The Asian Mantrap

Twenty

The face leaning into the lighted match bent lower and lower until it crashed into the roof. Willow stood over the crumpled soldier, waiting for some sign of life. With her knife shoved up to its hilt so its blade severed the man’s left carotid artery and sliced through his trachea, he was dead before his knees had folded under him.

“I had to do it,” she said regretfully. “There was no other way.”

I knew what she meant. The mess we had left behind the vault would not be discovered for some time. The roof guard, however, would soon be missed. “Just leave him,” I said. “Every second counts now.”

Martin kneeled down next to the body. He extracted the knife, wiped the blade on the dead man’s tunic, then pocketed it. He lifted a limp arm and pulled loose the soldier’s Russian AX-47 rapid-fire automatic and slung it over his shoulder. “How did you get behind him?” he asked Willow. “He was standing at the edge of the roof.”

She pointed over the edge. Four feet down was a five inch ledge that ran the length of the building. No one said anything.

Before I jumped back onto the department store roof, I spent a full minute looking out over the city. It wasn’t because I liked the view. I had to take time to set a course to the river.

For centuries the great Hong Ha, or Red River, had been a lifeline for the people who occupied this land. It was a vast avenue of commerce. Thousands of watercraft of every kind plied the broad, silt-laden waterway. Traffic between Hanoi and Haiphong was thick and constant. A fast pleasure boat could cover the distance in three hours. A tug pushing flatboats could make it in under seven. The trip upstream took a third longer.

I’d made up my mind that we’d go by river. We were in a hurry, but I wasn’t interested in getting to Haiphong too soon. I just wanted to get there for sure.

Once on the ground, we moved quickly along the route I had fixed in my mind. Willow acted as point in case a verbal encounter occurred. As we got closer to the river, we met more people. Movement of goods by waterway is a round-the-clock activity.

Willow was invaluable. She kept her ears open. We were within sight of the docks when she interpreted what an excited passerby was calling out to a friend. “He says that terrorists have vandalized army headquarters. There’s been another brutal murder, this time a lowly soldier. That makes six men in uniform, including two officers, who have been killed in just one day. Extra troops are being called out. The city is going to be sealed off.”

A man driving a small flatbed truck drove up and came to a stop before a quayside saloon and started shouting. Sailors and merchants tumbled out upon hearing his words. Willow pushed us against a plate glass window of a darkened storefront. “Well, joy time is over,” she said.

“Those are reservists running off to join their unit?” I mused.

“Everyone’s going to clear out before the marines show up to put all boats under quarantine until they’re inspected. If we’re going to grab a ride, we’d better take our pick soon.”

I was moving before Willow finished laying on the bad news. There was no time to be selective. Or timid. I strode straight ahead to the end of the dock ahead of us. A sixty foot, self-propelled coal barge — fully loaded — was moving off. The skipper, barely visible in a small pilot house at the stem, was backing his craft into the river proper. His attention was stern. He tugged on a lanyard frequently, sounding whistle warnings as the ungainly craft got underway. He was in no hurry; he had yet to hear the latest news.

I leaped onto the pyramid of apple-sized chunks of coal. Martin let out a low groan when he landed right next to me. Willow did it right, not even losing her balance on the sloping side of the piled coal. The heaped-up load acted as a screen between ourselves and the busy barge master. We squatted in the bow, blending in well with the background because of the dark clothing we wore. Martin cradled his newly-acquired weapon possesively.

The lights on shore receded as the barge backed away from the dock. I realized we had reached the traffic lane when a small freighter crossed our bow from starboard to port. The skipper swung the barge’s nose about to parallel the freighter’s course and reversed his engine. We moved forward, heading downstream.

“Stay here you two,” I said. “I’m going astern to size up the situation. Keep an eye out but stay put.”

I eased back along the gunwale. The barge sat low in the water. The river surface was tar black and smooth. Halfway to the stem I could see a white light atop the pilot house. A bit further on the head of the skipper came into view. I wondered if there was other crew aboard — an engineer, perhaps.

I watched for a long time. The skipper seemed statuelike; only his forearms and hands on the wheel moved, and then only slightly. I was about to return to Martin and Willow when the man in the pilothouse did something I didn’t like. He reached out with one hand and brought a microphone up to his face. The barge had radio communications with other boats and the shore.

I told Martin and Willow. “That’s bad,” muttered Martin. “If he sees us, he’ll have the river patrol here in no time.”

“I wonder if a radio alert will be put out to riverboat captains to look for stowaways?” Willow remarked.

“It appears he’s alone, so he can’t make a search,” I answered.

“I’ll take him out,” Martin said gruffly. He had a wild light in his eyes. Violence was second nature to him.

“There’s no need to kill him,” I objected. “We need him. He knows the river.”

“We can get along without him,” argued Martin. “He’s got charts in the pilothouse. Besides, he’s just another gook.”

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Martin was plain crazy with his obsession. He still thought of himself as being at war in enemy territory. He had lost touch with reality — driven by a compelling urge to destroy indiscriminately. There was only starlight around us, but I could see his craggy jaw was set, his eyes sunken from weariness and gnawing pain, but mostly his eyes were fixed and over-bright. Fever, I guessed, but not enough to cause that hard, flinty glint in them as well. Martin could become a problem.

I had to be firm. “Keith, you stay right where you are. Keep a lookout down river. Willow and I will handle the skipper.” He accepted the duty, nodding his head sharply. I drew Willow aside and told her what to do.

We moved toward the stem, each of us on either side of the small mountain of coal. I got to a point where I could see the captain’s head. When he turned upon hearing a thump against the side of the pilothouse, I knew Willow had thrown the first lump of coal. I waited. Another thump. This time the skipper lashed the wheel and stepped away to look out the side window.

I ran ahead. The boatman heard my footsteps. He was facing me when I stepped into the wheelhouse. He was middle age with a thin, scraggly beard. A cataract clouded his left eye. One shoulder dipped lower than the other as if he suffered from spine curvature. His head crooked to one side to compensate for the deformity.

His eyes went wide with surprise and locked on the gun in my hand. They narrowed when he looked up. The disintegrating makeup on my face seen in the sidelighting from the binnacle lamp must have been hideous. He was adjusting to the apparition before him when Willow joined us.

She talked to him softly in his language. It took him a while to understand. Then he spoke in a surprisingly strong voice. Willow translated. “He doesn’t know any details, but from radio chatter between riverboats, he’s aware that a manhunt is underway in Hanoi. The search is fanning out and everyone is ordered to report anything out of the ordinary. A total curfew has been imposed in Hanoi. No one is allowed in the streets and all traffic going out of the city has been halted. No trains, no buses, no movement of any kind. Martial law is being declared.”

“What about shipping?”

She asked, then turned to me. “All craft on the river not already underway must remain docked until all vessels can be searched. All downstream watercraft in transit are to put in at the next guard station for inspection.”

“Where’s that from here?”

Willow passed the question. The boatman put a grimy finger on a dog-eared chart spread out on a navigation shelf. “He says it’s just around the next bend about two miles ahead. It’s the first of two between here and Haiphong.”

I made a meaningful gesture toward the skipper with my gun. “Tell him to douse his lights. All of them. I want this scow blacker than the coal he’s carrying.” The man complied. “Now tell him to swing way over away from the guard station so we’ll be harder to see. We’re going to sneak by it.”

The man protested. “That’ll put us in the upstream lane,” Willow translated. “We’ll be bucking traffic and may have a collision.”

“If he won’t do it, I will! Tell him.”

Willow and I took turns overseeing the barge master’s compliance. We passed the guard post unchallenged. I went forward to look at Martin. He was having fever chills although he did his best to conceal them. He refused to come astern to the wheelhouse. He wanted to stay at his lookout post. I didn’t argue that the river ahead could be seen best from the pilot’s position.

The detailed charts of the river were old but useful. From them I calculated the distance to the rendezvous point with the rescue sub. It would end its two hour standby at 5:10 AM. I looked at my watch. “Ask him what our speed is,” I requested.

The answer he gave Willow sounded right, but it didn’t fit my time frame. The river current gave a three knot boost to the coal boat’s speed, but we were still going to arrive too late. Twenty minutes late, I figured. And ten minutes after that, sunrise would be on us.

There was no way we could survive through another day waiting for the time the sub would be on station the second time. Under the circumstances, with the entire Vietnamese countryside and armed forces alerted, I was sure there wouldn’t be a second time. The submarine would be recalled, leaving us stranded.

We had this one opportunity only.

If we missed it, we’d be written off for sure.

“Tell Captain Whiskers to increase to maximum speed,” I said to Willow.

He balked when she gave him the order. “He says we’re going as fast as we safely can now,” Willow repeated the man’s comments.

I believed the old river pirate. The throttle was up to the three-quarters point on the quadrant. I reached over and shoved it all the way forward. The engine picked up speed. It rumbled and whined. The old man snatched back the throttle, raising his voice in protest.

“He’s says the engine can’t take it. It can run at full power for a short time before it will tear itself apart. It sounded like it would. If he loses his engine, he could lose his barge.”

“He’ll lose his ass to the eels if he doesn’t,” I snapped. “Tell him he can either add three knots to our speed or start walking. And he’s got five seconds to make up his mind.”

It looked like he wasn’t going to do it. I reached over again and jammed the throttle ahead. The engine began laboring. The skipper glared at me. He drew the control back a full inch, then held up three fingers and shook them at me.

A half hour later we passed a navigation buoy. I took another fix. We had increased speed a shade over three knots.

I didn’t think I could sleep, but I did — seated on the floor of the pilothouse while Willow kept the barge master company. When I awoke we switched places. Willow got two hours of sleep. Martin was as comfortable as we could make him in the bow. He didn’t want to be moved. The night remained warm with no appreciable wind, but I covered him with a blanket taken from a locker in the wheelhouse anyway. Martin slept fitfully, groaning in his sleep. I felt his forehead. It was warm to the touch, but not feverish. Willow had loaded him with aspirin.

After four o’clock I remained awake. The river widened slowly as we approached the sea. The water surface turned choppy as it mingled with the saltwater of the Gulf of Tonkin. A string of lights dotted the northern shore. The dark land mass on our left six miles away was Pho Cac Ba Island.

I thought our speed was falling off, but it was the change in wave action that made it seem so. All seemed serene and quiet. My spirits lifted. We were going to arrive well within the set time limits for the pickup. We were going to make it after all.

Willow jumped to her feet. She turned up the volume control on the radio receiver. “There. I know I heard it. The river patrol is calling this barge number. There it is again!”

I took Wilhelmina out again and held it two feet from the skipper’s head. I snatched up the microphone and gave it to him. “Tell him I’m very nervous so he’d better be careful of what he says.”

The man’s hand was trembling when he took the mike. I hoped his shaky voice wouldn’t give us away. He answered the call. I watched Willow’s face. She frowned then clamped her lips together. “It’s the second guard watch station. They want a position report.”

I jabbed my finger down on the chart, placing it six miles upstream from where we actually were. It coincided roughly with where we would be if we’d been moving at normal speed. The old man understood, but hesitated. I rammed the gun muzzle into his thin ribs. He grunted, then spoke into the radio mike.

The reply that came back was a series of short orders. Willow briefed me. “We’re to pull in when we come up to the guard station. Seems they know we passed up the first checkpoint.”

I looked at my watch again. “We’ll run the gauntlet. Have him radio back a Wilco.” Willow instructed the boatman who reluctantly acknowledged the instructions.

When he completed his message, I shoved the throttle up to its forward stop. The engine coughed, then surged to full power. I waved Wilhelmina meaningfully at the skipper to let him know my decision was irreversible.

The submarine would hold on station for another eighty minutes. My figures showed we should reach it in fifty-five minutes. Almost half an hour to spare. With the extra speed gained by using maximum power, we’d have even more cushion.

After twenty minutes, I pushed on the wheel, urging the boatman to cut closer to the point. The barge had a shallow raft. Even fully loaded, there was no danger of running aground. I wanted to stay in the lee of the land to avoid any slowdown by gulf currents.

We were close — less than three hundred yards from the Kian An harbor. There the water could hardly be seen because hundreds of sampans and junks were massed together, gunwale to gunwale, and stem to stem in a seemingly endless expanse of floating craft. The bay at that point was almost totally carpeted with boats in an unbelievable demonstration of human togetherness.

It was difficult not to be impressed as we approached. The mind-blowing rows of lashed-together craft stretched all along the shore and into the bay. Every rocking, naked mast had a light at its tip. In the dark, the lights looked like bobbing fireflies. The illusion burst when the straining engine growled, then gave off clanking noises before turning silent. I waited for it to surge back into life, but nothing happened.

The barge began losing headway, although its inertia would carry it a long way. The old skipper, a true sailor, spun the wheel to head for open water.

I brushed him aside. With one hand I jiggled the throttle while reversing the wheel with the other. I pressed the starter button. It churned but the engine refused to start. The heavy, coal-laden barge plowed on, carrying us toward the outer row of junks. We stared silently as the gap between the scow and the anchored boats narrowed. A voice crackled over the radio. “That’s the river patrol calling us again!” Willow cried out.

“Forget it,” I snapped back. “Grab our stuff. We’re getting off. Where’s Martin?”

“Right behind you,” his deep voice told me. I shot him a glance. His chest was puffed out from the wrapped-up MIA documents safely tucked under his knitted turtleneck pullover. The Soviet AK-47 from Willow’s rooftop victim was slung over his shoulder. Willow steadied the helm while I worked my arms into the harness of the knapsack containing the mass of vital intelligence data we had acquired. Willow wore the pack that held the oxygen bottles, goggles, and breathing masks used during the glide-chute descent that now seemed half a lifetime ago.

We were getting close to the bunched sampans. “Get out on the starboard side and be ready to jump,” I ordered. “I’ll try to bring us close alongside. Then we’ll board. Go over the decks to the very last boat. We’ll commandeer that one.”

My words were cut off by a piercing, hooting noise coming from low on the water behind us. Upon hearing it, the barge skipper leered and spit out some contemptuous-sounding words at Willow’s back. She spun around to be met by his triumphant grin. “That hooting — it’s the river patrol!” she hammered at me.

“Get going!” I barked. Willow scrambled out of the wheelhouse. My full attention was bent on easing the scow up beside the line of anchored boats, but I glanced sideways to see what was delaying Martin.

What I saw made me let go of the wheel and lunge at him. He had grabbed the barge captain from behind, holding the crippled man with an arm around his chest. I was too late. The knife in Martin’s free hand was plunged deep into the left side of the old boatman’s throat and moving swiftly across his neck. A spray of warm, frothy blood made a crimson mist before my angry eyes.

Without any show of emotion, Martin dropped the body, and stepped over it as if it were offal. Martin said nothing; he went by me as if I didn’t exist. His lips were set in a thin, arrogant smirk as though he was proud of his needless, barbaric action. Any thoughts I harbored that Martin had the strength to bear up under the ordeal he’d put himself through were worthless. The man’s mind had become warped and shattered by the nightmare he had created. The trauma of Phan Wan’s death could have been the final blow that had put him over the edge.

I heard Willow’s shout. I whirled about. The barge was following a course of its own. Despite full rudder, I couldn’t bring the bow around before it reached the nearest sampan. There was a loud splintering of wood as the corner of the barge smashed into the side of a junk, tearing out a huge gouge. I was thrown off balance but kept my footing.

I jumped from the pilothouse door onto the dew-dampened teakwood deck six feet below. Willow and Martin were on the next boat before the occupants of the first vessel recovered from the shock of being rammed and boarded. I ran at full stride, leaping from boat to boat. When I caught up with Martin we skimmed over mated gunwales like neck and neck hurdlers in a track meet. Ahead of us Willow upset a crate of chickens on a deck. The flimsy bamboo cage burst open, leaving a shower of squawking fowl and airborne feathers in her wake.

A snarling dog came out of nowhere and clamped strong teeth on my right pant leg. I spun completely around in an effort to dislodge the animal. The centrifugal force added weight to the dog. My pant leg gave way. The dog slithered across the deck with a torn piece of cloth between his locked teeth, once again scattering the hysterical chickens.

Martin was half a sampan ahead of me when I got moving again. Our headlong rush was attracting the attention of floating city dwellers. The once sleeping atmosphere became a focal point for shrieks of alarm, yapping dogs, crying children, and every sound possible from disturbed domestic animals. Until everything came to life around us, I hadn’t appreciated how extensive a life-style existed on Haiphong’s floating cells.

Above all was the persistent, weird hooting of the river patrol boat that paced us. It was as if the mournful sound was counting off time that was running out for us. It was then that we ran out of decks leading to freedom. The last boat was a small, pitching sampan. We had to jump down to reach its deck.

Willow and Martin were fumbling with the mooring lines when I caught up. A bare-chested, irate man emerged from under the oilskin-covered bows that formed a deck shelter. He had his eyes on Martin and didn’t see me coming. I hit him with a stunning shoulder block that lifted him off his feet. One foot tagged the deck in his sideways travel. The other snagged on the gunwale, flipping him head over heels as he fell into the bay.

I raced to the tiller. Beside it was the control handle of a ten horsepower Johnson outboard motor. For once I was grateful that the United States had poured every conceivable kind of mechanical equipment into the Vietnamese wastebin of war. I yanked the starter cord, moved the choke lever and yanked again. The first sputterings evened out to a smooth, burbling tempo. Willow shouted: “All clear!”

I took the motor out of neutral and twisted the rubber hand grip. We moved off. I headed straight out. We had a long way yet to go in very little time.

The annoying hooting of the patrol craft sounded louder now. I got a fix on its location. It was directly off to our left. Its lights should be visible.

As I looked for them, a blinding glare struck me full in the face. I was blinded. A powerful searchlight stabbed through the darkness, its just turned-on beam hitting us as it began its sweep. The light, broad-focused and low on the water, illuminated a large area as it slowly scanned the bay ahead of us.

I concentrated on steering what I thought was the proper course. Willow and Martin manned either side of the bow, looking off their respective quarters for the special float marker that meant life or death to us.

The noisy patrol boat whipped its spotlight shoreward to scan across the bunched sampans. Looking behind, I could see people on decks, looking stark in the bright light and pointing in our direction. The light turned and started probing again. It passed back and forth over the water surface ahead of us. It was then that I saw the marker. The bobbing float was barely discernable even when well lit. I steered for it. I tried to twist the outboard’s throttle past the stop.

Just five minutes more! We could make it with five more minutes. I shouted to Willow and Martin. Willow came to the stem and strapped a green bail-out bottle to my thigh. She slung the goggles over my neck and clipped the breathing mask to my jacket. She prepared herself for immersion.

It was like being hit by a meteor. The blazing searchlight flicked over us and returned, pinning the little sampan in its powerful, now-narrowed beam. Then the shooting began. Zinging bullets from hand-held automatic weapons whipped up the dark water around us. Most fell short. The chunk-chunk-chunk of the double-barrel 20 mm. cannon was different. Streams of flat trajectory tracers smashed in our hull. Pieces of wood flew off the boat. Half of the port gunwale disintegrated. The chewed and splintered mast came down like a felled tree. The entire boat shuddered under the repeated impact of the large caliber shells.

“Jump! Into the water!” I yelled, hoping to be heard.

Willow plunged into the bay. I saw Martin rear up, roaring defiance. He faced the attacking patrol boat and fired a long burst. His bullets found the searchlight, knocking it out. At the same instant a 20 mm. round exploded next to him. He lunged overboard.

I surfaced halfway between Martin’s bobbing form and the descent marker buoy attached to the submerged submarine. I swam to see if I could help Martin.

He was dead.

I took his body in tow. Willow swam alongside. We were ten yards from the beckoning end of the lifeline. The blinded patrol boat stood off, continuing to rake and batter the burning, shattered sampan.

Willow went down first. I threw a leg lock around Martin’s body and submerged after her, working my way down the guideline until I was some fifteen or twenty feet below the surface. It would be a cold, lonely wait until the submarine escape hatch was cycled and Willow was taken inside. I concentrated on breathing as evenly as I could. It was the only way I could close out the world that threatened my sanity.

I felt motion next to my weightless feet. Two frogmen suddenly took shape beside me. One took Martin’s body. The other led me down to the waiting escape hatch.

I dripped sea water all over Commander Beckwith’s khaki uniform when we shook hands vigorously. Unsmiling black shoe navy enlisted men filled the control room. Most of the crew were present. Very few of them were young.

A radioman pushed his way through to the submarine captain. The message he handed to Beckwith was read quickly and handed back with an affirmative nod. The commander leaned toward me. “For security reasons and our own safety, we can’t tell Washington you’ve been picked up until we’re well out to sea. So the White House doesn’t know that you’ve been recovered. I have no idea what you’ve stirred up topside in the past twenty-four hours, but it’s enough for us to receive a presidential recall directive. That message cancelled all previous instructions and ordered us to abandon station immediately.”

“You mean, if we hadn’t made it today, you wouldn’t be here tomorrow?”

“That’s what the order intended,” he answered. “But we would have been here. We wouldn’t let General Martin down. Not these men.”

“They’re something special?”

“Yes. All volunteers. Every man served in Vietnam.”

A pair of medical corpsmen came aft carrying a litter bearing Keith Martin’s blanket-covered form. They placed it gently on the deck in front of us. Two waiting Chief Petty Officers laid a spread-out American flag over the blanket.

The crew of war veterans stood sad-faced and quiet with heads bowed.

I saw tears running down the cheeks of one man.