by Ian Slater
Then, as if to suddenly confirm his suspicion, Murphy conceded that a nail file, however small, might be of some use after all, not as any kind of wire cutter itself, but as something that could be used to make a cutter.
“Make one out of what?” Mellin pressed.
Mike Murphy grunted, agreeing that it posed quite a problem. “Well,” he said. “There’s only one way.”
“Don’t tell us,” Shirley murmured sarcastically. “It might help us!”
“We steal a cutter,” Murphy answered. Before anyone else could object, the Australian added, “Look, they must have one or more to have set up the coils of razor wire around the perimeter.”
“Makes sense,” Danny conceded. “But I haven’t seen any of Upshut’s guys carrying them about.”
“Neither have I,” Murphy agreed. “That’s why they have to be in the trucks — glove box maybe — or tool kit in the back.”
“I didn’t see any toolboxes in the back of the truck that brought us in,” Shirley said.
“Nor me,” Danny told Murphy, “which means you’re probably right. They must have cutters in the glove box.”
As Murphy passed another brick for what would be their prison’s wall, and its rough surface tore a small flap of skin, he cursed the lack of gloves once again, adding, “Only chance we’ll have will be slop parade.” He meant the five o’clock ration of rice and tea. “Somebody’ll have to get under the truck and try—” They stopped talking as one of the guards ambled closer. As the guard moved farther away, Murphy said, “We’ll have to get in the passenger side and have a look-see in the glove box.”
Shirley nodded. “We could create some kind of diversion— get people to crowd around the truck.”
Murphy frowned at the idea. “Problem is, we’d have to let more people in on our plan.”
“I didn’t know we had one yet,” Shirley quipped.
“Well,” Murphy retorted, “I take it we’re going to bust out the hut wall, then cut through the wire. Don’t have to be a fucking genius to figure that out. Except—” He looked now at Danny. “—you’d better be right about that fucking rice, mate, otherwise we’re dead as fucking doornails.”
Danny said nothing, nor Shirley, who was too disgusted with Murphy’s bad language.
“I don’t like your silence, mate,” Murphy said as he took hold of another brick. His thumb was now bleeding. “C’mon, Danny, tell us. You ever done this before — the old rice trick?”
“No, but—”
“But nothing! Jesus Christ, Danny! Whole fucking plan depends on you and the friggin’ wall, mate!”
“I know that,” Danny replied tartly. “You think I—”
Upshut was coming back on his rounds, so they fell silent, Murphy still cursing under his breath about the lack of proper gloves for handling the bricks.
* * *
Gloves, or rather a glove — an asbestos one — was on the mind of the third M-60 assistant machine gunner in the Echo column west of Dien Bien Phu. He’d lost the glove — supplied so that in a firefight you could quickly change a red-hot barrel for the cool, spare one in less than three seconds. Somehow, the piece of green fishing line that he normally used to attach the glove to his kit had been severed from the pack — probably twisted in underbrush and giving way when he’d moved forward quickly after a “sit and listen.”
The assistant gunner knew that if it was discovered missing by any of the other Special Forces, he would henceforth be called TOM — turd of the month. It was serious business if you couldn’t change the barrel. The time lost could be responsible for a lot of men killed, causing your position to be overrun, letting the enemy inside your perimeter, from where he could wipe out the entire column, with the machine gunner’s buddies having only one corridor of retreat: in front of their own “overlapping-fire” claymores.
* * *
In the jungle five miles to the south of Echo and beyond the Laotian-Vietnamese border, Kacey, the remaining Ranger of the two-man warning squad sent by Delta’s Major Roscoe to warn Foxtrot, had moved well off the trail from where he’d seen the young girl. Advancing slowly, silently, on a line parallel to the trail, the Ranger could see a clearing — several huts, and now, coming down the trail, a squad of five, no six, men, Khmer Rouge, led by a brother — a black man — or was it the heavy mud camouflage? — no, he was black — and the little seven-year-old girl in front of him nudged along by the barrel of the man’s AK-47.
Suddenly, the Khmer squad stopped about a hundred feet from where the Ranger had seen the little girl earlier, the Khmer patrol now using the girl as a shield. The point man inched ahead, covered by the other six Khmer. The Khmers stopped again next to where the Ranger had been hiding. They were checking out her story — probably using the girl’s family as hostages back in the village, the Khmer point man wanting to see where the dead pig was and so see if anyone had been hiding by the trail. Kacey knew it would take only a few seconds for the Khmer to discover broken twigs and bruised underbrush and conclude that someone had been hiding there and had taken her grenade. The Khmer’s leader gave a spread-out hand signal, and in seconds the other six men of the enemy squad had disappeared into the jungle beneath the high canopy of trees.
Kacey was caught in a dilemma: the only way for him to move fast enough to warn Foxtrot column that their general position was now known by the enemy would be to break cover and move quickly down the trail. Yet to do that would put him in danger of running smack into another enemy patrol and/or booby traps. He knew he had to risk it — the closer he got to Foxtrot, the better the chance of warning them to split in time and head back for pickup along with Echo and Delta columns.
Still moving slowly and well in from the trail, he could see the six Khmer spread out in a line about seventy yards behind him as he neared the edge of the bare ground around the village huts, working his way carefully around its perimeter. In between the huts he saw there were patches of bare ground all but devoid of the dead leaves one usually saw. He guessed that they were punji traps, the teepee-shaped bamboo stick cages that normally identified the booby traps for the village children now removed. Kacey was sweating profusely, not only because of the sticky heat, but from the growing anxiety that was creeping up on him as surely as the seven Khmer coming up behind him.
“Hey, buddy!”
It sounded like an obscenity, so unexpected was it. Kacey froze. It was definitely an American voice — not a trace of a foreign accent. It had to be the black man he’d seen. Kacey said nothing. He couldn’t see the speaker, and presumably the speaker couldn’t see him, otherwise Kacey knew he would now be dead.
“Hey, man,” the voice called out again. “I got a deal for you.” There was no echo, the disembodied voice quickly lost in the sudden hush of the jungle.
“You come out, man, or the girl gets it. You understand?”
There was nothing mysterious about it — a straightforward threat, and not even for a split second did Kacey doubt that the other black man meant exactly what he said. And not for a second did the Ranger doubt that if he didn’t get to warn Foxtrot column, then thirty men would become the victims rather than the executors of a fatal ambush. It was the girl or the column.
But what if he didn’t answer the black man? What if he simply kept quiet? How could the black man and the remainder of the enemy patrol be sure he was still in listening range, that he’d heard the black man’s threat? For all they knew, he could have been well back on the trail by now, hightailing it in the direction he’d come from — to Delta in the marshland below Dien Bien Phu.
“You hear me, man?” came the black man’s call.
Kacey, his finger on the trigger guard of his HKMP 5, said nothing. Two could play this game.
* * *
Though the tail of the monsoon had now passed over the POW camp at Ningming, the ground was muddy, and several of the weaker prisoners slipped on the way to the “slop” truck for the bowl of rice and cup of tea, the truck being mobbed as co
ver for Murphy to slip under the tailgate, quickly wriggling forward on the passenger side. He heard the shouting of the guards at the back, Upshut among them, and several warning shots fired. He rolled out, got up, tried the passenger door. It opened and he was inside the truck’s cabin. Two things caught his eye at once: a small, battered, dirty plastic toolbox in the passenger’s foot well, and a bunch of keys hanging from the ignition, the gate through the razor wire being fifty yards away. A run for it — crash through the friggin’ one-arm barricade and drive like hell. He was excited, but he wasn’t dumb. Probably wouldn’t make it anyway. Besides, there was the minor matter of leaving everyone else behind. Not nice. There were no wire cutters in the toolbox. Shit. He grabbed a pair of pliers, a file, snatched the keys and got out of the truck.
In all it had taken less than a minute. From underneath the truck Murphy could see a thicket of legs. One of the POWs whom Danny Mellin had designated as a lookout saw Murphy under the tailgate and shouted, “C’mon, hurry up there! I’m starving!” This was immediately followed by a surge of bodies around the tailgate and Murphy scrabbling amid the legs, only to surface as the guards began pushing the line back while clubbing several POWs to the ground.
“You get wire cutters?” Mellin asked, handing the Australian his rice bowl and plastic spoon.
“No cutters,” Murphy told him, “but I swiped the truck’s keys. Silly bastards left ‘em in the ignition.”
“They’re going to shoot people when they, find them missing.”
“You don’t say,” Murphy said. “But first the driver’ll get shit and he’ll wonder whether he left ‘em in the truck or wherever. You know how it is when you’ve lost your keys?”
“Yeah, but when he’s sure they’ve been stolen, they’re gonna shoot people.”
“Exactly,” Shirley chimed in.
“All right, you two,” Murphy snapped. “Cool it. Ya don’t think I haven’t thought that out?”
“So what are you going to do with them?” Shirley asked. “Hold out for a reward?”
“Very fucking amusing.”
“All right, Mike,” Danny cut in. “What’s your plan?”
“Well, first we get a good impression of the key. Surely to God we’ve got someone in this camp who can make a duplicate — can do it from wood if you get a good impression.”
“And how—” Shirley began, but the Australian didn’t let her finish.
“Mud,” he said. “Fucking compound’s a sea of mud, if you hadn’t noticed. We get a good impression — mud on a brick— anything’ll do.”
Shirley Fortescue conceded it was the obvious thing to do.
“Then return the keys?” Danny asked.
“Right!” Murphy said. “Only we don’t have to be particular. I mean we don’t need to get anyone back into the cabin. Just toss the keys outside the truck by the driver’s running board. He’ll figure he dropped them getting out.”
“Okay,” Danny agreed, “but move fast. We’ll have all the POW huts up by tonight.”
“Good as done,” Murphy quipped, gripping the keys and disappearing into the crowd of POWs.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Kacey had done nothing, but then the black man put the AK-47’s barrel against the little girl’s temple. “Listen, man, you don’t come out in thirty seconds I’m gonna waste the kid. Then I’m gonna start on her family. You want me to bring ‘em out? We’ll waste the whole fuckin’ village, man — if that’s what it takes. I ain’t gonna let you fuck up my business, man. You dig?”
You dig, Kacey thought. It was from another era — another time, another place. And what the hell is business!
Kacey said nothing, his right thumb moving the catch to the full automatic position.
The black man yelled something in a language other than English, and the tail-end Charlie of the six-man Khmer squad ran back a hundred yards or so to the village. Kacey could hear nothing but the occasional faint whimper, like that from a puppy, the young girl crying. Then he heard shouting and a slap that resounded through the rain forest as the tail-end Khmer was half dragging, half pushing two elderly natives, a man and a woman — Laotians most probably — down the trail toward the black man. The young girl turned as if to run to them, but the black man cuffed her about the ears. Then behind the tail-end Khmer and the old couple there came a woman armed with the ubiquitous AK-47 and wearing one of the green lion-tamer hats so popular in the old NVA. Kacey could tell it was a woman, for despite the leafy camouflage about her head and shoulders, she couldn’t hide her figure. As she came nearer, about twenty yards from where Kacey was hiding, he could see she was white.
Through the undergrowth Kacey caught glimpses of the two elderly Laotians being driven, half tottering, up the trail, the old man tripping.
There was a shot, and a scream so loud that Kacey felt a sudden chill as he strained to see which of the old people had fallen. Neither of them. It was the young girl who’d been shot.
“You hear me, man?” came the black man’s voice. “I ain’t foolin’ ‘round here. Now you come out or we’ll do the old man next. Man, we’ll do the whole friggin’ village if we have to. You understand? Now move your ass.” The man was poking the distraught old Laotian woman with the AK-47.
Kacey stood, his hands held high. “All right!” he shouted, and made his way toward the track even as he realized it was a no-win situation. There was no doubt in his mind he’d be shot. The only question remaining was, who’d pull the trigger, Salt or Pepper?
CHAPTER SEVENTY
A good mud impression was made of the truck key stolen by Murphy, and already one of the dozens of technician POWs from the oil rigs was working on making a duplicate out of the hard base of his plastic tea mug, while another was using the file Mike Murphy had brought him to hone the edges of the pliers into a wire cutter. Murphy told Danny Mellin that he saw no reason why they couldn’t bust out that night. Shirley Fortescue, glancing up at the wind-riven sky, advised against it. “Too much moonlight,” she said, “now that the monsoon’s passed.”
Danny didn’t like the suggestion of any delay. “Longer we wait, the longer Upshut and his crew have to detect something’s going down. Besides, we could have an informer amongst us. Won’t take long before someone starts thinking about getting extra rations of rice — a bit of meat, whatever.”
“Then I say go tonight,” Murphy said. “Moon or not.”
“Let’s see what the weather’s like tonight,” Danny replied. Might cloud over later this afternoon.”
“I say go!” Murphy repeated.
“Wait and see,” Danny said.
“I agree,” Shirley put in.
“Two to one,” Danny said. “That it?”
“Women got the vote,” Shirley said, looking at Murphy. “Or hadn’t you heard?”
Right there and then, Murphy wanted her. Not only was she good-looking, but there was something about her standoffish manner that excited him, that begged to be tamed.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
In Hong Kong, Breem, satiated from a smorgasbord of sex with Mi Yin and two other girls who he was sure belonged to the Chinese Secret Service, put on his royal-blue robe, wandered over to the full-length glass windows by his fax, which overlooked the harbor, and grabbed a handful of messages from all around the world. The ones that interested him most were from various hospitals requesting donor organs, and those faxes from Fukien province, a cover for Beijing transmits, requesting resupply of tractor bearings — another cover, this time “bearings” referring to bullets, “tractor” to Black Rhino, the type of bullet. Within minutes he had ordered the “tractor bearings” to be taken south to the Ningming railhead.
Breem estimated that the profit on the sale of the armor-piercing bullets alone would net him around a million U.S. dollars, and then there was the kickback from General Wei’s son-in-law, who, as part of a resurging market in China, was Wei’s procurement officer.
It wasn’t the first time that the irony of the Chines
e buying American bullets from an American to maim and/or kill Americans struck Breem as funny. The whole business of international arms dealers reinforced Breem’s conviction that in this world there were only winners and losers, and that right now the Americans were the losers. Oh sure, press reports were going out on CNN telling how the Americans were making up some lost ground in the fighting around someplace called Disney Hill, but Breem was more than confident that once the U.S.-USVUN counterattack met the fresh troops and Black Rhino armor-piercing ammunition now on their way via rail to the front from Ningming, the Chinese would soon push the Americans back. Besides, if the newspaper stories were true, then a U.S.-USVUN force sent in by Freeman to secure his left flank around Dien Bien Phu was about to be wiped out by an overwhelming number of Chinese airborne troops.
Flicking through the channels, Breem picked up another news story, this one from BBC television news claiming that as well as the Chinese airborne, a full Chinese regiment of 2,817 men had been moving down the 150 miles of secondary roads from China’s Mengzi to the area around Dien Bien Phu. Whether this force had been sent by General Wang before or after Freeman’s IFOR was now purely academic. What mattered was that ignoring Laotian neutrality, as Freeman had done, the Chinese now in Vietnam were closing in on the valley between Dien Bien Phu and Ban Cong Deng. And roads meant heavy artillery; not that a lack of roads would have prevented the PLA from bringing down their heavy guns. In their last war with Vietnam, they had manhandled heavy guns down piece by piece, as the Viet Minh had done against the French.
The BBC interviewer asked a military expert who would win.
“All depends on what the troops are like on the ground.”