Walking Wounded td-74

by Warren Murphy

  "You are cruel. I was wrong about you. You are not my son. My son would not leave me alone in the jungle to be eaten by tigers."

  "I'm glad we have that settled," Remo said, clanging the hatch shut. He had gotten the last word. Somehow. that made him feel good. But when he painfully inserted himself in the driver's seat and started the tank, he felt a vague, elusive sadness-as if he were leaving something behind. Something important.

  The Master of Sinanju watched the tank containing his pupil chug off into the night. He knew that Remo was not driving off in a huff. This was for real. He hadn't defended himself from Chiun's spiteful but harmless blow. His hands reeked of burned gunpowder and he was consorting with a Vietnamese.

  Smith had been correct. Remo had backflashed. He had backflashed so far he no longer remembered the Master of Sinanju.

  And worse, he no longer remembered Sinanju.

  The Master of Sinanju sniffed the air. There were other ways to journey through Cambodia. Many other ways. He set off into the jungle to find one of them. The Master of Sinanju knew where Remo was going even if Remo himself did not. When Remo reached his destination, the Master of Sinanju would be waiting for him there.

  Chapter 17

  Captain Dai Chim Sao did not admit defeat. He would not admit defeat. He could not admit defeat. Returning to the base camp on foot, he informed the second in command, Captain Tin, that he had located the renegade American.

  "My forces have him surrounded," Dai said rapidly. "It is just a matter of time now." He did not tell about the destroyed tanks. Or the soldiers who deserted under fire. Or how he had lain in the middle of the road for more than an hour, curled in a fetal position, after the tank had rolled over him. None of it.

  "It will be dark soon," said Tin. "Do you need more men?"

  "I need all of your men. Assemble them at once," Captain Dai ordered him stiffly.

  "But if you have the American surrounded, then-"

  "He could escape our cordon under cover of darkness," Dai snapped. "I will not take that chance."

  "But if we deploy our entire force, who will defend this camp?"

  "You will," said Captain Dai. "You will."

  Captain Tin gulped and saluted. "Yes, Comrade Captain. "

  The Hind gunships lifted off first. Captain Dai was in the lead helicopter. The tanks followed with frustrating slowness. Captain Dai had a plan. He would lead the helicopters to the ruined tanks and express his surprise.

  He would curse and rage and blame his men for having let the American turn the tide against them. His men could not contradict his story. Those who had not discredited themselves by desertion were dead. Then he would switch to the ground vehicles and lead the attack.

  No one would know or believe that Captain Dai had led his unit into ignominious defeat. Especially after he snatched success from the dragon's jaws.

  The jungle shivered under the rotors of the lowflying gunships. The whole night seemed to shiver. The sun took a long time to fall under the horizon. the night would come like a curtain closing on the final act of a play. Or on someone's life.

  It would not close on his own, Captain Dai Chim Sao promised himself. On his sham career, perhaps, but not on his life.

  Remo sat with his back to a tree. A leech dropped onto his hand and he quickly plucked it free before it could sink its teeth into him.

  The moon was rising like a crystal globe. Remo watched its reflection in the still water of a rice paddy. Even in reflection, the moon looked too perfect, almost as if it had been sculptured of frosted glass. Remo stared at its icy surface, trying to see through it. He could not, of course. It only seemed transparent to the eye.

  Lan slept nearby. They had pulled the tank into a thicket of bamboo. Wood smoke wafted from a nearby village. No one had come to bother them. Remo guessed they had wandered across the border into Vietnam. It was quieter. There were no sounds of distant conflict. It was like the Vietnam he always imagined would exist after the war.

  According to Lan, it was. Remo looked at her face, composed in sleep. It was a trusting face. It was hard to believe such a face would concoct such a series of fabrications as she had tried to convince him were true. But the other possibility was less plausible. The war was long over. America had withdrawn in defeat. Just that part alone was too much. And what was Remo doing in Vietnam twenty years after his last conscious memory of it?

  On an impulse, Remo picked up his rifle, and walking low, worked his way toward the rice paddy. Its waters looked cool and inviting. But undrinkable without Halzatone tablets or boiling. He had no Halzatone, and lighting a fire was dangerous.

  It was a perfect night for seeing. Not that Remo needed the moonlight. He had done so much night fighting during the war that he had taken to sleeping by day and avoiding artificial light. It built up his night vision until he could see like a cat.

  That ability hadn't left him. It made Remo wonder. Where had he been all these years? Why couldn't he remember? As a kid he'd read stories about Japanese soldiers who were found hiding in the jungles of remote Pacific islands, unaware that World War II had ended long ago.

  Was Remo like that? Had he been lost in the jungle, left behind? And what about his memory? He knew who he was, so he guessed that he wasn't suffering from amnesia.

  The rice paddy was a perfect mirror. Remo crawled onto an earthen dike and looked down. His face was in shadow, his eyes hidden in hollows so that his face resembled a skull with flesh.

  Leaning on his rifle, Remo got down on hands and knees for a closer look. He got a shock.

  His face looked different, his eyes more deeply set than he remembered, the skin drawn tightly over high cheekbones. He didn't look nineteen anymore. But he didn't look twenty years older, either.

  He was older-but not a lot older. It was his face, yes. But there were subtle differences. What did it mean?

  When he got back to the tank, Remo sat down beside Lan. He stared at her innocent face as if something in her childlike features would reveal the truth. Finally he shook her awake.

  Lan rubbed her green eyes sleepily.

  "My time to watch?" she asked, pushing herself up.

  "Later," Remo said.

  Lan saw the stern look in his face. "What?"

  "I have to know the truth."

  "What truth?"

  "The truth about the war," Remo snapped, shaking her shoulders. Lan recoiled from his touch.

  "You hurt me." She kneaded her shoulders where Remo's hard fingers had dug into the soft flesh.

  "Sorry," Remo said in a quieter voice. "I just can't make sense of it."

  Lan looked away. "Not my fault."

  "The war is over?"

  "Yes. "

  "You're sure of that?"

  "Yes." Her eyes were sullen.

  "I looked at myself in the rice paddy. I look older."

  "Of course."

  "But not that much older. Not twenty years older." Lan said nothing.

  "I can't have been wandering the jungle for twenty years without growing older or being captured."

  "You show up at reeducation camp. Not know where you come from. You rescue Lan. Rescue Lan's friends too. Friends very grateful. You leave us, but Lan not want to leave you. Lan like you. Lan sneak back on bus. You drive away. Then bus hit mine. You wake up. Lan wake up. Rest you know. Lan stand guard now?"

  "Later," Remo said. "Listen, I think I believe you. But there are things I can't explain. Except one way."

  Lan tossed her long hair back. "Yes?"

  "When the bus hit the mine, it was pretty torn up."

  "Yes. Cut in two."

  "Don't you think it's strange that we both survived? The thing was riddled with steel pellets."

  Lan shrugged. "You in front. Lan hiding in back. Bus hit mine, break in middle. Not strange. Lucky."

  "What if we only think we're alive?"

  Lan looked at Remo uncomprehendingly. "What if we're dead?" Remo said flatly.

  "No!" Lan cried, scramblin
g to her feet. Her face shook with anger. "Lan not dead. No! You dead, maybe. Not Lan!" She backed away from Remo in fear.

  "Look," Remo said, getting to his feet. "I don't want to believe it either. But it fits. It even explains Captain Spook. We're the walking wounded, dead but still fighting on."

  "No, not fit."

  "You said it first, remember? Maybe I'm a ghost. I can't remember anything but the war. I must have been killed driving that bus."

  "No. Lan not killed in war. Lan born during war, grow up after. Mother teacher, taken away when Lan young. Lan live on street. Later, Lan taken to reeducation camp. Lan not die in war. Lan not die ever!"

  Lan broke down sobbing. She fell to her knees and buried her face in the cool grass.

  "Lan not die ever!" she repeated brokenly.

  Remo knelt beside her. He brushed her long black hair away from her face.

  "Maybe you're right," he said quietly. "I just can't figure it out."

  "Remo think too much. Should be like Lan. Not think. Feel. Feel with heart."

  "Yeah? What do you feel?"

  Lan gathered her legs under her. She sat up. Her eyes were red around the edges.

  "Lan feel sad. Feel ache. Lan think it love."

  "Me?"

  "Since Lan child, Lan's mother told her about American father. His name Bob. Bob come back someday, Lan's mother say. Come back and take us to America. But Bob not come. No American come. Then Lan's mother say Bob dead. Lan not believe. Bad things happen to Lan. Then you come. Lan like you because you American. Now Lan like you because you Remo."

  "I like you too. But you're just a kid." Remo's face froze. "Funny. "

  "Lan not funny."

  "No, I didn't mean it like that. The last I remember, I was nineteen. You look about that. But somehow I think of you as a kid. Like somewhere in my head I know I'm older."

  "Not understand."

  "Me neither. And what was that old Oriental's problem? He knew my name. He said he was my father. I never knew my father, but there's no way my father was Vietnamese-or whatever he was."

  "He very strong," Lan said.

  "Yeah, but so am I." He looked at his fist. "I killed two guys with single punches. I don't ever remember being that strong."

  "Lan tired of thinking."

  Remo grinned suddenly. "Me too."

  Lan smiled shyly. She touched his arm tentatively. "Remo like Lan?" she asked softly.

  "Yeah, sure I do."

  "Love Lan now?"

  "What?"

  "Love. Love Lan now?"

  "I don't know. I'm just getting to know you. I do like you, though. "

  "Love Lan later, then. Make boom-boom now?"

  "Oh," said Remo, suddenly understanding.

  "Okay?"

  Lan peeled off her shirt. Her skin was pale in the moonlight, her breasts small but firm. She put her arms around Remo's neck and pushed him to the ground gently. Her little mouth took his hungrily.

  When they broke apart, Remo whispered, "That was pretty good." He took her by her tawny waist.

  "Maybe if Remo make boom-boom, Remo understand he is alive, not dead, not ghost. Maybe we both feel alive."

  "It's worth trying," Remo said, pushing her down into the cool grass.

  In his perch in a nearby tree, the Master of Sinanju made a disgusted sound. He turned around and faced the east, where the sun would soon rise. Without knowledge of who he was, Remo had reverted to his most base nature.

  When the sounds coming to his fragile ears told him that Remo was actually enjoying himself, and therefore not employing correct Sinanju love techniques, Clriun knew for certain that Remo had lost his knowledge of Sinanju. He was actually performing sex as a pleasure, not a duty. Chiun clapped his hands over his ears to block out the animal moans of backsliding.

  Chapter 18

  Remo woke first. He woke instantly, some instinct pulling him from sleep. He raised himself up on one arm, listening.

  Lan clung to him. He reached over and threw her shirt across her naked shoulders. Her mouth moved as if she were speaking to him. Remo bent an ear. Her words were vague mumbles, not English. Not even Vietnamese. But subvocal mutterings.

  Remo decided that Lan wasn't making the sounds that woke him.

  Then they came out of the north. First one. Then two more.

  Helicopter gunships. They flashed overhead so fast there was almost no warning of their approach.

  Remo shook Lan briskly. "Lan! Wake up."

  "Remo?"

  "Choppers. They probably spotted the tank. We gotta di-di out of here."

  Lan quickly scooped up her clothes and followed Remo into the tank. They dressed frantically. Remo got the tank going. He sent it grumbling up onto the road.

  The choppers came around on another searching pass. On the third pass, one cut loose with a rocket. It struck fifty yards up the road. Dirt and rocks mushroomed. Dust billowed into the periscope. When it cleared. Remo saw a gaping crater.

  "Those are antitank rockets," he yelled as he sent the tank skittering around. "One direct hit and it's all over."

  Lan grabbed up an AK-47 and popped the main hatch. She opened up into the sky. Her firing was wild and indiscriminate.

  "Don't waste ammo," Remo yelled after her. He had the tank turned around. He hit the gas. Of course, it was hopeless. No way they could outrun three fast gunships.

  "I keep them away," Lan called down between bursts.

  "For how long? They're faster and more maneuverable."

  "Have to try," Lan shouted down. Then she emptied another precious clip.

  "Damn!" Remo said.

  Then the gunships ripped across his line of sight again. One of them peeled off from the group and cut loose with another rocket. The whoosh sound made Remo's blood go cold.

  Remo jumped up and pulled Lan down by the seat of her pants. They fell together in a tumble. Remo felt a bare breast under one hand. Lan hadn't had time to button her shirt. He pressed her to the floor, using his own body as a shield. No time to close the hatch. It wouldn't matter under a direct hit.

  There was no direct hit. The concussion sound came from the front. Dust and grit rained down the turret hatch.

  Remo got up. He scrawled forward into the cockpit. There he saw another crater ahead.

  Lan joined him. "They miss again," she said.

  "I think it was deliberate," Remo said. "They want to stop us here. Probably means reinforcements on the way. "

  "We dead?"

  "Maybe not. They might want us alive."

  "Better off dead," Lan said, buttoning her shirt.

  "Look, you stay with the tank."

  Lan's eyes widened. "You leave Lan?"

  "They're probably sending more tanks. I took over one. I can take over others."

  "Okay," Lan said. "Hurry back. Do not get killed."

  "It's not in my plans," Remo said. And he kissed her. Remo waited until the gunships dropped behind the trees before he slipped out the hatch. He jumped into the roadside bamboo. The sun was sending mists rising off the rice paddies. It was warming up. He found a sturdy tree and got into the high branches. He had a full clip in his rifle and three more in his pockets. He waited.

  As Remo had guessed, the convoy came out of the north, as had the helicopters. There were three tanks, led by a Land Rover. Remo recognized the pockmarked face of the NVA officer he knew as Captain Spook in the back of the Land Rover.

  Remo raised his rifle and got the man in his sights. But no, that would spoil the element of surprise. He lowered the rifle.

  "You got more lives than a cat, pal. But today they run out. That's a promise."

  Remo shouldered his rifle and crawled out on a limb as far as he could. He hung over the road. The tanks ran with their turrets open, soldiers manning swiveling .50-caliber machine guns. Remo waited until the first two tanks had passed. He dropped from his perch just as the third tank rolled under him.

  Remo landed behind the turret. He landed clumsily. The boots. They
felt wrong. He clung to a bulkhead to keep from falling off. When he regained his balance, he inched up toward the turret.

  The machine-gunner never heard Remo's approach. Remo smashed him in the back of the head with a single blow. The soldier slumped over his weapon.

  Remo lifted him out of the hatch bodily, surprised at his own strength. He threw the man overboard and took his place.

  Carefully, hoping the crew below wouldn't notice the substitution, Remo unlimbered his rifle. He set the selector to single shot. He waited.

  Ahead, the Land Rover came to the first crater. It whirled around it. The first tank hadn't enough room. It clanked into the pit, treads digging into the broken asphalt for traction. The noise would cover the sound of single shots. Remo dropped into the tank and put his muzzle to the back of the driver's head.

  The driver said nothing. He raised his hands.

  The officer manning the cannon hadn't noticed Remo. Covering the driver, Remo slipped up behind the weapons officer and slammed his face into the cannon breech with the butt of his rifle. Then he turned his attention back to the driver.

  The driver's face was a mask of sweat.

  "I don't want to kill you, pal," Remo told him, "although I'm not sure why I shouldn't."

  "Khoung! Khoung!" the driver protested.

  Remo knocked him over the head. He yanked him out of the bucket and got behind the lateral controls. Remo peered through the periscope. He had a clean shot at the tank up ahead. But even if he got it, the lead tank was in a position to return fire. The helicopters were still a factor too.

  Remo decided to wait. The first tank clanked out of the road crater as the second flopped into it. Remo sent the tank inching ahead cautiously. He wasn't sure of his next move.

  The helicopters decided him. One by one, they settled onto the road on the other side of Lan's tank, blocking it.

  "Okay," Remo said. "Time to rock-and-roll."

  Remo dug around in back. He found a crate of hand grenades and started stuffing them into his pockets. He came out through the driver's hatch and slipped to the ground.

  Remo still wore the ill-fitting Vietnamese khaki and one of their avocado pith helmets. He walked casually up behind the other tanks, slouching to make himself appear shorter. He pulled the pin on a grenade and just as casually tossed it into the lap of the second tank's turret gunner.