There were some risks inherent in the plan, of course, and Stone was not discounting them. The village was not built for armed defense; the earlier experience with the bandits made that point with crystal clarity. At the same time, any further delay, let alone a holding action in the middle of the jungle, put them that much farther behind their rigid schedule.
It was touch-and-go, but there was nothing else to do. They would dig in, prepare to fight, and if the Vietnamese trackers overtook them in the meantime ...
Stone smiled to himself as another plan, more refined and detailed, more sophisticated; came to mind.
There just might be a way to kill two vultures with a single stone, if he was quick enough. And if the shaken, frightened villagers would help him with the plan that he was formulating.
"We will wait for them here," he said at last, seeing the surprise on the headman's face, and on the faces of his own armed men, as well.
Hog was looking at him like someone who sees a friend begin to dance the funky chicken at an embassy reception, and the Brit was shaking his head in grim bewilderment. As I for the P.O.W.'s, two of them were seemingly oblivious to what was going on around them, lost in a delirious world of their own, and Jack Mandrell was smiling at him and nodding as if he relished the idea of another armed engagement with the hostiles.
Stone frowned and turned away from the recent captive's scrutiny. He wondered if his plan was really so insane that only madmen could see what he had in mind and yield to his suggestion.
Never mind. It was the only choice available, and that made it no goddamned choice at all. They were bound to die if they left the village on a blind rush fore or aft, and wandering away to north or south would simply lose them in the jungle, cost them days of doubling back, provided they had the time to start with.
He would stand and fight, because it was the only thing to do. And his associates would stand beside him in his choice, because they trusted him—because, in the final analysis, they either stood or felt together. There was nowhere for the rest of them to go alone.
He started speaking rapidly, outlining what he wanted his men and the villagers to do, the role that they would play in the engagement he was planning. They were listening, nodding in agreement, grudgingly at first, and then with more enthusiasm as the scheme revealed itself. By the time he finished speaking, he could tell that they were with him, still uncertain of the outcome, naturally, but willing to see it through and find out if it had a chance of working.
If it worked, they all could walk away from this intact, perhaps with time to keep their LZ rendezvous.
And if it failed, then Meyers could take off without them, holding to his schedule, and pocket the retainer for his pains.
The money would be meaningless to Stone and company if this last desperate plan fell through. For cash meant nothing to a dead man, and there were no bars or cathouses in hell.
Stone put the grim, defeatist line of thought away from him and started concentrating on the fine points of his plan. There were things to be done, orders to be issued, preparations to be finalized before the Vietnamese and Pathet Lao moved in to take them by surprise.
Mark Stone was counting on a little surprise of his own this evening, looking forward to the effect his scheme would have upon the enemy if it worked smoothly. If it failed... well, then, he wouldn't have to bear the shame for long.
Dead men never felt embarrassment.
Chapter Twenty
It was doubly dark inside the hut, a combination of the velvet night outside and the enclosure of the walls surrounding him. The dual effect was almost crushingly oppressive. Mark Stone kept his eye upon the gun slit he had cut an inch above the hard-packed earthen floor . . . and waited.
They had passed an anxious hour since completing the fortifications of their makeshift village stronghold. Time was dragging now, each moment ticking off their chances of making the chopper rendezvous on time and with their human cargo intact. As it was, they would be hard-pressed now to keep their crucial appointment, even if they left immediately.
But they had to wait. The time elapsed had not deprived them of all choices in the matter. From the moment they had agreed to stand and make a fight of it, the little warrior band was out of options, locked into the game of life and death.
The only question now was which of their enemies would arrive first. It mattered little, but Mark Stone was counting on the timing to assist him in his plan. It did not have to be precise—the jungle and the darkness would allow for some margin of error—but it had damned well better be close, or they were all in for trouble of the terminal variety.
The fortifications, which scarcely deserved the name, had taken little time to finish. Men and women of the village had pitched in to help, and only when their phase was finished had Stone sent them packing to the north, away from the converging enemy columns. With any luck, they were a mile or two away by now, and safe beyond the line of fire.
With any luck.
Speaking of luck, Stone could use some now, lying belly-down in the shallow trench he had cut, with help from two of the Laotian refugees, in the flimsy hut. The trench would keep him below the line of fire from gunners on the outside, but it might become his grave if they, should torch the hut or drop grenades inside.
No matter. He had weighed the chances, gauged the risks, and now he was committed. There had been no time for more sophisticated planning or construction. Given what they had, the team had done their best.
Each one of them had picked a hut, and all of them were now concealed like Stone, tucked down in shallow trenches, eyes and guns alert along the firing slits cut hastily with machetes. They could move around to some degree inside the huts, commanding different fields of fire, but every move entailed the risk of rising from their trenches, exposing themselves to streams of automatic fire which could cut the shacks to pieces in a moment.
The whole plan was a gamble, but it was the best they had, the best that anyone could hope for on short notice, given the materials at hand. They had a chance—but only just. If everyone performed his duty, kept his head, then yes—they just might walk away from this alive.
And into what?
If they were not on time for their prearranged pickup, then what?
Stone closed his mind to that possibility, concentrating on the moment and its needs: Survival was the top priority, and that came one step at a time. This moment, here and now, took precedence over anything that might happen tomorrow, or even an hour in the future.
Stone was used to living on the edge, hanging on the moment, and he was not nervous now, but merely tense, keyed up, his nerves tingling in anticipation of the coming battle. If he could have seen the future—
Sudden movement at the limits of his peripheral vision, shifting underbrush along the eastern perimeter of the camp.
Stone brought his rifle closer, nosed its muzzle through the narrow aperture, aimed in the general direction of the target zone.
The undergrowth was parting there, a man emerging, dressed in mottled camouflage fatigues. Stone watched him as he cautiously began to circle, probing at the village's defenses, feeling out the night. The enemy was closing, and it was the Pathet Lao patrol. They were on time and moving in. Stone checked his watch and swore beneath his breath. No sign of their pursuers from the prison camp as yet. If they were forced to fight their battle piecemeal, it was finished. They could never hope to take two forces separately, when each was on alert and throwing its concerted weight behind the thrust.
Stone waited, breathed a silent prayer into the night, and eased the safety off. The time had come to improvise, and every second mattered now. Timing was everything. He had to do it right the first time, for there would never be a second chance on this side of the grave.
The hut reminded Jack Mandrell of prison, of the early days before the camp, when he and several others had been crowded into reeking huts, awaiting transport or the rough interrogation of their captors. He was sweating profusely
, the palms of his hands slippery on the weapon that he held against his chest, stinging droplets of perspiration threatening to blind him when they fell into his eyes.
The others were all scattered: Stone away to his right, the Brit somewhere behind him in the crude semicircular arrangement of the huts, the big one and his fellow prisoners together on his left. The rough arrangement gave them each a slightly different field of fire, and he rehearsed Mark Stone's instructions in his mind, making sure that he remembered them, forgetting nothing of importance.
It was a daring plan, no doubt about it, but the risks were terrible. Mandrell did not believe they had a chance, but at the moment that was not what bothered him.
It was confinement, lying in the sweltering darkness of the hut, which brought the cold sweat springing out of every pore. He was a free man, damn it, free at last, and there was no way in God's world that he was going back inside a cage. Not ever.
Except that now he lay inside a cage he had created for himself, and he was waiting for the enemy again, his very jailers, to emerge out of the trees and try to kill him.
Let them come. He would die before he let them take him back there, to that living hell. Mandrell had served his time, and then some. The bastards would have a dead man on their hands before they took him in again and caged him like a beast.
He saw the movement without recognizing it at first, and he was gaping at the opening in the trees when a human figure left the shadows, taking on substance. He recognized the Oriental features, the military garb, the weapon carried cautiously and at the ready. This was Pathet Lao, the animals who dropped by Mandrell's prison camp from time to time to banter with the damned Vietnamese and get their jollies out of kicking prisoners around. It was all that he could do to keep from jabbing his rifle through the makeshift firing slit and ripping off a burst right now, riddling the bastard where he stood.
But there was need for caution, and he waited, feeling his pulse increase, now hammering inside his head. His finger tightened on the trigger, and he had the target in his sights, just waiting for the signal that would let his hate and fear come spilling out, erupting through the muzzle of his weapon.
It was not time. The players weren't assembled yet. They were still waiting for another column, this one from the west, arriving any minute.
He wondered if the Pathet Lao would give them time to wait, and in the ringing stillness of his private cell, the P.O.W. realized he didn't give a damn.
Commander Chong Tri Minh was cursing underneath his breath, tripping over roots and rocks in the darkness. Every step was an ordeal, and the pounding in his chest was frightening. He had not felt such raw emotion since his first engagement in the Tet Offensive, when he matched his troops against American Marines.
There had been fear that day, and triumph. Now the fear was tempered with another sort of feeling—a sensation of impending doom that he could not shake off.
Commander Chong was not religious, certainly. His parents had been Buddhists, but he had renounced them, fingered them for Uncle Ho's police when the enlightenment came over him and he decided to make the Party and its military wing his life. The past was dead now, dead and buried. All that mattered was the present, and the future.
Chong's future, at the moment, seemed as dangerous and dismal as the forest all around him. They weren't gaining any ground to speak of in their hot pursuit, from what his eyes could tell him, and while they were certainly still on the track of their quarry, he had no way of telling how far behind they had fallen with the bungled river crossing and their other problems on the trail. He was pushing the men to their limit, aware that they must rest or break before much longer, but he didn't care. Stragglers would be shot, and all the others would take strength from their example. Chong would have his prey, or none of them were going back alive.
The sounds of firing up ahead alerted him at once, and he was thrashing through the undergrowth, moving forward rapidly along the column, when one of his scouts doubled back to report what they had heard. There was still some distance left to travel—perhaps two miles of rugged jungle track—but they were growing closer and the sounds of automatic firing, muffled by the forest, were a beacon that renewed Chong's own enthusiasm and the ardor of his troops.
They had a goal in sight now, or almost, and they redoubled their pace, no longer taking care to camouflage the noise they made in their passing. The enemy was up ahead, with more things on his mind than crackling twigs and branches in the jungle.
Chong did not waste his time trying to deduce what might be happening, who might have met the enemy, engaged him in a firefight. It was not important. All that mattered was the distance that he closed with every stride, the fact that he was growing closer to his quarry, to his self-redemption. There was still a chance of saving something from the grim fiasco of this day.
He cursed a lagger, slapped him hard across the face and drove him onward, like an animal bound for market. Moving in the middle of the column, Chong had taken out insurance for himself in case of ambush—and he was in a position to watch out for any stragglers who might try to drop out of the chase.
Another mile, now less, and he would have them. Let the capitalist god have mercy on their souls.
Mark Stone was getting nervous now, no doubt about it. Several moments had elapsed since he caught sight of the invader, moving cautiously inside the camp, and now the guy was gesturing behind him, calling up the reinforcements. Other figures were emerging from the darkness of the forest, merging into groups of two and three as they advanced, fanning out into a pincer movement.
Stone was watching as their point man reached the nearest hut and kicked it ¶n, dropping to a crouch as he ducked through the doorway, rifle at the ready. He had picked an empty that time, but the game was getting too damned close to call, and Stone expected uninvited company at any moment, slamming through the door and throwing down on him with automatic weapons.
They were out of time, and he could feel the pieces of his plan collapsing all around him, fractured images, spinning in a grim kaleidoscope of death. They didn't have a choice now; when the Pathet Lao discovered them, they had to fight, whether the Viets arrived to make it work or not. And it would never work unless they did arrive.
Stone cursed again and tightened up his finger on the CAR-15's trigger. Thirty paces out, in front of him, the point man was emerging from the empty hut and moving straight for Stone's, carrying his rifle with a sort of easy caution. Just another moment, maybe two, and Stone would have to start the ball without the guests of honor.
The Laotian was perhaps a dozen yards away and closing when he halted and swiveled to the west, swinging his weapon up instinctively. Stone followed the direction of his adversary's eyes, and saw a group of men emerging from the forest on the far side of the little village. One of them had a hand upraised in warning or in greeting—and he was about to call out something to the Lao guerrillas, either hailing them or calling out for some sort of ID.
Either way, he never got the chance. Stone saw his opening and didn't hesitate, already tracking as he recognized the uniforms of the Vietnamese regular.
He squeezed off his initial burst at the new arrivals, leveling a pair of them and sweeping the Viet point man away into the darkened jungle. Suddenly, a score of weapons opened up in ragged concert, and hell was visiting the tiny jungle village for the second time in a few hours.
Stone kept firing, choosing targets carefully, selectively, aware of other weapons firing from the huts on either side of him. They were playing this one for all the marbles, but at least they had a chance. With any luck at all, it would be chance enough.
Chapter Twenty-one
Stone milked another burst out of his CAR-15 and watched a Pathet Lao commando go down, writhing on the hard-packed soil of the jungle clearing. The guy was still alive and screaming out the final moments of his life, and Stone left him to it, tracking on in search of other, more worthy targets.
All around the little village
, automatic weapons tore the midnight apart, Vietnamese and Pathet Lao firing back and forth at one another, each side convinced that it had engaged the enemy, had been betrayed by someone in the opposition ranks.
And it was working like a charm, beyond Stone's wildest hope. The trap was sprung with all his enemies inside, and it was working.
Except that he and all his men were in the middle of the trap. And it was time to give some serious thought to getting out of there, in one hellacious hurry, before the savvy hostiles tumbled to his ruse and formed a strong united front against the common adversary.
Time to pull out, damned right, but it was easier said than done.
Stone wriggled up and out of his slit trench, crawling belly-down across the earthen floor with bullets eating up the air above his head. Both sides were pouring fire into the huts, taking fire from his commandos in return, no one certain who it was inside there, laying down the cover fire. Each side would think the other had arrived before it to set the trap, and each side was reacting with an all-out effort to destroy the village.
Stone had made it as far as the doorway when a body hit the flimsy door and tumbled through. He had perhaps a heartbeat to recognize the face and uniform as Pathet Lao, and then the gunner saw him and swiveled up and out of his awkward sprawl, bringing his weapon to bear on the unexpected enemy with swift professionalism.
Stone beat him to it, putting a round into his left eye at a range of less than fifteen feet, lifting the top of his skull in a gray-pink spray. The almost headless body rolled away, and Stone was past it in an instant, moving smoothly toward the open doorway, reloading on the move. Outside, the jungle night was lit flickeringly by muzzle blasts, and he was racing right into it, to join the dance.
Jack Mandrell ejected the empty magazine from his Kalashnikov and slammed a new one—his last—into the smoking receiver of his assault rifle. He had emptied two full loads already, dropping a dozen soldiers on both sides, and he was on a roll. Adrenaline was pumping through his system, taking him on to a high that he remembered from the days in 'Nam, before he had been captured in the final stages of a covert border raid.
M.I.A. Hunter Page 14
