World Bank, which received a good bit of funding from America. Now American taxpayers were going to spend a few million dollars destroying it.
Zeus’s first job was to make sure that the villages along the southern end of the lake had been evacuated. At twenty thousand feet, he could barely make out the houses, let alone tell whether they were empty.
“We need to go down,” he told the pilot when they came over Song Da. “Way down.”
“Oh yes. We go down.”
The aircraft’s right wing rolled and the Albatros began plummeting toward the ground. Murphy’s nausea returned. He clamped his mouth shut beneath the oxygen mask, holding tight as the pilot pushed the aircraft through ten thousand feet. Thieu rolled the plane onto its back, then through an invert, before pushing into a somewhat shallower dive.
Zeus managed to open his eyes. The reservoir’s turquoise blue spread before him. “I need to see the houses on the south side,” he said.
“Oh yes. That’s where we are going,” said Thieu.
Zeus took out the binoculars and began scanning the bank of the reservoir as the plane continued to glide downward. They began slowing down as well, the airspeed dropping through three hundred knots until it seemed as if they were standing still.
He could see a hut, and what looked like it might be a boat, but little else. He followed the road for a while but saw nothing on it.
“Can you get lower?.” Zeus asked.
“Next pass,” said Thieu, banking the plane.
They crisscrossed along the southern border of the reservoir three more times, finally getting down to within about five hundred feet. Thieu kept cutting their speed, but paradoxically, the lower they got, the faster they seemed to be flying.
Were the villages empty?
He thought they were. Certainly no one was moving around down there.
As they reached the western end of the reservoir, Zeus saw a reflection of light near the bridge. He asked Thieu to go down and check it. They came back around low and slow, barely at a hundred knots.
It was a Vietnamese troop truck, one of the units that had been charged with getting the villagers out of the area. Three soldiers waved as they plane passed overhead.
“We have to get them off the bridge,” said Zeus. “And then I need to talk to my general.”
14
“They’re trying to burn us out,” he told her. “I saw them do it earlier. They wait and shoot when we come out.”
“I know.”
“You think we have enough air down here?”
“The fire might suck it out.”
“Yeah. But if we run out, they’ll kill us anyway.”
It was a hell of a choice, Mara thought — death by suffocation or by bullet.
Josh moved away, back into the cellar. “M?, where are you?”
Which was better? she wondered. Lie down in the hole and maybe die? Or face certain death trying to leave the building?
Better to stay. They’d have at least something of a chance.
And yet, everything inside her was pushing for her to run up the steps, get out, and kill the bastards who had done this.
Josh came back, poking her in the ribs as he searched for the wall and the steps.
“Where are you going?” Mara asked.
“I had an idea,” he said. “You stay with M?. I’ll run out and surrender. They won’t realize you’re here.”
“That’ll never work. They’ll search the place for sure then. We’ll all die. It’s noble of you — but no. It’ll do the opposite of what you want.”
“I can’t stay here and suffocate to death. No way.”
“That may not happen. We may have enough oxygen.”
“You think we should take the chance?”
“It’s a better chance than certain death.”
Josh started away. Mara grabbed his shirt.
“You told me what they did,” she said. “They’re waiting out there for us now.”
“Maybe if we both go out,” he said, “they won’t think of the girl.”
“They’ll find her and kill her. You saved her once.”
Mara waited for him to speak. She could hear noises above them — it sounded like more helicopters.
Was it really hopeless?
“I don’t know what to do,” said Josh finally.
“Neither do I.”
She reached forward and touched his arm. He pressed into her.
“All my life, I’ve known what to do,” he told her. “I’ve survived.”
“I don’t know what to do either,” she said. “But I think we stay.”
Very possibly dead.
Hopefully not. An infrared searching device was on its way; they’d have an easier time finding him if he was still alive.
Either way, he’d get him.
“Let’s go,” Jing Yo told the army captain. His men were already heading for the helicopters.
“You’re going to just let the fires burn?” asked Sergeant Wu. “What if they spread?”
Jing Yo turned back. Black smoke billowed from the biggest barn; flames were poking from the others. Most of the houses were already destroyed.
“We’ll have the helicopters fly over them. The downdraft will beat the flames down,” he said, climbing into the chopper.
This was a time he should be praying, but it had always seemed the coward’s way, or a cop-out. Turning yourself over to God, or at least the unknown.
That was what he liked about science. You could measure the odds of something happening, the probability of a specific weather pattern and how it would intersect with the ecosystem, and you could measure the parameters of your guess. You could look at the possibilities and your models, and decide what to do.
Not that it guaranteed success. There were always a lot of variables. The climate crisis proved that. The outliers on the graph — the possibilities everyone had rejected — had proved to be the accurate predictors.
“Are you still conscious?” Mara whispered.
“Yes. You?”
“Well I wouldn’t be talking if I wasn’t.”
He laughed — quickly, briefly, and not very hard. But it was still a laugh.
“The helicopters sound like they’re leaving,” said Mara.