Assignment - Bangkok

by Edward S. Aarons

  “I am not afraid of this—this—” General Savag snarled. “But we are allies. Friends. We have done business together. This man cannot be trusted not to put a bullet in my head.” He looked bitterly at Durell. “You will die very badly, American. I will see to it, personally. I shall think of very exquisite ways for you to die.”

  “On your feet, General.”

  He let the stocky Mongol go by him, then urged Benjie out into the bunker corridor. The two Pathet Lao still sat at the table. Durell backed out, taking their revolvers with him. He gave one to Benjie, who took it with limp, nerveless fingers.

  Durell closed and locked the door to the command room, then turned quickly to Savag. “You first. Don’t try anything foolish, General.”

  “You will never escape.”

  “But we’ll try, General.”

  Kem was waiting nervously outside the dugout. His face reflected relief as he saw Durell and Benjie climb up the bunker steps. He showed no surprise at seeing General Savag in the lead, his hands clasped behind his neck.

  Some of the uproar in the camp, caused by the eight old bhikkhus, had died away. What commotion was left was at the far end of the road, among the trucks and jeeps. Practically every man in the caravan had gathered there. But as Durell urged his little party toward the river, four of the caravan men came trotting back, apparently to report to the bunker. One of them shouted and raised his gun, and Durell fired a burst from the AK-47 over his head. The caravan men scattered, but the alarm was out. For a moment, the whole camp paused, as the sound of the shots echoed back and forth from the hills. Then whistles blew and more men yelled and the first four came on toward the line of houses on the river bank, careful and purposeful now.

  Durell pushed Kem and General Savag into the water. He held Benjie by the hand. Her fingers were cold. There was little to be seen in the predawn darkness. They stumbled and splashed and hurried through the knee-deep shallows. Flares were lit, and a searchlight went on and probed brilliantly against the sky, then began to sweep back and forth across the river. A fusillade of shots whipped over their heads, but Durell did not think they could be seen against the dark bank of the river across the way.

  “Stay low, Benjie,” he said.

  They were halfway over when Savag, sensing desperately that this was his last chance, suddenly broke free and stumbled back toward the caravan’s shore.

  “Hold it!” Durell shouted.

  “You will die!” Savag yelled back.

  His stocky figure surged through the water toward what he assumed to be safety. Durell squeezed the trigger. He fired above the man’s head, and at the same time, shots answered the muzzle flare of his gun. General Uva Savag was caught in the crossfire. Durell saw the two uniformed Pathet Lao with automatic weapons, sweeping the surface of the river. Savag fell as if hit by a battering ram, his legs and feet coming up, his arms splayed wide as he was knocked backward. Benjie made a thin sound, and Durell pushed her toward the safety of the foliage on the far bank. Savag fell on his back in the water and his body rolled over twice, then floated face down, moving away with the current.

  “Come on,” Durell said to Kem.

  “It was the Pathet Lao who killed him,” the monk murmured.

  “Maybe they had their reasons, too.”

  They splashed and surged toward the opposite bank of the river. Some of the caravan men started in pursuit, but Durell threw the grenade, a little downstream, and the explosion burst thunderously in the night over the water. The enemy turned back. Benjie reached out and helped them out of the water. There were shouts and orders and the caravan men retreated all the way. Lights were on all over the camp now.

  “The bhikkhus,” Kem whispered. “The old men!”

  “Here they come,” Benjie said, awed.

  The tattered old hermits totally ignored the excitement and alarm and gunfire, as they waded solemnly out into the stream after them. They still had their sticks and clubs, and they tucked their dirty robes up over their skinny knees as they forged unsteadily into the current.

  One after another, truck motors were being started up at the far end of the camp.

  “They’re going to leave early,” Durell said. “And they’ll get through the pass before we can use the dynamite.”

  “We must wait for the old men.”

  “You wait. Here. Cover them.” Durell thrust his rifle into the monk’s unwilling hands. “You can get them back to the cave, Flivver.”

  “I must not kill,” the bhikkhu protested.

  “You don’t have to. Fire high. Just hold them off.” Durell turned to Benjie and grabbed her hand. “We have to run.”

  24

  They stumbled, fell, picked themselves up, and ran on again, climbing the painful ascent trail of the cliff. Now and then Durell looked back, holding Benjie’s hand, pulling her up with him. The whole camp was a beehive of desperate, frantic activity as the caravan leaders decided to move out ahead of time. He did not know what they suspected, but they were certainly alarmed enough to change their plans. He swore softly as Benjie stumbled and fell again.

  “Hurry.”

  “I can’t. They hurt me too much.”

  “You must. Come along.”

  “We can’t make it. Maybe Mike—”

  “We can’t count on Mike. Or Major Luk. I have to set that dynamite charge off myself.”

  “We’ll be too late.”

  “Maybe not.”

  They kept on climbing. Benjie fell again, dragging him down with her. He pulled her to her feet once more. From a vantage point on the trail, Durell paused to let Benjie catch her breath again. Down along the river below, all had gone quiet again. There was no glimpse to be had of Kem and the eight old bhikkhus. He did not know if they had been caught or killed, and he could not think about it now.

  The way seemed longer than before. Once, at a fork in the trail, Benjie started the wrong way, and he had to pull her back with him. A few truck motors started down in the camp, their engines racketing back and forth in echoes between the rocky walls of the gorge. They were almost to the ledge that led to the last level near the cave when Durell checked himself and pulled Benjie to a halt. Someone was running toward them. It was Major Luk. Mike Slocum hobbled along behind the Thai.

  “They’re moving out,” Mike exploded. “They’re going through the pass ahead of time.”

  Major Luk said quietly, “And General Savag?”

  “Dead,” Durell said. “His playmates didn’t like to see him go with me—as my prisoner.”

  “Very good,” Luk said. “But now we must hurry.”

  The first trucks and jeeps of the caravan were already lining up on the trail, and a few had nosed into the mouth of the pass. The headlights flared along the rock walls and glinted on the narrow ribbon the river made as it raced along its restricted bed in the gorge. Overhead, the stars were beginning to fade. A faint wind stirred, bringing with it the smell of morning.

  “The bhikkhus?" Luk asked.

  “Coming after us.”

  “I am relieved. But we must move quickly.”

  Durell turned to the exhausted girl. “Benjie, I want you to take it easy. Come the rest of the way with Mike.”

  It was going to be tight. Never tighter, he thought. More and more trucks were starting up down there, and the first jeep had rolled into the pass and then halted, waiting for the caravan to form into a convoy line. There was dim shouting, orders yelled, some argument. The voices echoed, as if coming from a far-distant tunnel. Some of the Missa men were standing on the ledge outside the cave

  Assignment—Bangkok 153 they had occupied through the night. They looked uncertain as Durell and the Thai officer ran up the last ascent.

  More and more of the caravan crowded onto the trail in the gorge. There were only moments left before they would start rolling for the security of the nearby border. Durell began to limp as his knee acted up again, and he swore softly at the doctor who had assured him that the torn ligament had mend
ed as good as new. For a moment he could not find the detonator, and when he located it, he discovered that the wires he had trailed up the face of the cliff had slipped away and were dangling ten feet below the ledge. The sound of the truck motors made a rising thunder that rolled up from below.

  “I’ll get it,” Major Luk said.

  He lowered himself quickly, not careful now, and swung from a grip on some scraggly shrubs that grew out of a crevice in the rock. He could not reach the wires. His small, lithe figure swung back and forth. The first trucks were now almost directly under them. Durell heard a dim chanting and saw the eight old bhikkhus, led by Kem, coming up the trail.

  “Major!” he called.

  “I can get them.”

  “Go slow. Go steady.”

  “Yes.”

  The Thai’s face was upturned for a moment. His hold on the shrub was precarious, his legs dangled out over a thousand feet of black space. He jerked as he urged himself into another swing. His arm came out, his fingers closed on one of the wires, caught it, then lost it. He swung again. The shrub cracked, protesting, came partly loose. This time the Thai’s fingers caught both wires and pulled and held them. Major Luk looped the strands around his wrist, tying them in a loose knot with his teeth. His brown face turned up toward Durell.

  “I am afraid—”

  “Take it easy, now.”

  “—I cannot climb up.”

  Durell turned. “Kem!”

  “I am here. Buddha smiles on us all.”

  “Hold on to my ankles. I’m going over for Luk.”

  “Let me try to do it.”

  “No. It’s my job.”

  Durell slid on his belly over the lip of the ledge. None of the Missa tribesmen offered to help. Mike and Benjie had not yet reached the cave. The trucks of the caravan were now bunching up below, and the headlights shone with glinting reflections off the rock face on the other side of the gorge. Durell dangled head down on the surface of the cliff. He felt Kem’s hands holding his ankles in a tight, numbing grip. He hoped the monk was well braced against his weight. It was dizzying, looking upside-down into the gorge and the river. Major Luk tossed the wires up to him. He caught them, twisted, and passed them back and up to the monk.

  “I’ve got them,” Kem said briefly. He added, “I seem to have gotten out of condition.”

  “Save your breath. Major?”

  “Yes?”

  “Reach up. Grab my hand.”

  “The bhikkhu cannot support us both.”

  “He won’t have to. There’s a grip, just over there. All you need is a lift of twelve inches. I’ll do it fast, then let you go. Don’t fall.”

  “I hope not.”

  Durell pulled on the Thai’s extended wrist. Major Luk surged up, one hand grabbing desperately for the outcrop of rock that could hold him. When Durell felt his ankles slipping through Kem’s fingers above him, he let go of the Thai. Major Luk caught at the rock, held it; he swung, got one leg up, stood flat with his body pressed against the face of the cliff.

  “Pull me up,” Durell told Kem.

  “Is he safe?”

  “Yes. Safe.”

  “A very brave man,” the young monk said.

  In another moment, Durell and the major stood safely on the ledge outside the cave. The eight old bhikkhus now sat all in a row, looking downward at the caravan in the gorge. Their faces were serene, but there were glints of pleasure in their old, wise eyes. Durell knelt and fixed the wires to the detonator. His fingers trembled. He did not want to admit to himself how tired he was, or how close he had come to the end.

  Major Luk knelt beside him, breathing quickly and lightly. “I want to thank you.”

  Durell turned the detonator over to the Thai. “You can blow it, yourself. It’s your country, after all.”

  The Thai grinned. “A pleasure. Now?”

  “Now,” Durell said.

  Major Luk slammed down on the plunger.

  It began slowly at first. The earth trembled slightly, then the blast hit them, a tremendous thunderclap that echoed deafeningly back and forth between the walls of the gorge. A great spray of rock, earth, and debris shot out from under the heavy bulge of granite midway down the cliff, overhanging the road. The trail was crowded with trucks, jeeps, and men while great boulders shot out into space and hung over them. For just an instant, the scene seemed to be frozen. Then the earth shook again, like some monster slowly coming alive, and a heavy rumbling began and grew louder and heavier as the rockslide started down. The noise was overwhelming. Dust boiled up across the pass, and blocked the view. Durell could barely see the caravan lights through it, and then all the fights were obscured by the grinding, churning, roaring mass of the landslide. It seemed to go on forever. The Missa tribesmen on the ledge outside the cave cowered back with shouts of fear. The eight old bhikkhus did not move. It seemed to Durell that he could hear their chanting through the tumult, but he could not be sure. He saw that Kem had joined them, and the line had now become nine men.

  The taste and smell of dust and grit touched Durell. The earth continued to shake. For a few moments, he did not know if the whole cliff would go down, taking them all with it. He could see nothing of the river below. Then, very slowly, the landslide died away and ended.

  Someone took his hand and stood beside him. It was Benjie. “Sam . . .”

  “It’s over.”

  “Are they all dead?”

  “I think most of them got away. But the trail is blocked, and most of their trucks are buried. And the river is dammed up. Look.”

  There was a faint gray light in the sky now. It would soon be dawn. Down below, clouds of dust slowly drifted away in the morning breeze. Where the trail had been beside the river there was now a huge mass of jumbled rock and earth and broken trees. The road was gone. The river swirled muddily behind the great barrier, slowly forming a large pond, and then a lake. It would overflow the dam in a day or two, but by then it would not matter. The caravan was destroyed.

  Major Luk drew a deep breath and sat down beside him. The Thai’s face was drawn and haggard, but he looked happy.

  “It is done. The smugglers have been dealt a blow from which they cannot recover for at least a year. All the money they would have collected—which would have gone mostly to finance the insurgent army—is lost. Next year the hill people might have another crop of poppies for them, but by then, we hope, the entire organization should be in our net.” He paused and looked at Durell. “You have done your job well, sir.”

  Durell said, “It’s not finished yet.”

  25

  Durell said, “You’re shivering, Benjie.”

  “I can’t help it.”

  “We have lots of time yet.”

  “Yes. It’s good to be alone with you again. I’m grateful to you. I don’t know how I could have stood it, if you—if we—had found that Mike was guilty. I couldn’t bear the thought that he’d gone so bad that he was a traitor, selling out to the Muc Tong.”

  “Mike’s all right. He just has to be allowed to be his own man. The Missa people will bring him along soon.”

  She was silent for a moment, then said, “Sam, did it mean anything?”

  “I don’t know. We just have to do what we can.”

  “I mean, about you and me . . .”

  “I don’t know about that, either.”

  Benjie said, “You say it isn’t over for you yet. What do you mean by that?”

  “Unfinished business.”

  “I’m worried about it. I’m worried about you. I don’t think I could stand it, always wondering where you were, what you were doing, who was trying to kill you, or—” “Don’t,” he said.

  “It’s an old story with you, isn’t it? No permanent entanglements. No involvements. Like for the moment.” “Perhaps.”

  “Do you like it that way?” “No. But I chose it, and it’s now the only way I know. It’s too late to go back.”

  “You can’t get out of the spook business
?”

  “No.”

  “You mean you don’t want to.”

  “That’s right.”

  They were waiting in the tumbledown drying shed of the abandoned tea plantation, next to Benjie’s Apache plane. It was almost noon, and the air was hot and still and lifeless. Birds and insects made the only sounds to be heard. It had taken most of the morning to make their way through a hostile, confused countryside, past the ruins of Xo Dong and up over the mountain to the terraced slopes of the tea farm. Mike and Major Luk were not far behind them, but they had separated for safety, the easier to make their way around the wiengs that were beehives of angry activity since the explosion and the landslide. The caravan men who survived were on the hunt, too, and they had to be avoided. Their thirst for vengeance made the prospect of a quick death a certainty, if they were caught.

  “Sam?”

  “We’ll wait until noon,” he said.

  “I couldn’t leave Mike here.”

  “He’ll be along by then.”

  “And if he isn’t?”

  “I told you. Unfinished business in Bangkok.”

  She rolled over on the straw, her body close to him, and stretched, touching the length of him with her hand. “Sam, we may never be alone like this again.”

  “That’s probably true.”

  “It was beautiful, before. Wonderful, the first time.” “Benjie, don’t just feel grateful—”

  “It isn’t only that. You changed me.”

  Insects hummed in the quiet, fragrant shadows of the tea shed. Beyond the open side, past the plane, he could see the landing strip and the trail that led away over the mountain, away from the plantation back to Xo Dong. A bird whipped across the terraces, bright red and green, long tail streaming behind its darting flight. Benjie’s mouth was soft and warm and yielding. She shivered again, but she was not cold. She held him tightly, pulling him toward her, demanding him.

  “Sam, make love to me. Please.”

  “Yes.”

  They waited until ten minutes after noon, and then he saw Major Luk and his troopers, and Kem and Mike coming up the trail. Mike had to be supported with an arm around the monk’s shoulders. His face was haggard, bearded and grim. But a flash of his irrepressible spirit showed in his quick laugh as he sagged against the plane. “Good. Oh, very good. Benjie, you’re a wonder.”