Temple of Gold

by A. J. Stewart

The Pilot got out and stretched while Lenny and Lucas checked their gear and hoisted packs onto their shoulders.

  “What’s your plan?” asked the Pilot.

  “It’s a couple hours to the reccie point,” said Lenny. “Take a look around, see what’s what. If we decide to go into the village, that’ll probably be around sunset. So we might not be back until well after dark.”

  “I’ll be here,” said the Pilot. “I’ll fuel her up and be waitin’. Just give me a tingle.”

  Lenny looked at Lucas for translation.

  “Radio,” he said. Lucas took two rifles from inside the Huey and handed one to Lenny.

  “L1A1,” said Lucas. “Bigger caliber than your M16, and a damned sight more reliable. Think you can handle it?”

  “If it shoots I can handle it.”

  Lucas pulled his rifle sling over his head and tucked it into his shoulder, and then turned to the Pilot.

  “See youse later,” he said.

  “Have fun. Say G’day for me.”

  Lucas gestured for Lenny to lead the way. They stepped across the rocky bed and then disappeared into the trees. Lenny checked his compass and his map periodically as they hiked up the hillside. The altitude gave some respite from the humidity but the trees blocked any breeze, and within ten minutes both men were drenched in sweat.

  They walked in silence for an hour, when Lenny suggested they take some water. They didn’t unload their packs, but took canteens from their belts and chugged the tepid liquid.

  “Your spot up here?” asked Lucas.

  “Yeah, just below the ridge. You were to the east, right?”

  “Allegedly,” said Lucas.

  “How’d you get in? I didn’t hear another chopper.”

  “I walked.”

  “You walked? From where?”

  “There’s an old makeshift airstrip, about a day’s hike north.”

  “I take it you didn’t come with him,” Lenny said, nodding back toward the unseen Huey and its pilot.

  “Nah, I came in on a fixed wing.”

  “How’d you know we’d be here?”

  “That would be telling.” Lucas gave Lenny a quick grin and then recapped his canteen. “Shall we?”

  They hiked for another hour. Once on the ridgeline, Lenny turned to the east and found the spot where he had notched a tree with his knife. Then he led Lucas down the hill a short way, until they came upon a break in the trees. Here, Lenny dropped his pack and crept toward the edge of a small drop-off, and Lucas followed.

  The hill dropped away before them, into the rice paddies and then the tiny village where Ventura had met General Tan. They saw the road that led away from their position and into the jungle. They saw no people and no movement.

  Neither man had a sniper rifle so Lucas took a scope from his pack and surveyed the village. As before, the village appeared deserted, and the structures looked as if they might blow away in a decent breeze. The only sign of current habitation was a firepit below a canopy made from sticks and branches. There was no fire in the pit, but the coals were black and clearly fresh.

  The two men lay in their position for a couple of hours. They took turns at the scope—more to alleviate boredom—and took long stretches watching for nothing more than any sense of movement. Lucas had the scope when Lenny spoke.

  “Why are you here?” Lenny asked.

  “Why are you here?” replied Lucas without dropping the scope from his eye.

  “I asked first.”

  “Because it pisses me off. I joined the damned army because I couldn’t think of anything better to do, and I figured protecting the Australian people was a worthwhile way to pass my days.”

  “These aren’t Australians, and you’re a long way from home.”

  Lucas lowered the scope and stared over the valley below. “Well, that’s something they don’t tell you in the recruitment office: Australians aren’t the only ones that need protecting. There’s a lot of people in a lot of places a hell of a lot worse off than the folks walking around Brisbane. Too many. And what they don’t tell you is that not all these poor buggers are enemies. They’re just bloody people, you know? And who’s helping them, protecting them?”

  “No one,” said Lenny.

  “Exactly. No one. Well, bugger that. These people didn’t pick this fight and they don’t deserve what’s happening to them. And, hell, I got time to kill.”

  “Some guys golf in their downtime.”

  “I don’t play golf. I don’t mind a spot of fishing, though.”

  “No? Me, too,” said Lenny.

  “What do you go for?”

  “Don’t care. I just like the peace and quiet of it.”

  “Yeah, fair enough. So why aren’t you fishing right now?”

  Lenny shrugged. “Like you say, someone’s got to look out for these people.”

  “Unfortunately, mate, no, they don’t.”

  “Well, someone ought to. And my dad always said that freedom doesn’t come free.”

  “You sound like a recruitment poster.”

  Lenny nodded. “My dad did. He believed it, 100 percent. Good people deserve to be protected from bad people. And if you happen to be one of the protectors, then you have a duty.”

  “You should run for president or something.”

  Lenny smiled. “I don’t think they’d have me. I drink too much.”

  “I’m not sure that’s an issue.”

  “Besides, I’m not the dealmaker. I’m the blunt instrument.”

  “Roger that.”

  Lucas seemed to catch something in the corner of his eye, because he raised the scope. He watched for a moment, and then handed the scope to Lenny, who zeroed in on the buildings. A small-framed person was walking across the open space between one of the structures and the firepit. They wore what looked like dirty cotton pajamas and, with head bowed, watched the ground as they walked. The person tended the firepit, removing some ash and then stacking sticks in a pyramid. They didn’t light the fire. They stood and shuffled back to the farthest building, which was nothing more than a hut.

  “The others came out of the jungle at dusk,” said Lenny.

  “Down that road,” Lucas replied. “Reckon we should get a closer look?”

  “Why not?”

  They collected their gear and made their way down the hillside, until they reached the open expanse of rice paddies. From close up, the field was thick with sludge, unlikely to grow grass or reeds, let alone rice. The falling sun sent long shadows across the valley, and the men were able to stick to the banks between the moist paddy fields.

  They stopped within fifty yards of the firepit and dropped into the first of the paddies, which had dried up and gone hard under the brutal sun. In the last of the daylight, they saw a figure reappear from the farthest hut and shuffle across to the firepit. It may have been the same person. From their new position, it looked like a child, small and fragile. This time, the person lit the fire, tending it gently, not allowing large flames to develop, as if that would be a waste of a precious resource. Once the fire was right, the person moved back into the darkness, and Lenny heard the sound of water being poured. The person reappeared with a pot, which they placed atop the fire.

  The sound of the truck engine came on gradually, at first competing with the growing cacophony of insects and night creatures, but eventually overwhelming them. Headlights appeared from the unseen track, and a single truck broke out of the cover. Lenny and Lucas ducked as the lights washed across their position, and the truck pulled around and came to a stop in the open area between the firepit and the huts.

  Men jumped from the cabin, shouting orders in rapid-fire, and then the tailgate dropped open and a group of small-framed, pajama-clad people began slowly to climb down from the truck bed. But these people weren’t just small-framed: They were skin and bone, malnourished for certain, and as a group, their skin had a sickly gray hue. The men from the cabin, meanwhile, continued to yell.

  Then the last perso
n was helped down, and Lenny could hear his pained groans, as four men carried him toward their position and gently lowered him onto the dirt beside the fire. The four moved on toward the huts, accompanied by the barking of orders.

  When all the people from the truck bed were stowed away in huts, the yelling finally stopped, and the men from the cab climbed back inside and drove away.

  Silence fell across the valley again, except for the insects and the animals scuttling in the foliage, and the soft moans of the man lying beside the fire. The same person who had tended the fire came back with a small bucket of water and kneeled by the injured man, dabbing a wet cloth on his legs. Each time the man gave a soft mumble, as if trying to suppress a yelp. The caregiver began singing softly, in a language Lenny did not understand, but in a tone that was universal. It sounded like a lullaby. The voice was gentle and high, and clearly a woman’s.

  The woman dabbed the man’s forehead and began scooping rice out of the pot on the fire. The ladle looked small in the firelight—maybe half a cup—and each metal bowl she picked up received one scoop. When she was done serving, she collected a handful of bowls and took them away to the huts and the men who had come in off the truck. She made several trips.

  Lenny and Lucas dropped down low in their paddy.

  “That man’s hurt,” whispered Lucas.

  “I’ve got a med kit,” replied Lenny.

  “They’ll know we’re here.”

  “I think that was always going to happen, wasn’t it?”

  They waited for the woman to return to the man’s side. She had collected leaves and with some water made a muddy paste, which she began wrapping on the man’s legs.

  Lenny slowly pushed himself up out of the depression and stood in the darkness. He was used to moving quietly and the woman didn’t seem to notice him, so he stepped up onto the bank and walked forward. Lucas stayed in the depression, rifle aimed at the woman.

  Lenny felt the warmth of the fire before the woman saw him. If she was surprised by a stranger appearing from the paddy fields, she didn’t show it. Perhaps she had seen too much. Lenny let his rifle hang loose and held out his hands, palms forward. The woman stopped her wrapping and watched him come.

  “Do you speak English?” Lenny asked quietly.

  The woman watched him but made no attempt to reply or move. Her expression was indifferent but her eyes flashed across him, taking him in—his clothes, his weapon, his mane of rust-red hair.

  “English?” repeated Lenny. He didn’t expect her to speak English, but he always found it better to ask. He’d muddled through more than one conversation using nothing but gestures with a person who turned out to speak passable English. He stopped short of the fire.

  “No English,” he said to himself. “Okay.”

  “A little,” said the woman.

  Lenny wasn’t sure if he had heard right, so he asked again, “English, yes?”

  “Yes,” she said, her face still giving nothing away.

  “Okay, good,” he said. “My Cambodian will order us a beer and that’s about it.” He smiled but the woman didn’t return it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Is this man hurt?”

  The woman glanced at the man and then back at Lenny. “Yes. Hurt. Very bad.”

  “I have medicine. I can help.”

  Lenny slowly lifted the strap of his rifle over his head and placed the gun on the ground. He shrugged off his pack and kneeled, and then he took out a field med kit.

  “What happened to him?” Lenny asked.

  “Men say explode,” she said. “Boom.”

  She pulled back some of the leaves she had been applying, and Lenny saw the man’s pants had been torn to shreds. His legs were a mangled bloody mess. Landmines had been laid across Cambodia/Kampuchea by all sides during the Khmer Rouge conflict, and Lenny could only assume that this mine had in some way malfunctioned, because although the man’s legs were badly damaged, he wore no shoes but still had both his feet.

  Lenny opened his kit and took out a syringe of morphine, which he displayed.

  “Morphine?” asked the woman.

  Lenny nodded. “Can you tell him it is for the pain?”

  The woman said something to the man and then nodded to Lenny, who injected the drug into the man’s thigh. He returned the syringe to his kit and took out a packet, which he ripped open and handed to the woman.

  “Antibiotic,” he said. “Stop the germs. You understand germs?”

  The woman nodded and Lenny gestured to swallow the medicine. The woman removed two pills and put them in the man’s mouth, and then gave him some water. As the morphine kicked in, the moaning stopped.

  For a moment they kneeled in silence, watching the man breath slowly in and out. Lenny glanced at the woman. She was older than him, he guessed, maybe thirty or so. Her skin was as smooth as porcelain but covered in a film of dirt.

  “Are you a medic?” asked Lenny.

  The woman frowned. “No. I nothing.”

  “You know morphine.”

  “I nothing. Nobody.”

  “This man needs treatment.”

  “No treatment.”

  “I can give you my medicine kit but it won’t last long. His leg will probably get infected.”

  “Yes, infected. I will help him.”

  “You can’t help him fight an infection.”

  “No, I help him.”

  “You can’t help him. He won’t get better without treatment. These wounds are serious.”

  “He no get better.”

  Now it was Lenny’s turn to frown. The conversation appeared to be getting lost in translation.

  “You can’t help him without treatment, do you understand?”

  “I understand. I no help get better. I help him die.”

  “You’ll help him die?”

  The woman nodded.

  “He die. I will help him. Help die in peace.”

  Lenny sat back on his boots and looked at the woman. She clearly hadn’t expected medicine to appear from the paddy fields. She expected the man to die from his wounds because no treatment was coming. She would stay and tend to him as best she could with mud and leaves and water, not in the hope of saving him but in the knowledge that he would die.

  The matter-of-fact nature of her comment tore at Lenny. He came from a world where sickness was cured by a hospital visit, and even in warfare, where he had seen men die, there was always the hope, if not the expectation, that patients would live. Not here. Death came on a timetable that was not interrupted by such things. Death was as everyday an event as life, and the pragmatic look in the woman’s eye told Lenny this wasn’t her first deathbed.

  But Lenny wasn’t a hospice caregiver. He was a fighter, from a family of fighters. He wouldn’t give up, not until this man’s last breath. He glanced back at the darkness of the paddy field, where Lucas lay with his rifle. They had come to see, but they had not planned to just sit back and observe. He looked at the woman, who was watching him.

  “I can get him help,” said Lenny.

  The woman said nothing.

  “I can get him to a hospital.”

  The woman frowned and looked at the paddy fields as Lenny had done.

  “You are American?” she asked.

  “No,” Lenny lied. “I’m Canadian.”

  “You no help. You with Americans. You with General Tan.”

  “No, I’m not. I mean yes, some of us are. It’s complicated.”

  “No complicated. You with Tan. You no help.”

  “Please believe me, I’m not with General Tan. I can help save this man’s life. I have a helicopter. I can fly him to a hospital.”

  Her brow furrowed as she looked him over, then she looked at the man lying beside her. Lenny knew she only had two options. One option meant the man would die here on the dirt by the fire. The other option—allowing this stranger from the dark to take him—increased the man’s chances some. At least in theory. She couldn’t know how much, but some was some
.

  “Okay. You go. You take him to hospital.”

  Lenny nodded and said, “I have a friend to help. Okay?” He turned and gestured for Lucas to come over, and the woman watched Lucas amble up with the same disinterested expression she had given Lenny.

  “We need to get this guy to the chopper,” said Lenny.

  “Okay,” said Lucas, offering no objection.

  “I’ll carry him if you carry my pack.”

  “We’ll hide the packs in the hills and take turns. Carrying a man is hard work,” said Lucas, speaking as if from experience.

  Lucas grabbed Lenny’s pack and rifle, and Lenny looked back at the woman.

  “You should come, too.”

  “No.”

  “I can get you out.”

  “No. We too many.”

  “I’m just talking about you. If Tan’s men find this guy gone, they’ll be after you.”

  “No, they know nothing. If I gone, they suspicious. Hurt others. But this man? I make grave. Tell he die. This what they expect.”

  Lenny figured he wasn’t going to change her mind, so he picked up the man as gently as he could and hoisted him across his shoulders.

  “We’ll be back,” he said.

  The woman frowned. “Why?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  It took twice as long to get back to the chopper through the dark jungle. They hid their packs in the trees and then took it in turns to carry the man in fifteen-minute bursts. The dead weight sapped their energy and the canteens were long empty by the time they reached the riverbed.

  The dark chopper sat in silence in the middle of the riverbed. There was no sign of the Pilot. Lucas dropped the injured man onto the floor of the Huey, strapped him down, and gave him another hit of morphine. Lenny jumped into the cockpit and grabbed the headset and called the Pilot. He heard nothing, so he repeated his call. Then he heard static.

  “Keep your pants on,” came the reply.

  The Pilot wandered across the riverbed from the opposite bank, carrying a bedroll.

  “Where’d you get to?” asked Lenny as the Pilot ambled up to the chopper.

  “The smart money doesn’t snooze in an unguarded Huey, mate. I just dropped my swag in the bushes over there.”