where some two thousand limestone and dolomite teeth poked through the water, flashing at the dragons said to haunt the area.
A bridge ran over a creek about three miles inland. About a mile north of the bridge was a hamlet where two companies of Chinese APCs had parked before the storm. The units were the farthest south of the Chinese infantry.
Fog drifted in from the ocean, the mist curling around islets of pillarshaped rocks and tree-covered spits of land. The sun played through the mist, cutting it like a sword, flashing against the white rock sides to reveal intricate clefs and scars. The storm had pulled many trees down, and the two boats had to trim their engines to tread through the debris. The ends of tree trunks poked up like the elbows of dead sailors, and the dark hulks of the submerged branches loomed just below the surface, shifting like mythical beasts waiting to spring from the water and swallow the small PBR whole.
Zeus rubbed his arms, suddenly cold. The rounded crags towering over him made him feel puny and small, showing him just how insignificant he was, how tiny, how unimportant.
Kerfer’s words came back to him:
Standing on the forward deck, he realized nothing was his, not these looming green and white shadows around him, or the still-angry water. And especially not the hulking green earth behind them.
By that logic, too, not one thing he possessed was his — not the gun loaned to him, not his boots, not his own arms or legs. The earth was the possessor of all things, not him; he was just another speck flicking across the sun, throwing a momentary shadow across the water.
And as he contemplated that puniness he thought of Anna, thought of the soft way she had fallen into him, thought of her kiss and the touch of her lips. It was an antidote to his depression — the sunlight that pushed away the fog.
This wasn’t his war, but it had brought her to him, and for that reason alone — for that reason beyond fate or chance, beyond even his duty — he would fight this war. He would find her and free her. Because they couldn’t deny him anything. He was their hero.
The debris thickened as they began inland. Two soldiers were detailed to push some of the logs away. They began cheerfully enough, one of the men even laughing at some joke. But within moments one had slipped and fallen into the water, and by the time he was pulled out he was covered with bruises, and his arm seemed to have been badly sprained. There was no more laughter after that.
Finally, they reached the mouth of the stream that would take them up toward the bridge. They passed into what looked like a clear lake: the typhoon had swelled the stream far beyond its banks, and rather than the farm fields Zeus expected they passed telephone lines and the tops of trees. The shoreline had completely disappeared. Even the boat captain was amazed at how high the water level had risen.
“The water is much higher than normal,” Chau explained, translating what the boat captain told him. “Higher even than during some rainy seasons. He expects that the area you wished to land will be flooded. It may be flooded all the way to the bridge, if the water is this high here.”
Ordinarily, that might not have been a problem, but their experience farther north made Zeus worry that the Chinese might have moved down to the bridge. He took out his map and conferred with the boat captain, trying to decide on an alternate spot.
“The captain says there is a stream that runs beneath the highway a little farther north,” said Chau. He pointed on the map. “There is high land on the west side. If we landed there, we would be only about two miles south of the hamlet.”
“All right, let’s try it,” said Zeus.
They pulled across to the Stolkraft, and after a few words the PBR captain slid his vessel ahead, steering it through a patch of muddy water. They passed a set of wooden staves on the left, fence posts that separated small fish pens from the rice paddies behind them. The boundary had been erased.
A fork loomed ahead. The boat captain started spinning the wheel, pushing the PBR to port side. As he did, something shot through the air a few inches from Zeus.
Zeus’s first thought was that it was a swarm of insects; they’d passed several already. Then another part of his brain pushed him to his knees.
They were being fired on.
The soldier manning the forward machine gun started blasting the trees to the right. Soldiers on both boats started yelling and returning fire with a vengeance.
“Cease fire! Cease fire!” yelled Zeus, seeing that the Chinese had already stopped shooting. There had been one or two men at most. “You’re wasting ammo!”
He turned around and shouted at the captain. “Get us out of here! Get us upstream! Go! Go!”
The captain had already gunned the throttle. The PBR lurched forward, pushing toward a group of houses on the left. Meanwhile, the soldiers on both boats continued shooting. Zeus scanned the opposite shore, but saw nothing — no flashes, not even an area of cover where someone could be firing from.
“Chau! Chau! Get them to stop firing!” yelled Zeus. “Just get the boats up to a place to where we can get off. We’re wasting ammo.”
He looked behind him but couldn’t see Chau. One of the sailors had grabbed a rifle and was standing next to the captain on Zeus’s left, firing wildly. From the wild look on his face Zeus knew he was simply firing from fear, without any target. He kept shooting until he’d run through the magazine.
Zeus saw Chau crawling across the deck toward him. He ducked down and yelled in his ear.
Chau yelled something from his crouch, but his voice was hoarse and even Zeus, right next to him, couldn’t hear.
“Tell me the words for ‘cease fire,’ “ yelled Zeus. “We need to get us ashore.”
Chau’s voice was gone, and even leaning against Zeus’s ear, couldn’t make himself heard over the din. The boat lurched hard to port, then back, swerving wildly. Something clunked hard against the side, and Zeus thought they’d been hit by a shell or a grenade. But it had only been the top of a fence post, brushing against the hull.
Zeus rose, pulling Chau with him.
“There’s a road ashore,” Zeus yelled at the captain. He pointed ahead, where he saw the crown of a dirt road rising above the water. “Get us there! Go!”
The sailor on the deck gun had run through his second belt. As he paused to reload, some of the soldiers on both boats heard the lull and stopped firing themselves. Finally, the firing died.
“We go ashore near the road! We get out here!” yelled Zeus. “Chau — tell him. There! We land!”
Chau squeezed over to the captain, cupping his hands to his mouth to try to amplify his weak voice. The captain altered his course, aiming just to the south of the road.
Zeus slipped to the stern of the PBR. The Stolkraft was behind them, separated by almost twenty yards and listing serious to starboard.
“Land the men ahead!” Zeus yelled. He spun around and tried to mime what he wanted them to do.
The Stolkraft tucked toward its port side, angling to come up next to the PBR. Zeus decided it would have to do.
He turned back to find Chau. Just then, a black brick flicked overhead. Zeus started to react even before the brick materialized into a shell, exploding about a hundred yards beyond the two boats in a burst of water and mud.
“Get us to the shore!” he yelled.
A few seconds later, there was a whistling scream as a full volley of shells, seven or eight at least, flew overhead and crashed into the swollen stream behind them. Hoisted from at least two miles away, they were well off the mark, hitting the water three hundred yards behind the boats.
The next volley came close enough to splatter water over the PBR. The wake of the explosion shoved the boat sideways against a fallen tree. The vessel lurched, then stopped short. The motor revved but Zeus knew they were never going to reach the spot he’d picked out.
“We land, now!” he yelled. “Off the boat! Everyone onto land! Get away from the shells!”
He started for the side, thinking he would jump off onto the tree, then realized Chau wasn’t with him. Turning back, he heard the whistle again, a brief — all-too-brief — high-pitch whine of the air unable to resist the inevitable rush of the Chinese shell. And then the next thing Zeus knew, he was face-first in a pile of wet green
