John, Becky and Stephie were separated from the other, mostly wounded soldiers amid a pen holding over two hundred POWs. A Chinese nurse had treated Stephie’s wound with stinging alcohol and steri-strips. At Stephie’s insistence, she had taken a look at John, but the nurse had quickly frowned and made a pained face at the condition that he was in. Hours had then passed during which the cold had settled into the idle soldiers in the open-air camp. Bright lights shone on the prisoners from beside dark profiles holding rifles. Few slept despite the early morning hour.
“I saved your lives,” Becky whispered, tired of being ostracized. “I saved all our lives.”
Stephie had to agree, but still she loathed Becky. John moaned from his fetal curl. The blows from the butts of Chinese rifles had viciously targeted the American officer. His skull felt soft beneath his scalp from swelling that Stephie was sure meant a fracture. Cracked ribs made his breathing difficult. And he wouldn’t let her look at his bleeding groin, where he kept both hands sandwiched between his thighs.
“Look,” Becky said, “if we all stick together, we’ll get through this thing okay. They’re not going to do anything to you! You’re the president’s daughter!”
“So I keep hearing,” came Stephie’s bitter retort.
Becky finally shut up. Stephie knew that Becky had used her tactical acumen to choose — incorrectly — to ride out the battle with Charlie Company. She had confided to Stephie that Ackerman’s placement of the battalion HQ was at what she’d overheard was a vulnerable stretch of the line. Her old Charlie Company had been in a better position, or so Becky had thought.
John awoke from his semicoma to grab Stephie’s hand. She asked in an upbeat voice as if to an ailing child, “How are you feeling?” He squeezed her hand with surprising strength before the grip faded and John’s hand returned to his groin. Stephie stared at the blood smeared across her palm.
Chinese soldiers created a stir as they marched straight up to Stephie and pulled her to her feet. John feebly grabbed a soldier’s ankle before the man shook his boot free. Other soldiers then raised a groaning John to his feet. Becky bolted upright, unprompted. The three were led down a narrow aisle through exhausted American POWs. The sullen prisoners stared in silence as the procession passed until one man, on recognizing Stephie, finally shouted, “Keep the faith!”
Stephie found the wounded first sergeant in the crowd and nodded in reply. Other prisoners had heard the call as well.
“Fuck ’em!” another man shouted, drawing menacing chatter in Chinese from one of Stephie’s guards. But it didn’t stop the growing torrent. “Ar-my!” one woman called out. “Give ’em hell!” came another cry. “God bless America!” “Tell ’em to go fuck themselves!” “Long live the United States!” But the shouts that attracted the growing chorus consisted of one, simple word, which was chanted in unison by hundreds.
“Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry! Vic-to-ry!”
By the time the small procession reached the wire, Stephie’s jaw was set. Her muscles and fists were clenched. Her lower lip quivered on the verge of tears. She was ready. She was committed. Nothing would break her.
Lieutenant Wu created a stir as he passed through the halls of Sheng’s army headquarters. All had seen him and had known who he was when he was on staff, but now something had changed. Many of the file clerks and secretaries who now lined the doorways had earlier gotten video calls from home. “Of course I know him!” they had replied excitedly. “I used to sit next to him in the cafeteria every day!” Many now sought his autograph on passing, but Wu was too determined to be slowed by the respectfully proffered pads and pens.
Shen Shen intercepted him at the top of the staircase. “Wu!” she exclaimed, throwing her arms around his neck. She pointedly kissed him — for all to see — openmouthed on the lips, her first ever public display of intimacy. “Your face!” she squealed, touching the bandage on his cheek and curiously smiling as her fingertips caressed the gauze. The dueling scar beneath, she clearly thought, would now permanently prove his valor. His manhood. Shen Shen’s gaze shifted to the wave of whispers that rippled up the corridor. Her kiss had ignited a buzz of excited chatter. Shen Shen beamed up at her prize.
Wu pried her arms from his neck and proceeded down the staircase.
“No!” she cried out, grabbing him from behind. “I have a message for you!” she shouted as he fought her slender, vine-like arms. “The prime minister asked that you telephone him immediately!”
Wu ignored her and descended into the bowels of the building. In the basement, bayonets at the ends of rifles were crossed in front of Wu’s filthy body armor, but when Wu’s eyes rose from the black blades to the guards’ faces, the rifles quickly parted.
“Where is she?” Wu asked.
The guards looked at each other, then back at Wu. One confided in a lowered, conspiratorial tone, “Colonel Li said no admittance.”
“Where is she?” Wu repeated with a menacing edge. The junior sergeant immediately wilted and led Wu to the cell door. The second set of guards saw Wu and came to rigid attention. Wu nodded, and the door was opened.
A woman screamed to the smacking sound of a wet cane. The metal door clanged shut behind Wu. “Roberts!” came a spasmodic, shouted reply. “Stephanie! Second lieutenant! Seven-five-nine, two-nine…!” The smack of another lash cut short her scripted reply.
Wu headed toward the bright, stagelike lights. General Sheng and Colonel Li stood beside a television camera just outside of its field of view. Two American POWs — one a battered man wearing black captain’s bars, the other a whimpering woman — stood off to the side.
And there, under the lights, was Stephanie Roberts, who sat bound to a wooden chair, bent over forward with her T-shirt in tatters. Her camouflage blouse lay on the floor beside her. She was half naked from the waist up. Her back was red with welts. Her face was buried in her knees. Her breasts were pressed flat to her trousers.
Sheng and Li stared at Wu. He walked up to the two senior officers, who never took their eyes from his. The eighteen-year-old junior lieutenant stood toe to toe with the seventy-year-old commander of Eleventh Army Group (North). Wu had received no invitation to join them there, but neither Sheng nor Li questioned his presence. No one in the room said a word until Colonel Li nodded at the captain, who expertly wielded the cane.
“You will read the statement on the TelePrompTer,” the captain commanded in English. He leaned closer to her ear and whispered barely loud enough for Wu to hear. “These lashes aren’t meant to break you. They’re meant to break your friend, the captain. Brace yourself, and watch how he flinches.”
Stephanie turned her red, tear-covered face toward the two standing POWs. The lash came down with a jarring snap. Wu flinched with a start, and the American captain took a half step forward. A guard held a rifle to the prisoner’s head. The guard’s finger was on the trigger, but his eyes were on Sheng and Li.
“It doesn’t hurt!” Stephanie shouted to her fellow prisoner, then she dissolved into sobs. The captain milked the tears from her by whispering into her ear. She turned her head, but he found her other ear. Then her other, and her other, in succession. Wu couldn’t hear anything but the hisses of the torturer’s siren calls. But he was promising her, Wu felt sure, some easy way out.