The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers)

by Stephen Leather

  He pushed himself up off the ground and wiped his hands on his overalls. “I guess that’s why I agreed to work with the colonel. It gives me a chance to get even.”

  He smiled thinly and turned his back on Lehman. Lehman watched him walk back to the warehouse. He sipped his Budweiser and counted the cricket-chirping. There were consistently thirty-three chirps every fifteen seconds.

  Lehman sat for half an hour on his own, then went back inside. He walked around the Huey again and sat for a while in the pilot’s station, fingering the glass fronts of the various instruments on the panel in front of him: the altimeter, the vertical speed indicator, the attitude indicator, the airspeed indicator, the heading indicator, the torque indicator, and the dials which showed the levels of fuel and the oils in the various transmissions. Lehman would have liked the opportunity to test fully all the instruments but Tyler had insisted that the first flight would be on the day of the robbery.

  He pushed down on the rudder pedals and held the collective and cyclic gently. He badly wanted to fly; being in the air was almost an addiction for him and it had been several months since he’d been at the controls of a helicopter. He yawned and closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw Tyler standing in front of him, a wry smile on his face.

  “Sleep-walking, Dan?” asked Tyler.

  “Couldn’t sleep,” said Lehman. He was surprised that he hadn’t heard Tyler walk across the concrete floor.

  Tyler climbed into the co-pilot’s station on Lehman’s left.

  “It always amazes me the way you guys keep these things in the air,” said Tyler. “All those opposing forces working against each other: the rotors trying to pull themselves off, the fuselage trying to spin the opposite way to the rotors, the tail rotor pushing it back, the whole thing trying to shake itself to pieces. And in the middle of it all, one man, using both hands and both feet and one pair of eyes.” He shook his head. “You guys have my admiration, Dan.”

  Lehman looked across at Tyler. The words sounded right, but Lehman knew he was being spoken to in the same manipulative manner in which he’d addressed hundreds of others, playing to their vanities, their weaknesses.

  “It’s just a matter of technique,” said Lehman. “You could train a monkey to do it eventually.” He looked sideways at Tyler. He was wearing a short-sleeved khaki safari suit that was military in appearance, epaulets on the shoulders and button-down pockets on the chest. His hair seemed shorter than when they’d first met, but he couldn’t recall exactly when Tyler had had it cut.

  “Something on your mind, Dan?” asked Tyler quietly. He was scanning the instrument panel and playing with the controls, not looking directly at Lehman. He pulled the cyclic back and the duplicate moved in between Lehman’s legs.

  “We’re gonna fly this to Happy Valley, right?” said Lehman. “On the last raceday of the season?”

  “That’s right,” said Tyler, his voice soft and level.

  Lehman turned to look at him. “So how come the last race of the season is always held at Shatin?”

  Tyler looked up sharply, his eyes narrowed. His lips were two thin horizontal lines and he studied Lehman like a surgeon weighing up where to make his first incision. Lehman felt his insides tighten. Tyler’s face gradually softened, the lips opened and turned up at the edges and the eyes crinkled. “So who’ve you been talking to, Dan?”

  Lehman shrugged. “Does it matter?” he said.

  “It matters if it means you don’t trust me,” said Tyler. “This whole operation, from start to finish, depends on you trusting me.”

  “What about you trusting us?” asked Lehman.

  “Need to know,” said Tyler. “It’s on a need-to-know basis, I said that right from the start. Everything has been planned down to the last detail, but I can’t reveal it all.”

  “Because you don’t trust us?”

  “Because if one of you – Lewis, Horvitz, Carmody, Doherty, or you – is compromised, then the whole operation is blown. That’s too big a risk to take.” He moved the cyclic in small, tight circles. Lehman looked down at his own cyclic moving in identical circles. “You’re right, of course,” continued Tyler. “The last race is at Shatin. Normally. But I’m arranging for it to be switched to Happy Valley.”

  Lehman laughed coldly. “So you carry weight with the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club now?” he said.

  “No, that’s not it,” replied Tyler. “Some friends of mine will be setting fire to the Shatin grandstand two days before the race is due to be held. They’ll have no choice but to switch venues.”

  “That doesn’t make sense, Joel. Shatin is a hell of a lot easier to get to than Happy Valley. We wouldn’t have to go near Kai Tak, and we could fly straight out to sea. The crowds are bigger at Shatin, too.”

  Tyler nodded. “That’s true, but there are three reasons why Happy Valley is better. First, there are components to the operation I haven’t told you about. We’re going to be relying on help from inside, and we only have that inside help at the Happy Valley track. We’re going to need someone to get us inside the back offices, and we can’t do that at Shatin. Second, they’ll all be geared for the meeting to be at Shatin, so it’ll throw all their security arrangements into disarray. And third, we’re going to be leaving to the south which means Happy Valley is closer. All we have to do is fly over the Peak and we’re away. Does that make sense to you?”

  Lehman thought about it for a moment or two. He sighed. “Yeah, I guess so. I just thought …” He faltered, not sure what to say.

  “You thought what?” said Tyler.

  Lehman put his hands up. “Okay, okay, I didn’t know what to think, Joel. It’s just that you were gearing us up for Happy Valley, and then I heard that the last meeting was at Shatin. I was confused, that’s all.”

  “You wouldn’t have been confused if you’d trusted me, Dan.”

  “That’s difficult to do when I don’t have the full picture,” said Lehman.

  Tyler nodded. “You know the rules on that,” he said. “There are other people involved, not just the guys here. As soon as I can tell you everything, I will. But, Dan, I promise you that I won’t lie to you. Okay?”

  Lehman looked at Tyler and slowly nodded. “Okay,” he said.

  Tyler smiled and patted Lehman on the shoulder. “Good,” he said. “I’m hitting the sack.” He swung easily out of the helicopter seat and walked away. Lehman watched him open the door to the offices and close it behind him.

  He sat in the cockpit for another half an hour, idly playing with the controls as he thought over what Tyler had said. It was hard to trust a man he barely knew who was planning to lead a group of virtual strangers into the robbery of the century. He looked at his watch. It was almost one o’clock. He decided to follow Tyler’s example and go to bed.

  He showered and went to his room with a large pink towel wrapped around his waist. He sat on the end of his camp bed as he dried his hair on a second towel. He heard groaning sounds from the room to his right, the room where Horvitz was sleeping. The partitions between the rooms were cardboard thin and Lehman had often lain at night listening to Lewis’s resonant snoring, but the noises from Horvitz were completely different. He was muttering something, incoherent words Lehman first thought, but then he realised that Horvitz was talking in Vietnamese. He stopped drying his hair and stood up, bending his ear to the wall and straining to listen. Lehman could hear sobbing, as if Horvitz were crying as he talked, then he heard a scream, a shout of pure terror that shocked him away from the wall as if he’d been slapped in the face.

  He threw open his door, crossed to Horvitz’s room in three strides and burst through his door. Horvitz was still asleep, one arm clawing at the air in front of his face, the other thrown across his forehead. The scream had died as suddenly as it had begun and he was crying and talking again, partly in Vietnamese and partly in English. Lehman heard the words “sorry” and “killed” and something that sounded like “maybe” as Horvitz tossed and turned on his ca
mp bed. Sweat was pouring off him and Lehman could see that almost every tendon and muscle in his body was stretched tight. His breathing was fast and erratic and his chest was heaving. He began making stabbing movements with his right hand, each jab in time with a Vietnamese word as if he was poking someone in the chest. Suddenly Horvitz’s eyelids sprang open, his eyes wide and staring but he was still asleep and still talking Vietnamese. He began mumbling and tears welled up in his eyes. It was the first time Lehman had ever seen Horvitz display any real signs of emotion, and the first time he’d even seen the colour of his eyes. They were pale grey.

  Horvitz began grinding his teeth as if he were in great pain, and then he opened his mouth and Lehman knew he was about to scream again. He knelt down quickly and reached out to touch his shoulder, hoping to wake him before he cried out. He shook the sleeping man and said his name quietly but barely had he got the name out than Horvitz’s hand was clamped around his neck, as tight as a vice. Lehman fought to loosen Horvitz’s grip, but his two hands could make no impression on the fingers which clawed into his throat, the nails biting into the skin, the fingertips cutting off the blood supply to his brain. He tried to speak but he couldn’t get the air out of his lungs. He tried to twist Horvitz’s wrist but the deadly grip was unbreakable. His throat burned and he felt himself slide into unconsciousness. As his vision began to blur he released his hold on Horvitz’s wrist and dropped his hands on to his shoulders. He started to shake him, so hard that his head was lifted off his pillow, and to his relief he saw Horvitz’s eyes refocus and his hand drop away from Lehman’s throat.

  Lehman fell back, gasping for breath as he massaged his aching throat. Horvitz lay back on his bed, his hands against his face, his hair in disarray and his cheeks wet with sweat and tears.

  “Jesus, Dan, you shouldn’t wake me when I’m having a nightmare,” Horvitz said.

  “Yeah, well I know that now,” said Lehman, his voice a dry croak.

  “You don’t want to do that again.” Horvitz wiped his forehead with the back of his arm.

  “I know, I know. Now I know, okay.”

  Horvitz sat up and looked at Lehman as if seeing him for the first time. “I’m sorry, Dan. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

  “I thought you were going to scream,” said Lehman. “I need some water.” He padded down the corridor to the bathroom and reappeared with a glass of water. He sipped it as he sat down. “Do you have nightmares a lot?” he asked.

  “Most of the time,” said Horvitz, rubbing his eyes. He picked up his sunglasses and put them on and looked at Lehman through the dark lenses. “It’s been a long time since I was woken up while I was having one, though. When I came back from Nam I nearly killed a couple of girls in my sleep. Ever since I’ve made sure I sleep alone.”

  Lehman nodded, knowing exactly what the man meant. “Probably best,” he said and smiled. “You wanna talk about it?”

  “The nightmare?”

  “Yeah. It might help.”

  “It might,” said Horvitz. He put his hands behind his head and lay back on the pillow, staring at the ceiling. He looked like he was lying under a sunbed, working on a tan.

  It was some time before Horvitz spoke again. Lehman waited, sipping at the tepid water. “Remember I told you about Billy Wills?”

  “The guy who was killed when you were in the Lurps?” Lehman remembered Horvitz telling him the story about the young soldier who’d been disembowelled while they were out on patrol in the Iron Triangle. It hadn’t been a pleasant story.

  “Yeah, that was it. We never found the VC who did it, they just disappeared. Vanished. Turns out they’d gone underground, into the tunnels. A while after that I pulled a few strings and got myself assigned to the Tunnel Rats of the 1st Infantry Division. It took some doing because I was a bit heftier than the average volunteer but I had acquired some skills that they knew would be useful. They let me join one of the teams, six men in all. Two stayed at the tunnel entrance to pass in supplies or pull out the wounded, and four of us went in. I always went point. Always. The man on point was always at least twenty feet ahead of the second man so that if he hit a booby trap there’d only be one fatality. We each had a flashlight with a red light so it wouldn’t destroy night vision, a knife, wire, and a pistol. That was it. No grenades because an explosion would burn up all the oxygen, no equipment because there was no room for it, I was too big as it was. The gun I used was a beauty, a Hush Puppy, ever heard of it?”

  Lehman shook his head.

  “Great weapon, for close-up fighting, anyway, and that was the only sort I ever got involved in. Smith & Wesson made it especially for the Navy Seals, to kill guard dogs, would you believe? It was based on the Model 39 automatic pistol, 9 mm calibre, weighed just under a kilogram. You screwed in a specially made silence which was good for about thirty shots before you had to replace the insert. What made it really special was the ammunition they designed for it, a subsonic round which was much heavier, and slower, than the normal 9 mm bullet. You could lock the slide mechanism so that it only fired one shot and the mechanism stayed closed and didn’t make a clicking noise. You could carry it underwater, which was an added bonus. But it was perfect for the tunnels; the sound hardly carried at all, whereas a normal round fired underground would deafen you for ages. And down there, your ears were your most valuable equipment because you could hardly see a thing, even with a torch. Anyway, a torch gave your position away more than anything so we tended to move in the dark.”

  Lehman shuddered. He couldn’t even begin to comprehend the horror of moving through a small tunnel in complete darkness, not knowing if there was a VC in front or behind ready to blow your brains out or stick a bayonet into your guts.

  “Most of the tunnel system was based on three levels: the top levels were the main communication tunnels leading to the outside entrances and to kitchens and conference chambers; the second levels were sleeping chambers and air-raid shelters; and the third was where they stored their weapons and food and treated their wounded. When the VC knew there were rats in the tunnel they’d clear out of the upper layer and go deeper. The tunnels there were narrower, so narrow that the slimmest of the rats couldn’t turn round. You could imagine what it was like for me.”

  Lehman shuddered. He could visualise all too clearly what it would have been like.

  “The most dangerous areas of the tunnels were bends, because you never knew what was around them, and trapdoors, because they were usually booby-trapped. It was the point man’s job to make the trapdoors safe. It was the sort of thing I was used to doing with the Lurps, but it was a hell of a lot harder underground, in the dark. Sort of clarified the mind, you know. You get to know what’s important, and what isn’t.”

  He fell silent for a minute or two and Lehman had no way of knowing if his eyes were open or closed behind the sunglasses.

  “Whenever we got to a fork, or to a trapdoor, one of the team would stay there in case the VC were leading us into an ambush. I never stayed, I always went point. I was there to kill VC, nothing else. For Billy Wills, you understand. It was something I had to do. The first trapdoor was clean, but the second had a Russian grenade attached to it, its pin halfway out. I almost missed it. I went down, alone. I knew there was a VC close by, I just knew it. It was completely dark, darker than any darkness you can imagine. The walls were damp, the air was so thick that you could almost chew on it, and I could smell sweat. Their sweat is different, because their diet is different. We used to eat rice and dried fish so that we’d smell the same as them. No C rations, no chocolate. No toothpaste. Nothing that would leave a chemical signature. I squeezed through a tunnel into a large room, lined with what felt like parachute silk. The room was big. I followed the left side, knife in one hand, pistol in the other, flashlight tucked into the back of my trousers. I heard a noise, a rustling sound, and I heard breathing. The sound was about ten feet away, maybe more, too far away to use the knife. I fired the gun, three times so that I could get a spre
ad of shots, then I lay low and waited. I heard a crying noise, and thought I’d just wounded him, so I crawled closer and put another bullet into him. The crying didn’t stop, but I couldn’t have missed. I held the torch out to the left, well away from my body, and switched it on. There was a body in the far left corner of a chamber which was about twenty feet square. There were three tunnels leading to the chamber, the one I came through and two others. I went over the body, certain that he was still alive because of the crying sounds. He was wearing black pyjamas and sandals and I was sure he was VC even though there was no weapon. There was blood; I couldn’t see the colour because of the red light but I could see it glisten, but even so he could have been faking, so I used the knife, going for the kidneys and twisting the blade, and then I rolled him over. It wasn’t a man, it was a woman, an old woman, skin all wrinkled, cheeks sunken, rotting teeth. She must have been in her seventies. She was curled up around a bundle, rags I thought. That’s where the crying was coming from. It was a baby. The old woman had rolled up around the baby to protect it. I pushed away the rags from around its face and the little face smiled up at me. I’m sure it was a girl, just a few months old. She stopped crying. She smiled up me, Dan. I’d killed her grandmother, and she smiled at me. She started to gurgle, like babies do.”

  Lehman rubbed his chin, wanting to comfort Horvitz but not sure what to say. “It was a war,” he said eventually. “She must have been involved with the VC or she wouldn’t have been down the tunnels. And at least the baby wasn’t hurt.”

  “I haven’t finished, Dan,” said Horvitz, and Lehman’s blood chilled. Horvitz swallowed. “I heard someone moving down one of the tunnels and I killed the light. There were three, maybe four, moving slowly. They’d probably come to see what the noise was. The baby wouldn’t stop gurgling, it was as if she was trying to tell them that I was there. Then she stopped gurgling and began to cry. I had to stop her crying, Dan. I had to stop her. So I did. I stopped her crying and then I killed all three of the VC, one with the knife and two with the Hush Puppy.”