Chant laughed. “I told you Sinclair was a meticulous planner. He must also be feeling magnanimous this month.”
“Magnanimous?!”
“Sure. Remember that if you hadn’t received some kind of communication, it probably meant that one of these days he’d stop fooling around and kill you out of hand. It seems he’s not only willing to let you live, but he’ll even leave the Baldaufs with a little mad money to speed them on their separate journeys.”
“Fuck you,” Baldauf said through clenched teeth.
“How does it feel, Baldauf, to be a man who took Hmong babies away from their mothers in order to put them up for sale in the black market adoption market?”
Baldauf went pale. “Christ, you even know about that?”
Chant gestured impatiently. “Let’s focus on our common problem. You talk and sweat like Sinclair is going to get something besides dead. Unfortunately, the demands you describe don’t seem to leave him very vulnerable. Did he ask anything for himself?”
Baldauf nodded. “A million. In cash.”
“Good! I knew he was going to try to pull this badass Robin Hood stunt once too often. It’s what I was hoping for. Now we may have a chance of nailing him.”
“He wants the money dropped by helicopter up in the high country. He’s even specified the denominations of the bills, the type of satchel to put it in, and the coordinates for the drop.”
“Good, good.” Chant paused and drummed his fingertips on the desktop, as if thinking over the problem. “It’ll be tricky,” he said after almost a minute had passed, “but I think we can get him.”
“I don’t know anybody who can fly a helicopter,” Baldauf said tightly, “and I’m sure as hell not going to hire a stranger to fly it.”
“I’ll fly the helicopter; that’s not the problem. The problem is trapping and killing the bastard.”
“I can have a hundred men with rifles ringing the area.”
Chant shook his head. “I haven’t seen the coordinates, but it certainly occurred to Sinclair that you’d try that. He’ll have chosen the drop site carefully, and he’ll know it if you send men in there. If the men are too close, he’ll just pass up the money, come back, and blow up something that’s worth a lot more than a million to you. There’s also a possibility he might kill you, or a relative.”
“I’ll make sure my men keep their distance. After the drop, we’ll close the ring and trap him.”
Again, Chant shook his head “If they’re so far away that he can’t spot them, you’ll never spot him. Remember that he’s a man who made it out of Southeast Asia, on foot, with the Americans, Viet Cong, and Pathet Lao all chasing his ass. No, we’ll do it the simple way; we’ll blow up the son of a bitch.”
“How?”
“We booby-trap the satchel He’ll anticipate your trying that; along with everything else he does, he’s also an explosives expert. He’d be able to detect and disarm any booby-trap you rigged. The one I rig will kill him. One stick of dynamite would splatter him all over the countryside We’ll rig two, just to be certain.”
“You expect me to blow up a million dollars?!”
“Of course not,” Chant said in a tone that displayed growing impatience. “We’ll substitute an equivalent weight of newspapers.”
Baldauf’s lips slowly curled back into a crooked smile. “You’re not as goddam smart as you think you are, Fox Sinclair may have been ahead of me up to now, but he’s also ahead of you on this one.”
“How so? You don’t think I can rig a booby-trap that will kill him? Believe me, it’s the only way. Your men aren’t going to find him up in those mountains, and you’d better make any shot against him work the first time. Try to kill him and miss, and he’ll stop playing with you.”
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll do a fine job with the booby-trap. But you can’t put newspapers in the satchel. If Sinclair gets blown up, so does a million bucks.”
“What are you talking about?”
“One of the conditions is that the widow of a man Sinclair claims Lester paralyzed and murdered, a gook woman by the name of Kim Chi, puts the money in the bag herself. Then she puts a lock on the bag, and she carries it. She has to be in the helicopter, with a bullhorn, to tell Sinclair that the money’s there, and that there’s no trap.”
“Shit!” Chant exclaimed, pounding his fist on the desk. “Can you get to this woman? Fool, bribe, or threaten her?”
Baldauf shook his head. “No. I know the bitch. She speaks English, and she knows American currency, so you can’t fool her. She’s a troublemaker, like her husband. Threats won’t work, and I can’t imagine her taking a bribe from us. That fucking Sinclair knew what he was doing when he chose her.”
“Then we do have a problem,” Chant said. He bowed his head for a few seconds, then sighed heavily and looked up. “All right, let me think about it. This is too good an opportunity to let pass. Also, we’re going to have to do something, because Sinclair won’t allow you to ignore him. When is the drop supposed to take place?”
“Tomorrow. Precisely at noon.”
“Then I have the rest of today and tomorrow morning to come up with something. You call the Seattle airport and make arrangements to rent a helicopter.”
“Fox?”
“What?” Chant said impatiently. “That son of a bitch won’t make a mistake, damn him!”
“He made a mistake when he decided to fuck with me, Fox. Can you booby-trap the satchel so that it will look empty before the Hmong woman puts the money in?”
“Sure,” Chant said, frowning as if puzzled by the question. “I can rig the bomb under a false bottom. That isn’t the problem.”
Baldauf swallowed hard, cleared his throat. “Then I’ll give the gook whore the money.”
“You’ll what?”
“Shut up, Fox. I know what I’m doing. It’s worth a million to me to blow that bastard off the face of the earth. He’s already cost me close to that, and he’s the man who butchered my son.”
“I’m impressed,” Chant said with a broad shrug. “At least I can say I think you’re going to get your money’s worth.”
“I’d damn well better, Fox,” Baldauf said in a low voice that bristled with menace “You’d just better be able to do what you say you can do.”
Chant hurriedly wrote on a pad, ripped off the sheet and handed it to the other man. “This is a list of the materials I’ll need. Have one of our men pick up the woman and bring her here for the night; I don’t want to have to chase around the complex after her in the morning.”
“When are you going to rig the satchel?”
“As soon as you bring it to me, along with the dynamite and the other things on that list.”
“A couple of hours.”
“I’ll be waiting.”
Baldauf stepped close to Chant, poked his thick index finger into Chant’s chest. “I’m going to stand over your shoulder while you rig that thing, buddy, and you’re going to explain to me exactly what you’re doing every step of the way.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Chant said as he casually pushed the other man’s hand away.
“You sure that’s going to do the trick?”
“You watched me put it together, Baldauf, and I’ve explained it to you. The dynamite, batteries, and firing mechanism are all hidden under the false bottom I put in. The contact points on the firing mechanism snap into position when the lock is snapped through the steel hasp. There are wire filaments all through the satchel, laced inside the lining, so it doesn’t make any difference whether he attacks the lock or tries to cut through the leather itself with a knife. Either way, it’s good-bye Mr. Sinclair. You know which apartment the woman lives in?”
“She’s already been picked up.”
“I don’t want her to see me; not yet. I haven’t decided yet what story I’m going to give to explain my presence. Where is she?”
“She’s on ice over at the jailhouse.”
“Class act, Baldauf.”
“I don’t give a shit what you think of me, Fox, and you know it. I’m not about to have some gook woman stinking up my house just to please your sensibilities.”
“Did you book a helicopter?”
“Right. It’ll be ready any time after eight in the morning. They want your pilot’s license number.”
“I’ll give it to them when I go there. How soon can you get the money?”
“I’ve got it.”
Chant tapped his fingers on the desk top. “All right,” he said. “Bring the woman here now Just tell her I’m a friend of yours who can fly a helicopter You explain the situation to her any way you want. Then she can watch us load the bag and lock it. She can take it back to the jail with her, handcuffed to her wrist I’ll pick her up around seven-thirty in the morning.”
“Seven-thirty? Seattle’s only an hour away.”
“I want to make sure there are no foul-ups If Sinclair says he wants the drop precisely at noon, that’s what he means.”
“I’ll be up at the logging camp I want to see and hear the explosion when that son of a bitch goes up.”
“You’re certainly paying for the privilege.”
“I’m also going to put a hundred men in a ring around that site. They can go in and pick up the pieces. I may pickle what’s left of him.”
“You can do whatever you want with what’s left of him. Just make sure those men stay a long ways away from the site.”
“This had damn well better work, Fox.”
Chant shrugged. “How can it fail?”
SEVEN
Vietnam, 1971
Chant, his automatic rifle resting across his knees, crouched at the edge of the cliff and scanned the jungle below him through narrowed lids. It was too quiet, he thought. Undisturbed, the great beast that was the jungle breathed with a life of its own—sighs one could hear if one’s senses were properly attuned. When intruders moved in its bowels, the jungle held its breath and was unnaturally silent. Like now. It had been like this for close to three hours.
“Chant!”
Chant twisted around and quickly put his index finger to his lips as the lithe and lovely Kim Chi ran toward him across a small clearing. She came up, knelt down beside him, and placed her automatic rifle on the ground between them. The fatigues she wore were stained with dark blotches, and her amber-colored, almost translucent skin glistened with sweat. “Greg’s coming in,” she panted. “His code signal just came in over the radio.”
“Shit,” Chant said in English.
“What’s wrong, Chant?” the slight woman asked, shielding her eyes with her hands against the rising sun and looking out over the jungle, a sea of verdant green, below.
“I’m not sure. Did you signal a confirmation?”
“I tried, but I don’t think he received it; there was no sign-off code. Just silence. I think something may be wrong with his radio. What’s happening down there?”
“We’ve either got a tiger on the prowl, or a lot of people.”
“Coming down the trail?”
“No. The sensors I put out last week would have picked up any movement on the trail. If there are Pathet Lao down there, they came in from different directions during the night and are just sitting tight.”
“But the jungle knows they’re there,” Kim Chi said tightly.
“It could still be a tiger.”
“You don’t believe it is; I can tell. Why, Chant? What can the Pathet Lao hope to accomplish by just staying down there? The trail is within range of our mortar fire, and they can’t hope to get at us up here. We’d have to … Oh God, Chant! Greg!”
“The signal that came in—where does he want to meet me?”
“The purple zone.”
“When?”
In response, Kim Chi raised her arm and pointed to the southeast, where a helicopter was coming in low over the horizon, its rotors glinting in the bright sunlight.
“I’m going to borrow this,” Chant said, picking up Kim Chi’s rifle, putting it under his left arm with his own. He rose, squeezed her shoulder. “I’ll be back in a while.”
“Chant, you can’t go down there alone! It could be a trap! If there are Pathet Lao down there—!”
“We don’t know that there are. They couldn’t know that Greg is coming in to see me. It’s just lousy timing. However, I’ve got to go down there; I have a feeling he has something important to tell me. Also, if the enemy is around, he’s going to need some help.”
“Chant, you need help!”
“No. If it is a trap, I have a better chance alone; they won’t see or hear me.”
“At least let me get Le Duc!”
“No!” Chant said firmly. “I go alone! You run back and keep trying to raise Greg. Forget code; try all the channels. If he responds, tell him to get the hell out of here. Under no circumstances do I want any Hmong coming down after me. You know that I can move in ways that you can’t. If the enemy’s down there, anyone moving on the trail down from here will make an easy target. You’ll be massacred. Just wait for me.”
“Chant,” Kim Chi murmured in a trembling voice as she clutched at his arm “I’m afraid. You know that we need you; you give us courage and hope.”
“The Hmong don’t need anyone to lend them courage. In any case, I’ll be back. Tell Le Duc to tighten security around the camp.”
Before the woman could say anything else, Chant darted off to his right and disappeared around an outcropping of jagged rock.
Eschewing the narrow, twisting trail carved into the face of the cliff, Chant rappelled down the escarpment, using a rope of plaited vines he had constructed and hung for that purpose. He reached the jungle floor and began running toward the meeting site, where he estimated that the helicopter would already have landed, unless warned off by Kim Chi. Able to move as silently as any jungle creature when he wanted to, Chant now purposely crashed through the brush, making as much noise as possible, inviting fire from the enemy in order to warn his friend.
But there was no fire, there was no sound except the crashing of his own passage.
Yet, now that he was on the forest floor where his senses could reach out and probe, he knew that his initial suspicions had been correct; there were Pathet Lao all about. The jungle was alive with them.
They were letting him pass through.
Immediately, Chant changed his tactics. He abruptly stopped running, stood dead still for almost a minute, then—moving silently—he started off at a right angle to his previous direction. He glided from shadow to shadow, keeping low, moving with incredible swiftness.
He came up on the purple zone, a large glade two miles from the Hmong cliff side camp, from the north, crawling the last few yards on his belly with both M-16s slung across his back.
The helicopter, its engine shut off, was parked in the middle of the glade. Greg King, both hands thrust deeply into his pockets, was pacing back and forth.
“Greg,” Chant said in a voice just loud enough to carry to the other man. “Don’t stop moving, and don’t look in my direction.”
The other man hesitated for just a moment, then continued to pace with his head cocked just slightly in Chant’s direction.
“It’s a trap,” Chant continued. “They’re waiting until they can get us both together. I want you to glance at your watch as if you’re getting impatient, then get into the bird and start her up. Just take off as fast as you can. Adjust to the right, because I’ll be hanging off the left strut. Do it now.”
Chant watched as his friend stopped pacing, glanced at his watch, then shook his head in frustration. “Fuck you, Sinclair!” Greg shouted at the jungle. “I’ve got better things to do than sit around in this heat and wait on you! I’ll be back next week!”
The CIA controller abruptly turned on his heel and marched stiffly to the helicopter. He got in the cockpit and turned on the engine.
The rotors had just started to turn when the shell from the hand-held mortar hit the helicopter dead center. The
re was an explosion, and flaming debris whistled over Chant’s head.
Chant sprang to his feet, dodging forward through black smoke and flame across the glade to the burning helicopter. Cloaked in acrid smoke, breathing shallowly to keep flame out of his lungs, he yanked open the cockpit door.
Greg, an arm and leg blown away, was nevertheless still alive. His eyes rolled, came into focus on Chant. “Cooked Goose,” he murmured as blood bubbled in his mouth. “Stupid, Chant … wrong.” Then he shuddered and was still.
Chant let go of the lifeless body, jumped down from the strut, and rolled through a deadly, billowing blossom of orange flame. His clothes smoking, he came up on his feet with both M-16s blazing. He spun around in a circle at the edge of the glade, spraying bullets in all directions, then dived into brush. He rolled to extinguish his smoldering clothes, and came up with his back braced against the trunk of a huge tree.
Holding a gun under each arm, he continued to spray bullets in a semicircle around him for almost thirty seconds, then released both triggers and flattened himself on the ground in anticipation of return gunfire or a mortar shell.
Except for the dying echo of his own guns, the jungle was silent.
They were converging on him, Chant thought. They wanted him alive, to torture, to extract secrets from, and then to hold as a very public captive to humiliate the United States and dram hope from the Hmong.
That wasn’t going to happen, Chant thought grimly. He believed he could withstand the torture without divulging secrets, but he had, without ever trying or wanting it, become too much of a symbol to too many people to allow himself to be captured and used for the enemy’s purposes; he would kill himself first.
But first he would take as many of the enemy with him as possible; if they were planning to take him alive, they would be willing to pay a large price—and he would extract it He had not yet emptied the two M-16s, and he had two extra clips of ammunition. From this moment on, he would make every bullet count…
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