Deirdre did not dare give the place more than a swift glance before she urged Paio forward to the table.
“Quickly,” she said in a quiet voice.
The man nodded and scooped up the papers and maps that littered his desk. The men sorting ammunition looked up curiously and one of them said something in local dialect. Her finger tightened on the trigger. But Paio, the nape of his fat neck glistening with sweat, merely grunted and finished gathering up the maps. Then he stood still.
“Back the way we came,” Deirdre murmured. “And take it easily.”
The ammunition-sorter said something again, and this time Paio Chu had to answer. The sound of his words was angry and impatient. Then he backed up, and Deirdre moved into the shadows to return to her cell again. Once out of sight of the others, Paio halted. “What can you hope for now?”
“There’s another way out, We’ll take it.”
“Into the jungle? You could not survive a day."
“We'll see. Quickly, now.”
She wondered how much time was left. Perhaps five minutes. Anxiously, she prodded the fat man ahead of her down the narrow corridor to the left. It led at right angles to her cell, paralleling the main temple chamber. She saw a long row of monastic cells where shaven monks of other centuries had lived and died. Darkness waited ahead. Paio stumbled and almost fell.
“Don’t make any mistakes,” Deirdre murmured.
Abruptly, they came out into the night.
Moonlight flooded the river gorge. There were ruined gardens here, low and crumbling walls, a path that led through rank elephant grass toward the edge of the cliff. But the guerrillas had cleared all the underbrush for some distance in a perimeter around the temple, leaving the treetops intact as a camouflage against any passing planes that might fly up the valley from the coast. Most of Paio’s men were crouching shadows, fifty yards to the right, at their mortar emplacements.
There came the distant puff and chug and thrashing of the Dong Xo Lady’s progress, sounded through the murmur of the quickened river current. She paused. Where now? She thrust Paio’s roll of maps into her shirt. Paio seemed to regain some of his confidence in the open night air. “You are lost, dear lady. The game is mine, not yours, whatever you do.”
“Go ahead,” she said, urging him with the gun.
“To what purpose? I will promise to be merciful. After all, you may be an important prisoner. Not for what you know, but for propaganda purposes. It would startle the world to learn we had captured an American woman such as yourself. But I promise you will be exchanged for one of our people we wish returned from Saigon.”
“No deal,” Deirdre said shortly. “Keep walking.”
Paio Chu said angrily: “I will not repeat my offer."
“Good. You’ll be saving your breath.”
She urged him on through the desolate gardens. A small wind blew across the cliff top; it smelled of sweat from the men at their mortars. One edge of the cliff had crumbled and a trail led from the fortress area to this place beyond the perimeter. A man in the black pajama uniform, with machine-pistol clips on his muscular chest, stood up and challenged Paio. Paio replied briefly. The man looked uncertainly at Deirdre. His head was shaven, glistening with sweat in the moonlight. Paio spoke again, and he sat down at his post once more.
They were in the clear.
But now the sound of the approaching steamer was echoing loudly with creaks and groans as it thrashed through the tumultuous current. Deirdre urged Paio on, and when they came to the point in the trail where it descended to a tiny beach below, on the river’s edge, she could see the little paddle-wheeler like a toy in the distance. Sparks belched from her tall stacks, which leaned precariously to port. Surprisingly, her paddles were in reverse, fighting the current that pushed her into the trap. It was as if those aboard knew of the mortars that waited for them at this point. But the steamer’s efforts were failing. Her stern turned this way and that, she yielded to the current and drifted downstream into the gorge where the temple commanded the river.
Durell was down there somewhere, she thought. And she felt a despair that almost burst her heart.
“Go on, Paio," she said. “Climb down.”
“But someone is coming!” Paio said in surprise.
Deirdre saw the dim shadow climbing desperately up the trail from the liver. In the moonlight, she could not make out the man’s face. But there was an urgency in his climb and his indifference to obstacles as he stumbled and clambered up in his sodden clothes.
Then he paused and stared up at them and she saw his face.
It was Lao.
27
DURELL halted when he saw Deirdre confronted by Lao. He had reached shore only a moment before, and by luck had glimpsed Lao’s wet figure clambering up the trail. The range was too far to use his gun, and, at any rate, he did not want to alarm the Congs with the sound of the shot. He poured ‘all his energy into overtaking Lao. Lao was intent only on his escape. Twice, the Chinese looked backward; but then Durell froze in the shadows, and he did not think Lao spotted him.
Glancing over his shoulder, he saw that Papa Danat had checked the progress of the Lady. Her stern fish-tailed and she tended to slip sidewise down the current. But there was some time to spare. Papa was doing a good job.
When he saw Deirdre and Paio, he wanted to yell a warning that Lao was coming. But he only redoubled his efforts to overtake the Cong assassin. Once his foot slipped and sent a small avalanche of stones into the gorge below. The sound seemed enormous as he froze again. But Lao had now seen Deirdre and all his attention was focused on the pair coming down toward him. After a moment, Durell resumed his climb.
Deirdre was very close to death. He saw that she was in control of Paio, but he knew that Lao would show her no mercy. His heart hammered in his throat when he saw Lao raise a gun he must have taken from the guard he killed aboard the boat, and he shouted: “Dee! Look out!”
Deirdre had spotted Lao a moment before, and she fired over Paio Chu’s shoulder. The shot raised harsh echoes that bounced back and forth from the cliffs frowning over the river. Paio screamed a Warning in Chinese, but Lao fired back, scrambling upward as he did so. His eagerness made him miss. And with a last rush, Durell was upon him.
Lao heard him coming. He turned, lips skinned back in a malevolent grimace. Paio Chu screamed again, his voice shrill with terror, and there was a commotion at the temple that glowered above them. A few lights shone against the wink of fireflies in the jungle beyond. A machine gun rattled as one of the Cong Hal panicked and fired a vicious burst at nothing at all.
Lao’s gun was turned to Deirdre in a bitter effort to kill her. He fired twice, and then again. Paio Chu gave grunt and a gurgle of pain and sagged to the ground, a victim of his own creature’s bullets. But it left Deirdre without a shield now. From the trail below, Durell lunged and caught Lao’s ankle. Lao had to stop shooting and grab at a bush to keep from being tumbled into the gorge. The man’s naked ankle was slippery with sweat. Durell could not pull hard enough. He felt a naked foot crack him in the jaw and a wave of dizziness halted him. But he did not slacken his grip. He yanked harder.
Deirdre’s gun made a smashing sound and Lao grunted and tried to kick Durell into space again. His free foot slipped. He yelled and threw up both arms and gyrated dizzily on the narrow path over the abyss.
Then he fell, cartwheeling out and beyond Durell.
His scream echoed for a long time between the walls of the gorge.
Durell turned and watched the body hit the tiny beach far below, bouncing like a rag doll.
The ancient whistle of the Dong Xo Lady tooted. Then the paddle-wheeler chuffed and creaked and a dark bow wave appeared as she began her run through the defile, as Durell had ordered. He did not watch it after that. He scrambled up the path to where Deirdre stood.
“Are you all right, Dee?”
“Yes . . . good enough, I think.”
“They didn’t—”
�
�No, Sam. There wasn’t time. Let’s get out of here, before I shake to pieces.”
“We’re not through yet,” he said.
He wanted to hold her tight and never let her go. He prodded Paio Chu’s fat body. “He was in command?”
“Pain was a colonel in their alleged army.” Deirdre’s voice trembled. “Saul, the others are coming.”
“How many?”
“Fifty, perhaps. Maybe more. They have mortars.”
“Then they’ll clobber the Lady. We have over a hundred people aboard her. Where is their ammo?”
“Back there, beyond the garden—”
He managed a grin. “Dee, you’re a wonderful idiot.”
“And I love you,” she said simply.
She led him back through the dark, weed-grown gardens behind the temple. Men ran here and there in confusion. Lights flickered. A mortar on the terrace overlooking the river coughed and there came the dull crump of a shell landing far across the gorge on the opposite cliff. But it would not take them long to zero in on the boat.
One of the Cong perimeter guards suddenly lurched up from his emplacement with a cry of challenge as they raced toward him in the darkness. Durell called something unintelligible to check him. The man hesitated. And Durell was on him, slamming his gun against the other’s round, shaven head. The man collapsed with a groan. Durell knelt over him and tore eight anti-personnel grenades from the man’s bandolier.
“These will do nicely,” he told Deirdre. “Do you know how to use these?”
“I think so.”
“Throw them anywhere, to distract the Congs from firing on the boat.”
The mortar on the temple terrace coughed again. This time the shell landed in the middle of the river. He threw his first grenade at the mortar, lobbing it past the dark pinnacle of a temple chedi, and it exploded at the same time as Deirdre’s first throw burst some distance ahead of them. Lights flared; there were startled shouts, some screams. Someone spotted them and fired a burp gun that stitched long patterns through the tangled garden and chipped stone from a low wall to their right. Durell threw his second grenade, then a third.
He was lucky. The last grenade hit an ammo box and there was a great crash, and a sheet of flame leaped high in the sky over the gorge.
“Save your last one,” he told Deirdre. He grabbed her hand. “Come on, it’s time to go.”
He pulled her out of the garden, into the jungle, away from the flames and explosions that engulfed the ancient ruins.
Their legs ached and their lungs burned. Their progress was a nightmare, as they circled wide above the river’s edge. There was no trail and no moonlight now, under the umbrella of leaves high above in the forest. But they could guide themselves by the distant flares and explosions that still came from the Cong fortress.
Durell tried to identify the sound of mortars among the other explosions. He thought they had stopped, but he couldn’t be sure. He held Deirdre’s hand and pulled her on. Once they slipped and fell into the mud of a small swamp. But he drew back in time and held Deirdre close for a second longer than necessary.
“Sam, I can’t keep it up.”
“You must, Dee.”
“Where are we going?”
“We’ll know in a minute.”
The land sloped down again beyond the high rise of the gorge. They had run perhaps a quarter of a mile downstream before he actually saw the glisten of moonlight again on the surface of the river. It seemed as if a thousand fireflies hovered in some orgiastic dance high above the current. Then Deirdre gasped: “They’re following us.”
“I know,” he said.
She stumbled and fell in the thick humus of the forest floor. As they paused, he heard the thrashing of men coming up fast behind them. He hauled her roughly to her feet. Her face was white, drained of all strength. Her weight sagged against him, and her mouth was shaped by remorse.
“Sam, I’m sorry. Go ahead. I have Paio’s charts—” She took them from inside her shirt and pushed them at him.
“Keep them. You got them; they’re yours.”
“But Sam—”
“You wanted the job, didn't you?” he said harshly. “You’ve done fine up to now. Don’t blow it at the last minute.”
She pulled herself together, revived by a touch of anger. They ran for the river’s edge.
Like a miracle, the Dong Xo Lady chuffed and shuddered and splashed only a few yards offshore. The moonlight hid her rotten, rickety condition, and she looked beautiful in Durell’s eyes. Papa Danat had done exactly as he’d ordered. The boat had gone through the gorge and was waiting for them.
He could see Danat’s fat figure in the pilothouse atop the Texas deck. Sparks belched from the crazily tilted stacks and the paddle wheels turned erratically. Durell hailed the Frenchman and got a loud reply, and then a burst of machine-gun fire from one of the .50’s mounted on the lower deck chopped a swath of death in the jungle behind them. It checked the hounds on their heels.
Deirdre stumbled again, and Durell scooped her up and held her tenderly as he waded into the warm current toward the dozens of hands outstretched to help them.
28
IT WAS raining, and the sound was warm and comforting. The rain rattled and dripped from the ornamental gargoyle eaves of the Palace Hotel in Giap Pnom. A haze obscured the Gulf of Siam along the curving white beach that formed part of the harbor. The air was warm and wet.
Durell soaked luxuriously in his hot tub. Outside, the gardens in Government Square shone with varied greens —wet moss, the metallic emerald f a parrot’s wing, the bronze green of a beetle’s back. The sea beyond was dull and flat, stained with mud. Durell felt as if he could stay there forever. It was twenty-four hours since he had brought the sagging, groaning Dong Xo Lady alongside the dock in the coastal town and the crowds of refugees had boiled ashore, to the astonishment of the local police and the militia at the wharf.
He had filed a preliminary report for Bangkok Central of K Section and dictated another for the military radio communique. Even then, he had not been able to rest. Red tape prescribed that he fill out internal customs reports for the Giap Pnom port authorities. A radio message advised him that the Embassy in Bangkok was sending down a replacement to take over the cleanup. He did not care about that. The job was done.
Durell soaked in the tub and called for the smiling Thai bellboy to bring another pail of hot water. The boy bobbed his head, and his neat white-uniformed figure backed out of the huge bathroom. He sighed and sank down to his chin in the suds.
Papa Danat was in the French missionary hospital at the other end of Government Square, attended solicitously by the French nuns who enjoyed fussing over his huge carcass. Never leaving him, silent and loyal, Giralda was at his side.
“My follies, M’sieu Durell, have caught up with me at last,” said Danat. He had looked possessively at the tall, brooding Giralda. “It is a truth that a man becomes accustomed to anything and presently finds he cannot do without it. But perhaps it is more than habit, with Giralda. The nuns click their tongues at her, and she is embarrassed.”
“As long as she keeps you from other follies,” Durell had said.
“I have promised to do that. And also, in my present state of weakness, yielded another promise. I shall marry Giralda before I go back to Dong Xo.”
“You’re planning to return there?”
“But of course. Where else is there, for a man like me? I have my home, my work, my tea plants. I do not fear the Congs. I shall need a new manager, of course. A pity about Uncle Paio. He was really very efficient, you know.”
“A bit too efficient,” Durell murmured.
Papa Danat sighed and heaved his bulk about on the hospital bed. “You will do me one little favor, my friend? You will see about my little daughter, so infatuated with Lantern?”
“I think it's more them mere infatuation.”
“Yet he used her only to contact you. He will go back to America with you and leave my little gir
l broken-hearted.”
“I think Anna-Marie will go with him,” Durell said.
“As his wife?”
Durell smiled. “I’ll see to it.”
Orris Lantern was in another room in the mission hospital. The Thai doctor had ordered several transfusions, and the French sisters had insisted on shaving his ragged yellow beard. He looked surprisingly younger, as American as apple pie, as he said thinly, “Yo, Cajun.”
“How do you feel?” Durell had asked.
“Hungry and lonely.”
“Where is Anna-Marie?”
“They won’t let her stay with me. I guess they can see the gleam in her eye.” Orris grinned. “I can’t say I blame the sisters. I feel the same urge toward her. If it wasn’t for this slug that chewed up my shoulder—”
“I’ll get them to let her stay,” Durell promised. “How long does the doctor say you loaf around here?”
“Two weeks.”
“We can’t wait that long. I’ve promised to get you back to Washington the day after tomorrow.”
“You’ve got Paio Chu’s charts?”
“I’ve got them. And the stuff you gave me to memorize, too.”
Lantern was thoughtful. “I’m sorry I had to give you such a bad time, Cajun. But my bosses figured we had to make it look good, or else we couldn’t smoke out Paio
Assignment - Cong Hai Kill Page 17
