Beside me, someone moaned. I looked over and saw Than pale and grimacing in the next clump of brush. Could I risk it? Than was holding up one hand, motioning to me to stay where I was. He clamped his hand around his upper arm, then held utterly still.
I moved slowly, trying not to rustle the brush around me, moving at a pace measured in inches rather than knots. It took me five minutes to traverse those ten feet, but finally I was at his side.
I unpeeled his fingers from around his shoulder and inspected the wound. Blood soaked camouflaged uniform, running in trickles over the fabric until absorbed by a dry portion. I pulled the fabric back gently.
The entry wound was clean, a hole through his arm rather than ripping the entire arm off. I fingered it cautiously, hoping that the wound was still numb enough from nerve trauma for Than to tolerate it. There appeared to be no fragment of the bullet left inside, so I took his hand and placed it back over the wound and clamped down. I placed my hand over his and pressed firmly.
Wetness seeped between my fingers, dark red rivulets that coursed down my fingers and crept around my fingertips. I could see it under my nails, darkening them as though I were a mechanic.
Than pulled his uninjured arm free, and I felt the wound throbbing warm and moist under my fingers. He reached in a jacket pocket, extracted a small medical kit. With one hand, he withdrew a roll of bandages and tape.
There was still no sound from the jungle, and the gunfire had fallen silent. Still moving carefully, trying to make no motion discernible to the people that were shooting at us, I slowly peeled back the tattered camouflage sleeve and pushed the torn T-shirt up onto his arm.
From the little I know of wounds, this was a clean one. I dumped some alcohol on it, then wound the gauze tightly around it in multiple layers. When finally I saw no more red seeping through, I bound it over with tape. Than watched impassively, not so much as a groan escaping from between his lips.
Up ahead, one of our men returned fire. I saw the bright sparks from the muzzle of his rifle, heard the antiseptic rattle of his automatic weapon. An AK-47, I suspected ― it had looked like that when I'd had a chance to see it earlier.
Lying motionless in the jungle was unendurable. Fear turned to rage, then to the urgent, overwhelming need to act, to do something to take my own destiny into my own hands. It is a trait bred into fighter pilots, reinforced through days and days of aerial combat maneuvering, and finally imprinted on your mind by your first at-sea combat experience. Unlike ground troops, for whom the survival of one man depends on all his buddies doing their jobs, aviators rely primarily on people within their own cockpit. For me, that meant the voice of my backseater in my ear, giving me vectors, calling off warnings as missiles were launched against us.
The closest thing I had to a backseater here was Than, and he was in no condition to help. I patted him once reassuringly, urged him slightly deeper into the underbrush, then crept forward toward the man who'd fired. Years ago, I'd test-fired an M-16 during OCS. Later, every few years or so, I'd have a chance to go out on a range and reacquaint myself with its capabilities. Not enough to call me a good shot with it, but then at that rate of fire you don't have to be good. You just have to be close.
The man saw me coming, and motioned me into Position behind a tree. Evidently he'd ascertained the bearing of the threat. I crept behind the tree, then cautiously raised up, letting its bulk shield me from the snipers. The man to my right fired off another burst, and finally our assailants in the trees began returning fire again.
Their muzzle flashes gave them away immediately. With my M-16 in full-automatic mode, I hosed down the vicinity of the muzzle flashes, staying low to the ground to catch him in cover.
There was a scream; then a muffled wailing began up on the hill. The enemy gunfire ceased.
The man I'd identified as our platoon leader stood slowly and waited, exposing himself to fire. When none followed, he motioned to the rest of the men. They formed on him, and quickly took up fighting positions.
I returned to Than, only to find him struggling to his feet with one good arm. The bandage around his left arm was already soaked with blood.
With Than injured, our pace slowed considerably. Although the bleeding had finally stopped, he was fighting off shock by sheer willpower. I watched him carefully as we progressed through the jungle, noting the pallor beneath his burnished skin, the telltale tremble in his fingers.
The other men were aware of it as well, and one stood by his side at all times, ever ready to lend a hand during the steep upward climbs. At first, Than protested, shaking off the help. As the day progressed and there was no denying his increasing weakness, he accepted the assistance with bad grace.
The only thing he absolutely refused to do was Stop. During one short rest break, taken at my insistence, he provided only a brief unsatisfactory explanation. "We are in danger until we arrive. Once we are there, I think we'll be safe."
I strained to hear the slightest unusual noise in the jungle, unconvinced that our attackers had been persuaded so easily. Where there was one, or two, there could be a whole platoon, lurking just out of sight in the dense jungle. I could feel their eyes on me, and even though there was no trace of them otherwise, not an unfamiliar noise or an odd flash of color in the jungle, I knew they were there.
For whatever reason, there were no further attacks. Late in the afternoon, when Than's strength was clearly almost gone, we broke out into a low valley between two sets of hills.
It was as though I had stepped back in time. Hard-packed ground surrounded cinder-block buildings, the materials for which must have been transported by unimaginable effort. Helicopter perhaps, I thought, glancing at the stand of trees. There was almost enough room to allow in a cargo aircraft, although the descent and landing would have been harrowing. Still, if the branches had been trimmed back, the trees thinned a bit thirty years earlier, it could have been done.
The buildings themselves were virtually intact. Someone had been caring for them ― they could not have survived so well in the jungle otherwise. And there was the cleared dirt area around them, only a few green shoots popping up in the middle. It would have to have been cleared quite frequently.
The jungle around me was omnivorous, voracious, devouring any sense of order that man attempted to impose on it.
"It is here," Than gasped. Two of his men were lowering him to a sitting position on a barren tree stump at one edge of the compound. Than's color was markedly paler, and his breath was coming in deep, shallow gasps. His men moved in gentle eddies around him, murmuring uneasily. One ventured forward and began caring for the wound, tentatively at first as though he would be rebuked, then with greater confidence.
"You can't mean this has survived all these years?" I stared at the compound again, baffled at the orderliness of it.
We had entered the clearing at the southeast corner. Positioned at an angle to us was one large, central building, the glass that had been in the windows ― if there had ever been glass ― the only clear casualty of time. This building was flanked on three sides by longer ones, clearly configured as barracks. The low, utilitarian appearance was unmistakable to anyone who'd spent any time in the military.
A central tower two stories high stood at the back part of the compound, behind the barracks-shaped building that ran directly behind the main building. It was two stories tall, capped with a sunshade made out of poles. From it, a security detachment would be able to see everything that moved in the camp ― and outside it.
There was only one fixture to the puzzle missing, one that had not struck me at first. I turned to Than, considered his condition, then asked anyway. "Defense ― where is it?"