Bamboo Terror Read online

  "Here is the complete file on this operation," said the colonel as he shoved it across the desk. "It is most complete. I will send out a request today to give you four companies from the 300th Regiment. You may use your own methods in dealing with this problem. Do not return here until you have succeeded. You have two weeks."

  The interview was over, and Chen knew that he was dismissed. Without a word he rose, picked up the heavy file, saluted briskly and left the room.

  The call from Colonel Wu was put through quickly, and his polite request for four companies was immediately granted by the commander of the 300th Regiment. The commander was relieved that the personal telephone call from Colonel Wu had been nothing more than a request for troops, and he settled down once more into his daily routine of relaxing with his fellow officers and their locally procured concubines.

  Captain Chen went over his plans with the officers of the four infantry companies. He would use the whole two week period. It is not wise to be hasty, especially when there is fighting to be done in the jungle. It would take two days to gather the necessary supplies and ammunition, six days of forced marching through the jungle, two days to reconnoiter the village, and two days to deploy the troops. They would attack on the thirteenth day, and by the last day of the allotted period the area would be secured.

  Three days after the interview with Colonel Wu, Captain Chen and his four companies were deep in the jungle, heading southeast toward the coast and Tu-Hao-Tuc. Chen had also brought twenty of his own special troops with him. He had assigned four men to each of the company headquarter sections on the pretense of guarding the officers who were grateful for the captain's apparent consideration of their safety. They did not know that Chen had given his men special instructions to make absolutely sure that all of his orders would be obeyed immediately and without question by the company commanders.

  The remaining four men carried a small portable field transmitter-receiver with which Chen could keep in daily contact with the intelligence center at Hanoi.

  Everything was under control, his rigid time schedule was being adhered to, and Captain Chen gloried in his own importance and efficiency as he followed the beaten trail that the lead company had trampled through the undergrowth.

  He would destroy Tu-Hao-Tuc in such a way as to leave an example that would live forever in the minds of the rebellious peasants, and at the same time it would create a monument to his name. He would be called to Peiping. There would be speeches, possibly a promotion, most surely another decoration. Colonel Wu had chosen wisely. Captain Chen would not forget that the colonel had been the one to send him on to further glory.

  12 The Code Book

  CHANG had heard rumors of what Hazzard had done with his unruly bunch of backward farm peasants, and had finally decided to go and see for himself. He had found Hazzard sitting lazily against a tree watching his men run through the complicated exercises of setting up and dismantling light mortars into firing positions.

  "You have even surprised me, Mr. Hazzard," remarked Chang when he saw the precision movements of the men, "the way you have trained these men. I still do not see how you managed it in such a short period of time, especially when you do not speak the language."

  "I gave up trying to speak to them," said Hazzard. "Here, watch this," and placing two fingers in his mouth, he whistled two short shrill blasts. The men stopped immediately and looked toward Hazzard who was motioning weirdly with his hands. They quickly dismantled the mortars, ran to the other side of the clearing and set them up again.

  "We worked out a set of hand signals for almost everything," explained Hazzard. "And it's a lot better than words. I can run them around in the jungle without a sound by just moving my hands and arms. I've spent a long time teaching them to Big Stoop, and I'm even thinking of making him first sergeant of the group."

  "Big Stoop?" asked Chang with a frown.

  Hazzard smiled. "Big Stoop is a great big giant deaf-mute that a man by the name of Milton Caniff created in a comic strip. And I gave the name to that great big clown who tried to run me through with the dagger that first day in the sand pit. I don't know his real name, and he might just as well be a deaf-mute, 'cause I can't talk to him anyway. I found out that the men will do almost anything he says, so I go over everything with him first, and let him do the coaching and set the example. Works out real good."

  "Remarkable," commented Chang.

  "Don't get any ideas about making this a permanent job," Hazzard put in quickly. "I'm supposed to be a detective, not a soldier. Remember?"

  Chang only nodded his answer and continued to watch the movements of the men. "It is too bad you cannot speak Chinese like Doctor Kelly. It would make the training that much easier for you.

  Hazzard's brain clicked. "Doctor Kelly speaks Chinese?"

  "I thought you knew," said Chang. "He lived in China for years."

  "You never did tell me about Kelly," said Hazzard. "How long have you known him?"

  "Oh, he came here about a year ago," replied Chang. "Just walked out of the jungle one day. We needed a doctor, so he stayed."

  A picture flashed by in Hazzard's mind. It was a picture of a room crowded with bottles, medical instruments, and books. How much training do you have to have before you begin to see the obvious. Kelly's office would be the perfect place. You could hide almost anything there by just tossing it among the piles of medical rubble.

  "Chang, can you get me a flashlight?" asked Hazzard.

  "Yes. When do you want it?"

  "Right now. I'm going visiting tonight."

  The evening meal had been devoured by the four hungry men in the usual friendly atmosphere of complete silence, after which each one had taken up his usual off duty relaxation.

  Hazzard sat leafing through an ancient copy of the National Geographic Magazine.

  Maurice was throwing darts at the two bosomy targets on the nude theater poster, and periodically winding and changing the much used records on the phonograph.

  Sturmer sat at the table with an untouched glass of whiskey, playing a European variety of solitaire.

  Kelly, who had already soaked up half a bottle of whiskey, was sprawled out on a chair in a drunken stupor, his right hand clutching a partially filled glass as it dangled over the side, and the bottle was cradled in his lap.

  Hazzard shifted his eyes from one to the other and pressed his forearm against his leg to feel the presence of the flashlight that Chang had given him. He rose, threw the magazine into the chair, and stretched lazily. Turning, he walked leisurely toward the door. Behind him were only the sound of the darts hitting the wall, and the occasional snap of a card as Sturmer methodically went through the deck.

  As he reached the door, Kelly's glass hit the floor. The sound seemed twice as loud as it should have been. Hazzard stopped and looked back over his shoulder. Neither Maurice nor Sturmer had paid any attention to the noise, and Kelly was too far gone to have noticed an artillery barrage.

  Continuing out to the veranda, Hazzard paused to light a cigarette and let his eyes grow accustomed to the darkness. He waited until the cigarette was half gone, then glancing back into the room to make sure everyone was still preoccupied with his own amusement, he snubbed the tobacco out and walked off through the edge of the darkened compound.

  Kelly's office in the hospital had somehow escaped Hazzard's notice. He had searched every place there had been books, paper, or writing materials. Lying awake at nights, he had wracked his brains to think of a place he could possibly have missed. This was the last place you could possibly hide a code book.

  Kelly spoke Chinese, and if you were communicating with the commies, what would be more convenient than to use a language they could readily understand.

  The bamboo-shuttered windows of the hospital glowed with the yellow light of candles, but the office was in darkness. Hoping that no one would have a reason to come in during the doctor's absence, Hazzard slipped silently up through the heavy shadows and opened the rear d
oor.

  Inside he moved quickly to a row of bookcases he had remembered from his first visit. From here he would work methodically around the room.

  After Chang had given him the flashlight, Hazzard had taped tissue paper over the lense to avoid the harshness of the beam of light. Now, he turned it on and it glowed with enough soft light to see in a close area, but not enough to be detected from the outside.

  He had worked halfway around the room when a soft noise made him turn off the light and stoop swiftly to the floor. Then he heard a chain rattle against wood, and remembered the monkey he had seen before. Clucking his tongue against the roof of his mouth brought an answering movement and another rattle of the chain. He turned the light on, cupped the lense in his hand and saw the two shiny staring eyes of the monkey looking at him from the window sill. Hazzard grinned to himself and went back to his search.

  A bamboo shutter rattled slightly. Hazzard heard the noise and passed it off as the movements of the monkey. He did not see the fingers that held the slats of the bamboo apart, nor the two eyes that watched his movements around the room from outside the window.

  Then Hazzard found what he had been looking for. It lay beneath a pile of moldy unused books on a dusty shelf. It was a Chinese telegraph code book. The type used throughout China to send ordinary telegrams.

  The Chinese written language is made up of thousands of ideographs. To devise a morse-type code for each of these characters would mean that telegraph and radio operators would have to learn thousands of various, and completely different groups of intricate dots and dashes. The problem was solved many years ago by arranging the characters of the most common usage in a large book. The pages were ruled to form small squares, and one character was printed in each square, which was them numbered. The numbers run across the page in rows, starting with or, then 02, and so on to the bottom of each page. The page number is used for the first two digits of a four-digit group, and the last two digits represent the character number on that particular page. Therefore, telegraphic code group 2315 would be ideograph number 15 on page 23. If the numbers are used as they are printed in the book, any message would be like plain language to persons familiar with the Chinese telegraphic system. To send secret messages with the aid of the book, it is only necessary to change the numbers.

  Hazzard looked closely at the pages. None of the numbers had been changed. The book was exactly like any other telegraphic book used throughout the Chinese-speaking world. This meant that there would be a slip of paper somewhere, probably carried continuously by the spy, that would show the numbers used in the actual coded messages.

  He put the book back beneath the pile of rubble on the shelf, switched off the flashlight and quietly left the office.

  Cutting back toward the quarters through a small patch of jungle, he failed to see the silent shadow that dogged his footsteps, and then passed around him through the trees like a phantom.

  The moon had come up and now it shone brilliantly through the leaves to make flickering patches of light along the narrow trail. Hazzard had just passed a large vine-covered tree when his foot slipped under a root that bowed up at the edge of the path. He almost fell as the root held firmly across his instep. Bending down to pull it away, he heard the swishing sound of a thrown dagger, and then the dull impact as the blade struck solid wood.

  There was no sound from the jungle as Hazzard remained bent over and motionless. Reaching inside his shirt, he pulled Sam from his waistband. Then, making sure he would not expose himself in a patch of moonlight, he stood up. A shadow flicked among the trees and came closer. Hazzard pulled himself deeper into the shadows and waited. The dim form of a man stood three yards away from Hazzard, and appeared to be intently searching the path.

  "Don't move," said Hazzard.

  The shadowy form dropped to the ground and dissolved into the darkness of the jungle. Hazzard moved slowly forward. There was no sound, and Hazzard knew that his stalker was now gone. He pulled the knife from the tree, and circling around through the thick undergrowth, he returned to the quarters by a different route.

  Hazzard was surprised to see Sturmer walking up the steps of the veranda lighting a cigarette. A sound made the already nerve-taut Hazzard spin around to see Moro coming through the trees from the direction of the hospital.

  "You have been taking a walk?" said the voice of the German.

  Hazzard looked at Sturmer, then back at the approaching Moro. "Yeah, a walk,"replied Hazzard as he moved up the steps past Sturmer and through the door.

  Kelly was alone in the room standing by the phonograph, and apparently as sober as a judge. He looked up from the record he was holding in his hand as Hazzard entered. "You shouldn't go walking in the jungle alone at night," he said.

  "How do you know I was in the jungle?" asked the suspicious Hazzard.

  "Look at your boots," said Kelly.

  Hazzard glanced down and saw a sprig of leaves that had entangled itself in the laces.

  The rear door slammed, then following the sound of heavy footsteps, Maurice came into the room, and stopped at the sight of the dagger in Hazzard's hand.

  Sturmer, Moro, and Maurice had all been outside. Anyone of them could have been the knife thrower. Hazzard thought of the leaves in his own boot laces as he glanced at Kelly's feet. They were clean, but his trousers were stained at the knees. Were these fresh stains, or had they been there before? Hazzard could not remember, but it meant that Kelly could also have been in the jungle at the same time.

  Hazzard turned around. They were all staring at him. Sturmer from the doorway, Moro from the veranda, Maurice and Kelly from their position by the phonograph, and each one of them was looking at the dagger that Hazzard held in his hand.

  The corner of his eye caught the life-sized theater poster, and flicking his arm upward and sideways, he threw the knife heavily at the image of the nude stripper. It thudded into her midsection just above the belly button.

  There was no reaction from among his impromptu audience, and swinging around to go to his room, Hazzard almost trampled over the grinning house-boy, who jumped quickly to one side to let him pass.

  Nothing seemed to happen for a long time. When it did happen, everybody seemed to get into the act.

  Someone knew why he was here. They had attempted to kill him twice on the first night. Then for a month the spy had ceased ah activities and let Hazzard go about his business. He had searched the entire quarters and nothing had happened. He had gone through everyone's room and still nothing had happened. Now, as soon as he had discovered the Chinese telegraphic code book, this same someone had known it, and once more had tried to kill him.

  Was it only a coincidence that Sturmer, Moro, Maurice, and possibly Kelly had been out at the same time? Could Kelly work in his office everyday for a year and not have seen the telegraph book? It would not be logical for Kelly to hide it there himself if he were the spy . . . or would it?

  All of this was getting Hazzard nowhere in a hurry, and he made his mind up to tell Chang everything that had happened since he had arrived at Tu-Hao-Tuc.

  13 The Plan

  CHANG and Ling Ling Yung sat impassively in the main room of the villa as they listened to Hazzard.

  "And that's the whole story. I have a lot of suspicions, in fact, there are too many suspects, but I haven't found anything except the location of the code book. But your spy, whoever he is, knows why I'm here and this makes finding him that more difficult. He can watch me, but I can't watch him," concluded Hazzard.

  Chang remained silent and unmoving for a long time. "Well, I am afraid we can wait no longer," he finally said.

  "No," Ling Ling said forcibly. "It is too dangerous. Let us wait a little longer."

  "We have already waited too long as it is," said Chang.

  "What are you talking about?" asked Hazzard. "Wait for what?"

  "Most of our weapons, as you know, were captured from the enemy," Chang explained. "The only place we can get ammunition for them i
s to raid their supply dumps along the coast. If we should be attacked suddenly, we could fight for only a few hours before our supplies would be exhausted."

  "And now you want to go out and raid a few supply dumps?" said Hazzard.

  "Yes," replied Chang. "It is the only way. The spy in our midst also knows about our supplies. If the raid should fail, we will lose but a few men, but if we are attacked in force in our present circumstances, we lose everything."

  "No matter what you decide, it will be suicide," said Ling Ling.

  "This time we will try and be more careful," said Chang. "Maybe we can keep the traitor from discovering our plans until it is too late. We shall not brief the men until the last moment. Now, I must send for Mr. Paquet, Herr Sturmer, and Doctor Kelly, and outline our plans."

  "Wait a minute," broke in Hazzard. "They don't all have to know about this. Why bring them all here?"

  "It is the only way," Chang told him. "It is Herr Sturmer's turn to lead the raid, and calling him here alone would give away the fact that we are planning something. Calling everyone is not unusual, as we often have meetings here."

  "And if one of them is the spy?" asked Hazzard.

  "That is the chance we must take," said Chang as he left the room.

  Hazzard sat back in his chair and stared gloomily out across the rocky seacoast as he waited for Chang to return with the others.

  "You are not happy here?" said the throaty voice of Ling Ling.

  "I'm not happy with the way things are going," replied Hazzard.

  Ling Ling sat down in the chair beside him, and he shrank from the touch of her hand on his arm.

  "You are afraid of me?" she said as she noticed his reaction.

  Hazzard shot a glance at the ever watching Ming Lee. "I just don't want King Kong there to get any peculiar ideas."

  Ling Ling spoke quickly in Chinese to Ming Lee. The giant grimaced at Hazzard and then left the room.

  "Now, we are alone," and she put her hand on Hazzard's arm again.