White Crocodile (11 page)

‘I don’t know.’ His voice was tight. ‘Have you told anyone else, Tess? About what you’re doing out here? About what you found last night?’

‘No.’

‘Good. Don’t.’

‘Why? In case the White Crocodile hears me?’

He gave the suggestion of a smile. ‘No smoke without fire. Isn’t that what you Brits say?’

She was struck by how the smile transformed him, made him boyish. But it was gone, as quickly as it had appeared.

‘You found that woman, didn’t you? This morning?’

‘Yes, I found her. Jacqueline, she was called. Jacqueline Rong.’ Her gaze dipped to the floor. ‘I found her, and then MacSween drove her little boy to the orphanage.’

‘She’s not the only one.’

Tess looked up. ‘What do you mean?’

‘There are others. Ten, fifteen gone missing, a couple killed, all from villages surrounding that minefield.’

‘Surrounding Koh Kroneg?’

He nodded. ‘MacSween didn’t tell you?’

‘No.’

‘The locals think that the White Crocodile has possessed the place, that it’s taken these women.’ Alex gave a short, harsh laugh. ‘MacSween doesn’t want to freak out our Khmer mine clearers. MCT’s history if they get scared. So he’s playing everything down. But that’s going to get harder, with Johnny’s accident, plus the other we had six months ago—’

Silence – a silence which quickly began to feel awkward.

Alex broke it. ‘Go back to your apartment and pack your things. You’re leaving tomorrow.’

‘What?’
Where the hell had that come from?
‘Fuck off. No way.’

He bent nearer to her, lowering his voice. ‘You need to listen to me, Tess.’

‘
No.
Who are you to tell me what to do?’

He placed his hands on her shoulders. ‘Listen to me, Tess.’

‘Get off me.’ She tried to pull away.

‘For Christ’s sake, listen to me.’ There was only a thin veil of control in his voice.

‘Get your fucking hands off me.’ She shoved him with the flat of her hands.

‘You need to leave. Before you get in too far.’

‘You’ve got no right to tell me what to do. You don’t know anything about me.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

‘What the fuck does that mean?’ She suddenly felt desperate to be away from him. Twisting sideways, she bent her head and sank her teeth into his hand. Swearing, he let go of her shoulders. She turned and ran for the door.

‘Do you think Luke was murdered, Tess?’

His words stopped her in her tracks.

‘I know that you were married to Luke, and I know why you’re here.’

Slowly she turned back to face him; his gaze locked with hers.

‘You don’t know anything about this place, Tess. Go home before you no longer can.’

Tiep Thilda liked to get up early, to tend to her animals before anyone else in the village was awake. She hated the sideways glances from the other villagers and the woman she seemed to be when she saw herself through their eyes: someone to scorn, barely out of her teens, stuck with six-month-old twins – neither of them a boy – left by a husband who had vanished into thin air one night when she was seven months pregnant. At first there had been sympathy, but that had hardened into suspicion and, lately, outright mistrust. She knew they talked about her, questioned whether her ‘husband’ had left payment and disappeared once her allure had vanished with her swelling belly. How else could she afford two goats for milk and six healthy laying chickens?

Four in the morning; she was alone. The one light she could see shone from a hut at the far end of the village, well out of her way. She crossed the damp expanse of grass to the small, muddy corral where she kept her animals, walking carefully to avoid tripping, navigating by the light of the full moon. She had built it near to the edge of the jungle, fifty metres up a shallow hill from her hut, so that the animals had shade on hot days, but were still close enough for her to keep an eye on them. She came to the corral, put the feed bucket down and bent to slide through the parallel bamboo poles of the fence.

A noise behind her. She wasn’t a girl who scared easily, but it irritated her to think that someone had taken to spying on her. It was the same noise she had heard yesterday morning. And the morning before. She had searched the tree line behind her carefully on the previous occasions and seen nothing.

Straightening up on the other side of the fence, the goats jostling her for food, she scanned the edge of the jungle again, the foliage drained of colour by the moon’s light. For the first time now came creeping unease. She had heard whispers of a girl disappearing from a neighbouring village, bordering the same minefield, a few nights ago. She didn’t know if they were true: nobody spoke directly to her any more and what she knew was pieced together from overheard snatches of conversation as she had collected drinking water from the well. A wind stirred the leaves, and suddenly her mouth felt completely dry.

She looked down the hill to the village. A man had come out of one of the huts near hers. She could see the light from his lantern as he moved around. She could make it back to her own hut – it was an easy downhill run – in less than a minute. Shunting herself back out of the fence, she broke into a jog, barely managing to stay on her feet in the slick of mud. She could no longer hear the rustling of leaves in the jungle behind her; everything was masked by her own heaving breath. The lantern had disappeared, but she could see a pale glow reflected on the ground near the village. Tiep was nearing the huts now, only a few metres to safety. But as she came down the slope her momentum threw her weight forward and, losing her footing, she came crashing down and half slid, half rolled on to her face.

Someone was looming over her. Hands grasped her arm. She twisted on to her back, ready to aim a vicious kick in defence. It was just the old man, wearing a pale woollen cloak against the early morning chill.

‘
Daa neh sok sabbai te?
’ he asked. Are you OK?

She sat up groggily, let him help her to her feet.

‘
La’or, arkhun
,’ I’m fine,
she said, ‘
la’or, arkhun
,’ staring past him into the black, silent chasm of the jungle, hugging her grazed arms tightly across her chest.

A hand had shot up. One of Alex’s mine clearers must have found something; he had pulled his teams back to safe ground while he went to investigate. Tess watched him walk up the clearance lane, the Khmer mine clearer trotting behind, trying to keep up with Alex’s stride. He looked confident, in control.

Her teams had found ten anti-personnel blast mines this morning, but since the last break three-quarters of an hour ago, nothing. That was how it was with mine clearing. Nothing for ages and then—

‘Tess!’

She swung around. Alex was waving, calling her over. He had returned to safe ground and was instructing his mine clearers to pull back to the knot of Land Cruisers, two hundred metres from the near edge of the field. He must have found something difficult. Something big. Tess crossed slowly towards him.

‘I need your help,’ he said, when she reached him.

Tess nodded, eyes cast somewhere over his left shoulder.

‘Tess?’

She felt him staring hard at her.

‘Yes, I heard what you said. You called and here I am, at your service.’ She said it lightly. That he knew of her relationship to Luke made her feel horribly exposed.

‘OK, as far as I can tell it is two anti-personnel fragmentation mines, one a stake mine, the other a bounding mine. The guys, my guys, don’t have enough experience to handle it.’

‘It’s fine. Like I said – I’m happy to help.’

‘Thank you.’ He hesitated, dragged his fingers through the rough stubble on his chin. ‘The mines are hidden in thick scrub, so I might not have seen everything. There could be anti-personnel blast mines in addition, maybe anti-tank, though that isn’t likely. Call your clearers back from the field. If this goes there will be carnage.’

Tess returned to her teams and instructed them to join Alex’s by the vehicles, well into safe ground. As she walked back to Alex, she tested her detector, shook her belt to check that her tools were secure, tightened her flak jacket, lowered her visor.

‘Ready?’ He flashed her a tense smile.

She nodded.

‘Let’s go then.’

They walked down the clearance lane, Alex leading, Tess jogging occasionally to keep up. The lane wound down a dirt road on the edge of a paddy field. On the left side it dipped under the cloudy surface of the half-flooded rows. To their right, undergrowth banked the road for a hundred metres or more. Alex stopped suddenly, crouched, waving at Tess to stay behind him.

‘See that trip wire?’

He pointed to a spot just in front of them, on the fringe of the vegetation.

Tess stared hard.

‘No.’ She was tense, struggling to concentrate. Alex was uncomfortably close. Shifting sideways, she edged away from him and cast her eyes up the track again, trying to pick out the trip wire against the mess of colours and textures in the background. ‘No, I can’t see it.’

‘There. From the trunk of that first palm. The fragmentation mine – a POMZ-2 – is hidden in the undergrowth at its base. The trip wire stretches over the dirt road and is anchored in the paddy field.’ He looked at her to make sure she understood. ‘Under the surface of the water.’

Tess followed the line of his finger, and then she saw it glint: a length of wire, thin as gossamer.

‘Got it.’ The POMZ-2 it was anchored to was an unripe pineapple packed with explosive, fitted to a wooden stake. Snagging the trip wire would free the striker’s retaining pin, releasing the striker into the detonator assembly and initiating the main charge. The explosion would shatter the steel body, blasting lethal fragments for fifty metres. Tess traced her eyes along the trip wire, from where it broke through the algae on the surface of the paddy field towards the POMZ-2, then, ‘Christ, there’s—’

‘Another one. Running from a bounding fragmentation mine.’ Alex indicated a second palm tree, just beyond the first. A fat olive-green finger of steel was just visible amongst the grasses clogging the tree’s base. The second trip wire crossed the first in the middle of the dirt road.

‘What do you think it is?’ he asked.

‘The frag mine?’

He nodded. She glanced at him quickly. Was he trying to test her? ‘Maybe a Type 69 – looks like it from what I can see. Could be an OZM-3 or 4, but I don’t think so. I think it’s a Type 69 because of the colour and shape of the plunger.’

A Type 69 contained a propellant and a main charge. Tripping the wire would release the striker, initiating the fuse; the fuse’s flash would ignite the propellant, blowing the mine into the air and igniting the pyrotechnic delay element in turn. Before the mine reached 1.5 metres – groin height – the main charge would detonate, fracturing the steel body.

‘I think you’re right.’ He pointed back to the first palm tree. ‘And if you look back to the POMZ-2, right of it, you can see the trip wire continuing into the wood. I think it passes through the safety-pin hole in the striker and keeps going – tensioned – wired to blow if it’s tripped or if it’s cut. I am pretty sure that the one from the Type 69 runs away only and it’s slightly loose, so it’s only armed to operate when tripped. We’ll have to trace both ends of it though, to make sure before we cut it.’

‘That’s a pretty dodgy arrangement for whoever laid it. They were either very good or very stupid.’

‘Maybe both.’

Tess glanced over and met his gaze. His dark eyes were warm, alive. He was a different animal from the one she had encountered last night. She looked away, unable to hold his gaze.

‘I’m going forward for a closer look,’ she heard him say. He was kneeling now, reaching to the battery pack of his detector to switch it on. ‘Then I’ll wire the fuses to neutralise the mines and we can cut the trip wires. You OK with that?’

She nodded. It was vital to neutralise a mine before cutting its trip wire; this way, if while cutting the trip wire you accidentally triggered it, the safety pin or wire you’d wrapped through the fuse would prevent the striker being released into the detonator assembly and initiating the mine.

‘Good.’ Alex straightened and made to move forward.

Tess grabbed his ankle. ‘Watch for blast mines, Alex. There could be blast mines buried where the trip wires cross.’

She caught the flicker of a smile that crossed his face as he looked down at her.

‘Thanks,’ he said.

She dropped her hand quickly, feeling foolish. A moment later, he had stepped forward and was running his detector slowly left to right across the muddy soil in front of the trip wires. Silence. Crouching, he extended his reach, stretching his detector directly under where the two trip wires crossed. A shrill electronic whine cut through the heavy air. He glanced over his shoulder at her, nodded. She’d been right. There was something there at the nexus between the wires.

Sliding carefully on to his stomach, Alex pulled his prodder from his belt and began to snake forward. Tess inched after him, eyes on the trip wires stretched just in front of him. One touch was all it would need.
Don’t think about it.
Instinctively, she reached forward and laid her hand on his back, pressing into it, keeping in contact with him. For a long moment, the only sound was the soft slush slush of their bodies through the mud.

‘PMN-2.’ A half-circle of black and green plastic in the muddy ground, tilted slightly to its side. A PMN-2 anti-personnel blast mine: it could take a leg off. Tess watched, almost holding her breath, as slowly, gently, Alex began to uncover it from its bed of soil, brushing his hand over its top without placing any pressure on the plate, gouging a hole next to it big enough to bury high explosive.

A crack of thunder sounded suddenly, jerking them from their absorption. The sky had turned from blue to dusty black. Tess hadn’t noticed, but now that she was aware of the sky, she felt the heaviness in the air, the moisture on her skin. It would soon rain. Rain destabilised the ground, made tools and hands slippery, clouded visors and impaired vision.

Alex cast a grimace at the sky. Sliding his forearm under his visor, he mopped his face with a sleeve. As he dropped his hand, Tess saw another wink of green in the soft brown earth. Almost invisible.

‘Alex,
stop
.’

His hand froze in mid-air.

‘I think there’s another mine.’

‘Where?’ He sounded oddly calm. But she could see his raised hand trembling – a muscle spasm in his jaw. She reached forward, tensing her muscles against the shaking in her own hand, and pointed.

‘There. Where you were going to put your left hand.’

Alex looked hard, muttered – ‘Fuck’ – and began to slither backwards, dragging himself carefully over the ground he had already crawled through. He stopped and lay still, breathing hard. Tess squatted next to him, heart jumping against her ribcage.

Another crack of thunder, louder, closer. The sky broke and fat drops of rain speckled the surface of the road.

‘We have to move fast.’ Alex took a deep breath. ‘I’m going to have another look.’ He slithered forward again, prodder in hand, and started easing it into the ground around the flash of green. Contact, immediately. ‘It’s another mine, for sure. Bastards.’ Laying the prodder down, he started digging at the soil with his fingers, carefully excavating.

The rain was lashing now, hammering against their visors, soaking their clothes. The surface of the paddy field was a boiling explosion of circles and bubbles. Alex’s fingers were muddy, slippery. Tess moved her hand to his back again, sliding it to the bottom of his flak jacket, grabbing a tense handful of his shirt in her fist. He glanced behind him and they exchanged tight half-smiles.

‘A Type 72 anti-personnel mine.’ Alex’s voice, firm, objective, but she could hear the catch in the words, the choppy sound of his breathing. A Type 72: tiny, minimum metal, incredibly hard to detect. Buried next to the PMN-2, so that it would be missed. So that a mine clearer would nudge it accidentally while clearing the PMN-2 and blow his hand off. ‘I’m going to wire the fuses on the frag mines and cut the trip wires,’ he said. ‘Then we can lay explosive and detonate them all at the same time.’

Tess nodded. ‘I’ll wire one, you wire the other.’

‘No.’ He turned. ‘You get the explosive.’

‘Alex, I’m not going to leave you now—’

‘Just go and get the explosive.’

‘Alex—’

‘It’s an order,’ he snapped. He looked embarrassed. ‘Look, there is no point both of us risking it here.’

‘That’s my job.’

‘Please . . . just . . . go.’

Reluctantly, Tess climbed stiffly to her feet. Cast him one last look before turning and trudging back down the lane.

When she returned with the plastic explosive and detonator cord, Alex was standing, hands in his pockets, staring through the curtain of rain out across the paddy fields. As she approached, he turned, reaching for the explosives with a brief smile. But instead of taking them, he closed his hand around hers. Their eyes met.

‘Last night,’ he said. ‘I behaved badly.’

She shifted uncomfortably; couldn’t decide whether to yank her hand away or to leave it where it was and hear him out.

‘You were sleep-deprived. You felt like shit,’ she said eventually.

‘Yes. I still feel like shit.’

She smiled, despite herself.

‘And I . . . wanted to apologise.’

‘Go on then.’

He looked confused. ‘Go on what?’

‘Apologise. You said you wanted to apologise, so apologise. Saying “I wanted to apologise” isn’t an apology.’

Alex gave a low whistle. ‘Jesus! You don’t make it easy, do you?’

She felt a sudden stab of real anger and was surprised by it.

‘It’s getting late. The guys are waiting.’ She held up the explosive. ‘Let’s just finish the job.’

Together, in silence, they laid the explosive. Running a length of detonator cord in a circle to make the ring main; taping four lengths of det cord, one for each mine, to it; knotting the other lengths’ other ends and moulding plastic explosive around each knot; laying the explosive in small craters excavated next to each mine. Finally they crimped a long length of safety fuse to a flash detonator and taped the flash detonator to the two ends of the ring main, completing the circle.

‘Let’s go,’ Alex said, rising to his feet and trailing the safety fuse after him.

They trudged slowly back down the track towards the vehicles, slipping on the muddy bank, heads lowered against the driving rain, playing out the safety fuse until they reached its end. Alex lit it, and they jogged further back, well into safe ground. Turning, they squatted down to watch. A second later, the high explosive blew, detonating the mines. A massive, beating pulse hammered through the rain as the mines exploded fractionally apart in a lethal shower of metal fragments fifty metres wide.

When the explosion had died down, Alex stood and brushed at the front of his shirt. It was caked in mud, his shirt and shorts plastered to his body. Tess knew she looked the same, worse maybe.

‘Good job,’ he said mildly. ‘I’m glad you were with me.’

‘No problem. Don’t take it personally, but I have to say it was absolutely no fun at all.’

‘No.’ Alex shook his head solemnly. ‘It wasn’t the best.’ He wiped a hand through his dripping hair, then, without warning, reached over and took hold of a strand of hers. ‘You’ve got mud in your hair.’ He dragged his fingers through it, almost absent-mindedly. Tess stood stock still, staring at her feet. But when she glanced up out of the corner of her eye, she realised that he wasn’t even looking at her. He was gazing out across the minefield, a stricken look on his face.

‘What’s the matter, Alex?’

He shook his head, refocusing on her. ‘I meant what I said, about you going back to England.’ He paused. ‘I made a mistake.’

‘Mistake? About what?’

He sighed, and she felt sure he was about to answer her, but then the expression on his face changed, a shutter falling. She laid a hand on his arm.

‘In MCT House last night, you asked me if I thought Luke was murdered, and you know my answer. But what about you? What do you think?’

He shuffled his feet. ‘Does it matter what I think?’

‘It matters to me. And I’m pretty sure that it would matter to those women – and to Johnny. Because they’re all related, aren’t they? I don’t know why yet, but I do know that these attacks are related. It doesn’t take a genius to work that out.’ She dropped her hand from his arm. ‘I came to Cambodia to find out who murdered Luke. It’s bigger than him now. But I’m still not going to stop until I find out the truth. I’m not going to sit tight and be good and do nothing. And I’m
not
going home.’ She paused. ‘So what
do
you think, Alex?’