Shadows of War

Maybe they hadn’t had all that much.

He kicked at a bed mat, then rolled it back with his foot. The floor of the hut, like the others, was wood.

So was the floor in the toolshed.

Why wasn’t it dirt? The floors in the barn were all dirt.

Josh got up from the bed and left the house. He started back toward the hut where he’d left Mara and M?, then altered his course to swing by the toolshed.

The walls looked all of a piece, though, everything together, fifty or more years old, and worn. There was a rug on the floor, a woven bamboo rug, almost brand-new, beneath one of the plows.

Why use a new rug to protect a plow?

Josh pushed the mower and another plow out of the way. The plow holding the rug in place was heavy, close to a hundred pounds, he guessed. That might account for the rug — they needed something to make it easy to push across the floor.

But as Josh pulled it back, the plow blade hung up on the lip of something.

A trapdoor.

Josh pushed the plows and the mower out of the way, then carefully pulled back the rest of the rug to reveal a cutout. It was difficult to get a grip — there were holes where he thought a handle had been, but no handle. He started to use the machete to help pry it open, then realized he was likely to break the blade. A rusted hoe worked much better. He pried up the door and found a set of steps.

The door covered a large cellar storage area stuffed with crates. It was too dark to see much, even with the lamp, but there were dozens and dozens of boxes stacked down there, along with some clothes and tools.

He decided to go back and tell Mara what he had found. The idea of food pushed him to run — he was hungry beyond belief.

He’d taken a few steps across the compound when he heard the sound in the distance:

Helicopters.

* * *

Mara was tending to the rice when Josh came running into the hut.

“Choppers!” he yelled. “The Chinese are coming!”

“We have to hide in the jungle,” she said, turning off the stove.

She grabbed the rice pot, using her shirttail as a pot holder. Then she realized that if any soldiers came inside, they’d see the stove was hot and know someone was hiding nearby. She grabbed the water jug, dousing the burner area. The water sizzled off. By the time they got here it would be cold.

“We gotta get out,” Josh told her, grabbing M? and leading her outside. “They’re coming. Come on.”

The helicopters were still some distance off, not yet visible in the sky. Mara pulled the door closed behind her, then started after him.

They’d never make it to the jungle. The irrigation ditches were closer, but what then? There were several helicopters; she could tell from the sound. They’d leave one circling the area, looking.

“We have to find a place to hide,” Mara said. “The helicopters are too close.”

Josh’s face went blank, as if he were having trouble processing the information. For a second, Mara thought he had frozen on her.

“This way then,” he said, darting toward the barns. “I know the perfect place.”

12

Northwestern Vietnam

Jing Yo pressed his hands together, folding the tips of his fingers against each other and pulling outward. His biceps tightened; the muscles in his shoulders and neck went taut.

Balance is all. A man who is balanced stands at the center of the ever-changing swirl. A man balanced is unchanged by chaos. He does not know catastrophe. He is the eye of the storm.

“We’re landing, Lieutenant,” said Wu, standing over him as the helicopter touched down. “We are at the village.”

Jing Yo got up from the bench. They had already searched an abandoned hamlet farther north, the Hmong settlement Colonel Sun had directed him to. As soon as he saw that it was empty, he had reboarded the helicopter and directed the bulk of his force here — back south of the creek, contrary to the colonel’s orders. It was a gamble, but he thought it justified by the circumstances.

Or at least by his gut sense.

The settlement was a small farming commune, with cottages on either side of a central barn area. Jing Yo sent half of the regular army troops to watch the perimeter, then split the remainder in half, sending one group to search the huts at the north and tasking one group on the huts at the south. He and his commandos went to the barns.

“You seem tired,” said Sergeant Wu as they walked toward the first building.

“Just thinking.”

“You shouldn’t do that.”

Jing Yo smiled, thinking it was a joke. Wu was serious.

“If you worry too much about losing men, you can’t do your job,” he said.

Jing Yo nodded.

“They were good, those people,” said Wu.

“Very.”

“Mercenaries. Working for the Americans, I would bet. Or Americans themselves. They’re a mongrel race. You can never tell where they come from.”

The man Jing Yo had wounded was probably back at the medical unit at the forward helicopter base by now. Jing Yo would talk to him eventually. Hopefully after they had apprehended the scientist.

The barn was empty. The commandos moved inside quickly, silently, securing it, then moving on.

“The peasants here make furniture,” said Wu dismissively, surveying the interior. “Cheap furniture for Americans, I bet.”

Jing Yo walked around the interior perimeter, rechecking the areas his men had already looked at. There were no hiding places; it was a plain, simple building without interior walls or a loft.

The next building was a twin of the first, except that it contained piles of rough wood rather than furniture.

If the scientist wasn’t here, then most likely the colonel was right, Jing Yo realized as he surveyed the second barn. He was likely to be cowering in the jungle somewhere, hiding like a scared rabbit.

Overestimating an enemy could be nearly as bad as underestimating him. Because he was an American, Jing Yo was preconditioned to see him as almost a superman, when in reality he was no different from anyone else.

Jing Yo returned to the door. Stepping outside, he caught the scent of burning wood on the wind. He thought for a moment that the village wasn’t abandoned after all, that someone was making dinner. Then he turned and saw that one of the cottages had been set on fire.

They’ve found someone and are smoking him out, he thought.

“This way, quickly,” he called to the others, who were just about to go into one of the smaller buildings nearby.

As they ran across the compound, Jing Yo signaled to them to spread out. Then he noticed that the soldiers nearby weren’t watching the building, but searching the others.

A soldier lit a bundle of dried weeds and held it to the roof of the nearby cottage.

“What are you doing?” Jing Yo shouted. He ran over and grabbed the man’s arm as he tried to light another part of the roof.

“Orders, Lieutenant.”

“What orders?”