It was getting hard to breathe. Probably the stench of the hides and the tanning fluid. Maybe loss of blood. Whatever. The room started to rotate. Gunfire ripped through the windows. Leather strips fluttered.
And, in the dark, a curious thing happened. I couldn't be sure, but I thought she moved to place herself between me and the Cong. Whatever. I grabbed for her wrist and hit the deck. But I didn't quite get hold of her. She slid free. "Down," I snarled.
The shooting went on and on.
She knelt beside me. "You can't stay here."
Not we. You.
The floor was wet and slippery. It smelled vaguely of formaldehyde. "Okay," I said. I found her in the dark and pulled her after me.
Abruptly the gunfire stopped.
There was a door in the rear wall. I pushed it open and we shoved through out onto a loading dock. A truck with no wheels was parked outside. I glanced up: the tannery was located in a three-story building. A staircase mounted along the wall to the second floor, where there was a wooden landing and a door. Other buildings crouched nearby. Occasional bursts of sparks fell among them. "This way," I said, climbing down into the street. "We might just have time to get clear."
She shook her head. No. "I don't travel in alleys," she said.
I opened my mouth to tell her she was crazy. If I could have got hold of her, I'd have dragged her along. But she stepped back, and studied the stairway. Flickers of red light glowed in her eyes. Without a word, she started up.
I hesitated. "They'll trap us." You dumb bitch. I thought it. But I didn't say it. She stopped at the upper level and tried the door. It opened and she disappeared back into the tannery. Goddamn it.
I started up, and got halfway when a blast took out the lower room. She'd left the door open for me, and I was howling mad when I caught up with her. "They'll burn this goddamn place down around our ears," I said.
She stopped, and turned toward me. "Courage, Anderson," she said.
Anderson? Had I told her my name?
"There are more stairs here," she added, coolly. "Toward the center of the building. I believe they go all the way to the roof.''
She was moving among walls and offices.
With all chance of escape now cut off, I took the sensible course. I followed. "Who are you?" I asked.
Behind us there were shouts, running footsteps, occasional shots. Shadows danced outside.
Voices. In French. Already on the lower staircase.
They fired a couple of bursts through the door.
She waited for me, and led the way up to the third floor. I moved as quietly as I could. The woman had been gasping occasionally, peering at her burned flesh, holding up her arms and rotating them against the air, as though she derived a cooling effect from the motion. She paused in the darkness at the top of the staircase, pushed through a wooden door, and strode into a dusty corridor lined with storerooms. She looked up, murmured something. But I caught a sense of satisfaction. Then, to me: "Skylight."
I could see it, dark, stained, rusted, padlocked. Out of reach. "Nice move," I said.
There was confusion below. They didn't know where we were. But that condition wouldn't last long. Worse: I didn't feel good. I was sweating heavily, and the stairs felt slippery. The night felt slippery.
Something creaked, broke, and I was looking out at a rooftop.
She was silhouetted momentarily against the smoking sky.
"Hurry," she said. Her voice sounded far away.
The stars grew dim.
She reached down, took my hand.
It was the last thing I felt as darkness closed in.
When I came out of it, she was standing with her back to me, gazing over the city. The building shook under the whine and whomp of incoming mortars and distant artillery. Automatic fire clattered in the streets, and screams spilled into the night. Long plumes of smoke drifted across the face of the moon. "It never ends," she said.
I wondered how she'd known I was awake. "Yeah," I said. "It never does."
She turned. Her features were composed, calm, masked. Her eyelids were half-closed, her lips parted revealing sharp white teeth. Most of the soot was gone. "You have no idea, Anderson."
That was the second time she'd used my name. "Who are you?" I asked. "Do I know you?"
"No," she said.I was propped against a chimney, and my shoulder ached. I moved cautiously, but something spasmed and I gasped. She was gazing toward the horizon, and gave no sign she'd heard. Lights were moving high in the sky. Helicopters. "Are you from Quangngai?" I asked.
Her eyes clouded. And she smiled. But it was a smile composed of shadow and empty spaces. "I'm from Aus-terlitz," she said. "And Cannae. And Lepanto and Gettysburg." The voice was controlled. Resigned. Weary.
"I don't think I understand." I was chilled.
"No." She was watching something in the street. "You don't."
There was a doorway in the center of the roof. Heavy. Ribbed with iron bands. The door was closed, braced by a timber. "Is that the way we came?"
"No," she said.
"Where are they?"
"Everywhere on the lower floors. And in the street. They were trying to ambush some of your friends." Again that stab of pain in her eyes. "They had some success."
"Sons of bitches."
I could hear footsteps on the stairs. The door was rusted, bent, splintered. But it looked solid. The Cong were laughing, sliding their bolts forward.
The knob rattled.
"Have no fear," said the woman. "You're safe with me." Another chill.
I heard them retreating. Then the door blew out, and flame belched from the stairway. Six men stepped onto the roof.
She watched them without emotion. They leveled rifles at us. "I'm sorry," I said to her. "They may let you go."
She came silently from the roof's edge, and stood by my side.
They watched in angry silence. An officer came out behind them. He was bullwhip lean, efficient, alert. His movements were crisply economical. "ID," he said to me.
Without hesitation, I pulled it out of my wallet and handed it over. He glanced at it, and lost interest. Only a corporal. His gaze traveled to the woman. He slid his pistol out of its holster and used it to signal her to get away from me.
She didn't move.
The weapon was a Czech automatic of the kind commonly carried by NVA officers. He caressed his jawwith the barrel, and brought the gun up until I was looking into the front sights.
Then she stepped directly in front of me.
I couldn't see his face. He spoke to her in French. The tone was hard and cold. Annoyed. He would not warn her again.
A sudden hot wind blew across the rooftop.
The officer shrugged. His finger tightened on the trigger.
But something in her face caught his eyes. He stared at her. She stood quietly. Sweat stood out on his brow. I started to move, to get out from behind her, but she reached back and seized my shoulder, held me still.
A pulse appeared in his throat. His soldiers seemed frozen, staring into her face as their captain did. Then one broke free, the youngest of the group. He shook himself, as though awakening suddenly in an unfamiliar place. His eyes glittered with hard cold fear. But he advanced nonetheless, forcing himself forward, and stood with his captain.
The others, perhaps released by his movement, began to back away. Weapons sagged.
The officer's breath was coming in short hard gasps.
He struggled with his gun, trying (I thought) to pull the trigger. But it was no longer aimed at me.
He took a step back. And one by one, they retreated into the stairway until only the young soldier was left. He held tight to his AK-47, and stared at her with stricken eyes. She spoke to him in Vietnamese, gently, and then he too was gone.
"Who the hell are you?"
"Do you really not know?" Her face had taken on the tint of the smoldering sky. "After all this time, after all the killing, do you really not know?" Her gaze swept the rooftop, and locked on the city. Savagery flickered in her eyes. "Your fathers knew me. At Troy, at Port Arthur, at the Coral Sea, they knew me. Pray that your sons do not."