The Thin Wall: A POW/MIA Truth Novel

by R. Cyril West

“Go away.”

  “I demand compensation.”

  “Stand back.”

  “But my pigs?”

  Ayna thrust the point of the bow toward Dal’s face, but the irked KGB colonel put the car in gear and backed away.

  She missed, stumbling.

  The sedan bumped into a parked Renault. Dal shifted into drive and crept forward, scattering the remaining farm animals.

  This time she reached into the window and grabbed him by the throat. “You bully,” she yelled. “Leave Milan alone. He has done nothing to you.” Her nails dug into his skin and she tried to punch him, but he pushed her out the window and accelerated away.

  . . . but she stayed on her feet. Ayna was not done. She refused to give up and darted across the square in lightning speed, chasing the car for a block until she was finally out of breath.

  At an intersection, Dal’s sedan sideswiped a van, and then struck a startled Ota Janus, who flipped over the hood and dropped a worn pamphlet of the Communist Manifesto on the street.

  She collapsed on the cobblestones while the car sped off. Maybe she should have gone for the key in the ignition switch. Maybe she should have found a way to hang on to his arm for a second longer. Something. Anything.

  She heard footsteps, people approaching and calling her name. Someone asked, “Are you okay?”

  She went numb.

  Did it matter if she was okay?

  The bell had stopped ringing and Bedrich was standing next to her. He was wheezing, out of breath. His normally pleasant face was rigid and unrecognizable. He, too, was no longer smiling. He, too.

  “WE CAN DO this,” Milan shouted. The Škoda was marked with bullet holes and had a cracked windshield. “We just have to drive to the border. It’s that simple.” It felt like the top of the 9th inning and his team was up 9-2. He was thinking about baseball, of all things. Maybe it was his competitive nature, the memories of yesteryear flooding back to him. Knowing Johnston was from Houston, he was about to ask about his favorite team, the Astros, or maybe the Yankees, or the Dodgers, when he crossed paths with Potapov, who apparently had not been at the villa, rather was milling about town. Two words flashed in front of his mind: bad luck. They were at an intersection near the hardware store. The Ukrainian soldier was sitting behind the wheel of the GAZ truck, about to stuff a cake into his mouth, when their eyes met──Potapov, Milan, and Johnston. There had been a hesitation, a moment of disbelief, Milan kicking himself for not having instructed Johnston to hide his face below the dashboard and perhaps Potapov wondering what the POW was doing in the doctor’s car.

  Milan jammed the gas pedal to the floor and accelerated into high speed, passing fields, several farms, and a feed store. He snaked in and out of oncoming traffic, passing cars ahead of him, a flatbed Praga truck, a Volkswagen Beetle, finally a tractor that was slowing everyone down. A half-mile beyond the monastery, he steered sharply into a series of s-curves.

  “You’re a crazy son of a bitch,” Johnston said with a grimace. A bullet had pierced his leg. At the time, it seemed more of a nick, though was oozing heavily.

  The car roared through another curve. After the wet road straightened out, Milan flashed a nervous smile, doing his best to remain poised. “We’ve got to find a place to pull over,” he said. “And take care of that wound.”

  “No problems here, sir. I’m fine.”

  “The goal is to save your butt, not let you bleed to death.”

  “But the documents . . .”

  Milan looked into the rearview mirror: Potapov was some distance behind, maybe a quarter mile. Should he stop to take care of Johnston’s injury? Or drive on? Johnston had accidently dropped the Steyr-Han in the tunnel and the AK was low on ammo. They could not win a gunfight without bullets. Pulling over, he decided, was too risky.

  . . . so he drove.

  To help stem the flow of blood, he grabbed a towel from the backseat and placed it over Johnston’s wounded thigh. “Apply some pressure,” he said, feeling a sharp pain in his shoulder where Gurko’s bullet had nicked him. He grabbed his satchel from the backseat and instructed the Marine to take a needle, the morphine, and inject himself. Always, as he spoke, he was positive and reassuring. One way or the other, they would eventually ditch the Soviets and reach the border.

  “I have to tell you what happened,” Johnston said. Rain was pounding hard against the windshield. “About my abduction from ‘Nam . . . why they brought me here . . .” He attempted to explain what had happened since his kidnapping, but it was difficult for Milan to grasp the complexity of the Soviet scheme. Even with Johnston as living proof of KGB crimes, the trafficking network that stretched from Hanoi to Vientiane to Prague to Moscow seemed unthinkable, more like something from a farfetched spy novel. “Rats,” Johnston kept saying. “Giant rats everywhere they locked me up . . .” His words were mostly unclear as he spoke of the Viet Cong, the bamboo cages, the beatings, and the flesh-eating rodents. He leaned his head back, stared up at the ripped interior, and whispered, “motherfucking rats, sir.” The morphine had set in.

  To keep him alert, Milan told Johnston how he had served in the U.S. Army during the war and for several minutes, with the cool air rushing into the vehicle, he talked about the resistance forces and fighting the Nazis. “We socked it to them,” he said, before becoming aware of the briefcase sitting in the footwell. “Hey──I don’t get it. That briefcase. Why retrieve it? What could be so important that you’d risk getting burned in the fire?”

  “Proof,” Johnston said deliriously. “There’s more to my story, sir. You won’t believe it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Johnston snapped opened the case and grabbed the documents. “Me. Williams. Thomas. The list of Marines doesn’t stop there.”

  “More abductions?” Clearly Frank had not told Milan everything. Horrific visions of soldiers and airmen bound by chains and wasting away in damp cells flashed across his mind.

  “By my count, eight more, sir.”

  The photos, the faces of Americans attached to the documents, spoke to the horror and the secrets bureaucrats in Washington D.C. were trying to keep from the American people. Milan’s shoulders flexed. How could the United States government let this happen? They sent American sons to the hellhole known as Vietnam to fight for freedom. Yet according to Frank, a shadowy figure close to the president had made the decision to abandon the search for POWs in Czechoslovakia.

  In some ways, this was the part he had the most difficulty with. The Washington cover-up and a possible understanding with the Soviets stank to high heaven. How could the cowards in the White House, in Congress, perhaps even at the Pentagon, sleep at night knowing servicemen like Johnston were living a hellish nightmare on foreign soil? Did the president know anything about abducted servicemen? What about previous administrations?

  His foot pressed harder on the gas pedal.

  If anything, the search for prisoners and missing military personnel should never end. Every damn stone must be overturned.

  “I’m going to bust this conspiracy open,” Milan said. “Expose KGB crimes. Then help identify the lowlife scum in Washington D.C. who left you behind.”

  At the river, where a fence was partially collapsed, Milan slowed and turned onto a service road, one of several roads that were not on any maps.

  Here, the country road was overrun with weeds and botched with potholes. It had been shoddily paved by the Germans in the late 1930s, and neglected ever since. There was good fishing out that way, Josef Novak had told him days ago, and if he drove long enough he would eventually reach the historic town of Vyšší Brod, where the baker made regular deliveries. Milan was trying to decide if he should perform roadside surgery on the man’s leg, wait until they reached a clinic, or risk driving straight for the border, when from nowhere the GAZ truck slammed against the rear bumper.

  Milan jolted into the steering column. Recovering quickly, he cut the wheel sharply and drove onto the side of the road, smashing
through a dilapidated fruit stand. Pieces of wood dinged off the vehicle’s hood and roof. Without braking, he sliced back onto the cracked pavement, the mud tearing beneath the spinning wheels.

  “We’ve got problems,” Milan eventually said, detecting a knocking from the engine. “Back in town . . . I think we took a bullet in the radiator. And maybe in the motor.” He had pushed the Škoda to its limits, the speedometer touching 120, and sensed the car was in real trouble. The collision had also destroyed the alignment and the wheels wanted to veer into the other lane.

  “How far to the border?”

  “Not sure. Can’t be far.”

  Milan locked his grip on the wheel and kept the car steady when from nowhere the GAZ truck rammed against the fender again, shooting Milan and Johnston forward. Milan kept the wheels centered in the lane and floored the accelerator, glancing over his shoulder and cursing. He found breathing room only after Potapov swerved onto the side of the road.

  . . . moving.

  . . . in the downpour.

  The Škoda charged over a single lane bridge and entered a bend in the road near the river.

  Up ahead──was that a large pothole in the pavement?

  Milan leaned into the windshield . . . attempting to see through the slashing rainwater. At the last second, he jerked the steering wheel and avoided the hole . . . and a spinout.

  Right on his butt, the GAZ dropped a wheel into the pothole and bounced on the road. Potapov lost control of the truck and drove off the pavement, steamrolling through a cattle fence where the vehicle flipped onto its side. Milan looked into the rearview mirror and pumped a fist. “Dasveedanja,” he shouted.

  He could already smell the Austrian air.

  There was a kind of inevitability to the day. What had begun with optimism in the warm sun of 1945 would soon finish in the heavy rain of 1968. Milan knew this. He had been running for nearly a quarter century and was tired of the deception. He felt guilty for leading Ayna on, when all along he had unfinished personal business to deal with, like his own personal tragedies, and now saving the Marine.

  With Potapov out of the picture, he could ease up on the gas and concentrate on the next steps of evading the Soviets, avoiding the police, crossing the border. But ignoring his thoughts of Ayna was impossible.

  For a split-second, prior to the colonel’s gunfire at the church, he had seen her shocked face and felt like a schmuck for all the secrets of recent weeks. What he imagined must have been one of the most exciting days of her life──taking center stage with her cello──had ended disastrously. Was using the recital as cover to save the Marine selfish? Yes. If she had any sympathy for him, she would pray for his escape. Hopefully she would understand why he had to rescue the Marine and expose KGB crimes to the world.

  The cracked pavement ended at the remains of a World War II German garrison. He pulled over and opened his satchel. Johnston was reclined in the seat, his eyes partially closed and a hand on the bloody towel. Milan found a gauze bandage and tied a tourniquet around the Marine’s wound. It would have to do. “Hang in there, buddy,” he said. “You’re going home.”

  He cranked the ignition. In all, less than fifteen minutes had passed before they were back on the muddy lane.

  NEAR THE MONESTARY, Dal had had a decision to make after the road crossed the river: proceed or take one of the service roads into the forest. At the time, staying on the main road seemed the logical choice, the most direct route out of the valley, where the doctor’s Škoda could outrace the more sluggish military truck. However the road eventually led to a roadblock. He knew Milan was aware of the roadblock and that he would have no problem finding refuge at a farm with conspirators eager to help plot his next move. What was his final destination, anyway? The only sensible choice was Austria. Yet time was of the essence. Sure, he could make a phone call and shut down the frontier crossing within the hour. It would bring the daring escape to a halt. Except that sort of kneejerk reaction would only implicate him. Questions would surface: an American Marine in Mersk? Devil Dog? Sascha Boyd? If there was any hope for his future, he had to finish this messy business himself.

  When Dal failed to see any skid marks on the road, he second-guessed his decision to head east. The doctor, he reconsidered, had no intention of risking a day or two hiding at a farm, looking for ways to smuggle the POW to safety──after all, twenty-three Soviet Army divisions occupied the country. Milan was the sort of man to make a sprint for the victory line, not fall back and consider other options. If this were a chess match, it would be the type of match to end in less than ten moves. Milan was bold enough to enter the guarded villa; he would be brazen enough to drive straight for the border in broad daylight. Dal’s heart raged. There had been another road, a narrow country lane with potholes that split between a farm and the river. He had explored that road the previous week and knew it meandered south, eventually arriving at Vyšší Brod. From Vyšší Brod, one could easily reach the border. It was a feeling. After another minute he slammed on the brakes and turned the car around.

  THE RAIN had stopped.

  By then, the Škoda had a flat tire and its exhaust pipe was clanking against the muddy road. With the last of the motor oil pouring from the engine, the car had driven longer than Milan expected. He spoke to the sputtering vehicle, encouraging it to get past one more row of trees or some shrubbery or the next creek. He would take whatever the car would give. Another mile? Maybe two? It was wishful thinking. Within minutes, he felt a loss of acceleration when the car seized up and rolled to a halt.

  Milan leaned back in the seat. “Dammit.”

  He got out of the car and looked at a map: they were in the foothills of the Bohemian Forest. The middle of nowhere, he realized. Then maybe that was a good thing. There were fewer Russians to worry about out here──if any. He had a sweep of the landscape: they were surrounded by a meadow with tall grass and a patch of woods on either side of the road. If he could get the car hidden in the trees, the underbrush and limbs might provide camouflage from anyone in pursuit, time for the Marine to regain his flagging energy.

  “You need to keep moving, sir.” Johnston was slumped against the passenger door with the briefcase.

  “Let me think.”

  “You’re wasting time.”

  “We’re both getting out of this alive. Give me a second. I’ll come up with something.” Hopefully Johnston was not as weak as he feared. But a wounded man . . . under the numbness of morphine . . . persisting off of adrenalin . . . there was no telling what might happen. He could go into shock.

  “There’s a lot at stake,” Johnston said. “I’ll slow you down with this bum leg. I’m dead weight.”

  “Stop with this quitter’s mentality.”

  “I’m only being realistic, sir.”

  “It’s the morphine talking.” Milan folded the map. “I’m taking you to Austria.”

  “They’ll eventually find us. We’ll both be dead by sundown. Take the briefcase. You know what’s on the line. Go.”

  The decision to stay or leave weighed on him. Milan looked down the desolate road. It stretched for five miles until it met the river, then veered south toward a bridge. Beyond the bridge the road led to Vyšší Brod. He could find help there.

  “Vyšší Brod isn’t too far from here,” Milan said. “I’ll hitch a ride somehow, then get a car and come back for you.” He considered pulling the Marine from the Škoda and carrying him into the woods. Good idea? Bad idea? Moving him could initiate new hemorrhaging, so he decided against it.

  “Just go to the border,” Johnston pleaded. “And don’t come back for me, sir.”

  “Hang in there, gunny. There’s a cold beer waiting for you in Vienna.”

  Milan placed the assault rifle in Johnston’s arms, the barrel pointing out the window. Already he had second thoughts about leaving him alone as he walked vigorously away with the briefcase. How much time did he have? He was unsure. Dal was likely on the hunt. With luck, maybe he had gotten lo
st or turned back at the garrison.

  The road curved slightly along a creek.

  It was sprinkling again.

  He felt a chill from the wind.

  RETURNING TO the county road, Dal pressed on with a sense of urgency. He scanned up ahead for the escapees, the muddy side roads, the overgrown fields. Where were they? A lesser man would have panicked. Not Dal. There was a gleam in his eye. He had come across skid marks. Someone had driven through a vendor’s fruit stand.

  He slowed to drive around the scattered debris.

  A minute later, he passed the overturned GAZ and saw Potapov’s body lying face down by the front wheel.

  He could smell victory, just as the sun was breaking through a mishmash of black and gray clouds──sweet victory. He no longer questioned the sequence of events leading up to this catastrophic day, rather remained observant, looking for signs of auto damage on the road, such as the broken tail light and the oil leakage he was following on the cracked pavement.

  Like a predator, he was moving in for the kill.

  MILAN HAD BEEN walking for fifteen minutes when he came upon a large standing snag and a rock wall separating the road from an open field. An elderly man wearing a raincoat was fishing at a pond, near the crumbling remains of an ancient stone house.

  “You there,” the man said, “hello.”

  “Good day,” Milan responded.

  “Out for a hike?”

  “Not exactly.” Milan wiped the rainwater from his eyes. “How is the fishing?”

  “Not bad. Care to give the rod a try?”

  “I haven’t the time.” He was looking for the man’s automobile, instead he found a bicycle leaning against the wall. It would do. “I don’t have time to explain,” Milan said. “I need your bicycle. I’m sorry.”

  “What on earth are you saying, young man?”

  Even as he tossed the briefcase into the wire basket on the handlebars and peddled away in the mud, Milan wondered why he had bothered to apologize. Stealing an old man’s bicycle was about as low as it got.

  DAL BRAKED. Up ahead, beyond a row of spruce trees, was the broken down Škoda. The POW sat in the car with an AK jutting out the window. But where was the doctor? He flicked his cigarette onto the road and pulled in behind the car’s crushed rear fender.