CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Not having heard anything for several minutes in the tunnel, Freeman, still on hands and knees, edged his way from the bamboo swing door into the first curve of what turned out to be an S and not a U bend. Somewhere above him he heard the faint stutter of what he guessed was an M-60, probably chopping down a PLA soldier who’d felt trapped on hearing tunnel rats coming for him from two directions at once. At the end of the S turn, Freeman came adjacent to an alcove about four feet deep, four feet high, and six feet long, containing two bunk beds of bamboo, and, set into a small recess, an oil wick candle. Beneath the bottom bunk were several dozen plastic hoops, known to the Americans as “Beijing hoops.” When twigs and leaves were attached to the plastic rings, a soldier wearing them could turn his head 180 degrees without the camouflage moving.
At the end of the bottom bunk was a small first aid kit. Freeman knew that whether your enemy had morphine was one way to tell how well-equipped he was. But to find out that bit of intelligence would have meant opening the box, which he didn’t do. Seeing a deep shadow off to his left about three feet away, he determined it was another alcove and made his way toward it. Its three walls contained rolls of curtainlike muslin that could be unrolled to form cloth walls insects couldn’t penetrate.
In the middle of the alcove, taking up about half its length, was a bamboo operating table with various instruments laid out, including forceps, suturing needles, scalpels, and clamps. There was a large light overhead, its socket set into the earthen ceiling. The wire leading from it went across the roof of the tunnel to a smaller alcove, no more than two feet deep, five feet long, and five high, where Freeman found an old Flying Pigeon bicycle on rollers. When pedaled, the turning wheels would produce electricity to light the small operating theater.
Seeing a cone of light ahead of him at right angles, the beam moving farther to his left, Freeman released the safety on his .45, lay flat, and held the revolver in two hands. The beam went out, its images still dancing on Freeman’s right retina, the general, from experience, having kept one eye closed. He opened it now, shutting the right eye. “Delta two!” he called.
“Lima!” came the correct response from one allied tunneler to another.
Freeman could hear his own sigh of relief. “Nothing is better than hearing a friendly voice down one of those godforsaken gopher holes,” he’d once told Bob Cline. He switched his flashlight on then off. The other tunnel rat did the same. Freeman could see he was approaching a T section, with the other soldier about to cross it. Though becoming more claustrophobic by the minute, he whispered, “I’ll take it, son. You head back. Make sure you let our boys know it’s you coming out.”
“Don’t worry,” the soldier whispered. “I will.”
Freeman patted the youngster, then crawled cautiously across the junction to cross the T and follow the tunnel to its end, and in so doing added to his legend, to the mystique of those commanders before and since Caesar whose men knew they would never be asked to do something by their commander that he would not be prepared to do himself.
When Freeman crossed the T and was alone again in the enemy’s subterranean world, an involuntary shiver passed through his body. He felt the claustrophobia worsening, the ever-present danger of suffocation so heavy upon him that he had to fight not to throw up. Combined with his own body stench, he smelled the damp mold of the tunnels themselves, and felt an overwhelming urge to go as fast as hell and get out. But speed, he knew, was as sure a killer as a hidden grenade or trip wire. “Carefully does it,” he told himself, and when he moved forward, felt the rush of gut acid up his esophagus and cursed himself for not bringing antacid pills — next to his .45 and knife, a tunneler’s best friend.
He felt ahead with the base of the flashlight in his right hand, careful of any traps. The ground was holding. Now he gave it the full weight of his right hand as he moved forward with his left. Suddenly the ground went from under his left hand, his body driving it down hard on the punji sticks. It was the first time anyone had ever said they’d heard Freeman scream. Two punji sticks, each tipped with excrement, had penetrated his left hand. Simultaneously he saw a shadow flitting ahead left to right. He challenged, got no answer, and fired two rounds that echoed eerily in the subterranean world. Freeman slumped for a moment, then regained his composure enough to back up out of the tunnel, his hand bleeding profusely.
CHAPTER FIFTY
It seemed as if the bus back to Dalat had no springs. It was certainly overloaded, and despite a sign — albeit a small one — warning of fines for expectorating on the people’s buses, Ray Baker could hear the loud guttural rumbles of spitters about to take aim through the open-air windows.
Some of the children in the back of the bus were yelling with glee as the vehicle bumped and rattled on its way to Dalat. It made Ray Baker nervous. All the noise and the disease of Saigon had spread to the north — ghetto blasters blasting everything within earshot, the sound amplified by the interior of the ramshackle bus. He suddenly had a case of deja vu — a bright morning like this, bodies pressing up hard against one another, the smell of people jammed together, engine fumes and dust, kids squalling then screaming, an American collapsing in the aisle, eyes bulging, falling flat on his face, adults screaming, reaching for their children to get them away from him, the American facedown, a knife protruding from his back, no one helping him. Baker had been unable to reach him because of the stream of hysterical passengers pouring from the bus as it skidded to a stop, several passengers climbing out the open side windows. A stampede, no one but him wanting to help the American, no one wanting to get involved.
Suddenly, the flashback over, he turned around. A baby saw his face from less than a foot away and began screaming. There were only other children and harried parents trying to maintain some sense of order while balancing the various fruits, vegetables, and village wares they were taking to Dalat. It was then that he saw the boy from yesterday running by the bus, sending out a long crimson stream of betel juice and waving happily to him.
“Oh yes,” Baker said, smiling maliciously at him. “I want to see you too, you little bastard!” It was the boy who must have fingered him, or at least suckered him away to the market while they did over his room, whoever
When Baker got out of the bus, the boy was nowhere to be seen. Then, on his way back to the hotel, he saw the boy nonchalantly coming toward him, not even pausing as he spat the next stream of betelnut juice onto the dusty street. Baker wanted to ask the youth a pile of questions, but all that came out was “Hi!” in response to the boy’s greeting. Only then did Baker ask, “Who are you?”
“Friend, Bac Baker. Friend of Americans. Okay?”
True, the kid had indirectly got him the info about a couple of MIAs, but how about the woman and the lemon? Baker confronted the boy: Wasn’t that just a dead end to allow whoever was paying him time to ransack his hotel room?
The boy didn’t understand “ransack,” but thought he understood after Baker had given him another dollar.
“I don’t know who did this,” he said.
To believe him or not? Baker wondered. He asked the boy who had hired him this morning, or did he just happen to rum up at the bus stop at that particular time? The boy was astounded by the question. Whether something had been lost in the translation or not, Baker didn’t understand. But in any event the boy said, “Same man yesterday, today. Same man, Bac Baker.”
“Yeah, all right, but
The boy shook his head. “I tell you that, no more money. Bad for me. Okay? You understand, Bac Baker?”
“Yeah, yeah. So are you going to tell me why you’re here at the market, right now?”
The boy spat a long, crimson stream at a bug crawling on the sidewalk, missed, and told Baker, “He say to tell you Salt and Pepper be back.”
Baker felt a surge of exhilaration with an overlay of panic. “Salt and Pepper will be back?”
“No, be back.”
“You mean they are back.”
