P. O. W. (23 page)

Nappa looked puzzled. “Where’s James?”

“He turned traitor and is working with the NVA.” Garibaldi frowned. “He’s dangerous, and I agree with Spencer…. If you see
a black soldier, kill him. He won’t be taken alive.”

Woods picked up Barnett and carried him in his arms. “Let’s get back to the helipad.”

The other three Americans joined him, with Cooper taking the lead and Nappa bringing up the rear.

Lieutenant Reed threw James over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran back to the waiting Chinook that was loaded with
the South Vietnamese POWs. The chopper took off as soon as he hopped on board. Gunships opened fire on the jungle that bordered
the open pasture on the sides away from the village. The Chinook took a dozen rounds of 12.7mm antiaircraft fire in its rear
section but made a good escape.

McDonald tied in with Arnason and Kirkpatrick and they fought their way through the guards over to Lieutenant Van Pao’s office.
It was empty. Kirkpatrick threw a white phosphorous grenade into the building, and the hooch burst into flames.

McDonald saw Sergeant Cooper appear around the corner of a longhouse, followed by Woods, who was carrying a small man wearing
only the bottom part of a peasant’s suit. A taller man followed wearing the same black pajamas, but he carried a CAR-15, and
then Lieutenant Nappa shot around the corner, turning around to check their rear. The man in Woods’s arms was covered with
dirt and filth, but McDonald knew who he was.

“Let’s go!” McDonald signaled the men with him, and they started withdrawing to the helipad.

A pair of Huey slicks waited on the pasture with their skids barely touching the ground. The pilots were anxious to load up
and get the hell out of there. The landing zone was becoming very hot. Just as McDonald’s team arrived at the LZ, a pair of
NVA gunners fired their RPG-7s. The twin choppers exploded in balls of flame and collapsed in junk heaps on the green grass
that turned black from the heat almost instantly.

“Go to our alternate LZ!”
McDonald barked the order and waved the team back.

The FAC pilot circling above the LZ saw the helicopters explode and then saw the mass of NVA soldiers approaching the LZ from
the jungle. “The LZ is too hot! Abort! Abort!” He screamed over his radio for the remaining rescue choppers to pull away.

The second pair of choppers were already making their approach and could see the Americans standing at the edge of the LZ.
The chopper flying in closest to the jungle banked to its left and flew over the top of the other aircraft to escape the ground
fire.

The remaining chopper continued its approach on course. The pilot kept his hands on both levers as he made his touchdown.
He had been one of the oldest men to have graduated from flight school and had taken a lot of ribbing by the younger trainees
because of his age. They had nicknamed him Pappy, and the name had stuck. He was living up to his name; Pappy to everyone,
he wasn’t going to leave any of his children down there on the ground.

The door gunners had started out firing short bursts from their machine guns, but the NVA targets became so abundant, they
ended up just holding down the butterfly triggers on their weapons and moving the barrels from one group of targets to another.

McDonald saw the chopper coming in under the intense ground fire and started spraying the jungle. His team followed suit as
they ran for the last extraction aircraft. Nappa, Cooper, and Colonel Garibaldi ran around to the left side of the chopper,
and Woods, carrying Barnett, went to the right side with McDonald and the rest of the team.

McDonald, Kirkpatrick, and Arnason were spraying the jungle while the rest of the men loaded up. The engine from the chopper
screamed for them to hurry up. Holes popped in the skin of the vehicle everywhere. A round went through the Plexiglas in front
of Pappy and nicked his left foot pedal and veered up to smash into his right kneecap. The chopper jerked its tail around
to the right, forcing McDonald and the other men outside of the Huey to drop to the ground to escape being cut up by the rear
prop. Pappy’s hand involuntarily jerked, and the chopper started banking away from the LZ. He tried banking back, but the
maneuver was causing him to lose his lift and airspeed, and if he continued banking back to the LZ the chopper would crash.
He gave it more power and continued pulling away. He would make a circle and return to pick up the remaining three men.

“Let’s go, Pappy!” His copilot screamed over the intercom system.

“We can’t!”

“Yes! Look down there!”

Pappy looked down over his left shoulder and saw the LZ covered with brown uniforms. His copilot was right. They couldn’t
go back. The air was filled with green tracers flying up at them. He banked away from the LZ and headed for the Special Forces
camp at A Shau. The chopper left a stream of black smoke behind it as it limped toward the camp.

McDonald saw the black smoke and hoped that they would make it. He slipped back into the jungle with Arnason and Kirkpatrick.
The NVA unit was concentrating on the chopper and gave them time to escape. McDonald led the way through the burning POW camp
and into the jungle on the opposite side. He passed the cages where the Americans had been held and saw a narrow trail leading
off into the jungle. He pointed with his CAR-15, and Arnason took the point, followed by Kirkpatrick.

Mother Kaa was a hundred meters ahead of them. She was using the trail to get down to the river. Arnason nearly stepped on
her tail and did a series of quick high-steps to miss her weaving coils. He looked like a football trainee running through
tires. Kirkpatrick saw Arnason running funny and then saw the huge python.

“Hot fuck!”
The New York soldier had never seen a snake that big.

McDonald caught up to him and slapped Kirkpatrick’s rear end with the barrel of his CAR-15. “Go around it!” He took the lead
and led Kirkpatrick through the jungle growth around the snake and then back onto the trail.
“Move it!”
Arnason was out of sight and Kirkpatrick ran hard to catch up to him.

Mother Kaa was pissed. She was sick of those smelly things bothering her. She slipped off the trail, and the cool, damp vegetation
felt good against her dry skin. She would be very happy if she never saw another one of those creatures again in her life.
She flicked out her tongue and sensed the air. The taste and smell of water made her feel at home as she neared the river.

The Bru chief pointed in the direction of A Rum, and his men separated into teams of four and disappeared into the jungle.
Some of the Bru warriors were armed only with their long knives and crossbows, and a few of them carried NVA AK-47s and SKS
semiautomatic rifles. The old chief had served as a scout for the French and knew how modern weapons worked, and fourteen
of his villagers had served at one time or another with the Special Forces CIDG program. He had one hundred and seven warriors
with him and another fifty Bru men loyal to him at A Shau. The torture and death of his grandson would be avenged.

McDonald let Arnason break trail until the sound of gunfire from the village became muffled, then he signaled for the small,
three-man team to stop. Kirkpatrick took up a prone position on the trail facing the direction they had come from. He had
the safety off his CAR-15. Arnason took up the same position but faced down the trail in the direction of the Rao Lao River.

McDonald squatted between the two men’s feet and spoke in a low whisper. “Turn on your transponders.” He reached up on his
own web gear and pushed the switch that would send out a signal to Brigadier General Seacourt’s airborne command aircraft.
“If we get separated, head due east until you reach the valley. At Ta Bat, the Rao Lao turns due south. Stay with the river
until you reach the Special Forces camp. Remember that we’re on the north side of the Rao Lao, so you’ll have to cross over
it. I recommend you do that as soon as you can, because it gets wider and deeper in the valley.”

Kirkpatrick and Arnason kept their eyes on the trail while McDonald talked. “I’m going to try and avoid all contact with the
NVA…. There are too many of them for us, and even though we might kill a few of them, they’ll eventually surround us by zeroing
in on the sound of our weapons.” McDonald tapped Arnason’s boot. “I’ll take point.”

The river appeared sooner than McDonald had expected. Moving downhill was easy, and they were making very good time. He picked
up an animal trail and headed east next to the swift-running water.

The NVA squad left the cages where the Americans had been kept and started running at a fast clip down the trail. The NVA
point man could see the distinctive boot prints in the moist dirt that identified the Americans. They knew that three of them
had run back into the village after the helicopter left the LZ. The NVA point man ran with a smile on his face. The Americans
were heading down to the Rao Lao, and he was sure that they would turn east and try to make it back to the American base in
the A Shau. Americans were fools, they were so predictable.

The Montagnard team watched the three Americans pass through their ambush site. Any one of the small brown men could have
reached out and touched the Americans, but their camouflage was perfect. The leader of the team thought that one of the Americans
looked like the young soldier who had buried his son and wondered if American fathers loved their children as much as the
Bru did.

The NVA squad had made up the distance quickly between them and the three Americans. They ran without worrying about running
into an enemy patrol. The first four NVA crashed into the brush lining the trail and rolled downhill until they had become
so entangled in vines and bamboo that their bodies stopped. The squad leader had little time to realize what was happening;
there were no warning gunshots. The Bru reloaded their crossbows with practiced skill and speed, and three more of the NVA
fell down on the trail with small arrows embedded in their throats. The remaining NVA soldier started backing up and bumped
into his squad leader. The soldier cursed and tried shoving the man away from him, using his pistol. The blow from the long
knife was so swift that the NVA squad leader probably could have looked back and seen his own headless body as his decapitated
head spun down on the trail. Only the remaining NVA soldier had time to pull the trigger on his AK-47.

McDonald stopped and turned around to face back down the trail, his CAR-15 held up against his inner thigh. The AK firing
had come from less than a hundred meters away. He quickly pointed for Arnason and Kirkpatrick to take up ambush positions
next to the trail.

The Bru father used his long ceremonial machete to trim nine two-inch-thick bamboo stakes from the stands of bamboo growing
wild next to the trail. The Bru warriors worked fast, impaling the NVA soldiers on the stakes in the same fashion that had
been used on his son. Those NVA soldiers were lucky: they were already dead. But the Bru were sending a signal to the living
NVA. It took two of the Bru warriors to free the body of the last NVA from the vines he had rolled up in as he had slid down
the steep incline. The father waited on the trail with his cousin. The NVA soldier the warriors dragged back had been hit
in the lung by the arrow and was still breathing deeply, trying to stay alive; the Bru father nodded and they lifted him and
shoved him down on the stake.

McDonald heard the horrible man scream and shivered. Something was happening up the trail. No NVA had passed their ambush.
McDonald decided that he would risk leaving the ambush site; they couldn’t afford to waste time hiding next to the trail.
He left his hiding place slowly and started walking east on the narrow trail. Kirkpatrick constantly kept his eyes on their
six o’clock and walked sideways and backward as the small team moved away from the screams.

She had heard the loud noises coming from the plateau and raised her head off her paws. She was very hungry, and it had been
days since she had heard that pleasant sound. There would be good things to eat when the loud noises stopped. She got up on
her feet and stretched. A soft mewing brought her around, and she licked both of her cubs. They had not had the benefit of
a full fifteen weeks inside of their mother but had been born early. The female cub was very weak and would probably die.
The small male cub struggled to find his mother’s warm body in the large cave. She purred to comfort them and left the entrance
of her cave. She must find food so that she could produce the milk her cubs demanded.

McDonald was still serving as the point man when they ran into her on the trail. She was as surprised as they were. The sounds
that were loud and shook the ground always left dead things, and here in front of her were live things. The second of confusion
gave McDonald the advantage, and he pulled the trigger on his CAR-15. She roared and leaned back on her haunches. Something
was stinging her. She turned her head to one side and swatted at the air. McDonald’s clip emptied fast. Arnason stepped up
next to him and emptied his CAR-15 into the huge tigress. Blood spurted out of her mouth and turned her teeth red. She growled
again, but with less force; something was happening that she did not understand. She couldn’t move or even swat with her paws.

She died.

“Look at the size of that thing!” Arnason instantly recalled Fillmore being dragged out of his night rest site and wondered
if this beast was the one that had eaten him. He didn’t know exactly where they were, but they had to be within ten miles
of where it had happened.

“Man! This is some shit! First a fucking snake as long as a fucking
train
, and now a fucking tiger that looks like a motherfucking elephant!” Kirkpatrick shook his head. “Man! This is some
shit
!”

McDonald tended to agree with the New York soldier. The tigress was huge and would have been a world-class trophy except for
the scarred, burned hide on her hip. “Move it!” McDonald kept the point and changed magazines as they traveled. The pause
from the encounter with the tigress brought McDonald’s attention to the dimming light. It would be dark within an hour. He
couldn’t believe that the day had passed so quickly! They had attacked the POW camp at first light of morning. He couldn’t
believe his eyes, and waited until they broke out of the jungle to see if it was just thick cloud-cover over the sun or if
it had gotten dark. The trail turned to his left and started going up a steep incline. McDonald stayed with it. Animal trails
were always the easiest avenues to travel in the jungle. The paths always followed the best terrain.