DESSERT—A RICH PEAR CAKE
with ginger ice cream—was served, and the plates cleared. The waiters poured cognac. Then they disappeared, leaving the nine men at the table to the country’s business.
Zhang, sitting beside Xu, the general secretary, raised his glass. “To the glory of the new China.”
“And to the people,” Xu said. “To the wisdom of the Chinese people.”
“Of course, Comrade Xu,” Zhang said. “We must always serve the people.”
Li sipped from his snifter, feeling the glow of the golden liquid in his mouth. Cognac was one of his indulgences. A glass before bed made his sleep pleasant.
The Standing Committee met for the banquets once a month. The dinners always followed the same script. Only when the waiters had left the hall did business begin. Of course, the committee met in regular sessions several times a week, but the truly important decisions were made at this table—with no aides to overhear or record the sessions. Even in here, even speaking only to one another, committee members chose their words as carefully as Mafia dons on a phone line tapped by the FBI. Speaking too clearly signaled weakness, not strength.
“Comrade Zhang,” Xu said. “Please begin.”
“The economic situation has not changed,” Zhang said. “The transition period”—what the liberals called the economy’s slowdown—“is continuing. But there’s no reason for concern. The will of the people is excellent. Business conditions are good.”
Zhang had said the same thing the month before, and the month before that. How much had Zhang stolen from the national treasury and hidden in banks in Singapore? Li wondered. How many bribes had he taken? Five hundred million yuan—$60 million? A billion yuan? Two billion?
With money you are a dragon, with no money, a worm.
“Then what is the problem?” Xu said.
“General Secretary,” Zhang said, “just as a farmer must let a field lie fallow from time to time, the economy must slow occasionally before it grows again.” Though he’d lived most of his life in Shanghai, Zhang liked to use farming metaphors with Xu, whose parents had been peasants. “We’re pruning the deadwood so saplings can prosper. If the young trees aren’t rising fast enough, we must prune more vigorously.”
To the men at the table, Zhang’s meaning was clear. The government should close more state-owned factories, like the tire plant where Li’s father had worked. Li couldn’t believe that Zhang had the audacity to propose more layoffs with so many people already jobless. But arguing openly with Zhang would be futile.
“Yes,” Xu said. “I see.”
“I’ll propose a plan for the Congress next month”—the annual Communist Party Congress, which would officially ratify the decisions these nine men made.
“Does anyone else have thoughts on Comrade Zhang’s view?” Xu said. Li held his tongue. Then Xu turned toward him.
“Comrade General Li. How was your visit to Tehran?”
Now or never, Li thought. “Very productive, General Secretary.” He outlined the oil-for-nuclear-help deal he’d discussed with the Iranian president. Li could see that he’d caught Zhang by surprise, as he’d intended.
“Zhang, what do you think?” Xu asked.
Zhang sipped his cognac, trying to buy time. Li could imagine his calculation. An open alliance against the United States would have enormous risks. On the other hand, a confrontation with America would buy time to right the economy. And Zhang didn’t want to appear as though he feared the United States.
Zhang looked at Li. “What’s your view, Comrade General?”
Zhang was hoping to force the responsibility for the decision back on Li. In doing so, Zhang had slipped into Li’s trap. Zhang had never before given up control on an important issue. He would find retaking it more difficult than he expected, Li thought.
“My view, Comrade Zhang?” he said. “Let’s seize this opportunity. The Iranians can give us leverage against the hegemonists”—the Americans. “Our industries will benefit from a guaranteed supply of oil. And the Persians will be a new market for us. They see all that we’ve done. They can help us through the transition period. Anyway, why should we let the Americans decide what nations have certain weapons?”—nuclear bombs. “The Persians don’t threaten us.”
“And the Americans? What will they say?”
“Let them talk,” Li said. “Talk does not cook rice.”
“It isn’t their talk that concerns me,” Zhang said. “What if they misunderstand our peaceful intent?”
Li had to admit that Zhang could turn a phrase. Of course the United States would “misunderstand” if China allied with Iran, America’s biggest enemy.
“The hegemonists aren’t interested in any more wars.”
“You’re certain.”
“Nothing is certain, Comrade Zhang. But they are distracted now, and our army and navy are valiant.”
The table was silent when Li finished speaking, and he knew he’d won. They’d send him back to Tehran to finalize an agreement with Iran. For the first time since the end of the Cold War, the United States would face a challenge to its global dominance.
The Americans would want to respond. But they had their own problems, Li knew. The death of their North Korean spy had cost them their best intelligence on Pyongyang. The war in Iraq had sapped their army. They were on the defensive—and the public announcement of the Chinese/Iranian alliance would irritate them further. Like a wounded bear, they would lash out but with words, not actions. The American president would speak against the agreement, and that would irritate the men around him. No one in this room wanted advice from the United States on how China should conduct its affairs.
But neither Washington nor Beijing would expect the war of words to go any further. What no one at this table realized was that Li intended the agreement with Iran to be only the start of China’s confrontation with America.
“It’s agreed, then?” Li said. “We’ll accept the Iranian proposal?”
Nods around the table. By springing the deal on them this way, Li had given them little choice. Turning down the offer would have made them look weak, and none of these men wanted to look weak, least of all Zhang. If they’d known what he planned next, they would have been more cautious, but they didn’t.
Li raised his glass to his lips. Another step toward the power he’d been chasing for so long. He took a deep sip of cognac, filling his mouth with its sweetness.
13
“NOW!” HUGHLEY YELLED.
“NOW!”
Holding the frame of the juddering Black Hawk, Wells tugged on his pack: sixty-three pounds of ammunition, grenades, energy bars, water, bandages, and the other essentials of close combat.
A Kevlar cable was coiled on the floor, its end knotted to the helicopter’s frame. Wells threw it out the side. He shimmied down, hand over hand, feeling the cable’s rough fibers under his gloved fingers. AK-47 rounds whistled by, and he wondered if he should have chosen heavier armor. Five feet from the ground, he jumped, landing lightly despite his gear.
The sun was gone now. But the quarter-moon and stars shined on the open plateau, making Wells’s night-vision goggles a distraction. Wells pulled up the goggles and took stock. The plateau was a half-mile long and five hundred feet wide. Boulders and stunted trees littered the ground, offering decent cover.
Around the drop zone, the Hellfire missiles had done their job. Burned men were strewn across the plateau like trees tossed by a category 5 hurricane, the stench of their barbecued flesh heavy in the air. A guerrilla in a long white robe twitched and moaned beside a rock seventy-five feet away.
As planned, the attack had caught the guerrillas building campfires for dinner. Sheep and goats were tethered near the caves, maybe the same animals that had provoked Bashir Jan, the village headman, to reveal the existence of the camp. Somehow, the animals had survived the missiles. Their desperate bleats cut through the night over the crackle of the automatic rifles and the roar of the Black Hawks. The goats, the fires, the dead men: the scene was a waking dream, a twenty-first-century Goya painting, Wells thought.
The satellite photos had shown three encampments across the plateau. The Apaches had targeted most of their Hellfires at the northern and center camps, trying to drive the guerrillas south, toward the 10th Mountain. But either the southern camp had been the biggest, or the plateau as a whole had held more men than they’d been told. Thirty or more men were scattered behind rocks and trees to the south. A smaller group was half-hidden behind boulders that obstructed the entrance to a cave west of the loading point.
Wells unstrapped his carbine and dropped to the ground. The plateau was cold, more stone than dirt; a rock poked at his groin. The men by the cave were the immediate threat, he thought. They had already almost taken out a Black Hawk with their RPGs. He opened up at them with three-shot bursts, hoping to distract them from the helicopter.
Thump! Thump!
Hughley landed beside him, followed by the rest of B Company, as A Company hit the plateau two hundred feet to the southeast. When the last soldier touched the ground, the Black Hawks pulled away.
“We’re in it now,” Wells yelled to Hughley.
“Yeah, and we ain’t getting out till the sun comes up.”
THE MEN OF B COMPANY
fanned out in a two-hundred-foot arc. Wells and Hughley lay nearest the caves. A Company had set itself similarly. The position looked more solid than it was, Wells thought. Already the Talibs to the south were spreading out, enlarging the battlefield, giving themselves new angles to fire on the SF soldiers. Guerrillas—like civilians—usually clustered when they came under fire, hoping for safety in numbers. The fact that these men had done the opposite offered more evidence that they were getting professional help.
“Shit!”
Even without looking, Wells recognized Hackett’s voice. The stocky sergeant hopped on his right leg toward Hughley and Wells. Ten yards away, he fell. Wells ran for him, picked him up, and threw his shoulder under Hackett’s arm. Together they struggled toward Hughley like kids in a three-legged race.
“Sir, I took one.” Hackett spoke evenly—he could have been talking about someone else—but the pain in his voice was unmistakable. “Left leg. Bad, I think.”
Wells put Hackett down and shined a penlight on his leg. The bullet had hit low on the thigh, just above the knee. Blood pumped steadily out from the wound, shining under the light. The popliteal artery. Hackett grunted as Wells palpated the area around the wound. Hughley put a flashlight to the sergeant’s face. He was pale, his massive jaw gritted against the pain.
Get a tourniquet on him,
Wells thought. Cutting off the artery might cost Hackett his leg, but the alternative was worse. A trauma surgeon could sew up the wound, but the nearest surgeon was in Bagram, so the tourniquet would have to do.
“Take off your pack, Sergeant. I’m gonna wrap it tight.”
“A tourniquet?” Hackett’s voice lifted slightly.
Hackett knew what a tourniquet meant, Wells thought. He wanted to give Hackett a hit of Demerol, but the sergeant had already lost too much blood. An opiate would put him in shock. “It’s gonna sting a little. Bite on this.” Wells found a mouthguard in his pack and pressed it into Hackett’s hand. Beside them Hughley fired short bursts at the cave.
“How we doing?” Wells said to Hughley.
“Worry about my soldier.”
Wells grabbed a combat tourniquet—a black plastic band big enough to fit over a man’s leg, with a sturdy plastic handle attached. He pulled on latex gloves and tugged the band above the spurting wound. The sergeant groaned and bit hard on the mouthguard. Wells pulled the loop of plastic tight around Hackett’s thigh.
“Just a few seconds more.”
“Down!”
Hughley yelled as a guerrilla popped up from behind a boulder beside the cave to fire an RPG. It exploded behind them, lighting the night.
“That the best you can do?” Hughley said. He fired a burst at a guerrilla who’d foolishly stood to watch the RPG. The Talib screamed, his hands rising to his throat. He fell hard and didn’t move.
“Hold tight, Sergeant,” Wells said. He turned the handle of the tourniquet, tightening it around the meat of Hackett’s thigh. Hackett’s shoulders trembled. He moaned softly, a low sound hardly recognizable as human.
The blood slowed to a trickle but didn’t stop. Wells wiped down the wound and taped a thick, clean bandage around the sergeant’s leg. He pulled off his gloves, slick with blood. “Sergeant. It’s over. You’re gonna be okay. Just get comfortable. Keep your leg up.”
“Yessir. I’m cold, sir.”
Wells pulled an aluminum blanket from his pack and wrapped it over Hackett’s shoulders, then grabbed a water bottle and dumped in a pouch of Gatorade powder. “Drink this.”
“He gonna make it?” Hughley whispered.
“If I knew, I’d say.”
“All right.” Hughley nodded at the boulders where the men with the RPGs were hiding. “Gotta take them out, protect our flank. Can you handle it with Gaffan? Gonzalez can give you some support while he watches Hackett.”