P. O. W. (19 page)

The Montagnard chief watched his grandson. Only a person experienced in the ways of the mountain people would have noticed
that the old man was very disturbed. He kept a poker face as he walked over to where his grandson lay. One of the field soldiers
pushed the old man back away from the boy, using his rifle.

“What you two have done will cost you a great deal!
One
of you will die a very slow, painful death… while the other one watches!” Van Pao hissed out the words. “Tonight you will
have time to think about it and wonder which one of you will be so
lucky
as to die!” She whirled and walked away.

The POW camp sergeant screamed orders to his men, who grabbed Spencer and Garibaldi and dragged them back to their old cages.
One of the guards grabbed the boy by his broken leg, and the youth released a high-pitched scream, then caught himself and
bit his tongue.

Lieutenant Van Pao stopped walking and turned around with an evil smile on her face. She barked out some orders to her guard,
and he picked up the boy and carried him into her hut.

Barnett and Garibaldi had both been beaten by the NVA sergeant who had made the mistake with the guard roster and had allowed
for their escape. The Americans spent the night lying on the floors of their stripped cages. Their exhausted state from the
escape and the all-night vigil allowed them to pass out and sleep most of the night.

A guard woke Barnett by pulling him out of the cage onto the ground, and then the pain from the guard’s heel in his side brought
Spencer to his feet. Garibaldi was already standing next to Mother Kaa’s cage, waiting for Spencer. The look in the colonel’s
eyes told Spencer that the old officer was near the point of giving up.

Spencer knew that if he said anything he would be beaten, but he risked it anyway. He looked directly at Garibaldi and spoke.
“You chickenshit fucking
officer
! Don’t you have any fucking guts?” Spencer butted the colonel with his shoulder. “At least think of your wife and kids! Live
for
them
!”

Garibaldi blinked and came out of his mental coma of self-pity to see Spencer fall to the ground from the rabbit punch.

Lieutenant Van Pao, Mohammed James, and all of the Montagnard villagers were standing in a semicircle facing the jungle when
Garibaldi and Barnett arrived with their guards. Spencer saw the nine-year-old Montagnard boy who had helped them escape sitting
on the ground with his legs tied Indian fashion. The guards had used nylon cord to tie the boy’s calves up against his thighs.
The pain from his broken leg must have been excruciating. The boy’s hands had been tied behind his back, and then a nylon
cord had been wrapped tightly around his upper arms to hold them against his sides. The boy was naked.

“I want you to see what happens to enemies of the People’s Republic of North Vietnam!” She nodded her head and two of the
camp guards picked up the small boy by grabbing his bound thighs and arms.

Spencer couldn’t figure out what they were going to do with the kid.

Garibaldi let out a soft cry and then started begging Van Pao. “Please… please… spare the boy…. He’s just a kid!”

Van Pao smiled. “Would you like to take his place, Colonel?”

Garibaldi looked down at the ground in shame.

Spencer looked from Garibaldi to Van Pao and then over to James, trying to figure out what was going on, and then his eyes
rested on the clump of bamboo growing at the edge of the clearing. One of the two-inch-thick poles had been cut off about
three feet above the ground, and the end had been sharpened to a needle point.

Barnett understood what they were going to do to the boy.

“Van Pao!” Spencer tried taking a step toward her but was restrained by the guards on each side of him. “Let the boy go, and
I’ll tell you everything I know…
everything!
”

The lieutenant smiled at Barnett, then the look changed to one of pure hate. “You are too late, Spencer Barnett! Some of your
friends returned and destroyed the sensors!” She spat at him. “You have nothing that I want!” She looked at the guards holding
the boy and nodded her head. They lifted him up and held him over the sharpened stake. Some of the Montagnard women started
to wail.

“Wait!”
Spencer struggled against his guards. “
I’ll
take his place!”

She turned around slowly, smiling a full-mouthed grin. “Fine!”

James looked over at Barnett with an expression of total disbelief on his face. “You fool! He’s just an ignorant Montagnard!
He’s not worth it!”

Spencer looked over at James and smiled, using only the right side of his mouth. “Would he be worth it if he was
black
?”

The sound of the slap across Spencer’s face echoed through the village. “You white motherfucker!”

Van Pao stopped James from hitting Barnett again. She gave her guards orders to prepare the American for the bamboo stake.
They stripped him naked in front of the assembled villagers and bound him in exactly the same fashion as they had tied the
boy.

Garibaldi watched as they wound the nylon parachute cord around Spencer’s upper body. He bit his lip and swore to himself
that if he survived the POW camp, he was going to submit the young soldier for the Medal of Honor.

Van Pao waited until her guards were finished tying Spencer, then she lit up a Salem cigarette—she had changed her brand to
something a little stronger—and looked over at Garibaldi. “Would you like to take
his
place?” She nodded at Spencer.

Colonel Garibaldi dropped his head in shame.

“Come on, Colonel!
You’re
the leader… are you going to let your soldier die?”

Colonel Garibaldi’s lower lip trembled. He was so ashamed, but he didn’t have the courage to take Spencer Barnett’s place.

“Well, answer me!” Van Pao screamed at the colonel.

Garibaldi kept looking down at the ground and whispered, “No.”

Spencer saw what the NVA lieutenant was doing. She was going to kill him, but at the same time she was going to totally break
the colonel and turn him into a mental case. “Hey! Sweet Bitch! I won’t
let
him take my place!” Barnett screamed over at the colonel, “Damn you, sir! Don’t you fall for this shit! You know the game
she’s playing!”

One of the guards kicked Spencer in the side to shut him up, and he yelled all the louder.

“Colonel! You’ve got to live for
both
of us!”

Garibaldi’s head snapped up, and he looked directly at Spencer. “You bet your ass on that one, Spencer Barnett!”

Spencer smiled.

Lieutenant Van Pao curled her lip. “You stupid, stupid… fool.” She barked orders to the guards, and they picked Spencer up
by his thighs, one guard on each side. A third guard held his hands against the soldier’s back to balance him. They placed
him directly over the sharpened stake and lowered him until his rectum touched the very tip of the bamboo rod that was still
anchored in the ground by its own root system.

Spencer felt the point of the stake enter his rectal passage about an inch and then a sharp pain when the point scraped against
the wall of his colon. He clenched his jaws.

“Does it hurt, Spencer Barnett?” Van Pao smiled and flipped her cigarette at the soldier. The butt struck his chest, sending
a spray of red coals over his bare flesh. Spencer glared at the woman. He was terrified, but there was no way he would give
her or James the pleasure of knowing that he was. He concentrated on a short prayer, asking Jesus Christ to let him die swiftly.

“Don’t close your eyes, Spencer… I want to see those baby blues.” James took a step forward but was stopped by Van Pao. She
shook her head.

The Montagnard chief watched along with the rest of his villagers. They did not need an interpreter to tell them that the
American had volunteered to replace the boy on the stake. One of the village elders started beating on the gong he had carried
with him to the assembly. The solitary musical instrument made the only sound in the whole village; even the animals sensed
that it was best to remain quiet.

Van Pao pointed at the boy and barked orders rapidly in Vietnamese. The guards lowered their weapons and pointed them at the
villagers. A heavy 12.7mm machine gun had been rolled out on its small wheels and set up facing the group.

The guards removed Spencer from the stake. They had not lowered him far enough to draw blood, but Spencer had been made aware
of what could have happened to him. The guards picked up the nine-year-old and lowered him down on the stake. They did not
stop. The boy screamed when the stake tore into his intestines. Spencer had been placed four feet in front of the stake, facing
the child. One of the Montagnard warriors took a step forward and was shot. He fell to the ground and twitched a couple of
times before he died. The pain was uncontrollable for the boy, and he screamed his nine-year-old lungs out. Spencer tried
closing his eyes, but the child’s face remained there under his lids, etched by emotion.

The Montagnard chief started chanting in Bru. It sounded like he was singing one of their spirit songs, but what the old man
was doing was cursing the North Vietnamese and pledging a blood feud. The villagers took turns answering the old man and pledging
themselves and their offspring until there would be no one left to carry on the battle with the NVA. It was extremely unusual,
but even the women made the pledge. Lieutenant Van Pao should have learned the Bru language. She would have saved her country
thousands of soldiers’ lives, because with the single execution of the boy she had turned four hundred Bru into fanatics.

Spencer couldn’t take the boy’s screams anymore. He started praying out loud, begging that the boy would die quickly, before
he went insane watching the cruel execution of the child.

The NVA guards forced the Bru back to their village and took Garibaldi back to his cage. Spencer Barnett was left alone, tied
up and sitting four feet in front of the boy impaled on the stake. One of the guards showed a sign of mercy and placed both
of his hands on the youth’s shoulders and shoved down hard. The sharp bamboo stake tore through the child’s chest cavity and
stopped when his rear pressed against the ground. The stake had penetrated all the way to the boy’s throat cavity.

The Montagnard boy’s eyes bulged and his mouth opened to allow the blood to gush out. The child died with a soft rush of air
coming out of his lungs.

Spencer was left sitting in front of the child all night long. He kept his eyes closed and struggled to keep his sanity.

The Bru chief instructed his elders, and during the night the whole Bru village disappeared; animals, belongings, everything
except the longhouses was gone when the sun came up the next morning. Lieutenant Van Pao would start receiving reports of
missing NVA soldiers and messengers before the sun rose again the next day. It would be a couple of weeks before she realized
the full impact of her deed.

Spencer felt the sun against his face but refused to open his eyes. He could hear the flies landing on and taking off from
the small body in front of him. He continued to struggle with his mind. He must live for
revenge
.

The sun was almost directly overhead when a pair of guards came and cut his legs free. He couldn’t stand up, and the rush
of blood to his starved legs caused a terrible pain. Spencer kept his eyes tightly shut until he had been thrown back in his
cage.

“Spencer, I’m sorry….” Garibaldi tried saying more, but the words just wouldn’t come out.

The C-141 Starlifter was waiting on the special restricted runway with its engines running. The two black step-vans pulled
up to the jet aircraft, and McDonald’s prisoner snatch team ran into the rear of the large cargo plane. A well-trained crew
helped the reconnaissance men into their seats after stacking their gear on a pallet and strapping all of it down.

Brigadier General Seacourt sat inside of the command communications pod that had been loaded onto the aircraft earlier. He
sipped a cup of black coffee and listened to the radio traffic coming in from the high-flying spy aircraft soaring over the
target area in Laos. He felt the plane move to the end of the runway for takeoff and looked at his watch; they were right
on schedule. He fastened his seatbelt and leaned his head back against the headrest on his leather swivel chair. A lever next
to his seat locked the chair in place for takeoffs and landings.

Woods looked around the dark aircraft and saw the olive-drab communications pod and another one of the portable containers
strapped down on the roller bearings that were used to slide heavy cargo to the back of the aircraft. David had been surprised
when the vans pulled up to the Starlifter instead of to helicopters. He was puzzled, along with the rest of the team—except
for Master Sergeant McDonald, who knew that they were flying to the island of Palawan in the Philippine archipelago.

The Air Force crew served the team hot dinners from the food warmers that had been brought on board, and beer and wine were
served with the meal. Woods listened to rock music over the headsets in the lounge chair he occupied. Two pallets of specially
designed first-class seats had been loaded aboard the Starlifter for the flight, and all of the team relaxed in the luxury.

The three Bru recon team members toyed with their food and laughed when Sergeant Cooper and Lieutenant Nappa showed them how
the headsets worked. The Montagnards pulled the headsets off their ears each time one of the Special Forces men put them on
the tribesmen.

McDonald checked to make sure all of his men were taken care of and opened the door to the communications pod where the general
was waiting for him.

“Hello, Sergeant.” Seacourt held out his hand. “I want to congratulate you on an excellent team prep…. They really look good.”

“Thanks, General… but you’re too early on the congratulations. When we bring
out
the POWs will be the time for celebrating.”