Sword of Shiva - Страница 18

“I agree,” General Guo said. “If we are not careful, this could become to us what Vietnam was to the Americans. Or what Afghanistan was to the Soviet Union. A bloody quagmire, with no prospect of a graceful conclusion.”

“This is already our version of Vietnam!” Lu snapped. “Can none of you see that? Think about it… Vietnam was not a technical failure for the Americans. Nor was it a tactical failure. The American military was well equipped, well trained, well supplied, and well supported. By comparison, their adversaries were a pack of semi-literate monkeys squatting in rice paddies and swinging through the jungles. So, why did the Americans lose?”

“The communist ideal,” General Guo said tentatively. “The North Vietnamese were sustained by the superior teachings of Marx and Chairman Mao…”

Lu Shi slapped his open palm on the table. “Bái mù!” Literally, this could be translated as ‘white-eyed,’ or ‘blind.’ In this context it meant something like ‘you’re looking the wrong way, you idiot!’

Lu’s voice was still sharp. “The communist ideal had nothing to do with it,” he said. “If it were a matter of ideologies, the Soviets would have used their communist philosophies to triumph over the Afghanis. Instead, the mighty Russian military was vanquished by a few tribes of unwashed goatherds hiding in caves. So I ask you again… Why did the Americans lose in Vietnam? Why were the Soviets defeated in Afghanistan? How were two military superpowers both routed by inferior enemies? When you know the answer to that question, you’ll begin to understand what is at stake in our current conflict.”

The room was silent.

Lu Shi looked from one face to the next. “No one? The military brains of our nation are seated around this table, and not one of you can answer such a simple question?”

Still, no one spoke.

“Very well,” Lu Shi said. “I’ll answer the question for you… The Soviet Union lost in Afghanistan for the same reason that America lost in Vietnam. Because their national will was weak.”

“With all due respect, Comrade Lu, that may be a bit of an oversimplification,” General Chen said.

“It is not an oversimplification,” Lu said. “It is a basic statement of truth, and any serious examination of the facts will prove it.” He jabbed a finger toward General Guo. “Comrade General, how many military deaths did North Vietnam suffer during combat actions against the Americans?”

“Roughly a million or so,” the general said.

“Closer to 1.1 million,” Lu said. “And how many deaths among North Vietnamese civilians?”

“I’m not sure, Comrade Vice Premier,” said General Guo. “I’ve seen figures as low as 50,000 and as high as 300,000.”

“Fair enough,” Lu said. “The numbers vary significantly from one source to another. But let’s assume a number on the low end, somewhere around 100,000 civilian deaths. Combined, that puts the death toll for North Vietnam at somewhere around 1.2 million.”

Lu glanced around the table again. “Can any of you tell me how many American military personnel died in Vietnam?”

“I believe,” said General Chen, “that the final count was about 58,000 American dead.”

“That’s about right,” Lu said. He lifted both of his hands, and turned them palm up, shifting each slowly in a reciprocal up-and-down motion, as though they were the arms of a balance scale. “The North Vietnamese lost 1.2 million, and much of their national infrastructure was bombed out of existence. By contrast, the Americans lost fewer than 60,000 soldiers, and the national infrastructure of the United States was completely untouched.”

Lu dropped his hands. “America was winning on the battlefield. They were winning economically. Their ability to wage war was not even slightly impaired. So I ask you, comrades… How did the United States lose the Vietnam War?”

Again, no one in the room responded.

“Their weapons did not fail them,” Lu Shi said. “Their soldiers didn’t fail them. Their economy was not in danger of collapse. Only one thing failed them, but it was enough to send the indomitable American military slinking home like a beaten mongrel. Their national willpower failed. They lost the desire to win. And because of that, they allowed themselves to be defeated by an inferior enemy.”

Lu’s eyes blazed. “That’s what our current conflict is about. It’s not about trains. It’s not about 200 dead PLA soldiers. It’s not about some rat-bitten Indian village. And it’s not about my son. It’s about the strength of our national will. It’s about refusing to bow to a weaker adversary.”

“I… ah…” General Guo looked at the other faces gathered around the table, and swallowed. “How far do we go with this?”

“As far as it has to go,” Lu Shi said. “Until the Indian government backs down.”

“But what if they don’t back down?” General Guo asked.

“They will,” Lu said.

“But what if they don’t?” Guo repeated.

“They are an inferior adversary,” Lu Shi said. “If we raise the stakes far enough, they will have no choice but to back down. And if they don’t… Our Indian neighbors will discover that they do have a breaking point.”

CHAPTER 19

LHASA GONGGAR AIRPORT

SHANNAN REGION, TIBET

WEDNESDAY; 26 NOVEMBER

8:50 AM

TIME ZONE +8 ‘HOTEL’

The wheels of the China Eastern Airbus A320 left the runway of Lhasa Gonggar Airport exactly on schedule, and Reverend Bill McDonald took his first easy breath in three days. He hadn’t slept more than fifteen or twenty minutes at a time since the massacre in Barkhor Square. Now that he was finally in the air and leaving Chinese territory, he could relax.

His cell phone was safe in his pocket, and the memory card with the video recording was still intact. In three and a half hours, he’d be landing in Kathmandu. Then, after a four hour layover, he’d be on a Cathay Pacific flight to San Francisco International by way of Hong Kong.

He’d be home by tomorrow evening, in time for a late Thanksgiving dinner, but he still hadn’t decided what to do with the video recording. He needed to get it into the hands of the right people. That much was obvious. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure who the right people might be.

He’d considered going straight to CNN or one of the nationally-recognized newspapers, but he didn’t have any contacts in the world of journalism. The major news organizations probably got several thousand crackpot calls a day. If he cold-called the offices of any of the big papers or studios, they’d probably lump him in with the xenophobes and the conspiracy nuts. He’d never get a chance to present his video to anyone with the power to make the story public on a national scale. That pretty much ruled out the major media approach, unless he could figure out a way to get someone high up to take his story seriously.

He’d also thought about cutting out the middleman, and going public with the video on the internet. He could post it to the top dozen streaming video sites and wait for it to go viral, like so many of the video clips from the Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011. But there were hundreds of millions of videos on the web, maybe billions. Only a small fraction of them ever captured large scale public attention.

Bill didn’t have an established following on any of the popular video websites, and it might take him years to build enough of a reputation to attract a significant audience. He could upload the recording to a hundred websites, or a thousand, but it wouldn’t do any good if no one bothered to watch it.

He might get lucky and the video would spread through the internet like wildfire, until everyone was talking about it and politicians were arguing over it on network news. Or it might vanish into the great ocean of the web without creating a ripple.

The irony of the situation was not lost on him. Despite his personal aversion to violence and the machineries of politics, the video clip in his phone was the physical manifestation of both. He had flown to Tibet in search of one sort of truth, but the fates had selected him to become the witness and bearer of an entirely different sort of truth. One that could affect the lives of many people, and perhaps even the fates of nations. He quite literally carried the truth in his pocket, but he had no idea of what to do with it.

* * *

He was still puzzling over the problem when his plane touched down at Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu. And he hadn’t solved it four hours later, when his Cathay Pacific flight left the runway en route to Hong Kong.

He was so exhausted now that he was practically a zombie. He reclined his seat, closed his eyes and tried to surrender to sleep, but his brain remained stubbornly awake. His mind refused to let go of the problem, turning it over and over ceaselessly and uselessly.

He tried to meditate, to release the cares of the world, and allow himself to find his spiritual center. He controlled his breathing, and one-by-one, willed every muscle in his body to relax.

He was calm… He was focused… He was at peace…

He was… awake.

His eyes came open. It was no use. Sleep was impossible.

His weary hands fumbled through the seat pouch and came up with an in-flight magazine. He leafed through the pages, only half glancing at the photos, and ignoring the text entirely. His eyes were too tired to make reading seem very interesting. He was just hoping to distract his brain long enough to get some rest.