Lost Soldiers

by Lost Soldiers (retail) (epub)

  ‘So, this is the place where I will sell my rice,’ said

  Dzung, watching Manh’s face for clues as he spoke.

  ‘Yes,’ said Manh simply. ‘But we still have pre-parations to make. Nothing can go wrong. We will get only one chance.’

  ‘I know that,’ said Dzung. ‘You’ve told me a thousand times.’ He checked Manh’s face again. ‘Where?’

  ‘There, I think,’ said Manh, pointing to the road just before them, where two open-bedded trucks were now waiting to unload their hogs. He stopped on the road, squinting at the trucks for a moment. ‘Think of yourself right here, Mister Trong. In the dark. Think hard! Get your bearings.’ He looked at Dzung, his dark eyes searingly alive, then began walking toward a narrow path that bordered one of the concrete gutters. ‘Now down here. Follow me!’

  Dzung caught up with him and began following him down the dirt path. Cong Ly? Here? ‘Who?’ he asked.

  ‘Whoever I tell you to,’ said Manh. ‘You must not think of a person, Mister Trong. You must keep your mind totally clear of that. You will be shooting a target, that is all. It has no face, no name. You cannot afford to personalise this mission. You will shoot only when I tell you to, and only the person I tell you to shoot.’

  ‘Tonight?’ asked Dzung. The path dropped slightly, and through the little slum of makeshift hooches he saw the wide, churning river.

  ‘Tonight, I am fairly sure,’ said Manh. ‘But there is a possibility that he may not be here tonight.’

  ‘If he is not here, what do we do?’

  ‘We come back another night.’

  Dzung smiled hopefully. ‘So, we would have to wait here in Bangkok until our target makes himself available?’

  ‘He will be here tonight,’ said Manh.

  ‘For sure?’

  ‘Not for sure. But you should count on it.’

  ‘No,’ said Dzung, ‘I think I will not count on it.’

  He watched Manh carefully, torn between the hope that the moment might indeed never come and the sure knowledge that if it did he would carry out his duty. There was indeed no other option in this place of dust and hogs, unless he wished to die himself. And wasn’t that the essence of combat anyway, to kill so that you yourself might live?

  They were very near the river. Manh scolded him. ‘Why are you saying that to me?’

  Dzung forced a grin, making light of it. ‘He should take his time, Manh. We could go to Patpong again. And in the end he will only die anyway.’

  They reached the river. Manh stopped, looking curiously back at Dzung. ‘You are the calmest man I have ever worked with.’

  ‘I’ve done this many times before,’ said Dzung. ‘So stop worrying.’

  ‘Not this,’ said Manh.

  ‘No, but this is easier than combat.’ Dzung shrugged at Manh’s surprised expression. ‘Here I will be in control. I will have a target and after I finish with my target I can leave. Do you know how long combat lasts? You can never leave. Combat lasts forever.’

  ‘If you make even one small mistake you will be dead.’

  ‘So you care about that, Manh? That I might die?’

  ‘If you die, I will never have known you,’ Manh said flatly. ‘I will have disappeared. You have no identification papers with you. Your fingerprints are not recorded. Your pistol will be traced to the old West German Army.’ He smiled, pleased with himself, looking out at the river as he spoke. ‘From your stylish haircut, maybe they will think you are a Vietnamese who came to Bangkok from America.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Dzung. ‘I know all that. But you do care? That I might die, I mean?’

  Manh turned back to Dzung for a long moment, saying nothing. Then he put a hand on Dzung’s shoulder. ‘Why do you think I am preparing you so thoroughly? From the moment you shoot your target, our mission is a success. The rest of it is taking care of you.’

  ‘I am surprised at myself, but I believe you,’ said Dzung.

  ‘I told you the night your baby died that I would take care of you.’

  ‘No,’ corrected Dzung. ‘You said you would take care of my family. No matter what happened to me.’

  ‘Well, I will take care of you,’ Manh said, his face slowly working into a warning grin. ‘But if you screw things up, it will be my duty to disappear.’

  The river was so brown at this turn that it seemed thick, like a turbulent current of gravy. The concrete gutters from the slaughter pens made neat little rows, their troughs ending just inside the water along its banks. They saw an old man slowly bathing, standing thigh-deep a hundred feet downstream from the gutters. He was wearing brown shorts and was rubbing a rag over his body. His chest and stomach were covered with a rash, no doubt from the bacteria in the river that he thought was cleansing him.

  ‘So, the plan. After you hit your target you run down the path to the river,’ instructed Manh. ‘And then you throw the pistol, as hard as you can throw it, toward the other side. They would never dredge this river. How could they? Just throw it hard, and then run back upriver. Upriver, remember. Along the bank. Make a triangle in your mind. A hundred meters upriver, then cut to your right, and you will be at the park where the man kissed the little boy’s penis. I will meet you in the park, and we will walk slowly back to the embassy. If I am not in the park, don’t wait for me. At the slightest suspicion I will go back to the embassy by myself and wait for you there. If that happens, you must remember the landmarks. Do not try to talk with anyone. Do not let anyone clearly see your face. Do you have any questions, Mister Trong?’

  ‘Why did he kiss the little boy’s penis?’ wondered Dzung.

  ‘I do not know,’ said Manh. And then he shook his head, amazed at Dzung’s serenity.

  They made their way back up the dirt path to the concrete pens. The trucks were now lined up six deep, and the killing had begun. Hogs were screeching and howling with an almost human sound as the muscular men tied them down and hacked them up.

  Just across the street from the slaughter pens, a very old woman sat on a wooden platform inside an open-air home, smoking a cigarette. Near her, a kitten cuddled up against a sleeping rabbit, and a gray ferret slithered snake-like in and out of the raised boards that made up her floor. The woman was looking toward the pens where the hogs were being killed as if it were a TV soap opera.

  Manh took out a booklet and approached her, forcing his hands prayerfully underneath his chin and speaking a few sentences in Thai. She shrugged and then nodded, pointing to a corner of her shack. And then she went back to watching her evening show.

  ‘She says we can eat here if we like,’ said Manh, walking into the shack and taking a seat on the floor. ‘I don’t know what she’s looking at. She seems to have very bad cataracts.’

  ‘So she won’t remember us?’ asked Dzung cautiously, watching her face as he sat near Manh.

  ‘What does that matter?’ shrugged Manh. He opened up his pack and took out the boiled chicken and rice they had cooked in the embassy kitchen. ‘Shoot what you’re told to shoot, Mister Trong. As long as none of their people get hurt, they won’t care at all.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Hanson Muir was waiting for Condley at a table on the back terrace of the Oriental Hotel, idly nursing a beer as he looked longingly at a firmly built German woman in a string bikini who was sunbathing at the edge of the nearby swimming pool. Sharing a drink and a snack at the Oriental had been Condley’s idea. It seemed a nice way to kick things off, sitting next to the river under the smiling eyes of doting young waitresses who fawned over their every move, in the shadow of the grand hotel that had been there long before they were born and would still be there long after they were gone. The Oriental was expensive but Condley had recaptured his money, so at that moment expensive appealed to him. He took great delight in the idea of paying the bill with a wad of Ted Simolzak’s cash.

  ‘You should buy her a lemonade,’ said Condley, following the professor’s gaze as he took his seat.

  ‘We don’t have ti
me for that, do we?’

  Condley checked his watch, eyeing Muir. ‘It depends on how fast you work.’

  ‘Dreadfully slow,’ chuckled Muir, patting his ample stomach with one hand. ‘You think in terms of minutes, Brandon, and I measure things in terms of centuries.’

  ‘Better hold the lemonade.’

  ‘Did you find Van?’

  Condley beamed, raising his shirt slightly and tapping the pistol so that Muir could see. ‘I traded her for a Glock.’

  ‘Simolzak?’

  ‘Sort of,’ said Condley. ‘Or I should say, for now. It could have been anybody. She wanted out.’

  ‘Sorry about that, Brandon.’

  ‘We’ve got more important things to think about.’

  Professor Muir’s beer had sweated a little pool of water on the outdoor table. He twirled it, looking far upstream toward the setting sun. ‘Archer called. Sal Marino’s dead.’

  Condley grunted, as if he was not surprised. ‘How many hands did he have when they found him?’

  ‘One, actually.’ Muir’s eyes were wide, and his face was lit with apprehension. Finally he could hold it back no more. ‘Is that all you have to say about this? The man is dead, Brandon. This was a rather prompt response, don’t you think? I just met him last night. He’s dead and his hand is gone. I doubt we have many copycat killers out there who know what we’re after. So what does this tell us?’

  ‘It means Mister Deville is in town,’ said Condley, ‘and evidently he’s pissed.’

  ‘How would he know you met with Marino?’

  ‘We don’t know what he knew, and we don’t know why he did it.’

  ‘Of course we do! Brandon, don’t play games with me, not when we’re about to try to – apprehend this man.’

  Condley’s eyes had gone molten, as if there was so much burning inside him that his brain had turned lava-hot. ‘It already happened, OK? What can we do about it? Let the Thai police figure that out. We don’t have the time.’

  Muir looked worriedly around the terrace, as if he might see Deville creeping toward him at that very moment. ‘Archer says he can’t imagine them going through with the delivery tonight.’

  ‘Sure they will. He’s already launched the job. The Vietnamese trucks had to leave Sai Gon yesterday in order to get here tonight. He knows we work for the government, and he knows governments are slow. And around here they’re either bought off or deliberately looking the other way.’

  ‘Don’t you have any thoughts about your friend Sal?’ Muir said nothing else, just sitting at the table, staring upriver into the fading pink sun and twirling his beer.

  ‘Focus your mind, Professor. If you want the truth, it’s obvious. He killed Marino to scare us.’

  ‘Well, it worked with me.’

  ‘Why? Didn’t you think this was real before?’ Condley watched the gentle scientist for another moment and melted a bit. After all, this was his calling, his way of life, not Muir’s. ‘You can always wait for me here. Or just go back to the hotel.’

  Muir twirled his beer some more, staring at the bottle as he worked his mouth into little grimaces. ‘Obviously, I am tempted by that thought.’

  ‘You’ve got nothing to gain by going down there. And no offense, but you’d probably be in the way.’

  Muir thought about it some more and then looked up at Condley. ‘We’ve been through a lot together, Brandon.’ He smiled self-consciously. ‘I guess that sounds like a cliche, but I’m oddly proud of it, sick as it might seem. And if I didn’t come tonight, I’d feel like I was abandoning you. You need someone to look out for you, whether you’ll admit it or not.’

  ‘Sounds like a plan,’ said Condley, reaching his hand across the table.

  Muir took his hand, shaking it firmly. ‘Actually, I’m counting on you to indeed have some kind of a plan.’

  ‘I do,’ said Condley, smiling grimly. ‘My plan is to see their plan, and then improvise.’

  Muir rolled his eyes, then sighed deeply. ‘Are there any… shall we say, specifics to this idea?’

  ‘Four trucks,’ said Condley. ‘Two driven by Vietnamese, two driven by Burmese. A white guy taking a pay-off. And drivers trading places.’

  ‘A white guy with a gun.’

  ‘There’ll be more than one gun. So maybe I can use your eyes.’

  ‘I could be your spotter.’

  ‘We could always try to shake Simolzak down for another pistol,’ teased Condley.

  Muir shrugged, pretending seriousness. ‘I think the moment has passed on that one, unless you brought another girl.’

  ‘Have you ever fired a gun, Professor?’

  ‘Actually, I used to own a BB gun. They came in handy in Indiana. I was twelve at the time.’

  ‘Not good enough.’

  ‘I knew that.’ Muir suddenly chuckled, as if the whole thing were so ludicrous that it was logical. ‘Oh, all right, I will be your squire. Lead on, fair knight. And I shall follow.’

  It was growing dark. Condley drained his beer and checked his watch. ‘Then let’s go.’

  Muir took a deep breath. His eyes moved this way and that, avoiding Condley’s. ‘Can I go to the men’s room first?’

  Condley laughed, rising from his chair. ‘I’ll go with you. This is probably going to take a while.’

  * * *

  When they left the hotel Condley walked down to the nearby Oriental Pier, where he flagged a boat taxi rather than taking a tuk tuk or a cab to Klong Toey. From this part of Bangkok the river was far faster than the choked roads.

  The two men sat on low seats near the waterline in the long, slim boat, its outboard motor whining and the warm, musky water of the river splashing against their faces. The bright lights and gaudy hotels of new Bangkok slipped quickly past them as they sped down the river. A bridge flashed overhead, choked with evening traffic. The river bent slowly around a turn. And soon the boat’s driver had beached them up against the darkened shoreline near the shacks and concrete gutters of the slaughterhouse. They landed only yards from where Manh and Dzung had stood a few hours before.

  ‘Amphibious assault,’ joked Condley quietly as he helped the lumbering Muir out of the boat. Then the boat taxi sped away, and they were alone. It was pitch-black. Nothing moved around them. Uphill they could hear the woeful screams of dying hogs.

  Muir’s face shined from the glow of a distant light, his terror palpable. ‘Don’t get too far away from me, Brandon.’

  ‘Stay right behind me.’ Condley pointed toward the noise. ‘It’s not far. Walk slowly and don’t talk. If somebody sees us, pretend you’re bored. We’re going up this hill.’

  ‘Bored?’ asked Muir, breathlessly following Condley. ‘Bored?’

  ‘Like maybe you’re here to buy some meat.’

  Condley knew Klong Toey. When he first came to Bangkok after the war, he had run the security detail for an American company that, among other things, owned several farms near Chiang Mai. The company, a part of which was a CIA front, had raised hogs and goats. The goats, with Condley escorting them, were usually sold to Iran and were shipped along with hidden weapons to assist the clandestine forces of the recently ousted Shah. The hogs, along with Condley, most often came to Klong Toey. A lot had changed in Iran since then. But despite all of Thailand’s advances, very little had changed in Klong Toey, especially in the slaughterhouse section.

  The gutter next to them on the dirt path was pulsing and splashing with a run-off that was rolling slowly downhill toward the river. Its rich aromas surrounded them as they crept up the hill, filling their nostrils and attacking their lungs.

  ‘What is that?’ whispered Muir, pointing to the gutter.

  ‘Hog blood,’ said Condley. ‘And guts. Mixed with water.’

  ‘I stood in it when I got off the boat!’ said Muir disgustedly.

  ‘You sure did,’ muttered Condley, his eyes fixed piercingly to his front. They were nearing the slaughter pens, and in front of them the road was lined with trucks. Behind hi
m he heard the professor retch. He kept going. This was not the time to baby-sit a sick scientist.

  As he moved slowly up the path he reached underneath his shirt, testing his grip on his pistol. He did not want to walk into the open with the pistol in his hand lest someone, even a worker, see it and attempt to disarm him or kill him. Instead, he had placed the Glock inside the belt just over his right hip, so that he could draw it and fire it in one smooth motion. The extra magazine was in his left pocket, as were enough bullets for a reload.

  Your fucking ammo better work, Simolzak.

  Muir shuffled close behind him, done with his puking. The dirt path ended and the slaughter pens were suddenly before him, filled with the sickening sights and screams of hogs being killed, hacked into sections, and dressed for the market. As he walked along the edges of the pens he saw them in the floodlit street: four trucks with identical company markings and green sideboards near the front of a long line of vehicles, moving slowly into place at the slaughterhouse gates so that their hogs could be offloaded into the waiting pens. The drivers and passengers in the front two trucks were clearly Vietnamese. The drivers and passengers in the third and fourth trucks were Burmese. Also in the fourth truck was a brooding, dark-faced Caucasian.

  ‘He’s early,’ said Condley quietly to Muir as well as to himself, his whole body going electric with goose bumps. ‘If we’d taken a taxi we’d have missed the son of a bitch.’

  The trucks halted. The men on the passenger sides got out first, jogging to the rear of the trucks and dropping the tailgates so that the Thai workers could begin unloading the hogs. As the hogs were being unloaded, the drivers and the Caucasian also left the trucks, nine men gathering in a small circle, conversing with an idle familiarity as they waited for the hogs to be slaughtered, dressed, and packed back into their trucks.

  Condley watched them intently as he moved slowly toward a concrete wall off to his right that made the outer boundary of the nearest slaughter pen. The Caucasian was thick and heavily muscled. His head was shaved to the scalp, and his round face was gashed with a long, full mustache. For a moment Condley stutter-stepped, unsure of himself. He could not be certain that this was the computer-enhanced face of Deville that he had studied for so many hours. Deville had not been so bulkily built. The face should have been squarer. Or maybe it was just that the computer enhancement had given Deville hair. Lots of hair.