Afterburn by Colin Harrison

roof. The burning huts smudged the sky. The GIs found a teenage girl inside and pulled her out. She struggled.
    "Baby-san suck-suck?" said one of the GIs.
    "Me no give suck-suck." She spit in his face.
    The soldier grabbed the girl's hair. "You fucking VC motherfucker baby-san, blow me!" She thrashed hatefully. He laughed and pushed her away.
    After that, the soldiers stopped checking the hootches, just burned them quickly. He waited, wondering if the ball might get hit to him. Grounder, watch it all the way into your glove, Charlie-boy . They were not checking the hootches, and he was in one. The three men torched the hootch next to his. You have to want to be picked for the team. His arms were still roped to the pole. The soldiers' boots scuffed the earth outside. One of them machine-gunned the hootch.
    Part of something that was part of his leg was blown off.
    One of the GIs said, "You hear a noise?"
    More shots. He curled into a ball. Something hot pierced his hand and passed between his legs. He screamed a hoarse whisper.
    "It's a trap, man! Gas it."
    His tongue lolled thickly in his mouth, his pants filling with blood. More gunfire cracked over him. Then silence. A shadow appeared at the opening to the hootch. A hand grabbed his dog tags. "Get the radio. We got a throttle-jock here. Fact, he just got shot." The hand slapped his cheek hard. A black face drew up to his, bloodshot eyes bright. "Boy, don't you fucking die on me now—someone else be doing the dying today."
     
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    China Club, Hong Kong

September 7, 1999
     
     
    HE WOULD SURVIVE. Oh shit, yes, Charlie promised himself, he'd survive this , too—his ninth formal Chinese banquet in as many evenings, yet another bowl of shark-fin soup being passed to him by the endless waiters in red uniforms, who stood obsequiously against the silk wallpaper pretending not to hear the self-satisfied ravings of those they served. Except for his fellow gweilo s—British Petroleum's Asia man, a mischievous German from Lufthansa, and two young American executives from Kodak and Citigroup—the other dozen men at the huge circular mahogany table were all Chinese. Mostly in their fifties, the men represented the big corporate players—Bank of Asia, Hong Kong Telecom, Hang Seng Bank, China Motors—and each, Charlie noted, had arrived at the age of cleverness. Of course, at fifty-eight he himself was old enough that no one should be able to guess what he was thinking unless he wanted them to, even Ellie. In his call to her that morning—it being evening in New York City—he'd tried not to sound too worried about Julia. "It's all going to be fine , sweetie," he'd promised, gazing out at the choppy haze of Hong Kong's harbor, where the heavy traffic of tankers and freighters and barges pressed China's claim—everything from photocopiers to baseball caps flowing out into the world, everything from oil refineries to contact lenses flowing in. "She'll get pregnant, I'm sure," he'd told Ellie. But he wasn't sure. No, not at all. In fact, it looked as if it was going to be easier for him to build his electronics factory in Shanghai than for his daughter to hatch a baby.
    "We gather in friendship," announced the Chinese host, Mr. Ming, the vice-chairman of the Bank of Asia. Having agreed to lend Charlie fifty-two million U.S. dollars to build his Shanghai factory, Mr. Ming in no way could be described as a friend; the relationship was one of overlord and indentured. But this was to be expected, and Charlie smiled along with the others as the banker stood and presented in high British English an analysis of southeastern China's economy that was so shallow, optimistic, and full of euphemism that no one, especially the central ministries in Beijing, might object. The Chinese executives nodded politely as Mr. Ming spoke, touching their napkins to their lips, smiling vaguely. Of course, they nursed secret worries—worries that corresponded to whether they were