There was a holstered gun at Khay's belt but I couldn't use that: they would hear the shot. I used my hands instead, talking to him in my mind, wishing him well, speeding him on his journey, asking Buddha to receive his spirit and be mindful of the honour this man had brought upon himself in giving his life for his people. Then, when there was no pulse any more, I went to pull the cassette out of the Hartmann-Zeiss, but found it was jammed: the camera had been wrenched away from its bracket on impact and the shock had buckled the panels.
I could take the whole thing with me, but it was cumbersome, would slow me down a great deal, critically: if I were going to get clear of this mess I would need to be light on my feet. They should be within gunshot range by now, the people in the search party; all they would need to do was catch sight of me through the trunks of the palm trees, when I left the Sikorsky and began trekking.
A thought came: they might have orders to take any survivors alive, and I didn't want to confront the barking man again, Colonel Choen. This time he would put me through interrogation to the point of attrition.
I went on tugging at the cassette and got it halfway out, but it was jammed worse now because of the angle and I hit it back and started again, listening for voices as the gyro wound down to silence at last. The people in the search party would also be listening, guided by the sharp chittering sounds of the monkeys in the trees above the crash site.
I had to get this bloody thing out and take it with me: there was no choice. Take a letter, Miss Fortescue, to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Pentagon. Dear General, the Khmer Rouge base camp is in fact located at 12°3W x 10301 OE, as I have now established personally. A massive artillery barrage was fired as our helicopter twice made a run across the area. I trust this will leave you convinced.
Use the sheath knife on Khay's belt, prize the bloody thing out, come on, for Christ's sake, come on.
I'm sorry to disturb you, sir, but this has just come in from a British intelligence agent in Cambodia.
What the hell, he trusts it'll leave me convinced? Who is this guy?
I don't know, sir, but he could have gone loco, you know, jungle fever, it's pretty hot there right now.
Get this fucking thing out you've got one more fucking minute before they're here.
Sure. But there may be something in it. Tell him we gotta have photographs, okay? Tell him to get pictures.
Not coming out so I kicked the side of the camera to stress the frame back to a rectangle, parallelogram now, shit shaped, the sweat running off me because listen, those bastards are close, have to be very close, and I can't — I cannot leave here without this cassette, without the photographs for the general, Khay died to get me this bloody thing, kick, a precision kick and the cassette came out with a rush and I stuffed it inside my jump suit and we have to move rather quickly now, my good friend, do we not, feeling in Khay's pocket for his lighter, not finding it, try the other one, he's — he was left-handed, I should have remembered, wasting so much time, found it now and clambered onto the seats to reach the door above my head but it was stuck, the whole cabin was distorted just like that fucking camera, hit it with your shoulder, harder than that, could see a light, I could see some kind of light through the jungle, firefly, just joking, a soldier with a torch, the first of them, the nearest, hit it and we got it right this time and the door swung open and I clambered through and slid down the outside of the cabin, would need a fuse, the belt of the jump suit was all we had so use that.
Twisted the cap of the fuel tank open and made sure none of the stuff spilled onto me, dipped the belt in and pulled it out again and flicked the wheel of the lighter and flung myself clear and hit the jungle floor and burrowed through the undergrowth as the Sikorsky blew like a sunrise, kept on burrowing through the cool darkness of the leaves, the monkeys screaming now.
I suppose I had come three or four miles, burrowing at first and then getting onto my feet and stumbling through the dark entangling undergrowth, tripping many times on creeper, going down and smelling the fibrous soil against my face, rich and moist from the recent rain.
Now I was leaning against a palm trunk, watching the glow in the distance as Khay's funeral pyre burned low. He would have wanted cremation, according to Buddhist custom, and would have enjoyed the fact that torching the Sikorsky had given them something to focus on, the men in battledress, to hold their attention while I got clear. He would have left nothing for them in the ashes, no metal badge or insignia; he had known our sortie would perhaps bring us into direct contact with the Khmer Rouge.
Black smoke hung in a cloud above the trees, sometimes smothering the moon and then clearing again as the night air flowed, drawing out the smoke in skeins. I still listened for voices, for the clink of weaponry, but heard nothing, saw nothing of any light.
After a while I moved on again, heading east towards the nearest bullock track, and it was when I was tripped again by jungle creeper and went down with my hands spread out in front of me to break the fall that I felt a squirming beneath one of them, the left one if I remember, and then the rapid and repeated shock of the strike against my wrist, and when I hit the thing away I saw a long thin trickle of green against the jungle floor, and remembered what Gabrielle had said.
20: SKULLS
There are snakes in the river.
My spine arched again to a spasm and I lay like that, curved against the earth with my face to the sky, lay like that for I didn't know how long, the sweat pouring from me.
They swim across at night — the light attracts them, and the rats.
I slumped again like a drawn bow snapping, and the fever began. I had been expecting it.
Especially the hanuman — do you know it? The bright green one, quite small but more deadly thane cobra, even the king cobra.
Another spasm struck and I became arched, drawn taut, powerless to move, to relax the muscles. It was beginning to be difficult now to breathe, so I dragged at the air, sucked at it, but nothing happened. If the voluntary muscles were to be affected, so would the involuntary muscles, including those of the heart. I waited, with the moon swimming in the slits between my lids, and then the drawn nerves snapped again and my shoulders hit the earth.
Were there more of those things here? Did that one have a mate, and if so, how far was it from where I was lying? I couldn't do with more, with more than one. They are more deadly than the cobra.
One simply has to relax. Khay, the late Captain Khay. Western people drink whole bottle of whisky, sometimes works. Meditation best.
Soon after this — hours? I didn't know — the shaking began, and the delirium.
There were nine moons when the storm came roaring into the jungle and I counted them as the trees bent low under the force of the whipping wind, nine in a circle, circling, a giddy-go-round of white-lit moons, spinning in the night as the head rolled, lolled, shaking itself, was shaken by the fever as the sweat sprang and I shouted something, shouted at the storm, shuddering, hands, fingers clawing at the soft moist fibres, bringing them to the mouth to eat, hungering for remembered motions, eating, running — staggering up and lurching and then crashing down again, singing like a drunk as the storm howled through the leaves and blew away the circle of moons and there was just the dark and I lay blinded, whirled in the deep spinning vortex of the night.