“You come out, man, or the girl gets it. You understand?”
There was nothing mysterious about it — a straightforward threat, and not even for a split second did Kacey doubt that the other black man meant exactly what he said. And not for a second did the Ranger doubt that if he didn’t get to warn Foxtrot column, then thirty men would become the victims rather than the executors of a fatal ambush. It was the girl or the column.
But what if he didn’t answer the black man? What if he simply kept quiet? How could the black man and the remainder of the enemy patrol be sure he was still in listening range, that he’d heard the black man’s threat? For all they knew, he could have been well back on the trail by now, hightailing it in the direction he’d come from — to Delta in the marshland below Dien Bien Phu.
“You hear me, man?” came the black man’s call.
Kacey, his finger on the trigger guard of his HKMP 5, said nothing. Two could play this game.
Though the tail of the monsoon had now passed over the POW camp at Ningming, the ground was muddy, and several of the weaker prisoners slipped on the way to the “slop” truck for the bowl of rice and cup of tea, the truck being mobbed as cover for Murphy to slip under the tailgate, quickly wriggling forward on the passenger side. He heard the shouting of the guards at the back, Upshut among them, and several warning shots fired. He rolled out, got up, tried the passenger door. It opened and he was inside the truck’s cabin. Two things caught his eye at once: a small, battered, dirty plastic toolbox in the passenger’s foot well, and a bunch of keys hanging from the ignition, the gate through the razor wire being fifty yards away. A run for it — crash through the friggin’ one-arm barricade and drive like hell. He was excited, but he wasn’t dumb. Probably wouldn’t make it anyway. Besides, there was the minor matter of leaving everyone else behind.
In all it had taken less than a minute. From underneath the truck Murphy could see a thicket of legs. One of the POWs whom Danny Mellin had designated as a lookout saw Murphy under the tailgate and shouted, “C’mon, hurry up there! I’m starving!” This was immediately followed by a surge of bodies around the tailgate and Murphy scrabbling amid the legs, only to surface as the guards began pushing the line back while clubbing several POWs to the ground.
“You get wire cutters?” Mellin asked, handing the Australian his rice bowl and plastic spoon.
“No cutters,” Murphy told him, “but I swiped the truck’s keys. Silly bastards left ‘em in the ignition.”
“They’re going to shoot people when they, find them missing.”
“You don’t say,” Murphy said. “But first the driver’ll get shit and he’ll wonder whether he left ‘em in the truck or wherever. You know how it is when you’ve lost your keys?”
“Yeah, but when he’s sure they’ve been stolen, they’re gonna shoot people.”
“Exactly,” Shirley chimed in.
“All right, you two,” Murphy snapped. “Cool it. Ya don’t think I haven’t thought that out?”
“So what are you going to do with them?” Shirley asked. “Hold out for a reward?”
“Very fucking amusing.”
“All right, Mike,” Danny cut in. “What’s your plan?”
“Well, first we get a good impression of the key. Surely to God we’ve got someone in this camp who can make a duplicate — can do it from wood if you get a good impression.”
“And how—” Shirley began, but the Australian didn’t let her finish.
“Mud,” he said. “Fucking compound’s a sea of mud, if you hadn’t noticed. We get a good impression — mud on a brick— anything’ll do.”
Shirley Fortescue conceded it was the obvious thing to do.
“Then return the keys?” Danny asked.
“Right!” Murphy said. “Only we don’t have to be particular. I mean we don’t need to get anyone back into the cabin. Just toss the keys outside the truck by the driver’s running board. He’ll figure he dropped them getting out.”
“Okay,” Danny agreed, “but move fast. We’ll have all the POW huts up by tonight.”
“Good as done,” Murphy quipped, gripping the keys and disappearing into the crowd of POWs.
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
Kacey had done nothing, but then the black man put the AK-47’s barrel against the little girl’s temple. “Listen, man, you don’t come out in thirty seconds I’m gonna waste the kid. Then I’m gonna start on her family. You want me to bring ‘em out? We’ll waste the whole fuckin’ village, man — if that’s what it takes. I ain’t gonna let you fuck up my business, man. You dig?”
Kacey said nothing, his right thumb moving the catch to the full automatic position.
The black man yelled something in a language other than English, and the tail-end Charlie of the six-man Khmer squad ran back a hundred yards or so to the village. Kacey could hear nothing but the occasional faint whimper, like that from a puppy, the young girl crying. Then he heard shouting and a slap that resounded through the rain forest as the tail-end Khmer was half dragging, half pushing two elderly natives, a man and a woman — Laotians most probably — down the trail toward the black man. The young girl turned as if to run to them, but the black man cuffed her about the ears. Then behind the tail-end Khmer and the old couple there came a woman armed with the ubiquitous AK-47 and wearing one of the green lion-tamer hats so popular in the old NVA. Kacey could tell it was a woman, for despite the leafy camouflage about her head and shoulders, she couldn’t hide her figure. As she came nearer, about twenty yards from where Kacey was hiding, he could see she was white.
Through the undergrowth Kacey caught glimpses of the two elderly Laotians being driven, half tottering, up the trail, the old man tripping.
There was a shot, and a scream so loud that Kacey felt a sudden chill as he strained to see which of the old people had fallen. Neither of them. It was the young girl who’d been shot.
“You hear me, man?” came the black man’s voice. “I ain’t foolin’ ‘round here. Now you come out or we’ll do the old man next. Man, we’ll do the whole friggin’ village if we have to. You understand? Now move your ass.” The man was poking the distraught old Laotian woman with the AK-47.
Kacey stood, his hands held high. “All right!” he shouted, and made his way toward the track even as he realized it was a no-win situation. There was no doubt in his mind he’d be shot. The only question remaining was, who’d pull the trigger, Salt or Pepper?
CHAPTER SEVENTY
A good mud impression was made of the truck key stolen by Murphy, and already one of the dozens of technician POWs from the oil rigs was working on making a duplicate out of the hard base of his plastic tea mug, while another was using the file Mike Murphy had brought him to hone the edges of the pliers into a wire cutter. Murphy told Danny Mellin that he saw no reason why they couldn’t bust out that night. Shirley Fortescue, glancing up at the wind-riven sky, advised against it. “Too much moonlight,” she said, “now that the monsoon’s passed.”
Danny didn’t like the suggestion of any delay. “Longer we wait, the longer Upshut and his crew have to detect something’s going down. Besides, we could have an informer amongst us. Won’t take long before someone starts thinking about getting extra rations of rice — a bit of meat, whatever.”
“Then I say go tonight,” Murphy said. “Moon or not.”
“Let’s see what the weather’s like tonight,” Danny replied. Might cloud over later this afternoon.”
“I say go!” Murphy repeated.
