P. O. W. (14 page)

James closed the briefcase and started leaving.

“Sir… I need to see some identification.” The MP’s voice was losing its patience.

James reached into his rear pocket and produced his wallet. He flipped it open and laid it on the table in front of the MP.
A green-and-white military ID card with James’s photograph was displayed behind a plastic cover.

The MP lifted the wallet and looked at the card. “You’ve got to get your ID updated; it says that you’re a lieutenant.”

James smiled. “I just got promoted…
ahead
of my peers.”

“Thank you, sir!” The MP handed James back his wallet and let him pass.

James walked down the hall, thinking how dumb whites were. They would believe anything, absolutely anything. He watched the
signs above the doors as he passed and tried memorizing them for future visits to the headquarters complex. He had been to
the First Marine Division Headquarters before and had no problem getting past the black guard on duty there. The Marine had
been very impressed meeting a black captain. James smiled. Maybe next time he would be a major, or maybe a lieutenant colonel.

A large stained sign was nailed above the double doors with
PLANS
burned into the wood. A cardboard sign on each side of the doors warned that only authorized entry was allowed. James didn’t
hesitate and walked through the swinging door.

The large room was a beehive of activity. Maps covered all of the walls, and officers and senior NCOs from all of the XXIV
Corps units were busy making overlays from the Corps battle plans. James looked for the map that depicted the junction of
Laos, South Vietnam, and North Vietnam. He saw the map on the wall and started walking toward it when another captain reached
up and grabbed him by the arm.

“Where in the fuck do you think you’re going, stud?”

James twisted away and glared at the heavyset officer. “To trace an overlay… cunt!”

“You can’t just fucking walk in here and make overlays!” The officer had been up all night and was very tired and angry. He
had missed breakfast.

“What would you like for me to do?” James was getting nervous.

“Sign the fucking logbook!” The captain pointed to the open ledger. “You fucking field jocks think you can just fucking ignore
procedures!”

James picked up the pen that was attached by a string to the book and signed his name: Martin Luther King, Jr.

The other captain turned the ledger around and read what James had written. “Funny… real fucking funny!”

“Hey, man… can’t you take a joke?” James picked up the pen again and wrote the name that was on his ID card: Ben Arnold.

The captain smiled when he read the name. “I’d use Martin Luther King too if my name was Benedict Arnold.”

“
Ben
Arnold…
Ben!
Do you want to see my ID card?” James glared at his cover peer.

The captain thought for a second before answering. “No… but there’s something about you that I don’t like….”

James felt his heart beat faster.

“Go on and make your overlays!” The staff captain nodded in the direction of the battle maps. “I’ve been up all night posting
that shit, so it’s the latest stuff going!”

“Thank you,
sir
.” James walked over to the I Corps Vietnam map and smiled. A new Marine and Army combined operation had been posted in blue
grease pencil. He pushed his fatigue cap to the back of his head and taped the transparent paper over the battle plans. James
took a half-hour copying the data and unit locations. He wished that he could also get a copy of the operations orders, but
that would be risking too much.

A Marine lieutenant colonel watched James work. There was something about the way the Army captain carried himself that bothered
him. He knew that a lot of blacks had been pushed through the Army OCS programs and through ROTC because of the aggressive
equal-opportunity programs, but they must have really been hurting when they commissioned him. The man’s whole attitude reeked
of street punk, not officer. The lieutenant colonel looked at James’s cap riding on the back of his head over a sprouting
Afro hairdo.

James folded the overlay and looked at the map on the wall behind him. A large block-letter sign read
TOP SECRET
on the black vinyl drape covering the battle plan. James looked slowly around the room and saw that the captain who had given
him a hassle when he had entered was gone. He smiled and decided to risk it. James picked up another piece of overlay paper
and some paper tape and approached the top-secret map. He had lifted a corner of the vinyl cover and was trying to pin it
back when a heavy hand grabbed him by his shoulder.

“What do you think you’re doing!” The Marine lieutenant colonel pulled James around until the black soldier was facing him.
“Can’t you read? That’s a top-secret battle plan with a special ‘need to know.’… Do you have clearance?”

“Yes sir! I’m supposed to get copies of everything in the I Corps Tactical Zone….” James tried bluffing his way.

“Who said the plan was in I Corps?” The lieutenant colonel wasn’t about to be bullshitted.

“I just assumed.”

“An assumption is the mother of a fuck-up, Captain… and you just fucked up. Now get out of here.” The more the Marine office
looked at James, the madder he got. The captain was just too arrogant.

“Sure… sir.” James dropped his eyes down to the floor. “I didn’t mean to cause you any trouble.”

“You have… now move your ass!” The Marine looked James’s shoulders for a unit patch and saw that there wasn’t any sewn on.
“What unit you from?”

James hesitated before answering, “The Cav.”

“What
unit
, Captain?”

“First Brigade, Recon Company, First Cavalry Division, Airmobile…
sir!
”

“Don’t be a smartass, Captain, or I’ll have the MPs escort you out of here!”

“Yes sir!”

The Marine lieutenant colonel turned away in disgust. He was going to mention the captain to the Army general he worked for.
He didn’t care what the general did about it, but he wasn’t going to work for the Army and take shit from junior officers.
“What’s your name, soldier?”

“James—” James caught himself. “Ben Arnold, sir.”

“James Ben Arnold?” The lieutenant colonel became very suspicious. He sensed something was very wrong. “Let me see your ID
card.”

James removed his wallet and pulled his NVA-forged ID card from the protector and handed it to the officer.

The Marine looked at the picture and down at the card a half-dozen times before staring at James, who looked away. “You stay
here. I’m going to have the MPs check you out. There’s something very fishy about you.”

James felt his stomach turn sour and squeezed his left upper arm against his side to make sure the 9mm pistol was still there.
He had checked his .45 in with the MP at the duty desk according to Corps procedures.

“Sir! We need you right away in the general’s briefing room! It’s important. Brigadier General Seacourt is in there, and they
want you.”

The Marine lieutenant colonel looked down at the ID card and back at James. “Here! And the next time I see you, you’d better
have a decent haircut!” He handed the card back to James and hurried after the staff lieutenant.

James left the plans room and stopped out in the hallway to catch his breath. That had been too close a call. He felt the
sweat running down his sides. His eyes focused and he read the sign with the black arrow pointing to the left that showed
the direction of the snack bar. He felt hungry after all of the pressure and decided on having something to eat before heading
back to his camp. He had already lined up a helicopter ride out to the Marine forward base called The Rockpile. He could walk
to his contact point from there.

The Vietnamese woman who operated the counter at the snack bar took the ten-dollar MPC note from James and paused to look
at the dark brown spot that covered a third of the bill. She didn’t know if she should take the damaged money and called the
club NCO over to her counter.

The staff sergeant looked at the note and then at James. “What happened to it?”

“You got me, Sarge; I got it from the PX like that…. Maybe somebody spilled some paint or ink on it.” James shrugged his shoulders.

The sergeant looked at the MPC certificate again and frowned. He handed it to the woman. “Take it.”

James took his tray and found a seat near the wall. He knew the stain was dried blood from the American soldier’s body it
had been removed from by the NVA.

The longer James sat there eating, the more pissed he became. He had told Lieutenant Van Pao that the cover name Ben Arnold
would cause more problems than the insult was worth, but she had insisted his ID card and other papers have that name on them.
She found the name of the American Revolutionary War traitor a perfect form of irony for James’s cover. He was going to cause
some hell when he returned to the camp over the money with dried blood on it; there was no excuse for that kind of carelessness—none!

Woods sat in the armchair outside of the office McDonald was in with Sergeant Cooper. Brigadier General Seacourt was inside
the room with them getting briefed on the POW snatch operation. He had been in there, but all of the cigar smoke was making
him sick, so he slipped outside to catch his breath. Besides, there wasn’t anything going on in there that he didn’t know
by heart.

A command sergeant major walked by and then stopped and backed up. “There’s a small snack bar right around the corner if you
want a soda or a hamburger, young man.”

“Thanks, Sergeant Major.” Woods nodded and smiled.

“No problem. The hamburgers are
good
, though….” He patted his stomach. “Too good!”

Woods looked over at the closed door and figured they would be in there a few more minutes, long enough for him to get something
to eat. He stopped by one of the clerk’s desks before leaving and asked the guy to tell McDonald where he had gone in case
they came out early.

James finished his food and stepped out of the door into the hallway. He looked to his left and saw the exit door leading
out onto the quadrangle and the parked staff vehicles. He figured he could hitch a ride to the Marine helipad easily enough.
Whites were stupid.

Woods turned the corner and saw James staring directly at him. He stopped and blinked his eyes. It was James, but he was wearing
captain’s bars on his cap and collar.

“James!”
The single word coming out of Woods’s throat echoed down the narrow hall like a cannon shot.

James turned away from his ex-teammate and hurried to the exit door. Once he stepped outside, he started running as fast as
he could. His briefcase smashed against his leg.

Woods took a few seconds before he reacted. He was sure the officer was James, but the way the black officer had reacted,
he could have been wrong. He put his hand on the snack bar door and paused. He was
sure
the man was James; he was
sure
! Woods hurried down the hallway to the exit and stepped outside. The black officer was gone. He walked a few steps toward
the parked vehicles and then changed his mind. Maybe the officer just looked like James. He had been thinking a lot lately
about the ambush and the A Shau Valley, where James had been with them. He was probably just seeing things. The smell of frying
hamburgers drew him back inside and over to the snack bar.

Cooper kept twisting his lips as they drove back to the CCN compound. He was deep in thought and drove the jeep slower than
he normally did. McDonald kept his eyes locked on the Vietnamese houses lining the right-hand side of the road.

Woods kept playing with the selector switch on his CAR-15, flicking it on and off full automatic. A dozen times he started
to tell McDonald about what had happened at the XXIV Corps snack bar, but each time he stopped himself.

McDonald turned around sideways on the canvas seat and looked back at Woods. “You know,
everyone
gets nervous before they go out on patrol…. This mission is no different, Woods.”

Woods stopped flicking the selector switch and decided that he was going to tell the sergeant and take the ribbing. “It’s
not the mission, Sarge…. I—I saw a captain who looked like… James.” Woods shook his head and corrected himself. “You might
think I’m fucking crazy… but… it
was
James, dressed up like a captain!” Woods couldn’t believe what he had just said to McDonald.

McDonald stared hard at Woods and frowned. “Are you sure?”

“Sarge, I told you that you’d think I’m fucking crazy…. I know what James looks like, but man, you know his…
eyes
.” Woods swallowed. “Someone can look
like
James, but nobody can have the same look in his eyes.”

McDonald knew exactly what Woods was saying. “Turn around!” He grabbed Cooper’s arm. “
Turn around… now!
”

The drive back to Corps Headquarters took them half the time it had taken getting there the first time. Cooper wove between
the traffic like a Philippine taxi driver. He paused at the main gates to the complex just long enough to get checked in.
The MP remembered them from earlier, because of the black-painted jeep, and rushed them through the checkpoints.

McDonald entered the exit door first, followed closely by Woods. “Where did you see him?” McDonald turned to face Woods.

“He was standing over there by the snack bar door.” Woods pointed and McDonald ran to the spot.

The master sergeant looked inside the bar, hoping that James would have returned, and saw only a couple of staff officers
drinking coffee. He turned to leave and his eyes locked on a stained sign hanging above a closed door:
PLANS
. Everything fell together for him as he ran to the door and entered the classified area. The duty captain stopped him at
the door and asked for his ID. McDonald produced it and at the same time scanned the room and the maps hanging on all of the
walls. He was sure now.

“Did a black captain—say, in his early twenties—come in here this afternoon?” McDonald felt his breath catch in his throat.