Big Mango (9786167611037) (41 page)

Lek was pushing gently with one hand against
the Latrine’s front door while two Vietnamese men with the
unmistakable look of pros took up positions on either side to seal
off any escape from the building. Eddie was pretty sure he could
pick out at least two more soldiers hovering not far away, their
eyes also fixed on the Latrine.

Eddie slid back into the crowd and quickly
retraced his steps.

***

IT
hadn’t taken long for
Lek’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. As soon as they did, she took
stock of the room. The place was thick with dust. Tables, chairs
and bar stools had been shoved haphazardly around and the floor was
littered with debris. Splintered wood, nails, dirt and broken
bottles were everywhere.

Her caution kept her motionless in the
shadows, but when no threat materialized, her curiosity finally got
the better of her. She rose slowly from her crouch and began to
edge across the room, poking carefully at the wreckage with her
foot. Her eyes scanned methodically for an explanation as to what
might have happened, but she found none.

She was almost in the middle of the room when
she heard a click that made her freeze. A male voice spoke from
somewhere behind her.

“Hey, Lek. What took you so long?”

Instinctively, she dropped to the floor and
roll away from the sound even as she registered that it was Harry
Austin’s voice she was hearing. He
had
faked his death, the
clever old bastard.

Lek crashed against a chair and felt her
shoulder hit the wall furthest from where the sound had originated.
She pushed herself up and edged along, her back pressed against it,
looking for cover.

It was only a few seconds before she felt the
cold metal against her neck. Knowing immediately that it was the
muzzle of a gun, she stopped moving without a word.

“I’m right here, honey. These remote-control
tape things are slicker than owl shit down a greased tube, ain’t
they?”

Austin grabbed Lek by the hair with his free
hand jerking her head roughly backward. She grunted, but did not
cry out.

“Let it go, baby doll,” Austin said.

Lek opened her hand and the knife clattered
to the floor.

“Now there’s one more thing I need for you to
do, darlin’,” Austin said in a cheerful voice. “Scream real loud a
few times, would you?”

Lek didn’t respond right away, trying to work
out what Austin was up to.

He jerked hard on her hair again, slamming
her head against the wall.

“Your goons are outside and I want them in
here. That’s simple enough, ain’t it? So, a nice loud scream,
please, or I’ll shoot you through a kneecap to get it.”

To underscore his seriousness, Austin snapped
Lek’s head against the wall again, harder this time.

Lek couldn’t see what harm it could do her,
so she gave Austin the long, wailing scream he wanted.

Almost immediately the two Vietnamese
covering the front door burst into the room followed quickly by the
two who had been hovering out in the street. Keeping low and
clearing their weapons smoothly, they split apart until they had
Austin and Lek covered from four widely separated angles.

“Okay, Harry, we’re all here. Now what?”

“Only four?” He sounded almost amused.
“You’re traveling light these days, baby. I’m not worth anything
heavier than that?”

“Fuck you, Harry.”

If Lek could have seen Austin’s face, she
would have realized that he was smiling; but she couldn’t, so she
tried the obvious tack.

“We can make a deal, Harry. You can still
save yourself.”

Lek could feel Austin shaking his head.

“It’s the others I’m worried about now, Lek.
I got no chance anymore. No chance at all.”

“You’re dead if you hurt me, Harry.”

Austin laughed. “No, honey, I’m dead
anyway.”

Before Lek could work out what Austin meant
by that, he told her in a matter-of-fact voice.

“It’s cancer, they say. If I shoot you now, I
just get dead a little sooner, that’s all.”

Suddenly, unmistakably, Lek knew exactly why
Austin had wanted her to scream and pull her men inside. And she
saw in a flash of total clarity just what he was going to do.

She lunged desperately away from him,
dropping toward the floor and groping at the place where her knife
had fallen. It was a hopeless gesture.

Harry Austin’s old .45 was loaded with hollow
points, rounds that tumbled and twisted on contact, chewing into
bone and tissue alike, ripping away everything in their path. He
had wedged the pistol’s muzzle solidly into the flesh under Lek’s
chin and her weight falling toward the floor only jammed it
tighter.

When he felt Lek begin to move, Austin
squeezed the trigger twice in rapid succession. The roar of the
.45’s detonations were deafening in the small room and all four of
the Vietnamese instinctively opened fire. In an angry counterpoint
of silenced coughs, they emptied their clips into Austin, but the
shots came far too late to do Lek any good.

Both she and Austin were dead before either
of them found the floor.

THE
two Toyota vans were
parked about fifty yards up soi 23 facing away from Soi Cowboy. By
the time Eddie got back to them, Bar had finished strapping the
crates down in the closest one and was just closing the back doors.
Winnebago was still working inside the other.

Eddie took Bar by the elbow, towing him
quickly through Poncho’s and up the hallway toward the Green
Latrine describing to him as they walked what he had just seen. He
had barely finished when they both heard a woman scream, followed
shortly by an unmistakable explosion of gunfire.

“Oh, Christ,” Eddie shouted as he leaped
toward the back door of the Latrine. “We’ve got to get the captain
out of there!”

Bar grabbed Eddie’s arm and pulled him away
from the door, his eyes flat. “Didn’t you see him send Short Time
away?” Bar asked.

“What’s that got to do with—”

“He was protecting her, Eddie.”

Bar pointed to the locked door, still holding
onto Eddie’s arm with his other hand. “When he went back in there
and locked the door, he was doing the same thing for us. He knew
Lek was coming. He was buying us time.”

Eddie shook off Bar’s hand and stared at the
locked door.

“He’s dead, Eddie. That’s the way he planned
it. Now we’ve got to get the fuck out of here before we’re
next.”

Eddie took a deep breath and started to say
something, but Bar was already pulling him away and Eddie allowed
himself to be led back up the hallway in silence. He knew Bar was
right.

As they stepped out of Poncho’s, there was a
ching
on the wall next to Eddie’s cheek and brick dust
showered his face. Eddie and Bar dived behind the nearest Toyota,
hugging the concrete as more shots ricocheted off the buildings
along the sidewalk and pinged into the van.

Eddie glanced back over his shoulder. He saw
Winnebago’s eyes go as big as saucers and he waved at him to take
cover behind the crates in the second van. Whatever else a crate
full of money was good for, it ought to stop bullets, he
thought.

The shots came from the direction of Soi
Cowboy and, since he had heard no audible reports, Eddie gathered
they were from silenced weapons, probably handguns. He guessed it
could have been worse. They could have been staring down the wrong
end of a rocket launcher.

When he risked a quick bob of his head toward
Cowboy to reconnoiter, the movement drew a second volley of shots.
They missed, and Eddie got a clear look at Lek’s soldiers.

Two of them were edging carefully into soi 23
and two more were providing cover from behind a parked motorcycle.
Beyond them, Cowboy seemed to be partying on as usual. A few people
glanced toward the Vietnamese, but they looked more amused than
concerned at the antics of the four men.

“I don’t see Lek,” Eddie’s said and his face
creased in a tight smile. “I’ll bet the captain got her.”

As the sound of the second volley died away,
Winnebago’s old reflexes took over. He high-stepped his way smartly
up from the second van, drawing more shots that went high and wide,
and flattened himself between Eddie and Bar.

“We’re loaded,” he said. “Let’s get the fuck
out of here.”

Eddie noticed Winnebago didn’t ask about
Captain Austin. Maybe he had already guessed what had happened.

Glancing over his shoulder and measuring the
soi behind them, Eddie shook his head. “We’ll never make it,” he
said. “They’ll cut us up before we get out of range.”

“How could I have left those guns at the
Princess?” Bar slapped his cheek with his open palm a couple of
times. “Stupid. Fucking stupid.”

“They don’t know if we’re armed,” Eddie said.
“They’ll hang back until they decide.”

Eddie glanced up and down the soi again, and
then he scanned the walls of the buildings that lined both sides.
He sighed deeply and made a hopeless gesture with his open palms.
“We could always throw rocks at them, I guess.”

Bar thought about that for a second, and then
shoved his hands down into the deep side-pockets of his fatigue
trousers. “Or these might be better,” he said.

And like a magician dipping into a top hat,
Bar produced two hand grenades, one from each pocket.

Eddie couldn’t believe it. “Where the hell
did you get those?”

“The guy I bought the guns from gave them to
me. They’re the samples I told you about. I forgot I had them until
something just reminded me. Can’t imagine what.”

Eddie took the grenades from Bar and hefted
one in each hand. “Oh man, oh man. Aren’t these the most beautiful
things you ever saw?”

“Ah…” Bar broke in reluctantly. “Don’t get
too carried away.” He pointed to a smear of red paint on one of the
grenades. “That one’s not real.”

Eddie closed his eyes. “It’s a dummy?”

“Not quite. But it’s only a smoker.”

The Vietnamese had begun working their way
cautiously up the soi in a two-by-two cover formation. The lack of
any return fire was making them bolder.

“Well, hell,” Eddie shook his head. He
bounced the grenades up and down in his hands. “I guess you work
with what you got.”

He switched the live one to his left hand and
rose into a half crouch. Pulling the pin on the smoke grenade in
his right and clinching the spoon tightly, he duck-walked his way
around the van, staying down out of sight as long as he could. When
he reached a spot where he was sure he would be in the clear, he
bobbed up with his arm cocked, and launched the smoke grenade in a
perfect arc over Austin’s old Nissan right down the middle of soi
23. By the time it hit the concrete, the Vietnamese were already
reacting as Eddie knew they would, falling back into Soi Cowboy and
flattening themselves against a wall to ride out the explosion.

But there was no explosion.

The grenade hit the concrete with a solid
cling and bounced a couple of times before it lay still. After a
moment, it gave out with a long, slow hiss, and began emitting a
thick cloud of yellow smoke that quickly filled the soi.

On the downwind side of the smoke, part of
the Cowboy crowd had worked out that something nasty was happening
and a few people started to scramble away without being entirely
certain what they were running from or where they were running to.
The Vietnamese ignored them as well as the hysterical screams of
two girls who had seen the grenade hit. The four men peered
cautiously around the corner into soi 23, trying to decide if the
smoke was the only thing that was coming at them or if something
much more unpleasant was just behind it.

On the upwind side of the smoke, Eddie was
busy. As soon as he let the smoke grenade go, he sprinted back to
where Bar and Winnebago were crouched.

“You take the first van, Bar.” Eddie pointed
at the Toyota that was furthest away up the soi, “And lead us out
of here to the main road.” He twisted his head toward Winnebago.
“You get this one started and sit tight until I get back.”

Eddie shifted the live grenade to his right
hand and looked back at Bar, who hadn’t moved. “Take off, man!” he
snapped. “Do it now!”

Bar and Winnebago glanced uncomfortably at
each other, neither wanting to leave Eddie alone to do whatever it
was he had in mind.

“Do what I’m telling you!” Eddie screamed at
them. “Move your goddamned fucking butts!”

And they moved their goddamned fucking
butts.

Within a few seconds, Bar was powering the
first van up soi 23 away from the Vietnamese while Winnebago
fidgeted at the wheel of the second, its engine idling.

By then, Eddie had sprinted forward again and
jerked open the back doors of Austin’s old Nissan van. He climbed
through the cargo space and vaulted into the driver’s seat. The
engine fired on the first try and Eddie let out a thankful sigh. He
yanked the shift lever into drive and accelerated down the soi
toward the yellow smoke.

When the Vietnamese heard engines turning
over and the unmistakable sound of vehicles moving, they quickly
abandoned their cover positions and plunged out of Cowboy,
zigzagging through the swirling smoke and firing as they ran. They
were now certain the smoke had been only a diversion; that nothing
else was coming at them.

It was a miscalculation on which none of them
would have long to dwell.

As the Nissan hit the edge of the smoke,
Eddie made the steering wheel as steady as he could. In a single
motion, he rolled over the seat and out through the flapping rear
doors. When he hit the ground, he staggered slightly, but he kept
his feet. He pulled the pin from the grenade, and lobbed it
underhanded into the Nissan’s open cargo space.

The driverless van wobbled from one side of
soi 23 to the other, but it kept going toward Cowboy. It crunched
over a pile of empty cardboard boxes, grated against the front of a
building, and then nosed into the thickest part of the smoke. Shots
from the four charging Vietnamese thudded off its front and sides
and Eddie heard the windshield go with a pop.