Thai Horse

  ‘That Tonton’s got me worried,’ said Cohen. ‘He was a little too interested in us.’

  ‘Curiosity,’ said Hatcher. ‘Hell, it isn’t—’

  He stopped and looked out the window at the Dutchman, who had reached the Chris Craft and was getting ready to leave.

  ‘I just thought of something else,’ he said. ‘You all go to the snakeboat. I’ve got to ask the Dutchman one more question.’

  ‘Hurry it up. The sooner we’re out of here, the better,’ Cohen answered nervously.

  The man with the ponytail sat up on the edge of the pool table, his legs dangling above the floor and watched Hatcher leave. He jumped to the floor and walked casually toward the door.

  Outside, heat seeped down over the jungle like warm syrup. The Dutchman was checking his fuel supply. He looked up as Hatcher approached the boat.

  ‘Ja?’ he asked.

  ‘One more thing. This Taisung, the warden of the camp, you know what happened to him?’

  ‘He ran for it,’ the Dutchman answered without stopping his work.

  ‘Ja. I don’t tink he vas too vell thought of in Hanoi.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Drugs, booze. Dey vere all corrupt, y’know.’

  ‘How about the prisoners?’

  ‘I don’t know ‘bout dem,’ the Dutchman said with a shrug.

  ‘Where did Taisung run to?’

  The Dutchman capped the fuel tanks and purged the fuel lines as he thought about the question. He stepped over the gunwale and stood close to Hatcher. As they spoke Hatcher became aware of movement downriver, at the bend in the elbow. It was a barge, moving slowly around the sharp curve in the narrow river.

  ‘Bangkok,’ he said.

  ‘Bangkok?’

  ‘Ja, Bangkok.’

  ‘One more thing,’ said Hatcher. ‘Does Thai Horse mean anything to you?’

  Cohen was surprised at the mention of his statue. The Dutchman too looked surprised.

  ‘Vere did you hear about Thai Horse?’

  Hatcher’s heart jumped. Cohen seemed even more bemused.

  ‘Around. Does it mean anything?’ Hatcher urged.

  ‘Rumors.’

  ‘What are they?’ Hatcher asked eagerly.

  ‘Only dat dere is a heroin-smuggling outfit in Bangkok called Thai Horse. Very dangerous bunch, not to mess vit dem. Dat’s all. Booze talk, I tink.’

  Cohen tried to hide his obvious surprise. Hatcher hesitated. The more he dug, the worse it looked for Cody. How much did the Dutchman know?

  ‘You don’t believe it, then?’ he asked, trying to keep his voice from showing any emotion.

  ‘I believe only vat I can see and touch,’ said the Dutchman.

  ‘But it’s possible?’ Hatcher pressed on.

  ‘Veil, as you know, in Bangkok everyting is possible,’ the Dutchman said with a wave of his hand.

  The Dutchman was looking downriver, toward the barge. Hatcher ignored it. He needed one more answer. But before he could ask it, the Dutchman’s face drained of color. His eyes bulged.

  ‘Mijn God!’ the Dutchman said.

  Hatcher turned and looked. The barge was halfway around the bend. Standing on the front of the boat was Sam-Sam Sam. Hatcher felt a momentary jolt, a combination of fear and surprise — he had expected them to come the other way. Now Sam-Sam was between them and the Cigarette boat. They were cut off, and there were at least twenty men and women on the barge.

  In the bar, Leatherneck John said, ‘Jesus, the shit just hit the fan.’

  ‘It’s Sam-Sam,’ the Dutchman whispered to Hatcher with awe. ‘Get out uf here, man! I don’t even know you.’

  Hatcher grabbed his jacket in a tight fist. His tormented voice left little room for argument.

  ‘Have you seen him there? The warden?’

  ‘He has been seen,’ the Dutchman quickly stammered. ‘He does some business over dere now. He is passing himself off as a Thai.’

  ‘A Thai? You know what he calls himself?’

  ‘Vol Pot,’ cried the Dutchman, squirming out of Hatcher’s grasp. ‘He calls himself Vol Pot.’

  THE BEST DEFENSE

  With the information that Wol Pot had once been the warden of the Huie-kui camp, Hatcher’s heart was racing as he rushed down the pier to the snakeboat. Cohen was watching Sam-Sam’s barge through binoculars.

  ‘I don’t think he knows we’re here yet,’ Cohen said. He lowered the glasses and looked at Hatcher. ‘Maybe we ought to run for it, back to the Cigarette boat.’

  Hatcher took the glasses and studied the barge. ‘He’ll cut us off once he recognizes me. “Why don’t you people take the snakeboat and I’ll go overland, back to the cutoff and meet you there.’

  ‘No!’ said Daphne. ‘We came together, we’ll leave together.’

  ‘This is no time for heroics,’ Hatcher whispered, still watching the barge.

  ‘She’s right,’ Cohen said.

  ‘Look, I’m the only one he wants. The ch’u-tiao is between us, not you people.’

  As they watched through their binocu1ars, Sam-Sam Sam strolled the deck and stretched. One of the women came out of the cabin. She was still getting dressed and was as ugly as Sam-Sam.

  ‘See him?’ Cohen asked, without lowering his binoculars.

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Had himself a little matinee,’ said Cohen. ‘Phew, look at that woman, she’d gag a maggot.’

  ‘This isn’t the Miss Universe contest,’ said Hatcher.

  ‘More like Miss Mud Fence of 1912,’ Cohen said, swinging his glasses around and checking out the rest of the barge.

  As Hatcher watched, another man joined Sam-Sam, a swarthy olive-hued man wearing a white cotton shirt open to the waist. Two gun belts crisscrossed his chest from shoulder to waist and an M-16 rested casually across his shoulders. There was a pistol in his belt and a machete. The three men stood on the foredeck of the barge, looking at the water and chatting.

  ‘You’re right, they look like they expect an invasion,’ Cohen said.

  ‘That must be the Iranian,’ said Hatcher.

  ‘Yeah. Batal.’ Cohen lowered his glasses. ‘So, now what do we do?’

  ‘I’ll hit the woods, go overland back to the Cigarette boat,’ Hatcher said.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Daphne, pointing behind them.

  Far out at the end of the pier, Billy’ Death was talking into a walkie-talkie.

  ‘Think he made me?’ Hatcher asked. He focused his glasses on the Haitian, who was pointing toward them as he spoke. ‘Yeah, he made me,’ he added.

  He swung his glasses back to the barge and was staring straight into Sam-Sam Sam’s binoculars. The pirate lowered his glasses. His mouth curved into a grin, then a leer, then formed the word ‘Hatcher.’ lie raised his AK-47 and charged it.

  ‘Love at first sight,’ said Cohen.

  ‘Behind us,’ Daphne said.

  Billy Death and another brigand were coming down the pier toward them.

  ‘Sing, you and Joey take care of those two,’ Hatcher snapped.

  The Chinese gangster nodded curtly and he and Joey took their Uzis, climbed up on the pier and walked slowly toward Billy Death.

  Watching from the doorway of the saloon, Leatherneck John said, ‘Christ, it’s beginning to look like High Noon.’

  At the snakeboat, Hatcher made an instant decision. They were outnumbered twenty or thirty to one. Hatcher grabbed Cohen by the elbow and shoved him into the snakeboat. ‘Daphne,’ he yelled as loud as he could, ‘get inside the saloon, out of range.’

  He turned the key and cranked the snakeboat’s engine to life.

  ‘Take the tiller,’ Hatcher ordered Cohen, and grabbing his briefcase, he ran to the front of the long, narrow boat and lay down flat on the bottom. He opened the case and took out a small square of gray C-4 plastique. He molded it quickly into a thick rope about two feet long and two inches thick.

  ‘Where the hell are we going?’ Chen demanded.

  ‘
Head for the barge,’ Hatcher yelled back.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Trust me!’

  ‘You’re nuts, Hatcher, you’re just plain fucking nuts,’ Cohen yelled as he steered the skinny boat toward Sam- Sam’s barge.

  Daphne backed slowly toward Leatherneck John’s saloon, watching the snakeboat and the face-off between Cohen’s men, Sing and Joey, and Billy Death and his man. Leatherneck John reached out and, grabbing Daphne by the arm, pulled her inside the door of the saloon.

  ‘You’re gonna get yourself killed out there,’ he snapped.

  ‘Can’t you help, please?’ Daphne pleaded.

  ‘Not my fight, ma’am,’ Leatherneck John said emphatically. ‘I gotta live up here.’

  ‘Then give me a gun!’ she hissed at him, her eyes afire with anger and fear.

  The black man with the ponytail stared out the door.

  The snakeboat was zigzagging its way toward the barge. Half a dozen gunmen were firing at it. Bullets tore through the thatched hooch at the rear of the boat and erupted in the water around it. Cohen was guiding the boat’s dodging course toward the barge while Hatcher lay in the front firing intermittent bursts at it while he wrapped the coil of C-4 around the prow of the boat.

  ‘Keep dodging them,’ he growled.

  Onshore, Sing and Joey reached the pier. They were half the length of a football field from Billy Death and his man. The two Chinese stopped.

  ‘No farther,’ Sing ordered. As he held up his hand another of Sam-Sam’s river rats jumped from behind the corner of the saloon and jammed a knife into Joey’s back, just above the waist. Joey turned with a roar of anger and grabbed his attacker, but the wound was lethal. His arms went limp and he fell off the pier into the river.

  Sing grabbed the man around the neck and snapped it with one hard twist. The man dropped. Sing turned toward Billy Death and his sidekick and fired a burst down the pier. It hit the sidekick shin-high, and he toppled to the dock with a scream. As Sing fired a second burst into the fallen thief, Billy Death got off a double burst. The bullets ripped into Sing. He fell to his knees but tried to get up, still firing. Death shot him again. Sing fell facedown, dead.

  ‘Pretty tough Chink,’ Leatherneck John said.

  ‘I make that about twenty to two now, not exactly what I’d call fair odds,’ said the man with the ponytail.

  ‘Odds don’t mean shit up here,’ leatherneck John said.

  The man with the ponytail walked resolutely to the bar and took down the M-60 hanging behind it. Curled below it on a shelf was a fully loaded ammo belt. He threw the ammo belt over one shoulder and headed for the door.

  ‘Hold it!’ Leatherneck John demanded.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said the ponytailed man, ‘I’m going outside.’

  ‘Not with my piece.’

  The man swung the muzzle of the M-60 toward Leatherneck John.

  ‘I’m borrowing it,’ he said flatly as he walked out the door.

  Leatherneck John said nothing. He stood watching with his mouth hanging open and his hands on his hips.

  Billy Death ran past the door of the saloon and started down the riverbank, running with his back to the pony- tailed man.

  On the boat, Hatcher had the C-4 plastique wrapped around the prow. He armed a small black contact fuse and, reaching over the front of the boat with his head down, twisted it into the soft p1astic explosive. Bullets stitched a line down the rail of the snakeboat, inches from Hatcher’s ear. The barge was coming up fast.

  Hatcher turned and crawled back to the thatched cabin.

  ‘Let’s go!’ he said to Cohen.

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘We got to get out of here. This thing’s going to blow sky-high any second!’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going to do something like this?’ Cohen yelled. Bullets tome into the rail near him. Cohen went berserk. He stood up let go of the tiller, and holding his gun hand straight out in front of him, started firing his .357 at Sam-Sam.

  ‘We’ve got to go now!’ Hatcher yelled and dived into Cohen’s stomach, driving the little man backward into the side of the thatched shed. The side collapsed. Hatcher and Cohen plunged through the flimsy cabin, out of the speeding boat and into the river. The snakeboat, driver- less, etched its crazy course toward the barge.

  Hatcher and Cohen hit the water with such force that it momentarily knocked Hatcher’s wind out of him. He felt Cohen’s body wrench and then slip away from him. Hatcher tumbled once in the water, spread-eagled and stopped his motion. He lunged to the surface, took a deep breath and dived hard, his arms and hands sweeping the water around him.

  Nothing.

  He surfaced, took another deep gulp of air and dived again, taking powerful strokes and searching the dark water with his hands. Still nothing. Then as he surfaced he saw Cohen’s head bob up a few yards away. Cohen was half conscious, disoriented.

  Hatcher took three hard strokes, reached out and grabbed Cohen’s arm by the sleeve. ‘I gotcha, pal, relax.’

  Behind them, the snakeboat drove straight toward the barge. Batal looked at it and saw the gray cord of plastique around the bow. He screamed and dived overboard as the boat charged into the barge. Sam-Sam leaped to one side as the snakeboat hit and rose up out of the water, its prow several inches above the side of the barge. The hull of the snakeboat shattered and the prow tore into a stack of TV sets, smashing through tubes, scattering them like blocks. Tubes burst like firecrackers. The contact fuse smacked against the casing of one of the TV sets and the plastique exploded.

  Sam-Sam was ten feet away when the barge erupted. He felt the sudden burst of hot air just before the concussion tossed him into the air like a broken twig. The force of the explosion ruptured his vitals and ripped his body apart. A moment later the explosion set off the gas tanks; the rear of the barge burst like a balloon. Fire and debris showered the air. Men and women on the barge were scattered like confetti.

  The explosion lifted Batal out f the water, and blood spurted from ears, nose and mouth. He plopped back down into the river unconscious and sank slowly to the bottom as bits and pieces of the barge splashed into the water and sank with him.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said the ponytailed man with a smile.

  ‘Holy shit!’ was all Leatherneck John could muster.

  A hundred yards away, the concussion of the explosion knocked both Hatcher and Cohen underwater. Hatcher lost his grip on the stunned Tsu Fi again. Cohen came up gasping, heard the chatter of submachine gun fire. Geysers of water sprouted from the river around him, shocked him into full consciousness. He splashed around like a hooked marlin, gulping air. The river erupted a few inches from Hatcher’s face as another burst ripped into the water. This time Hatcher saw where it was coming from. Billy Death stood near the river’s edge, fifty yards away, firing his AK-47.

  Hatcher turned and zigzagged away from shore, yelling to Cohen to follow him. Another burst showered past him, bip, bip, bip, bip, bip.

  A half-mile downstream, behind the barge, the Cigarette boat hugged the shore. The men in the boat had seen Sam-Sam return and had followed the barge upstream, hugging the shore to keep out of sight. Now all hell was breaking loose in front of them.

  ‘We go see,’ the leader of the three Chinese backup men said, pointing toward the barge.

  The barge was tilting rapidly and the Ts’e K’ams aboard were too busy scrambling for safety and hauling their wounded to the shore to worry about Hatcher. Another explosion rent the barge, a gorge of flame roared out of the stacks of ammo boxes, followed by a wrenching explosion as the boxes exploded.

  The explosion distracted Billy Death, who lowered his gun and walked uncertainly toward the barge.

  Then the pop-pop of 9 mm. shells began as the heat cooked them off and they began ricocheting off the barge, ripping into the trees, and plopping harmlessly in the water. The barge was now fully ablaze.

  Billy Death hesitated, then turned his attention back to Hatcher and Cohen. He raised th
e AK-47 to his shoulder and aimed at the two figures struggling in the river.

  Behind him, seventy-five yards away, the ponytailed man stepped outside, and standing under the porch, he swung the heavy M-60 up, smacked the cartridge belt into the receiver and charged the first round into the chamber. He threw the rest of the belt over his shoulder and walked toward Billy Death.

  ‘Hey!’ he yelled. ‘You, the one they call Billy Death.’

  The Haitian turned toward him. The man stood with legs spread Out at the edge of the river with the M-60 aimed squarely at the ex-Tonton assassin.

  ‘Drop the gun,’ the man ordered.

  Billy Death stared uncertainly at him, then back out at Hatcher. He hesitated a moment to long before he swung the AK-47 around at the man with the M-60.

  The heavy machine gun roared kicked, rippled the muscles of the ponytailed man. Half a dozen shots ripped into Billy Death’s chest. His own gun went off harmlessly into the air as he was spun around by the burst. His knees buckled. He floundered, staggered to the edge of the river and fell to his knees in the water. His arms went limp, the AK-47 fell into the water and his chin dropped to his chest. Billy Death fell sideways and rolled over on his face in the water.

  The man walked back into Leatherneck John’s, unloading the heavy machine gun a s he strolled across to the bar. He put the M-60 back on the rack and dropped the ammo belt on the shelf below it.

  ‘You better be long gone when they get this mess under control,’ Leatherneck John said.

  ‘I was thinking the same thing,’ the ponytailed man said.

  ‘Why the hell’d you do such a crazy thing?’ the barman said.

  ‘I told you, I didn’t like the odds’

  ‘That’s it, you didn’t like the odds?’

  ‘You know what a HALO drop is?’ the ponytailed man asked.

  ‘Sure, high altitude, low open parachute jump,’ Leatherneck answered.

  ‘I did a HALO drop in the Delta back in ‘74. It was dark and the wind changed and I missed my zone by half a mile and came down in a bamboo thicket behind Gook lines. A bamboo shoot went right through my foot and came out my shin, right here.’

  He pulled up his pants leg and pointed to an ugly scar near the middle of his shinbone.