The Tunnel Rats (Coronet books)

by Stephen Leather

  Doc handed the three passports and tickets to the girl behind the check-in desk. ‘Three seats together,’ he said.

  She smiled and began tapping away at her computer console.

  Doc turned around to look at Ramirez and Hammack. ‘Okay, guys?’

  The two men nodded. ‘I could do with a beer,’ said Hammack.

  ‘We’ve plenty of time before we board. We can get a drink airside.’

  ‘Any bags to check in, sir?’ asked the Thai Airways girl.

  ‘Just hand baggage,’ said Doc. ‘We won’t be staying for long.’

  From their vantage point up on the second floor, Wright and Kruse looked down on the three Americans as they walked away from the check-in desk towards immigration. ‘They’re travelling light,’ said Wright.

  ‘They’re not planning to stay long,’ said Kruse. ‘Straight up to the tunnel complex, then down.’

  The men walked through the barrier to the immigration area and passed out of sight. ‘Are you sure we won’t lose them in Vietnam?’ asked Wright.

  ‘We know where they’re going. The map I’ve got is incredibly detailed. We can find the entrance, and once we’re in the tunnels we know where they’re going.’

  ‘They’re going to have a hell of a start on us.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Kruse. ‘We’ll get to Saigon about three hours after them, and they don’t seem to be taking much in the way of equipment with them. They’re going to be picking up their supplies in Saigon, say an hour. Maybe two.’ He kicked the metal suitcase at his feet. ‘We’ve got all the stuff we need right here. I reckon we’ll reach the tunnel entrance an hour or two after they get there. They’ll only be half a mile or so ahead of us, and that’s not too big a margin. Sound will travel down there, so we won’t want to get too close.’

  Wright rubbed his chin thoughtfully. ‘What are we going to find down there, Jim?’

  ‘The answer,’ said Kruse. He leaned on the rail that ran around the balcony. He already knew what the Americans hoped to find when they reached their destination, deep underground. A body. O’Leary had told him everything before he died: where the map was; where the body was buried; what had happened twenty-five years earlier and why the Tunnel Rats were so convinced that their past had come back to haunt them.

  Kruse didn’t believe in ghosts. He didn’t care who was responsible for the murders, but he needed to know the identity of the killer and he needed to make sure that everyone who knew the secret of the tunnels was silenced for ever. He looked across at Wright and smiled. Kruse’s speciality was making deaths look accidental, but down in the tunnels that wouldn’t be necessary. ‘What say we get breakfast, Nick? We can’t check in for a couple of hours yet.’

  The Thai Airways 737 turned off the main runway and headed for the terminal. ‘Never thought I’d be back,’ said Hammack. ‘Once I was on the Freedom Bird, I swore that was it.’

  ‘I don’t think any of us ever expected to return, Bernie,’ said Doc, peering out of the window. The plane taxied past curved concrete shelters that had protected US warplanes from VC mortar attacks during the last years of the wars. Most stood empty and were overgrown with weeds but a few contained small cargo planes. At the peak of the war, Saigon airport was the busiest in the world, with huge transporters ferrying in the hundreds of thousands of troops and all the armaments and equipment needed to keep them in combat, and bombers queuing up to drop their loads on whatever targets the top brass had earmarked for devastation that day. The airport was still busy, but now it was civilian airliners that were rolling up and down the taxiways.

  The plane stopped and three buses pulled up next to it. The passengers poured off the plane and were ferried to the terminal, where they handed in yellow health forms that said they had no contagious diseases, and then joined the queues for immigration. Most of the passengers were Japanese and Chinese businessmen, though there were a few Westerners, mainly backpackers.

  ‘Just like Bangkok, huh?’ said Ramirez, nodding at the queues.

  ‘I guess we make it just as hard for foreigners arriving at JFK,’ said Doc.

  They waited for more than an hour before handing their passports and visa forms to a stony-faced immigration officer in a green military-looking uniform, then passed through Customs where another green-uniformed official gave their holdalls a cursory inspection after passing them through an X-ray machine.

  The three men walked out of the terminal into blinding sunshine, and stood in silence, looking out over the acres of tarmac, filled with gleaming taxis and chauffeur-driven luxury cars. Drivers in blue trousers and white shirts waited expectantly. Beyond them were large billboards advertising Japanese computers and American cigarettes. All were struck by the same thought: they’d left a war zone, and returned to an economic boom town.

  Two Vietnamese girls walked by wearing the traditional ao dai costume – long blouses slit up the side over flowing, baggy pants. They were carrying cans of Coke and sipping their sodas through straws. From the open window of one of the taxis came the thumping beat of an Aerosmith song.

  ‘Remind me again who won, Doc,’ said Hammack. ‘It was the Communists, right?’ He ripped open a pack of chewing gum and slotted a piece into his mouth.

  A young Vietnamese man came over. ‘Taxi?’ he asked.

  ‘We want to go to the Rex Hotel,’ said Doc. ‘How much?’

  ‘All taxis have meters, sir,’ said the man. He motioned with his arm to the queue of taxis where a driver had already opened his boot for them.

  ‘Beats Bangkok,’ said Ramirez. ‘You always end up bargaining with the cabs at the airport.’

  They loaded their holdalls into the boot and climbed into the back of the Toyota taxi. The airconditioning was on and the interior was spotless.

  It was a half-hour drive to the hotel. The bulk of the traffic on the roads was of the two-wheeled variety, bicycles and motorcycles. Unlike Bangkok, the traffic flowed freely and the air didn’t shimmer with exhaust fumes. Construction seemed to be going on all around them and the skyline was littered with cranes and the skeletons of half-completed tower blocks. The three Americans stared out of the windows. The last time they had seen Saigon it had been a military town, packed with Jeeps and trucks and US military personnel. Now the only uniforms were worn by the policemen standing in the middle of the crossroads directing traffic. They drove by a sidewalk café where waiters in white shirts and black trousers served coffee to a group of businessmen, then by a line of shops filled with lacquerware and rosewood furniture. The car slowed as they eased through a group of young women pedalling old bicycles, all wearing pastel-coloured ao dais and what appeared to be long evening gloves, presumably to protect their hands and arms against the fierce Vietnamese sun.

  It was a city in transition. One block would consist of a gleaming office tower with smartly dressed secretaries carrying briefcases, the next a boarded-up tenement block with peeling paint and rusting balconies, obviously awaiting demolition. Alongside modern stores with expensive display cases stood open-fronted shops selling secondhand motors covered in grime and oil, and advertising hoardings promoted everything from vitamins and baby powder to cigarettes and cognac.

  ‘It’s not what I expected,’ said Hammack.

  ‘What did you expect?’ asked Doc.

  ‘I dunno. Everyone in Mao tunics, maybe. The NVA on the streets. Tanks. Communist slogans. Martial music broadcast through loudspeakers. This is just like Bangkok.’

  ‘It’s capitalism, but under Communist control,’ said Doc. ‘They’re trying to bring in Western products but without Western politics. Same as China.’

  ‘And foreigners can go anywhere? No restrictions?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ said Doc. ‘They’re trying to encourage tourists. And that’s what we are, tourists.’

  The taxi turned down a tree-lined avenue. Ahead of them a sandy-coloured building sported a huge crown. ‘The Rex Hotel,’ said Doc. ‘It was where the military used to brief the press corps.
I thought it was appropriate. We can have a final briefing here before we head upcountry.’

  It was a long time since May Eckhardt had worn an ao dai. The silk was soft against her skin and it rippled in the warm wind that blew down Nguyen Hue Boulevard from the Saigon River behind her. In front of her stood the red-roofed white and yellow building that was the Hôtel de Ville, home of the Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee. The Vietnamese flag, a yellow star on a red background, fluttered above it. To her left was the Rex Hotel. She stood astride her Yamaha scooter, her sandalled feet flat on the ground. No one gave her a second look in her pale blue ao dai and conical hat, she was just one of many. A small beggar boy, nine years old at most, held up a handful of packs of chewing gum. She shook her head. ‘Toi khong muon . . .’ she said, but he pouted and pushed the gum at her.

  She relented. She didn’t want the chewing gum but she could remember when she was nine years old and alone on the streets of Saigon. She gave him one US dollar and took a pack. He grinned, showing a mouthful of yellowing teeth, then skipped away to bother an overweight German couple who were loudly bargaining to buy an opium pipe from a roadside trader.

  May stared up at the Rex Hotel. She’d followed the three Americans from the airport, keeping close behind them on her scooter, until she was sure of their destination. She was disappointed that the one called Rabbit wasn’t with them. She’d hoped that by sending him photographs of what she’d done, he would have contacted the others and travelled to Vietnam with them. She’d been wrong. Still, there was a certain irony in leaving him until last, because he was the one she hated most. She kicked the scooter into life and drove away from the kerb. She weaved between the packs of cyclists making their way towards the Hôtel de Ville, and turned left on to Le Loi Boulevard, then into the narrow side street where she’d rented a small house. In front of the house was an Isuzu pick-up truck, the red paintwork starting to rust. She parked the scooter behind the Isuzu and went inside to change. The Americans wouldn’t stay in the hotel for long, she knew. And where they were going, her ao dai would be useless as camouflage.

  The woman in the registrar’s office wouldn’t take Gerry Hunter’s word that he was a detective inspector and insisted on taking down his warrant card number and calling him back. When he picked up the receiver again she apologised profusely but explained that a year ago a jilted boyfriend had obtained confidential information from the university by falsely claiming to be a police officer. Hunter told her that he was trying to track down a former student who had studied computing at the university. ‘Her name’s May Eckhardt but she’s married and I’m afraid I don’t know her maiden name,’ he said.

  ‘Do you know when she was here?’ asked the woman.

  ‘About fifteen years ago, but could you check five years either side?’ said Hunter. Wright had shown her date of birth as September 1965, but there was nothing in his report to say when she’d gone to university. ‘I think her parents were from Sale in Cheshire. She’s Oriental. Chinese, maybe.’ He gave the woman May Eckhardt’s date of birth, and she promised to check with the Department of Computer Science and get back to him as soon as possible.

  Nick Wright scratched his ear with his pen. ‘So many bloody forms to fill in,’ he complained. ‘Customs, immigration, health.’

  ‘You’ve got to remember it’s still a Communist country, Nick,’ said Jim Bamber. ‘The bureaucracy controls everything.’

  Wright finished copying down his passport details on to the immigration form and put away his pen.

  A stewardess with bright pink lipstick smiled and asked Wright if he wanted another drink. He shook his head. They were about halfway through the eighty-minute flight from Bangkok.

  ‘Tell me about the tunnels,’ Wright asked.

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘O’Leary said they had all sorts of stuff underground. Factories, hospitals, training areas. How come the Americans didn’t just blow them up?’

  ‘They tried,’ said the FBI agent. ‘Cu Chi, to the north-west of Saigon, is riddled with tunnels. They reckon the network there is more than a hundred and fifty miles long, spread over something like three hundred square miles of an area they called the Iron Triangle. The Americans knew the tunnels were there, and they sent in tens of thousands of troops, but they uncovered only a tiny fraction of the network. They bulldozed the jungle, they sprayed the area with defoliants, practically killed every tree and blade of grass, but still they couldn’t find the tunnels. Bomber pilots returning to Saigon were told to dump their unused bombs and fuel on the area, and then they started carpet-bombing with B-52s. Couldn’t move the VC, though. They just dug in, deeper and deeper. The only way to get them out was to send in American soldiers.’

  ‘The Tunnel Rats?’

  ‘That’s right. Hand-to-hand combat, deep underground.’

  ‘Maybe I’m being obtuse, but why didn’t they just pump the tunnels full of gas?’

  ‘They tried, but the tunnels were built with water traps so that the gas could only go so far. Like a sink trap. Then they tried using dogs, but so many were killed by booby traps that they had to stop. They tried filling the tunnels with explosives and setting them off, but there are so many kinks and bends that the damage was always limited.’

  ‘What I can’t work out is why they’re going back. What can be down there that’s so important?’

  ‘If we knew that, Nick, we wouldn’t have to go down ourselves.’

  Wright shivered. ‘What about the reports you were getting from the Defense Department?’

  ‘My people are having trouble tracking them down. They hope to have them by the time we get back to Bangkok.’

  ‘But you’ve got the map, right?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Can I see it?’

  Bamber looked around. The plane was full. ‘I’d rather wait until we’ve got a bit more privacy,’ said Bamber.

  ‘I guess so,’ said Wright. ‘But we’re going to Cu Chi, right?’

  ‘About thirty miles further north,’ said Bamber. ‘Cu Chi has been turned into a tourist area, believe it or not. They’ve widened some of the tunnels, even installed electric lighting. The tunnels that our guys are heading for haven’t been opened up, and have probably been deserted for the last twenty-five years.’

  A thin sheen of sweat had formed on Wright’s face. A male steward offered him a cold towel with a smile and Wright accepted it gratefully. ‘What sort of state are they going to be in?’ he asked. ‘Won’t they have collapsed?’

  ‘Shouldn’t have,’ said Bamber. ‘The earth is mainly soil and clay, but it doesn’t soak up water so most of the time it’s as hard and dry as brick. It’s softer during the rainy season, which is when the VC did most of the digging, but at this time of the year it’s rock hard. It’s perfect for tunnelling: it doesn’t turn to mud, yet it doesn’t crumble. The water table is about fifty feet below the surface, so they don’t flood. The network we’re going to is more than ten miles from the Iron Triangle, so it should have escaped the bulk of the B-52 bombing. Even so, the tunnels were so well built that even a bomb from a B-52 would only affect the upper levels.’

  ‘I don’t understand this business about levels,’ said Wright.

  ‘I’ll be able to show you better on the map,’ said the FBI agent. ‘But basically the upper levels were communication tunnels, linking villages, firing posts and all the trapdoor entrances. They were usually about ten to fifteen feet down. There are trapdoors leading down from the communication levels to the second level, about thirty feet below the surface. That’s where they had sleeping chambers, air-raid shelters, training rooms and hospitals. Even further down, forty or fifty feet, were the command headquarters and storage areas.’

  ‘Sounds like a whole city underground.’

  ‘It was, Nick. At one point there were supposed to be something like twelve thousand VCs based in the various tunnel networks.’

  A stewardess interrupted their conversation, asking th
em to put up their tray tables and to make sure that their seatbelts were fastened as they were preparing to land. Wright wiped his face with the cold towel. He was still sweating. He stared out of the window at the rice fields below and wondered what it would be like to be deep below the surface, crawling through the earth like a tunnelling animal. He shivered.

  Sergio Ramirez and Bernie Hammack were already sitting around a wrought-iron table with cups of coffee in front of them when Doc walked on to the terrace. They had ordered a cup for him and it sat with its aluminium coffee dripper on top of it. He lifted the dripper off and poured milk into the inky-black brew.

  ‘Rooms okay?’ asked Doc. He sipped his coffee. It was bitter and strong.

  ‘Hard to believe it’s Saigon,’ said Hammack. ‘It’s as good as anything in Bangkok.’

  ‘And they speak better English,’ said Ramirez.

  A group of Japanese businessmen were sitting at a neighbouring table, peering at a blueprint. Two Chinese entrepreneurs in polo shirts and Chinos slurped noodles and argued over a balance sheet. Doc could almost smell the money being made. The terrace bar was tacky in the extreme, with garishly painted statues of animals, including two grey elephants and a white horse, standing amid tubs of ornately clipped bushes, and around the perimeter of the roof faded flags fluttered gently in the wind. At the far end of the terrace was a statue of a crouching Oriental archer, drawing back his bow. A Japanese girl posed next to it while her boyfriend snapped away with a small camera.