For the Sake of All Living Things (83 page)

“Yes sir.” Duch smiled and set about with his calls. All about them yotheas were in a destroying frenzy.

Nang ran downhill toward the hospital. Firing was sporadic. He found Rath, the company commander, talking lustily with Puc, the leader of Monkey Platoon. “They’ve no way out.” Met Puc laughed. “First we eliminated those in the upper wards. Now our strugglers have sealed all the exits. They’re working through the caves room by room.”

“Bring me there,” Nang said triumphantly. “Have those standing around collect all the medicine. Police up the weapons.”

“Should we set up our own bivouac?”

“No! We don’t want terrain. Let them have it back so we can trap them here again.”

Nang scurried in through a tunnel opening, down a short corridor and into a large room. The bodies of half a dozen dead Viet Namese orderlies were strewn amid the floor clutter. That of a traumatically decapitated yothea lay on the table in the center of the room, his mangled head set upon his chest like some repugnant cancerous growth. Nang smiled broadly at the few yotheas relaxing with the corpses. From a narrow connecting passageway came the muffled sound of small arms. “Have we taken the next room?”

“Oh yes, Met Nang. The next two are ours. It’s the middle one that’s fortified.”

“Fortified?”

“Met Nang.” A small thirteen- or fourteen-year-old boy stood. “You remember me?”

“Yes,” Nang said.

“Met Tam. I helped you at Baray.”

“Yes. Yes, I remember.”

“Met Nang, this is too much. Must we kill those who lie helpless?”

“Would you have us leave them to heal and attack us again?”

“I...I would...Could we take them prisoner? Most have been wounded by American bombs. Wounded in the same fight we fight.”

“We fight the same enemy, Tam, but if they win they’ll turn again on Kampuchea. A tiger doesn’t change its stripes because it’s been maimed by an eagle.”

“I just...think...”

“Why is there fortification in the center room?”

Another yothea stepped forward. “It’s their prison,” he said. “That’s what Thevy thinks.”

“Prison! POWs!”

Nang squeezed through the passage to the second room, a large ward in which forty or fifty patients in narrow three-high bunks had been bayoneted. He squeezed through another passage into a third opening, a room with four operating stations. Again there was the litter and stench of death—doctors, nurses, their heads smashed by clubs or rifle butts—and patients, tubes and hemostats removed, allowed to drain.

Nang slowed, took his time. He sauntered about the ward ordering yotheas to confiscate various medical supplies and instruments. The underground facility was more modern than anything Nang could have imagined—better equipped than any operating room he’d ever seen. “What’s this?” he asked, lifting a chromed instrument.

“I don’t know,” Tam said. From the back of the third room came childlike whimpering. Tam glanced up, looking for the source.

Nang grabbed the handle of the instrument he’d found and shook it. The outer chamber began to whirl about the central handhold. Nang smiled. To him the centrifuge was like a shiny toy. Into the narrow slit passage leading to the final room, two yotheas were firing short bursts. Nang turned, turned back. “What’s that crying?” The distraction of the instrument had temporarily broken his drive for immediate conquest.

“There’s a jail cell back there,” Tam said. He had made a brief investigation and now walked past Nang, his head down as if he were about to vomit.

“Stop!” Nang ordered. With the instrument in his claw he motioned for the young yothea to lead him back. Tam covered his nose.

At the back of the surgical ward Nang, Tam and several yotheas stared into two small dungeons. Inside each were perhaps a dozen Mountaineer or Khmer elders. In one the people were dead—drained human bags—rotting in a half-resealed cave. In the other the living huddled, terrified. “Open it,” Nang said to the yotheas. Immediately two ripped the bamboo-slat door apart. The elders cowered farther to the rear. Nang stepped in, squatted. He still held the chromed centrifuge. “Why are you here?” he asked quietly. No one answered. He pointed at an old woman. “I know you, Auntie,” he said. “Come out.” Still the old people didn’t move, didn’t answer. “Come,” Nang said, gesturing with the instrument.

“take me,” an old man said, “you take me. leave moeun.”

“Moeun?” Nang said.

“take my blood,” the old man said. He rolled to his knees expecting to be dragged from the dungeon. He did not comprehend what had happened in the underground surgical ward before him. In his bitterness he crawled and swore and mumbled at Nang. “bastard, yellow bastard, you don’t need that instrument. i’m O. O positive, you typed my blood twice already, bastard. you keep us for blood for your wounded, then suck us dry and seal our bodies in the caves, go ahead, bastard.”

Nang and his yotheas stumbled back as the barely human creature crawled from the dungeon. Then Nang said, “Get them out of there. They are Kampuchean. To be regained.” Nang turned, stepped toward the slit passage where two yotheas were sporadically firing toward the central wardroom. Then Nang stopped. “Moeun,” he muttered to himself. He turned to see his soldiers assisting the old people. Moeun, he thought. Aunt Ry’s mother! How did she get in...What have those yuon bastards done to Phum Sath Din?!

Nang clamped his teeth, strode to the slit passage. A yothea was about to roll a grenade into the tunnel. Pistol cracks exploded from the far end, the unaimed rounds impacting the sides of the curved tunnel.

“Stop!” Nang barked the order.

Heads snapped. Some yotheas looked at him with who-the-hell-is-he? glances. A few leaped up. The grenadier snarled, “This’ll get em.”

“No. Angkar wants those POWs—alive.” Nang pointed to the man with the grenade. “You. And you, Puc. Go out and come in from the other side. Order the fire ceased.”

In the absence of Krahom fire from the operating ward the firing of the NVA guards in the center chamber increased. For ten minutes they fired wildly. For ten minutes Nang could hear the muffled sounds of KK fire from the other side. Then all fire stopped.

In Viet Namese, to the astonishment of the Khmer Krahom soldiers about him, Nang shouted,
“Dung ban nua! Dung co so.”
Cease fire! Don’t be afraid! To his astonishment the NVA firing stopped.
“Di ra day!”
Come out here.

“Who are you?” a voice shouted.

“I am Comrade Nang, commander of the KT 104 Battalion of the Khmer Liberation Army. Come. You will not be harmed.” With hand signals Nang directed yotheas to move or cover up the corpses.

“Why have you attacked us? Colonel Nui will be furious. We are allies.”

“Yes. A grave mistake. We have ceased our fire. Have you American prisoners?”

“A mistake!”

“Yes. Terrible.” Nang stopped shouting. “Come out now. You’ll see.”

“What?”

“I said”—Nang raised his voice infinitesimally—“if you come here, you will see. We mean you no harm. Some agent must have penetrated our system. You’re not part of the ARVN offensive, are you?”

A soldier peeked around the curve in the corridor then pulled back. He peeked again. Nang laid his rifle at his feet. The soldier stepped into view. “What offensive?”

“Haven’t you heard? The ARVN has attacked all behind the lines.”

“No! How?”

Nang held his arms out as if to embrace the soldier. The man edged back. Behind him a second guard peered about the earthen wall. “Two American divisions and the ARVN Airborne Division have landed to the west. They’re trying to cut off your troops from the rear. We were told they’d captured this camp.”

The Viet Namese guard turned and spoke quickly to the men behind him. A moment later he emerged alone. “Are we free to go above?”

“Yes.” In Khmer Nang ordered free passage for the allied troops. Yotheas glanced at one another quizzically. A few, copying Nang, smiled at the NVA guard. The guard retreated into the center room then emerged leading seven men. Nang did not attempt to disarm them but let them mill a moment amid the yotheas. In Viet Namese he addressed the soldier who had emerged first. “Have you American prisoners?”

“No. Only an ARVN captain.”

“Seven guards for one captain?”

“No. No. Two guards. These others fell back when your troops came.”

“Are there more?”

“An orderly with the captain.”

Nang smiled. In Khmer he said, “Give these men cigarettes.” None of the Viet Namese indicated understanding though all smiled tentatively and, when offered, accepted the smokes. “Give them more.” Nang smiled. “Then take them to meet their brothers.”

The light in the center room was faint, worse than in the wards, much worse than in the surgical cave. The air was stale, foul, smelling of infection and mildew. A single orderly, a man of sixty or more years, sat on a gray metal chair reading a recent copy of Hanoi’s newspaper. In the only occupied bunk a severe-looking man lay grinding his teeth against a constant pain in his left arm and hand—pain in a limb that was no longer part of him.

“You”—Nang gestured to the orderly—“why do you sit there?”

The man slowly lifted his head from the news and looked without understanding at the filthy black-clad boy with a filthier scarf wrapped about his waist and a dust-covered assault rifle held by a two-fingered claw. Nang repeated the question in Viet Namese. “I understood the first time,” the orderly said in Khmer. “Your Viet Namese is Northern.”

Nang pointed the weapon at the orderly’s chest. “Forget my Viet Namese. Who’s that?”

“He is a wounded man,” the orderly answered gently.

“Why haven’t you killed him?”

“Me?!”

“Your command. Why do you let an enemy live?”

“He is a wounded man,” the orderly repeated. “I could never hurt him. As for the command, they think he may be of value. Maybe to you, too, eh?”

“Who is he?” Nang demanded. The soldier grimaced at Nang’s harshness but seemed to pay little attention.

“He is from somewhere. Saigon maybe? The Americans washed his brain.”

Nang pushed the old man back with the flash suppressor of his rifle and approached the patient. “You were captain?”

“Ah intelligence officer,” the orderly offered. “An intelligent intelligence officer. But I don’t think he understands Kh...”

“Captain?” Nang repeated in Viet Namese.

“Có. Dai úy.”
Yes. Captain.

Nang stared at the soldier, at his left arm truncated and wrapped in gauze. Nang raised his own stubbed hand and smiled a slight smile. “For you they brought in the Mi-4?”

The captain acknowledged Nang’s hand with a flick of his eyes and an easing of his grimace. “
Không.
No,” he said. “It was for a colonel but they let me come, too.” It was a joke, the second part, and the captain tried to grin.

“Where’s this colonel?”

“He’s dead,” the orderly interrupted. “He didn’t have much blood.”

“These murdering pricks killed him.” The captain’s words were acidic. His countenance changed. His pain-tensed features became caustic.

“I know you,” Nang said. “What’s your name?”

The captain didn’t answer.

“Name? Unit? Tell me everything.”

Still the captain didn’t answer.

The old orderly stepped between Nang and the bunkside, put a hand on the prisoner’s forehead, then said, “He is too hot to talk.”

Nang lifted his rifle and aimed it at the orderly’s head. “Name, Dai uy Tran.” The captain’s eyes snapped to his filthy captor. “I know you,” Nang repeated.

“He is a wounded man, eh?” The orderly turned and looked down the barrel to Nang’s eyes aiming in on his own. “Such a small world. You know...”

Nang squeezed. The AK cracked three times. Teeth, eyeballs, brains burst, splattered. The body fell. The captain, covered with wet bloody tissue chunks, startled, shivered, amazed not by what had happened, but by its suddenness.

“I know you, Lieutenant. Oh, now Captain. Tran. Tran Van Le. Or is it Mister Truong Cao Kiet?” The captain’s eyes widened. He searched Nang’s face for a clue to who this madman might be. “Hey, now you’re
my
detainee. Ha!” Still Tran did not recognize Nang. “I bake bread. Remember?”

Tran Van Le shook his head. Then a faint memory clicked. Then flowed back. “Hai? Hai Hoa-Binh?”

Nang laughed. He laughed uproariously. “Ha! You do remember!”

Tran attempted to sit up but the wounds in his abdomen shot pain throughout his body. He fell back on the bunk. “Who,” Tran gasped, “are you with this time?”

“I am the Liberation Army of Kampuchea.” Nang smiled, giggled.

“Then let me help you,” Tran said. He did not plead. He did not show weakness but even in supplication showed his strength.

“Help me?” Nang removed his bayonet from its sheath.

“How are you called? You’re not Binh.”

“Call me...Nung. Nung Angkar.”

“Lao? You are northern Khmer?”

“First Khmer,” Nang said. “Very first.” He walked slowly to the oil lamp and placed the bayonet in the flame.

“You wish to rid your home of Communist Viet Namese?” Tran said.

“Of all Viet Namese,” Nang responded. He flipped the blade over, looked at the carbon smudge on the side which had been to the flame.

“I wish the same,” Tran said. “Let me help you expel the Tonkinese.”

Nang laughed. He pulled the blade from the flame, spun, grabbed Tran’s left ankle and slapped the flat of the steel on the sole of his bare foot. Immediately Tran jerked. Nang pulled. Tran’s abdominal sutures ripped and pain flooded him as he flopped back unable to kick, punch or pull away. The skin blistered beneath the blade, almost immediately filling with fluid, pushing the heat source away and protecting the inner tissues. The pain dulled.

Nang laughed, dropped Tran’s foot. “Yes, Captain. You can help me. That’s how my feet were burned. Mine were worse. Ha! That will heal. You get out of here. I’ll see that you make it back to your country, Captain. Go fight the Tonkinese. But remember, Captain...Remember Kampuchea. It is your fate. It is the fate of all Asia.”

There was but a single pin-sized hole in the wall, just below the roofline of Chhuon’s cell. Chained by the ankles to the floor he could see nothing but the faint beam lighting the dusty air when the sun shone brightly or a pale glow when the moon was full. Otherwise his cell was blackness. Twice a day for a few minutes the door was opened and he was given a bowl of rancid rice. His sanitation bucket was exchanged every other day. Then, in blackness with the door rebolted, his only friend was the pencil beam of light. He had tried to keep track of the days but in trying he’d confused himself. Had a day passed while he stared at the dust floating free and lazy in the still air, passed when he blinked, blinked or slept? He could not distinguish minutes from hours from days from lightdark. They feed me off schedule, he thought at one point. Surely they do. To confuse me. It’s not once a day.