Carl Hiaasen - A Death in China

Then the Chinese made their mistake.

From the night came the sound of small arms fire. Stratton heard the pop of Chinese weapons and the crack of the AK-47s. The PLA already knew. The shooting flustered the Chinese. The commissar spoke in English for the first time.

"There is no time for this. Pick up your friend."

Stratton stared dumbly. Only when they all began to shout and wave did he allow himself to understand.

He picked up Bobby Ho the way a mother bundles an injured child. Blood from Bobby's mouth ran off the shoulder of Stratton's jacket. There was a jagged hole where his teeth had been. Stratton held his head gently and pressed him close.

Bobby Ho rasped a final sentence into Stratton's neck.

"It was the kid… sorry, Tom… "

Bobby Ho spun from Stratton's arms and lunged for the student. The carbine, shockingly loud in the small room, cut him in half. Impelled by momentum that the bullets did not reverse, the corpse of Bobby Ho collided with his killer.

The commissar was too slow. A bullet from his pistol plucked at Stratton's ribs.

Stratton's open palm drove the commissar's nose into his brain.

Then Stratton had the pistol. He shot the policeman twice, and then the student as he writhed to free himself from Bobby Ho's last embrace. The professor burst from the room, vaulted off the stage and darted among the chairs, a frenzied hurdler. Stratton shot him in the back.

Outside was a holocaust. Two trucks burned at the far end of the street, and along either side civilians spilled from single-story hutches whose thatched roofs burned with a hungry crackle. The PLA had arrived in force. Stratton counted eight or nine rag doll figures in army khaki sprawled around the trucks.

Stratton saw Panofsky go down hurling a grenade. Bloomfield dove after him. He didn't make it.

Screaming, waving his assault rifle to scatter peasants who seemed more curious than frightened, Stratton headed back up the street the way he had come. Two knock-kneed soldiers emerged from an alley. Stratton took them with a short burst. He ran back to where he had left Gomez and Harkness. An old man brandishing a cane appeared from nowhere. Stratton clubbed him with the rifle.

He found Harkness's body propped against a tree, and then Gomez, firing methodically at dancing shadows from behind a low concrete wall.

Together they broke away from the village and into the black, beckoning fields.

Stratton's wound bled freely. Every step was a fresh souvenir of defeat. After about fifteen minutes he could go no farther. He huddled in an irrigation ditch, Gomez beside him. The Chinese had paused at the edge of the village. To regroup, to await orders, or simply to separate soldiers from civilians. It made no difference. They would come soon enough.

"What a fuck-up," Gomez growled.

Stratton gasped for breath, wincing with pain.

"Did you call for help, for the chopper?"

"Bloomfield had the radio," Stratton whispered.

"Shit. I got no ammo left."

Stratton checked his own rifle. One magazine remained.

"They're all around us, Captain. I can feel it. And the civilians are worse than the fucking soldiers. Crazy bastards. One guy came at us with a cleaver."

Stratton knew what the next question would be, and he dreaded it.

"How are we gonna get out of here, Captain?"

"Pickup is in about thirty-five minutes," Stratton gasped. "Do you think you can find where we left the beacon? It can't be more than a mile or so."

"I can find it."

"Go. I'll stay here and keep them busy till the last minute. When the chopper comes I'll be right behind you."

"Sure," Gomez muttered in a way that meant it would never happen. "Adios."

"Good luck," Stratton called, and waited alone to die.

The bugs were bad. He ignored them. Every time he shifted, his jungle boots squished in the mud. He held perfectly still. The second hand crawled around the face of his watch like a turtle with palsy. He willed himself not to look at it.

The flames were dying now, but enough light remained to make the village a perfect target. The Chinese recognized that. They could not know how large was the force opposing them, and they were in no hurry to find out. Stratton blessed their fear.

Stratton heard officers hollering and the whine of new trucks arriving, but it was nearly twenty minutes before the first infantrymen burst from the closest buildings and dove for cover. They were in range, but Stratton did not fire. To fire was to die.

He waited another agonizing five minutes. Then he crouched and with all his strength hurled the last grenade as far as he could off to the left, away from the route of escape. The night ignited once more: the grenade, followed by Chinese carbines, firing blind. Tracer bullets streaked along the treeline like orange meteors.

Stratton slithered from the ditch and trotted for the landing zone.

He had nearly made it when he heard a grunt and the thrashing of a desperate struggle about thirty yards ahead. In the moonlight he saw a figure wielding a pole, a ghostly jouster.

A scream pierced the night, and then a terrible, expiring "Madre… "

Stratton crashed forward like a murderous boar, the Kalashnikov on full automatic. Before him, squat gray shapes rustled away. Peasant killers.

Systematically, Stratton cut them down. One. Two. Three. Four.

It had not been a pole, but a pitchfork, and it had impaled Gomez as he lay on the moist earth beside the homing beacon that would bring the rescue helicopter.

Gomez was dead when Stratton reached him, the pitchfork deep in his chest.

Mindlessly Stratton knelt by his friend's body and activated the ultrasonic beacon. Already he could hear the invisible helicopter, waiting for the signal.

From behind he heard whispers from approaching Chinese soldiers as they skittered between clumps of cover.

Stratton glanced down at Gomez and smothered a moan. He passed a grimy hand across parched lips. All he could do was wait; it would be a very near thing.

Wait in silence for deliverance, for the sight of the rope ladder peeling out of the chopper's belly. Pray that the chopper came before the Chinese found him.

Stratton heard a noise and knew instantly that the helicopter would come too late, an eternity too late.

It was a squelch in the mud, and he whirled to face it. Another gray shape, only a few yards away. It had been watching him; he should have sensed it.

Stratton sprang forward, his hand working on the Thai blade at his belt. The shape had no gun or he would already be dead. But it could scream, and if it screamed, he would be discovered.

In three frantic bounds he reached the peasant. It was a young woman. She cried out and backed away, her eyes wild. The distant throb of the chopper blades grew louder. A minute or two, maybe more.

The woman turned to flee.

Let her go?

But she would scream. He knew she would scream. She ran in awkward steps, her arms around her belly. Stratton swiftly caught her, sobbing. Not this time, Bobby Ho. Not again.

With his left hand Stratton jerked back the girl's head, and the fire's glow shone on the flesh of her neck. He killed her with a single savage thrust.

Still she screamed, a thin, piteous wail lost in the clatter of the descending helicopter and the confused shouts of the Chinese soldiers. She screamed for her life, and that of the child who lay heavy within her. Two senseless deaths.

Thomas Stratton did not care.

Stratton's throat was dry, his voice rough. He felt himself winding down like a cheap clock.

"Like it was yesterday," he said. "I still dream about it. It still hurts. I murdered them. The woman, the baby… "

Kangmei worried a deep furrow with her stick.