We neared the top of one ridge, and Than called for a halt. After four hours of moving at almost breakneck pace through the jungle, my legs could barely hold me up. Than himself seemed indefatigable.
"We wait here," he commanded, and gestured toward the barren, rocky outcropping along the mountain.
"Why?" I asked. There was no doubt that in matters effecting our survival in the jungle, Than was the expert. If we survived, it would be because his decisions were the right ones, not because anything had been left to me to decide.
He regarded me for a moment, then appeared to reach some decision. "There is shelter here. Come, I will show you."
We crossed the rocky clearing, rounded three large boulders, clinging to them as we negotiated a narrow path, then arrived next to a sheer cliff face.
I stopped and stared up at it, amazed. There was a series of steps leading up the mountain face, maybe fifteen in all, to a narrow ledge. Just behind that ledge there was a dark, black opening. A cave ― one that was invisible from almost any angle except this one.
"If the fire comes closer, we will take cover there." Than gestured at the cave. "There are ways to survive fires. These I know."
A small, wintry smile, one that reminded me that he would have been a very young man during the days of the Vietnam war. Very young, but most probably a fighter. During the latter years, the Vietnamese drafted everyone including women, grandmothers, and children into the continuing fight against the strangers on their land. It was this action on their part that had led to some of the major atrocities of the last war. U.S. troops in the field began to distrust small children, knowing that the Vietnamese were not above strapping booby traps on the children's backs and sending them off to beg food from the all-too-generous American troops. More than one woman had been sent to decoy other men, playing on their great weakness and loneliness, and then slitting a man's throat at an intimate moment.
From this elevation, I could see the progress of the fire in the jungle below us. It was moving rapidly, and had already encompassed the area where I thought the camp was. I gave silent thanks that I'd made a complete visual record of it, knowing that the memories contained in it were now lost forever. Mine would be the last ― and only ― record of those messages echoing down through the decades.
I am dying.
The fire was following a general westerly course, leaping back and forth on either side of the creek bed we'd followed. It was approaching the position we would have been in had we not cut up the side of the mountain, and I could see now that there had been no chance of our outrunning it.
Additionally, it was creeping up the sides of the hill, more slowly than its forward progress, but still clearly moving. It was a long, narrow wedge that broadened gradually, eating up the countryside around it.
Than appeared to be unworried. He watched the fire with me, then said, "To the cave. We have preparations to make."
It isn't the heat of the flames that always kills men in fires. The dangers, even for those that are out of reach of the more obvious threats, are more subtle. Fire requires oxygen to burn, and a good forest fire will suck the oxygen away from areas near it. You can survive the heat and flames and still suffocate, and I was afraid that would be what would happen to us.
The men were moving now, filing into the cave with their packs.
I could hear the fire now, chomping the valley as it moved toward us like a giant beast devouring the terrain. It was punctuated by high-pitched squeals, as the heat flashed moisture inside large tree trunks into steam, splitting them open like roasted pigs. The wind was picking up now too, rushing in toward the fire, billowing up smoke in huge gouts into the sky.
We were all inside the cave now, and men were pulling large, folded packages out of their packs. Clear sheets of plastic, heavy lengths of canvas. I watched as they rigged them over the door, dousing the canvas first in water from their canteens, then covering it with plastic. The canvas faced outward, the plastic inside. They worked carefully but quickly by the light of flashlights, fastening the canvas and plastic securely to the edges of the entrance into the cave, driving metal spikes into the wood and then positioning clamps on those.
"It keeps the air inside," Than explained briefly. The force of the wind outside was already sucking the canvas up against the edges of the cave entrance, and it billowed away from us, creating what appeared to be an excellent air trap.
"Are there any other air vents in this cave?" I asked.
He glanced briefly at the ceiling, then shook his head. "I am not certain, but I think not. You see the smoke ― it pools near the top, not rushing out." Now I knew why he had lit the candle shortly after the men had started erecting the barricade.
"Where did you learn this?" I asked.
He shot me a dark look, then said, "Experience. We know to come prepared."
"I wonder how the fire started," I said.
Another unreadable glance from Than, and then he turned away. Something in his response puzzled me. While he was often providing less than complete explanations for what we were doing, he normally had at least some response. Then it hit me.
The MiG. The fire. There was one thing I knew far too well that could ignite incendiary fires across a wide swath of country. While not the only cause, certainly, a ground-strike attack with heavy weapons could do just that.
We had seen it too often even during practice runs. Even practice SAR missions, where troops on the ground drop smoke flares and then wait for helos, could fan into brush fires, particularly under the heavy downdraft of a rescue helicopter. Another lesson we'd learned during Vietnam.
The MiG ― the damaged MiG. And how had it been damaged? Through some mishap in a routine training mission?
From Than's response, I thought not. It had been in air combat, and that left just a few possible candidates. The Chinese to the north ― or the Jefferson to the east. And if Than had a radio, he would have known what had happened. Known, and been prepared to move out and flee from the fire.
The fire was on us now, the noise all-consuming. It sounded like a tornado, or the sound of some odd jet engine spooling up. The canvas and plastic barricade was sucking hard against its clamps now, and the men were lining the entrance, adding their strength to hold it in place against the difference in pressure between the inside of the cave and the outside. The canvas itself was smoking, and I could see a thin layer of smoke trapped between the canvas and the plastic.
How long could it hold? Even wetted down with water from our canteens, the canvas would soon dry into a thin, combustible layer. The fire was on us now, dancing and howling just past the thin temporary air lock we'd jury-rigged out of what we had. Flames danced and skittered along the canvas, sheets of fire steaming off the last remnants of water. The canvas was beginning to smoke. Or burn. The noise was unholy, and the small cavern was filled with groans and creaks of rock heating and expanding. A new danger now ― that the flames would crack the rock, opening air vents to the outside and quickly sucking out our oxygen.
The men were crouched around the lower edges of the canvas, which was stretched tight to immobilize its top, holding it with all their might against the rock walls. The clamps alone could not hold. The heat was unbearable, radiating in and raising the temperature inside to excruciating levels. I had thought the jungle hot, but it was nothing compared to the scorching, killing heat.