Thai Horse (37 page)

With the sun, the jungle creatures in this marginal rain forest began to awaken and the un
d
erbrush came alive with morning sounds. Adjutant storks squawked, gliding frogs bellowed and leaped from tree to tree, hornbills pushed through the foliage with their powerful beaks vying for food with fruit-eating bats. High above them all, eagles drifted leisurely through the blood-red sky seeking breakfast.

By noon they were near the small villages of Jiangmen and Shunde. They slipped past them. By mid
afternoon they were deep in the jungle.

‘We’re coming to the Ts’e K’am Men Ti cutoff,’ Daphne said.

Hatcher studied the map she had sketched before they left. It showed a narrow cutoff
snaking
away from the main river to the south. Four miles up the cutoff was another branch that twisted off to the east through the jungle, then cut sharply west forming a narrow peninsula, an elbow in the stream, like the trap in a sink, and easy to block in the event someone tried a hurried retreat back toward the main river. Leatherneck John’s was on the far side of the elbow.

Hatcher pointed to the tight little peninsula and traced his finger straight across its base, away from Leatherneck John’s.

‘This where we are?’ he whispered.

‘About there.’ Daphne nodded.

‘So if we got in trouble at the bar, we could forget the boat and come overland, straight back here, right?’

She nodded.

‘How far is it?’ he asked.

‘A mile or less,’ she said.

‘Okay,’ Hatcher’s voice rasped, ‘that’s our fall-back position. We’ll have the Cigarette boat wait here and we’ll go around the bend in the snakeb
o
at. If we get in trouble, we run overland, like rabbits, back here, forget the small boat.’

Cohen said, ‘How many men do re take with us?’

‘Sing goes in the bar with u, covers our ass,’ said Hatcher. ‘Maybe one other shooter to stay with the snakeboat and keep his eyes open in case Sam-Sam should show up. The other three stay with the Cigarette. If we have to run for it they can cover our retreat. If it goes smoothly, they’ll just follow us back.’

‘Sam-Sam will not be back until tomorrow,’ Daphne reiterated.

‘Uh-huh. Well, there’s always the unexpected,’ Hatcher said, half aloud. ‘I’ll stop worrying about Sam-Sam when we get back to Hong Kong.’

‘You are very cautious,’ Daphne said with a smile.

‘And still alive,’ Hatcher answered. ‘Let’s put it together and get on up there.’

As they entered the domain of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti the jungle sounds merged with other sounds. Human sounds. While the sun began to sink behind the trees a strange chant drifted through the trees from in front of them.

‘What’s that?’ Cohen asked.

Daphne said, ‘The women are singing a
hanchi,
some kind of good-luck song.’

‘I’ve never heard that before,’ Cohen said.

‘It’s Cambodian, I think,’ Daphne said.

‘Are they Khmer Rouge?’ Hatcher asked.

She shrugged. ‘Khmer Rouge, free Laotian guerrillas, river tramps. Who knows. Remember, the women are just as mean as the men, and maybe a little quicker.’

The stream was no more than a hundred feet wide. As they rounded the elbow they saw the first signs of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti. There were three barges lashed to trees hard on the bank to their right, jutting out into the small river. Sing had to swing out to get around them. On the first, there were two hooches, side by side on the back of the barge, like guard stations.

A dozen women, all bare-breasted and wearing red bandannas tied tightly around stringy black hair, chanted as they cleaned the deck. On one corner of the barge two large woks were smoking as another woman stirred vegetables for dinner into them. A man sat on another corner fishing.

‘Quite a domestic little scene,’ Hatcher growled.

‘Sweet,’ Cohen said, ‘like a Fourth of July picnic.’

There were five or six crates of electronic equipment stacked in the center of the dec
k
of the second barge, sloppily covered by a tarp. Beside it, the third barge held only ten or fifteen cases of ammunition. Hatcher checked the ammo through binoculars: 9 mm., .30 caliber, .38 caliber, a crate of .45s.

‘A lot of bullets and very little inventory,’ said Hatcher.

‘Sam-Sam’s probably got his he
a
vy stuff stashed a little farther upriver. He’s not expecting customers,’ Cohen offered.

‘Good,’ said Hatcher.

Beyond the barges, another hundred yards up the creek, was Leatherneck John’s, a large, ugly square with thatched sides and a corrugated roof. It jutted out over the creek on stilts and was surrou
n
ded on both sides by makeshift piers, like a shoddy
m
ud-flat marina. Several boats of various descriptions were tied up at the pier. One of them was a scruffy-looking Chris Craft, at least twenty years old, a tattered German flag dangling from its radio antenna.

Daphne said, ‘The old white fishing boat is the Dutchman’s.’

‘Good,’ Cohen whispered. ‘Maybe we can get out of here in a hurry.’ He swept
the
binoculars farther upstream. A heavily laden barge,
w
ell covered with waterproof tarpaulins, hugged the ban
k
a hundred yards past the bar.

‘Jesus,’ Cohen breathed.

‘What?’ Hatcher asked.

‘Check the barge farther upstream,’ Cohen said and Hatcher lifted his glasses.

‘Fat city,’ said Cohen. ‘That’s the store.’

As they watched, a man came out on the front of the barge and stretched, then began t urinate into the river. He was a tall, very thin black man with greasy hair kneaded into pigtails held in place by a red headband. His blue shirt was open to the waist anti he had an AK-47 over his shoulder and a H&K 9 mm. pistol in his belt. He was wearing gold-rimmed Porsche sunglasses.

‘Uh-oh, that’s the Haitian, the one they call Billy Death,’ Cohen said. ‘He’s the one likes to cut
off
people’s feet. Look down at the bow.’

Hatcher swung the binoculars down and searched the front of the barge. There, hanging by a cord, appeared to be a pair of shoes. Hatcher
fl
ipped the switch on the glasses and increased the focal length, zooming in tightly on the shoes. He could see the rotten gray skin of an ankle sagging over the top of one of the shoes. Flies buzzed furiously around it.

‘My God,’ Hatcher gasped.

‘It should be all right,’ Daphne said. ‘He doesn’t know you. He probably won’t pay any attention to us.’

‘Yeah,’ said Cohen. ‘Just business as usual.’

Sam-Sam’s barge was a sprawling floating flatbed, stacked with contraband and ammunition. He had a dozen of his best men with him and seven women, some of them concubines, some tougher than the men. Batal was along but Billy Death was not. The Haitian didn’t like the river.

‘What is the problem with Billy Death?’ Sam-Sam asked Batal.

‘He cannot swim,’ the Iranian answered.

Sam-Sam thought that was funny.

‘He is afraid to ride the barge because he cannot swim?’ Sam-Sam said with a laugh.

The Iranian nodded.

‘Hell, I cannot swim,’ Sam-Sam said, smacking his chest with an open hand.

‘Neither can I,’ Batal said, and he started laughing too.

A racket from the rear of the barge broke up their merriment. The helmsman came running forward.

‘What was all that about?’ Sam-Sam demanded.

The helmsman pointed toward the rear of the barge.

‘Generator blow up,’ he stammered.

‘Well, change it. Throw that one overboard and hook up another one.’

The helmsman shook his head.

‘Do not have,’ he said.

‘We do not have a spare generator?’

The helmsman shook his head. He stared down at the deck.

‘Only one generator?’ Sam-Sam stormed. ‘We got every fucking other thing on this damn barge. We got TVs, stereos, we got Thai silk and cotton from India. We got cigarettes from America, France, England, Turkey, Egypt. So why do we only have one generator? So? Anybody got an answer to that?’

He raged around the deck kicking at things and cursing to himself, his snake eyes darting from one person to another. Suddenly he drew his pistol. The men and women on deck moved back as a group. Sam-Sam stalked the deck like an insane man, twirling on the balls of his feet, glaring from one face to the next.

‘Who takes responsibility?’ he screamed.

His clan stared at him, afraid to speak.

‘Who wants to eat a bullet?’ he yelled. His voice carried into the jungle and echoed back. ‘Anybody?’

He waited for a few moments more, enjoying the fear etched on the faces of his band. Then suddenly he wheeled and emptied the gun into the forest. Birds scattered, shrieking their complaints.

Sam-Sam turned back to his crew and laughed. His crew relaxed. There was a wave of nervous laughter.

‘So
—
we go back,’ Sam-Sam said with a shrug. ‘What is the big rush to go anywhere?’

LEATHERNECK JOHN’S

Sing guided the snakeboat into the dock beside Leatherneck John’s and they tied it down.

‘Everybody stay loose unless there’s trouble, okay?’ Hatcher said.

Sing and Joey, the other gunman, nodded. Sing followed them down the makeshift dock to the bar. A large slab of ebony over the door had ‘Leatherneck John’s Last
Chance Saloon’ carved into it, and a line below it, ‘Founded 1977.’

Hatcher was surprised when they entered the place. He had expected the bar to be a tawdry, ramshackle oasis in the midst of the Ts’e K’am Men Ti’s contraband market. But the big room was clean and neat. On one side there were twenty or so tables and a pool table that had seen better days. A black man with thick hair tied in a tight ponytail was sleeping on his side on the poo
l
table. He was wearing olive drab combat pants and Hawaiian shirt, and was using his bush jacket as a pillow. On the other side was the bar, a long, fancy oak bar with a slate top.

‘The last time I saw a bar that fancy was in Paris,’ Hatcher said.

‘Came from a joint in Mong Kok,’ Cohen said. ‘The way the story goes, Leatherneck John won the whole place in a crap game and shipped it up by barg
e
. But
—
up here you can hear anything.’

The place was deserted except for
three
men, including the one sleeping on the pool table.

One was a big man sitting on a barstool sipping a glass of beer. He had less hair than the billiard balls, and was dressed in khaki, his ample stomach folded over a military web belt. This would be the Dutchm
a
n, Hatcher thought. His bald head was sunburned and peeling. Years of hard living on the river had ravaged his face, leaving behind a puffy, ruddy orb laced with broken blood vessels. His nose was swollen and warty, and his eyes were buried under thick lids, giving him a sleepy
lo
ok.

And then there was Leatherneck John himself. He was an enormous man, towering at least six foot three, and easily weighing 220 pounds, his red hair trimmed close to the scalp, a thick, neatly trimmed
b
eard concealing the bottom half of his face, the sleeves
of
his camouflage shirt rolled up almost to the shoulders, revealing biceps the size of a truck tire. Leatherneck John looked like an old topkick. Burly was a perfect word to describe his size and bulk. Not fat, but big and solid.
Formidable
. His hair was shaggy and turning white. His eyes glittered with gaiety, as though he had just heard a joke and had not started laughing yet. A retired topkick, thought Hatcher, has to be. He looked past the big man and saw the six stripes, pinned to the wall with a Marine K-Bar knife.

‘No hardware permitted inside the room, cowboys,’ Leatherneck John said in a voice that was friendly but left no room for argument. Hatcher and Cohen gave Sing their weapons. The Chinese bodyguard stuck the short-barreled Aug and Cohen’s .357 in his belt and stepped just outside the door, where he leaned against the wall. The other Chinese gunman in the snakeboat had moved to the back, near the tiller, where he sat with his Uzi tucked against one leg.

Hatcher strolled over to the bar. The wall behind the bar was a collage of Marine paraphernalia. Medals hung haphazardly: a Purple Heart, a Navy Cross
—
Hatcher lost interest after those two
—
along with an M-60, two M-16s, an 870 riot shotgun and a .45 Army-issue automatic, and photographs, belts, a canteen. The counter below was a shambles of ammo belts, boxes of ammo and several loaded clips.

Hatcher made a fist, his thumb above the knuckles lying flat and pointing straight out. This was
a
dap,
among
‘in-country’ vets a sign that they had been in Vietnam. The ritual could be carried further with a series of slaps and knuckle knocks to indicate the unit they served with. John stared down at the first, looked back up at Hatcher and a sort of smile crossed his lips. He made a similar fist, slid open an old-fashioned ice c
h
est and took out two beers. He stared at Hatcher with
h
is twinkling eyes as he popped the tops. He smacked one down on the bar in front of Hatcher.

‘I never forget a face,’ he said.

‘A noble attribute,’ Hatcher whispered.

‘I saw you once in Nang. This was, uh, let’s see
—
maybe ‘73, around that time.’

Hatcher smiled but did not say anything.

‘You’re Hatcher,’ Leatherneck Joh
n
went on. ‘I recognized you when you walked in the door. I was with a guy in the Seals, knew who you were.’

‘If you say so,’ Hatcher whispered.

‘A lot of talk about you up here,’ J
o
hn said with a slow nod, his mouth curling into a grin.

‘Is that a fact?’ Hatcher replied.

John nodded. ‘I hear all sorts of things,’ he went on. ‘I don’t know whether you’re a good guy or a bad guy. The jury’s still out on that.’

The man on the poo
l
table stirred, turned slightly and peered sleepily over his shoulder at Hatcher and Leatherneck John.

‘Don’t believe everything you hear,’ Hatcher said. He held the wet can up in a short salute and took a deep swallow of the cold beer. He decided to take a chance on Leatherneck John.

‘I’m looking for a guy,’ Hatcher said. ‘Navy pilot named Cody, went down in the Delta in ‘72.’

‘Never heard of him,’ John said,
m
aking work to end the conversation.

‘He may have been in a Cong prison camp up around Muang.’

‘Never heard of him,’ John repeated. He leaned over the bar toward Hatcher. ‘See, what yo
u
got here is a very volatile situation. I mean, there’s no reason whatsoever for any of these creeps up here to even sa
y
hello to each other, let alone get along, okay? But in here this is like the Free State of Danzig, y’know. You don’t ask questions. You don’t
answer
questions. You get along.’ He made a circle in the air, waving it around the roo
m
. ‘In here, it’s my rules. Nobody argues with me. You g
e
t outa line, you deal with me. And that’s just the way it is.’

‘Thanks,’ Hatcher said.

The black man on the pool table had turned and was facing the group now, still feigning sleep, although he was watching the action through half-closed eyes.

‘Howdy, Miss Chien,’ John called from the bar as Hatcher returned to the table, ‘welcome back to the Last Chance. What’ll it be? Dinner, booze or barter?’

‘Got any brandy?’ Cohen asked.

‘The best. Armagnac ‘78.’

‘Dey are my guests,’ the man at the bar said in a heavy Dutch accent as he walked toward them. ‘Put it on my bill.’

The man took Daphne’s hand in a large, hairy paw and pumped it while appraising Cohen and Hatcher.

‘Goot to see yuh,’ he said.

‘And you, Dutchman,’ she answered. ‘This is the Tsu Fi.’ She nodded towards Hatcher. ‘And this is our friend, Tom.’

‘Tom, huh,’ he said skeptically. ‘I hear you come to
fish.’

Hatcher grinned a quick, passing grin as he stared the Dutchman down. ‘Just looking for an old friend,’ he growled.

‘I see you met John,’ the Dutchman said, making conversation.

‘We exchanged amenities.’

‘Ja,
sure. Veil, let’s sit and talk, den, I got to move on.’ He motioned to a table and they sat down. Hatcher stared hard at him, sizing up the heavyset trader. His swollen eyes were bloodshot and his mouth curled in what seemed like a perpetual sneer.

The Dutchman leaned over the table and said in a whisper to Hatcher. ‘Look, I know who you are, okay? No problem. I ain’t interested in your beef vit Sam-Sam.’

‘What do you know about my beef with Sam-Sam?’ Hatcher croaked casually.

‘Veil, you know how talk goes.’

‘No,’ Hatcher said, still staring at the trader, ‘how does it go?’

The Dutchman looked at Daphne with a question: Why was the Yankee being difficult? She looked away. It was Hatcher’s game and she decided to stay out of it.

‘I ain’t looking for trouble,’ the Dutchman said. ‘I come because Miss Daphne ask me to, okay? I know all about you,
Ying bing.
I just vant to keep it clean, see? Don’t do me no goot, they know I’m talkin’ to you.’

Ying bing.
Shadow warrior. Nobody had ever called him that to his face before. Hatcher let i
t
pass.

‘Just curious,’ Hatcher said.
‘I
hear there’s a misunderstanding between us.’

The Dutchman raised his eyebrows and laughed.

‘Misunderstanding?
Ja,
dat’s goot. Some misunderstanding. He says you owe him fifty thousand dollars. And proper interest.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Hatcher whispered, shaking his head and chuckling, ‘A roll of the dice to Sam-Sam.’

‘I don’t tink it’s da money, although it is a consideration, I’m sure,’ the Dutchman said. ‘He says you disgraced him.’

‘What the hell,’ said Hatcher, ‘hijackers got the guns. Cost me a penny or two, too.’

‘Dat’s not da vay he says it happened,’ said the Dutchman, taking a sip of beer and wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

‘You can hear anything you want to hear,’ Hatcher whispered, dismissing the comment with a wave of his hand.

The Dutchman looked furtively around the empty bar and said, ‘Sam-Sam says you vere Company.’

Hatcher chuckled and leaned back, feigning shock. He shook his head. ‘Come on.’

‘He says you set him up. Dat you used his money, bought da guns, and sold dem to the Chem guerrillas and da Chems used dem against the people he vas going to sell dem to.’

‘I’m not that devious,’ Hatcher said casually, at which Daphne, Cohen and the Dutchman all stared at the floor rather than disagree. The Dutchman fit
ted
a cigarette into an ivory holder and lit it with a gold lighter. He leaned back, blowing irregular smoke rings toward the ceiling, watching them dissipate.

Leatherneck John brought the drinks to the table.

‘Anything else you need, just yell,’ he said and drifted back to the bar.

‘What else does Sam-Sam say?’ Hatcher asked.

‘He says you sleep vit da Devil,’ the Dutchman said. ‘He says you haff an instinct for da throat and are not betrayed by conscience. He says you lie vittout moving a muscle and kill vittout a taste for blood. And he says you could negotiate vit God and get da best share.’

‘He knows you well,’ Cohen said with a grin.

‘Sounds like he’s describing himself,’ Hatcher said.

The Dutchman laughed too, and raised his beer in a half-hearted salute.

‘So
—
vat is it?’ the Dutchman asked.

‘I’m trying to find out if the Vietcong had a floating prison camp called Huie-kui in northeast Laos. They may have called it the spirit camp. This would be late 1971, early ‘72.’

The Dutchman looked at Daphne and then back at Hatcher.

Daphne took out an envelope and laid it on the corner of the table. She kept her hand over it. ‘Five hundred dollars Hong Kong, as agreed
—
if
the information is reliable,’ she said.

It was the first time Hatcher had heard about paying the Dutchman, but he did not intercede. He would settle up with Daphne later. This was not the time to discuss it.

‘Dey had several camps over dere,’ said the Dutchman.

‘This would be on the other side of the mountains, near Muang.’

‘Muang,
ja,’
the Dutchman said with a nod. ‘Across country, utter side of da Annimitique.’

‘That would be it,’ said Hatcher, his eyes glowing. His pulse picked up a few beats. ‘Did they move it around?’

‘Ja,
to keep from choppers.’
He
pointed toward the ceiling.

‘You did business with them?’

The Dutchman shrugged. ‘So?’

Hatcher took out the photograph of Cody and Pai that Schwartz had given
him.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I don’t give a damn about the camp itself or what the Cong did. The war’s over. I’m looking for a friend of mine.’

‘All you Yankees tink your friends are still alive over dere,’ said the Dutchman.

Hatcher handed him the photograph.

‘This guy here,’ he said, pointing to Cody.

The Dutchman held the photograph a few inches from his face and squinted at it. He shifted positions a little, turning the photo to catch the light and looked hard at the picture for almost a minute. As he was perusing it Daphne looked at the rear door and stiffened. Hatcher casually followed her gaze.

Billy Death stood in the doorway, his AK-47 cradled in his arm. Leatherneck John stared hard at him.

‘Hey, Billy,’ he said, ‘park the piece. You know the rules.’

The black man stared across the room at Hatcher’s table.