"They are still here." Than fell silent, clearly disinclined to elaborate.
"You shoot first?" I asked. In the military we have rules of engagement that govern our contact with enemy forces. But here, in his country, under his sponsorship, I would be extremely reluctant to take the first shot against a Vietnamese, even one who might intend me harm.
"We have scouts ahead," he said, motioning to the front of the column. I saw that we were short two men, who'd evidently gone ahead to mark out our path. "If the rebels appear, my men will try to determine whether they are hostile or friendly. Some are indifferent to our presence here, others are openly… territorial."
The terrain had changed slightly, had been rising under my feet steadily, and now abruptly increased in grade. I found myself trying to carry on a conversation with Than while struggling up a mountain, and gave up talking. There was no point in trying to get more information out of him ― he'd tell me what he thought I needed to know.
Soon I noticed that the vegetation was changing, thinning out slightly from the morass of vines and undergrowth we'd run into below. The going was rough, though, and vines and thick bushes still barred our way. I was sweating, water pouring down my back and gluing my shirt to me. Insects swarmed around us, flocking to any bit of exposed skin. I pulled the tube of insect repellent out of my pants pocket and smeared some more around my neck and on my hands. God knows how long it would last with the sweat pouring off me like it was. Were there leeches? I shuddered, and made it a point to check that my jungle pants were bloused over the heavy boots.
The heavy growth of trees stopped abruptly, and we broke out into a clearing. The ground continued on up, and we followed it to the very top.
From the top of the ridge, I could see the ocean in the distance. On the horizon, a dusty, misted-over familiar shape greeted me. Jefferson ― it had to be. There was no other aircraft carrier in the vicinity.
For a moment I felt a sensation of inchoate longing, the absolute conviction that I was in the wrong place. I belonged on the carrier, at sea, surrounded by a clean expanse of water. Not here, cloaked in mosquitoes and insects of every description, blinking to clear the dirty sweat from my eyes and trying to keep up with men born to this country.
Had it been like this for my father? The power of the thought almost stunned me, and all at once I had the uncanny sensation that I was trodding in his steps. Perhaps he'd stopped in this very spot and looked out at the ocean, seeing his ship out there so clearly visible and so far from reach. Maybe he'd had his radio, and it had been broken in the fall, or maybe he'd lost it when he punched out. How had he survived out here, alone and without his people?
No. Reality reasserted itself. My father would not have been here ― not immediately after the ejection, at any rate. He'd punched out over the Doumer Bridge in downtown Hanoi, nowhere near here. His wingman had said he'd seen a chute, but despite the best efforts of the U.S., there was never any report of his surviving.
No, if he'd come here, it had been as a prisoner of war, under the escort of armed men. They would have set a faster pace, urging him on perhaps with his hands bound together in front of him as he stumbled over these paths.
"They brought them in in helicopters," Than said as though reading my mind. "Prisoners of war were collected at a central site, then transported by helicopter."
"Not always," I said.
He appeared to consider that for a moment, and then nodded. "Not always."
"How much further is it to this camp?" I asked.
He shrugged. "It depends on the pace. Much of the way is like this, mountainous and jungle. Another ten miles, perhaps a little bit more."
"We're heading north," I noted, observing the position of the sun in the sky.
"Yes. It is to the north."
"Then let's get going."
Than called out softly in his own language, and the men who'd been seated on the ground taking a well-deserved break moved quickly to their feet and gathered up their packs. We continued on for another hour before all hell broke loose. As we progressed through the jungle, I started developing a morbid dread of leeches. I'd heard too many stories about men in country in Vietnam, of the giant bloodsuckers that would affix themselves to any visible part of the skin and burrow in, bloating their vast bodies on human blood. It was an unreasonable fear ― we were far above the small stream that had created the gully we'd first crossed, and probably well out of the reach of leeches.
Probably.
I started to ask Than about that, and then thought better of it. No, there were no leeches here. None.
After four hours of hiking, pushing my runner's legs past their normal endurance point with the steep terrain, the crawling sensation of sweat trickling off my body fed into the obsession with leeches. Each small movement of sweat across my body made me suspect that it was not just my own perspiration, but one of those horrendous leeches burrowing in. Then the itching started in my groin. It almost panicked me, the thought of a flaccid worm crawling across my crotch, looking for just the right point at which to feed. I'd heard that leeches first injected their victims with a small amount of numbing agent so as not to alert them when the leech finally selected its spot. Was that what I was feeling now? Was there a patch of numbness spreading across my thigh, stretching out tentacles toward my left nut?
It couldn't be. My rational mind was firm about that. Still, to appease the demons lurking in my mind, I bent over to check that my boot-pant barrier was still impenetrable. In the process, I brushed lightly at my groin, and was relieved to feel nothing out of the ordinary there.
I had just started to straighten up when the first light chatter sounded through the jungle. I glanced around, looking for the source of the noise. A hand clamped down on the back of my collar, the fingers hard against my neck, and jerked backward. I stumbled backward, lost my balance, and fell to the ground next to Than.
"Guerrillas." He mouthed the word. He pointed in the direction of the slope.
I squinted, and could make out nothing besides the same dense green foliage. I eased my rifle off my shoulder sling and settled it into my hands. It was bulky, uncomfortable, but the stock was worn in several places where other hands must have held it.
Than lay a quieting hand over mine to still the action of chambering a round.
From up ahead somewhere a thin, bloodcurdling cry started low and quickly crescendoed past any octave I'd ever heard a human utter before. It was a wild, keening sound, something inhuman and unholy. It lasted for about five seconds, then cut off abruptly.
Than nodded. "Now we wait."
"For what?" I asked, barely breathing the words.
Than gave me a look of slight disgust. "To see if that was them ― or us."
The minutes stretched into hours, the jungle silent except for the noise of the wind through the trees. The animals had taken cover, and not even a bird disturbed the silence.
Finally, one of our point men emerged from the foliage. A severed head, eyes still moist but glazed with the unmistakable look of death, hung from his hand. The point man was grinning. He motioned to his fellows with his rifle with all the braggadocio of a fighter pilot, as if to say, "It's safe ahead, I've taken care of business."
The men climbed back to their feet, slowly now, casting looks around at the jungle around them. It wouldn't do any good ― we'd not heard them before, and I doubted we would hear them next time.
We'd just started to reassemble into a column when the next shots were fired. This time I needed no prompting ― I dove to the ground and rolled under some brush.
The shots were concentrated on an area about ten feet ahead of me, slightly above waist-high. I could hear no sounds save my own harsh breathing.