The Tunnel Rats (Coronet books)

by Stephen Leather

  May slung the crossbow on her back and transferred the knife to her right hand.

  ‘He was going to kill you,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Not Bamber!’ he shouted. ‘Your husband. And the rest of them.’

  ‘They killed my father,’ she said. ‘They tortured him and they cut him to pieces. They deserved to die.’

  Wright staggered back against the boot of the Mercedes. ‘You were down there? You saw them? You saw what they did?’

  ‘I saw everything,’ she said, her voice a dull monotone.

  ‘But you couldn’t have been more than . . .’

  ‘I was eight years old,’ she said. ‘I’d been living down the tunnels with my father for almost a year. My mother had been killed in the fields.’ There was a faraway look in her eyes as she relived the memory in her mind. ‘I saw her die, too. She was planting rice with a group of women from her village, and a helicopter flew overhead. We were always told to wave at the American helicopters, so that they’d know that we weren’t VC.’ She put a hand against the black pyjama top. ‘The peasants wore tunics like this, but so did the Viet Cong.’ She shrugged. ‘My mother refused to wave. She stood glaring up at the helicopter, glaring at it as if she wanted it to fall out of the sky. I was at the side of the field, fishing in a canal. The helicopter circled around her, then there were gunshots, lots of gunshots, from the big gun they had inside. There was a black man firing and laughing, and lots of splashes around my mother, like tiny fish jumping, then she fell back and the water became red. The helicopter flew away. They didn’t even land to see what they’d done.’

  Wright leaned back against the Mercedes and slowly slid to the ground, his legs out in front of him.

  ‘They burned our village a week later, and my father took me down into the tunnels.’ She stared at Wright. He expected to see tears, but her eyes were dry. ‘You don’t want to hear this,’ she said.

  Wright looked from her face to the knife in her hand, and back to her face. ‘I do,’ he said.

  She swallowed. ‘It wasn’t so bad down in the tunnels. There were lots of children there. We played games, we had lessons, we helped catch snakes and scorpions for the booby traps. We even helped dig the tunnels. We were small so we could get into difficult places.’

  ‘Weren’t you scared?’

  She shook her head. ‘Never,’ she said. ‘The tunnels were our homes. We were safe there.’

  ‘Until the Americans came.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Until the Americans came.’ The faraway look returned to her eyes and she stared off into the middle distance. Wright wondered if she intended to use the knife in her hand, if she was intent on removing all witnesses to what she’d done. The one thing that gave him hope was that she’d killed Bamber to save his life.

  ‘My father heard them coming, but we didn’t have time to use the escape tunnel. He hid me in the wall and told me not to come out, no matter what happened, no matter what I heard. I said I wanted to stay with him but he made me promise. Then he went back to his desk, just as they burst into the chamber. They were like madmen, Nick. Like animals. I could see through a tiny gap in the parachute silk. I saw everything.’

  ‘They said they interrogated your father. That they started out by asking questions.’

  She laughed harshly. ‘A lie,’ she said. ‘They had a bloodlust. They just wanted to hurt and to kill. I saw everything they did to him. Everything.’

  For the first time she looked as if she was about to cry, but she shook her head, refusing to allow the tears to come. ‘Afterwards, they buried him, as if they were finally ashamed of what they’d done. The one called Burrow threw a playing card on my father’s body. The ace of spades. Then they left. I waited for hours in the dark, convinced that they would come back for me. Can you imagine what it’s like, Nick, to be trapped in a pitch-black room with your dead father, too scared to move?’

  She moved closer to Wright. The sun was behind her and Wright had to shade his eyes to look up at her. ‘Actually, May, I can,’ he said quietly. ‘You probably won’t believe me, but yes, I can appreciate what you went through.’

  She continued to talk as if she hadn’t heard what he’d said. ‘Eventually I crawled out of my hiding place. I dug the earth away from my father with my bare hands. That’s when I found the dogtags. Eckhardt, M. Max Eckhardt. I took the tags and reburied my father.’

  ‘And you waited more than twenty years to find Eckhardt?’

  She nodded. ‘That’s how long it took. And then I had to get him to tell me who his friends were, who he’d served with in Vietnam.’

  ‘And to do that, you had to marry him?’

  ‘I did what I had to do to avenge my father.’

  ‘How could you do that?’

  ‘How could I do what? Seduce him? Sleep with him? Every time I opened my legs to the man, I thought of what he’d done to my father and what I would one day do to him. The hatred kept me going.’

  ‘For more than two decades?’

  She shrugged. ‘How long it took didn’t matter. All that mattered was that my father’s death was avenged. Now it’s almost done. Soon I’ll be able to rest.’

  She knelt down and Wright flinched. She smiled, and used the knife to tear a slit up the leg of his trousers. She put the knife on the ground, then reached behind her back. Her hand reappeared with a green plastic pack. It was Doc’s medical kit. She took out a piece of cotton wool and a bottle of iodine and cleaned his wound, smiling again when he winced with pain.

  As she placed a dressing on the wound, Wright cleared his throat. ‘May Eckhardt, I am placing you under arrest for the murder of Max Eckhardt.’ The words sounded oddly stilted and he stumbled over the word ‘murder’.

  May smiled and brushed a stray lock of muddy hair from her face. She picked up her knife and slid it into its scabbard.

  ‘You are not obliged to say anything, but—-’

  She placed a hand on his chin and kissed him softly on the cheek. ‘Goodbye, Nick,’ she said. ‘Take care.’

  She turned and walked away without a backward look. Wright slumped down against the wheel of the Mercedes and watched as the jungle swallowed her up.

  His mobile phone began to ring again. He groped for it and put it to his ear. It was Tommy Reid. ‘Hell’s bells, Nick, where’ve you been?’ asked his partner. ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you for hours. What have you been doing, fooling around with some gorgeous Asian babe?’

  Wright’s arm fell to the side and the mobile phone knocked against a small rock. He could still hear Reid talking, his voice buzzing like a trapped wasp. Wright threw back his head and began to laugh, louder and louder, until the laughter became an ugly, pain-filled scream that echoed around the jungle, quietening even the insects and birds.

  Dean Burrow removed his reading glasses and surveyed the cheering crowd. There were more than five thousand people, and the sound of their clapping and shouting vibrated through his body like an earthquake tremor. He could understand why rock stars became addicted to performing; nothing came close to the sensation of being on the receiving end of the adulation of thousands of people. Placards praising his virtues and huge posters of his face were displayed at strategic intervals, placed to obtain maximum television coverage from the cameras that were scattered around the auditorium.

  It had been the best speech Burrow had ever given; modest but farsighted, laying out his vision of a united, prosperous, caring America. Jody Meacher had done him proud. The only minor criticism that Burrow had raised was that the speech seemed more suited to a presidential campaign, but Meacher had just smiled at that. Both men knew that the Vice President’s job was just a stepping stone.

  Burrow put up a hand to acknowledge the cheers, then turned to look at his wife. She smiled on cue, the pride and admiration pouring out of her, a look as practised as any of Burrow’s gestures. Flashes went off as the assembled photographers captured the image. That would be the one splashed across the morning ed
itions of the world’s newspapers. That or the picture of the President shaking his hand, congratulating him on becoming the second most powerful man in the world.

  The cheering began to die down and Burrow put his glasses on. He had considered wearing contact lenses, but Meacher had disagreed, pointing out that the glasses gave Burrow a more serious air, adding maturity but not detracting from his looks. The time would come when Burrow would want to lose the glasses and some of the grey that was spreading through his hair, but that time was almost a decade away. Burrow had ceded to Meacher, knowing that when it came to image-making, Meacher was second to none.

  Burrow looked across at the bank of television cameras that were transmitting the event around the world. It was all about image now. Getting elected was a matter of presentation, of media manipulation, of not making mistakes, and Jody Meacher would be there to guide him every step of the way. Burrow scanned the crowd as the cheering swelled again. Meacher’s enthusiastic young team scattered through the audience would keep the applause going for a full two minutes before giving him the chance to continue his speech. Meacher wasn’t in the auditorium, he was in an office upstairs watching the television coverage on a bank of monitors.

  Burrow held up both hands as if trying to quieten the audience down. He knew it was futile; Meacher had stipulated the two minutes at rehearsal and there was nothing Burrow could do to change the programme. The gesture showed modesty, though, humility, even. Burrow smiled and gave a small shrug as if finally accepting that there was nothing he could do to stop the applause.

  He waved at the audience. It was a good mixture: nobody too old, nobody too young, nobody too black, nobody too disabled. A camera-friendly melting pot that showed how all America was behind the new Vice President.

  Suddenly Burrow stiffened. An unsmiling face glared at him with undisguised hatred, an Oriental woman with high cheekbones and shoulder-length hair. Her eyes bored into his as if she was staring into his soul. Burrow swallowed. The crowd around the woman cheered and waved, but she sat motionless, her lips set tight, her arms folded across her chest.

  Burrow looked around to see if any of his Secret Service agents had noticed her. There were six of them, all in dark suits with radio earpieces and dark glasses, strategically placed around the stage. They were all scanning the audience but none appeared to be looking in the direction of the woman. There was nothing he could do to attract their attention, not with the world’s cameras aimed at him.

  He forced himself to smile and turned back to face the audience. The woman had gone. He couldn’t even find the place in the crowd where she’d been. Burrow’s smile widened and he raised both arms in a victory salute. The cheering welled around him. Maybe he’d imagined her. Besides, he had nothing to worry about. He was the Vice President of the United States of America and only one man in the country was better protected. He had nothing to fear from a sullen-faced Oriental woman. Nothing.