Shock of War (20 page)

“Yes,” said Zeus.

“Go through the door that way,” she said, pointing to Zeus's left. There was a large red door that opened outward. “That is the exit.”

“Is this building okay?” he asked.

“Go through the door to the left,” she repeated.

She looked at him, obviously expecting an answer.

“All right,” he said. “Okay.”

She resumed her conversation on the phone as if he weren't there.

The crash bar on the door gave way reluctantly. Zeus had to muscle the door open, the edges chafing against the sides.

The door opened into a concrete courtyard. The sunlight was intense, washing out his view. Piles of stone and construction rubble lined both sides of the space. A gray-brick building rose some fifty feet away. There were no windows, just a blank wall of bricks.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, Zeus saw that the opposite wall had the outline of another structure—the building, or part of one, that until very recently had stood where the courtyard was. It had been reduced entirely to rubble by the raid.

Zeus found a path to the street. Two troop trucks idled next to the sidewalk, but there were no soldiers nearby.

He had no idea where he was. He was about to go back and ask the woman to get him a ride when a boy of twelve or thirteen called to him from across the street.

“Joe, you need ride?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess I need a ride,” Zeus answered.

The boy turned and darted to his left. The buildings across the street were three stories high, storefronts topped by apartments. All were intact, though the closest one to the right had large boards covering what had been plate glass windows. As he stared, Zeus noticed that some of the apartment windows had been blown out; curtains poked through the empty spaces, fluttering with the light wind.

A bicycle rode up to his left. It was the boy who'd called to him.

“Where you go, Joe?” asked the kid.

“Hanoi's Finest Hotel,” said Zeus. It wasn't a description—that was the name of his hotel.

“Very good. Five minutes.”

“How?”

The boy started describing the directions, speaking in a mixture of Vietnamese and English.

“No,” said Zeus. “I mean, where do I get the taxi?”

“No taxi. No more. I ride you.”

“On this bike?”

“Very strong.” The kid rattled the bike, as if its sturdiness were the actual issue. “It hold you good.”

“There's only one seat. Where are am I going to ride?”

The boy stood over the frame; Zeus would sit on the seat while he pedaled.

“I'll pedal,” said Zeus.

The kid made a face.

“What's your name?” Zeus asked.

“Lincoln.”

Clearly, that wasn't the case. But it made Zeus smile. He took the bike, positioned himself over the seat and the pedals, then told the kid he could sit on the handlebar.

“You pay first,” said the kid. “Five dollars.”

“Five dollars?”

“Three good.”

“I don't have any money with me,” said Zeus. “I'll pay when we get to the hotel.”

“No pay, no ride,” said the boy, grabbing the bike with both hands. His look was so ferocious Zeus laughed.

“I'll give you ten when we reach the hotel,” said Zeus. “Okay?”

“Deal, Joe. You pedal.” He climbed up on the front of the bike.

“Where'd you learn English?” Zeus asked.

“School.”

“Just school?”

“Internet. Very good teacher.”

“I guess. Tell me when to turn.”

Zeus struggled to get his balance and to get going—the tight pants and clogs made it difficult. He finally kicked off the clogs and managed a steady pace.

The boy began talking, showing off how much he knew about America. His name was Linkin, not Lincoln; he had adopted it not from a study of American presidents but from Linkin Park, the rock bank, which apparently he knew from YouTube. He described a video of the latest
Transformers
movie, punctuating his enthusiastic review with directions to turn.

It took nearly fifteen minutes to reach the hotel, which was guarded by a platoon of Vietnamese soldiers. Zeus had to argue with the platoon commander to get him to allow the kid to come into the hotel so he could be paid. The boy's English was better than the lieutenant's.

When Zeus had been here last, the hotel lobby and bar had been filled with foreigners. Now they were empty except for a desk clerk and four security officers. The security men, all in their mid-fifties, refused to allow the boy upstairs. Zeus told him to wait by the elevator and he would get his money.

“No no,” said the kid fearfully. “You leave, Linkin out.”

“You think they'll kick you out?”

“You leave, Linkin gone.”

Zeus glanced at the guards. The kid was undoubtedly right. He walked over to the desk clerk.

“Major Murphy,” said the man brightly. “We are glad you have come back to us.”

“I need to pay my friend here,” Zeus said. “He gave me a ride.”

The clerk glanced at the boy, then made a face.

“You have ten bucks?” Zeus asked.

The clerk began scolding the boy in Vietnamese. The boy answered back, defending himself.

“It's all right,” Zeus told the clerk. “I have it upstairs. I'll pay you right back.”

“I do not have any money to lend,” said the clerk.

Zeus knew the hotel did keep small sums of money, both American and Vietnamese, at the desk; Perry had borrowed some a few days before to pay a local driver.

“Can't you just lend it to me for a minute?”

“These children are thieves,” said the clerk, getting to the heart of the problem. “You pay, it encourages them.”

“Zeus, what are you doing out of jail?”

Zeus turned around and saw Christian striding out of the elevator.

“Hey, you got ten bucks?” Zeus asked.

“Ten bucks?”

“Kid gave me a ride. I gotta pay him.”

“Get outta here.”

“Come on, Christian. I'm good for it.”

Christian pulled out his wallet. “All I got's a twenty.”

“That'll do.”

Zeus took it and gave it to Linkin. The worried look immediately vanished.

So did the twenty.

“You need help, you ask for Linkin,” he said. “Linkin best guide to Hanoi.”

The boy turned and ran from the lobby, undoubtedly escaping before the hotel people could intervene.

“You owe me twenty,” said Christian.

“And you owe me your life,” said Zeus. “How come you're not in the hospital?”

Christian shrugged. “I'm tougher than you.”

Zeus laughed. “Your problem, Win, is that you believe it.”

12

Alexandria

Mara knew something
was up when she didn't see the marshal in the hotel hallway. She knocked on Josh's door anyway, then called his room from hers. There was no answer.

After changing, she went down to the lobby and sat on one of the plaid-fabric couches next to the plastic ficus tree to wait for him. There was a television in the corner of the room, tuned to CNN. Mara went over and changed the station to a sports network showing a tennis match.

An hour later, when he still hadn't come in, she knew he had left.

Without saying good-bye?

Impossible.

She waited another hour. She had no way of contacting him—she didn't even have the marshal's cell phone number.

She could get it from the marshal's service.

Mara held off, thinking it would seem too … what, exactly? Like she was worried about him? Or infatuated with him.

More the latter. Which she wasn't. Except she was.

Finally, after she'd been sitting for nearly three hours, Mara's cell phone rang. She nearly jumped from the couch.

“Hello?”

“Where is he?” demanded Jablonksi.

“What?”

“Mara, where the hell is Josh?”

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

“The marshal service says they're taking him home. What the hell is going on?”

“I have no idea what's going on. You're supposed to be helping him. Why did you let him go before that committee? They made him look foolish.”

“They're the ones who look foolish. I told him not to say anything about the Chinese,” Jablonski added, flustered. “I specifically told him not to call them murderers. I told him not to use that word.”

She clicked off the phone and got up. Time to get something to eat, she decided. And think.

13

Aboard the
McLane

“They're too far away.”

Silas looked at the image on the computer screen. The
McLane
's present course was plotted against the expected course of the merchant vessels he'd been assigned to intercept. The line ended at Hai Phong—about ten miles shy of the vessels.

“That's at flank speed,” added Lt. Commander Li. “And it assumes the merchant ships will continue moving slowly. They're only doing about six knots.”

“We need to go faster,” said Silas.

He turned and looked around the destroyer's combat information center, or CIC. Stuffed with data screens and high-tech gear, the space was the
McLane
's nerve center, literally the brain and spine of the vessel's warfighting ability.

Long before Silas's time, a destroyer's chartroom served as a primitive information center, in some ways as much a library as think tank. But the advent of sensors such as radar and sonar greatly increased the size and function of the combat information center, and by World War II, the CIC was the most important compartment on the ship, with due respect to the bridge. Its function since then had not so much changed as it's been refined and expanded with advances in technology. The destroyer's sensors—and the information beamed from elsewhere, generally via satellite—put unparalleled intelligence at the commander's beck and call.

The downside of all of this information was that it had to be processed, which meant not only machines but people who could help make sense of what the instruments told them, and not bombard the captain or weapons officer with isolated bits of intel. The modern CIC—also known by the more modern names of Combat Display Center and Combat Direction Center—was as high-tech as the bridge on a fictitious starship, and in her own realm just as dangerous.

“Commander, with due respect, we're moving as fast as we can,” said Li.

“Good,” said Silas. “Find me a few knots more. Let's get to those merchant ships before the storm hits.”

14

Hanoi

In the first hours of the war,
the Chinese planes and theater-launched conventional missiles had been aimed primarily at radar, SAM, and antiaircraft sites, following the time-honored strategy of reducing the enemy's ability to contest control of the skies. But with most of those sites neutralized, and the Vietnamese air force a marginal factor, the Chinese had intensified their attacks on the Vietnamese command and control centers. This meant a step up in their attacks on government buildings, including the one in Hanoi whose basement housed the hospital ward where Zeus had been treated.

Vast swaths of the capital had been struck over the past two days as part of this campaign. The accuracy of the bombs and missiles was impressive—for the most part, they had avoided the area of west Hanoi where foreigners had their embassies and hotels like the one where Zeus stayed were located. And where they hit, the damage was generally contained to the actual target, as Zeus had seen leaving his building.

The effect of this was to make the war seem almost bizarre. One could go several blocks with everything looking normal, then suddenly come upon a street where half the buildings were reduced to rubble. After the first raids, the authorities immediately mobilized and organized relief parties to clear the debris and restore some sense of order. But now the workers, who were mostly volunteers, were tired. Their work dragged, and the continued onslaught was wearing the city down.

A few bombs, apparently strays, had struck the Old City in the center of Hanoi during the day. Fires continued to burn there, smoke wafting over the city. The smell in the air changed from that of an electrical fire to something sweeter, an incenselike aroma of charred, ancient wood.

The city's businesses had largely shut down, with their workers recruited for the country's home guard, or organized into volunteer brigades for various chores. The regular army soldiers who had been manning checkpoints just a few days before had been moved on to more important tasks. Many of their posts were now abandoned, though sandbags and barrels they left behind still slowed traffic. Others were manned by men who had served in the army earlier, primarily during the early stages of the war with America. They were gray, frail figures, more ghostlike than soldierly, dressed in ragtag combinations of military and civilian clothing. Still, motorists obeyed them, stopping and explaining their business, often asking for directions around the streets that had been barricaded due to the strikes, and exchanging information and rumors about the war.

Rumors were a great currency. Information about a pending attack, no matter how far-fetched, could get a citizen very far, opening the doors of shuttered shops and even obtaining extreme discounts in price for necessities.

Hoan Kiem Lake, the romantic soul of Hanoi just east of the now devastated Citadel, was a rallying point for the brigades that were organizing citizen volunteers for the defense. This was at least partly for symbolic reasons—the lake commemorated a successful uprising of the Vietnamese against the Chinese in the fifteenth century, when General Le Loi received a divine sword from a golden turtle there and used it to rout the Ming Dynasty rulers from the country. The park around the lake was overwhelmed by the outpouring of citizenry. Crowds overflowed into the nearby streets, completely choking off traffic.