Bamboo Terror Page 13

  The voice of Hanoi Harry droned on behind them unheeded as they concentrated on their poker playing.

  Sturmer stood by the helmsman watching the darker outline of the coast slip by, and occasionally looking behind to make sure that the other sampan was maintaining the same speed. It was a clear moonless night, but the stars gave off sufficient light to give them enough visibility to navigate.

  Looking at the luminous dial of his watch, Sturmer saw that it was almost eleven ten. Soon they would be turning into the shore and the mouth of the narrow bay. He reached down and tapped the man who sat next to the small battery-operated field radio. The man took off his earphones, turned the radio off and stood up.

  The helmsman snapped his fingers and pointed toward the shore. A cleft in the solid blackness of the land showed between the steep hills that rose on either side of the narrow inlet to Thai-Binh. The two boats turned toward the land, and the engines stopped as Sturmer raised his hand. Two men on the stern of each boat lowered long oarlike sweeps into the water and began to scull the sampans silently through the deepening swells.

  Maurice had just bluffed Kelly out of a large pot and was feeling immensely proud of himself when Hanoi Harry came to the end of his nightly propaganda spiel.

  "We shall be back again tomorrow evening at seven o'clock with five minutes of English news, and again at eleven o'clock with ten minutes of English commentaries on world events. This is Radio Hanoi, the voice of the people . . . I have just received a special bulletin for our friends at Tu-Hao-Tuc . . ."

  The effect in the room was electrifying. They all froze, and each one could hear his blood pulsating madly in his ears as his heart pounded from the shock of Hanoi Harry's words.

  "I have been asked to tell you that a wonderful reception party has been arranged at Thai-Binh for Heinrich Sturmer's visit tonight. . . ."

  Maurice slammed his hands on the table and exhaled a torrent of ugly French.

  "You . . . ing bastards," yelled Kelly, and threw half the deck of cards at the radio.

  "Quick, the radio," cried Chang, and followed by the others, he dashed through the door, leaving Hanoi Harry monotonously talking to an empty room.

  "Radio Hanoi broadcasts daily in the three point five, seven, and fourteen megacycle bands. . . ."

  When Hazzard arrived at the small radio shack, Chang had already alerted the operator, who was now speaking methodically into a microphone in Chinese. Periodically, the operator would stop and listen, but all that came back to them was the rushing hiss of static.

  "What time is it now?" asked Chang.

  "Twenty-two minutes after eleven," replied Hazzard.

  "He is supposed to land at eleven thirty," said Chang. "We will keep trying."

  The two armored sampans had silently entered the narrow bay, and were moving steadily along between the high steep slopes that bordered the small fishing harbor of Thai-Binh when suddenly they were blinded by the sharp brilliance of searchlights on both banks.

  The voice of Captain Chen called out in heavy accented English over a loudspeaker.

  "Drop your guns and surrender. There is no escape. If you do not obey at once, you die."

  Sturmer blinked at the lights as the voice repeated the order in Chinese. He looked forward to where three men crouched out of sight with a tripod mounted 30-caliber air-cooled machine gun.

  "Ready with the machine gun," he called out in a hoarse whisper.

  He heard the click of the bolt as they pulled it back to cock and load the weapon.

  "Now, fire!" he shouted.

  The machine gunners heaved the gun up on a small deck between the gunwales and began to rake the shore. Instantly both boats erupted with rifle and machine gun fire, and a second later they were met with a withering return fire from both sides of the narrow strip of water.

  "Back! Back!" shouted Sturmer. "Start the engines!"

  Men standing up to obey were cut down by the intense fire from shore and fell back to the deck that was fast becoming coated with blood.

  The radio operator squatted down beside his small set and hurriedly grabbed the earphones. Reaching for the switch, he was driven forward by the impact of machine-gun bullets that slammed into his back and continued on to make jagged bloody holes through the tubes and wires of the radio.

  Sturmer was firing his Luger ineffectively at the shore. "The lights!" he screamed above the thundering chatter of guns. "Shoot at the lights! Shoot at the lights!"

  He was trying to take careful aim at one of the searchlights when something smashed into his face, and for an instant the scene before him seemed to magnify and dance crazily before his eyes. Then he was falling into a deep void of soft velvety blackness and silence. He dropped the Luger and started to pitch forward over the rail.

  The strong hands of Moro grabbed Sturmer and hauled him back down to the safety of the deck.

  "The lights. Shoot the lights," he mumbled as Moro tried to stop the bleeding where the bullet had cut deeply across the eyes and shattered the bridge of Sturmer's nose.

  Chang had ordered the radio operator to keep a continuous watch on the frequency that the raiding party was using in the false hope that they might try to send a message back to Tu-Hao-Tuc. They had then returned to the living quarters to torture themselves by waiting for some kind of news from Sturmer, which they all knew, but would not admit, would never come.

  Maurice began once more to throw darts, but this time he attacked the poster with a vengeance and growled out oaths in French each time he violently hurled a dart.

  Hazzard and Chang had slumped themselves dejectedly at the table, neither one knowing what to say or do under the present uncertain circumstances.

  Kelly was standing by the bookcase where he kept some of his liquor supply, nervously rattling bottles as he tried to find a full one. Pulling the cork from one that had originally held a fifth of long-forgotten Johnny Walker, he held it to his mouth for a long time, letting the raw liquid burn down his throat and spill out over his chin. He gasped, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, and then wiped his hand off on the front of his sweat-stained shirt.

  "Did you ever hear this story?" he asked outloud with his back to the room. "Once there were ten little Indians. Ha! Look around you. How many Indians do we have left now?"

  "All right, Doctor Kelly," Chang said in a sharp voice. "That will be about enough."

  "What do you mean, enough?" said Kelly, spinning around to face them. "Don't you think we ought to start planning a party—a welcome party for Sturmer's return? A Roman feast for a conquering legion. Had Ceasar! And if things come out for the worse, we can turn it into an Irish wake."

  "You're drunk," said Chang.

  "So I'm drunk. So what? It's a damn sight better than being dead. . . ."

  A dart whizzed by Kelly's face and imbedded itself in the wall. Kelly's mouth dropped open as he saw the angry red look on Maurice's sweaty face, and he staggered backwards against the bookcase.

  "Drink your whiskey, you stupid pig," Maurice said through clenched teeth. "Do not talk. Just drink your whiskey," and he turned once more to harass the poster of the nude stripper with his darts.

  Kelly mumbled drunkenly to himself as he sat down in a large bamboo chair, alternatingly drinking from the bottle, and casting dark glances at the broad shouldered back of the Frenchman.

  The night dragged on, and one by one sleep overtook them as they succumbed to the aftereffects of a day of tense nervous strain and excitement.

  15 The Return

  THE SUN ROSE out of the sea to cast its golden rays along the high cliffs of the rocky coast line. A sleepy guard stood on the edge of a precipice overlooking the ocean and harbor of Tu-Hao-Tuc, wondering if his relief would be late again this morning as he peered down toward the village. Sometimes he was relieved on time, most often it would be late, and never was it early. Today it would be late: he must remember to be late himself when his turn came again for guard duty. It was a vicious circle of—do unto ot
hers as they do unto you, and in his simple Oriental peasant's mind, it was the only natural and logical thing to do.

  He leaned against the uprights that held the alarm bell. It had been retrieved from a temple that the communists had burned to the ground in the early stages of the war. Now, it was no longer a voice to summon the gods, but one to summon the quick aid of armed men.

  The relief guard was late. He should have come before the sun rose fully out of the sea. Squinting against the horizontal rays that beamed across the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly up and down the coast. The morning sun was playing tricks that made him imagine a boat was coming out beyond a spit of land to the north. No, there it was again.

  He took the pair of binoculars from the box under the bell. It was a boat. But it was too early for the raiding party to be returning, and besides, the raiders had taken two boats. An attack by one boat would be stupid, but . . . Putting down the binoculars, he grabbed the heavy padded hammer, and sent the throbbing peals of the bell echoing through the jungle.

  The village erupted into frenetic activity. Men snatched up weapons and ran to their assigned posts. Women hurriedly grabbed their children and disappeared into safe places of hiding. Ammunition cases were opened, machine guns emplaced, riflemen jumped into camouflaged holes, and through all of this, none of them knew what menace was about to strike.

  Chang snapped erect as the sound of the bell penetrated into his sleep-filled brain.

  "The alarm bell," he said. "It means an attack."

  The door burst open and a breathless soldier rushed in jabbering in rapid Vietnamese.

  "A boat is coming down the coast," said Chang.

  "It might be Sturmer coming back," said Hazzard as he and Maurice followed Chang through the door.

  Kelly blinked his whiskey red eyes and staggered uncertainly to his feet.

  "I gotta go see this," he mumbled to himself. "Never saw dead men sail a boat before!"

  Stopping halfway across the room, he returned to where he had left his half-filled bottle, raised it to his lips and took a long, healthy swig. He set the bottle down on the table, then as an afterthought, he picked it up again and walked unsteadily from the room.

  From the top of the cliff above the lagoon, they could see the boat clearly now. They recognized it as one of the armored sampans that had left the evening before with Sturmer and his men, but it was still too faraway to see anyone on board except the head and shoulders of the helmsman.

  Hazzard went down the wide path to the wharf where people were beginning to gather and wait for the sampan to enter the quiet waters of the cove. A group of women and children hovered behind the men, and Hazzard knew by their expressions that these were the families of some of the men who had gone out with Sturmer.

  The steady throb of the boat's engine grew louder, and it cut swiftly into view between the rock walls of the small opening. Three soldiers were standing along the sides with long poles in their hands, and as the helmsman cut the engine, they began to pole the boat through the shallow water. It came toward the wharf at an agonizingly slow pace. There were no calls or questions shouted from the shore. The sight of the bullet-torn superstructure was evidence enough that few men on the boat were alive, and that the other boat would never be seen again.

  Ropes were thrown and the sampan was pulled up and secured to the wharf. Hazzard stepped forward until he could look down into the sunken deck between the steel-sided gunwales. The wounded lay or sat on one side, and the dead were lined up in a long neat row on the other, some of them covered, and others exposed to the harsh rays of the sun. Dried blood, spent cartridges, and discarded weapons littered the open spaces of the deck. The unarmored superstructure was honeycombed with bullet holes and ragged gaping spaces where the wood had splintered off under the impact of the intense firing.

  It was a sickening sight of blood and carnage, of defeat and disillusionment, and Hazzard felt that he himself was partially to blame for not having completed his mission of discovering the spy.

  Men were helping the wounded from the boat, and as Hazzard walked forward to give them a hand, he saw Moro sitting in the small pit by the helm with Sturmer's head cradled in his lap. Hazzard leaped into the boat, and kneeling beside them, he lifted the bloody rag from Sturmer's face. He winced at the sight of the blood oozing up through the raw flesh across the German's eyes.

  "Doctor Kelly!" he called out. "Come here. It's Sturmer."

  Kelly looked up from where he was examining the wounded, barked instructions at some of the soldiers, and jumped into the sampan beside Sturmer.

  The doctor took one look at the ugly wound and yelled at two men who were lifting a dead body out of the boat. They set the body down again and hopped quickly into the open pit next to the doctor. He told them in rapid Chinese to carry Sturmer to the hospital and then climbed back up onto the wharf.

  Hazzard jumped up beside him and watched the two soldiers carefully carry the limp form of Sturmer up the path.

  "Will he live?" he asked the doctor.

  Kelly reached down to grab the bottle of whiskey he had been using to sterilize some of the minor cuts on the wounded and took a long drink.

  "Yes, he'll live," Kelly said as he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. "But he'll never see again."

  He held the bottle up again to finish the last of the whiskey, then heaving the empty bottle into the lagoon, he followed the long line of wounded up the steep path.

  Moro climbed slowly and wearily from the sampan. Clutched in his hand was the bloody cap that Sturmer always wore, and in his eyes was the deep smoldering fire of hatred that would glow until the day it burst into the dame of ruthless revenge.

  The next afternoon Hazzard went to see Sturmer. He had just mounted the steps of the hospital when doctor Kelly came out of the door, wiping the sweat from his face with a dirty piece of gauze.

  "It always gets hot like this just before the rainy season," he remarked when he saw Hazzard.

  "How is he?" Hazzard asked.

  Kelly sat on the split bamboo railing and lit a cigarette. "He's all right, except he'll be blind for the rest of his life." He paused to study the cigarette in his hand. "And something else has happened to him—inside. It's strange, but the bitterness he had before is gone.

  "The bitterness is gone?" Hazzard repeated.

  "I know what you're thinking," said Kelly. "A thing like this, suddenly becoming blind, would usually make a man more bitter, especially a man like Sturmer. But it seems to be having a reverse effect on him. I don't think anyone will ever be able to figure out just what goes on inside a human being."

  "What's going to happen to him now?" asked Hazzard.

  "It's like a pair of shoes. When they get old and useless, nobody wants them anymore. So you just throw them on the trash heap, forget about them, and then go get a new pair." Kelly paused to crush the cigarette beneath his heel. "You can go in and see him if you want," and he walked down the steps, wiping his face and neck with the small piece of gauze.

  Sheets had been hung from ropes around the area of Sturmer's bed to wall him off from the pitiful sight of the other sick and wounded without giving thought to the fact that he could not see. Hazzard pushed the stained sheets aside and stepped into the small enclosure. Sturmer was lying on his back, his eyes heavily bandaged, and his hands folded peacefully across his chest. Under the window squatted the small form of Moro, still clutching the German army cap, and staring blankly at the floor. He gave no outward indication that he had noticed Hazzard, who now stood quietly at the foot of the bed.

  Sturmer moved his head as he seemed to sense the presence of someone else. "Who is it?" he asked.

  "It's me, Hazzard."

  "Ah, Herr Hazzard," Sturmer smiled and patted the bed with his hand. "Come sit."

  Hazzard unbuttoned the pocket of his shirt and took out the cord and key. "I've come to . . ."

  "You are my first visitor, sit here," and Sturmer patted the bed again.

 
; Hazzard sat down on the edge of the mattress, and Sturmer folded his hands across his chest again.

  "Lying here like this gives a man much time to think. Last night I lay awake a long time. It is surprising that I never notice the many sounds of the jungle before. We rely on our eyes too much for beauty. There is much beauty to be found in the sounds around us. Something which we human beings seldom appreciate." Sturmer paused and thought of Hazzard sitting and watching him. "You are wondering why I am not feeling sorry for myself."

  Hazzard was beginning to feel uneasy. "Why, no I . . ."

  "Please, do not feel sorry for me, Herr Hazzard. To understand me you must first know something about me. Many years ago, during the war, I was a colonel in the German Army. I became wounded in Africa, and after my release from the hospital, I was second in command of a prison camp in Germany."

  "You don't have to tell me," broke in Hazzard.

  "No, it is all right. I feel I must tell someone. It is good to talk about it after keeping it inside of me for so many years," and he paused to arrange his thoughts. "At first I thought I was going to a prisoner-of-war camp, but I found that they were all political prisoners and Jewish people that the Third Reich had decided were too dangerous to the government to be allowed to walk around freely. At first it was not so bad, but as the war steadily went against us, we began to receive orders to exterminate the prisoners. A large building was converted into an airtight gas chamber, and ten gas-fired furnaces were constructed to cremate the bodies. Every day orders increased, until finally the gas chamber and the furnaces were in constant use, twenty-four hours a day."

  Sturmer had begun to breathe heavily; his words were coming faster as he began to relive the horrible scenes again in his memory.

  "Women, children, even small babies. There were no exceptions. It became such that I could not sleep. The camp doctor gave me medicine, and then when I slept, I would see them, slowly walking by, and as each one passed, his eyes would look up at me, empty and hollow. They seemed to be asking me why this was happening to them. Even I could not answer."