The Tunnel Rats (Coronet books)

by Stephen Leather

  ‘Recreational use, Doc,’ said Ramirez.

  Hammack was walking around the perimeter of the chamber. Three tunnels led off the room: the one they’d come through, the one the bats had flown down, and another, midway along the wall. In the far corner, to the right of the screen, was a jagged hole in the floor. Hammack went over to it. The hole was about three feet deep and at the bottom were sharpened bamboo spears, pointing up. ‘Damn near lost my foot to that thing,’ said Hammack.

  ‘Yeah, well, you should know they always put punji traps in the corners,’ said Ramirez. ‘That’s where you hide when you’re scared of the dark.’

  Hammack sneered. ‘Hell, I weren’t ever scared of the dark,’ he said.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Ramirez. ‘When you closed your eyes and your mouth you were damn near invisible.’

  Hammack laughed throatily. He popped a fresh piece of chewing gum into his mouth and went over to the tunnel the bats had flown into. He knelt down and looked inside. There were fragments of metal embedded in the red clay. Hammack pulled one out and held it in the palm of his hand. Doc peered over Hammack’s shoulder.

  ‘Max was lucky,’ said Hammack, probing the metal with his finger. ‘Got down just in time. Another second and it would have killed him.’

  ‘Shouldn’t have gone in without probing for tripwires first,’ said Ramirez. ‘It was an obvious place.’

  ‘Easy enough to say after the event, Sergio,’ said Doc.

  ‘Come on, Doc. He was panicking, he wanted to get out and he took the wrong tunnel. If you hadn’t heard the click, if you hadn’t shouted . . .’

  ‘Yeah, well, I did and he got away with a backful of shrapnel,’ said Doc, crushing his cigarette with his heel. ‘Come on, let’s go.’ He slipped his rucksack on. ‘Bernie, are you okay going point for a while?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Hammack.

  ‘I can do it,’ said Ramirez defensively.

  Doc shook his head. ‘You’ve been in front for two hours, Sergio. You need a rest. You take the rear.’

  Ramirez looked for a moment as if he was going to argue, but Doc’s eyes hardened and Ramirez nodded. Hammack went over to the hole in the middle of the wall. He pointed his flashlight into the darkness, ran the beam over the walls and ceiling, and crawled in. Doc and Ramirez followed.

  Nick Wright had no idea how deep he was. The tunnel had been sloping downwards for some time, a gradual incline but a definite one. He wondered how much earth was above his head. If there was a collapse, he’d never be able to claw his way to the surface, of that he was sure. The tunnel sides seemed to be pressing in on him, and the roof seemed to be lower than it had been in the first section. Occasionally his back would bang against it and there’d be a small shower of red dirt. The tunnel had zigzagged left and right until he’d lost all sense of direction, though Bamber had insisted that they were still heading north. Wright wondered what they’d do if the way ahead proved to be blocked. The tunnel was so narrow that he doubted he’d be able to turn around, they’d have to shuffle backwards for upwards of three hundred metres to a small chamber which had apparently been a resting place for VC on their way to the main tunnel complex. The thought brought on feelings of panic and Wright tried to think of relaxing images: trees, fields, beaches. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine he was out in the open, that above his head was clear blue sky and not unyielding clay.

  It was bad enough fighting the claustrophobia. Wright couldn’t imagine what it must have been like for the Tunnel Rats, knowing that the enemy was waiting for them somewhere underground, an enemy with guns and knives, hiding in the darkness.

  His hands and knees were sore and his back and neck ached, and the rough surface kept scuffing and scratching his skin. Gritty dust constantly worked its way into the cuts and abrasions on his hands, stinging and burning.

  He opened his eyes. Bamber was ten feet or so in front of him, crawling with slow, regular movements. Wright tried to follow the FBI agent’s rhythm, right arm and right leg moving together, then left arm and left leg. It produced a rolling motion that would have been soothing if it wasn’t for the friction on his palms and knees.

  His shoulders banged against the concrete-hard walls. He’d never be able to dig his way out if anything went wrong. He pictured himself clawing at the impenetrable clay, his fingers bleeding, his nails breaking, screaming for help with no one able to hear him. Wright’s chest began to pound. He was underground, he was surrounded by the earth, he was buried deep below the ground and if the roof were to collapse he’d die with his mouth full of soil and clay with no one to help him. He shook his head. Nothing was going to go wrong, he told himself. The tunnels had been there for decades, there was no reason for them to start collapsing now. He took deep breaths, willing the panic to subside.

  His hand squashed against something soft and mushy and he jerked it back. He shone his flashlight on to his palm. There were pieces of dead insect on it. Something long and thin with dozens of legs. Wright flinched. His head banged against the roof of the tunnel and he yelped. He frantically wiped his hand on the wall, trying to get the mess off his skin. There was another, longer, piece of centipede on the floor, its legs sticking lifelessly up into the air.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ asked Bamber. He’d stopped and was looking over his shoulder.

  ‘I put my hand on a centipede,’ said Wright. He rubbed his hand on his shirt.

  ‘Did it bite you?’

  ‘I think it was dead already.’

  ‘You okay?’

  ‘I’ve been better.’

  Bamber nodded. ‘We’re almost at the main complex,’ he said. ‘Then we go down to the second level.’

  Wright nodded. He took deep breaths, fighting to stay calm, knowing that if he did panic there was nowhere to go. He couldn’t turn around, and the FBI agent blocked the way forward. He had never felt so trapped and helpless in his life.

  Doc leaned back against the wall of the chamber and sighed. ‘I’m too old for this,’ he said.

  ‘We’re all too old for this,’ agreed Hammack. He unwrapped a stick of gum and put it in his mouth. He offered the pack to Doc and Ramirez but both men shook their heads.

  Doc flipped his Zippo open and lit a cigarette. He looked around. The chamber they were in was conical, like a concrete teepee, with two tunnel entrances. It was big enough to hold four people and Doc knew it had been constructed as an air-raid shelter for Viet Cong cadres. The conical structure was virtually indestructible, even by a direct hit from a 750-pound bomb dropped by a B-52. The shape of the structure amplified sound from above ground so that the cadres would be able to hear the planes long before they arrived over the tunnel complex.

  Ramirez drank from his canteen and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘We must be fucking crazy,’ he said.

  Doc looked at his wristwatch. They’d been underground for four hours. ‘If we’re crazy now, think how crazy we were twenty-five years ago,’ he said.

  Hammack nodded. ‘We were young. We thought we’d live for ever. I did, anyway. I was fucking invincible. I was the man.’

  Doc blew a smoke ring up at the apex of the chamber.

  ‘Secondary smoking kills, Doc,’ said Ramirez, grinning.

  The three men laughed, but it was an uneasy, disjointed sound and it echoed eerily around the chamber.

  ‘Do you ever think about what happened, last time we were here?’ asked Hammack when the last echo had faded.

  ‘About Jumbo?’

  ‘About Jumbo. About what we did.’

  Doc rolled his shoulders and twisted his neck from side to side. ‘I try not to,’ he said.

  ‘I think about it every day,’ said Hammack. ‘Especially at night.’

  Ramirez nodded. ‘Yeah. The nights are the worst. Sometimes I wake up and for a moment I forget where I am. It’s like I’m back down in the tunnels, in the dark. Then I’ll hear a noise and I’m up in a crouch, hands out.’ He flashed a humourless smile. ‘Scares the shit out o
f the girls.’

  ‘That’s not what I meant,’ said Hammack. He interlinked his fingers and cracked his knuckles. ‘I get flashbacks and stuff, but anyone who was in ’Nam gets them. I’m talking about guilt.’

  Doc and Ramirez exchanged looks, then stared at Hammack. Hammack raised his hands.

  ‘I’m just saying, that’s all. I think what we did was wrong.’

  Doc stubbed his cigarette out on the floor. ‘We were fighting a war, Bernie. They killed Jumbo, slit his throat like they were killing a pig.’

  ‘Yeah, but—-’

  ‘There are no buts, it was kill or be killed.’

  Hammack shook his head. ‘Not at the end it wasn’t, Doc. It was murder.’

  Doc’s eyes hardened. Before he could speak there was a scrabbling noise from one of the tunnels and all the men jumped. A large grey rat rushed out of the hole next to Ramirez, leaped across his outstretched legs, and disappeared through the other hole.

  Hammack put his hand on his chest and let out a long sigh. ‘I almost had a seizure,’ he said. ‘That’d be one for the books, wouldn’t it? Killed by a rat.’

  May Eckhardt sat in the darkness, listening to the laughter echoing down the tunnels. She sat cross-legged, her unlit flashlight in her lap. The darkness was total, but her other senses were telling her everything she needed to know. She could hear the men, even though they were more than five hundred feet away. She could smell the cigarette that Doc had smoked and the spearmint gum that Hammack was chewing. On her right cheek she could feel a light breeze, fresh air blowing in through a small ventilation tunnel only a few inches in diameter. She placed the flat of her hand on the floor, feeling the vibrations made by the men as they started to move again.

  She knew exactly where they were going, and the route they would take. May had all the time in the world. She knew her way around parts of the tunnel complex that the Americans didn’t even know existed. She took her knife out of its scabbard and used her black and white checked scarf to polish it, smiling to herself as she worked.

  Bamber stopped and opened his map case. Wright crawled up behind him. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘You’ll need to get the plastic bag out,’ said the FBI agent.

  Wright knelt back, ducking his head so that it wouldn’t scrape along the tunnel roof. ‘What are you talking about?’

  The tunnel had widened a little, giving Bamber enough room to twist around so that he was facing Wright. He kept his flashlight down so as not to dazzle him. ‘You remember I told you about the water trap? The U-bend, to stop gas going all the way through the complex.’

  Wright realised what Bamber was getting at. He shook his head fiercely. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No way.’

  ‘It’s no big deal,’ said Bamber. ‘Eight feet at most.’ He put the map on the ground and pointed at a length of tunnel. ‘We go through the water, then we go down to the second level.’

  Wright continued to shake his head.

  ‘Nick, we’ve no choice. It’s the only way forward. Doc and the rest have already gone this way.’

  Wright felt suddenly light headed. He was hyperventilating. He held his breath for a while, then exhaled. He shone his flashlight over Bamber’s shoulder. An oval pool of water glistened. Beyond it was nothing but red clay. ‘Eight feet?’ he said.

  ‘Maximum. You hold your breath and you crawl down, then up. You don’t even have to swim.’

  ‘What about the flashlights?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are they waterproof?’

  ‘They’re rubber coated, but I wouldn’t want to risk exposing them under water.’

  ‘Jim, you don’t know how tough it is for me to be down here in the first place. It’s all I can do to stop myself from screaming. There’s no way I can go underwater in pitch darkness.’

  ‘You can, and you will.’

  ‘I can’t be in the dark. I’ll freak out.’

  ‘Because of your claustrophobia?’

  Wright nodded.

  ‘Hell, Nick, you’re already underground. What is it with you and dark places?’

  Wright put his hands over his face. ‘It’s a long story,’ he said.

  ‘Give me the short version. We don’t have too much time.’

  Wright sighed. ‘When I was a kid, my father built me a train set, a huge one, scenery, stations, points, the works. He built it and I helped him. It got so big we had to put it in the basement. When I was ten, he and my mum got divorced. To this day I don’t know why. I don’t remember any rows, it’s not as if he used to hit her or anything. But my mum moved out, and I went to live with her. We didn’t live far away so I used to go around to my dad’s house all the time. I had a key so I could I let myself in.’

  Wright went quiet as the memories flooded back. Bamber waited patiently for him to finish.

  ‘I went around one Saturday afternoon. I rang the doorbell but there was no answer. Sometimes he went away, he was a salesman, selling life insurance and stuff, and he often went on sales trips. I let myself in. The light in the basement wasn’t working, but there were lights on the train set, for the stations and the houses, and I knew the switch, for that was in the far corner, so I went down in the dark. I got halfway down the stairs and the door closed. I kept on going, figuring I could find the switch in the dark.’

  Wright fell silent again as he relived the experience in his mind. Walking slowly through the dark, his hands stretched out in front of him. He shook his head.

  ‘I bumped into something, something hanging from the ceiling. He’d hanged himself. At first I didn’t know what it was, then I felt his shoes. They were wet and there was a funny smell. He’d pissed himself. People who hang themselves always do.’

  ‘I know,’ said Bamber quietly.

  ‘I turned and ran, slap bang into the table. Knocked myself out. I woke up a couple of hours later, didn’t know where I was or what had happened. It was pitch black. I don’t know how long it took me to find my way back up the stairs and to open the door, but it seemed like for ever. It still does.’ Wright smiled ruefully at Bamber. ‘That’s the abridged version,’ he said. ‘But the upshot is, I always leave a light on when I sleep, because if I wake up in the middle of the night and it’s dark, I panic.’

  Bamber looked at him for several seconds. ‘I don’t know what to say. You want to go back? You want to quit?’

  ‘No, I don’t want to quit,’ said Wright quickly. The words came out without thinking, but he realised that he meant what he said. Just then nothing meant more to him than finding out who had killed Max Eckhardt and Eric Horvitz. He wasn’t going to quit, not after he’d come this far. He shrugged off the knapsack and took out the plastic bag. He put the knapsack into the bag, then put his flashlight inside, still switched on, before twisting the neck of the bag to form a seal.

  Bamber followed Wright’s example. The lights were dimmer, but they still illuminated the tunnel around them. ‘I’ll go first,’ Bamber said. ‘Give me thirty seconds, then follow me through. If you can, I’d recommend you keep your eyes closed, there’s no telling what shit’s in there.’

  He turned around, took a deep breath, and plunged head first into the water. His legs kicked, then they disappeared, leaving only ripples in the surface. Water spilled on to the floor of the tunnel, and then ran back into the pool. Wright stared at the water. It was inky black, like oil. He wondered if there were snakes in the water, or worse. They were bound to find their way into the tunnels; what would he do if he got bitten? He imagined himself writhing in agony, already entombed in the earth, dying alone, in the dark. He twisted the plastic bag so that the beam of the flashlight ran along the length of the tunnel behind him. It was clear. How fast could snakes move? he wondered. Would they attack him from behind, or did they only bite if threatened? Wright didn’t know, and he didn’t want to find out.

  He looked back at the pool. Its surface was still once more, a black mirror through which he had to pass. He had no way of knowing if Bamb
er had got through safely. He could be trapped under the surface, the last breath escaping from his body. Wright shuffled up to the edge of the pool. His reflection stared back at him. ‘Eight feet,’ he whispered to himself. ‘It’s only eight feet.’

  He swallowed, then took deep breaths. He said a silent prayer, then dipped the bag into the pool. He took a final breath of air and ducked his head under the surface. He pushed himself forward, his hands and knees scrabbling on the tunnel floor. The water pushed him up and his head banged on the roof and he arched his back and pushed again with his toes. He felt as if he was hardly making any progress. The back of his head scraped the clay again. His natural buoyancy and the air in the plastic bag were pushing him up against the roof. His eyes began to sting and he clamped them shut.

  His feet floated up and he kicked them but he was being pushed against the tunnel roof so strongly that he couldn’t move forward. Wright’s lungs began to burn and he knew he was only seconds away from drowning. He tried to claw his way along the tunnel floor but he couldn’t get a grip. His head slammed into the roof again.

  He opened his eyes but the water was so dirty that he could only see a few inches in front of his face. He tried kicking again, but his feet had nothing to push against and his heels flailed uselessly against the roof. His chest began to heave and he clamped his jaws shut tight. He hadn’t even reached the halfway mark; the roof was still curving down. Wright twisted around so that his face was turned towards the roof. He scrabbled with his hands and feet, the plastic bag banging into the side of his head, but finally he managed to get a grip on the slippery clay and he pulled himself down. The tunnel began to curve up again and his buoyancy pulled him around the bend and he popped up to the surface, crying and gasping for air.

  A hand gripped him by the collar and pulled him out of the water. ‘What the hell kept you?’ asked Bamber. Wright rolled on to his hands and knees and retched. The FBI agent slapped him on the back. ‘I’d just about given up on you,’ said Bamber.