by James Grady
Stayed on the road as it whipped into a 180 bootlegger turn, slid backwards as I shoved off the emergency brake, stomped on the gas and raced back the way I’d come, hoping that the triggered cops couldn’t tell it was just me in the fleeing silver machine.
Sirens cut the night. Wind rushed in the open windows as the road sped under my tires. My eyes flicked to the rear view mirror: spinning red lights chased my wake.
Forget about them! Concentrate. Calculate. Wait… Wait…
The road curved. My foot jumped off the gas pedal. My hand pulled on the emergency brake so the cops couldn’t see I was de-accelerating. Brakes howled. Cops wouldn’t hear that over their own sirens. Rushing towards me came the narrow slot of the guardrailed bridge as my car shuddered down from 70 to 65, 60… 55…
Too fast! Going too fast!
Bumpty-bump went the bridge under my wheels. Can’t wait!
My left hand jerked the door handle door beside me. Wind pressure from my race pushed against that steel slab. The silver car’s warning buzzers kicked on to join the wail of nearing sirens, the woosh of night air, tires bumping over the bridge.
And I whipped the wheel to the right. My windshield filled with the headlight vision of the bridge’s wooden guardrails hurtling towards me.
My left shoulder rammed the unlatched door.
But I didn’t have enough force to knock the door open, let me roll out free and safe like James Dean had in the chickee game of REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE.
The silver car blasted through wooden plank guardrails and flew through the air above the ice skimmed river. Boards splintered out from the impact. The rental Ford’s airbag mushroomed out of the steering wheel. I was already pressing against the unlatched door: the exploding white air bag shoved me out of the car.
Time stopped. Sound stopped. My life became something I watched in a movie. Oh, look: there I am, floating through the night above a river silvered with a sheen of ice. My arms and legs flail like useless wings. Plummeting ahead of me is a dented silver car. Busted boards flutter near me like confetti. Up there, in front of my face, falling further and further away stretches a bridge with a gap blasted in its guardrails. Tendrils of red lights flick across the dark sky.
A crashing ton of metal car shattered the river’s sheen. I gulped a frantic breath as a wall of liquid swallowed me into a brutal dark swirl.
Every inch of my skin screamed in pain from the burn of the cold river. I forced my eyes open. Saw blackness. I tumbled in dark water and felt it soak my clothes to pull me down, keep me down.
Easy, so easy to just let air out and suck in death.
But something in the deep fought me to the surface. I popped up under the bridge. A white-haired, white bearded giant pulled me to the shore through the frigid water. Sirens screamed closer. Cop cars skidded to a halt on the bridge, their headlights revealing the hole punched in the ice by the fugitive car that sped out of control. Car doors opened and slammed. Cops rushed to the busted guardrail and shone flashlights to the river below. Zane muscled me through the brush, through trees to the family Jeep that minutes before, we’d hot-wired away from a country house where everyone seemed asleep and thus for hours wouldn’t report their vehicle as missing, presumed stolen.
My crew stripped me naked. Wiped me down with our spare clothes as fast as they could, Zane stripping and drying off, too. They stretched me out in the Jeep’s folded-down-rear-seat cargo bay. Naked Zane piled in beside me. Eric and Hailey surrounded us with their clad bodies, pulled a scavenged canvas dropcloth over our prone huddle and the scent of old paint told me I was still truly alive.
Russell drove the Jeep onto the bridge where cops shone flashlights on the icy water below. He slowed the Jeep to a crawl. A quick glance showed a flashlight-waving cop only one man in the vehicle as Russell leaned out the driver’s window and yelled: “Hey, officer! What’s going on? You need help?”
“Keep moving!” answered the state trooper, who like his partners had broken their roadblock to chase the suspicious silver car that had veered out of control and smashed through the bridge railings. As our classic Decoy & Divert tactic planned, the black hole in the river’s ice claimed all the troopers’ attention. “Clear the area!”
Russell obeyed. Sped the Jeep on into darkness.
Naked under the paint-stained canvas, I couldn’t stop shivering.
“You’ll be OK,” said Hailey as she held me. “I don’t have any open sores.”
Eric said: “Zane, you OK?”
Zane told us: “Sure. Cold works for me.”
15
Zane fell from sanity through the cold stars of Halloween, 1968.
Trick or treat, he thought before his fall as he rode in the B-52 bomber re-fitted from its globe-busting role in the Dr. Strangelove movie that Zane had sneaked out of the orphanage to see. Now only stadium-busting ‘conventional’ bombs hung in racks below the vibrating ledge he sat on as the warplane flew over North Vietnam.
He turned his fishbowl helmet to see the five pressure-suited men on his team.
Intercom static crackled as Jodrey’s voice said: “You and your crazy ideas.”
Zane crackled back: “Better a crazy idea than no idea.”
Like he always did, Jodrey said: “’Xactly.”
Zane was a Wyoming orphan raised by penguin nuns to fear the fires of Hell, carry the weight of his sins, and never, no never, cry. He turned 21 while getting shelled at Da Nang. Inspiration seized him from the blue sky outside a Studies & Observations Group/spy unit Quonset hut in Da Nang, but he barely got the commanders with ice eyes and Hawaiian shirts to listen because: “He’s just a kid.”
Then Sergeant-Major Jodrey said: “Out of the mouths of babes.”
“It’s a great idea!” Zane had argued to officers who shared his Army Green Beret as men in Hawaiian shirts watched.
“Washington sent us to Vietnam to fight the good fight,” said Zane. “Right?”
No one answered the young man.
So Zane figured they were on the same page as him. Enthusiasm bubbled through his logic. “So let’s fight it smart. The North Vietnamese have miles of phone lines through the trees along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos. What if instead of bombing or cutting those phone lines, we tap into them?”
Zane’s spy idea infected the Quonset hut. Compounded itself when the pocket protector whiz from NSA told them about new toys. Spread its wings after Sgt. Major Jodrey told the bosses that if the plan was a GO, so was he.
If.
“That’s the life word,” Sgt. Major Jodrey told Zane during a stroll inside the barbed-wire/claymore mined perimeter of Da Nang where they couldn’t be heard by the brass and spooks who would say GO or NO.
“But it’s your word to call, isn’t it Sgt. Major?” said the younger soldier.
“’Xactly,” said Jodrey. “That’s my word: Exactly. What a thing is down to its bones, Troop. That’s what I need to know about you.”
Helicopters chopped the muggy sunset air above them and made it bleed.
“I do what has to be done,” said Zane. “And I’m tough enough to take it.”
Marines jogged past them. Zane felt himself fall into Sgt. Major Jodrey’s gaze.
“’Xactly right,” said Jodrey. “But not completely true.”
“Sgt. Major, I would never lie to you.”
“You didn’t lie, young’n. You just don’t know the whole truth.”
“What whole truth?”
“The whole truth is everything you shovel into this hole called your life. And one thing you better shovel is that a man needs to be more than what he has to do.”
Jodrey walked away.
Zane ran after him. Didn’t ask and didn’t care where.
Four weeks of training in Okinawa later, Zane, Jodrey and four Hmong volunteers stood waiting to be strapped in amidst coffin si
zed bombs in the belly of a B-52.
“Last thing I gotta know,” Jodrey told Zane: “How come you’re still a virgin?”
“Wha-what?”
“You heard me. A virgin.”
“I was raised strict Catholic.”
“Yeah, but you got over it. We’re talking now. How come you ain’t got laid?”
A fighter plane took off to air cover Marines out of the shit in a jungle firefight.
As that jet whine faded, Zane said: “If we’re more than animals, sex can be special. That’s what I got to be. Want it to be.”
Before he pulled on the two Halloween thermal stocking-cap like hoods and the visored helmet fitted with a breathing apparatus, Jodrey shook his head at Zane:
“Special is what gets done special. When we get back, you need to talk with a nurse who reminds me of my second ex-wife. But here and now, you being a virgin is your mojo. And your mojo is ’xactly what’s going to bring you home alive and true.”
Now here I sit, thought Zane as B-52 engines droned. With somebody who sees ’xactly who I am. And with four stone soldiers who’d follow us into Hell.
Being this heavily dressed on the ground would make him feel as hot as Hell. Two layers of thermal underwear and socks under Russian army paratrooper boots. Triple gloves. Double hoods and jungle fatigues under a winter jump suit that’s zipped to the fishbowl helmet. Canvas bags strapped on Zane’s team held an NSA tap/transmit system. Strapped to each man’s chest was a brand new thing called a Global Positioning Scanner programmed to guide them to where the CIA predicted jungle phone lines. Canvas bags held five days’ rations, one canteen, water purification tablets, two anti-personnel grenades, a purple smoke grenade, a folding stock Russian AK-47 assault rifle and three mags of ammo.
Only Jodrey and Zane carried special 14-shot 9mm automatics with silencers.
Only they carried the paperback book sized Flash Code Transponders that were the new delight of the CIA. Pushing keys on the FCTs created a text message the FCT ‘remembered’ with something called a ‘chip.’ When you pushed TRANSMIT, your message zapped up to a satellite, then back down to CIA headquarters and Da Nang.
Steel groaned and whined. Wind rushed in through the bomb bay doors swinging open beneath the racks of coffin-sized cylinders below Zane’s dangling feet.
Zane’s stomach fell as the B-52 jumped starward with its release of explosive tonnage. By the time the plane stabilized and Zane looked down at the black sky flowing below his boots, the bombs were halfway to explosions 10 miles behind the plane.
We’ll never even see them flash. Hear the boom. Trick or treat.
Bomb bay doors clunked shut.
Intercom crackle filled Zane’s ears: “This is the pilot. Be advised turbulence and wind shifts require altering course. We factor a 20 minute delay.”
Ride it out. Something always goes wrong. We’re lucky it’s only time. Mojo.
Blue lights snapped on.
Zane’s team switched from the plane’s air to their own oxygen tanks.
Yellow lights snapped on.
The team unbuckled themselves from the bomb bay shelf. Huddled as close together as they could in a line on top of the juncture for the swing-open bomb bay doors.
Red lights flashed like a sprinter’s heartbeat.
Zane, Jodrey, and the four Hmongs all closed their eyes.
Bomb bay doors swung open. Six men plummeted from the belly of a B-52 in Zane’s inspiration: history’s first bombing run/HALO intell combat insertion.
HALO: High Altitude, Low Opening.
Eight miles high and gliding like eagles. Zane and his team spotted their helmet beacons flashing in the dark sky and surfed their bodies closer together. Followed their pop-up GPS screens toward the drop zone, gliding down, covering 20 horizontal miles in their long starry night descent that weather made 30 minutes late so they popped their parachutes in the mist of near-dawn.
An emerald sea of jungle canopy rushed up towards Zane’s pressed-together boots. Leaves, branches, vines slammed him as he crashed through them. Birds screamed. Tree branches grabbed his parachute canopy. He bounced like a yo-yo until his boots dangled fifty feet off the ground; he could see through a dappled netting of leaves.
Hung up! I’m hanging in a tree!
Through the leaves that screened him, Zane saw the ground, saw another parachutist who’d landed in a clearing, saw him bundling his black chute.
Zane pushed off his fishbowl helmet, tore off the two hoods that helped keep him from freezing to death during the freefall through –40 degrees high altitude night sky. His teeth and fingers ripped off his outer right glove as the steam heat in the jungle treetops grew cooler than the heat trapped inside his jumpsuit. Hot like Hell.
Zane licked his lips to call to the Hmong paratrooper on the ground.
Machinegun fire ripped the Hmong’s black costume to red shreds and he fell.
A second machinegun chattered somewhere far off in the jungle below. Shouts.
Zane dangled fifty feet above the ground. Made himself go still. Silent. He swayed like a pendulum. The soles of his boots brushed a lacework of leaves.
A tiny figure wearing black pajamas and a conical peasant straw hat glided over the jungle floor to prod the dead Hmong with the barrel of a machinegun.
Still! Zane ordered himself. Stay absolutely still. His boots brushed the screen of leaves. Sweat rivulets trickling down his cheek obeyed gravity. Fell off him like kamikaze drops. Hit the black pajamaed machinegunner.
A monkey screamed.
Black Pajamas whirled, machinegun scanning the walls of jungle.
Wild orchids opened to scent the dawn.
An NVA Captain joined Black Pajamas. The NVA Captain barked orders and Black Pajamas passed him gear stripped off the dead Hmong.
Zane swayed in the trees above that jungle’s execution ground.
Three Hmongs stumbled into the clearing, hands clasped behind their necks. Five new NVA soldiers and two guerrilla warriors kept guns trained on their prisoners, dropped the Hmong’s gear in a heap at the Captain’s boots.
Black Pajamas removed the conical peasant hat.
Pathet Lao guerrilla, thought Zane, under NVA command.
Woman, he realized as he saw black hair tumble to her shoulders.
Pretty, was the truth.
Hot, so damn hot baking in this flight suit & dangling from a tree…
Can’t risk unzipping the belly bag. Not just the noise. If my gear has shifted, if something falls out before I can swing out the AK-47, chamber it, and start firing, they’ll look up—shoot up, even if they don’t have a clear view of me through the leaves. But—
Snake slipped down a silky tangle of vines to land plop! on Zane’s head.
DON’T SCREAM!
Don’t move.
Don’t blink.
Don’t breathe, but sweat’s pumping out in gallons, hot so hot, as a rope uncoils on Zane’s head, as it slides down his face, as that three foot long jungle strand arcs out in front of Zane’s DON’T BLINK eyes and met Zane’s gaze with its own beady black orbs.
Don’t. Move.
Viper. Maybe it’s a Ten-step, for how many you can take after it bites you. Maybe it’s an Eyelash, because it likes to hang head-down from the trees at just that level, bites you dead right there, right where the snake now flicked its black tongue.
The serpent spiraled down the peculiar monkey hanging in a tree. The snake looped its tail around a left boot while stretching its head straight out, seeking—
Zane kicked his boot and flicked the snake off him.
Mojo, keep your mojo working.
In the clearing below where he swayed, soldiers were tying the Hmongs’ hands.
Time! Got no time! Can’t get to my AK-47 but shoulder hol-ster, 14 silenced shots and at the first
dropped guard, the Hmongs will–
Jodrey flew into the clearing and crashed, stripped naked, at the Captain’s boots.
The dozen NVA soldiers who threw him there laughed.
The Captain booted Jodrey to a kneeling position and—in English—yelled the question that changed the universe: “Why were you late?”
Jodrey told the Captain: “I had to fuck your mother.”
The Captain slapped the kneeling naked prisoner.
“Where’s the other one of you? Other American?” the Captain yelled at Jodrey.
Who said: “You got a sister?”
Zane froze as the Captain’s boot arced toward Jodrey’s face:
Change plan. Escape now not the priority.
Zane’s hand slid to the pouch around his neck carrying his FCT communicator.
Jodrey caught the Captain’s boot mid-kick, upended the officer, dove on top of him and swung a skull-smashing rock high above the Captain’s head.
Miss Black Pajamas shot the foolish American.
Hanging in a tree, Zane watched Jodrey die.
Don’t give a damn now, thought Zane. It’s only me dangling in Hell’s tree. Hmongs won’t make it out of this clearing. They’re worth nothing to the enemy.
Slowly, painstakingly, Zane pushed the FCT keys to build a one word/eight letters message in that thing called a chip.
The Captain barked orders and sent his patrol of had-to-be 40 soldiers out in a wide search pattern for the missing American spy from the sky.
Zane was on letter seven of his first FCT message when his parachute ripped.
Not a loud rip. Not a long one. Hot, so hot. Baking in the jumpsuit. Zane knew it was only a matter of time before his chute ripped all the way and he crashed to the jungle floor. He finished the eighth letter of the key message and pushed TRANSMIT.
rrrr-rip
Easy! Don’t jerk. Ten more letters. Two words.
Smell cigarette smoke. Zane flicked his eyes down as he one-handed keyed buttons. The Captain was smoking. Miss Black Pajamas watched with disdain.
Letter nine—done. Letter ten—
