by J. B. Hadley
Mike grinned. “These guys have a real feel for drama. Well, I’ll show them the quiet way to do it. Nolan, Richards, you got yourselves an assignment.”
Campbell had chosen the two quickest of his team. He went forward with them in the undergrowth and explained their roles to them, which would change according to which direction the truck was traveling. Nolan crept along a tiny brook and then crawled through a four-foot concrete pipe which carried it beneath the road. He would seek cover as close as possible on the northern side of this culvert. Richards and Nolan could only guess at one another’s positions on each side of the highway, but as long as they were approximately opposite each other and acted at more or less the same time, things should work out.
They waited almost another half hour before they heard the engine of a truck. When it lumbered into sight, it was such a ramshackle antique that Mike hoped Nolan and Richards would let it pass. Unfortunately, they had no signal to communicate this. Their orders were to bag the first truck. The truck was traveling north at about twenty miles per hour, and Mike saw Richards jump from cover, run alongside the truck for a moment, and then pull himself up on the step beneath the driver’s door. Richards shot the man in the face with his Colt and reached in to steer the truck as it wavered and slowed on the highway. Nolan gained entry to the cab from the far side, pulled the driver’s body out of the way, slipped beneath the wheel, and braked the truck to a stop. They immediately ran to the back and checked the canvas-covered interior. They waved to the others and climbed in before any of the peasants traveling on the road approached near enough to identify them as Westerners.
Mike and the other three Westerners climbed aboard unobserved, so far as they could tell. Three of the Hmong who were to do the driving waited for Verdoux to translate Campbell’s instructions for them.
“About seven kilometers north of here—I doubt if this truck’s instruments are working—”
“They might be,” Richards interrupted cheerfully. “It’s a British Leyland, early sixties’ vintage, I suspect.”
Mike smiled. “Have them look at the gas gauge, too. Seven kilometers north, they turn east on a minor road that doesn’t seem to hit any big towns, but goes all the way to the Viet border.” Mike traced the route with his finger before handing the map and money to Andre. “They can buy gas with Thai bahts, and if they won’t accept that currency, the Hmong can shoot them. Get the drivers to understand one thing. I don’t want anyone to see our round-eye faces between here and the Viet border—and I want to get there before dark.”
“Entendu, mon général”
The six mercs and seven Hmong made themselves as comfortable as they could on the bouncing floor of the empty truck, constructed of splintering planks. They took turns at keeping a lookout to the front and rear through rents in the canvas, a duty for which there was no shortage of volunteers, since it was probably more comfortable to stand holding onto the side than sit and absorb spinal shocks through the floor.
Richards was feeling cocky since his capture of the vehicle. He looked out at the impoverished, wild countryside they were passing through and said to Verdoux, “Frenchie, your lot made a proper bollox of this place when you had it as a colony.”
Verdoux’s blood pressure rose visibly. He said nothing.
“I’m serious,” Richards persisted. “Look at the ex-British colonies in this part of the world—Burma, Malaysia, Singapore—they’re all still in the free world. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos … all French and all commie today. Proper fuck-up, I call it.”
Verdoux looked as if he were ready to go for a gun or a knife.
Mike diplomatically intervened. “I could tell you guys to shut up. Or since Andre hasn’t said anything, I’m going to tell you to keep your mouth closed, Larry, while Andre tells us who lives here. It’ll help pass the time if nothing else. Go ahead, Frenchie.”
“Don’t blame the French!” Andre said, which caused laughter and eased the tension. “The Chinese dominated the whole region for about a thousand years. In the tenth century, the Vietnamese shook them off east of the Annamitique Mountains, while to the west the Khmer people—present-day Cambodians—gained control of what we now know as Cambodia, Laos and Thailand. Even today, Cambodians, Laotians and Thais are all closely related in race and language, and are all completely distinct from the Vietnamese. Which is why they hate them. From about the year 1300 on, the Thais became aggressive. They all fought with each other over the centuries, gaining or losing pieces of territory. The place was such a mess by the nineteenth century, all the French did was walk in and say no more warfare. They managed to keep things reasonably quiet until the Japanese swarmed in during the Second World War, just as they did over the British colonies, too!”
“Let me give you facts about Laos today,” Mike said. “At the time the South Vietnamese government in Saigon collapsed in April, 1975, the Laotian monarchy went under. A neutralist coalition government ruled for a short while, but as usual the commies did in their moderate partners and took over. They call themselves the Lao People’s Democratic Party and take their orders from Hanoi or Moscow. In this country right now there are about fifty thousand Viet regulars. The Laotian government has thirty-six thousand troops. So we and the Hmong and a few other misguided souls are taking on eighty-six thousand full-time trained professional soldiers, not to mention peasant militias and spies and so forth! If we get caught here, we can’t expect any help from Washington. The politicians are going about their usual diplomatic bumbling. Know why Washington was so anxious to keep us from coming into Laos? They’re thinking of upgrading the U.S. diplomatic mission in Laos’ capital, Vientiane, to a full embassy. Our mission might upset their afternoon tea party, where they all stand around in pinstripe suits and white gloves saying, ‘Definitely a pleasure to meet you, I’m sure.’ They call that a diplomatic breakthrough, while meantime there may be dozens of poor fucks captured more than ten years ago held captive in bamboo cages just because they are GIs. I say screw the ambassador and his garden party.”
They passed the time laughing, joking, even dozing. They shared their C and K rations with the Hmong, and at least one always kept a wary eye on the passing countryside. They had no trouble buying gas with the Thai bahts from peasants with fifty-gallon drums operated by foot-pedal pumps along the roadside.
“I bet they are charging us too much,” one of the Hmong said to Andre, “because they think we are smugglers. They won’t report us because they want to do business with us again. The Laotians are not good communists. They don’t understand it.”
The truck had been on the road for more than four hours when Bob Murphy shouted a warning, “Roadblock ahead!”
The others jumped to their feet and peered through holes in the canvas cover over the cab. It turned out that roadblock was too strong a word for a soldier standing in the roadway waving a red flag, while his rifle leaned against a fence post fifty yards away. Two other soldiers, both without visible arms, talked with a group of women in a field.
The Hmong drove the truck straight at the soldier in the middle of the road. He got the message fast and threw himself out of its way. Not a shot was fired. They last saw the soldier looking disconsolately after them in a cloud of dust they had raised. The two other soldiers talking to the women had not bothered to turn and look.
Nolan made an obscene gesture with his middle finger back at the lone soldier. Two of the Hmong liked that and practiced the gesture themselves. The others were in good humor at the quick defusing of the potential threat. Except for Campbell. He looked worried and stared moodily out over the tailgate of the truck for some minutes. Then he walked up behind the cab and hammered with his fist on its metal wall. The truck slowed and pulled over. They were on a deserted stretch of road with a crazy tangle of growth on both sides.
Mike jumped down. “You might as well stretch your legs for a few minutes,” he called to the others in the back of the truck. He went forward to the driver. He asked in Vietnamese, “How far do
you reckon to the border?”
The Hmong understood him and climbed out with the map, glad to exercise his limbs. The other two in the cab lit cigarettes and went back to talk to their friends.
“Maybe an hour,” the Hmong said to Andre, who translated.
“You think we should risk staying on the road in the truck?” Mike asked.
Andre interpreted for him. “He says you’re right to stop and think about it. I think he’s afraid that if he says we shouldn’t stay with the truck, you’ll say we should to prove you’re a braver man than him.”
Mike looked up and down the road and weighed the gain against the loss. Stay with the truck, in another hour be done with Laos and into Vietman—meanwhile presenting yourself as a ready, identifiable target that just ran a military checkpoint, assuming those three soldiers had a radio and bothered to use it. Dump the truck, go back to trekking, and add another day, maybe two, to getting out of Laos, plus leaving yourself with low mobility if a general alarm was raised.
Campbell gazed up and down the road, wrestling with his very limited options. He was pleased to see that everyone, including himself, had automatically moved out of the road into the cover of the ditch. A couple of days in the field had brought back gut thinking to the members of the team. Basically he had no choice. Fast transportation was worth almost any risk it involved. They had to keep the truck. There were so few vehicles on this road, there was no great advantage in exchanging this truck for another. He was about to wave everyone back to the truck when he noticed a dark shape out of the corner of his eye.
The chopper swooped down lower over the road, traveling so fast it was upon them before they heard the noise of the engine. The side-door machine gunner stitched a neat row of spurts along the center of the dirt road and through the center of the truck from back to front.
“It’s one of our old gunships they’ve fixed up,” Nolan yelled. “The pilot’s seen us.”
The chopper followed through like a boxer on a haymaker and then swung in a tight circle to come back on their rear and give the side-door gunner a nice view of their backs. They had no cover worth a shit.
“Scatter!” Mike yelled.
Regret flashed across his mind he had decided not to take along the Carl-Gustav M2 shoulder-borne rocket launcher and a couple of rockets because of their weight and cumbersomeness. He had turned down the Redeye heat-seeking guided missile for the same reasons. All he would have had to do with the Redeye was point the missile in the general direction of the chopper, wait till the audio signal informed him that the infrared homing device had locked onto the target, then launch the missile. A booster motor expels the missile from the shoulder-borne tube, the main motor fires after six meters, and the infrared sensor on the missile homes on the heat of the chopper’s engine … End of helicopter.
During the seconds that these regrets were running through Campbell’s mind, his fingers worked the magazine release on his AK47, freed the magazine from its housing, pulled back the bolt to discard the round in the chamber, loaded a special magazine of ballistite rounds, rapped the bottom of the magazine with his weak hand to ensure that it was properly seated, unhooked the HEAT-RFL-75N Energa rifle grenade from his H-harness, mounted it in his rifle, swung the rifle to his shoulder, took quick aim down the barrel …
The men had scattered in all directions to cut down on their casualties from the machine gunner. Only Campbell still stood in the roadside ditch, looking along his rifle at the helicopter bearing down to one side of him and the machine gunner sending forward a raking seam of fire across the ground a few feet off Mike’s right shoulder.
Both the gunner and the pilot saw what Mike was doing and knew they had to move in to take him fast.
Mike took a last aim down the rifle barrel and let loose his one shot into the empty space he figured the chopper would occupy by the time the rifle grenade traveled there. He was blown off his feet by the blast.
The high-explosive antitank grenade had done an aerial job. The others, rifles raised to empty their magazines of small bullets, only 7.62 mm, at the pilot and gunner, or anything they could hit, were blinded by the flash. Then they felt the heat of the explosion on their faces. The sudden blast of hot wind swept by them, bearing deadly jagged pieces of the chopper’s metal fuselage. The sound pressed on their eardrums and painfully invaded their brains. Each man found himself standing alone in the smoke and debris, wondering if he was the only one who had survived. Wreckage burned in the middle of the roadside field.
They were startled when, with half-deafened ears, they heard the truck’s motor start up.
Campbell stuck his head out the cab door and yelled at them, “The engine’s OK! Move your asses! We’re getting outta here!”
A Hmong drove the truck at its maximum speed—about thirty-five mph—along the dirt road, and another sat next to him cradling his rifle. They drove with both cab doors partly open, so they could abandon the vehicle fast when next attacked. They knew they would be. On orders from Campbell, all the canvas covering had been stripped from the truck to give the occupants the 360-degree view of the sky they needed to fend against chopper attacks. They could no longer afford the luxury of concealment. Also, they had gained a fast exit over the wooden sides when it came time to abandon ship. No one had any illusions about what a beautiful target they made aboard the truck.
The road had been climbing steadily, and the mountains and hills were higher, the country wilder. The Hmong seemed vague about where exactly they were, and Mike began to worry about coming up to the border crossing unexpectedly. It could not be far away. Perhaps only a couple of kilometers, at most twelve to fifteen. They descended into a broad river valley and could see the road snaking up into the mountains on the other side. The valley bottom was divided into rice fields, with no cover except for an occasional solitary palm. Although the sun was close to setting, people still stooped in the knee-deep water setting rice seedlings in the earth. They looked up as the truck passed them, more to ease the monotony and straighten their backs than out of genuine curiosity.
“Choppers at three o’clock!” Nolan yelled.
Campbell hammered on the roof of the driver’s cab and the truck slowed. Three helicopters could now be seen plainly, flying a triangle formation over the road, with the lead helicopter covering the road itself and the two others the land on each side. Campbell and his men leaped from the truck. Their only cover was a mud embankment holding back water in a rice field.
The three choppers disappeared behind a fold in the valley. The men had just about enough time to crouch behind the embankment and raise their weapons before the machines popped out of the horizon and came on them faster than an inexperienced man would have expected.
“Never seen this model before,” Nolan muttered.
“Must be a new Russian design,” Murphy agreed. “Faster than a bat out of hell, too.”
“Hold your fire and lie still!” Campbell yelled as the choppers came nearer, like three monster hornets. “They might not see us!”
The lead machine zapped two rockets at the stationary truck, a left and a right from pods attached amidship. For an instant, the two deadly darts were visible in the air in every detail from their rounded nose back to their stabilizing fins.
The truck disappeared in a huge ball of orange light. The ground shook beneath them from the impact, and the brown water slopped back and forth in the rice field like the wake of a distant boat in a muddy inlet.
The noise and wind of the blast masked those of the choppers passing overhead. Then they could hear the flames lapping the wreckage.
“Hold still!” Campbell commanded. “Keep your head down!”
They could tell by the noise of the engines that the choppers were swinging around for another fly-by.
Verdoux roared Campbell’s orders at the Hmong, who obeyed.
Mike eased his eyes above the embankment to gain some idea of the pilots’ intentions. He was fairly sure they had not been seen, but he did
n’t want to be responsible for making his men sitting ducks. A half-kilometer to the west, the three machines hovered, marked by uncertainty. In the rice fields all about, men, women, and children ran in panic, splashing through the water like flightless ducks. The choppers’ engines roared, and they picked up speed as they came in on another pass.
“Stay put!” Campbell yelled.
Verdoux repeated the command in Hmong.
This time the choppers zoomed over the fields and machine-gunned the fleeing peasants. The running workers were tumbled like ninepins and sprawled face down, arms outstretched, floating on the water.
One of the pilots must have come to his senses, realized what they were doing and called off the others, because suddenly they all headed back the way they had come, over the far side of the wide valley.
The panic-stricken peasants were still running in all directions. They avoided the area where they could see the truck burning and thus missed discovering Campbell’s force.
“We need to move in a bit from the road.” Mike pointed to a bank of tall reeds sixty meters away. “We’ll take cover there till dark. Follow me and keep your heads down. Our only chance of not being seen is while they are still panicking.”
As they moved, for the first time the others saw the bodies of the men, women, and children randomly scattered about the fields.
“Jesus, it’s great to be back again,” Nolan said bitterly.
They established themselves in the cover of tall reeds. Campbell ordered the men to eat, whether they felt hungry or not.
“Fucking picnic in a bog with dead kids floating about,” Murphy growled, which Campbell noted as the Australian’s first complaint.
“We move out at dark,” Mike explained, “and keep moving till we’re clear of Laos.”
The sun began to set, and its pink, gold, and orange bars spread rapidly across the sky in the short equatorial dusk. For a moment Mike thought he heard coyotes, but the howls were even more eerie. The sounds made Campbell’s hair stand on end as they came closer and seemed to spread about the fields, encircling them. Mike peered out of the reeds into the gathering darkness.