‘What about my friends? Will they be safe?’
‘They’re probably on their way to Da Nang already. Those people at the camp looked like they were only coming after us.’
That produced mixed emotions. ‘I hope they got away, but… that is not good for us, if they want me so badly, is it?’
‘I’ll do everything I can to get you back to your dad,’ he assured the young woman. ‘And the quicker we start moving, the sooner that’ll be.’
They set off across the hilltop. ‘You do not like to keep still, do you, Eddie?’ said Natalia with a half-smile.
‘Sitting around on my arse has never been my thing,’ he said, amused. ‘I like to do stuff, you know? Feel like I’m actually accomplishing something.’
‘I know exactly that feeling,’ she replied. ‘It is one of the reasons why I came to Vietnam — to make a difference, to help. The people in this part of the country are very poor; they cannot afford even simple medicines and vaccinations that can save lives — and there are also after-effects of the war, even now.’ She gestured in the direction of the radio tower, now hidden again behind trees as they began to descend the other side of the hill. ‘The stupid fight between the East and the West brought nothing but misery to the people caught in it. I wanted to do something to make up for it.’
Chase gave her a curious look. ‘Sounds like you take it personally.’ He couldn’t imagine why; she only appeared to be in her early twenties, barely old enough to remember the end of the Cold War.
Natalia shook her head. ‘Not me, but my family. Some of them were involved in things that… I do not like.’ She fell silent again.
He decided to let her stay quiet for now. The hill became steeper. He used the rifle as a makeshift walking stick, helping the young blonde down the slippery slope with his other hand.
It took several minutes for them to reach flatter ground. ‘That is better,’ Natalia said with a sigh. She wiped caked mud off one foot, then set off through the trees.
‘Hold on,’ Chase told her as he took out the map. ‘Let me see where we are.’
‘If we go north now, we will get to the hill with the tower,’ she countered as she kept walking. ‘Then if we go around it, we will reach the road, no?’
‘I know, but I want to take the quickest route.’ He used his watch’s hour hand in relation to the direction of the sun to locate north. ‘Okay, so… that way.’ He pointed.
Almost directly at Natalia. ‘You see? I was right all along,’ she said, smiling. Chase shot her a sardonic grin and started after her. ‘I told you, I have been here for four months. I have learned some—’
Click!
The sound was metallic, not the crackle of breaking wood.
‘Freeze!’ Chase yelled, trained instinct sending him diving to the ground even before the cry fully left his lips. ‘Don’t move! Whatever you do, do not move!’
A muted sound of pain escaped through Natalia’s clenched teeth. She had started to lift her foot — but froze on his shout, forcing herself to hold still. Chase raised his head. Something was poking through the mud and rotten leaves, grubby metal visible beneath the young woman’s sole.
Three narrow prongs jutting up from a dull green cylinder. The trigger and fuse assembly of a landmine.
‘Stay still, stay very still,’ Chase warned. He put down the gun, then crawled towards her. He recognised the particular type of weapon as he drew closer: an American M16A2 ‘Bouncing Betty’. Hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions, of similar mines had been laid during the Vietnam War, strewn throughout the jungles to hinder and kill the Viet Cong.
Many were still there. And still deadly.
Suddenly sweating, and not from the rising heat, Chase reached Natalia and examined the weapon. His SAS training had included mine defusal; the Bouncing Betty had been one of the types covered. He knew that, in theory, he could render it harmless fairly simply.
In theory.
In tropical conditions, an M16A2 had a life expectancy of twelve years. The Vietnam War had ended in 1975, so even if this particular mine had been laid on the very last day of the conflict, it was nineteen years beyond that. Time might have rendered it inert, moving parts rusted and clogged with mud, its explosive charge of tetryl broken down by microbes in the soil.
Or… it could have become so unstable that a hard jolt would detonate it.
Natalia whimpered again, from pain rather than fear. One of the prongs was digging deeply into her foot. There was no blood, so it had not broken the skin, but she didn’t dare pull away. ‘What is it?’ she whispered.
Chase looked up at her. ‘Natalia, I need you to stay calm, and keep very still. Okay? Promise me you’ll do that.’
‘I will,’ she managed to say.
‘Good.’ He kept his gaze locked on hers. ‘You’ve stepped on a landmine. Keep calm, stay calm,’ he added as she tensed. ‘It’s not working properly, otherwise it would have already gone off. It’s called a Bouncing Betty — it’s meant to spring up in the air and explode after someone steps on it, but even if they keep their foot on it, it’ll still blow up. This one hasn’t, so the fuse is probably jammed ’cause it’s so old. But if you move your foot, it might still go off — unless I defuse it.’
‘Can — can you do that?’ Her voice was trembling.
‘Yeah. I can. I know it hurts, but stay still.’ He finally broke eye contact, bringing his head right up to the mine and gently blowing damp leaves away from the fuse.
A small metal ring protruded from its side. If the weapon had been rigged to explode when a tripwire was pulled, the line would run through the ring, but there was no sign of one. That meant it was pressure-detonated. Natalia’s footstep had triggered it — and now her weight was all that was holding it in check.
But was it a dud… or would any movement finally set it off?
He didn’t know. All he could do was try to recall his training. ‘Okay,’ he said, speaking as much to keep Natalia’s mind occupied as to focus his own thoughts, ‘I know how to defuse it. There’s a little hole where the safety pin went.’ With great care, he used the tip of his smallest finger to brush dirt away from the fuse assembly, revealing a small circular opening in the side of a metal protrusion between the three prongs. ‘I’ll need to put something in it.’
A twig? No, too thick. It would have to be a piece of wire or similar, but where would he find one in the middle of the jungle? There was nothing in his gear—
Wait — there was. The radio headset. Its connecting plug was too large to fit the hole, but the wire itself…
‘Keep still, I’m going to get up for a minute,’ he warned. Natalia nodded. Chase moved back, then carefully rose to his knees. He pulled off the headset and used his thumb and forefinger to give the plastic-sheathed wire an experimental crimp. It seemed to hold its new shape.
With a nod of reassurance to the German, he took out his Swiss Army knife and unfolded the scissors to snip a short length of wire. He then got back down on his belly to begin his work.
Right away he saw there was going to be a problem. ‘Natalia, I need you to keep still,’ he said. Her foot — no, her whole body — was quivering. The prongs flexed under her weight.
‘I’m trying,’ she said, voice strained. ‘But my foot is hurting — and my leg is shaking. I cannot stop it.’
‘All right, okay. Er… where are you from?’
She was surprised. ‘What?’
‘Tell me about yourself, it’ll help you stay calm. Where are you from?’
‘Uh… I am from Hamburg.’
Chase waited a few seconds, but she said nothing more, and her shakes were not subsiding. ‘I’ve never been there. Nice place?’ he prompted.