by Adam Hall
There was a series of one-way streets in the area and 1 had to go left and left again down Soi Chitlom, and left again along Plern Chit Road, wanting to drive fast but having to think it out because the chances were that they’d be coming south down Asoke Lane - there wasn’t an exit from Phet Buri to the north and they could only come south from it.
My hands were trembling on the thin rim of the wheel because this was an all-or-nothing run and I couldn’t get to a telephone again without losing them.
If I found them.
I found them. They came south by Asoke and I was waiting for them in Plern Chit on the east side of the lights. They swung westward and against the fierce clamor of the hunting instinct I forced myself to wait until there were three other cars between us before I drew out and followed.
Chapter 24
The Trap
Procedure remained well-ordered for thirty minutes.
The Silver Shadow kept a steady medium pace within the 30-40 sector and for most of the time I managed to fit in a couple of cars between us. Nothing showed up permanently in the mirror. Two or three police patrols overtook us and the Shadow got a salute in passing. Kuo would be pleased by that. They had meant to use the Lincoln but when the grenade didn’t work they decided to change the image. They were pushed for time and couldn’t find a Humber Imperial and settled for the Rolls-Royce because it had a British-enough profile and the Union Jack at the wingtip made the finishing touch.
The rear window was shallow and the glass was darkened so I couldn’t see the people inside. Mental note: If it came to a showdown the Person, would normally be relied on to pile in with a will, but he was probably being kept under mild sedation for that reason and would have to be counted out.
It was bound to be awkward when the time came to get him out of the Shadow because at the last minute Kuo would throw the ace and use his prisoner as a hostage for his own protection. It might even be his plan to get through the Nontaburi roadblock on those terms. With one small-caliber pistol held - and seen to be held -at the Person’s head they could pass right through the thick of a machine-gun battery and dare the first man to shoot.
The only thing against that plan was that if Kuo shot his prisoner it would be his own suicide and he would die with his limbs torn off.
But I didn’t like it and part of the sweat that was gathering on the rim of the wheel was because of these considerations. It was no ordinary’ prisoner riding in state out there ahead of me behind the dark-glass window, and to free him would be as chancy as picking the detonator out of a delayed action bomb.
The traffic grew less thick as we cleared the suburbs because only those people with urgent business outside the city were prepared to suffer the delay in being cleared at the roadblock north. The police patrols were less in evidence too: the sections between the city limits and the Nontaburi block had become a deserted no-man’s-land.
Situation at the end of the first half hour: speed now a little lighter, direction north along Route 5, almost no other traffic, sun lowering in the west to five or six diameters above the rice-field horizon. E-type: all readings normal, tank three-quarters full. Distance from Shadow three hundred yards.
A single knock vibrated through the bodywork and a chip of paint flew up into the, slip stream from the nearside front wing and the shape in the mirror was identifiable as it closed up very fast and sat there at fifty feet. Honda.
The light was difficult because of windshield reflection, but a compilation of sightings gave me a solid image. Only one man in the Honda. Kuo.
Very sharp sound above my head to the left as the second shot pierced the hardtop twice and traveled on, leaving a hole an inch above the windshield. I whipped down to third, second, foot on the floor, rear wheels power-spinning a fraction as I closed hard on the Rolls-Royce and evened off at thirty feet. Kuo would have to be more careful now to avoid hitting anyone in the leading car. He wanted to get his prisoner to the exchange point alive.
I slid the driving seat back a notch and my buttocks forward to bring my head low, sighting through the top arc of the wheel. The situation was bad now and I let myself admit it so that fear could alert the brain to survival pitch. There was no point in overtaking the Shadow: it would expose me to a battery of five or six guns. I had to stay where I was, within fifty yards’ easy range of a top-flight professional marksman whose intention was to kill.
He was having to fire without sighting; in the mirror I saw his hand at the side of the windshield with the gun steadied against the pillar. He had fired a third time when I had reached up to tilt the mirror to suit my new position, but a bump in the road sent the shot wide. That was all right: he had time and he would have enough ammunition. He had seen the E-type somewhere along Plern Chit when I’d begun the tag and he had done as I had done, keeping two or three cars, between us and waiting until he could close up on me out here in no-man’s-land, where there were no more police patrols. He had moved in for the kill as a shark moves in when it is satisfied that there is no danger to be expected from the prey.
The rear window went snowy, and the bullet came on with force enough to shatter the windshield and I had to punch a hole through the opaque fragmentation so that I could see. The wind pressure took the rest of it away and the small hailstorm struck my face and left me driving blind for some seconds. Then the rear window blew out to the air-rush and I could see the Honda again, filling the mirror. He had closed up.
I didn’t shift down for motor assist because the exhaust note would warn him; I just hit the brakes for maximum drag a degree below locking point so that a skid wouldn’t carry me on. The mirror went dark as the Honda came piling against the back of the E-type and his tires howled as he used the brakes too late and smashed into me so hard that I was worried about the fuel tank. Then he was smaller again in the mirror, rocking badly and then straightening and coming on, taking up his position again. No go.
There was nothing else I could do now. He would be ready the next time if I tried it again. I was inside a trap and moving with it at an easy forty-five miles per hour and there was no way out. A pale blur showed permanently in the darkened rear glass of the Shadow; they understood the situation and they were observing it closely. Even if the shunt-trick had sent the Honda into an uncontrollable series of skids and turned it over it wouldn’t have done much good because they would have pulled up and forced me to stop and they would have got out of the Shadow with their guns raking me in a crossfire. I had tried it only because Kuo might have been smashed up as the Honda overturned and it would have evened the score a bit before they finished me.
They weren’t firing back at me from the Shadow because they could be certain of a killing hit and Kuo might not be ready when I smashed. They didn’t want to involve him in a pile-up. In addition they knew they could rely on him to make the kill, and when he made it he would be ready to avoid the mess. They were working as a perfectly disciplined cell controlled by a professional of talent; only men like these could take possession of a man so great in rank that the free world flinched as it watched for the headlines in a score of languages.
There was no chance now for me to save him or to prevent the exchange. Action by the armed forces manning the roadblock ahead of us might do it, though Kuo must have planned a foolproof operation for getting through Nontaburi or there would have been no point in his making the breakout from Bangkok.
A sudden rattle of shots sounded from somewhere aft: he had changed to a bigger-caliber arm and was going for the tires.
The sun was one diameter above the horizon and the sky was a sheet of amethyst and very beautiful. Herons flew up from the flatlands, startled by the crack of the gun.
The big Shadow rode rock-steady along the perspective of the road. The air rushed against my face. The shape of the Honda sat squatly in the mirror. Numbness was coming into my body, into my brain. It would happen soon. So be it.
Sooner even than I had thought. In the mirror the gun flashed again and the sharp c
rack was echoed as a rear tire burst, and already I was fighting instinctively to keep on a straight course as the whole tire broke up and jammed the wheel rim and sent the E-type slewing badly without any hope of correction because the rim was plowing into the tarmacadam. No response from the steering: she ran on at an angle and set her own course.
The Honda was suddenly smaller in the mirror: he was slowing to avoid the wreck when I smashed. The terrain to the right of the road was stony - a few small rocks and some timber and then a drop to the rice-fields. I tried for the last time to correct the course but it was no go so I cut the ignition and snapped the doorlock home and waited with my knees bent double and my feet braced against the fascia board.
She hit the first rock and shuddered, and hit the next and flicked over and there was thunderous sound as the first roll slung her against a timber pile. A lot of sound, a lot of pain, vision disorientated, partial blackout as the blood was piled to one side of the brain by centrifugal force, my voice shouting something against the shriek of metal on stone, then it was over and the world grew still.
Return to full consciousness was almost immediate. I could hear the low tire-squeal of the two cars as they were braked to a halt on the road above.
Kuo would come down for me and use one final bullet, so I found the window gap and crawled through onto the warm-soaked earth of the rice-field because I wanted to die in the open under the sky and not trapped in a metal coffin. It is most men’s wish.
Pain was in total possession of my body but I kept my eyes open, lying on my side, watching them as they stood grouped at the top of the bank, their dark figures silhouetted against the strange green light of the sky. Then one of them began coming down and I knew that he would be Kuo.
Chapter 25
The Flare
The scene was strange because of the green light in the sky, and I had to make a series of small tests to prove that I was fully conscious: a finger moved when I directed it, the eyes could close and open, my head was capable of movement. The greenness did not go.
The smell of gasoline was sharp on the air; the tank of the E-type had burst. The fumes seared my throat and I breathed shallowly. I lay watching Kuo. He had turned and was calling to the group of men at the top of the bank. The Chinese dialect was unfamiliar to me but I thought he was talking about the green light, and he pronounced a name in the Thai tongue - Nontaburi. He was giving them orders of some kind.
They vanished from the skyline and I heard the Rolls-Royce starting up. Kuo came down alone and his face darkened slowly as the green light faded from the sky. He held the revolver loosely, confidently, but watched me as he came. I lay still and watched him back.
My brain was working by habit, just as the clock went on ticking inside the smashed E-type. I was aware that the pain would disallow the movement of my body unless there were extreme necessity: unless, by moving, there was a chance of perpetuating life. This wasn’t conscious thought but the consciousness was aware of the findings.
Pure thought arrived at further information: Kuo was not yet ready to kill me, because he could have put an easy shot into me from the top of the bank, or ordered a fusillade from his men.
His shoes squelched across the flooded earth where the tender rice shoots stood in little blades, taller than the level of my eye. He stopped and looked down at me, the gun held ready in case I moved. His body looked enormous, standing over me.
Surely there was no chance, but an old dog is full of old tricks and I lay without blinking, holding my breath and letting only a little air seep in and out of my lungs. Blood was still gathering on me from the reopened wounds and a cheekbone had been skinned raw in the smash, and in the twilight I could pass for dead.
My heart beat, but he could not hear that. Only I could hear it, and feel the quiet ferocity of the body’s ambition: that this heart should go on beating.
‘Quiller.’
I had come to know this man so well but we had never spoken. He wanted to talk, but there could be nothing to say between us, because he had the gun.
He stooped over me suddenly, black against the sky.
‘Can you hear me?’ The accent was educated, authoritative. I lay without blinking, without breathing. His tone became hateful. Whether he spoke to the living or the dead he had to deliver himself of hate. ‘Can you hear me, damn you? It was my brother you killed. Where they keep the kites. I want you to know. That was my brother.’
His voice shook and he spoke in his own tongue, cursing my spirit, saying the words softly like a prayer, saying them deliberately, reverently, ushering my shade into hell everlasting. Then he spat against my face and brought the gun up.
Pain shivered through me as I moved but I went on moving and the shot was deflected because I had gone for his wrist. Stooping above me and unprepared, his mind engaged with its hate for the thing that he thought was dead, he was easy to bring down arid I worked on him with the strength of the mad. Reason was not totally absent: with one arm locked round his neck I was forcing his head down until his face touched the flooded earth on which we churned. I worked for a drowning.
He was a strong man but the dying are more desperate. His face went under the film of water and a shrill bubbling came; his legs kicked convulsively and his left hand scrabbled to reach the gun, but I felt for the thumb and eased it back until it snapped and he screamed under the mud. Then I brought pressure to the neck-lock, freeing my other hand and feeling for the gun. His fingers were nerveless and I prised them away and jerked the gun clear; it splashed somewhere behind me.
As I fought him I sensed a strangeness in it: in engaging an opponent one reckons instinctively the degree to which he will oppose. Kuo was young, strong, cruel, a man without pity, yet there was a lack in him: courage. There was strength in him but no effort, and I knew why. He was a Chinese and vulnerable - like all his race - to superstition, and when he had spoken to me in his own tongue he believed that he cursed the dead.
My sudden attack had seemed monstrous to him and the terror had withered him: it was not a man but a spirit that rose up against him and he was powerless. The process is not intellectual: small mammals are frozen by the same terror in the mere presence of a snake. So it was with Kuo the Mongolian.
His paralysis had passed within a few seconds. As a man of sophisticated action he realized what had happened; I had used the oldest trick of them all, the possum trick. But it was too late. The strength that had been bled away by terror within an instant would take minutes to return.
Sometimes he moved and violently, his legs kicking, his body twisting, his empty gun hand crawling for purchase on me; but the lock I had on his neck was unbreakable. Sometimes his face came out of the mud and his lungs heaved for air, but he was choking now. Words came among the other sounds, at first in Chinese and then in English, and I listened to them.
He was asking me not to kill him.
Above us the last of the day’s light was leaving the horizon. The young night was fragile, lit by the first stars, and very quiet. Mist came across the rice-field and covered us.
Another spasm of choking shook him and the words started again, asking me not to kill him. I wasn’t surprised: the deepest cowardice takes shelter behind the gun, and the gun was this man’s trademark. Not that it is cowardly to wish for life; it is cowardly to beg for it. Wish for it, fight for it to the last breath, but when you know it’s going, let it go, don’t beg like a bloody dog.
I wrenched his neck again and forced his nose and mouth under the mud and kept him like that because I wanted to weaken him, or that was my excuse. The crowd had screamed when the big car had gone into them and that sound was still louder to me than his frenzied bubbling.
Then I jerked his head up and waited till the choking was over, and gave him the edge of my uninjured hand at the side of the neck, a low-power chop to paralyze. It took a few minutes for him to rally, and by that time I was standing above him. I told him to get up, and we lurched together through the mud and crawled
up the bank to the road, where Pangsapa was standing.
His dark figure stood between two others; they were one pace behind him in the attitude of bodyguards. It was only when he spoke and I heard his lisp that I knew who it was.
‘I was uncertain of what was happening, Mr. Quiller, or I would have sent assistance.’
A big American car stood behind the Honda. It must have come up when Kuo was choking, or I would have heard it.
It was difficult for me to stand properly and blood showed through the mud that smothered me, so for pride’s sake I said, ‘It wasn’t necessary.’
Kuo moved and Pangsapa said to the two men: ‘Cover the Chinese.’ Kuo stopped moving. His breath sounded slow and painful. Pangsapa said to me, ‘Let us go back to the city, Mr. Quiller.’
I straightened up and tried to stop the onset of giddiness. ‘I’m going on to Nontaburi. The roadblock. Stop them getting him through.’
‘It is too late,’ Pangsapa said.
‘No. There’s a chance.’ As I began moving toward the Honda the first sounds came into the night from the north. Rifle fire, then machine-gun. Distance was a few miles, about where the roadblock was.
‘It is too late, Mr. Quiller. I’ll take you back to the city. You need medical attention.’
I stood staring northward. There were flashes in the sky. Grenades.
Over my shoulder I said dully: ‘Too late? Why?’
‘Didn’t you see the green light, ten minutes ago? The parachute flare?’
‘Yes. I saw it.’
‘It meant that the attack on the roadblock was about to begin. Sixty assault troops of the Vietcong were flown in earlier today from the Laos battle area. In a few minutes resistance will have been overcome, and the Rolls-Royce will pass through. The airplane is waiting at a private field three miles beyond.’
