Quiller's Run

18 Moon Drop

Dropping through the dark. 'He's half crazy,' Chen had said. 'Have you met him?'

We were talking about Colonel Cho.

Pepperidge: He could be very important. What we need to find is her exposed flank. I mean Shoda's. And Cho might tell us.

'I haven't met him,' Johnny Chen told me, 'no.' He'd got back late on Tuesday night. 'Nobody ever meets that guy. He's holed up in a burnt-out rebel radio station in the jungle in Laos and, like I say, he's half-crazy. There were two guys who tried to get near the place earlier this year, and the dogs got them. He has killer-dogs around.'

Let's have a snort!

Dropping through the dark.

Chen was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall and one thin leg drawn up, his arm hooked across his knee; he looked tired, drained, the fine lines in his face deepend by the light and shadow, his almond eyes strained, looking beyond their focus, seeing, I thought, his dead friend.

'So I'd forget it,' he said, and swung his head to watch Chu-Chu, a spark of light coming into his eyes now. She was kneeling in front of a garishly-costumed Xieng doll that he'd brought back for her; she seemed to be greeting it, formally, according to some kind of custom, giving it hardly perceptible bows, her hands – not much bigger than the doll's – placed together, steepled.

I didn't like disturbing the silence, their thoughts.

'It's necessary,' as quietly as I could, 'for me to see him.'

In a moment Chen swung his head in my direction. 'Then you're half-crazy too.'

'How was your trip?'

'My trip? Okay, I guess.' He seemed to be coming back to some kind of present. 'She look after you?'

'Yes, very well. She's an accomplished lady.'

'Cooks good. Thai Suki. I taught her that. She give you Thai Suki?

'Yes.' I didn't know what it was called.

He lit a black cigarette, squinting through the smoke. 'She likes you. Said you think you're going to die, is that right, made some kind of a crucifix?'

'I was just doing some mime for her. Trying to tell her she's going to die if she keeps on with that stuff.'

'She knows that.' He shrugged. 'We all know where death is, out here. It's all in the same place, in the poppy fields. Why's it so goddamned necessary for you to see this goon?'

'I've been told he might have some information I need.'

'You have any connection? Some kind of introduction?'

'No.'

He blew out a stream of smoke with a whistling sound. 'Jesus, have you ever seen the front end of a war-trained Doberman that never gets anything to eat?'

'There are ways of handling dogs.'

'Oh, sure. You shoot their ass off and the next thing you know is your own's gone up in smoke. Cho is real mean, but you don't seem to be getting the message.'

Dropping through the dark, the lines hissing.

'What else do you know about him, Johnny?'

'Not much.' He was watching the child again. 'You look cute, sweetheart. Cute.'

She looked up, knowing the word sweetheart. It wasn't quite a smile that came into her eyes, but a lessening of melancholy, the most, I knew now, that she'd ever be able to give him.

'He was chief of intelligence' – to me now – 'of an insurgent group affiliated with Shoda's organisation., He was clever, but he wanted to handle things his way, and she didn't like that. She had him arrested and slated for execution, but he got away with it somehow, with a head wound you'd never believe.'

A current of air drew the smoke beneath the dragon lamp and upwards through the shade, quickening as it reached the heat of the bulb, making me think of ectoplasm, of ghosts, hers, mine, his.

'Who's with him there?' I asked Chen in a moment.

'At the radio station? He's on his own. Been there a couple of years, maybe more, I doubt anyone really knows – he's become a kind of legend, I guess. But if you want cold facts, the cold facts are that he doesn't like anyone going near him, which is why, understandably, he's holed up in a remote place like that in the jungle, thirty or forty kilometres from the nearest village, which is a narcotics centre anyway, buried out of sight. I've made a few runs in there; otherwise I wouldn't have picked anything up on the guy. Ask me to guess, I'd say there's damn few people in the whole of Indo-China who know about him, just the villagers and fliers like me who go there.'

'Does Shoda know where he is?'

'I doubt that too. She'd have the place dive-bombed if she did. 'Well' – he tilted his emaciated hand, rotating it in the French manner – 'maybe that's not true. He can't do her any harm, for Christ's sake, the way he is now. That's how he knew about the place himself — he ordered it dive-bombed for his group, to wipe out some rival operations.'

'Does he use the transmitter?'

'There'd be nothing left of it, and nobody's ever picked up his signals, or they'd have said.' He plucked some tobacco from his lip, studying it. 'Who the hell told you he has any kind of information for anybody?1 'I got it on the grapevine.'

He shrugged. 'D'you trust it?'

'Yes.'

'Well, okay. But, I mean, if you want to go see the guy, I guess it's as good a death as any. But what am I saying? You'd have to shoot every goddamned dog first, to get yourself your own bullet. There's better ways.

In the poppy-fields.

'Would you drop me there, Johnny?"

Impatiently, 'He watches the track, see. There's a track from the village, where they ran the stuff to build the station with. You can still get a vehicle through, but weren't you listening? You try -'

'I mean by night. A moon drop.'

'By parachute?'

'Yes.'

He shifted his position, letting his long thin legs rest on the floor, his flying-boots angled. 'Fuck, I just don't know why you won't listen.'

It was dark inside the van, almost dark. Chen had hired it for the day and bought some gear for me, a backpack with things I might need: sleeping-bag, torches, flares, first-aid, insect-repellent, snake-bite kit, a machete.

'Look,' he'd said, 'you're going to have to walk up to the goddamned place even if I drop you from the air, so why not walk up to it by the track? He can't see in the dark.'

'He won't expect anyone to approach from the other side. Nor will the dogs.'

He'd settled for a thousand US dollars.

We parked the van on the tarmac near his Windecker AC-7 and checked out at the crew station. He'd found me a pilot's uniform and sunglasses, but I wasn't worried about the environment; the van hadn't picked anyone up, and the only people we went anywhere near were the airport officials. And I was here in my dead man's shoes.

'You been in deep jungle before, Jordan?'

'In training.'

'Training. How real?'

'Real.'

'Commando type?3 'Yes.'

He'd been putting questions like that all the way to the airport, a man with a sense of responsibility. 'I don't need a thousand lousy bucks that bad, and what I don't like about this whole thing is I'm offering myself as a party to suicide before the fact.'

Dropping through the dark.

The lines hissed in the air-rush, and somewhere high in the canopy a tag of fabric fluttered, sometimes so fast that it produced a musical note, a low whining. The canopy was grey, because the moon was almost full; otherwise we couldn't have done it. The sky was clear of cloud or haze, the colour of white eggshell, with the moon's brightness blanking out most of the stars. He'd dropped me from three thousand feet and there was no wind; his computer had done a fairly accurate job: I could see the shape of the radio station almost directly below, and I still had a minimal drift from the aircraft's one hundred knots at the dropping-point.

The lines hissed.

There'd been doubts and I'd expected them. I still didn't know what resources Pepperidge could tap, what kind of information he could get at that distance. He could pick things up in the pubs and they'd be from the communications mast; but the raw intelligence going through it non-stop was massive before it hit the computers and was broken into streams for analysis. But he'd just got back from London, and that was probably where he'd been working on the Colonel Cho lead. The only thing I had to rely on was that he knew that whatever move I made would be dangerous, and he wouldn't willingly expose me without good reason.

Signal me at any time on any subject and I'll get to work immediately. I really am on the ball you know.

Or I wouldn't be here now.

The jungle was coming up. Moonlight, shadow, a spread of dense leaves like a dark sea rising.

I'd told Chen that if Katie asked about me he wasn't to tell her how difficult it would be to talk to Cho.

The sound of his plane faded to silence, southwards in the direction of the village. 'Cho won't take any notice if he hears us at the drop altitude; planes run in to the strip most nights.' He'd told me I was crazy not to bring a gun, and offered me his. 'Or are you one of those nuts that get their kicks making things tough for themselves?'

'The last thing I want to do is make a noise."

'Shit, even if it's to save your life?'

'The first shot would bring the dogs, Johnny.'

He had certain blind spots. The night-glasses, for instance. He'd finally put a pair in the bag for me but I wouldn't be using them, even though it was a strong temptation. They'd reflect.

Dark sea rising, the light and shadow of the leaves taking on the semblance of waves running below me. All I could see was the rough shape of a building half-buried in the undergrowth, with a thin stem of a mast leaning at an angle. There was no flat ground, no clearing; the place looked like . a wrecked ship lying on the sea-bed, smothered in weeds.

Stink of the insect-repellent on my face and hands. I wore no gloves; I wanted to feel things; the lines, the handle of the machete, a dog's throat, perhaps; I didn't know, it could go any way, an easy fall among the leaves or an errant movement in the air and my legs smashed against the mast or a hot death with my own throat ripped by their teeth.

I never have liked dogs.

Though they weren't the worst. 'I guess you've got everything, Jordan.' Stuffing the gear into the bag for me. 'Couple of tilings I should tell you. If you sleep on the ground, check for ants; they're this size. And in that region there are black mambas and they hunt by night; if you get unlucky, don't bother with the snake-bite kit: their venom takes less than a minute to knock out the heart muscles.' Zipped the bag shut. 'Have fun.'

Dark sea rising fast now with the mast leaning away from me, its shadow lying across the broad leaves, silver under the moon. I held the machete behind me, its bright blade hidden from the light. I couldn't hear any dogs, but it didn't mean they were sleeping. If they'd been well-trained they wouldn't bark, even when they attacked; but they could be jungle happy by now, undisciplined, half-starved, voracious.

Air spilled from the canopy on the left side and I tensioned a line and straightened the drop, watching the spread of leaves and their shadowed gaps. The radio station was half a mile away and the distance was closing but I was almost down and I drew my legs up and brought them together and became aware of the real speed of the drop as the jungle rose fast and the shadow of the canopy spread suddenly black on silver to my right and grew in size and swept in a dark wave as the leaves leapt to meet me and I was among them with the machete out of its sheath and its thong tight round my wrist and we were down and I shielded my face with the other arm and felt the tugging of the lines and the whiplash effect of stems straightening as I plunged between them and found nothing under my feet, nothing but the air and then the rush of undergrowth and then the ground, impact, my legs doubling as I leaned into a roll and dragged on the lines and started work with the machete at once because I might need the ability to move at any given second, move fast.

Cut myself free and waited.

Damp smell rising; my flying-boots had churned the fibres of the jungle floor; a smell of fungus. Silence overall, with small sounds coming into it and breaking off, fading. I stood still, waiting for the retinae to accommodate. Vines hung overhead, festooning the patch of sky, lacework against the moon's light; something was moving not far away, making a rhythmic whispering, sometimes fading, coming back – then a sudden rush of sound as a bent stem freed itself and straightened like a whip, tearing leaves away.

It wasn't dark here; it was worse than darkness: the moonlight spilled through the gaps overhead and dappled the undergrowth, creating a mosaic of black and white with nothing defined except the edges of shadow. I knew where the building was, and that was all; if there were trip-wires I wouldn't see them; if the dogs came I would only hear them.

The rhythmic whispering had stopped, not far away. A snake wouldn't attack unless I seemed threatening or was near its nest; if that sound had been a snake it would have come for me by now. But the thought of it persisted, its sinuous length, contracting, forming coils, the flat head held still as it heat-sensed me. A trickle of sweat gathered and ran; I breathed tidally, the better to listen. There were no distant sounds, only near ones, small and subtle, and once a creature voicing, a swift kill in progress, it sounded like, because of a cry cut off, and then scuffling.

I waited another few minutes and then unbuckled the harness and lowered it to the ground, stepping away, tripping on a tendril and getting my balance again. There was no accurate measurement possible, but if the jungle were this dense as far as the building it could take me the rest of the night to go half a mile, given the need for silence. It was now 01:09, and in four hours the moon would be down and there'd be total darkness here under the leaves, with only the glow from Sirius through the gaps overhead. I could stay here and sleep and acclimatise during the coming day, but there'd be heat, moist and enervating; and by daylight the dogs might roam, hunting, and if a wind rose in the wrong direction they'd pick up my scent at once. Or I could move now, and try to reach the building before first light, and deal with whatever I had to deal with in the dark. I thought that was the best way.

It was just before three o'clock when I saw the top of the radio mast leaning across the gaps in the leaves, and I put the distance now at three or four hundred yards. The silence was still not absolute, though there was no sound from inside the building; all I could hear was the nocturnal life of the jungle around me. Some kind of big cat had voiced an hour ago, perhaps a tiger, a low wickering in the distance, two miles away, maybe three. I'd heard a dozen more kills, one close, the scream of fright piercing the night and bringing the sweat out on my sides; there'd come the smell of blood raw and intimate, then the swishing of leaves as the predator had carried the prey into the deeper reaches.

And then towards dawn there was another sound, of a snout rooting, scenting, and in the mottled light I caught the shape of the dog as it froze for an instant and then came leaping for me with its ears flattened and its jaws bright.