The man stood there — unmoving.
‘I said go!’ The aide left. Kartsev sat before the keyboard — ready to type. His mind was again brimming with ideas. The late hour didn’t matter to him now. With his fingers poised over the keys, one last doubt lingered. The young aide was clearly worried by his plans. Kartsev imagined that the man’s preparations for the event would include some of a purely personal nature. Fake passport, cash, airline tickets. Such an escape might still be possible for a junior aide. But no escape was available to Kartsev. His remaining days — however many there were — would be spent in his windowless office. He could never hope to evade the ‘justice’ of a vengeful world.
So why not take some risk here and there? he asked himself. He looked around the empty room. What is it that I have to lose?
He began to type — the keys clacking rapidly as if in a race against time.
Chin almost didn’t see the others in the darkness. ‘Where the hell have you been?’ the company commander hissed.
‘I brought a man back with me to look for an ambulance,’ Chin explained.
‘And so you go roaming around the countryside while we sit here waiting for you?’
‘Where’s your man?’ Hung asked Chin.
‘He died.’
His fellow lieutenants all fell quiet. The company commander let it drop. ‘All right,’ he said, ‘we’re pulling back.’ That was it. Three months of driving ever northward — three months during which the merest suggestion of retreat could get you shot for treason — and now the orders to withdraw were so casually delivered.
‘What’s going on?’ Hung asked.
‘None of your business!’ the captain shot back. ‘You don’t get paid to ask questions! You get paid to follow orders!’
‘I haven’t been paid in two months,’ Hung mumbled.
‘What did you say?’ the CO replied. He was so angry his voice rose. Chin could hear the rustle of fabric as he checked the trees all around.
‘I said I haven’t been paid in two months… sir. And I haven’t eaten in almost two days. And none of us has had a day off from combat in almost three weeks.’
There was silence. Everyone waited. ‘Are you looking to get arrested?’ the company commander asked in a low and menacing tone. ‘Cause if you are, you can forget it! And while we’re on the subject, orders have come down that if there are any more self-inflicted wounds in this regiment, the colonel will personally finish the job!’
‘My man didn’t shoot himself!’ Hung objected. ‘He was wounded in a firefight!’
‘In the foot? It just so happened that he only lost a toe — his little toe at that?’
‘It happens! People get shot all over! I had a man get his balls shot clean off! You think he did that on purpose? Two of my men lost their lower jaw… from the same bullet! One man got a flesh wound in his shoulder! Only he died, ’cause the bullet didn’t ricochet out from his bone, like we thought! It tumbled into his chest! I lost my senior sergeant when he started complaining about a headache after an artillery barrage! When he passed out, we looked all over his body for the wound! We stripped him naked right in the snow ’cause he was turning white as a sheet! Somebody finally noticed he had a ti-iny speck of blood on his temple, and another under his hairline on the opposite side of his head! A metal splinter from one of the shell casings had gone straight through his brain! He didn’t even know he’d been hurt till he keeled over dead four hours later!’
Hung had clearly forgotten whatever point he was making. But in his agitated state no one made any attempt to shut him up. When he ran out of steam, the company commander said simply, ‘Get your men packed up and ready to pull back in an hour.’
‘In the middle of the night? Hung questioned. ‘We’re heading back toward our own guns in the middle of the night?
‘Everybody’s pulling back!’ the captain explained. ‘Don’t you understand? Can’t you get what I’m saying through your thick skulls? One hour! Listen for the whistle!’
Chin had pulled his platoon in tight around him so as not to get separated in the darkness. In the distance he heard several tentative toots from whistles. He couldn’t tell the one meant for his company from any of the others. But he decided it didn’t really matter. ‘Everybody up!’ he ordered.
His men rose. They followed him back over ground they’d fought for the day before. The woods around them were alive with movement. They completely lost contact with their brother platoons. After the first few tense encounters with strangers, Chin and his men let down their guard. They even took comfort from the shadowy figures streaming south alongside them. The thought occurred to Chin that some might be American infiltrators. But he silently just wished the concern away. He was determined to avoid contact at all costs.
The first sign of danger he saw was lightning. At least that’s what it looked like. But it lasted too long. And the rumble that arrived seconds later went on and on and on. The unearthly noise of the distant airstrike set his men talking.
‘Quiet!’ Chin snapped.
The next strike was much, much closer. The ‘booms’ could each be made out individually, though they still sounded out of time with the flashes. They were loud enough, however, to be jarring. Chin flinched with almost every string. They were brief strobes of a man-made thunderstorm. In the flickering light he could see fear quickly taking hold of his men’s faces. Their eyes darted this way and that. Even their pace began to pick up.
Chin found himself being passed by jogging troops. His initial reaction was to command them to slow down. They were supposed to be following him. But on second thought he instead quickened his step, as did the other units against whom they brushed in the night.
The dark forests suddenly erupted with fire. Everyone threw themselves to the earth as the screeching jets tore through the sky overhead. They bombed the positions the Chinese had just abandoned. From a distance of almost a kilometer the explosions did little more than shake loose snow from the trees.
At least that was what Chin thought at first. Then — in the first lull in the bombing — men rose to their feet. They didn’t jog now, they ran. ‘Hold on!’ Chin shouted, but they didn’t listen. The few men who remained by Chin’s side nervously searched the woods. When the bombing began again, someone shouted ‘America-a-ans? at the top of his lungs.
That began the panic. All Chin could see in the fiery flashes were the moving forms of fleeing Chinese troops. But they were mistaken. Like a herd made anxious by an unfamiliar scent, they fled now from demons only imagined. He rose to run after his men. To collect them as a shepherd might round up his flock. But the ‘pum-pum-pum’ of a loud cannon to the rear drew his complete attention. Its rapid fire was like nothing he’d ever heard.
He knelt behind a tree and saw a large armored vehicle approaching to his right. As it raced through the woods its gun again opened fire. Glowing tracers shot far into the distance at incredible speed. It was already firing well past where Chin lay. Firing at some target that Chin couldn’t even see. But the gunner on the speeding vehicle could see. He was as comfortable as a bat with his special sights.