Mekong Dawn
‘We must be cautious.’ Ang could feel Malko’s malevolent presence beyond the patchwork of sunlight and shadow that disappeared into the distance. He pulled the slide partly open on his pistol and checked there was a round chambered. ‘Anyone for miles around will know that a helicopter has landed. Malko and his men could be on their way here right now.’
The others nodded and checked their weapons also. Then they set off around the mountain towards where they had last seen the young man.
Chapter Twenty
Scott leant against the wall of the dining saloon and tried to remove the top of a plastic bottle of drinking water. His hands shook so much that the task was impossible. In his mind he could still feel the razor-sharp edge of Ky’s knife against his throat as he waited for that sudden, sideways slash that would open his carotid artery and end his life in a pool of his own blood.
The sensation overpowered him and he stopped trying with the lid and placed a hand to his throat to check that it was still intact. His fingers found no damage, no blood, no gaping wound, so he lifted his tablet box out of the breast pocket of his shirt. Popping five tablets out of the blister pack, he ran his tongue around his mouth to summon up all the saliva he could. The bloody water bottle wouldn’t open. He’d improvise, adapt, overcome.
He looked at Nancy standing by one of the tables. His wife and Collette were going through the first-aid kits, putting them into some kind of order that only Nancy understood. If she saw him take this many tablets at once she would have a fit. Hell, she’ll probably come and stick her fingers down my throat and make me puke them onto the deck.
Scott knew there weren’t many tablets left in the box. He should be rationing them, hoarding them like a miser. God only knew how long they were going to be stuck out here in this backwater.
He considered dropping four tablets back into the box, but one was never enough to get him to the place he wanted to be. Two weren’t enough for that matter. His mouth was half-full of saliva. He looked at Nancy again. She still had her back to him, counting bandages or something.
Scott threw all five tablets into his mouth and swallowed them down with a gulp. He leant his head back against the wall. That razor-edged sensation had returned and his hands moved to his throat.
Not long now!
Through closed eyes, Scott could see the numbness coming. It arrived like a blanket thrown over him, blocking out the light and enveloping him in its protective embrace. Inside its warm folds the world went dark and he drifted down into that place where his demons couldn’t find him.
***
The buzz of low conversation in the dining saloon died as the sound of the helicopter returned. Nancy looked up from the contents of the first-aid kits and tilted her head to one side as she listened to the drum of rotors.
‘Looking for us do you suppose?’ Fred sat at the next table, dealing cards to a group of passengers.
‘Still a fair way off.’ The thud-thud noise carried a familiarity to it, but she couldn’t quite place the type of aircraft. The noise faded out then came back in a series of confusing echoes off the side of the mountain. ‘Maybe four or five kilometres away. Scotty will know.’ She looked about the dining saloon and saw her husband leaning against the wall, his eyes closed, and decided to let him sleep.
‘It’s got them stirred up.’ Collette pointed to the gunmen in the breezeway, lined along the rail and peering up at the sky through chinks in the camouflage nets.
‘Word of our disappearance must have filtered out by now.’ Nancy held a handful of compression bandages and noted their size and number on a notepad. ‘Even if Scott’s call got cut short, the boat was due in Phnom Penh today. Somebody will be missing us. The authorities will be out looking for us.’
‘Unless Malko has made threats against us at the first sign of a search getting close.’ Fred dropped the deck of cards onto the table and pointed vaguely at the mountain. ‘That’s just one helicopter by the sound of it. If they were running a search in this area they would have scrambled a whole squadron. I don’t think that helicopter is anything to do with us, I’m sorry.’
‘Our hosts think it is,’ Collette countered.
Fred turned to look out at the breezeway. Two gunmen held the camouflage net high while two others manoeuvred the aluminium gangway through the opening and positioned it against the bank. Ky stood close by, his assault rifle unslung.
Fred nodded his agreement. ‘That helicopter has them worked up.’
Ky came back to the two guards by the saloon doors and said something to them in Khmer, pointing at the passengers. Tamko, sitting with some of the crew at a nearby table, flinched involuntarily.
Fred saw the reaction. ‘What did he say?’
The purser’s normally smiling brown face was ashen. ‘He said to wait two hours. If he doesn’t return in that time, then start killing passengers. One every five minutes.’
***
Ky led his men around the island at a run. Where vegetation blocked their path he used his knife like a machete to slash a way through. Malko had warned him the police were using a civilian helicopter to search the area. The aircraft had not overflown the Mekong Dawn. He was sure the vessel remained undiscovered, but the helicopter had landed somewhere on the far side of the island. Morris had given away more information than he was letting on? Whatever the reason, if armed police have landed nearby, he needed to deal with them quickly.
The only place where a helicopter might land was on a little group of grassy islets to the south-west of the mountain.
For thirty minutes they pushed as hard and as fast as they could. When Ky judged them close to the area, he slowed to a more cautious pace and unslung his AK74. Ahead, a grove of palm trees extended from a rock outcrop and down to the water, the trunks enmeshed in thick undergrowth. Opting for stealth, Ky sheathed his knife and eased into the vegetation. Vines and thorny branches snagged at his body, but he was hardened and trained to the jungle and made steady progress. After a few metres he was able to see beyond the thicket and out into the swamps where a white shape sat wraithlike on the water.
Ky dropped to his haunches as he made out the helicopter sitting on a grassy islet, a hundred metres from the shore. The aircraft was side-on to where he hid and he could see a man sitting in the pilot’s seat. There was no one else in sight.
‘The pilot waits with the helicopter,’ he said.
Mani squatted beside him and peered at the aircraft. ‘Only one? Surely there are more aboard?’
Ky looked back the way they had come. Steep ground prevented anyone from traversing the island too far above the waterline. If the helicopter had held more than one occupant – and he was sure it had – then they had gone the other way around the mountain, leaving the pilot with the machine.
‘The others have gone off around the island.’ He pointed ahead with the barrel of his rifle. ‘We will deal with the pilot and wait for them to return.’
Ky left the two men in the trees and stepped down into the water. He unsheathed his knife and circled wide to get behind the machine, into the pilot’s blind spot. Moving as slowly as possible to prevent water sloshing about his legs, he came up on the helicopter and stooped under the tail rotor. The words NIPPON GEOLOGICAL were painted on the tail boom.
The pilot had his door open, probably in an effort to get a little airflow through the cabin. The helicopter sat in full sunlight and the interior must have been stifling. As he neared the bulge of the fuselage, Ky could make out the back of the pilot’s head through the side door, which was also open. He used this door to gain quick access, but as he stepped onto the floor his weight tilted the aircraft.
The pilot’s head turned. He wore dark sunglasses and Ky saw the mouth opening to say something. The knife flashed forward across the man’s throat and opened a wound like a pink smile that rapidly filled with blood. Whatever the pilot had been about to say died in a gurgling hiss that sprayed blood over the interior of the helicopter and spattered Ky?
??s face. The pilot clutched at his throat and fell sideways across the centre console. Blood flowed in little rivers where it pooled among the switches and gauges and dripped onto the floor.
Ky watched, transfixed, until the pilot’s legs stopped twitching, then he pulled the body upright, sat him back in the seat and adjusted the lifeless limbs to look as natural as possible. Satisfied, he called Mani and Parl to join him.
The two gunmen hurried through the water. They waded up onto the islet and stood beside Ky. Neither of them gave the pilot or the lake of blood in the helicopter a second glance.
Ky pointed to a nearby islet covered in knee-high grass. ‘We will hide there. When the policemen come back we will kill them.’
***
The tent was nothing more than a blue tarpaulin stretched over a bamboo ridgepole. Inside, blankets were neatly folded, the plastic-sheeted floor swept clean, drums and boxes of provisions stacked in neat rows near the back wall. A woman’s touch.
Three people waited by the tent; an Asian man in his forties watched the policemen approach with quiet wariness, a young girl at his side, clutching his hand. The Westerner who had signalled the helicopter stood a little apart from the other two, his eyes flicking from the policemen’s faces to the guns holstered on their belts. His stance was tense, frightened, his fists clenched. Ang could tell he was ready to run for the jungle should these men show any signs of being a threat.
‘Keep your hands away from your guns,’ Ang warned his companions as he lifted his right hand in a friendly wave. The only Western language he spoke was English.
‘Hello. My name is Sinh Ang. I am a major with the Cambodian National Police.’
The young man seemed to relax. The tension went out of his legs and his fists opened.
‘Police?’
Ang nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘You came from the helicopter?’
‘We saw your signal. The helicopter is a few kilometres away. We had to find a place to land.’
‘Thank God!’ The young man’s face broke into a huge smile. He came around the campfire and held out his right hand. ‘I’m Todd McLean. Me and my friends were on the Mekong Dawn. Gunmen boarded the boat yesterday. My friends and I escaped.’ The smile slid from his face and his bottom lip quivered. ‘They were shot while swimming for the trees. I think I’m the only one that got away.’
Ang held up his hand to quiet the tumble of words. ‘We know about the Mekong Dawn. Malko is holding your fellow passengers to ransom. Do you have any idea where the vessel went after you escaped?’
‘No idea. It was still out on the big lake when I went over the side. They were crawling along the tree line.’
‘On which side?’
A look of confusion crossed McLean’s face.
‘On which side of the lake was the boat when you escaped.’ Ang gestured at the man and child. ‘They obviously found you and rescued you.’ He turned to the man and switched to Khmer. ‘Where did you find the boy?’
The man looked down at the girl. ‘My daughter found him swimming in the swamp. We brought him to our camp.’
‘You did not cross Tonle Sap?’
The man shook his head. ‘He was not far from here. We were going to take him to the police station in Kampong Chhnang.’
So, the Mekong Dawn had been steaming slowly on this side of the lake. Looking for the entrance to a channel? Somewhere they could hide the boat?
‘What is your name?’
‘I am Nguyen Hunh. This is my daughter, Soo-Li.’
‘You live in the floating village at the lower end of Tonle Sap?’
Hunh nodded. ‘We are wood gatherers.’
‘Do you know of a large tourist vessel that is hidden in the swamps?’
‘I only know of it from the young man my daughter found. I have not seen such a vessel in these swamps.’
‘Do you know the waterways? Could a vessel of that size be brought into this side of the lake?’
The man hesitated and looked at the ground between his feet. Ang realised some sort of internal struggle was going on in Hunh’s mind. The Vietnamese who lived in the floating village were refugees. They had no official citizenship, no legal entitlement to be in Cambodia. The government tolerated their existence because they kept to themselves. On the other hand, the Vietnamese realised their tenuous position and did their best not to bring attention to their existence. Hunh just wanted to hand over the troublesome Westerner and disappear into the swamps. He did not want to get involved in any police investigation.
Ang tried to quell the man’s concerns. ‘Please! I care only for the welfare of the passengers and crew on the boat. I will not involve you any further other than to help me get the young man back to our helicopter.’
Hunh looked up. ‘Before my daughter was born, men came to this part of the swamp. They dredged a channel from Tonle Sap to the Mountain of the Sun.’ He pointed at the peak looming above them. ‘They used barges to bring in the antennas on the mountain. When they were finished they left. The channel they made is overgrown, but it is still there. Our people know about it and use it. A vessel like the one you describe could use this channel to reach the mountain.’
Ang felt a tingle of excitement well up from deep inside him. Was this where Malko had hidden the Mekong Dawn? ‘Where does this channel reach the mountain?’
Hunh pointed directly inland. ‘On the opposite side from here. The ground is not so steep to the summit. The workers had a camp beside a temporary dock.’
‘Thankyou, my friend. You have been a great help. Will you help me further and take us in your boat back to the helicopter?’ He ran his eyes over Todd’s gaunt features. ‘I don’t think the young man is capable of walking that far.’
***
Todd sat in the middle of the boat and watched the afternoon shadows drift by. Soo-Li sat in front of him on the slatted wooden floor. It had been decided that the boat’s motor was far too noisy to risk using. The three policemen sat in front of Soo-Li, with Major Sinh using a length of bamboo to steer them through the trees. Hunh stood in the stern, punting them along with another length of bamboo.
Todd couldn’t believe his good fortune. The police would take him to the helicopter and fly him back to civilisation. He would probably spend tonight in a hospital bed, but that was fine. He relished the thought of clean sheets against his skin, of hot food and clean water. But behind the jubilation of his own survival he could feel the sting of guilt sitting in the pit of his stomach, gnawing away at his insides. Morgs and Wilkie were dead for sure. He had seen them machine-gunned as they swam for the trees. Paul had been recaptured, but Todd had no idea what had happened to his friend after that. He could only hope Paul had simply been put back with the other passengers.
He snapped out of his thoughts as Ang said something in Khmer and Soo-Li’s father responded. The policeman pointed through the trees and Todd followed the line of his arm. A large white egg sat in the shadows, about three hundred metres away. It was a few moments before Todd realised he was looking at a helicopter from directly behind. The pilot had set the machine down on the largest of a small group of grassy islets. Probably the only landing place for kilometres in any direction.
The boat angled towards the aircraft. Hunh grunted in the stern as he poled them forward. Soo-Li’s father was unhappy about this diversion from his wood gathering, but the Vietnamese would be glad to see him and the policemen gone from the swamps. Not that Todd really cared. He wanted to be gone from these swamps as well.
Ang used his bamboo pole to steer the boat around one of the islets. They had about a hundred metres of open water to cross before they reached the helicopter.
Ang called out in English, ‘Tahki? We have returned. Prepare for take-off.’
There was no response from anyone at the helicopter. One of the policemen said something in Khmer. Todd didn’t understand a word, but he could sense the tension in the man’s voice.
‘Tahki?’
The major
waited for a response, the silence lingering on. Water dripped from the bamboo poles and rippled along the hull, the only sounds in the following quiet. Then Todd saw starlight twinkling across the top of a nearby islet. The air about his head filled with a fluttering hum, as if a swarm of bees passes by. Then the noise of gunfire reached him and the policeman in front of Soo-Li pitched against the side of the boat, part of his head blown away.
Ang’s right hand struggled with the flap of his holster. He drew his pistol and leapt from the boat, dropping into waist-deep water. The other policeman had his gun out and fired three quick shots in the direction of the muzzle flashes before he was hit squarely in the chest. He dropped his gun and slumped onto the floor of the boat. Then Ang had his gun up and began firing.
‘Get into cover.’
Todd heard the major scream at him but he was stunned by the noise and the sight of the dead policemen. He stared open-mouthed as a row of holes appeared in the side of the boat beside a policeman’s body. The holes worked their way towards where he and Soo-Li sat. Wood splintered out of the hull, splashing into the water.
‘Move or die,’ the major yelled.
The shout broke through into Todd’s conscious mind. He threw an arm around Soo-Li and dragged her over the side. The girl struggled in his arms as he went deep. For the second time in two days he heard the pfffft pfffft sound of bullets hitting water and struck out in what he hoped was the direction of a large tree they had passed on the approach to the helicopter. The girl stopped fighting him and he could feel her body moving in a rhythmic motion, swimming with him.
His head hit something hard and slimy. He reached out with his free hand and felt the tree root that blocked their path. Todd grasped the root and pulled Soo-Li with him, his lungs beginning to burn. They came up on the far side of the tree, panting and coughing, squatting in shallow water with only their heads showing.
The gunfire had stopped and Todd risked a quick look around the bole of the mangrove tree.
The splintered remains of the boat floated low in the water with the bodies of two policemen floating facedown nearby. The other policeman, the major, had reached the islet. He lay face down in the grass beside the helicopter, not moving.