The Vets (Stephen Leather Thrillers) (2 page)

“It’s not on the map,” said the pilot.

The man ignored him and kept looking out of the side window. “Lower,” he said.

The pilot eased the Huey down until it was about 200 feet above the treetops.

“There she is,” said the man, pointing.

“Got it,” said the pilot, turning the Huey towards the thin ribbon of water. It did look like an oddly stretched heart, as if the river had lost its sense of direction for a few miles and almost turned in a circle before realising its mistake.

“Go as low as you can,” said the passenger. “There’s a clearing about one klick from the base of the heart.”

As the pilot guided the Huey down he saw a light flash on the ground, then another.

“See the lights?” said the passenger.

“I see them,” replied the pilot.

“Land between them.”

The pilot put the Huey in a hover about ten feet above the thick grass of the clearing while he checked for obstructions as best he could. Seeing none, he reduced the power and put the skids softly on the ground. There was no sign of whoever had been holding the flashlights that had guided them in.

The passenger clicked the intercom on. “We’ll be gone for about five minutes, not much longer. Keep the blades turning in case we have to leave in a hurry.”

The passenger pulled off his flight helmet. He left it on the floor as he climbed out of the Huey. His hair was blond, cut close to his skull, and it gleamed in the moonlight. The pilot felt the Huey shudder as the cargo door was opened and he turned to watch the men haul the chest out. The four men moved cautiously towards the treeline as the rotor blades beat the air above their heads. They bent down like grunts always did, fearful that the blades would take off their heads, even though there was more than enough room. You’d have to be a basketball player leaping in the air to stand a chance of being hit by the main rotor. The tail rotor was a different matter; the pilot had seen two grunts killed by running the wrong way when leaving a Huey. The rotor was a fraction of the size of the one on top but it was the perfect height for taking off a man’s head.

The four men disappeared into the undergrowth leaving the pilot feeling suddenly alone. He shivered and leant back in his seat, filling his mind with the melting ice cube. If there was a VC out in the jungle with his name on a bullet there was nothing he could do about it. He blocked out thoughts of what might be and concentrated on the cold, wet, ice.

A firefly sparked to his left, a red dot that glowed briefly and then was gone. Ice. Melting ice. Another spark, then another. He ignored them. A fourth appeared but this didn’t disappear, it moved in a straight line, blinking on and off. The pilot realised with a jolt that it wasn’t a flying insect but a light in the far distance, the blinking effect caused by it passing behind trees. He killed the lights on his instrument panel and widened his eyes, trying to calculate the distance between him and the lights as they came down the hill. One klick? Maybe two? Maybe closer. He swung around and looked anxiously at the vegetation at the edge of the clearing. There was no sign of the men. He put his hand on the butt of the gun in his shoulder holster, the metal warm to the touch. He could fire a warning shot, but that was just as likely to attract the attention of whoever was on the hillside as it was to bring the Special Forces guys back. But he had no other way of getting in touch with them, they hadn’t told him the frequency their radio operated on. He took his hand off the gun and rubbed his face. The lights were getting closer. There were three of them. As he watched, the lights disappeared one by one.

The rule was that the pilot stayed with the slick, but he couldn’t face sitting in the Huey waiting for whoever it was to arrive. He had to do something. He had to warn them and get the hell out. He peered up the hillside. No more lights. He could picture them moving in the darkness, crouching low with AK-47s in their hands, black pyjamas and wide, conical hats. He shuddered.

He slapped the cyclic stick in frustration and swore before climbing down from the Huey and running towards the area where he’d last seen the men take the chest. He hated the jungle with a vengeance. The only time he felt comfortable with it was when he was looking down on it from a great height. Long, scratchy things clawed at his shirt as if they were alive, and damp fronds wrapped themselves around his face as if they wanted to squeeze the life out of him. Something squelched under his foot but it was too dark to see what it was. He stopped and listened but all he could hear was the whup-whup of the Huey behind him. He pushed on through the undergrowth, feeling his way with his gloved hands in front of his face. He heard water only seconds before he splashed into a stream which came up to his knees. It was slow-moving and no danger but it was uncomfortable. He thought of leeches and river snakes and waded through quickly, slipping once on a wet rock.

In the distance he saw a yellowish glow and he moved towards it, praying that it was the Special Forces team and not another group of Viet Cong. He slowed down as he came closer to the light, and peered around a massive tree trunk around which wound thick vines, like varicose veins on an old woman’s leg. He saw the young man with the Commando and was just about to shout to attract his attention when something stopped him. The Commando was levelled at a group of what the pilot guessed were Laotian mercenaries, dark-skinned men with high cheekbones and narrow eyes, some with AK-47s, others with wicked-looking machetes. There were about a dozen, some of them little more than children carrying weapons that were almost as big as they were. The three other Special Forces men were facing the mercenaries, spaced so that they couldn’t be cut down with one burst of automatic fire.

In between the two groups were three hemp sacks lined up on the ground next to a small campfire which was clearly the source of the glow he had seen when he entered the jungle. One of the Laotians was kneeling by the middle sack and cutting a small hole in it with a curved knife. He dug the blade into the sack and it came out with white powder on the end. He carefully carried it over to the man with the Commando, one hand held under the knife to catch any spillage. The American licked his finger, scraped it along the white-powdered blade, and licked the tip. He nodded to the other Special Forces men, a white smile breaking through the painted face.

The pilot couldn’t take his eyes off the scene that was being played out in front of him, even though he knew the danger from the men on the hill was growing by the minute. The Laotian sheathed his knife and walked over to the chest standing about six feet or so in front of the two men who’d carried it. They stepped back, their guns in the ready position, as the mercenary leaned down to open it. Two more of the mercenaries moved forward to stand either side of him. From where he was standing behind the tree, the pilot couldn’t see what was in the chest. He slowly went down on all fours and crept along the damp jungle floor, moving slowly and taking great care where he put his hands, until he reached a tree with thick, rubbery leaves. He hugged its trunk and peered around. He now was looking at the backs of the Laotians, and through their legs he could see inside the open chest. Blocks of metal gleamed in the light of the flickering fire. The mercenary who had opened the sack bent down and picked up one of the blocks. He had to use both hands, and even from thirty feet away the pilot knew it could only be gold. He knew he was seeing something more than a simple “need-to-know” CIA operation. The Special Forces men were about to swap the gold for drugs and the Huey was to fly the drugs back to the ship. The pilot was confused. He’d heard of Air America planes being used to ferry drugs around for the Thai drug barons as a way of getting them to help in the fight against the VC, but what he was seeing was something different. The Americans were paying for the drugs, with gold; it wasn’t a case of doing a favour for the Laotians or supplying them with cash or arms. This was a straightforward drug deal he was witnessing.

For the first time he became aware of another group of Laotians standing further behind and to the right of the mercenaries on the edge of the circle of warm light cast by the fire. The group was composed of women and very small children. One of the women held a baby in her arms and she was making small shushing noises to keep it from crying. Whereas the men were dressed in khaki combat fatigues, the women and children wore brightly coloured clothes made from red, green, yellow and blue striped material, the girls in skirts, the small boys in leggings. The women had their hair tied back and were wearing strips of cloth wound around their heads like badly tied turbans.

The pilot wanted to shout a warning to the Americans, to tell them that they had to go, but he was unsure how they’d react to him being there. The decision was made for him when the American with the Commando fired at the three Laotians standing by the chest, cutting them down before they had a chance to raise their weapons. The three other Americans fired almost immediately afterwards and bullets ripped through the foliage near where the pilot was standing. Those mercenaries who weren’t killed outright were screaming in pain, flowers of blood spreading across their fatigues. The women and children made as if to move forward to help their men but one of the women, old with shrivelled skin and no teeth, shouted to them and waved them back. The pilot reached for the automatic pistol in his shoulder holster but didn’t draw it out. What could he do? Shoot the Americans? Plead with them to stop the slaughter? Tell them he’d report them when they got back to the ship? None of the choices was viable. He let the butt slide from his sweating fingers. The women and children turned and ran, stumbling and tripping in their panic. The four Americans fired together, raking the Laotians with a hail of bullets, the individual weapons making separate identifiable sounds but the end result was the same: women and children falling to the ground and dying.

A gasp escaped involuntarily from the pilot’s mouth and he tasted bitter vomit at the back of his throat. His ears were hurting from the sound of the guns and even when the firing stopped they were still ringing, making it hard to think. The humid night air was thick with the smell of cordite and hot metal. The two men who’d carried the chest from the Huey ran over to it and closed the lid. The guy with the Commando shouted something and one of the men went to the dead Laotian with the knife and kicked him over on to his back, searching the ground until he found the gold bar he’d picked up before he died. The bar was returned to the chest and the lid lowered. As two of the men lifted the chest, one of them looked in the pilot’s direction. He pointed and the pilot flinched as if he’d been fired at. While watching the massacre he’d stepped away from the tree without realising it and now he could clearly be seen in the firelight. His feet felt as if they were rooted to the ground. The man with the Commando stepped forward, walking slowly with the barrel of his gun lowered. He stopped when he was about thirty feet away from the pilot, his face in darkness because the fire was behind him. The pilot couldn’t see his face but he could feel the man’s eyes boring into him. He could hear the blood pounding through his veins and feel the sweat clinging to his forehead. He knew he had never been so close to death and that everything depended on how he reacted. He dropped his hands to his sides and gave a half shrug as if nothing mattered. The man with the Commando stood stock still, his feet planted shoulder width apart, his left side slightly closer to the pilot than his right, the perfect shooting position. The barrel of the gun was still pointed at the ground. The pilot widened his smile. He knew that his face was clearly visible in the firelight, that they could see his every expression.

The man’s upper body appeared to relax as if he’d come to a decision and the pilot let out a sigh of relief. He was about to step forward when the Commando swung. The pilot dived without thinking, throwing himself to his left and rolling on the ground before scrambling away into the undergrowth. He didn’t look back so he didn’t see the muzzle flashes but he felt the air crack as bullets passed within inches of his head. He ran by instinct, dodging trees before they loomed out of the darkness, avoiding vines on the ground without seeing them, jumping the stream without getting wet, as if his subconscious mind had recorded every step of his journey through the jungle and was now replaying it in reverse because it knew that if it made one wrong move he’d be dead. His breath came in ragged bursts and his arms pumped up and down as he ran, his eyes wide with fear, his muscles screaming in agony as his feet pounded on the jungle floor.

He burst out of the jungle into the clearing and ran headlong towards the Huey, throwing himself into the pilot’s seat and pulling on the collective before he’d even sat down. The turbine whined and the blades speeded up until they were a blurred circle above his head. Relieved of the weight of its four passengers and cargo it soared almost vertically out of the clearing. From the corner of his eye he saw the four Special Forces men tear out of the undergrowth and point their guns at him. Red dots streamed past the Huey and up into the night and he heard a series of bangs behind him, thuds of metal against metal. He waggled his directional pedals frantically, jerking the slick from left to right to make himself less of a target, all the time increasing the power to the rotors to give it extra lift.

It was only when the altimeter showed 2,000 feet that he relaxed. He put the Huey into a hover while he considered his next move. He pushed the right pedal and nudged the cyclic to the right and pointed the nose of the Huey east, towards Vietnam. A thousand thoughts crowded into his head, all seeking attention, but they were dulled by the conflicting emotions he felt: horror at what he’d seen, guilt for not doing anything to stop it, anger at the men behind the massacre, terror at being hunted, fear of what would happen to him when he got back to the ship. If he got back. He took deep breaths and tried to focus his thoughts, to bring some sort of order to his bewildered mind. When it happened it happened suddenly, without him knowing, the way water freezes, turning from liquid to solid so quickly that there is no borderline between the two states. One moment he was in total confusion, the next he knew with perfect clarity what he would do.