Avenger by Frederick Forsyth Page A

always had the edge. They only had to stay silent and await the man crawling towards them.
    Most nerve tearing of all, and the source of most deaths, was the task of penetrating the trapdoors that led from level to level, usually downwards.
    Often a tunnel would come to a dead end. Or was it a dead end? If so, why dig it in the first place? In the dark, with fingertips feeling nothing ahead but laterite wall, no side tunnel to left or right, the Tunnel Rat had to use the flashlight. This would usually reveal, skillfully camouflaged and easily miss sable a trapdoor in the wall, floor or ceiling. Either the mission aborted, or the door had to be opened.
    But who waited on the other side? If the GPs head went through first and there was a Vietcong waiting, the American's life would end with a throat cut from side to side or the lethal bite of a gar rotting noose of thin wire. If he dropped downward feet first, it could be the spear through the belly. Then he would die in agony, his screaming torso in one level, ruined lower body in the next down.
    Dexter had the armourers prepare him small, tangerine-sized grenades with reduced explosive charge from the standard issue but more ball bearings. Twice in his first six months he lifted a trap door, tossed in a grenade with a three-second fuse, and pulled the door back down. When he opened a second time and went up with his flashlight on, the next chamber was a charnel house of torn bodies.
    The complexes were protected from gas attack by water traps. The crawling Tunnel Rat would find a pool of rank water in front of him.
    That meant the tunnel continued the other side of the water. The only way through was to roll onto the back, slide in upside down and pull the body along with fingertips scrabbling at the roof. The hope was that the water ended before the breath in the lungs. Otherwise he could die drowned, upside down, in blackness, fifty feet down. The way to survive was to rely on the partner.
    Before entering the water, the point man would tie a lanyard to his feet and pass it back to the partner. If he did not give a reassuring tug on it within ninety seconds of entering the water, confirming that he had found air on the other side of the trap, his mate had to pull him back without delay because he would be dying down there.
    Through all this misery, discomfort and fear there occurred a moment now and again when the Tunnel Rats hit the mother lode. This would be a cavern, sometimes recently vacated in a hurry, which had clearly been an important sub-Headquarters. Then boxes of papers, evidence, clues, maps and other mementoes would be ferried back to the waiting intelligence experts from G2.
    Twice the Badger and the Mole came across such Aladdin's caves. Senior brass, unsure how to cope with such strange young men, handed out medals and warm words. But the Public Affairs people, normally avid to tell the world how well the war was going, were warned off. No one mentioned a word. One facility trip was arranged but the 'guest' from PA got fifteen yards down a 'safe' tunnel and had hysterics. After that, silence reigned.
    But there were long periods of no combat, for the Rats as for all the other GIs in Vietnam. Some slept the hours away, or wrote letters, longing for the end of tour and the journey home. Some drank the time away, or played cards or craps. Many smoked, and not always Marlboro. Some became addicts. Others read.
    Cal Dexter was one of those. Talking with his officer-partner he realized how blighted was his formal education, and started again from square one. He found he was fascinated by history.
    The base librarian was delighted and impressed, and prepared a long list of must-read books which he then obtained from Saigon.
    Dexter worked his way through Attic Greece and Ancient Rome, learned of Alexander who had wept that, at thirty-one, he had defeated the known world and there were no more worlds to conquer.
    He learned of Rome's decline and fall, of the Dark