Read Online Assignment - Cong Hai Kill by Edward S. Aarons - Free Book Online Page A

frantically for shore to get him away. The water presented a milling
pattern of organized confusion. Doko Dagan still held his cheap
suitcase. Durell dropped down the ladder and plunged for the gangplank, with
Major Muong at his heels as they battered through the crowd.
    The clashing of tin pans
and chanting under the market sheds had died away. People were running out of
the open square of sunlight. It was not the first time Durell felt
conspicuously alone in a hostile mob. Hatred flashed from the alien eyes around
him. Dagan had jumped ashore from the sampan, and Durell glimpsed him heading
for an alley where an ancient Renault waited for him.
    He swung for Muong’s jeep.
“He’s got a running start,”   he snapped. “Can we stop him?”
    “He will not get away,“ Muong promised
grimly.
    The jeep driver replied
to Muong’s snapped order and started recklessly through the crowd
between themselves and the Renault. The other car disappeared down the alley
with a roar of sound. Muong’s eyes were white crescents as he leaned
forward to speak to the driver.
    “He heads for the Menam Phao bridge,
Lao. Take the Embankment Road and cut him off.”
    They worked their way
through the tides of bicycles in the narrow streets and swept around the
Government House, a mirage of green gardens in the shimmering heat. The
waterfront was left behind. People scattered before the two cars, and a
brightly plumaged funeral procession of yellow-robed monks was broken in two as
they gave chase. Muong settled back, his face expressionless.
    “We will catch him. He
cannot get away.”
    The jeep bucked and
bounced after the Renault, but despite Muong’s confidence, they began
to lose ground.  The town was built around the curve of the long,
shallow bay, then spread in a tangle of thatched houses on stilts along the
riverside. There was no pattern to the narrow streets; but Muong apparently
knew the way well. He gave another brief order to the driver and settled back.
    “The steamer captain is
dead. We will never know what he wanted to say. But obviously, he knew of
Chang’s murder. Why the Cong Hai killed the old gentle, man is a most
difficult question--except that he was to escort your Orris Lantern
here, is it not so? So we must face the question that either your American
renegade had a change of heart, to which Chang objected, or he was retaken by
the Cong Hai who refuse to let him go.”
    “Have the Cong Hai been
so bold before?”
    “Not here along the
coast. Inland, in the high country, it is What you call a witch’s brew.” Muong’s English
was very precise. Sweat shone on his brown face. “We know that the Cong Hai ‘fortress
areas’ are being built in the jungles, financed by opium brought down from the
north where the renegade Kuomintang Army units have settled since the Japanese
occupation. And we suspected Doko Dagan of being one of their prime
distributors.”
    “And Orris Lantern?”
    “As Yellow Torch, his
name is a sound of terror to the upland villagers. He has built up the Cong Hai to
spread guerrilla warfare along the borders of Vietnam and Cambodia. My
government takes a most serious view of this, naturally. We are anxious to
capture and question him. When we find him, he must come back to Bangkok with
me, you understand.”
    “We can decide that when
we capture our game,” Durell said. “Until then, We have, each of us, orders to
cooperate, even if it isn’t a happy alliance.”
    “I have no suspicions
about you, Mr. Durell.”
    Durell said: “No. Just
enough to bug my room.”
    “Routine procedure.” Muong smiled.
“If you are offended, I apologize.”
    The fleeing Renault had
vanished, and they were delayed by an overturned vegetable cart and water
buffalo in the lane leading to the Menam Phao bridge. Now the
jeep skidded with screaming tires into the last alley, and bicycles and people
scattered from their path like frightened chickens.
    Along the