“They’re heavy,” Bill said.
“Do you want something else?” Fielding asked. “A Valium?”
Bill shook his head in jerks. He felt silly. For months, his daughter and millions like her had fought a war of immense and intense brutality. What Bill now had to do required not a tenth of their bravery, but he was petrified. He looked up at Fielding.
“What if it’s a trick?” Bill asked for the hundredth time. It wasn’t a question that called for a reply. That question had been answered — none too satisfactorily — in the quiet, early morning hours. Bill had asked the question only to get reassurance, but that was one thing that the skeptical Fielding was ill-suited to provide.
“We’ve provided for that contingency, Mr. President,” Fielding said. “If for some reason the pill doesn’t work, just stand as still as you can. You understand?” Bill nodded. “Without you, they’ll find your daughter of limited use. There’ll be no reason for them to harm her. We’ll trade for her. Get her back quickly. It’ll work out, Mr. President.”
There was a knock on the window, and Bill shivered suddenly. He wanted to change his mind and ask for the Valium so that he wouldn’t throw up from fear, but the door opened, and he got out into the freezing day. The shivering got worse. An army officer ushered Bill and Fielding to a semicircle of sandbags in which stood a massive set of periscoping binoculars on a tripod. Bill looked through the lenses and saw a crowd of people at the far side of the river. At their highest power, he could clearly make, out Stephie standing next to a slumping American prisoner amid Chinese soldiers and a lone civilian. They stood atop a small platform ringed by hordes of the press mixed in with a curious, pressing audience of soldiers who numbered into the hundreds.
Bill suddenly felt calm. He stood straight and nodded. He was ready. They climbed the grassy bank to the roadway. The thick suit pants made it difficult for Bill to bend his knees for the effort. Several times solicitous soldiers helped. At the top of the American side, there were no cameras or press, only main battle tanks and a stream of former prisoners of war, who descended from the bridge and hugged each other and waiting comrades.
When they saw Bill and his small entourage heading down the road toward the bridge, the sobs and jubilation ended. Bill didn’t acknowledge them — he was too lost in thought — but they acknowledged him.
“Long live the United States!” a man covered in black, caked blood shouted on the quiet winter afternoon.
“Stay on the right side of the bridge,” an officer from the Army Corps of Engineers said to Bill. “It’s more stable there.” He tried to say more, but he was drowned out.
“Long live the United States!” rose the cheer from the newly released POWs, who lined the cratered road leading up to the bridge. “Long live the United States!” came a dozen, then a hundred, then a thousand rising voices until the riverbank was filled with their roar.
Bill shivered again, not from fear, but from pride.
He slipped cyanide tablet into his mouth and ascended the bridge.
Han Zhemin and the others on the platform could clearly hear the Americans’ cheers. Han looked at Bill Baker’s daughter. Her eyes — shiny with tears — were fixed on the distant riverbank. Wu’s eyes were fixed on her.
General Sheng stepped up to Stephanie Roberts, but he didn’t repeat the mistake of trying to shake her hand. He wore a self-satisfied smile, which forced Han to hide his own amusement. “You are now free to go,” Sheng said to Stephanie Roberts in strained English.
“Burn in hell, cocksucker,” she replied.
Han laughed out loud and waited as Sheng got a whispered translation from Colonel Li. Stephanie Roberts waited also. General Sheng was not in the least amused. That was what the girl had waited to see.
Han walked over to Stephanie grinning broadly and said, “You’re just like your mother.”
“What?” she shot back. “My mother!”
The battered American captain seized her by the arms and turned her toward the steps. She kept looking back over her shoulder at Han even as she and Wu helped the wounded man descend into the gauntlet of fiery cameras.
Jim Hart alternated the aim of his sniper rifle back and forth between the president at extreme range and his daughter, who was slowed by the limping, sagging soldier. At high power, he could see the grimace on the man’s swollen face and Stephanie Roberts encouraging him with words. Those two — still on the Chinese side of the bridge where Hart lay — were easier shots. There was a long, fresh streak of what looked like urine down the man’s right pant leg, but in the smear that he left after resting for a moment on the white concrete railing Hart could see that he was bleeding profusely.
The woman, who was practically carrying him, saw it too. She had seen a lot, Hart had read in his one week back in the world. Time magazine had done a long piece on her experiences in the war. When he had begun reading the article, he had expected her exploits to be minor brushes exaggerated for dramatic effect, but they weren’t. She was the real deal. A soldier. A combat infantryman.
Hart’s aim returned to the president. He flicked the scope to full power. Bill Baker had arrived at the center of the bridge and waited next to the electrical house, as agreed with the Chinese. He watched his daughter slowly weave her way past giant holes in the sturdy bridge. Chinese commanders, Hart had been briefed, had seized the bridge before U.S. engineershad destroyed it. Half a dozen aircraft had been lost bombing the bridge.
The president’s daughter helped pull the sagging captain over the upturned lip of a penetrating splash of pavement. Somehow, the concrete and steel structure hadn’t been dropped by the pounding from dozens of thousand-pound bombs. No vehicles could make it across, but humans could. The bridge was bent and twisted, but some engineer long ago had done his or her job.
“It’s just a little farther, John,” Stephie urged. She tried to talk him into rising from the knee that he had taken when he had said that he felt light-headed. The blood that he had vomited trickled down the listing pavement. “There’s an ambulance waiting for you. Come on, John. Now!”
She squatted, slipped her forearms under his armpits, and lifted him to his feet with her legs. He groaned and whimpered. His head flopped as though his neck were broken. “Come on!” she said, panting from the effort of holding him upright. “We’re almost there.” She could see her father straining toward her. He had already taken several steps past where he was supposed to wait. “No! Stop!” she called out, waving him back. John saw what was happening and, with her arms around his waist, began to shuffle forward on knees that threatened to buckle with every step.
Stephie kept an anxious eye on her father. When she came near enough, her plan was to talk him into making a run for it. But what about John? she thought. Her mind was in a race against her feet. She had to decide what to do before she reached her father, who waited twenty meters away.
John groaned something.
“It’ll just be a minute more!” Stephie promised.
“There’s something wrong!” he forced with extreme effort and pain through a broken jaw. She thought he was dying right then and there, but he held up his arm and pointed toward her father. “It’s a trick,” John said with crushing disappointment. “Oh, God, it’s a trick.”
She saw now what he saw. The door to the concrete electrical house at the center of the bridge was cracked open. She could see a rifle muzzle.