She nodded.
‘How far is it?’ he asked.
‘A mile or less,’ she said.
‘Okay,’ Hatcher’s voice rasped, ‘that’s our fall-back position. We’ll have the Cigarette boat wait here and we’ll go around the bend in the snakeboat. If we get in trouble, we run overland, like rabbits, back here, forget the small boat.’
Cohen said, ‘How many men do re take with us?’
‘Sing goes in the bar with u, covers our ass,’ said Hatcher. ‘Maybe one other shooter to stay with the snakeboat and keep his eyes open in case Sam-Sam should show up. The other three stay with the Cigarette. If we have to run for it they can cover our retreat. If it goes smoothly, they’ll just follow us back.’
‘Sam-Sam will not be back until tomorrow,’ Daphne reiterated.
‘Uh-huh. Well, there’s always the unexpected,’ Hatcher said, half aloud. ‘I’ll stop worrying about Sam-Sam when we get back to Hong Kong.’
‘You are very cautious,’ Daphne said with a smile.
‘And still alive,’ Hatcher answered. ‘Let’s put it together and get on up there.’
As they entered the domain of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti the jungle sounds merged with other sounds. Human sounds. While the sun began to sink behind the trees a strange chant drifted through the trees from in front of them.
‘What’s that?’ Cohen asked.
Daphne said, ‘The women are singing a hanchi, some kind of good-luck song.’
‘I’ve never heard that before,’ Cohen said.
‘It’s Cambodian, I think,’ Daphne said.
‘Are they Khmer Rouge?’ Hatcher asked.
She shrugged. ‘Khmer Rouge, free Laotian guerrillas, river tramps. Who knows. Remember, the women are just as mean as the men, and maybe a little quicker.’
The stream was no more than a hundred feet wide. As they rounded the elbow they saw the first signs of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti. There were three barges lashed to trees hard on the bank to their right, jutting out into the small river. Sing had to swing out to get around them. On the first, there were two hooches, side by side on the back of the barge, like guard stations.
A dozen women, all bare-breasted and wearing red bandannas tied tightly around stringy black hair, chanted as they cleaned the deck. On one corner of the barge two large woks were smoking as another woman stirred vegetables for dinner into them. A man sat on another corner fishing.
‘Quite a domestic little scene,’ Hatcher growled.
‘Sweet,’ Cohen said, ‘like a Fourth of July picnic.’
There were five or six crates of electronic equipment stacked in the center of the deck of the second barge, sloppily covered by a tarp. Beside it, the third barge held only ten or fifteen cases of ammunition. Hatcher checked the ammo through binoculars: 9 mm., .30 caliber, .38 caliber, a crate of .45s.
‘A lot of bullets and very little inventory,’ said Hatcher.
‘Sam-Sam’s probably got his heavy stuff stashed a little farther upriver. He’s not expecting customers,’ Cohen offered.
‘Good,’ said Hatcher.
Beyond the barges, another hundred yards up the creek, was Leatherneck John’s, a large, ugly square with thatched sides and a corrugated roof. It jutted out over the creek on stilts and was surrounded on both sides by makeshift piers, like a shoddy mud-flat marina. Several boats of various descriptions were tied up at the pier. One of them was a scruffy-looking Chris Craft, at least twenty years old, a tattered German flag dangling from its radio antenna.
Daphne said, ‘The old white fishing boat is the Dutchman’s.’
‘Good,’ Cohen whispered. ‘Maybe we can get out of here in a hurry.’ He swept the binoculars farther upstream. A heavily laden barge, well covered with waterproof tarpaulins, hugged the bank a hundred yards past the bar.
‘Jesus,’ Cohen breathed.
‘What?’ Hatcher asked.
‘Check the barge farther upstream,’ Cohen said and Hatcher lifted his glasses.
‘Fat city,’ said Cohen. ‘That’s the store.’
As they watched, a man came out on the front of the barge and stretched, then began t urinate into the river. He was a tall, very thin black man with greasy hair kneaded into pigtails held in place by a red headband. His blue shirt was open to the waist anti he had an AK-47 over his shoulder and a H&K 9 mm. pistol in his belt. He was wearing gold-rimmed Porsche sunglasses.
‘Uh-oh, that’s the Haitian, the one they call Billy Death,’ Cohen said. ‘He’s the one likes to cut off people’s feet. Look down at the bow.’
Hatcher swung the binoculars down and searched the front of the barge. There, hanging by a cord, appeared to be a pair of shoes. Hatcher flipped the switch on the glasses and increased the focal length, zooming in tightly on the shoes. He could see the rotten gray skin of an ankle sagging over the top of one of the shoes. Flies buzzed furiously around it.
‘My God,’ Hatcher gasped.
‘It should be all right,’ Daphne said. ‘He doesn’t know you. He probably won’t pay any attention to us.’
‘Yeah,’ said Cohen. ‘Just business as usual.’
Sam-Sam’s barge was a sprawling floating flatbed, stacked with contraband and ammunition. He had a dozen of his best men with him and seven women, some of them concubines, some tougher than the men. Batal was along but Billy Death was not. The Haitian didn’t like the river.
‘What is the problem with Billy Death?’ Sam-Sam asked Batal.
‘He cannot swim,’ the Iranian answered.
Sam-Sam thought that was funny.
‘He is afraid to ride the barge because he cannot swim?’ Sam-Sam said with a laugh.
The Iranian nodded.
‘Hell, I cannot swim,’ Sam-Sam said, smacking his chest with an open hand.
‘Neither can I,’ Batal said, and he started laughing too.
A racket from the rear of the barge broke up their merriment. The helmsman came running forward.
‘What was all that about?’ Sam-Sam demanded.
The helmsman pointed toward the rear of the barge.
‘Generator blow up,’ he stammered.
‘Well, change it. Throw that one overboard and hook up another one.’
The helmsman shook his head.
‘Do not have,’ he said.
‘We do not have a spare generator?’
The helmsman shook his head. He stared down at the deck.
‘Only one generator?’ Sam-Sam stormed. ‘We got every fucking other thing on this damn barge. We got TVs, stereos, we got Thai silk and cotton from India. We got cigarettes from America, France, England, Turkey, Egypt. So why do we only have one generator? So? Anybody got an answer to that?’
He raged around the deck kicking at things and cursing to himself, his snake eyes darting from one person to another. Suddenly he drew his pistol. The men and women on deck moved back as a group. Sam-Sam stalked the deck like an insane man, twirling on the balls of his feet, glaring from one face to the next.
‘Who takes responsibility?’ he screamed.
His clan stared at him, afraid to speak.
‘Who wants to eat a bullet?’ he yelled. His voice carried into the jungle and echoed back. ‘Anybody?’
He waited for a few moments more, enjoying the fear etched on the faces of his band. Then suddenly he wheeled and emptied the gun into the forest. Birds scattered, shrieking their complaints.
Sam-Sam turned back to his crew and laughed. His crew relaxed. There was a wave of nervous laughter.
‘So — we go back,’ Sam-Sam said with a shrug. ‘What is the big rush to go anywhere?’
LEATHERNECK JOHN’S
Sing guided the snakeboat into the dock beside Leatherneck John’s and they tied it down.
‘Everybody stay loose unless there’s trouble, okay?’ Hatcher said.
Sing and Joey, the other gunman, nodded. Sing followed them down the makeshift dock to the bar. A large slab of ebony over the door had ‘Leatherneck John’s Last Chance Saloon’ carved into it, and a line below it, ‘Founded 1977.’