M.I.A. Hunter

by Mertz, Stephen

  "They grow 'em big where you come from," he grinned. The Texan scowled at him and grunted.

  "Big and friendly," Meyers amended. "Well, let's tote that barge and lift that bale. It's time to hit the not-so-friendly skies."

  Chapter Eleven

  The border separating Laos from Thailand is a natural boundary, the Mekong River. Flowing south to meet the China Sea and empty through a delta west of what was once Saigon, the Mekong is familiar to the veterans of Vietnam, a liquid artery of transportation north and south, the scene of many fierce engagements with the Cong and NVA regulars brought down across the DMZ. In that war, it had carried troops and arms both ways, devouring the casualties and sweeping them away for unsung burial at sea. In later wars, all undeclared but no less deadly, the Mekong was a tenuous borderline between opposing forces. Often crossed, but never in the open, it was less an obstacle for the determined warrior than a demarcation point, the last stop before he entered into hell.

  Laotians called their land the Lao People's Democratic Republic, but there was precious little democracy inside the jungle nation. All the. strings of government were firmly held by members of the Lao People's Revolutionary Party, and the party, in its turn, was dominated by the Pathet Lao guerrilla leadership. Communism was the gospel of the "democratic" state, and its opponents ended up in harsh "reeducation camps," which were the tropical equivalent of a Siberia. The few who came back out again had been "converted" to the new regime, and were anxious to repair the "damage" they had done to "people's government" by speaking freely.

  Approximately half the size of Thailand, Laos could boast but one-sixteenth the population of her neighbor state. A large proportion of her people clustered in the capital, at Vientiane, or in the second-largest city, Savannakhet. Out in the wooded countryside, Laotian villages had been systematically decimated since the final victory of creeping Communism to the east, in Vietnam. With fifty thousand armed Vietnamese inside her borders, Laos amounted to a client state, an occupied territory of the new Vietnamese empire, and her natives had become the prey of roving hunter-killer bands that looted freely, raping, robbing, killing at their pleasure. Between the ravages of the Viets and their own government's "reeducation" measures, refugees had turned into the prime Laotian export, flocking into Thailand and Cambodia by the thousands. In an age of Asian population booms, Laos had managed to reverse the trend with a little help from her friends.

  Stone knew that roughly two divisions of the occupation troops were stationed to the north, in the provinces of Luang Namtha, Oudomsay, and Phong Saly, to repel the danger of incursion by the Red Chinese. As usual, Communists made shaky comrades in reality, and while the troops of Chairman Mao had tutored Ho Chi Minh and his guerrillas early in the war for Vietnam, it had become a Chinese war of late. The nations, theoretically united in pursuit of Marxist revolution, seemed at times more desperate to annihilate each other than to liberate the proletariat of other lands.

  And that was fine with Stone. If fifty thousand of the opposition were committed northward, waiting for a sneak attack from their reputed allies, it meant his men would not have to worry about running into them where it mattered, in the south. Of course, there would be troops enough to bar their way, including more Vietnamese, the Pathet Lao guerrillas, and enough collaborators in the scattered villages to populate a good-sized town if they were all collected in a single place.

  Staring past Deke Hopkins and his sleek machine gun, through the Huey's open loading bay, Mark Stone was studying the jungle as it slid by several hundred feet beneath their feet. Night was falling now on both sides of the Mekong, and down there among the trees, beneath the dappled roof of foliage it would already be dark. The grim nocturnal predators would be awake and prowling—animal and human both—competing for survival in the normal killing cycle of the forest. All but one of them—the human animal—would be abroad to kill for food. But man, with the machinery of war and reason at his fingertips, had found a higher calling: he would kill and kill again for sport, for ideology, for pleasure.

  So much for civilization. Stone had been around the world and fought his wars in every climate, without finding any concrete evidence of its existence.

  They were coming in with dusk, Leo Meyers at the Huey's delicate controls, and hoping that no hostile eye observed their coming. There was every chance, of course, that they had been picked out already—by the scores of spotters stationed along both banks of the Mekong, or by roving agents deep in the interior of Laos. Either way, discovery could be fatal, and they might be heading even now into a hot LZ, with hostile guns on station, waiting for the signal to blast them out of the sky in flaming wreckage.

  It was a chance Stone took each time he climbed aboard a chopper headed into hostile territory, and it did not frighten him. He was a veteran of many landings behind the lines, and this would not be his last—with any luck at all.

  They tried to stretch the safety margin by coming in with darkness, seeking out the clearing that had been selected by Meyers and Hopkins as a landing site. Darkness would impede patrols, if any sought to find them, and it gave Stone's group, a fighting chance of getting on the ground and away from the landing zone alive, in case they met with hostile fire on their approach.

  He started counting off the heartbeats, never thinking now beyond the moment, as they neared the point of their rendezvous. A clearing, marked by flashlights screwed into the spongy ground, had opened in the canopy of trees below them, and Meyers brought the Huey around in a sweeping circle, running without lights, nothing but the eggbeater sound of his powerful engines to give them away in the jungle's velvet darkness now. They were dipping lower, and Deke Hopkins jacked a round into the chamber of his big M-60, ready just in case the jungle underneath them opened up in roaring flame.

  Stone and his companions cocked their CAR-15s, ready now as they could ever be until they reached the solid earth below. Up here they were like sitting ducks, and while they would be able to retaliate against hostile fire to a limited degree, their lives were firmly in the pilot's hands until they left his custody for good. Up here, above the treetops, they were vulnerable in the extreme.

  Stone found himself unconsciously holding his breath, and deliberately released it in a long, slow exhalation. They were hovering, descending, perfect targets now for any snipers on the ground or in the treetops, but there were no hostile rounds incoming. Down below he caught a glimpse of movement, and picked out human forms converging on the landing zone.

  The touchdown was a rocky one, but solid, without mishap. Hopkins kept his mangler trained in the direction of the figures that were fast approaching, never easing off the trigger as they came within hailing range of the Huey. Only when a reedy voice was raised outside did he visibly relax, and even then, Stone noted, he did not release the trigger of his weapon, but only held it slightly less intently.

  "This is it!" Meyers bellowed from the cockpit, shouting to make himself heard above the chug-chug of the rotors whirling overhead. Stone nodded to his men and cleared the open loading bay in one fluid motion, relieved to feel the solid earth beneath his feet again.

  Behind him, Hog and Loughlin hit the turf, moving out to flank him as they came face to face with what proved to be a two-man reception committee. Their Free Lao guide was moving past them, taking the lead automatically, speaking to the closest of the armed men in his native dialect while Stone and his companions stood by, watching silently.

  After a huddled consultation, the guide turned back to face them, motioning to them to follow him.

  "This way," he said softly, turning back to leave them in the clear assurance that they would follow his direction without question.

  Stone shrugged, and for the moment surrendered himself conditionally into this stranger's care. Time enough later to think about reprisals if it fell apart, if someone turned traitor and started jerking his chain. For the moment there was no damned reason to suppose that these men were other than what they appeared to be: fighters un
ited against the Communists' tyranny that held Laotians underneath a grim, relentless boot heel.

  The Huey, with its two crewmen, lifted off behind them, but Stone and his companions were already in the forest, moving along what seemed to be a narrow game trail, following their guides to whatever lay ahead. The forest sounds and smells were overpowering now, surrounding them as they moved ever farther away from the slender security of the clearing. Nightbirds started calling, eerie voices rising in the night when the apparent threat of the helicopter was removed from their ancestral jurisdiction. Other animals were moving stealthily to either side, keeping pace with the Westerners, taking their scent, perhaps, deciding whether they were good enough to eat. Once a heavy body veered away from their line of march; crashing gracelessly through the underbrush, still unseen, and the three warriors gripped their weapons tighter, ready for a sudden challenge from the bush.

  Not all the predators were human here, and Stone did not intend to end his journey in a tiger's belly, or beneath the crushing hooves of a water buffalo, if he could help it.

  After fifteen minutes that felt more like several hours, they were through the trees and standing all together on a muddy riverbank. Ahead of them, dark water stretched away for several hundred yards before it terminated in another wooded shore.

  The river could not hold a candle to the grand, majestic Mekong, but Stone saw that it was wide enough to block their passage if their guides had not provided something in the way of floating transportation. He did not intend to swim it with the risk of gunners hidden on the other side and snakes or crocodiles patrolling on the muddy bottom, somewhere out of sight.

  His answer made itself apparent in an instant, as he spied the sampan waiting for them on the bank some paces down. There was another huddled conference that excluded Stone and company, then one of the Laotians moved away without a backward glance, and was soon lost to sight among the jungle shadows. Lan Yang, the Laotian guide, together with the nameless one, continued on until they reached the sampan, Stone and his companions obediently in tow. They climbed aboard, and the Laotian who had greeted them on touchdown took the helm, cranking up a small inboard motor and piloting the rickety craft out into midstream, nosing it northward and running slowly against the seaward current.

  Stone and his companions settled in, their weapons handy, as the sampan bore them north. The sky above them was a canopy of stars, the crescent moon a beacon for their mission. Sitting there and listening to the rustle of the water inches underneath him, Stone might have surrendered to some fantasy of peace, but the weapon in his hands reminded him of grim reality, the purpose of his mission.

  They were in a war zone, and all of them would have to stay awake, in fighting trim, while they were out here in the open. On the river they were every bit as vulnerable, every bit as exposed, as they had been in the air. More so, in fact, having sacrificed mobility and flight for this snail's-pace mode of travel.

  An hour passed in virtual silence, the Laotians speaking seldom, Stone and his commandos not at all. They watched the shadowed banks intently, scanning either side in turn and searching for a light or a movement that might give away an enemy before he had a chance to open fire or telegraph their progress to his base camp in the forest. There were so damned many shadows, there was so much darkness.

  There was nothing on the bank or in the forest, at least nothing the naked eye could see without assistance from some night-bright optics, and Mark Stone was wishing for a night-scope when the helmsman hissed a warning to their guide, Lan Vang. The warrior was about to ask him what was happening, but the words died in his throat as he picked out the sound of engines running toward them on the darkened water, growing closer by the moment.

  And he recognized patrol boats by their sound, two of them at a minimum, and running south in tandem, sticking to the shores. He could almost pick out their silhouettes against the dim reflection of the moonlight on the water—well enough, in any case, to know that they were closing on a virtual collision course. It was too much to hope that they would overlook the sampan, let it pass them by unnoticed.

  As if in answer to his thoughts, a searchlight blazed to life and pinned them in the middle of the river, quickly followed by another, turning midnight on the river into lethal noon.

  Chapter Twelve

  The twin patrol boats were converging on their sampan, tinny voices hailing them first from one amplifier, then from another, demanding papers, explanation. Huddled in the bow, Stone knew that they could not withstand the most cursory examination, and he knew already what they had to do about it.

  Do or die, damned right.

  He started counting down, signaling his intentions to the others by a movement of his eyes, a gesture with his flash-suppressor-equipped carbine. They would follow where he led, no doubt about it. And the only question left for Stone was whether they had guns enough and time enough to pull it off. The slim advantage of surprise could only take a man so far, before he had to make it on his own.

  The countdown bottomed out at zero, and Stone made his move, already on his knees and sweeping with the automatic rifle as the thought was being filtered through his nerve synapses into action. On his right, Lan Yang was following his lead, the autonfle that he carried sweeping up and out across the gunwale of the sampan, its lethal muzzle seeking targets in the spotlight glare.

  Stone was aiming for the searchlight first, and he found it with a probing, measured burst. The light exploded, winking out like some cyclopian eye. Over on his right, a burst from Loughlin or the Laotian found the second spotlight and put it out of action in a spray of glass shards. An operator who was tardy in retreating from his station had a major portion of his brain forcibly externalized, deposited among his comrades huddling on the deck of their patrol boat, under fire.

  It took an instant for the stunned Vietnamese to react—long enough, at any rate, for Stone to pick a target on the bridge of the patrol boat nearest him and slam a three-round burst into the khaki-covered chest. He saw the uniform reduced to bloody tatters in the half-light of the moon, and then the blank-faced corpse was gone, propelled away and out of sight by the impact of the CAR-15's manglers.

  It was in the fan, for damned sure, and the twin patrol boats were returning fire now, taking time to determine range and elevation with their light machine guns, feeling for the sampan, finally finding her without much difficulty. She obviously had not been built for naval combat, and Stone knew that she would not remain afloat for long beneath that concentrated fire. Whatever happened now, for good or ill, would have to happen quickly if they were to have any chance at all of surviving.

  He considered bailing out, but rejected it at once, aware that they would not survive for half a minute in the water, with the incoming fire and the prowling crocodiles to pick them off. The sampan was their only hope—a flimsy one, from all appearances, but still the best they had.

  Stone raked his target vessel with another burst, and was rewarded as a crewman doubled over and lurched against the rail with both hands clasped across his punctured abdomen. Stone let him have another single round to finish him—a lethal head shot that almost decapitated him at twenty yards—and then his gun was tracking on, in search of other game.

  Their craft was taking hits, and rolling with the punches, but Stone knew that any solid hits below the waterline would spell their doom. No matter what it took, he had to burn the enemy before they started thinking straight enough and long enough to let the human targets go and concentrate upon their weakness, the boat itself.

  His life was riding on it, as were all the others', and there was no time for second chances, no margin for error in the game of life-and-death.

  Stone watched a gunner slinking out of cover on the rising, falling patrol boat, clinging to the rail and seeking its protection. He got a neat figure-eight burst to the upper back; it clipped his spine below the shoulder blades and left him rolling on the deck, a leaking eel in human form, with no control of anything below t
he armpits.

  His shipmates were dodging all around and over him, some slipping and sliding in the blood that was spreading out across the deck, and almost falling in their haste to find-some cover. Stone's carbine was belching short, determined bursts, and punching holes through their ranks whenever someone dallied long enough to make himself a stationary target.

  Even so, the gunners on the two patrol boats were laying down an enfilading fire that put the sampan's passengers in clear and present danger of extinction. Bullets chipped the gunwales, scored the decks, and whistled through the little wheelhouse like a heavy-metal cyclone. Any moment now, the hostile gunners might get wise and drop their sights a notch or two—enough to send their vessel to the bottom.

  A sudden curse came from Hog, and Mark Stone turned in time to see him stagger, almost going down. A slug had grazed his temple, sending rivulets of blood coursing down his sunburned cheek and into the forest of his beard—but he recovered quickly, shaking his head like a fighter as he gained his second wind. The blow, so nearly fatal, seemed more to have angered him than anything else, and as Stone looked on, he resumed his duel with the Vietnamese, ripping off short, measured bursts with a kind of controlled ferocity.

  On Stone's right flank, a burst from Terrance Loughlin's weapon suddenly deprived one of the patrol boats of its pilot, slamming his lifeless body away from the wheel and dumping him unceremoniously onto the bloody deck. At once his craft began to veer, swinging in and toward the sampan as his crewmen scrambled to regain control in time. They clearly did not relish the idea of ramming their target—at least not while her crew was still alive and firing back.

  It took a moment for the Vietnamese to get their vessel in hand, and by the time they managed it, the gap between their own patrol boat and the sampan had been cut in half. The firing now resumed at virtual point-blank range.