wouldn’t have time to cover up the entrances again, or escape in what could only be a vast and complicated maze of tunnels.
They would be trapped and caught.
Solange with them.
Quoc misapprehended his hesitation. “You are also afraid of tight spaces?”
Nicholai smiled, thinking of his blissful days exploring caves with his Japanese friends. “No.”
He pointed toward the advancing troops. “We need more time.”
“Yes.”
“Take care of her,” Nicholai said. “She isn’t one of your ‘ten.’ ”
“You have my word.”
Quoc quickly chose five of his best men and Nicholai went with them toward the edge of the copse. The gunfire increased, branches dropped on them, men fell. When they got to the edge of the trees, one of the Viet Minh bent over and opened a square of earth.
Then they lay down and started to fire across the open ground.
Nicholai felt a body fall beside him, then he was face-to-face with the blazing green eyes of angry Solange. “I said I wasn’t leaving without you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t ever do that again.”
She laid the stock of the machine pistol against her cheek and started shooting.
Diamond flattened himself onto the ground and peered through the grass at the copse of trees.
Nicholai Hel was trapped between the approaching flames and the rifles.
He hoped Hel chose the fire.
A harsh roar came up as the fire hit the trees.
Nicholai turned and saw them go, the flames climbing up the trunks and then igniting in the leafy branches with a hideous
A Viet Minh ran from the center of the trees and signaled.
The weapons were in the tunnels.
“Time to disappear,” Nicholai said.
They crawled back to the tunnel entrance.
Solange balked, but Nicholai helped her and she squeezed down. When she was clear, Nicholai lowered himself into the hole, his wide shoulders snug against the entrance. It was a very tight fit, and for a few seconds he thought he might not make it at all. But his caving experience had taught him how to narrow his shoulders, and he felt Solange tug at his legs, and then he slid down the entrance shaft.
Four Viet Minh came behind them, and the last one pulled the tunnel entrance shut behind him. Another one gave his life to replace the camouflage on top.
Nicholai found himself in a small oval chamber that opened to a narrow horizontal shaft, just high enough to crawl into on all fours. Lanterns, apparently run off a generator, were hung every twenty feet, and although the light was dim they could see to move. He eased Solange into the next tunnel and crawled behind her.
A minute later, Nicholai heard the flames erupt above them.
It would have been a bad death.
“Are you all right?” he asked Solange.
“I hate this.”
“I know.”
He paused, then followed Solange into the next chamber.
This one was larger, high enough to stand up in. Three horizontal shafts came off it in different directions. They rested for a moment, then one of the Viet Minh led them into another shaft, reached behind him, and ripped a plug from a cable, plunging the tunnels behind them into darkness.
Diamond cursed when the tunnel went black.
He had found the hastily camouflaged entrance and led several of the Vietnamese down the shaft into the first chamber. They crawled until they came to the chamber with the three shafts, then split up. Diamond took one of the men with him and was sure that he had the right tunnel as he could see recent scrape marks in the dirt below and could swear he heard the sound of movement, like rodents, ahead of him.
He was on the track and then darkness hit.
Fighting off a momentary panic, he felt for the flashlight on his belt, turned it on, and shone it in front of him. The light in his left hand, his.45 in his right, he crawled forward.
They crawled until they came to what seemed to be a dead end. But another shaft ran sharply to the right, and they took it, and then repeated this process of seeming dead ends until this maze zigzagged at least three hundred yards and Nicholai roughly reckoned that they must be literally out of the woods. They came to a chamber that had a vertical shaft and they descended a wooden ladder another twenty feet down to a much larger chamber.
“Your home for the next couple of days,” Quoc said.
It was an underground barracks of sorts. Wooden-framed bunk beds lined the walls, rudely constructed wooden chairs were placed about, some medical supplies, bottles of water, and canned foods were neatly stacked and organized. There was even a small shelf of books, and relatively fresh air was being pumped from a narrow ventilator shaft.
“It’s quite good,” Nicholai said, “but I prefer the Continental.”
“I’m sure Mancini would be pleased to welcome you,” Quoc answered. “Shall I call for a reservation?”
“That’s all right.”
“Or the Beijing Hotel?”
“I’m growing fonder of this establishment by the second,” Nicholai said, “assuming, of course, that the price is reasonable.”
“Your bill has already been taken care of,” Quoc said.
“It’s a small city down here,” Nicholai said. “How far does this complex go?”
“Now?” Quoc said, “Almost all the way to the outreaches of Saigon. Eventually, all the way to the suburbs.”
“And then you pop out of the ground with rocket launchers and take the city,” Nicholai said.
“When the time is right,” Quoc said, “hopefully before the Americans blunder in. You will stay down here for a few days, then we will get you out, I think through Cambodia, if that suits you.”
“That will be fine,” Solange said.
She took a bottle of water, sipped from it, and handed it to Nicholai.
“We will leave you alone,” Ai Quoc said.
He and his men left the chamber to see to the rocket launchers.
Diamond crawled to a dead end and realized that he must have chosen one of the false tunnels. They were clever, these Communist rats. He started to back out, then paused and felt a small waft of air. He shone the flashlight to his right, saw the concealed shaft, and headed into it.
Soon he came to another dead end.
Damn these bastards to hell, he thought.
Then he saw the next shaft.
He was halfway through the maze of zigzags when he heard a dull throb above him.
Nicholai looked up.
So did Solange.
They stared at the ceiling as if they actually thought that they could see what they were hearing.
A low-pitched hum and then a whining sound, and then the bombs hit.
The bombers came in directly over the tunnel complex and laid their ordnance in a spread pattern over a rectangle of a thousand square yards.
The chamber shook.
Dirt fell from the ceiling.
It all held for a moment and then there was a horrific bass thud and the bunk beds came down, and the neat stacks of supplies, and the walls quivered and more dirt came down and then the lights went out.
Nicholai heard Solange moan,
