Walking Wounded
( The Destroyer - 74 )
Warren Murphy
Richard Sapir
IT DIDN'T TAKE TWO TO RAMBO
It didn't matter to Remo that his mentor Chiun told him he was acting like a child to want to go back to Vietnam on a mission of rescue and revenge.
It didn't matter to Remo that his superior Smith ordered him to abandon a plan that could upset the delicate balance of world peace.
Remo was out of his skull with remembered rage, and out of control of anyone who wanted to stop him from trying to spring a wartime buddy from a jungle hell. And the Destroyer plunged back into the past to fight a one-man war against an old enemy that would not die but could still kill without mercy and vanish like a ghoulish ghost....
Destroyer 74: Walking Wounded
By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
Chapter 1
The footsteps began at the edge of consciousness. Even in sleep, Cung Co Phong recognized them. Somewhere in the deepest recesses of his mind, Phong understood that he slept. He did not want to awaken. Sleep was his only escape. But the familiar, hated footsteps intruded like drumbeats.
Phong awoke in a cold sweat.
The Americans still slept. Nothing seemed to rouse them from slumber anymore. They had been here at Camp Fifty-five so long that they'd ceased to fear the wrath of Captain Dai. But Phong feared Captain Dai. Captain Dai had made the task of breaking Phong's spirit his personal responsibility.
Phong sat up. The hut was still dark. The hammering of his heartbeat was so loud in his ears that it wasn't until the footsteps were nearly to the rattan door that he realized the camp was alive with activity. Men moved about hurriedly. Shovels were at work. And most amazingly, there were trucks. Many of them. And other vehicles. Gasoline had been rationed tightly since long before Phong had been born, up in Quang Tri province.
Whatever had brought the captain in the middle of the night, it was very, very important.
At the sound of the padlock being opened, Phong nudged the others. Boyette, Pond, Colletta, and the others. And finally the big black one, Youngblood, whose snore did not die away until he stopped blinking his bleary eyes at the grass-mat ceiling.
"Huh! What?" Youngblood mumbled. He grabbed Phong's forearm so sharply it hurt. Of all the Americans, only Youngblood had kept his weight. Even in the worst days of captivity, when all there was to eat was fishbone soup, Youngblood never lost a pound.
"Dai," Phong said in his clipped English. "He come."
"Shit! That ain't good news."
The rattan door banged open and a flashlight stabbed at their eyes.
"Up! Up!" said the shadow behind the light. He was tall for a Vietnamese. His sidearm was holstered. He did not fear them enough to draw it.
"What gives?" someone asked in English.
"Up! Up!" Captain Dai barked, stepping in and kicking the nearest man. Phong.
Phong winced. But he said nothing.
They got to their feet, their hands dangling helplessly at their sides. Their gray cotton clothes had no pockets. They never knew what to do with their hands. Single file, they walked out into the night.
The jungle encroached close to the camp, a moving dark wall of primordial foliage. Within the camp, lights blazed. The two-story officers' huts were being dismantled and the sides loaded into the back of flatbed trucks. Tents were coming down. Provisions-sacks of potatoes and rice-were set against a sandbag wall and a human chain of green-fatigued soldiers was relaying them into a canvas-topped truck.
"Looks like we're moving out," Boyette whispered through set lips.
"No talk!" Captain Dai snapped. Although tall for an Asian, he had thin shoulders that might have been cut from a two-by-four. His face was pocked and pitted, the skin so dry it looked dead. His eyes were bright and black-the avid eyes of a crow. A cigarette dangled from his stained, shovellike teeth.
They were quickly surrounded by soldiers, fresh troops in khaki uniforms, their green pith helmets-adorned only by a red medallion surrounding a single yellow star-sitting low over their merciless eyes.
"Follow!" Dai snapped.
Captain Dai led them around an old T-54 tank, the yellow-starred flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam emblazoned on the domed turret.
"Must be big for them to pull a tank from the war zone." Pond had spoken.
"Look again," Youngblood said.
The cannon was false. A wooden barrel painted to look like metal. They walked around it and their hearts stopped.
"Oh, dear God," Colletta moaned.
On the back of a flatbed, they had mounted the steel conex container. Each man knew the conex box intimately. Each of them had spent weeks of solitary confinement in its sterile, stifling interior.
"I ain't going back in there," Colletta suddenly yelled. "No way, man. I ain't! I ain't!"
Youngblood grabbed him and threw him down before the nervous guards could shoot.
"Easy, man. Take it easy. You won't be alone this time. We're all goin' in." He turned to Captain Dai. "Ain't that so? We're all going in."
Captain Dai looked down at them. The soldiers had their AK-47's pointing at them, huddled there on the ground. Youngblood moved his body between their menace and Colletta's flailing, trembling form.
For a long, hot moment even the jungle seemed to hold its breath.
"Up!" said Captain Dai at last.
Youngblood found his feet. "Come on, Colletta," he said. "You can do it."
Colletta sobbed uncontrollably.
"Come on, Colletta. We're going to a better place. You won't be alone, man."
Still crying and trembling, Colletta gathered up his limbs like a clutch of sticks and stood on his feet.
One end of the conex container was opened and they were shoved into its darkened interior. It was warm inside, but not oppressive. Youngblood was the last of the Americans to go in. Phong started to follow, but Captain Dai inserted a boot between his shuffling feet.
Phong fell to his hands and knees. He stayed there because Dai had not given permission to rise.
"You are on your knees now," Dai said in Vietnamese, sneering.
"I tripped," Phong replied in an emotionless voice.
"I need the Americans," Dai said slowly. "I do not need you. Perhaps I will kill you here and leave you for the tigers to eat."
Phong said nothing.
Dai plucked a rifle from the nearest soldier and placed the muzzle against the back of Phong's head. He pressed hard. Phong stiffened his neck. If he was to die here, he would die a man-resisting. His mouth would taste dirt only in death.
"But I will let you live, traitor to the people, if you kneel before me and beg for forgiveness."
Phong shook his head slowly.
Captain Dai sent a round into the chamber. "You are already kneeling!"
"I tripped."
"Then I will shoot you for your clumsiness," Dai screeched.
Phong said nothing. The pressure of the barrel was more maddening than frightening. He had stared down the barrel of a loaded weapon before and seen Captain Dai's hate-charged face behind it. This way, looking at the red soil of Vietnam and not into the face of death itself, oblivion could be accepted.
Dai pulled the trigger. Phong flinched at the click. But there was no pain, no other sound. Instead, his voice strangled with inarticulate rage, Captain Dai threw the rifle to the ground and picked Phong up bodily. He flung him into the conex container and the door slammed with a ringing finality.
Inside, the men disentangled themselves and each found a place of his own along the walls. After years of shared captivity, their most basic instinct was to seek a place to call their own.
> No one said anything. The truck started up. Other engines joined it. Finally the T-54 tank grumbled and rattled into life. The convoy had started.
No one slept. The novelty of being moved absorbed their attention.
Youngblood's rumbling baritone broke their private thoughts.
"Wherever we're going," he said, "it's gotta be better than where we've been. "
"Could be worse," Pond said. "They might be ready to execute us."
"They wouldn't break down the camp to do that, fool," Youngblood scoffed.
"You will not die," Phong said. His voice was distant, stripped of all emotion.
"Yeah?" Youngblood said. He shifted closer to the trembling Vietnamese.
"Dai tell me he need the Americans. I am not needed. You will not die."
"What else did he say?"
"Nothing," Phong said.
"Okay, then. We sit tight. Whatever happens, we just go along. Just like always. We go along and we'll get along."
"You always say that, Youngblood," Pond grumbled. "But what's it ever got us?"
"It's kept us alive," Youngblood said. "I know it ain't much, but it's something."
"I'd rather be dead than kowtow to these stinkin' gooks another day."
"I hear you. But what do you wanna do? We can't cut and run. Charlie owns the whole country now. They're in Cambodia too. There's no place to run to. 'Less you long to go swimming in the South China Sea."
It was a joke but no one laughed.
"They will have to open the door to feed us," said Phong without feeling.
"What're you sayin', man?" Youngblood demanded.
"I am dead man. Dai will kill me if he not break me. He will kill me if he break me. Either way, I am dead man. I have nothing to lose. So I escape."
"Hey, Phong, don't be a stupid gook," Boyette said. "It can't be done."
"No. Mind made up. Listen. Youngblood right. Many men escape, that no good. But one man-not white man-has chance. Leave Vietnam. Go Cambodia. Then Thailand. Is possible for me. Not for American soldier. I go. I tell world."
"That's a laugh," Boyette said bitterly. "If anyone cared, don't you think they would have done something by now? Hell, my kid's gotta be a teenager now. My wife could've remarried three times in the years I've been rotting here. I got nothing to go back to. Face it, we're going to die here."
"No. Show proof. Americans come back. Rescue."
"Sure, Phong. Why don't you just whip out your Kodak and snap our pictures? What? You say you don't have a flashbulb? Aww, that's too bad. Maybe if we ask nice, Captain Dai will shoot more holes in the side of this box to let in a little light."
"Can it, Boyette," Youngblood grunted. "Keep talkin', Phong. How you gonna prove we're here? Tell me. Give us a little hope. I ain't had hope in so long I forget what it tastes like."
In the darkness, Phong reached into the waist of his dirty cotton trousers. He took Youngblood's thick wrist in hand and placed a slim metallic object in his big paw.
"What's this?" Youngblood asked.
"Pen. "
"Yeah?"
"I find on ground. Has ink."
"Paper?"
"No. No paper. Have better than paper. Paper get lost."
"Keep talkin', Phong," Youngblood said. "I'm starting to get a whiff of something I like."
The conex stopped at midday. They knew it was daytime because light streamed in through the air holes on one side-air holes that had been made with short bursts from an AK-47.
Someone threw a stone against the side of the conex container and the sound inside rattled their teeth. They all recognized the signal to back away from the door. They crowded to the far end of the dumpsterlike container. All but Phong. The wiry Vietnamese crouched at the door, his body taut, one fist gripping the silver pen like a dagger.
The corrugated door opened outward.
There was only one guard. His rifle was slung across his shoulder. He carried a large wooden bowl of soup-forest greens mixed with red peppers.
Phong sprang on him like a cat.
The guard dropped the bowl, his mouth gulping air. Phong tripped him, kicked at his windpipe, and yanked the rifle from his shoulder. The guard made a feeble grab at the pen-which was suddenly sticking from his sternum like a protruding bone. Then his rifle butt collided with his head. He sat down hard, his head slamming the ground a moment later.
"Atta boy, Phong!"
"Go, man, go!"
"Shut up!" Youngblood snapped. "Phong, close that door. Then get moving! And get rid of the body."
Phong took a last look at his frienas, huddling in the rear of the conex, and waved good-bye. Then he swung the conex door closed and dragged the guard's body into the bush.
He stripped the man of his clothes and tied them into a ball. In the guard's pockets were a wallet containing nearly two hundred dong, a military ID card, and a clasp knife. There was a little bag of betel nuts tucked into his right boot. It wasn't much, but it was food. Phong left the boots. They would only slow him down.
The mists were rising off a near hill, and Phong pushed on toward it. He scrambled up the face, using deep-rooted plants for handholds.
At the top, he looked around him. He didn't recognize the terrain and thought perhaps he was in the unfamiliar north. But there was a long ground scar to the west, like those seen often in the old days, when the Americans were in Vietnam. Those early bombing scars had long ago disappeared under new growth.
Phong realized that he was in Cambodia, where the New Vietnamese Army fought Cambodian guerrillas. Then, down below, the convoy started up. One by one, the trucks wound out of sight, going west, deeper into Cambodia. Even after their sight and sound were an hours-old memory, Phong sat unmoving, waiting for darkness to fall.
When the crickets were in full song, Phong descended. He was very frightened. He was alone in a land where no one could be his friend. The Cambodians would kill him as one of the despised invaders. His fellow Vietnamese would take him for a soldier and force him to fight. And he had no way of knowing how far it was to Thailand. But he was determined.
In the days that followed, Phong lived off tender bamboo shoots and insects. The shoots were plentiful, and he learned to climb into trees above flat rocks and wait for insects to alight. Then he spat red betel-nut juice down to immobilize them. They didn't taste so bad in the juice. But he soon ran out of nuts.
On the fifth day, Phong's resolve to conserve his ammunition for self-defense was shattered. Famished, he killed a small monkey and ate it raw. He carried the bones for three days before he allowed himself the luxury of sucking out the sweet, nourishing marrow.
When he had fired his last bullet, Phong buried the rifle because he was afraid he'd be tempted to chew the wood stock for relief from hunger pains and injure his stomach. By this time, he had changed into the heavier fatigue pants. His cotton prisoners' clothing had been ripped to shreds. He dared not wear the shirt. It would soak up sweat and stick to his back. He took great care at night to sleep on his stomach. He was afraid that the slightest injury to his back would make his journey fior nothing.
Phong pushed further west. Time held no meaning for him. He avoided population centers, control points, and the sounds of battle. These detours forced him further and further south.
One night, he smelled salt in the air. It made him dream of fish the next day, when he slept. Hunger was a constant ache in his gut, so he struck out for the south.
Phong came to a river. He hadn't followed it many kilometers before he came across a fishing village whose stilted huts straddled the river. The smells of cooking fish and boiling rice made his stomach heave. But he was too weak to dare steal himself a meal. Instead, he crawled on his stomach to one of the fishing boats on the river and climbed in.
The boat carried him silently down the river. He lay in the bottom of the boat and watched the stars pass overhead. He found a fisherman's net and chewed on it, enjoying the taste of salt. Eventually, he slept.
Phong a
woke with the sun. He sat up. The sea around him was indescribably turquoise. Beautiful. And deadly. The South China Sea, some called it. Refugees from, the conquered South called it the Sea of Death and Pirates. Many who fled after the fall of the old Saigon government fell victim to its treacherous waters.
Phong hunkered down, unraveling the fish net. Trawlers sat like fat water bugs on the sea's cool surface. If Cambodian, they would ignore him. If Thai, they could be pirates.
Phong cast his net, and when he felt a muscular tugging, reeled it in. He ate the fish greedily, not bothering to kill it. The blood ran down his fingers. It felt wonderful, the cold flesh slipping down his throat. He caught two more, and for the first time in many months, his stomach was full.
Perhaps he would drift down to Malaysia, or the tides might carry him to Thailand, where, if he avoided pirates, he could seek one of the refugee shelters, and then go on to America. He had heard that many refugees spent years trying to leave the camps, but they would take him to America once he showed them his proof. Phong was certain of this.
The screaming changed his mind. It carried across the water as clear as a temple gong. It was a woman, crying out for mercy.
"Khoung! Khoung!"
Others took up her cry. Phong looked up.
A boat wallowed, riding low in the water. Seawater slopped onto its deck. Phong had only to see that to know it was overburdened with cargo. Human cargo. Men, women, and children lined the gunwales. Some had begun jumping into the water.
A fast boat was bearing down on the first craft. It too ran with its decks full. But those decks were filled with men. They brandished pistols, bolt-action rifles, clawhammers, and spiked hardwood clubs. Saffron bands were tied over their brown foreheads.
Thai pirates. The scourge of the South China Sea. The fast boat came alongside the weaker one, bumped it once with truck-tire fenders, and the two crafts were quickly and expertly lashed together. The pirates descended like raging locusts.
They clubbed, shot, and stabbed the men and the children. The old women were thrown overboard. The younger ones were beaten and pitched over to the pirate ship to be hastily shoved below.
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