The Tale of the Lazy Dog

by Alan Williams

  ‘My wife? What the hell! — why didn’t you let me speak to her?’

  ‘Because she wanted to speak to me, Mr Conquest. A little personal matter between the three of us.’ He nodded at Jones and Ryderbeit. ‘Now I’m sure you’d prefer to discuss it quietly, in private?’

  Conquest gave a little wince and his jaw muscles tightened. In the sudden silence an aircraft began revving up engines outside. ‘Sergeant,’ Conquest said at last, without moving his eyes from Murray: ‘will you wait outside for a moment.’

  The M.P. hesitated, then turned slowly, his hand still on his holster, and ambled back into the passage. ‘I think you’d better close the door,’ Murray said quietly; and Conquest glanced behind him to see the giant figure standing just outside. He shrugged, stepped over to the door, closed it and turned again. ‘Now what’s all this —?’ he began, and his eyes suddenly opened very wide.

  What happened next seemed to take place in slow motion, against the rising roar of the plane outside. Ryderbeit leant down as though to scratch his ankle, straightened up, and in one smooth motion stepped out to embrace Conquest. One hand went up over the man’s mouth, as Conquest drew back his lips to scream; the other went down round his waist, slipping the knife deep under the ribs into his spleen. For three full seconds they both stood transfixed. The engines roared to a crescendo as Conquest’s eyes took on a bright glassy look, his fingers twitching upwards. The noise outside dropped for a moment, and there came a long weird belching sound, a slackening of Conquest’s whole body as he began to lean towards Ryderbeit, his knees buckling, hands still clawing feebly upwards, while Ryderbeit said in an undertone: ‘Get the chair, No-Entry — wedge the door!’ — beginning to lower Conquest to the floor, supporting him now with his hand behind his neck, the other holding him up under the ribs with the knife. ‘Window!’ he said softly to Murray, as the Negro nimbly slid the chair under the door handle and spittle bubbled over Conquest’s rigid lips.

  Murray turned and pushed up the window frame, dropping soundlessly to the ground outside. No-Entry followed a couple of seconds later. Murray did not wait for Ryderbeit as he sprinted towards the jeep, parked in darkness only a few yards from the canteen entrance; leapt aboard and found the keys just where Wace had promised, still in the ignition. He switched on and the motor fired first time, as Ryderbeit and Jones came running low down the path and bounded aboard with their carbines held across their chests.

  ‘Take it slow and easy now, soldier!’ Ryderbeit breathed: ‘That boy’s not goin’ to make any more noise.’

  Murray had the headlamps dipped, steering out into the one-way path between a double row of huts. They had each studied the plan of the airfield so well they knew every track, every turning by heart.

  ‘Are you loaded?’ Ryderbeit said at last.

  ‘Load me,’ said Murray, and felt his M16 jerked sideways, the confident touch as Ryderbeit snapped the clip under the plastic muzzle, the light weight of the strap against his shoulders. He wondered — despite the film industry — how long it really took a strong man in anger to break down an ordinary-size door wedged by a chair.

  He had reached the end of the ATCO III compound and now turned towards the huge aerial transport lanes lying a thousand yards ahead in almost total darkness, under a sky ripped by criss-cross streaks of light — the whole night black and heavy with the fluctuating boom and scream of invisible machinery.

  They reached the beginning of a long zig-zagging wall of sandbagged fighter plane parking bays, with the folding wing tips of the Phantoms and Thunderchiefs jutting over the top like sharks’ fins. No one spoke again until Murray suddenly drew into a dark embrasure about a hundred yards from the end of the wall, stopped and switched off the headlamps. Just ahead were two long black sedans, unmarked, non-military, with no lights.

  ‘Look like Treasury boys,’ Ryderbeit muttered, glancing at his watch. ‘Ten forty-three. Two minutes to go. That bitch o’ yours had better be on time with Virgil’s button,’ he added, ‘or we’re going to be right in the shit!’

  ‘We’re pretty deep in it already,’ said Murray.

  A couple of flares burst high ahead along the perimeter, lighting them all up like sitting toy soldiers. They were now nearly half a mile from the hut where Conquest had died, and Murray was just wondering which alert would go out first, when he saw in his mirror a pair of blazing headlamps and a flashing red beacon heading straight at them from behind, along the edge of the sandbagged wall.

  Ryderbeit and No-Entry slipped their guns on to semiautomatic. ‘Wait for it!’ said Ryderbeit, as a camouflaged jeep identical to their own came screeching up behind them and both doors snapped open.

  ‘You men with Major Millbright’s outfit?’ a voice called. Two officers in fatigues and soft G.I. caps had stepped out, unarmed.

  No-Entry Jones turned in his seat, beginning to stand up and salute. ‘Correct, sir.’

  ‘Then get the hell out o’ here!’ the officer cried: ‘You know this whole area’s off limits till twenty-three-fifteen hundred hours?’

  ‘You givin’ us orders?’ Ryderbeit said, in a very passable Mid-West accent.

  ‘I’m ordering you to get your arses out o’ here!’ the man bawled back, but even as he spoke there came two brilliant flashes about a hundred yards to their right, followed by a double ear-cracking explosion, and the two men flung themselves half sideways into the shelter of the jeep, as two more flashes burst about a mile away and the first officer was yelling, ‘Get your heads down!’ But the words drifted emptily into a high whooping howl — the panic-stricken howl of the Red Alert siren bouncing off more than a dozen echo-chambers in every corner of the giant Tân Sơn Nhất airfield. The officer tried to shout above the sound, but another rocket swished down and burst with a shuddering crack behind the sandbagged wall, this time followed by a boom and the billowing glare of exploding high-octane fuel.

  Ryderbeit yelled: ‘Get goin’!’ and Murray let the clutch out, the jeep jerking into the dark, its lights still switched off, heading towards the two dead sedans. But just as they drew abreast of them, two red bars of tail-lights came on and both cars started forward together. ‘Take ’em, soldier — on the right!’

  Murray swung the wheel over and passed both cars — long black Fleetwoods with smoked windows so that it was impossible to see how many men were inside. He had his foot flat on the floor, but the jeep lacked the power of the two big cars which were accelerating fast.

  Ryderbeit and No-Entry sat twisted round in their seats, and a moment later their M16’s flared simultaneously — two bursts ripping diagonally across both windshields, but without any apparent effect. Ryderbeit raised his gun and fired more carefully this time, the muzzle jumping in his hand as he lined up the tyres of the first car, while Jones blazed away at the headlamps of the second.

  But the cars kept coming on, all headlamps intact, drawing rapidly closer. Ryderbeit swore: ‘Bullet-proof glass — self-sealing tyres!’ He laid down his carbine and now reached inside his tunic pockets, bringing out a grenade in each hand. The two cars were almost level with each other now, perhaps twenty yards behind, beginning to draw apart to cut the jeep off on either side, when Ryderbeit pulled the pin of the first grenade with his teeth and flung it, in a smooth lob, directly in the path of the car on their left.

  The grenade hit the concrete almost exactly in front of the headlamps and exploded a second later, well under the long engine. There was a flash and the front wheels rose and toppled, the whole car going into a drunken slewing motion, while Ryderbeit leapt round, pulled the next pin and aimed the second grenade low and fast, like a deadly pitcher, under the belly of the other car as it tried to swerve away. Another flash — flames now coming from the first car — the second bouncing to a stop, its engine-bonnet springing open like a twisted tin can; then slowly rolling up on its side, two wheels still spinning in the swelling flames from the first car.

  Murray then caught another red flashing in his mirror and a pair o
f headlamps glared back at him, gaining fast. Ryderbeit and No-Entry were both kneeling on the seat, facing backwards and fitting fresh clips into their carbines. Their pursuers this time were in a large yellow Land Rover, its siren blaring even above the crescendo of the Red Alert.

  Murray had the speedometer touching sixty, running out across the smooth concrete apron as Ryderbeit crouched over the short-muzzled M16 and fired two more quick bursts. In the mirror Murray saw both headlamps explode and go black. Ryderbeit aimed again and this time his muzzle jerked round in a scything arc that cut upwards across the windshield and homed in on the revolving red beacon which suddenly went out, and he was yelling at No-Entry: ‘Give it ’em on fully automatic!’ This time the whole jeep seemed to lurch as Jones’ little plastic gun emptied itself in a single roar — thirty rounds in just over one second flat. The Land Rover behind swerved blindly, then rocked to a standstill. No one got out: though Murray had noticed the long antenna swung out from the bonnet like a fishing rod, and knew that unless No-Entry’s last burst had killed them all — or at least put them fully out of action — that radio was going to be critical.

  He was still holding their speed at around 60 m.p.h., following the orange-painted lines and arrows that splayed out across the concrete towards the Air Freight Transport runways; while behind, over a wide horizon, several large fires were already lighting the sky and the sirens kept up their agonised rhythm like the panting of asthmatics. Fighter-jets were starting up behind the sandbagged walls; the secondary, slower siren howls of Air and Military Police were now baying out against the chaos of the night: and for the first time Murray began to take stock of what had really happened.

  Less than two minutes had passed since those first two rockets had hit the field, and been followed — his mind registering almost subconsciously — by at least a dozen more explosions. He recognised them well as Soviet 122’s: lethal, highly manoeuvrable weapons which are also notoriously inaccurate. And the fact that at least a dozen of them had landed inside a relatively compact area of the field indicated that they were being loosed off from unusually close range, perhaps as the prelude to a large-scale assault.

  But the first two rockets had struck a few seconds before the Red Alert went off — which suggested that something very odd indeed was happening. Was it mere coincidence that Jackie Conquest had fired General Virgil Greene’s button at almost the precise second that, at a mile or two away, some scrawny Viet Cong had lit his fuse and stood back? For Murray doubted even America’s mighty war-machine capable devising an alarm system so exact that it could activate a Red Alert within seconds of the first explosions.

  Yet this was just what had happened. And as they drove further into the dark wastes of the Air Freight Transport Area, he began to have an ugly feeling, not that things were going wrong, but that they might be going just a little too right.

  They were now perhaps a quarter of a mile from the two crashed Fleetwoods and the Land Rover, when, about three hundred yards ahead, illuminated under the glow of more flares, they saw the familiar silhouette of a Caribou transport plane. It was already lined up at the head of the runway, red and green wing-lights on, facing down the lane of orange landing beacons. Around its wings and below its tail was a cluster of vehicles — a forklift truck, jeeps, several motorcycle outriders. Murray made no attempt to slow down, even for the large stencilled sign under a flashing red warning light:

  AFTA / RUNWAY IV / TSN

  ALL UNAUTHORISED PERSONNEL

  KEEP OUT!

  He almost laughed aloud. After that first numbing shock of seeing Conquest die, he now felt a heady exhilaration, the release and recklessness of a gambler on a wild streak — no road back now — all bridges burnt and the only way out down that empty runway in the slim blunt-nosed Caribou with its anus-vent closed under the tail, fuel trucks withdrawn, forklift empty, all systems go.

  Some of the vehicles, dim now under the dying flares, were beginning to move away towards them, followed by the outriders.

  Only the last two hundred yards now of flat oil-streaked concrete: men climbing out of the nose and rear doors of the plane: more on the ground — perhaps half a dozen in all — as Murray switched on the jeep’s own siren and Ryderbeit unclipped the windshield fasteners, folding the Perspex forward on to the bonnet, his M16 reloaded and at the ready.

  The forklift truck, flanked by the outriders, came grinding towards them. Murray kept up his speed, swerving round them with Ryderbeit and No-Entry still holding their weapons level with the bonnet. The motorcycles snarled past without incident. He began to brake only when the jeep was about thirty yards from the Caribou, with the siren still going and Ryderbeit yelling, ‘If there’s goin’ to be any shootin’, let’s get between ’em and the bloody plane!’

  Murray pulled up just behind the Caribou’s port engine, which was already turning. As he did so, several men in khaki baseball caps ran towards one of the two jeeps parked behind the plane’s tail. Obviously last-minute maintenance men. But Murray had his eyes on a third vehicle — another long dark Fleetwood with smoked windows parked slightly aside from the others, where two guards stood frozen under a fresh set of flares, staring back at where three more rockets had hit in quick succession, stitching the skyline like fireworks.

  These guards wore no insignia, no helmets, just well-tailored uniforms of grey-green, with flat-visored caps and repeater-rifles slung over their shoulders. But for the rifles they could have been chauffeurs, or receptionists at some grimly exclusive hotel.

  Murray switched the siren off only when he was well between the two guards and the plane. Then Ryderbeit whispered, ‘Let Jones do the talking first — you come in only when it starts gettin’ tricky!’ A tall man in the same plain uniform, but without a rifle, had appeared in the forward door up to the pilot’s cabin.

  ‘Who’s the officer in charge here?’ Jones yelled, above the roar of the Caribou engine.

  The man climbed down the steps. He had a delicate handsome face, polite and serious — the exact contrast to the hulking brute of an M.P. they had left to break down the door half a mile back at ATCO III compound. His voice was calm and unruffled: ‘I’m the operation super — name’s Sanderson. We have a Red Alert.’ He said it as a statement of fact, without panic or concern, but moving closer as he spoke, examining each of them.

  ‘You’re to get your men out o’ here, Mister Sanderson,’ Jones said. ‘Your flight plan is postponed — your crews are to move this aircraft, temporarily, to another area.’

  ‘What are your precise orders?’ Sanderson asked with exasperating calm, as the second of the plane’s engines spluttered and swung to life. Ryderbeit’s fingers tightened round the stock of his gun.

  ‘All non-combat aircraft are automatically grounded,’ Jones said; and the man just nodded and repeated: ‘Where are your orders?’

  ‘We have orders to commandeer all non-combat aircraft!’ Jones shouted, jumping suddenly down from his side of the jeep and running to the forward door of the Caribou. ‘Get your men out o’ here, Mr Sanderson!’

  The second engine had burst into a roar and Ryderbeit was saying to Murray in a shouted whisper, ‘We mustn’t let ’em cut those motors, soldier — let ’em warm up a couple o’ moments longer!’ As he spoke he too sprang from the jeep, his M16 held low from the waist, at nobody particular, but watching the two other guards whose rifles were still slung over their shoulders.

  ‘This is Treasury property,’ Sanderson began: ‘I have no authority —’

  ‘You have no authority period!’ Murray snapped, not bothering to disguise his Irish intonation, as he watched, from the corner of his eye, Ryderbeit edging round towards the steps up to the pilot’s cabin. ‘This airfield is under attack, Mr Sanderson,’ he went on, ‘and I am to advise you that all military and civilian equipment is as from now under the authority of the military. Get it!’ he yelled, above the scream of three fighters streaking overhead.

  Time was running out. At any moment some
genuine M.P. patrol might arrive, either to give Sanderson the same orders, or more probably to investigate the murder of one CIA man and the unknown fate of a number of Treasury guards in two unmarked cars and a Land Rover with a powerful radio.

  Sanderson was looking worried now. ‘We’re awaiting two automobiles back there for emergency instructions,’ he began slowly, but Murray broke in: ‘Your two vehicles have been hit by VC rockets. My own orders come personally from General Greene. In the event of an enemy attack Operation Lazy Dog is to be put on ice — your personnel to be withdrawn — your aircraft to be placed under General Greene’s personal guard. Which means us, Mr Sanderson — plus an extra detail arriving presently. Now let’s get moving, sir.’

  ‘If this plane gets hit —’

  ‘If this plane gets hit, Sanderson, your arse’s going to be in a sling!’ They flinched as another rocket burst less than a quarter of a mile away. Murray took it as his final cue: ‘The military is responsible for the security of this airfield, sir. And I am ordering you for the last time to get your men out of here!’

  ‘The crew of this aircraft take their instructions from me,’ Sanderson said calmly, and walked over to where the two Treasury guards stood beside the remaining jeep, parked just in front of the Fleetwood. He whispered something to them; they nodded, saluted and climbed aboard the jeep. Sanderson now walked back to where Ryderbeit was still standing under the forward door of the Caribou.

  Ryderbeit let him pass, up the steps into the nose of the aircraft — the crew still aboard, engines still running. A moment later the jeep carrying the two Treasury men started up, followed almost at once by the Fleetwood. Murray nodded at No-Entry, who sprang up through the rear door, closing it quickly behind him.

  Murray waited ten seconds, then climbed up to the forward door, kicked the steps away and slammed it shut behind him. Inside, in the sudden dark, he eased off his helmet and realised that he was leaning against the body of a man. It felt soft, swinging with the hammock-seat. As he touched it, the head lolled with a bump on to his shoulder, slid off, and the whole body collapsed like a sack down the metal steps and sagged against the door.