Assignment - Bangkok

by Edward S. Aarons

  “My man says to the left,” Major Luk whispered. “Over there.”

  “I see it.”

  The soldier behind Luk was breathing heavily with fright. His eyes gleamed white in the moonlight as they clung to the face of the cliff. All at once his face disappeared and he gave a low, strangled cry. Durell moved to the left and peered down in the faint light. The Thai’s brown face was upturned, alarm struggling with a grin, only ten feet below the great bulge of rock that overhung the road.

  “I am all right,” the man said.

  He stood on a ledge under the rock outcrop, breathing hard, but quite safe. Durell carefully lowered himself to join the soldier. The place was a natural.

  “Let’s get to work,” he said.

  There were crannies and cracks for planting the explosive in abundance. If everything worked, the charge could drop half the cliff down on the road, blocking the pass. Luk and his man were efficient, but it was Durell who placed the charges and did the wiring. The work took less than fifteen minutes, now that they had found the proper spot. The moon began to set over the dark mountains to the west, as they climbed back up, unreeling the wire behind them. On the ledge outside their cave, Durell checked the batteries, but left the wires unconnected to the detonator. His left leg ached again from the long, dangerous climb, and he accepted a cup of tea from Kem gratefully.

  “I have been talking to the bhikkhus,” Kem said quietly. The eight men now sat in a row, their backs to the wall of the cave, watching Durell as he drank the tea. Their faces all looked alike; they were equally poor and ascetic looking. “The holy men,” said Kem, “have decided to help us in any way they can.”

  “Benjie hasn’t come back?”

  “I have learned where she is. And the matter of the money—it was all a mistake. Both of the Slocums seem to be innocent.”

  Mike came hobbling from the back of the cave. His round face was sunken in the two hours Durell had been out on the cliff, and there were red lights far back behind his eyes. Hostility made an electric aura around him, thick enough to touch and taste.

  “Are the charges set, Cajun?”

  “All set, Mike.”

  “I hope we mash every one of those bastards.”

  “We’ll do the best we can.”

  “You didn’t look for Benjie?”

  “I’m going to, now.”

  “You have a hell of a set of priorities, Cajun. The job always comes first, doesn’t it? You don’t give a damn what might have happened to my sister, do you?”

  “Do you?"

  “I owe her plenty. I owe her an effort to get her away from Uva Savag, that’s for sure.”

  Durell looked at Kem. The monk nodded, his eyes obscure with thoughts of his own. Durell said, “Tell me about it, Flivver.”

  The monk pointed out and below. “She is down there.”

  A Missa man, Kem said, a refugee from Xo Dong, had come up to the cave while Durell and Major Luk were out on the cliff with the explosives. He was the son of Gujiwandara, the headman, and he had come for the money. “He knew about it?” Durell asked.

  “It is just as Mike said,”,the monk replied. He smiled at Slocum. “It was the squeeze money collected from the villagers for the Muc Tong. And then the head man decided not to pay it. When the Muc Tong came to the village, he knew Mike would get out, and he hid the money in Mike’s pack. Now he wants it back, in his father’s name.”

  “But why did Benjie take it?” Mike asked angrily. “And where is she?”

  The Missa said he had seen the fahrang woman in the caravan camp. Mike drew a long, angry breath and started to charge the man with lying, then he looked at Durell.

  “Okay, so they caught her. She’s been turned inside out by all this, Cajun. By you, Sam. It’s your fault, if they got her. If it wasn’t for my stupid ankle, I’d go down there after her. I hate to think of what those people may do to her.”

  “Take it easy, Mike.”

  The Missa man again asked for his money. Kem spoke to him quietly, promising to get it back. Then he looked at Durell. “It is up to you, Sam. But perhaps I can help.” “With your eight old men? Against three hundred?” “They are bhikkhus. They are holy men. They are not afraid. And the caravan men are mostly Buddhist, or superstitious, at any rate.”.

  Mike said, “If we don’t get her back, and they take her with them through the pass when they move at dawn, she’ll be killed with the rest of the smugglers. Which means you can’t set off the charges, Cajun. You’d be murdering her.”

  “I must,” Durell said.

  “You’d kill her, too?”

  Durell said, “We’ll get her out.”

  “And if you can’t?”

  “Major Luk will detonate the charges, whether we come back or not.”

  Mike said, “You’re going down there, too?”

  “I have to,” Durell said.

  There was still an hour before dawn when they came to the river bank across from the enemy camp. Durell was grateful for the long watch he had kept on the place that afternoon, spotting the trucks and jeeps and donkey corral, the guard tents and the bunker. The river was shallow here, filled with flat rocks that made easy stepping-stones. The camp slept. The cooking fires had died down, making only dull red embers in the dark hour before sunrise. The moon was down, the skies had cleared, and only starlight glimmered on the surface of the river.

  Durell carried the AK-47 he had taken from the guard up the river at the ford. Kem and his eight old men refused to carry any guns at all, except for long staves cut from tree limbs on their way down from the cliff. For some moments, they stood behind tall bamboo that screened them from anyone who might be awake across the river. The caravaneers were secure in their sense of immunity. A few lamps glowed in tents about two hundred yards downstream, and the shadow of a picket moved near the animal corral. A man in a Pathet Lao outfit stood in front of the hidden bunker, beyond the leaning, rickety houses on the river bank. To the left, the glow of a cigarette showed where a mechanic tinkered with a truck engine. The click of his wrench on metal, the sleepy grunt of a donkey, were the only sounds above the quiet purling of the river moving on its rocky bed.

  “Your bhikkhus know what to do?” Durell asked.

  Kem nodded. His dark eyes gleamed with excitement. “They say it is their duty to wipe out evil. They say that meditation may be good for their souls, but what of the souls of the unfortunate criminals over there, who should be assisted in making merit for their next incarnation?

  Otherwise they may live again only as pigs and dogs and spiders, or worse.”

  The eight old men began a low, humming chant as Kem spoke, and several of them began clicking beads and prayer wheels as they tucked up their tattered robes and waded out into the stream, brandishing their sticks. For long seconds, nothing happened. No one noticed them.

  “Go on, Kem,” Durell said.

  “I will stay with you. I may be more helpful.”

  “But those old fellows may be killed.”

  “They will not be harmed.”

  The oldest monk began a ululating cry that pierced sharply through the darkness. He was halfway across the river before someone shouted querulously in the caravan camp. The shout was taken up by others, and fights began to bloom here and there among the tents and leaning houses on the opposite bank. Kem started forward, and Durell caught his arm.

  “Wait. Let them get into the camp.”

  An uproar began like the slow, seething chum of a giant sea coming in to shore. More fights flashed on, and a warning shot was fired, and men began tumbling sleepily from wherever they happened to be. The old bhikkhus did not pause or hesitate. Their chanting became shouts of rage, and as the first caravaneers ran toward them, yelling warnings, they laid about them sturdily with their staves, whacking and thrusting and cracking the smugglers across their heads and shoulders.

  Kem chuckled. “Watch.”

  In the first fury of the monk’s sudden onslaught, the caravan men fell
back, astonished. There were some shouted orders from their leaders, and more lights came on, in one of the houses directly in front of the bunker that Durell watched. The smugglers grew in numbers as more and more woke up, but no shots were fired. The old men continued their chanting and shrieking progress up the main camp street, heading away from the bunker, where several men, two in Pathet Lao outfits and another in a Thai uniform, came out and shouted angrily. A lamp was smashed by one of the monks’ sticks, a smuggler howled as a second stave cracked him across the scalp. Durell could not guess what the bhikkhus were shouting, but their tones were those of sharp reprimand and anger. In less than a minute, they seemed to be swallowed up by a growing circle of the caravan men, none of whom dared to touch the old men; nor did they try to stop their progress. Like a flood, the men of the camp moved away from the bunker area across the river from Durell and Kem.

  “Now we can go, Flivver.”

  Durell stood up and ran, crouching, into the stream. Most of the lights in the camp were to the left, surrounding the onslaught of the angry old men. No one stood on guard across the river. Durell dashed through the cold water with all his speed, and threw himself to the bank under the dark shelter of a stilted house. Kem splashed down after him, laughing softly.

  “Ah, this is something these old men will always remember. A joy to their waning years.”

  “If they’re not murdered.”

  “Buddha will watch over them.”

  Durell crawled under the house, through mud and weeds, holding the AK-47 out of the wetness. So far, he saw no hint that Benjie Slocum was anywhere in the camp, captive or otherwise. Kem breathed lightly beside him. The shadows under the house were filled with debris, odorous and malignant, which Durell did not care to identify. He crawled forward until he could see the main street of the camp. He was about thirty yards from the bunker. He did not know how deep or elaborate its construction might be, or how many men might be posted inside. He wondered if there might be another exit. There often was an escape hole from these places, when the enemy had time to construct them. But the dark line of foliage across the dusty trail hid any hope of finding it. He would have to go in the front way.

  The sounds of rioting in the camp increased. Fires sprang up, and now there was angry shouting between two factions of the caravan men—those who considered the old bhikkhus holy, if mad, to be treated gently; and those more hardened types who would just as soon cut them all down for disturbing their sleep with their religious fanaticism. It would be touch and go, Durell thought. In either case, the issue would be decided in a few more minutes. There was no time to lose.

  He touched Kem’s shoulder and got up and ran in a crouch across the road toward the bunker. A single guard was toned the other way, watching the commotion that spread up and down the trail among the trucks and jeeps. The man went down with a single blow, and Durell caught him and lowered him silently to the ground outside the bunker entrance. A rude plank door had been built, covered with pieces of sod. He pulled it open, his gun ready. Faint light came from inside, down a flight of steps cut in the hard, dry ground.

  “Stay on watch out here, Kem,” he said quietly.

  The monk’s fingers twitched. “I used to like a good fight, in my college days. You know that I was boxing champion of my class at Williams.”

  “Just hope you don’t have to do anything.”

  Durell went down the earthen stairs. There was a large bunkroom, with planked walls and teak posts holding up the ceiling. An electric battery lamp lit up the disheveled place. It smelled like an animal’s lair. Cans of food were strewn about, empty and battered and rusty. A timbered doorway led him on, across the guard room. Sharp and angry voices came from within. Durell paused, saw a wooden case shoved under one of the lower bunks, and crouched, never taking his eyes from the inner door. He felt within the box. Grenades. He took one, saw it was a Russian GK-51, anti-personnel type. It felt solid and heavy in his hand.

  As he straightened, an officer in a Thai-type uniform came hurrying from the inner room of the bunker. His surprise was brief. Durell hit him with the butt of his rifle, and sent him sprawling across the bunkroom. But the man’s mouth was open, yelling an alarm, seeing what he thought was a half-breed, strange Chinese. Durell’s makeup was still intact. Durell hit him again, but now there was a commotion from inside the bunker, and although he had knocked out the officer, there was no longer the element of surprise in his favor as he pushed quickly down a wooden-shored tunnel to the inner quarters.

  “Hold it,” he said. “Don’t move.”

  General Savag was there. And two officers in black Pathet Lao uniforms. One of them wore steel-rimmed glasses. The other was older and bald. Between them sat Benjie Slocum.

  They were seated at a long plank table, in the glow of a fading battery lantern, and on the table between them was the money Benjie had taken from Mike. There was a bruise on Benjie’s forehead, her hair was tumbled down around her face, and her hands were tied behind her back. Her shirt had been tom, exposing a long scratch across her shoulder and more bruises on her arms and chest. Her eyes were dull and defeated. She did not seem to recognize Durell as he filled the low doorway to the command room.

  Savag started to lurch from his chair, then halted halfway to his feet as he looked into the muzzle of Durell’s rifle. The other two men, the Pathet Lao, stood silently, and a fourth, a man of indeterminate origin, perhaps Viet or Thai, did not move from his position in a corner. He had been smoking a cigarette, and now he dropped it and crushed it out and smiled and said in English:

  “So this is the American imperialist spy? The one you told us about, General?”

  “He is the one. A madman.” Savag’s eyes were red with fury. His mouth looked wet. “It seems I have been betrayed.” He looked at Durell from black, slanted eyes that were utterly venemous. “Was it Major Luk? The man has foolish ideals. Perhaps you have such ideals, too. But money can change things, eh?”

  “Shut up,” Durell said. He glanced at the girl. “Benjie?”

  She drew a shuddering breath. “I’ve been stupid, Sam.” “Did you tell them anything?”

  “N-no. They tried—they beat me—and threatened me.”

  “How did they get you?”

  “I—I thought I could make a deal. To save Mike. 1 wasn’t sure—I thought he was with them. I don’t know. I’ve been mixed up since you—since we ...”

  “All right,” Durell said. “Can you stand up?”

  “They hurt me, but—”

  “Try,” he urged.

  She wavered to her feet, then fell against the table. The two Pathet Lao did not move to help her. Her hands were still manacled behind her back. Durell said to Savag, “Get those cuffs off her.”

  “Do it yourself,” Savag snarled.

  “If I have to take the keys,” Durell said, “you’ll be a dead man, General. You’re as good as dead now. You’re a traitor, conspiring with insurgents, taking bribes from smugglers, betraying your country. Unlock Miss Slocum’s cuffs.”

  Durell’s voice was quiet, but Uva Savag saw something in his face that convinced him. He got up reluctantly from behind the table, and Durell saw that he wore a holstered revolver.

  “Put your weapons on the table. All of you. Don’t hold me up too long.”

  Savag did as he was told. His round, cruel face was covered with sweat. His' thick mouth drooped in sullen hatred. The two Pathet Lao also did as ordered. The other man, apparently the caravan smuggling chieftain, was another matter.

  “You will never get away alive,” he said. “I see you have a grenade. Will you pull the pin and kill us all—-you and the girl, too? I doubt it. But perhaps we can come to an arrangement. You are a chivalrous man, it seems. You came to save the girl. We have no need of her. You may take her. We are not interested in her. We are not interested in you. You can do us no harm. You may take the girl and go.”

  “You’re not concerned about your opium and heroin?” “You cannot stop us there.�
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  “I suppose not.” Durell pretended to think it over. “I want General Savag, though. I’m taking him as a prisoner back to Bangkok.”

  Savag laughed sourly. The two Pathet Lao smiled. The one with the glasses moved his head and the light splintered off the round lenses. The caravan man said, “That is no deal.”

  “I insist.”

  “That is too bad.”

  The man was fast. Durell never saw where the knife came from until it already had left the man’s hand. It flashed in the light of the battery lamp, and then shattered on the barrel of Durell’s gun. He fired once, a short burst that knocked the caravan leader back into a bloody heap in a corner of the bunker room. The air smelled of cordite, echoed with the explosions. No one else moved, until the bald Pathet Lao smiled briefly and took a cigarette from a pack on the table. No one turned to look back at the dead man in the corner.

  “Let’s go, Benjie. Pick up the money.”

  “Sam—”

  “Don’t waste time. General Savag, come with us.”

  The Pathet Lao with the cigarette said, “Go, General. We will get to you easily. Have no fear.”