The Chinese Agenda

by Joe Poyer

  Either way, all ideas of completing the mission were now irretrievably lost; on that they all agreed. Their overriding concern was now to get themselves out alive, a feeling to which Gillon heartily subscribed. Roped

  together once more to avoid losing each other in the heavy snow, the four men headed in the direction of the Khalik Tau.

  Gillon led them deeper and deeper into the forest as the hours lengthened. The ground had begun to slope steadily downward toward the first of the low-lying river valleys well to the east of the rendezvous locations. Occasionally they crossed wide clearings in the trees but could see nothing but swirling snow around them. Not once did the snow ease and Gillon knew that the snowfall of the night before had only been a prelude to this blizzard. He was also aware that they were now down to one final day's rations and unless the snow let up soon there would be no chance of getting a plane in to pick them up tonight. If that happened and the Reds picked up their trail again, they stood a good chance of never leaving the Tien Shan alive. Only once during the long afternoon did they stop and then only long enough for Leycock to rig the radio and Dmietriev to report to Ala Kul that Rodek had been killed and that they were being driven eastward by Chinese ski troops. Of the last, Gillon had absolutely no doubt. The Chinese, now that they had been seen, would never end the hunt until they were killed or captured. Gillon knew that they would certainly guess they had gone over the ridge and into the valley rather than attempt to skirt the ridge above the canyon and double back. It was the only way open that allowed even the meagerest chance. Even now, he was sure that at least one party of Chinese troops was pushing on fast to be down into the valley ahead of them when the snow should let up. He also knew that as soon as the weather moderated, more troops would be parachuted in to surround them. They were, in effect, in the center of a slowly tightening noose and their only hope was to outrun the far side.

  Dmietriev signed off and while Leycock replaced the radio, Dmietriev translated the message.

  `There has been no word at all for two days from our contact. Moscow reports that a battalion of ski troops has been moved into this area and that a second battalion is also being brought in.'

  'Oh, Christ,' Gillon muttered.

  'The weather report is equally bad. That high pressure area has moved down out of the Arctic sooner than they had anticipated. We can expect snow and blizzard conditions for at least another two days. They suggest that we hide somewhere until the snow stops.'

  'Nuts,' Gillon snorted. 'We do that and with one whole battalion already looking for us . .

  . we wouldn't stand a chance.'

  Dmietriev shrugged. 'Perhaps . . . but then, in this snow, they will not find us anyway.'

  Stowe had been listening to the argument and now he leaned forward and stared hard at Gillon. 'Dmietriev is right. We need to find somewhere to camp . . . the gooks won't be able to find us in this snow.'

  'You keep thinking of them as gooks and we'll be dead before you know what's happened,' Gillon snapped back. 'These aren't guerrilla soldiers, half-starved and as much concerned with finding something to eat and a place to sleep as finding us. These are trained mountain troops. You saw how neatly they sprang that ambush on us a couple of hours ago . . . they may not be able " to track us during the blizzard, but it won't take them long to find us after the snow stops. If we don't get as far away from this area as possible, we'll never get out alive.'

  'He's right,' Leycock said unexpectedly. 'Don't forget one thing. No one has heard from this mysterious contact we are supposed to meet. In both Moscow and Washington . . .

  and probably Peking, and every other goddamned capital in the world . . . they know by now that there was no one at either rendezvous site to meet us. As far as they are concerned, the mission is a failure. And if you think they are going to exert themselves to get us out ... you're crazy.'

  'That's nonsense,' Stowe interrupted. 'The last thing in the world the United States wants is for us to be caught here ...'

  'Exactly,' Gillon interrupted in turn. 'Think it out, man! We've failed, the mission has failed. No one gains anything? Of course the United States doesn't want us caught . . . but the Russians, there's another matter. If the Chinese take us, then the Russians have a propa-ganda victory at least. Americans captured by Chinese soldiers while on espionage mission in Chinese territory. Think how that'll sound. The Russians will have gained, even if no one else does.'

  'Wait just a moment .

  Dmietriev began angrily.

  `Shut-up, Colonel . . . can't you see it? You are as expendable as the rest of us. There never was a Colonel Andre Dmietriev with the GRU . . . or at least there isn't now. If we don't get out of here alive or without being captured . . . you have suddenly become one very un-person.'

  Gillon watched the Russian's face, as he spoke, go from anger to thoughtfulness to apprehension. Certainly well acted, Gillon thought. And he had no doubt that if things worked out as he had just described, that Dmietriev had already thought them through and arrived at the same conclusion . . . in fact, Gillon suspected, Dmietriev's orders probably covered just such a contingency. But he wondered. Just what arrangements had the Americans made to counter any such Soviet duplicity? There was no honor among thieves, or among governments who thought they were competing for survival, for that matter. Whatever the arrangements were, they had died with Jones.

  A heavy silence fell over the four men as they considered the implications of the latest turn of events. The snow swirled wildly through the trees in time to the wild keen of the wind. It settled on the folds of their snowsuits and the mounds of their- packs, on their carbines and faces until eyelashes and eyebrows, moustaches and beards were covered with white frosting.

  'We have no other choice but to keep moving,' Gillon said- finally. 'The border is thirty miles west, straight-line distance from where we sit . . . and you can bet your boots that the Chinese will have a good half of their available forces between us and the border, just watching for us to try. Half of the rest will be concentrated in a line north of us to the next nearest border crossing and the rest will be marching as fast as they can to get around in front. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by going any further east . . .

  twenty miles more and we run out of mountains and in the high desert they'll pick us off in no time. So we go south in an end run and hope that their football strategy is damned rusty.'

  The others slowly nodded agreement in silence and once more they started out again.

  Gillon led the way. compass always in his hand, as they negotiated the thick forest and occasional change in terrain. By late afternoon, the downslope became definite once more and Gillon was sure they were nearing the Chiran-toka River.

  As they descended, the forest grew thicker until, at times, it was almost impenetrable.

  The terrain here was rugged in the extreme, full of glacially deposited boulders and fallen trees that often forced extensive. detours, until Gillon was no longer sure of anything but that they were still moving downslope. As they descended from the ten-thousand-foot plateau, breathing began to come easier and as Gillon had counted on, they revived somewhat to remain just this side of exhaustion awhile longer. If the slope had been uphill for any distance, he was certain they would have all collapsed within an hour.

  The one point in their favor, he realized, was that they were professionals; each of them had been in similar situations before where they were required to exert themselves to the utmost, long after other men would have collapsed. They knew, each and every one of them, that the stakes were no less than their lives. And while they might differ as to the approach to be taken in extricating themselves from the depths of the Tien Shan, they would each push on until exhaustion forced total collapse. Not until then would they stop. Gillon knew this and was depending first on their strength, and secondly on their desperation to keep them going. There was also the chance that by now, the blizzard had become too much for the pursuing troops and that they had holed up.
He had meant every word he said to Stowe about not underestimating the Chinese. But that did not prevent him from reckoning on their underestimation of them to save their lives.

  At 1800 hours, they stopped and cooked a hasty, hot meal, rested for thirty minutes and continued the march

  into the night. The trees had thinned considerably by the time they reached the mid-slopes of the valley, making travel somewhat faster. Gillon calculated that it was still eight miles to the river; his goal was to cross and march deep into the forest on the far side before they stopped for sleep.

  Silently they marched on, and in the faint light from his shielded flash, the vague slope to the land was no longer apparent; there was only the white, continuously moving circle of hypnotic light that preceded them, broken occasionally by a tree trunk or the top of some bush barely thrusting wiry branches above the snow. His snowshoes followed the trailing edge of the circle of light, which itself was guided by the compass needle, and Gillon pushed on, knowing that he was half hypnotized by its bobbing glare, but not caring because it made it that much easier to drag himself forward.

  There was no longer any doubt in Gillon's mind that Jack Liu and his people were dead or captured and that they were now completely on their own. His analysis of their situation earlier was, he knew now, the only accurate one. Unless they could be picked up without exposing the hand of the Soviet Union in this whole affair, they would be abandoned. At the very least, the Soviets would gain the disintegration of the SinoAmerican rapprochement.

  He wondered as they trudged along just how the Reds had taken Liu. However it had been, it would not have been an easy task. The wind swirled the icy snow crystals around him, but for just a moment, he felt again the sun beating down on his back and tasted the dry, gritty dust and felt the grinding pain in his legs. For three hours they had taken turns in relays, pounding away at his leg muscles, and the cramps that twisted and tugged at his strapped legs were almost more than he could bear. Every fifteen minutes, they stopped while an officer, a tiny old man with a wispy moustache and a pleasant smile, asked him politely in French if he had reconsidered and would now tell them where the ambush was to take place. Each time he had shaken his head, his mouth, nostrils and eyes full of the talcum-like red dust that covered the narrow trail on which he

  lay. The sun and the thirst and the fact that he knew that they would go on like this until he was dead .. . made it a certainty that he would talk eventually. They were clever at their trade, these Pathet Lao regulars. They knew how to adjust their torture to avoid pushing him into insanity with pain, knew how to keep him balancing on the edge of agony until he either told them what they wanted to know or died. And Gillon knew that he would never last long enough to die; no one could, unless he was insane to begin.

  Time after time they had stopped and he had shaken his head and the officer had dribbled a bit more liquid from the canteen near his face so that he could smell the water as it disappeared into the dust.

  Then had come a moment when the rifle butt had not fallen. He had been counting the blows, thirty per minute, and then they changed off to the other leg. Fifteen changes and the officer asked his question and the water dripped into the dust near his face. They had not varied the routine in three hours. He had raised his head in puzzlement, but could no longer see clearly, and for a long moment, the officer's twisted face had confused him.

  Then he heard the snapping of small-arms fire and thudding feet around him. He saw camouflage uniforms running from the growth along the trail and Jack Liu was in front, pistol in one hand and knife in the other. The pistol fired twice and he fainted.

  When he awoke, it was long after dark and he was being jolted through the jungle on a stretcher sling. He could just see the faint outline of the carrying pole, and, then moonlight flooded everything as they crossed a clearing that marked the beginning of the hills. The swaying of the stretcher made him sick and he vomited.

  Someone whispered and the column halted and he was laid carefully on the ground. The moonlight was bright enough to show that it was Liu bending over him.

  `How are you feeling, Bob ... ?'

  In answer, Gillon choked and gagged once more and Liu put an arm around his shoulders and lifted his head to ease the reflex. After it had passed, Liu wet a cloth and bathed his face, then carefully poured water into the palm of his hand and urged Gillon to drink.

  'Can you hold out until we reach the camp . . . ? I'll be able to get some morphine for your legs ...

  Gillon tried to answer but found that he could not work his lips enough to form words, nor could he force any sound at all past his aching throat. He nodded his head and Liu spread the cloth over his eyes and ordered the column forward once more.

  For hours they traveled, but always uphill. He floated in and out of consciousness and he thought he remembered a period of delirium when he tried to call out for help, but he was never sure whether he managed any sound or not. For hours they traveled until at last he could no longer find the pale glimmer of moonlight through the cloth and he must have slept deeply then, because there was bright sunlight under the trees when he awoke once more.

  An old Meo woman sat near him, fanning away the flies and when he turned his head to look at her, she stared back without emotion. The fan moved steadily, never missing a beat, and after a bit she went back to staring at the distant hills, ignoring him so completely that she might have been fanning herself.

  His head was propped on a hard pillow and he could look around him. After a few minutes, everything slid into focus and he recognized their base camp high in the hills near the North Vietnamese border. After a few minutes, an American walked across the compound toward him. It was no one that Gillon had ever seen before, and although dressed in a pair of khaki slacks and open-necked sport shirt, the pistol strapped to his waist indicated that he was well aware that there was a war on. The man stopped beside his stretcher and stared down at him, a friendly grill on his face.

  'How you feeling, buddy?' He did not wait for an answer but- squatted down, raised the blanket and studied Gillon's legs.

  'Not too bad for the beating you took,' he answered his own question. 'Not bad at all. You go out today and they'll be able to give you some decent care in Tokyo.'

  'How bad are they?' The words came out in an awkward croak but Gillon was surprised that he could

  speak at all, the way his throat ached. The memory of the trail and the long trek came back in -an instant's searing pain.

  `Like I said, not bad at all. Your legs are going to be as tender as hell for a month or so, but I don't think there'll be any permanent damage.'

  The intense blue sky and the heat were combining to rob him of consciousness again and for a long time afterward he was never sure whether he had heard the story from the CIA doctor or had dreamed it all.

  He had been leading a scouting mission, ahead of his band of Meo tribesmen, up near the border. Liu was one of those nameless and unidentifiable people who came, stayed awhile and disappeared, all ostensibly working for the Laotian royalist government, as was he, but usually as a matter of convenience only. A Chinese had appeared one day, introduced himself as Jack Liu and presented all the proper credentials. Since then, he had become an invaluable member of Gillon's unit and a close friend. This particular day they had received word that a combat unit, fresh from rest and refit in North Vietnam, was moving down one of the thousands of pathways that made up the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

  Gillon's assigned task was to intercept, destroy and return with prisoners for interrogation. Accordingly, they had moved out and set up their ambush. Gillon and one guide had moved carefully up the trail to try to obtain a firsthand look at how large and well equipped was the force they would be facing. Either the guide had betrayed them, or else had been taken by surprise and killed, as Gillon suddenly found himself surrounded by black-pajamaed Pathet Lao troops.

  Perhaps, Gillon thought long afterward, someone else would have figured that Gillon had been take
n and made to talk . . . it being axiomatic that anyone captured by the Pathet Lao would talk or die. By rights, Liu should have withdrawn and quickly, before he found himself the victim of a similar ambush. Instead, Liu had sent the main body back toward the hills in an apparent retreat, but had moved quickly with a handful of men across and around south of the trail until he had found Gillon. A surprise attack had killed or routed

  the Pathet Lao. Later that day, a helicopter flew him out to an airfield in Thailand and the next thing he remembered was the soft freshness of the sheets in the Tokyo hospital. He had not seen Liu since that night on the trail. In spite of that, he knew Liu had risked his life for him and that was a bond not easily forgotten. Yet tonight it had been broken for him and there was nothing, not a damned thing, that he could ever do about it.

  Shortly before midnight, they reached a depression in the snow that became a wide, flat surface and he knew they had reached the river. They had come down through thick stands of aspen, clambered over a sharp dip and edged out onto a smooth surface nearly a quarter of a mile wide. On the far side was an identical dip and again, more aspens. The ground climbed sharply upward to the beginnings of the spruce forest. Barely able to keep his eyes open and his feet moving, Gillon trudged on without thought of rest now, knowing that if they stopped, they would never go on again.

  For another hour they climbed higher and higher until the ground crested and flattened.

  Gillon paused, breathing heavily, and shone his flashlight around. They were deep into the trees again and he was certain that they had passed beyond the tightening circle of Chinese troops. If his assumption was correct, then they stood a chance once more.

  They stumbled on until they found a small clearing. In the swirling snow, the flashlight was insufficient to show details, but even so the clearing appeared suitable for their needs. Tall spruces rose straight from the floor of the forest to hide their crowns in the gloom above. Gillon guessed that they roofed together about sixty feet or so above the ground and that would provide all the cover from air search they would need.