Wright picked up the bag full of broken metal and glass and slammed the end against Bamber’s head, again and again, whipping it back and forth.
Bamber tried to stab him with the knife but Wright easily evaded the blows. Bamber cocked his head on one side, listening intently. Wright held his breath so as not to give away his position, but he realised that Bamber was listening for the buzzing of his infra-red goggles.
Wright pulled the flashlight out of the bag and stabbed the end of it into Bamber’s face, grinding the broken glass into his cheek. Bamber cried in pain and Wright brought the flashlight down on his nose with a satisfying crack. Bamber put his hands up to his broken nose and fell back into the water. He disappeared under the surface, head first. Wright crouched over the water, the flashlight raised like a club, waiting for Bamber to reappear, but after half a minute the ripples had subsided and the surface was as flat as a mirror. Wright counted a full two minutes in his head before lowering the broken flashlight. He turned and began to crawl along the tunnel, looking over his shoulder every few seconds, just in case. He’d hit Bamber hard, but he was reasonably sure that he hadn’t him hit hard enough to kill him.
May undid the trip wire. It was connected to a small bamboo cage containing two venomous snakes that she’d bought from a dealer in Saigon. She crept by the cage, which she’d set into the tunnel wall, then retied the trip wire. The three Americans who’d come down the tunnel were all dead. She’d killed Ramirez and Hammack herself, though the man in the strange headset had beaten her to Doc Marshall. Still, she’d managed to place an ace of spades on Marshall’s corpse. That had given her no small satisfaction. There were two men still in the tunnels: the man in the goggles and the other man, whom she hadn’t yet seen. Neither concerned her. She’d completed her work in the tunnels and was now intent on getting back to the surface and out of Vietnam.
The tunnel she was in was relatively tall and the roof arched, so that she was able to run along it providing she kept her upper body thrust forward and her knees slightly bent. She cradled the crossbow in her hands as she ran, a bolt in place even though she didn’t anticipate meeting anyone. The two men were the other side of the collapse, and one had probably died in the explosion.
She reached the end of the tunnel and paused for breath in a resting chamber large enough to hold six men. A slight breeze came from a small hole close to the roof of the chamber. May turned her head towards it and let it play over her face.
As a child she’d crawled through ventilation tunnels, despite her father’s warning that it was dangerous, that they weren’t built to such a high standard as the chambers and the communication tunnels. She had grown since then, but she knew that she would still be able to crawl up through the ventilation tunnel, all the way to the surface. It would be a tight fit, and she would come out almost half a mile from her pick-up truck, but it was still the quickest route out. She drank the last of her water, then stood up and pushed her crossbow into the hole. She used both hands to get a grip on the hard clay, and heaved herself up.
The green flickering image faded and the buzzing of the infra-red goggles became suddenly fainter. Wright had a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. The infra-red image had been getting steadily worse over the past few minutes, but he’d tried to convince himself that he was imagining it. Now there was no doubt. He couldn’t see more than ten feet ahead of him and his field of vision was fading fast. He crawled faster, wanting to take advantage of what little life remained in the equipment, but he’d barely managed twenty feet before they failed completely. Despair washed over him and he beat his hands on the ground.
He ripped off the goggles and threw them down. He cursed himself, he cursed the tunnels, and he cursed Jim Bamber. He started to hyperventilate and fought to steady his breathing.
‘It’s okay,’ he whispered to himself. ‘It’s one straight tunnel. A walk in the park.’ He started to crawl forward, groping ahead with his fingers, staring ahead with unseeing eyes. ‘A walk in the park,’ he repeated, though he could hear the uncertainty in his voice.
Gerry Hunter opened the front door. ‘Hey!’ he called.
‘Hiya, honey!’ Janie shouted from the kitchen. ‘We’re in here.’
She was standing by the dishwashing machine. Sean was helping her to load it.
‘Hiya, Sean,’ said Hunter, dropping his briefcase next to the kitchen table. ‘How was school?’
‘Okay,’ said Sean. He closed the door of the machine and rushed out of the kitchen. Hunter watched him go.
Janie kissed him on the cheek. ‘He’ll get used to you,’ she said, and slipped her arms around his neck. ‘I’m pleased to see you.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘But you’re late.’
‘Yeah, Nick’s in trouble.’
Janie held up her hands. ‘I don’t want to hear any more,’ she snapped.
‘But—-’
‘No, Gerry. He’s out of my house, he’s out of my life, I don’t want to talk about him.’
‘You’re over-reacting, Janie.’
‘You didn’t have to live with the man, Gerry. With his moods, his nightmares, his fixation with work. You didn’t get woken up in the middle of the night to find him downstairs playing his bloody mouth organ.’ She stamped her foot. ‘Damn him, damn him for never leaving me alone.’ She turned on her heel and stormed out of the kitchen.
Hunter groaned and took off his coat. He was finding it harder and harder to deal with Janie’s mood swings. When he first met her he’d thought that the break-up of her marriage had been Nick Wright’s fault, but the longer he spent with her the more he realised that Janie was far from the catch she first appeared. She was moody, spoiled and selfish, and while the sex was terrific, she was impossible to live with. In fact, Hunter had made it a point not to live with her. She’d given him a key, and he often stayed until the early hours, but he was never there in the morning. He always left before first light, partly because he didn’t think it fair on Sean, but partly because he didn’t want to make a commitment to Janie which he might have to break.
He switched on the kettle, then took his mobile phone out of his briefcase. He tapped out Wright’s number. To his surprise, after half a dozen rings, it was answered by a laconic male voice.
‘Nick?’
‘What?’
‘Nick? It’s Gerry.’
‘Gerry who?’
It wasn’t Wright, Hunter realised. He checked the number with the man. He was one digit out. He apologised for bothering the man, and redialled, taking care to press the correct buttons. It rang out for a while, then he got the recording again, asking him to leave a message.
Wright probed forward with his fingers, testing the dirt ahead for trip wires. He had no idea what he’d do if he did touch something. What could he possibly do in the dark? He would have no way of knowing what sort of trap it was. Bamber had mentioned snakes, and Doc had said there had been a scorpion trap down in the escape tunnel. What would he do if he touched a snake or a stinging insect? He could feel blood trickling from the wound on his calf each time he moved his left leg but he blanked the pain from his mind, focusing all his attention on the tunnel ahead of him.
He had no sense of time passing, no way of knowing if it was day or night outside. He couldn’t see his watch, so for a while he’d tried to mark the passing of time by counting. He’d given up after reaching three thousand. Three thousand seconds was fifty minutes, almost an hour, but he couldn’t tell how far he’d crawled during the time he’d been counting. At least his infra-red goggles had held out until he reached the upper level. He would never have been able to get up from the second level without being able to see the trapdoor.
A sudden thought gripped his heart. What if the trapdoor had been replaced? What if Chinh had found the entrance and had put the hatch back? Maybe Wright had already crawled under the trapdoor and was now heading away from it, crawling to oblivion, to a waterless, lightless, lonely death. He shook his head. No, the kitbags were in the tunn
el. To miss the hatch he’d have to pass the kitbags the Americans had left. All he had to do was to crawl until he reached the kitbags. Unless Chinh had taken them, figuring he was better off stealing what they contained than waiting for Bamber’s half of the hundred-dollar bill. He pushed the thought out of his mind and began counting again, ticking off the seconds as he crawled.
May squeezed through the last section of the ventilation tunnel. She could feel the breeze on her face, stronger than before, and hear the sound of birdsong and running water. She pushed the crossbow ahead of herself, then pulled with her arms and wriggled with her legs.
She burst through a veil of spindly white tree roots and hauled herself out into the sunlight. The tunnel opened into the wet clay of a riverbank and some six feet below muddy water rippled past. She slid down towards the river, but grabbed on to a rock and swung her legs to the side until she managed to get a grip on the slippery clay. She dragged herself up and lay on her back on the bank, gulping in lungfuls of clean, fresh air.
Wright had counted to two thousand when he saw the patch of light ahead of him. He stopped and stared at the sunbeam that lanced through the dusty air of the tunnel. It looked solid, almost as if it could be sliced with a knife. He started crawling, oblivious to the pain in his leg, all thoughts of booby traps forgotten, his eyes fixed on the small square of light, staring at it as if he feared it would disappear at any moment.
He roared with triumph as he got closer, an animal-like bellow that swelled to fill the tunnel. He’d made it. He’d survived.
He dragged himself up through the opening, and rolled over and over in the sand like a puppy. He stared up at the brilliant blue sky and the white feathery clouds that moved slowly across it, revelling in the fact that he was alive, then rolled on to his front and sat up on his knees, his eyes half closed against the blinding sun. He shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted around, trying to recall where the Mercedes was. If he could find the car, then Chinh, the driver, would help him.
He tried to get to his feet but he had no strength left and fell back on to his hands and knees. He kept his head down and began to crawl, his left leg dragging in the sand. After several minutes he realised he was in the shadow of a rock formation. He clawed himself up the sandstone rock, then twisted around and sat with his back to it, breathing heavily.
He rolled up his trouser leg and examined the wound on his calf. His ripped jeans were stained with blood, but the cut itself wasn’t too deep. Wright could see grains of dirt among the cut tissue and he realised there was a good chance of the wound becoming infected if he didn’t clean it soon. He didn’t have any antiseptic or water, so he put his head close to the cut and spat at it several times, then smeared the saliva around it. He tried to spit again but his mouth was too dry.
‘Chinh!’ he shouted, but his voice wasn’t much more than a hoarse whisper.
The elation that he’d felt as he climbed out into the open began to fade, and Wright’s mind started to wander. A series of disjointed images flashed through his mind. Eckhardt’s mutilated body in the Battersea tunnel. The blood streaming from Hammack’s chest wound. Bamber, the crazed look in his eyes and the knife in his hand. His father, hanging from the beam, his shoes stinking of urine.
Wright’s head slumped forward and the jolt woke him up. He slapped his face several times, but barely felt the blows. His whole body seemed to have gone numb. He had to find Chinh. He pushed himself up, using the rock for leverage, and scanned the surrounding vegetation. There were no features that he recognised. He staggered out of the shadow and back into the searing sunlight, shading his eyes with his hands. Once he’d walked some distance from the rocks, he turned to look at them, trying to recall what they’d looked like when he and Bamber had first approached the hatch. He stood staring at the rock formation for almost a minute, then figured that they’d come in from an angle to his left. He looked down to see if there were any footprints, but the wind had obliterated all tracks.
A large black and yellow bird flew overhead and settled in the branches of a spreading tree. Wright staggered towards a gap in the vegetation, wincing each time he put his weight on his left leg. He had to stop after a dozen steps to rest. He wiped his forehead with his hand and it came away sopping wet. Sweat was pouring off him. He put his hands on his hips and took deep breaths, then started walking again.
He heard a noise behind him and whirled around. Bamber was crawling out of the hatch, his knife in his right hand.
‘Wright!’ he yelled.
Wright felt as if he’d been punched in the solar plexus. Any remaining strength he had seemed to drain away from him and his arms hung uselessly at his sides. He was exhausted. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t hide. He couldn’t fight back. He stood and watched as Bamber hauled himself out of the tunnel.
‘It’s over, Wright!’ shouted Bamber. He walked slowly towards Wright, the knife raised in the air. The steel glinted in the harsh sunlight. The yellow and black bird cawed and took flight.
Wright’s heart began to race and he felt a surge of adrenalin. He turned and staggered into the jungle, pushing branches and vines away with his hands, barely managing a fast walk, his left leg dragging, a dead weight. It was like walking through treacle, as if the ground was sucking at his feet, slowing him down so that every step required a superhuman effort. Wright looked over his shoulder. Bamber was gaining. He too was exhausted, but he didn’t have an injured leg and he had a knife.
Wright turned and forced himself to jog, though every step was agonising. He could hear Bamber breathing and snorting behind him, and the sound of his feet slapping into the dirt. Wright stumbled over a fallen branch and pitched forward. He fell on to his hands and knees, his chest heaving, tears of frustration and rage stinging his eyes. He pushed himself up. In the distance he could see the Mercedes, its windscreen a mass of reflected sunlight. He got to his feet and staggered towards the car, his arms outstretched as if reaching for it.
His legs became heavier and heavier with each step, but behind him Bamber maintained his pace, breathing like a bull at stud. Wright risked another look over his shoulder. Bamber was only six paces behind him, the knife held high. He was grinning maniacally, his eyes wide and staring, his face smeared with blood and mud like hastily applied warpaint.
Wright fell again. He hit the ground hard and rolled over on to his back, his hands up in front of his chest in an attempt to defend himself against the attack he knew would come. Bamber slowed and stood over Wright, a look of total triumph on his face.
Bamber opened his mouth to speak, but before he could say anything, there was a swooshing sound and something thwacked into his neck, just below his right ear. The look of triumph turned to one of disbelief. His hand clawed up at the object in his neck, but as he touched it his legs folded under him and he fell to his knees. Blood streamed from his neck, and Wright watched in horror as Bamber’s mouth worked soundlessly. It was a crossbow bolt, Wright realised. Someone had shot Bamber with a crossbow bolt.
Wright scuttled away on his back like a startled crab, but he couldn’t take his eyes off Bamber’s face. Bamber reached out a hand as if begging Wright to help him, but then he fell face down into the sand.
Wright rolled on to his front and crawled, head down, towards the car. He had to find Chinh. Blood was pouring from the wound in his leg, but he ignored the pain.
He crawled into a clearing and towards the Mercedes. ‘Chinh!’ he shouted hoarsely. There was no sign of the driver.
As he got closer to the car, Wright heard a muffled ringing sound. It was his mobile telephone. ‘The phone!’ he muttered. He could use it to call for help. He struggled to the rear of the car and pulled himself up, grunting with the effort.
He pulled open the boot, then stepped back in horror. Chinh was there, his eyes staring lifelessly up at the sky, dried blood over his chin. The telephone continued to ring. It was inside his suitcase, at the bottom of the boot. Wright grabbed the body by the arms and heaved it out
. It dropped on to the dirt with a dull thud. Wright pulled Bamber’s metal suitcase out of the boot and placed it next to the body, then opened his own suitcase.
The mobile was under a pair of Levis. He put it to his ear. It was the last person in the world he expected to hear from. Gerry Hunter.
‘Nick!’ said Hunter. ‘Thank God.’
‘What the hell do you want, Hunter?’ asked Wright.
‘The killer,’ said Hunter. ‘I know who the killer is.’
Wright smiled grimly. He slammed down the boot door. ‘Yeah, well, you’re about three hours too late,’ he said, looking down at Chinh’s corpse.
‘Nick, shut up and listen, will you?’ interrupted Hunter. ‘It was Eckhardt’s wife. May. She’s the killer.’
Wright stiffened. He heard a footfall behind him and turned around, slowly. May Eckhardt was looking at him, a puzzled frown on her face. She was wearing black pyjamas and sandals, and around her neck was a black and white checked scarf. She had her hair tied back and her face was streaked with dirt. In her right hand she carried a loaded crossbow; in her left, the knife that Bamber had been holding.
Gerry Hunter paced up and down the hallway, his mobile phone pressed against his ear. ‘Nick? Are you there?’ The phone buzzed and clicked. ‘Nick?’
‘Yes, I’m here.’
‘Did you hear what I said? May Eckhardt killed her husband.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive. She was flown out of Vietnam when she was a kid, holding a set of dogtags. The dogtags belonged to Max Eckhardt.’
There was a longer silence. Then the line went dead.
‘Nick? Nick, can you hear me?’ There was no reply.
The phone dropped from Wright’s hand. ‘Why, May?’ he asked.
The Tunnel Rats (Coronet books) Page 42
