Bamboo Terror Page 8

  The path cut back through the jungle and angled off toward the sea. Neither spoke, and Hazzard began to take an interest in the colorful birds that were flitting through the heavy foliage. He was brought back to reality when a machine gun opened fire, and the sudden sound triggered long forgotten reflexes which threw him headlong into the underbrush.

  Chang recognized Hazzard's reaction for what it was and saw no amusement in it.

  "I am sorry. I should have warned you," and he pointed along the trail ahead of them. "Our practice firing range," he explained.

  Hazzard, grumbling incoherently to himself, and brushing dirt and leaves from his clothes, crawled out of the tangled undergrowth. The firing was coming in short bursts with long intervals in between, and became louder as they stepped from the trees near the edge of a narrow cove. Ahead of them two machine guns were emplaced in positions that covered the opposite bank. Behind the gunners sat about fifty men, watching and waiting their turns to fire.

  "We have found that the sound of firing does not carry out to sea from this location," said Chang.

  Just then a man, who had been bending over one of the machine guns, stood up, and the crew fired a burst across the cove. The man was tall and straight, wore khaki-colored clothing, carried himself with a touch of arrogance—and wore a German Wermacht army cap. Hazzard had seen these caps by the thousands when he was in Europe with OSS, and knew he could not be mistaken.

  "Who's the Prussian general?" asked Hazzard.

  "That is Heinrich Sturmer," replied Chang. "He was once a colonel in the Germany army."

  "He looks like he still is."

  "He is a strange man," confided Chang. "He can speak German, French, English, and Arabic, yet he talks very little, stays to himself, and when he does talk, it is usually something that shows he is bitter at the world."

  Chang raised his arm to point. "You see the little man next to Sturmer? That is Moro. Sturmer saved his life once at great risk. Since that time, Moro has never been more than a few feet away. He even sleeps outside Sturmer's window. The strangest thing of all is that Sturmer tolerates Moro—yet the two of them have never been known to speak with each other."

  "Sounds like the real friendly type," said Hazzard.

  Sturmer had noticed the two men standing at the edge of the trees and was now walking with slow, deliberate, precise military steps in their direction. Behind him came the short waddling form of Moro. Sturmer stopped in front of Chang, straight as a ramrod, clicked his heels with a stiff military bow of his head, and turned to look intently at Hazzard. His attitude seemed to demand an explanation for the presence of this stranger.

  "Herr Sturmer, this is Mr. Hazzard. I have just brought him back with me," and Chang turned to Hazzard. "This is Herr Sturmer."

  "Glad to meet you," said Hazzard.

  "And you are to be with us?" asked Sturmer in clipped English that betrayed no sign of emotion.

  "Yes, I guess I am," replied Hazzard.

  "You are an American," said the German.

  It was a statement, not a question, and Hazzard could not see what the German was driving at. It might just be friendly conversation, but according to Chang, Sturmer was not one to engage himself in friendly chats.

  "Yes, I am," said Hazzard. "Why do you ask?"

  "I can tell by your accent," and having satisfied himself that he had correctly identified Hazzard's nationality, he turned away abruptly. "Now, if you will excuse me," he said, and went back to his men and machine guns.

  Walking back along the path to the village, Chang told Hazzard one more interesting fact about the strange family of foreigners he was to work with. A fact that Hazzard was soon to see brought into dramatic reality.

  "There is one more thing you should know about Sturmer and Maurice," said Chang. "They do not get along very well with each other."

  Hazzard lifted an eyebrow. "Oh? What seems to be their trouble?" he asked.

  "They are still fighting the last war. I should say that Maurice is the one who wishes to continue it. The French underground against the Nazi," Chang explained, "but Sturmer has proven quite capable of handling the situation. So far it has not broken out into actual combat. It just smolders along waiting for one of them to add enough fuel for an explosion."

  The whole situation at this small village of Tu-Hao-Tuc was becoming more complicated with everything that Hazzard learned, and also becoming more interesting. This was the type of problem that offered endless material for Hazzard's calculating, curious mind.

  Back in the village Chang led Hazzard toward a long L-shaped building which had a large red cross painted on its white door.

  "This is the hospital," said Chang with an apologetic tone. "It is not very modern, but it is the best we have been able to do. Come, I want you to meet our Doctor Kelly."

  Inside the hospital a few old beds of various shapes and sizes were arranged along both walls, and between them mats and straw mattresses had been laid on the floor to accommodate the overflow of patients. Every space was filled with people lying or sitting, each one a monument to filth and stench. Hazzard gagged at the sight. The rancid smell of sweating humans, dried urine, and medicine filled the heavy air. Everywhere were dirty bandages, and hungry flies buzzing about looking for a filthy place to land and enjoy themselves. There were the amputees, the delirious, the half starved, and the putrid effects of tropical skin disease mixed with gangrene all about him, and Hazzard felt a mixture of pity and disgust. They gained the end of the long room and Hazzard shuddered with relief as he passed through a door and left the appalling scene behind.

  They were now in the small room that served as the office of the hospital. It was littered with a large variety of tables, boxes, and shelves that contained piles of various medical instruments, books, and bottles of medicine. Seated at a desk, with his back to the door, was a middle-aged man, streaks of gray showing in his once brown hair, and with bloodshot blue eyes; his hawklike nose acting like a pointer, he was absorbed in the mysteries of a medical journal. His arms were outstretched, hands resting on the edge of the desk, and near his right hand was a bottle of unidentifiable whiskey and a half-filled glass. Behind the desk, chained to one bamboo-latticed window, was an extremely dirty and mangy monkey, solemnly picking at a piece of fruit. On the floor about the desk lay a profusion of medical books with mildewed covers. To the stranger, it was the headquarters of the local ragpicker's society with added smells.

  Chang broke the silence. "Doctor Kelly . . ."

  "The great Mr. Chang," broke in the sarcastic voice of Doctor Kelly. "The great legendary figure—The Cobra. Hail the conquering hero."

  "This is Mr. Hazzard," said the unaffected Chang.

  Kelly swung around in the chair and squinted at Hazzard. "Well, don't tell me you found another sucker? Welcome to "Shangri-La.' What kind of story did you tell this fellow? Fight for freedom? Liberty or death?" He aimed the bloodshot eyes at Hazzard again. "I hope you're healthy young man. Don't get sick around here. I don't have enough medical supplies to cure a headache." He got up from the chair and walked over for a close look at Hazzard's face. "Son, why did you come here?"

  "Because I thought you people could use a little help," said Hazzard.

  "To fight the lost cause? said Kelly bitterly. "Did you see those people out there in this excuse for a hospital? Wounded, sick, dying. You'll end up like them, and I won't be able to help you." He jerked his hand toward the window. "But if you're lucky, you'll end up out there in the jungle with a bullet in your heart—or a knife in your back." His voice rose and trembled as he pointed at Chang. "Ask him, he knows, but he's afraid to tell you. This isn't the shining outpost of freedom he'd like you to believe it is, it's the devil's own gateway to hell." Having worked himself up to a feverish pitch, he now turned his wrath on Chang. "And what did you bring back with you this time? Bullets? Guns? Hand grenades? Or maybe a little poison to take in case they capture us alive?"

  "Yes, I brought back guns," Chang replied in a
patient voice. "And I also brought back five cases of penicillin."

  Kelly's mouth dropped open in astonishment as this statement hit him and instantly dissolved his pent up anger.

  "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" he snapped, and dashed from the room.

  "And that, Mr. Hazzard, is our Doctor Kelly," said Chang with a weary smile. "In his sober moments he is rather a good doctor, but I'm afraid that the conditions he has to work under here have left him a little bitter."

  "Well, I can't say that I blame him very much," said Hazzard as he nodded at the litter-filled boxes and shelves.

  Chang opened a side door that led directly outside, and Hazzard wondered why they had not used this door to come in by, instead of the nerve-torturing walk through the long room of half-living human wretches. Was Chang trying to prove something? Was the tour past the tragic scene part of his education into the life of the guerrillas? The only thing it had proven to Hazzard was that he would not be able to eat well for a week.

  "Come, I'll show you to your quarters," said Chang as they left the hospital.

  8 The Country Club

  THE QUARTERS turned out to be a long, low, board building with a thatched roof and a wide bamboo-railed veranda stretching across the front. Inside, a large room ran across the full width of the building. A long table stood in the middle of the room surrounded by fifteen makeshift bamboo chairs. Along the walls were rough board bookcases, shelves, an ancient upright piano with a battered military radio receiver on its top, smaller tables buried under stacks of old magazines in French, German, English, and Chinese, an old hand-wind phonograph with a pile of cracked records, and various pieces of bamboo furniture. On the walls were calendars, pin-ups, and a dart board made from a life-sized poster of a nude strip teaser that had once beckoned men into a cheap Saigon theater. Hanging from the ceiling were two naked light bulbs and four kerosene lamps. A few native spears, machetes, and whiskey bottles completed the decor.

  Despite the roughness and makeshift appearance of the room, Hazzard notice that it was kept clean and dustless.

  "This is called the Country Club," said Chang. "You will stay here with Maurice, Sturmer, and the doctor. This is the living room of the quarters, and it is also where you will take your meals."

  Chang walked toward an open doorway in the rear of the room and clapped his hands together loudly. Almost instantly a grinning Oriental appeared in the opening.

  "This is Mr. Hazzard," Chang told him. "He will stay here from now on. You have a room ready?"

  The man bowed quickly several times and pointed through the door.

  "This is Wong, the houseboy," Chang told Hazzard. "He will take care of you."

  They went through the doorway and Hazzard saw that it was a corridor that cut through the center of the building to a door at the rear. Doors along each side indicated that the rest of the building was divided into fourteen rooms, seven on each side.

  Chang pointed to the first door on the right. "This is Doctor Kelly's room," then he indicated the door directly across the hall from Kelly's. "And this is Maurice's room."

  "And where is Sturmer's room?" asked Hazzard.

  "The last one on the right. He likes to be by himself," replied Chang.

  Wong had opened the door of a room halfway down the right hand side and stood in the hallway grinning at them.

  "This will be your room," said Chang. "If there is anything you need, just ask Wong. He understands many English words, even though he is too bashful to answer you. If you have any difficulty, try gestures, he has a very quick mind. Now, I must leave you. I have many things to attend to. Tomorrow I will introduce you to the men that you will train. Wong, take good care of Mr. Hazzard."

  Wong smiled and bowed rapidly as Chang left, then motioned Hazzard to enter the room.

  "Wong, do you think you can get me some hot water, a towel, and some soap," said Hazzard.

  Wong grinned and ran off down the hall. Wondering if the houseboy had really understood him, Hazzard went into the room and shut the door.

  The room was about as big as an ordinary hotel room. A metal cot stood by one wall with a rolled up mosquito netting suspended from the ceiling. A glassless, bamboo-shuttered window let light filter in over the crudely hewn board floor. A warped chest of drawers stood in one corner, and against the wall by the window, a table stood beneath a cracked mirror. Pasted next to the mirror was a large, cut-out French pin-up with her round fat bottom sticking out saucily.

  "Why, hello there. My name's Mike," Hazzard said aloud as he patted the rump of the pin-up. "That's what I like. The silent type."

  The hair on the back of his neck bristled, and reaching inside his shirt for Sam, he spun around as he sensed the presence of someone in the room behind him. It was Wong. He was standing in the middle of the room, grinning from ear to ear, holding a pan of water, a towel, and a small used bar of soap.

  "Oh, it's you Wong," said Hazzard as he relaxed and pushed Sam back into his waistband. "Thanks for the hot water."

  Hazzard glanced behind the houseboy and saw that the door was shut. Wong had opened the door, entered, shut the door and walked to the center of the room without making a sound. It was a weird feeling to know that there was someone around who could move that quietly.

  Wong placed the pan of water on the table under the mirror. Then he stood watching Hazzard expectantly, as though waiting for further orders.

  "Wong, who had this room before me?" asked Hazzard.

  Wong giggled his understanding and pointed to the wall by the door. Hazzard had not seen it when he came into the room, but drawn on the wall with colored pencils was a large American Confederate flag, and carefully printed below it were the words:

  SAVE YOUR CONFEDERATE PIASTERS MEN SOUTH VIETNAM WILL RISE AGAIN

  Dan Pierce, Roanoke, Virginia. 12 Oct. '61

  Hazzard read the words and thought of the man who had written his defiance of the communists on this wall a million miles from nowhere. Now he was gone, and no one knew or cared. Is this what we live for, thought Hazzard. To die in a Godforsaken hole, forgotten by the rest of the world? How many men had died this way so that fat old ladies could go on gossiping over their party lines, and big mouth politicians could sit secure in their plush, paid-for-by-the-people offices. Hazzard shook his head. This was bitterness, and he knew it. Freedom means more than this, and the fight would probably go on forever, dragging the good into premature death and multiplying the opportunities of the profiteers. Someone had to do the killing, someone had to do the dying, and someone had to do the living. Men like Dan Pierce and himself could not do all three. Hazzard wondered if he too was destined to leave the living up to someone else. The ones that did the majority of living probably did not even appreciate this eternal sacrifice to the god of war, or maybe they didn't even know about it. The safe ones were always too smug to care.

  Hazzard sighed wearily, and as he turned around he caught a glimpse of his face in the cracked mirror. Reaching up, he felt his chin and realized that the three-day growth of beard made him look like a hard case bum.

  "Say, Wong," said Hazzard. "Do you have a razor I could borrow?"

  Wong's grin melted, and he cocked his head to one side.

  "You know, razor," and Hazzard made the motions of shaving.

  The grin popped out again, and with deft hands, Wong reached into the folds of his jacket and whipped out a straight razor. He was holding it up, open, with the blade only inches from Hazzard's face.

  Hazzard tensed. The houseboy had gotten the idea, but how eager can you be? Hazzard held out his hand and Wong placed the razor in it. Hazzard relaxed.

  "Thank you, Wong."

  Wong bowed his grinning face out of the door. Hazzard wondered how many more weird characters he was destined to meet before he could say, 'Now I've seen everything.' He shut the door and noticed that the bolt had been ripped from the wall. It would be impossible to lock the door from the inside. He glanced at the flimsy bamboo strips acr
oss the window and decided that it did not make any difference. If anyone wanted to get into the room, a locked door would only make them use the window. Hazzard had nothing worth stealing except Sam, and this was like the old story of Mary and the lamb, everywhere that Hazzard went, Sam was sure to go.

  He had just finished shaving when he heard the sound of marching troops. Looking out of the window, he saw Maurice bring his men to a halt in the compound. The Frenchman was like a mother hen fussing with its chickens. He went down the line straightening a hat here, a rifle there, and when he was finally satisfied, he dismissed them.

  Hazzard had noticed the ragtag assortment of weapons. American, British, Russian, and Czecho-slovakian rifles, Chinese hand grenades, German pistols, and odd pieces of equipment he had yet to identify. Supplying ammunition for such a wide variety of rifles would be a tremendous problem.

  There was a knock on the door, and Maurice's voice was booming out, "Allo, Mike?"

  "Come in, Maurice."

  The door swung open and Maurice came in with an armful of clothing. He threw a pair of worn, but still serviceable boots on the floor.

  "I notice your shoes today. Zey are not for ze jungle," he said. "Maybe zeese fit you, non?"

  Glancing down, Hazzard saw that his oxfords were caked with mud and almost ripped to shreds.

  "Maybe zeese are your size, I theenk," and Maurice flung a tan shirt, trousers, and an Australian bush hat on the bed.

  "Thank you, Maurice, but I don't want to borrow your clothes," said Hazzard.

  "Zey are not mine," shrugged the Frenchman. "Zey were ze clothes of Monsieur Dan Pierce, but he does not need zem now."

  Slowly Hazzard picked up the shirt and looked at it. The clothes of Dan Pierce. First his room, and now his clothes. Was it good luck or bad luck to wear a dead man's shoes?

  "Zey are clean," said Maurice as he saw Hazzard holding up the shirt. "No leetle bugs, no dirt, no blood, nothing."