Cambodian Hellhole

by Stephen Mertz

  Stone moved out through the undergrowth, easing his way along without hacking at the vines and fronds that sought to hold him back. He had become a part of the landscape, another jungle predator coming down for water, and he would do nothing to arouse the suspicions of any invisible watchmen across the river.

  Behind him, Hog Wiley was moving with a silent grace amazing for a man of his size. Stone barely heard him trailing, confident that no one as far away as the compound would know that either one of them was closing on the water’s edge.

  The jungle shadows were already lengthening toward dusk, and here along the riverbank it was half-light, the undergrowth sheltering them completely from prying eyes. Stone spent another moment studying the opposite bank, finally picking out the landmark that he needed, motioning to Hog and pointing out what he had found.

  “Right there. My ticket in.”

  It was a piece of corrugated drainpipe, wide enough to let him pass with room to spare. The greater part of it was buried underground, but Stone knew it must surface somewhere on the inside of the compound. He would worry out the details when he got inside and reached the other terminus—before he showed himself to any prowling sentries that their first recon had overlooked.

  He carried an Uzi pistol, and the Ka-Bar knife would be his only other weapon. He could not afford to take the rifle with him, slowing him down and banging along inside the drainpipe; what he sacrificed in firepower for the soft probe, he was hoping to make up in speed and silence.

  And he had no intention whatsoever of starting a firefight inside the compound. Not yet.

  If he found signs of life, he would fade back and report, and they could lay their plans in safety, on the other side of the water.

  If the camp was as deserted as it seemed, he would watch out for clues as to where and when the prisoners had gone, although he knew that realistically there would be—could be—no second chance, this time out.

  They were extended to their limit as it was; they had no rations for extended ramblings through the jungles, and such actions would be tantamount to suicide in any case. A savvy warrior did not thrash around on unfamiliar turf, engaging the enemy blindly, without strategy or preparation.

  At least he did not do it more than once.

  Stone reached the water under cover of the overhanging vegetation, slipped into it, and was gone. He moved along, neck-deep, keeping his head above water and watching the opposite shore for any sign of movement that might betray a lookout or a waiting sniper.

  There was nothing, and he reached the shore and the drainpipe without incident. Pausing there, he turned back and gave Hog a simple thumbs-up prior to levering himself up and into the foul darkness of the pipe.

  It did not take a genius to figure out that they had been dumping garbage here, with an occasional load of sewage in the bargain. It was ripe and reeking, with mold and mildew thriving in the muck that soaked into his clothing and smeared his hands and face before he had progressed a dozen feet. Worms and water beetles squirmed beneath him, wriggling through the fingers of his free hand as he pulled himself along, a giant mole inside its makeshift tunnel, seeking daylight at the opposite end.

  And in his right hand Stone held the combat dagger ready. He would not risk a shot inside the tunnel, but grim experience had taught him that such avenues of entry might be guarded—even occupied—by troopers of the opposition. He did not intend to let them catch him unawares and kill him underground.

  Mark Stone was wise, alert, aware—and still, he almost missed the snake.

  It lay in wait for him, directly at the tunnel’s midpoint, dozing in the heat of late afternoon. He saw it only briefly, then the body reared up, open mouth hissing at him, the cobra’s neck flattening and flaring out in its distinctive hood. No time to hesitate, no time to think. Instinct took over instantly, and Stone lashed out with the razor-edged knife, decapitating the serpent before it had a chance to strike. The headless body stood in front of him defiantly, for a long, tense moment, then collapsed back into the muck from which it had risen.

  Stone took the body first, using what little elbowroom he had to toss it back behind him. Next he speared the venomous, still-deadly skull with the tip of his knife and tossed it, too, back over his shoulder, never letting the tiny fangs come anywhere close to his skin.

  Only when the tunnel’s guardian had been disposed of did Stone let himself expel a sigh of heartfelt relief. If he’d been another second slower in reacting, he would be dying now, the venom coursing through his veins to paralyze his heart, his lungs, his central nervous system.

  Ahead of him, the tunnel took a ninety-degree turn upward, climbing vertically for perhaps ten feet. The shaft was topped by a heavy metal grille, and Stone saw daylight streaming through the grating.

  He began to climb, wedging himself into the shaft with feet and shoulders, careful not to slip and thus betray his presence with the sound as he came crashing back to earth. It took him several moments, and his spine was in agony by the time he reached the lip of the shaft, but at last he was able to lift the grating slightly with the fingers of his free hand, and peer out into the compound.

  Nothing.

  He checked each direction twice, then finally edged the grille aside and levered himself up and out, collapsing on the grass and making himself instantly immobile.

  He was inside, and the heat hadn’t even begun.

  If the camp was occupied, he might already have been seen, in spite of his precautions. They might have guns trained on him already, prepared to riddle him the second he moved.

  He rose into a crouch, breaking for the nearest building, which appeared to be a barracks. When he rounded the corner, he saw that it was solid on only three sides; the front was barred with long poles of bamboo, forming a rank of narrow prison cages facing toward the center of the compound.

  Empty.

  Every cage deserted.

  Stone moved on, cursing under his breath now, using a bit less caution in spite of himself, as he began to sense that he had blown it once again.

  The prisoners were gone. He had arrived too late. He had fucked up.

  Another rank of cages, and he came at this one from the west end, moving cautiously along the empty ranks of bamboo bars, the knife still in his hand. Three cages, four, five. All empty.

  He almost cried aloud when the prisoner in cage number six stood up to face him, gaunt hands reaching for him through the bars.

  Stone caught himself in time, swallowing the heart that had somehow maneuvered its way into his throat. He closed in, speaking softly to the trooper, praying that the man could still communicate intelligibly after all these years.

  A soft voice answered him in Cambodian.

  From behind.

  Stone knew exactly what had happened, and the sudden rush of guilt was tempered with embarrassment at his own carelessness. The sentry had come up behind him, moving softly, unnoticed as Stone had rushed from one rank of cages to the next, convinced he was alone inside the compound.

  He had fucked up, yes … but there was still a chance that he could salvage something from the hideous snafu.

  He spun around, already drawing back the knife to let it fly, calculating the sentry’s position by the sound of his voice.

  There were two of them, the second standing silent, several paces to the first one’s side. They both held AK-475 leveled at his chest, and neither of them showed the slightest hesitancy about killing him.

  Stone froze, released the Ka-Bar from numb fingers, let it fall. He made no move to stop the second trooper as he stepped forward and ripped the Uzi off him without another word.

  The closer of the two motioned with his rifle, pointing Stone in the direction of the CP hut, the one that still displayed a flag.

  As any outpost should, of course, which was still occupied by troops.

  Stone cursed himself silently, bitterly.

  He was inside the camp, all right, and it was definitely occupied. There was only one thing w
rong.

  The hunter had suddenly become a prisoner.

  Chapter Ten

  Dusk, and the little penetration team was huddled in the deepening jungle shadows, well back from the riverbank. They shared cold rations, eaten straight from the can; despite their distance from the river and from the prison compound, they could not afford to risk a cookfire.

  Crouching in a tight semicircle were Wiley, Loughlin, Lon Ky, and two of the Hmong trackers. The third surviving Hmong was standing watch, taking his turn on the riverbank, watching the encampment and the bridge that was its only exit.

  The bridge was empty now, deserted, in sharp contrast to the traffic it had carried short hours earlier. After Stone had been captured right before their eyes and hustled off by two armed sentries to the compound’s CP hut, a jeep with a mounted heavy machine gun had raced out along the bridge and disappeared among the trees, in the direction of the rocky line of hills. An hour later it had returned, leading a line of soldiers and their prisoners—perhaps seventy-five men in all, marching two abreast.

  And mixed among the others, taller, instantly identifiable, had been no less than twenty-two Americans.

  The jackpot, yes.

  If only they could find a way to play their hand, without getting it lopped off at the shoulder.

  “We have to get him out of there,” Loughlin said to no one in particular, talking to the night.

  “We have to get them all out of there,” Hog Wiley amended for the record.

  “Right. But twenty-two …”

  “Don’t matter. Twenty-two or twenty-two hundred … makes no difference,” Wiley insisted.

  “I know that,” the Britisher told him. “But it damn well won’t be easy.”

  “Never is.”

  “All right, then, how do you suggest we go about it?” Lon Ky burst in upon their conversation, jabbering excitedly.

  “Kill soldiers!” he snapped, sounding almost rabid in the darkness. “Free Americans! Expose the traitors in Phnom Penh!”

  “Ease off, man,” Wiley growled. “There’ll be plenty of time for killing when we have a plan.”

  “They should be sending out patrols by now,” Loughlin suggested.

  Hog shook his head, downing another mouthful of the almost tasteless rations from his can.

  “Too late,” he said as he chewed. “They would’ve had ‘em out by now if they were coming. Our boy don’t want to split his forces in the dark, not knowing what they might run into.”

  “Psychic?”

  Wiley grinned.

  “No more. The V.A. doctors fixed me up.” He sobered, finished with his joke. “I know these assholes, man. I know the way they think. It’s strictly CYA.”

  Lon Ky looked puzzled, as if he feared he might be left out of some secret discussion.

  “What is CYA?”

  “Cover Your Ass,” Wiley told him, grinning through a load of Vienna sausages and potatoes.

  “Well, if they send men out tomorrow—”

  “Then we’ve had all night to run a recon, and be waiting for them when they find us.”

  “It’s feasible,” the Britisher admitted grudgingly.

  “Hell, yes … and it’ll work,” Wiley hissed. “Now let’s get down to brass tacks here.”

  There were plans enough for them to talk the night through, including their reconnaissance of the enemy encampment. Exits to be plugged or readied for their own use, timing to be synchronized—everything that went into a successful field engagement, now compressed into the hours of darkness, when it might have taken days under other conditions.

  They would not attempt a raid by daylight—not unless the enemy should somehow force them to it. If the camp commander stuck with his routine and sent the inmates out to work tomorrow, they should have a chance to scout the camp perimeter in greater detail, planning all the while for their incursion on the next night.

  Twenty-four hours away.

  And each of Stone’s commandos wondered if their leader could survive that long in hostile custody.

  He might be dead already, naturally; the thought had crossed everyone’s mind at least once that endless afternoon and evening. But there had been no shots from the encampment, no sign of a disposal team carting a body off for burial or burning. They were reasonably certain he was still alive, and probably undergoing harsh interrogation even as they sat there, planning ways to break him out.

  The next crucial question hinged on whether Stone could take the heat, survive the tortures that the camp commander and his personnel might put him through in their determination to find out his identity, his mission.

  It was a question whose answer was vital to each man crouched in the little jungle clearing, waiting out the night.

  If Stone was broken—if he talked—there would be no place left for any of them to hide.

  There was a chance, of course, that they could still take on and best a superior force. Stone’s team, with Wiley as a member, had done so several times in Vietnam—but they were far from home, isolated deep inside enemy lines. If their escape mutes and supply lines should be severed here, now …

  It did not bear consideration, but at the same time they could not ignore the possibility.

  If they were not picked off in the running firefight that would surely follow exposure of their position, they would be captured, turned into the kind of mindless, ambling automatons they had seen below them on the bridge that afternoon.

  The zombie squad.

  They were mutually agreed, from the beginning of their service with Mark Stone, that none of them would ever willingly submit himself to such a fate.

  As for Stone …

  “He’ll never tell them anything,” Hog Wiley told the darkness softly, sounding as if he sought to reassure himself as much as any of the others.

  “‘Course not,” Loughlin agreed.

  “They’ll have to kill him first.”

  “Right.”

  Silence settled down again across the little jungle clearing. They were back to square one, thinking in present tense about the possible death of a dear and trusted friend. It hurt, but it also fueled a rising flame of anger in both men, giving off a heat that communicated itself in short order to the Asians crouching with them in the darkness.

  Stone would never talk … but he might die resisting torture.

  Either way, they would have to get inside the camp and have a look around to satisfy themselves.

  And bring the others out.

  They could not go back empty-handed now, having come so far. It was unthinkable.

  Chapter Eleven

  From upside down, the camp commander reminded Mark Stone of some kind of jungle bat, hanging from a perch and waiting for the hours of darkness to arrive and set him free to hunt.

  Except that it was well past dark outside already.

  And it was Stone, not the commander, who was hanging upside down, suspended from the ceiling of the CP hut.

  His wrists and ankles had been secured by handcuffs, sharp-edged metal biting deep into the flesh, releasing sticky rivulets of blood that instantly obeyed the call of gravity. A kind of crude trapeze had been thrust behind his knees and hauled upon chains until he hung suspended and inverted, with his head perhaps three feet above the floorboards of the hut.

  The camp commander—his interrogator—sat in front of him, maintaining military posture on a straight-backed wooden chair. On either side of him, two uniformed soldiers stood at parade rest, holding long canes horizontally across their khaki-clad thighs.

  Stone was conscious of every sensation in his body, from the pressure bearing in behind his knees, the sharp pain in his wrists and ankles—numbing now, not a good sign—to the ringing in his ears as gravity brought the blood rushing to his head.

  I must look like I’m blushing, Stone thought to himself, and he smiled at the mental picture it presented.

  He was wearing his tiger-striped fatigue pants, minus shirt and shoes. Sweat glistened on his chest a
nd arms, diluting the streams of blood that were creeping floorward from his damaged wrists.

  “You find something amusing?” the commander asked him in stilted, textbook English.

  Stone dredged up another grin for the bastard.

  “Not especially,” he answered.

  “Yet you smile.”

  “I guess I’m an incurable optimist.”

  “Let us see if we can cure you, after all,” the Asian offered, his voice silky, laden with evil. “You are our prisoner.”

  “You mean this isn’t Thailand? Well …”

  The trooper on his left received a nod from the interrogator, and swung his cane around and into burning impact with the muscles of Stone’s stomach. He was silenced instantly, biting off a startled cry that was as much anger and surprise as pain.

  “You are our prisoner,” the camp commander continued, as if there had been no violent interruption of his little speech. “This sector is under my control. You will provide me with certain answers to my questions … and in return, you will be treated fairly for the remainder of your sentence.”

  “What happened to the trial?” Stone asked sarcastically.

  “It is over. You are guilty by your very presence here, inside our national borders. The sentence is life.”

  “Seems a little stiff for trespassing.”

  This time he saw the cane coming, but there was no way to brace himself beyond a tightening of the stomach muscles, which reduced the pain a fraction. Seeing this, the guard gave him an extra rap across the kneecaps for good measure, wringing a little sob of pain from Stone’s constricted throat. The guard seemed satisfied with the accomplishment.

  “You will answer certain questions which I put to you,” the interrogator repeated, smiling thinly, but with illconcealed impatience.

  “Well, since you put it that way …”

  “What is your name?”

  “Duke.”

  “Duke?” The Vietnamese looked puzzled.

  “Sure. Duke Wayne. You know. The Alamo?”

  The camp commander glanced from Stone to each of his guards in turn, but they clearly spoke no English and could be of no assistance to him.