

“They don’t know me very well.”

Mara asked DeBiase if he could arrange an equipment drop; she needed a backup radio, batteries, and most of all ammunition. DeBiase told her he’d have to work on it. Two hours later, he called back to tell her Lucas had wangled an unmanned aerial vehicle to drop the gear on the field at Nam Det just before dawn.

Assuming she could get there.

“We’ll know in an hour,” Mara told DeBiase. “If that roadblock at Tuyen Quang is still there.”

“It is. The Vietnamese are telling people in some of the villages near the Chinese border to leave and go south. You’ll be running into refugees soon.”

“I’ll try not to hit them.”

“Yeah.”

“That was a joke, Jess. You’re losing your sense of humor.”

“I know.”

* * *

Figuring she would be stopped at Tuyen Quang, Mara decided to try and polish her image. She used a needle and thread to sew a makeshift cross out of sheets on the top of the truck, but didn’t have enough left over for the sides. She had only a few boxes of supplies — a pathetic effort if she really was working for a relief group. Mara rearranged a few things, but there was only so much she could do, and when she climbed back into the cab and put the truck in gear, she felt even less confident than before.

A half hour later, Mara saw the first refugees walking along the road. They were a family of four, a mother and father with two children around seven and nine, a boy and a girl. Each carried a big bundle on his or her back. They didn’t look at her as she passed.

Mara thought they were an anomaly — the area had so far missed the fighting — but within a few minutes she saw more people, bunches of them, groups of ten and twelve. Most were on the side of the road, but here and there a group strayed onto the asphalt. Bicyclists were scattered among the walkers, most pedaling slowly and glumly alongside relatives or friends. By the time she’d gone another kilometer, the highway was flooded with people- old people, middle aged, children, some pulling carts, a few dragging bundles placed on pieces of wood and poles.

Another kilometer farther on and the road was almost impassable.

A few of the refugees stared at her as she drove, slowly, pressing forward against the tide. But most didn’t look at her at all; they looked at nothing but the black tar of the road, oozing up in the late-afternoon heat.

The steady flood of people overwhelmed a small village that straddled the highway They seemed like ants climbing through the remains of a dead animal, moving forward. A few of the inhabitants stood in their doorways, jaws slack, unable to entirely comprehend what was going on.

North of the village, Mara found she could go fastest by straddling the edge of the highway and shoulder. People would move off the road more easily there, and she managed to get the truck to twenty kilometers an hour for several stretches. But she was constantly slowing down, often hitting the brake as an old person got stubborn in front of her, or a child didn’t pay enough attention. By the time she got close enough to Tuyen Quang to see the checkpoint, the sun had set.

Mara had wondered why she hadn’t seen any automobiles on the way up; she had assumed that it was because the area was so poor. Now she saw that the authorities were seizing all motor vehicles — cars, trucks, and motorbikes — at the checkpoint. Once stripped of their vehicle, the refugees were then literally pushed onto the road, told to go south. The entire area had apparently been ordered evacuated shortly after Mara set out from Hanoi.

Her truck was the only vehicle heading north, and at first as she drove up Mara thought she would just get right through, without even being stopped — the soldiers were focused on the cars and the refugees. But as she passed into the bright glow of the spotlight illuminating the checkpoint area, an officer turned from the other lane and put up his hand.

Mara thought of ignoring him and simply driving on. But when she saw two soldiers step from the shadows