P. O. W. (3 page)

The NVA soldiers followed the lieutenant to their mess hall for supper. Barnett could hear her laughing all the way down the
trail. The guard positioned in the small shack that overlooked the Americans smiled and lit up a cigarette. Barnett could
see that it was taken from a Marlboro pack.

“That fucking thing has to be Kaa’s mother!” The colonel watched as she sensed the air between the narrow bamboo bars of her
cage. “Jeez! She’s got to be thirty-five feet long!” The snake was still circling the cage, trying to find a way out; one
long side of the structure as well as a short side had her body pressed up against it, with about a foot of her head and neck
just making a turn.

“Who’s Kaa?” Barnett found his voice.

“Rudyard Kipling, a British writer, wrote a book about a boy lost in the jungle, and a huge snake called Kaa sort of adopted
him…. This thing has got to be his mother!” Garibaldi was amazed. The snake was still clean and shiny from its swim in the
river and being in the clean rice sack. She was beautiful.

“What do you think they’re going to do with it?” Barnett was afraid to say what he thought.

“I don’t know… maybe make it a camp pet….” Garibaldi wasn’t going to scare the boy and say what was really on his mind.

The conversation stopped when the old Montagnard the NVA used as a runner approached their cages with a small bucket of rice.
Barnett pushed his wooden bowl over to the small opening where the old man scooped out two handfuls of the bland food, using
his own dirty hand as a spoon. Barnett nodded his thanks, and the old man smiled a near toothless grin and reached into his
waistband and removed two small bananas and a wild bird’s egg. He patted the egg gently and said something in his native Bru
language. Barnett nodded again and smiled.

“I think the old man likes you.” Garibaldi spoke from the shadows of his cage. The sun was setting, sending mixed rays of
light through the heavy green vegetation.

“I don’t know why….” Barnett slipped his arm through the cage and tossed one of the bananas over to the colonel. He had gotten
very good at tossing objects, and the banana landed within an inch of the bamboo bars.

“Thanks….” Garibaldi picked up the much-needed fruit that wasn’t a normal part of their diet and ate it slowly. “He might
feel sorry for you because of the way James harasses you… and it might have something to do with his daughter….”

“Who’s she?”

“The one James is living with in the village.” Garibaldi turned to listen to a noise coming from the South Vietnamese POW
compound and continued talking. “I don’t think the Bru like it when the NVA take their children and give them to others.”

“Well, James treats her like shit.” Barnett looked over at the guard, who was ignoring them. Some of the guards didn’t care
if they talked to each other, but the new ones, directly from units fighting in South Vietnam, would harass them for hours.
The NVA soldiers who had been wounded in combat and were recuperating from their wounds were the worst.

The sound of people approaching stopped Barnett and Garibaldi from talking. A squad of NVA soldiers approached in the dim
light, dragging a South Vietnamese POW. Garibaldi recognized the man from the first day that he had arrived. He was a second
lieutenant from a unit near Da Nang, who had been captured with some of the survivors from his Ranger platoon.

Barnett sat cross-legged on his mat and watched. The NVA sergeant climbed up on Mother Kaa’s cage and opened the trap door.
He beckoned for the squad to drag the South Vietnamese officer up on the structure. The man realized what they were going
to do and started to put up a struggle. They had him almost to the entrance of the cage when he stopped fighting them and
began talking in a very humble tone of voice. Barnett couldn’t understand what he was saying, but he guessed that the lieutenant
was begging for mercy. The NVA sergeant grunted and cuffed the lieutenant before shoving him into the cage with his foot.

Barnett could not remember a longer night in his life. The lieutenant cried and begged the guard to help him and finally ended
up crying a series of long wails each time the reptile touched him. Twice during the night Barnett smelled cigarette smoke
coming from behind his cage and guessed that Sweet Bitch was listening to the South Vietnamese officer from the shadows.

It was near dawn when the sounds of shuffling and crying ceased in the dark cage. Barnett could hear the snake slithering
over the bamboo matting that lined her cage floor, but no sounds came from the lieutenant.

Dawn revealed an answer to the mystery. The South Vietnamese lieutenant had removed his pants and had torn strips from the
legs to make a rope. He had crudely hanged himself—or, more accurately, he had slowly strangled himself with the homemade
rope using the bamboo bars.

Barnett looked over at Colonel Garibaldi’s cage as soon as the morning light was bright enough to see by and saw that the
colonel had also been up all night. “Sir… I don’t think that I can handle it… if… if they…”

“Me neither, Spencer… me neither…”

The Air Force colonel couldn’t take his eyes off the dead South Vietnamese soldier.

Sergeant Amason could see Woods sitting on top of the bunker. Searching through his pockets for his lighter, he took his time
lighting the Kool hanging from his lower lip. Even from where he was standing, he could feel the agony coming from Woods without
seeing the man’s face. It had been weeks since they had returned from the reconnaissance patrol in the A Shau Valley and the
decimation of two of their recon teams.

“Watching the dust, Sergeant?” Lieutenant Reed had exited the bunker from the rear entrance and saw his NCO standing there
smoking.

“There’s enough of it, isn’t there.” Amason looked over at the lieutenant. “The bigger this base camp becomes, the more red
dust…. That shit is everywhere!”

“It makes you want to go to the field, doesn’t it?” Reed tried leaning against the burlap wall in the narrow strip of shade
the early-afternoon sun provided.

“Yeah…” Amason kept watching Woods.

“How would you like to go back to the A Shau for a short mission?” Reed tried rushing over the name of the NVA stronghold.

Amason slowly turned his head away from Woods and looked the lieutenant directly in the eyes. He could feel the fear enter
his bowels and felt like defecating, but his face didn’t reveal any emotion. “The A Shau?”

“Yes. Brigade has received a highly classified message that concerns us.” Lieutenant Reed looked around to see if there was
anyone near who could eavesdrop on their conversation before continuing. “One of the CIA listening posts in Laos has monitored
a telephone conversation between a POW camp commander and a high-ranking NVA intelligence officer.” Reed checked the area
around him again for people. “Do you remember the seismic-intrusion detectors we planted?”

“How can I forget?” Arnason looked back over to where Woods was sitting. The soldier hadn’t changed his position.

“It seems that the NVA have found six of them, but they can’t locate the second set… the set your team planted.”

“Thanks… We did try to hide them.” Arnason was trying to be sarcastic.

“I hope you didn’t camouflage them
too
good, because they want you to go back and retrieve them.”

It took a couple of seconds for what the lieutenant had said to sink into Amason’s mind and take precedence in his thoughts.
His voice thickened, and the words came out in a jumble. “Are yuh… you trying to tell me those motherfuckingstaffbastards…
after I lost five men dead and two still in the hospital… James and Barnett missing… Are you telling me they now want me to
go back there and
retrieve
those fucking electronic boxes?” Arnason could feel that he was about to lose his temper and fought within himself to regain
control. “Three weeks ago—
three weeks!
—those supersecret boxes were
so
damned important! Now they want them back!” Amason lit another Kool with shaking hands. “Fuck them!”

“Sergeant! I was in
command
of those teams…. Don’t you think that I feel the loss too?”

“Look at what it did to him!” Amason nodded in the direction of the distant Woods.

“Who?” Reed couldn’t see the soldier sitting on the perimeter bunker.

Arnason curled his lip in contempt. “Woods… Have you been to the hospital yet, Lieutenant?”

“I’m going to try and make it there this week…. I’ve been real busy with after-action reports and the debriefings.”

“Yeah… Tell Kirkpatrick and Sinclair that….” Arnason turned to walk away before he did something stupid. “You were in
command
in the A Shau… so
act
like a commander.”

“Sergeant! I’m not going to take much more of your bullshit attitude!” Reed exercised his officership. “I’m doing the
best
that I can do! Someone has to fill out the
paperwork
, and you haven’t seen me volunteering for it!”

The officer did have a point. He was young and was trying. “Sorry about that, Lieutenant…. You’re right… you’re trying to
do your best.”

“All right… let’s drop it.” Reed’s face had turned red. “The mission to the A Shau is going to be quick. We’ll be briefed
this afternoon, and the insertion is planned for first light in the morning. The plan is simple: Your team will be inserted
under a heavy escort of gunships, both Hueys and fast movers. You’re to locate the sensors and destroy them.”

“Destroy?”
Arnason fought back his anger.

“Yes. The sensors have an antitilt device in them, so it’s just a matter of locating them and jiggling them a little with
an entrenching tool….”

“Simple as that?” Amason lit his third Kool. “Don’t forget,
sir
… we
camouflaged
them, so finding the
exact
spot where each one of them is buried is going to be difficult, not simple.”

“Sergeant, I was briefed by the brigade commander,
personally
! There’s much more to this mission than meets the eye. I’ve told you all that you need to know. Believe me, it’s very important
that the NVA doesn’t locate the sensors first.”

“My team is sort of new.” Amason made the statement to remind the lieutenant that his team hadn’t been tested even with a
short patrol. “Sinclair is still in the hospital, and it looks as if he’s going to be sent back to the States…. I’ve been
loaned Simpson, but he’s fighting like hell to get off a recon team and stay back in the rear to run his drug ring….”

“You’re not being fair, Arnason!” Reed flexed his jaws. “There’s no
proof
Simpson is selling drugs!”

Amason answered the lieutenant with his eyes. He wasn’t going to honor the officer’s totally ignorant statement with words.
The lieutenant knew as well as he did that Private Tousaint Simpson was
the
drug dealer in the An Khe base camp. Lieutenant Reed averted his eyes, and Amason continued talking. “And this new man… Lee
San Ko… looks promising, but he’s going to have to be shaken out first.”

“This will be a good mission for him.” Reed felt that the subject had turned in his favor. He had personally assigned the
new man to Arnason’s team. Sergeant Lee San Ko was a full-blooded Chinese American who had come from Hong Kong with his family
as a small child. The man was a martial arts expert and had trained in reconnaissance back in the States and Panama. He was
very promising and was being groomed as a team leader to replace Sergeant Fitzpatrick, who had been killed in the A Shau Valley.

“You say this is a hot mission?” Arnason’s professional side took control as he stuffed his personal emotions away somewhere
deep where they wouldn’t get in the way.

“Very.” Reed acted sure of himself.

“Are you coming along?”

“Not this time.” The recon platoon leader had seen bloodshed on his first mission and wasn’t thrilled anymore with the idea
of going out on long-range recon patrols. He could find plenty to do to keep himself busy back in the brigade base area, and
there would be enough missions for him leading combined teams.

Arnason nodded his head in agreement. He saluted the officer and started walking away. “We’ll be ready in the morning.”

The smell of fried rice filled the indigenous commando mess hall where Master Sergeant McDonald took most of his meals. He
sat by himself in deep thought and played with each forkful of food before putting it in his mouth. He was very hungry, but
his mind was occupied reviewing the message the Recondo School had received the night before. He had spent the whole night
over at the Special Forces headquarters G-3 office reviewing anything he could find on North Vietnamese Army activity in the
A Shau Valley and neighboring Laos. He knew a great deal already about the area because of his assignment with Project Cherry,
which operated out of Command and Control North, a SOG unit.

McDonald unconsciously rubbed his chest and side while he thought about his assignment with the top-secret project. He could
feel the heavy scar tissue through the material of his camouflaged fatigues. An old fear released itself from the dark brain
tissue he normally could keep locked up. He could remember everything in vivid detail: the jungle smells and the cool layer
of dead bamboo leaves on the ground. McDonald blinked and shoved a forkful of fried rice in his mouth, but the mental vision
would not go away. He heard the voices of the searching North Vietnamese and felt the fear deepen. The sound of returning
helicopters eased the fear for a second, and then the heavy thuds coming from a Chinese-made 12.7mm machine gun brought the
fear back again with an even greater intensity.

“You all right, Mac?”

McDonald blinked his eyes and saw one of the school cadre standing near his table with a tray of food in his hands. “Yeah…
sure!” He could feel the sweat dripping off his chin and used his arm to wipe it off. The mess hall was cool inside, and there
was no visible reason for him to be sweating so hard.