"And I suppose I've been asleep in a rice paddy all that time." Remo sneered. "Like freaking Rip Van Winkle."
"Not understand."
"The last thing I can remember is fighting in Vietnam. In 1968. What have I been doing for twenty years?"
Lan shrugged. "How Lan know? It your life."
Remo looked at her without speaking. Her face was troubled and confused. He wanted to believe that she was his friend-he desperately needed one but her story was ridiculous. It was impossible.
"I don't know what I'm going to do with you," he said slowly.
"Do nothing, then. I go." And Lan turned on her heel and walked in the opposite direction. Remo watched her go, half-wistful, and half-afraid that if he turned his back she would back-shoot him. Maybe she was VC after all. Maybe he was being set up for some elaborate brainwashing trick. He wondered if he'd been drugged. He still felt light-headed.
Lan's hair switched like an angry pony's tail as she walked off. She did not look back. Not even as she disappeared around a bend in the road.
Remo stood in the middle of the road, feeling foolish. "Aw, hell," he said, and started after her. He walked at first, then started running. His feet felt like lead in the canvas Vietnamese boots. Funny they would feel like that. American boots were heavier. Canvas boots shouldn't feel like lead weights on his feet. He was a marine. Yet he felt like his whole body was screwed up.
Maybe he had been asleep for years. What else would explain it all?
Automatic-weapons fire chattered not far off. Remo dashed into the bush.
"Dung lai! Dung lai!" a man's voice cracked. He was calling for someone to halt.
"Khoung! Remo!" It was Lan's voice. And then an AK-47 opened up.
Remo hurtled down the road like a linebacker. He plunged into the trees when he got to the bend and came out beside a low-slung tank. A Vietnamese soldier up in the turret hatch was sweeping the road with a pedestal-mounted .50-caliber gun.
Remo picked him off with one shot.
There was another tank behind the first, and a third idling at the rear. A Land Rover sat on a flat tire in the mud. Three soldiers crouched behind it, working their weapons.
Remo saw Lan dart between two trees. The crouching soldiers opened up on her with small arms.
"Hey!" Remo yelled, trying to think of the worst curse in the Vietnamese tongue. "Do may! Do may!" The soldiers turned at the sound of his voice. Remo waved at them, then vaulted onto the first tank and disappeared into the open turret hatch.
Captain Dai Chim Sao heard the American voice accuse him of sleeping with his mother, and a chill swept through him. He spun on his heels, still crouching. "There!" he pointed. "The American."
But before they could open up, he disappeared into the lead tank, past a dead machine-gunner. Muffled shots came from the tank's interior. Then there was silence.
"You and you," Dai said. "Lay down covering fire on that girl. I will get the American's body."
"How do you know he is dead?" the officer asked.
"Because there are three brave Vietnamese soldiers in that tank. They have shot him. Do as I say."
The officer shrugged and started firing at the trees. Captain Dai ran for the shelter of the far tank's tread, worked his way back, and climbed onto the rear deck. Just as quickly, he jumped back onto the road.
The tapered turret was swinging around, its .125-millimeter smoothbore cannon nearly knocking him in the head. What was happening?
When the turret was pointing back at the other tanks, the cannon fired. Once, twice. Captain Dai screamed as the successive concussions pounded his eardrums. He hugged the ground. Shrapnel flew. A steel wheel wobbled past his head and clattered to the ground like a manhole cover.
Captain Dai looked up. The second tank was in ruins. Then he got a blast of exhaust as the tank containing the American started up. Dai scrambled out of the way of a rolling tread as the tank jockeyed around the destroyed machine and bore down on the third T-72.
The hatches on the third tank popped and the crew came out like ants from an anthole. They poured off the tank's plate sides just in time. Captain Dai was certain his painful scream was louder than the cannon roar. The third tank took a direct hit. It was enveloped in flames.
Then the first tank rolled across the flattened front end of the damaged tank and worked back toward the Land Rover. The driver and the officer showed stern stuff. They bounced bullets off the tank before they split in opposite directions. The tank climbed across the Land Rover, mashing it flat. A tire burst under the pressure of those remorseless treads.
The tank kept going. And out of the open driver's hatch, an American voice boomed.
"Lan! Hop aboard. I'm not sure I can stop this thing." Even though Captain Dai knew that the Amerasian girl was about to jump out of the bush, he made no attempt to stop her when she did. He stood there, his pistol hanging loose and impotent at his side, as the girl disappeared into the open turret hatch and clanged it shut.
The T-72 continued on. There was nothing Captain Dai could do but inhale its foul exhaust and fight back the racking sobs of failure.
"See if there's any food in here," Remo said, straining in the driver's bucket to see through the periscope. The seat was mounted low to accommodate someone of Asian stature. Remo felt cramped in the tiny cockpit, which was set in the tank body just in front on the turret.
Lan stuck her head forward. "You believe Lan now?"
"I'm reserving judgment," Remo told her.
Lan shrugged. "Whatever that mean. I will look for food." She stepped around the bodies of the tank crew and opened steel ammunition boxes. They contained ammo clips. There was a crate tucked under a shelf. She lifted the lid.
"No food. But look."
Remo twisted around in his seat. He saw the gleaming stocks of new Kalashnikov assault rifles packed in Cosmoline.
"Food would be better," he grunted. Lan frowned.
Remo turned back to the periscope. Just in time. He had steered the tank toward some trees. He corrected the tank, his feet searching for the brake. He found it, and the tank rumbled to a halt.
"I'd better get rid of these bodies," Remo said. "In this heat they're going to stink. "
"I help."
"You sit." Remo climbed back to the turret and hoisted the bodies out the top hatch. He kicked them off the back of the tank and climbed back in. He left the hatch open to ventilate the tank.
As he got the tank moving again, Remo motioned for Lan to sit behind him. She did so without speaking. "You were pretty brave back there," he told her.
"Not brave. Scared."
"Same difference," Remo said, shooting her a smile. Lan bowed her head, but finally the smile was returned. "We friends?"
"Yes," Lan said. "Friends." She shook his hand and Remo laughed at the gesture, although it touched him.
"A while back you said something about my American friends. What was that about?"
"You say you come to Vietnam to help other Americans. POW's."