"We go with you. Help you. Fight fiercely. Not like old ARVN troops. Kill many gook for you."
The others took up her call to action, promising to fight bravely for the American and his friend.
Remo was touched by their willingness to fight by his side, but it was out of the question.
"I work best alone. Next time."
The green-eyed girl came up to Remo, her eyes impossibly sad.
"If I not reach America alive, will you tell my American father I love him?"
"Sure," Remo said. "What's his name?"
"Bob."
"Bob what?"
"Not know other name. You will tell him Lan love him and ask that he will remember me?"
"Yeah, I'll tell him. Bob. Sure. How many green-eyed Bobs can there be in America?"
Lan smiled. Remo forced a smile in return. The poor kid had no idea how big America was.
"Well," Remo said slowly, not really knowing what to say in farewell, "see you all back in America."
The Amerasians waved. They looked too scared to move. For a moment Remo hesitated, wondering if taking them along would possibly work out. They looked so helpless. Even the armed ones. But their very helplessness convinced him they were better off on their own.
Remo tore himself away. He replaced the jerrican in its wire bracket. He checked to make sure the gas cap was on tight. He spent more time at it than necessary, trying to look preoccupied, hoping the others would start walking on their own. But no one took the initiative. They watched him in mute wonderment.
Remo got back behind the wheel. He started the engine. The headlights flared brighter. Then, slowly, he sent the bus lumbering around in a circle. As he passed the huddled group, he shot them a weak salute. They waved back. Remo searched their faces one last time, looking for the girl called Lan. He didn't see her.
Then Remo sent the bus rumbling back toward the border. The Amerasians stood watching him until they were swallowed by the darkening jungle.
Remo felt a slow lump rising in his throat. He tried to swallow it away. It wouldn't go away. He concentrated on the road.
Remo had to guess when he got near the Cambodian border. He used the Black Virgin for a reference point. He remembered having seen a dirt road somewhere along this stretch that veered north. For lack of a better plan, he intended to follow it. He had no idea where the POW camp was. But he knew he would have a better chance of locating it on foot. He hoped to find a place to stash the bus while he conducted his search. He would need the bus later. There was no telling what kind of shape Youngblood and the others would be in.
Remo watched the jungle until he found the road. He slid onto it, and the bus tires started crunching rock. The bus slowed in the dirt. It bounced and rattled.
Remo wondered if the old springs would hold. Then he stopped wondering. Abruptly there was a roaring in his ears and the pressure made his vision turn red, as if the blood vessels in his eyes had all popped at once. He never heard the sound of the explosion.
When Remo woke up, the first thing he felt was a stabbing pain at the small of his back. His eyes would not focus. Everything was dark-dark and blurred. He sensed he was on the ground, and dimly a flicker of conscious thought made him wonder if he'd been wounded.
Carefully he moved his hands. They worked. He tried sitting up. His back ached dully; then the sharper pain began. Half-sitting up, he felt a sick fear in the pit of his stomach. Resting on one palm, he reached for his back with the other, afraid of what he might find. The exertion brought more pain. But he felt no moisture, no ruptured flesh, no protruding bone. He looked back to discover that he'd been lying on a rugged rock.
Now, why would he go to sleep on a rock like that? Had he been drinking?
Remo sat up and looked around. There was something there. Even with his vision out of focus, he made out the front end of a bus. But there was something odd about it. It was too short. Remo looked further and not far away found another shape. His eyes started to clear and he realized that the second shape was a bus too.
But there was only one bus. It had been cut in half. He was looking at the rear half, open in front like an old loaf of bread and spilling the charred remains of its seats.
Remo understood what had happened. An artillery shell. Or maybe a mine. He could see no bodies. He hoped there were none. He was wondering who'd been on the bus, when he noticed his feet.
His feet were encased in shoes. Where the hell were his boots? he wondered. Experimentally Remo tried to bend his legs. They were stiff, but they moved. He removed one shoe. A loafer. Good leather, too. Maybe Italian. Remo couldn't remember ever owning shoes of this quality before. Maybe he'd bought them in Saigon. Foreign goods were cheap in Saigon. But Remo couldn't remember having bought them. That wasn't his chief worry, however. He could see that he was somewhere out in the bush. Where the hell were his boots? Without them, he'd have immersion foot in no time. Assuming this was the rainy season. Funny, he couldn't remember that either.
Remo put the shoe back on and took a minute to breathe deeply. Then he got to his feet. His joints ached. He tried walking in a circle. Nothing damaged, just aches. He flexed his arms, working his biceps to get the night chill out of his muscles.
It was then that he noticed that his arms were bare. "What the hell is this?" he asked aloud.
He was wearing a T-shirt. It was black, like his pants. He looked around for his Marine uniform. There was nothing in sight. He had no pack, no canteen, no boots. He was dressed for shooting pool back in Newark, not for Vietnam.
Stiffly, apprehensively, he stumbled toward the front half of the bus. He clambered in through its gaping rear, which was tilted like a ramp. He found a Russian Kalashnikov rifle on the buckled floor. He checked the bolt. It worked. There were no bodies in the seats. Remo wondered where the driver was. His head throbbed. His ears felt like they had on the day he first landed in Saigon. It had been his first airplane flight, and during the descent, his eardrums had built up pressure until they ached. He hated the feeling and it hadn't gone away until he'd stepped off the plane with the rest of his company and the first trucks containing the aluminum coffins of dead American servicemen arrived to be loaded for the return flight. The shock had cleared his ears.
Remo felt like that now. He worked his jaw to clear his ears, but they remained stuffy, like blocked nasal passages.
Someone groaned. Remo ran to the other half of the bus. He pointed his rifle into the dark, tangled interior. Little steely glints like feral eyes winked back at him. "Who's there?" he challenged. Another groan.
With his rifle barrel Remo knocked aside still-smoking seat covers. He stepped in gingerly, not trusting his light shoes. Again he felt the lack of boots as a dull fear in his gut. A man without boots in the jungle might as well shoot himself in the head and save himself a lot of unnecessary trouble.
Remo found a young girl, her face in shadow. She wore the black pajama uniform of the Vietnamese farmer-or the Vietcong. Probably a prisoner being transported, he decided.
Remo nudged her with the stock of his rifle. Her eyes snapped open and Remo was shocked by their color. They were green.
Ever since she was a child, Thao Ha Lan had had one dream. That the Americans would come back to Vietnam and crush the Hanoi regime. At night she dreamed that it would begin with the clatter of their helicopter gunships coming in low over the South China Sea. They would take Ho Chi Minh City first. And one special helicopter would come for her. Her father would be the pilot. Lan didn't know if her father had flown helicopters during the war. She only knew that her father was an American soldier. And American soldiers could do anything.
It was a dream her mother had impressed upon her. Her mother had loved an American serviceman. The American had died, her mother said. Lan did not believe her. She knew he lived in America, where there was no war, no fighting, no Communists. She hoped to go there one day. The dream survived the day her mother was taken away to a reeducation camp and even after she herself was taken off the Ho Chi Minh City streets.
The dream had flared anew at the arrival of the lone American with the dead, flat eyes that held no fear. The man had American features. Like her own. The only American features Lan had ever seen belonged to the other bui doi who shared her work barracks.
It had been a crushing disappointment for Lan when the American had ordered them off the bus in the middle of the Cambodian jungle. She could not believe it. So when the American had finished putting gasoline in the bus, she slipped back aboard and hid in the darkened interior where she wouldn't be seen.
Lan was determined to go with the fearless American wherever he went.
Lan woke suddenly. She remembered the red flash. She felt herself tangled among broken bus seats. Then she saw the American. He was pointing a rifle at her face. He looked angry.
"Don't shoot. It Lan. Lan."
"Don't move," the American said. His voice was cold. Lan knew he was angry. She had expected that.
"I no move," Lan said. She folded her hands together to show they were empty. "I no move. Okay?"
"Where is this place?"
"Kampuchea. "
"Never heard of it. You VC?"