have no reason to come here — unless they were looking for them.
What if the man who called himself Peter wasn’t working for the CIA at all? What if he wasn’t American? What if he was Chinese?
The thick stretch of trees gave way to a sparse patch of jungle, very lightly wooded. Josh stopped at the edge of this partial clearing, trying to figure out what it was. Rock outcroppings poked from the ground at his right; the terrain seemed too rocky to be a farm field. But maybe that’s why it had been abandoned.
M? tugged at his arm, then pointed to his side.
“I’m okay,” he told her. “I cut myself.”
The pain from the wound had slackened. It no longer seemed to be bleeding, though his shirt was stained dark red. He held out his hands, shrugging as if it were nothing. She looked as if she was ready to cry.
“It’s okay. Just a cut. A lot of blood, but no real harm,” Josh told her. “Okay. It’s okay. You understand ‘okay’?”
He tried to think of words to use to reassure her, but he couldn’t find any. His Vietnamese vocabulary, never large to begin with, had totally deserted him.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s find a place to hide.”
He walked along the rock outcroppings. There had been a road here not very long ago. The jungle had rushed back in, but it was too soon for thick trees.
Josh spotted the remains of a shack, busted down and overgrown, opposite the rocks. A rusted sign lay half covered with dirt and weeds in his path. He pointed to it, trying to get M? to read it, though he wouldn’t have understood even if she did.
The loud stutter of an approaching helicopter, of two or three or four helicopters, reverberated through the hills. Josh looked up and decided they needed to find a spot with more cover from above.
“This way,” he told M?, starting toward what looked like a large rock about twenty yards ahead.
As he came closer, Josh saw it wasn’t a rock at all, but the remains of a structure. It was too overgrown and ramshackle to provide any cover. Just beyond it, however, the rocks formed a narrow ledge and a cleft in the hill. He led M? to it, and pushed her beneath it. She barely fit, but Josh knew he couldn’t leave her alone.
“I’ll hide in the trees,” he told her, this time remembering to mime. “I’ll be right there.”
She grabbed hold of his leg and wouldn’t let go.
“You’re safer here,” he said. “They’ll come after me. They won’t bother you. They won’t be expecting a kid.”
He hoped he wasn’t lying.
As he started to push her back into her spot, he looked up and caught sight of something large beyond the row of rocks, a green hole at the edge of the jungle.
It took a few seconds for him to realize that it was the gaping mouth of a mine shaft, roughly six feet tall and only partly reclaimed by nature.
He tugged M? from her hiding place. “Come on,” he said. “There’s a mine shaft. We’ll hide there. We can both hide there. Come on.”
21
“Did our work for us,” yelled the sergeant, leaning toward him. “Now maybe we get some rest.”
The helicopter pitched backward slightly as it landed. Jing Yo leapt onto the uneven ground and, head lowered, trotted toward the knot of soldiers standing near the building.
“Who’s in charge here?” he yelled.
“Sergeant Wong,” replied the private closest to him. The man barely glanced at him.
Ordinarily, Jing Yo didn’t stand on ceremony, especially when in a hurry, but the private’s attitude could not be ignored.
“Stand at attention when an officer talks to you,” he barked.
The private turned and frowned, then complied.
“What is your name?” said Jing Yo.
The soldier finally realized that he might actually be in trouble. He went ramrod straight, hands to his sides, and snapped out his name, along with the requisite sir and tone of respect.
“Take me to Sergeant Wong,” said Jing Yo.
“He’s in the house.”
“Take me to him. Now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Jing Yo told Wu and the rest of the team to watch the bam, then went with the private around the back end of the building, circling through a narrow garden and farm yard before reaching the small yard separating the bam and building. A dead goat lay next to the pond bordering the yard. Its head had been chewed up by 5.8 mm bullets. Flies buzzed across the wounds.
Ordinarily a private’s attitude toward an officer mimicked that of his squad sergeant, and Jing Yo expected to be met with disrespect from Sergeant Wong. But the sergeant spotted the commando patch on Jing Yo’s uniform and was instantly cooperative.
“Lieutenant, a pleasure,” said Wong. He held out his hand. “I am Sergeant Wong. How can we help the commandos?”
“You may have a person I’m looking for. Have you searched the house?”
“We are in the process of doing so, Lieutenant.”
“You and I must talk. Alone.”
“Of course, Lieutenant. A pleasure.”
Jing Yo led the sergeant outside. As they walked toward the front of the house, he noticed that no one was standing guard on that part of the property. In fact, the soldiers were poorly organized, clumping around the barn and the house.
“Why haven’t you secured this property?” Jing Yo asked.
“It is secure, Lieutenant.”
“You have no guards along the road, or on this side of the house.”
“Who would we be guarding the house from?”
“Before you search an area, you secure it.”
“We weren’t searching it, Lieutenant. We were moving through. Our job is to probe Viet defenses. We found three snipers in the barn,” he added. “We smoked them out.”
“Where are they?”
“In the field, not far from where we shot them.”
“Take me to them. Make sure the area is secured and searched. My men will search as well.”
The three people who had run from the barn were lying faceup about thirty meters from the still-smoldering structure. Their eyes gaped at the blue sky; they wore puzzled expressions on their faces, as if they couldn’t yet believe they had passed on.
Two men, both Vietnamese.
“Why were they shot?” Jing Yo asked the sergeant.
“They were snipers.”
“Where are their weapons?”
“We haven’t searched the barn yet. No sense risking our own necks, eh, Lieutenant?”
Jing Yo knelt down to check if either of the men had identification cards. Neither one did.
“You know these Vietnamese,” continued Wong. “They’re all trained killers. They were guerrillas during the
