It was difficult for reporter Marte Price to know who was more surprised by the Chinese breakthrough south of Lang Son: General Vinh or Freeman. Both commanders were well practiced in their ability to keep their innermost thoughts to themselves, and while Freeman was less inhibited about acknowledging defeat to a press conference than was the Vietnamese general, he, like Vinh, was not about to cause a plummeting morale in the U.S.-led U.N. forces.
Vinh, a veteran of the Chinese- Vietnam border clash in February of 1979, during which the PLA suffered more than 25,000 casualties in just three weeks of fighting, did say, however, that the PLA advance was “somewhat unexpected” by Hanoi, given what he described as the “corruption.” Beyond that he had nothing to say to either Marte Price, the CNN reporter, or to any of the other news correspondents who, under pressure from the U.N. to allow a larger press pool, were now flocking into Hanoi. Given General Vinh’s reluctance to elaborate any further, several reporters turned to Freeman to explain the Vietnamese general’s terse charge of “corruption.”
“Several years ago, in 1979 to be exact,” Freeman answered, “the Republic of Vietnam defeated the PLA in a border war. The Chinese premier, and thus the commander in chief of the PLA — which includes, by the way, the Chinese navy and air force — told the PLA that it had better get leaner and meaner. He reduced the force size by almost a million— that still left him with plenty — and he told the PLA chiefs of staff that if they wanted to upgrade their capability, they’d have to find the extra money themselves.”
“You mean,” an obviously surprised British reporter asked, “that the Chinese generals were told to go into business?”
“That’s exactly what I mean,” Freeman answered. “It’s long been practice for many of the PLA armies to grow most of their food, but now they were being told to get busy making whatever would bring in hard cash.” Freeman paused. “And it wasn’t only growing and selling excess vegetables on the open market that they got involved in.”
Freeman had anticipated a knowing chuckle or at least a nod from some of the more senior correspondents, but none came, and he realized, from the frantic scribbling in his audience, that for many in the press pool this background information he was giving was something new. For a fleeting second or two Freeman had an uncharacteristic moment of anxiety as he wondered whether he was revealing information he’d gotten from classified intelligence sources. It was a professional hazard. Then, just as quickly, he realized that the information he was giving out was the result of his own “homework,” and that he wasn’t revealing anything the Pentagon had on its secret list.
“Problem was,” he continued, “that many of the PLA armies, particularly those who, with the government’s blessing, got involved with the making and selling of arms to make money, also got involved with a lot of kickbacks and the like. From privates who were making ten times as much money as an ordinary private’s pay to officers who were getting brown envelopes under the table from middlemen in the arms sale business, there was one hell of a lot of corruption.”
The CNN reporter had his hand up. “General, you mean that because of this so-called corruption, you underestimated the PLA’s ability in this war. Thought they’d gone soft?”
“Soft?” Freeman’s tone could barely conceal his anger. This son of a bitch was trying to ambush him. If he said no, he hadn’t thought the PLA had gone soft, his spiel about corruption wouldn’t be believed, but if he said yes, the PLA had gone soft, then the next question from the monkey gallery would be, Well, if the PLA has lost its combat readiness, General, what are your troops doing retreating south from Lang Son?
“I never said the PLA was soft — nor did General Vinh. Why, the PLA’s one of the toughest outfits in the world. Their training is hard, their morale is high, and they keep coming at you — ask anybody who fought in Korea. No, they’re sure as hell not soft! What I think my distinguished colleague had in mind in referring to corruption was that the PLA soldier has been corrupted politically by a lot of propaganda about his neighbors to the south — that their political leadership is ‘corrupt.’ “
Freeman pulled out his retractable pen-sized pointer and moved it in a huge semicircle, starting from the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, going west, north up to Russia and then east to the Siberian republic. “In the Spratlys, Vietnam, Burma, India, Tibet, Russia, all the way to—” He almost said, “Black Dragon River,” the northern border between Siberia and China, but Black Dragon was the Chinese name, and instead he used the Siberian name. “—all the way to the Amur River and to Vladivostok, the Chinese have been fighting neighbors for years. Now we’ve had enough, and we won’t put up with it anymore.”
“Who’s we. General?” the CNN reporter asked in his follow-up question.
“We are the United Nations.” Cunning bastard, Freeman thought, but at least he’d got them off their damn fixation with Vinh’s remark about corruption.
Press officer Boyd and Major Cline were likewise impressed, and after the press conference congratulated the general on his adroit handling of what could have been a loss of face, for Vinh.
“General, sir,” Boyd inquired, “why did the Chinese manage to push us back down the Lang Son road?”
Freeman telescoped the long pointer back into its pen’s sheath, simultaneously looking about him to make sure no reporters were within hearing range. “Because, Captain,” he answered, “we got the shit kicked out of us. Because General Vinh’s boys, tough as they are, like our boys, haven’t been in a major battle for years. For them it’s been since 1979—not counting the naval battle they had over one of the Spratlys in ‘eighty-eight and again in ‘ninety-two. Meanwhile, the Chinese have been keeping in practice in Tibet and all their other border disputes. But don’t worry. Second Army’ll be up to combat strength very soon, and then my boys’ll kick those Chinese asses back across the border beyond Dong Dang where they belong.”
One of the reporters, a Frenchman, Pierre LaSalle, now well back in the room, couldn’t suppress a smile. For a few American dollars in Manila on a stopover en route to Hanoi, he’d bought a pickup mike, one of those that advertisers boast can capture a whisper from thirty feet away, and he had Freeman’s answer to Boyd on tape.
The Frenchman, who had always resented American presence in Indochina after the French had lost it all at Dien Bien Phu in ‘54, didn’t want a French paper to have the tape. They could easily trace it back to him. No, he thought, the North American market would be best. The only problem for LaSalle was how long he should wait. It would be nice to get ahold of that photo the American woman, Price, was said to have taken of Freeman. No one could tell him exactly what the photo was, but it was rumored to be pretty embarrassing for the American general.
The next explosion that Mellin, Murphy, and the other prisoners heard on the island was followed at dawn by the agonized howl of a mobile claw crane, its tracks in several inches of water, its long neck stretched out beyond the edge of the partially submerged reef. Its claw brought up huge lumps of coral that had been blasted out by underwater dynamite charges, then swung inland and deposited the coral and sea bottom mud on a pile on part of the reef that was now submerged beneath a few inches of water in the high tide.
Dozens of variegated fish — grouper and red snapper among them — some stunned, some dead, a few sharks and hawksbill turtles as well, lay floating on the sea’s surface. Several PLA soldiers who, apart from thongs on their feet, were stripped naked — despite the presence of three women among the thirty POWs — were wading out to gather up the fish, one soldier carrying an AK-47 over his head to make sure of the sharks. Quietly, Mellin, his temples still pounding from the headache he’d suffered as a result of a PLA guard hitting him with the rifle butt the day before, nudged the Australian. “See all the heaps of coral they’ve dredged up?”
Murphy was looking to the west. “No,” Mellin told him. “Other way — east of us.” When Murphy saw them, he could also see a line of what he thought might be prisoners, all clad in peasant-style black pajamas, passing baskets of coral from one of the heaps along the line, several of the black pajamas emptying the broken coral on a part of the reef covered in a few inches of water. The mud, or rather sea bottom ooze, was being carted away by another line of black pajamas to one main heap a few hundred yards inland, amid the scrubby and stunted bushes.
“How big d’you reckon?” Mellin asked. “The island?”
Mike Murphy shrugged and a guard saw it. “ ‘Bout half a mile long, maybe less, five hundred yards wide.”
“Up shut!” shouted the soldier.
Murphy saluted the guard. “Sorry, shithead.”
“Jesus,” Mellin murmured, looking away from the guards. “For Chrissake, shut up, Mike.” But Upshut seemed impressed by Murphy’s elaborate show of obedience and the snappy salute.
Now Mellin could see several pairs of the black pajama figures leaning, straining forward like beasts of burden, pulling cement rollers behind them over the coral that had been spread out over the tidal pools.
Upshut and his cohort were looking away from Mellin, Murphy, and the dozen or so other prisoners in their charge when Mellin heard a soft and distinctly British woman’s voice — one of the other rig prisoners — whispering to them to be careful, that Upshut understood more English than the American or Australian realized.
Mellin checked out the guards. They were talking to one another at about a hundred decibels, pointing at the fish dinner provided by the latest explosion. It was the Englishwoman doing the translating.
“You know a lot of Chinese?” Mellin asked the woman.
“I speak Mandarin, a little Cantonese,” she said. “I was radio operator on Chical 3.”
Mellin nodded. As far as he could remember, Chical 3 was a rig — or at least what had been a rig — off Livock Reef about a hundred miles northeast of the island they were now on, one of the more than 220 island reefs, cays, and shoals that made up the Spratly, or, as the Chinese called them, the Nanshan, island group.
“What’s your name?” Murphy asked in a low tone, looking not at her but rather at the two guards she’d warned them about.
“Fortescue,” she answered. “Shirley Fortescue.”
“Well, Shirl,” Murphy responded. “Thanks for the tip.”
Danny Mellin could see the woman, in her mid-thirties, didn’t like the Australian’s easy familiarity with her name. “Shirley,” she corrected Murphy.
“Righto, luv,” Murphy said, smiling. “No problem.”
Mellin watched the Australian eyeing her more closely now, taking note of an hourglass figure which even the drab black POW pajamas couldn’t hide. “Things could be worse,” he told Danny with a wink. There was a growling sound nearby — one of the other prisoners’ stomachs complaining of hunger.
“Hey, Shirl,” Murphy whispered. “How ‘bout using a bit of the old Mandarin and asking Upshut when we get a feed? We’re all bloody starving.”
“No,” Danny said quickly. “Don’t let them know we’ve got someone who can understand their lingo. We might find out what—”
Upshut swung about. “Who talks?” he shouted. No one said anything, and for a moment there was silence between the sounds of the dredge claw bringing up more dislodged coral, water, and kelp streaming from it, and dumping it. One of the prisoners, a Vietnamese, got up and, holding his hand up like a child in class, asked, in what Shirley Fortescue could tell was a border dialect of Cantonese — the Chinese spoken in the south — when they would be getting some food and drink.
Upshut’s cohort gave a long, loud answer, after which the Vietnamese who had asked the question sat down desultorily, shrugging his shoulders.
“What’d he say?” Murphy asked.
“I think,” Shirley Fortescue said softly, “that the guard said we’ll get some water but no food until we finish our work.”
“Work?” Murphy said. “What fucking work? Ah, sorry, Shirl, but I’m not working for these assholes.”
Upshut was coming straight at him, clicking the fold-out butt of the Kalashnikov to use the AK-47 as a club.
“Sorry!” Murphy said, quickly raising his hands. “Sorry.”
The Australian’s raised arms stopped Upshut, who made a show of folding the butt, shortening the weapon, and grunting, pleased by the Australian’s surrender, nodding his head as if to say, That’s better, now you know who’s boss.