Shadows of War (58 page)

Authors: Larry Bond

Personal Chronicle: Looking Back to 2014 â¦

To my beloved grandson Markus:

Here is the continuation of our family chronicle I promised, picking up in the winter of 2014. It seems like only yesterday that this all took placeâand yet the time before it seems buried further in the past than ancient Rome. So much has changed, and nearly all of it caused by the conflicts that erupted that year.

In the year 2014, the violent changes in the weather and climate began to take their toll on the world in ways that many had feared, but few had spoken of. Violence increased everywhereâin the cities, in the suburbs, even in farm country, where our family lived. But it was the violence between nations that came to dominate our thoughts and nightmares that year.

Our family had been one of the lucky ones. Like most of our neighbors, we had benefited greatly from the rising crop prices. Our corn was worth twice what it had been less than five years before, and the yields, due to the latest genetic advances, were practically three times as high per acre. Best of all, there were ready markets for anything we could grow.

Prices for nearly everything were shooting up fast, but we were still far ahead of the game, especially when compared to the people on the East and West Coasts. My parents had cut back quite a bit, but mostly on things that as a kid you hardly noticeâeating out, new clothes, extras. For us, the fact that we couldn't go see friends after school was probably the biggest impact. They cut back on the gas they used, though our four-year-old hybrid got what was considered decent mileage then. The real savings came with the fuel cell engines that had only just come out; we couldn't afford one yet.

We saw on television and read on the Internet about what was going on in Europe and Asia. There were riots in Europe, but Asia seemed to be hit even harder. I remember downloading pictures for a class project that showed more
than a hundred bodies floating in a narrow streamâor what looked like a narrow stream, since according to the caption it was really a road. The picture had been taken in China, of a flash flood in a village in a northwestern province. If I remember correctly it was particularly ironic, because the area hadn't seen rain in several months. Then suddenly in two days there was a deluge, twenty-some inches inside forty-four hours.

What I didn't know then, being only ten, was that China was in much worse shape than those pictures revealed. Their rice-growing regions in the north and eastâfor centuries the mainstay of the populationâhad been racked by devastating typhoons. The overcrowded population in the smog-filled cities near the coast was suffering tremendously. Unemployment was nearing 50 percent, a sharp contrast to just four or five years before, when China's rapid industrialization had transformed the old Communist society into one of the most productive on earth. Every day there were food riots, though news of them got out only by chance. The Chinese were in free fall.

I doubt I would have understood all of that then, even if I'd known it. A ten-year-old's world has very strict boundaries, and mine were at the edge of our farm. So when my older cousin Joshuaâthe man we call your uncle Joshâtold the family he was leaving for Vietnam, it was as if he were going to outer space. In fact, I probably knew more about outer space and some of the planets there than I did about Vietnam, or even its neighbor China. But what happened in China and Southeast Asia, to Josh and to the people there, would affect our family greatly in the end, and the whole world. Ignorance, it turned out, was anything but bliss â¦ .

February 2014

Commodity PricesâChicago Board of Trade

Average February Temperatures (Celsius)âMajor World Cities

Fresh Riots Suppressed in Northwest China

WULUMUQI, NORTHWESTERN CHINA (World News Service)âUnofficial sources reported today that government forces had suppressed a riot near the town center, the third report of a disturbance in northwestern China over the past week.

While food riots have subsided with the selection of China's new premier, Premier Cho Lai, Western analysts say Cho Lai faces a difficult task as China confronts devastating food shortages brought on by a third consecutive year of record drought. With food and other commodity prices soaring and the country already battered by the worldwide depression, an estimated forty percent of the Chinese male working-age population is out of work.

In Chinese-occupied Tibet, six persons were shot to death by soldiers during â¦

Housing Prices Hit New Record Low in U.S.

WASHINGTON, D.C. (APâFox News)âThe FDIC today released a report showing that house prices in the U.S. had reached their lowest point in fifty years, when adjusted for inflation.

Analysts caution, however, that the statistics are somewhat misleading, as rampant inflation in the food sector over the past two years has skewed inflation numbers skyward. The unprecedented rate of inflation is due to decreased crop yields throughout much of the world, and the consequent pressure on American farm prices.

“If we were in a period of normal inflation, say only three or four percent,” said John Torano, analyst for the HSBC-Key-Banco, the
world's largest bank, “then the decline in house prices would be only about twice what we saw in early 2009.”

Still, Torano and others admit that the downward pressure on housing prices will put more families in jeopardy. The bankruptcy reform laws passed last year failed to lower the number of filings â¦

Brighton Beach Renaissance Continues

LONDON (Reuters-Gannet News Service)âSally Smith frowned as she pulled into the parking lot B of the new Brighton Motor Park. The sign at the entrance flashed “FULL,” even though it was only half past eight.

“Balls,” said Smith in frustration as her two little girls complained sleepily in the rear seat that they wanted to get swimming. “It's getting so you have to come an hour before dawn to get a parking spot.”

Smith's problem is cause for celebration among the owners of hotels and tourist spots in this seashore town, which until two years ago was a boarded-up ghost, fifty years past its glory.

Now, thanks to a climate shift that has raised the average year-round temperature in southern England to a balmy seventy-eight degrees, Brighton is booming. In March, where once the average high temperature was a damp 8.3 Celsius, or 47 degrees Fahrenheit, sunbathers must be careful in the afternoons to avoid sunstroke. Last week, the temperature peaked at 32 Celsius, or 89 Fahrenheitâwhich would have been a near-record for August just two years back.

Scientists say the warm-up is due to a number of factors besides the general trend of global warming. In Brighton's case, the combination â¦

Major Characters

United States

Josh MacArthur, scientist

Mara Duncan, CIA officer

Peter Lucas, CIA station chief, Bangkok/Southeast Asia

Major Zeus Murphy, former Special Forces captain, adviser to Vietnam People's Army

Lieutenant Ric Kerfer, SEAL team platoon commander

President George Chester Greene

CIA Director Peter Frost

National Security Adviser Walter Jackson

China

Lieutenant Jing Yo, commander, First Commando Detachment

Colonel Sun Li, commando regiment commander, executive officer Task Force 1 Premier Cho Lai

Vietnam

Premier Lein Thap

General Minh Trung, head of the Vietnam People's Army

Other

Jimmy Choi, Korean mercenary

Forge Books by Larry Bond and Jim DeFelice

Larry Bond's First Team
Larry Bond's First Team: Angels of Wrath
Larry Bond's First Team: Fires of War
Larry Bond's First Team: Soul of the Assassin
Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the authors' imaginations or are used fictitiously.

LARRY BOND'S RED DRAGON RISING

A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010

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Book design by Susan Walsh

eISBN 9781429960601

First eBook Edition : April 2011

First Edition: November 2009