Edge of War

“I’ll just throw a paper bag over your head.”

Mara would have decked him if they weren’t being watched.

Kerfer started to giggle like a thirteen-year-old.

Jerk.

The soldiers wouldn’t even listen to her questions. Mara walked parallel to the building, looking for an officer. She found a lieutenant having a cigarette on the sidewalk. He told her the airport was completely closed.

“I have a plane that’s meeting me,” Mara told him. “It’s a charter. I have a little girl and — ”

The officer cut her off, saying that she would need to take up her problems with the travel ministry. When she asked where the office was in the terminal, he replied that it was downtown, not here.

“Who can I talk to here?” she asked.

“No one,” he insisted. Mara pressed him for his commander’s name; the lieutenant finally gave her the name of a captain, who, he said, was back by the trucks where the traffic was being diverted.

“We can walk down that alley there, hop the fence, and get in,” said Kerfer as the lieutenant went back to his men. “Easier than this bullshit.”

“Yeah.”

“What time’s our flight?”

“It should be here in an hour,” said Mara. “But they’ll wait.”

The area around the perimeter of the airport was packed tightly with buildings. They were halfway through them, heading toward the fence at the end of the runway, when DeBiase called her on the sat phone.

“Bad news, angel. Your airport’s closed.”

“No shit,” said Mara. “Tell the pilot we’re going to hop the fence. Ask him where to meet.”

“You’re not following me. They can’t land. The Vietnamese closed the airport to civilian traffic. They mean business. There are armored cars on the runway. Word is they’re using it for fighter operations tonight.”

“You’re joking, right?” she said.

“I wish. Apparently they have a dozen MiGs left and they want to make it easy for the Chinese to blow them all up,” said DeBiase, as sarcastic as ever. “We’ll get you out, don’t worry. Why don’t you go get something to eat? Get some rooms and relax for a while.”

“You make it sound like we’re on vacation.”

“You’re not?”

2

Washington, D.C.

This was not the way they taught it in civics class.

Then again, they didn’t teach civics anymore. They didn’t teach history, either. It was social studies, which was about as far from an accurate description as possible.

President Greene leaned forward against the long table in the White House Cabinet Room, trying to contain his anger as Admiral Matthews lectured him on the dangers presented to aircraft carriers by aircraft. This was just the latest round of whining, protest, and foot-dragging from the service Chiefs, who were determined to resist Greene’s efforts to help the Vietnamese. Most of their resistance was passive-aggressive — find that in the social studies textbooks under separation of powers — but it was no less effective because of that. As far as Greene was concerned, it was a small step away from mutiny.

A very small step.

But the lecture was especially galling coming at five o’clock in the morning, an ungodly hour undoubtedly selected by the service Chiefs to keep him off guard. The bastards always fought at night.

The president decided that it was time to put the admiral and his fellow members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in their place.

“Apparently, Admiral, you’ve forgotten that I was not only in the Navy for over twenty years, but that I was an aviator and flew off of aircraft carriers. And protected them, I might add.”

The admiral shut up. The generals around him looked — ”chastised” wasn’t the word.

“Peeved” was.

Pampered jackasses.

“Now listen to me,” said Greene. “You work for me. I understand the military damn well. I know pushback when I see it. I’m not going to stand for it.”

Tommy Stills, the commander of the Air Force and a personal friend, started to protest. Greene put up his hand to indicate he shouldn’t interrupt.

“I want U.S. ships close to the Vietnamese coast,” continued Greene. “I don’t give a crap about how the North Koreans are acting up, or how Russia’s alleged battle fleet needs to be looked after. Taiwan can rot in hell for the moment. I want ships close to the oil fields. Period. Now.”

“Do you want us to run the blockade?” asked Admiral Matthews. “That’s the bottom line.”

“I want us to ignore the blockade,” said Greene. “We had a submarine off Hai Phong. It was supporting a mission — why the hell was it ordered to leave?”

“It had another mission.”

“And that mission was more important?”

The admiral took a second before answering. Undoubtedly he was thinking of Greene’s rank at retirement — captain — and found it galling to be questioned by him.

When he finally did speak, Greene cut him off.

“I thought it prudent to — ”

“You thought it prudent?” Greene was having difficulty controlling himself. Showing his temper was counterproductive to the Chiefs. Outbursts only built resentment, which encouraged more backstabbing, greater foot-dragging, and even less candor later on. Any display of temper would surely be reported to Greene’s enemies in Congress — now the Chiefs’ best allies — within minutes of the session’s end.

But damn it, he was commander in chief.

“Look, I’m not asking for a shooting war here,” said Greene, trying to dial back his emotions and change tactics. “I want us to act like a superpower. That’s what we are. We’re the only ones who can stand up to this bully. Admiral, I know you feel the same way. This is pure Navy doctrine.”

Matthews nodded. Greene wasn’t really sure he did feel the same way. Matthews’s predecessor had been lambasted for acting too aggressively at several points during the Malaysian conflict. As the previous administration’s term wound down, he’d been dragged before not one but three different congressional committees and interrogated for his sins. The Army chief of staff, Renata Gold, had gone through the same process — one reason, Greene thought, that she hadn’t said a word the entire meeting.

It was often said that generals always refought their last war. In this case, the war they were fighting was the one their predecessors had lost in Congress.

But to be fair, Malaysia had been a real fiasco, with Greene’s predecessor caving disastrously toward the end of his term. The service Chiefs had no reason to see this any differently — there was no sense risking the lives of their people, or their careers, for a lost cause.

“You realize that this is 1939 all over again,” said Greene. “Or maybe 1937. Same thing. Vietnam is Czechoslovakia.”

“I don’t think anyone is suggesting we partition Vietnam,” said General Gold.

“Good.” Greene didn’t know what else to say. He turned back toward Admiral Matthews. “Tell the Kitty Hawk to turn up the steam. And let’s have that destroyer — which one was it?”

“USS McCampbell, sir. DDG-85.”

“Get it near the oil fields below Saigon,” said Greene. “Posthaste.”

“Aye, aye.”

“Aye, aye, yourself,” said Greene, trying, though failing, to inject a lighter mood. “More coffee, anyone?”