The American snorted in amusement or disgust, Wu couldn’t tell which. “I’ve heard of men shooting their little toe off to get out of combat, but I’ve never heard of them slashing themselves across the face. It must be gettin’ pretty bad on you guys.” The beginnings of a smile lit his face and a twinkle his eye. “I heard things didn’t go so well up at DC.” He couldn’t hide the smile any longer.
“Thank you,” a devastated Wu said. The doctor was ill prepared for that response, and his smile faded. He taped the bandage back over Wu’s face. Wu, lost in thought, turned to leave.
“Why don’t you just give up?” the doctor Wu asked from behind. “You’re never gonna win this war,” he said to Wu’s back. “I’ve never been more convinced of that fact than right now. Before the invasion, I had my doubts. My fears. But now, I’m certain we’re gonna win this thing. And when we do, well, you’d better get the hell out our way young man. You’d better start shootin’ off major pieces of yourself ’cause we’re in a bad fuckin’ mood and there’s gonna be hell to pay.”
Wu never turned back toward the man. He marched past the halls of the sick and out into the fresh air. The line hadn’t moved an inch. In fact, it now wrapped around the block and disappeared out of sight.
When Wu got into the command car, he turned to his driver and said, “Radio for a medical team to come down here and assist at this clinic.”
The sergeant seemed hesitant. “Lieutenant Wu, sir,” he stumbled, “the field hospitals are overflowing with casualties from the battle.”
Wu jerked his head to the man. “Do you know who I am?” he shouted. The eyes of the driver and the men in back widened. The driver nodded. “Then get on that radio and relay that order. Now.”
The keys jangled outside Stephie’s cell door. She rose from where she had lain on her stomach to sit on her bed. Her back stung as if she’d been branded, but a young female nurse — empathetic and consoling — had applied a balm that had helped.
A young Chinese guard in starched garrison uniform brought Stephie her dinner on a silver tray.
The door remained open. A second guard peered inside until he saw her looking at him, and then he receded from sight. Her waiter — with an automatic in a white leather holster — removed linen napkins from her steaming bowl of rice and chicken. The tall, muscled twenty-year-old — groomed and shorn of hair like a headquarters show horse — kept stealing glances at Stephie as he arranged her silverware.
They were alone.
Stephie whispered, “Do you know what’s happened to the American captain who was brought in with me?” The soldier focused his eyes on his job of arranging the salt and pepper. She could read nothing in his face. It was a blemishless mask. The lacquered brim and chin strap of his hat gave him the look of a toy soldier in the Nutcracker. “Come on,” she whispered urgently, “I know you speak English! Is he alive?”
The Chinese soldier — bent over at the waist before her just inches away — gave her a millimeter bob of his chin. It was the most infinitesimal of movements, but it was a nod. It was, most definiately, a nod.
A great weight was lifted from her. Her font of information finished and marched off toward the door. He was her lone contact with the outside world. She had to think of another question quickly. The only thing that came to mind was, “Why are you in my country?”
It stopped the guard in his tracks.
The Chinese soldier turned to her with the most pathetic of faces. He squinted, and his mouth parted slightly, which for the mannequin-turned-man was clearly a look of anguish. He glanced up at the far wall of Stephie’s cell, then abruptly turned and marched out the door. He had turned the wrong way, away from the door. He’d spun 270 degrees to the left instead of 90 degrees to the right, and in the process he had glanced up at the wall. It wasn’t much, but Stephie understood what he was telling her. She knew every inch of her cell. She hadn’t needed to follow his eyes to her cell’s lone vent. She didn’t want to get the guy into trouble. There was a camera and a microphone in the air vent, he had told her. It was just as she had suspected since she had first prowled the cell.
She ate her meal in silence and dissected their exchange. At first she concluded that the guard was simply saying “I can’t talk because we’re being watched.” But the more she thought about it, the more stunning became her realization of what the soldier was actually trying to say. Could it possibly be true? she wondered. The guard had been handpicked to provide security at what looked like a major army headquarters. He was surely the most loyal of the loyal, and he looked the part. Stephie’s skin tingled with what his reply might have meant.
When she’d blurted out, “Why are you here in my country?” the man had looked straight at the camera. He had looked at the security that watched the security. At the officers who manned the monitors. At the authority that they represented, which rose above the lowly enlisted man all the way back up to Beijing where they might even be watching the video feed live.
It hadn’t been much. A little glance. Some carefully controlled shock at her question. A not quite so innocent look at the camera. But what had just happened was that an ordinary soldier had just risked his life simply to tell Stephie that he didn’t want to be there. That he was only in America because of “them.” They had ordered him to come, he had apologized with a look. Her skin tingled with excitement at the import of the soldier’s unspoken remark.
We’ve won, she realized. It’s over.
13
“Echo Foxtrot two one nine, do you read, over?” came the words in Hart’s dream. “Attack Beijing. Repeat. Attack Beijing.” Suddenly, Hart wasn’t in the rolling hills of northern Virginia, but looking down on the Chinese capital, which looked — strangely — like Birmingham, Alabama. He marched into the Chinese city laying waste to buildings and cars with weapons that blasted entire blocks into rubble, but couldn’t seem to kill the Chinese soldiers scurrying underfoot. Point-blank fire inexplicably missed them. He was Godzilla with a full-auto grenade launcher.
“Echo Foxtrot two one nine, do you read, over?” Hart opened his eyes. It was night. Time to go to work. “Echo Foxtrot two one nine, do you read me, over?” It was no dream. All was quiet in the dark woods save the sound in his ear.
He cleared his throat, pushed the “Talk” button, and said, “This is Echo Foxtrot, I read you, over.”
“Echo Foxtrot,” came the familiar controller’s voice, “this is India Zulu four four. Able mind. Able mind. Do you copy? Over.”
Hart panicked at the total blank that the encoded challenge drew. He had memorized dozens of sign-countersign combinations, all of them chosen because they had no natural associations. But that security protocol also made them hard to remember. “Echo Foxtrot,” the impatient controller repeated, “I say again. Able Mind. Able Mind. Over.”
It was his last chance. A failure to reply — correctly — within the next few seconds would mean the end of his war. There would be no further use in communicating with the one-eyed colonel. No words — no explanation — would rebut the presumption that the Chinese held a gun to Hart’s head. Hart would be on his own to make it back to friendly lines. A little voice in his head said, Quiet. Say nothing. Go home.