P. O. W. (6 page)

One of her soldiers appeared in the doorway. “Lieutenant! There is a call for you in the radio bunker!”

She nodded her head and started for the door. She turned and looked at James, who was watching Barnett’s face. “Mohammed?”

James looked up at the officer with an expression of pure pleasure. “Yes?”

“You were too busy to notice….” She held up the half-dozen Polaroid photographs of him beating Barnett that her guard had
just taken and fanned them out in her hand. “This is what we call in the intelligence community…
insurance
.”

“Keep them! I could give a fuck less… Lieutenant!” James spat out the words.

She left, and all but one of the guards followed her. She shivered when her back felt the warm sunlight touch it, not from
the warmth but from her thoughts of Mohammed James. He was a very sick man.

Spencer had forced his eyes open and saw the photographs in Lieutenant Van Pao’s hand. The pain coming from his feet, buttocks,
and testes was excruciating and blended together as one great force. He swallowed hard and shivered.

“James… I am going to kill you….” The words were spoken so softly that James barely heard him.

“You’re not going to do shit, honkie!” James kicked Spencer’s bruised buttocks, sending the POW swinging back and forth, as
he left the darkened room.

Mohammed James walked down the jungle trail with Spencer Barnett’s CAR-15 slung over his right shoulder. The short version
of the M-16 rifle was perfectly designed for the thick jungles of the highlands. The telescoping stock could be pulled out
and the weapon selector switch placed on semiautomatic, or else the weapon could be used as a compact, fully automatic submachine
gun. James smiled to himself as he walked between the NVA company commander and the unit’s first sergeant. He was recalling
the first time Spencer Barnett had seen him carrying the weapon. His ex-teammate had literally thrown himself against the
bars of his cage and screamed curses at him. It served the uppity white trash right to have the weapon taken away from him.
Sergeant McDonald had no right giving Woods and Barnett their own CAR-15s after they had graduated from the Re-condo School
in Nha Trang. He had graduated too, and with honors! That was the way it was with white people: they always took care of each
other and shit on the black and colored people of the world! James’s smile changed to a full-mouthed grin. Who had the CAR-15
now?

The North Vietnamese column he was part of moved at a casual pace down the jungle road that would have been a trail in a more
developed country. NVA engineers had built the road running next to the Rao Lao River to link up with Highway 547 in South
Vietnam, cutting the A Shau Valley in half and providing high-speed access to the prized city of Da Nang. Groups of NVA soldiers
passed James’s unit riding bicycles on their return trips to the NVA supply depots in Laos. The NVA modified the bikes to
carry huge loads of ammunition and supplies to their troops in the south by removing the seat and placing the load where the
man would normally ride. The soldier would walk next to the bike and steer it using a modified bar across the handlebars.

James had learned a great deal about the NVA in just the short couple of weeks he had agreed to work with them against American
units. The NVA traveled mostly at night down well-used trails and roads. The jungle was used only to get into and out of major
command or supply areas in the south. The American units spent almost all of their time humping through the heavy jungle sounding
like an old steam engine as they hacked their way through the virgin terrain. The NVA were
never
taken by surprise if the American unit was larger than a squad. James wondered how much the American intelligence people
would pay him for what he knew about NVA small-unit operations; it could probably change the results of the Vietnam War.

The North Vietnamese commander stopped his company and gave orders for his men to fill their canteens and eat. James found
himself a comfortable spot to sit next to a large tree and removed his nylon backpack. He opened a side pocket and took out
a can of potatoes and beef. Everything James wore was authentic American equipment, down to his underwear. He was supplied
with gear that had been taken off American dead and POWs. The only thing that James did not wear was camouflage paint, and
there was a reason for that: the NVA wanted the fact that he was a black man to be very obvious to anyone they encountered
once they reached the Laotian–South Vietnamese border.

James leaned back against the tree and ate his can of C-rations alone. The NVA soldiers stayed away from him, and only the
first sergeant or the company commander would even bother talking to him. James liked it when the sergeant gave him his orders,
because the man spoke almost letter-perfect English—in fact, the North Vietnamese spoke English better than he did.

Sweat rolled down in his eyes, and he used the back of his hand to wipe it away. He started thinking of home, back in Detroit,
Michigan, where he had been raised in a white-built ghetto that had been designed to contain the black people and keep them
all together, below 8 Mile Road in the city. The whites had always treated black people like shit. The ghetto projects where
his mother had found them an apartment were new when they moved in, but the whites who controlled everything in Detroit refused
to give the black people good jobs, and so they were forced to tear the toilets and sinks out of the apartments and sell them
to feed their families. If a light bulb was screwed into a socket in the hallway, it was gone within minutes. The halls at
night became a battle zone for muggers and dope dealers.

Mohammed James ground his teeth as he thought about how the white people treated blacks back home in Detroit. The whites were
the ones who had forced his mother to work long, eighteen-hour days operating a steam press in a white-owned laundry. She
had caught pneumonia during his fourteenth winter and died. Mohammed chose to live in the streets, rather than go to the Wayne
County Youth Home and be forced to feed the emotional vampires who worked there under the protection of the powerful social
services organization. It was on the streets that he had first met the man who became the most powerful influence in his life:
Malcolm Pride. James had learned through the popular Black Moslem exactly what his personal calling in life was, and at sixteen
years of age, James had become the youngest Death Angel in the United States.

A smile of pride crossed James’s face under the jungle tree. He had known from his first Black Moslem secret ceremony for
Death Angels what his lifetime vocation was going to be.

Whites were dumb. He remembered cruising down Highway 75, just south of River Rouge, and picking up white teenagers who were
running away from home and hitchhiking out to the hippie mecca called California to join communes and fuck all day long. Whites
were dumb. It was only a matter of persuading them to get into the van, and then there would be a half-dozen of them pushing
and shoving to choose from. It seemed like every intersection of the highway had a group of hippies waiting for rides. He
liked the blond ones with the light blue eyes the best. Malcolm had told them that those were the ones who grew up to be the
worst white devils, and it was best to kill them early, before they could do harm to the pure black folk.

Whites were dumb. He knew of five white teenagers who would never return to their homes in Detroit from their hippie pilgrimages
to California; that was the number of whites it took to become a Death Angel.

Yes, when Malcolm Pride had entered James’s life, everything had taken its proper place, and he became very useful to someone.
What Mohammed James had never realized, and probably never would, was that his great friend Malcolm Pride had seen in him
what even the most incompetent psychologist would have instantly detected: that here was a psychopathic killer who, even had
he lived in all-black Africa, would still have killed for pleasure. Knowing this, Malcolm channeled the hate to white people
and gave James a cause and a reason to kill by being a Death Angel for the Moslem movement.

The NVA officer spoke sharply now to his junior leaders, and the company started preparing to move out of their break site.
There was a noticeable difference in the way the soldiers acted. The lackadaisical attitude of the troops was gone. The soldiers,
who had been carrying their weapons by their barrels over their shoulders, now carried the weapons at the ready. James knew
they were crossing into South Vietnam’s A Shau Valley. Lieutenant Van Pao had briefed him before he left the POW camp that
an American battalion had moved into the A Shau, and she was almost sure that it was a unit from the First Cavalry Division,
his old outfit.

Mohammed James took his position ten meters out in front of the NVA point element and began earning his keep.

Corporal Barnett lay in the bamboo cage where the guards had left him. He barely moved, and when he did, a groan escaped his
throat. The bottoms of his feet were raw, and his arches were so bruised that it would be weeks before he could walk without
limping. The blows James had given him across his testicles had caused both genital glands to swell to triple their normal
size. His scrotum had been cut and oozed a mixture of blood and other body fluid. There would be scars on Spencer’s buttocks
when the deep cuts finally healed… if he lived.

Colonel Garibaldi kept eyeing Barnett’s cage every time he had a chance to pass it or work near the cages. The guards had
been instructed to forbid him to administer to the teenager’s wounds until after their supper meal, and then they would allow
him to stay with him in the cage for only a half-hour. Garibaldi spent the day gathering anything that he might be able to
use on Spencer: pieces of cloth for bandages, sticks for splints. He even begged a small bottle of liquid Chinese aspirin
off one of the older guards.

The small Montagnard boy reached through the bamboo bars and lifted Spencer’s head just enough to pour the thick monkey meat
stew down his throat. The effect of the high-protein food was almost immediate on the starving man. Barnett’s eyes fluttered,
and his mouth kept moving like that of a small baby when its bottle was removed before it had finished nursing. The boy looked
constantly around the cage for any approaching guards. He then pulled a dirty Vietnamese perfume bottle out of his loincloth
waistband. He looked back across the pungi stake barrier and saw that his grandfather was watching from the porch. The opium-brewed
pain reliever burned and tasted bitter against Spencer’s tongue, but the numbing effect of the powerful drug was almost immediate.
Spencer felt a hand tugging at the drawstring of his black peasant pants and a sharp pain as the trousers were tugged down,
breaking the scabs of his wounds that had dried against the material. The boy worked swiftly, rubbing the salve deep into
all of Spencer’s wounds. An old Montagnard woman had made the opium-based ointment by boiling the sap down and mixing it with
animal fat and jungle plants. The ointment did a number of things to the wounds that enabled Spencer to fall asleep.

The Bru chieftain’s grandson slipped the empty perfume bottle back into his waistband and dropped down in the shadows next
to Barnett’s cage. He was taking a great risk and knew the guard would kill him without question if he was caught near the
American soldier, but his grandfather’s orders were to be obeyed without fear. The Ae Die liked good deeds, and his grandfather
was a close friend of the mountain spirit. He would be protected from evil.

Colonel Garibaldi was shocked to see Spencer awake when he returned from his work detail. He had feared all day long that
he would be burying the young soldier when he returned.

Barnett tried smiling, but failed. “Are you working half-days now, Colonel?”

The older man grabbed the bamboo bars and pressed his face up against the smooth fibers. “How are you feeling?” Garibaldi
blinked back the tears. Spencer looked so helpless lying on his stomach. “I was a little worried about you this morning.”

“I’m a little buzzed….”

“What?” Garibaldi became alarmed.

“One of the Montagnard kids brought me a little jug of what I think was dope. It sure has stopped the pain…. And then he rubbed
some greasy stuff all over my ass…” Spencer wasn’t ashamed and continued talking, “and nuts…. Whatever it was, it works. The
pain is gone.”

Colonel Garibaldi could see that Spencer’s eyes weren’t focusing like they should and figured the Montagnards had drugged
the young soldier so that he could rest and start healing. The risks that they took in approaching the American POW cages
in bright daylight were tremendous. The colonel turned around slowly, knowing that the guard was watching him, and looked
across the pungi stake clearing to where an old Montagnard and a small nine-year-old boy sat watching him from the porch of
their longhouse. The American colonel checked to see what the guard was doing and saw that the NVA soldier was reading a letter
from home. Garibaldi placed his palms together against his chest and tilted the top half of his body forward in an Oriental
sign of great respect to the old man. The boy whispered something in the nearsighted old man’s ear, and the Bru chieftain
smiled a betel-nut–stained grin and nodded his head in the direction of the Americans.

The squad leader was the first one to sight the American soldier walking down the center of the trail. He blinked his eyes
rapidly to clear his vision and confirmed that the man he saw was a black American. The sergeant didn’t take the time to wonder
what a lone GI was doing walking down a trail deep in NVA-held territory. He waited until the soldier drew near to his hidden
position and called out softly, “What in the hell are you doing here?”

James was startled and took a step sideways before catching himself. He spoke loud enough for the NVA point element to hear
him. “Man! Am I glad to see you! I got fucking lost!”

“Quiet!” The sergeant lifted up a little higher from his prone position and looked down the trail in the direction of Laos.
“This fucking place is crawling with NVA.”