He started talking to himself, rattling off the drill. ‘Got to get out,’ he said and, loosening his safety belt, tried to hang out of the plane and drop to the tree limbs. The smell of smoke grew stronger, and suddenly he was free of the plane, arcing through the air. He reached out toward a branch, felt it slap his palm and then slip away. It spun him around so his feet were now below him. Just like a bail-out, he thought as he hurtled toward the ground. Knees together and bent, roll when I hit.
But he hit wrong, and as he landed he heard his kneecap pop, felt the pain burn deep in the leg, coursing down to his ankle. He trapped the scream of pain between his teeth. Sweat boiled out of his skin.
He looked up. The river was twenty yards away, shimmering in the early morning sun. He got up and started hobbling frantically toward it He knew there were bandits all around, but maybe he’d get lucky. Then overhead and behind him he heard a sizzling sound and a moment later the dull thumpf as the gas tanks went. Heat from the explosion wafted down over him, but he kept hopping toward the river, dragging his ruined leg behind him. He didn’t look back. Then he heard the familiar chump, chump, chump of the chopper, off to his left, coming upriver.
Oh God, c’mon, baby, he thought.
Twenty yards to freedom.
‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue one. We have the Black Pony in sight . . .
The Huey was suspended twenty feet above the river. In the belly, Harley Simmons, a young gunner, squinted and peered into the thick foliage, looking for signs of life. The pilot’s voice crackled through the earphones.
‘How about it, Simmons, anything?’
‘I’m looking, Captain, I’m looking. . .
The explosion cut him off. It was almost like slow motion. First the shock wave of the burst rippling through the trees, then the Black Pony disintegrating, then the bright orange fireball boiling up into the sky. Seconds later the ping of bullets sang off the fuselage a few feet from Simmons’s head.
‘We got bandits shooting at us!’ Simmons screamed into his mike.
‘How about our man?’ the pilot relied back.
Then Simmons saw him; he was hobbling from under the awning of fire, heading toward the riverbank. He was almost there-. twenty, thirty feet maybe. But before Simmons could say anything, another round of bullets ripped into the edge of the open hatch, tearing it up. Bits and pieces rattled off Simmons’s helmet. He heard the whine of 9 mm. shells wailing inches from his ear, and fear .charged deeply into him like a bolt of lightning. The plane in the forest exploded again and fire raged through the treetops.
He can’t make it, Simmons said to himself as more gunfire tore at the Huey.
‘I don’t see nothing, Captain,’ he lied. ‘We got bandits chewing us up back here.’
The pilot rolled the belly of the chopper toward the forest and spun around, heading back downriver.
Simmons dropped weakly to his knees. He was shaking all over. Oh God, he thought, what have I done .
But he was too frightened to say it aloud. He heard the pilot’s voice on the intercom: ‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue one . . . We lost him . . .
Cody almost reached the bank when the chatter of an automatic weapon off to his right startled him. He dropped to the ground and crawled to the edge of the water.
The Huey was a hundred feet away, hovering over the river.
Over here, over here! he urged silently. He started to get up, to wave at the chopper. And watched in horror as it peeled away and headed back downstream.
No, he cried to himself, No, no
‘I’m here,’ he screamed desperately.
He stood up, determined to jump into the water and swim to the safety of the other side, at just the moment the sky erupted in fire as the plane disintegrated in flames. The heat roared down over him like a blanket. He covered his face and fell to the ground, huddled against the raging fire in the trees overhead. And as the inferno baked his back and legs he kept crawling toward the river.
Freedom was ten feet away when he gave up.
The commander burst into the radio shack, his face frozen in a scowl.
‘What the hell is it, Wicker?’ he snapped.
‘We just lost a bird, Commander,’ the radio operator answered forlornly.
The commander’s shoulders sagged. He shook his head.
‘Damn!’ he barked. ‘Who was it.’
The radioman hesitated for just a second.
‘Chili one, sir, Lieutenant Cody.’
The commander closed his eyes for a moment and his jaw twitched as he clenched his teeth. ‘Jesus H. Christ,’ he moaned. And a moment later: ‘Okay, get me GHQ, Saigon. I gotta tell the Old Man we just lost his son.’
CENTRAL AMERICA
1985
LOS BOXES
The river had been broad and energetic at the beginning of the journey, but the jungle had gradually encroached on it until now, after four days, the tortured umbilicus between Madrango, the capital, and the forlorn outpost 160 miles away was a mere trickle. The ancient riverboat, scarred by years of heat and rain and piloted by a captain who could barely stay awake, chugged feebly up the last few cramped miles. Trees and ferns snapped at its gunwales and rattled its portholes. The old tub groaned as it fought the brush. The only passenger was an obese grotesque, his delicate face squinched by layers of fat, his faded blue eyes, tiny mouth and pointy nose lost in folds of flesh. He sat on a decrepit old lawn chair near the bow, knees and ankles tucked together, his chin pulled down, a white hat hugging his brow, his soft, dimpled hands clutching a white umbrella to shield him from the broiling sun. His white suit was skimpy, ill fitting and sweat-stained, and his unbuttoned shirt cuffs hung loose, for they no longer fit around his massive wrists.
His name was Randall Wilfred Pratt III, and he was with the U.S. State Department in Madrango, much to the chagrin of the embassy staff. On paper, Pratt had looked good, an honor graduate of Harvard whose father was a major contributor and leverage broker for the party in power, and a confidant of the president.
In person, Pratt III was an embarrassment to all, a closet case who came in the package, along with the donations and endorsements. Banished to the minute, unstable Central American country, he was kept discreetly out of sight and used only when some undesirable occasion arose. This job was perfect; it required no diplomacy at all.
For two days he had sat thus, all tacked in, waiting and watching for his first glimpse of a place so foul, so unforgiving, so terrifying by reputation, that even the judges who condemned men to its depths whispered its name. With each passing hour Pratt’s anxiety grew until it was a scream waiting to happen, a scream that could not be suppressed.
The old scow burst through the trees and the place rose like a specter before them, a towering stone bastion tortured by vines, smothered with damp green moss, and choked by the forest that entrapped it. Pratt was so undone, so utterly terrified by the sight that he -yelled out loud, a piercing cry that jarred the master of the boat awake and brought him immediately to his feet. Pratt quickly recovered. Turning with embarrassment, he dismissed the outburst with a wave of his chubby hand. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and furiously mopped his face.
My God, he thought, was Hatcher still alive? And if so, was he sane enough to be worth this trip?
HATCHER
Christian Hatcher had been there for three years, two months and twenty-seven days — 1,183 days, to be exact. Nobody in Los Boxes knew his real name, which was not uncommon; nobody in Los Boxes knew anybody’s real name. To be sentenced here was to be sentenced to oblivion.