Shadow Puppets (The Shadow 3)

Then, "Reservists. No discipline."

Ambul thought: This is a dilemma. Reservists are probably local troops. Old men, unfit men, who treated their military service like a social club, until now, when somebody trotted them out because they were the only soldiers in the area. Killing them would be like killing peasants.

But of course they were armed, so not killing them might be committing suicide.

They could hear the Chinese commander yelling at his part-time soldiers. He was very angry--and very stupid, thought Ambul. What did he think was happening here? If it was a training exe

rcise by some portion of the Chinese army, why would he bring along a contingent of reservists? But if he thought it was a genuine threat, why was he yelling? Why wasn't he trying to reconnoiter with stealth so he could assess the danger and make a report?

Well, not every officer had been to Battle School. It wasn't second nature to them, to think like a true soldier. This fellow had undoubtedly spent most of his military service behind a desk.

The whispered command came down the line. Do not shoot anybody, but take careful aim at somebody when you are ordered to stand up.

The voice of the Chinese officer was coming nearer.

"Maybe they won't notice us," whispered the soldier beside Ambul.

"It's time to make them notice us," Ambul whispered back.

The soldier had been a waiter in a fine restaurant in Jakarta before volunteering for the army after the Chinese conquest of Indochina. Like most of these men, he had never been under fire.

For that matter, neither have I, thought Ambul. Unless you count combat in the battle room.

Surely that did count. There was no blood, but the tension, the unbearable suspense of combat had been there. The adrenaline, the courage, the terrible disappointment when you knew you had been shot and your suit froze around you, locking you out of the battle. The sense of failure when you let down the buddy you were supposed to protect. The sense of triumph when you felt like you couldn't miss.

I've been here before. Only instead of a dike, I was hiding behind a three-meter cube, waiting for the order to fling myself out, firing at whatever enemies might be there.

The man next to him elbowed him. Like all the others, he obeyed the signal and watched their commander for the order to stand up.

The commander gave the sign, and they all rose up out of the water.

The Chinese reservists and their officer were nicely lined up along a dike that ran perpendicular to the one the Indonesian platoon had been hiding behind. Not one of them had his weapon at the ready.

The Chinese officer had been interrupted in mid-yell. He stopped and turned stupidly to look at the line of forty soldiers, all pointing their weapons at him.

Ambul's commander walked up to the officer and shot him in the head.

At once the reservists threw down their weapons and surrendered.

Every Indonesian platoon had at least one Chinese-speaker, and usually several. Ethnic Chinese in Indonesia had been eager to show their patriotism, and their best interpreter was very efficient in conveying their commander's orders. Of course it was impossible to take prisoners. But they did not want to kill these men.

So they were told to remove all their clothing and carry it to the truck they had arrived in. While they were undressing, the order was passed along the line in Indonesian: Do not laugh at them or show any sign of ridicule. Treat them with great honor and respect.

Ambul understood the wisdom of this order. The purpose of stripping them naked was to make them look ridiculous, of course. But the first people to ridicule them would be Chinese, not Indonesians. When people asked them, they would have to say that the Indonesians treated them with nothing but respect. The public relations campaign was already under way.

Half an hour later, Ambul was with the sixteen men who rode into town in the captured Chinese truck, with one naked and terrified old reservist showing them the way. Just before reaching the small military headquarters, they slowed down and pushed him out of the truck.

It was quick and bloodless. They drove right into the small compound and disarmed everyone there at the point of a gun. The Chinese soldiers were all herded naked into a room without a telephone, and they stayed there in utter silence while the sixteen Indonesians commandeered two more trucks, clean underwear and socks, and a couple of Chinese military radios.

Then they piled all the remaining ammunition and explosives, weapons and radios in the middle of the courtyard, surrounded them with the remaining military vehicles, and set a small amount of plastique in the middle of the pile with a five-minute fuse.

The Chinese interpreter ran to the door of the room where the prisoners were being held, shouted to them that they had five minutes to evacuate this place before everything blew up, and they should warn the townspeople to get away from here.

Then he unlocked the door and ran out to one of the waiting trucks.

Four minutes out of town, they heard the fireworks begin. It was like a war back there--bullets going off, explosions, and a plume of smoke.

Ambul imagined the naked soldiers running from door to door, warning people. He hoped that no one would die because they stopped to laugh at the naked men instead of obeying them.