The jeep stood idle; the machine gun lay on its squat tripod. One man sat with his legs spread on either side of the gun, his arms cradled across the handle, chin dropped on his arms. Another sat with his back to the side of the jeep, cupping his hands around a fresh cigarette, lighting it. The match flipped from his fingers and sizzled in a puddle. The one who liked to laugh leaned hipshot on one of the wooden sawhorses thrown across the street. The man at the gun lifted his head and spoke a few words. His companion laughed coarsely, almost falsely.
Khang came up and lay belly-flat by him. Tyreen glanced up. The gray surface of the clouds was pearled. Here and there the sun shone through. It seemed a little warmer than it had been. Hooker crawled up, his face bloodless, his brooding gaze dropping to fix itself on the machine gun and the soldiers. Hooker glanced at Khang, and his expression was static. A car rattled along a street nearby. Tyreen whispered, “One thing wrong. There were four men when they set up the roadblock. Where’s that fourth man?”
“Walking a beat,” said Hooker. “Hear him?”
“No.”
“He’s down the far end of the block. Coming back this way.”
“All right,” said Tyreen. “Wait for him to turn the corner up at that end. Jump him when he’s out of sight of the others. And Hooker — no noise. Understand?”
Hooker’s eyes were devoid of everything but consciousness. He lifted the knife from his boot. Tyreen said, “Live soldiers are more use to me than dead heroes, Sergeant.”
“Yes, sir.”
Hooker turned away and crawled toward the side of the building. Tyreen watched him go over the edge onto the roof of the neighboring building. When Hooker was out of view, Tyreen heard the soft thud of boots coming back up the street, under the wall. The sentry walked on slowly toward the far corner where Hooker waited. Tyreen caught Khang’s sullen glance and said, “Wait here.” He went off, trailing Hooker across the rooftops, moving with silent speed. Looking back, he saw Khang’s round head turning steadily to watch him. Khang was showing his teeth. Tyreen went over the edge onto the lower roof and saw Hooker at the end of it; Hooker’s hard, bright eye flickered, and then he swung around, swinging one leg over the wall. He looked back again, and Tyreen nodded.
Fine short wrinkles converged around Tyreen’s tired eyes. Hooker was bent over, a dozen feet ahead of him, looking down into the alley. Cold air clung to the rooftops. Looking at Hooker’s wide flat back, Tyreen could feel the strain in Hooker, temper crowding self-control. Hooker tensed, crouching poised. The knife lifted and glinted dull reflection against Tyreen’s eyes. Hooker’s fist clenched at the rim of the roof and he bent, curved his knife-arm, and dropped soundlessly from sight.
Tyreen dug his feet in, lifting his knife. He moved rapidly to the edge and looked down.
Ten feet below, Hooker stood with feet spread, body bent in an attitude of strained anticipation. Before him a stirring shadow on the ground was the soldier, knocked flat by the force of Hooker’s jump. Hooker held his knife up. The blade was still clean. “Damned fool,” Tyreen murmured. He saw the soldier’s arm move. He lifted his own knife by the point and flung it down with enough force to sink it hilt-deep in the soldier’s back.
The soldier’s back arched in powerful spasm. There was one quiet cough; that was all. Tyreen slid over the edge, let himself hang by his hands, and dropped to the alley. He wheeled to face Hooker and saw Hooker’s angry flashing eyes and spoke under his breath with flat calm:
“Next time sink your knife when you drop on the man. You waited for him to make a fight out of it. What if he’d yelled? One more play like that, and I’ll kill you myself. You hear me?”
Hooker’s glance clashed with his. Hooker’s eager, cruel hatred grew bright. He started forward with his knife, stopped, held Tyreen’s eyes a moment longer, and dropped his face, putting the knife away. He looked up again and checked something he had clearly meant to say.
Tyreen put his foot against the soldier’s shoulder and withdrew his knife; he wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic and put it away.
Hooker opened his mouth and then closed it. He moved closer and said, “Somebody’s coming up the street.”
Tyreen put his shoulder to the corner and looked around into the street. Beyond the roadblock he saw a single small figure coming toward the wooden sawhorses. It was the girl, Lin Thao: he recognized her unmistakably. Hooker crowded around beside him. “What the shit?”
The girl was looking up, past the roadblock and above it. Toward the roof of the garage. Tyreen said, “Khang must be showing himself so she can see him.”
“So she can give us all away, Colonel? Like that bastard Sun?”
The girl walked straight toward the roadblock. One of the soldiers grinned. The man by the machine gun stood up. All of them faced the girl. Tyreen murmured, “Come on. No noise.”
He stepped out and walked toward the backs of the soldiers. He had gone five or six paces when the girl brought her hand to her mouth and uttered a weak scream. Her eyes rolled up and she fell limp to the ground, as if she had fainted. The soldiers spoke in quick excitement, and all three ran around the sawhorses toward the crumpled girl.
Tyreen crossed the street and moved quickly along the wall. He lifted his head and made a signal to Nguyen Khang; Khang moved along the rooftop, keeping parallel to the soldiers. Tyreen’s boots moved without sound. He felt weak and unsure of himself, but his knife came up and by the time the first soldier knelt over the girl, Tyreen was within jumping distance of the man. Khang dropped off the roof; Hooker grabbed a man from behind by the throat, and Khang broke a man’s back with his boots, jumping on him from the roof. Tyreen put one hand around the third soldier’s mouth and rammed his knife up between the man’s back ribs. The man’s mouth sprang open and he tried to scream; the sound was blocked by Tyreen’s palm.
The girl rolled over and looked up. She said gravely, “We must go.”
“In the jeep,” Tyreen said, and turned toward the garage. Theodore Saville was sliding the big door open.
Chapter Thirty-seven
1345 Hours
It was a wild journey.
The Chinese jeep’s canvas top and doors were spattered with mud; the only visibility was through a single arc of wiper-cleared glass. It was hard to see out, but no one could see in. Saville and the girl and Hooker sat squashed together, holding Eddie Kreizler across their laps. Sergeant Khang, in his North Vietnamese uniform, sat in the passenger seat.
Tyreen pressed the clutch and said, “The damned gearshifts are never where you expect them to be.” They had to cross the length of Chutrang, and the city was littered with roadblocks. He put the jeep into the head of the boulevard. It bucked and swayed, battering all his hurts; it made a red haze swim before his eyes; it made him blink back tears of pain and fatigue and impatient, edgy rage. Walls of yellow stone and cracking stucco lurched by. He almost collided with a buffalo-drawn wagon. Through it all, he felt the unreasoning push of time driving forward. His face was pallid and wet, and he could not put out of his head the image of the dying red cast of the eyes of the soldier whose back he had knifed.
He swung the jeep into a side street and squinted ahead. The half-mile of visible pavement seemed clear of roadblocks. He rammed forward, slipping wildly around a delivery van parked in the street and trusting pedestrians to dodge out of his path. The street lay cluttered with obstacles — motor scooters, parked vehicles, ox-drawn equipment, an enormous ancient tractor-trailer rig. After eight or nine blocks he judged he had been on the street long enough. He turned off, narrowly avoiding a crash with a farmer’s cart.