Table of Contents

M.I.A. HUNTER: CAMBODIAN HELLHOLE

LICENSE NOTES

OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY STEPHEN MERTZ

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Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-one

Chapter Twenty-two

Chapter Twenty-three

Epilogue

Cambodian Hellhole: M. I. A. Hunter, Book 2

M. I. A. Hunter [2]

Stephen Mertz Wyntner Woody

Tags: Action Adventure

After escaping a CIA team sent to capture him in Bangkok, Stone finds himself on a brand new mission. One of his buddies who saved his life in the Vietnam war has been captured in Cambodia and needs to be rescued. Mark Stone, again joined by his fellow mercenaries Terrance Loughlin and "Hog" Wiley, goes in search of his friend, but ultimately is captured.

Tension mounts as his team works to find and free him. While a huge US Strike on the camp is imminent, Stone is subjected to various torture techniques and abused, resulting in him fighting for his very life.

This action-packed follow up to the first volume in the series M.I.A. Hunter is a must-listen for Stone fans and readers of men's adventure/war fiction.

M.I.A. HUNTER: CAMBODIAN HELLHOLE

Stephen Mertz

Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

© 2012 / Stephen Mertz

Cover Design By: David Dodd

Background Images provided by:

http://solarka-stock.deviantart.com/

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This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.  This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.  If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with.  If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the vendor of your choice and purchase your own copy.  Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

OTHER CROSSROAD PRESS PRODUCTS BY STEPHEN MERTZ

Novels:

The Castro Directive

M.I.A. Hunter Series:

M.I.A. Hunter

M.I.A. Hunter: Cambodian Hellhole

M.I.A. Hunter: Exodus from Hell

M.I.A. Hunter: Blood Storm

M.I.A. Hunter: Escape from Nicaragua

M.I.A. Hunter: Invasion U.S.S.R.

M.I.A. Hunter: Crossfire Kill

M.I.A. Hunter: Desert Death Raid

M.I.A. Hunter: L.A. Gang War

M.I.A. Hunter: Back to 'Nam

M.I.A. Hunter: Heavy Fire

M.I.A. Hunter: China Strike

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"Go with us as we seek to defend the defenseless and to free the enslaved."

—from the "Special Forces Prayer"

Prologue

Tra Vinh Province,

South Vietnam: 1971

Sergeant Mark Stone's six-man combat patrol trudged through a jungle that teemed with humidity, life, and the stench of rot.

Torrential rains had soaked the ground, making each boot-sucking forward movement laborious. The jungle was a dense wall of brilliant green splashed with patches of wild orchid and Jacaranda on either side of the narrow game trail. Vine-wrapped trunks of palm, balsa, mahogany, and eucalyptus reached up out of sight.

The patrol was four kilometers from its base camp at Duc Pho.

Twenty paces back, Stone reacted instantly to the abrupt, deafening burst of fire that dropped the point man, and this "routine" patrol suddenly went all to hell. More automatic fire blazed at them from either side of the trail.

Stone caught a glimpse of the man nearest him, drinking buddy and RTO SP4 Jess Lynch, diving to the mucky ground like the rest of the men. Stone did the same before the point man's body came to rest, twitching wider the impact of incoming rounds.

Stone swung his rifle around and kept cool, counting gunners, figuring the muzzle flashes, scanning for trajectories as projectiles and shouting shattered the air. He freed a frag grenade from his combat webbing, yanked the pin, and let it fly in a looping overhand. He saw the lethal egg touch down some fifteen yards away.

On target.

Fire and shrapnel added to the chatter of the guns, and his patrol was weighing in with answering fire of its own now, each man falling back upon his training and experience, covering his own ass. They were still a team, but at the moment, until they could establish some communications and bring partial order out of chaos, it was each man for himself.

A burst of bullets gnawed the undergrowth a foot from Stone's face, driving him back deeper into meager cover. He fired an aimless blast from his M-16, wishing to hell that the enemy would show himself and provide him with a living, breathing target.

Movement in the jungle to his right. A rustling, rattling sound that had to be produced by man. No animal alive would move so clumsily, producing sounds of metal clanking into tree trunks. Stone shifted his position, ready to defend himself against the flanking movement that was coming. . . .

And he heard the hand grenade as it touched down no more than three feet from his outstretched hand.

No time to think, to plan the movement. He was up and diving, rolling, knowing he was dead if he remained in place, and very likely dead before he could find another place of shelter. Automatic weapons opened up before he took the second loping stride, hot feelers brushing flank and shoulder as he moved—and then the world disintegrated in fire and thunder.

Stone was airborne, twisting as he catapulted through the darkness, somehow clinging to his rifle as he landed on his back. The breath was driven from his body by the stunning-impact, and for a moment he lay where he had fallen, trying desperately to clear his head.

His ears were ringing, deafened by the blast, and yet he knew that they were coming for him. It was S.O.P., and only common sense, to follow up the power drive with swift and deadly force. Destroy the enemy while he was down and disoriented.

Stone had used the trick himself a score of times, and it had always worked.

He struggled up into a combat crouch, almost overcome by sudden dizziness, aware of salty blood inside his mouth. No time to double-check his weapon, to see that it was functioning. The darting shadows in front of him were closing rapidly, their rifles winking automatic fire.

Stone reacted by the numbers, letting instinct do it for him, holding down the trigger of his M-16 and sweeping left to right, waist-high. The first man-shadow stumbled, reeling, and went down. A wild burst from an AK-47 raked the palm fronds overhead and showered him with mangled vegetation.

Number Two was closer when the stream of M-16 rounds impacted on his chest and blew him backward, out of serious contention. He was dead before he hit the ground, and Stone forgot about him instantly, his full attention focused on the lone survivor.

And he almost made it.

He was tracking onto the target, squeezing off instinctively, when suddenly the assault rifle was slammed out of his grasp and yanked away. A heavy round punched through his shoulder, spinning Stone around and dumping him facedown onto the marshy earth.

He tasted death, the gritty, grim reality of dying, and a portion of his mind, was wondering when a life of sorts would flash before his eyes. If it had time . . .

A rough hand on his shoulder spun him around, face-up and looking toward the sky. A human silhouette blocked out a portion of sunlight, looking tree-tall from his worm's-eye perspective, and then Stone was focusing upon the muzzle of the weapon that was leveled inches from his face.

I'm dead, he thought, surprised that it no longer terrified him. He was numb, deprived of fear, of any conscious feeling whatsoever.

Our Father . . .

Something came upon them out of the treeline, sweeping in from Stone's peripheral vision, taking the North Vietnamese regular on his blind side, lifting him off his feet with one hand as the other brought a Ka-Bar knife around and into play. From where he lay, Stone saw the long blade sever windpipe, jugular, carotid artery. And then it was raining crimson on him, saturating his fatigues, running down his cheeks in bloody rivulets.

More hands upon him, but familiar now, and almost gentle. Up above his own, a face swam into focus, and he recognized Jess Lynch.

"We're getting out of here," Lynch told him, but the words were lost on ears still ringing with grenade concussion. Stone understood him all the same.

He clutched at Lynch, and pulled him close, his whisper fierce through clenched and bloodied teeth.

"I owe you one, Jess."

"Forget it, man."

But there was no forgetting. Ever.

DEPT. OF THE ARMY WESTERN UNION MAILGRAM WASHINGTON DC 51005

4-057894S345 5/11/72 ICS IPMRNCZ CSP LSAB 2134845304 WU TDRN WASHDC 44 5-11 1 130 EST

MRS J LYNCH

1476 NE FORT KING OPALOKA FL 32760

REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SGT J LYNCH, 578043851, HAS BEEN REPORTED KILLED IN ACTION TRA NINH PROVINCE, SO VIETNAM. WE JOIN YOU IN YOUR HOUR OF SORROW. PLEASE ACCEPT CONDOLENCES.

RESPECTFULLY,

COL M. B.ATKINS DEPT OF THE ARMY WASHINGTON DC 51005

Chapter One

Southeast Asia, the Present

Daybreak, and the jungle comes alive. Nocturnal predators are banished by the first pale light of dawn to hidden dens, and their selected prey are able to relax their guard, breathe easily again. Another set of hunters are abroad now, forest denizens who thrive on light instead of darkness, basking in the warmth and shunning shadows.

For a man on watch, the hour of dawn is perilous in the extreme. Despite his best intentions, he experiences a creeping sluggishness, a deep, involuntary letting-down that has been built into his genes from prehistoric times. Sentries at their posts must be on guard against the siren song of sleep—or they may never wake again.

Mark Stone was counting on the natural reactions of the sentries, rooting for the hours of tedium that made them careless, lax about their duties on patrol. He needed that small edge to guarantee himself the crucial element of surprise. Without it, he was looking at a death trap there, beyond the trees.

The small encampment might have been abandoned, judging from a first glance, but two full days of recon in the area had proven otherwise. There was a military presence here, albeit casually maintained . . . and there was something else.

Something, someone else had brought Mark Stone across six thousand miles to penetrate the reeking jungle hell of Vietnam. Ten years and more after the cease-fire, after "peace with honor," he was coming back to finish what was started in another time, another life.

Mark Stone was picking up the pieces, trying desperately to salvage lives that somehow had been forgotten in the rush to disengage from Vietnam. Across the years, there had been more than ten thousand eyewitness sightings of Americans and other Westerners in hostile custody, and not all of those sightings could be passed off as mistakes or drunken ramblings. In the face of U.S. government inaction, someone had to shoulder the responsibility of seeking out the long-forgotten missing. Mark Stone had volunteered.

It was the least he could do for men who had responded to their nation's call and then been thrown away like so much dirty laundry, forgotten, covered up. He would not rest while any one of them remained in hostile hands.

Not while he lived.

They called Stone the M.I.A. Hunter. He returned periodically to Southeast Asia in search of American missing-in-action prisoners of war for the families of such men. Stone did not accept these rescue missions for money. He made no profit whatever from the danger. His fees covered expenses and personnel. The M.I.A. Hunter's motivation was that Stone had once been a P.O.W. himself; he knew what it was like to starve in a bamboo cage under a scorching sun and the sadism of the guards. Stone's living expenses came from a career as a successful Los Angeles private investigator, but this had become more and more a sideline as the far more meaningful M.I.A. work took up more and more of his time. He was well connected in the international soldier-of-fortune community, and had at his disposal a roster of twenty-seven men, a network of seasoned, battle-savvy mercs like Hog Wiley, the raunchy East Texan, a light-weapons and hand-to-hand combat expert, or Terrance Loughlin, a melancholy ex-S.A.S. commando; the tough-as-nails Britisher was the best demolitions expert for hire anywhere.

Stone was a big man outfitted in jungle camo fatigues webbed in full combat rig. He toted a CAR-15 and kept low.

Reports had placed a dozen M.I.A.'s inside this little compound, guarded by a force of twice as many North Vietnamese regulars. The overkill in personnel was customary, typical of Asian operations. Officers who were not needed elsewhere, or who might have made themselves some enemies along the way, were garrisoned to watch the P.O.W.'s, to keep them hidden until such time as they might be of use.

The M.I.A.'s were pawns, without official recognition, and if some or all of them should die before their captors found a use for them . . . well, in the eyes of their own nation, they were dead already.

Scanning the perimeter, Stone picked out the positions of his allies. To his left, Hog Wiley was a bulky shadow in the undergrowth, unmoving and invisible to any but the keenest eye. Beyond him, three of the Hmong commandos were positioned on the firing line and ready to push off at Stone's signal.

Jungle growth prevented him from spotting Loughlin, but Stone knew he was in position, with the other tribesmen backing him. They were professionals; they would not let him down.

He checked the action on his CAR-15 assault rifle, glancing at his watch and counting down the seconds in his mind. After another half-minute he felt the tension mounting in him, but suppressed it with an effort of sheer will.

Overanxiousness could get you killed in jungle combat. Patience was a virtue and a necessity for any soldier planning on survival to a ripe old age.

He finished counting down the numbers, swallowed hard to break the sudden log jam in his throat, and pushed out of the covering undergrowth. Ahead of him, a youthful sentry was lighting a cigarette, blissfully unaware of grim death gliding up behind him.

Stone announced himself with a vicious blow that slammed the butt of his rifle into the base of the young sentry's skull. He heard the snap of separating vertebrae and recognized the boneless, rag-doll sprawl.

One down.

On either flank, the others were advancing in cautious pincers, closing on the camp perimeter. They had not yet been seen, but any moment now . . .

A warning shout, the crackle of an AK-47, and the element of surprise evaporated like a morning mist upon the wind. At once the camp was on alert, its score of armed defenders boiling out of barracks and latrine to face their challengers.

A scattered, probing fire was reaching from the camp and peppering the trees, the riflemen still seeking targets, some of them too groggy for an organized response. Their officers were shouting orders in there, driving their enlisted men into a ragged firing line, but now Stone's men were at the fence and plowing through it, blowing tunnels with grenades and homemade bangalore torpedoes, clearing channels through the coils of concertina wire.

One of the Hmong was toppled on Stone's right, beyond Hog Wiley. He was sprinting for the wire, and then he seemed to stumble, sprawling in the waist-high grass without a sound. He did not rise again.

Stone fired a burst in the direction of the barracks building, and was rewarded by the sight of two defenders reeling, tumbling to the ground. He raked across the squat communications hut, advancing in a crouch and under fire, refusing to be driven back or pinned down by the probing, whistling rounds that sought to find him in the morning mist.

White phosphorous exploded to his left front, livid coals igniting men and thatch alike, the smoke obscuring half the compound. Moving under cover of the rolling cloud, he cleared the final strands of concertina wire and breached the camp perimeter, advancing on the compound proper with his team in tow.

Their target of the morning was a ring of bamboo cages in the center of the camp. These would contain the P.O.W.'s, if in fact the men were here at all, and Stone's commandos were especially careful not to fire in the direction of the makeshift prison cells. A handful of defenders had observed this and were taking shelter near the cages, sniping from behind what they perceived to be protective cover.

Moving silently, communicating through a practiced system of hand signals, Stone and his men closed in upon their prime objective, circling the bamboo cages, taking time to snipe the guards with grim precision fire. One down, another, and a third. Another moment, and the area of the cages had been cleared.

Peripheral movement drew Stone's attention through the drifting smoke, and he spun around in the direction of the CP hut. An officer was framed within the doorway, watching him from maybe fifty feet away, and in a heartbeat Stone knew he was looking at the honcho of this hellhole operation.

Something churned inside him, lit a sputtering fuse of anger, and he turned away from his objective long enough to loose a burst in the direction of the camp commander. Half a dozen 5.56mm manglers swept the doorway of the CP hut, gnawing thatch and clapboard—but the target was no longer there. He had ducked back and under cover with an instinct for survival that had bested Stone's desire to kill.

But he was coming back.

Incredibly, the guy was moving back into the line of fire, as if to challenge the intruders, daring them to strike him down. And there was something in his hand.

Stone recognized it, felt the chill race up his spine and settle like a vise around the base of his skull. He knew at once that they had overlooked the obvious, allowing themselves to be sucked in like amateurs. Their recon should have been more detailed, more precise.

The camp commander held a radio-remote detonator in his hand, brandishing it like a band conductor waving a baton. The smile upon his face was mocking, hateful.

Stone recoiled, already turning toward his men with a shouted warning on his lips, when hell descended on the compound, ripping it apart. A string of charges detonated underneath the bamboo holding cages, spewing shattered earth, bamboo, and flesh across the enemy encampment. Flames leaped skyward, burning off the thready morning mist, their rushing sound devouring a strangled scream from somewhere in the heart of the inferno.

The shockwave picked Stone up and hurled him backward, dumping him on his backside in the dust. Through bleary eyes he saw another of the Hmong commandos airborne, tumbling through an awkward somersault, impacting on his head, and folding up like an accordion. Hog Wiley and Terrance Loughlin were farther from the blast, but both of them were flattened by the strong concussion.

Something struck the earth a yard in front of Stone and wobbled toward him like a squat, misshapen bowling ball. It took an instant for Stone to focus on it, to make the recognition, and then he felt his stomach turning over, his meager breakfast rising in his throat.

It was a human head, the hair singed off, one ear reduced to nothing but a bloody flap of skin—but it was obviously Caucasian. Lidless eyes were staring at him with a dazed expression, almost questioning, as if to ask him what had happened.

Stone was snarling as he found his feet and spun in the direction of the CP hut. His target was no longer standing in the doorway, but through one small window he could pick out moving shadows, human silhouettes.

It was enough.

He rushed the hut, one finger clamped around the trigger of his CAR-15 and holding it down in full-auto mode.

He emptied out the magazine in two seconds and ditched the rifle, clawing an incendiary grenade from his pistol belt on the run. Stone yanked the pin and let the lethal can go without aiming, trusting rage and instinct this time, watching it sail through the tiny window, out of sight.

The hut erupted into roiling flames, the thatched roof rising on a fiery mushroom, then settling back again to trap the occupants inside and hold them there.

Except for one.

A nimble figure, wreathed in flame and screaming like a lost soul, stumbled free of the inferno, dancing on the threshold, vainly beating at the flames with burning hands.

Stone recognized the figure of the camp commander, and drew his Uzi reluctantly from its belt holster as the burning scarecrow staggered toward him.

He deliberately held his fire until the human torch was almost close enough to rush him, then thumbed the hammer back and sighted down the barrel, squeezing off a rapid double-punch that kicked his target over backward in a lifeless sprawl. The manic screaming ceased, and silence settled down across the prison compound like a shroud. Stone heard footsteps closing on his flank and pivoted, the Uzi pistol held out in front of him at full arm's length to meet the challengers. Wiley and Loughlin were standing there, regarding him with hollow eyes set deep in smoky faces.

And behind them, near the ruin of the cages, the surviving Hmong commandos were attempting to pick through the wreckage, looking for survivors, all in vain. There would be nothing left to salvage there, Stone knew, except scorched earth.

"We bitched it," he told no one in particular.

The others nodded silently and did not attempt to argue with him. Scanning back across the smoking wreckage of the compound, Stone experienced a feeling of despair that was entirely alien to his disposition. Guilt and anger mingled with the strange sensation, bringing tears of rage into his eyes as he surveyed the carnage.

Ten lost souls. Perhaps a dozen.

Blown to shit because his recon had been faulty. Dead as hell because he had not followed through and carried each hypothesis out to a logical conclusion.

His fault, yes, as if his own hand had depressed the button on that detonator, sent the silent message streaking over empty space to kindle hellfire in the cages.

The big man, Wiley, put a big hand on his shoulder. "Time to go, Cap."

"Right."

And there was nothing here to hold them, nothing that required their presence in the smoking graveyard. Everyone was dead, friend and foe alike. The best they could hope for now was to effect an exit, pass through roving border guards, and make it home.

They would be going out the way they came in this time, empty-handed.

The worst of it was that instead of going on a wild-goose chase, they had located prisoners of war exactly as predicted . . . and then got them slaughtered to the last man.

It was Mark Stone's burden now, and he would have to live with it awhile. Until he had a chance to compensate for failure with another victory. Until he had the opportunity to vent his rage on those who held his countrymen in grim captivity.

"Let's go."

There was a lifetime left for making payments on the debt he had incurred this day. Before be finished, Stone would see it paid in full.

The jungle closed around them, swallowed them, and they were gone. By slow degrees, the natural predators revealed themselves, no longer frightened, and began to feed.

Chapter Two

"You must not blame yourself."

Stone pushed the dinner plate away and frowned.

"There's no one else. I was in charge. I blew it."

Across the hand-carved table, old An Khom regarded him with almost fatherly concern. The eyes set in his wrinkled face were bright, alive, entirely aware of Stone's internal turmoil.

"There are limits to a man's responsibility. Some things are meant to be. You cannot change fate."

Stone shook his head. He knew the old man's argument by heart, and none of it rang true. It would have made things easier if he could simply shrug it off and put the blame on fate or karma, but the gap between their points of view was generations wide, ingrained in each of them beyond eradication.

And while Stone knew that he had blown it, he could still appreciate the old man's efforts to put his mind at ease, to lift the burden of responsibility from his shoulders.

He had known An Khom long enough to realize that there was no point in arguing philosophy across the dinner table. Politics was one thing, business something else again . . . but when it came to matters mystical and pre-ordained, the old man lapsed into the archaic ancestral mold. It was part of his charm, the inscrutability of the East coupled with a Western instinct to aim for the jugular when it came down to money.

The old man was a weapons dealer, operating out of Bangkok, and he had grown wealthy in the martial trade. Stone had used his services on more than one occasion, when he had had a mission to conduct and needed some reliable equipment off the record, but their personal relationship was more than strictly business.

Stone had risked his life to rescue An Khom's daughter, An Ling, from the clutches of a rival arms dealer, and he had avenged the murder of the old man's wife in the process. Friendship had been sworn between them, forging ties that went beyond the mere material concerns and mutual interests of their two professions. An Khom felt a debt to Stone which he could never fully pay, and while Stone never pushed that sense of obligation, he accepted An Khom's friendship gladly.

"You must rest," the old man told him, rising from the dinner table, motioning for him to follow. "Let the war go on without you for a time, and seek yourself within."

Stone trailed him through an exit leading to a garden behind the house. From where they were, he could look out across the lights of Bangkok, which seemed small and far away with the illusion of distance. Five million people lived down there, jammed together in varying degrees of poverty and affluence, an easy quarter of them more or less continuously involved with the intrigue that had been spawned by Vietnam. Among them, An Khom was a minor legend, with his contacts reaching into both the public and the private sectors, assuring him a margin of protection which the less successful operators could only hope to emulate in time.

Stone knew Bangkok the way he knew Saigon—now renamed Ho Chi Minh City—and the other capitals of Asia. He had moved among the city's people, never one of them but not entirely alien, either. He had shared the burden of their wars, and knew the faces of the refugees who had been flocking into Cambodia for a decade, seeking sanctuary. If he was not one of them, at least he knew their suffering and loss. He had been there, all too recently.

"Nothing changes," An Khom told him, staring off across the lights. "There is nothing new under the sun."

Stone glowered at the darkness, wishing he could find an argument against that one, but coming up empty. In his heart, he knew that there should be a way to make a difference, strike a blow for what was right . . . but he had butted heads with bureaucrats and their red tape for much too long to cherish any optimism as he went about his private war.

You struck a blow wherever and whenever you were able. If you scored, so much the better. If you missed . . . well, there was nothing you could do but try again.

Providing you survived.

There was a movement in the shadows to his left, and Stone turned toward it, feeling the old combat prickle along the nape of his neck, adrenaline rushing through his veins to prime the fight-or-flight reflex. Another heartbeat, and he let himself relax.

It was An Ling, the old man's daughter. She approached him almost silently and slid her arm through his. Stone dredged up a smile for her, and nodded a greeting.

"It is late," the old man said to no one in particular. "I need my rest."

And he left them standing there together in the darkness, with the lights of Bangkok spread below them like a magic carpet.

It occurred to Stone that this had been the old man's purpose from the moment they sat down to dinner in the dining room.

An Ling had not joined them at the table. She had served the varied rice and seafood dishes, then retired to take her own meal in the kitchen.

In the Oriental scheme of things, the woman was subordinate. Though Mark Stone had learned to accept the system, he did not particularly subscribe to it.

An Ling would never take second place to anyone in his own personal estimation.

And there were complications—such as Carol, a blonde, blue-eyed beauty who kept Stone's bed warm and helped with the stateside aspects of his work.

When they had passed some time in silence, An Ling released his arm and moved to stand in front of Stone, demanding his attention.

"I feel your pain and sorrow," she said softly. "I understand."

The soldier did not contradict her. She had known her share of pain, no doubt about it. If their cases were not identical, they were close enough for her to empathize. In other circumstances, at other times, it might have been enough to help him.

"Let me share your burden," An Ling offered, moving closer, until they were touching in the darkness. "I can bring you to forgetfulness."

He smiled at her.

"It's tempting . . . but I'll have to pass. Reluctantly." Her frown was thoughtful, rather than insulted.

"You do not find me . . . adequate?"

"I find you more than adequate," he told her frankly. "In fact, I find you beautiful. But this is not the time or place."

"My father—"

"Never mind your father," Stone interrupted her. "I have to find my own way out of this. Alone."

She studied him for another silent moment, finally nodding, and the frown had disappeared when she looped her arm back through his, turning to face the lights of the city again.

"I understand," she told him softly.

And she did, of course.

He needed fire and blood to wash the taste of his defeat away. A different flame from the one that men and women kindled when they came together—this one fierce, destructive.

Stone was hungry for revenge, for the opportunity to start getting even on his loss. It was not ego—at least not primarily—that drove him in his quest for violent confrontation with the enemy. That was part of it, of course, but there was much more.

A need to pay some dues, to keep the silent promise he had made to absent comrades.

A need, if nothing else could be accomplished, just to spread the suffering around and make damned sure the enemy absorbed his share of punishment along the way.

Tonight was not a night for love. When Stone lay down tonight and slept, his dreams would be of fire and blood and killing.

There was no remaining room for softness in him, not tonight. And Stone had no desire to take An Ling along with him into the nightmare world that his nocturnal hours had become since the bungled mission into Vietnam.

The girl deserved a warmer, softer place.

Perhaps, in time, Mark Stone could join her there, and they could share some tenderness.

But first there was the fire.

Chapter Three

Mark Stone's hotel was located in central Bangkok. Of the lower-middle budget class, it had seen better days, but it was still a cut above most of the other lodgings readily available inside the crowded Eastern city. It would offer little in the way of actual security, but at the moment, between assignments, Stone had nothing special to conceal in any case.

The taxi driver let him out onto the bustling sidewalk three doors down, stopping for a line of rickshaws that had pulled against the curb to wait for patrons. Stone did not object to walking back, and after paying off the driver, he merged with the flow of pedestrian traffic surging up and down the long, congested avenue.

He was about to enter the hotel when a Caucasian in a light, tropical-wear suit sidled up beside him, almost brushing elbows in the nighttime crush. Stone felt the man, and smelled his cheap aftershave, before he saw him, registering the presence on his flank, prepared to react instantly if some reaction was required.

He had never seen the man before, but he recognized the type instantly. A single glance was ample to provide him with the information that he needed.

"Mr. Stone? My name's Carruthers." The voice was firm and strong, but somehow lifeless. "I work out of the U.S. Embassy."

"That right? And how are things around the Company offices these days?"

He felt the C.I.A. man stiffen at his side, but he recovered swiftly, never missed a beat as they reached the hotel's revolving glass doors and passed on through, Carruthers trailing.

"It's important that I speak with you."

Stone halted in his tracks and turned to face the man who called himself Carruthers.

"So speak," he answered simply.

The agent looked both angry and embarrassed, managing to let both expressions surface on his countenance at once. "This isn't what I had in mind," he said.

Stone shrugged.

"Okay. Forget it."

He was turning toward the elevators when Carruthers seized him by the arm. Stone shook the hand off without difficulty, and this time, when he turned around, his face and voice were as cold as steel.

"We've never met, so I'll forgive you that. This once." Carruthers looked him over, seeming to decide it was not worth it, here and now, inside the crowded hotel lobby. "I don't believe you understand the situation."

Stone frowned at him. "I understand it perfectly," he countered. "Someone at your office found out I was back in town, and they decided to check me out, find out if there's anything unusual going on."

Carruthers stared at him blankly, without speaking.

"Well, you've done your job," Stone continued. "You've seen me—and I have absolutely nothing that I want to tell you. Got it?"

Without waiting for an answer from the agent, Mark Stone turned his back and walked away. Carruthers did not follow him across the lobby.

He reached the elevator, reconsidered on a whim, and took the stairs, hiking four flights up to his floor without encountering another patron on the way. The elevator might have been all right, of course, but the encounter with Carruthers had forewarned him. If he was being watched around Bangkok—by C.I.A. or other hostile eyes—then it would pay to give himself some room to run, some room to fight at need.

And just because you might be paranoid, that did not mean no one was out to get you.

Stone smiled wryly as he remembered the slogan from the sixties—"even paranoids have real enemies" but there was no humor in the smile. He had lived long enough with justifiable paranoia to realize that the slogan contained more than a little truth.

They had tried to take him out before—and there was every chance that they would try again in Bangkok.

The corridor was long, dingy, lined on either side with alternating doors. Stone glanced both ways, satisfied that he was alone in the hallway before he proceeded along to his room, midway down. The key was in his hand by the time he reached the numbered door.

He turned the key and slipped inside, the darkness greeting him, enveloping him like a shroud. Stone reached for the light switch just inside the door . . . but he never got that far.

A strong hand locked around his outstretched wrist and twisted, pulling him off balance. Before he could brace himself or counteract the drag, he was propelled across the darkened hotel room, colliding with the furniture in transit. He barked his shins on the low-slung coffee table, spilling ashtrays to the threadbare carpet, and rebounded, running headlong into human flesh.

A fist slashed upward, driving hard into his solar plexus, and the air was forced out of his lungs. He doubled over, feeling like a deflated balloon, but he recovered swiftly, using every ounce of strength and will at his disposal to pivot, turning away from the second blow, which would be sure to follow. When the fist came toward his face this time, it slid through empty air.

Stone backpedaled, seeking combat stretch, the split seconds he would need to get his wind and bearings back again.

From somewhere close behind him he heard movement—and he realized that he was faced with no less than three adversaries.

They had all been waiting for him in the darkness, and the knowledge that he had been set up for an ambush struck him like a fist above the heart. Worse still was the instant realization that he had allowed the enemy to take him thus, completely unawares, when he should have been prepared for an attack.

No time to worry now if these were C.I.A. or Communists or God knew what. There was just time to save himself, and even that would take tenacity, along with fancy footwork.

Without thinking, Stone increased his backward speed, colliding with the thug behind him, carrying his target backward with his own momentum until both of them slammed into the wall. He felt the yielding body stiffen as they hit, and took the opportunity to drive his elbows back into the sagging gut with swift precision. Someone cursed in broken English, and Stone twisted, driving one more elbow home, together with a side hand chop in the general direction of the cursing face.

His hand connected with an invisible nose, and warm blood spurted out across his wrist. The guy went momentarily limp, and Stone forgot about him as he circled, moving out through darkness, seeking other targets now before they came to him.

His eyes were just beginning to adjust, the pupils widely dilated, accommodating almost total darkness, but he still nearly missed the rushing body. The enemy was close upon him, and it was his breathing that betrayed him first, the heavy panting of a man not used to such resistance from human punching bags.

Stone sidestepped and almost made it, but the slammer clotheslined him and drove him backward, gagging from the impact of a hard forearm across his windpipe. With more force, a little more precision, it might have been a killing stroke, but as it was, his chin and lower lip absorbed most of the impact. Stone could taste the salty blood inside his mouth, and he was seeing red now as he spun to face the circling enemy.

A shadow-shape was looming close in front of him, backlit by windows with flimsy drapes, and Stone let go a flying kick in the direction of the bullet-shaped head. His heel connected with a heavy cheek, and he could feel the flesh rip, shredding, as the thug was driven over sideways, sprawling from the impact.

Stone closed in, the third man momentarily forgotten, desperate to make sure the heavy did not rise again and renew his attack. His left hand brushed against the back of a decorative chair and he scooped it up in passing and swung it high above his head as he closed on the groggy, fallen slugger.

The attacker was trying to rise now, his bulk in the darkness and his labored breathing told Mark Stone that much. Stone brought the chair down on his head and shoulders, felt its frame disintegrate on impact, and the guy went limp, collapsing back onto the threadbare carpeting.

He was about to give the buffalo a rib-kick for old times' sake when a flying body struck him hard and low, propelling him forward into a facedown slide through darkness.

Stone gasped as the man's full weight came down across his back and shoulders. Desperately he arched his spine, pushing off with hands and knees, struggling to raise the dead weight, to cast it aside. For a heartbeat, the issue was in doubt, his attacker wallowing across his back like some paralytic bronco-buster, than the weight was gone and he was free again, at least momentarily.

Stone rose to hands and knees, about to find his footing, when a boot drove hard into his ribs, lifted him, and dumped him over on his back. Another boot, and something seemed to snap inside him, lightning bolts of pain rushing along his spine, detonating at the base of his skull in multicolored streamers.

They could kill him if he did not find his feet. If he stayed down . . .

The soldier twisted, brought himself into a fetal curl, and was waiting when the boot slashed in for thirds. He caught it, cushioning the impact with his arms and hands, and twisted, pushing off, forcing the stomper to spin like a whirling dervish, fighting for balance.

The guy lost it, vaulting backward into darkness, landing hard across the coffee table, crushing it beneath his weight. Stone did not wait around for someone else to find him where he lay; he staggered to his feet and put some ground behind him, stopping finally when he reached the cover of a wall.

His final adversary made his rush, and was screaming as he came, a hurtling juggernaut intent on crushing Stone against the plaster wall. Stone felt the first disturbance of the air as his assailant launched a flying kick, and he was gone when it impacted, but felt the wall absorb the shock, the plaster cracking, showering dust.

Before the startled slugger could react or get his balance back, Stone had him by the ankle, twisting, bringing that leg up and over at an angle it was never meant to hold. The guy was airborne in an instant, shoulders touching down before the rest of him received the message.

And Stone was straddling his chest, both hands locked tight around the straining throat. No need to see the face above the windpipe, just as long as he could gouge his thumbs a little deeper, cutting off the vital flow of oxygen. Another second now, no longer, and . . .

The lights blazed on, the artificial glare momentarily blinding Stone. He hunched his shoulders, bracing for the blow he knew was sure to come, but he did not release his grip upon the purpling throat.

By God, he would take this one with him when he went, and they would have to pry him off, the sons of bitches. Just a heartbeat longer.

And then he recognized the sound of the revolver being cocked.

A glance in the direction of the open doorway told him all he had to know about the ambush and his adversaries.

The C.I.A. man, Carruthers, was framed in the doorway, his pistol leveled at Stone's face almost casually.

"I recommend that you release that man," the agent said, his tone disinterested. "Please believe me when I say that I have no desire to shoot you. But I will, if you insist."

Stone believed him. He released the thug and left him sputtering for air as he rolled away, rising nimbly to his feet.

"That's good," Carruthers said. "I hoped we could reach some kind of deal."

"Like hell."

The agent's smile was frosty.

"But we have, old son. Already. And I must insist that you accompany me downstairs. Right now."

Chapter Four

In front of the hotel, a black sedan was waiting for them, with another C.I.A. man at the wheel. He did not even glance back as the two of them climbed into the rear seat, Carruthers sitting opposite Stone, his short revolver never wavering.

Before they had driven a block, Stone knew that he could take them if he wanted to—at least he thought he could—but he decided to complete the ride and find out what the hell Carruthers and the Company desired from him so urgently if they were willing to risk touching off a minor riot in a public place to bag him, then it just might be worth listening to.

And it occurred to him, of course, that this might be a one-way ride, with nothing at its end except his sudden death, but Stone dismissed the idea out of hand. If the Company had wanted him dead, he would be dead by now. They could have sniped him on the street or wired explosives in his room—whatever. They would not have wasted time with that pathetic scene at the hotel, and they would not have led him through the crowded lobby on his way to execution, where an errant witness might remember seeing him with Carruthers.

No, they did not mean to kill him, or at least it did not seem to be the primary objective of the evening. And with that decided, Stone determined that he could afford to wait and hear them out.

There would be time enough for getting in his own licks when he knew exactly what they wanted, where they were taking him, and why.

And Stone would not forget the debt he owed to Carruthers. Not if he had to wait a lifetime.

Their track took them out of the downtown sprawl and into winding, darkened streets where people moved in twos and threes or kept themselves inside with darkness, out of sight and danger. Bangkok was a city of extremes, and within several moments they were at the far end of the poverty scale, cruising almost regally through slums that would have made a stateside ghetto look like the wealthy end of Beverly Hills. There were no houses here, at least no structures truly deserving of the name. Such dwellings as he could readily identify were thrown-together tin and cardboard, with some oilcloth added for the more affluent models. Trash was everywhere, great mounds of it, and little, wizened women scrounged among the refuse, seeking this night's dinner.

Stone had seen it all before, and yet it sickened him. Bangkok and Thailand had become a dumping ground for refugees from Indochina, all the smaller nations that had fallen one by one to Communism, seeing dictatorial regimes installed and people driven from their homes and land.

The domino effect had proven more precise than any armchair analyst had dared to speculate back in the sixties or the early seventies. And "peace with honor" did not mean a damned thing to the thousands who were starving daily in the Bangkok streets. Vietnamese, Cambodians, Laotians, all of them were pressed together in what had to be the vilest slums on earth.

If revolution came in Thailand, it would start right here, Stone knew—but red-tinged hands would stretch out from Hanoi to light the fuse.

At last they left the reeking slums behind, and reached a neighborhood that passed for middle class. It was a residential area devoid of shops and roadside businesses, its narrow streets and sidewalks almost barren of pedestrians at this hour.

The safe house was set back away from the street, a fenced-in garden providing some security from prying eyes at curbside. The silent driver turned in at a narrow driveway, killing lights and engine simultaneously and coasting back until they came to rest beneath a little carport at the side of the house.

"This is it," Carruthers told him. "Get out."

Stone exited on his side, and the driver was a step ahead of him, moving to cut off the best avenue of retreat in case he tried to make a break. Stone grinned at him and turned his back, following the silent hand signals from Carruthers, moving up a little flight of concrete stairs to reach the side door of the house.

Carruthers knocked, a simple sequence of taps and pauses, then waited while a man inside opened a series of locks.

The door opened on soft lighting, and Stone saw a third man standing well back from the doorway, with an automatic pistol leveled at the open portal. Except for being blond and somewhat younger, the man and his suit might have been a carbon copy of Carruthers and the driver.

Stone wondered where they found these guys, and if they came prepackaged, or their individuality was simply stripped away by some sophisticated laundry process. Instant secret agent: put him in a cheap suit, wind him up . . . and watch him butt his head against the wall for hours on end.

Stone passed inside, Carruthers and the driver crowding close behind him, and saw a fourth man standing on the opposite side of what appeared to be a kitchen.

Make that two pairs of matching bookends.

This one had taken off his jacket, and the holster he wore beneath his right arm held a standard army-issue .45 Colt autoloader.

Mark Stone registered the fact that this one was left-handed, filing it away for future reference. You could never tell what might come in handy in a life-or-death combat situation.

When the outer door was closed again and double-locked against the hostile night, Carruthers spoke again.

"We've got someone you'll want to meet. He wouldn't talk to anyone but you."

"I guess he's choosy."

"Smart guy," the driver commented. It was the first time Stone had heard him speak.

"Relax," Carruthers told his sidekick. It was both a warning and an order, and his tone told Stone that this one was in charge, at least the nominal superior of the other three.

That knowledge, too, might come in handy. Later.

"So, where's the mystery guest?" he asked of no one in particular.

"This way."

Carruthers brushed on past him, leading him along a narrow, dingy hallway, past a bathroom and what may have been a tiny den. The bedrooms were in back, along the north end of the house, and one of them was plainly their final destination.

It was the first time Carruthers had moved out ahead of Stone, and he was no longer holding his revolver. Stone could have taken him, but he was very much aware of the other three agents filling the corridor behind him, and he had to assume that one or all of them would waste him if push came to shove.

He would have to bide his time, find a way to shave the odds a little, get them on his side.

In any case, they had him interested now, in spite of himself. He put his anger on hold and let a cautious curiosity take over as they reached the bedroom doors and Carruthers opened the one on the left.

It was a bedroom in name only, barely functional. All furnishings except for a card table and a narrow folding cot of military make had been removed; the windows had been boarded over, either when the house was originally abandoned or later, as a slipshod security precaution. The net effect was to make the room even darker than it would normally have been. A single low-wattage bulb dangling from a ruined ceiling fixture cast surrealistic shadows in the corner, climbing halfway up the faded, grimy walls.

The cot was the central feature of the tiny room, and Stone observed that it was occupied. A gaunt, emaciated figure lay stretched out upon the framework of aluminum and canvas, covered with an OD blanket, shaven head reclining on a pillow that had seen much better days. The face—a man's—was turned in Stone's direction, but there was no recognition, and damned little life, in the hooded eyes.

"Peter Ramsay," Carruthers told him. "That's Corporal Ramsay, USMC. Some friendlies picked him up a few kilometers from the border, on the Cambodian side, three nights back."

The full reality of what the agent had been saying struck Stone like a blow across the chest. This skeleton upon the cot was an American marine, for Christ's sake, and a P.O.W. at that. Somehow, against the odds, he had escaped from his captivity and made his way to the Cambodian border. Made his way to this.

"You fucking bastards."

"Hey, now—"

"Easy, Stone," Carruthers cautioned. "We were all for sending this bird stateside when we got him, but the word came down to check him out, debrief him. You know how it is."

Stone knew exactly how it was, all right. And he was mad enough to kill somebody now, without discriminating on the grounds of nationality.

"The problem is, he's got a hangup," Carruthers continued. "Like I said, he won't spill to anyone but you. So, in the interests of time and all that . . . here you are."

"You're here for our convenience, Stone," the driver told him ominously, finally finding voice and nerve to use it. "Just don't fuck it up."

Stone pinned him with a glance that sent the agent back a pace or two, and then he turned away, his face softening as he neared the cot and knelt down by the ravaged form of what had been a U.S. fighting man.

"Corporal Ramsay?"

Something stirred behind the eyes.

"I told you mothers . . . nothing till you bring Mark Stone in here."

"I'm Stone."

The face was changing, hope replacing misery and anger somehow.

"No shit?"

"I wouldn't shit you, soldier."

"I'm a marine," the corporal corrected him, grinning.

"Damn straight." Stone answered that weak smile with a strong one of his own.

His reputation had preceded him, somehow, against the odds and across the many miles. He knew about the jungle grapevine, how a message or a name could travel from Cambodia or Laos into the Mekong Delta within weeks, sometimes within the span of days. And he had been at this job long enough to know that guards, perhaps some P.O.W.'s themselves, would know about his efforts, and be talking quietly among themselves.

A legend in his own time? Hardly.

Just a soldier, trying his goddamnedest to release some others from the living hell they had been cast into ten years ago, while fighting bravely for their country.

Let the opposition know his name. And let them come for him, if they thought they could handle it. And fuck them if they couldn't.

It was good enough, for now, that some of their captives knew his name as well, that they kept hope alive until the time when he—or someone else—could find them, come for them, and take them home to families that had been waiting for what seemed a lifetime.

"You've got to get 'em out of there," Ramsay was saying, his voice almost a whisper, feverish and faint.

"Get who, son? Out of where?"

"It's s'posed to be a secret."

He was rambling now, far gone with his fever and starvation, with exposure from his walk out of Cambodia's reeking jungle. But Stone bent closer, almost whispering himself now, willing the young man to hear and understand. "It's all right for you to tell me, Corporal. Time to make your report."

"Yessir." Hesitation, and the dry tongue darted lizardlike across white, narrow lips.

"Quang Tin province . . . north . . . not far." The eyes were glazing over, and Stone gripped him by his scrawny shoulders, shook him gently, brought him back around by slow degrees.

"I need coordinates," he said, and there was no need now to feign the tone of urgency.

The corporal was trying to pinpoint a P.O.W. camp, of that Mark Stone was certain. If he could . . . if he could dredge it up from feverish memory . . .

"Ten klicks out, across the line . . . Quang Tin . . . they've got a shitload of our men there, Captain. You . . . you got to get 'em out of there before . . ."

He faded out again, and Stone was loath to shake him. From his looks, the kid was racked with disease already, and he might well have internal injuries. If he was right about the distance from the border being ten kilometers, there might still be other ways of pinning down the camp. If there was a camp.

Suddenly the corporal grasped Stone's hand in both of his own, and squeezed it with a strength Stone would not have believed he possessed. The kid was straining up and off the narrow cot, his face mere inches from Stone's now; his eyes-were bulging, staring at and through Stone, searching for his heart and soul.

"Lynch says you owe him one . . ."

And he slumped back, collapsing on the canvas. Stone stared at him, doubting the evidence of his ears . . . except that the adrenaline was pumping through him now, the short hairs rising on his neck.

There was no doubt about the words, not really. Somehow Ramsay knew about Jess Lynch, about the pledge Stone had made to him one hellfire night in 'Nam.

He knew, and yet how could he?

Lynch was dead, his life snuffed out in a pathetic rearguard action two weeks before the final pullout in '72. A patrol had been coming in under fire, with the VC closing fast behind them, and Lynch had turned back to hold the enemy while the rest broke free and made it safely into their defensible perimeter.

And he was never seen again.

The DOD had listed him as killed in action, had informed his wife that he was dead meat, never coming home to see their baby or the home they had been saving up to buy and live in as a family.

No way in hell could Ramsay know about Jess Lynch, unless . . .

Unless Lynch was alive.

And in captivity.

Inside Cambodia?

Stone reached out for the corporal and tried to rouse him from his fever dream, but he was far beyond the point of waking now. The bulging eyes were half-closed, glassing over now, the emaciated form a rag doll, devoid of life.

His final breath had been the warning, plea, supplication, all rolled into one.

Lynch says you owe him one . . .

Another debt unpaid, sweet Jesus, but at least this one still had potential. This one was in sight, if not in reach.

You seldom got a second chance in warfare. And Mark Stone was not about to pass this by. Not while he lived.

Chapter Five

"Okay," Carruthers said, "we've got the dope we needed. I'll have you taken back to your hotel now . . . if you think you want to face the manager."

"That's it?"

"That's it," the agent confirmed, smiling thinly.

Mark Stone gestured toward the body on the tiny cot. "And what about him?"

Carruthers shrugged. "He's out of it. We'll send him home to his family."

"And the others?"

The C.I.A. man heaved a weary sigh. "We'll have to check out his intel. If it pans out, we may be able to get some mileage from it in negotiations."

Stone was scornful, and he let it show in face and tone of voice.

"Your so-called negotiations have been dragging on for over ten years now," he snapped. "So far, you haven't brought a single prisoner home."

Carruthers sneered. "What makes you the expert, Stone?"

"Experience," the soldier answered. "I get results." The agent's answering tone was mocking, filled with malice.

"Yeah, we heard about your great results the last time out. I guess you didn't bag your quota of Americans."

"Fuck you, Carruthers."

The spy's face turned cold. "Get this, smartass," he growled. "You're out of this. In fact, you're out of Bangkok. Like by tomorrow morning, at the latest."

"Really?" There was wry amusement in Stone's voice.

"Bet your ass. We find you still in town by lunchtime, I'll rack you up."

"What's wrong, Carruthers? Feeling heat?" When there was no immediate answer, Stone forged on ahead. "You know, if you had done your job, I wouldn't need to do it now. I wouldn't exist."

Carruthers's face had turned a violent, mottled scarlet. "You won't exist, goddammit, not if you start messing with this one."

"I don't bluff, Carruthers."

"Neither do I. This is straight from the top."

Stone smiled at his adversary, stalling as he weighed the odds and angles. Carruthers and one of his sidekicks were still in the room with him; the other two had disappeared, presumably to keep an eye on outer security. With any luck at all . . .

Stone smiled—his best, most disarming grin. "I guess there's nothing I can do to stay on your good side, then, is there?"

The agent glowered at him, fairly grinding his teeth. "Not a goddamned thing."

"Well, in that case . . ." Mark Stone unleashed a haymaker that caught Carruthers on the chin and drove him backward, bouncing him off the nearest clapboard wall. He was not out, but he was shaken, stunned, and there would be enough time to dispatch him once his sidekick was immobilized.

The second C.I.A. man was already clawing for his holstered pistol, but his jacket slowed him down a fatal fraction of a second. Stone was on him even as he reached the weapon, slashing with the knife-edge of his hand and making contact with the bridge of his nose, crushing it out flat against his face. A gout of blood erupted from his flattened nostrils, and the agent sat down hard, no more than semiconscious now, his gun forgotten.

Stone had not forgotten it, however. He retrieved it from the chamois shoulder holster, suddenly reversed it in his palm, and swung it like a blackjack, hard against the agent's bloody face.

The guy went over backward like a sack of dirty laundry down the chute. His head hit the carpet with the sound of a bowling ball bouncing downstairs.

Stone was already turning away from him, moving back in the direction of Carruthers. The senior C.I.A. man was recovering more swiftly than Stone had anticipated, reaching for his own weapon now, and shaking his head to clear it of the reddish fog that had settled in behind his bleary eyes.

Stone met him halfway and whipped the borrowed handgun up and over in a vicious roundhouse, laying Carruthers's left cheek open to the bone. He never had the time to speak or shout a warning to the men outside. A strangled grunt escaped from his bloody lips, and then he was floorward bound, a tumbling deadweight bag of bones that met the carpet with a resounding thud.

Stone lifted his revolver from its holster, just in case, and jammed it down into his own waistband. With the heavier-caliber autoloader in his fist, he moved cautiously in the direction of the bedroom door, leaving the two unconscious agents alone with the mortal remains of Corporal Ramsay.

For one of them, the war was finally over. When the others woke, they might well find that theirs was just beginning.

First things first, and Stone was at the door now, one hand on the knob, listening with his ear close against the thin wood paneling. If the man or men outside had heard the sounds of struggle, they might be advancing on him at that moment. Or they might be laying back and playing safe, setting up an ambush in the event that the wrong person emerged through the door with a weapon in his hand.

Stone knew he had to take the chance. There was no other way for him to get out of the safe house—and remaining where he was could turn out to be anything but safe.

He had no wish to kill an agent here tonight, but on the other hand, Carruthers would be aching to waste him after the beating he had just received. His options had been narrowed radically, and Stone no longer knew if he could make it out of there without spilling blood along the way.

If he had to ice an American . . .

He put the thought out of his mind. He would play it as it came, and handle it instinctively, the way he did in combat. He had not come here to kill, but by the same token, he had not come here to die, either.

Survival took priority, and he would sort the rest of it out later, at his leisure, from a true safe house of his own choosing.

He turned the knob and edged the door open a silent fraction of an inch. One eye against the slit, he scanned the room beyond—and found his target immediately.

Agent number three was standing with his back turned toward the door, no more than six paces distant. He was the only person visible within that slim pie-wedge of space—but that most emphatically did not mean he was alone.

There was the driver to account for, and he might well be positioned just beyond Stone's line of sight, perhaps with weapon drawn, already noticing the marginal movement of the door.

It was a chance Stone had to take. He could not stall forever, and remaining where he was, pinned down by his excessive caution, simply was not a viable alternative.

He shouldered through the door and closed the gap in one swift, silent rush. Somehow the agent heard him corning, sensed his danger in the final second, and threw himself aside, dodging to the left, almost evading the pistol butt that Stone directed at the base of his skull.

Almost.

The gun butt missed its primary target, but it struck the agent's cheek, tearing flesh and drawing blood. He staggered, almost going down, but he was big and tough, apparently accustomed to taking knocks and standing up to punishment.

Stone forged ahead, the pistol butt and the knuckles of his free hand raining on the agent's head and face. He brought a sharp knee up into the other's groin, and the C.I.A. man crumpled, going over, retching on the dingy carpet.

Stone stepped back a pace, gathered his strength, and drove the toe of his shoe into the agent's crooked front teeth, crushing them inward, pulping his lips, snuffing out his final flame of consciousness in one swift stroke.

The spy performed an awkward, graceless somersault, landing on his butt, going limp the moment he touched down on the floor. Stone bent beside him, feeling his jugular for a pulse and finally finding one, however weak and thready at the moment.

He would live, all right, unless Carruthers killed him for allowing Stone to make his break. Whatever happened now, from here out, the guy was on his own.

And there was at least one to go.

The driver was nowhere in sight, his absence finally registering on Stone as the excitement of his battle with the other agent faded. There had been no ambush waiting for him out beyond the bedroom door, no grim surprise.

And that meant he had another man to find and immobilize, before he could effect a clean escape.

The driver might be anywhere, inside the house or out, but he would have to find the man, and swiftly. He could not afford to leave an enemy awake and stalking in his rear zone; it was suicidal.

Moving swiftly, silently, Stone checked the other rooms of the C.I.A. safe house, moving from one to the next until all had undergone his scrutiny. The house was small—even smaller than it had looked from outside in the darkness—and it did not take him long to finish up the quick recon.

He found no one in any of the other rooms, and that meant his quarry was outside. Somewhere. In the darkness.

Stone would have to find him, in a grim nocturnal game where the hunter had as many fatal disadvantages as the prey. The only plus so far was that the driver had apparently not noticed what was going on inside the house. He would be unaware of any danger from within, perhaps approachable, if Stone used proper caution.

Moving swiftly, he rolled the fallen agent over and nimbly stripped him of his sports coat. It was far from a perfect fit, but outside, in the darkness, it would pass a casual inspection. They were nowhere near the same in height or weight, but once again, Stone counted on the cloak of night to carry him within the necessary striking range.

He left the kitchen, exiting the house by the same side door that had served as his original entrance. Outside, the night was warm, balmy, and he was perspiring in the stolen coat before he had taken a dozen steps along the narrow driveway.

He would try the car before he started searching through the yard and garden. His quarry was the driver, and it made good sense that he would be prepared to drive. The Company mind was compartmentalized that way: a duty for each agent, and each agent in his place.

If Stone guessed wrong . . .

Perhaps he could still bag the car and shag his ass out of there without encountering the fourth man. Either way, the vehicle was essential for his getaway, and he could not escape without it. Not with agents on wheels prepared to track him down, raising a hue and cry against him.

Ten yards out he found the fourth man that he sought. He was in the car, as Stone had anticipated. The glowing ember of a cigarette betrayed him, and Stone swiftly deserted the narrow driveway, fading right into the foliage of the garden, circling around to take the driver on his blind side. Under cover of night, he made good time, arriving close beside the car in something under forty seconds.

He could see the final agent, almost smell him now, but the approach could be a problem. He could shoot the man, of course, and take him that way . . . but again he hesitated, reluctant to spill American blood if there was any way around it.

And he decided to play the wild card, bluff it out. He could get close enough from here, no doubt about that, and from the moment he was sighted by the enemy, he would just have to play it as it came.

As usual.

He rose from cover, moving out onto the graveled driveway proper, raising the captured .45 until he had the driver's profile in his sights. He thumbed the hammer back, and let the C.I.A. man hear it locking into place.

"The gun," he said. "I want to see it hit the ground. Then get your ass on out here, and make it easy."

The driver hesitated, long enough to get a look into the bore of Mark Stone's weapon, then his revolver clattered on the gravel and his door swung open soundlessly on well-oiled hinges. He stood beside the car, not raising his hands in surrender, but not making any threatening gestures, either.

"Assume the position," Stone ordered.

He waited while the agent turned to face the dark sedan and splayed his open palms across its roof. Another moment, while his feet slid back and wide apart, heels scraping on the gravel of the drive, and Stone was ready.

Two strides closed the gap between them, and he brought the butt of his automatic crashing down onto the agent's skull, choosing his target precisely and for maximum effect. The C.I.A. man instantly went limp, his chin colliding with the doorjamb on his way to touchdown.

Stone dragged him clear and slid behind the wheel, relaxing as he found the keys in the ignition. He was out of there and rolling in an instant, leaving the Company safe house and its occupants behind . . . but one of them was traveling with him in spirit.

He was carrying a message from beyond the grave, and there were debts to pay.

Chapter Six

"Is that all of it?" Stone asked.

Terrance Loughlin crouched down on the tailgate of the half-ton truck, consulting the checklist in his hand.

"It's the lot," he answered finally. "Rifles, ammunition, C-4, and grenades . . ."

Stone listened through the list and nodded when the Britisher had finished. He raised the tailgate, leaving Loughlin back there with the crated arms and rations that would see them through their penetration of the Cambodian interior.

When Loughlin had the tailgate latched, Stone turned to face An Khom. The old man had been watching from the streetside loading dock of his riverfront warehouse, personally supervising the transfer of equipment as he often did. It paid, in his illegal business, to be well aware of what was going on at every moment.

But there was more to it than that, Stone knew. Their friendship had compelled the old man to attend this loading; nothing could have kept him from it. Stone was going into danger, there was every chance they would not meet again in this life, and An Khom was not a man to let his friends depart for hell without a sendoff.

"Guess we're ready," Stone said needlessly. He wondered why An Ling had not come down to see them off, and at the same time he was thankful she had not. A warrior did not need entanglements of that kind on the eve of combat

"May fortune smile on your endeavor," An Khom said, the stiff formality of his words softened by his tone and the expression on his weathered face.

"And on your house," Stone answered, completing the little ritual, accepting the hand the old man offered to him, wringing it warmly as they parted.

Fortune would have damned little to do with their mission, he knew, whatever An Khom might believe. A soldier made his own luck in the field—or most of it, at any rate.

Stone climbed into the truck's cab, nodding to Hog Wiley in the driver's seat. Hog fired the heavy engine up and took them out of there without a backward glance. No ties, and no regrets. Not this time.

The window that connected the cab with the covered bed of the truck had been cleared of glass, allowing them to keep in constant voice communication with Loughlin. It was a simple enough precaution—and one that Stone had viewed as absolutely necessary in the circumstances.

He had briefed them both on his encounter with the C.I.A. team under Carruthers, about the nature of their mission and the likelihood that U.S. agents would attempt to interfere at some point prior to jump off at the border. Stone was hoping he was wrong, but at the same time, he had rubbed Carruthers's nose in shit last night, and the C.I.A. man would be aching—literally—for revenge. If nothing else, his ego might compel him to get even; if there were really orders coming down, "straight from the top" as he had said, then the pursuit would be that much more compelling.

They had traveled half a dozen crowded blocks before Hog saw the tail and tipped Stone to it. Mark checked out his rearview mirror, readily identifying the black sedan that seemed to be de rigueur for "secret" agents in the Orient.

No emphasis on originality there, he thought. The C.I.A. team stood out sharply in the crush; they might as well have come with flashing lights and sirens.

"Lose them if you can," he told Hog.

Hog's response was a muted growl—and sudden pressure on the truck's accelerator. They surged forward, brushing past the lines of rickshaws and battered taxis that were abroad even at this hour of the morning in Bangkok. One of the rickshaw drivers shouted at them, a Thai curse, and others were shaking their fists ineffectually at the speeding half-ton.

The chase wound on through Bangkok's narrow labyrinth of streets, sometimes veering up onto the sidewalk, speeding up and down blind alleys. Hog was grinning through the flyspecked windshield, whistling to himself, but Stone clung to his armrest, bracing himself with each new twist and turn for what seemed to be the inevitable collision that would bring them grinding to a halt.

In the rearview mirror, Stone could see one of the occupants of the chase car babbling excitedly into a radio mouthpiece, beaming out a message to other pursuers. They might be anywhere—ahead of the truck or behind it, perhaps running parallel, unseen, on other streets—but one thing was certain: Carruthers and his crew had not taken any chances this time on being surprised or outsmarted by Stone's team.

Still, there might be a way . . .

The trap was closing then, before the thought had half a chance to run its course. From out of a narrow side street on their right, Stone's side, a crash car gunned its engine, screeching out to cut them off. It was another of the identical dark sedans—They must get some kind of discount, Mark thought—and the face behind the wheel was instantly familiar to Stone.

It was Carruthers, yes, his face a battered mosaic of bandages and bruises, growling silently behind the screen of safety glass. His hands were locked, white-knuckled, on the steering wheel, and Stone could almost read his lips as the gap between them dwindled down to nothing.

He would cut them off, unless—

"Hang on, Cap!" Wiley grated, and he held the half-ton steady, never even considering a change of course.

They roared ahead—and struck the government sedan a crushing broadside. For an instant it appeared that they would not get through, but then their weight and hurtling momentum turned the trick. The dark sedan was swept aside—first running parallel to them and grating close along the half-ton's side with a hellacious grinding sound—and then it spun away, smoke and steam pouring out from underneath the crumpled hood.

In the moment while their vehicles were joined, Stone had glanced down out of his window and found himself eye to eye with Carruthers. The C.I.A. team leader was shouting at him, lips writhing silently behind the spider web of his shattered window glass, and he was clawing at the pane as if he thought he might break through and throttle Stone by sheer force of will.

Stone did not have a lot of time—but there was enough of it for him to raise one mocking finger, waggling it just long enough for Carruthers to see and understand, to get the message before Hog took them on away from there and left the smoking sedan behind.

The tail car was closing now, taking full advantage of the momentary holdup, and now someone was leaning from the window on the passenger's side, trying to sight on their hastening truck with a handgun. In the mirror Stone could see the muzzle flash, and then the bullet slapped into the canvas covering in back.

He turned in the direction of the glassless window, calling back to Loughlin.

"Take 'em out!"

"I'm on it!"

Yet another flash, another bullet singing past, this one impacting on the door beside him, taking paint and metal with it as it ricocheted. The gunner was improving, and he would be doing better yet—provided that he got the chance to practice on his moving target.

It was up to Loughlin, now, to take that chance away from him before he hit a tire and rolled them.

Terrance Loughlin freed a CAR-15 from its protective wrappings and selected a magazine at random from the nearest crate, aware that all of them were fully loaded. He rammed the clip home into the receiver, and racked the rifle's bolt back, chambering a 5.56mm round.

Another bullet hit the tarp above his head and sliced on through, this one striking the metal roof of the cab behind him, giving Stone and Wiley something to think about.

"Will you hurry up, goddammit?" the driver shouted through the glassless window.

"Working," Loughlin told him simply, refusing to let this hairy Neanderthal rattle him when they were under fire.

He reached the tailgate of the half-ton, ducking down and undercover as he used the rifle's muzzle now to edge the tarp aside. The gunner back there was not bad, and there was no point in giving him a human target sooner than was absolutely necessary.

Just a peek at first, and Loughlin knew that he could take them anytime he wanted to. The question was, could he take them out and leave the crew alive?

It was not certain by any means; unloading at a moving car that way, with automatic fire—he might hit any one or all of them, explode the engine or the gas line, send them up in flames . . .

But he was wasting time.

Stone had told him to take them out. Not gently, not necessarily alive. Just out.

Loughlin rose to a crouch, bracing himself against the wheel well of the truck as he brought the rifle to shoulder level, sighting quickly down the barrel, acquiring his target across a distance of no more than thirty yards.

The driver and his shotgun rider saw it coming—and there was nothing they could do about it now. The gunner tried to duck beneath the dashboard, but even that option was denied his companion at the steering wheel.

Loughlin was humane enough to sympathize—and human enough to chuckle quietly at their discomfort. Let them taste a sample of their own medicine now, and maybe they would think twice about drawing down on others anytime they felt like it.

Provided that they lived, of course.

He stroked the rifle's trigger, riding out the recoil, watching a line of tidy holes appear across the sedan's grille, marching up and across the hood at an oblique angle. The hood blew off, the engine block erupting into clouds of inky smoke, and suddenly the dark sedan was losing steam, coasting to a dead stop in the middle of the street, while Wiley took them out of there and out of range.

Before they turned the corner, losing their pursuers from sight, Loughlin saw two of them scramble clear of the burning car, dashing off into the crowd, perhaps in search of fire extinguisher—or, more likely, seeking out a place of shelter and concealment.

"Done," he told the others, knowing both of them would have been following the action in their mirrors.

"Fine. We're clear," Stone told him curtly.

Clear.

Unless the Company had other crash cars up ahead, other pursuers on their tail, keeping in touch by radio.

And what if they were clear now, in Bangkok? What did that say about the mission they were facing later—tomorrow, the next day, the day after that?

They were a long and bloody way from clear, the former S.A.S. commando realized. It would be naïve—worse, foolish—to assume that their problems had evaporated with the stalling of some clumsy C.I.A. men on a Bangkok street.

The heat was just beginning for them, and the end was nowhere yet in sight. They might be killed on this block, or around the corner, or . . .

Loughlin cut off the defeatist train of thought as unproductive. It was no good borrowing trouble on the eve of an engagement, he knew that much from grim experience.

Whatever was going to happen would happen, and the best they could do was to be prepared for every logical eventuality, every conceivable deviation from the script.

In jungle warfare, you could always count upon the unexpected. Surprise was the one grim constant in a nightmare world where black and white did not exist with any certainty; everything was murky, shaded, gray.

And surprises were predominantly fatal.

Loughlin frowned and kept the smoking rifle close to him as they continued on in the direction of the city limits.

The nightmare was not over, he knew. In fact, it was only beginning.

Chapter Seven

Cambodia had always been a problem.

Throughout the war in Vietnam, the jungle neighbor had been used as a convenient sanctuary for the Vietcong, providing them with somewhere they could run when the fighting got too fierce around the Mekong Delta and Saigon. At the same time, Cambodia's so-called pro-American government had turned out to be so repressive, verging on the genocidal, that it had inspired a Communist guerrilla movement of its own—the deadly Khmer Rouge.

The Communists had been victorious in Cambodia, as they had in Vietnam, but that was not the end of it. As so often proved to be the case, the Reds could no more live with one another peacefully than they could coexist with capitalists. Vietnamese invaders pounced upon their fellow Reds in 1979, driving the Khmer Rouge government out of the capital at Phnom Penh, and since that time, Cambodia—alias Kampuchea—had been governed by a People's Revolutionary Council under one Heng Samrin.

Samrin and his top aides were defectors from the Khmer Rouge government, little quislings who had seen which way the wind was blowing and bailed out in time to save themselves by switching sides. The Samrin government was totally dependent on Vietnam and the Soviet bloc for military protection and technical assistance; it relied upon world aid and generosity to keep its failing economy afloat.

As in Vietnam itself, the artificially imposed "people's government" was not without some opposition from the people it professed to serve. Survivors of the old Khmer Rouge regime were still at large, along with several rightist factions who remembered the days before Red rule had been imposed at gunpoint.

Cambodia's five million people were scattered over some 70,000 square miles—the rough equivalent of Bangkok's population sprinkled across an entire country. The little nation had experienced severe depopulation in the past two decades, losing millions of her people to war and starvation, the flight of refugees, and systematic genocide performed by whichever regime held power at the moment. Right or left, the ruling powers in Phnom Penh seemed to view their subjects as a group of human guinea pigs, fit only for abuse and experimentation, targets in the testing of new war machines and chemicals. Slowly, surely—and lethally—Cambodia was being stripped of her forests, her wildlife, and her people.

And the jungle hid a host of grisly secrets, yes, but Stone and his commandos were interested in only one of them. One riddle this time out, and all the rest would have to wait for other missions, other warriors, to discover them and right the wrongs that had been ruthlessly inflicted in the name of brotherhood and people's revolution.

The penetration team consisted of eight soldiers altogether. Stone, Wiley, and Loughlin were the hard core of the operation, but they never ventured out to enemy territory without some support, if possible. This time their backup force consisted of four sturdy Hmong tribesmen, the same fierce "Meos" who had suffered so much at the hands of Vietcong and North Vietnamese alike. Their war was every bit as personal as Stone's—and in the long run, every bit as futile.

The last man on the team had been selected by An Khom for his experience in Cambodia and his knowledge of terrain in the northern part of the country. Stone did not question his ability to lead them to the target, but he still had grim, persistent doubts about the man's dependability in combat.

For the guide was a surviving member of the Khmer Rouge army—in his way, as dedicated to the cause of Communism as were the jailers who were holding the Americans in captivity around Indochina.

There was a difference, of course: this man had been among the soldiers driven from his homeland by Vietnamese invaders. He had a score to settle with the enemy, but for a dozen years and more, Americans had been the enemy for him. It was asking much, risking everything, to put the mission in his hands this way.

And Stone would never have engaged him if it had not been for old An Khom. This guerrilla had convinced the old man of his evident sincerity, and An Khom was not the easiest man to put one over on. Still . . .

He would bear watching, definitely—all the way. Stone would not let himself relax until they had reached their destination, brought the P.O.W.'s out, and were en route for home. And even then, he knew, he would not fully trust the Communist Cambodian named Lon Ky.

Aside from the small force in arms, they had brought along a pack mule to transport the heavier equipment that might well be necessary for their mission: extra rations, clothes—in case the P.O.W.s' uniforms had been reduced to tatters by the rigors of a decade in the jungle—medical supplies, extra ammunition, and explosives.

Just in case.

The mule bore it all with equanimity, unprotesting, letting himself be led along by one of the Hmong, bringing up the rear in case they met an ambush on the trail.

The jungles of Cambodia were indistinguishable from those of Vietnam and Laos—which was fitting, since they all had been combined into a single country prior to 1954.

That was the year the French had lost it all at Dien Bien Phu, but the Indochina war went back for generations, only the enemies changing like the walk-on villains in some cosmic soap opera. The French, Americans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans—the indigenous peoples of Indochina had fought them all, and beaten them all, at one time or another. Now, since final victory during 1972, with the ouster of the hated Americans, they had run out of foreign enemies to fight—and they were turning on each other with a vengeance.

Stone was well acquainted with the jungle's dangers: quicksand, poisonous snakes and insects, huge trees rotten to the core and ready to collapse upon unwary soldiers at the drop of a canteen. He had survived them all throughout three tours of duty in Vietnam with the Special Forces—and he had been surviving them ever since, in his private capacity as hunter of the missing, rescuer of the forgotten soldiers.

As they marched, he wondered what they would find waiting for them when—if—they made it back to Thailand with the M.I.A.'s. How long could he keep flouting the authority of several sovereign governments, humiliating agents in the field, and going on about his task as if he was a law unto himself?

The answer came to him at once: as long as he kept bringing P.O.W.'s home alive.

And Stone did not want to blow this one. He could not blow it. For his own sake and the sakes of all the men still penned and caged by hostile forces in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.

The jungle was an old familiar adversary, and sometimes a friend—but Stone had never seen it as it was here, in northern Cambodia. They had been marching for less than three hours when the countryside began to change, the verdant foliage withering, dying. It was as if a blight had fallen from the sky to curse the plant life and the animals below.

Scorched earth. He had seen something like it in Vietnam, where Agent Orange and other chemical defoliants were used to clear vast fields of fire and strip a roving enemy of food stores. But this was something different, something vastly worse, and on a greater scale by far than anything he had seen in 'Nam.

Stone overtook their guide, Lon Ky, and asked, "What is all this?"

The Khmer Rouge warrior looked around with anger in his eyes.

"The yellow rain," he said. "Vietnamese and Russians test their gases, chemicals, out in the countryside. Many die. Many more lose homes. Yellow rain."

Stone had heard the grim reports of chemical warfare and testing—both from Laos and Cambodia—but he had never seen the hideous results firsthand before. It was beyond anything he could have readily imagined, even after all his years of warfare in the field.

It was approaching noon when they reached the village, moving in from the southwest, approaching cautiously to keep from raising an alarm. There was always a chance that government regulars would be found in the villages, looking for guerrillas, living off the land—or simply seeking out some untried village women to warm the jungle nights in bivouac.

But not this time.

From far away they saw that the village was lifeless, devoid of human habitation. As they drew in closer, Stone could see that every bit of vegetation had been stripped for yards around, as if the lethal yellow rain had been dumped down directly on the village in some kind of aerial attack. But, occupied or not, the village posed a threat. They entered on alert, watching out for any booby traps that hostiles might have left behind—or that the villagers themselves, in their extremity, might have prepared for ground troops who would follow in the wake of the airborne death-dealers.

It took a moment, no more, to realize that this village had been dead for some time. The jungle will strip corpses to the bone in relatively short order, but the polished skeletons they found in and around the little clutch of huts were bleached by sun and rain, testifying that it must have been some weeks, at least, since the occupants experienced hell from above.

Among the human bones were those of animals—the poultry and livestock that had maintained life in the village, and had died with their masters as the lethal chemicals came drifting down from overhead. The village was surrounded by the standing trunks and stumps of trees—but there was not a shred of foliage left within a radius of a hundred yards.

It was like something out of Dante, Stone imagined—a grim, surrealistic portrait of the other side. Of hell.

Stone swallowed hard to get the taste of death and rot out of his throat. The other men in his patrol were fanning out, checking out the huts and any tunnels that might be underneath them for evidence of life or usable supplies.

In his initial preoccupation with the evidence of genocide around him, Mark Stone almost missed the movement up above them, on a ridge that overlooked the village.

Almost.

From the corner of his eye he caught a fleeting shadow, moving left to right, and then another following it—another, and another . . .

Stone swiveled where he stood, one hand dropping instinctively to the pistol grip of his CAR-15 assault rifle, slung muzzle-down across his shoulder.

Half a dozen men in uniform were watching them from the high ground, more of them showing themselves by the moment. All of them were armed, and all were obviously on full alert, their weapons ready at hand. Although the ridge had been defoliated like everything else within sight, it was lined with the bare trunks of trees, and the roving patrol was using these to good advantage for their cover.

It took a moment for Stone to recognize the camouflaged and jungle-stained uniforms they wore. Lon Ky moved up beside him, saving him the trouble.

"Cambodian regulars," the guide said, his voice flat, devoid of emotion. "They kill us now, I think."

Chapter Eight

"We need some time," Stone told the guide. "Try talking to them. Stall them if you can."

Lon Ky gave him a solemn nod and moved forward, taking several paces out into the open, careful to keep both hands in plain sight and clear of the AK-47 that hung off his shoulder. His narrow eyes never left the line of uniformed figures stationed on the denuded ridge.

The guide said something in the native language, got an answer, responded in kind. Stone listened to the exchange for several moments, taking the opportunity to fade back by degrees, placing himself a few strides closer to the open doorway of a long-abandoned hut. Around him he could see the others taking similar precautions, seeking places of retreat in case a firefight should erupt now, without further warning.

He could not make out what Lon Ky and the leader of the uniformed patrol were saying to each other, but he did not have long to wait. After a moment the Khmer Rouge guide turned toward him, frowning, translating the patrol leader's comments into English.

"He believes that we have drugs," Lon Ky explained, "or else that we intend to purchase them from someone nearby. I try to tell him we are simple traders, but he is suspicious."

And rightly so, Stone thought. Ironically, though, the team leader had tagged them for the wrong offense. Stone wondered why he had not opened fire immediately.

"Will he take a bribe?"

Lon Ky shrugged casually. Too casually.

"It is difficult to say. If I ask now, in front of all his men, he may feel obligated to reject it. Or . . ."

Stone did not have to hear the alternative. If the offer struck the leader wrong, if it angered him in any way, he would not hesitate to open fire upon them.

"We need time," Stone said again. "Keep him talking."

A glance to either side showed him Wiley and Loughlin drifting out to flanking fire positions, Loughlin leading the pack mule with its precious load of gear. The four Hmong tribesmen seemed distracted, almost bored by the proceedings, but a closer look revealed that each of them was primed for combat, each with his finger on the trigger of his weapon, muscles tensed and ready for the sudden move they all knew was coming any second now. As soon as Lon Ky ran out of things to say.

And if the patrol leader could not be bought off, there would be killing.

Even if he could be bribed, Stone was worried that he might have second thoughts a mile or two along the trail. He might double back and pursue them . . . or radio a message on ahead.

And they could not afford a double-cross. Not now, with so much at stake, and so far yet to go.

He was turning back to face the ridge when an unexpected movement caught his eye, away to his left flank. Loughlin was there, with the mule, and now, glancing back in that direction, Stone picked out two more figures closing on the Britisher, their rifles held at the ready.

They were uniformed Cambodian regulars.

Stone cursed beneath his breath. They had been flanked already, cut off in the rear. He did not need to signal Loughlin; the former S.A.S. man had already seen his danger and was responding coolly, professionally, lifting one hand in an almost casual greeting to the hostile troops.

One of the regulars hung back, covering his partner as the second one advanced to stand beside Loughlin and the pack animal, giving the equipment load a swift visual once-over. He was reaching out to touch one of the packs on the mule, tugging at the ties that held it firmly in place, about to loosen the knot, from all appearances.

Another second, and he would be standing ankle-deep in C-4 plastic explosives, and whatever cover Lon Ky was constructing for them with the leader of the search patrol would be shot to hell.

No time to hesitate now. Time to move, to—

Stone was reaching for his rifle's safety lever when he saw the British commando reach across in front of the Cambodian soldier, almost as if he meant to slap his hand, admonishing him for rudeness. But there was a gleaming Ka-Bar knife in Loughlin's fist, and now the wicked blade was biting deep into the trooper's chest, punching through his camouflage fatigues and letting loose a crimson torrent from within.

The shit was in the fan, and there would be no turning back now, short of victory or death. Stone swiveled, leaving Loughlin to deal with the other flanker, knowing he could handle him without assistance. In the meantime, Stone's own weapon was rising, tracking onto target, his finger tightening into the squeeze as he riveted the team leader with his narrowed eyes.

They were all out of time and chances now. It was kill or be killed, the only game in town. And it was one that Stone was well equipped to play for keeps.

Terrance Loughlin ripped his knife out of the dying soldier's chest and let him fall, so much dead weight, no longer able to support himself on legs that had turned to rubber.

Pivoting, he brought the Ka-Bar knife up and over in a sweeping overhand toss, aiming more by instinct than anything else, already gauging the distance to his second target before he let it fly.

The knife described a glittering arc, tiny droplets of blood spraying from the eight-inch blade . . . and then the blade was disappearing once again, sunk deep into the second soldier's throat.

The trooper staggered backward, clawing at the knife that had transfixed his Adam's apple, cutting off his oxygen supply, his life itself, but there was nothing he could do to save himself. He tumbled to his knees and pitched over on his face with force enough to drive the knife completely through his throat and out the back of his neck.

Loughlin was already moving, dragging the pack mule along behind him, when his adversary hit the ground. Behind him, CAR-15s were opening up along the firing line, and heavier AK-47s answered from the ridge as the Cambodian patrol answered fire with fire.

Incoming rounds were whistling through the village, smacking into walls of thatch and board as the British soldier found an open doorway and led the mule inside and under cover.

It was a small house, but more than adequate for their short-range purposes. He glanced around, using a brief moment to register the former occupants—now skeletons—still lying where they had fallen when death descended on them from the sky. He wondered idly what had killed them—nerve gas, some defoliant, an even more unusual biochemical device—but he was out of time for speculation, and survival was the top priority. His life depended on attention to the here and now.

He left the mule, assured that it would not go wandering back outside with bullets singing past the open doorway. Moving in a combat crouch, he found a window, open, without glass, and thrust the muzzle of his rifle through it, ready now to join the fight.

Perhaps sixty yards away, the naked ridge was visible to Loughlin, tree trunks marching like a line of giant wooden soldiers in some strange formation. He could make out men in uniforms now, dodging in and out among the bullet-scarred trunks, trying to avoid the fire that Stone and Wiley, with the Hmong gunners, were lying down around them.

And they were answering, with a light machine gun and their AKs, pouring fire into the village with alarming accuracy. Loughlin knew that their position was a shaky one at best. If they could not wipe out this little force, they might well be pinned down until reinforcements came . . . and there would be no withstanding any sort of major assault, not in these flimsy structures that had housed only the dead for months.

He spotted a Cambodian wriggling up a tree trunk, going topside, seeking a sniper's nest somewhere overhead. Loughlin sighted on him quickly, set the CAR-15 for semiautomatic fire, and stroked the trigger lightly.

Twice.

The bullets plucked his target from the tree and spun it earthward, shrieking as it fell. The soldier hit the ground like a large potato sack, and did not move again.

Two others must have marked his muzzle blast. They swung their Soviet-made automatic rifles around to bring him under fire, peppering the hut and his window with a nonstop stream of lead. Loughlin backpedaled, deserting the window, seeking cover deeper in the room.

The regulars were lethal, no question about it. Their responses were swift, professional, and deadly. If they had been armed with heavy weapons . . .

Loughlin heard the telltale whooshing sound of the Soviet RPG-7 rocket launcher, and recognized it instantly. He did not need to see the rocket coming; it was quiet enough to hear the grim express-train rattle bearing down upon him, inexorably.

The south wall of the hut exploded inward with the impact, showering him with thatch and splintered wood. The shockwave picked him up and threw him back to earth again, knocking the wind out of him in the process.

Outside, the sounds of battle faded, weakened, and were lost.

Stone watched the hut explode and grimaced, knowing Loughlin was inside there, possibly disabled. There was nothing he could do about it at the moment.

But there was something, yes, that he could do about the hostile rocket team.

The nearest Hmong commando was carrying two LAW rocket launchers in addition to his other complement of gear. The Fiberglas tubes were expendable, disposable bazookas, each good for one shot only . . . but with any luck and skill at all, one shot was all that Stone would need.

He signaled to the Hmong, and watched as the little guerrilla fighter broke from cover, racing back toward Stone's concealed position. He was ten strides out, no more, when some invisible puppeteer jerked his strings and dumped him facedown on the hard-packed soil. A small, neat bullet hole in his forehead was pumping crimson blood into the earth.

Stone cursed, knowing he could not abandon the LAWs; he would have to expose himself to get them, and run the risk of being picked off by the same fire that had downed the tribesman.

There was no time left to think about it. He was out of cover, moving, weaving in and out among the lead raindrops that were falling all about him, crouching at the dead man's side and fumbling with the straps that held his gear in place.

Stone got one of the rockets free, and he was going for the second when a burst of light machine-gun fire drove him backward, sprawling. A stream of bullets smashed the Second LAW, disabling it on impact, and he scuttled backward, cursing, seeking cover, with the remaining rocket launcher tucked beneath an arm.

He gained the cover of a shed and crouched down on his haunches as he made the launcher ready for firing. He pulled the retainer pin and swiftly telescoped the tube out to its full length, raising the sights and priming it to fire its single rocket.

There was no reloading the LAW rocket launcher. You made good with your first shot, or you got another launcher and tried again.

If you had another launcher handy.

If you got a second chance.

If, yes, you were still alive after the first round missed its target.

Stone did not intend to miss. He braced the launcher on his shoulder, sights adjusted to his eye, before he even tried to make a target acquisition. He would have no more than a few seconds to do everything before the hostile gunners zeroed in on him . . . and once they had him sighted, he was dead.

Stone took a breath, released part of it, and held the rest. Moving fully erect now, he rounded the corner, deliberately exposing himself to fire as he brought the rocket launcher into play.

A single glance was all he needed to pick out the RPG crew, wrestling to reload their bulky weapon. They were almost finished, and the riflemen covering them were alert to any sign of danger, one of them already pointing off in Stone's direction, swinging his AK-47 around to bring him under fire.

Another second, no more, and they would have him.

Stone sighted quickly, calculating azimuth and range, smoothly depressing the firing lever of the LAW. It shuddered on his shoulder, sending out a fiery backblast that would have denuded any living vegetation for twenty feet . . . and he could actually see the rocket as it streaked along its course, homing on the little clutch of human targets.

The whistling rocket struck a tree trunk three feet to the left of Stone's primary target, detonating into smoke and oily flame, the thunderclap rolling back to envelop him despite the range. The explosion flattened the RPG team and their surrounding gunners, and deafened those close by, but under cover.

Stone dropped the useless tube of Fiberglas, and he had his rifle in hand, ready to respond to any answering fire, when he suddenly realized that it was over.

Straggling survivors—three of them—were standing up along the ridge, hands raised high overhead, now advancing out of their positions, coming down the slope. Stone watched them come, risking a sideways glance toward either flank, reassuring himself that Loughlin had survived the RPG blast and was on his feet.

Almost incredibly, they had not suffered any casualties beyond the one Hmong guerrilla. They were short one rifle now, but taken altogether, it could have been much worse.

The Cambodian regulars had reached the foot of the slope, and they were entering the wasted village proper when Stone saw Lon Ky advancing on them, his AK-47 leveled from the hip. It took an instant for Stone to realize precisely what the Khmer Rouge fighter had in mind, and by the time he started moving out to intercept their guide, it was too late.

Lon Ky let loose a single, rattling burst that raked the three surrendering regulars from left to right and back again, almost cutting them in two at waist level, blowing them back and out of frame, out of life. They lay twitching on the blood-soaked ground for perhaps an instant, then were still.

"Goddammit!" Stone saw Wiley closing on the guide, his CAR-15 primed and ready to explode in his big, hairy fists. "What the hell are you doing?"

"Killing vermin," Lon Ky told the Texan impassively. He turned to Stone, no expression whatsoever on his face. "We have no food, no time for prisoners. The captain knows this."

"Well, Jesus Christ—"

"He's right," Stone said, trying to keep the disgust he felt from showing in his voice. "Anyway, it's done now."

"Listen, Cap—"

"It's done," he said again, and pinned Wiley with his eyes. "No way to bring them back."

Hog Wiley hesitated, glaring daggers at their guide, and finally nodded and turned away, muttering under his breath.

Stone recognized the truth of what Lon Ky had said, the possible necessity of his action . . . but that did not help murder to set any better with him. Whether the Khmer Rouge guerrilla fighter had been right or not, whether the little massacre had served a purpose or been all in vain, there was no time to agonize about it now.

But he would watch Lon Ky even more closely now.

There was something about the Cambodian, something that set Stone's teeth on edge and raised the short hairs on the nape of his neck.

Something.

"Let's get out of here," he ordered, already suiting action to words. "We've got another seven miles to cover before dark."

Chapter Nine

"There's nothing," Wiley whispered bitterly before he passed the glasses over. "Not a goddamned thing."

Hog was not speaking literally, of course. The camp was there, as predicted, laid out before them like a child's fort, lacking only toy soldiers on the walls. Lacking, in fact, any sign of life at all.

Stone took the binoculars from Hog and raised them to his eyes, careful not to give himself away by any sudden disturbance of the undergrowth that sheltered him from prying eyes. He scanned the camp, alert for any signal that the prisoners and troops were down there waiting for him.

And he came up empty.

Cursing underneath his breath, Stone made a second careful scan of the alleged prison compound, taking his time and committing every relevant detail to memory as he went.

The compound was located on an island in the middle of a sluggish river, an ideal defensive position—but one that could also work against the defenders in some ways. While frontal assault would be out of the question, neither could the troops inside—if there were any troops—take full advantage of the combat stretch provided by the surrounding countryside.

Stone had mobility; the camp's defenders were hemmed in by walls.

But where were they?

The compound was surrounded by an eight-foot bamboo fence, its poles topped with wicked concertina wire. A soldier could get hung up there while snipers picked him off, and they would have to find some other way inside if they decided to go in. No point in ending up like flies on flypaper, waiting to be swatted.

The only gate in the surrounding fence was facing to Stone's left, and it opened directly onto a wooden bridge that spanned one channel of the river, keeping the camp in touch with the opposite shore. From the land end of the bridge, a narrow footpath had been worn into the grass and underbrush, winding away into the jungle, disappearing in the general direction of some rocky hills just visible beyond the treetops.

Lon Ky noticed the direction of Stone's gaze and spoke to him in a muffled whisper.

"Mines there," he said by way of explanation.

Stone knew they would be mining iron or phosphates—possibly even gold. Prisoners of war would make an ideal forced-labor force for the mines, certainly. But there was still no evidence of anyone in residence at the camp below.

Well, almost no evidence.

Inside the compound, one of perhaps a dozen huts of varied sizes was flying a Cambodian flag. The flag was not new, but neither was it unduly tattered or faded. It might easily serve for the standard of a jungle outpost, still in service.

Or, he told himself, it might as easily have been abandoned, left behind by careless color guardsmen when they stripped the camp before departing for another bivouac.

Obviously there was but one way to resolve the problem. They could not afford to sit here, watching while the afternoon of their third day on the trail turned into evening. Someone would have to get inside the camp and check it out firsthand, at close range.

Someone like Mark Stone.

"I'm going in," he told Wiley and Loughlin as he shrugged out of his Alice pack, setting his assault rifle aside.

"Count me in," Hog said, likewise wrestling out of his traveling gear.

"It's strictly one-man-in," Stone told him, his tone leaving no room for argument.

"Fine," the driver answered. "So I'll give you some close-range support, okay?"

Stone could find no logical reason for objecting. He had worked with Wiley long enough to know that the big man was entirely capable of moving stealthily and silently through the jungle. He would not give himself away—and he could be invaluable if they were, in fact, walking into some sort of sophisticated ambush.

"Right." He turned to Loughlin, speaking fast before the Britisher could invite himself along as well. "Stay here and keep an eye on things. If we run into trouble, I want you in a position to get us out. Fast."

Loughlin nodded, clearly hating to be left behind, but he had already spoken to Stone about the need to have someone watching Lon Ky, making sure that he did nothing—inadvertently or otherwise—to blow their mission. They had come too far to let a traitor in the ranks, real or suspected, double-cross them now.

"I'll hold the fort," he told Stone grudgingly.

"And don't fall asleep on us," Wiley jibed, grinning through his whiskers.

"See you take your own advice," Loughlin told him gruffly, but he was also smiling.

Stone moved out through the undergrowth, easing his way along without hacking at the vines and fronds that sought to hold him back. He had become a part of the landscape, another jungle predator coming down for water, and he would do nothing to arouse the suspicions of any invisible watchmen across the river.

Behind him, Hog Wiley was moving with a silent grace amazing for a man of his size. Stone barely heard him trailing, confident that no one as far away as the compound would know that either one of them was closing on the water's edge.

The jungle shadows were already lengthening toward dusk, and here along the riverbank it was half-light, the undergrowth sheltering them completely from prying eyes. Stone spent another moment studying the opposite bank, finally picking out the landmark that he needed, motioning to Hog and pointing out what he had found.

"Right there. My ticket in."

It was a piece of corrugated drainpipe, wide enough to let him pass with room to spare. The greater part of it was buried underground, but Stone knew it must surface somewhere on the inside of the compound. He would worry out the details when he got inside and reached the other terminus—before he showed himself to any prowling sentries that their first recon had overlooked.

He carried an Uzi pistol, and the Ka-Bar knife would be his only other weapon. He could not afford to take the rifle with him, slowing him down and banging along inside the drainpipe; what he sacrificed in firepower for the soft probe, he was hoping to make up in speed and silence.

And he had no intention whatsoever of starting a firefight inside the compound. Not yet.

If he found signs of life, he would fade back and report, and they could lay their plans in safety, on the other side of the water.

If the camp was as deserted as it seemed, he would watch out for clues as to where and when the prisoners had gone, although he knew that realistically there would be—could be—no second chance, this time out.

They were extended to their limit as it was; they had no rations for extended ramblings through the jungles, and such actions would be tantamount to suicide in any case. A savvy warrior did not thrash around on unfamiliar turf, engaging the enemy blindly, without strategy or preparation.

At least he did not do it more than once.

Stone reached the water under cover of the overhanging vegetation, slipped into it, and was gone. He moved along, neck-deep, keeping his head above water and watching the opposite shore for any sign of movement that might betray a lookout or a waiting sniper.

There was nothing, and he reached the shore and the drainpipe without incident. Pausing there, he turned back and gave Hog a simple thumbs-up prior to levering himself up and into the foul darkness of the pipe.

It did not take a genius to figure out that they had been dumping garbage here, with an occasional load of sewage in the bargain. It was ripe and reeking, with mold and mildew thriving in the muck that soaked into his clothing and smeared his hands and face before he had progressed a dozen feet. Worms and water beetles squirmed beneath him, wriggling through the fingers of his free hand as he pulled himself along, a giant mole inside its makeshift tunnel, seeking daylight at the opposite end.

And in his right hand Stone held the combat dagger ready. He would not risk a shot inside the tunnel, but grim experience had taught him that such avenues of entry might be guarded—even occupied—by troopers of the opposition. He did not intend to let them catch him unawares and kill him underground.

Mark Stone was wise, alert, aware—and still, he almost missed the snake.

It lay in wait for him, directly at the tunnel's midpoint, dozing in the heat of late afternoon. He saw it only briefly, then the body reared up, open mouth hissing at him, the cobra's neck flattening and flaring out in its distinctive hood. No time to hesitate, no time to think. Instinct took over instantly, and Stone lashed out with the razor-edged knife, decapitating the serpent before it had a chance to strike. The headless body stood in front of him defiantly, for a long, tense moment, then collapsed back into the muck from which it had risen.

Stone took the body first, using what little elbowroom he had to toss it back behind him. Next he speared the venomous, still-deadly skull with the tip of his knife and tossed it, too, back over his shoulder, never letting the tiny fangs come anywhere close to his skin.

Only when the tunnel's guardian had been disposed of did Stone let himself expel a sigh of heartfelt relief. If he'd been another second slower in reacting, he would be dying now, the venom coursing through his veins to paralyze his heart, his lungs, his central nervous system.

Ahead of him, the tunnel took a ninety-degree turn upward, climbing vertically for perhaps ten feet. The shaft was topped by a heavy metal grille, and Stone saw daylight streaming through the grating.

He began to climb, wedging himself into the shaft with feet and shoulders, careful not to slip and thus betray his presence with the sound as he came crashing back to earth. It took him several moments, and his spine was in agony by the time he reached the lip of the shaft, but at last he was able to lift the grating slightly with the fingers of his free hand, and peer out into the compound.

Nothing.

He checked each direction twice, then finally edged the grille aside and levered himself up and out, collapsing on the grass and making himself instantly immobile.

He was inside, and the heat hadn't even begun.

If the camp was occupied, he might already have been seen, in spite of his precautions. They might have guns trained on him already, prepared to riddle him the second he moved.

He rose into a crouch, breaking for the nearest building, which appeared to be a barracks. When he rounded the corner, he saw that it was solid on only three sides; the front was barred with long poles of bamboo, forming a rank of narrow prison cages facing toward the center of the compound.

Empty.

Every cage deserted.

Stone moved on, cursing under his breath now, using a bit less caution in spite of himself, as he began to sense that he had blown it once again.

The prisoners were gone. He had arrived too late. He had fucked up.

Another rank of cages, and he came at this one from the west end, moving cautiously along the empty ranks of bamboo bars, the knife still in his hand. Three cages, four, five. All empty.

He almost cried aloud when the prisoner in cage number six stood up to face him, gaunt hands reaching for him through the bars.

Stone caught himself in time, swallowing the heart that had somehow maneuvered its way into his throat. He closed in, speaking softly to the trooper, praying that the man could still communicate intelligibly after all these years.

A soft voice answered him in Cambodian.

From behind.

Stone knew exactly what had happened, and the sudden rush of guilt was tempered with embarrassment at his own carelessness. The sentry had come up behind him, moving softly, unnoticed as Stone had rushed from one rank of cages to the next, convinced he was alone inside the compound.

He had fucked up, yes . . . but there was still a chance that he could salvage something from the hideous snafu.

He spun around, already drawing back the knife to let it fly, calculating the sentry's position by the sound of his voice.

There were two of them, the second standing silent, several paces to the first one's side. They both held AK-475 leveled at his chest, and neither of them showed the slightest hesitancy about killing him.

Stone froze, released the Ka-Bar from numb fingers, let it fall. He made no move to stop the second trooper as he stepped forward and ripped the Uzi off him without another word.

The closer of the two motioned with his rifle, pointing Stone in the direction of the CP hut, the one that still displayed a flag.

As any outpost should, of course, which was still occupied by troops.

Stone cursed himself silently, bitterly.

He was inside the camp, all right, and it was definitely occupied. There was only one thing wrong.

The hunter had suddenly become a prisoner.

Chapter Ten

Dusk, and the little penetration team was huddled in the deepening jungle shadows, well back from the riverbank. They shared cold rations, eaten straight from the can; despite their distance from the river and from the prison compound, they could not afford to risk a cookfire.

Crouching in a tight semicircle were Wiley, Loughlin, Lon Ky, and two of the Hmong trackers. The third surviving Hmong was standing watch, taking his turn on the riverbank, watching the encampment and the bridge that was its only exit.

The bridge was empty now, deserted, in sharp contrast to the traffic it had carried short hours earlier. After Stone had been captured right before their eyes and hustled off by two armed sentries to the compound's CP hut, a jeep with a mounted heavy machine gun had raced out along the bridge and disappeared among the trees, in the direction of the rocky line of hills. An hour later it had returned, leading a line of soldiers and their prisoners—perhaps seventy-five men in all, marching two abreast.

And mixed among the others, taller, instantly identifiable, had been no less than twenty-two Americans.

The jackpot, yes.

If only they could find a way to play their hand, without getting it lopped off at the shoulder.

"We have to get him out of there," Loughlin said to no one in particular, talking to the night.

"We have to get them all out of there," Hog Wiley amended for the record.

"Right. But twenty-two . . ."

"Don't matter. Twenty-two or twenty-two hundred . . . makes no difference," Wiley insisted.

"I know that," the Britisher told him. "But it damn well won't be easy."

"Never is."

"All right, then, how do you suggest we go about it?" Lon Ky burst in upon their conversation, jabbering excitedly.

"Kill soldiers!" he snapped, sounding almost rabid in the darkness. "Free Americans! Expose the traitors in Phnom Penh!"

"Ease off, man," Wiley growled. "There'll be plenty of time for killing when we have a plan."

"They should be sending out patrols by now," Loughlin suggested.

Hog shook his head, downing another mouthful of the almost tasteless rations from his can.

"Too late," he said as he chewed. "They would've had 'em out by now if they were coming. Our boy don't want to split his forces in the dark, not knowing what they might run into."

"Psychic?"

Wiley grinned.

"No more. The V.A. doctors fixed me up." He sobered, finished with his joke. "I know these assholes, man. I know the way they think. It's strictly CYA."

Lon Ky looked puzzled, as if he feared he might be left out of some secret discussion.

"What is CYA?"

"Cover Your Ass," Wiley told him, grinning through a load of Vienna sausages and potatoes.

"Well, if they send men out tomorrow—"

"Then we've had all night to run a recon, and be waiting for them when they find us."

"It's feasible," the Britisher admitted grudgingly.

"Hell, yes . . . and it'll work," Wiley hissed. "Now let's get down to brass tacks here."

There were plans enough for them to talk the night through, including their reconnaissance of the enemy encampment. Exits to be plugged or readied for their own use, timing to be synchronized—everything that went into a successful field engagement, now compressed into the hours of darkness, when it might have taken days under other conditions.

They would not attempt a raid by daylight—not unless the enemy should somehow force them to it. If the camp commander stuck with his routine and sent the inmates out to work tomorrow, they should have a chance to scout the camp perimeter in greater detail, planning all the while for their incursion on the next night.

Twenty-four hours away.

And each of Stone's commandos wondered if their leader could survive that long in hostile custody.

He might be dead already, naturally; the thought had crossed everyone's mind at least once that endless afternoon and evening. But there had been no shots from the encampment, no sign of a disposal team carting a body off for burial or burning. They were reasonably certain he was still alive, and probably undergoing harsh interrogation even as they sat there, planning ways to break him out.

The next crucial question hinged on whether Stone could take the heat, survive the tortures that the camp commander and his personnel might put him through in their determination to find out his identity, his mission.

It was a question whose answer was vital to each man crouched in the little jungle clearing, waiting out the night.

If Stone was broken—if he talked—there would be no place left for any of them to hide.

There was a chance, of course, that they could still take on and best a superior force. Stone's team, with Wiley as a member, had done so several times in Vietnam—but they were far from home, isolated deep inside enemy lines. If their escape mutes and supply lines should be severed here, now . . .

It did not bear consideration, but at the same time they could not ignore the possibility.

If they were not picked off in the running firefight that would surely follow exposure of their position, they would be captured, turned into the kind of mindless, ambling automatons they had seen below them on the bridge that afternoon.

The zombie squad.

They were mutually agreed, from the beginning of their service with Mark Stone, that none of them would ever willingly submit himself to such a fate.

As for Stone . . .

"He'll never tell them anything," Hog Wiley told the darkness softly, sounding as if he sought to reassure himself as much as any of the others.

"'Course not," Loughlin agreed.

"They'll have to kill him first."

"Right."

Silence settled down again across the little jungle clearing. They were back to square one, thinking in present tense about the possible death of a dear and trusted friend. It hurt, but it also fueled a rising flame of anger in both men, giving off a heat that communicated itself in short order to the Asians crouching with them in the darkness.

Stone would never talk . . . but he might die resisting torture.

Either way, they would have to get inside the camp and have a look around to satisfy themselves.

And bring the others out.

They could not go back empty-handed now, having come so far. It was unthinkable.

Chapter Eleven

From upside down, the camp commander reminded Mark Stone of some kind of jungle bat, hanging from a perch and waiting for the hours of darkness to arrive and set him free to hunt.

Except that it was well past dark outside already.

And it was Stone, not the commander, who was hanging upside down, suspended from the ceiling of the CP hut.

His wrists and ankles had been secured by handcuffs, sharp-edged metal biting deep into the flesh, releasing sticky rivulets of blood that instantly obeyed the call of gravity. A kind of crude trapeze had been thrust behind his knees and hauled upon chains until he hung suspended and inverted, with his head perhaps three feet above the floorboards of the hut.

The camp commander—his interrogator—sat in front of him, maintaining military posture on a straight-backed wooden chair. On either side of him, two uniformed soldiers stood at parade rest, holding long canes horizontally across their khaki-clad thighs.

Stone was conscious of every sensation in his body, from the pressure bearing in behind his knees, the sharp pain in his wrists and ankles—numbing now, not a good sign—to the ringing in his ears as gravity brought the blood rushing to his head.

I must look like I'm blushing, Stone thought to himself, and he smiled at the mental picture it presented.

He was wearing his tiger-striped fatigue pants, minus shirt and shoes. Sweat glistened on his chest and arms, diluting the streams of blood that were creeping floorward from his damaged wrists.

"You find something amusing?" the commander asked him in stilted, textbook English.

Stone dredged up another grin for the bastard.

"Not especially," he answered.

"Yet you smile."

"I guess I'm an incurable optimist."

"Let us see if we can cure you, after all," the Asian offered, his voice silky, laden with evil. "You are our prisoner."

"You mean this isn't Thailand? Well . . ."

The trooper on his left received a nod from the interrogator, and swung his cane around and into burning impact with the muscles of Stone's stomach. He was silenced instantly, biting off a startled cry that was as much anger and surprise as pain.

"You are our prisoner," the camp commander continued, as if there had been no violent interruption of his little speech. "This sector is under my control. You will provide me with certain answers to my questions . . . and in return, you will be treated fairly for the remainder of your sentence."

"What happened to the trial?" Stone asked sarcastically.

"It is over. You are guilty by your very presence here, inside our national borders. The sentence is life."

"Seems a little stiff for trespassing."

This time he saw the cane coming, but there was no way to brace himself beyond a tightening of the stomach muscles, which reduced the pain a fraction. Seeing this, the guard gave him an extra rap across the kneecaps for good measure, wringing a little sob of pain from Stone's constricted throat. The guard seemed satisfied with the accomplishment.

"You will answer certain questions which I put to you," the interrogator repeated, smiling thinly, but with illconcealed impatience.

"Well, since you put it that way . . ."

"What is your name?"

"Duke."

"Duke?" The Vietnamese looked puzzled.

"Sure. Duke Wayne. You know. The Alamo?"

The camp commander glanced from Stone to each of his guards in turn, but they clearly spoke no English and could be of no assistance to him.

"Your name is Wayne."

"Now you're getting it, asshole."

An order, barked in sharp Vietnamese, and both guards waded in with canes flailing, landing half a dozen blows each on Stone's chest, shoulders, and skull. They left him dazed and bleeding from the mouth and nose, a ragged cut above one eye.

"You will show the proper respect for your superiors," the commandant insisted. "What is your rank?"

"General."

The Asian looked surprised.

"You are a general?"

"Yeah. A general nuisance, you fucking—"

The closest of the guards stepped forward and brought his boot toe up and into jarring contact with Stone's forehead. For an instant he was afraid he might lose consciousness, but then the spinning colors and the overwhelming dizziness passed away.

"I grow weary of this, American shit-eater. You will pray for death soon, if you do not cooperate."

Dead silence, as the bloodied soldier glowered at his captors from the inverted parrot's perch.

"We begin again. Is this an official mission?"

"No mission. I'm a smuggler."

"Ah. You thought, perhaps, to smuggle something into prison camp? Or perhaps to smuggle something out?"

"Didn't know it was a frigging prison, man. I thought there might be something I could steal and sell farther down the line."

"How many men with you?"

"I came alone."

The interrogator nodded, and the canes descended once again, beating out a savage tattoo on Stone's legs, his arms, his aching ribs. When the two guards retreated again, his torso was already showing signs of mottled bruises underneath the skin.

"So simple to escape the pain," the Vietnamese officer informed him. "You need only answer questions truthfully."

Another pause, allowing Stone to contemplate the possibility of an end to the pain.

"Tell me, please, how you come to know of this camp's existence."

"Accident," Stone told him, trying to grin through split and swollen lips, but not quite pulling it off. "I came across it by coincidence."

"There is no coincidence. We are isolated here. There has never been an accidental visitor."

"First time for everything, I guess."

The commander reached into the breast pocket of his uniform tunic, withdrawing a cigarette lighter. Stone recognized it as a Zippo, like the ones many paratroopers and Marines had carried a lifetime ago, when they were slogging through the jungles, hunting Cong.

The officer nodded toward Stone, a little upward motion of his head that might have meant anything—or nothing. In the circumstances, it conveyed an infinite amount of malice, and Stone was already bracing himself as the trooper on the commander's right accepted the Zippo from him, circling around until he was lost to sight, behind Stone's back.

"The night is chilly," his interrogator said, a reptilian smile now plastered across his flat face. "I do not wish you to be uncomfortable. Allow us to warm you up."

Stone heard the flywheel of the Zippo spinning, grating on the flint. It seemed as loud as artillery fire inside the congested little CP office. And he could smell the flame as it sprang into life, the tang of lighter fluid. He could feel it. Jesus . . .

The trooper played that flame along the sole of Stone's bare left foot, and he was convulsed by the sudden pain, every muscle in his body taut and straining as he fought the urge to scream.

Hold on. A little longer. Just a second more now. It can't get any worse than this.

And, of course, it got worse immediately. As the flame continued to lick his feet, playing with the toes on one and then the other, singeing and blistering the flesh, the second guard stepped forward, swinging his cane at Stone as if the soldier's body were a gong and he was announcing the arrival of royalty.

Stone clenched his teeth and shut his eyes, swallowing the scream that rose unbidden in his throat. He would not give these shits the satisfaction, and would not let them see how close he was . . .

He would die before he told them anything, before he broke.

A single word from the officer, and his two tormentors withdrew. Even in their absence, now, the pain took longer to recede.

"You are a stubborn man," the camp commander said. "But I am patient. We have all night, all day tomorrow, the day after. There is nothing but time here. Endless time."

He waited for a moment, letting that sink in, and then began the questioning anew.

"How many men are with you, Duke?"

Stone almost manage the smile then, his mind focusing on the endless tunnel of the night, and on the light beyond. He could last a little longer, and beyond that . . .

Wiley, Loughlin, and the others were still out there, still free and ready to blast him the hell out of here. If they had been captured, he would not be hanging here in the commandant's office. There would be no questions—or at least the questions would be different ones.

There was a chance. A good one. He could make it yet; all of them could make it out of here alive.

If he could just hold on a little longer.

One of tile canes smacked against his ribs, almost casually, and then the tip came back to prod him, poking at one of his nipples.

"How many men?" the commander repeated.

"No men," Stone said again, trying to disguise some of the weariness he felt.

The canes fell in unison across his kneecaps, driving jagged bolts of pain along his thighs and up his spine.

"So foolish to come out of this a cripple, when you will have to answer anyway, eventually."

Stone watched the commander's face, trying to read something behind the narrow eyes. There was hatred in there—of Americans, of the West in general—and something else, something like fear.

Of course.

Stone tried to speak, his lips and throat working, producing little croaking sounds, barely audible from where the interrogator sat. The commander frowned, leaning forward, finally craning on the edge of his chair to hear whatever Stone was saying, or was about to say.

"What is it? Speak up!"

With the last of his strength, the last of his bloody saliva, Stone spat full in the officer's face, blinding him momentarily as he rocked back in his wooden chair, cursing incoherently.

The guards did not require a signal this time. They were on him instantly, flailing with the canes, cursing in a rhythmic chanting cadence, timing the epithets to coincide with the blows they were raining on his defenseless, inverted form.

Stone rode it out, no longer having strength left to protect his face and head, to avoid the slashing blows. A cane connected with his temple, another smashed in on target over his left ear, and he was spinning downward, downward, into darkness . . .

Chapter Twelve

Captain Nguyen Ngu lit a slender cigarette and drew the smoke deep into his lungs, savoring the tart aroma, waiting for it to mask the smell of blood, sweat, and urine that had made his office reek like a slaughterhouse.

The stains on the floorboard were another matter. He would have one of the prisoners attempt to clean them up tomorrow, when the others were at work in the mines. One of the wounded or ill, perhaps, fit for nothing more than kneeling, scrubbing up the dirt of others.

Perhaps the new arrival would be perfect for it.

Ngu reconsidered. If he was not questioning the tall American tomorrow, he would send him to the mines along with the others. He did not want him here, inside the camp itself, in case his men should risk a foolhardy rescue attempt.

Captain Ngu had no doubt whatsoever that there were other men, probably nearby, perhaps watching the corn-pound at this very instant. The story of a lone American smuggler wandering through Cambodia was totally preposterous, a joke.

And Ngu did not find it amusing.

There were others, yes, beyond a doubt. And they would come for their companion, if they valued him at all.

Indeed, they would not be here if they did not plan to penetrate the compound somehow, for some reason.

He had puzzled out the alternatives, including a simple reconnaissance in preparation for a later raid to free the prisoners, but nothing made sense. If this had been a simple scouting mission, the American would not have come inside the fence. Besides, the flabby U.S. government had long since ceased seeking actively the return of American prisoners of war. The politicians who ran Washington had given up on something like three thousand uniformed combatants, dragging out their memory on Flag Day, using it as a propaganda weapon only when the need arose.

Ngu understood from sources in Ho Chi Minh City that the majority of American P.O.W.'s had now been cleared off the rosters of the missing by administrative findings of presumed death. It pleased him to see the capitalist cowards exposed for what they really were: leeches who would use their own in an unpopular imperialist war, and then discard them like so many of their no-deposit-no-return containers.

This American would not be on official business, no . . . but his very presence here, now or at all times, would be sufficient to create an international incident of sorts. It would backfire on the very government that had doubtless tried to discourage him from coming in the first place.

Ngu started ticking off the possibilities.

He had the man in custody; it was his show. He could report it at his leisure, certainly when everything was well under control—and reap the rewards for handing the government a valuable propaganda tool.

It should be more than enough, given time and fortune, to get him the hell out of this stinking pesthole and back to Hanoi. He was sick of jungle duty and the reeking prisoners of every race with whom he was forced to deal on a daily basis. He had not joined the army to become a prison guard, and if something did not happen soon in his career . . .

But it had happened. Here. Now.

The American scum had unwittingly handed Ngu his transfer—probably a promotion, as well—on the proverbial silver platter.

No. Make that gold.

Like the gold the prisoners were mining in the hills nearby. How many tons had they taken out of the rocky caverns in two years' time?

How much of it had he kept for himself?

The answer to the second question could be measured with a great deal more precision than the answer to the first. And when Ngu returned to Hanoi, or wherever he was transferred, he would be able to afford the good life.

Women.

Wine.

More women.

Even in a socialist republic, there was room for personal advancement, private pleasure. He had learned as much during his days as a combatant in the revolution, and beyond. Somehow the people's government had stopped short of actually extending to the masses—which was fine with Ngu.

He was no longer one of the masses, the peasants who groveled and scraped in the paddies for their meager bowls of rice.

He was on his way to the top. Ironically, an American would help to put him there.

If nothing went disastrously wrong.

He pushed the thoughts of his golden future aside and returned for the moment to the present, his defensive preparations for the camp.

Ngu had already doubled the sentries along the entire perimeter of the compound, and tripled them around the prison cages in its center. No one would pass in or out tonight, and as for the drain that had admitted their unexpected guest, two men with AK-47s would be down inside it for the duration of the crisis, waiting for a backup team to show.

He had resisted the suggestion of a night patrol, unsatisfied with the meaningless answers his prisoner had given him, and unwilling to risk a portion of his smallish garrison force in the darkness, going up against an unknown force of unknown capabilities.

His soldiers knew the surrounding terrain, of course, but their world was confined primarily to the compound, the road that led away from it, and the mines at the other end.

They could launch a respectable patrol at need, as on the rare occasions when a prisoner made a pathetic break for freedom . . . but they were a long way from being seasoned jungle fighters. Most of them had come into the service since 1975, when the real fighting with the French and Americans was over, and only a scattered handful of them had seen sporadic action against the Chinese in recent years. Aside from himself, there were not a dozen seasoned combat veterans in the garrison.

Ngu was not concerned. Not overly, at any rate.

His force was large enough to handle anything that came his way, provided that it came without air support, armor, or artillery. From the looks of the American they had in custody, he was expecting a small force, Special Forces caliber, rigged for light combat, hit-and-run.

It would be no problem.

He briefly considered suspending mining operations until the issue was resolved, then quickly rejected the idea. The per diem was all-important, the critical factor here and now. His superiors would clearly expect him to deal with this minor-league crisis. without sacrificing production in the mines.

He would not disappoint them, Ngu decided. There was time yet for him to become a hero, the indispensible man. With this American in custody, and soon his backup team as well, he would be something of a national celebrity. A hero, yes. And deservedly so.

Ngu stubbed out his cigarette and lit another, smiling to himself through the rising screen of smoke. He closed his eyes and dreamed of greatness.

Crouching in the undergrowth, Hog Wiley watched the camp, unmoving, unblinking, studying each detail of the layout as best he could by Starlite scope.

They did not possess a generator down there, from the look of things—or else they were not using it tonight. A bonfire in the center of the compound, and lanterns or torches around at intervals, provided spotty illumination while leaving much of the camp's interior in darkness.

That was probably deliberate, the Texan knew. With Stone in custody, whether they had broken him or not, the commander had to know that there were other hostiles in the immediate vicinity. He could not deny them visibility by day, but in the darkness . . .

Hog had half expected a patrol to issue forth when Stone was bagged, but it was too late now, he knew. Tomorrow, perhaps, they could expect a hunter-killer team to come shuffling after them.

And they would greet them with open arms, oh yes. A little something to remember them by on their way to hell.

It ate at him to think of Stone down there, crammed into one of the holding cages—or worse. He could not picture Stone dead, would not allow himself to picture it—although he knew the possibility existed, if Stone had proved too damned resistant under questioning, or if he had said something—anything—that might have pissed off the commander of the garrison.

They had not heard a shot, granted, but there were many ways to die inside a prison compound. Stone could have been knifed or had his throat slit, been strangled or beaten to death . . .

Hog cut off the gruesome litany, making his mind a deliberate blank to drive away the images of slaughter. Time enough for that shit later, if the evil prophecy came true. When they had found the body, checked the pulse, then he would think about grieving for one of the few men he had called friend in recent years.

Mark Stone was a survivor—first, last, and always. If there was any way to come out of this thing alive and kicking, Stone could be counted upon to come up with it. At times his skills seemed infinite, and yet . . .

He had been captured.

It was a fluke, Wiley knew. It could happen to anyone, but he had to wonder how much Stone's personal stake in the mission had contributed to carelessness.

The captain had been wired, no doubt about it, when he eased himself inside that drainage pipe and slithered out of sight. Hog did not know the man called Lynch, but Stone owed him one.

A debt of blood and honor, from the war.

Okay. Hog understood that much. He'd run up a few such debts himself.

One of them was owed to Stone.

The man whom Hog affectionately called Cap had saved Wiley more than once from certain death when they were teamed together in Vietnam. On one occasion, Stone had even pulled him out of a melee behind the lines which could have cost his life—or a dishonorable discharge, at the very least.

And Stone had kept right on saving him, as recently as Bangkok, two days back, when every knife-happy shit in that rundown whorehouse had been out for a slice of Hog, and there was nothing there to hold them back. Stone had been there for Wiley—along with Loughlin—and again, the captain had pulled him out of the crapper.

Hog owed Stone a debt, right. And he meant to pay it.

Tomorrow, next day at the latest, he would be extracting Stone from the prison camp, along with every other living mother's son who looked, sounded, or smelled like an American.

Hog would do it, or he would die in the attempt.

It was that simple.

Chapter Thirteen

Mark Stone came slowly back to consciousness, by degrees recovering awareness of each ache and pain that wracked his tortured body. Rough and rigid floorboards underneath him told him he was lying on a platform of some sort. The wood was warped, foul-smelling, as if it had received frequent doses of urine and feces, which had been allowed to dry in place.

It was cold, a jungle-night chill, and by opening one eye as far as he was able, Stone could see that the walls surrounding him were little more than ranks of bamboo poles. He knew at once that he was inside one of the prisoner cages grouped together in the center of the compound.

It was cold, yes, but there was some source of warmth nearby. Stone wriggled backward instinctively, drawing closer to it, and his buttocks came in contact with flesh and bone.

Body heat. Of course.

Someone else was in the cage with him.

Stone tried to react, rolling away again, struggling into some vestigial upright position, but the pain produced by his efforts was too severe. He almost vomited, and would have if there had been anything inside his stomach. The exertion left him panting, prostrate on the floorboards.

After another moment he found the strength at least to roll over on his left side, so he would be facing in the general direction of his cagemate. Both eyes open now and swimming into hazy focus, blinking back the drying blood that had run down across his forehead from a lacerated scalp, he saw not one, but two men crouching close by, watching him intently.

They were human scarecrows, neither of them weighing more than a hundred pounds, although they seemed to be approximately the same height as Stone. Clearly they had been on a starvation diet for a long time, wasting away to skin and bone. They would be able to walk, with effort, and to work, with even more difficulty. But they were hardly in any shape for rough-and-tumble combat.

Stone felt his initial hopes begin to fade, waning as he scrutinized the human skeletons before him. He wondered what he must look like to them; well-fed, but bloody, battered.

For the first time, Stone became conscious that he had his shirt on. Someone had taken time to half-dress him after he lost consciousness during the marathon beating. He also had his boots on, although they were not laced. He decided that could wait until he found the energy to sit upright, the strength and tolerance for pain that he would need to bend over and reach his feet.

The nearest P.O.W. shifted his position, staring more closely at Stone, his brow furrowed, puzzling over something. He seemed about, to ask a question, then thought better of it, rocking back on his haunches again, keeping silent. One skeletal hand came up to scratch at his stubbled chin, then dropped limply again to his side, knuckles rapping on the floorboard.

Stone studied that face, the sunken eyes, the missing teeth and scabrous cheeks. Mentally he added a hundred pounds, a shave, more hair where this man's had been thinning out on top . . .

And recognition hit him like a boot in the stomach, driving the wind out of him as surely as the interrogators had with their slashing, pounding canes.

The skeleton crouching there in front of him, no more than three yards away, was Jess Lynch. The very man he had come so far and risked so much to extricate!

"Jess?"

Stone kept it low, a question rather than a statement. He was certain in his heart, but in his mind . . .

The scarecrow frowned again, the whole face sagging as if someone had pulled sharply on the pointed chin.

"Do I know you?" he asked. The voice was like a draft from the grave.

"It's me," Stone hissed. "Stoney."

"Stoney."

The nickname, on Lynch's lips, had a wistful and faraway sound to it, like something blown in by the night wind. The prisoner was thinking hard, remembering, and there was a warm light growing there, behind the haunted, hunted eyes.

"Stoney."

"I came to get you out of here. To get all of you out." Lynch almost smiled, but he did not quite achieve the long-unaccustomed expression.

"How you gonna do that, Stoney? You're in here with us."

Stone managed to sit up, groaning with the pain the effort cost him, and scooted over next to Lynch, keeping it down to a whisper. The cages would not be bugged, he knew, but there was no telling when or where a guard might materialize—no way of telling which ones spoke English well enough to understand his words.

He glanced at Lynch's companion, and the wraithlike man followed the direction of his eyes, nodding toward the other prisoner.

"That's Page. Been in here thirteen years."

A bony hand was offered; Stone shook it gently, sickened by the soft consistency of flesh condemned to jungle rot, the sharp feel of bone beneath tightly stretched skin.

"Pleasure."

"Yeah."

"How are you gonna do it, Stoney?" Lynch asked again.

"I'm not alone. I've got some men outside."

Lynch did manage the smile then, a ghostly trace of a grin.

"I heard about you guys. You wouldn't think we'd hear, but the word gets around. Somebody transfers, and like that. I heard about you."

"Well, I'm here."

"Inside."

"No matter. They'll be coming for me. For everybody. Soon."

"Okay."

Lynch did not question Stone, did not appear to doubt him . . . but clearly the prisoner had become used to disappointments, letdowns, and betrayals.

"Ramsay made it through," Stone told him.

"Yeah? The kid had balls."

"I never thought he'd make it," Page said listlessly, but there was a sense of growing wonder in his voice. "He gave me your coordinates."

"Real balls. I like that kid."

"I thought you were dead, Jess—till I talked to him. I swear to God."

"Don't sweat it, Stoney. There were times I thought the same myself."

Stone felt a burning in his chest, rising up and into his throat, threatening to choke him, making it hard for him to speak.

"What happened?"

"We were at the Bien Hoa outpost when a force of VC and N.V.A. regulars hit us in strength. We held out for two days, but without air support . . ."

In his mind, Lynch was clearly reliving his last battle as a member of the Special Forces. Stone let him work through the story in his own way and time.

"It was somethin' to see, man. You shoulda been there. Shoulda . . . It was three damned weeks before the pullout, Stoney. Three fucking weeks to go."

Mark Stone was silent in the darkness. He could think of nothing to say.

"The bastards hit us with everything except the kitchen sink, and they were bringing that up when we finally got our air." Lynch hesitated, and the smile was bitter. "Evac choppers. How about that? We were beggin' them for gunships two days running, and then they send us evac choppers. Gave the outpost up without even tryin' to save it for us."

Lynch was no longer with them now. He was far away, in miles and years, refighting that futile engagement somewhere to the north.

"Most of the guys made it to the choppers, the ones who could. And the ARVNs. I was fighting a rearguard with Jackie Donato—you never knew him, Stoney—and we were holdin' 'em off pretty well until the mortars got us zeroed in."

Another hesitation. Lynch's voice was almost cracking as he continued moments later.

"Donato caught an AK round in the throat. Tore right through and left him in a hell of a mess. He was suckin' wind, drowning in his own blood, for Christ's sake, and I was tryin' to plug up the hole with a compress. I never heard the mortar shell coming in. I never knew what hit me, till I woke up with a bunch of goddamned slopes all around me, jabbering a mile a minute."

You never hear the shot that kills you.

And sometimes it is the lucky ones who die.

Stop that! Nobody is dying here!

Not yet.

"You've been here all that time? Since then?"

"Hell no. I've been in half a dozen camps since I was taken. Thought I might get out there, for a while, around '75. Only been here the last four years. Or is it five now? Shit, I can't remember anything anymore."

"Don't worry about it. You'll be going home before you know it."

"How much backup did you bring, Stoney?"

"Should be plenty, once they get their plans worked out. I sort of bitched things up by getting caught here with my pants down."

Lynch grinned sardonically. "Don't let the guards hear you say that, man. Biggest bunch of friggin' queens you've ever seen."

The sense of humor was still intact, even if it might be hanging by a slender thread.

"How many Americans are here?" Stone asked.

"I figure twenty-six." Lynch glanced at Page for confirmation and repeated it. "Yeah, twenty-six."

"All of them work the mines?"

"All but four. Poor bastards can't even walk anymore. Beside them, I look like a flicking Adonis."

"How many of the men are fit to fight?"

Lynch frowned. "None of them are really fit. But of the twenty-two, I'd say that twelve or so could hold their own in the short run."

Stone frowned. Against the odds, he had been hoping for a stronger force among the prisoners themselves. Lynch saw his disappointment and laid a bony hand on his shoulder.

"Hey . . . don't write them off yet, Stoney. There's not a man in the camp who wouldn't rather die standing up than live another hour like we are. You give 'em something they can fight with—anything at all—and they'll give it everything they've got."

"I'll have to talk it over with them on my own, as soon as I get the chance. Tomorrow, if they send me out to work with the rest of you. If not . . ."

"Just tell me what I have to do," Lynch hissed in the darkness.

Stone told him. He spent half the night telling both of them his rudimentary plan, formulated while he was suspended from the parrot's perch in the camp commander's office. When he finished speaking, it was nearly dawn, but none of them were sleepy.

It was going to be a long day, yes, and an eventful one.

Before it ended, Stone and his companions would know exactly what fate had in store for all of them. Life or death, success or failure, victory or defeat.

Whichever way it came down, Stone was certain of one thing: The prisoners—or most of them—would give him everything they had. He could only hope that with a little help from Loughlin, Wiley, and the others, it would turn out to be enough.

Chapter Fourteen

The guards came around at sunup, rattling the cages, waking everyone from restless steep, unlocking the hasps and padlocks that held the bamboo cages closed. The prisoners were herded into the compound, forced to stand in ragged ranks for the morning count. Stone took a place between Lynch and Page, and was counted along with the rest.

They were marched to breakfast in the first light of dawn, forming a single line and trooping past a giant kettle where quantities of rice were being boiled to the consistency of paste. Stone received a wooden bowl, with maybe enough rice inside it to satisfy an anorexic squirrel. His silverware would be his fingers.

They sat together in a cluster, some fifty men all told, the Americans apart from the captive Vietnamese political prisoners and Montagnard freedom fighters who were also doing time inside the jungle compound. Stone and his companions found a place on the perimeter of the closely guarded group.

"You live on this?" Stone asked Lynch, lifting the bowl with its meager portion of soggy rice for emphasis.

"You call this livin'?"

A guard materialized behind them and aimed a kick at Lynch's kidneys.

"Motherfuckers shut up!" he snapped. "No talk at breakfast."

"Sorry, fuckface. Won't happen again."

Another kick, this time on target, and Lynch dropped his rice bowl, spilling his tiny breakfast onto the ground. The guard stepped across in front of him and ground the paste into the mud with his boot heel.

"Smart motherfucker no need food to work," he sneered, moving away down the line, looking for someone else to abuse.

"Someday I'm going to kill that sonofabitch," Lynch said, rubbing his injured back.

"Your chance is coming," Stone promised his friend earnestly.

After a fifteen-minute breakfast period, the men were marched to the latrine trench, where they relieved themselves by threes. That done, they were formed into ranks, two abreast, and the front gates of the compound were opened to let them out. With guards on either side, pacing the column and lashing out at potential stragglers with their AK-47s, the prisoners were marched out of the camp, along the bridge and down the winding road that Stone had earlier observed from the opposite riverbank.

The mines were approximately two miles from the prison compound. It was all uphill, and what with the lame condition of the work party, it required over an hour for them all to reach their destination. When they got there, another complement of guards was waiting for them at the entrance to the mine, having made the journey earlier by truck. The commander of the work detail took custody of his slaves, and the soldiers who had marched them from the camp doubled back, returning the way they had come.

It was typical of the Vietnamese, Stone knew, to double the shifts on everything, creating make-work positions to justify their existence here. A Cambodian prison camp might not be the best of duties, but it had to be preferable to staking out the northern border of Vietnam, waiting for a hundred thousand screaming Chinese to pour across the border in an endless human torrent. On the other hand . . . There just might be another reason for the double shift of guards, a reason for sentries to be on duty at the mine around the clock.

"What are we digging for?" Stone asked, embarrassed that the question had not occurred to him sooner.

"Gold," Lynch answered from the corner of his mouth. "The fucking mother lode."

It added up, of course. Made perfect sense. Slave laborers, literally worth their weight in gold to their captors. Laborers who could never tell anyone precisely what they had been mining, or where.

Stone saw an opportunity to get an extra lick in at the Vietnamese and their Cambodian lackeys.

They entered the mine, Stone following the more experienced workers and the wordless gestures of his captors. He was given a pick, then had it taken away from him again as the guard in charge remembered his directions from the camp commandant. The Vietnamese finally led Stone to an ore cart of ancient wood-and-iron construction, its small wheels bent and almost off their axles. The guard indicated to him in broken English and through signs that it would be his task to move along the line, letting the miners fill his cart, and then to haul it—full—into the outer world.

Stone wondered how many such trips he could survive. The cart was heavy, and once it had been filled with chunks of rock and ore . . .

He set out, dragging the cart along behind him, sometimes shifting to push it like a ghetto vendor moving through the streets with fish to sell. The image almost made him laugh . . . almost.

At each stop along the line, once the men had seriously begun to work, and the sounds of digging masked his whispered conversation, Stone began recruiting members for his freedom brigade. At each stop he picked up a new enlistee, taking longer with some than with others, meeting occasional resistance from the long-timers, those who had been broken—or almost broken—by their jailers.

But in the end, no man refused him. Lynch had been correct. They would stand and fight upon his signal—perhaps not long or well, but they would fight.

And die, if need be, with the hope of freedom in their hearts and minds.

Jess Lynch watched Stone moving along the line of miners in the lamplit darkness of the shaft, now pushing, now dragging his ungodly burden. At times he seemed about to crumble, but each pickup stop allowed him time enough to catch his breath, time enough to pass a word or two with each of the P.O.W.'s in turn.

Stone skipped the Vietnamese, and spoke to only those Montagnards who could understand and respond to him in English, but from the nodding heads and the fleeting, unaccustomed smiles, Lynch knew that what he said was striking home, paying off.

Laboring in the foul darkness underground, the captive wondered what their final payoff would be.

Death, most likely—but he had been expecting that for eleven years now. It would almost be a welcome relief from the daily abuse, slave labor, and humiliation he experienced at the hands of his Vietnamese captors.

Anything was better than the so-called life he had. Literally anything, barring only more of the same.

Stone was halfway back along his return route, dragging an empty cart this time and working his way to the head of the line, starting over, when one of the P.O.W.'s turned to whisper something. Stone was nodding, glancing around to make certain that they were not overheard by any of the guards nearby.

And they had not been overheard—but they had certainly been seen.

One of the soldiers, laughingly known behind his back among the P.O.W.'s as Needledick, was moving in, unslinging his AK-47 and taking a firmer grip on the weapon as he closed the gap behind Mark Stone.

When he was within arm's reach, Needledick swung the wooden butt of his assault rifle hard around and drove it cruelly into the small of Stone's back. Lynch dropped his pick, about to come to his friend's assistance, and then eleven years of instinct took over, forcing him to look away, to fumble for the tool as if he had simply dropped it by accident.

He could not—would not—interfere. When the time was right, when Stone gave the signal, he would find the courage to respond, to fight. But not here, underground, where they were so many ducks in a shooting gallery.

They would be slaughtered here, he told himself . . . and if the guards did not mow them down on the spot, one blast from an AK-47, one stray bullet striking ancient timber, and they would all be buried forever underground, the living and the dead.

Stone fell to one knee, cursing bitterly, and Needledick kicked him roughly in the buttocks, keeping it up until Stone was back on his feet again. Needledick moved around to face Stone, pushing his flat Oriental face into the soldier's, kissing-close.

"No talking! Work!" he shouted, kicking Stone once more for emphasis, this time in the shin.

Lynch's hands were white-knuckled on the wooden handle of his pickaxe. He imagined the face of Needledick and Ngu, the camp's sadistic warden, on the rough wall of rock in front of him . . . and suddenly he found the strength to attack the wall again, driving the blunt, rusty tip of the pick home repeatedly.

"Slow down," a voice hissed from somewhere to his left. "You'll wear yourself out, for Chrissakes. Make the rest of us look bad."

Lynch nodded, panting, his face and shoulders slick with cold perspiration. He hesitated, slowing his strokes, once again keeping pace with the skeletal workers on either side of him.

No point in showing Charlie that you still had any strength left. Let it be a sweet surprise, when your fingers closed around his fucking throat and cut off the air that he needed to breathe, to live.

Lynch was looking forward to the break. He hoped his chance would come tonight. A chance at Ngu. At Needledick. At all the others who had beaten and starved him through eleven long years of living hell.

Suddenly he was afraid. Of freedom. Of a world outside which was no longer a part of him, no longer his. He wondered if he could exist with free men, totally at liberty to come and go, to buy and sell, to do whatever the hell might strike his fancy.

There were risks outside, so different from the known risks, the shared risks he had become used to in the prison camps. Out there a man would have to think for himself, decide what to eat—God, the food!—what to wear.

The women . . . Lynch felt a tightening in his groin that was more fear than lust. He had not experienced a full erection in nearly four years, and he wondered now, for the first time in months, if it was really only diet, as he told himself.

He was not afraid of having lost his manhood, of becoming homosexual. That would have shown itself before this, in his day-to-day existence.

Instead, he was afraid that he would not—could not—respond to either sex. He was suddenly terrified, where before he had been simply relieved, that a part of his life had been ripped away from him forever.

No wife, no children . . . Christ, that was a blessing. At least he would not have to rehash eleven years of war and prison stories, look into their eyes and wonder whether it was pity or simply curiosity he saw reflected there.

Lynch caught himself drifting on the endless stream of consciousness, and almost laughed aloud as he realized how far he had let his imagination transport him into the unknown future. He was standing in a goddamn gold mine in northern Cambodia, for Christ's sake, guarded by a fucking platoon of armed Vietnamese . . . and he was wondering if he would fit in somewhere along Fifth Avenue.

It was hysterical. He had to stop himself from laughing right out loud and bringing half a dozen sentries on the run to club him down.

First things first. That was the ticket. See if you can get out of the frigging camp, then out of the frigging country . . . and when you've done all that, alive and in one piece, then you can start worrying about how well you'll fit back home.

Right now, his home was here. In prison. He would have to work with Stone, with whoever else was waiting in the jungle, to prove that he was worthy of a one-way ticket stateside.

Time enough for all the other plans and worries later. If he lived through the night to come.

Chapter Fifteen

Terrance Loughlin shifted positions silently, brushing away an ant that had fallen from the canopy above onto the back of his hand. He watched it recover its balance on the ground and scuttle away through the carpet of fallen, rotting leaves.

He was crouched with Wiley on the hillside overlooking the river and the enemy compound beyond. They had been there since early morning, long enough to watch the prisoners marched out to work—Stone among them—and the escort patrol return within the hour, empty-handed.

So there were more guards at the mine. That meant more hostile guns to deal with when the firefight started. Even if the other troops were on permanent garrison duty at the mine for whatever reason, some of them would respond to an assault on the compound. It was inevitable. The sounds of gunfire would probably carry the mile or two it took to rouse them; the detonation of explosives certainly would.

And they would have a force of unknown size arriving at their flank as they were in the middle of their mop-up. Great.

It would be Loughlin's task to see that the new arrivals never got inside the camp. Never got across the bridge. And he was just the man to make that guarantee.

He pointed through the screen of foliage, letting Hog Wiley follow his aiming index finger, careful not to let himself be seen by anyone across the narrow river.

"I can slip in and plant some charges there . . . and there. Electronic detonators. I can bring the bridge down on cue—with all hands, if need be."

Hog nodded, smiling grimly.

"That oughta hold 'em for a while, but we're not looking at the Missis-fucking-sippi there. They'll ford the river when the bridge goes, and we'll have to fight 'em anyway."

"Better to catch them arse-deep in the water than to have them pouring through the open gate, though."

"Yeah, it's better," Hog admitted grudgingly. "I just wish there was some way we could keep them all at the mines. Maybe get them inside and then blow the friggin' hole down around their ears."

Loughlin shrugged.

"I could go take a look, if you think we can spare the time."

"That's just it. We can't. Or the explosives, either. We'll have to do the bridge your way and hope it works."

"All right."

"I'll take the Hmong in through the fence . . . there."

He pointed to a spot along the fence not far from where Mark Stone had made his disastrous entry through the drainage pipe.

"They'll be on guard."

"You got some options for me?"

"No. I just want to play it safe."

"There's no such play in this game, slick."

"Okay. In through the fence. It will be close."

"You bet your ass it will. We'll go in killing anything that moves and isn't one of ours. No prisoners. A quick in-out, and with any kind of luck at all, we can be back across the river before the cavalry gets here."

"You're dreaming."

"So don't fucking wake me. You're the powder man. Just blow 'em all to shit the way you're s'posed to."

Loughlin grimaced and shook his head, but Wiley did not notice. He was busy staring at the compound, down below them.

Loughlin was the powder man, the demolitions expert, yes. He had learned his trade in the British Army and gone on to serve in Her Majesty's elite counterterrorist command, the Special Air Service. In the S.A.S. he had seen his share of killing, by both sides. He had planted some explosives, defused some others . . . and seen a number of his closest friends go up in smoke and flame when they got careless and started taking things for granted in the dirty, nameless war.

It had been war, no doubt on that score. There were no front lines or safe retreats, but otherwise it was war at the filthy worst. At one time or another, Loughlin had seen action against the I.R.A., the Japanese Red Army, Baader-Meinhoff terrorists, Basques, Moloccaris . . .

He got tired of running down the names and faces, the half-baked philosophies that were really nothing more than mock-sophisticated justifications for mayhem. Terrorists enjoyed the killing, and the feeling of power they got from creating fear. They got a kind of high out of the bloodshed and the notoriety they won through acts of cowardice.

It had taken Loughlin a year on the job to understand his enemy, to realize exactly what the hell was going on in minds so twisted that they slaughtered women and children in the name of freedom for a nation halfway around the world. It took him that long to comprehend a mind that would bomb churches in the heart of London to make a religious point, or machine-gun buses filled with children to make a statement about the starving hordes of Africa or Asia.

Sometime in his second year with the S.A.S., after he understood, he started hating. It was a weakness, Loughlin knew, but in the end it had been inescapable. He had fought long and hard to obtain the ideal objectivity of a trained counterterrorist fighter, knowing that emotional involvement was a one-way ticket to a graveyard . . . but in the end, heart won out over mind to some extent.

He had been sitting in the gutter, holding a khaki-clad leg in his arms . . . all that remained of an S.A.S. sergeant he had barely known. They had been speaking acquaintances, not even really friends . . . but Loughlin knew that the man had a wife and two children in school, that he was paying on a flat in Soho, that he had the same hopes and dreams for his life and his family as did any other man.

The sergeant had been killed by a car bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army outside a crowded department store. A spokesman for the I.R.A. was kind enough to call police and tell them where the hundred pounds of TNT were hidden—more or less. Loughlin had been part of the second group arriving at the scene, seconds behind the first wave, and he was just out of range when the car detonated, shattering windows for a mile and shredding seven people with its hail of shrapnel.

He was close enough to be knocked down by the concussion, close enough to catch the leg that landed in his lap like some grisly airborne trophy. If he had been twenty meters closer, with the rest of them, he might have been vaporized like the three other S.A.S. men who had accompanied the sergeant.

Loughlin did not swear a blood oath on his enemies; nothing so dramatic for this stolid Britisher . . . but he had made a quiet determination in his own mind that whenever possible, whenever he could justify eliminating terrorists by any stretch of the imagination, he would do so.

He found the car-bombers, led a squad sent out to take them into custody . . . and brought them home again in rubber body bags. A shootout, and all that—yes, regrettable—but at least they would not be planting any more bombs, would they?

He began to gain a reputation in the service for shooting first and asking questions later, an attitude that brought him on the carpet several times—and earned him the unqualified respect of the line of soldiers he served with.

When new men came on duty, they were almost invariably teamed with Loughlin their first time out. It was a tacit admission by the brass, however they might criticize him, that he got results, that he would keep the new recruits alive at least long enough to learn their jobs firsthand.

Then came Loughlin's bad break.

A news camera caught the S.A.S. commando's unmasked features when a terrorist tugged the Brit's mask away during an embassy hostage rescue action, moments before Loughlin iced the terrorist, but by then it was too late, and with his face now in terrorist files, his undercover capability gone, Loughlin was mustered out of the S.A.S.

He did not protest it, nor did his melancholy side become any more pronounced than usual. He took it stoically, without question, and within two weeks he was fighting in Angola, against the Communist insurgents. Mercenary life had offered some of what the S.A.S. had failed to give him: clear-cut choices, do-or-die decisions without the tangle of red tape and bureaucratic bullshit to be chopped away before you had a chance to act to move. At the same time, though, there had been something missing . . .

And he found it with Mark Stone.

At first Loughlin did not realize what he was lacking, but with time and some careful thought he realized that it was a cause. Fighting, killing for the dollar sign, without regard to any ideology beyond blind anti-Communism, had its limitations. But with Stone . . .

The cause made sense, it beckoned him, and once inside its clutches, he could not break free. He did not want to break free.

Stone had shown him something he had been searching for and fighting for from the moment he joined the S.A.S., namely, a chance to count for something, to use his skills not only fighting evil, but achieving something for the cause of good.

If they could bring just one man home and reunite him with his family . . . if they could extricate one human soul from a living hell or captivity, it would be worth the risk, the effort.

And now, the soul and body on the line belonged to Stone himself. It had been careless of him to get caught, but Loughlin knew that it could happen to anyone, anytime. Like the sergeant in London, laughing and living one moment, and the next—

The bridge would be no problem, he decided, smiling to himself. There just might be a way to take the reinforcements with the bridge, if it came to that. Some close work, with precision timing—but it could be done.

As for the fence, some simple C-4 charges would do the trick. The problem there would not be getting in, but staying alive once entry was achieved.

They would be walking right into the middle of a hornet's nest on this one . . . except that these hornets carried automatic rifles and bloody well knew how to use them. Loughlin smiled in the shadows, shrugging off a sense of apprehension. He was the powder man, and he would do his job on cue. What happened after that was out of his hands.

Chapter Sixteen

Captain Ngu crushed his cigarette beneath a boot heel, frowning as he watched the final members of the small patrol disappear through the bamboo gates. When the gates were closed and secured behind them, he turned away, moving back inside the command hut and closing the door behind him.

His patrol would find the enemy, be they Americans or natives. They were under orders to take the enemy alive, if at all possible, and to kill only in the last extremity. In practice, of course, this meant he would be fortunate to receive perhaps only one out of four intruders alive—but that should be more than ample for his purposes.

He needed to be certain that the threat had been contained. He needed someone from the intruder force, alive and talking—long enough, at any rate, to make sure that there were no more like themselves lurking in the jungle around the compound, waiting for a time to strike.

Ngu was getting paranoid. He had begun to see an enemy in every shadow, to detect the sound of hostile movement in every rustling movement of the forest. If they did not resolve the situation soon . . .

But it would be resolved, he told himself.

Today.

The patrol would find their man or men and bring back prisoners—or corpses. Either way, the threat would be eliminated, and life could return to normal in the compound.

With a twist.

Captain Ngu was getting out.

If his ploy succeeded, if there were more Americans or their lackeys prowling in the jungle just outside his defenses . . . and if he brought them in as evidence of an illegal border crossing . . .

He smiled, then lit another cigarette, and immediately stubbed it out, aware that his nervousness had begun to manifest itself in chain-smoking. It was a sign of weakness, incompatible with Ngu's image as a man of strength.

The image was important, yes. In fact, it was vital. The military brass would have no choice but to reward him for so great a coup, so marvelous an opportunity to embarrass the Americans.

He would be moving up. If he could pull it off.

The commandant had sent the American intruder out to work that morning with the others, certain that he would have the other members of the man's patrol in custody before he returned from the mines.

There was an outside chance, of course, that the prisoner's support troops would be foolhardy enough to try to break in daylight, thinking he was still safe inside the camp. In the unlikely event that they made such a move, Ngu wanted to ensure their disappointment—and their capture, by seeing that there were no extra inmates in the way.

Anyone breaking into his camp today or tonight would be annihilated like the sneaking scum they were. He would see to it personally.

There had been only one successful escape in his tenure as commander of the compound. The American named Ramsay. And Ngu had managed to conceal that one from his superiors, reporting Ramsay dead of snakebite, buried in the jungle in accordance with standing orders from headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City.

They had fallen for it, and his ass was covered. So far. But there would be no way he could cover another escape, or string of escapes.

The thought was not to be tolerated. He would not permit Americans to run roughshod over everything he had been trying to do at the camp. The salvation of his military career was at stake, and he did not plan to sacrifice his own future for the lives of a few worthless round-eyes.

If the patrol came back empty-handed, if it found nothing in the jungle, he would interrogate the American intruder again tonight. All night, if necessary. He would wring the truth out of that bastard if it killed him . . . and, he realized with a devilish smile, it would undoubtedly do exactly that.

He had been easy on the man last night, almost giving him the kid-glove treatment. Tonight he would pull out all the stops and teach his captive the meaning of hell on earth.

If the patrol did not bring back his backup troops.

And if they did . . .

Then he would have no end of subjects to interrogate before he executed them. Or perhaps some of them would be wanted by headquarters for display before an international tribunal. Living, breathing evidence of border violations by the United States.

It was perfect.

All he had to do was find his subjects now, and that was virtually taken care of already.

He would delay the report to his superiors until tomorrow morning, making sure that he had good news for them when he made the call by field telephone. They would be happy when they heard that he had captured Americans and/or their mercenary sidekicks. They would be ecstatic when they learned that there was something they could use against the Americans . . . perhaps even in front of the United Nations.

It would be easy to conceal the P.O.W.'s from anyone who should try to back-check the reports, of course. Relocate or kill them—either way, it scarcely mattered.

Live border-violators were worth more for propaganda's sake than a handful of dying prisoners would ever be worth in the endless negotiations for wartime reparations.

It had been more than ten years, and the Americans were clearly not concerned enough about their missing men to ante up the paltry millions that would bring them home again.

Or bring most of them home, at any rate.

A few could always be misplaced, misfiled, ready for the next set of reparation talks . . .

He viewed all Westerners with deep contempt, but he reserved a special hatred for Americans. They had killed members of his family, almost killed Ngu himself, during the war. He could not forget and would not forgive the debt they owed him.

And tomorrow, at the latest, they would begin paying off.

He lit another cigarette, never mind that he was chain-smoking now. It calmed him and helped him organize his thoughts, thoughts of what he would do with his new rank, when he was back safe and sound in the capital, working his way into the upper echelons.

He was hungry for power, thirsty for the pleasures that accompanied it. And he would have them all now, sooner than he would ever had deemed possible.

A sudden worm of fear turned over in his bowels, burrowing deeper, gnawing into his vitals. What if he could not pull it off? What if his patrol missed the others out there, in the jungle vastness . . . and the American he had in custody never talked?

Ngu took a deeper drag on his cigarette, almost burning his fingers on the glowing tip.

There would be no mistakes, no disasters to ruin his plan, his dream.

Everything would go according to schedule.

It was preordained.

Chapter Seventeen

Terrance Loughlin crouched beside the game trail, carefully threading the silencer onto the muzzle of his .22 caliber semiautomatic target pistol. His eyes never strayed from the narrow footpath, never glanced in the direction of the weapon as he performed the delicate task by touch alone. He was waiting for the point men, counting on them, from their noise and previously known position, to reveal themselves within a minute, perhaps less. His thighs were starting to ache from the awkwardness of his position, but he dared not change it now, knowing that they could be literally just around the corner.

They had been charting the course of the hostile patrol now for more than an hour, since the nine armed men issued forth from the compound, crossing the narrow footbridge in a ragged formation, bearing off into the trees, heading east. The patrol had tried to pull a fast one, quickly coming back around and circling toward the riverbank opposite the drainage pipe, where Stone had entered the camp, but they were taking their time along the way, checking out side trails and caves, trying to be silent but not quite making a go of it.

It would be futile, of course, to attempt a sneak attack when the only exit from the compound was completely exposed, but the commandant obviously felt obliged to try his hand.

So be it.

They could not afford to play tag with the patrol all day and night, could not expend the time it would take to lead them on a merry chase across the countryside.

The troops would have to die. It was as simple as that. And when they did not return to the compound, what then?

Loughlin was not sure, but he imagined the commandant would have given them most of the afternoon to conduct a thorough search of the surrounding forest. Even that would not be truly adequate for what they had in mind—a clever, silent enemy could keep one step ahead of them for days on end, leading them right around in circles—but he felt certain that the commandant would want them back by nightfall.

They were dealing with a cautious man in there, perhaps a little frightened of the unknown waiting for him in the jungle.

That was good. His fear, expressed in terms of hesitation at a vital moment, could work to their advantage when the time came to break Stone and the others out of their jungle prison.

But for now, this moment, grim survival was the top priority . . . and that meant that the patrol, every last man of it, would have to be expunged without a trace.

Annihilated.

Wiped out.

He finished threading the silencer into place and soundlessly worked the action of the pistol, chambering one of the hollow-point long-rifle rounds.

The .22 was vastly underrated as a killer, often dismissed even by professionals who should know better as a child's or ladies' gun, incapable of putting full-grown men away. The truth was rather different: ballistics, range, and the workability of fairly simple silencers made the lowly cartridge first choice among many of the world's top professional assassins, Mafia and otherwise. With practice and a bit of luck, you could hunt big game with .22s, although it definitely was not recommended.

Today Loughlin had somewhat smaller game in mind. But size was no index of lethal capabilities; the warrior knew that much from grim experience.

There were three of them when they at last appeared around a bend in the trail, and they were taking the point, letting the other six catch up. Strung out along the trail that way, they minimized the risk of getting caught in one apocalyptic ambush—but they also cut the chances of one group's being able to reinforce the others before lethal damage was done by the opposition.

Loughlin hoped to reinforce that lethal lesson for them very soon. Almost immediately, in fact.

He let them draw abreast of him, one man slightly forward of the other two, who hung back and whispered between themselves. He did not have to understand their words to know that even this slight distraction from their duty would be enough to let him get in firing range.

He lifted slightly to his left, lining up his first target, sighting on the lead man. He zeroed in his autoloader's sights at a point directly behind the right ear, just below the lip of his pith helmet.

And he squeezed off, not waiting to see the results as he swung the pistol away and in the direction of his second target, tracking by instinct.

The first man never knew what hit him. One instant he was poised for another step along the trail, and then something struck him behind the ear with freight-train force, coring through his brain and leaving him so much dead meat on the hoof, tumbling facedown on the trail without a chance to sound an alarm or reach his weapon.

The other two were confused by what had happened, and did not immediately realize that their companion had been shot. Instead, they seemed to think that he had stumbled on a vine or stepped in a small hole. One of them was reaching out a hand to help his comrade up, smiling, about to laugh at his predicament, when grim reality punched through his left eye socket and drove him over backwards on his rump.

And number three had no more doubts concerning what was going on. He reached the pistol grip of his assault rifle, and actually had it off its sling and level at his waist, when two hot rounds in quick succession came stinging in and struck him in the temple, lifting his helmet as they exited the other side in twin geysers of blood. He fell in the middle of the game trail without a sound. Stone-cold dead.

Loughlin turned away, shunning the trail as he began to make his silent way back through the jungle. The others still might need some help, an extra gun, and he was ready, his own kills accomplished. He was hunting, following the scent of blood to other game, ready for the kill.

Lon Ky was ready and waiting when the sounds from up the trail informed him clearly that Loughlin had engaged the point men. He did not wait, did not hesitate, but immediately sprang out on the trail, directly behind the three men who were moving past his place of concealment.

He came in behind them, closing on their blind side with a rush so sudden that they never really heard it coming until it was much too late for an effective countermeasure. Without a silenced weapon, knowing that a gunshot now would bring troops pouring out of the compound to confront them, he had opted to use his machete, brandishing it overhead like a scimitar as he raced down the game trail on their heels.

Grim death was on top of them before they could react, hacking and slashing among them like a wild man, never pausing to think or wonder if the Hmong were holding their positions off to either side. He had informed them in no uncertain terms that these pigs were his, that his own men should intervene only if he was killed or incapacitated, or if the pigs seemed likely to escape or raise an alarm that he could not prevent.

He had them to himself now, just the way he wanted it, slashing at the Vietnamese bastards who had defiled his homeland, uprooted the popular government, and installed a puppet in Phnom Penh.

The first man turned, his rifle already out and ready to fire, gripped in both hands.

And Lou Ky took both hands off at the wrists, with a single sweeping blow of his machete, leaving long gouts of blood pumping from the severed stumps.

The man was about to scream, but he never got the chance. After severing his hands, Lon Ky swung the long knife back around, overhand in a looping blow, and brought it down directly on the crown of the soldier's skull, easily slicing through his sun helmet, encountering a bit more resistance from the skull itself. The blade finally stopped at a point midway between the dead man's nostrils, but by then its job was done.

He ripped it free, already spinning, slashing at his other two opponents, giving them no time to recover from the initial shock of watching their friend die, taking them apart with rapid, hacking blows.

Number two was close, and Lon Ky hit him with a slashing backhand that cut across his face at mouth level, opening a ghastly smile from ear to ear. Solid cheekbones prevented any fatal damage from the chop, but the soldier sat down hard, stunned, with thick blood streaming down his chin and over his chest, dyeing his fatigues a deep crimson.

Turning quickly to face number three, his final adversary, Lon Ky brought the machete up in both hands and swung it down, lopping off half of the frightened soldier's skull and face with one swift incision. He staggered backward, loose brains spilling down over one shoulder, already dead before he collapsed into the underbrush on the side of the trail.

Finally turning back to his second victim, Lon Ky found him still alive, sitting upright on the muddy trail and trying vainly to repair the irreparable with bloody, fumbling fingers.

Standing over him, Lon Ky spat on the soldier, cursing him with feeling, watching as uncomprehending eyes turned up to plead with him.

The machete rose and fell, rose and fell, rose . . .

Lon Ky had demons of his own to exorcise, and he was working them out, chanting all the while as he hacked away at the limp and lifeless form stretched out at his feet. "Traitor . . . scum . . . traitor . . . scum . . ."

Hog Wiley was waiting in ambush as the last three members of the patrol passed by him on the game trail, following the others who had gone before them. Others who would be dead by now, or very shortly, if his companions did their jobs.

Wiley had no fears along those lines.

He moved out of concealment, closing in behind the last three members of the squad. Wiley did not have his rifle unslung. He did not intend to use it unless there was no viable alternative, and even then he would do so with reluctance.

Up ahead of him there were sounds of violent struggle on the trail, and a strangled cry, suddenly cut off as by a falling guillotine. The soldiers were reacting, glancing back and forth at one another, preparing to advance . . . or perhaps to run away.

Wiley made the choice for them, coming in silent, swift and deadly from behind, ramming his Ka-Bar knife deep into the small of one trooper's back, slashing outward, twisting to make sure he got the kidneys, spine, intestines with his ripping thrust. The man cried out, but softly, like a wounded child, and fell to his knees.

Two other faces turned to gape at him, and both of the enemies were fumbling with their weapons as he reached them. One almost had his gun up, and Hog knocked it aside, sent it spinning into the undergrowth and out of reach, slashing back and forth across the man's lower face and exposed throat with the big knife. Dark blood fountained from the ragged wounds, drenching both of them, dribbling through Hog's beard and matting down his whiskers.

The Vietnamese stumbled backward and Hog followed him down, taking time out to smash his companion with his other fist and send him sprawling, dazed and on the verge of total blackout. Bearing down upon his second target, Hog drove the knife blade into his chest, skewering lungs and heart until the dummy pinned beneath him no longer twitched in response. He was dead as hell, and Wiley turned away from him, no longer beating a dead horse, advancing on the one remaining trooper who could pose some threat to them in this world of the here and now.

The guy was struggling to rise, up on one knee and both hands now, shaking his head to clear it and flinging off a spray of blood from flattened nostrils in the process.

Hog kicked the soldier in the ribs, flipping him over onto his back in the middle of the trail. He could feel ribs giving way on impact, ripping into lungs and other vital organs. The guy might well be on his way to death already, but Hog damned sure could not take a chance on letting Mother Nature do the dirty work.

He bent down, pressed the tip of his knife against the adversary's Adam's apple, and pressed it home. Blood spurted everywhere, soaking into the earth.

At last, satisfied that this one would not be making any more noise, Hog stepped back from his kill, wiped the Ka-Bar on his fatigue pants, and surveyed the carnage he had wrought.

There was disposal work to do, but he would leave that to the Hmong. No one would find the missing troopers until they were finished with their business across the river, inside the prison camp. And after that . . .

Hog frowned to himself.

Hell, after that, win or lose, it would not matter in the least whether anyone found them or not.

The nine men of the search patrol we're out of it forever. Canceled. Null and void.

For the living, the trials had only just begun.

Chapter Eighteen

Stone pushed the ore cart on another yard or two and stopped, almost collapsing across it as the Vietnamese political prisoners moved forward to relieve him, picking at the chunks of rock and ore inside. He took the opportunity to catch his breath.

Two guards assigned to watch the adit were eyeballing him now, whispering among themselves, perhaps deciding whether it would be worth their while to hassle him before the cart was unloaded. One of them nodded to the other, making up his mind at last, and he was moving in Stone's general direction, barking at the other prisoners as he came, when the commander of the guard detail suddenly emerged from the mine.

Turning back to face the shaft itself, he raised a whistle to his lips and blew a shrill, echoing blast that reverberated down the stygian tunnel. Inside, Stone could hear the guards barking at the P.O.W.'s, tools clattering as they were dropped on the spot.

Slowly, by twos and threes, the prisoners were emerging, forming their two-abreast ranks outside the mine. The guard who had been moving toward him reached him now, and nudged Stone roughly with his rifle butt in the direction of the loose formation.

Stone found his place from the morning, between Lynch and Page, and fell into line. Another moment passed as the guards did a head count, making certain that no one had tried to hang back in the darkness of the mine, to slip away later when the guards were gone, and then the commander of the detail blew his whistle again, pointing a bony finger down the trail in the direction of the compound.

And so they started back for camp. The workday was over, and Stone felt excitement rising in him with the knowledge that his men would make their move tonight. One way or another, they would have to move. They would be running out of time and rations, risking contact with hostile patrols every moment they remained in place without striking.

It was time, and past time. They would wait for darkness, certainly, and that meant two more hours at least, but Stone could wait. He had been waiting for one thing or another all his military life, and patience was ingrained in him.

At least until the time came for violent action. Then patience would evaporate, and his instinctive fury would take over, to vent itself upon the inhuman animals in charge of this Cambodian hellhole.

He was looking forward to another meeting with the camp commandant, yes. It was something to anticipate. If there was time, he just might let the captain feel a taste of his own medicine. If there was not . . .

Well, a quick kill was as good as a slow one, in the long run. As long as the enemy came out of it dead meat on the other end of the process.

They had progressed about a hundred yards when Stone noticed that the guards from the mine were accompanying them back to camp. Risking a glance back over his shoulder, he saw a lonesome pair of gunners left on duty at the entrance to the mine, watching their comrades recede in the distance and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes.

This was unusual, he knew. The escort detail from the compound should have come back for them at the end of the shift, leaving the full detail in place to guard the gold mine. Something had happened.

At once, a dozen fears and possibilities came crowding in upon his mind, jostling for space, each one demanding immediate attention. Stone tried to sort them out as he marched, keeping his eyes focused on the back of Lynch's head, following him with the movements of a zombie.

Loughlin and Wiley might have made their move already, in the daylight, thinking Stone would not be moved with the others.

And as soon as the thought materialized, he dismissed it, knowing his men would not take a chance on missing the other P.O.W.'s just to rescue him. It had to be everyone at once—or no one at all. There would be no second chance, once the camp had been penetrated. They would have an all-out battle on their hands, and no one life was worth the risk with so many others at stake, all hanging in the balance.

Something else, then.

Perhaps the commandant had sent out a patrol in force, and they had killed or captured some or all of Stone's backup group.

It was a possibility, but one he did not dare to contemplate at length before he saw the evidence before his eyes. It would be the end of everything—the escape attempt and any hope of getting out alive.

Stone refused to contemplate defeat. Not yet. There would be time enough for that when it became absolutely inevitable.

But why the sudden change in routine?

Something had happened, something that had upset the balance at the compound and moved the commandant to alter his usual procedure, keeping his escort force at home . . . in case they were needed.

Stone dismissed the insoluble puzzle, moving on to the real and obvious problems that the change presented for him. With the sentry force returning to the camp, there would be at least fifteen soldiers more to deal with when the final push came down. Fifteen more guns and men to be neutralized before they could escape.

That meant fifteen more chances that some or all of the prisoners—including Stone—would be shot at the first sign of trouble.

Fifteen more weapons to face Wiley, Loughlin, and the four backup gunners.

Small odds, in a normal battle setting, but they could be awesome in the type of precision-planned infighting Stone and company were used to.

Fifteen men could blow the whole equation out of balance, make the camp impossible to breach if they performed even adequately. By simply firing blind in the event of an assault, they made the chance of friendly casualties that much more likely.

At least, he told himself, Hog and Loughlin would have a preview of coming events when they cleared the jungle, marching toward the bridge. His men would have a chance to see and count the odds against them, and make some last-minute adjustments in their strategy to compensate.

What they could not do was find another backup force to fight beside them, more guns and ammunition to compensate for the larger hostile force. When all was said and done, they would have to make do with what they had . . . for good or ill.

So be it. They would go ahead because they had to. Because there was no other frigging choice, and they were all committed to the common goal.

And Stone would help, as best he could, from the inside.

He had spent the day recruiting volunteers for the break. It would be shaky at best, and getting out of the cages could itself be a problem . . . but if any of them were able to get their hands on automatic weapons in the confusion that would follow the break-in . . .

Some of the P.O.W.'s had been reluctant at first, one or two of them downright hostile, suspecting him as a collaborator dropped among them to ferret out potential escapees. Those few had come around after he took a clubbing, but he could still read hesitation in their eyes, their shaky nods of assent.

Some of them would predictably fold once the action started, Stone knew. It was to be anticipated, and he did not hold it against them in the least. A few of these poor bastards had been caged for almost twenty years now, going back to the early days of the war, and their will to fight, if not completely broken, was certainly showing the cracks of age and long abuse.

They might follow when the tide began to turn—if it turned in their favor—and then again, they might be unable to move, unable to act. At least, he hoped, they would not mill aimlessly about, charging into the line of fire and getting themselves or others killed by careless movement.

Stone cut off the defeatist line of thought in midstream. There was no damned way to predict what would happen that night—or whether anything would happen at all.

If Loughlin and Wiley were alive, they would be coming for him. If and when they came, Stone would rally any P.O.W.'s fit to fight, and he would try to help them out.

If they could get out of their cages.

If they could get their hands on working weapons.

If the cages were not wired to detonate immediately, as they had been at that other camp.

If . . .

Stone knew that he could talk himself in circles all night long and end up where he started. Nothing counted now but action, and he was waiting for it, looking forward to it, anticipating the hot taste of gunsmoke in his throat, the adrenaline rush that came with every life-and-death confrontation.

It was up to Loughlin and Hog now. There was nothing Stone could do from here, inside, without their help.

Another mile, perhaps another forty minutes, and they would be back at camp. He tried to spot some movement in the jungle, off to either side, that might betray the presence of a friendly lookout, someone to reassure him that plans were being made, steps being taken to effect the breakout.

But there was nothing.

So be it.

Stone took comfort from the fact that if he, in his exhausted state, had been able to pick out members of the patrol, then the guards, fed and rested, would almost certainly have seen them. It was good that there was no sign of Hog or the Britisher. It was downright reassuring.

But Stone did not feel the least bit reassured.

Chapter Nineteen

The water was colder than Loughlin had anticipated, and it momentarily took his breath away. He kept moving, refusing to let the cold settle in and take a grip on his bones, paralyzing him at the water's edge. He had a job to do, and there was no time to waste now.

They were running out of daylight, and the charges had to be in place by sundown at the latest. Hog was shooting for an early crash-in, and the charges were essential to any kind of marginal success.

Beneath the footbridge, in the shade, the temperature seemed to drop another ten degrees, and Loughlin was shivering in spite of himself. It was ironic, he thought, that anyone could feel so bone-cold here, of all places, in the middle of a steaming jungle.

But the temperature would fall like a plummeting stone with nightfall, and in the river, where he stood, armpit-deep in moving water, it was already cold. He did not want to think what the combination of wet clothing and the night chill would be like upon his flesh.

The charges that he carried were all waterproof, and otherwise, beyond the Ka-Bar knife strapped on the shoulder of his field harness, Loughlin was unarmed. It did not matter in the long run; if sentries found him down here, they would kill him or take him prisoner, no matter what sort of weapons he was carrying. There would be no way he could outshoot the entire garrison force by himself, so he opted for traveling light, keeping his assault rifle and the silenced pistol high and dry, free from rust and ready to perform at need, without hesitation.

He had set his charges first along the bamboo fence, not far from the drainage pipe where Stone had made his first, ill-fated entry to the compound. They would detonate upon a signal from his radio remote-control box—also high and dry on shore—giving Hog and the Hmong an entryway that would accommodate them nicely.

Passing by the pipe, with nothing but his head above the surface of the water, he picked up whispered voices, speaking in Vietnamese, and he knew they were waiting in the pipe for him, for anyone. He doubled back, pried off a small chunk of the extra C-4 plastique that he carried, and tamped it down silently against the corrugated metal, shaping it so that the blast would be directed inward, carrying along the channel of the pipe like a whirlwind from hell.

He would let them be the first to know exactly what was going on. And at the same time he would make damned certain that they were not waiting to ambush Wiley's force at either end of the pipe, going in or coming out.

That done, Loughlin proceeded on to the bridge, hugging the shore and keeping well in, well down, in case a sentry prowling along the fence should glance into the water. There were no catwalks on the eight-foot fence, he knew, but the construction of bamboo allowed men to look out between some of the poles, and he did not want any premature alarms to spoil their master plan.

Everything hinged on surprise, and it was still possible to achieve that, even with Stone in custody, even with the commandant inside there, no doubt biting his nails to the quick by now, wondering what in bloody hell had become of his patrol.

They could still take advantage of the surprise element, even when the enemy knew—or strongly suspected—that they would be coming in to get him. The defenders could never know precisely where or when the invaders would strike, and that uncertainty, that tension, was enough to make them jumpy, ready to fire at moving shadows instead of skulking commandos. With any luck at all, the sentries would be firing at each other when the final showdown came.

Loughlin finished packing his charge against one of the bridge-support timbers, set the radio-remote detonator in place securely, and moved on. He traversed the length of the bridge, stopping at each support in turn, working his way back from the landward end toward the camp, wiring each upright timber as he went along.

No sense in taking any chances, and he meant to be damned certain that the bridge went up on cue. He had to close that back door, keep the support troops from the mine from getting in too easily, ahead of schedule.

He would blow the fence and bridge together, on Wiley's signal, when the assault force was ready in position to attack. That would be a short time after sundown, when the prisoners were back inside their cages, more or less removed from the immediate line of fire.

There was no sense in complicating things, after all, no point in risking lives that were enough at risk already. If they could make it in and out without getting any of the P.O.W.'s killed, so much the better.

Loughlin could remember the last time, and he knew the way it ate at Stone—at all of them. But Stone had taken it most personally, as if he should somehow have seen the hidden charges, or read the crazy camp commandant's mind in those last seconds before he hit the plunger and sent everything sky-high.

Something wet and slippery wound around Loughlin's ankle, sinuous and serpentine, gliding in and out between his legs. A fish? Some kind of water snake? And if so, was it poisonous?

He froze, sweating now in spite of the icy water, unmoving until the thing—whatever it was—passed on. Even then, he gave it another long hundred-count, knowing he was behind now, preferring to hurry and make up the time on the other end, rather than risk an incapacitating and possibly fatal bite.

Finally free to move, he finished strapping a charge to the last of the pylons, snugging it in place and setting the detonator deeply, firmly. He was close in to the bank now, almost kneeling in the shallower water, and he heard the gate swing open, somewhere above him and to his immediate left, creaking as it moved.

Heavy footsteps—boots—moved out along the bridge, and paused almost directly overhead. They crossed behind him, moving toward the far side of the bridge, and then immediately doubled back. The man was right above him now, rocking back and forth on his heels, by the sound of it, and Loughlin held his breath, unwilling to make any sound or movement that might inadvertently betray his presence, jeopardize their mission.

A cigarette butt struck the surface of the water ten feet from his face, hissed briefly, and went out. Another moment, then the sentry turned, retreating toward the gate. But Loughlin did not release his pent-up breath from straining lungs until he heard the gate close again behind the man, the latch bar falling soundly into place.

It had been close. Too bloody close for comfort, certainly. But he had pulled it off.

Finished now, Loughlin began working his way back along the shore of the little island, to the point where he would cross and regroup with Wiley and the others. They would be waiting for him, counting on him to play his part in the night's festivities. And Loughlin would be there with bells on.

Hog Wiley sat in jungle undergrowth, scanning the enemy camp through his binoculars for perhaps the thousandth time that day. This time, however, his attention was concentrated more on the water's edge and underneath the bridge than it was on the fence and buildings inside the compound.

He was watching out for Loughlin, counting the charges as the Britisher set them, marking their positions in his mind.

If anything happened to the powder man, Hog wanted to be able to go on without him. That meant detonating the explosives on his own . . . which would require a working knowledge of their number and location.

More than that, Wiley was keeping an eye on Loughlin for safety's sake. He liked the Britisher, for all of their good-natured bickering—and their occasional really heated disagreements—and he did not want anything to happen down there. Not now. Not yet.

The mission was literally riding on Loughlin's shoulders. If he should be picked off by a sentry, or even seen, whether he escaped or not, the charges would be neutralized, their only means of entry to the camp wiped out at a single stroke.

Hog was determined that they would not fail. Their slim advantage of surprise would be maintained, no matter what risks he personally had to take.

Wiley would expose himself to sniper fire, if need be, or bring down fire of his own on the camp to distract the defenders . . . anything to make sure that the charges went unnoticed and undisturbed.

They would be getting antsy down there as it was, what with their patrol now overdue and nowhere in sight. It would give the commandant something to think about, and Wiley knew that every little bit of tension or confusion he could heap upon the enemy would work to their advantage later, when the final showdown came that night.

Let the commandant sweat it out. It was good for him. Let him feel a little of what his prisoners had been feeling all this goddamned time, locked up in their sweatboxes with nowhere to go but the mines and the stinking latrine.

The gate was opening, and Hog immediately dropped his field glasses, picking up the CAR-15 that lay beside him on the ground. He brought it to his shoulder and flicked the safety lever off in a single fluid motion, setting it on semiautomatic fire and sighting down the barrel across the sixty yards or more of intervening distance.

Almost point-blank range, yes, for a marksman of his capabilities—but the close range could work as well to his disadvantage if the enemy began responding with their big guns.

He watched tensely as a single soldier exited the gate, moving out perhaps fifteen feet along the bridge. His AK was slung muzzle-down across his off-hand shoulder, casually, but Hog did not relax. He knew that some of these birds could swing their blasters up and into action in the time it took to fart.

The guard stopped in the center of the bridge, then turned his back and ambled over to the far side, with his back toward Wiley, taking his time and apparently not looking for anything in particular. He was smoking a cigarette, and the smoke curled around both sides of his head as he moved away, making it look as if his face was burning.

Hog centered the rifle's sights on his shoulder blades, ready to crack the man's spine with a round at a second's notice. When the guy turned and moved back toward the near side of the bridge, the sights were automatically dead-center on his scrawny chest.

From here, Hog could clip him easily, blow him backward off the bridge with a sustained burst of fire, if it came to that.

And what then?

Soldiers, pouring out of the camp, through the gate, firing at anything and everything in their desperation to find a target—any target at all. Others would be banked along the fence, their weapons poking out through slits in the bamboo barricade.

It was an option Wiley wished to avoid, provided that he got the choice.

The guard was standing almost directly over Loughlin now, rocking back and forth on his heels, taking deep drags on his smoke. Finished with it, he flicked the butt into the water, ten feet below his boots. It sizzled and died, almost audible even from where Hog sat and watched.

Another moment, and the sentry was retreating through the gate, closing it behind him, securing it from the inside. Wiley waited another moment and finally lowered his rifle, leaving it across his knees, the safety off, and raised his field glasses once again.

Loughlin was giving the guard a long count, in case he doubled back and tried to run a fast one past them . . . and then he was moving, back in the direction of the island and the bank, circling toward his original crossing place.

Wiley went back to watching the long line of bamboo fence, alert to any sign of roving sentries who were interested in what went on outside their little compound. No one seemed to be on duty there, but he kept watching, just in case.

The soldier on the bridge had come closer to death than he would ever know. And soon, within a matter of hours at most, he would come closer yet. All the way through death's door, perhaps . . . and straight on to a hell the likes of that which he had helped build here on earth for others.

Soon.

Tonight.

They dared not put the breakout off another day.

If Stone had some plan worked out in his mind to help them from the inside, that was fine. If not, Wiley and the others would be prepared to go ahead without him.

And Hog wondered, once again, if they would pull it off.

He knew that Stone had been alive that morning, when they marched him off to work the mines along with all the other P.O.W.'s. Barring some incident on the job, some trigger-happy sentry, Stone should be alive right now, perhaps already on the way back to his cage.

It was important to Wiley that Stone come out of this alive and in one piece. But if he could not . . . if, by some chance, he was wasted on the way . . . Hog swore a silent oath that he would carry out the mission in Stone's name, the way he would have seen it done if he had made it to the end.

No prisoner would be left behind, alive and in captivity. No hostile would be left alive to tell the tale, not if Wiley had anything to say about it.

In and out.

A classic hit-and-run.

Except that five men would be punching in, and roughly thirty would be coming out.

The odds were different from those they had encountered on any other mission. Wiley wished they had made some provision for backup air support. There would be hell to pay if a message was flashed out of camp to some larger garrison force. They might respond with heliborne troops, air drops, any damned thing at all.

Enough!

Wiley cut off the defeatist train of thought, refusing to entertain the idea of anything less than total victory. If they went in as planned, and pinned down the field telephones and any walkie-talkies, there was no reason on earth why anyone outside the compound should even be aware the raid had taken place. Not until the next supply delivery, days or weeks away.

It could still work.

It had to work.

Their lives were riding on it now, and there could be no turning back.

Chapter Twenty

Captain Ngu checked his watch and scowled, cursing underneath his breath. The search patrol was hours overdue, and no matter how he tried, it seemed impossible to come up with any sort of encouraging explanation for their tardiness.

They should have been back by the time the work detail returned from the mines, no later. Easily in time for the evening meal, which was already being consumed by prisoners in the courtyard of the camp.

He stood up, pacing back and forth across the small interior of his command hut, finally pausing in front of the narrow window, staring out at the uniformed inmates assembled there. His eyes picked out the new arrival, off to one side, eating, and they narrowed, growing cold and hard.

It was his fault, whatever had happened out there. He had brought this plague upon Ngu and upon his small command.

Again he ran through the conceivable explanations for the failure of his patrol to return on time, or at least to report in on the walkie-talkie they carried with them as standard field equipment.

The men might have deserted, run away into the jungle. It would not be the first time that the Army of Vietnam had lost soldiers in the field. Conscription methods were arbitrary, harsh, often used as punishment for some minor civil or criminal infraction. If the men had put their heads together, plotted their escape . . .

Ngu shook his head and dismissed the idea from his thoughts. Those nine were not the best of friends; two or three of them had actively disliked the others he selected for the mission. They would never have agreed on something so momentous as desertion and a life in hiding. If they had the initiative at all, those who were inclined to leave without permission would have taken advantage of their alternating night watch long before now.

They might be lost somewhere in the jungle, wandering around in aimless circles, too frightened and embarrassed to call for help on their walkie-talkie. It was not unusual for his troops, ill-trained and unfamiliar with the Cambodian countryside, to take a wrong turn and lose their way completely.

But no. They were not lost. At least not in that way. Ngu could feel it in his bones, where a chill had settled in, refusing to be shaken out by liberal doses of the rice wine he had drunk throughout the afternoon.

They could be wasting time deliberately, what the Americans called "goldbricking." It was possible that they had happened on a native woman and persuaded her, through force or favors, to have sex with them.

Rape was commonplace wherever Vietnamese troops were bivouacked, and prostitution was considered an acceptable alternative to subsistence farming in Cambodia. No shame attached to the sale of a daughter—or even a wife, if the price was adequate.

Ngu considered it, and again dismissed the thought as a sterile rationalization. His camp had been constructed with isolation in mind. The chances of finding a woman—or any other native—in the immediate vicinity were small indeed. The searchers would have to go far before they found a human female to amuse them.

And he knew, without really acknowledging it to himself at any conscious level, without having to, that they were dead.

All dead.

Long dead.

As he stood there, looking out over the compound, their bodies, in all probability, had been stiff and cold for several hours now.

The enemy would be close by, reluctant to desert their comrade in captivity, keeping close by so that they would not have to travel far to launch the night attack.

And they would come by night—this night. Ngu was as certain of it as he had ever been certain of anything.

There was no time to waste, for it was dusk already. He would have to get some answers from the one American clumsy enough to let himself be captured inside the camp. He would have to get the answers now, before the day got any older and twilight turned into blackest night, bringing down the wrath of whoever waited for him, out beyond the thin bamboo perimeter of the compound.

He knew he could hold them off, blunt the attack and turn them around in defeat—if he knew how many troops he had to deal with, their offensive capabilities, their motives.

No. Scratch that. The motives were already plain to him. They meant to kill him, wipe out his command, and carry off the scum he held captive here.

They would not succeed. His career, his very life itself, depended on Ngu's ability to hold the compound through the coming night. And to succeed in that, he would have to wring some answers out of the American infiltrator.

Starting immediately.

Mark Stone sat with Lynch and Page to eat his evening meal. It was rice again, still soggy, still in wooden bowls, but now in slightly larger portions, as if the day's supply had to be used or thrown away.

For all the nutritional value it gave the prisoners, Stone thought, it could have been thrown out to begin with.

He sat with his back against the bamboo fence, forking the rice from his bowl to his mouth with dirty fingers. There had been no opportunity and no place to wash. Their single stop at the latrine, reeking and surrounded by a swarm of biting flies, had been for purposes other than cleaning up.

No matter. With any luck at all, this would be his last meal in the prison camp, and he could sweat it out. He might have ignored the soggy rice, but they had not eaten since breakfast, and any fuel at all was better than none for the energetic evening that he had in mind.

There would be fighting and killing to be done before the night was out; exhausted as he was, Stone knew that he would need every ounce of energy available.

Already the sun was sinking beyond the western treetops, setting the jungle on fire there, spreading purple shadows in the east. Night was closing swiftly in upon them, settling down across the jungle and their little prison island like a silent cloak.

It would bring Loughlin and Wiley moving in to blast them out of their confinement, bringing fire and steel into the compound like a hailstorm out of hell. Stone was looking forward to the break, anticipating the feel of an assault rifle in his hands, its buck and tremor as he hosed the enemy with unforgiving lead.

Soon.

From where he sat, Stone had a clear view of the CP hut. He could see the camp commandant watching through his narrow window there, and guessed the man was probably wondering, worrying about the failing darkness. He had to know that any raid would come with nightfall, and from the looks of the compound, he was going out of his way to be ready when it came.

Guards were doubled all along the fence, a pair of men located every twenty feet or so with AK-47s. The dual lookout towers, east and west, that had been unmanned throughout Stone's reconnaissance, now boasted pairs of soldiers, and a light machine gun each.

Around the barracks, where the morning shift would normally be turning in by now, no one had gone to bed yet.

They were staying up, standing or sitting around in groups, looking casual on the surface, but keeping their rifles close at hand.

Stone felt a rising sense of apprehension. Even knowing that Wiley and Loughlin would have seen the reinforcements moving in when the work detail returned from the mines, he knew there was only so much that six men could do against a small army. The element of surprise, now considerably lessened, if not lost altogether, could only carry them so far.

He was still wondering if Hog and the Britisher could pull it off when he saw the camp commandant emerge from his little thatched CP hut and move restlessly across the porch. Like all the buildings in the compound, the CP hut was elevated, built on posts to keep water and snakes from getting in, and the commandant's footsteps echoed, reverberating through the floorboards of the little covered porch.

He was looking for something, someone, and Stone felt a grim premonition as to the identity of his target. As if to prove him right, the camp commandant turned, making a slow, almost graceful pirouette, and stared directly at Mark Stone across the open compound. Their eyes met for an instant, held across the intervening space . . . and then the Vietnamese officer was scanning for a trooper, snapping his fingers at the closest uniform, beckoning him over.

They conversed briefly, the soldier nodding rapidly in response to whatever the commandant was saying, flicking an occasional glance toward the section of fence where Stone sat with Page and Lynch. When the commandant finished speaking, the trooper saluted sloppily and turned on his heel, moving out across the compound on a beeline for Stone's position.

Stone saw him coming and grunted a warning to Lynch and Page, who had been deep in a whispered discussion of the coming break. They shut up instantly and were all silent, watching the guard with expectant eyes, when he reached them.

Towering over them where they sat, in spite of his relatively small stature, he crooked a finger at Stone and grimaced, trying to look authoritative.

"You come with me," he snapped, backing off a pace and giving Stone room to stand.

Mark Stone made up the difference in their heights when he got up, glaring down at the guard with such intensity that the rumpled little Commie backed away another pace and took a tighter grip on his assault rifle, just in case. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the CP hut, working on bravado and not quite reaching it, and Stone moved out in front of him, letting the guard bring up the rear.

He had wondered about the abbreviated nature of his interrogation the previous night, and now he had his answer. As brutal and seemingly endless as the first session had been, it had been relatively short by the standards of any determined torturer.

And yes, he had the answer, now. They were not through with him, after all. Instead, they had a day's work out of him, adding another pair of able hands to the duty roster . . . and now they would be free to work him over at their leisure, through the night.

Depending, of course, on how much night anyone inside the compound still had left.

Stone gritted his teeth as he mounted the steps to the CP hut, brushing past the commandant on his way inside. The best he could hope for now was to hold out, hang tough until the cavalry arrived.

He could not, would not tell them anything to jeopardize the mission. If they came up with something new, which they had not already tried but which appeared to be effective, he would die before he let them wring the answers out of him. He would not risk the mission they all had come so far and dared so much to accomplish.

He owed it to the prisoners to succeed, even if he spent his life in the attempt. He owed it, yes, to all those others he had failed, and those that he would never get a chance to help.

Stone owed it, finally, to himself. And he was grimly, finally determined to pay off that debt. In blood, if necessary.

He would be paying it tonight, one way or another, and he would let the devil keep the change.

Chapter Twenty-one

Terrance Loughlin waited in the darkness, alone, watching the compound below him, counting down the heartbeats to oblivion.

They were still on schedule, from what he could see, and true night was only ninety minutes old. Plenty of time left yet to accomplish the mission and get back out again before the first light of dawn burned off the morning fog and left them vulnerable.

He scanned the dark line of the river, taking several seconds to pick out the form of Hog Wiley, knowing even as he did so, exactly where the giant of a man should be. Lon Ky and two of the Hmong warriors were accompanying him, clinging tightly against the shoreline, taking full advantage of the darkness and the undergrowth. They were in position now, almost opposite the drainage pipe where Stone had made his own ill-fated entry to the compound more than twenty-four hours earlier.

Loughlin had warned them about the sentries in the drainpipe, and about the charge he had planted especially for their amusement. He saw now that Hog and the others were giving the pipe a wide enough berth; when it went up, they should not be caught in the backblast, unless they strayed from their present places of concealment.

One Hmong was missing, and Loughlin glanced away to the west, knowing he could never pick the man out in the stygian darkness of the rain forest. He would be in place by now, armed and ready to create the diversion they were all counting on him for. Another moment now, perhaps less . . .

As if on cue, an automatic rifle opened up across the wide part of the river, near the landward end of the bridge. Bullets started thunking into the gate of the compound, drilling neat lines of holes through the bamboo fencing. Voices inside were beginning to shout, some of them seeking information, others clearly barking orders, as the defenders tried to think of some acceptable response to the challenge.

A rifle was thrust through a slit in the bamboo fence, followed immediately by another, and they began stroking off wild bursts in the direction of the treeline. It would have been a miracle if they hit anything but empty air.

Another moment, and the front gate was opening, exactly as Loughlin had hoped it might, and a squad of perhaps a dozen uniformed men came pounding out, led by a noncom who brandished a sidearm and fired it every third step or so, aiming toward the Hmong troopers' moving, twinkling muzzle flashes. They were closing fast. Loughlin let them make it to the midpoint of the bridge before he raised his little radio-remote detonator box, fingering the fire control button.

Below him, at river level, things began going to hell in a hurry.

The bridge supports blew out with half a dozen smoky thunderclaps, and then the whole bridge turned into a crumbling, rolling lane of fire. Soldiers—and parts of them—were airborne, some of them screaming out the last fractured seconds of their worthless lives, the rest already far beyond the spoken word. Bits and pieces of the bridge and its occupants were thudding down along the bank, or splashing in the stream and raising little frothy geysers.

Loughlin did not wait for the shock of that initial blast to wear off. Swiveling where he sat, he keyed another button on the detonator's master panel, touching off the secondary charges.

The drainpipe went first, instantly consumed in fire that devoured its squatting sentries in their tunnel, before they had a chance to register the shaking of the earth beneath their feet. One instant they were there; the next, they might never have existed.

Finally the charges he had set against the southern fenced perimeter went off in unison, blasting through the stand of bamboo, clearing Hog and the Hmong an entry the size of a double doorway at a posh hotel. He saw them up and at it, moving before the smoke and falling debris had a chance to clear away.

And Loughlin was on the move himself now, dropping the exhausted detonator where he was and picking up the CAR-15 assault rifle that had been lying on the damp earth beside him. He slithered down the slope, fairly crashing through the underbrush, no longer taking care to keep his movements silent. The defenders over there had plenty on their minds and on their hands, without worrying about some twigs cracking in the forest now, some sixty yards away. They could not see him, could not hear him—but the Britisher meant to change all that, and very soon.

He was closing in for the kill, determined to be a part of the final confrontation with the camp's defense. Loughlin had already done his part by closing off the bridge and opening the camp, by wiping out a dozen of the soldiers who would otherwise oppose them now, but he did not intend to be left out of the action after coming so far and risking so much to be a part of it.

He reached the river and waded out into the frigid water, holding his rifle overhead to keep it dry. It was difficult to move quickly, but he did his best, forsaking the avenue of entry used by Wiley and the Hmong. The open gate was closer, and he moved toward it obliquely, passing bits of floating rubble from the bridge, and bits of bodies, torn and blackened, floating on the surface.

Another hundred feet now . . . seventy-five . . .

He braced himself for the assault and redoubled his pace, already smelling battle smoke and blood, hearing gunshots and the cries of the wounded and dying. Loughlin was home at last.

After the sudden burst of automatic fire somewhere outside the camp, Stone's three torturers backed off in an instant, poised and listening.

It was beginning.

Another burst, more sustained, and now, before the commandant could issue any orders, weapons from inside the camp were answering, firing blindly into the outer darkness.

The captain looked down at him hatefully, seemed about to kick him in the stomach, then decided that there was no time to waste on entertainment. He moved toward the door, one of his orderlies falling into step behind him, peering through the window before he went outside, as if to make sure the attackers were not already waiting for him on his doorstep.

Finally satisfied, he went out on the covered porch, calling to his men in the yard, getting responses, issuing more orders in a singsong, cracking voice. Within a minute he was back inside the CP hut, leaving the door open at his back, revealing a wedge-shaped slice of darkness, prison cages in the background.

"A feeble attempt," he told Stone, trying to gloat and not quite achieving his goal. "My men will deal with yours in short order, now that we know their position."

Riflemen? What the hell?

Before the grim interrogation could resume, Stone heard the telltale sounds of a small patrol racing out of the camp, their voices growing marginally smaller in the direction of the footbridge.

And suddenly their voices, and everything else, were swallowed by the roar of rapid-fire explosions, ripping the night apart, sending tremors through the ground on which the stilted CP shack was standing.

The camp commandant paled, losing all of his color in the space of a heartbeat, looking for all the world like a man instantly drained of blood. He glared at Stone, then raced in the direction of the doorway, his orderly hot on his heels. Over his shoulder he barked a single order to the trooper who remained behind.

Stone had learned enough Vietnamese in his tours of Asian duty to translate an order for his own death. The soldier was moving briskly, turning away from him, heading for the corner of the shack where two AK-47s stood, propped together carelessly.

It was now or never, and to hell with all the aches and pains that wracked his body. Stone would find his feet and move, or he would die almost immediately. It was that simple.

He rolled over onto his back, clenching his teeth and biting off the groan that forced itself into his tortured throat. Curling himself into yet a tighter ball, he bent his legs at the knees, ankles tight together, sitting up until he could reach his heels with his hands. That accomplished, it took perhaps another second for him to slip his feet through the loop of rope that bound his hands together, bringing his hands around in front of him again, where they would be of some use for fighting.

He struggled to his feet, lurching, staggering, and the gunner was well ahead of him now, already bending down to close one hand around the barrel of an automatic rifle. Stone took two shambling steps, then launched himself into a headlong tackle, his forehead and shoulder striking the human target low, in the small of his back, and driving him face-first against the wall.

They fell together, the guard more stunned and surprised than Stone for an instant. Blood was streaming down his face where his nose had smashed against the wall of the CP hut, and he was shaking his head to clear it, dabbing at the blood with one hand, groping with the other for his weapon.

And outside, more smoky thunder tore the night, this time from the south side. A section of the fence had been blown away.

Stone was behind his enemy, the taut rope between his wrists serving as an admirable garrote now, biting deep into the orderly's throat, closing off his airway, dragging his head back and chafing the flesh until more rivulets of crimson stained his khaki uniform. A final twist, the snap of separating vertebrae, and he was still.

Stone found a knife in the guard's pocket, opened it, and finally freed his hands with difficulty. Satisfied that they would serve him, he picked up the rifle that his late opponent had been scrambling for so desperately. He racked the cocking lever back, chambering a round, and eased the safety off.

A hurtling body cleared the doorway, skidding to a stop. It was the second orderly, returning for the rifle that he had forgotten in his haste to get outside.

Stone let him see the weapon in his hands, let him watch the muzzle tracking into target acquisition, and then he blew the scum away, putting a short, five-round burst dead center in his chest, propelling him backward through the open doorway and out into the smoky night.

Chapter Twenty-two

Hog Wiley led his band of warriors through the smoking breach in the prison camp's bamboo fence, with Lon Ky hot on his heels. The other men were peeling off, each closing on his assigned target, nailing down the guards who posed the greatest threat to the P.O.W.'s, but Wiley hung back a moment, scanning the scene of orchestrated chaos with narrow eyes.

First and foremost, he was looking for Stone. Failing in that objective, he was trying to get a rough estimate of hostile strength, their general deployment, before he committed his tiny force to some action that might prove suicidal.

Before Hog had a chance to finish up his instant recon, a gunner in the western guard tower spotted him, swung his light machine gun around, and sent a lethal hailstorm in Hog's general direction. Slugs were eating up the ground around his feet, and Hog went into a diving shoulder roll, loosing a quick burst from his assault rifle as he made the move.

Coming up in a combat crouch, he stroked another burst into the tower, and saw his bullets harmlessly deflected by the heavier logs its builders had used to line the fortified, exposed position. Cursing, he quickly set the rifle down, unlimbering the LAW rocket launcher he wore slung across his back like a quiver full of arrows.

One deadly arrow, this one, ready to pierce the heart of his attacker's crude defenses.

Hog yanked the pin and primed the launcher, swinging it up onto his shoulder and sighting on the guard tower in one practiced motion born of long experience with martial tools. He hit the firing lever and watched the rustling firebird climb away from him, rattling toward its target on a comet-tail of flame.

The machine-gunner saw it coming, but there was no place left for him to go, and no damn time to get there. The tower detonated like an ammo dump on stilts, spewing chunks of burning logs and blackened flesh over the breadth of the compound.

Over by the cages, Hog could see the two Hmong troopers who had accompanied him already blasting locks off the bamboo cages, freeing some of the prisoners inside, using their automatic weapons to repulse a halfhearted counterattack by the camp's defenders.

It was early yet, and the Vietnamese required a little time to recover from the initial shock of the assault, to put their defense together and get it in good working order. It was Wiley's job to see that they never got the time they needed.

A pair of gunners in the east tower, on his right, were firing down into the compound now, indiscriminately, trying for anything and everything at once. Their wild rounds were impacting near the cages, scattering the Hmong, even driving their own troops back into cover for a moment.

Hog saw Lon Ky appear from nowhere, marching directly toward the guard tower, firing his AK-47 from the hip. He was peppering the target, spending his whole magazine—and getting no more positive results than Wiley had with tower number one.

The chief gunner stood up, standing his weapon almost on its nose to bring the Cambodian guerrilla under fire. The first long burst took off Lon Ky's head at the shoulders, vaporized them, leaving him standing like a headless mannequin before another burst of slugs cut him off at the knees and blew him backward, out of the action completely.

Cursing, Wiley ripped a thermite grenade from his web harness, jerked the pin free, and let it fly in a looping overhand. He was rewarded as the lethal egg dropped squarely on target, directly into the open lookout tower, slightly behind the machine-gun emplacement.

A heartbeat passed while the gunner tried to find him, and his loader tried to find out what had fallen in among them—then the night was turned to instant noontime by the detonation of the incendiary charge. Glowing coals of thermite fanned across the compound, setting fires wherever they touched down, enveloping the tower—or what was left of it—in dense white smoke.

Before the smoke obscured everything, Hog had a glimpse of the gunner, still at his weapon, hands fused to the metal now, screaming out his life as the coals ate into him and through him, unquenchable by blood or any other, human fluids.

Wiley left them to it, turning back into the compound proper, holding his assault rifle at the ready as he moved out, hunting. He would find Mark Stone, alive or dead. Without him, Wiley did not plan to leave. They went together or they stayed together. Simple.

Jess Lynch stumbled out of his cage, followed closely by his cellmate, Page, and accepted the rifle that a grinning Hmong guerrilla thrust into his hands. It was an AK-47, and even now, after a dozen years, he could remember how it felt, how it operated, the kick it had.

Just like riding a bicycle, he thought. You really never do forget.

The weapon had been primed and loaded by a previous owner, presumably no longer among the living. Lynch hefted it, turned to face Page, and found that someone had handed him a rifle too.

They stood there in the chaos of the firelit darkness for an instant, looking each other in the eye, exchanging a silent thought about what it felt like to be warriors in arms again, even for a fleeting moment. Something like a burst of pride welled up inside Jess Lynch, and he felt hot tears in the corners of his eyes, a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him.

And a sniper's bullet broke the mood before their hesitation got them killed. Lynch and Page were out of there instantly, taking advantage of the flickering shadows as they moved along the line of cages, helping the invaders free their fellow P.O.W.'s. A sudden thought occurred to Lynch, and he turned away, moving off toward an isolated group of cages on the southern perimeter, where the invalid inmates were kept in abject misery, separated from the other P.O.W.'s, barely fed, no longer even allowed to walk for themselves.

Stone's men might be unaware of their location, of their very existence. They could get caught and killed in the crossfire if he did not hurry, did not free them from their cages and help them find some hiding place until the battle burned itself out around them.

He cleared a rolling cloud of smoke and saw the cages. Three Vietnamese guards stood in front of the bamboo structures, rifles at their shoulders, poised to fire. A noncom stood beside them, a pistol in his hand, and even with the gunfire all around him, despite the grenades detonating like thunder on every side, Lynch could hear him give the order to open fire.

A furious burst of rifle fire tore through the cages, riddling the four men trapped inside, and Lynch was firing now, as well, from the hip, on the run, with tears streaming down his filthy cheeks and curses pouring from his lips.

The three riflemen died on their feet, bisected from behind by a deadly figure-eight burst that swept them all away into a bloody, tattered heap.

Tracking on with his shuddering weapon, Lynch cut the noncom's legs from under him, and blew his gun arm out of the socket with a final burst that left him lying on his back, alive—just barely—and staring at the smoky sky above him.

It was Needledick. Lynch had known it almost from the moment that he squeezed the AK's trigger and sent the bullets streaming into the slender form.

Needledick. The bastard who had made his life—every prisoner's life—a living hell inside the compound.

The noncom was still alive, sucking wind through skinny lips and moaning with pain. Lynch stood above him, letting him see the rifle in his hands, letting him know exactly who it was who had cut him down.

"M-mercy."

The word came out like the croaking of a tree frog. Weak, non-human somehow.

"Right. You slimy shit."

Lynch forced the heated muzzle of his AK-47 in between those skinny lips, his finger tightening on the trigger. He gave Needledick twenty rounds of mercy, shattering his skull and spewing bloody fragments of his brain in every direction. Lynch was soaked in blood, with chunks of flesh hanging off his uniform, clinging to his face and hands.

Ngu's worst nightmares were materializing, coming true before his very eyes.

The camp was in chaos, his soldiers running to and fro without direction, aimlessly, firing at the attackers, at shadows, at each other—all indiscriminately. If they wounded or killed any of the enemy, it would be blind luck. A miracle.

Ngu did not believe in miracles. He knew he would hate to solve this grim dilemma by himself, using his brain and the skills drilled into him through military training. He could rally his troops yet, bring order out of mass confusion . . . but he had to have a starting place.

A trio of Vietnamese political prisoners were running toward him, holding hands like children, babbling senselessly. Ngu raised his service pistol, sighting quickly, and fired a single round into each of them, tracking from left to right, watching their frail bodies jerk like puppets on a string under the impact of his slugs. They hit the ground still twitching, and he moved away from there, forgetting them immediately.

Shouting, cursing at his troops, he got a little clutch of them to follow him in the direction of the bamboo cages. Even from a distance he could see that all the cages had been opened, their occupants released. It would be his job now to track them down, inside the compound, if his luck was holding . . . and to bring them back or wipe them out.

He quickly dismissed the first alternative. There was no realistic way he could deal with prisoners now. His first responsibility would be to make sure that none of them got away, that nothing leaked into the outside world to confirm the existence of this or any other P.O.W. camp.

He could do that, at least, and salvage something from the ruins of his dreams.

A group of prisoners, some American and some Asian, were disappearing through a breach in the southern fence. Ngu herded his riflemen after them, barking orders to them to open fire immediately, before the final targets slipped out of sight and range.

A grenade detonated thirty feet away, and his little rifle squad fell apart, racing off in all directions, babbling like frightened children. Cursing, Ngu let them go, raising his pistol, sighting quickly, squeezing off a quick double-punch.

He saw a tall American stagger, falling to one knee, clutching at his shoulder—and then a hard fist struck him in the small of the back, lifting him completely off his feet and dumping him into the dirt. Ngu tried to rise, but found that his legs would not obey the mental commands to bend, to flex, to move.

Trying to sit up, he glanced down and saw the spreading crimson stain along his waistline, soaking through his urn-form. And he knew then, in an instant, what had happened. Knew that it was over.

The new American was standing over him, an AK-47 leveled from the waist. Ngu could see the smoke curling skyward from the muzzle of the weapon that had stood in a corner of his office moments earlier.

The American was saying something to him, but Ngu did not have the strength or presence of mind to translate. He was drifting, fading, wondering if he would die before the American emptied the rest of the clip into his face and chest.

The commandant closed his weary eyes, and said a prayer to long-forgotten gods.

Chapter Twenty-three

Mark Stone raised his weapon, turning away from the twitching corpse of the prison camp commandant, moving on in search of other targets. All around him the night was lit with flames and explosions and the muzzle flashes of a score of automatic weapons firing in unison. Bullets swept the compound, smacking into bamboo and thatch, toppling human figures here and there.

Stone did a rapid scan for inmates, and found a group of them huddled tight against the north wall, another clutch making their way through the front gate, breaking for freedom. He let them go, knowing he could round them up once the threat from the compound's garrison of defenders had been dealt with effectively.

Two Vietnamese broke through the drifting smoke, heading for Stone on a collision course. He hit them with a searing burst, waist-high, and dropped both of them writhing in their tracks. Another soldier was a pace or two behind them, and he bolted backward, making tracks at the sight of what had befallen his comrades.

Stone chased him with a wild burst, then dismissed him from consideration. If he left the camp, he would keep going, and if he remained behind, there would be time enough to deal with him later.

Tracking on, he picked out Wiley by his voice first, then saw him, crouching with one of the Hmong warriors, struggling to beat back a fierce counteroffensive by perhaps a dozen of the guards. Fighting from the cover of the former CP hut, Hog and the tribesman were dropping soldiers when they got the chance, but the survivors were closing a ring around them, keeping them under cover with enfilading fire long enough to edge in closer, getting into effective firing range.

One of the soldiers bolted, charging, his arm cocked to unload a grenade. Stone stitched his spine with a short burst of armor-piercing rounds and tossed him over in the dust, a flopping rag-doll figure that suddenly disintegrated with the explosion of his grenade.

The rest of the attack force faltered, their attention divided now that fire was coming in upon them from two sides. It gave Hog the chance he needed, and he flanked them, roaring out of cover like an angry giant, his CAR-15 cutting a bloody swath through their ranks, mowing down the half-dozen of them closest to him, driving the rest of them back into Stone's line of fire.

The crossfire was murderous, and terribly effective. Within a matter of seconds the attack was broken, a dozen riddled bodies scattered on the ground in mute testimony to the efficiency of teamwork.

Stone and Wiley shook hands briefly, gravely, and went on about their business on the killing ground. There was no time for words, no need to speak; they were professionals, each man doing his job to the best of his ability, slaughtering as many of the opposition as possible.

Stone's rifle was empty, and he ditched it, relieving one of the fallen soldiers of another AK-47, snatching up his ammo belt at the same time and looping it around his own waist. At least now he would be able to get through the duration of the firefight without suddenly finding himself empty-handed against the enemy.

As suddenly as he had met Hog, they were separated in the swirl of battle. One instant they were shoulder-to-shoulder, fighting side by side, and the next, Wiley was nowhere in sight, lost in the drifting smoke and din of combat.

Stone moved in the direction of the cages where the invalid prisoners were held. But he never got that far. A grenade exploded in his path, the shockwave staggered him—and suddenly a flying body struck him, knocking him sprawling to the ground.

A voice was jabbering excitedly at him in Vietnamese, cursing, railing hysterically. He fought to rid himself of the weight that bore him down, struggling to reach his captured rifle, but the AK had been jarred out of his hands and out of reach by the initial impact of the tackle.

He rolled over, taking the soldier with him, and Stone was on his back now, the Vietnamese astride his chest. Slender fingers raked across his face and fastened on his throat, trying to choke off his oxygen.

One hand.

The significance of that struck him immediately and Stone looked up through narrowed eyelids and saw the long blade of the knife whistling down toward his face, mere inches from impact.

Terrance Loughlin reached the battleground late, but he was still in time to see his share of lethal action. As he left the water, near the gate, a group of P.O.W.'s burst through the open portal, breaking to the left and following the line of fence into the surrounding darkness. Loughlin watched them go, resisting an urge to call them back, knowing they could never hear him anyway, with all the gunfire and explosions close at hand.

Close behind the P.O.W.'s, two Vietnamese came through the gate, both of them armed with AK-47s. They were running from the battle, not in search of it, and they were disappointed at the sight of Loughlin there before them, like some elemental killing spirit from the jungle.

He hit them with a short, precision burst from the CAR-15 he carried, lifting both of them off their feet and spinning them around, dropping them backward across the threshold of the gate like crumpled welcome mats.

He moved around them, entering the camp and breathing in the smells of combat. Blood and smoke and sweat. The elusive but nonetheless real smell of fear.

No more explosions now, and Loughlin saw that most of the buildings in the camp had been reduced to rubble or were burning brightly in the darkness. Scattered firing continued from the other side of the compound, beckoning him toward the action, and he followed its lead, crossing the killing ground and moving among the bodies of those who had already fallen.

A P.O.W. leaped in front of him, a captured rifle leveled from the waist, but at the final instant he seemed to recognize Loughlin as an ally, a Westerner, and he turned away, vanishing again in an instant, into the roiling smoke.

Ahead of him, two figures were locked in mortal combat, rolling about on the ground. A uniformed Vietnamese was uppermost, one hand locked around his assailant's throat, his other hand holding a long, wicked knife which he seemed intent on driving through the second man's face.

It took Loughlin all of half a second to recognize the man on the bottom as Mark Stone.

Instantly he dropped to one knee—a position that would let him have the flattest possible trajectory of fire. His thumb found the fire-selector switch and hooked it onto semiautomatic even as his finger curled around the trigger, exerting steady, lethal pressure.

One shot, at a distance of perhaps twelve feet.

There was no way to miss, but Loughlin aimed anyway, just in case. No point in taking unnecessary chances with a comrade's life.

The bullet struck his target just behind the ear and exited through his left cheek, taking most of his face with it as it exploded through flesh and bone, spewing blood and brains across the compound. For an instant the body teetered upright, still leaning over Stone, the knife still poised as if to strike, and then the American wrestled it away, dumped the lifeless thing over onto its side, and struggled free.

He saw Loughlin at once, grinning as he made it to his feet, and retrieved his lost rifle, an AK-47.

"Glad to see you," Stone cracked, dusting himself off.

"Glad I could make it," Loughlin answered.

There was nothing more to say, not with a war to fight, still going on around them. The sounds of battle were declining, winding down by slow degrees, the pockets of resistance being gradually eliminated now that most of the P.O.W.'s had managed to arm themselves. They were hunting down their tormentors, and it was a hunt that Loughlin would join gladly, wiping out the final traces of the parasites and sadists who had kept these men in foul captivity—for how long?

The question would not bear asking, could not be answered. Loughlin put it out of mind and went about the task of killing, confident that, for the moment at least, killing was enough.

"How many did we lose?"

"Five dead," Lynch told him solemnly. "And of the twenty-one surviving, three are wounded."

Stone looked around at the carnage and nodded grimly. The P.O.W.'s were formed into ragged ranks behind Lynch, not quite a military formation, no, but close enough for his purposes.

It could have been much worse, he knew. So damned much worse.

Four of the dead had been the invalids, shot down in their cages before they had a chance to realize that freedom was upon them. The fifth—his momentary cagemate, Page—had sacrificed himself and taken three Vietnamese along with him to knock out the field telephone before a report of the raid could be relayed to any larger strike force.

Thanks to Page, they had the time they would need.

"Everybody up to traveling?" he asked, already knowing the answer.

"Ready as we'll ever be," someone cracked from the ranks behind Lynch.

"Shit, man," another offered, "I've had my bags packed for thirteen goddamned years."

A ripple of laughter went up around the little team, and Stone allowed himself to share in it. It cleansed their recent wounds, and might, with time, assist in healing some older ones.

"I can promise you a hike," he told them. "And we don't have much to eat."

"As long as it's not rice," Lynch said, and everybody laughed again.

"No rice," Stone promised.

Quickly, helped by Hog and Loughlin, he selected half a dozen prisoners to serve as squad leaders in the event that they got separated. Others—the strongest of the lot—were detailed to help carry the dead with them when they left.

Mark Stone would not be leaving any of their casualties behind. If need be, they could bury them along the trail, but he—and all the P.O.W.'s—were determined that the Vietnamese would have no bodies to display, to mutilate, when they finally got wind of what had happened here tonight.

The other prisoners, Vietnamese and Hmong, had melted into darkness when the battle started. Those who lived were long gone, and Stone dismissed them from his thoughts. They were on their own now, by choice. He had his hands full with the people he had come to find. And they would demand every bit of his attention on the long walk home.

He looked around and saw another camp, this one with all the prisoners dead, but as he looked, the scene began to fade, reality returning, bringing with it a feeling of accomplishment.

Of peace.

"Come on," he said to no one in particular, already turning for the open gate and hoping his emotion was inaudible. "We've got some people making supper for you, and you're late."

Epilogue

The debt was paid, at least in part.

Mark Stone still owed the P.O.W.'s something. They had sacrificed their youth, their lives, in valiant support of a cause doomed to failure.

A cosmic debt, written in blood, which could never be fully repaid.

A debt owed by all men to each and every one of those who had suffered, who are suffering still.

And the debt would be repaid in kind.

In blood.