Shadows of War

Walter Jackson.

“I cannot believe such a bald-faced lie can possibly succeed in the General Assembly,” said Greene.

“They’re scared they’ll be next.”

“That’s an excuse for Malaysia, not Germany.”

“It’s not the Chinese they’re worried about. The Russians want Poland.”

“They may get it if the Chinese aren’t stopped.”

“Vietnam is lost, Ches. The Chinese are pouring armies across the border. The Vietnamese don’t know it yet, but they’re toast. We have to face that reality.”

“We have to help them,” Greene told Jackson.

“General Perry should be there shortly. If they take us up on the offer of advisers, we can have people inside the country in a matter of hours.”

“That’s not enough. They need more than pictures and at-a-boys.”

“You want to send troops?” Jackson asked.

“I know I said I wouldn’t.”

“If you do anything sizable, you’ll need an authorization from Congress. They’ll never pass one. God, Ches, you’d be lucky to get half of your own party behind it. Especially after what’s going on in the UN today.”

The phone buzzed, preventing Greene from unleashing his full and candid view of Congress.

“Mr. President, the director of the CIA is on the line.”

“Put him through.”

Peter Frost always sounded a little hoarse when he began a conversation, as if he’d just come inside the building. “Mr. President, there’s something up in Vietnam I think you should know about. Something we’ve been working on.”

“Go on.”

“We have a witness who saw the Chinese staging the attack they used as a pretense to invade Vietnam. He has a video showing the massacre of a village by Chinese soldiers the day before the attack,” continued Frost. “And he saw the Chinese staging the incursion.”

“What?”

The president listened as Frost told him about Josh MacArthur and the scientific team. He told him everything, including the fact that one member of the team — not MacArthur — had been persuaded to spy for the U.S. That fact, if it ever came out, might compromise MacArthur’s testimony. But if he had a video, his credibility would be nearly unassailable.

“We’ve been working on getting him out,” said Frost. “But we’ve run into trouble.”

Greene put the call on speaker. He knew Vietnam well enough to know the area Frost was talking about. It was a very long way from the coast, and sufficiently far from the border with Laos to make retrieval from that direction difficult as well.

And then there was the little matter of the Chinese wanting to keep Josh MacArthur for themselves.

“How do we get him out?” asked Greene.

“I have a CIA officer with him, someone who was in the country already. But to get him out, we’re going to need to take a bigger risk. We need U.S. personnel. It’s the only way now.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“It involves a SEAL team.”

“Do it,” said Greene. “Do it now.”

8

Hanoi

After seeing the spartan bunker where the head of the government was working, Zeus was not surprised to find that General Minh Trung was working in an office that couldn’t have been much more than eight feet wide and ten long.

What was surprising was that he wasn’t in a bunker; instead, his headquarters was in a barracks building in the middle of an army base about a mile from the bunker complex. The general was conferring with several aides when Zeus arrived. The lieutenant who had escorted him from Hanoi directed him to wait in the hallway, then disappeared.

There were no chairs. The door to the office was open, and while the men inside were speaking softly, Zeus could easily hear the discussion. Unfortunately, it was in Vietnamese, and the translator had stayed with General Perry and the ambassador.

Zeus stared at the light gray wall, visualizing a map of Vietnam and the route the Chinese army was taking. The Vietnamese did not have very long to implement his plan; if the Chinese got beyond the reservoir, it wouldn’t work.

They might even be there by now. His last intelligence update was before they left Washington, several hours ago.

Zeus began to pace, trying to conjure a follow-up plan. In Red Dragon, he could have bombed the hell out of their supply line and hit their spearhead with medium-range missiles. But that wasn’t an option for the Vietnamese. They lacked missiles and a strategic bomber fleet. The few MiGs that they could have used as attack aircraft had been heavily targeted by the Chinese already, and the remainder would undoubtedly be shot down if they attempted an attack.

“Major?”

Zeus looked up. General Trung was standing in the corridor.

“Yes, sir. I’m sorry. Um — I am Major Murphy, sir — ”

“I know who you are,” said the general. “Come.”

The general was thin, like many Vietnamese, and very tall — an inch or two taller than Zeus. His close- cropped hair was gray around his temples, but otherwise he looked youthful, even younger than the fifty-one years Zeus remembered from the briefing paper on Vietnam’s military leadership.

“I’m Major Murphy from the U.S.,” Zeus told the officers who were crowded into the room. “I, um, I’m afraid I have to use English, because I can’t speak Vietnamese. My translator is with General Perry.”

Trung nodded.

“I’ve analyzed the intelligence and I have a presentation on my laptop,” said Zeus. As he started to unclasp his briefcase, General Trung put his hand on it to stop him.

“We have no electricity.”

“It’s a laptop. My battery — ”

“Tell us in your own words.”

Zeus spotted a map of the country on the wall and walked over to it.

“I admit my intelligence is a few hours old,” said Zeus. “From what I heard last, the Chinese took the airport at Na San and were consolidating for a fresh push — we believe toward Ninh Binh and the south.” He stopped for a moment, locating the point on the map. The Vietnamese characters made it hard to read, but there was only one airstrip in that part of the country He put his finger on it, then traced a path southeastward, following the mountains and river valleys until he came to the massive reservoir.

“We would recommend breaking the reservoir at Hoa Binh and attempting to block their path,” said Zeus. “At that point, they would have to redirect their attack toward Hanoi, and you get a chance to fight them on your own terms. Otherwise they simply take over the rest of the country and bomb Hanoi into submission.”

One of the officers in the room, a colonel, said something to General Trung in Vietnamese. The general held out his hand, encouraging him to speak directly to Zeus.

“Why do we want them to attack toward Hanoi?” said the colonel.

“Two reasons. One, it’s not their plan, and two, that’s where you have your best defenses. If they go south, which is what I believe they’re planning to do, you’ll be swamped.”

“The capital would be destroyed in an all-out attack,” said the colonel. “Our job is to protect it.”

“It will be subject to bombing in any event,” said Zeus. “But you can bottleneck the tanks if you wipe out the