Drone Command

Twenty minutes later, Pearce found himself in another movie scene. The lieutenant was lying on the chopper deck, medics at work. Plasma, Cipro, bandages. They moved slowly now, kept checking his pulse. A good sign. Leg wound. Like Daud’s, a friend, long ago in another place. At least this one would live.

Pearce settled in his seat, soaked in his own sweat and Lt. Pham’s blood. Secretly, he was pleased. Sitting in the helicopter, door flung open, watching the moonlit canopy of trees slide below his feet. He’d always wanted to visit Vietnam, the country and the war that had so defined his father and, by extension, him. As a kid, he had always wondered what his dad’s war had been like. Now he knew. The experience had nearly killed him. Still, it was a gift.

He wondered what the old man would’ve thought had he seen his only son riding shotgun in one of Charlie’s helicopters on a secret mission to help the communist government of Vietnam. Or running full tilt with a VPA lieutenant on his shoulder, saving him from certain death.

Not hard to guess. His old man would’ve shit bricks then punched his lights out.

Pearce smiled.

Dr. Pham fell into the jump seat next to him. Her long hair danced in the air rushing through the cabin. She still wore a canvas pouch slung over her shoulder. The Pterodactyl’s CPU and a few other electronic components were stashed inside. She said something. Pearce couldn’t hear her. He pointed at the headset next to her. He pulled on his.

“Thank you for saving my brother,” she said, her voice an electronic whisper in the roaring noise.

Pearce shrugged.

She tried to tuck her flying hair behind her ears but it wouldn’t stay. Even though she held a Ph.D. in aeronautical engineering, was a senior drone researcher at the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology, and an obviously brave and loyal patriot, she was still a woman, and a beautiful one at that, even if she was smeared with mud and blood.

“We wanted you to see for yourself that the Chinese violated our national airspace and how they continually invade our territory.”

Pearce nodded. “You knew they’d come for it.”

“Of course. Just not when. You weren’t supposed to be there when it happened, but you took so long to get here.”

“Bad travel agent.” Pearce couldn’t explain to her that he had just come from a Japanese diesel submarine in a secret operation in the East China Sea.

Just then the helicopter swooped over a small town. Dr. Pham pointed at it. “Cao Bang. Very famous. Do you know it?”

Actually, Pearce did. Cao Bang was the site of the last battle in Vietnam’s 1979 war with China, where a hundred thousand Vietnamese militia and border forces humiliated a much larger regular Chinese army in less than a month of bloody fighting. Pearce had written a paper on the Sino-Vietnamese war in one of his undergraduate courses at Stanford and studied the battle of Cao Bang intently in a modern warfare graduate seminar, a classic.

“So your military was here waiting for the Chinese to arrive on top of that hill. A trap. They show up; you drop the hammer.” Just like Cao Bang, Pearce thought.

“Precisely.” Her bloodshot eyes stole another glance at her wounded brother. “My brother was in charge of coordinating the air strike.”

“Don’t worry. He’ll be fine. He just won’t win any dance contests.”

Pham smiled a little. “You’re a medical doctor, too?” All she knew was that Pearce was a very important person in the American government and a drone expert. Her superior in Hanoi instructed her to treat him with the utmost respect and mistakenly referred to him as Dr. Pearce.

“In a previous life, I had some combat medical training.” He pulled his mic closer so she could hear him better. “Tell him when he wakes up that he did a good job.”

“Thank you. I will.”

Pearce shook his head. “He won’t believe it, though. He lost his men. But tell him anyway. Tell him I said so.”

The Chinese had been warring against the Vietnamese for more than two millennia, but for the most part, the Vietnamese people, through sheer determination and force of arms, had maintained a relative cultural independence from the Han warlords on the other side of the rugged border. But like Japan, Vietnam had island disputes of its own with the PRC, especially over the Spratly and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea and for much the same reasons as the Japanese: oil, gas, and national sovereignty.

Pearce had his own run-in with the Chinese a few years ago in the Sahara. Hunted two of them down. Exacted a brutal payback for killing Mike Early and Mossa, the Tuareg chieftain who had helped him find himself again.

“When we return to Hanoi, I would like you to be my guest at the academy. We now produce six of our own drone systems. I would very much like your comment on them.” She was clearly proud of her country’s achievement. He didn’t have the heart to tell her that he knew their indigenous drones still relied on imported engines and propellers.

“I wish I could.”