“The first shipment should be there in a few hours. I should be there already.”
“You’re not going.”
“What?”
“We’ll find someone else to take care of this.”
“Why?”
“For one thing, you’re now world famous. Your videos on YouTube are up to a million hits apiece. Give it a rest, Mara,” he added with a bit of an edge. “You’re going to have to accept that you’re in a new phase of your career.”
Mara had half-convinced herself that Peter would let her go. In fact, more than half-convinced: she felt honestly disappointed, and angry.
“I don’t see, after everything that’s happened, why I can’t get a break,” she told him. “I think I’m owed a break.”
“You’re not thinking rationally. Come on.” He picked up his empty soda can, twirling it between his fingers. “I want you to look over the material that’s coming in from Vietnam. I want to figure out who the mole is.”
“What’s Grease doing?”
“Grease has different priorities,” Lucas answered. “I want you to look at everything. I need a second set of eyes to go through it. You’re the best we’ve got. Really.”
Mara didn’t want to concede.
“Who’s going to handle this?” she asked.
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Well, I can give them a heads-up. If it’s somebody from Thailand — ”
“It won’t be from in-house,” he told her. “I have somebody in mind.”
“Do you want me to talk to him?”
“No. That’s all right.”
“You don’t trust me?”
“Jesus, come on. You’re taking this whole thing way too hard. Way, way too hard.” He put down the can and frowned at it, as if it had somehow crossed him. “We’ll figure something out together, all right? When this… passes, we’ll sit down and think about where you can go next. It’s not going to hurt you, believe me.”
“Passes — like a kidney stone.”
A faint smile came to Lucas’s lips.
“It’ll pass,” he told her. “Go upstairs and get up to date. I’ll arrange things for you in the vault. All right? Somebody took your money in Hanoi, right? That should be your focus.”
“You think I can figure that out from here?” she asked sourly.
“I think you can do anything.”
33
The Russian-made aircraft wheezed and whined as it made its way eastward, flying over Route 18 — avoiding the mountains as the Alba-tros had, though in the case of the helicopter it could be argued that the altitude would have presented a hazard.
A more immediate problem was the fact that the pilot had only the most primitive navigation instruments at his command. He lacked night-vision gear, and “GPS” was just a set of letters in an unfamiliar language. He put his forward light on and flew low to the highway, following the roads to General Tri’s command post.
The headquarters was now in a field outside Vu Oai, an agricultural settlement along Route 18. General Tri was some ten miles west of the intersection of Route 18 and 329, a critical intersection the Chinese would undoubtedly attempt to seize.
The search beam caught a large farm building as they turned toward the CP. The helicopter pilot pulled up suddenly, barely missing a power line, then settled into a field about twenty-five yards from the road. A pair of old American tanks, M48s Zeus thought, were set up on a slight rise, guns pointed east. The rest of the headquarters sat behind them.
General Tri was working in the barn. The space dwarfed his table, which had seemed so large when Zeus saw it outside earlier. The general and three staff officers were poring over a set of maps when Zeus and Christian entered.
Tri rose and stood stiffly at attention as Major Chau announced them. The general turned his gaze silently from Major Chau to Zeus, fixing him with the rigid stare Zeus might have expected from a newly minted private.
The gaze made Zeus uncomfortable. The only thing he could think to do was salute, but this was a mistake — Tri held his hand at his forehead, waiting for Zeus to lower his — another sign of submission.
“General.” Zeus leaned toward Tri, lowering his voice to almost a whisper. “I’m not here to give orders. I’m just an adviser. I want to help you, not command you.”
Tri stared at him, stone-faced. The three Vietnamese staff officers — two colonels and a major — remained frozen at attention next to him.
“Maybe we should discuss the situation,” said Zeus. Major Chau, rather than translating, pulled out a chair. Tri only sat down when Zeus did.
The general’s G-2 began pointing out the disposition of the forces, speaking in haltering English though occasionally glancing at Chau when he hit a hard word. He knew English reasonably well, and Zeus had no trouble with his accent.
The situation was a little worse than Zeus thought. The spearhead of the Chinese force was about twelve miles north of the highway intersection. Harassed by stragglers from the overrun division, the PLA forces were dropping off infantry units to control their flanks. This was a positive, if only a small one — the more stretched out the Chinese became, the better the odds of slicing a gap through their line.
Christian had brought the latest Global Hawk imagery with him. The staff officers grabbed at them like kids reaching for goody bags at a birthday party. They laid them on the table, speaking rapidly in Vietnamese.
“General, could you and I speak privately for a second?” said Zeus.
Tri rose and walked with him toward the back of the barn. Chau stayed with the others.
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you,” said Zeus. “I know this is a difficult situation for you.”
Tri didn’t answer.
“I’d suggest that we let the Chinese get past the intersection. Entice them… make it look as if we have a major force that they can engage. The faster they go, the better off we are.”
Tri took a long, slow breath.
“My commander is trying to find more antitank weapons,” said Zeus. Tri did speak English — he had at their first meeting — but did he understand it well enough to know what Zeus was saying? “Once the bulk of the storm hits, the Chinese tanks will have to stop. The farther they are from the rest of their force, the better. Once they’re on the defensive, we can pick them off.”
“You are a young man,” said Tri finally.
“Yes, sir, I am.”
“Your father fought in our war?”
“No, sir.”
“You have studied Vietnam?”
“Mostly the Chinese.”
“You know it is a diff-i-cult — ” Tri stumbled over the word, finding it hard to pronounce. “A diff-i-cult position. They outnumber us greatly.”