Cambodian Hellhole (10 page)

The bridge was empty now, deserted, in sharp contrast to the traffic it had carried short hours earlier. After Stone had been captured right before their eyes and hustled off by two armed sentries to the compound's CP hut, a jeep with a mounted heavy machine gun had raced out along the bridge and disappeared among the trees, in the direction of the rocky line of hills. An hour later it had returned, leading a line of soldiers and their prisoners—perhaps seventy-five men in all, marching two abreast.

And mixed among the others, taller, instantly identifiable, had been no less than twenty-two Americans.

The jackpot, yes.

If only they could find a way to play their hand, without getting it lopped off at the shoulder.

"We have to get him out of there," Loughlin said to no one in particular, talking to the night.

"We have to get them all out of there," Hog Wiley amended for the record.

"Right. But twenty-two . . ."

"Don't matter. Twenty-two or twenty-two hundred . . . makes no difference," Wiley insisted.

"I know that," the Britisher told him. "But it damn well won't be easy."

"Never is."

"All right, then, how do you suggest we go about it?" Lon Ky burst in upon their conversation, jabbering excitedly.

"Kill soldiers!" he snapped, sounding almost rabid in the darkness. "Free Americans! Expose the traitors in Phnom Penh!"

"Ease off, man," Wiley growled. "There'll be plenty of time for killing when we have a plan."

"They should be sending out patrols by now," Loughlin suggested.

Hog shook his head, downing another mouthful of the almost tasteless rations from his can.

"Too late," he said as he chewed. "They would've had 'em out by now if they were coming. Our boy don't want to split his forces in the dark, not knowing what they might run into."

"Psychic?"

Wiley grinned.

"No more. The V.A. doctors fixed me up." He sobered, finished with his joke. "I know these assholes, man. I know the way they think. It's strictly CYA."

Lon Ky looked puzzled, as if he feared he might be left out of some secret discussion.

"What is CYA?"

"Cover Your Ass," Wiley told him, grinning through a load of Vienna sausages and potatoes.

"Well, if they send men out tomorrow—"

"Then we've had all night to run a recon, and be waiting for them when they find us."

"It's feasible," the Britisher admitted grudgingly.

"Hell, yes . . . and it'll work," Wiley hissed. "Now let's get down to brass tacks here."

There were plans enough for them to talk the night through, including their reconnaissance of the enemy encampment. Exits to be plugged or readied for their own use, timing to be synchronized—everything that went into a successful field engagement, now compressed into the hours of darkness, when it might have taken days under other conditions.

They would not attempt a raid by daylight—not unless the enemy should somehow force them to it. If the camp commander stuck with his routine and sent the inmates out to work tomorrow, they should have a chance to scout the camp perimeter in greater detail, planning all the while for their incursion on the next night.

Twenty-four hours away.

And each of Stone's commandos wondered if their leader could survive that long in hostile custody.

He might be dead already, naturally; the thought had crossed everyone's mind at least once that endless afternoon and evening. But there had been no shots from the encampment, no sign of a disposal team carting a body off for burial or burning. They were reasonably certain he was still alive, and probably undergoing harsh interrogation even as they sat there, planning ways to break him out.

The next crucial question hinged on whether Stone could take the heat, survive the tortures that the camp commander and his personnel might put him through in their determination to find out his identity, his mission.

It was a question whose answer was vital to each man crouched in the little jungle clearing, waiting out the night.

If Stone was broken—if he talked—there would be no place left for any of them to hide.

There was a chance, of course, that they could still take on and best a superior force. Stone's team, with Wiley as a member, had done so several times in Vietnam—but they were far from home, isolated deep inside enemy lines. If their escape mutes and supply lines should be severed here, now . . .

It did not bear consideration, but at the same time they could not ignore the possibility.

If they were not picked off in the running firefight that would surely follow exposure of their position, they would be captured, turned into the kind of mindless, ambling automatons they had seen below them on the bridge that afternoon.

The zombie squad.

They were mutually agreed, from the beginning of their service with Mark Stone, that none of them would ever willingly submit himself to such a fate.

As for Stone . . .

"He'll never tell them anything," Hog Wiley told the darkness softly, sounding as if he sought to reassure himself as much as any of the others.

"'Course not," Loughlin agreed.

"They'll have to kill him first."

"Right."

Silence settled down again across the little jungle clearing. They were back to square one, thinking in present tense about the possible death of a dear and trusted friend. It hurt, but it also fueled a rising flame of anger in both men, giving off a heat that communicated itself in short order to the Asians crouching with them in the darkness.

Stone would never talk . . . but he might die resisting torture.

Either way, they would have to get inside the camp and have a look around to satisfy themselves.

And bring the others out.

They could not go back empty-handed now, having come so far. It was unthinkable.

F
rom upside down, the camp commander reminded Mark Stone of some kind of jungle bat, hanging from a perch and waiting for the hours of darkness to arrive and set him free to hunt.

Except that it was well past dark outside already.

And it was Stone, not the commander, who was hanging upside down, suspended from the ceiling of the CP hut.

His wrists and ankles had been secured by handcuffs, sharp-edged metal biting deep into the flesh, releasing sticky rivulets of blood that instantly obeyed the call of gravity. A kind of crude trapeze had been thrust behind his knees and hauled upon chains until he hung suspended and inverted, with his head perhaps three feet above the floorboards of the hut.

The camp commander—his interrogator—sat in front of him, maintaining military posture on a straight-backed wooden chair. On either side of him, two uniformed soldiers stood at parade rest, holding long canes horizontally across their khaki-clad thighs.

Stone was conscious of every sensation in his body, from the pressure bearing in behind his knees, the sharp pain in his wrists and ankles—numbing now, not a good sign—to the ringing in his ears as gravity brought the blood rushing to his head.

I must look like I'm blushing
, Stone thought to himself, and he smiled at the mental picture it presented.

He was wearing his tiger-striped fatigue pants, minus shirt and shoes. Sweat glistened on his chest and arms, diluting the streams of blood that were creeping floorward from his damaged wrists.

"You find something amusing?" the commander asked him in stilted, textbook English.

Stone dredged up another grin for the bastard.

"Not especially," he answered.

"Yet you smile."

"I guess I'm an incurable optimist."

"Let us see if we can cure you, after all," the Asian offered, his voice silky, laden with evil. "You are our prisoner."

"You mean this isn't Thailand? Well . . ."

The trooper on his left received a nod from the interrogator, and swung his cane around and into burning impact with the muscles of Stone's stomach. He was silenced instantly, biting off a startled cry that was as much anger and surprise as pain.

"You are our prisoner," the camp commander continued, as if there had been no violent interruption of his little speech. "This sector is under my control. You will provide me with certain answers to my questions . . . and in return, you will be treated fairly for the remainder of your sentence."

"What happened to the trial?" Stone asked sarcastically.

"It is over. You are guilty by your very presence here, inside our national borders. The sentence is life."

"Seems a little stiff for trespassing."

This time he saw the cane coming, but there was no way to brace himself beyond a tightening of the stomach muscles, which reduced the pain a fraction. Seeing this, the guard gave him an extra rap across the kneecaps for good measure, wringing a little sob of pain from Stone's constricted throat. The guard seemed satisfied with the accomplishment.

"You will answer certain questions which I put to you," the interrogator repeated, smiling thinly, but with illconcealed impatience.

"Well, since you put it that way . . ."

"What is your name?"

"Duke."

"Duke?" The Vietnamese looked puzzled.

"Sure. Duke Wayne. You know.
The Alamo
?"

The camp commander glanced from Stone to each of his guards in turn, but they clearly spoke no English and could be of no assistance to him.

"Your name is Wayne."

"Now you're getting it, asshole."

An order, barked in sharp Vietnamese, and both guards waded in with canes flailing, landing half a dozen blows each on Stone's chest, shoulders, and skull. They left him dazed and bleeding from the mouth and nose, a ragged cut above one eye.

"You will show the proper respect for your superiors," the commandant insisted. "What is your rank?"

"General."

The Asian looked surprised.

"You are a general?"

"Yeah. A general nuisance, you fucking—"

The closest of the guards stepped forward and brought his boot toe up and into jarring contact with Stone's forehead. For an instant he was afraid he might lose consciousness, but then the spinning colors and the overwhelming dizziness passed away.

"I grow weary of this, American shit-eater. You will pray for death soon, if you do not cooperate."

Dead silence, as the bloodied soldier glowered at his captors from the inverted parrot's perch.

"We begin again. Is this an official mission?"

"No mission. I'm a smuggler."

"Ah. You thought, perhaps, to smuggle something into prison camp? Or perhaps to smuggle something out?"

"Didn't know it was a frigging prison, man. I thought there might be something I could steal and sell farther down the line."

"How many men with you?"

"I came alone."

The interrogator nodded, and the canes descended once again, beating out a savage tattoo on Stone's legs, his arms, his aching ribs. When the two guards retreated again, his torso was already showing signs of mottled bruises underneath the skin.

"So simple to escape the pain," the Vietnamese officer informed him. "You need only answer questions truthfully."

Another pause, allowing Stone to contemplate the possibility of an end to the pain.

"Tell me, please, how you come to know of this camp's existence."

"Accident," Stone told him, trying to grin through split and swollen lips, but not quite pulling it off. "I came across it by coincidence."

"There is no coincidence. We are isolated here. There has never been an accidental visitor."

"First time for everything, I guess."

The commander reached into the breast pocket of his uniform tunic, withdrawing a cigarette lighter. Stone recognized it as a Zippo, like the ones many paratroopers and Marines had carried a lifetime ago, when they were slogging through the jungles, hunting Cong.

The officer nodded toward Stone, a little upward motion of his head that might have meant anything—or nothing. In the circumstances, it conveyed an infinite amount of malice, and Stone was already bracing himself as the trooper on the commander's right accepted the Zippo from him, circling around until he was lost to sight, behind Stone's back.

"The night is chilly," his interrogator said, a reptilian smile now plastered across his flat face. "I do not wish you to be uncomfortable. Allow us to warm you up."

Stone heard the flywheel of the Zippo spinning, grating on the flint. It seemed as loud as artillery fire inside the congested little CP office. And he could smell the flame as it sprang into life, the tang of lighter fluid. He could feel it. Jesus . . .

The trooper played that flame along the sole of Stone's bare left foot, and he was convulsed by the sudden pain, every muscle in his body taut and straining as he fought the urge to scream.