“I thought you were dead. I was happy to think it.”
“How sad for you then that I was on the shore at the time that Mr. Victor blew up the boat. But believe me, your sentiments are merely fleeting. Believe me, they will change. You shall see." His unctuous tone changed to one of command. “Kai! Guard!"
I crawled out on a sturdy limb of the tree until I was directly over the clearing, looking down on them. Anna was sitting propped against a tree, the wolfhound directly in front of her with his lips drawn back in a warning snarl. Her face was a mask of terror and she didn't dare move. Across from her, Samantha sat on the ground. Ben Narouz loomed over her, the loaded Luger clenched in his hand.
He stooped down and grabbed the blouse she wore by the throat. It was still wet from her swim and clung tightly to her body. The outline of her breasts was clear and their tips were pointed circles, pinkly visible under the sopping material. Ben Narouz yanked savagely at the garment and it tore easily. When he took his hand away, the breasts were naked except for a few soggy strips clinging to their sides.
He knelt and reached out with his free hand to caress them. Samantha's face shot forward and she buried her teeth in his wrist. Ben Narouz screamed a curse and slapped the side of her face with the Luger.
That was the instant I picked to jump him. It seemed an opportune time, with him distracted by Samantha. But his reactions were quicker than I'd thought they would be and my misjudgment nearly proved my undoing.
As soon as my weight hit his back, his muscles countered the shock as if by reflex. He rolled forward with it in an unexpected somersault that sent us both flying. Ben Narouz was up first and I found myself looking into the muzzle of that Luger with his finger tensed on the trigger, about to shoot.
Samantha saved me. She jumped him from behind and the impact threw him off just enough so that the bullet went winging past my ribcage. What happened after that was a blur and only when it was all over was I able to sort it out.
Kai must have pulled Samantha off Ben Narouz just as I went for the Egyptian again. I hit his wrist first with I calculated karate blow and the gun went spinning from his grasp. He ducked the punch I threw and dived for where the Luger had fallen. I was right behind him and we hit the ground together, his arm outstretched, fingers groping for the gun.
They fastened on it and we thrashed about the ground together as he tried to get it in position to shoot me. I was on top of him then, trying to choke him with one hand, trying to ward off that gun inching into position with the other. It was no good. I had to roll off him fast or take a slug right in my back.
But the sudden releasing of my grip on his throat made Ben Narouz over-confident. This time his fast reaction worked against him. As he shoved the gun up and toward my retreating belly, my hand zoomed down, grabbed his wrist and turned it. At that same moment his finger tightened on the trigger. The slug tore the right side of his chest off. What was left of him fell back to the ground, lifeless.
I grabbed the gun from the dead hand. I swiveled fast and pumped lead into the dog, Kai. He had Samantha pinned to the ground and his fangs were already red with her blood as he tore at her flesh. The impact of the first bullet sent him spinning, yelping with pain. The next three put an end to him and his dead body, fur matted with his own blood, finally settled in the sanddust at the edge of the clearing.
I knelt beside Samantha. It was too late. The beast had literally ripped out her throat. Her once-pretty face was an ugly mess of raw, torn, still bleeding flesh. One of her breasts had been half-torn from her body. Her eyes were wide-open, staring, still filled with the horror of her death.
I closed the lids gently and turned away. Anna still leaned frozen against the tree. I pulled her to her feet. “Come on,” I said brusquely. Once more we plunged into the jungle.
Two days later we reached the outskirts of Saigon. The first sounds we heard of the city were the sounds of shooting. Some welcome! The first sight we had of it was the sight of a riot; That’s Saigon!
What was happening was reconstructed for me later by a friendly American officer. The fuel for the bonfire which had first drawn our eyes had been human. A Buddhist monk, a crowd of his followers thronging around him, had doused his robes with gasoline and struck a match to himself. The gasoline was American, part of the “aid" the United States pours regularly into Vietnam.
The crowd of Buddhists had gone berserk, venting their rage on passersby and nearby shops. The rest of the citizenry had responded by giving battle. Local gendarmes had come flooding onto the scene, pumping bullets into the crowd, shooting Buddhists and non-Buddhists indiscriminately.
While this was going on, the Viet Cong, taking advantage of the melee had attacked an ammunition store-house on the other side of the city. A handful of American “observers," outnumbered but valiant, were fighting them off. And at roughly the same time, the American Seventh Fleet, in the Gulf of Tonkin, was retaliating against a North Vietnamese attack by shelling shore installations. Such was my impression of the “war of containment" in Vietnam!
Caught up in the stampede of the crowd, Anna Kirkov and I were swept back the way we'd come.When the throng thinned out, and things began simmering down, I made inquiries as to where the American HQ might be. A Vietnamese lad with a smattering of English finally guided us there.
Our reception was a mixture of annoyance and amazement. A Colonel Elkins finally received us in his offce. The interview was constantly interrupted by the ringing of his phone to announce some new crisis requiring an immediate snap decision from him. Thus he heard my story in bits and pieces with his mind of necessity occupied with other, more pressing matters.
“You say you’re Americans, but it sounds pretty unlikely," he said. “How the devil could you have gotten here if that's true? Don't you know there's a war on? I tell you, it all sounds pretty suspicious."
“I'm American,” I tried to explain. “The lady's Russian and--"
“Russian! That's all the hell I needed! Viet Cong guerillas! Chinese Reds! And now a Russian! Why don't we just give this lousy country back to the Commies? They deserve it! I tell you—-" He was interrupted by the phone. He listened a moment, shouted some orders and hung it up. "Even if you're telling the truth," he said, “what do you want from me? I've got my hands full enough without worrying about an American civilian and a Russian broad!"
“All I want from you is transportation to Tokyo," I said.
“Oh, that's all, is it?" His voice dripped sarcasm. “Do you happen to know what transportation is, Mr.— What did you say your name was anyway?"
“Victor. Steve Victor."
"Well, Mr. Victor, let me tell you about transportation in Vietnam. It's the most essential thing to this so-called war, that's what it is! We're short of everything in this hellhole! And you know why? Not because there isn't more than enough for our needs back home in the land of plenty, but because there's no damn transportation to get it to us!"
"I'm travelling the other way,” I reminded him mildly.
“Oh, you are, are you?" Colonel Elkins was turning purple and I feared for his blood pressure. “Well, for your information, so are more than a hundred American boys down in the base hospital. They've been waiting two weeks to be flown to Tokyo so that they can get some decent medical attention. And you know why they haven't been flown out? Because it's too damn dangerous, that’s why! The skies between here and Japan are lousy with Chinese MIGs, that's why! And if you think I'm going to give up a place on a plane for one of those kids to you, you’re—" The phone rang again, and again Elkins' frustration was apparent in the orders he snapped into the mouthpiece.