in the event someone tried a hurried retreat back toward the main river. Leatherneck John’s was on the far side of the elbow.
Hatcher pointed to the tight little peninsula and traced his finger straight across its base, away from Leatherneck John’s.
‘This where we are?’ he whispered.
‘About there.’ Daphne nodded.
‘So if we got in trouble at the bar, we could forget the boat and come overland, straight back here, right?’
She nodded.
‘How far is it?’ he asked.
‘A mile or less,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ Hatcher’s voice rasped, ‘that’s our fall-back position. We’ll have the Cigarette boat wait here and we’ll go around the bend in the snakeboat. If we get in trouble, we run overland, like rabbits, back here, forget the small boat.’
Cohen said, ‘How many men do re take with us?’
‘Sing goes in the bar with u, covers our ass,’ said Hatcher. ‘Maybe one other shooter to stay with the snakeboat and keep his eyes open in case Sam-Sam should show up. The other three stay with the Cigarette. If we have to run for it they can cover our retreat. If it goes smoothly, they’ll just follow us back.’
‘Sam-Sam will not be back until tomorrow,’ Daphne reiterated.
‘Uh-huh. Well, there’s always the unexpected,’ Hatcher said, half aloud. ‘I’ll stop worrying about Sam-Sam when we get back to Hong Kong.’
‘You are very cautious,’ Daphne said with a smile.
‘And still alive,’ Hatcher answered. ‘Let’s put it together and get on up there.’
As they entered the domain of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti the jungle sounds merged with other sounds. Human sounds. While the sun began to sink behind the trees a strange chant drifted through the trees from in front of them.
‘What’s that?’ Cohen asked.
Daphne said, ‘The women are singing a
‘I’ve never heard that before,’ Cohen said.
‘It’s Cambodian, I think,’ Daphne said.
‘Are they Khmer Rouge?’ Hatcher asked.
She shrugged. ‘Khmer Rouge, free Laotian guerrillas, river tramps. Who knows. Remember, the women are just as mean as the men, and maybe a little quicker.’
The stream was no more than a hundred feet wide. As they rounded the elbow they saw the first signs of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti. There were three barges lashed to trees hard on the bank to their right, jutting out into the small river. Sing had to swing out to get around them. On the first, there were two hooches, side by side on the back of the barge, like guard stations.
A dozen women, all bare-breasted and wearing red bandannas tied tightly around stringy black hair, chanted as they cleaned the deck. On one corner of the barge two large woks were smoking as another woman stirred vegetables for dinner into them. A man sat on another corner fishing.
‘Quite a domestic little scene,’ Hatcher growled.
‘Sweet,’ Cohen said, ‘like a Fourth of July picnic.’
There were five or six crates of electronic equipment stacked in the center of the deck of the second barge, sloppily covered by a tarp. Beside it, the third barge held only ten or fifteen cases of ammunition. Hatcher checked the ammo through binoculars: 9 mm., .30 caliber, .38 caliber, a crate of .45s.
‘A lot of bullets and very little inventory,’ said Hatcher.
‘Sam-Sam’s probably got his heavy stuff stashed a little farther upriver. He’s not expecting customers,’ Cohen offered.
‘Good,’ said Hatcher.
Beyond the barges, another hundred yards up the creek, was Leatherneck John’s, a large, ugly square with thatched sides and a corrugated roof. It jutted out over the creek on stilts and was surrounded on both sides by makeshift piers, like a shoddy mud-flat marina. Several boats of various descriptions were tied up at the pier. One of them was a scruffy-looking Chris Craft, at least twenty years old, a tattered German flag dangling from its radio antenna.
Daphne said, ‘The old white fishing boat is the Dutchman’s.’
‘Good,’ Cohen whispered. ‘Maybe we can get out of here in a hurry.’ He swept the binoculars farther upstream. A heavily laden barge, well covered with waterproof tarpaulins, hugged the bank a hundred yards past the bar.
‘Jesus,’ Cohen breathed.
‘What?’ Hatcher asked.
‘Check the barge farther upstream,’ Cohen said and Hatcher lifted his glasses.
‘Fat city,’ said Cohen. ‘That’s the store.’
As they watched, a man came out on the front of the barge and stretched, then began t urinate into the river. He was a tall, very thin black man with greasy hair kneaded into pigtails held in place by a red headband. His blue
