Praetoria: a Chinese Army story

The Americans were in a trap. Shaxi turned his tanks eastward behind the last line of enemy positions as smoothly as in a demonstration for visiting dignitaries, working up along a broken plateau atop the high ground. He felt as though he was finally in control of the battle. Most of the targets were infantry fighting vehicles and trucks now, with few tanks in evidence. Twice, Shaxi saw enemy tanks hit his own to no effect; he concluded that the Americans had likely run out of anti-armor rounds and were using their HE shells in desperation.

As Shaxi's armor overran one of the positions, an American soldier emptied his assault rifle at the command tank, then charged the fifty-five-ton vehicle, holding two live frag grenades in a desperate hope. Shaxi's gunner cut the man in half with his machine-gun. The grenades did nothing aside from spraying dirt all over Shaxi's periscope.

The last of the smoke disappeared, and Shaxi's tankers now fought under blue skies. Shaxi halted his seven tanks halted along the ridge, and Pang's tanks and mechanized infantry joined him. After double-checking to the rear, Shaxi concluded the eastern half of the ridge was cleared. Then he continued onto the western half, towards First Battalion's sector.

The long slope up which Shaxi's sister battalion had attacked presented a chilling testament as to what could happen when a reckless attack met an antitank ambush. Most of Tiger's vehicles sat inertly or burned, sending pillars of dark smoke heavenward. Given the limitations of the plan, Tiger had done well--his tanks were intermingled in the American positions, and here and there Shaxi could see that he had achieved some local successes on a platoon or company level. But overall, the frontal attack had failed to break the defensive order. The combination of Shaxi's sweep and the converging attack helicopters turned the tide. Every single American vehicle on the ridge was now captured or destroyed.

Five or six tanks from Tiger gathered around Shaxi's position. Leaderless, the disoriented crews' general confusion was evident in their tendency to draw too close to one another, as if for protection by virtue of proximity, and in the slackness of their behavior. They began to stop in the middle of seized positions; one crewman, convinced the task was complete, climbed out and began to relieve his battle-tightened bowels, squatting unashamedly in full view of his fellow soldiers.

Shaxi acted quickly. He had not forgotten the forward detachment mission, and he did not want to lose the chance to lead the first tanks past the DMZ. He ordered the Captain Pang to take one platoon of motorized riflemen along with his undamaged company and push on southwest towards Sep'o and Pyonggang, clearing the roads and radioing if he encountered anything of note. Then he folded every stray, functioning tank he could locate into Captain Xia's battered remnants to form a heavy company of fourteen tanks. His logistics officer provided a pleasant surprise by appearing on the scene with six full trucks of ammunition before the last tanks had stopped firing. The logistics captain, an especially preachy communist who was laughably naive about much of the corruption in the regiment, had come through, living up to all of the hollow phrases about the need for good communists to lead the way. A representative from Poplar, the regimental artillery, came up as well, maneuvering warily in his artillery command and reconnaissance vehicle. It was a captain, a battery commander. He brought with him three self-propelled guns and a drone carrier, all mounted and ready to move. Evidently, the division commander's directives to Poplar had shocked him into action.

Shaxi delayed calling Dragon Ten until he felt he had assembled a sufficient, if lean, grouping that could act as a forward detachment. He personally ran from vehicle to vehicle, insuring that they were on the correct wireless frequencies and ordering them into local positions that provided at least partial protection from ground and aerial observation. The clear sky showed a tangled crisscross of jet trails, and Shaxi felt it was only a matter of time before the enemy would attempt to strike back. Shaxi saw his tankers take the initiative to restock their on-board ammo from the supply trucks without any orders from above, and he smiled at the thought that remembered their training. Then he urged them to hurry, convinced that time was pressing, that the afternoon was waning. When he finally glanced at his watch, he was amazed to find that it was not yet ten in the morning.

As Shaxi remounted his own tank the gunner told him that Dragon Ten had been calling. Shaxi was horrified. "Why didn't you come and get me?"

The gunner shrugged; he was a gunner. Command communications were not part of his responsibilities.

Shaxi hastily pulled on his headpiece. "Dragon Ten, this is Mustang Actual."

The major general responded quickly. "This is Dragon Ten, what's your status?"

"We've cleared Ridge 732. I've formed a grouping by combining my battalion with the remnants of First Battalion. Overall strength, battalion-minus of tanks, with one mechanized infantry company attached and a battery of guns and drones to join us. We are prepared to act as a forward detachment. I've already dispatched a tank company and mechanized infantry platoon to clear the approach route to the south."

Shaxi's body tensed in anticipation. He wanted this mission. He wanted to lead. He had tasted blood, and he liked it. He felt as though he could take on anything the Americans had to offer. His battalion had earned the right to be the first across the DMZ.

"This is Dragon Ten. Do you have a clear understanding of the mission? Do not respond with details on the radio, just yes or no."

"Yes, I understand. We're ready." Shaxi knew this was a slight exaggeration. It would be at least ten to fifteen minutes before he could get everyone back aboard their vehicles and organized into march formation.

"All right. Do you have any longer-range comms equipment with you?"

Shaxi thought hard. What he needed was a regimental command tank or vehicle.

"I have a special artillery vehicle with me. I can use the artillery long-range radio, if necessary."

"Good. Get your vehicles on the road. And whatever you do, keep moving. We will all be behind you."

The gravity in the division commander's voice, and his simple choice of words, moved Shaxi. He switched over to his battalion radio net, anxious to send out the code phrases that would set them all in motion. He knew that his tanks needed more time to resupply; that the stray tanks had not been sufficiently integrated into the grouping to do much beyond merely following the tank immediately in front of them. But he knew that now, with a great hole punched through the last line of the enemy's defense, time was the dominant factor. He felt simultaneously elated and half-wild with small, cloying frustrations. He worked his radio in a fierce, uncompromising voice that had matured in the space of a morning.

Major Wang Shaxi wanted to move.

Loved the latest posts!

Found your story here:



Is this your work, or are you just reposting it?

solarz said:

Found your story here:

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Is this your work, or are you just reposting it?

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It's my work; I'm also reposting this on the forums for Hearts of Iron.

t_co said:

It's my work; I'm also reposting this on the forums for Hearts of Iron.

Click to expand...

Ok, just wanted to know. Keep'em coming!

The morning mist floated off the Nakdong, blending with the slow-moving darker smoke from the burning buildings. Lieutenant Colonel Zhao Jianmin sat concealed on the bank, alone, allowing himself a brief rest, fighting against his body to maintain the strength to lead. He gingerly touched his injured ankle. The brace on his leg helped, but each step still jarred him with pain. He had selected the brace himself at the hospital, and he had worked it onto his foot and calf, unwilling to surrender himself to any other man's care.

He had expected an assault at first light, but the dirty air had been growing paler for an hour, and still the only sign of battle was an occasional rattle from a spooked rifleman in an outlying position. Comms checks with the network of observation posts returned only reports of vehicle noises back in the hills. Jianmin could not understand the enemy's delay. The reduced visibility provided by the mist and smoke offered perfect cover. Later, after the mist burned off, an assault would be much harder. Jianmin could feel the change in the weather; the last of the rain had sputtered out during the night, and the day would be warm and clear.

He was certain of one other thing, too. There would be little mercy shown on either side. As he limped around the perimeter in the first light, he'd been startled by the number of dead civilians in the Gumi streets. He realized house fires had likely driven them from their hiding places right into the middle of the firefights. In the night, they would have just been dark running shapes, impossible for any nineteen-year-old under a heavy combat to distinguish from legitimate targets. Both sides had shot them down. But Jianmin understood that the blame would fall solely on his men. When the enemy returned, they would see only the victims, and they would not pause to consider that their own firepower might have been as much at fault as Chinese weapons. And they would not be inclined to take prisoners--his men would get that message quickly enough.

So be it.

In many ways, so many ways, this was a totally different fight than Uzbekistan. You rarely had such a heavy morning damp, or such thick mist off slow rivers. In high Asia, the air was thin, and the mountain torrents plunged through impassable gorges down into ruined valleys. You did not have so sturdy an urban area as this outside of Tashkent itself.

But the haunting similarities remained.

As a brand-new, unblooded officer, just off the big transport plane with the first windblown sand in his eyes and teeth, Jianmin was garrisoned at Karshi-Khanabad, where the new airborne leaders learned the ropes. A priority then had been reopening the road to Samarqand. The Uzbek forces failed, as always, and Chinese forces recieved the order to do the job. Jianmin commanded a company in a battalion equipped with airborne-variant infantry fighting vehicles. They road-marched south, nervously awaiting an ambush that failed to materialize. Jianmin had not tasted combat directly that time, but he got his first look at war up close.

The column halted in a ruined village, whose dirt streets were littered with fly-covered carcasses. At first, he had only noticed the dead animals, large, bloated, and obvious. Then he realized that the clumps of rags lying about were human bodies. Scavenging birds circled overhead, like attack drones awaiting targets. The column idled in the stench and the heat, anxious for orders that would call them to support a combat operation ongoing in the next valley. But the vehicles began to cook over, and still no word came. Jianmin dismounted to relieve his bladder, and he walked a few meters away from the column, hunting for a place where the flies would not hurry off a nearby corpse and bite him in the crotch. He turned into an alley between two ruptured mud buildings--and faced a carpet of human bodies, butchered until they were layered three corpses thick.

The alley was at least fifteen meters long and perhaps a meter and a half wide. It ended bluntly against a brick wall. The hundred or so natives had been driven into the enclosure. Most of the bodies had their hands tied together, and the lack of bullet holes along the walls implied every shot was one made at point-blank range.

A few pillaging birds lazily drifted away at the sight of Jianmin, too full of dead human flesh to fly quickly. Then a fly pinched his cheek. He batted wildly at his face, gagging at the thought of some strange and hopeless infection. As he was bent over, struggling to master his insides, a hand seized his slung weapon from behind.

Jianmin whirled around and found himself staring into the sun-kissed tip of a combat knife. It was a special-operations major, grinning. "Interesting, don't you think, Comrade Captain?"

Proud, Jianmin struggled to mask his emotions, but it was useless. He still had many things to master back then.

"We... we certainly... didn't do this," Jianmin said.

The special-ops major laughed, releasing Jianmin's weapon and sheathing his blade. The major's skin had cooked a dark brown, almost as brown as the exposed, dehydrated corpses. He looked as though he lived in the mountains with the dushman.

"Of course not," the major said. "This village was loyal to the government." And he paused, smirking, a comedian loosening up the audience before the punchline. "We only do this sort of thing in villages that support the enemy. But get yourself an eyeful, and be sure to use your phone camera. You'll see plenty more, if you don't go home in a tin box first. And you'll want pictures to help you describe our glorious efforts at international peace and harmony."

As he walked away, Jianmin hurried back to the stalled column, seeking shelter in its vigor and familiarity. He pissed against the road wheels of his track, thinking about the spec-ops officer, trying to understand him. Jianmin remembered zipping up in the stink of death and shit and diesel fumes, wondering how the veterans could sit in their turrets spreading fermented tofu on steam buns and eating it. He failed that day, but, later on, he came to understand the man quite well. Death became more trivial than a spilled drink. In six months, he, too, had learned the art of not seeing.

Now he waited, exhausted, in a damp uniform, with the remnants of his battalion. He was a lieutenant colonel, one of the youngest and most decorated lieutenant colonels of his generation and on a fast-track to general officership. He was fighting a civilized enemy half a world away from the land where he had first learned the art of war. But as he walked through litter of charred or ripped or shattered bodies on the streets of Gumi, he knew it was going to be the same.

He placed his hand on the fender of a burned and blasted tank. A faint warmth lingered under the slick of the morning dew. He stared up calmly at the tank commander whose body had been caught halfway out of his hatch. The body had shriveled so much that it resembled a blackened monkey.

There was no point in trying to understand it all, Jianmin thought. The point was simply to win, to outlive the other bastard.

Colonel Luo Qipeng sat in his command car, eyes lowered to his map, thinking about Liszt. His fingers tapped and touched delicately at the milky plastic map bag, forming chords and absentminded arpeggios across the routes and rivers, cities and towns of central and southern Korea. Remembering a favorite passage, a quick flourish into melody, he closed his eyes, the better to hear the vibrating piano wires of memory.

Qipeng loved Liszt, and regretted the war, even though his formation had not committed into combat yet. He regretted his spectacular rise to the command of a premier maneuver brigade at a jealousy-inspiring age. He regretted all of the things his father had never been able to see clearly. The old man had made such a fuss about accepting no patronage for his son. Yet, Qipeng thought, were it not for his position, it was unlikely he would be much more than a middling major. Were it not for the name and its iron burden of traditions, he would hardly be a soldier.

Maneuver brigade commander. Colonel of the Cavalry. It sounded marvelously romantic, the stuff of operettas and oversized epaulets. Strauss might have had a grand time with such a character. Or Lehar. Or better yet, a more common touch--Romberg. Well, one could not dismiss light music so easily. There was a need for more lightness in the world.

Qipeng peered out at the grim North Korean sky beyond the camouflage net. He was alone now, his officers attending to their endless chores. He had sent his driver splashing off through the mud in search of something warm to eat. His driver was a good boy, not really cut out to be a soldier either. Quite frightened of the great, brooding, Luo Qipeng, son of one of the most powerful officers in the Chinese military establishment. Qipeng watched the sickly colored mud grab at the boy's ill-fitting boots. A lean Chinese boy in a dismal training area in the Koreas, waiting for orders; waiting for orders, like all of them.

Qipeng had heard that the war was going very fast up front, even faster than the plan had called for in some sectors. The combination of modern killing technologies and the barely controllable mobility of contemporary armored vehicles and aircraft had torn the neatness of situation maps apart with rapidity alarming even to the winning side.

Qipeng remembered the baffled faces at the corps briefing he had attended earlier in the afternoon. Everyone had expected a tougher initial fight, but the fairy-tale endings of countless dreary exercises had suddenly come true. Even the careful Mongolian eyes of the corps commander had revealed an odd disorientation, unsettled by the velocity of events.

In his heart, Qipeng felt that the war could not go too slowly for him. He recalled the detritus of enemy air attacks on the approaches to the Yalu River crossing site east of Dandong. The long lines of burned-out trucks and hapless rows of barbecued human beings had not even made it into the war in the traditional sense. Hours away from the front line, death had come without warning. If war ever had any glamour, Qipeng thought, it was surely gone now. As if war had any glamour, ever.

Now complex, inhuman systems flew overhead, or perhaps in the middle distance, beyond the reach of the human eye, and computers told the machines what to do and when to do it, and the earth erupted with hellfire. Qipeng had counted thirty-seven wrecks in one area, over fifty in another. The crossing sites themselves were little more than vehicle graveyards, the riverbanks charred black from napalm. His brigade had lost several vehicles during the Yalu River crossing, including precious air-defense systems. Now the survivors sat hidden in an assebly area, topped off with fuel, organized into combat march serials, ready to move on the last, most difficult leg of the journey. The corps commander projected a resumption of the march within nine to twelve hours, and a rapid movement to commitment, with no scheduled rest stops or halts at provision points. When they moved again, the destination would be combat.

As soon as the colonel told them to move. As soon as the corps commander told the colonel. As soon as the theater commander gave the word to the corps commander.

Qipeng thought helplessly of his father. He truly loved the old man, and admired him. Of course, it was easy to admire Army General Luo Shuren, Commander of the Chinese Expeditionary Forces in Korea, but Qipeng wondered how many other men truly loved him. His father had always seemed enormous and heroic to him, and blind, as heroes had to be in the political architecture of any nation. Qipeng was convinced that his father was scrupulously, almost absurdly honest. The old man meant it when he said he wanted no special treatment for his son, but the system was not equipped to handle such requests. Qipeng knew well that he would have had to commit a string of outrageous public follies even to slow his career.

Luo Shuren's son. Promote him. And get him out of here.

Even if he had to do it all over again, Qipeng doubted he would follow his own desires. The old man was too big, too grand to be resisted, and disarmingly demanding, in his aristocratic way. He had never threatened or bullied Qipeng into becoming an officer. He had just assumed it would be, with such unshakeable conviction that Qipeng had found himself powerless to resist.

Nancy wanted him to quit. She wanted him to find his own life. It was far too late now, of course, to think seriously about becoming a concert pianist. His fingers had stiffened around too much military hardware. But, she pointed out, he could always become a professor of music, and a critic. He had a good name, and the good names were back in fashion at last, a new novelty for the privileged elite.

And then they could be together always.

Nancy.

She was a fine, loving, exuberant chaos of a woman, absolutely inappropriate for the role of an officer's wife. She insisted on being called her English name, and when that failed, used her Cantonese name she acquired from growing up in Hong Kong. She could never remember the ranks of the other wives' husbands; she was only half-aware that Qipeng wore a rank himself. If Nancy liked her, a lieutenant's lolita was as good a friend as a general's dowager. And naturally, since, on top of being betrothed to a Luo, she came from an influential family herself, the other officer wives assumed that Nancy had purposely snubbed them. Nancy was an open, honest, naive, hated woman who danced jauntily through it all, never fully aware of the nastiness behind the smiles, singing her little Taylor Swift songs.

Sometimes, he would play Scriabin, and she would listen, curled up like a cat on an old peasant stove. But left to her own devices, she buoyed in and out of rooms, delighted and frenetic with life, singing in her perfect English, "Why can't you s-e-e.... you belong with me-e-e..."

Tears came to his eyes as he pictured her, straight black hair draping a white throat made for jewels. Jeans and jewels. Nancy, his princess. He touched his eyes, dreading discovery, and a queasiness that had been nipping at his stomach for the last few hours twisted in him again. He hoped he was not getting sick, even as the beginning of illness soured his mood still further.

The brooding, serious officer. What a masquerade, he thought. He had been able to play-act all right, as long as there wasn't a real war. he had not even had to go to Uzbekistan. Instead, he had shipped off to Thailand, under the protection of Lieutenant General Ma Shiwen, then the major general in charge of Southeast Asian military relations. Shiwen was an abusive drunkard, clever and talented enough to survive, and indebted to the elder Luo. He had treated Qipeng carefully, and Thailand had been a good assignment. Qipeng had run a military engineering training course--a task that required almost no hands-on leadership. There had always been a little time to live, and he had even been able to take Nancy with him. The Thais had no interest in socializing with the Chinese beyond official functions. But he and Nancy had lived in a world all their own, going down to the beaches together whenever a bit of free time could be scavenged, or spending a rare weekend in Bali.

"What fine little capitalists we are, darling," Nancy had teased him. "Wicked cocktails and the stars on the water, and the casino, and my dear Peng-peng in that dreaded capitalist uniform, a tuxedo."

Now he was here, in Korea, in the mud, and everything was painfully real. The war was real, and he did not know if he could do his duty--if he could really be his father's son. He knew all of the phrases and drills, all of the wisdom of the classroom and training range. But would he be able to lead men into battle? Would he be able to manage the complexity? Would he be able to do it right when it really mattered?

Perhaps the hard men of the Revolution had been correct. Perhaps the old families were no more than parasites. Useless. Perhaps the Red Guards should not have stopped until they had purged every last man, woman, and child.

Qipeng thought of his father again, and the theory fell apart. His father would pay the Party in full for what little they had given him; he would overpay them. But he was not a Party man, no matter what he said and no matter what they said. His wonderful Chinese father, as great as the foggy mountains and broad rivers. As great as summer and winter. Qipeng smiled a little. Surely, the old man was in his element now, as strong as his son was weak. Perhaps, this time, the plaudits would outstrip those gained at the gates of Huaihai, or Nanjing, or Tokyo.

Yes. Parades in Tokyo. And Nancy. One of the only ways in which he could reconcile his father's dreams with his own.

His driver came back around the trees, plopping through the mud, struggling to balance two steaming bowls of noodles.

Tokyo. And Liszt. And Nancy.

Qipeng shook his head in wordless sorrow.

"Praetoria" is a copy-and-modification of the 1989 novel Red Army, by Ralph Peters, which is about a hypothetical Soviet invasion of Western Europe. The "author" has taken the text of Red Army and merely changed the names, locations, equipment details, etc., including adding recent technology like drones and tablet computers. All the creative content -- the characters (for example, airborne infantry officer, recon-vehicle commander, forward air controller, tank commander), plot, exposition, action scenes, dialogue, interior monologue -- has been lifted from Red Army. And I don't mean "inspired by" or "based on." I mean (other than minor changes in wording) "copied verbatim." When I was reading the first few installments, it all seemed vaguely familiar, although I couldn't put my finger on why. But when I got to the part where the airborne officer's radioman is shot, I realized that many years after I had first read Red Army, I was reading it again, this time in plagiarized form. Here's the part to which I'm referring:

"Movement caught his eye. And then Jianmin was back in the hills of Uzbekistan, brilliantly alive. He didn't let the leading figure distract him. He searched the point of origin for the covering man. When he had him fixed, he put a burst of fire into him, then shifted his weapon to catch the forward man against the side of a building. The forward man returned fire as he fell, but it sprayed wildly.

"Jianmin turned and kicked in the door. Then he scrambled to drag the radioman inside the hallway.

"His hands grew slick with blood. It reminded him of dragging a wet, rolled-up tent. Bits and pieces of the boy seemed to be falling off as Jianmin dragged him. He had clearly caught a full burst. Amazingly, he still whimpered with life."

Change "Jianmin" to a Russian name and "Uzbekistan" to "Afghanistan," and you now have a word-for-word excerpt from Red Army. By the way, didn't anyone else find the flashbacks and references to Uzbekistan out of place? I'm not aware of any current or historical disputes or problems between China and Uzbekistan, and they don't share a border. The reason those things are in this story is because Red Army contains the same flashbacks and references, but with respect to Afghanistan. The "author" simply replaced "Afghanistan" with "Uzbekistan."

Feel free to see for yourself. Significant portions of Red Army are viewable at the Google Books website. (Search for "red army ralph peters," and the novel should be at the top of the results.) If you live in the United States, there's a good chance your local public library has a copy of the whole book.

"Flight Leader, I have you on my radar screen. You are cleared for auxiliary runway number two. Don't screw around, we have more hostiles en route and the air defense boys are really nervous."

"This is Zero-Five-Eight. Roger. Auxiliary number two. Coming straight in."

"Watch for the smoke, Flight Leader. We have burning fuel."

"With me, fifty-nine?" Captain Kang Zongqi called to his wingman.

"Roger, fifty-eight."

"You're in first. Number two's longer than it looks, but it comes up suddenly behind the trees. Don't flare early, you'll be fine."

Even after striking the enemy airbase, Zongqi was unprepared for a similar sight at the Chinese one. Fuel fires raged, and black smoke rose into a wall against the gray sky. Vehicles with warning lights ran along the apron, and planes took off from burning runways like circus performers leaping through hoops of fire.

"Flight Leader, this is Control. I have you on visual."

"I'm going to be pulling up. My wingman's coming in first."

"Roger. Do you need ground crew assistance?"

"Negative, not unless we fuck it up."

"Your runway."

The lieutenant, Zongqi's wingman, took his aircraft in cleanly. Zongqi remained surprised that they had made it this far, that they were still alive--for at least one more mission. He came around and followed his wingman in, bouncing on the runway.

"Talk to me, Control. Where am I going?"

"Proceed onto taxiway four, hard hangars, carousel B."

"Which hangar?"

"Just take the first open one. This is war, Comrade Aviator."

Zongqi guided his plane through the trailing smoke and wreckage of planes that had been caught on the ground. He thought briefly of the other two planes in his sortie that didn't make it, but now that he was on the ground, he realized his focus was to get to a bathroom.

Zongqi's legs quivered as he stood on the concrete of the hangar floor, and his thighs felt spongy as he walked to the tunnel and collected his wingman. After a bathroom stop, they reported to the mission room, deep underground. Muffled blasts sounded through layers of earth, steel, and concrete. The enemy aircraft had returned.

The occupants of the mission room went silent as Zongqi and his wingman entered, each face turning to see who had just made it back. Several men offered greetings, but the voices were hollow; everyone knew their survival might only be a temporary affair. Zongqi himself managed a brief thumbs-up, then disappeared to draw a cup of dark, steaming tea from the thermos in the rear of the room.

Conversations resumed, but the mood was serious, almost somber, unlike the swaggering tone of peacetime exerises. Now there was no question about who had passed and who had failed. Zongqi took a chair, listening to patchwork dialogue of the other men and trying to calm his insides with the tea. His lieutenant took a seat close by, as though they were still in the air and he required shepherding. There was on basic subject to which all of the talk returned.

"Lao Feng's down over Daegu. I couldn't see a chute."

"It's hard to see anything in this weather."

"Has anyone seen Xiao Meng?"

"Xiao Meng's group went deep. Nobody bailed out."

"Except for Yinglong, he got out clean. Good canopy opening."

"He'll come out all right. Luck of the Cantonese."

"Couldn't even see what was shooting at us. The visibility was some of the worst I've ever flown in."

"And this forward air controller was absolutely worthless. Couldn't locate the enemy, couldn't get a fix on me..."

Zongqi began to grow conscious of less dramatic physical sensations now. his flight suit felt greasy and cold on his skin, stinking with the sweat of fear. The strong tea burned his empty stomach.

"How many more sorties do you think we'll run today?"

"They're not going to try to do this at night, are they? With these planes? In this weather?"

"Anyone want these potstickers?"

"Damn it, Lu, I thought getting shot at would make you less of a pig."

The entrance of a staff officer interrupted the pilots' conversations. The outsider strode to the blackboard, positioned himself for authority, and began to call names. Several times, he met no response, and Zongqi realized that the staff did not even know who was still alive at this point.

At the end of the grim roll call, Zongqi, his wingman, and six other pilots were ordered to report to a special top-security briefing room. The major could not tell them anything about their mission, only that their aircraft were being prepped with the proper ordnance packages.

Zongqi led the way down the grimy corridor. He was seriously worried about his ability to keep going without making deadly mistakes. The lack of sleep and constant grating stress were surely taking their toll on his performance, Zongqi knew, even if he couldn't feel it.

He looked at his wingman. The boy looked as though he had been sick for a week. "Feeling all right?"

The lieutenant nodded, weakly. "Was it ever this bad in Uzbekistan?"

"Not even remotely. No comparison."

They rang a bell for admittance at the oversized steel door. The special facility was identified only with a number. A lieutenant colonel from the intelligence services opened the door slightly, looked them over, then allowed them inside. A live spy satellite feed of a fleet of ships played on a gigantic screen covering the far wall of the briefing chamber.

"Sit down, Comrades. I must ask you to remain in this room and only this room. If any of you need to visit the bathroom, you'll have to use the one outside. This complex is restricted to intelligence personnel only. Now, can I offer you some tea?"

The pilots declined as a group.

"Well," the briefer began, "you're all in luck." He glanced from face to face, an eager lieutenant colonel, conditioned to the paper reality of staff work, then opened up his laptop. "This ought to be the easiest mission anyone's had all day." He pressed a key; the map behind him became an overhead feed of a burning urban area. "This is the city of Kusong. Actually, more of a large town." He pressed another key; colored arrows and dots showed up on the feed. "These are the air approaches to the heart of the downtown and various key features, such as the local Korean Workers' Party headquarters and hospital. Your mission consists of aerial destruction these features. They're very easy to spot, as you can see. There are three targets, or target groups. Two planes to a target. The last pair of aircraft--you, and you--" he said, pointing at Zongqi and his wingman "--will take pictures."

"Just a moment," Zongqi said. "What's the military value of the target?"

The lieutenant colonel seemed surprised at the question. "The target," he said, "is just the town itself. Don't worry, we assess a minimal air defense threat in the sector. You'll be safe. Our own troops are already in the vicinity, and the town itself is... mostly pacified."

"But what's the military purpose? The enemy's bombing the hell out of our airbases, and we're attacking little towns nobody's ever heard of?"

The intelligence officer's last, hesitant, smile disappeared. His next words were punctuated by a series of blasts thudding dully up on the surface.

"You will do as you're told," the briefer said. "There is no time--or allowance--for argument. You wil all do exactly as you're told."

Halfway between the improvised helipad and the concealed forward command post of the 63rd Mechanized Group Army, the truck carrying Lieutenant General Ma Shiwen down the muddy trail backfired once, shook, and sank to a stop. The sudden absence of mechanical noise startled the general out of his baijiu-induced stupor. The world seemed to stop inside the silent bubble, despite the vigor of the rain and the dull, distant sound of the war. Each rustle of uniforms and wet leather straps seemed amplified, and the sour smell of tired men in damp uniforms grew uncomfortably sharper.

Overcoming his initial bewilderment and horror, the junior sergeant behind the steering wheel clumsily tried to restart the vehicle, but the engine would not come to life. Instead of waiting for the dispatch of his own Range Rover from headquarters, Shiwen had hurriedly commandeered the available truck, unwilling to lose the extra ten or fifteen minutes. Now he sat heavily in the little vehicle, with no means of communication, still several kilometers from his command post, mocked by the barrage of rain on the canvas roof.

The young driver carefully avoided looking around, fixing his eyes on the dashboard as though his stare might bully the machine back to life. The two aids accompanying Shiwen remained carefully silent. Shiwent listened to the boy's fumbling for as long as he could bear it, then shouted:

"You can't beg it to start, you useless shit. Get out and look at the engine."

The boy shot out of the vehicle, banging against the door frame with bruising haste. Beyond the rain-smeared windshield, Shiwen could see him fumbling with the engine cover. In the blurred background, the rain seemed to have scoured all of the color out of the sky and landscape.

"And you two," Shiwen bellowed, turning to his aides. "Get out there and help him. What's the matter with you idiots?"

The aides moved with the panic of caught thieves. One of them, a staff major, jostled wildly against Shiwen in his anxiety, and the army commander gave him a hard kick in the rear as he left the truck. Soon the two aides stood glum-faced beside the driver in the steady rain.

They were hopeless. All of them. Shiwen sat back, squaring his shoulders, convinced that he had to carry the entire army on his back. All of his life, he thought, he had to drive his will head-on into the ponderous complacency of the system which he had joined. When something broke, those responsible would sheepishly sit down and wait for orders to fix it. Then they would take their sweet time on the task--unless you drove them. And so Shiwen had learned how to drive men, but now, under the greatest test of his lifetime, he feared his inability to move the men under his command.

More than anything, he feared failure. He feared it because he thought it would reveal some secret incompetence hidden within him, deep within his soul, where no other human being had ever been allowed to penetrate. Shiwen sometimes doubted himself, and it was this doubt that drove himself every day, fighting to preserve his pride.

The damned whoring Americans would not break. It seemed incredible to him that he could not simply will his way through them, hammering them to nothing with his personal determination and the tank-heavy army under his command. He drifted back and forth between his bobbing doubts and waves of immeasurable energy. Now, as he envisioned the defending American III Corps, he sensed it would be impossible for them to resist.

Yet the Americans were resisting, fighting bitterly for every road and water obstacle, seemingly for every worthless little village and godforsaken hill. While to the west, that bastard Xu Tengfei was breaking through, already ahead of schedule, splitting the seam between the Koreans and American light divisions. While he, Shiwen, had to butt head-on against the heaviest American formation this side of the Pacific.

That little homosexual shit Nie Zhen undoubtedly had a hand in it, Shiwen was convinced. He stared through the mud-speckled windshield at the soaking trio bent over the vehicle's engine, feeling a strange pleasure at the thought of Nie. The hatred he felt was so intense, so pure and unexamined, that it was soothing. After the war... Nie and his ilk would be made to pay. China had to be purged yet again. It was time to settle accounts with the false reformers and cultural liberals, corrupting the minds of China's youth. And yet Shiwen realized that he hated Nie Zhen not merely for his homosexuality, but for his effortless, controlled brilliance as well. Nie Zhen could absentmindedly perform tasks that confronted Shiwen with agony and consternation.

Surely, Shiwen decided, Nie was sabotaging him, poisoning Luo Shuren against him and cleverly throwing the theater's support behind Tengfei.

And Shuren. How could Shuren fail to support him, even at the expense of Tengfei? Tengfei was nobody's friend, but Shiwen had baby-sat Shuren's son in Thailand.

Just keep the boy out of Uzbekistan. Shiwen was certain the posting had been no accident. Luo Shuren must have fixed it up for his son, and Shiwen clearly understood who possessed power and how much. He had known what was tacitly expected of him. Just keep the son out of trouble.

Of course, the kid had not been so bad. He worked hard enough. As the officer running the training program, he had done all that was required, even a bit more. Luo the Younger, like his father, was clever at solving problems. Yet somehow, there was so little to the boy. It was though his heart wasn't really tucked inside the tunic of his uniform. There was no fire. Luo the Younger had gone through all of the paces, performing with ease. But he just did not seem like a real soldier.

Young Luo didn't even drink like a man. In Thailand, the boy had spent all of his spare time cuddled with his highborn bitch of a wife, following her around like an excited dog. Shiwen doubted that the boy would have had the strength to raise his hand against her even if he had caught her in the act of fucking someone else. Not that Shiwen had any evidence she had betrayed her husband. No, the little cunt was probably too smart for that. She knew what she had to do to keep the gravy coming in. But she was still a whore. One look at her and Shiwen knew. He could smell it. And her independence of manner, her lack of respect...the boy seemed to have no control over her. Shiwen believed he had to treat women the same way he treated men beneath himself. Break them down. Force his will upon them. Get them by the ears, and shove it down their throats.

Shiwen thought, briefly, disgustedly, of his own wife. A sack of fat. The woman had no pride, no respect, for her position. She had the soul of a peasant, not of a general's dowager. Young Luo's wife, now--she at least looked the part. But she was still a calculating little tramp.

Hearing a series of distant explosions, Shiwen pounded his big fist on the side window of the truck, cracking it. The war would not wait for him. His war. The opportunity of his lifetime. Even the daylight seemed to be floundering, failing, letting him down. Everything was accelerating past him, while he sat in a broken-down vehicle in the mud. He felt as if the universe had conspired to humiliate him. And Tengfei and Nie Zhen and all of the whoring homosexual bastards of the world were leaving him behind. Shiwen gnashed his teeeth, feeling as though he would explode with the enormity of his anger.

He threw the door of the truck open and clambered out into the mud just as the rain picked up again. He stared, hatefully, at the sergeant and the two aides. They were tinkering dutifully with the engine, but it was clear none of them knew what to do.

"You're relieved," Shiwen told the two officers. "I don't want to see your goddamned faces anywhere around the headquarters. Your careers are finished."

Suddenly, two fighter-bombers roared in low overhead. The sound of their passage was so big it shocked the ears like an explosion. The aides and the sergeant threw themselves into the mud. But Shiwen only raised his wide face to meet the jets, automatically sensing they were after something bigger than a stranded truck. In the instant of their passage, he clearly saw the ghostly white stars of the US Air Force. A moment later, parts of the army's command post threw a bouquet of fire high into the heavens, followed quickly by a second bloom, orange, yellow, and spectral red, tricking the eyes as it singed the air to black. The mud grasping at Shiwen's boots turned to jelly, and waves crossed the surface of the puddles. Then the sound of the blasts arrived, pinching his eardrums into ringing deafness.

Without a backward look, Shiwen advanced on the flames, raging at the rain that fell on him, cursing God and every man and woman who crossed his mind, marching, almost running in the slop, fervent and vicious with fear.