'Romeo two?'
'Clear.'
'Romeo three?'
'We still have to drop the mortar,' replied the pilot of the llyushin.
'Got to have that,' said Nark to Bolan.
'Not if it's going to cost us a crew, we don't,' Bolan told him. 'The moment he tries to make an approach, they'll shoot.' Bolan jabbed the talk button. 'Okay, guys, we'll forego the mortar. Prepare to split.'
'Romeo one to Phoenix!' The voice was frantic again. 'We're ordered to proceed to Oudon.'
'Keep saying you don't understand in Russian and standby.'
Bolan slung the radio over his shoulder and ran for the woods. He grabbed a Degtyarev machine gun, inserted a drum of ammunition, and ran out. He climbed the slope to a rocky tower and took up a position in the entrance to a cave, gun at his hip.
The Sabres were curving toward him, coming from the left. They went out of sight, and he heard them fly past behind him. They reappeared on his right, exhaust glowing. They curved once more and straightened out over the opposite ridge.
Bolan pulled the trigger and a line of tracers arched over the valley. The rounds came nowhere near the planes, but Bolan was not interested in hitting them; he only wanted to attract their attention. And attract it he did. The fighters zoomed and peeled. Two Immelmann turns followed, and they came shrieking down at him.
'Split, Romeo!' Bolan shouted into the radio. 'Split!'
The nose of one of the fighters winked, and colored tracers from its cannon flew at him. Bolan stepped into the cave. It was a trick he picked up from the VC though they, he had to admit, were much more sophisticated. The VC pulled the stunt using artillery.
The rocky tower thudded under the impact of the projectiles. The planes roared over, and a bomb exploded outside. The ground shook, the cave blurred. A section of the wall collapsed, and the cave filled with dust.
Bolan ran out, coughing. There was a crater ten yards from the tower. As for the planes, they were banking, coming out of their dive. One left the valley, heading after a plane, the other prepared to pay Bolan another visit.
Bolan teased it with a burst and stepped inside. Once again, the tower thudded. Another bomb exploded. As it did so, the entrance of the cave flashed white and a blast of hot air swept the inside. Close!
Bolan ran out and tumbled headfirst into a crater just outside the entrance. As he was scrambling from it, the radio came on. Over the crash of static a voice was shouting.
'Fighter on your tail! Fighter on your tail! Look out!'
'Oh, shit,' a voice said calmly. In the northern sky something flashed.
'Fire! Fire! We're burning! We're hit!'
'Pipe down,' the calm voice told him. 'Damage report.'
'Fire in number four engine. Fuel pressure dropping.'
'Phoenix to aircraft on fire,' said Bolan into his set. 'Can you make it back to land here?'
'We'll try,' the calm voice replied. 'Thanks for the invitation.'
The sound of cannon in the sky sent Bolan diving into the crater. The Sabre roared over, the rocky tower flashed as if hit by lightning, the ground shook, rocks and dirt rained on Bolan.
When he finally got up, the tower was no more. Nor was the cave. Had Bolan gone back into the cave for the third time, he would be climbing the ladder to heaven, as the Meo put it so poetically.
A drone filled the sky, the Ilyushin was returning. From its starboard wing trailed two tongues of flame. Both engines were now on fire. On the field, Nark was supervising the clearing of the drop zone. The last crates were being dragged off by teams of ponies. Bolan scanned the sky for the fighters, but they were gone. Gone to refuel, which meant others would be coming.
'Romeo three to Phoenix,' said the voice in the sky. 'We're coming in.'
The Ilyushin approached, one of its two remaining engines coughing. Then both fell silent. The plane lost height rapidly. It flew over the first bonfire, and Bolan could hear the rush of air and the noise of flames sounding like flapping cloth. The silver fuselage gleamed red from the bonfires. The landing gear was not extended. The plane touched down and with a crunching noise slid on its belly, raising a cloud of dust. It plowed through the second bonfire, a wing tipped, and it spun to a halt.
The crew jumped out but instead of getting away proceeded to unload. Nark and Stressner ran to them with Montagnards coming after, leading ponies. Bolan followed. By the time he reached the plane, the mortar tubes and bombs had been unloaded. Everyone grabbed something and ran.
From the south another pair of fighters was streaking toward them. This time the whole valley opened up. The air filled with the crash of automatic weapons and a panoply of tracers formed the sky. The planes peeled, avoiding the tracers.
'Cease fire!' Bolan shouted, running along the slope. 'Cease fire!' The last thing he wanted was to shoot down a Thai plane. They were fighting Tiger Enterprises, not Thailand.
The shooting died down while the Thunderstreaks circled the valley by a wide margin. Nark came running to Bolan. 'They'll have bombers with napalm here in a moment.'
'And heliborne troops first thing in the morning,' Bolan added. 'Major Vang Ky!'
The headman ran to him up the slope.
'Move out,' Bolan told him.
'For village?'
'No, we go directly to the Tiger camp.'
He nodded and ran off.
Whistles blew, voices shouted. Bolan's Montagnard army was finally on the march.
Chapter 9
By noon they had covered a third of the way. They were in the La Kon forest, famed for its sandalwood and its herds of wild elephants. It was there that Bolan called a long halt, the first of their journey. The trees provided plenty of shade from the now broiling sun and there was, a stream. The Montagnards watered the horses, Bolan posted guards, and the men sat to eat. It was simple Montagnard fare, glutinous rice dipped in pimento, washed down with water from the stream, which they drank in cups made from banana leaves. Lunch over, everyone stretched out for some shut-eye except for the whites who were not used to siestas. They sat in a group talking. Nark was describing how the Thais fought the heroin trade.
'One day the district chief came to see me and said they had captured a ton of raw opium. He said they were going to burn it. Why didn't I get some American reporters to come up? I called the DBA office in Bangkok, and they sent a busload. The office liked the publicity. It shows Congress back home what a good job we're doing. The district chief put on a big party with girls and dancing, the reporters took pictures, and I paid out the reward money. In those days we paid reward money. Only later did I learn that what we burned was silage. The opium had been resold to a merchant in Bangkok. Clever, no?'
'Why are they like that?' asked Heath, the Ilyushin pilot. 'Don't they care what that stuff does to the people in America?'
'America?' said Nark. 'They don't give a damn about America. All those Thai politicians care about is themselves. Tiger pays protection money to Bangkok. Without it a lot of those government people wouldn't be able to afford their villas and their Mercedes. So they play ball.
'Mind you,' Nark went on, 'there's also economics. If Bangkok put Tiger out of business, the opium farmers wouldn't have anyone to sell to. How would they make a living? Bangkok's afraid they'd turn Communist. USAID suggested schemes for substitute crops. Trouble is there isn't much demand for substitute crops from the Triangle. The area's too far from the main markets. Anyway, the farmers prefer opium; it's more profitable.'
