“Hello,” he said.
No answer.
The door was held in place by its odd angle against the threshold; he had to lift it up and toward him to open it. The interior was empty except for an old shovel and several seed bags of grain.
“Here, come on,” he told M?, gently pushing her inside. “You stay here. I want to look at the rest of the farm. Stay.”
He mimed her sleeping, and pointed to the seed bags on the floor. The girl looked fearful, almost on the verge of tears. Josh dropped to his knees, trying to explain that he would be back. He mimed himself walking around — fingers on his palm — and looking for trouble — hands cupped like binoculars — and then coming back. When he was done, she looked confused rather than reassured, but she stayed when he pressed the door closed.
About ten feet of the side wall of the house had disintegrated, and there was a sizable hole where the floor had been in the back room. Josh squeezed gingerly around the jagged edge, slipping between the leaning interior walls into what had been a children’s bedroom. Except for the cracks in the walls and ceiling, it appeared entirely untouched by the chaos. Bedrolls were neatly lined up against one wall. A small shelf above them held a rock collection; stones of all sizes and shapes sat on the linoleum paper surface as if on display. Two dolls, one made of vegetable husks and the other of yarn, flanked the collection, as if they were guarding it.
Josh tucked the yarn doll under his arm and went to explore the rest of the house. It was large and clearly belonged to a relatively well-to-do family. The furniture in the living room looked Western and new. The television was a large LCD screen.
The blue power light was on. Curious, Josh went and pushed the Power button. The TV flicked off. He pushed it again, expecting that he would get a screen of static. Instead, he got a picture — snowy, but visible.
A newscaster was speaking, not in Vietnamese, but in Chinese. Josh couldn’t follow what he was saying, but the graphics that flashed on the screen showed an arrow arcing into China, and then arcing back.
Were the Chinese saying that the Vietnamese had attacked first?
The newscaster’s face came back, angry, flushed.
He was saying that, wasn’t he? Claiming the Vietnamese were getting what they deserved for having attacked first.
But Josh knew they hadn’t. He’d lived through it. And he had evidence.
He put his hand on his pocket, touching the digital video recorder.
As he did, something creaked behind him. Panic seized him before he could turn around, before he could grab the rifle hanging from his shoulder. It was so important that he live, and yet here he had gone and let his guard down; he was going to die.
But it was only M?.
“You scared me,” he told her. “I told you to stay.”
She held her hands out to him.
“Look, a doll,” he told her, holding out the toy he’d found.
She ignored it, raising her hands up and down emphatically. It was the signal they’d used while walking, indicating she wanted to be carried.
“It’s okay. I’m just looking around,” said Josh, kneeling to talk to her. “Did you know this house? Did you know these people?”
She didn’t answer, just kept pumping her arms.
“Is this your house?” he asked.
He tried to think of a way to put the question into gestures, looking upward, pointing at her. But she didn’t understand. She grabbed hold of his shirt and tugged him toward the window.
“What’s up, M?? What’s going on?”
She pointed through the window. He pulled the curtain back to see.
There were soldiers in the field, moving toward the building.
16
“Trying to learn by osmosis?” said Win Christian across the room. The snicker in his voice was anything but subtle.
“I got the map memorized already,” Zeus said, lifting his head slightly. “I’m trying to blank out your face.”
“Very good, Zeus. Just remember, I’m chief of staff. Anything you want, from dental floss to a weekend off, goes through me.”
“Nice.” Zeus knew he wouldn’t be getting any free time for the foreseeable future, and he’d already stocked up on dental floss. “I’ll tell you what I do need. Real-time access to the satellite data. Can you arrange that? There’s no reason we can’t have it immediately, not an hour later. I don’t need the analysts to tell me what I’m seeing.”
“We all need it. Intel is screaming for it.”
“They should scream louder.”
Zeus stretched his muscles. The Chinese plan to invade Vietnam clearly incorporated American doctrine — lightning strikes away from the main centers of resistance, along with coordinated air and armor movements. Cover a lot of ground, don’t let the enemy know precisely what you are up to. It was Shock and Awe, Chinese style.
But the Chinese army wasn’t the American army, and it wasn’t fighting in a desert, where Shock and Awe had had its proving ground. There were flaws in the strategy — plenty of them, starting with the limited road network in the areas they were attacking, and the decision to keep the flanks lightly protected. The latter had been a feature of the second Gulf War, where the risk was carefully calculated and deemed acceptable. In this case, it seemed like an even greater gamble, though the Vietnamese had yet to make the Chinese pay for it.
Tanks were the keystone of the attack. The Chinese Type 99 main battle tank was a hell of a weapon, a main battle tank that, while not quite on par with the American M1A1, easily overmatched anything the Vietnamese were able to field. It was fast and powerful, capable of moving along the roads at high speed and then overcoming all but the most concentrated defenses. Its most glaring vulnerability was the fact that, like the Russian designs that had inspired it, its extra ammo was kept in the crew compartment, an invitation to disaster if it met a high- powered antitank round.
Had this been a simulation, Zeus could have blunted Red’s attacks by making the most of this vulnerability. He’d hit the leading edge of the attacks with old but sturdy A-10A Warthogs, chewing up the leading edge of the invading force. He could mop up with special operations teams deposited near key intersections, who could strike with shoulder-held antitank weapons when the tanks came through.
But in real life, the Vietnamese had no A-10s. Their antitank weapons were either old Russian designs or Chinese-made-for-export missiles that conspicuously lacked the punch to get past the Type 99’s skin and explosive reactive armor. Even if they somehow managed to get defensive forces in the right place — a big if at the moment — the Vietnamese weapons were the equivalent of peashooters as far as the tanks were concerned.
That could be partly solved by giving the Vietnamese new weapons. But even if they were flown over immediately from Army stockpiles, there’d be a delay in training and deployment. Several days at the very least, and by then the Chinese would have enough of the country that it wouldn’t matter.
So there had to be another way to stop the Chinese. Or at least slow them down.
They’d just taken Na San and were staging there for their next big run. As Zeus saw it, tonight they would zoom down Route 6, probably overrun Moc Chau, and then go on either to Hanoi or farther south, down to the area of Nimh Binh.
