“Because of your increased activity?”
“One cannot know another’s mind,” Kpa said respectfully.
“This man Hang Tung, he...”
“He has four bodyguards,” Sam said. “He had one but he was killed by a trap set for his master. Now he has four. He’s smart, nervous.”
“Mister Kpa”—Ngoc Minh turned toward the resistance leader—“I need only one of your men for a guide. The village will be easy. But the headquarters will be difficult. Send your squads there.”
“You must”—Sam cleared his throat—“rescue my cousin.”
“It will be done.”
“When?”
“In three days,” Nhel said. “In three days the village will be liberated. Our fighters at the yuon complex will attack first.”
Quietly, almost as if he were a spirit without physical substance, Kpa walked the animal path along the river toward the village. With nightfall, mist had settled amongst the trees, between the bunkers and houses, isolating the area as much as if it had been surgically pared from the earth and set afloat in the ether. Kpa did not crawl through the minefield but walked where his feet told him he’d walked a dozen times before. He did not slither over the berm but stepped slowly through the gap the militia had left, left secure in the knowledge that no one would cross the mined belt between the river and the berm. He did not sneak along the alleyways toward the home of Cahuom Chhuon but strolled the middle of the main street as he’d done dozens of times, strolled to the turnoff, walked to the small angel house before the Cahuom home, said a silent prayer for Chhuon, then relaxed, motionless, awaiting the changing of bodyguards in the courtyard.
To the east the resistance squads had rendezvoused with elements of Von’s 81st Battalion and were being used to assist Von’s yotheas in their preparation of attack and withdrawal routes and of ambush sites in case the NVA attempted to reinforce from the east or in case the headquarters troops attempted to break out or counterattack. Farther east, across the border, the NVA had finally opened the third front of the Nguyen Hue Offensive and was fully committed to battles at Plei Ku and Kontum.
Two hours past midnight Kpa heard the familiar commotion of Hang Tung’s bodyguards. Like a cat he moved. Quickly he leaped from tree to tree within the small family orchard, then to the wall of the house where Hang Tung slept. “Get your rice-bottom up,” Kpa heard a guard grumble. “You’ve snored enough.” “Uhh. Not as much as Mister Committee Member, eh?” “I’d like one night to sleep on his mat.” Kpa glided to the window. A guard would be inside on a mat below the sill. Another across the threshold. “I’d like one night to return to my wife’s mat.”
Kpa waited. When all was again silent, he traced the jamb with his left hand, raised his right foot to the sill, his toes just reaching, then as if a helium-filled balloon, he rose effortlessly. Immediately he separated the curtain, dropped his foot, tenderly felt for the body which he had heard breathing beneath. He felt the mat, dragged his foot to its edge, stepped in. Hang Tung slept by the plaited curtain dividing the central room. His breathing was irregular, spasmodic, as if dreams haunted him. Kpa shuffled toward his symbol of evil. Slower, he cautioned himself. Quicker, his hatred ordered. Suddenly his legs felt as if they were sacks filled tight with a rush of water. He stopped. The guard across the threshold coughed, rolled, sputtered back to sleep.
From his sleeve Kpa removed a bamboo stiletto. Its tip was needle sharp, its edges like razor blades, its entire length soaked in poison made from an extract of wild raisins. Kpa listened carefully. He could not see even an outline of Hang Tung’s form. Which way were his feet? When Kpa descended upon Tung to clamp a hand over his nose and mouth, to ensure silence he needed to know whether Tung slept mouth-nose or nose-mouth from him.
Kpa slid a foot. Then another! His shin contacted the low table and he froze. Something, ajar, a lamp, wobbled. “Umph!” Hang Tung hacked, arched his neck, resettled. Kpa knew. Mouth-nose. He turned ninety degrees to the body, slowly descended, slowly passed his hand up until he felt the heat of exhausted breath. He waited. Inhale, Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Clamp. Hang Tung tried to gasp. Before he could, Kpa’s dagger found the soft tissue beneath his jaw. He drove the dagger in, down through the mouth, tongue, palate and into the brain—exactly as a butcher might kill a chicken. Hang Tung’s body shuddered, first head and shoulders, then arms, hips, legs and feet. Then all movement ceased.
“One slow, four quick! One slow, four quick!” Nang chanted as the main force concentrated on the few strong points. Their attack on the NVA headquarters east of Phum Sath Din followed classic North Viet Namese tactics. The first LP/OPs were knocked out as Hang Tung shuddered and died, two days, not three, after Ngoc Minh had met with the resisters. An hour later every KVM/NVA village in the lower Srepok Valley was under siege and Lieutenant Colonel Nui’s lightly defended headquarters (not a single artillery piece,
AA gun or even mortar had been left back) was being prepped by Krahom 61mm mortars as KK commandos penetrated the perimeter, grenading fighting positions, hitting the internal structures with 57mm recoilless rifle fire and creating general chaos amongst the defenders, POW guards, medics and porters.
“Move! Move! Move! Attack!” Adrenaline surged through every cell of Nang’s body. The rapid barking chorus of his yotheas’ AKs elevated the excitement. “Without this,” he shouted back at a cell of new yotheas as they huddled behind a large tree trunk, “without Angkar, all Khmers are doomed. The Khmer race prevails or vanishes tonight. Move!”
His troops moved. They ran into sporadic return fire, disciplined fire from those few soldiers who remained along the south berm. Within minutes, perimeter pockets of resistance fell back or were flanked and destroyed. The fighting moved deeper into the camp. From the north berm a huge explosion—a bomb to be transported, no Krahom soldier knew where—a fireball flashed, leaped skyward illuminating attackers, defenders, structures. Then blindness in blackness as the concussion blasted outward knocking troops of both armies flat, ripping eardrums, zinging stones, tree splinters, charred jeep shrapnel. Wounding. Killing. “Move!” In the second-long pause following the concussion Nang rallied his fighters. “Through the center,” he ordered. “There, there, there.” Nang pushed yotheas into the gap between the hospital and the main operations bunker. “Duch, get Thevy. Cut it in two.”
“Got it.” Duch radioed the Rabbit Platoon leader of the 2d Company. He monitored others. Nang was too excited to direct; Eng also was too deeply immersed in the direct killing of NVA resistance pockets. Duch radioed orders as if Nang had told him: 3d Company take the operations center, 1st mop up the perimeter, 2d to the hospital complex. “Met Nang!” Duch grabbed the CO’s shirt. “Met Nang. Hawk Platoon is out of ammo.”
Nang paused, looked eerily at Duch. “Have them fall back.”
“Hawk! They’re the recoilless rifle team. Rifle fire can’t penetrate the operations bunker. There’s a company of defenders there.”
“Get Von. The 81st has a recoilless platoon, eh?”
“Yes sir.” Duch smiled and set about with his calls. All about them yotheas were in a destroying frenzy.
Nang ran downhill toward the hospital. Firing was sporadic. He found Rath, the company commander, talking lustily with Puc, the leader of Monkey Platoon. “They’ve no way out.” Met Puc laughed. “First we eliminated those in the upper wards. Now our strugglers have sealed all the exits. They’re working through the caves room by room.”
“Bring me there,” Nang said triumphantly. “Have those standing around collect all the medicine. Police up the weapons.”
“Should we set up our own bivouac?”
“No! We don’t want terrain. Let them have it back so we can trap them here again.”
Nang scurried in through a tunnel opening, down a short corridor and into a large room. The bodies of half a dozen dead Viet Namese orderlies were strewn amid the floor clutter. That of a traumatically decapitated yothea lay on the table in the center of the room, h
is mangled head set upon his chest like some repugnant cancerous growth. Nang smiled broadly at the few yotheas relaxing with the corpses. From a narrow connecting passageway came the muffled sound of small arms. “Have we taken the next room?”
“Oh yes, Met Nang. The next two are ours. It’s the middle one that’s fortified.”
“Fortified?”
“Met Nang.” A small thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy stood. “You remember me?”
“Yes,” Nang said.
“Met Tam. I helped you at Baray.”
“Yes. Yes, I remember.”
“Met Nang, this is too much. Must we kill those who lie helpless?”
“Would you have us leave them to heal and attack us again?”
“I...I would...Could we take them prisoner? Most have been wounded by American bombs. Wounded in the same fight we fight.”
“We fight the same enemy, Tam, but if they win they’ll turn again on Kampuchea. A tiger doesn’t change its stripes because it’s been maimed by an eagle.”
“I just...think...”
“Why is there fortification in the center room?”
Another yothea stepped forward. “It’s their prison,” he said. “That’s what Thevy thinks.”
“Prison! POWs!”
Nang squeezed through the passage to the second room, a large ward in which forty or fifty patients in narrow three-high bunks had been bayoneted. He squeezed through another passage into a third opening, a room with four operating stations. Again there was the litter and stench of death—doctors, nurses, their heads smashed by clubs or rifle butts—and patients, tubes and hemostats removed, allowed to drain.
Nang slowed, took his time. He sauntered about the ward ordering yotheas to confiscate various medical supplies and instruments. The underground facility was more modern than anything Nang could have imagined—better equipped than any operating room he’d ever seen. “What’s this?” he asked, lifting a chromed instrument.
“I don’t know,” Tam said. From the back of the third room came childlike whimpering. Tam glanced up, looking for the source.
Nang grabbed the handle of the instrument he’d found and shook it. The outer chamber began to whirl about the central handhold. Nang smiled. To him the centrifuge was like a shiny toy. Into the narrow slit passage leading to the final room, two yotheas were firing short bursts. Nang turned, turned back. “What’s that crying?” The distraction of the instrument had temporarily broken his drive for immediate conquest.
“There’s a jail cell back there,” Tam said. He had made a brief investigation and now walked past Nang, his head down as if he were about to vomit.
“Stop!” Nang ordered. With the instrument in his claw he motioned for the young yothea to lead him back. Tam covered his nose.
At the back of the surgical ward Nang, Tam and several yotheas stared into two small dungeons. Inside each were perhaps a dozen Mountaineer or Khmer elders. In one the people were dead—drained human bags—rotting in a half-resealed cave. In the other the living huddled, terrified. “Open it,” Nang said to the yotheas. Immediately two ripped the bamboo-slat door apart. The elders cowered farther to the rear. Nang stepped in, squatted. He still held the chromed centrifuge. “Why are you here?” he asked quietly. No one answered. He pointed at an old woman. “I know you, Auntie,” he said. “Come out.” Still the old people didn’t move, didn’t answer. “Come,” Nang said, gesturing with the instrument.
“take me,” an old man said, “you take me. leave moeun.”
“Moeun?” Nang said.
“take my blood,” the old man said. He rolled to his knees expecting to be dragged from the dungeon. He did not comprehend what had happened in the underground surgical ward before him. In his bitterness he crawled and swore and mumbled at Nang. “bastard, yellow bastard, you don’t need that instrument. i’m O. O positive, you typed my blood twice already, bastard. you keep us for blood for your wounded, then suck us dry and seal our bodies in the caves, go ahead, bastard.”
Nang and his yotheas stumbled back as the barely human creature crawled from the dungeon. Then Nang said, “Get them out of there. They are Kampuchean. To be regained.” Nang turned, stepped toward the slit passage where two yotheas were sporadically firing toward the central wardroom. Then Nang stopped. “Moeun,” he muttered to himself. He turned to see his soldiers assisting the old people. Moeun, he thought. Aunt Ry’s mother! How did she get in...What have those yuon bastards done to Phum Sath Din?!
Nang clamped his teeth, strode to the slit passage. A yothea was about to roll a grenade into the tunnel. Pistol cracks exploded from the far end, the unaimed rounds impacting the sides of the curved tunnel.
“Stop!” Nang barked the order.
Heads snapped. Some yotheas looked at him with who-the-hell-is-he? glances. A few leaped up. The grenadier snarled, “This’ll get em.”
“No. Angkar wants those POWs—alive.” Nang pointed to the man with the grenade. “You. And you, Puc. Go out and come in from the other side. Order the fire ceased.”
In the absence of Krahom fire from the operating ward the firing of the NVA guards in the center chamber increased. For ten minutes they fired wildly. For ten minutes Nang could hear the muffled sounds of KK fire from the other side. Then all fire stopped.
In Viet Namese, to the astonishment of the Khmer Krahom soldiers about him, Nang shouted, “Dung ban nua! Dung co so.” Cease fire! Don’t be afraid! To his astonishment the NVA firing stopped. “Di ra day!” Come out here.
“Who are you?” a voice shouted.
“I am Comrade Nang, commander of the KT 104 Battalion of the Khmer Liberation Army. Come. You will not be harmed.” With hand signals Nang directed yotheas to move or cover up the corpses.
“Why have you attacked us? Colonel Nui will be furious. We are allies.”
“Yes. A grave mistake. We have ceased our fire. Have you American prisoners?”
“A mistake!”
“Yes. Terrible.” Nang stopped shouting. “Come out now. You’ll see.”
“What?”
“I said”—Nang raised his voice infinitesimally—“if you come here, you will see. We mean you no harm. Some agent must have penetrated our system. You’re not part of the ARVN offensive, are you?”
A soldier peeked around the curve in the corridor then pulled back. He peeked again. Nang laid his rifle at his feet. The soldier stepped into view. “What offensive?”
“Haven’t you heard? The ARVN has attacked all behind the lines.”
“No! How?”
Nang held his arms out as if to embrace the soldier. The man edged back. Behind him a second guard peered about the earthen wall. “Two American divisions and the ARVN Airborne Division have landed to the west. They’re trying to cut off your troops from the rear. We were told they’d captured this camp.”
The Viet Namese guard turned and spoke quickly to the men behind him. A moment later he emerged alone. “Are we free to go above?”
“Yes.” In Khmer Nang ordered free passage for the allied troops. Yotheas glanced at one another quizzically. A few, copying Nang, smiled at the NVA guard. The guard retreated into the center room then emerged leading seven men. Nang did not attempt to disarm them but let them mill a moment amid the yotheas. In Viet Namese he addressed the soldier who had emerged first. “Have you American prisoners?”
“No. Only an ARVN captain.”
“Seven guards for one captain?”
“No. No. Two guards. These others fell back when your troops came.”
“Are there more?”
“An orderly with the captain.”
Nang smiled. In Khmer he said, “Give these men cigarettes.” None of the Viet Namese indicated understanding though all smiled tentatively and, when offered, accepted the smokes. “Give them more.” Nang smiled. “Then take them to meet their brothers.”
The light in the center room was faint, worse than in the wards, much worse than in the surgical cave. The air was stale, foul, smellin
g of infection and mildew. A single orderly, a man of sixty or more years, sat on a gray metal chair reading a recent copy of Hanoi’s newspaper. In the only occupied bunk a severe-looking man lay grinding his teeth against a constant pain in his left arm and hand—pain in a limb that was no longer part of him.
“You”—Nang gestured to the orderly—“why do you sit there?”
The man slowly lifted his head from the news and looked without understanding at the filthy black-clad boy with a filthier scarf wrapped about his waist and a dust-covered assault rifle held by a two-fingered claw. Nang repeated the question in Viet Namese. “I understood the first time,” the orderly said in Khmer. “Your Viet Namese is Northern.”
Nang pointed the weapon at the orderly’s chest. “Forget my Viet Namese. Who’s that?”
“He is a wounded man,” the orderly answered gently.
“Why haven’t you killed him?”
“Me?!”
“Your command. Why do you let an enemy live?”
“He is a wounded man,” the orderly repeated. “I could never hurt him. As for the command, they think he may be of value. Maybe to you, too, eh?”
“Who is he?” Nang demanded. The soldier grimaced at Nang’s harshness but seemed to pay little attention.
“He is from somewhere. Saigon maybe? The Americans washed his brain.”
Nang pushed the old man back with the flash suppressor of his rifle and approached the patient. “You were captain?”
“Ah intelligence officer,” the orderly offered. “An intelligent intelligence officer. But I don’t think he understands Kh...”
“Captain?” Nang repeated in Viet Namese.
“Có. Dai úy.” Yes. Captain.
Nang stared at the soldier, at his left arm truncated and wrapped in gauze. Nang raised his own stubbed hand and smiled a slight smile. “For you they brought in the Mi-4?”
The captain acknowledged Nang’s hand with a flick of his eyes and an easing of his grimace. “Không. No,” he said. “It was for a colonel but they let me come, too.” It was a joke, the second part, and the captain tried to grin.
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