Restless Soul (22 page)

Annja frowned. “There are some people I want to talk to, but I’d rather avoid the news.”

Pete laughed louder. “That isn’t going to happen.”

She ran her fingers over the laptop. “Will this—”

“They have Wi-Fi here. Yeah, it’ll work.” He pointed to the phone. “That is prepaid, so take care with your calls, because when that one is empty, you’re on your own.”

Annja smiled. She was always on her own.

She had to admit that she felt much better than she had in days. A glance under the covers revealed that her leg had been rebandaged, and her left arm was in a loose sling. She felt a little pulling from the stitches where the bullets had been.

“We’ll leave you be for a while,” Pete said. “But we’ll be back after dinner. Some reports to fill out, plenty of questions to ask, that sort of thing.” He tipped his head and spun around in military fashion, walking out of the room with the other men nodding politely to her and following.

Annja punched in the number for the lodge and asked the man at the front desk if he would please find Luartaro.

“He checked out, Miss Creed. Early yesterday. He and his film crew packed up and took the bus to the city and the airport. But he left a note for you.”

Annja asked him to read it.

Annja hung up the phone and flopped her head back on the pillow. She couldn’t blame him…not really. The previously undiscovered teak coffins with the human remains were the real treasure of the spirit caves. She’d wanted them for a
Chasing History’s Monsters
special, but she was fine with Luartaro getting the credit. Annja had more than enough hours in the spotlight, and apparently would be getting more if the television crews downstairs had their way.

She still was bothered that Luartaro took the ancient jewelry from the cave…and she would stay in touch with him, if only to discuss that and come to some resolution.

And there was the matter of the skull bowl in a museum in Florida. She’d travel there to make sure it didn’t have a seal and dog tags.

A knock on the door interrupted her musings.

A nurse opened it a crack. “I speak English,” she announced.

“Yes?”

“You have a visitor, Miss Creed.”

Annja groaned. She didn’t want to deal with the media yet. She shook her head. “No. I need my rest.”

“I understand.” She started to back out. “He is a Frenchman. Said he came a long way. But he can wait. I will tell him to come back—”

“Wait.” Annja sat up a little straighter. “You can send Roux in.” She had a lot to tell him.

Vietnam, July 1966

Lightning flashed and the ground rocked again and again. Above the patter of the driving rain, the whisper-hiss of machine-gun fire reached inside the old stone building.

Sanduski risked a glance outside to see mud spitting up around the feet of his sergeant.

Gary Thomsen screamed when the bullets chewed into his legs, and he fell face forward.

“Wallem!” he managed before he hit the mud. “Company. Moore, get out here. We’ve got…”

Wallem and Moore were the first soldiers out the door, raising their rifles and firing as they went. Sanduski hung back. He’d gotten a look at the Vietnamese force out there.

At least two dozen…and that was his guess without counting or getting a real good look. And that meant there were more. There were always ones that you couldn’t see. This was his second tour, and he intended to get out of it alive.

As the rest of the men raced out, all of them firing and hollering, some of them screaming as bullets slammed into them, Sanduski edged deeper into the building. There was a large Buddha at the back, decorated in gold and silver and just big enough to squat behind. He hid just as the firing stopped.

He held his breath when he heard footsteps. They were faint against the sound of the rain. Men talked, in a language Sanduski didn’t understand. Slope heads. And that meant Thomsen, Moore, Wallem and all of the others were dead.

The Vietcong talked among themselves, pacing and moving things around, and finally leaving.

Sanduski let out a breath carefully. His legs cramped from the position, but he didn’t dare move. He didn’t move for what he guessed was a few hours.

When it had gotten so dark that he couldn’t see anything, he stood, rubbing at his numb legs to get the feeling back and stumbling forward and into one statue after another. He could hardly walk; his legs weren’t cooperating.

At last he found the opening and cautiously looked out. It had stopped raining, and there were just enough stars overhead so that he could see the bodies of his fellows. Not a single VC corpse—they’d either taken their fallen or Thomsen and the others hadn’t scored a single hit.

Sanduski went from one body to the next, discovering that the VC had taken the treasure; however, they missed a diamond ring that Thomsen had taken. The gem was the size of a big sunflower seed. Sanduski plucked it loose and then went to collect the dog tags.

But there weren’t any.

“Damn slope heads took ’em,” he said to no one.

He hadn’t seen Lanh Vuong carefully pluck each tag loose and put a bullet in the head of each soldier…just to be sure they were dead.

He hadn’t seen the colonel collect blood from each man and say a twisted prayer to Papa Ghede.

Sanduski returned to the building, where he hid until dawn. Then he picked up enough small pieces of treasure to fill his pockets and pack and headed down the trail to the east.

“‘War is always the same,’” he said. “‘It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise.’ I promise it won’t get me.”

ISBN: 978-1-4268-7974-6

RESTLESS SOUL

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Jean Rabe for her contribution to this work.

Copyright © 2011 by Worldwide Library

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