“Okay,” Saville said, and opened the door.
Sergeant Khang walked in and saluted with a dry expression. Saville skidded the door shut. Tyreen said, “Where’d you get that uniform?”
“Ran into an old buddy,” said Nguyen Khang.
J. D. Hooker said, “You slimy bastard. What’ll you bet he—”
No one was paying any attention to him. Hooker trailed off into a grumble.
Tyreen studied the sardonic twist of Nguyen Khang’s features. “What did you find out?”
“Captain Kreizler’s still in interrogation. The interrogation officer’s Colonel Trung. About the meanest son of a bitch in this part of the country, sir, next to you, maybe.”
Saville said, “You’re asking to get your ass chewed, Sergeant.”
“Go on,” Tyreen said mildly.
“I talked to the transportation officer. Gave him a line of crap, told him to deliver a staff car to headquarters at twenty after twelve. I thought we could use it maybe. Okay, Colonel? I told the guy they sent me down to deliver Captain Kreizler and Colonel Trung to Hanoi for questioning by the big Red brass. He swallowed it. Hell, I ought to be a Goddamn movie actor, the way I pulled it off. Should’ve seen me.”
Theodore Saville said, “Looks like you’ve done a good piece of work.”
“Yes, sir,” Khang said; his voice had gone suddenly dry. He said, “You want to know the truth, Captain, I was all set to conk out. Faint right there. Surprised me I didn’t.” He added absently, “It’s stopped raining.”
Tyreen said, “Over here, everybody. We’ll map this out.”
Tyreen and Saville reached the head of the street and turned into a boulevard, heads bowed under their hats. They walked half a block, and Tyreen said, “This way.”
They turned down a steeply pitched passage. Tyreen heard the quick scratch of running footsteps receding somewhere nearby. That would be J. D. Hooker and Corporal Smith, on their way across the side of the mountain.
Tyreen’s pulse pumped. Saville fell into step beside him. They ran down through the narrow curving street, paused to look back, and turned at a dogtrot into a new passageway, still going downhill. Across a wide intersection stood a high fence overhung by wild foliage. Tyreen stopped on the corner and examined the area with all his charged senses. He detected nothing, but Theodore Saville shook his head and they drifted back into the obscurity of a doorway while footsteps advanced into the intersection. A shape became visible, shuffling across the pavement. Tyreen’s fingers found the hilt of his knife. The pedestrian came close, paused to remove his straw hat and scratch his head — a gray, ragged old man in patched clothes; he replaced the hat and wandered on. Tyreen heard the release of Saville’s breath.
It would be a thirty-yard sprint across open ground. Tyreen felt alert, primed, all his juices under high pressure; he broke into a hard run.
His boots pounded the pavement, and when he brought himself up short below the iron fence, the breath was crashing in and out of him. Saville came swiftly across the intersection, stopped, and said, “You’re in bad shape, David.”
“Give me a boost.”
Saville cupped his hands and lifted Tyreen easily. On top of the fence Tyreen reached down to pull the big man up after him, but he lacked the strength for it; Saville got a grip on the top rail of the fence with one hand and pulled himself up by the strength of one thick arm. They dropped off the fence into a thicket of weeds and thorns.
They pawed through the brush until they could see the garrison motor pool directly below.
“What time is it?”
“Eight minutes of twelve.”
“Better keep moving,” Tyreen said.
Beyond the motor pool, at the foot of the mountain, he could see an officer on the headquarters porch talking to a squad of armed soldiers. The squad leader saluted, and the knot of men broke up, double-timing away by twos toward the perimeter of the camp. “Extra sentries,” Tyreen said. “They figure something’s up.”
“Wouldn’t you? They’re scared — they don’t know who pulled off that stunt at the power station.”
Closer to him, past the truck park at the big garage, Tyreen saw two figures moving along the back wall. “Khang and Sergeant Sun,” Saville said. “Let’s get down there, David.”
Tyreen led off, walking down the hill at a steady pace. He felt a target for a hundred guns. Dressed in the remnants of a North Vietnamese uniform, he moved deliberately, but his legs strained to run. He heard Saville’s boots striding behind him. They achieved the edge of the pavement and moved among orderly rows of trucks and tanks; Saville said, “This is damn thorny.”
The last row of tanks — that was the spot, between the end tank and the beginning of the row of half-tracks. Tyreen stopped behind the bulk of the tank. Up the hill he could see the brows of the big gasoline storage tanks that were due for destruction in less than half an hour.
He said, “All right. We wait here.”
“I feel like a mouse walking into a mousetrap — on purpose.”
“That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Tyreen said.
Chapter Thirty-two
1155 Hours
On the sky, ponderous clouds moved slowly, but the rain held off, and the premonition of sunlight was strong. Corporal Smith huddled in the shadow of the big storage tank. His eyes moved fitfully. When he turned his head, his chin trembled. “You about done with that?”
“Relax,” said J. D. Hooker. “Plenty of time, kid.”
“I wonder if they made it. What if we get cut off?”
“For Christ’s sake shut up,” Hooker said. He was bent over, measuring out fuse by inches. He checked his watch and clipped off a precise length of fuse. He tamped it into the set charge with care and scooped gravel over the charge, burying it from sight. “Pick up them ammo boxes.” He popped a wooden match alight on his thumbnail and made sure the fuse was burning properly. It burned smokelessly; in a moment the spark receded into the plastic sheath. There was no odor, no sound.
He turned and lifted the machine gun. “Come on.”
Not far away on a hillside road there was the clatter of a buffalo-drawn cart. The noon chill cut through Corporal Smith’s clothes and stung the tip of his nose. He crabbed along behind Hooker’s crouched running figure; they slipped out through a fresh cut in the fence. Smith fought a moment’s alarm when his pants snagged on the wire. He plunged through, tearing off a patch of cloth. Somewhere on the windless slope an engine chattered into life and roared. Patches of fog covered the higher reaches of the mountain. Smith said, “Wait up.”
“Keep up,” Hooker answered. They ran through a grove of stunted trees and came in sight of a crumbling temple half overgrown by a garden gone wild. Hooker ran across the road and trampled a path choked with creepers. Smith followed him into the temple, and Hooker turned to his right. “Up there.”
“Jesus.”
They went up a precarious curling staircase of wood. The steps sagged low under Hooker’s weight. Smith put his shoulders to the wall and crept up the steps wordlessly, fearfully. Splinters of rotted wood dug into his back. Mildew and dust lay thick in the dark temple. Hooker battered a path through thick cobwebs with the machine gun. “Come on — come on.” They climbed past tier after tier of open pagoda — style windows. Smith felt choked by dust and the smell of rot. The building seemed ready to collapse on him. A thick vine crawled in through an opening; he was sure it was reaching for his ankle. He listened to the hollow sound of his own voice: “You think this is a Cao Dai temple?”
“How in hell do I know? Quit draggin’ your ass.”
They climbed to the top landing, forty feet above ground. Hooker planted the machine gun in the center of the open arc. “Lay out them grenades over here where I can reach them.” He bellied down behind the gun and fed ammunition into it.