At the same moment he was aware, even above the roar of the engines, of a curious noise. The thumping, snorting, shuffling sound of a fight. A merciless, bone-breaking fight being fought out against the crackle of a radio transmitter: ‘Control to Lazy Dog, do you read me, do you read me…?’ He looked down and saw that the body he had touched was Sanderson’s, his neck twisted as though it were broken, while above, in the red gloom of the cockpit lighting, Ryderbeit and No-Entry Jones were grappling with the two men, fighting with their fists and feet and plastic butts of their M16’s. They were fighting like dancers, rocking back and forward across the tiny floor, the two pilots in flying-suits and helmets, the other two dodging low and fast.
Murray was clambering up to the cabin when he saw the knife jab out in Ryderbeit’s hand and one of the pilot’s begin sinking to the floor. The second crew member, his helmet flopping back, earphones scrunched and awry, was trying to get away, backing up against the corner of the cabin; then he whipped round with something in his hand and No-Entry grabbed his wrist, and the roaring darkness burst round them like a paper bag. The man went over backwards, sliding against the edge of the cabin with the side of his face suddenly gone. The Negro stood with a heavy .45 automatic in his hand, shaking his head: ‘What a damned mess!’ he muttered. And there came a loud hammering on the forward door. Ryderbeit was already in one of the pilots’ seats, running his hands over the controls, ignoring the static whine of the R/T monotone: ‘Curly Mantle to Lazy Dog, do you hear me?’
The hammering kept up on the door outside. He checked the last knob, looked through the side window and yelled back at Murray: ‘There’s a Moke out there — empty! See who the bastards are, and try and keep ’em sweet. If not’ — and he nodded at the M16 in Murray’s hands — ‘blow ’em in half! I’m goin’ to need a few more seconds to get my revs up. We’ve got a full payload back there, soldier!’
Behind them No-Entry had lowered the dead pilot, with half his head shot away, feet first down the steel steps on to the cargo floor, leaving a broad messy smear. Murray tried not to look at him. The .45 bullet had smashed the skull like a soft-boiled egg, splattering bone and brain-pulp over the floor and walls of the cabin. Jones was now dragging him across to the edge of the dark narrow hull of the aircraft on which lay two solid slabs of tight-packed, black waterproof paper laid in two piles at least three feet high, with scarcely room to squeeze down between them. But Murray did not stop to examine them. As he started towards the door he could feel his rubber soles growing sticky on the steel floor. The pitch of the engines was rising, the hammering on the door getting louder, frantic now, as he reached the double swing-lock and began to turn it.
He opened it less than an inch and saw her face staring up at him — a distraught fragment of face with her mouth open and dark hair swept down over one eye. She put her whole weight against the door and he glimpsed a Mini Moke with U.S. Army markings parked just below the wing. In the background, across the wide dark apron, a stream of headlamps and more flashing red beacons were converging towards them. He grabbed her through, slamming the door behind her and swinging the lock back into position.
She turned and pulled herself against him, arms round his neck, hair all over his face, not looking at the cargo or the three crumpled corpses — Sanderson down by the door, with his delicate features twisted sideways, the pulped head of the pilot down in the cargo bay, or the second crew member who was still up in the cabin, bleeding heavily from just under the heart. She went on holding him, as Murray yelled up at Ryderbeit: ‘They’re coming — half a dozen at least!’
Ryderbeit raised his hand without turning, his voice still intoning the pilot’s catechism to No-Entry Jones: ‘Flaps up — half throttle — check air-brakes — full throttle…’ The floor lurched and they began to move. Murray broke away from her and seized hold of one of the hammock seats. He saw her look down at Sanderson, then at the pilot in the cargo bay, and her face showed an indifference that was faintly shocking.
The floor was swaying, the stacks of cargo beginning to shift and tremble under their tight wire moorings, each layer of packages separated by a plywood raft. Jackie had pressed herself down the narrow passage between them, steadying herself against the top of the left-hand pile, and now began neatly slitting the shiny charcoal-black paper with her fingernail, folding the edge back and tearing the whole sheet away as far as the wire binding.
As Murray followed her he felt the floor lift. She turned and kissed him, beginning to laugh, holding out a thick sheaf of bills bound in a wrapper with the seal of La Banque de L’lndo-Chine.
‘C’est épousstoufflant!’ she cried, using the old-fashioned Sorbonne slang, ‘blown out in a gust of wind’. Murray peered down at them, and in the dim red light from the cabin he could just make out, under the sealed wrapper, the plump humorous features of old Ben Franklin, sitting nobly on the Century — the one hundred dollar bill. He nodded slowly, giddily. ‘We had to kill at least four men to get those. One of them was your husband.’
She looked at him with mild surprise. ‘Oh? Where?’
‘Back at ATCO III compound — he walked in and found us. Ryderbeit did it with a knife.’
She nodded slowly. ‘Well, perhaps Monsieur Ryderbeit has some virtue after all.’
Murray said nothing. He took one of the packs of Centuries and made his way back up to the cabin steps, trying to avoid the sludge on the floor. Ryderbeit sat without earphones, with the R/T turned up on the HF wavelength, droning with the weird jabber of modern warfare: ‘Lover Boy to Glamour Girl, check out your five-zero over perimeter’ — ‘Crackerjack to Glamour Girl, we have total alert over Gia Dinh.’ Beside him No-Entry sat marking the celluloid overlay on the navigation dial with his wax pencil, checking against the elaborate chart that had been prepared and abandoned by the dead co-pilot. Ryderbeit was saying: ‘Up to three hundred feet and holding her steady — north, north-west — and keep yer eyes peeled for any low-flying Bird-dogs or choppers!’ He looked round at Murray. ‘And how’s the cargo?’
Murray dropped the wad of bills into his lap. ‘Just a random sample off the top.’
Ryderbeit picked it up with his free hand, riffling his thumb through it with a quick snapping sound, then nodded slowly and put the money away inside his tunic, while his left hand moved the stick gently forward and the jewelled pattern of lights, which were the twin cities of Saigon and Cholon, slid away on their left. ‘But we’re not out of it yet, soldier,’ he said, with a strange lack of emotion, as he levelled the wings and headed now into the darkness of D Zone and the Iron Triangle — sixty miles of rainforest reaching to the Cambodian border.
‘We’re running into a rise,’ No-Entry called: ‘Take her up one hundred.’
‘Up one hundred,’ Ryderbeit repeated, moving the stick back and switching the R/T over several wave-bands until a harsh Kansas voice came ringing through the cockpit, loud and clear: ‘We have five negative calls on Lazy Dog! Get a check on her and a call on Curly Mantle for immediate instructions!’ Another voice, pure mellow cotton-picker, chimed in: ‘Curlay Mayntle rayports immediate ground-to-air sweep for Layzy Dawg!’
Murray glanced back and saw Jackie Conquest busy edging herself along between the cargo, tearing open the top packages on both sides.
‘We’re getting ’em on radar, Sammy!’ No-Entry called suddenly: ‘Three bleeps coming up from near due south off the sea. Probably Navy boys off one o’ the carriers.’
Ryderbeit swore in Afrikaans. ‘What speed?’
‘Mach One, coming into Mach Two, and closing fast. Look like Phantoms.’
Murray swallowed and glanced at the air-speed dial, the needle creeping round to over two hundred knots. ‘Those Navy pilots know their job — they’re the best,’ he murmured. Astronaut material every one, he thought: getting their action learning to buzz Iluyshin reconnaissance planes over the Arctic Circle — and that kind of run does not allow for error. He turned to Ryderbeit. ‘What can they do? Try to force us do
wn? Or shoot us down — with the risk we make a forced landing and Charlie Cong gets the lot?’
‘You’re the thinking man, soldier. You tell me what they’ll do.’
‘Well, unless they’ve got close contingency planning for this kind of emergency, which is hardly likely, I’d say they’d have to get top priority clearance to shoot down one-point-five billion worth of Federal Reserves.’
Ryderbeit nodded. ‘But I’ll say this for the Yanks — they’re bloody quick on the draw!’
Jones said calmly, watching the radar bleeps: ‘They’re closing at about nine hundred knots — height about four thousand feet. Can we take her down a little, Sammy?’
‘What do the charts say? This D Zone’s not all flat, and it’s just goin’ to need one little hill to have that whole load of Ben Franklins back there burnin’ like a bonfire.’
‘Down another fifty feet and we’re under any radar they got,’ Jones said.
Ryderbeit shrugged: ‘You’re the navigator.’ His hand eased the stick forward, the tilt of the aircraft scarcely perceptible, the darkness ahead and below total.
‘They’ll be over us in less than two minutes,’ Jones added, as the R/T crackled out: ‘Lazy Dog — whoever you are — now hear this! You will identify yourself, your position and your destination within thirty seconds or our aircraft will take appropriate action!’
Ryderbeit grinned under the red light: ‘That means the sods don’t know what to do — just goin’ to try and bluff us out.’ As he spoke he began to slow the air-speed — the needle dropping to 180, 160, holding at 150. Murray watched with the same baffled awe as when they had begun to crawl down through the high mountains west of Dien Bien Phu — wondering now, as he had then, how much of it was luck, how much sheer skill, and how much just the gambler’s wilful instinct to win through.
The Phantoms closed a few seconds later and the radar screen became a confusion of spattered light. ‘They’ve lost us,’ Jones said; and Ryderbeit chuckled grimly: ‘What do they expect at those speeds?’
‘They’re coming round again — about five miles ahead,’ Jones said, ‘speeds down to around six hundred —’ and the R/T broke in: ‘Lazy Dog, this is Navy Phantom Squadron Silky Tawdry. We have air-to-air missiles and orders to use them.’
‘Silky Tawdry, you’re full o’ shit,’ Ryderbeit muttered, and the R/T went on: ‘We’re giving you twenty seconds or the missiles go off, Lazy Dog!’
‘Sounds as though they mean it,’ said Murray.
‘They’re bluffing,’ Ryderbeit said. He reached inside his tunic and took out one of his Romeo y Julietas, biting the end and handing it back to Murray without turning his head. ‘Light it for me, soldier.’
His nerve was extraordinary. Murray took the full twenty seconds to light the cigar, keeping the flame well shielded, knowing that even the flare of a match can destroy minutes of a pilot’s night-sight. He handed it back and Ryderbeit said, ‘Have one yourself.’
‘No thanks.’ The twenty seconds passed — thirty seconds — and Ryderbeit called suddenly, ‘Let’s try ’em with a mayday. Say we’re on one of the military transport routes, coming down from Pleiku, losing height fast and need medivac choppers.’
No-Entry switched the channels over to the international distress wavelength, calling quickly: ‘Mayday, mayday, eleven-nine-four-zero — Marine Transport Caribou Big Brother out o’ Pleiku to Can Tho…’
Ryderbeit began to cackle over his cigar: ‘You genius, No-Entry! Those Navy bastards are go in’ to have to think twice before they start loosin’ off any missiles when there are Marines around!’
‘We have full payload of wounded men and need immediate assistance with medivac support,’ Jones went on.
For a moment the Phantoms seemed to be undecided, the radar bleeps jerking about in little concentric knots in the middle of the screen. Jones had started again on his mayday call, when Jackie Conquest came up the steps and stood beside Murray, whispering in French: ‘It’s all there — every packet I looked at. The large ones seem to be mostly on the top — hundreds of thousands of them!’
He peered at her curiously, wondering if he were mistaken, or was there just a chance that the widowed Mrs Conquest had been bitten by the gold-bug more deeply than he suspected? While he was still looking at her, Ryderbeit suddenly swung the stick back and they were both thrown sideways, nearly falling down the steps into the cargo bay. The engines howled, the floor tilting upwards as Murray grabbed at some canvas straps behind the pilots’ seats, seizing Jacqueline’s arm with his free hand, while Jones yelled, ‘Take her up another two hundred!’
The engines kept up their long climbing howl and through the windshield, against the deep grey night, there now appeared the still blacker shape of rounded hills. Ryderbeit was brushing ash off his lap, as he strained forward to see the treeline leaping away about a hundred feet below. ‘We missed that last ridge by less than fifty feet. I guess one can do this kind o’ thing once too often — and Samuel D. Ryderbeit’s been doin’ it for an awful long time now!’
‘One thing’s for sure though,’ Jones replied gravely: ‘Those Phantoms weren’t built for tree-hopping.’
‘What’s happening?’ Jacqueline asked, with magnificent detachment.
‘Up hill and down dale, darling,’ Ryderbeit said, without looking at her.
‘Where are we?’ said Murray.
‘By my reckoning,’ said Jones, ‘we should be out of the country in seven to eight minutes.’
‘Still no other visitors, except the Phantoms?’
‘Nothing so far.’
‘You brought me some dollars from down there, Mrs Conquest?’ Ryderbeit asked, this time looking round at her with a bright smile.
She smiled faintly back, not at Ryderbeit but at Murray, giving him a sidelong wink as she tapped two well-padded breasts under her sleeveless dress. ‘I’ve been more discreet,’ she whispered: ‘Only bills of fifty.’
Just then Ryderbeit gave a yelp and sprang forward in his seat, watching two pricks of light come looping down from the top of the sky — nose-lights blinking towards them at close to the speed of sound, as two of the Navy Phantoms converged and shrieked down above them, clearing the roof of the Caribou by less than ten feet. For a moment the whole aircraft seemed to pause in mid-air, cringing like a great beast being tormented by these two venomous bat-winged hunks of aluminium.
‘Mad bastards! They’re tryin’ to head us off before the border.’
The third Phantom now appeared out above the port wing, flying in the same direction but at twice their speed — the glow of burning kerosene curving out of the rear-nostrils of its short fat fuselage as it turned ahead of them, rolling on its back, and suddenly came towards them like a fire-streaked dart, passing close above the starboard wing — less close than the others, and a lot slower, with its landing beacons suddenly flaring on like a pair of searchlights, long enough to spoil Ryderbeit’s night-sight, and probably long enough for the crew to read the Treasury markings on the Caribou’s tail-fin.
‘Less than five minutes to the border,’ Jones said quietly.
‘You think that’ll stop them?’ said Jackie.
‘What sort of stuff has Sihanouk’s Air Force got?’ asked Murray.
‘Nothing that can stop a Phantom, that’s for sure,’ said Ryderbeit — just as the lights of the first two fighters came swerving round again over their port wing. While almost directly below, flicking through the screen of trees, they saw a spray of lights.
‘That’ll be Trang Bang,’ said Jones: ‘Six miles to the border.’ Above the shanty town, and the row of brighter lights that marked the U.S. helicopter base, more lights now appeared. Murray recognised the dim dragonfly silhouette of Huey ‘choppers’, flying towards them at about the level of the next rim of hills. The R/T came on again, this time on HF: ‘Trang Bang base to Marine Big Brother. We have your position. Can you attempt a landing? We have all medivac and fire-fighting crews standing by. Over.’
J
ones leant out and spoke back on the HF wavelength: ‘Big Brother to Trang Bang base. We’ve got three crazy Phantoms on our tail, trying to buzz us. Probably think we’re from Cambodia. We will attempt a landing, but first get the bastards called off — or tell ’em the Marine Corps’ll have their arses for breakfast!’
But this time they did not listen to the answer. For at that moment a great ball of flame burst in the sky almost directly ahead, followed instantly by a long explosion, like a giant orange caterpillar crawling down towards the jungle. In the vivid lingering glow they had a glimpse of a dismembered helicopter, rotor blades severed, spiralling to earth with flames spouting from its tail. What was left of the Phantom hit the hills a second later with a thud of exploding fuel and rockets that reached even into the cabin of the Caribou.
Ryderbeit was taking the nose up steeply now, shaving the rim of hills perilously close, even in the dying flames of the crashed aircraft; and again they heard the crackle of the R/T, and a voice, quick and worried: ‘Base Control to Big Brother — are you still receiving? Are you still receiving…?’
‘Shut her off, No-Entry!’ Ryderbeit shouted, easing the throttle out, with the air-speed rising rapidly. The radar bleeps from the two remaining Phantoms were beginning to draw away from the centre of the screen, becoming confused now with the myriad specks of more rescue helicopters lifting off from Trang Bang base.
Height 1,500 feet, still climbing with the hills. Speed more than 200 knots. Throttle full out, holding steady as Jones called: ‘Last ridge ahead!’ — and the branches swept up, seeming almost to brush the wings this time. Ryderbeit jerked the stock forward. The nose went down and they dropped like a lift.
‘We’re over the top,’ said Jones. ‘Welcome to Cambodia! And the Phantoms seem to be holding off.’
The Tale of the Lazy Dog Page 26
