Koob translated, then turned to Lincoln to translate the responses. “They want guns that will kill the most Pathet the fastest.”
“I’ve got one more thing to show them,” Lincoln said. “Hand me that grenade.”
Koob gingerly passed it over. Lincoln checked to make sure everyone was still well away from the palm, then said, “This is a hand grenade. Here’s how it works.”
He yanked the pin and tossed it at the tree. His aim was true; it hit the lower trunk and dropped to the base. Moments later, with a deafening blast and a roar of flame, the trunk was splintered, leaving only a smoldering, uprooted stub leaning at the edge of a crater.
Lincoln didn’t even have to ask. Every hand in the crowd flew up again.
“You’ll all learn how to use these,” Lincoln promised. “You need to be careful—all these weapons can be dangerous if they’re used incorrectly. If you’re not careful you can accidentally kill your own people. But once you’ve been trained—and demonstrated to me that you can use them well—then we can go out together and use them against the Pathet Lao and the VC.”
Koob translated, and a cheer went up from the throng. Lincoln looked at their faces—eager, enthusiastic, ready to go out and wreak havoc against their ancient enemies.
Many of them had no clue what war was really like. Raised up here in the highlands, they had largely been protected from the conflicts that had raged across Southeast Asia. They would find out soon enough. But first they had to learn which end of the guns to hold and which to point, how to aim them, how to control the weapons when they tried to kick out of their hands. They had to learn how long to hold a grenade before throwing it and how far to throw to keep themselves and their comrades safe.
It would be up to him to train them. And he had to do it fast, because the war wasn’t getting any shorter. The children of Vang Khom would get their school, but for the men and older boys, Lincoln was the only teacher they’d get.
22
* * *
In the mornings, they worked on the windmill and laid the pipe. In the early afternoons, they drilled, practicing the combat techniques Lincoln taught them. After the day’s worst heat, they had target practice.
After dinner, on the day the windmill first operated the pump and brought water from the well into the village and beyond, to the fields, Sho came to Lincoln’s longhouse. He was sitting at a bamboo table the villagers had built for him, perusing aerial photos Donovan had sent, via Corbett, showing the location of a Pathet Lao base on the Plain. When she entered, he turned the photographs over on the table and rose.
“I want to thank you for everything you do for us,” she said. “The school, the well. Teaching the men how to make war. You are like a . . . I do not know. Like a big man in our village. Like a hero.”
Lincoln shook off the praise. “I’m just doin’ my job, Sho.”
“I think you do more than your job, Lincoln. Those poppies we grow—you said they will bring riches to Vang Khom. Is that also your job?”
Now that the irrigation system was up and running, the villagers could start cultivating the poppies. They would bring wealth, though Lincoln wasn’t sure he wanted to explain to Sho what the end product would be.
“In a way,” he said. “I’m supposed to help the village. Not just to fight the communists but to thrive, to be self-supporting after the war. So I’m doing what I can.”
She crossed the space between them and put her hands on his arms. “Well, you are an . . . impressive man.”
“Sho,” he said, feeling like a fool before he even launched into his sentence. He’d had a feeling this moment would come, and he had gone back and forth on how to handle it. She was mixed race, like him. Like him, she had never known her own father. She was undeniably smart, and in their conversations she had come across as utterly genuine. “You’re a beautiful woman. One of the most beautiful I’ve ever known. You’re brilliant, and I think you’re a great teacher for those kids, and . . . ah, goddammit, I don’t even know what to say. I want you like I’ve never wanted anyone. But if you’re gonna offer yourself to me, I want you to do it because you want me, not because you feel like it’s your duty, or because you have to thank me on behalf of the village.”
“You like me?” she asked, a smile forming on her lips. “You want me?”
“Hell yes, I like you. And yes, I want you.”
“I want you, too,” she said, running her hands up his biceps to his shoulders, then over his broad chest. “Not for the village, Lincoln. For me.”
“You sure?”
“I am . . .” She struggled for the words, then continued. “I am more sure than I have ever been.”
Pressing her hands flat against his chest, she leaned into him, tilting her face up toward his. Even on tiptoe, she couldn’t reach his mouth, so he lowered his neck, wrapped his strong arms around her, and held her close. Her body was warm, supple, her curves as firm and comfortable against him as he had hoped they would be. He brought his lips to hers, tentatively at first, then, when she responded, hungrily. He felt her tongue slip between his teeth, and he thought, She did learn some things from the French. Then her hands were all over him, and his ran down her back to her taut behind, drawing her even closer, and he forgot to think at all; he only felt.
• • •
He didn’t wake until the morning, when he realized she had slept in his arms all night, her head against his chest. The first thing he thought was that he wanted some more of what they’d shared the night before. The second thing—delayed considerably by the urgency of the first—was of the photographs he’d been studying before she had come to his door.
The Pathet Lao had built a base near the intersection he was supposed to be working to clear, and according to the pictures Donovan had sent, they were busy expanding it. Corbett had delivered the photos on the same trip that he brought the seeds, and with them, he’d had a message from Donovan.
“The head gook at the camp is this Laotian warlord named Colonel Phan Phasouk, Donovan says. He’s trying to become a major player on the Pathet side, and he claims he’s gonna secure the crossroads and hold it, no matter what. Donovan says you’ve gotta take out that camp, man. If you hit it hard before he can build it up more and bring in more men, maybe you can give old Phan second thoughts.”
“My guys aren’t combat-ready,” Lincoln had protested.
“This ain’t me talkin’, brother. I’m just tellin’ you what the man said. Donovan was pretty clear. He said the brass wants you to mount an op ASAP. The longer you wait, the stronger they’ll get.”
“Tell him—”
“You got a radio, man. You want to get crosswise with that cat, tell him yourself. I wouldn’t want to be on Donovan’s wrong side.”
He had given Lincoln the photographs and pointed out what Donovan said looked like the weakest points in Phan’s defenses. The trouble was, none of Phan’s theoretical weaknesses were as meaningful as Lincoln’s biggest weakness—a sixty-man platoon that had never seen combat. Most of the guys were getting pretty accurate with their weapons, on a shooting range. That was different than going up against people who were more experienced and trying to kill them. Lincoln had considered live-fire exercises, making the men crawl on their bellies while he fired over their heads, but had decided they weren’t even ready for that yet. The last thing he wanted was for one of them to panic and get killed before they ever saw combat.
Now he was being told to rush them into harm’s way. He had been studying the maps, trying to formulate a plan with some modicum of chance for success and the lowest likelihood of casualties. Then he had spent the night with the most exotic, fascinating woman he’d ever met, and it had all flown out of his head.
Sho got up and started putting her clothes back on. “I am late for school,” she said. “The children will be wondering where I am.” With a mischievous grin, she added, “The ones who don’t already know.”
“You think they know?”
“No
thing remains secret in a village this size, Lincoln. By now, all the adults know. Probably the children, too.”
“They gonna be upset?”
“They will wonder why you waited so long. If they knew what I know about you now, they will be happy for me.”
“What you know . . . ?”
“I already told you,” she said. “You are a big man in village.” She stepped close, gave his crotch a firm squeeze, kissed him, and headed out the door.
• • •
He returned to the photographs and the dilemma they represented: How to take out Phan’s camp with the very limited, untested resources he had? He didn’t even know how many soldiers Phan had. At this point, he was hesitant to go up against the handful they had seen by the jars that day, before Donovan’s departure, and he had to assume that was only a small part of the Pathet force.
First things first. He knew some of the men were skilled hunters. That implied the traits of patience and stealth, two attributes useful in scouts. He went to find Koob, first looking at the man’s house, then at the village center. Everywhere he went, people snickered or openly laughed, and a few made remarks he could only assume were obscene. Finally, one grabbed his right arm with his left hand, bent the right at the elbow, made a fist with that and held it up straight. That needed no translation; Sho had been right about word traveling fast.
He found Koob at the well, explaining windmill maintenance to a couple of the other men. When he saw Lincoln, a wicked grin crossed Koob’s face. “You like her?” he asked.
“Who, Sho? Of course I do.”
“Good. She is much liked here,” Koob said. “Be good to her.”
“I intend to, but I didn’t come for romantic advice. I need a few scouts to go into the Plain of Jars with me. Who’s the best hunter in the village?”
“My father is the best,” Koob said.
“I mean of the young men. Ones who can make it down the mountain, spy on a Pathet camp, and come back up. Preferably at least one who can speak some English.”
Koob pondered the question for a moment. “Burlee,” he said. “And Pos. Burlee is the best hunter, but Pos knows English.”
Lincoln knew the names and thought he knew which villagers they belonged to, but he wasn’t sure enough to seek them out by himself. “Bring them to me,” he said. “We have to leave this afternoon.”
“Is it dangerous?” Koob asked.
“Very dangerous. We need to look at the camp so we can decide how to mount an attack. So this mission is dangerous, and after it’s over, then it gets more dangerous.”
“Good,” Koob said. “The men have been waiting for danger. That means it’s closer to time for killing some Pathet.”
“Oh, we’re close,” Lincoln said. “We’re so damn close I can just about taste it.”
23
* * *
Burlee didn’t live up to his name, or what it would have implied in English. He was one of the smallest men in the camp, barely five feet tall and likely could have held on to two ten-pound dumbbells and still weighed in at less than a hundred pounds. If not for the lines etched deeply in his face, Lincoln would have taken him for one of the teenagers. Pos was bigger, broad-shouldered and deep-chested for a Hmong.
They met Lincoln at his longhouse in the late afternoon. Pos brought a spear along, but Lincoln took it from his hand. “You won’t need that,” he said. He handed each man an AR-30 and a few magazines, then, realizing their loincloths and loose shirts didn’t give them any way to carry those, found web belts and canteen covers for them in the supply stash he was building. He gave each man two canteens as well, for water, but the spare covers were for carrying magazines. Each would hold seven or eight, as opposed to the two or three that fit into a regulation ammo pouch. He helped Pos strap on a knife, but on Burlee it had to go around his calf because the strap wouldn’t cinch tight enough to stay on the man’s pencil-thin ankle.
Lincoln wore his usual black uniform, with two canteens of his own, a couple of spare covers for ammunition, and a few grenades. At his hip he had a .45, and his survival knife was strapped to his ankle. His pack held some containers of rice and a medical kit that he devoutly hoped he wouldn’t need to use.
“We’re going down into the Plain of Jars,” he explained. “And we’re going to go to a Pathet camp down there. Not to go in, just to watch. We’ll try to count how many men they have and see what their defenses are like. Do you understand that?”
Burlee looked at him, stone-faced, but Pos nodded. “Yes. I will tell him.” He spoke a quick sentence in Hmong that didn’t sound like it could have conveyed half of what Lincoln had said. At the end of it, Burlee nodded. “He understands,” Pos said.
“You sure you told him all that?”
“I told him everything.”
“Okay. We’re not going down to fight them, just to have a look. The main thing is not to let them see us. Got that?”
“We understand,” Pos said.
Lincoln regarded Burlee, whose face remained blank. He wasn’t sure the man had the slightest idea what was going on. He could have been a department store mannequin—the kind they used in the boys’ section.
“All right,” Lincoln said. “Let’s go.”
• • •
By the time they reached the Plain, the sun had set. The moon was just a sliver of fingernail overhead, with wispy clouds drifting across it now and again. Soon, clouds would be the norm and the monsoon rains would drench the land. Lincoln was glad that hadn’t started yet. Coming down those switchback trails in the dark was bad enough; contending with them when they were slick with mud would be a nightmare.
He had studied the aerial photographs until he’d memorized every detail that could be discerned from them, and he had drawn his own rough sketch of the Plain and the junction of the two main roads that cut through it. The camp was a few kilometers beyond where the first set of jars stood. It had been carved from a thickly forested area, and the vegetation around it had been scalped to the dirt to provide clear lines of sight and fire from inside the fence. Lincoln had been able to discern bunkers at regular intervals along the wire and square objects that might have been guard towers at the northwest and southeast corners.
They cut through the field of jars, which looked even more strange and forbidding in the scant moonlight. He supposed New Bordeaux’s traditions surrounding death, including funeral parades with brass bands and burial in aboveground sarcophagi, would seem just as odd to the people who had built these as the jars did to him.
A couple of clicks north of the jars, they descended a gentle slope into a scattering of bamboo and trees that quickly turned into full-blown jungle. Game trails cut through it, so machetes weren’t required—which was good, because they hadn’t brought any. Hacking one’s way through jungle brush pretty much destroyed any hopes of a silent approach, and secrecy had to be the watchword on this mission.
He was beginning to wonder if he had misjudged the distance to the camp when he spotted lights twinkling through the screen of trees. For a few minutes, he was afraid they were just stars, but as they got closer, they resolved into the lights of the camp. Once he was certain about that, he stopped the others.
“There it is,” he said. “We have to be really careful here. They probably don’t have sentries outside the wire, but they might. And the clear space around the outside is probably mined, so we stay off it. We won’t leave the cover of the forest.”
“Okay,” Pos said.
“Tell Burlee.”
“He knows.”
“How does he know? I just told you. Tell him.”
Pos shrugged and said something to Burlee, who nodded once. Lincoln realized Pos might have just said, “Clay is one freaky-ass motherfucker,” and Burlee’s response would have been the same. He resolved to work harder to learn some Hmong, so he could know that his words were being appropriately translated or he could deliver instructions directly.
Not really satisfied but unsure what
other options he had, Lincoln started toward the lights. He moved silently down the narrow game trail. Every dozen feet or so, he checked his six, because the Hmong men were so quiet he wasn’t sure they were still back there. They were, though, and in that manner, they made their way to the tree line.
The camp looked much as he had pictured it from the photos. Two tall fences surrounded it, the outer one chain link topped with barbed wire and the inner one ten strands of closely spaced barbed wire. Concertina wire was stretched along the ground in between. Wooden watchtowers rose just above the eight-foot fence at the corners he had identified, and machine gun emplacements protected by sandbag walls were where he’d expected them. Maybe fifty yards of cleared ground separated the trees from the first fence.
He saw the glow of cigarettes in various places—in the towers, moving slowly between darkened buildings—but except for a few soldiers standing in the occasional pools of light, he couldn’t see many actual people. Six long, one-story wooden buildings were probably barracks, which he judged could have held up to thirty people each, but from their position there was no way to know if they were even occupied, much less how sparsely or jam-packed.
Lincoln checked his watch. A little after three in the morning. If they waited for a couple of hours, the sun would rise and the camp would come to life. At that time, he could get a better idea of the force size.
Of course, the people in the camp would also have a much better chance of spotting them. That was a risk they’d have to take, he decided.
“We’re gonna stay here until it’s light,” he told Pos. “So we can get a look at them when they wake up. Tell Burlee.”
“I will tell him.” Again, Pos said something unintelligible, and Burlee nodded once. He seemed to have no opinions of his own about anything. Lincoln could have told him—through Pos—that his legs were on fire, and he would have nodded once and stood there, stone-faced.
“Let’s get off the trail,” Lincoln said. “Into the trees. I don’t want to be in the way if a tiger or something comes through, and I don’t want to take the chance that the Pathet will look this way and see us in the open.”
Mafia III Page 14