Shock of War

“Not that I can see. Nothing on the map, either.”

Zeus drew to a stop behind a late model Buick. The GM car was a status symbol here, a sign of wealth and probably political influence, which went hand in hand.

“There are some lights about a half mile ahead,” said Christian, leaning out of the cab to look. “Must be a checkpoint.”

“You see a place I can turn around?”

“Nothing.”

Pulling a U-turn at this point would undoubtedly draw a lot of attention. He could do it anyway, find a side street, turn off.

“Look for a store with a parking lot,” he told Christian. “We’ll pull in there and leave the truck.”

“Yeah.”

A better solution presented itself as he crept ahead: a gas station sat ahead on the left. He’d have to cross traffic to get there. But it would be perfect.

Zeus waited for the Buick to move up a little farther, then began angling the truck in the direction of the service station. There was a stream of cars coming from the other direction, spaced just far enough apart to make it dangerous to cross.

Finally, he saw his chance. The truck bucked, nearly stalling as he gave it too much gas. This time he was able to back his foot off the pedal in time to keep the engine working, and they made it across into the service station without stalling or getting hit.

As they pulled alongside a pump an attendant came out of the nearby building.

“We’re outta here now,” Zeus told Christian, turning off the engine.

The attendant looked at him quizzically as Zeus jumped from the truck.

“Fill ‘er up,” said Zeus.

He tossed the man the keys, hitting him in the chest. With a quick stride, he walked around the back of the truck. Christian was already out.

“The ocean’s in that direction,” he told Zeus.

“Let’s go.”

* * *

It took them nearly two hours to get close to the water, walking down narrow streets that curled through mini-hamlets before opening into wet fields of salt marsh and muck. The area was crisscrossed by canals and bridges. Not many years before, rice fields had dotted the land, which had been partially reclaimed from the ocean centuries ago. But effluence from the nearby city and factories had poisoned the shallow bay waters. The ocean was rising gently, flooding into the muck, but it couldn’t come fast enough to cleanse the ground.

Adding insult to injury, much of the land was now being filled in, legally and illegally, with garbage from the industrial north. Zeus and Christian wended their way past several massive dumping grounds. One was a mountain of old computers and other electronic gear. A trio of squatters huts sat at the edge of the dump near the road, as if standing guard. An old woman and two children watched them as they walked past, no doubt wondering what they were up to.

The sea smelled worse with every step closer. A thick, oily stench hung in the air, stinging their eyes.

“End of the road,” said Christian, pointing toward the rocks ahead. “God, the smell is wretched.”

Zeus remained silent as he walked toward the water. He was calmer than he had been before, but even more tired. His stomach felt like a marble rock, smooth and hard. His mouth was dry, his neck ached.

The sun, low on the horizon, pinched his eyes when he looked back at it. They’d come out on the western side of a peninsula opposite the city proper, which lay two or three miles across a shallow bay. Zeus stood at the water’s edge, gazing across at the buildings in the distance. A jungle of red seaweed and algae floated nearby, giving the water a purplish cast. Barges were lined up to the right, a vast array bereft of cargo.

A navy vessel was anchored in the open water to his left, too far to be identified even if Zeus had been an expert on the Chinese navy. From here it looked rather large and ominous.

“Now what do we do?” asked Christian.

“We find a boat,” said Zeus. “There should be plenty of fishing boats around somewhere.”

“Let’s try this way,” he said, starting back. “We’ll work our way along the coast and see if we see anything.”

“I really need to rest.”

“Soon.”

* * *

About a half hour later, after zigging and zagging across a few marshy dunes and hills of grass that came nearly to their chests, Zeus spotted a pair of boats anchored together about twenty yards from land. They rocked gently with the light breeze.

There didn’t seem to be anyone around. Zeus sat down in muddy sand, and took off his shoes.

“We’re swimming?” Christian asked.

“Unless you got a better idea.”

The oily film on the water made Zeus decide he’d keep his pants and shirt on. He put his shoes on a rock, thinking he’d come back for them, then he put the gun there, too.

The mud and weeds were soft, like a carpet thrown beneath the water. The first few yards were almost flat; the angle was very gradual after that.

Zeus got within arm’s length of the nearest boat when the depth suddenly dropped off. He reached out with his arm and grabbed the side of the boat, kicking his feet free of the muck.

Long and narrow, the wooden-hulled craft looked more like a racing shell than a fisherman’s boat. It was propelled by two long oars, one at the bow and one at the stern. A tiny, open-sided canvas tent sat just aft of the midway point, its stretched fabric bleached and brittle from the sun.

“Front or back?” said Christian, working through the water behind him.

“You take the bow.”

Zeus pulled the long oar from the bottom of the boat and positioned it in the yoke.

The boat was tied to a stick that poked out of the water on the starboard side. Christian unleashed it, then moved up to the bow.

“We’ll go back for our shoes,” Zeus told him. “We may need them.”

In water this shallow, the oars were better used as poles, and they were much easier to manipulate standing up. But it took Zeus several minutes to realize that, and several more to master the technique well enough to get them close to the shore. Finally Christian jumped off, waded through the muck, and came back with the shoes and gun.

“Who do you think owns the boat?” he asked as he plunked Zeus’s shoes down.

“Somebody.”

“Maybe we should leave some money in the other boat.”

It wasn’t a bad idea, but Zeus ended up vetoing it. They might still need Chinese money they had — eighteen yuan from the trucker’s envelope. And leaving the American money might give anyone looking for them too much of a clue.

They headed toward the city’s shore, trying to skirt the Chinese warship by the widest margin possible. The wind began picking up when they were roughly halfway across; Zeus found it harder and harder to steer them in a straight line. By the time they got across they had been pushed back almost to the barges.

“We’re beat,” said Christian. “We really need sleep.”

“We gotta keep going,” insisted Zeus.

He tugged harder on the oar, angry with Christian even though he was only stating the obvious. They started doing better, then caught a break as the wind died.

“Look for a motorboat,” Zeus told Christian. “We’ll trade.”

“Yeah, anybody would take that deal.”

Zeus laughed. It was the first time he’d laughed in quite a while. It surprised him.

It felt good, shaking his lungs and clearing his head. They made it past the city peninsula, then began crossing a wide expanse of water toward an area of beaches. In happier times — only two years earlier — the