Nicholai found a rifle and picked it up. Solange draped the sling of a burp gun around her neck. They walked to the far edge of the trees. In front of them stretched a long rectangle of tall sword grass bordered on the right and left by paddy dikes. Beyond the grass rose another stand of trees.
“We’ll be safe once we get there,” Quoc said, pointing to the trees.
“Why is that?” Nicholai asked.
“We disappear.”
Nicholai had no patience for Zen metaphysics. If Quoc, whether he was really a monk or not, thought they were going to meditate themselves into thin air, Nicholai wanted a more mundane plan. The plane had flown off, but the pilot had certainly radioed their position to the patrols that were thick on the ground.
It wouldn’t be long before troops arrived, and they would run out of neither bullets nor fuel. The French troops and native militia that had been crisscrossing the countryside would converge in a neat, organized pattern and surround them. The sheltering trees would become a death trap, unless Quoc had an actual plan for escape.
“Our motherland will swallow us,” Quoc said.
Poetic, Nicholai thought, but hardly practical.
Of course his mind went to a different metaphor, the go-kang, and he saw it all too clearly. Their little pool of black stones would soon stretch into a thin line and progress toward Quoc’s apparently magic trees, there to group into a pool again. The white stones – and there were many more of them – were even now gathering around them.
Go players had a term for such an isolated, surrounded group.
Dead stones.
And, Nicholai recognized, the flat go-kang surface had become an anachronism. The ancients never anticipated modern airpower, which literally added another dimension to the game. They couldn’t have imagined stones floating above the board, delivering death and destruction below.
Nor, he had to admit, was Go a model for battle. The go-kang was serene, quiet, perfect in its organization and form. The modern battlefield was chaotic, noisy, hellish in the anarchy of its blood, carnage, and agony.
Modernity, he thought, has destroyed so much.
He forced his mind back to the reality on the ground. Trap or no, the copse on the far side of the grass was a better position than the one they now occupied, its size created a larger defensive perimeter from which to make a last stand. He made it to be a little less than a half mile away, so it should take only minutes to reach.
But the sword grass would be a painful impediment, although doubtless narrow foot and game trails had been cut through the chest-high blades. The burden of the weapons, especially now that there were fewer porters, would slow them down further.
Perhaps…
No, Quoc would never think of abandoning the weapons, and when Nicholai looked at it honestly, neither would he.
They had come at too high a cost.
The quiet behind told him that the Viet Minh were ready to move out.
He turned and saw that they would leave their dead comrades. Everything useful had been removed from their bodies.
“It comes at a high cost, your freedom,” Nicholai said.
“For every enemy we kill,” Quoc answered, “they will kill ten of us. And in the end, it won’t matter.”
“Save, perhaps, to the ten.”
“The individual is nothing when compared to the whole,” Quoc answered.
Nicholai stared at him.
Seeing his true nature.
And, perhaps, a bit of his own.
“You’re wrong,” he said.
“You will come to see.”
“I hope not,” Nicholai said. “I hope never.”
If each individual became only part of the machine, at the end of the day there would be only the machine. The inexorable, impersonal, grinding machinery of the modern. He turned away from Quoc, took Solange by the arm, and walked her away, out of hearing.
“I was thinking,” he said, “about the first meal we’ll have when we get to wherever we’re going.”
“Oh yes?” she said. “And what were you thinking?”
“You made a dish back in Tokyo…”
“I made a number of dishes back in Tokyo,” Solange said, her wide mouth opening into a smile.
Nothing can dim the light in those green eyes, he thought. “The coq au vin, perhaps.”
“Simple French country cooking.”
“Simplicity sounds wonderful,” Nicholai said. “With what wine, then?”
She speculated on a number of choices, narrowing it down to a handful and then finding it impossible to choose. Then they discussed which vegetables they would have as side dishes, how they should be prepared, and then which dessert would be best, a tarte tatin or perhaps a marquise au chocolat.
“Should we invite De Lhandes?” Nicholai asked.
“Yes, of course,” Solange answered, “but he must leave straight after coffee so we can make love.”
“Out he goes, then.”
She kissed him, long and lovingly.
163
THEY WERE ONLY fifty yards into the sword grass when the shooting started.
Turning to his left, Nicholai saw the line of Legionnaires come onto the dike, and to the far right of the troops he thought he saw a soldier with a vermilion beret directing their fire.
Signavi.
Nicholai lifted his rifle to his shoulder and returned fire, shooting to his left but moving ahead. The copse of trees was their only faint hope and they had to keep moving, for getting bogged down in the grass was certain death.
Quoc saw it and ordered a dozen men to form a screening line to their left to try to slow up the French advance and buy enough time to get the weapons into the trees. The porters were amazingly disciplined, not pausing to shoot, or drop to the ground, or even duck. They just kept shouldering their loads and moving ahead at a slow trot.
Signavi saw what they were doing, directed fire on them, and several of the porters dropped. The others strained to carry the weight, and a couple of Viet Minh lowered their rifles and took their places on the bamboo poles.
Two Legionnaires fell as the screening line came into action, and Nicholai saw Signavi direct a squad to his left, toward the copse, to cut off the Viet Minh. If the French got into the trees first, it was over.
He shouted to Solange, “Can you run?”
She nodded.
They took off, the saw grass slicing their faces and chests as they ran toward the copse, angling off to the left to block the French. Several Viet Minh joined them, and they ran through the grass as bullets zipped around their heads. One man dropped, and then another, and then it was as if they had disturbed an angry nest of hornets and the air buzzed around them.
But most of them made it to a tiny rise above a ripple of ground, and from there they could lay down fire on the flanking Legionnaires, forcing them to stop, drop to the ground, and engage in a firefight.
Behind him, the porters moved toward the trees.
Nicholai looked back to the dike and saw Signavi talk into a radio attached to the backpack of one of his soldiers.
No, Nicholai thought, please no.
He raised his rifle, sighted in, took a deep breath, and fired. The bullet hit Signavi in the high spine, and he clutched at his back and then fell.
But it was too late.
Only a minute later, Nicholai heard the plane engine, and then he saw it, but this time it didn’t drop low to strafe, but stayed high until it was directly above the rectangle of grass, and then it dropped its load.
Napalm.
The grass caught fire immediately, and a wall of flame rolled toward them.
Men ignited like torches and spun madly around, shrieking. Others seemed to simply melt.
Nicholai took Solange’s hand and ran.
The wave of flame rolled behind them like a fiery red tsunami from a nightmare. Nicholai felt it scorch his back and singe his hair as the intense heat seemed to suck the air from his lungs.