The origins of tap code dated back to Ancient Greece but were more recently used by prisoners of war during Vietnam. Every American soldier knew of this communication method. But as Victoria discovered, familiarity and mastery were two very different things.
Victoria and her fellow POWs had begun communicating to each other through tap code within the first few days of arriving in the camp, though it took her a while to get the hang of it. Five rows of letters, A to Z. C was also K, in the top row. The first consecutive taps were for the vertical row, top to bottom. The second set of taps were for which column the letter was in, left to right.
Tap tap tap. Tap tap. Three down, two across. M.
Morning. Short for good morning, in this case. Her cell neighbor was greeting her.
She responded, and then began receiving her morning report.
All personnel present and accounted for. PO Nordyke sick. Needs meds.
Petty Officer Nordyke had caught pneumonia. The poor kid had been suffering chills and a fever for the past forty-eight hours. Victoria would use her meeting today with the camp’s commanding officer to ask for better medical treatment, her job for now. She was the prisoners’ representative for food, water, and humane treatment.
The first week in this camp had been almost nonstop torture and interrogations, but even the guards couldn’t keep up that pace. Those bastards had to sleep at some point. Victoria had negotiated with the base commander, promising him “good behavior” in exchange for better food and a few hours per day of exercise. In a moment of weakness and fatigue, she had even conducted a video confession.
Victoria was humiliated and dishonored. The prisoners’ conditions improved, but her mistake only further fueled a desire to resist. She commanded her fellow prisoners to continue creating an escape plan.
South American men and women forced to work for the Chinese cooked the prisoners’ food. Some were local political prisoners, held in a low-security barracks outside of the American POW camp. Others came from the nearby town. As Victoria understood it, they were paid pennies.
Several groups of non-prisoners used the mess hall as well. The guards ate first, of course, and next came a team of scientists or researchers. Some wore white lab coats. They were Hispanic, but Victoria got the feeling that they weren’t local. Every time the researchers entered the mess hall, they were under the Chinese guards’ watchful eyes. They didn’t receive the same tender loving care as Victoria and the American servicemen, but she could feel a definite tension.
Whenever the scientists weren’t eating, they worked under guard in a building half a mile south of the camp. Sometimes Victoria could hear incredibly loud rumbles coming from the facility, almost like a jet engine.
Several Chinese installations were located near the POW camp, and a lot of manual labor was required to keep everything running. Venezuelan military soldiers also ate at the mess hall sometimes. They drove their jeeps right up to the hall and looked like they were having a great time while they ate. Victoria was mainly interested in the gear the Venezuelan soldiers stored on their jeeps. The Chinese guards kept all of their communications gear in a single building that overlooked the camp courtyard from the north. Captain Tao’s office was there. But the Venezuelan jeeps had UHF/VHF radios that looked similar to the standard American-issue gear, and a long HF antenna on the rear of each vehicle. She had tasked Plug and his escape committee with finding a way to get access to that comms gear.
The Chinese eventually put the American prisoners to work alongside the locals, doing laundry, cleaning, and cooking.
After a few weeks of this, Victoria ordered the escapes to begin in earnest. There were several unsuccessful attempts, one resulting in an ensign’s death. The kid had actually tried to rip the sidearm out of a PLA soldier’s holster. He was shot twice by snipers in two different guard towers. Some of the Americans thought it might have been a suicide attempt, but Victoria didn’t want to think about that. Even though that particular escape hadn’t been run by her before execution, she still added it to the pile of things she couldn’t forgive herself for.
Most days were long, boring, and hot as hell. Her time was spent staring at the thin slice of jungle she could see from her cell or tapping through the wall to the young man next to her. Sometimes they played telephone, passing information along from one cell to the next. Other times they had deeply personal conversations, telling each other about their homes.
She found herself telling her prison cell neighbor about her childhood. Reeling up home-made crab pots with her brothers in the Chesapeake. Scoring the winning goal during a college lacrosse game. Sun-filled stories of a happier time. Stories she hadn’t thought about in forever. Her life had been consumed by work and purpose, her rank and title forged through years of stress and sweat. But now, looking back, she found that these simpler times were the memories she cherished the most. The ones she wished she had more of.
Victoria stopped tapping when she heard a guard’s club dragging along nearby cell bars.
“Rows one and two. Morning meal.”
The guards’ English was getting better. Some of them regularly conversed with their American captives, and Victoria suspected they enjoyed it. Her standing orders to the prisoners were to befriend anyone they could. Forge useful connections. Find out information. Probe for weaknesses and potential solutions.
Escape. It was their ultimate objective, despite any false pretense of cooperation.
She wanted nothing more than to get all of her men out of here alive so they could rejoin the fight. As she thought of this, the ground rumbled beneath her feet. Another jet engine test from the research facility to the south.
A guard opened her cell door with a clang, and she stretched as she got out and stood up. Victoria spotted Plug in the cell row next to hers. They wouldn’t be allowed to sit together at breakfast — or morning rice, as her men called it — but she would likely get a chance to speak to him in the dirt-covered exercise yard.
She walked through a meal line. A pregnant Hispanic woman served each of them a bowl of rice and a plastic cup of water. Today there was a hard-boiled egg in the bowl, an exciting addition. They ate in silence. They knew not to test the rules. Three armed Chinese guards watched over them, including the mean one with the shaved head who always ogled her chest.
After the meal, Plug and another American were chosen to stay behind and help clean up the mess hall. The rest were marched out to the courtyard for “exercise time.” Soon the group of American prisoners lined up in a formation, almost like they were back on base, doing squadron PT. Victoria was happy to see the chief out with them. He seemed to be getting over his violent arrival. He even led one of their “daily dozen” exercises.
Plug, finished in the kitchen, fell into the rear of the group’s formation, then traded spots with the guy in front of him so he could stand next to Victoria, watching for the guards to look away so he wouldn’t attract too much attention. The chief, seeing what Plug was trying to do, turned up the volume.
“Let’s count a bit louder now, eh? One!”
“One!” replied the group of prisoners in unison.
“Two!”
“Two!” replied the group.
It went on like that for a while, the group performing a simple arm stretch while Plug gave Victoria his update.
“The day after tomorrow.”
“How?”
Plug shrugged. “That fat Venezuelan soldier driving the jeep has a thing for one of the laundry girls. A local Venezuelan girl.”
Victoria frowned. “Is the laundry girl a prisoner?”