was one of their own, and let him pass before opening fire. But what about the two kids no more than ten paces behind him? To make everything worse, more confused, it was getting dark.
Like most things in war, Kacey mused, no matter how well you plan things, something always goes wrong. What kind of luck was it to be setting a trap for Khmer Rouge troops and instead run smack into a freakin’ drug caravan armed to the teeth?
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
Danny Mellin, Mike Murphy, and Shirley Fortescue were having their own bad luck. Above the POW camp white clouds of cumulus were crossing the moon like a line of silvered galleons, at once obscuring then revealing moonlight.
The silhouette of the four PLA trucks that had been parked in a square around Upshut’s guarded administrative hut were clear one moment, obscured the next, and there was no way of knowing how many guards were inside. Beyond the long coils of razor wire that made up the camp’s perimeter, there were two PLA soldiers for each side, eight guards in all, constantly walking up and down the side they’d been assigned. As the camp was not yet complete, four three-ton trucks were parked at each comer of the camp, a type 67, 7.62mm machine gun mounted atop each truck’s cabin. These would soon be replaced by regular guard towers. The on-again, off-again moonlight wasn’t making Danny Mellin’s decision any easier. If they waited a few days, the PLA would erect bamboo-supported towers, equipping each with overarching searchlights. Yet if they went now and were caught in a beam of moonlight…
“I say go,” Mike Murphy urged, glancing around at the other POWs. “Look,” he said, turning to Mellin, “pretty soon this thick cloud cover is gonna pile up, hiding the moon.”
“I don’t know if it will or not,” Shirley said, “but I’m leaning toward Murphy. They could start on those towers tomorrow. And as you said, Danny, someone’s bound to let something slip out sooner rather than later.”
“All right,” Danny said. “We go. Everybody know what they have to do?”
Mike answered for the others. “Yeah, two of us in the cabin, one navigator, one driver, four in the back of the truck, one man feeding the other on the machine gun.”
“Right. Remember ‘one’?”
“Cut the wire,” Murphy answered, the tension making his throat tight.
‘Two?” Danny said.
“Get the two guards nearest the truck,” Shirley answered.
“Three?”
“In the trucks,” one of the others said.
“Four?”
“Drive like hell—” Murphy began.
“Jesus, Mike!” Danny cut in.
“Sorry, sorry. Four — if any team has time, we hook the cut wire to the tailboard and pull the shit out of the perimeter.”
“And,” Shirley put in, “shoot up the four trucks inside the compound to stop them chasing us—
For better security, the people that made up the two squads had all been chosen from the same hut. They had split any money they’d managed to hide on themselves upon arrest by the PLA, some preferring to carry American cigarettes to yuan. There was no survival kit, unless you included a ball of rice saved here and there — whatever was left after they’d donated enough to Mellin’s wall — the wall of the hut nearest the wire, the wire looking like great rolls of silver in the intermittent moonglow.
Via biofeedback, Danny was willing his breathing to slow down, asking quietly, “Every team got their matchbox compass?” They all said yes. “Remember, the border’s fourteen miles due south from here.”
A voice in the darkness asked, “Mike, you got those wire cutters tied to your wrist?”
“No.”
“Well, you’d better. You drop them in the dark and can’t find ‘em, we’re up shit creek.”
“Good idea,” Danny said, his heart racing. Damn! he berated himself. Tying the cutters to the first man’s wrist should have been one of the first things he’d thought of. He and the other nineteen in the two escape teams knew that the toughest part would be taking out the two-man PLA guards as they walked the couple of hundred yards or so along the wire. He and a couple of others were former ‘Nam or Desert Storm types, so they knew how to kill, but none of them were anywhere near their normal strength, having subsisted on little more than a bowl of rice and the weak, lukewarm green tea. Some, like Danny Mellin, had ground up the occasional bug with a spoonful of rice and forced it down. At least it was protein.
“One more thing,” Danny reminded them. “Be careful with the machine guns. I mean, when we break out, it’ll make one hell of a big hole for all our fellow POWs to run through. That’s good for everybody. PLA’ll have to look for two hundred of us if there’s a mass break, and every POW in here knows the importance of the Ningming-Dong Dang railroad.”
Having said his piece, Danny now turned his attention to the sky. It had always amazed him how cloud formations change in seconds, that the patch of sky you’ve been watching changes completely in five minutes. It was something he’d had ample time to notice while working, like Mike Murphy and the other POWs, on the rigs in the South China Sea, something that most people in normal, everyday life didn’t notice. There was such a change occurring now, the moon’s face becoming obliterated as anvil-shaped cumulus piled up. Where seconds before there had been a brilliant orb, there were now only dark storm clouds. Soon it began raining. There was nothing gradual about it — it simply fell in buckets, as was its wont in the region.
Then he saw lightning, and a moment later it seemed as if God’s artillery had opened up, the thunder so powerful they could feel it rumbling in the hut, rattling the locked door. Danny Mellin and three others, including Murphy, picked up the base of one of the bunks, counted in unison, “One, two,” and smashed it into the wall where the rice had formed much of the mortar. Immediately they could feel that several bricks had been displaced by the shock of the bunk base, the air pockets around the grains of rice having substantially weakened the mortar between the bricks.
Waiting for the next roll of thunder, they counted and hit it again. There was choking dust, and three of the ramming squad were on the floor. Mike was stuck halfway through the hole, his knuckles badly lacerated. But he felt the rain pouring on his head and murmured, “Christ, we’re through! We’re fucking through!” It was a ragged hole about three feet in diameter.
“Quick,” Mellin ordered. “Get to the wire.” There was another flash of lightning, during which the hole was brightly illuminated. Then there was another rolling barrage of thunder as the ten of them quickly got through the hole and within seconds were at the wire.
As Murphy cut the first strand, there was a rustling sound as the tension of the wire gave way, but the noise was drowned out by the gut-churning rolls of thunder and the hiss of the rain. Soon they were halfway through the concertina wire. Murphy stopped and listened for the sentries. He couldn’t see any in the rain-riven darkness, nor could he hear them, given the noise of the storm. Murphy cut more wire, stopped and listened, and all he could hear was his heart thumping. Soon, within seven minutes of reaching the razor wire, all ten of them were through, five turning left, the other five to the right.
Both teams, Murphy in charge of the first squad, Danny the second, all crouching low, moving along the outer wire, were astonished not to find any guards.
“Probably in the trucks,” Shirley whispered.
“Hope to Christ they haven’t locked the doors,” Murphy whispered in return. “Shirley, stay with me. You too, Frank. The other three of you go around to the passenger side.”
The sound of the rain was drumming on the truck’s canopy, rivulets of water running down the fenders and streaming off the running boards. Suddenly, Murphy saw a red spot dancing about in the cabin, someone in the cabin smoking, nice and comfy out of the rain.
“Now!” he said in a hoarse command, wrenched open the driver’s door, and pulled him out. Already three others of Murphy’s crew were up in the back, while the other guard, on the passenger side, who had also been
