They worked through the day, but even with hundreds of prisoners dumping their baskets, Teddy worried his breaker would shut down. If he was in charge, that’s what he’d do. Instead of running all these breakers at half capacity, pull the manning out, and put those hands to carrying baskets of ore too. Old Lew looked anxious. He kept scurrying up and down, scolding and chattering at them to hurry, though the conveyors themselves were running at half speed.
At noon, instead of one droning note, the whistle hooted staccato bursts. A jeeplike vehicle dropped off the guards. The prisoners downed tools and mustered in marching order. Teddy hung back, but the guards hustled him into line too.
They filed down into a deeper pit lined with crumbling red rock, as if whatever had been here had been mined out down to the floor. Now it made a natural amphitheater. They were shouted and buttstroked into squatting ranks. Teddy settled in with Pritchard, Trinh, Shepard, and Fierros. Then nothing happened for about an hour, except that the cold wind shuddered through him.
Finally, with a snort and rumble from the direction of the town lights, a menacing shape clanked and squealed into view. Shading his eyes, Oberg made it as an old Soviet-era T-55. The tank crawled down the gravel road, rocks spitting from beneath iron treads. It halted, venting black smoke. The engine revved, then shut down.
Two guards brought a ladder, and a middle-aged man in a green uniform climbed onto the back deck of the tank. A guard handed up a loud hailer. As he spoke, the prisoners in front of Teddy and Pritchard turned and glared at them, hissing through their teeth.
Major Trinh translated in a mutter. “He is Colonel Xiu, commander of Camp 576 Production Cooperative. He says: The war is going well. China army is advancing on all fronts. Enemy dogs, Japan, Vietnam, are running with tails between legs. However, the U.S. has grown desperate. It has begun criminal biological warfare. Many, many are dying.”
Teddy hung his head, understanding now why the other prisoners had hissed and shot them murderous looks. The officer tried to whip the prisoners into a cheer, but it sounded more like the weak bleating of underfed lambs.
“He says… the Party announces a generous release program. Convicted criminals, even political prisoners, can demonstrate love for country. Those between twenty and fifty with less than five years on sentence can join army. They will get large meal of rice, fried pork, and hot tea. A new, warm uniform. They will leave camp now, today.”
Teddy couldn’t help it; his mouth watered. Here and there, men began standing. They shouted and yelled, shaking fists. Then a rock lofted. It hit Pritchard in the chest. More followed, raining down, and the Chinese around them scrambled away, clearing the field of fire. Teddy shielded his face with both arms but took a stone to the skull from behind. Stunned, he slumped over.
A staccato crack echoed. Blue smoke drifted from one of the T-55’s machine guns. The Chinese prisoners subsided. They turned away from the Caucasians, and joined a queue. Officials were setting up the same folding tables at which they’d checked Teddy’s transport in, months before.
Obie stood with arms dangling, looking into the sky. He couldn’t shake the images. Warm uniform. Hearty meal. Hell, he could taste it. Sweet and sour pork, fluffy steamed rice… he took one sliding step toward the desks before reality hit and he halted, hammering a fist on his thigh and grunting like an angry camel. Get control, Oberg! That would be ringing the brass bell the loudest any SEAL ever had. Not to mention that with this strapped-up, useless fucking foot, he wouldn’t be accepted into any army on the fucking planet.
Another rock came flying. This time he didn’t bother ducking. His hand came away from his cheek smeared with red. Shit, even his fucking blood looked darker, felt stickier than it used to.
No. He couldn’t stay here any longer. Or he’d die.
Maggie Pritchard, beside him, tugged at his sleeve. “Come on, Teddy. Let’s get the fook out of here.”
The next morning, on the road, mustering the prisoners who remained, their brigade commander announced in a singsong that Breaker Twenty-Three was closed. All hands employed there would report to Pit Three.
“I am sorry, Ted-ti,” he added. “I tried to get you place in kitchen. But no joy.”
At least that was what Teddy thought he said. “That’s okay,” he told him.
The girl guard formed them up, joking in her lilting tones. The column was more than decimated. Most of the Chinese had volunteered, leaving the too-old, the too-sick, and the foreign devils. They huddled shivering in thin jackets and ragged blankets, hands under their armpits. When they shuffled into motion, Obie found himself in the middle of the column for the first time. The girl trailed them, singing something gay as they marched a mile and a half to Pit Number Three.
In all the time he’d been here, he’d never seen where the ore came from. Even when he peered from atop the breaker, piles of waste had hidden whatever lay beyond. The path twisted through culm hills, acres of loose rock and shale, then began to drop.
They marched down, and down, along sloped ramps into a sort of reversed ziggurat. He couldn’t make out the bottom. The cold wind was stirring up a haze of grit that coated their lips and made everyone cough. Teddy kept peering around, half expecting something with teeth and claws to emerge out of the haze.
Gradually, from the dust-fog, the floor emerged. A mile-wide yawning in the earth, at the bottom of which lay containers, stacks of tools, scattered puddles of dully reflecting, dirty water, tar paper-roofed shacks. And parked to the side, well-used power diggers, graders, augurs, dump trucks. They were motionless. The dust-haze was thinner down here, the wind less fierce. As they reached the pit floor, he saw the ore. It writhed in twisted veins across the rock, amid dun-colored, softer-looking slate. Trusties waited by each excavation point. Sidling in among the new arrivals, they broke the column into six-man work units. With peremptory gestures and pidgin Han, they explained the quota. Ten cubic meters a day.
“You got to be shitting me,” he muttered to Maggie. He’d watched this stuff go past on the belt. It took forty-ton hardened-steel rollers to crush it. But the unit leader was handing out picks and shovels, pointing to dump barrows with bicycle wheels and stacks of woven plastic baskets. Teddy grabbed a pick. With his leg, he wasn’t going to be any use on a wheelbarrow.
His first blow struck sparks from the rock, but didn’t loosen a grain. The leader shouted something at him. To hit harder, apparently. He reshouldered the tool grimly.
Ten cubic meters.
It didn’t sound like all that much.
That night, back in the cave, he and Maggie and Toby Fierros, the pilot, huddled over the hot water that was all they had to brew. Even two feet from the little smoking fire, the cold was numbing bitter. “They wouldn’t even fucking feed us,” Pritchard marveled. “Wouldn’t even fooking…”
“Méiyou pèi’é, méiyou shíwù,” Trinh said, coming over.
“And that means?”
“No quota, no food.” The Vietnamese looked grim. A twist of grass stuck out of his mouth. It gave you racking gut-aches, but it was something. Vu, the other Viet, squatted behind him, silent.
“We got to get out of here,” Fierros said.
No one spoke again for some time. Until the pilot added, “Doesn’t matter where we go. Probably, just out there to die. But we’re gonna get bagged here, anyway.”