‘Where’s daddy?’ she mumbled. She never looked her mother’s way.
‘I don’t know.’
The door opened. It wasn’t Pyotr, or a nurse, but one of the policemen. Pyotr regularly talked to the men protecting them. But they rarely came in the room.
‘This was left for you, ma’am,’ the officer said. It was a letter with no words of address. The man left. Olga opened the envelope.
‘Dear Olya,’ Pyotr wrote by hand — in Russian. Olga almost choked on the constriction that formed instantly in her throat. ‘I have had to go away. I hope you understand, but this is something that I must do. I missed my first opportunity. Now I must take my second.’ Olga drew a deep breath and closed her eyes. No! she raged silently. She knew without question what Pyotr was saying.
Repeated demands from Masha forced Olga to open her eyes. She explained again that she couldn’t read the book. Olga glanced back over at Oksana. The girl was staring attentively at her mother with dark eyes. ‘It’s okay,’ Olga whispered in English. She moved quickly to dry her face. She pressed on Oksana’s mattress — the closest she could come to touching her. ‘Vsyo okay. Ladno?
The girl returned to her sad pose. Masha began an incessant repetition of a cereal commercial jingle. Olga returned to Pyotr’s letter. This time she reined in her emotions. She bottled them up. She ground her teeth together and read.
‘This is not something that I want to do. No, that’s not true. I do want to do this. But I would not be so selfish if not for the fact that our life can never be normal until this is done. We can never live the life you dream of living unless we are free from fear. We’ve tried to ignore the evil, to pretend it didn’t exist, but it does. And fate punished you and the girls for a single mistake that I made. I will try to correct that mistake. But I will also try to return home to you. For, you see, I want that more than anything else, Olya. To live in a small house with you on a quiet street. And I swear by God Almighty that I will try. I swear to you that I will, Olya. With all my love to you, Oksana, Mashenka — Pyotr.’
Olga began to sob. She couldn’t help it. Now the girls would see! Even the searing pain from her incisions couldn’t stop it.
The door burst open. In walked a nurse. ‘You need some pain medication, Mrs Andreev?’
Olga looked around. Oksana lay staring — frightened — with both thumbs pressed down on the call button.
Chin’s ears were still ringing. His head was pounding. He staggered back for a company meeting. Officers only. The other platoon leaders were gathered in the open. Under shelter of a tree. He stumbled, almost fell right in front of them. He expected ridicule. But instead Lieutenant Hung asked, ‘How many’d you lose?’ All three of the others wore visible bandages from light wounds.
‘Four,’ Chin replied. ‘I’m down to sixteen men.’
Hung snorted. Not really a laugh. ‘You know how many I have from my original platoon? Five! He was shushed by the others. ‘Five out of thirty-two!’
Chin sat in the silence. ‘You had some bad luck on that frozen lake,’ he sympathized.
The supply platoon leader unexpectedly hissed out a curse. ‘Where’s our air support?’ he whispered angrily. He drew cautionary looks and gestures. ‘They keep pushing us on and on and on!’ the boiling man continued. ‘We’re doing our job. Where’s the air force?’
Everyone looked around nervously. Platoon leaders were disappearing. People everyone knew. And not from combat, but from security squads. They marched in, read a charge, took a man… usually an officer.
‘Where’s the captain?’ Chin asked. A couple of bitter laughs greeted his mention of their commanding officer. ‘Is the company meeting still on?’ Chin tried. He got shrugs and frowns. ‘Because I really need some more ammo,’ Chin mentioned to the supply platoon leader.
The man could barely contain his disgust. ‘Get in line. The last supplies we got, we stole out of the 1104th’s regimental depot.’
Chin’s fellow officers all wore concerned looks on their faces. ‘Are you saying our supplies are being cut off?’ Chin asked.
His question instantly angered the supply platoon leader. ‘Why do they send us these fucking sodbusters!’ he asked the others.
‘Our supply lines are stretched too long,’ Hung explained.
‘Because we’re advancing,’ Chin protested. ‘We’re winning. We haven’t hit anything solid in weeks!’
‘Until this morning,’ another officer commented. ‘That artillery wasn’t hit-and-run shit. It was a sustained barrage — maybe fifteen minutes. And when we pushed on, we ran right into prepared positions. By the time we crawled back, I’d lost six men.’
Heads were nodded in agreement. ‘There’s something up there,’ Hung ventured. ‘When we got the orders to move to our night positions, they were four kilometers back from where we made contact. Four kilometers!’ He looked from eye to eye — even briefly catching Chin’s gaze.
‘And those troops you ran into up there,’ the supply officer said. ‘They’re Americans.’ The words had an ominous ring. ‘Everybody was talking about it at the battalion depot.’
‘What the hell are they doing out here? Chin asked. ‘We’re in the middle of nowhere.’
‘This is as far as we go,’ Hung said. He had a distant look. ‘It’s the end of our “glorious victory”!’
Chin looked around to ensure they weren’t overheard. ‘You think we’re gonna lose? Chin asked to make sure he understood.
‘Oh, Chin,’ Hung replied. He frowned and shook his head. ‘I can’t decide whether I pity or envy you. You’re the perfect citizen. The “everyman.” You believe we’re winning the war because they tell you so. And when the hammer comes down on the anvil, you’ll believe whatever lies they use to explain that, too.’ He was being totally unfair, Chin felt, but there was a strange tone of compassion in his voice. ‘I’m only gonna say this once.’ He twisted to make certain they were alone and then caught the return gaze of each man — ending finally with Chin. ‘The real enemy isn’t four kilometers to the north,’ he said quietly, slowly. ‘It’s two thousand kilometers to the south.’
A silence descended on the group. It was a chance Chin welcomed, for he had a lot to consider. Hung had suffered the same hardships as Chin. He and his platoon had more than once laid down the fire that had allowed Chin’s platoon to withdraw. Chin had done the same for him. They were joined by a bond of common experience despite their dislike of each other. Chin could conclude only one thing from Hung’s comment. He’d just stated that the enemy was not NATO, but the Communist Party. For Beijing was two thousand kilometers to the south.
Lieutenant Hung was a traitor. He’d guessed as much ever since he’d found him reading English in the barracks bathroom. His views were treasonous. He should be shot for them. But he’d shared that most intimate confidence with only three other men. Chin was one of them. A new bond had been established.
‘Cut!’ Kate Dunn said to Woody. He lowered the camera from his shoulder. She turned back to the German colonel. ‘We’ve got enough footage of people talking about supplies and logistics. What I need now is someone who’ll talk about strategy. How you’re gonna beat the Chinese army.’