Minefield

by Andy Maslen

  “What have you got there?” she asked.

  He explained about the meat and then showed her the mine.

  “Wow! OK. That was stupid. I mean super-courageous,” she said with a grin. “By the way, whatever you gave me in that syringe? You should be selling it on Pub Street in Siem Reap. Those backpackers would empty their wallets for you.”

  “Yeah, I bet they would,” Gabriel said, inwardly delighted that Eli seemed to have regained some of her old spirit. Her cheeks were still flaring with spots of high colour. But her eyes were clear and she was focusing much better than she had been when he’d first arrived.

  “Where’s the leopard?” he asked.

  “It’s been coming from that high wall over there,” Eli said, pointing to a pile of stones that filled in the angle between the temple floor and a wall about seventy feet to their west.

  Gabriel picked up the hunk of meat and walked to the wall. He took a few paces back then swung his right arm like a pendulum a few times and hurled the ragged meat over the wall. He jogged back to Eli.

  “That should fill its belly and keep it happy while we get out of here,” he said. “Even apex predators will always choose an easy dead meal over a chancy live one.”

  “OK, Mister Wildlife Expert. I believe you. Now, are you going to get us out of here or were you thinking of setting up home?”

  9

  The Making of a Killer

  “It’s too hot to move,” Gabriel said. “With your leg infected like that, It’ll drain too much of your strength. Let’s hunker down here and let you recover. I brought some field rations. We can keep you medicated to damp down your fever and then go this evening. Early. Maybe six or seven. It’ll be cooler then and we can make our way back to the truck.”

  The fact that Eli didn’t protest made Gabriel realise how much of an effort she was putting into maintaining her sarcastic attitude. He made her drink more water then settled next to her, the M16 across his lap. They were in shade and the heat was bearable if they kept still. Eli leaned against him and was soon asleep, snoring quietly.

  A deep coughing grunt brought Gabriel back to high alertness. Definitely a leopard , he thought. That jungle warfare course was the best value for money ever . As the grunt rumbled and echoed through the temple, he thought back to a sunlit classroom at MOD Catterick, motes of dust illuminated in mid-air. He and a dozen other Special Forces operators had listened attentively as the instructor ran through a set of slides of predators, scavengers and, as he called them, “the nasty little buggers who won’t kill you, but will seriously fuck up your day”. The tall infantry officer, a Major Mark Finlay, had played audio of the calls and cries of everything from big cats to birds of prey.

  The coughs subsided, first to a loud purring, almost like an engine idling, then to silence. Gabriel visualised the big cat dragging the lump of dead cow away to a lair somewhere, preferably on the other side of the temple complex. Excellent , he thought. Now the coast’s clear all we have to do is wait for evening and get out of here . He let his eyes close.

  * * *

  Win Yah was ruminating on Samang’s absence. A few hours he might have put down to his man having some fun with the woman before killing her. Maybe finding a roadside stand and treating himself to a skinful of Angkor beers. Then sleeping it off until the morning. But it was now after two in the afternoon: almost a day since he’d sent him to kill the woman. That meant trouble. That meant he needed to investigate. He called his second-in-command, a wiry, dark-skinned man called Lon Sen.

  “Samang’s not back. We need that Jeep. And the woman’s satellite phone could be useful, too. Go and get two men, then come with me. We’ll go to the temple and see what’s happened to that idiot boy.”

  The quartet armed themselves with AK-47s, loaded a spare jerrycan of gas onto a rack on the back of a second Jeep, then scorched out of the compound, throwing out red grit and dust in a drifting cloud.

  Win Yah had not, originally, been a killer. Or even a particularly violent man. He had been born in a village northeast of Siem Reap. He made his living tending a small market garden, just a quarter of a hectare, in which he used to grow mangoes, tomatoes and squash, which his wife used to sell at the market.

  Then, one day, a group of thirty Khmer Rouge had crashed into the village armed with Soviet-made assault rifles and pistols. The man at their head had stood on the bonnet of his Chinese- made armoured car and announced through a megaphone that as of now, they were all members of the Khmer Rouge. Their duty to Brother Number One was to assist him in his transformation of the corrupt, imperialist, capitalist kingdom of Cambodia into Democratic Kampuchea.

  He would always remember the date: April 17th 1975.

  Two weeks later he killed his first human being. The man was a schoolteacher. He had pleaded for his life on his knees, but Win Yah had pulled the trigger anyway. Better that than receiving a bullet in the back of his own head. Over the next six months, he multiplied that single corpse into a mountain of corpses. In the end, he’d killed so many people — men, women, children, even babies — that he lost count. He lost his humanity, too, sloughing off all compassion, empathy and loving kindness as enjoined by the Buddha, until all that was left was a husk, like the shed exoskeletons of dragonfly larvae that clung to reeds poking out of the Tonlé Sap river.

  Through his zealotry, he avoided the fate of so many of the Khmer Rouge cadres, falling first under suspicion of treason and then under the blows of their newly recruited comrades. He even murdered his own wife, when the new lists of traitors were issued, feeling nothing as he stove in her skull with the butt of his AK-47.

  When the Vietnamese invaded in ’79, ending Pol Pot’s murderous reign of terror, Win Yah had headed north, fearing recriminations. There, he established a new life for himself as a warlord, first taking over a village and then offering “protection” to local businesses and conducting a lucrative trade in heroin smuggling across the border with Thailand.

  When he discovered that the heroin route was part of a bigger and more complex racket involving financing Islamist terror groups, he’d simply renegotiated his fee. Upwards. And if his men occasionally needed to blow off steam by travelling to a nearby town or village and raping a few of the women and girls, or maiming their husbands with machetes, well, it was better than what their parents’ generation had dealt with so they should, on the whole, count their blessings .

  And now the killer was sitting behind the wheel of an American Jeep, jouncing along an unmetalled road with his trusted lieutenant Lon Sen by his side and two more hardened killers behind them. They wanted their other Jeep back, and the satphone. And they wanted to know what that hapless idiot Samang had got himself into.

  “He probably went off and got drunk,” Lon Sen said. “Fucked her, killed her, then celebrated too hard.”

  “If he did I’ll celebrate his fucking head with a rifle butt,” Win Yah said in a low, dangerous voice.

  The drive had taken almost a hour and his back was complaining. He let the narrow rim of the steering wheel run through his hands as the front wheels hopped into and out of ruts and potholes that threw the four men left and right like rag dolls. Easing off the gas, he brought the Jeep round a sharp bend and then swore.

  “Shit! Look. That’s our Jeep.”

  “And that’s Samang,” Lon Sen added, pointing through the windscreen at the supine corpse of the twenty-year-old fighter who wouldn’t be celebrating anything ever again.

  The four men climbed out of their Jeep and approached Samang’s body. Flies were already swarming over his ears, eyes, nostrils and lips. Win Yah poked the toe of his boot at the head, which lay at an unnatural angle. It flopped over sideways, creaking loudly, so that the face hit the red dirt.

  Lon Sen scratched the top of his head.

  “She did that?”

  “Who else, idiot?” Win Yah shouted, making the older man flinch.

  The two subordinates exchanged a quick glance, though neither cracked a sm
ile. They’d seen their boss summarily execute men for less.

  Win Yah looked closely at the ground around the Jeep, making a complete circuit.

  “Right. She must be in there somewhere. No footprints except for a single set leading into the temple. Get your AKs!”

  10

  Hypervigilance

  Gabriel woke from a dream in which he’d been drinking from a young, green coconut, sucking the cool, refreshing liquid inside through a straw. His shirt was soaked in sweat and his tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. He scanned the area in front of them and the ramparts that loomed over them. No big cat. Good. Maybe the unexpected bounty of a few kilos of fresh beef had satisfied it and it had gone off to sleep somewhere.

  He looked right to check on Eli. At some point she had shifted position and was now lolling back against the wall, her head on one side. He placed his lips to her forehead. She was hot, but it was the heat of skin cooling its owner down, not the blaze of a fever. The time was 3.15 p.m., still several hours before they could leave.

  How anyone could have conceived of building such an ornate structure so deep in the forest baffled him. Who would see it? Was it a priest-cult, its leaders so revered that they could command a slave army to build whatever they told them to, wherever they chose? He knew Angkor Wat, the vast complex of temples outside Siem Reap, had been built in just 30 years. It occupied a space into which you could have fitted a small city. It seemed Buddhists weren’t any more averse to a bit of architectural grandstanding than the cathedral-, mosque-, temple- and synagogue-builders of the time.

  Trying to calculate how many men would be needed to move just a single one of the vast stone blocks, he almost missed the high-pitched giggle that rose above the uniform background sizzle of insects. His conscious mind ignored it. But somewhere deep in his unconscious mind — the mind that every seasoned soldier develops, the mind some call their “spider sense”, and others “hypervigilance” — an alarm bell rang. It increased in volume until Gabriel took notice. At which point the hairs on his forearms and the back of his neck stood on end, thousands of minuscule muscles tugging the follicles erect. A useless effect on a hairless ape, but one that in bygone times would have made Gabriel appear bigger to an enemy.

  11

  Everyone’s Frightened of Something

  Slowly, he lifted the M16 from his lap and curled his right hand around the pistol grip, keeping his index finger straight along the outside of the trigger guard. For now. He breathed shallowly through his mouth and waited. Straining to catch that oddly childlike sound again.

  He didn’t have to wait long.

  He jumped to his feet. Turned and looked down at Eli, who was still sleeping. He leant the M16 against the wall then crouched and shook her shoulder, simultaneously placing his free hand over her mouth. Her eyes opened slowly then popped wide as she felt his palm against her lips. He mimed a shushing sound then lifted his hand from her face.

  Leaning close, he whispered into her ear.

  “I heard something. It sounded like a man, giggling.”

  “Tourist?” she whispered back.

  He shook his head.

  “Out here? No. Something’s up.”

  “I guess it could be Win Yah, or one of his men. Maybe they came looking for the guy who drove me out here.”

  Gabriel nodded .

  “OK. I’m going to take a look around. Take my Sig.” He handed over the pistol and the box of ammunition.

  She took the gun by the grip. Ejected the magazine and checked the spring pressure, then reseated it in the butt. Before he left, Gabriel cut down a couple of palm fronds and laid them across Eli’s left leg and her torso as basic camouflage.

  Holding the M16 across his body, index finger still mounted across the side of the trigger guard, Gabriel made his way to the nearest wall and began climbing, pausing briefly to sling the rifle over his back. Feeling for a handhold, he inserted his fingers into a deep crack between two stones and felt something move beneath his questing fingertips. He adjusted his grip and was about to put his weight on the hand when two, three and then four fat, hairy, brown legs emerged in slow motion from the gap between the stones.

  He jerked his hand back as the tarantula emerged, fixed him with a baleful glare from its eight beady little black eyes and moved away in a laborious series of movements that had Gabriel’s heart thumping like a drum in his chest. Gabriel Wolfe – Special Forces veteran, winner of the Military Cross for gallantry, government assassin, unnecessary risk-taker – hated spiders.

  Once the malignant arachnid had moved away, he resumed his ascent of the pyramidal pile of stones, gaining the relatively safety of the top of the wall in a few more minutes. He lay prone on the rampart and surveyed the temple floor beyond its further side. A brief flash of light a hundred yards distant caught his eye. He zeroed in on the spot and waited, breathing shallowly.

  There it was again! The sun was glinting off something shiny – metal, maybe, or glass. He unslung the M16, brought it up to his shoulder and sighted through the scope. In a slow, deliberate movement, he swept the rifle from left to right. He concentrated on the magnified circle presented by the scope, straining to discern anything that might indicate a threat, or, less likely, the possibility of rescue.

  Shit! Company. The wrong kind of company .

  12

  Jump or Die

  Through the scope, Gabriel could see two short, brown-skinned men walking into the temple through the main entrance. He recognised neither man, but their motley collection of camouflage and khaki garments marked them out as members of Win Yah’s crew of bandits. That and the AK-47s they were carrying. They were scanning the ground in front of them and gesturing vigorously. Arguing, maybe, or just discussing how they would deal with Eli when they found her. The man on the left threw back his head and let out a piercing giggle that reached Gabriel a split-second later. OK, so not arguing. Great. Now what?

  He briefly considered lighting them up with a sustained burst from the M16. And just as quickly dismissed it. If they’d brought company, Gabriel would only succeed in alerting the rest of them, even if he’d reduced their numbers in the process. Instead, he shouldered the rifle and began working his way along the rampart, aiming to get behind them, where he would use the Böker.

  The heat and humidity were stifling. He swiped a hand across his brow and continued his crouching progress over the uneven paved walkway. He kept the two bandits in view: they were walking into the central space of the temple, still chatting, occasionally pointing at a statue and giggling.

  He’d begun to plan his attack on the two men when his train of thought was derailed by a gap in the rampart. No more than six feet, but it was a forty-foot drop to the ground. It was immediately apparent what had caused the breach. Wedged about halfway down the crevasse, a huge silver-barked tree lay at a forty-five degree angle. It must have toppled during a storm. Or perhaps the Khmer Rouge had taken offence to a monument celebrating a deity other then Pol Pot. On the other side of the gap, Gabriel could see relatively even slabs, though they were green with algae, a result of being situated in the shade of a second broad-leafed tree.

  Pausing only for the briefest of moments to collect his thoughts and ensure his rifle was secure across his shoulders, he measured out three paces back, then bent forward at the waist, took a deep breath and ran.

  The jump should have been an easy one. Certainly no more difficult than that which Gabriel and three fellow soldiers had mastered during their SAS selection week. It was a five-foot gap between the Isle of Barra in the Outer Hebrides and a basalt column nicknamed Old Tom, which had been split from the cliff by erosion. Then, failure meant a drop of hundreds of feet into the North Sea or onto the jagged blades of rock spearing out of the water.

  As Gabriel reached the lip of the drop, he planted his left boot and bent at the knee ready to launch himself across. But instead of getting a clean contact and propelling himself up and over the gap, he hit a patch of moss and
lost traction.

  The jump was a disaster; with his left leg already falling away, his right swung up uselessly, already heading for the broken face of the wall opposite. He slammed into the edge of the rampart, driving the wind from his lungs with a grunt, and scrabbled for grip on the top edge. And at first he thought he’d made it.

  His fingers dug into a crack between two of the slabs. Ignoring the pain, he dug them in deeper and took his weight on his hands, beginning to heave himself up and over onto his belly. With a grating noise, the slab slipped towards him, dropping him back over the edge. Panicking, he kicked his booted feet into the side of the wall, desperately searching for a toehold. Then he was falling.

  13

  Tunnel Rat

  Gabriel rotated in the air half a turn before slamming down, face-first onto the sloping trunk of the fallen tree. In the distance he heard one of the two bandits call out. He couldn’t understand the words, but their implication was clear as day.

  “That way!”

  His chest was aching and each inhalation brought a sharp stabbing sensation under his right armpit. But this was no time for giving in to pain. He needed to move. Clinging to the smooth bark like a monkey to its mother’s belly, he shuffled his way to the ground as fast as he could. The tree had no branches below those that had partially demolished the wall, and his progress was unimpeded.

  It took him ten seconds or so to reach terra firma, and as soon as his boots touched the dry red earth, he turned and ran for cover: a dark doorway in the centre of a massive stone wall, flanked with more carved lions. Once inside the pitch-dark space, he felt his way along, fighting to get his breath under control. His questing fingers found an alcove, perhaps twice as deep as a man’s torso was wide, and he pushed inside the narrow space .