The Chinese Agenda (23 page)

'We have no other choice but to keep moving,' Gillon said-finally. 'The border is thirty miles west, straight-line distance from where we sit . . . and you can bet your boots that the Chinese will have a good half of their available forces between us and the border, just watching for us to try. Half of the rest will be concentrated in a line north of us to the next nearest border crossing and the rest will be marching as fast as they can to get around in front. There is absolutely nothing to be gained by going any further east . . . twenty miles more and we run out of mountains and in the high desert they'll pick us off in no time. So we go south in an end run and hope that their football strategy is damned rusty.'

The others slowly nodded agreement in silence and once more they started out again. Gillon led the way. compass always in his hand, as they negotiated the thick forest and occasional change in terrain. By late afternoon, the downslope became definite once more and Gillon was sure they were nearing the Chiran-toka River. As they descended, the forest grew thicker until, at times, it was almost impenetrable. The terrain here was rugged in the extreme, full of glacially deposited boulders and fallen trees that often forced extensive. detours, until Gillon was no longer sure of anything but that they were still moving downslope. As they descended from the tenthousand-foot plateau, breathing began to come easier and as Gillon had counted on, they revived somewhat to remain just this side of exhaustion awhile longer. If the slope had been uphill for any distance, he was certain they would have all collapsed within an hour.

The one point in their favor, he realized, was that they were professionals; each of them had been in similar situations before where they were required to exert themselves to the utmost, long after other men would have collapsed. They knew, each and every one of them, that the stakes were no less than their lives. And while they might differ as to the approach to be taken in extricating themselves from the depths of the Tien Shan, they would each push on until exhaustion forced total collapse. Not until then would they stop. Gillon knew this and was depending first on their strength, and secondly on their desperation to keep them going. There was also the chance that by now, the blizzard had become too much for the pursuing troops and that they had holed up. He had meant every word he said to Stowe about not underestimating the Chinese. But that did not prevent him from reckoning on their underestimation of them to save their lives. At 1800 hours, they stopped and cooked a hasty, hot meal, rested for thirty minutes and continued the march

into the night. The trees had thinned considerably by the time they reached the midslopes of the valley, making travel somewhat faster. Gillon calculated that it was still eight miles to the river; his goal was to cross and march deep into the forest on the far side before they stopped for sleep.

Silently they marched on, and in the faint light from his shielded flash, the vague slope to the land was no longer apparent; there was only the white, continuously moving circle of hypnotic light that preceded them, broken occasionally by a tree trunk or the top of some bush barely thrusting wiry branches above the snow. His snowshoes followed the trailing edge of the circle of light, which itself was guided by the compass needle, and Gillon pushed on, knowing that he was half hypnotized by its bobbing glare, but not caring because it made it that much easier to drag himself forward. There was no longer any doubt in Gillon's mind that Jack Liu and his people were dead or captured and that they were now completely on their own. His analysis of their situation earlier was, he knew now, the only accurate one. Unless they could be picked up without exposing the hand of the Soviet Union in this whole affair, they would be abandoned. At the very least, the Soviets would gain the disintegration of the SinoAmerican rapprochement. He wondered as they trudged along just how the Reds had taken Liu. However it had been, it would not have been an easy task. The wind swirled the icy snow crystals around him, but for just a moment, he felt again the sun beating down on his back and tasted the dry, gritty dust and felt the grinding pain in his legs. For three hours they had taken turns in relays, pounding away at his leg muscles, and the cramps that twisted and tugged at his strapped legs were almost more than he could bear. Every fifteen minutes, they stopped while an officer, a tiny old man with a wispy moustache and a pleasant smile, asked him politely in French if he had reconsidered and would now tell them where the ambush was to take place. Each time he had shaken his head, his mouth, nostrils and eyes full of the talcum-like red dust that covered the narrow trail on which he

lay. The sun and the thirst and the fact that he knew that they would go on like this until he was dead .. . made it a certainty that he would talk eventually. They were clever at their trade, these Pathet Lao regulars. They knew how to adjust their torture to avoid pushing him into insanity with pain, knew how to keep him balancing on the edge of agony until he either told them what they wanted to know or died. And Gillon knew that he would never last long enough to die; no one could, unless he was insane to begin. Time after time they had stopped and he had shaken his head and the officer had dribbled a bit more liquid from the canteen near his face so that he could smell the water as it disappeared into the dust.

Then had come a moment when the rifle butt had not fallen. He had been counting the blows, thirty per minute, and then they changed off to the other leg. Fifteen changes and the officer asked his question and the water dripped into the dust near his face. They had not varied the routine in three hours. He had raised his head in puzzlement, but could no longer see clearly, and for a long moment, the officer's twisted face had confused him. Then he heard the snapping of small-arms fire and thudding feet around him. He saw camouflage uniforms running from the growth along the trail and Jack Liu was in front, pistol in one hand and knife in the other. The pistol fired twice and he fainted. When he awoke, it was long after dark and he was being jolted through the jungle on a stretcher sling. He could just see the faint outline of the carrying pole, and, then moonlight flooded everything as they crossed a clearing that marked the beginning of the hills. The swaying of the stretcher made him sick and he vomited. Someone whispered and the column halted and he was laid carefully on the ground. The moonlight was bright enough to show that it was Liu bending over him.

`How are you feeling, Bob ... ?'

In answer, Gillon choked and gagged once more and Liu put an arm around his shoulders and lifted his head to ease the reflex. After it had passed, Liu wet a cloth and bathed his face, then carefully poured water into the palm of his hand and urged Gillon to drink.

'Can you hold out until we reach the camp . . . ? I'll be able to get some morphine for your legs ...

Gillon tried to answer but found that he could not work his lips enough to form words, nor could he force any sound at all past his aching throat. He nodded his head and Liu spread the cloth over his eyes and ordered the column forward once more. For hours they traveled, but always uphill. He floated in and out of consciousness and he thought he remembered a period of delirium when he tried to call out for help, but he was never sure whether he managed any sound or not. For hours they traveled until at last he could no longer find the pale glimmer of moonlight through the cloth and he must have slept deeply then, because there was bright sunlight under the trees when he awoke once more.

An old Meo woman sat near him, fanning away the flies and when he turned his head to look at her, she stared back without emotion. The fan moved steadily, never missing a beat, and after a bit she went back to staring at the distant hills, ignoring him so completely that she might have been fanning herself.

His head was propped on a hard pillow and he could look around him. After a few minutes, everything slid into focus and he recognized their base camp high in the hills near the North Vietnamese border. After a few minutes, an American walked across the compound toward him. It was no one that Gillon had ever seen before, and although dressed in a pair of khaki slacks and open-necked sport shirt, the pistol strapped to his waist indicated that he was well aware that there was a war on. The man stopped beside his stretcher and stared down at him, a friendly grill on his face.

'How you feeling, buddy?' He did not wait for an answer but-squatted down, raised the blanket and studied Gillon's legs.

'Not too bad for the beating you took,' he answered his own question. 'Not bad at all. You go out today and they'll be able to give you some decent care in Tokyo.'

'How bad are they?' The words came out in an awkward croak but Gillon was surprised that he could

speak at all, the way his throat ached. The memory of the trail and the long trek came back in -an instant's searing pain.

`Like I said, not bad at all. Your legs are going to be as tender as hell for a month or so, but I don't think there'll be any permanent damage.'

The intense blue sky and the heat were combining to rob him of consciousness again and for a long time afterward he was never sure whether he had heard the story from the CIA doctor or had dreamed it all.

He had been leading a scouting mission, ahead of his band of Meo tribesmen, up near the border. Liu was one of those nameless and unidentifiable people who came, stayed awhile and disappeared, all ostensibly working for the Laotian royalist government, as was he, but usually as a matter of convenience only. A Chinese had appeared one day, introduced himself as Jack Liu and presented all the proper credentials. Since then, he had become an invaluable member of Gillon's unit and a close friend. This particular day they had received word that a combat unit, fresh from rest and refit in North Vietnam, was moving down one of the thousands of pathways that made up the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Gillon's assigned task was to intercept, destroy and return with prisoners for interrogation. Accordingly, they had moved out and set up their ambush. Gillon and one guide had moved carefully up the trail to try to obtain a firsthand look at how large and well equipped was the force they would be facing. Either the guide had betrayed them, or else had been taken by surprise and killed, as Gillon suddenly found himself surrounded by black-pajamaed Pathet Lao troops.

Perhaps, Gillon thought long afterward, someone else would have figured that Gillon had been taken and made to talk . . . it being axiomatic that anyone captured by the Pathet Lao would talk or die. By rights, Liu should have withdrawn and quickly, before he found himself the victim of a similar ambush. Instead, Liu had sent the main body back toward the hills in an apparent retreat, but had moved quickly with a handful of men across and around south of the trail until he had found Gillon. A surprise attack had killed or routed

the Pathet Lao. Later that day, a helicopter flew him out to an airfield in Thailand and the next thing he remembered was the soft freshness of the sheets in the Tokyo hospital. He had not seen Liu since that night on the trail. In spite of that, he knew Liu had risked his life for him and that was a bond not easily forgotten. Yet tonight it had been broken for him and there was nothing, not a damned thing, that he could ever do about it. Shortly before midnight, they reached a depression in the snow that became a wide, flat surface and he knew they had reached the river. They had come down through thick stands of aspen, clambered over a sharp dip and edged out onto a smooth surface nearly a quarter of a mile wide. On the far side was an identical dip and again, more aspens. The ground climbed sharply upward to the beginnings of the spruce forest. Barely able to keep his eyes open and his feet moving, Gillon trudged on without thought of rest now, knowing that if they stopped, they would never go on again. For another hour they climbed higher and higher until the ground crested and flattened. Gillon paused, breathing heavily, and shone his flashlight around. They were deep into the trees again and he was certain that they had passed beyond the tightening circle of Chinese troops. If his assumption was correct, then they stood a chance once more. They stumbled on until they found a small clearing. In the swirling snow, the flashlight was insufficient to show details, but even so the clearing appeared suitable for their needs. Tall spruces rose straight from the floor of the forest to hide their crowns in the gloom above. Gillon guessed that they roofed together about sixty feet or so above the ground and that would provide all the cover from air search they would need.

`Here!' he gasped out, and like automatons, the others dropped their packs, broke out the tents and in minutes were collapsed inside and dead to the world in their utter exhaustion. Gillon trudged into the trees for several yards, forcing himself to take the elementary precaution of searching

the immediate area. He was not sure what he would find or that he would be able to do anything about it if he did, but the precaution had to be taken. The cold had settled down until he was certain that it was well below zero; he guessed that the wind was blowing at speeds close to twenty miles an hour and the combined effects of wind and temperature produced a chill factor of between forty and fifty-two below zero Fahrenheit. To try to mount a guard in their weakened condition would only have invited a quick death by freezing. Gil-Ion gave up halfway around the circuit and found his way hack to his own tent. He had just enough strength left to strip off his boots, brush the worst of the snow off his suit and crawl into the sleeping bag before he collapsed.

Gilloft fought his way out of a drugged sleep like an exhausted swimmer struggling for the unobtainable mirror surface. He opened his eyes to a diffuse light filling the stuffy tent. Above his face there was a sheen of frost crystals on the nylon underside where his breath had condensed during the night and frozen into tiny stalactites. It was daylight of their fifth day in the Tien Shan, he realized finally. His watch showed 0800 hours: long past the time that they should have been on the trail. He struggled out of the /seductively warm folds of the sleeping hag and crammed his feet into the half-frozen boots that he had forgotten to tuck underneath the sleeping bag the night before. Pulling his parka on he crawled reluctantly from the tent into the bitter cold, cold so intense that it snatched his breath away and he had to cover his mouth and nose with his gloved hands. In the half-light, the forest was low and menacing. Only the tops of the four tents showed above the newly fallen snow; at each end warm air from the interior had seeped out during the night to create saucer-like depressions around the tent flaps. Gillon reached back inside for his snowshoes and strapped them on, chafing his frozen boots as he did so to soften the leather. At least two additional feet of snow had fallen after they stopped for the night, certainly more than enough to cover any last trace of their passage from the pursuing Chinese ski troops. He crumbled a handful of snow between his gloved fingers, judging the consistency of the fine, frozen powder to be perfect for skiing. That of course could work against them, he realized. It would be just as perfect for the Chinese. Remembering the steep ridge they had climbed last night, he figured that it was less than half a mile back. If he recalled correctly, the slope to the ridge was bare of trees near the top and might just afford him a vantage point from which he could survey the river valley below. He took his bearings with the compass and set out through the trees. As Gillon trudged on, his boots warmed and the cold ache began to leave his feet. In spite of six hours of uninterrupted sleep, he was still exhausted. It was an effort to move one snowshoe forward after the other. They had been very near the point of collapse when they had stopped; closer even than he had realized. Looking back now over the previous day and night's march, Gillon was convinced that if they hadn't stopped when they did, they would have collapsed within another hour and died from cold and exhaustion. He knew that it was only the warmth of the tents and the sleeping bags that had saved their lives. In mountains this high and this cold, the human body was horribly vulnerable; the slightest miscalculation of resources could easily cost your life. There was, a curiously muffled quality to the forest, weighted down as it was by the thick blanket of snow. Even the wind had died away and the snow-laden spruces stretched quietly toward the gray sky. The pristine whiteness of the newly fallen snow was marred only with grayish shadows left by the snowshoe webbing. Shortly, the ground began to slope and the wall of trees before him thinned perceptibly. Gillon moved carefully now, using the trees for cover as he approached the ridge.