Temple of Gold
A Lenny and Lucas Adventure
AJ Stewart
Jacaranda Drive
To all those—young and old—seeking their next adventure.
Today is the day.
And Heather, always.
Chapter One
Western Kampuchea, near the Thailand border 1983
Lenny Cox watched the two men shake hands from his perch eight hundred yards up the hill. It wasn’t the handshake of lifelong buddies or former college roommates, but it was a lot more familiar than Lenny thought was warranted. They were smiling like they were closing a business deal and were about to bust out the cigars. But there were no cigars, even though Lenny felt like he was in a damned humidor.
Lenny felt the sweat drip from his red mane, down his spine, and into his butt crack. It itched but he left it alone. He wasn’t taking his eye from the sniper scope or his fingers from the trigger.
“Is that him?” whispered Barbera, his so-called spotter on this mission.
“That’s him. General Tan.”
Lenny and Barbera watched the two men walk away from the Huey helicopter to stand under some kind of open-shelter mess or eating area. Men in rolled-up sleeves jumped from the chopper and began pulling out crates, which they handed off to lean men in green uniforms and red-and-white-checkered kerchiefs. The men in the uniforms brought the crates to an open space behind the mess shelter, and then went back for more.
“Who lives in a dung heap like this?” asked Barbera.
“About half the planet,” said Lenny.
They were looking at a small village. What Lenny figured for the mess area was the largest structure, despite the absence of walls. There were a half-dozen other huts, cobbled together from branches and reeds and odd cuts of wood board and corrugated iron. None looked suitable for an armory. They barely looked suitable for habitation. The hard-packed dirt in front of the village was the only open space visible to Lenny and Barbera. Between their hill and the village were five hundred yards of rice paddies, a patchwork of rough squares filled with what Lenny guessed to be a foot or two of water, and beyond the village was nothing but jungle for as far as either man could see, even through a scope.
Lenny counted a dozen people in the village now. General Tan of the Khmer Rouge, and Ventura—the CIA jerk in charge of this whole operation—stood in the shade. Two of Ventura’s men were unloading the Huey, and the two chopper pilots sat in the cockpit, ready to make a quick getaway. The other six were the scrappy guys in military uniforms dumping crates onto the dirt. There were no other people. No villagers, no one working the rice paddies.
Once all the crates were removed from the chopper, the two CIA guys started pulling out the twenty-pound bags of rice. An uneducated eye might have mistaken them for a humanitarian mission.
Ventura and General Tan wandered out into the sun to inspect the crates. The general called one of his men to lever open a wooden crate, and once open, the man pulled out a rifle. Lenny recognized it as an M16, the ubiquitous rifle from the Vietnam War. The man held it up to the general, who said something Lenny could not hear, but which caused the man to drop the weapon back into the crate and go on to open the next.
This time he pulled out a long item wrapped in paper. It looked too long and thin to be another rifle. When the soldier pulled off the paper, General Tan smiled the smile of a man who had spent too much time in the jungle. There weren’t a lot of dentists in Kampuchea, as it was known now, or Cambodia, as it had been known before 1975, when the Khmer Rouge had taken control of the country. From what Lenny had heard, there weren’t many professionals left in Kampuchea, period. He refocused on the general, who was taking the long item from his soldier.
“What is that?” asked Barbera, looking through his spotting scope. He didn’t have a scope on his rifle. It wasn’t his job to shoot anything. His job was to watch Lenny’s back, while Lenny watched Ventura’s back. It was a job Lenny could have done alone, but he figured Ventura didn’t quite trust him. CIA guys were like that. They didn’t trust their own, let alone a Marine seconded to a CIA operation.
“It’s a metal detector,” said Lenny. He was mildly comforted by the notion that even Barbera—one of Ventura’s own people—hadn’t known what was in the crates they had brought into the Kampuchean jungle.
“What’s he need a metal detector for?”
Lenny raised his eyebrow to no one. “Lot of landmines got laid around here.”
“Didn’t these guys lay them?”
“Yeah, they did. Maybe they forgot where they put them.”
The general nodded along as Ventura explained how the apparatus worked. The general nodded again and handed the device back to his man. The soldier then opened another crate and pulled out a cardboard box that, in another place and time, might have held a pair of shoes. The soldier opened the box and handed a yellow rectangular device to the general. Again, Ventura showed the general how the device worked. There was the main box, joined by a coiled wire to a wand-like probe. Ventura held the probe out and both men focused on the top of the yellow box.
“What’s that?” asked Barbera.
Lenny took a long, slow breath. “Don’t know,” he lied.
Once again the general nodded and returned the item to his man, who placed it back in the crate from which it had come. General Tan then led Ventura back to the shade of the mess structure, and they watched the remaining rice bags get unloaded from the chopper and dumped beside the crates.
When the Huey had been fully unloaded, the two CIA guys jumped back inside, and the rotors on the chopper began to move ever so slowly. Ventura shook the general’s hand again and then dashed out into the sun. The general didn’t follow. Lenny didn’t blame him. The air under the jungle canopy was thick enough to eat. In the sun it was like being poached. Lenny couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to live in such a place, let alone fight over it. But his government had been putting men and boys into jungles like this one for as long as Lenny had been alive. Korea, Vietnam, now Kampuchea. Lenny blew air up at his face to stem the tide of sweat and then focused back on his scope.
Ventura rushed across the dirt and up into the helicopter like a man in a hurry trying to look like he wasn’t in a hurry. The rotors spun fast now, and Ventura was barely buckled in before the Huey lifted off in a cloud of dust, rising fast, straight up at first, and then, before it had cleared the tree level, it banked hard to the west as it rose, up and away, toward the falling sun.
Lenny listened until the whomp-whomp of the chopper was lost to the hum of the jungle. He could faintly hear the six soldiers talking, standing around the crates and bags in the sun, while the general watched from the shade.
“We should go,” said Barbera.
“What are they doing?” said Lenny.
“Who? The general? Who gives a damn?”
“Why are they just standing there?”
“Like I said, man, who cares? Let’s go.”
“A few more minutes.”
“You want to get left out here? We gotta make the chopper.”
“They’ll wait.”
“Ventura’s not going to wait all night.”
“Then we’ll walk out.”
“What is your story, man? You were just supposed to cover Ventura in case something went wrong. Not whatever this is.”
“This is recon. This is what I do.”
“You jarheads are a breed apart,” said Barbera, shaking his head.
Lenny smiled. He knew it wasn’t meant as a compliment, but that’s how Lenny took it. They were a breed apart. They were different. And they liked it that way. Besides, he knew the kid wasn’t going to walk back through the jungle to the exfil point all by himself.
The shadows
were growing longer and Barbera was getting increasingly fidgety when Lenny caught the sound of approaching vehicles. Two trucks broke from the jungle—a track that was indiscernible from Lenny’s position—and pulled to a stop, side by side, near the waiting soldiers.
Lenny watched men dismount from the rear of the trucks. These men were not in uniform—at least, it wasn’t a military uniform. They wore gray shirts and pants, reminiscent of the Vietcong’s pajamas. They moved slowly, sitting on the truck bed and slipping their sandaled feet onto the ground rather than jumping. Despite the falling sun, the humidity hadn’t abated, and so economy of movement made sense to Lenny, but there was more to it. The men’s clothing was loose by design, but it hung from their frames like flaccid sails on a square-rigger. They were little more than skin and bone. They helped each other down and then stood quietly in the sapping heat.
General Tan barked orders. Lenny picked up only the odd word; he didn’t speak Kampuchean. He didn’t even know if that was the name of the language. He did, however, know the sound of orders being given. He was familiar with the pitch and cadence. The thin, frail men moved slowly toward the equipment crates. Where two of Ventura’s men had been able to carry each crate from the chopper, it took four of these men great effort to hoist the crates onto the trucks. The soldiers just watched. The general began pacing the mess area like he had somewhere important to be.
They loaded the first truck with crates at the front and rice bags at the rear, and then sealed up the tailgate with a simple latch. Then the frail men started in on the second truck. They numbered about twenty, and they moved like grasses in the breeze—or would have, had there been any breeze. All Lenny felt was energy-sapping humidity.
But things were clearly moving too slowly for General Tan, because he stormed from his shade, yelling and pointing. Perhaps the heat and humidity were getting to him, too. Two of his men dashed toward the small huts that constituted the village, and the general clambered up over the tailgate of the loaded truck, and stood atop a pile of rice bags.
He wasn’t up there to help, but to yell harder and point more. The frail men continued loading the last of the crates and then began with the final bags of rice. They worked in pairs, one at each end, carrying the dead weight to the truck and then working even harder to lift it up to the load bed. Lenny could have hefted one on each shoulder and gotten the job done in ten minutes. But he figured he had eaten more the previous day than these men had as a group in the last week.
The two soldiers returned from the huts with some villagers in tow. Lenny counted seven people—possibly women, but he wouldn’t have put money on it. They weren’t old but they didn’t look particularly young, either. The general yelled some more and the women joined in the work. They weren’t any stronger than the men but they weren’t any weaker, either, and the increased numbers saw the bags loaded faster.
But not fast enough. The general yelled from his perch, and ordered double time. The women and men shuffled harder, but to Lenny’s eye, they looked like they were running in quicksand. Then Lenny saw an older man collapse, dropping his end of the bag. The seam split as it hit hard ground.
Grains of rice spilled across the dirt as the man fell to his knees. Others set their own bags down and dashed over to help scoop up the spilled rice. The general roared and everyone froze as he spoke—inaudible to Lenny—and the eyes of every villager dropped to the ground. Then the old man slowly stood. He shuffled, hunched, to the rear of the truck, where the general towered above him.
The man stood five feet back from the truck, head bowed. The general slipped a pistol from the holster on his hip and held it by his side. Then he spoke again. Lenny could see the general’s words were addressed to the sorry-looking villagers before him, but as one, the villagers concentrated hard on the dirt. Lenny had seen that look before. The knowledge of what was coming, and the hope that it might not happen if only they didn’t look.
The general aimed his pistol at the old man’s bowed head.
“He’s gonna kill that old guy,” whispered Barbera.
“Range to target?” asked Lenny.
“What?” asked Barbera. “You can’t shoot.”
“Range?”
“Cox, we’re not here, you get it? You can’t shoot. The general is Ventura’s guy.”
Lenny said nothing. He didn’t need the range. He knew it. He’d asked for confirmation out of habit, but he had seen the airborne recon photos and analyzed the distances and drawn up a range card that he had consulted after setting up position. It was 803 yards—give or take—to the front of the mess structure. That meant roughly 808 yards to the truck.
“Cox, do you hear me? I’m calling Ventura.”
“Do what you gotta do, pal.”
Barbera rolled over and pulled the handset from his field radio. “Flying Fox, this is Possum, come in.”
Lenny kept his eye on the scope. The general spoke again, and the old man slowly, one leg at a time, got to his knees. Lenny felt the trigger against his finger. He could hear Barbera on the radio, but it was just white noise. His focus was on the target. He gently moved the crosshairs onto the general. His breathing slowed to almost nothing. There was no breeze to speak of. He just needed to allow for the drop in elevation and gravity, and the humidity.
He heard Barbera roll back.
“Ventura says if you shoot, he’ll leave you out here. Do you hear me?”
Lenny didn’t reply. The muscles in the general’s jaw tightened.
Then all hell broke loose.
The tailgate suddenly dropped open, and the general’s feet flew out from beneath him, and for a moment he seemed to be suspended midair, like a cartoon character, and then he fell back onto the rice bags.
But the bags were moving, too. They had shifted against the tailgate, and now shot from the truck like coins from a slot machine. General Tan landed with a thud on a rice bag heading west, and he sped off the truck like a kid on a snow sled. His legs flailed upward and his arms flailed outward, and his pistol flew back into the load behind him as he went flying down the mound of falling rice bags.
Lenny grinned as the sack hurtled out from under the general, like organic ordnance, aimed directly at the old man still kneeling behind the truck. He was frail of body but not of mind, and dropping into a ball, he rolled out of the path of the rice bombs, and away from the general, whose tailbone cracked hard as he landed. The general let out an almighty howl, and then he was flipped around and driven into the rice bags face first.
“What the hell?” asked Barbera.
Lenny’s grin turned into a full-fledged smile as he glanced along the hillside to the east. He put his eye back to the scope to see that everyone in the village had frozen. No one moved now to help the fallen general. The wind had been knocked out of him, and he took a minute to recover.
Barbera rolled back to his radio. “Flying Fox, this is Possum. Uncle is down.”
The general levered himself into a pushup position, a look of agony etched on his face.
“Negative, Flying Fox.” Barbera glanced at Lenny. “He didn’t take the shot. Uncle fell out of the truck.”
Lenny suppressed a laugh as the general screamed orders. Two of his men ran to take his arms, and then they dragged him to the cab of the truck. The other four soldiers rushed forward to heave the fallen bags back into the load bed, and then two of them jumped up into the bed and pulled the tailgate up. The latch appeared to be smashed, so they held the tailgate closed.
“Roger, Flying Fox.” Barbera looked at Lenny. “We have to go, right now!”
For a moment, Lenny didn’t move. The two trucks roared to life and pulled away, into the jungle whence they had come. Some of the villagers moved to the old man, while the others began scooping up the fallen rice. All of them were busy, except one. One woman stood alone, her face to the hillside, looking up toward a position just east of where Lenny lay.
He rolled away, pulled up his rifle, and shot Barbera a grin.
“Let’s go catch a ride,” he said.
Barbera took off into the darkening jungle, and Lenny glanced back at the village below, and then to the east. He ran after Barbera, toward the waiting chopper.
Chapter Two
The safe house was an apartment above an office space on the western bank of the Chao Phraya. The view was quintessentially Bangkok: water taxis and long-tail boats and ferries cutting across the water and back, delivering people and goods, conducting commerce on each bank and in the middle of the river. Across the water, the distinctive rooftops of the Grand Palace cut the sky like a silhouette. When the breeze turned, the stench of humanity wafted in through the open window from the river below.
Ventura didn’t find the smell particularly appealing, but it was tolerable given it provided the only air movement in the apartment. He leaned back in his chair and felt the sweat sticking his shirt to his back. As he rolled a cold can of Coke across his forehead, he watched the Marine. The kid could shoot, that was for sure. Ventura had seen him on the testing ground at Pendleton, where he proved to be both sneaky and accurate.
But he was a Marine. They didn’t understand the world. Everything was buttoned up and hospital corners with them. Black and white. But Ventura knew the world didn’t work like that, especially the world he lived in. Everything was shades of gray, and it was all horribly messy. So Ventura tried to keep the Marine on a short leash, and deploy him judiciously.
Lenny Cox was watching the boats and activity on the river. He didn’t seem to be actively ignoring Ventura, but it was hard to tell. He was a cool customer, one of those guys who never seemed to get ruffled, whose heart rate rarely tipped over 80.
“I don’t think I’ve got your full attention,” said Ventura, across the small wooden coffee table from Lenny’s plastic chair. Lenny pulled his gaze from the river view and cocked an eyebrow at Ventura.
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