Another batch done. Phil was a little faster than the others, wanting to get it done. He walked over to the cooler and lifted the next one-kilo bag. He smelted it, as he had the others. Foul, chemical smell, like the chemicals used in the biology lab at his high school, formaldehyde, something like that. He slit open the bag with a penknife, dumping the contents into the first mixing bowl at arm's length, then adding a premeasured quantity of sugar and stirring with a spoon by the light of one of the Coleman lamps.
'Hello.'
There had been no warning at all. Suddenly there was someone else there at the door, holding a pistol. He was dressed in military clothes, striped fatigues, and his face was painted green and black.
There wasn't any need for silence. His prey had seen to that. Kelly had reconverted his Colt back to.45 caliber, and he knew that the hole in the front of the automatic would seem large enough to park a car to the others in the room. He pointed with his left hand. 'That way. On the deck, facedown, hands at the back of the neck, one at a time, you first,' he said to the one at the mixing bowl.
'Who the hell are you?' the black one asked.
'You must be Burt. Don't do anything dumb.'
'How you know my name?' Burt demanded as Phil took his place on the deck.
Kelly pointed at the other white one, directing him next to his friend.
'I know lots of things,' Kelly said, moving towards Burt now. Then he saw the sleeping girl in the corner. 'Who's she?'
'Look, asshole!' The.45 went level with his face, an arm's length away.
'What was that?' Kelly asked in a conversational voice. 'Down on the deck, now.' Burt complied at once. The girl, he saw, was sleeping. He'd let that continue for the moment. His first task was to search them for weapons. Two had small handguns. One had a useless little knife.
'Hey, who are you? Maybe we can talk,' Burt suggested.
'We're going to do that. Tell me about the drugs,' Kelly started off.
It was ten in the morning in Moscow when Voloshin's dispatch emerged from the decoding department. A senior member of the KGB's First Chief Directorate, he had a pipeline into any number of senior officers, one of whom was an academician in Service I, an American specialist who was advising the senior KGB leadership and the Foreign Ministry on this new development that the American media called detente. This man, who didn't hold a paramilitary rank within the KGB hierarchy, was probably the best person to get fast action, though an information copy of the dispatch had also gone to the Deputy Chairman with oversight duties for Voloshin's Directorate. Typically, the message was short and to the point. The Academician was appalled. The reduction of tension between the two superpowers, in the midst of a shooting war for one of them, was little short of miraculous, and coming as it did in parallel with the American approach to China, it could well signal a new era in relations. So he had said to the Politburo in a lengthy briefing only two weeks earlier. The public revelation that a Soviet officer had been involved in something like this - it was madness. What cretin at GRU had thought this one up? Assuming it really was true, which was something he had to check. For that he called the Deputy Chairman.
'Yevgeniy Leonidovich? I have an urgent dispatch from Washington.'
'As do I, Vanya. Your recommendations?'
'If the American claims are true, I urge immediate action. Public knowledge of such idiocy could be ruinous. Could you confirm that this is indeed under way?'
'Da. And then... Foreign Ministry?'
'I agree. The military would take too long. Will they listen?'
'Our fraternal socialist allies? They'll listen to a shipment of rockets. They've been screaming for them for weeks,' the Deputy Chairman replied.
How typical, the Academician thought, inorder to save American lives we will send weapons to take??r? of them, and the Americans will understand. Such madness. If there was ever an illustration as to why detente was necessary, this was it. How could two great countries manage their affairs when both were involved, directly or not, in the affairs of minor countries? Such a worthless distraction from important matters.
'I urge speed, Yevgeniy Leonidovich,' the Academician repeated. Though far outranked by the Deputy Chairman, they'd been classmates, years earlier, and their careers had crossed many times.
'I agree completely, Vanya. I'll be back to you this afternoon.'
It was a miracle, Zacharias thought, looking around. He hadn't seen the outside of his cell in months, and just to smell the air, warm and humid as it was, seemed a gift from God, but that wasn't it. He counted the others, eighteen other men in the single line, men like himself, all within the same five-year age bracket, and in the fading light of dusk he saw faces. There was the one he'd seen so long before, a Navy guy by the look of him. They exchanged a look and thin smiles as all the men did what Robin was doing. If only the guards would let them talk, but the first attempt had earned one of their number a slap. Even so, for the moment just seeing their faces was enough. To not be alone any longer, to know that there were others here, just that was enough. Such a small thing. Such a large one. Robin stood as tall as his injured back allowed, squaring his shoulders while that little officer was saying something to his people, who were also lined up. He hadn't picked up enough Vietnamese to understand the rapid speech.
'This is the enemy,' the Captain was telling his men. He'd be taking his unit south soon, and after all the lectures and battle practice, here was an unexpected opportunity for them to get a real look. They weren't so tough, these Americans, he told them. See, they're not so tall and forbidding, are they? They bend and break and bleed - very easily, too! And these are the elite of them, the ones who drop bombs on our country and kill our people. These are the men you'll be fighting. Do you fear them now? And if the Americans are foolish enough to try to rescue these dogs, we'll get early practice in the art of killing them. With those rousing words, he dismissed his troops, sending them off to their night guard posts.
He could do this, the Captain thought. It wouldn't matter soon. He'd heard a rumor through his regimental commander that as soon as the political leadership got their thumbs out, this camp would be closed down in a very final way, and his men would indeed get a little practice before they had to walk down Uncle Ho's trail, where they would have the chance to kill armed Americans next. Until then he had them as trophies to show his men, to lessen their dread of the great unknown of combat, and to focus their rage, for these were the men who'd bombed their beautiful country into a wasteland. He'd select recruits who had trained especially hard and well...nineteen of them, so as to give them a taste of killing. They'd need it. The captain of infantry wondered how many of them he'd be bringing home.