I jogged up to it, avoiding stubs of concrete pilings which marked the footings of adjacent buildings now removed. The last ten feet were covered by a headlong dive. My roll carried me under the vehicle. I belly-crawled under the rear axle and stood up just beyond the tailgate. I pulled myself up into the back of the truck. I was on my hands and knees. One hand rested in a thick, glutinous substance. I held it up so what little light there was could fall on it. The smear was tacky to the touch and a dull reddish color. That’s all I needed to know that this truck had been used to carry away the wounded Martin and the blood-dripping body of Phan Wan.
A door slammed close by. Voices — two of them — came toward the truck. I dropped flat on the bed of the truck, facing the tailgate. Wilhelmina was in my hand, the safety off.
The two men got into the cab from opposite sides. The driver cranked up the engine. Headlights came on, reflecting off the building’s sides. I’d surely be seen if I jumped out and ran.
The truck was moving, backing up. I looked over the tailgate and directly into the window of the infirmary. It was one large room with no partitions. I could see most of the interior. At the far end, two Vietnamese army officers were engaged in conversation. They stood near the only inside wall. A solid wood partition jutted out from the far side of the building to a point halfway into the main room. The fourth side of the corner alcove was open with what looked like cement-reinforcing mesh bolted to thick studs. Behind the thick wire lattice sat Keith Martin, strapped to a heavy wooden chair. Powerful, blinding lights inside the cage were focused on his face. The preliminary interrogation had begun.
The truck drew away. My glimpse into the building was brief, but enough to tell me that freeing Martin would be no easy matter. I had seen three armed enlisted men in addition to the officers in charge.
At the first opportunity before the truck picked up too much speed, I bailed out. I struck the ground, lost my footing and somersaulted. I got up, massaging one elbow.
Willow answered my low-pitched whistle with one of her own. We huddled together in the darkness beside a pile of rubble. “I saw him. He looks all right. They’ve got him penned up in a cell that needs more than a can opener to break open. Two officers and at least three soldiers are guarding him. We could clean out the troops, but we’d need something like a burning bar or three pounds of plastique to open up that corner room.”
“Any sign of Bu Chen?”
“No.” It took a moment for me to see her point. “No, I’m sure no connection between Bu Chen and Martin has been made. Until someone learns that Bu Chen was picked up only a short distance from where Martin was captured, he’ll probably be held for borrowing a bicycle. That rascal just might sweet talk his way out of the fix he’s in.”
“I wish he were here,” lamented Willow. “He could round up what we need to pry Martin loose... something like a Sherman tank.”
“That’s it!” I beamed. “We’ve got it. Not a tank, but the next best thing.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her up. “Come on! We’re going to get ourselves a battle wagon.”
Willow held the penlight while I hot-wired the ignition. The big diesel powering the bulldozer caught and roared. We surged forward, cleated tracks biting into the ground. The lurching machine was tested in the first fifteen yards. At that point it flattened a twenty foot span of the construction site fence.
Twenty yards from the end of the infirmary building, I brought the mechanical beast to a halt. I set the blade and lined it up with the corner of the building. I showed Willow how to get it in motion and told her to watch for my signal.
I ran forward and around to the far side of the building. Willow responded to the turned-on beam of my flashlight. The bulldozer started forward — straight on target.
I raced half the length of the building and jumped up onto the loading platform. I listened. The sound of the bulldozer was plain. It would become attention-getting louder in moments. After the count of five, I eased open on the door in front of me enough for one eye to see inside. One of the officers, catercornered from my position, was peering out of a window. The second officer joined him, looking over his shoulder.
The three enlisted men, posted about the large, open room, began to fidget. The approaching rumble drew their undivided attention. The sharp edge of the bulldozer blade was no more than ten yards from the building corner now.
One enlisted man made a dash for the window next to the one the two officers were using. The other two soldiers raced over to gaze out as well.
I stepped into the room armed with Pierre. I rolled the tiny gas bomb mid-way between the two clusters of bewildered observers. Then I jumped back as the air became asphyxiating.
I got halfway to the rear end of the building before an explosion sounded. Windows shattered and the side walls buckled and puffed out. Spurts of gray smoke spewed out of empty window casings. The whole building shifted on its concrete footings. The bulldozer had reached its goal.
I reached the corner just as the structure was being sheared away. I saw a figure leave the operator’s cab. Willow hit the ground, lighting with the grace of a ballet dancer. The mechanical giant thundered on.
As soon as it cleared the caved-in corner of the building, I scrambled over splintered, broken boards and twisted reinforcing mesh to reach Martin. His chair had toppled over. He was covered with dust. He was stunned but unhurt. He responded to his name while I set him upright and took off the binding straps. He let me guide him out through the torn-away corner to where Willow was waiting. The bulldozer was waddling on like a monstrous bug, clawing blindly on to a mindless destination.
By lifting Martin out of the proverbial frying pan, I had plunged all three of us into the fire. It wouldn’t take long to reconstruct what had happened. The prisoner had been rescued. The search for him and his accomplices would be immediate, intense, and widespread. There was no place to go. The smashed down fence protecting the construction site was like an arrow pointing to the foreman’s shack.
Willow seemed unconcerned. She drew Martin along, heading directly for our former haven. “There’s no point in going back there,” I objected.
“Trust me, Nick,” Willow replied. “First we’ve got to retrieve what we’ve left there and hang onto it. We’re going to be fine. There’s a trick I remember from Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.’s early movies. He was a master stuntman, you know.”
“We’re going to need more than some old-fashioned gymnastics backed by the right camera angle,” I protested.
“It will work because it plays on the basic character of humans. Man is a ground-oriented being. Most of their world exists at eye level or below. We’re going to use that trait to keep us secure.”
When Willow explained in detail, I went along. Her idea was wild, but better than any I had. In fact, it was the only out that gave us any chance at all.
I didn’t realize how hairy it would be, and afterward I wondered if I could have done it in daylight. For when daylight came, Willow, Martin and I were sixty feet in the air, invisible from the ground, and unreachable by any reasonable means.
We lay stretched out on the uppermost girders of the five story building skeleton. The flimsy bamboo scaffolding which would eventually surround and reach all levels of the structure had been erected only as far as the third floor when active work ceased. That left a terrifying gap of twenty unaccessible feet which could be spanned only by a bird, a cherry picker, a helicopter in flight, or a nerveless, determined acrobat with the skill of Willow. With expertise and sheer guts, she went hand-over-hand up the slimmest of ropes to the very top. Then working fearlessly on unsure, windy footing, she rigged a lift system that took Martin and me up the final treacherous height. Because of Willow, we had accomplished the impossible.