Assignment Burma Girl

by Edward S. Aarons

  He could have struck her with all his strength and hurt her less. She held out a hand to him, and then dropped it. Not knowing what to do or say next, she walked around Emmett and knelt beside Paul. Afterward, she did not know why she chose to do this. But she felt better at his side, somehow, when Paul’s hand took hers and closed tightly around her shaking fingers.

  “We’ll have to get you to a hospital,” she said. “Just as soon as it’s humanly possible.”

  Paul’s smile was wry. “Ask Emmett about that.”

  “I’m sure it’s all a mistake. We can reach an understanding—” She paused. “It’s all nonsense, about your being a spy.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Paul said. “I didn’t want to be. I didn’t ask for the job. But they gave it to me because they thought I had the perfect cover story for coming up here, presumably on your innocent, romantic search for your brother. But Emmett, of course, knows better. He got the truth out of me easily. It wasn’t too hard. He knows how to get the answers to any questions he cares to ask.”

  “Did he—hurt you?”

  Paul turned his tired face toward Emmett who stood glowering at them. “Ask him. Look at him. He won’t go home with you, Eva. It was all a dream you had. It would have been better if I’d found his grave and not the man himself.”

  “I won’t accept that.”

  “I’m afraid you’ll have to.”

  It was Emmett who abruptly terminated the meeting. He turned away, speaking bluntly. “I’ll see to it that my men send in some food for both of you. There’s no need to decide anything now. I have other matters on my mind.”

  “Wait a minute,” Paul said sharply. Then he turned to Eva. “Ask him if he’ll let you go free, right now, if I stay here.”

  “What?”

  “Ask him if he’ll let you go back to Rangoon now."

  She stared at Emmett. “Won’t you?”

  He just looked back at her with his yellow, feline eyes.

  “You’re in no position to bargain with me,” he said.

  Then he left.

  She could not talk to Paul afterward, and she did not see Emmett again through all the dreary, hot hours of that afternoon. Eva was aware of the fat priest in his yellow robe going about his business in the monastery and of the green-uniformed soldiers who camped around the place, cooking rice, cleaning their machine pistols, laughing and talking among themselves, or smoking and staring off into space with the tired patience of soldiers everywhere.

  But most of all she was aware of the deep, abysmal confusion within herself.

  Nothing had turned out the way she’d dreamed it would.

  This place and this time, and Emmett as he really was, could not have been expected. She told herself to discard the ideals of her childhood and accept as an adult the facts of reality. But she could not, and clung to her image of what she had wanted the meeting to be like, as if she were drowning in a tide of ugly, bitter facts.

  Eva was grateful to Paul for his long silence that let her think things out for herself. But upon trying to leave the cell, she found she was as much a prisoner as Paul. An armed guard thrust her roughly back into the room.

  She could not eat her. food when it was brought to her. Sick with nausea at the first mouthful, she stared at Paul in despair.

  “What is the matter with me?” she asked.

  “You’d better eat what you can,” he said simply.

  “Paul, can’t I do anything for you?”

  “I think not.”

  She studied him in an effort to comprehend the changes in him. “How can you be so calm when he says he’s going to kill you?”

  “I’m not sure. Something happened to me when he shot me. I don’t mind admitting that up to then I was half crazy with fear. When I was here with the Marauders, long ago, I was afraid, too; but there was the military discipline to keep things in check, you know. All men are afraid, in one way or another.” “So are women,” she said, and she studied her hands. “And I’m still afraid, but not half as bad as it was. Mostly, I’m afraid for you. What are you going to do, Eva, about Emmett?”

  “What can I do?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. For the moment, we’re both helpless.”

  “Do you think he’ll come back to the States with me?”

  “No,” Paul said.

  “But why not? I can persuade him.”

  “Even if you did,” Paul said carefully, “after what I’ve learned about the things he’s done to innocent villagers and their children, it won’t do any good.”

  “But why?”

  “Because the first chance I’d get, if it came to me,” he said quietly, “I’d kill him.”

  After that, they did not talk any more.

  When the sound of fighting began in the valley, Emmett reappeared. He looked dusty and tired, and there was a renewed anger in his thin body. He appeared suddenly, as always, standing in the doorway to stare at them with pale, brooding eyes.

  “Come on, on your feet. Both of you,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I can make it,” Paul said.

  Emmett yanked out his gun and pointed it at Paul. “You can die right here and now if you choose.”

  Eva helped him to his feet. Paul looked surprised at the offer of her slim strength, and then accepted it with a nod and leaned his weight on her. She could smell his dirt and sweat and dried blood, but somehow she did not mind or object, as she would have before. She felt him stagger as he moved painfully to the door, and looked in appeal to Emmett. But Emmett only gestured impatiently with his gun.

  “Hurry it up.”

  “May I ask what’s happening?” Paul said. “There seems to be some unexpected fighting going on.”

  “I’ve been double-crossed, but don’t worry. I know who’s responsible. I’ve been told about Durell. He’ll come looking for you, won’t he? He’ll be here soon, I think.”

  “Yes,” Eva whispered.

  Paul noticed that the troops who had been in the monastery were gone. “Are you all alone, Emmett? You’re not going to lead your men into the fight?”

  Emmett grinned wolfishly. “You have to be cold-blooded about some things, Paul. No nonsense about dying in a lost battle. I’m pretty sure my men will be trapped and killed— and I don’t intend to die with them. My life is more important than an idle gesture.”

  “So you run out while your men are slaughtered?” “Think what you like about it. I have Eva, and I’ll kill Durell, and that’s what counts.”

  Eva said nothing. Every step from the monastery had been torment for Paul. She heard his breath whistle in his throat and wished she could help him more. Emmett made no move toward them, but walked along behind with his gun.

  “Please,” she said. “Paul can’t stand more of this.”

  “Keep going,” he answered. “Down there.”

  Dusk had come, and she scarcely could see the faint trail that twisted down the mountainside to the river below. The tangled outlines of overgrown ruins seemed like something out of a nightmare.

  “How far must we go?”

  “Just keep walking.”

  Paul’s breathing became a gasping struggle for air. She took his arm and put it around her shoulders and felt his weight sag even more heavily against her. The shoulder wound began to bleed and his blood ran down her arm and side. Slowly her dismay and disillusionment gave way to the first rise of anger.

  “Emmett, you just can’t do this! You—”

  “Shut up,” Emmett snapped. His grin was hard. “I’m sorry you’re so disappointed in me, sister. I guess you had dreams of finding me and playing the great Lady Bountiful, is that it?”

  “Yes. Something like that.”

  “Well, I’m sorry to disillusion you. But there will be time enough to talk later—lots of talk between you and me. I’ve got a lot to teach you. Afterward, when you understand what this is all about and you’ve come around to my way of thinking, we’ll send you back to the States. We’ll arrange to have y
ou ‘rescued,’ eh? You’ll be a heroine, Eva. And you’ll go home to Texas and your three hundred million dollars with instructions as to how to spend it and use it as a payroll for certain people who will come and work for you.” Emmett grinned again. “You’ll be above suspicion, you see. And who knows? I may even slip back to the States and help set up the organization myself. Your money will buy a lot of information here and there that the people I work for badly want. And who will suspect you? An heiress, the wonderful Cinderella girl, working undercover for our cause!”

  Eva came to a dead halt and stared at him. “Why, you must be insane to think you can get me to do such a thing!”

  “You’ll learn. There are ways of teaching you.”

  “Is this the reason you wrote to get me out here?”

  “Of course. Now keep walking.”

  She felt numb. They struggled around one ruin, crossed the platform of another, followed the trail above a giddy precipice. For several moments her fear that Paul might stagger and fall from the dangerous height obscured everything else. She did not want to think about Emmett’s words, but told herself she had to. It was time to stop her idle, romantic dreaming and face the facts that brutally slapped her in the face.

  When at last they were permitted to sink to the ground in a comer of a ruined wall, she looked at Paul and wanted to weep.

  Paul’s voice was resigned and quiet.

  “You understand, Eva, that now he’s got to kill me."

  “Why?”

  “To keep me from talking about you and him.”

  “Do you think I’d agree? Do you really believe I—?” She paused. “I don’t want to talk about it now. I’m just worried about you. How can I help you, Paul?”

  But he had closed his eyes against his pain and weakness, and he had no answer for her.

  Twelve

  Durell lay flat on his stomach on the dark trail that twisted through the ruins. He could see nothing. No movement betrayed the position from which Emmett had shot at him.

  He felt exposed and helpless. The other man knew where he was, and even if Durell could not be seen clearly in the starlight, his general location made any movement immediately noticeable.

  Durell waited and watched the ruins on the hillside.

  The path continued for about twenty more yards on a level stretch, then dipped out of sight behind a low, ruined wall about ten feet high. To his left was another wall, too high to scale, even with the help of the vines that grew up its mossy surface. Behind him was an open area that prevented escape the way he had come, a pool of silver starlight where he would be a perfect target if he tried to run back across it.

  He looked to the right. Five feet away were the tops of shrubs and trees clinging to a precipitous drop into the dark unknown. He could not tell how high the cliffside was. Turning his head slowly, with infinite care, he studied the edge of the trail. After a moment he made out the tumbled, jagged room of a small pagoda rising behind the brush. It looked encouraging. But even if he succeeded in suddenly throwing himself off the path and over the edge of the precipice, a drop of twenty feet, unless he could break his fall on shrubbery or a tree, could snap a leg and make him completely helpless.

  He waited.

  There were no more shots.

  Again he slowly lifted his head and studied the wall where the path vanished. ‘He decided the shots had come from the ruins ahead, and anxiously scanned the top of the wall, looking for the shape of a head that might be watching for him. The wall commanded his approach to the ruins and gave a clear field of fire to explain the shots that had almost dropped him.

  But he could make out nothing that looked like a man in the shadows. Emmett Claye was as good or better at jungle stalking than he. Emmett knew how to be patient and out-wait his game.

  A light breeze stirred the foliage, and under the cover of the brief rustling, Durell tensed, ready to jump for the edge of the path. But the wind died in a moment, and there was only the faint echo of firing down toward Nambum Ga. Then even that ended, as if on signal, and utter silence filled the night

  He wondered what had happened to Eva. There had been no other warning outcry from her. Emmett calling Durell's name had simply been a tactic or surprise intended to stop him in his tracks and present an easier target. It had almost worked. But it would not trick him again, and Emmett was too adept at jungle hunting to repeat the same maneuver.

  When another minute passed, Durell began to wonder if the man had retreated with Eva and Paul, escaping down the mountain. Perhaps he was lying here on the path pinned down by nothing more than excess caution, while his quarry put more distance between them by the moment. On the other hand, this might be exactly what Emmett wanted him to think.

  Durell had no illusions about the danger. Emmett Claye meant to kill him. Emmett could not let him escape back to Rangoon with the true story of his identity as Major Mong. No, he was still around, waiting for him to break, waiting with the patience of a jungle cat.

  And Durell could not wait. He could not lie passively while Emmett perhaps maneuvered around him and took him from behind.

  Slowly, inch by inch, Durell raised his gun. His eyes were better adjusted to the starlight, and he saw the wall ahead more clearly. He thought something was there that had not been before. A round object, visible through the vines that grew up and over the wall, gleaming slightly in the starlight, like a man’s pale head. He could not be sure. But he raised his gun carefully and took aim.

  The moment he squeezed the trigger and fired, he threw himself to the right, across the five-foot space to the edge of the precipice. Everything seemed to happen at once. The sound of his shot was like a thunderclap, shattering the dangerous silence. Immediately the sharp crack of a rifle came in return. This time he saw the muzzle flame, a thin spiteful wink from his right, in the direction he had thrown himself. He knew an instant of dismay, hearing his own bullet slam on metal and richochet, screaming into the ruins. Even as he hurled himself from the path he knew that what he had thought was a man’s head was actually the head of one of the hundreds of Buddha images that dotted the jungle-grown hillside. At the same moment, something burned across his left shoulder throwing his body off balance, so that his grab for a thick, leafy bush Upthrust over the edge of the path went wide of its mark.

  He fell into space down the cliff.

  For a moment sky, earth, jungle and ruins wheeled about him in a crazy pinwheel. Something slammed across his chest and broke his fall and knocked the wind from him. It was a tree branch. Durell grabbed for it with his left hand, but an agonizing stab of pain in his shoulder made him miss. He dropped his gun. His body crashed into a bush, struck the steep slope of earth, and bounced into space again. But his fall was broken. He crashed helplessly through a series of bushes, one leg slammed into the bole of a tree, and then he landed at the bottom with a hard, stunning impact.

  For an instant, darkness swept over him.

  He did not move.

  He lay partly on his back, face up to the sky, aware of pain that jabbed and pulsed through him. There was blood on his left arm, running down from his shoulder where the rifle bullet had creased him. And his right hand felt numb. He stared up at the reeling stars, dimly visible through the young bamboo trees around him.

  At any instant, he expected to be killed.

  “Durell!”

  This time the harsh challenge rang out from above him. He moved only his eyes, not daring to turn his head. He had fallen about thirty feet through bushes and tree limbs that reached high above to the edge of the path overhead. There was a space of about ten yards between the base of the cliff and the base of the ruined pagoda whose roof he had glimpsed from the level of the path above. He was dismayed by the way Emmett had tricked him. Claye had moved from his original position ahead on the path to the roof of the pagoda Durell had seen earlier and disregarded, and so took him on the flank. Emmett was above him now. He heard the soft slide of the man’s feet on mossy stone, heard the click of
a rifle bolt.

  “Durell!”

  He had lost his gun in the fall. It might be somewhere near at hand, just within reach in the debris that carpeted the jungle floor. But he did not dare move to reach for it.

  The soft footsteps paused a moment and Durell held his breath. There was nothing he could do. His only hope was that Emmett thought he was dead, or at least wounded, and might show a moment of carelessness.

  But Durell did not think a man who had survived years of jungle fighting would be careless.

  He heard another footstep. And another. Closer now.

  He moved only his eyes, searching for the sound. What was Eva doing? he wondered. Would she stand idly by and watch her brother kill him? He had angered her cruelly, humiliating her with his rejection on the river bank last night. It was possible that she hated him enough to want him dead. But then why had she cried out to warn him?

  “Durell, you’re not fooling me!” Emmett called. “I only grazed you. Come out of those bushes. If I have to go in after you, I’ll kill you out of hand. I won’t show mercy.”

  The harsh voice came from his right. Turning his eyes that way, not moving any other part of himself, Durell saw the pattern of stone steps from the pagoda platform. A flamboyant tree intervened, blocking a clear view of the stairs. But then movement caught his eye and he saw the thin shape of a man with a nfle kneeling on the stones, staring down into the dark shadows where Durell was trapped.

  “Can you hear me? Do you understand me?”

  If he had his gun, he could have dropped Emmett Claye then and ended it. But his gun was lost somewhere near him, and he had no chance to hunt for it.

  Durell held his breath and was silent.

  Emmett came down another step. Eva spoke from above them.

  “Emmett? Emmett, please don’t. He must be dead.”

  “No, he isn’t. He’s trying to play it smart.” Emmett’s voice was low and savage. “He must have talked Ingkok into jumping my men. Who’d have expected these sheep to fight back? Durell must have started it, and he’ll pay for it.”