"Out of sight," she begged. "Hide. Helicopter come."
"That's the idea. They'll pick us up."
"No. Not American helicopter. Vietnamese."
"Crap. The Vietnamese don't have helicopters. Sounds like an American Huey."
The rotor noise grew louder. Lan pulled harder. "Look," Remo yelled. "Don't make me get rough. Run if you want. I'm staying in the open."
Remo stripped off his T-shirt and faced the direction of the approaching helicopter clatter. Lan broke for the roadside trees and hunkered down fearfully.
The helicopter lifted into sight up ahead. It was a wide-bodied craft with stub wings heavy with rockets.
It seemed to be following the road carefully, as if searching.
"Great," Remo muttered. "They can't miss me." He started waving his shirt.
"Hey! American on the ground," he shouted. "I need a dustoff "
The helicopter skimmed over Remo as if it hadn't noticed him. Remo jumped around to face it, still waving his shirt and shouting.
"Hey, come back."
The helicopter did just that. It flashed around in a tight circle. And as it turned, Remo saw the yellow star in a red field that told him he was trying to flag down the wrong side.
"Oh, shit," he said. "The Vietnamese have helicopters now."
"I tell you!" Lan called. "Now you hurry."
Remo dived off the road. He took a position between two tall trees, well away from Lan. He brought his rifle up. He waited.
The helicopter hovered ominously above, searching. Remo held his fire. The helicopter began to settle and he knew they'd spotted him.
Then Lan dashed across the highway under the gunship and to the other side of the road. She shouted at the top of her voice.
The helicopter suddenly rose in the air and peeled off after her. A chin-mounted Gatling gun opened up. It blasted the rubber trees until they stood like broken milkweeds.
"Dammit!" Remo shouted. He came out of cover and emptied his rifle after the helicopter, firing single shots. The big tail rotor suddenly made a pinging sound and began wobbling wildly on its axis. A lucky shot had clipped it. The rotor stopped dead, and without its stabilizing influence, the helicopter began a slow pirouette in place, like a ridiculous Christmas-tree ornament spinning on a thread.
The helicopter pilot had no other option and he knew it. He let the chopper settle. It sank into the trees steadily until the main rotor encountered the treetops. Then all hell broke loose. Breaking branches flew like shrapnel. Someone screamed.
"Lan!" Remo yelled.
The helicopter suddenly stopped, its main rotor banged into a tangle of metal. The gunship hung in a net of foliage several feet off the ground. Men started jumping out of the open doors.
Remo saw that they carried rifles. He ran toward them. Unless he hit them first, while they were shaken up, the advantage would be theirs.
Dashing across the road, he plunged into the bush. He moved in a low crouch, the AK-47 feeling strange in his hands. He was used to an M-16. The helicopter hung like an enormous rotting fruit among tangled trees. A Vietnamese soldier was clambering out of the gun door, his rifle slung over his shoulder. Remo lifted his own assault rifle and squeezed off a single shot.
The gun clicked. He tried again. Nothing. Remo dropped into the grass and pulled the clip. Empty. The Vietnamese soldier was hanging by both hands from the chopper skid. He dangled momentarily, then dropped to the ground.
Remo dropped his useless weapon and eased forward. The Vietnamese was standing with his back toward him, unlimbering his rifle from his shoulder. Remo made a fist and came up like a ghost rising from a grave. The Vietnamese picked that moment to turn around. He saw Remo's fist and screeched in fright.
It was too late for Remo to pull his punch. It flew past the soldier's shoulder. Remo felt his legs being kicked out from under him. The two men landed in a tangle, Remo on the bottom.
Furiously Remo tried to fend off the soldier's flailing blows, but his hands wouldn't do what he willed them to. Every time he made a fist, it felt wrong. He found himself warding off the blows with quick, openhanded thrusts. What the hell was happening to him?
Remo grabbed the man's wrists. The two of them struggled. Then the soldier collapsed on top of Remo. Remo shoved him off and found Lan standing beside him, the soldier's AK-47 in her hands. It was pointing at him. This is it, he thought. I'm dead. But, wild-eyed, Lan tossed the weapon to him.
Remo caught it and spun on the sounds of approaching soldiers. There were two of them. They yelled like Indians as they charged through the grass. Remo set the fire selector to automatic and pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. "Damn!" he said.
"What wrong? Why you not shoot?"
Remo looked at the breech. It was fouled with mud. "Damn!" he said again. He threw the rifle away. "Run, Lan!"
"No!"
He gave her a cruel shove. "Di-di mau!"
Lan stumbled away. Remo cut off in a different direction. The soldiers would be after him first. He got behind a thick-boled tree. He forced his right hand into a fist and listened for the clump of boots.
He saw the sweeping muzzle of a rifle before he saw the soldier himself Remo waited tensely. One step, then two. When the man's flat-nosed profile came in sight, only inches away from Remo's face, he uncorked a roundhouse swing.
Remo never felt his fist connect. Suddenly his face was wet with blood and bits of matter and he stumbled back, wondering if he had been shot or had stepped on a mine.
He wiped his face desperately. His hands were covered with blood. His first thought was: Oh, God, I'm wounded. Then he noticed the soldier.
He was lying on his back, his head turned completely around so that the back of his head was where his face should have been. His fingers and feet twitched in the nerve spasms of near-death.
Remo knelt down and pushed the man off his rifle. He checked the breech. It seemed unobstructed. Then Remo saw the man's face and backed away in horror.
The man's jaw was shoved up under his right ear. The jaw was shapeless, as if the bone had been pulverized. His neck was obviously broken too.
Remo checked himself for similar damage, but other than the blood on his fist and face, he was uninjured. Then he noticed a patch of human skin clinging to one knuckle and wondered how he had skinned his knuckles if he hadn't connected. He peeled off the patch and saw the skin underneath was undamaged. In spite of the danger all around him, he blurted out in English, "Did I do that?" He looked at his fist stupidly and wiped the blood off on his pants.
Crunching sounds told him the other Vietnamese was getting close. Remo ducked behind the tree.
"Let's see if this works a second time," he said under his breath. He made a fist. It felt strange to make a fist. As a kid growing up in Newark, making a fist was second nature. Not now. Weird.
This time Remo didn't wait for the soldier to come into view. He sensed when he was close and jumped into his face. Remo's punch connected before the other man could snap off a shot.
The impact sounded like a beanbag under a sledgehammer blow. Remo felt hard bone turn to grit under his knuckles. The soldier's arms flailed like he was trying to balance atop a high wire. When he went down, he lay still. His face was a smear of red, and Remo, who had seen terrible things in Vietnam, turned away, heaving.
He found Lan crouching by the roadside. "You okay?" he asked.
"Lan okay. And you?"
"I'm not sure," he admitted, breathing hard.
"Soldiers dead?"
"They won't be bothering us," Remo told her. He plucked thick rubber-tree leaves off with his hands. They were still wet from the night rain, and with several of them he got most of the blood off his hands.
When he was done, he turned to Lan. "Thanks," he said.
"For what?"
"For helping."