“I know exactly that feeling,” she replied. “It is one of the reasons why I came to Vietnam—to make a difference, to help. The people in this part of the country are very poor; they cannot afford even simple medicines and vaccinations that can save lives—and there are also aftereffects of the war, even now.” She gestured in the direction of the radio tower, hidden again behind trees as they began to descend the other side of the hill. “The stupid fight between the East and the West brought nothing but misery to the people caught in it. I wanted to do something to make up for it.”
Chase gave her a curious look. “Sounds like you take it personally.” He couldn’t imagine why; she only appeared to be in her early twenties, barely old enough to remember the end of the Cold War.
Natalia shook her head. “Not me, but my family. Some of them were involved in things that … I do not like.” She fell silent again.
He decided to let her stay quiet for now. The hill became steeper. He used the rifle as a makeshift walking stick, helping the young blonde down the slippery slope with his other hand.
It took several minutes for them to reach flatter ground. “That is better,” Natalia said with a sigh. She wiped caked mud off one foot, then set off through the trees.
“Hold on,” Chase told her as he took out the map. “Let me see where we are.”
“If we go north now, we will get to the hill with the tower,” she countered as she kept walking. “Then if we go around it, we will reach the road, no?”
“I know, but I want to take the quickest route.” He used his watch’s hour hand in relation to the direction of the sun to locate north. “Okay, so … that way.” He pointed.
Almost directly at Natalia. “You see? I was right all along,” she said, smiling. Chase shot her a sardonic grin and started after her. “I told you, I have been here for four months. I have learned some—”
Click!
The sound was metallic, not the crackle of breaking wood.
“Freeze!” Chase yelled, trained instinct sending him diving to the ground even before the cry fully left his lips. “Don’t move! Whatever you do, do not move!”
A muted sound of pain escaped through Natalia’s clenched teeth. She had started to lift her foot—but froze on his shout, forcing herself to hold still. Chase raised his head. Something was poking through the mud and rotten leaves, grubby metal visible beneath the young woman’s sole.
Three narrow prongs jutting up from a dull green cylinder. The trigger and fuse assembly of a land mine.
“Stay still, stay very still,” Chase warned. He put down the gun, then crawled toward her. He recognized the particular type of weapon as he drew closer: an American M16A2 “Bouncing Betty.” Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of similar mines had been laid during the Vietnam War, strewn throughout the jungles to hinder and kill the Vietcong.
Many were still there. And still deadly.
Suddenly sweating, and not from the rising heat, Chase reached Natalia and examined the weapon. His SAS training had included mine defusal; the Bouncing Betty had been one of the types covered. He knew that, in theory, he could render it harmless fairly simply.
In theory.
In tropical conditions, an M16A2 had a life expectancy of twelve years. The Vietnam War had ended in 1975, so even if this particular mine had been laid on the very last day of the conflict, it was nineteen years beyond that. Time might have rendered it inert, moving parts rusted and clogged with mud, its explosive charge of tetryl broken down by microbes in the soil.
Or … it could have become so unstable that a hard jolt would detonate it.
Natalia whimpered again, from pain rather than fear. One of the prongs was digging deeply into her foot. There was no blood, so it had not broken the skin, but she didn’t dare pull away. “What is it?” she whispered.
Chase looked up at her. “Natalia, I need you to stay calm, and keep very still. Okay? Promise me you’ll do that.”
“I will,” she managed to say.
“Good.” He kept his gaze locked on hers. “You’ve stepped on a land mine. Keep calm, stay calm,” he added as she tensed. “It’s not working properly, otherwise it would have already gone off. It’s called a Bouncing Betty—it’s meant to spring up in the air and explode after someone steps on it, but even if they keep their foot on it, it’ll still blow up. This one hasn’t, so the fuse is probably jammed ’cause it’s so old. But if you move your foot, it might still go off—unless I defuse it.”
“Can—can you do that?” Her voice was trembling.
“Yeah. I can. I know it hurts, but stay still.” He finally broke eye contact, bringing his head right up to the mine and gently blowing damp leaves away from the fuse.
A small metal ring protruded from its side. If the weapon had been rigged to explode when a trip wire was pulled, the line would run through the ring, but there was no sign of one. That meant it was pressure-detonated. Natalia’s footstep had triggered it—and now her weight was all that was holding it in check.
But was it a dud … or would any movement finally set it off?
He didn’t know. All he could do was try to recall his training. “Okay,” he said, speaking as much to keep Natalia’s mind occupied as to focus his own thoughts, “I know how to defuse it. There’s a little hole where the safety pin went.” With great care, he used the tip of his smallest finger to brush dirt away from the fuse assembly, revealing a small circular opening in the side of a metal protrusion between the three prongs. “I’ll need to put something in it.”
A twig? No, too thick. It would have to be a piece of wire or something similar, but where would he find one in the middle of the jungle? There was nothing in his gear—
Wait—there was. The radio headset. Its connecting plug was too large to fit the hole, but the wire itself …
“Keep still, I’m going to get up for a minute,” he warned. Natalia nodded. Chase moved back, then carefully rose to his knees. He pulled off the headset and used his thumb and forefinger to give the plastic-sheathed wire an experimental crimp. It seemed to hold its new shape.
With a nod of reassurance to the German, he took out his Swiss Army knife and unfolded the scissors to snip a short length of wire. He then got back down on his belly to begin his work.
Right away he saw there was going to be a problem. “Natalia, I need you to keep still,” he said. Her foot—no, her whole body—was quivering. The prongs flexed under her weight.
“I’m trying,” she said, voice strained. “But my foot is hurting—and my leg is shaking. I cannot stop it.”
“All right, okay. Er … where are you from?”
She was surprised. “What?”
“Tell me about yourself, it’ll help you stay calm. Where are you from?”
“Uh … I am from Hamburg.”
Chase waited a few seconds, but she said nothing more, and her shakes were not subsiding. “I’ve never been there. Nice place?” he prompted.
“Yes, it is a beautiful city.”
“Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“No, there is only me.”
The trembling subsided, slightly. Chase took that as a good sign and started the delicate task of sliding the wire into the hole. “I’ve met your dad—what about your mum? Does she live there too?”
“No, she …” Sadness replaced fear in her tone. “She died, a few years ago. From cancer.”
“I’m sorry. My mum died of cancer too.”
“I am sorry,” Natalia echoed. Another silence followed, but this time she broke it without prompting. “My grandmother died from cancer also. She was Russian, she came to Germany in 1961.”
“What, she got out of Russia?” The wire was almost in the hole, but Natalia’s shuddering was making the mine wobble. Chase used his other hand to brace the device.
“Yes. She was actually supposed to be taken to America with my grandfather, but …”
“But what?”
There was an odd—hardness? bi
tterness?—to her words. “He did not make it out of Russia. So my grandmother did not go any farther than West Germany. My mother was born there a few months later.”
“Well, at least she made it to the right side of the wall.” The wire finally slipped into the hole. It was a tight fit; he slowly applied pressure to push it in deeper. “West Germany sounded a better place to grow up than East Germany.”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“You don’t sound too sure.”
“East and West—they are both bad, in different ways. Not the people,” she quickly added, “but the politicians, those in charge.”
“Can’t argue with that too much.” The wire gradually disappeared into the hole. Chase kept pushing—but another thought had come to him. “So … your grandparents were Russians? You think there’s any connection to those Russians at the camp?”
Natalia drew in a breath, as if about to make a confession—
Click.
A much softer sound than before, accompanied by a tiny but discernible amount of resistance that Chase felt through the wire. According to his training, the fuse should have been deactivated.
Should have—but then the mine should have exploded a couple of seconds after Natalia stepped on it. Its safety features might be as faulty as its detonator. He withdrew his finger. The wire stayed in place.
“Okay, Natalia,” he said. “When I count to three, I want you to very slowly lift up your foot. Are you ready?”
The reply was barely even a whisper. “Yes.”
“Right. Now, one, two … three.”
She hesitated—then raised her leg.
The spring-loaded prongs rose back into position … and stopped. No sounds came from inside the mine’s casing.
It was safe.
An explosion did come, though—from Chase. “Fuck! Buggering fuck-bollocks arse and shit!” he cried, pent-up tension finding release. “Fuck. Ing. Hell! God, I hate mines.”
Natalia still had one foot raised, balancing like a flamingo. “Is it safe?”
“Yeah, it’s safe. You can put your foot down now.”
She did so—and began to cry. “I’m sorry. I should have been more careful …”
Chase bent the end of the wire to hold it in place, then unscrewed the fuse from the mine’s body and carefully lifted it out. The metal was scabbed with rust; the trigger had jammed. “Hey, it’s not your fault, okay? Blame whichever arsehole dumped millions of mines in the jungle and then forgot where they put ’em.”
She shook her head. “No, I should have known. When I was at Ly Quang, they warned us not to go too far into the jungle. One of the boys in the village lost a leg last year to an old mine.”
“The Yanks probably planted them to protect the radio tower.” He put down the fuse and sat up. “This one should be safe now, though.”
Natalia wiped her eyes. “Should be? Is there still a danger?”
“Depends how unstable the explosive is. It might have totally broken down by now, or it might go off if it takes a hard knock.”
“We cannot leave it like this, then. Another child from the village may set it off. Can you make it blow up from a safe distance?”
“Yeah—but a bang like that’ll be heard for miles. The people who’re after us’ll know where we are. We’ll just have to tell your friends in the village to watch out for it.”
“But we do not know exactly where we are!” she protested. “The Vietnamese government has people who destroy mines when they are found, but they need to know their precise location.” She thought for a moment. “If we take it with us, we can leave it near the village so it can be found and destroyed safely.”
Chase stared at her. “You want me to pick up a land mine.”
“Yes.”
“And carry it through the jungle.”
“Yes.”
“While bad guys are still after us.”
“That is not a good idea, is it?”
“Nope. But,” he went on, “you’ve got a point. We’re not that far from the village, so there’s a chance someone else might find it.” Another reason for taking the mine had occurred to him: If their pursuers found them again, it would give him an extra weapon—however dangerous—with which to fight them. For obvious reasons, he kept this to himself. “So long as we’re careful, we should be okay. The explosive in these mines can get unstable, but it’s not like nitroglycerine or something—it takes more than just a tap to set it off.”
He bent down again and gently scooped the earth away from the mine’s casing. There was a chance it could have been booby-trapped—a Vietnam-era tactic was to bury a live grenade beneath a Bouncing Betty so that if the mine were moved the hidden bomb would go off—but it didn’t take long to confirm that this hadn’t been done here. A deep breath … then he raised the weapon out of the ground.
“Well, we’re still here,” Chase announced after a moment. Natalia let out a nervous giggle. “Okay, I’ll carry it. You take the gun.” Her expression changed to one of concern, or even disgust. “What?”
“I am a pacifist,” she said, regarding the Kalashnikov on the ground as if it were a venomous snake. “I do not want anything to do with guns.”
“You want to carry the mine instead?” Seeing that she did not appreciate his sarcasm, he softened slightly. “Look, it’s okay—it’s got no magazine, and the safety’s on. Even if you pull the trigger, it won’t fire.”
“It is not about whether it can fire. It is about what it was built to do. To kill people. I do not want anything to do with weapons of war.” Her resolve belonged to a much older and more world-weary person.
Chase’s own view on the subject boiled down to Some people just deserve to be shot, but this was something else he opted to keep to himself. “Okay, I’ll take ’em both,” he told her. “I won’t be able to carry you if you have trouble with your foot, though.”
She nodded. “Okay. I did not mean to insult you,” she added, suddenly apologetic. “You are a soldier, you use weapons as part of what you do. But it … it is not for me. I only ever want to help people, not do anything to hurt them. I hope you understand that.”
“Yeah, I do.” He smiled at her; she seemed a little surprised by his ready acceptance. “What? I want to help people too, and it’s not like I go out of my way to hurt anyone. Only an idiot, or a psycho, actually looks for a fight. It’s just that sometimes, people do bad stuff and, well … a stern letter isn’t going to stop ’em.”
Natalia regarded him uncertainly. Questions crossed her face, but the one that finally emerged was: “Have you ever killed anyone?”
His reply was simple. “Yes.”
“Were they doing … bad stuff?”
“Yeah.” He stood, still holding the mine. “If you really don’t want to carry the gun, it’s no problem—I’ll take it. But can you put the fuse in my rucksack? It’ll be safe as long as the wire stays in place, but be careful with it anyway.”
She gingerly picked up the fuse and slipped it into one of his pack’s outer pockets. “What happens if the wire comes out?” she asked.
“Maybe nothing; it’s all buggered up with rust and muck. Or it might go off. There’s a gunpowder charge in it, enough to take off some fingers if you’re holding it.”
There was a startled gasp from behind him. When he looked around, he saw that she had retreated by several steps. “You want to walk in front of me?”
“Please.”
He grinned. “If it hasn’t gone off by now, it’s probably not going to unless someone tries to make it happen. And I’m not going to do that, not while I’m carrying the bloody thing!”
The young woman did not seem entirely convinced, but still managed a faint smile. She picked up the AKS as if it were covered in thorns and handed it to him. “Here.”
“Thanks.” He slung it over one shoulder. “Okay, now which way were we going?”
Natalia pointed into the trees. “That way.”
“Great. Let’s get to this
village of yours. Oh,” he said with a grin as they set off, “watch what you’re treading on this time, eh?”
13
Norway
Eddie emerged from a tent, rubbing his hands rapidly up and down his neoprene-sleeved arms. “Buggeration and fuckery! It’s a bit nippy.”
“I told you that you don’t need to do this,” said Nina. She gave the tight-fitting dry suit a cheekily approving look. “But you know, you look rather good in that.” Even though her own fitness regimen had started to slide of late, her husband worked out enough to keep himself in solid shape, muscles visible even through the layers of cold-water gear.
A smirk spread across his face. “I’ve been saying you look good in tight rubber for years. If you weren’t such a bloody prude, you’d buy that dress with holes in all the right places.”
Nina blushed as she realized they had an audience; Matt and Tova had just rounded the tent. The Swede widened her eyes, while the Australian’s response was little more than a heard-it-all-before shrug. “Ignore him, he’s just joking,” she hurriedly said.
“No, no, it is quite all right,” Tova replied. She smiled at the couple. “It is healthy to discuss your sex life—and keep it interesting.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Nina, blushing even more. Eddie cackled.
“So, aaaanyway,” Matt said, keen to change the subject, “we’ve got all the IBUs ready. Nelson’s waiting in the hole in the ice—once you and the other divers load up his topside rack with the gear, you can just grab on and he’ll tow you to the dig site.”
“You noticed how everyone says ‘the hole in the ice’ and not ‘the ice hole’?” Eddie remarked, still grinning as he tugged the dry suit’s hood up over his head. He put on his best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice. “Fuck you, ice hooole.”
It got a smile from Matt, at least, but Tova didn’t seem to understand what he had said, and Nina just gave a weary sigh. He snorted. “Well, I thought it was funny. So we’re ready?”
“No time like the present,” said Nina. Even though it was only early in the afternoon, at this latitude and time of year they only had a few more hours of daylight. She started for the shoreline, the others following.