Message From -Creasy 5 (5 page)

Neither
of them made friends easily, and the casual observer would have found it
impossible to see their closeness. They were not men who showed affection or
emotion; but they had served together for many years, and Creasy had come to
Naples to discuss the mysterious dogtag and the man who had delivered it in San
Diego.

He sat
down, saying: "That was Jens from Copenhagen. He discovered that the man,
Van Luk Wan, survived the shooting."

"What
was the range?" Guido asked.

"About
five metres."

Guido
glanced at his friend and raised an eyebrow. "You missed him at five
metres?"

"I
didn't miss. He went down like he was poleaxed. I had no time to make
sure."

Guido
looked out across the bay. An American frigate was swinging slowly at anchor.
That night the sailors would be drunk and brawling in Naples' red light
district. Some would be robbed and some would take home a communicable disease.
He turned back to Creasy.

"I
agree with Jens and The Owl. You're being set up. This guy Van is just the
bait. Why don't you go home to Gozo and enjoy your retirement?"

Creasy
took a sip of wine and answered: "That's the sensible thing to do...But
then, I was never famous for doing sensible things. This is nagging away at my
head. It won't go away whether I'm sitting here or in Gozo."

"So you'll go to 'Nam?"

"Yes;
but first I'll phone Jim Grainger in the States. He has the connections to find
out through immigration whether Van Luk Wan entered the US as a tourist or a
refugee. If he was given refugee status they'll have his address. In that case
I'll go and pay him a visit."

Guido
poured more wine. "The season is over here and I'm getting a little bored.
If you go to Saigon I'll go with you." He smiled briefly. "It'll be
like old times."

"I
hope not," Creasy answered. "In the old times a lot of guys were
trying to shoot our asses off."

The
Dutchman lost his temper. Piet de Witt had fought in many wars and many places
and on the whole had been well-paid; but he decided that if God ever wanted to
give planet Earth an enema, he would put the tube into Cambodia. It was not the
countryside, which was beautiful, or even the average Cambodian who, on the
whole, were gentle people. It was just that his present employers had sunk
below even de Witt's bottom line.

He turned
to the small, brown-clad figure of the Khmer Rouge officer beside him.
"Fuck you! It's impossible to clear that minefield before sunset. Not
without risking the lives of my men."

"They
risk their lives every day," the officer replied. "So do all our men.
That's what war is all about."

The
Dutchman laughed hollowly. He looked down the green, lush valley and said:
"Most wars are stupid. This one is simply crazy." He had a map in his
left hand. He jabbed a finger at it. "It was you people, the Khmer Rouge,
who planted those mines six years ago. Two thousand of them right in that
valley. You didn't even keep proper grid references or mark down the clear
lanes. Now all these years later you want to send a convoy of troops through
the same valley. Why don't you send them by another route?"

The
Cambodian looked up at the giant Caucasian beside him. "Because in those
days we mined every valley in this area. Of course sometimes maps and grid
references got lost. That's why we pay you ten thousand dollars a month to
train our men to clear them when we have to." He glanced at his watch.
"It's six hours to sunset, by which time the trucks will be ready to roll.
We need a clear way through that valley by then. Those are our orders."

The
Dutchman swore under his breath. "Maybe you'd better tell her it's
impossible. I've only been here two months and I'm the only expert you've got.
I've trained twelve of your people but they're still amateurs. You tell her
that."

The
Khmer Rouge officer replied: "You can tell her yourself. She'll be here
two hours before sunset and will expect to ride with that convoy through the
valley. I suggest you and your squad get started."

The Dutchman worked for his money, and he worked from the front in the classic
V-shaped mine-clearing procedure. The mines were mostly the Chinese K3000
antipersonnel variety, interspersed with the occasional Russian DOM K2
anti-tank mines.

They
worked at a total width of fifty metres. Two of his squad came behind at the
peripheries, planting small red flags to delineate the cleared path. After two
hours one of the squad made a mistake and had his right leg blown off. An hour
later there was another mistake, this time fatal.

Two
hours before sunset they were just halfway through the minefield. The Cambodian
officer who was walking a cautious fifty metres behind shouted out: "You
have to go faster! The field has to be cleared by darkness."

The
Dutchman turned on his knees and was about to shout back an obscenity when he
saw the line of trucks approaching behind the officer. The lead truck halted
and the tall, slim figure of the woman jumped down from the passenger seat. She
was wearing camouflaged combat gear and carrying an AK47 rifle.

She
spoke a few words to the officer and then walked forwards as though taking an
evening stroll down the Champs Elysees. The Dutchman had heard all about her
but never met her. In spite of his anger he was intrigued.

She
gave him a smile, held out her hand and introduced herself.

"I
am Connie Lon Crum and I'm pleased to meet you at last. I hear very good
reports about your work. We're grateful."

The
Dutchman was susceptible to women, especially tough, beautiful women. He took
her small hand in his big paw. His anger was forgotten, but he found himself
tongue-tied.

She
continued: "Is there any way you can clear a track through before
darkness?" With that technical question his military mind clicked back
into place and he found his tongue.

"The
only way would be to mount an intense artillery bombardment which would set off
most of the mines. My squad could then clear the remainder. The only problem is
we don't have the artillery to mount such a bombardment. Miss Crum, there's no
other way."

For the
first time he saw the steel in her eyes; and then, a different kind of smile on
her face.

"There
is always another way." She turned and shouted an order. From the front of
three trucks men began to jump down or be pushed down. Most of them had their
hands tied behind their backs, the others were Khmer Rouge guards holding
bayoneted rifles.

"Government
soldiers," she said. "We captured them two weeks ago near Sem Reap.
They will dance a path clear for us."

The
Dutchman watched speechlessly as the prisoners were organised into three lines,
each prisoner about a yard from the next, and then roped together. The guards
pushed them forward to the edge of the mine field.

Then it
began. First the guards had to jab them with their bayonets and then fire at
their feet. They did literally dance as they moved forwards. The air was filled
with the noise of their screams and then the roars of the explosions as, one
after another, the mines exploded.

The
Dutchman had thought he had become immune to atrocities.

He had
seen them in the Congo, Biafra, Angola and Mozambique; but he had never seen
anything like this. The woman took his arm and urged him along behind the dying
prisoners. She turned to the officer behind her and said: "Be sure our
friend here has a woman to sleep with tonight." She smiled up at the
Dutchman. "We have a saying here in Cambodia: 'a soft woman is like a
soothing ointment for both body and mind'."

"So
you are from Holland?"

"No."

"Then
why do they call you the Dutchman?"

Piet de
Witt sighed, and said as though repeating a litany: "I'm from South
Africa. An Afrikaaner of Dutch descent. For some reason, everybody calls
Afrikaaners Dutchmen."

He was
lying on his back looking up at the white mosquito net.

She lay
in the crook of his arm with her long black hair across his chest.

Connie
Crum had been right. This girl had soothed both his body and his mind. It
amused him slightly to think that his mind needed such treatment. He prided
himself on being a hard man in every sense. During his life and his work he had
committed many acts of violence, some of them mindless. He had learned that
early, from his rugby coach at school who had told him 'always get your
retaliation in first'. That had become his doctrine in life.

If he
was in a bar and someone threatened him with a fight, he always struck first;
and he kept striking until the fight was over. Under such conditions he had the
ability to flick a mental switch and go on to auto-pilot. That ability created
fear among his peers.

But
during the events of the evening he had not been able to flick that switch.
Somewhere deep down he did have a bottom line. He had never tortured anybody or
deliberately killed an innocent. He had seen it done many times. And although
he had not intervened, he had never felt the repulsion that a normal human
being should have. He reflected that he might be getting old; might even be
getting soft. He felt a strange tenderness for the slim girl lying by his side.
It was an alien feeling. He had used women in much the same way as he had used
weapons or eaten a plate of food. He had not even loved his mother.

"What's
your name?" he asked the girl.

"Tan
Sotho," she answered.

"You're
Vietnamese?"

"Yes."

"What
the hell are you doing here?"

Her
voice was wistful. "My family had lived here for generations. We had our
own land. When the Khmer Rouge came they killed all the men and the old women
and the male children. They kept the young women and girls alive, mostly to use
as forced labour. But some of us were put in this brothel." She turned her
head and looked up at him. "We're more or less slaves."

"You
never tried to escape?"

"No.
A friend of mine tried and they caught her. I won't tell you what they did to
her, but it was enough that the rest of us never tried."

There
was a long silence while he looked out of the mosquito netting around the
almost bare room. She said: "I hear you clear the mines."

"That's
my job."

"It's
very dangerous."

"They
pay me well."

She
lifted her head in surprise. "They pay you?"

He
laughed. "Of course they pay me. Otherwise, why would I risk my
life?" He looked at her face and saw the disbelief in her eyes. "Is
that so strange?" he asked.

"Yes...they
never paid the others."

"The
others?"

"Yes.
The Americans."

Now the
surprise was in his eyes. "They had Americans here?"

"Yes.
There were three of them. I suppose like me they were slaves."

"Where
the hell did they come from?"

"They
came from the war, of course. They were captured by the Vietnamese. In those
early days they co-operated with the Khmer Rouge. I think they were sold to the
Khmer Rouge."

Full of
curiosity, he pushed himself onto his elbow and looked down on her oval face.
"What happened to them?"

"They
died," she said. "One by one, in the minefields. The last one died
two years ago, on the seventeenth of November."

"You
knew them?"

"Yes.
The only pleasure they had in their lives was to be allowed to come here once a
month. I liked them all. I suppose it was because we were trapped in the same
hell."

He lay
back against the pillow and abruptly a noise intruded into his thoughts. It was
a child crying. The girl said: "Please excuse me." She slipped out of
the bed and under the mosquito net.

He
watched as she padded across the floor towards a wooden door. She went through
and switched on the light, leaving the door open. He could see the child lying
in a cot. She bent over it, whispered some words and stroked the child's face.
The crying stopped. Ten minutes later she returned to the bed with a warm wet
towel. Slowly and carefully she wiped all of his body, kneeling beside him.

"The
child is yours?" he asked.

"Yes.
He's my son."

"How
old?"

"He'll
be three next month. They were angry when they found out I was five months
pregnant. I was able to conceal it until then. But they let me keep him. He is
the only thing I possess."

She was
wiping his face with the towel, gently probing into the sockets of his eyes.
She asked: "How long have you been a mercenary?"

"Too
long. I guess about twenty-five years. This is going to be my last job. Then
I'll buy a farm in the Transvaal and raise cattle."

"Did
you fight in many places?"

"Too
many."

"Did
you ever meet a man called Creasy?"

She
felt his whole body stiffen and the towel was pulled from her hand. His head
lifted from the pillow and she winced as he gripped her arm.

"What
did you say?!"

"I
just asked if you knew a man called Creasy. He was a mercenary like you."

His
voice was like sandpaper. "Do you know him?"

"No.
It's just that I heard about him from one of the Americans."

He
relaxed. His head dropped back onto the pillow and he released her arm. She
looked down at his face, curiously. His eyes were far away. She asked:
"Did you know him?"

"I
knew him."

"Is
he still alive?"

"I
don't know."

She was
slowly stroking his chest in a way that was almost maternal. She asked:
"What kind of a man is he?"

He
lifted a hand and put it over hers to stop her movements, and answered:
"He is death."