Читать книгу Sunset People - Herbert Kastle - Страница 9

One night in July of 1966, in a clearing beside the ferocious jungle called the Annamese Cordillera, not far from Danang, a special three-man squad was deposited by helicopter, and settled down to wait for daylight. Two were American civilians, CIA men in their late twenties. The third was Vietnamese, an ARVN specialist, a guide who’d once farmed on the fringes of the Cordillera and had as good a chance of finding his way through it as any man did. Which wasn’t saying much.

Dressed in standard Marine fatigues, they entered the jungle at break of day. According to a map and a briefing given them at the American Embassy in Saigon, a high-ranking Viet Cong political officer would be at a clearing x-marked on the map between eleven and twelve today, which gave them five to six hours. The clearing wasn’t more than two miles away, but exactly where was the question.

Four hours later, fatigues drenched in perspiration, they came upon a trail, on either side of which were signs of a nearby VC staging area—pangee traps, the impaling stakes fresh, and spider holes for snipers. They paused for a quick meal, and the smaller of the Americans, sporting a pencil-line mustache, unslung his rifle, a Remington 7.62mm with scope and tubular silencer. He was the sharpshooter, the hit man in this execution squad, and he had to be ready.

They set off again, following the path, peering at the soggy soil and damp growth before their feet, trying to pick up the gleam of mine trip wires. Abruptly, the jungle darkness broke before them: a clearing. A subdued chattering of Vietnamese indicated that it was the clearing.

On the path about fifteen meters to their left was a VC sentry shabby in patched pajama clothing. They dropped to their faces in the dampness, the dankness, and the sharpshooter tapped the guide on the ankle. The Vietnamese looked back. The sharpshooter jerked his head right, to where another sentry was just visible some twenty-five meters off through the brush.

Voices rose in the clearing. Both VC guards craned to see what was going on.

The three-man squad inched along on their bellies in the slime. The sharpshooter eased a shell into the chamber of his rifle. He was now able to see directly into the clearing.

Perhaps twenty-five VC stood there, thirty at the most, their backs more or less to the assassination squad, their voices growing louder, taking on a cheering, greeting sound. The guards edged closer to the clearing to see their celebrity.

The sharpshooter also edged closer, and saw a man in a North Vietnamese uniform and cape rising dramatically up and over the VC, being lifted onto some sort of platform.

He stood alone, small, slight, aging; nodding and smiling. He was clearly in view.

The sharpshooter adjusted his scope. As the old man opened his mouth to speak, he fired.

There was a whisper of sound, not enough to alert the guards; certainly not enough to alert anyone amidst that crowd of VC. The man simply fell backward and out of sight. The sharpshooter was satisfied that the dum-dum had entered his chest, and that no one could survive that spread.

He was already turning and crawling. In the clearing behind him, there was a hush.

He saw that the guide was now well ahead of him, rising and moving off in a crouch. The sharpshooter rose and followed, glancing back at the other American, just now jogging toward him, smiling. But the smile disappeared, along with the entire face, as a heavy burst of automatic rifle fire raking the brush caught him. The fire continued—wildly, the sharpshooter realized—from the clearing, then ended in screams of rage and further firing on the other side of the clearing.

The sharpshooter waited a moment, not wanting to go back there. But his orders were explicit, and he sprinted to the nearly decapitated body and grabbed the submachine gun.

The guide was already moving into the jungle.

The sharpshooter hurried to catch up.

The guide turned, waving him on . . . and suddenly went down and out of sight. A brief scream told the sharpshooter what had happened, and he confirmed it when he reached the man. The guide was in a narrow pangee trap, impaled on a stake that had entered his stomach and come out through his back. He shook his head feebly as the sharpshooter raised the sub. “Tai Sao?” Why?

After finishing him, the sharpshooter reached down and got the guide’s long pistol. Rifle and sub slung over his shoulders, and holding the pistol, he began following the trail. He glanced back often, praying that the VC hadn’t picked up on him.

When the trail ended, he used his pocket compass. And swore to God that if he got out of this alive, he’d find a way to quit the Company.

At four-thirty, exhausted, dehydrated, ready to begin discarding the special weapons in defiance of A-priority orders, he broke out of the Cordillera and stood dazed and blinded by intense sunlight.

The chopper came at dusk, and returned the sharpshooter to the kickoff point—the Marine airport perimeter base at Danang. He showered, changed into fresh fatigues, and ate at the officers’ mess. Back in his tent, he glanced at the two empty bunks, and thought of the weapons. High-priority orders or no, he could say one had been lost. This would strengthen the image of an agent whose nerve had begun to fail, and help him get back home.

He speculated on what such a silenced firearm would bring in the States. Ten times the actual value of the gun would be a modest price; double that would be possible if Maxie, a Syndicate chieftain the Company had dealt with, was still filling contracts out of Frisco. Maxie would want handguns only . . .

He went to the locker and took out the guide’s Hi-Standard HD: lean, hungry, beautiful to anyone who had ever staked his life on a firearm. A ten-shot .22 automatic as deadly as a .45 because of its special hollow-point dum-dum load, and far more accurate. A target pistol in its civilian role, and not markedly reduced in range or accuracy by the superb MAC silencer. Hit men swore by it in urban situations.

Maybe he should keep it for himself?

But he shrugged and put it away. He was finished with such passions. He would return to law school. He would find the right woman and begin to live the good life.

And the pistol would help finance that life.