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Praetoria: a Chinese Army story
- Thread starter leibowitz
- Start date
"Wang Shaxi, report to regimental command."
It was Dragon Ten again. The voice over his headset jolted Shaxi awake. It took him a moment to register the lack of a callsign, or even a rank, and his heart sank. So he was a war criminal, after all.
The Seventy-Seventh Mechanized Division, Shaxi's parent unit, had taken command at Gapyeong. The bridgehead had taken on the character of a small military city. Air-defense systems crowned the surrounding hills. Five bridges floated in the Bukhan River at intervals of several hundred meters, ready to augment the 4-lane highway bridge or replace it, should the enemy finally succeed in their efforts to drop the prize span in the water. Antennas poked out of windows and rooftops, as a half-dozen divisional and regimental command posts jostled for space. On the northern bank, artillery batteries vomited their steel hail into the sky; Shaxi had lost count of the endless barrages of rockets and shells they had sent forth. And above them, dozens of drones drifted back and forth, like deadly flocks of migratory geese.
Shaxi stepped into the shattered remnants of what had once been a bank. The divisional commander had set his command post in the underground vault, surrounded by sacks of now-worthless Korean currency. His face was stern.
"Shaxi, sit down." He glanced at his divisional chief of staff, who had his arms crossed. A third officer, unfamiliar to Shaxi, huddled over a laptop, uninterested in the conversation. "We read your report. Don't worry about what happened with those refugees. This is war, not a vacation."
And so that was it? They had called him here just to tell him everything was okay?
"But we do think you're the right man for a job. We... just relieved your regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Min, and we think that you should assume his role. You have an immediate task ahead of you."
Shaxi blinked twice. This quick?
"We have reformed your forward detachment with the remnants of the 331st Regiment--you know, the one that was in heavy combat two nights ago, prior to the commitment of your regiment--into a new mechanized regiment, and you are to join a counterattack against the left wing of the Korean II Corps."
Shaxi had heard the rumors drifting between him, the air-assault lieutenant colonel, and Captains Xia and Pang. The Korean II Corps, together with the American 1st Marine Division, were leading a full-scale operational breakout from the Seoul pocket to link up with the American III Corps at Chuncheong.
"You will be augmented with elements from the Five Hundred and Eighteenth Drone Regiment. These are new-model attack drones, and we've assigned an officer--" the division commander nodded towards the laptop boy "--to help set them up for you. The 115th Regiment will function as a second echelon."
Shaxi had no doubts about the reality of the mission. The refugee attack had made him a political liability, and now he was to redeem himself by somehow disrupting the attack of an entire Corps with a mere regiment. He saluted and prepared to leave. A voice held him back.
"One more thing, Shaxi. Here is your new uniform--" a staff officer held out a pair of lieutenant colonel's shoulderboards "--and your new callsign is Genghis. Good luck."
Lieutenant Colonel Wang Shaxi, newly minted commander of the 331st Mechanized Regiment, watched the attack from the forward observation post southeast of Gapyeong.
His superior had been vague, but Shaxi rapidly caught up with the situation. The rapid Allied breakout, led by the 1st Marine Division, had opened a hole between them and the slower-moving Korean II Corps. His regiment was to descend into the fray, to slow them down. After checking the map, Shaxi decided on a plan. The terrain unfolded onto Highway 60, the Gyeongchun Expressway; he would breach the highway line, fording the Hongcheong River, and then establish short-range rocket and drone positions atop the hills northeast of Yangpyeong, where they could threaten forces using the Gyeongchun or Yeongdong Expressways to break out from the Seoul-Suwon pocket.
Shaxi reviewed the estimated enemy positions and road schedules in his handheld tablet again. The figures suggested a twenty-minute window in which this particular stretch of the Gyeongchun Expressway would be held by a single Korean battalion, but if he was off by fifteen minutes on either side, he would run straight into a trail brigade of the 1st Marine Division or the lead division of the Korean II Corps.
He had appointed Captain Pang, now Major Pang, to flank the enemy from Hudong-ri, and informed the other battalion commanders to prepare for a frontal assault from Chunghyo-ro. The drone officer was to hold his swarm of light assault craft in reserve, and to get as many of his drone carriers through the breach as possible, then join the regiment on Yangmunsan.
At the briefing, his officers had worn incredulous looks. Xia, also newly promoted, had asked repeatedly if Shaxi was serious about wedging his lone regiment between a division and an entire corps. They had all given up so much, he wanted to tell them, and now they were on the verge of finishing the job. Shaxi then realized that none of his tanker's training had prepped him for giving grand speeches, and he simply told them to hurry the fuck up.
The earth twitched beneath his feet. The artillery preparation had begun, concentrating all available fires on the known or estimated enemy positions. The broad, low valley filled with light, as though a bizarre morning had arrived ahead of schedule. Shells crashed and sputtered, ripping into the horizon by the thousands. Shaxi could not understand how men survived such shelling, yet he knew that some of them always did. It was, at times, amazingly difficult to kill the human animal.
The streaking dazzle of a multiple rocket launcher barrage rose from the left of the observation post, breaking in mid-air into tens of thousands of cluster bomblets that rained on the highway line like incandescent hail. Then the canopy of scheduled illumination began to unfold, with lines of flare rounds bursting in crooked ranks, hanging in the air four to six hundred meters apart like a trail of christmas lights.
Shaxi watched Xia's battalion deploy, his newly-blooded veterans flooding over the near crests in company columns that soon spread further into columns of platoons, all the while maintaining good combat speed. On the valley floor, the platoons further fanned out and the combat vehicles came on line. Shaxi could easily pick out the positions of the company commanders, of the staggered ranks of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and the air-defense weaponry trailing to the rear. On the trail of the maneuvering companies, the drone trucks snooped along, launching their light attack craft for direct-fire support. Then, at the very rear, ammo trucks and little clusters of ambulances followed. It was one of the most complete maneuvers Shaxi had ever seen, and it suddenly translated into timelessness for him.
He had never grasped it before, but now he saw in the surging lines the perfect modern version of the old dynastic armies marching out in their ready ranks, the men of Guan Yu or Yue Fei. The only difference today was that the rank and file wore layers of composite armor in place of the colorful uniforms of old. In a moment of skepticism, he told himself that there was really no comparison between these squat, ugly steel bugs scuttling across the valley floor and the antique brilliance of horse archers and heavy cavalry. But it was the same--he could not deny it now. It was exactly the same, and the revealed truth of it burned into Shaxi. What ever changed about war? he asked himself. Then, beside him, he heard Rena ask, what ever changed about mankind?
The Korean gunners and tank crews began to find targets, even with the Chinese artillery and drone rockets still crashing upon them. Shaxi had to admire the Koreans. He doubted that many men, especially those who had not previously known war, would even briefly attempt to stand their ground in the face of such a downpour of high explosives. Here and there, one of Shaxi's vehicles convulsed into a tiny bonfire or slowed, crippled, from the advancing ranks. Shaxi returned to his insistent vision. It made so much sense he could hardly believe it--the way he used to picture men falling away at the first enemy arrow volleys, only now the men had been made a part of war machines.
Upon reaching the fifteen-hundred meter line from the highway, his tanks briefly halted, not content with suppression fired from the move. Commanders' lasers and tracer bullets danced towards targets selected for platoon-level volley fire. The ranks of steel rippled with muzzle blasts and recoils. Then they began to march again, picking up speed as they closed. Shaxi could almost hear the drumbeats and the clipped, shouted commands issued under sweat-drenched beards. Forward, closer, charge...
The artillery shifted to a deeper targeting line as Chinese vehicles approached the highway. Shaxi watched, pained, as more and more of his vehicles fell out, some ending their journeys with volcanic explosions from which no survivors would emerge. Hundreds of green and purple parachute flares hung in the sky at once, and the battle took on a burnished hyperreality, as though the entire world was made of neon. The advancing lines wavered as individual tanks or platoons sought ways around local terrain impediments, but the classic, magnificent formations never broke.
As the last artillery lifted a new presence appeared over the battlefield, to the accompaniment of dozens of pink starbursts. This element could not be fitted so neatly into Shaxi's historical model. Six pairs of heavy attack drones and helicopter gunships rode in through the neon sky, coming from the right. The ugly aircraft had a presence both horrid and magical, spitting dozens of rockets into the enemy lines like flying dragons, or slowing into targeted missile-attack runs. Then they disappeared over the waves of Chinese vehicles.
The attack made the crest, and the vehicles continued down into the next valley. A radio set in the observation post squealed and coughed with Major Xia's requests for more illumination, even as another station chirped with Major's Pang's confirmation that they had completely penetrated the Korean position. A spontaneous cheer went up from the group of officers, clerks, and signalers assembled at the observation post, but Shaxi could only shake his head at the wastage in the valley and on the far slopes as the last flares sputtered into oblivion.
He turned to the regimental chief of staff.
"Faster. Drive faster. The enemy has to know where we are now, and they'll try to crunch us before we get into the hills. We can't stop on this damned road. Inform the division commander that we're in. I'm getting in my tank to join the regiment on Yongmunsan. Wish us luck."
It was Dragon Ten again. The voice over his headset jolted Shaxi awake. It took him a moment to register the lack of a callsign, or even a rank, and his heart sank. So he was a war criminal, after all.
The Seventy-Seventh Mechanized Division, Shaxi's parent unit, had taken command at Gapyeong. The bridgehead had taken on the character of a small military city. Air-defense systems crowned the surrounding hills. Five bridges floated in the Bukhan River at intervals of several hundred meters, ready to augment the 4-lane highway bridge or replace it, should the enemy finally succeed in their efforts to drop the prize span in the water. Antennas poked out of windows and rooftops, as a half-dozen divisional and regimental command posts jostled for space. On the northern bank, artillery batteries vomited their steel hail into the sky; Shaxi had lost count of the endless barrages of rockets and shells they had sent forth. And above them, dozens of drones drifted back and forth, like deadly flocks of migratory geese.
Shaxi stepped into the shattered remnants of what had once been a bank. The divisional commander had set his command post in the underground vault, surrounded by sacks of now-worthless Korean currency. His face was stern.
"Shaxi, sit down." He glanced at his divisional chief of staff, who had his arms crossed. A third officer, unfamiliar to Shaxi, huddled over a laptop, uninterested in the conversation. "We read your report. Don't worry about what happened with those refugees. This is war, not a vacation."
And so that was it? They had called him here just to tell him everything was okay?
"But we do think you're the right man for a job. We... just relieved your regimental commander, Lieutenant Colonel Min, and we think that you should assume his role. You have an immediate task ahead of you."
Shaxi blinked twice. This quick?
"We have reformed your forward detachment with the remnants of the 331st Regiment--you know, the one that was in heavy combat two nights ago, prior to the commitment of your regiment--into a new mechanized regiment, and you are to join a counterattack against the left wing of the Korean II Corps."
Shaxi had heard the rumors drifting between him, the air-assault lieutenant colonel, and Captains Xia and Pang. The Korean II Corps, together with the American 1st Marine Division, were leading a full-scale operational breakout from the Seoul pocket to link up with the American III Corps at Chuncheong.
"You will be augmented with elements from the Five Hundred and Eighteenth Drone Regiment. These are new-model attack drones, and we've assigned an officer--" the division commander nodded towards the laptop boy "--to help set them up for you. The 115th Regiment will function as a second echelon."
Shaxi had no doubts about the reality of the mission. The refugee attack had made him a political liability, and now he was to redeem himself by somehow disrupting the attack of an entire Corps with a mere regiment. He saluted and prepared to leave. A voice held him back.
"One more thing, Shaxi. Here is your new uniform--" a staff officer held out a pair of lieutenant colonel's shoulderboards "--and your new callsign is Genghis. Good luck."
Lieutenant Colonel Wang Shaxi, newly minted commander of the 331st Mechanized Regiment, watched the attack from the forward observation post southeast of Gapyeong.
His superior had been vague, but Shaxi rapidly caught up with the situation. The rapid Allied breakout, led by the 1st Marine Division, had opened a hole between them and the slower-moving Korean II Corps. His regiment was to descend into the fray, to slow them down. After checking the map, Shaxi decided on a plan. The terrain unfolded onto Highway 60, the Gyeongchun Expressway; he would breach the highway line, fording the Hongcheong River, and then establish short-range rocket and drone positions atop the hills northeast of Yangpyeong, where they could threaten forces using the Gyeongchun or Yeongdong Expressways to break out from the Seoul-Suwon pocket.
Shaxi reviewed the estimated enemy positions and road schedules in his handheld tablet again. The figures suggested a twenty-minute window in which this particular stretch of the Gyeongchun Expressway would be held by a single Korean battalion, but if he was off by fifteen minutes on either side, he would run straight into a trail brigade of the 1st Marine Division or the lead division of the Korean II Corps.
He had appointed Captain Pang, now Major Pang, to flank the enemy from Hudong-ri, and informed the other battalion commanders to prepare for a frontal assault from Chunghyo-ro. The drone officer was to hold his swarm of light assault craft in reserve, and to get as many of his drone carriers through the breach as possible, then join the regiment on Yangmunsan.
At the briefing, his officers had worn incredulous looks. Xia, also newly promoted, had asked repeatedly if Shaxi was serious about wedging his lone regiment between a division and an entire corps. They had all given up so much, he wanted to tell them, and now they were on the verge of finishing the job. Shaxi then realized that none of his tanker's training had prepped him for giving grand speeches, and he simply told them to hurry the fuck up.
The earth twitched beneath his feet. The artillery preparation had begun, concentrating all available fires on the known or estimated enemy positions. The broad, low valley filled with light, as though a bizarre morning had arrived ahead of schedule. Shells crashed and sputtered, ripping into the horizon by the thousands. Shaxi could not understand how men survived such shelling, yet he knew that some of them always did. It was, at times, amazingly difficult to kill the human animal.
The streaking dazzle of a multiple rocket launcher barrage rose from the left of the observation post, breaking in mid-air into tens of thousands of cluster bomblets that rained on the highway line like incandescent hail. Then the canopy of scheduled illumination began to unfold, with lines of flare rounds bursting in crooked ranks, hanging in the air four to six hundred meters apart like a trail of christmas lights.
Shaxi watched Xia's battalion deploy, his newly-blooded veterans flooding over the near crests in company columns that soon spread further into columns of platoons, all the while maintaining good combat speed. On the valley floor, the platoons further fanned out and the combat vehicles came on line. Shaxi could easily pick out the positions of the company commanders, of the staggered ranks of tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, and the air-defense weaponry trailing to the rear. On the trail of the maneuvering companies, the drone trucks snooped along, launching their light attack craft for direct-fire support. Then, at the very rear, ammo trucks and little clusters of ambulances followed. It was one of the most complete maneuvers Shaxi had ever seen, and it suddenly translated into timelessness for him.
He had never grasped it before, but now he saw in the surging lines the perfect modern version of the old dynastic armies marching out in their ready ranks, the men of Guan Yu or Yue Fei. The only difference today was that the rank and file wore layers of composite armor in place of the colorful uniforms of old. In a moment of skepticism, he told himself that there was really no comparison between these squat, ugly steel bugs scuttling across the valley floor and the antique brilliance of horse archers and heavy cavalry. But it was the same--he could not deny it now. It was exactly the same, and the revealed truth of it burned into Shaxi. What ever changed about war? he asked himself. Then, beside him, he heard Rena ask, what ever changed about mankind?
The Korean gunners and tank crews began to find targets, even with the Chinese artillery and drone rockets still crashing upon them. Shaxi had to admire the Koreans. He doubted that many men, especially those who had not previously known war, would even briefly attempt to stand their ground in the face of such a downpour of high explosives. Here and there, one of Shaxi's vehicles convulsed into a tiny bonfire or slowed, crippled, from the advancing ranks. Shaxi returned to his insistent vision. It made so much sense he could hardly believe it--the way he used to picture men falling away at the first enemy arrow volleys, only now the men had been made a part of war machines.
Upon reaching the fifteen-hundred meter line from the highway, his tanks briefly halted, not content with suppression fired from the move. Commanders' lasers and tracer bullets danced towards targets selected for platoon-level volley fire. The ranks of steel rippled with muzzle blasts and recoils. Then they began to march again, picking up speed as they closed. Shaxi could almost hear the drumbeats and the clipped, shouted commands issued under sweat-drenched beards. Forward, closer, charge...
The artillery shifted to a deeper targeting line as Chinese vehicles approached the highway. Shaxi watched, pained, as more and more of his vehicles fell out, some ending their journeys with volcanic explosions from which no survivors would emerge. Hundreds of green and purple parachute flares hung in the sky at once, and the battle took on a burnished hyperreality, as though the entire world was made of neon. The advancing lines wavered as individual tanks or platoons sought ways around local terrain impediments, but the classic, magnificent formations never broke.
As the last artillery lifted a new presence appeared over the battlefield, to the accompaniment of dozens of pink starbursts. This element could not be fitted so neatly into Shaxi's historical model. Six pairs of heavy attack drones and helicopter gunships rode in through the neon sky, coming from the right. The ugly aircraft had a presence both horrid and magical, spitting dozens of rockets into the enemy lines like flying dragons, or slowing into targeted missile-attack runs. Then they disappeared over the waves of Chinese vehicles.
The attack made the crest, and the vehicles continued down into the next valley. A radio set in the observation post squealed and coughed with Major Xia's requests for more illumination, even as another station chirped with Major's Pang's confirmation that they had completely penetrated the Korean position. A spontaneous cheer went up from the group of officers, clerks, and signalers assembled at the observation post, but Shaxi could only shake his head at the wastage in the valley and on the far slopes as the last flares sputtered into oblivion.
He turned to the regimental chief of staff.
"Faster. Drive faster. The enemy has to know where we are now, and they'll try to crunch us before we get into the hills. We can't stop on this damned road. Inform the division commander that we're in. I'm getting in my tank to join the regiment on Yongmunsan. Wish us luck."
Captain Wang Xingtan stared at death. Apart from the helpless revulsion he felt at the sight of the murdered men, he also realized with sickening clarity that, if relief forces did not break through soon, he would die. In the excitement of battle, the thought of surrendering had never occurred to him. Yet now, with that option suddenly and completely closed to him, he felt his resolve weakening, his confidence slipping through his fingers.
Xingtan realized that if he was captured, they would hold him personally responsible for this butchery, and they would kill him. He knew how the Germans had treated captured commissars in World War Two--a single shot in the base of the skull. And the political officer was heir to the mantle of the commissar. Even if the enemy today was not as barbaric as the Nazis, they would nonetheless hold him, the Gumi air assault battalion's ranking senior officer and deputy commander for political officers, responsible for the massacre.
And it was undoubtedly a massacre. There was no other way to describe it.
A few of the prisoners of war had tried to rush the two tired guards, but the prisoners were too slow. The guards had cut them down. But the two frightened, weary boys had not stopped at that. They continued to fire into the basement room full of POWs, their fear blooming into madness. They emptied all of their magazines before the comms detachment from the upper level of the department store found them. The signalmen found the guards stalking through the room, putting single shots into each prisoner to make sure he was dead.
Summoned by a panic-stricken young sergeant, Xingtan had, for the first time in his life, experienced the feeling of willful disbelief at the sight before him. He could not even lose his temper, instead walking through the dungeonlike basement in a wordless daze, surveying the gore with his penlight. His boot soles smacked and sucked at the wet floor. The dead men in the American uniforms at least looked like soldiers, hard-faced boy-men and non-coms with broken teeth. But the Korean reservists, for the most part, looked like fathers and uncles, hapless men caught up in events for which they were utterly unprepared. The air reminded Xingtan of his uncle's slaughterhouse, the reek of burst entrails catching at the top of his throat.
Xingtan knew that the Koreans or Americans would execute him for this. Deep down inside, he even believed that would be a just outcome.
He sent the two guilty privates out to fight on the line. He could not judge them. Somehow, it was all too easy to understand--they were unsupervised, there should have been an officer present. But the only officer who remained fit for combat, other than Xingtan himself, was Lieutenant Mao, to whom Xingtan had assigned the defense of the northern bridge. The sergeants were of little use. Zhao Jianmin, their battalion commander, had been missing since early morning. Captain Bao was missing an arm and a leg. The defense of the western bank had collapsed, and the isolated firing from that side of the river sounded as though the enemy were methodically rooting out the last resistance.
The situation at the northern bridge had broken into a standoff. The enemy held the western approach now, but they could not get across. Lieutenant Mao's handful of defenders killed every vehicle that approached, and the drones husbanded their last rockets to support Mao whenever things got too hot. The eastern bridge had been lost back to the enemy in its entirety, and American regulars had pushed back the defending air-assault troops north behind the ring boulevard. The only thing holding the Americans back now was their apparent reulctance to take the casualties one big rush would cost. The air-assault troops were running low on everything, including combat-capable soldiers. To Xingtan, it seemed a miracle that they had held on for so long.
Xingtan left the old town hall without trying the radios again. He had not been able to reach any distant stations since dawn. The location in the river valley was poor to begin with, on top of which the enemy jamming made communications impossible. Perhaps the burst transmissions had gotten through, but no responses had arrived. He wondered how the war was going overall. He had fully expected to greet Chinese tanks by now, to enjoy a scene like those in the old patriotic dramas. He had even imagined being a hero, and that Baili, his unfaithful wife, might take a renewed interest in him, and that they would be happy again. Now, weary beyond much emotion, he realized that he might never see his son again, and that Baili would not even really mind losing him. He had been a mistake for her; her father had been right. Baili would not be content with the things that contented him, not ever.
Xingtan popped another stick of chewing gum laced with amphetamines and thought of Baili. She had grown into a woman unfathomably different from the girl with whom he had fallen in love. Baili always had the quickness and edge of a city girl, yet, when they first met under the hilariously correct circumstances of a Communist Youth League gathering, she had spoken as a true believer, speaking her lines with conviction when the exchanges covered the triumphs of the Party.
But there had been nothing dignified or formal in her lovemaking. It was youthful, animal, and held Xingtan spellbound. He had fancied himself as serious and mature, destined to lead men, but Baili had led him. Her father, a Shanghai Party official of significant influence, had opposed their marriage at first. Xingtan had been at a loss to understand why, since he had a perfect military academy record and was the lead organizer of the Communist Youth League while enrolled.
Baili had her way. They married in a lavish ceremony. She was an only child, and she always had her way with her family. Xingtan had dutifully volunteered for the airborne forces, and, as a new junior lieutenant, he recieved a prized posting to the Nanjing Military Region.
They had a child, a son. Xingtan, who spent his off-duty time studying and prepping his political classes for the troops, was astonished when this new life appeared, as though Baili's months of pregnancy and complaints had been a mere academic problem. Suddenly, he was a father. Now, when he spoke at lectures and political-education seminars about the duty of the Chinese soldier to prepare a better future for the nation, the word future was no longer a tumult of concepts and images, but the clear, sharp cry of an infant. The better world would be the world in which his son would live.
Baili, too, changed after the child came. She began to joke about the Party and tease Xingtan about his staunch socialist beliefs. She complained that he only had time for his books, that he was naive and blind to opportunity. She gained weight.
Then she demanded that he leave the army as soon as he could. Her father was in a position to secure him a very good job; perhaps he could even arrange for an early release for Xingtan's military commitment. He needed a job with future, she insisted. And he knew that her future meant a life with perquisities and comfort and material possibilities.
Xingtan, too, grew nuanced in his beliefs, yet he continued to believe. He read history, and knew the Party was far from perfect, but it was continuing to adapt itself to the new world before it. And it had made China a better place, Xingtan concluded. It had rescued China from its fatal backwardness, and it had made the People's Republic into a great power that stood up straight, instead of being led by the hand of the Western imperialists. If the price had been high, then so had been the achievement. If there were many problems, then it was up to the present generation to address them, to fight inertia and complacency. He could not understand how Baili had so fully lost her vision, how she could fail to see the dynamic at work.
And so Xingtan stayed in the army, perfecting his abilities as a leader and his skills of political education.
Then Baili had an affair with a cocky staff officer. When Xingtan found out and confronted her, months after the rest of the garrison had known about it, Baili stamped and screamed that he neglected her, that he did not love her, and that he did not even care enough to provide for the future of his child.
The accusations about the child hurt him the most. He could not accept them as true; it was Baili who showed little concern for the infant. At times, she seemed to regard their son's care as nothing but a loathsome duty to be discharged with as little effort and conviction as possible. She was not even very clean about it, and their spacious apartment, a wedding gift, grew slovenly.
Yet her threats about leaving him reduced him to panic. He had always loved her. Now, knowing her betrayal--a betrayal she had not even tried to hide--he felt his love overripen to desperation. He hated the humiliation of it. And he loved her anyway. She let herself go. In a matter of moths, she looked ten years older than her age. She painted herself with far too much makeup and spent a fortune on plastic surgery. And, as she took from him, he only wanted to give her more. He wondered how he could possibly make a contribution to saving the world if he could not even save the woman he loved. He begged her not to leave him, to give him a chance, leaving all of his accustomed notions of manliness in ruins.
He promised he would leave the army, but it was too late to avoid a last posting. He had a commitment to fulfill, and Baili's father, who now regarded him without even the most basic respect, refused to grease the wheels of the Chinese bureaucracy. And so he went to the Shenyang Military Region. Alone.
Baili went to live with her family until his tour ended. She wrote decent, if shallow, letters, and sent him snapshots of his son. He tried not to think of the men with whom she was undoubtedly betraying him, because, he told himself, they did not matter. The weakness and error of the flesh was a minor concern. It was only the future, the better future, that mattered. There would be a tomorrow of decency, fairness, and love. There would come a future without betrayals.
Xingtan dashed across the little square, followed by the skip of a distant machine gun. In a well formed by a protrusion of buildings, a drone controller reloaded his white, gull-like bird with one last batch of rockets. Xingtan strained to hear greater battle noises in the distance, the joyful sound of Chinese tanks, but there was only the close-in chopping sound of automatic weapons and the dull thuds of grenades and mortar rounds. The enemy had concentrated an inordinate amount of force to reduce the bridgehead. Obviously, it was a critical objective. Why, then, hadn't his forces made a greater effort to break through? It made no sense to him.
Keeping the burning area to his right, Xingtan worked his way down a series of passages and alleys, past garbage bins and a pair of civilian corpses. At a loss for decisive actions now, he automatically began to inspect the perimeter positions one more time. He worked in through the back of a bar room where an automatic grenade launcher anchored the corner of Lieutenant Mao's defensive grid.
The entire front of the building had been gutted. He had to study the burnt debris to distinguish the bodies of his men.
Xingtan retraced his steps, assault rifle at the ready. Soaking with sweat now, he felt fear as a concentrated pain behind his eyes. The situation was out of control.
Foreign voices startled him. He drew back into a blown doorway. Footsteps slapped down on the cobblestones, the sound of men running.
Two American soldiers dashed down the alley and across Xingtan's line of sight. Xingtan cut them down with his under-barrel grenade launcher, then heard a covering machine-gun pick at the walls beside him.
Xingtan ran, but when he reached the end of the tunnellike passage, he discovered that the broad shopping street before him was the scene of a vicious firefight. The American forces had fired smoke rounds in a purple carpet over the boulevard. The headquarters element in the department store fired wildly out of mouseholes. The controller he had so recently passed lay dead on his bird of prey.
Careful not draw undue attention to himself, he pushed the controller's body off the drone, smearing red blood over the dull white frame. Then he toggled a switch on the laptop and sent the drone into the air. It climbed through the smokescreen, slowly revealing a view of a defensive grid in chaos. Stray rounds smashed glass and punched into a wall ahead of him. He held still, afraid he had been detected, but no other bullets followed the initial burst.
The screen was in black and white. His men were still fighting, cut off here and there. An American infantry vehicle nosed its way along a side street, attempting to flank the headquarters element. Xingtan stared numbly for a moment, then sent a rocket into the track. It exploded, seemingly without effect. Then small-arms fire found the combat drone, and static filled the control screen.
He was going to die. But not here, and certainly not like this. He was going to be captured, then get cut, slowly, by the enemy soldiers, in the same way the dushman had done it to the airborne troops in Uzbekistan. And he would never see his son again.
Xingtan returned to the department store. His men stared at him as he passed through their ranks, descending deeper into the bright, cheery bowels of his madness. The noises of battle began to diminish around him, automatic fire fading into single shots. Single shots. The enemy, executing his men, no doubt. As he meandered through the men's clothing department, it occured to him that he could dress as a civilian, that he might conceal his identity until Chinese forces finally arrived on the scene. He set down his assault rifle and stripped off his combat bandolier. Pulling at his paratrooper's tunic, he began to hurry himself into clumsiness, almost panic, tearing at the unwilling garment. He tried to identify a shirt in the correct size, but it was all too confusing. He tore open packages until he had freed a shirt that looked right. He grabbed a tie. Without bothering to find a mirror, he hurried into the shirt and pulled the tie into a knot. Then, in shirt and tie and underpants, he rooted through the racks of men's suits, settling for a gray, woolen set with a lovely, expensive feel.
Somewhere, there had to be shoes. He could not see any shoes, and he began to shake with nerves. He tore down the aisles in disbelief.
In his rampage, he caught an unexpected glimpse of himself in a mirror. He stopped, and began to laugh uncontrollably. Tears then emerged, and he stared at himself through wet eyes.
His face was filthy, blackened by the residue of battle, and a clotted cut stood out over one eye. The fine jacket hung limply, ridiculously, and the trouser cuffs, unsewn, unfitted, dragged along the floor. He looked like a child masquerading in his father's outfit. His dirty hands had fatally soiled the shirt.
He collapsed onto the floor in his laughter, sitting down hard. The noise he made broke into sobs. He cried into the fine gray cloth of the jacket sleeves. He was a fool. He even looked like a fool. He could never pass himself off as a civilian. He was ridiculous, and a coward, as well. Wang Xingtan, the idiot. He doubted that he could even pass as a human being anymore.
He crawled back toward his abandoned uniform, watched by the dead eyes of the mannequins, which he imagined as yet more massacred prisoners. He slapped his assault rifle out of the way and buried his face in the damp, stinking material of his tunic. He rocked onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest. Then he got a last, desperate, fragile hold on himself.
Xingtan sat up. He pulled the camouflage uniform back on, making sure every button was in its place, checking all his equipment, all his weapons, soothing himself with the mundane details of war. He used the gray sleeve of the suit and wiped his boots free of mud, then reached for his holster.
He thought of the men murdered in the basement room. Xingtan thought he heard their voices calling for him in the shadows, behind the piles of sweaters and the absurd variety of socks. The battle noises had almost completely ceased. He thought helplessly of his son and faithless wife.
Then he became angry at it all, hating for the first time in his life, hating indiscriminately. He dropped his shoulders back against a wooden display rack and cocked his pistol. He closed his eyes. The taste of metal was foul on his tongue. It was a relief to pull the trigger.
Lieutenant Mao found Captain Wang Xingtan's body not two minutes later, excitement radiating through his grimed, bloody face.
"Comrade Captain! Comrade Captain," he shouted, exuberant, almost dancing through the racks of clothing. "Comrade Captain, the South Koreans have requested a cease-fire."
Xingtan turned to face him, flashing a toothless, brainless, grin in response.
Xingtan realized that if he was captured, they would hold him personally responsible for this butchery, and they would kill him. He knew how the Germans had treated captured commissars in World War Two--a single shot in the base of the skull. And the political officer was heir to the mantle of the commissar. Even if the enemy today was not as barbaric as the Nazis, they would nonetheless hold him, the Gumi air assault battalion's ranking senior officer and deputy commander for political officers, responsible for the massacre.
And it was undoubtedly a massacre. There was no other way to describe it.
A few of the prisoners of war had tried to rush the two tired guards, but the prisoners were too slow. The guards had cut them down. But the two frightened, weary boys had not stopped at that. They continued to fire into the basement room full of POWs, their fear blooming into madness. They emptied all of their magazines before the comms detachment from the upper level of the department store found them. The signalmen found the guards stalking through the room, putting single shots into each prisoner to make sure he was dead.
Summoned by a panic-stricken young sergeant, Xingtan had, for the first time in his life, experienced the feeling of willful disbelief at the sight before him. He could not even lose his temper, instead walking through the dungeonlike basement in a wordless daze, surveying the gore with his penlight. His boot soles smacked and sucked at the wet floor. The dead men in the American uniforms at least looked like soldiers, hard-faced boy-men and non-coms with broken teeth. But the Korean reservists, for the most part, looked like fathers and uncles, hapless men caught up in events for which they were utterly unprepared. The air reminded Xingtan of his uncle's slaughterhouse, the reek of burst entrails catching at the top of his throat.
Xingtan knew that the Koreans or Americans would execute him for this. Deep down inside, he even believed that would be a just outcome.
He sent the two guilty privates out to fight on the line. He could not judge them. Somehow, it was all too easy to understand--they were unsupervised, there should have been an officer present. But the only officer who remained fit for combat, other than Xingtan himself, was Lieutenant Mao, to whom Xingtan had assigned the defense of the northern bridge. The sergeants were of little use. Zhao Jianmin, their battalion commander, had been missing since early morning. Captain Bao was missing an arm and a leg. The defense of the western bank had collapsed, and the isolated firing from that side of the river sounded as though the enemy were methodically rooting out the last resistance.
The situation at the northern bridge had broken into a standoff. The enemy held the western approach now, but they could not get across. Lieutenant Mao's handful of defenders killed every vehicle that approached, and the drones husbanded their last rockets to support Mao whenever things got too hot. The eastern bridge had been lost back to the enemy in its entirety, and American regulars had pushed back the defending air-assault troops north behind the ring boulevard. The only thing holding the Americans back now was their apparent reulctance to take the casualties one big rush would cost. The air-assault troops were running low on everything, including combat-capable soldiers. To Xingtan, it seemed a miracle that they had held on for so long.
Xingtan left the old town hall without trying the radios again. He had not been able to reach any distant stations since dawn. The location in the river valley was poor to begin with, on top of which the enemy jamming made communications impossible. Perhaps the burst transmissions had gotten through, but no responses had arrived. He wondered how the war was going overall. He had fully expected to greet Chinese tanks by now, to enjoy a scene like those in the old patriotic dramas. He had even imagined being a hero, and that Baili, his unfaithful wife, might take a renewed interest in him, and that they would be happy again. Now, weary beyond much emotion, he realized that he might never see his son again, and that Baili would not even really mind losing him. He had been a mistake for her; her father had been right. Baili would not be content with the things that contented him, not ever.
Xingtan popped another stick of chewing gum laced with amphetamines and thought of Baili. She had grown into a woman unfathomably different from the girl with whom he had fallen in love. Baili always had the quickness and edge of a city girl, yet, when they first met under the hilariously correct circumstances of a Communist Youth League gathering, she had spoken as a true believer, speaking her lines with conviction when the exchanges covered the triumphs of the Party.
But there had been nothing dignified or formal in her lovemaking. It was youthful, animal, and held Xingtan spellbound. He had fancied himself as serious and mature, destined to lead men, but Baili had led him. Her father, a Shanghai Party official of significant influence, had opposed their marriage at first. Xingtan had been at a loss to understand why, since he had a perfect military academy record and was the lead organizer of the Communist Youth League while enrolled.
Baili had her way. They married in a lavish ceremony. She was an only child, and she always had her way with her family. Xingtan had dutifully volunteered for the airborne forces, and, as a new junior lieutenant, he recieved a prized posting to the Nanjing Military Region.
They had a child, a son. Xingtan, who spent his off-duty time studying and prepping his political classes for the troops, was astonished when this new life appeared, as though Baili's months of pregnancy and complaints had been a mere academic problem. Suddenly, he was a father. Now, when he spoke at lectures and political-education seminars about the duty of the Chinese soldier to prepare a better future for the nation, the word future was no longer a tumult of concepts and images, but the clear, sharp cry of an infant. The better world would be the world in which his son would live.
Baili, too, changed after the child came. She began to joke about the Party and tease Xingtan about his staunch socialist beliefs. She complained that he only had time for his books, that he was naive and blind to opportunity. She gained weight.
Then she demanded that he leave the army as soon as he could. Her father was in a position to secure him a very good job; perhaps he could even arrange for an early release for Xingtan's military commitment. He needed a job with future, she insisted. And he knew that her future meant a life with perquisities and comfort and material possibilities.
Xingtan, too, grew nuanced in his beliefs, yet he continued to believe. He read history, and knew the Party was far from perfect, but it was continuing to adapt itself to the new world before it. And it had made China a better place, Xingtan concluded. It had rescued China from its fatal backwardness, and it had made the People's Republic into a great power that stood up straight, instead of being led by the hand of the Western imperialists. If the price had been high, then so had been the achievement. If there were many problems, then it was up to the present generation to address them, to fight inertia and complacency. He could not understand how Baili had so fully lost her vision, how she could fail to see the dynamic at work.
And so Xingtan stayed in the army, perfecting his abilities as a leader and his skills of political education.
Then Baili had an affair with a cocky staff officer. When Xingtan found out and confronted her, months after the rest of the garrison had known about it, Baili stamped and screamed that he neglected her, that he did not love her, and that he did not even care enough to provide for the future of his child.
The accusations about the child hurt him the most. He could not accept them as true; it was Baili who showed little concern for the infant. At times, she seemed to regard their son's care as nothing but a loathsome duty to be discharged with as little effort and conviction as possible. She was not even very clean about it, and their spacious apartment, a wedding gift, grew slovenly.
Yet her threats about leaving him reduced him to panic. He had always loved her. Now, knowing her betrayal--a betrayal she had not even tried to hide--he felt his love overripen to desperation. He hated the humiliation of it. And he loved her anyway. She let herself go. In a matter of moths, she looked ten years older than her age. She painted herself with far too much makeup and spent a fortune on plastic surgery. And, as she took from him, he only wanted to give her more. He wondered how he could possibly make a contribution to saving the world if he could not even save the woman he loved. He begged her not to leave him, to give him a chance, leaving all of his accustomed notions of manliness in ruins.
He promised he would leave the army, but it was too late to avoid a last posting. He had a commitment to fulfill, and Baili's father, who now regarded him without even the most basic respect, refused to grease the wheels of the Chinese bureaucracy. And so he went to the Shenyang Military Region. Alone.
Baili went to live with her family until his tour ended. She wrote decent, if shallow, letters, and sent him snapshots of his son. He tried not to think of the men with whom she was undoubtedly betraying him, because, he told himself, they did not matter. The weakness and error of the flesh was a minor concern. It was only the future, the better future, that mattered. There would be a tomorrow of decency, fairness, and love. There would come a future without betrayals.
Xingtan dashed across the little square, followed by the skip of a distant machine gun. In a well formed by a protrusion of buildings, a drone controller reloaded his white, gull-like bird with one last batch of rockets. Xingtan strained to hear greater battle noises in the distance, the joyful sound of Chinese tanks, but there was only the close-in chopping sound of automatic weapons and the dull thuds of grenades and mortar rounds. The enemy had concentrated an inordinate amount of force to reduce the bridgehead. Obviously, it was a critical objective. Why, then, hadn't his forces made a greater effort to break through? It made no sense to him.
Keeping the burning area to his right, Xingtan worked his way down a series of passages and alleys, past garbage bins and a pair of civilian corpses. At a loss for decisive actions now, he automatically began to inspect the perimeter positions one more time. He worked in through the back of a bar room where an automatic grenade launcher anchored the corner of Lieutenant Mao's defensive grid.
The entire front of the building had been gutted. He had to study the burnt debris to distinguish the bodies of his men.
Xingtan retraced his steps, assault rifle at the ready. Soaking with sweat now, he felt fear as a concentrated pain behind his eyes. The situation was out of control.
Foreign voices startled him. He drew back into a blown doorway. Footsteps slapped down on the cobblestones, the sound of men running.
Two American soldiers dashed down the alley and across Xingtan's line of sight. Xingtan cut them down with his under-barrel grenade launcher, then heard a covering machine-gun pick at the walls beside him.
Xingtan ran, but when he reached the end of the tunnellike passage, he discovered that the broad shopping street before him was the scene of a vicious firefight. The American forces had fired smoke rounds in a purple carpet over the boulevard. The headquarters element in the department store fired wildly out of mouseholes. The controller he had so recently passed lay dead on his bird of prey.
Careful not draw undue attention to himself, he pushed the controller's body off the drone, smearing red blood over the dull white frame. Then he toggled a switch on the laptop and sent the drone into the air. It climbed through the smokescreen, slowly revealing a view of a defensive grid in chaos. Stray rounds smashed glass and punched into a wall ahead of him. He held still, afraid he had been detected, but no other bullets followed the initial burst.
The screen was in black and white. His men were still fighting, cut off here and there. An American infantry vehicle nosed its way along a side street, attempting to flank the headquarters element. Xingtan stared numbly for a moment, then sent a rocket into the track. It exploded, seemingly without effect. Then small-arms fire found the combat drone, and static filled the control screen.
He was going to die. But not here, and certainly not like this. He was going to be captured, then get cut, slowly, by the enemy soldiers, in the same way the dushman had done it to the airborne troops in Uzbekistan. And he would never see his son again.
Xingtan returned to the department store. His men stared at him as he passed through their ranks, descending deeper into the bright, cheery bowels of his madness. The noises of battle began to diminish around him, automatic fire fading into single shots. Single shots. The enemy, executing his men, no doubt. As he meandered through the men's clothing department, it occured to him that he could dress as a civilian, that he might conceal his identity until Chinese forces finally arrived on the scene. He set down his assault rifle and stripped off his combat bandolier. Pulling at his paratrooper's tunic, he began to hurry himself into clumsiness, almost panic, tearing at the unwilling garment. He tried to identify a shirt in the correct size, but it was all too confusing. He tore open packages until he had freed a shirt that looked right. He grabbed a tie. Without bothering to find a mirror, he hurried into the shirt and pulled the tie into a knot. Then, in shirt and tie and underpants, he rooted through the racks of men's suits, settling for a gray, woolen set with a lovely, expensive feel.
Somewhere, there had to be shoes. He could not see any shoes, and he began to shake with nerves. He tore down the aisles in disbelief.
In his rampage, he caught an unexpected glimpse of himself in a mirror. He stopped, and began to laugh uncontrollably. Tears then emerged, and he stared at himself through wet eyes.
His face was filthy, blackened by the residue of battle, and a clotted cut stood out over one eye. The fine jacket hung limply, ridiculously, and the trouser cuffs, unsewn, unfitted, dragged along the floor. He looked like a child masquerading in his father's outfit. His dirty hands had fatally soiled the shirt.
He collapsed onto the floor in his laughter, sitting down hard. The noise he made broke into sobs. He cried into the fine gray cloth of the jacket sleeves. He was a fool. He even looked like a fool. He could never pass himself off as a civilian. He was ridiculous, and a coward, as well. Wang Xingtan, the idiot. He doubted that he could even pass as a human being anymore.
He crawled back toward his abandoned uniform, watched by the dead eyes of the mannequins, which he imagined as yet more massacred prisoners. He slapped his assault rifle out of the way and buried his face in the damp, stinking material of his tunic. He rocked onto his side and drew his knees up to his chest. Then he got a last, desperate, fragile hold on himself.
Xingtan sat up. He pulled the camouflage uniform back on, making sure every button was in its place, checking all his equipment, all his weapons, soothing himself with the mundane details of war. He used the gray sleeve of the suit and wiped his boots free of mud, then reached for his holster.
He thought of the men murdered in the basement room. Xingtan thought he heard their voices calling for him in the shadows, behind the piles of sweaters and the absurd variety of socks. The battle noises had almost completely ceased. He thought helplessly of his son and faithless wife.
Then he became angry at it all, hating for the first time in his life, hating indiscriminately. He dropped his shoulders back against a wooden display rack and cocked his pistol. He closed his eyes. The taste of metal was foul on his tongue. It was a relief to pull the trigger.
Lieutenant Mao found Captain Wang Xingtan's body not two minutes later, excitement radiating through his grimed, bloody face.
"Comrade Captain! Comrade Captain," he shouted, exuberant, almost dancing through the racks of clothing. "Comrade Captain, the South Koreans have requested a cease-fire."
Xingtan turned to face him, flashing a toothless, brainless, grin in response.
Nie Zhen emerged from the Shenyang Military Region command bunker into the light of day. The sight of the splintered forest, with its ashen wounds, shocked him. Throughout the war, he had heard and felt the impacts of the enemy's weaponry hunting over the surface. Yet unseen was somehow unimagined. Beyond the pockmarked outer door, large bomb craters and black scars marked the landscape, and the acridity of explosives lingered in the air. Yet a blue sky blessed the living and the dead, and even this pungent air tasted gorgeously fresh after the staleness of the bunker.
Soon, he would need to visit a good doctor, perhaps even take a vacation to Mount Baekdu. His breathing never came normally to him anymore, and despite his determination, Nie doubted that he could continue to shoulder his Chief of Staff responsibilities much longer.
Aircraft still cut the heavens, and vehicular traffic continued on the roads. But the volume, the noise of it all, was far less than it had been. The sounds of combat had stopped.
The Koreans and Japanese had caved in. Assailed militarily, politically, emotionally... the South Korean and Japanese governments had broken down over the issue of nuclear release. The Chinese and Americans had readied their rockets, but the Asian allies had experienced a failure of will, of nerve. Paralyzed by the speed of their apparent collapse and the unanticipated level of destruction, South Korea had refused to turn its country into a nuclear battlefield. Then the Japanese had followed suit. The Japanese and Koreans had alternately pleaded for and then whined about America's military presence in peacetime, and they reaped their harvest in war.
The South Korean government had declared a unilateral cease-fire and had demanded that all American forces halt offensive actions on Korean soil in a bid to conciliate the Chinese. All American combat forces were to withdraw out to Gwangju within ninety-six hours, and to leave Korean soil entirely within fifteen days. Intact Korean units would also withdraw to Gwangju. Numerous ROK commanders had resisted the cease-fire, but their rank and file had proved unwilling to follow them. And as the American armies withdrew, Chinese tanks closed the rest of the distance to the Korean coasts without firing a shot.
And that was it, Nie believed. There was no point in going any further. The Sea of Japan was the natural Chinese eastern frontier, and the control of Korea meant the control of the rest of Northeast Asia. The Japanese had already negotiated a treaty that found them a subordinate place in the new order. China's seaborne flank, a source of humiliating invasions since the nineteenth century, had been finally secured.
Some high-ranking officers within the Chinese military wanted to drive on. Most of them had not experienced the war firsthand, and they spoke more blithely of resuming the offensive than those who did. The most worrisome estimate making the rounds prophesied that the Americans did not regard the war as over, that they would seek to strike elsewhere. Would the war enter a South Asian or Himalayan phase? Personally, Nie hoped it was over. He hoped the Americans would have the good sense to turn their backs on an Asia that took their lives and money and gave them nothing in return. He could not quite believe that the Americans would find any of this worth fighting over. But he wondered. The Americans remained an enigma.
A black bird settled into a splintered tree, and Nie thought of Luo Shuren's son. The remnants of his brigade reported that Colonel Luo Qipeng had been killed by an airstrike, but no body had been found, and the old man refused to accept his son's death. The general went forward in person to conduct the search.
Nie felt deeply sorry for his protector and comrade. It seemed stupidly ironic that he, of all men, should lose so much at such an hour. In a way, he knew the loss of his son would be harder for Luo Shuren to bear than defeat on the battlefield would have been.
Of course, plenty of sons had died. Nie tried to rationalize the old man's misfortune away, but the image of Shuren would not leave him. He pictured the old man stepping over the blackened ruins of a forest, peering into the gutted shells of command vehicles. Blinking back tears, Nie realized, helplessly, how much he revered the old man. How much better if he, the asthmatic, closeted, eternal bachelor, who would never produce an heir to the Luo clan, had died in place of the cherished son.
Of course, it did no good to romanticize death. Nie looked up at the crow on the broken limb. The bird immediately spread its wings and rose skyward, as though Nie Zhen's gaze made it uncomfortable. Nie took a deep breath, filling his withered lungs. Then he turned back to the bunker to sort out casualty statistics.
Soon, he would need to visit a good doctor, perhaps even take a vacation to Mount Baekdu. His breathing never came normally to him anymore, and despite his determination, Nie doubted that he could continue to shoulder his Chief of Staff responsibilities much longer.
Aircraft still cut the heavens, and vehicular traffic continued on the roads. But the volume, the noise of it all, was far less than it had been. The sounds of combat had stopped.
The Koreans and Japanese had caved in. Assailed militarily, politically, emotionally... the South Korean and Japanese governments had broken down over the issue of nuclear release. The Chinese and Americans had readied their rockets, but the Asian allies had experienced a failure of will, of nerve. Paralyzed by the speed of their apparent collapse and the unanticipated level of destruction, South Korea had refused to turn its country into a nuclear battlefield. Then the Japanese had followed suit. The Japanese and Koreans had alternately pleaded for and then whined about America's military presence in peacetime, and they reaped their harvest in war.
The South Korean government had declared a unilateral cease-fire and had demanded that all American forces halt offensive actions on Korean soil in a bid to conciliate the Chinese. All American combat forces were to withdraw out to Gwangju within ninety-six hours, and to leave Korean soil entirely within fifteen days. Intact Korean units would also withdraw to Gwangju. Numerous ROK commanders had resisted the cease-fire, but their rank and file had proved unwilling to follow them. And as the American armies withdrew, Chinese tanks closed the rest of the distance to the Korean coasts without firing a shot.
And that was it, Nie believed. There was no point in going any further. The Sea of Japan was the natural Chinese eastern frontier, and the control of Korea meant the control of the rest of Northeast Asia. The Japanese had already negotiated a treaty that found them a subordinate place in the new order. China's seaborne flank, a source of humiliating invasions since the nineteenth century, had been finally secured.
Some high-ranking officers within the Chinese military wanted to drive on. Most of them had not experienced the war firsthand, and they spoke more blithely of resuming the offensive than those who did. The most worrisome estimate making the rounds prophesied that the Americans did not regard the war as over, that they would seek to strike elsewhere. Would the war enter a South Asian or Himalayan phase? Personally, Nie hoped it was over. He hoped the Americans would have the good sense to turn their backs on an Asia that took their lives and money and gave them nothing in return. He could not quite believe that the Americans would find any of this worth fighting over. But he wondered. The Americans remained an enigma.
A black bird settled into a splintered tree, and Nie thought of Luo Shuren's son. The remnants of his brigade reported that Colonel Luo Qipeng had been killed by an airstrike, but no body had been found, and the old man refused to accept his son's death. The general went forward in person to conduct the search.
Nie felt deeply sorry for his protector and comrade. It seemed stupidly ironic that he, of all men, should lose so much at such an hour. In a way, he knew the loss of his son would be harder for Luo Shuren to bear than defeat on the battlefield would have been.
Of course, plenty of sons had died. Nie tried to rationalize the old man's misfortune away, but the image of Shuren would not leave him. He pictured the old man stepping over the blackened ruins of a forest, peering into the gutted shells of command vehicles. Blinking back tears, Nie realized, helplessly, how much he revered the old man. How much better if he, the asthmatic, closeted, eternal bachelor, who would never produce an heir to the Luo clan, had died in place of the cherished son.
Of course, it did no good to romanticize death. Nie looked up at the crow on the broken limb. The bird immediately spread its wings and rose skyward, as though Nie Zhen's gaze made it uncomfortable. Nie took a deep breath, filling his withered lungs. Then he turned back to the bunker to sort out casualty statistics.
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Lieutenant Colonel Wang Shaxi sat on a concrete slab at the water's edge, watching the withdrawal of the last American forces over the Han River. His new medal dangled from the blouse of the fresh lieutenant colonel's uniform he had been issued for the presentation ceremony. General Luo Shuren, the theater commander, had flown in to present several dozen awards at a gathering hosted by General Ma Shiwen, commander of the 63rd Group Army and the new military governor of occupied Korea. The banquet undoubtedly continued, with passionate drinking of baijiu, back at the Ritz-Carlton that served as the provisional Chinese headquarters in Seoul. But Shaxi had no thirst for alcohol at the moment, and he had slipped away to think about Rena and the rest of his life.
Between daydreams, he watched the Americans passing in the distane. Ugly, venomous-looking attack drones covered the crossing from midriver and from the urban industrial tangle of the far bank. Tanks crossed the big bridge with their main guns at the ready, swiveling around to cover the eastern bank behind them. The Americans moved very well, with superb march discipline. They did not look like a beaten army to Shaxi.
But they had been beaten. First on the field of battle, and then at the greater level of political decision. Shaxi remembered waiting on the heights at Yangmunsan, surrounded by his surviving tanks, out of ammunition, as the last battalions of the 1st Marine Division desperately sought to regain control of the vital heights. Their advance had been halted by a miraculous swarm of drones, a few kilometers from his position. The Americans, the great enemy. Now they were leaving, and it seemed as if a lifelong nightmare had finally come to an end.
He attempted to report honestly on the tragedy that had occured along the highway behind Hwacheong, but no one wanted to hear it. As far as his chain of command was concerned, it was all history--regrettable, but, viewed from the grand perspective, unavoidable. The People's Republic of China needed war heroes, not war criminals.
And so Shaxi became a hero. One of the brilliant heroes of the Bukhan crossing operation, and the first battalion commander across the DMZ.
But the scene still haunted him. Now, interspersed in his memories of the sparse autumn birches, and the smell of Rena in his arms, was the sight of a girl who he did not know, and would never know. Shaxi leaned against the edge of the bench and tapped at his tablet again.
He started to write his confession. At first, it was to himself, but soon, he found that he was writing a letter, a letter to Rena, his first in years. As he finished the closing sentence of his war, briefly mentioning his medal and promotion, he found the strength, at last, to say that he wanted to marry her.
He had no idea how long a response would be in arriving, if one were to come at all. He feared that his letter or her reply would be censored, and he decided that, if no response came within a month, he would write again. And again.
For Shaxi grinned, while his mind with terrible images of Rena in another's bed, of her special admissions spoken to another man. He grinned, as he had when he stared down the long ridge of a defending American regiment. He was determined not to surrender without a fight. He would not be defeated now by fears of a little Uighur girl.
A vehicle pulled up on the . Shaxi stood. He was not supposed to be off on his own; there were reports of violent assaults against Chinese officers and men throughout the occupation zone. At a minimum, two officers were always to go together, and it was much preferred that officers remain near their place of work or assigned quarters unless official matters called them elsewhere. The soldiers and sergeants were closely restricted.
Shaxi touched his holster.
The sight of the lieutenant colonel surprised Luo Shuren. He had neither expected nor wanted company. He had simply wanted to see the Han River up close, to savor his moment in history as best he could, and to confirm the value of his sacrifice. And this nervous lieutenant colonel appeared, reaching for his pistol. Shuren decided to make the best of it.
"I would be grateful if you didn't shoot me."
Shaxi reddened, embarrassed. "So-sorry, General Luo."
"Don't worry," Shuren told him. "It's always a good thing to be on your guard. Would you like a cigarette?"
Shaxi shook his head.
Shuren recognized the lieutenant colonel as one of the men on whom he had pinned a medal not an hour before.
"A fine job at the Bukhan, if I may add. What is your name again?"
"Wang Shaxi. Lieutenant Colonel of the 331st Tank Regiment, 77th Mechanized Division, 63rd Mechanized Group Army."
It struck Shuren as odd that this fresh-baked hero would be alone, when Ma Shiwen was holding court for all his heroes at what promised to be one of the greatest parties of the decade. Shuren had excused himself so that Ma Shiwen and his steel paladins could relax and drink themselves sick. Ma Shiwen, Shuren realized, embodied much that was eternally Chinese--ambitious, shortsighted, clever, alternately venal and generous, and capable of great cruelty.
Well, who knew what devils chewed at this lone lieutenant colonel? The war had very different effects on different men. Shuren examined the younger man. The lieutenant colonel's face looked bright enough. As intelligent, though certainly not as sensitive, as Luo Qipeng's face had been. But it was the type of clean, earnest face that would go far under the new regime. Certainly, this Model Hero of the People's Republic would not be a lieutenant colonel for much longer.
"Married, Xiao Wang? Thinking of your wife and family, perhaps?"
Shaxi had begun to recover from his embarrassment, but he remained ill at ease.
"No, General Luo. I'm not married."
Shuren flicked his cigarette ashes toward the river. The storied Han River was a bit of a disappointment to him, running grayish-brown, with eddies of river grass against the shore. "A girl, then?"
Shaxi nodded. "Yes, General Luo. A wonderful girl, very well-educated."
Shuren sensed that Shaxi wanted to gush details and descriptions of his beloved, but the young man had the discipline to restrain himself.
"Well," Shuren said, "you should marry her. Marriage is a wonderful thing, I highly recommend it. And you must have children. The zu guo must preserve the bloodlines of her heroes."
Shuren thought of his wife. He would not see her for some time yet, and she would have to bear the news of their Peng-peng's fate alone. It seemed terribly unfair that his wife should be alone at such a time. A soldier's wife never had the comforts or conveniences of a normal life.
Luo Qipeng's wife, too, was alone. More alone than his own wife. No one would ever come back to the girl. Shuren thought of Nancy, a silly, irresponsible socialite, impossible to dislike. Swollen with the energy of life, bursting with it. She had possessed none of the makings of a soldier's wife except the ability to love his son, and yet that love had made his son so happy that Shuren had found it easy to indulge the girl's artistic pretensions and ridiculous behavior. Yes, he thought, she made Peng-peng happy. I must take care of her.
Shuren felt tears rising in his eyes, and he suddenly wanted to turn the discussion off, to drive the lieutenant colonel away, so that he could cry alone. He fought for and regained control of himself, flicking the butt of his cigarette carelessly, angrily, towards the river. But he could not reconcile himself to Qipeng's death. He could not bear it. He would have been glad to die, to die miserably, in his son's plae.
He looked at Wang Shaxi, who had averted his eyes. Why should this man live instead of his son? There was nothing special about this lieutenant colonel, nothing without which the world could not keep turning. His face bore none of the high traces of honor and breeding, of tradition, that Qipeng's fine features had carried. Why, of all the sons, did Peng-peng have to die?
Qipeng understood the mundane logic of it. He understood war, even comprehended the minuscule importance of his son's fate in the shadow of events that had changed the world. But he could not, would not, reconcile himself to it.
The last of the Luos, he thought bitterly. Now we will be nothing more than a footnote in unread historical treatises.
Luo Qipeng.
Shuren followed the Shaxi's stare out over the polluted water to the commanding span of the bridge. The Americans were going. Shuren knew how close they had come to embarrassing his plan. They had almost escaped the noose, but almost was a word that carried no reward.
He felt no special hatred for the Americans. He admired the good order of their formations, their unbroken feel. He thought of how bitter this march must be for them, when they had fought so well.
It was time to go. Shuren cut short his ruminations. He had other ceremonies to attend, other medals to award, and a host of tedious issues to resolve between toasts.
Removing his cap, he saluted the Americans before he left, the tribute of the old soldier. To his surprise, Shaxi was following his lead, and saluting as well.
So the traditions would not die after all, Shuren thought. Then he turned, wishing Shaxi luck with his girl, and left.
END
Between daydreams, he watched the Americans passing in the distane. Ugly, venomous-looking attack drones covered the crossing from midriver and from the urban industrial tangle of the far bank. Tanks crossed the big bridge with their main guns at the ready, swiveling around to cover the eastern bank behind them. The Americans moved very well, with superb march discipline. They did not look like a beaten army to Shaxi.
But they had been beaten. First on the field of battle, and then at the greater level of political decision. Shaxi remembered waiting on the heights at Yangmunsan, surrounded by his surviving tanks, out of ammunition, as the last battalions of the 1st Marine Division desperately sought to regain control of the vital heights. Their advance had been halted by a miraculous swarm of drones, a few kilometers from his position. The Americans, the great enemy. Now they were leaving, and it seemed as if a lifelong nightmare had finally come to an end.
He attempted to report honestly on the tragedy that had occured along the highway behind Hwacheong, but no one wanted to hear it. As far as his chain of command was concerned, it was all history--regrettable, but, viewed from the grand perspective, unavoidable. The People's Republic of China needed war heroes, not war criminals.
And so Shaxi became a hero. One of the brilliant heroes of the Bukhan crossing operation, and the first battalion commander across the DMZ.
But the scene still haunted him. Now, interspersed in his memories of the sparse autumn birches, and the smell of Rena in his arms, was the sight of a girl who he did not know, and would never know. Shaxi leaned against the edge of the bench and tapped at his tablet again.
He started to write his confession. At first, it was to himself, but soon, he found that he was writing a letter, a letter to Rena, his first in years. As he finished the closing sentence of his war, briefly mentioning his medal and promotion, he found the strength, at last, to say that he wanted to marry her.
He had no idea how long a response would be in arriving, if one were to come at all. He feared that his letter or her reply would be censored, and he decided that, if no response came within a month, he would write again. And again.
For Shaxi grinned, while his mind with terrible images of Rena in another's bed, of her special admissions spoken to another man. He grinned, as he had when he stared down the long ridge of a defending American regiment. He was determined not to surrender without a fight. He would not be defeated now by fears of a little Uighur girl.
A vehicle pulled up on the . Shaxi stood. He was not supposed to be off on his own; there were reports of violent assaults against Chinese officers and men throughout the occupation zone. At a minimum, two officers were always to go together, and it was much preferred that officers remain near their place of work or assigned quarters unless official matters called them elsewhere. The soldiers and sergeants were closely restricted.
Shaxi touched his holster.
The sight of the lieutenant colonel surprised Luo Shuren. He had neither expected nor wanted company. He had simply wanted to see the Han River up close, to savor his moment in history as best he could, and to confirm the value of his sacrifice. And this nervous lieutenant colonel appeared, reaching for his pistol. Shuren decided to make the best of it.
"I would be grateful if you didn't shoot me."
Shaxi reddened, embarrassed. "So-sorry, General Luo."
"Don't worry," Shuren told him. "It's always a good thing to be on your guard. Would you like a cigarette?"
Shaxi shook his head.
Shuren recognized the lieutenant colonel as one of the men on whom he had pinned a medal not an hour before.
"A fine job at the Bukhan, if I may add. What is your name again?"
"Wang Shaxi. Lieutenant Colonel of the 331st Tank Regiment, 77th Mechanized Division, 63rd Mechanized Group Army."
It struck Shuren as odd that this fresh-baked hero would be alone, when Ma Shiwen was holding court for all his heroes at what promised to be one of the greatest parties of the decade. Shuren had excused himself so that Ma Shiwen and his steel paladins could relax and drink themselves sick. Ma Shiwen, Shuren realized, embodied much that was eternally Chinese--ambitious, shortsighted, clever, alternately venal and generous, and capable of great cruelty.
Well, who knew what devils chewed at this lone lieutenant colonel? The war had very different effects on different men. Shuren examined the younger man. The lieutenant colonel's face looked bright enough. As intelligent, though certainly not as sensitive, as Luo Qipeng's face had been. But it was the type of clean, earnest face that would go far under the new regime. Certainly, this Model Hero of the People's Republic would not be a lieutenant colonel for much longer.
"Married, Xiao Wang? Thinking of your wife and family, perhaps?"
Shaxi had begun to recover from his embarrassment, but he remained ill at ease.
"No, General Luo. I'm not married."
Shuren flicked his cigarette ashes toward the river. The storied Han River was a bit of a disappointment to him, running grayish-brown, with eddies of river grass against the shore. "A girl, then?"
Shaxi nodded. "Yes, General Luo. A wonderful girl, very well-educated."
Shuren sensed that Shaxi wanted to gush details and descriptions of his beloved, but the young man had the discipline to restrain himself.
"Well," Shuren said, "you should marry her. Marriage is a wonderful thing, I highly recommend it. And you must have children. The zu guo must preserve the bloodlines of her heroes."
Shuren thought of his wife. He would not see her for some time yet, and she would have to bear the news of their Peng-peng's fate alone. It seemed terribly unfair that his wife should be alone at such a time. A soldier's wife never had the comforts or conveniences of a normal life.
Luo Qipeng's wife, too, was alone. More alone than his own wife. No one would ever come back to the girl. Shuren thought of Nancy, a silly, irresponsible socialite, impossible to dislike. Swollen with the energy of life, bursting with it. She had possessed none of the makings of a soldier's wife except the ability to love his son, and yet that love had made his son so happy that Shuren had found it easy to indulge the girl's artistic pretensions and ridiculous behavior. Yes, he thought, she made Peng-peng happy. I must take care of her.
Shuren felt tears rising in his eyes, and he suddenly wanted to turn the discussion off, to drive the lieutenant colonel away, so that he could cry alone. He fought for and regained control of himself, flicking the butt of his cigarette carelessly, angrily, towards the river. But he could not reconcile himself to Qipeng's death. He could not bear it. He would have been glad to die, to die miserably, in his son's plae.
He looked at Wang Shaxi, who had averted his eyes. Why should this man live instead of his son? There was nothing special about this lieutenant colonel, nothing without which the world could not keep turning. His face bore none of the high traces of honor and breeding, of tradition, that Qipeng's fine features had carried. Why, of all the sons, did Peng-peng have to die?
Qipeng understood the mundane logic of it. He understood war, even comprehended the minuscule importance of his son's fate in the shadow of events that had changed the world. But he could not, would not, reconcile himself to it.
The last of the Luos, he thought bitterly. Now we will be nothing more than a footnote in unread historical treatises.
Luo Qipeng.
Shuren followed the Shaxi's stare out over the polluted water to the commanding span of the bridge. The Americans were going. Shuren knew how close they had come to embarrassing his plan. They had almost escaped the noose, but almost was a word that carried no reward.
He felt no special hatred for the Americans. He admired the good order of their formations, their unbroken feel. He thought of how bitter this march must be for them, when they had fought so well.
It was time to go. Shuren cut short his ruminations. He had other ceremonies to attend, other medals to award, and a host of tedious issues to resolve between toasts.
Removing his cap, he saluted the Americans before he left, the tribute of the old soldier. To his surprise, Shaxi was following his lead, and saluting as well.
So the traditions would not die after all, Shuren thought. Then he turned, wishing Shaxi luck with his girl, and left.
END