“But,” I said, “what I would almost guarantee, is that when Transpan no longer needs you, you’re going to get worse than we’re offering.”
When Hawk spoke again, Ky nodded and looked at me steadily. Then he spoke.
“He wants to know what about you,” Hawk said. “I’m going to try and get Susan away, and if I succeed I’ll split,” I said. “Hawk too.” I was looking directly back at Ky. “You’ll be on your own.”
Hawk spoke it to him. Ky nodded some more. And was quiet, looking at me, smoking his cigarette in slow deep drags, holding the smoke in his lungs a long time before he exhaled slowly through his nose. Then he spoke.
“He wants to know how come you going to all this trouble. Whyn’t you just call up the immigration people and report a bunch of illegal aliens.”
“Because I need chaos. Immigration comes down, it will be legal and orderly and Russell will be long gone with Susan.”
Hawk translated, Ky nodded.
“I can try to get some kind of contact set up for them,” I said. “I can talk to Ives and see if there’s some Vietnamese underground they could disappear into.”
Hawk told him. Ky shrugged.
“But I can’t promise,” I said. “And I can’t trust what Ives will say.”
Hawk translated. Ky nodded and smiled. Hawk said “He like that, you don’t trust anyone, and he don’t trust you.”
“Calls for a lot of negative capability,” I said.
“They used to it,” Hawk said.
Ky said something to the men around us. There were murmurs, and one fast staccato of Vietnamese. I looked at Hawk. He shrugged.
“Too fast for me,” he said. “I don’t know what they saying.”
Ky turned back to me and looked at me while he dug a package of Camels out of the waistband of his pants and lit one from the butt of the old one and dragged in a lot of smoke and held it. And held it. And looked at me. And then the smoke slowly trickled out through his nostrils.
He made a sharp nod of his head. “Yes,” he said in English.
“Good,” I said. “We’ll need some planning.”
“We done some of that,” Hawk said, “already.”
“We get the arms room for them,” I said.
“Yeah. And they got some gasoline. Been stealing it a quart at a time and storing it.”
“This isn’t a new idea for them,” I said.
“Nope.”
My legs got a lot more cramped before we were through, Ky talking, Hawk translating, me replying. But before dawn we knew what we were going to do. And when.
CHAPTER 35
THE NIGHT MAN AT THE TRANSPAN ARMORY WAS a blond guy named Schlenker who spoke English with a German accent. He wore rimless glasses when he read; and-he was reading a copy of something in German with his feet up on the counter when I hit him behind the ear with the government issue sap that Ives had given us. He slid sideways out of the chair and his glasses fell off as he hit the floor.
I squatted beside him and fished the keys out of his right-hand pants pocket. I opened the door to the gun room and the sound of a siren exploded into the quiet night.
Behind me Hawk said something in Vietnamese.
A single line of Vietnamese men filed into the gun room. Each grabbed an M 16 rifle and a clip of ammunition and moved back out of the armory. Every fourth man took an ammunition box.
Ky stood beside Hawk speaking softly to the men in Vietnamese. Hawk said something to him in French. Ky nodded.
The siren screamed and a series of spotlights glared suddenly throughout the compound. I went out the side window headfirst and landed and rolled and got up running. Behind me I heard the first chatter of automatic fire. Then more of it. I was behind the nearest Quonset now, and behind me I heard soft footfalls. I turned with my gun out and it was Hawk.
“So there was an alarm,” I said.
“Don’t matter,” Hawk said. “They got the guns.”
I nodded toward the far side of the compound and we headed for it on the run. No one was worried about us. They still thought we were on their side and, like the rest of the forces, were running around wondering what the hell happened.
Behind us there was a sudden great whoosh, a giant thud, and the armory burst into a mass of immediate flame.
“Gasoline do work nice, don’t it,” Hawk said. We paused in shadow along the perimeter fence. “Lead free,” he said. The fire modified the harsh white glow of the spotlights and gave a bronze cast to everything and the men running across the open space became shadowed and distorted as the flames surged and wavered. The automatic fire echoed in short rippling bursts and then the ammunition left in the armory began to explode in festival
