She put the groceries away.
“What time is it?” Zeus asked, though he had a watch.
“Eight.”
“God, I slept all that time.”
“You are very tired.”
Anna poured the water, then sat. She blew gently on her tea.
“Are you hungry?” she asked.
“No,” said Zeus. “Are you?1”
She shook her head.
“My legs feel restless,” Zeus told her. The aroma of the coffee reminded him of soggy cardboard. He hated instant, but he treated the liquid as if it were the most precious in the world, nursing the cup in both hands, the steam rising against his face. “Do you think we could go for a walk?”
She answered with a question. “When do you have to be back?”
“Eventually.” He took a tentative sip. The liquid was still very hot. “What happened in there?” he asked. “At the hospital. Who was the man who was shot?”
She looked straight down at her tea. Her features seemed to harden, the soft frown she’d worn turning into a grimace.
“Can you tell me?” Zeus asked gently
“He was a Chinese pilot. A bandit. The director’s family had been killed by a bomb two days before.”
“Who was the officer who shot him?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” said Zeus. “Bad things happen in wars.”
“My grandfather was killed by bombs in the American war. And two of his brothers.”
She stared at him for a moment, then sipped her tea in silence.
“Let’s try that walk,” he told her finally. “Come on.”
“I saw the bombs fall the first night,” she told him. “I was standing at my window. There was a floodlight in the sky. Sticks fell through it. I thought there was something wrong with my eyes.”
Distance grew between them as they walked shoulder to shoulder, her arm occasionally jostling against his. The closeness that he’d felt in bed, making love, sleeping next to her, dissipated. His mind pulled toward duty. It was like gravity.
She stiffened when he took her hand.
“I want to see you again,” he said.
“In Vietnam, it is not usual to hold hands in public,” she said in a voice so faint that he barely heard.
“It’s dark. The streets are deserted.” He squeezed her fingers, looking down into her face. “Okay? You’ll see me again?”
“Yes.”
He leaned down and kissed her softly, gently, on the lips. She hesitated but then surrendered, her lips meeting his. It was a tantalizing shadow of what he had felt earlier, being pulled into bed.
But just a shadow.
But of course it was.
“Where the hell have you been?” demanded Christian, opening the door and getting out as he approached.
“Taking a walk,” said Zeus.
“All night?”
“Major Christian, this is Anna Anway,” said Zeus. Anna stiffened. She held her arms close to her body, as if she were trying to present as tiny a front to the world as possible.
“Hi.” Christian nodded, then frowned as he turned back to Zeus. “We gotta go. Perry’s going to have a cow.”
“He told me to get some rest.”
“Yeah, well, he thought you disappeared. You weren’t answering your phone.”
Zeus had left it upstairs. Christian had used the GPS tracking function to find him.
“I knocked on every door,” Christian told him. “Nobody answered.”
Upstairs, after he retrieved his phone, Zeus told Anna gently, “I’ll see you as soon as I can.” She gazed into his face, then took both of his hands and squeezed.
Their bodies were about a foot apart, an immense distance.
“Will you be at work tomorrow?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“I’ll get there. Somehow.”
She nodded, then closed her eyes as he kissed her.
Ordinarily, Zeus would have been angered by the comments, but he felt immune to them now. Immune to Christian.
“You know Perry was trying to get A-10 Warthogs here?” asked Christian.
“Huh?”
“There was a wing in Korea, already on the way. Some sort of political deal crushed it. Now we’re on our own.” Christian’s voice had a note of disgust in it as he continued. “I talked to these commanders yesterday. Pep talks? What a waste of time.”
“What’s the military situation?” asked Zeus.
“Chinese consolidated around Tien Yen during the day. Some of the Vietnamese armor’s engaging them outside the city. Thinking is they move farther south tonight. Probably already started by now.”
“Any action near Lang Son?”
“Lang Son?” asked Christian.
“The place on the border I showed you.”
“Nothing going on there that I heard,” said Christian.
The driver took them to Trung’s bunker. The general was in a conference with his commanders, but he smiled when Zeus came in. Perry was sitting in the corner, grave-faced.
“Our American friends have arrived,” said Trung. “Just in time to hear of the bad weather.”
The others smiled, as if this was some sort of inside joke. And perhaps it was; Zeus still felt a little off balance.
“A typhoon is approaching,” explained Major Chau, the senior translator who had led Christian around on his tour of the Vietnamese troops. “The estimate is that it will strike the coast in less than twelve hours. The path is unpredictable, but it is highly likely to make landfall.”
Zeus looked over at Perry. “I didn’t think this was typhoon season.”
Perry nodded as the translator explained that while typhoons were rare in February, they were not entirely unknown, averaging one every other third year prior to 2005. Over the past few years, the frequency had increased, possibly, though not definitively, as a result of global climate change.
This was a reasonably strong storm, with winds up to 125 knots projected. Rain was falling at over two inches per hour near the center. Total rainfall in the path of the storm would depend on its route, but could be anywhere from a “scant” ten inches to fifty and beyond.
