“They picked the right man this time, for a change. So, now that we’ve got Driffter in sight, can we collaborate on this?”
“Collaborate on what?” I asked. I eased the pressure on his throat.
“Killing him, of course. Isn’t that your mission too?”
“Why does the KGB want to kill Driffter? I’d think you guys would like the idea of his turning renegade and selling U.S. arms to the Commies.”
“We loved it. In fact, we sent a couple agents to see if he might want to draw some pay from our side. He’s a superbly effective field man, and we are always on the lookout for good double agents.”
“So, what happened?”
“He killed both of them. Or at least so we assume, as we never heard from them again after they contacted him. One was a good friend of mine, a former classmate. KGB policy, as you know, is to avenge our agents. Otherwise, people might get the idea they can trifle with us. Say, mind if I sit up? These rocks you’ve got me pinned on are sharp.”
I got off his chest. Grotesqcu presented the same sort of problem I had with Driffter: now that I got him, what was I supposed to do with him? It wouldn’t have bothered me if somebody killed Driffter. I had to admit the thought had crossed my mind that the world would be a better place without him. The trouble was, he was my only ticket home. “Okay, supposing we took out Driffter, what then? How do the girl and I get out of here?”
“We Russians have helicopters too, you know. Now that the Khmer Rouge has taken over, my side can operate aircraft in this zone easily enough. One of our choppers is standing by, waiting for a radio call. They’d be here in a few minutes.”
And then the KGB would have their hands on Jake Fonko, CIA super-agent? Didn’t sound like a promising future. “What would be my part in this?” I asked.
“All I need is a clear shot at him. Look, I can’t afford to fail at this mission. You’re on the inside. Set him up for me? Ten seconds anywhere within 500 yards and he’s mine.”
“How long do I have to think about this?” No answer. I felt where he’d been. Nothing. He’d slipped away into the darkness. I rolled aside, fast. Whonk! Something heavy landed where I’d been. I’d caught him with no weapon, but that wouldn’t last long. I didn’t fancy fighting him in the dark—why push my luck? I sprang to my feet and hightailed it back through the ravine. At least I didn’t have to sneak silently on the return trip. Once out of the brush and onto the flat ground, I was safe. With my yellow hat on, I’d draw no fire, but Grotesqcu would be a sitting duck for those sniper scopes. And nobody could move around those jungle hillsides in the dark. Grotesqcu would bother nobody tonight. No reason to report this to Driffter right away. Soh Soon had waited up for me, and was relieved to see I’d come back okay. No reason to tell her just now either. I’d decide what to do after I saw how tomorrow shaped up. Right then a good night’s sleep was what I needed.
At 0547 hours a rapping at our door aroused us. I opened it to find Driffter standing there in the gray dawn light. A light drizzle dampened the steps. “Hey, up and at ‘em,” he said amiably. “You folks sleep all right? Guards told me you were out prowling around for a while. Everything okay?” Just fine, we told him. “We’ll be taking off in a few minutes,” he informed us.
“Leaving so soon?” I asked. “I thought you said a couple days.”
“Change of plans. Anyhow, a thunderstorm’s moving in. I want to be out of here before it gets heavy. We’ll cut south of it, then go north up the coast to Bangkok. That okay with you?”
“Fine by me, but that’s a long way for a Huey. You have a refueling point?”
“We’ll take the Sea Sprite. Plenty of range. No problem.”
“What do you want us to do?”
“Be packed and ready when I come for you. I’ll get her warmed up first. Then I’ll come by, and we’ll leave straightaway. Don’t put your stuff out on the porch until I get here. And don’t mention about this, to anybody, okay? Come on over, Peggy Sue’s put some breakfast out. Get a bite to eat while you’re waiting.”
Peggy Sue seemed a shade wistful through her smile that morning; she sensed something was up. Notwithstanding, she served a sumptuous breakfast. Driffter drove toward the helicopters in the Continental. A couple minutes later I could hear faintly through the trees a motor turn over and catch, then churn raggedly. We finished our tea and returned to our place to wait. The village seemed agitated—the sound of that motor had awakened concerns.
Presently the Continental pulled up by our steps, and Driffter got out and came up. “Time to go,” he said quietly. “Make it real casual looking, don’t be in any hurry.” He took one of Soh Soon’s duffels and held it low. “Keep your bags out of sight. Slow and easy now.”
He slipped the bags in the back seat, rather than opening the trunk. He gave a couple toots on the horn and waved to Peggy Sue. She waved back. “Just another day at the office,” he mused as he put it in drive. “Nothing to be excited about.” But the people we passed looked apprehensive.
“They act upset,” I remarked. “Some problem?”
“There’s been some loose talk that I’m butting out soon, that’s all. That would make a lot of people here real unhappy. The sound of that chopper warming up this morning has set some of these folks to worrying, I imagine.”
“Any truth to those rumors?”
“You bet, buddy. I’ve been stowing stuff into that chopper for a week now. With the Commies in power all over Indochina, I’m out of business. Back to civilization, and high time. Today’s the goddamned day!”
“Who all’s coming along?” I asked.
“We’re it, Fonko, just us three. No room in a chopper for a crowd. It ain’t no 707.”
“We may have a little problem getting out of here. A KGB agent parachuted onto the apron out by the cliff last night. He wants to kill you.”
“Haw, tell the bastard to get in line,” Driffter guffawed. “He ain’t the only one. How do you know that?”
“I saw him drop while we were out talking. That’s why I went prowling around, to check it out. I know him from Phnom Penh.”
“Where is he now? Any idea?”
“Laying for us out in the ravine, is my guess.” Of course. Cover enough to hide a brigade, and I had to assume Grotesqcu dropped in adequately armed. We’d be a nice, slow clay pigeon for a shoulder-launched rocket as we lifted out of the valley at takeoff speed. We’d arrived at the chopper now. The blades rotated slowly, the motor running smoothly, all ready to take flight. A grinning guard stood by at attention. “A squad of your munchkins could root him out of there,” I suggested.
“Mebbe so,” said Driffter, “but that would take time, and the last thing I want is a bunch of those guys with guns down at this end of the valley. If they thought I was leaving, they’d blow us right out of the sky.”
“How come?” I asked. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Sure it does,” Driffter replied. “They all hate my guts, but they need me. I promised them guards a ride home to Laos. Them two Americans expect to go out with me. The hill folks ain’t exactly satisfied customers, either. If they all thought I was deserting them for good, they’d have nothing to lose by shooting me down. That’s sure what I’d do, if I was them.”
Okay, if that’s the way it was. Then an idea struck me. We might not be able to find Groteqcu, but if we distracted him for just a little while, we could lift out of there. I saw a way to do it. “You’ve got a lot of ordnance up here. Any chance you might have some hand grenades?”
“Frags, or flash-bangs? I’ve got both.”
“Flash-bangs. Where are they?” I told him my idea, and he agreed. What else could we do? He led me over to the caves in the side of the hill, three of them. Behind heavy barred gates were stacked weapons galore. He unlocked one and we went in. I loaded all the pockets in my safari shirt with grenades, wondering how he’d gotten his hands o
n German DM-51s. “I need something to cut those elephants’ tethers. What have you got?” He rustled up a machete with a gleaming edge. Now I had everything I needed.
He was to cover me as I went across the valley in the Continental. He called the guard over, took his sniper rifle from him, and moved out away from the choppers to a protected position from which he could hit the mouth of the ravine, about 200 yards distant. I started across, lurching the car so as to present a difficult target. If Grotesqcu was laying for us, he’d have a hard time hitting me at that range. But I doubted he’d try to stop me. Driffter was his objective, and shooting at me would give away his position.
Saronged natives were readying the elephants for the morning’s work. They, and the elephants, regarded me with curiosity as I pulled up and parked the Continental. I got out, dashed over and chopped tether ropes until all the animals stood freed. Then I ran back by the car, stopped and lobbed a grenade in their direction. Concussion grenades don’t throw fragments very far. They make a hell of a noise but wouldn’t hurt anybody out in the open like that. After the first one went off I tossed another.
The first grenade got the elephants’ attention. The second got them moving. Workers jumped off beasts, flung their gear aside and made fast tracks toward the fields. I hopped into the Continental and followed the trundling elephants a ways, then stopped and tossed another grenade behind them, and then another. Those two explosions inspired them, accelerating their stampede toward the ravine. I chased them with the car further down the funneling valley, pausing after I crossed one of the plank bridges across the stream to get out and peg a final grenade at their big, lumbering butts. The panicky herd added more speed. The lead elephants charged into the ravine, the rest crowding their heels.
I hopped back into the Continental and gunned it across the remaining ground. I slammed it to a halt, rammed it into “park,” piled out and sprinted for the chopper. Driffter was at the controls, hitting the throttle. The munchkin guard lay sprawled nearby. The Sea Sprite heaved up off the ground. Soh Soon leaned out the cabin door, frantically motioning for me to hurry. Looking up, I could see the overhead camouflage canopy straining dangerously downward, the suction of the churning rotor trying to drag it out of the treetops. I burst through the downdraft and clambered aboard as the Sea Sprite tilted forward and started tentatively to draw away toward the open sky.
I looked behind us. My fireworks had drawn an audience. The whole village came storming out of the trees, the two Americans and some munchkin guards in the lead. “Up, up and away!” Driffter roared. The crowd was closing on us. We lurched higher, gaining speed as we cleared the canopy, and headed toward the overcast hanging above the valley mouth. I heard some shots, and then some more. Driffter had left the sniper rifle lying on the cabin floor. I picked it up and braced myself in the open doorway to cover our escape. The silencer did me no good now, noise was what I needed—I wanted to discourage groundfire, not kill people. I wrestled it off the muzzle, tossed it aside and fired a few rounds here and there, sending the pursuing mob scrambling for cover. As I’d figured, Driffter’s munchkins were a bunch of bullies, not soldiers.
As far as I could tell, we didn’t take any hits. We passed above the ravine and out into the clear. The lead elephants had by now reached the apron and stopped at the edge of the cliff. The followers still crashed after them, shoulder to shoulder through the grass and brush, trampling the ravine from one side to the other. The ground fell away below us, and we lofted out over the lowlands, gaining altitude as we chopped our way through a thickening mist.
I scanned the ravine for signs of Emil Grotesqcu, but could make out no trace of him in the chaos and confusion. I thought I saw what possibly could have been a pack and rolled-up parachute, stowed next to a rockpile at the apron’s edge, right about where I must have encountered him in the dark. But we passed over it quickly, and with those elephants stomping around, I couldn’t be sure—might have been my imagination, might have been something left there long ago. Had he been waiting down there to ambush us? I’d never know now.
I felt a little sorry about that elephant stampede—old Mickey Mouse wasn’t really such a bad guy. Damned competent, actually—too bad he worked for the other side. And to make that night jump, all alone, onto that postage stamp apron by the cliff like he did…didn’t that just take a few guts!
Oh well. What difference did it make? The important thing was, the war was over, we’d come through it alive, and we were headed for home sweet home.
9
The edge of the plateau dropped away behind us and Driffter’s little fortress soon became indistinguishable, lost among the jumble of hills and trees in the distance. Then our climb took us up into the overcast, and everything disappeared into a grey fog. “Haw, got some good out of those tuskers after all,” Driffter chortled.
“I thought your workers used them in the fields,” I remarked.
“Oh yeah, they did, but that wasn’t why I had ‘em. We were collectin’ them. The munchkins would bring one in every now and then, strays they found wandering out in the hills. When we got enough for a shipment, I was going to knock ‘em off and sell the ivory. Had a buyer lined up, but it wasn’t worth the trouble for just a few. It was penny ante business anyhow,” he mused. “They can put ‘em to use back there, and welcome to ‘em. I wish ‘em luck.”
Now that we were safely airborne, I turned my attention to Soh Soon. She was sitting on the floor of the cabin with our duffels among an assortment of crates and boxes and loose gear. I could see why Driffter had had trouble gaining speed and altitude for take-off: he’d loaded the cargo space cram-full to capacity. Soh Soon acted agitated. “Jake,” she said, right in my ear so as to be heard over the chopper noise without shouting, “he try go away without you. If you not run so fast, he leave you back there with others.”
“What makes you think so?”
“Soon as you get elephants going, he run back to chopper, shoot guard, get in, tell me to get out and help you. I say no. He real mad, but no time for argue, went to controls and start take off. That why I yelling you to hurry. We got problems, I think.”
“For the time being, we’re okay,” I assured her. “We’re on our way out.” I made a closer inspection of the stuff in the cabin. Driffter hadn’t come away with much by way of personal belongings that I could see. Rather, he’d taken off with all the saleable cargo the helicopter could carry. Packing crates of M16 rifles, and cases of rounds to go with them. A big stack of M72 shoulder-launched anti-tank weapons. Redeye anti-aircraft rockets. Czech grenade launchers and crates of rocket-propelled grenades. Electronics gear. Several sealed wood boxes, contents not indicated but I could pretty well guess what. And the strangest assortment of spare parts I’d ever seen—structural members. But structural members don’t fail. You need spares for working parts—those are the ones that ground you. That was why Driffter’d kept those three Hueys, I’d bet—cannibalize two of them to keep the third one flying.
The spares in the crates didn’t look quite right. They were roughly finished and seemed vaguely out of spec. The paint on them didn’t match—unusual in U.S. military equipment, for which uniformity and interchangeability are key requirements. I picked one up, an angle-iron piece with a bend in it, to have a closer look. It was heavier than it looked—way too heavy. I hefted another, and another. Same story. Felt like they were made of lead… or gold? I banged the edge of one against the edge of another to chip some paint off. Solid gold. The whole box. Several boxes of those structural members. That must have been what those workmen were up to in those handicraft shops in Driffter’s village.
Soh Soon saw the gold, and her eyes went wide, then narrowed as she started doing mental arithmetic… ten pounds per part, and 20 parts per crate, and (count ‘em) 7 crates times (how much was bullion worth per ounce in those days, $200?) equals… too much for me to work out just then… a lot, no doubt. Leave that kind of figuring
to her. The chances were that those wood boxes held heroin, worth more than its weight in gold. The weapons would bring in a good dollar too—plenty of folks around the world were still in the market. Driffter could peddle those tank rippers for $5,000 each, minimum. He was heading home a wealthy man, even if he did leave his Continental back in the hills.
Seeing the weapons reminded me that I still had a couple of those flash-bang grenades stuffed in my pockets. I took them out and stuck them in one of the crates of solid-gold spares, where they wouldn’t bounce around. I pointed them out to Soh Soon, so that she wouldn’t blunder into them. She acknowledged with a nod. No use trying to talk any more than necessary, as the noise drowned everything out. Driffter leaned around the door and asked, “You folks okay back there?”
I heard him, but barely. I squeezed forward through the gap in the cargo and took the co-pilot’s seat. We were clipping along smartly now. We’d climbed above the overcast and were scudding over a vast, cottony carpet, shining a painful white under the clear, bright sun. Off to our right, the glistening pile of thunderhead loomed up thousands of feet above us. There wasn’t another airborne object in sight, bird or plane: we owned the Cambodian sky. “This thing’s got a good ceiling of operations?” I commented.
“About twice of a Huey’s,” he answered. “These Sea Sprites are right nice craft. The navy uses ‘em for search and rescue work, anti-sub, and just about everything else. Utility choppers, ship based, usually. Rugged. Good navigation and communications gear. No armament, but I wasn’t in the combat business anyhow. For workhorse jobs the Huey Iroquois is okay, a little slow, but nobody was sending air power up after me, so that didn’t make no difference, and I had refueling points between my place and Laos. For long hauls you can’t beat this baby—more speed, higher ceiling, twice the range. I was saving it for my homecoming—figuring there might be refueling problems, I wanted to make it all the way out of Cambodia non-stop. Never used this one for routine business runs, didn’t have spares to maintain it. I stripped out a lot of extra equipment, made extra space, to get the max out of her. Good thing I did, too, ‘cause she’s really loaded down right now. Had to crank her up higher than I’d wanted to, getting clear of the hanger, came close to pulling everything down on top of us.”
The Jake Fonko Series: Books 1 - 3 Page 18