Bayonet Skies

by John F. Mullins

  “Home?” Korhonen made a sweeping gesture. “This is my home now. These are my people.”

  “People who blackmail us, tell us they’re not going to let you go until we do as they say? Hell, you’re just as much a prisoner here as you were in the tiger cages.”

  Now Korhonen smiled. “Hah,” he said. “I told Sarpa you could be fooled.”

  A light seemed to go on inside Jim’s head.

  “They’re not keeping you prisoner at all, are they?”

  “These are my friends. They save me from the Communists. They need help. I tell them how they can get help. Would you even be here, if it were not for that?”

  Jim had to admit that, no, he would not. The Montagnards had been left to their own devices, despite their sacrifices during the war. He would himself not be alive had it not been for the ’Yards. His bones would have long since been bleaching white on a hillside somewhere.

  And he couldn’t force Korhonen to go if he didn’t want to. It would be dicey enough getting a willing subject out, particularly if they had to use Skyhook.

  “So,” he said. “What’s your plan of action?”

  Korhonen grinned again. “We kill some more goddamn Communists,” he said. “You gonna help?”

  Wouldn’t be as if I hadn’t done it before, Jim thought.

  “Right now, take me to Glenn,” he said. “What kind of sick?”

  “Don’t exactly think they’re gonna kiss and make up,” Jerry said. “But at least it don’t look like it’ll come to blows.”

  “What’re they doin’ now?”

  “Went into one of the bunkers—big enough it looks like it might be the headquarters. Or maybe a dispensary. Saw a guy comin’ out of it earlier, had a bandage on his leg.”

  “Still no sign of Parker?”

  “Not yet. I reckon they may be holdin’ him back, won’t give us both of ’em until we do what we say we’re gonna do.”

  Dickerson thought for a moment. Looked around the little shelter they’d made for themselves in the rocks. It wasn’t exactly the Ritz, but it would do. They’d stretched a poncho out over the top to shed the rains that were coming with more and more frequency, and were, generally, dry most of the time. The position had good visibility on all sides, plenty enough to warn them if someone was coming, anyway, and they’d strung tripflares for nighttime intruders. They’d positioned claymores close in, backing them up against the massive tree trunks that surrounded them. That way they’d be shielded from backblast if they had to use them, if not the blast overpressure. But both of them figured that shattered eardrums were a small price to pay if it got that serious.

  About the only thing they didn’t have was a nearby source of water, and that bothered Dick. One of them had to make a run to a stream nearly two hundred yards away at least once a day. It was the only time either was exposed.

  “We’ll stay here for now,” Dickerson finally said. “I know the captain, he ain’t gonna put up with a bunch of bullshit. Glenn Parker is in that compound, he’s gonna find him. Then we’ll see.”

  The plan, worked out at the last moment, was for the two NCOs to remain in hide positions outside the Montagnard position until Jim Carmichael gave them the signal to come on in. Pitifully small as a backup, but better than risking everyone if the whole thing had been a trap.

  “I’ll tell SFOB about Korhonen tonight, when I make commo,” he said. “’Bout your turn to make the water run, ain’t it?”

  Lieutenant Tan Vanh Trinh scoped the American position yet once again. He grunted in grudging admiration.

  Of course, in the old days their preparations would have done them little good. Trinh had led an anti-infiltration group working against the recon teams the Americans kept sending into Laos, and had been very good at his job. He had four American kills and at least two probables to his record, and he had lost count of the Nung and Montagnard team members. For this he had been highly decorated, promoted, and when the war finally ended, promised repatriation to his farm east of Hanoi, there to live in relative ease.

  He and his team had, in fact, been in a truck headed that way when the message came. He was told to report to the regional commander near Tchepone, and to waste no time.

  Not that it was a problem getting there. No longer did they have to travel the bumpy roads at night, always fearful when they heard the drone of an airplane. It felt strange, not having to look always to the sky. Not right, somehow. He often wondered if he’d ever be able to hear a plane again without cowering as deep as he could get in a hole, waiting for the rain of fire and steel that had swept away so many of his comrades.

  But Lieutenant Trinh was nothing if not obedient. He informed the driver of the change, ignored the protests of his men, and within a day was at Tchepone.

  “The Americans are coming back,” he was told. “And you are to find them.”

  He cursed. Back in the old days he would simply have called for reinforcements, surrounded the position, and under covering fire from mortars and B-40 rockets, assaulted. Antiaircraft guns would have been positioned all around to take care of any would-be rescuers.

  There would have been casualties, of course. The recon teams fought like tigers when they were cornered. But the result would have been foreordained. A team of six to eight men, no matter how good, could not defeat two or three hundred. Not without a lot of help, and increasingly in the days when the war wound down, that help did not come.

  Now, however, he could not attack the position. Not without giving himself away, and he’d seen enough of the Montagnard position on the knoll across the way to know that the moment a shot was fired they’d come swarming out, and the chase would be on. This time he would be the quarry, and that wasn’t something he was used to or that he would have looked forward to.

  The commander in Tchepone had promised him backup in the form of at least a seasoned battalion, but they would be at least two days away. He could have his mission done and be away long before their arrival. Then there would be more medals.

  Wait for the right moment, he told himself. It will always come.

  Chapter 13

  Jim Carmichael walked down the steps to the indicated bunker, opened the door, and was hit with a smell of putrefying flesh so strong he had to swallow hard to avoid gagging. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust from the sunlight outside, but he didn’t need eyes to tell him what was in the bunker.

  Dead people, and those about to be.

  Some of the men lying in the cots had obviously suffered combat wounds. Legs and arms were missing, one man had a great gaping hole in his stomach, yet another was swathed in bandages from chin to the crown of his head, the bandage leaking pinkish red.

  That he could deal with. Combat wounds were an accustomed sight. He’d treated enough of them himself over the years. You performed the lifesaving steps, stabilized the patient, and got him evacuated.

  There would be no evacuation here, but the Montagnard medics moving around taking care of the patients were calm, competent, and would do the best they could. Some of the men would die, some would not. He’d be able to improve their survival chances once he got the first resupply bundle and its load of antibiotics. He recognized one of the medics from a camp in II Corps, older now, but then so was everyone. He’d thought then that the young man, given different circumstances, would have made a hell of a doctor.

  Now it looked like he was, of a sort.

  But the combat wounded were the least of it. At the other end of the bunker lay the source of the smell. He moved closer. The man lying on the cot was in obvious agony, twisting and turning and trying to find some method of taking the pressure off skin that looked like someone had hit it with a flamethrower. Blisters covered his legs and lower trunk, and from the neck up bright red petechiae bloomed. His lips were covered with blisters and from the sound of his breathing Jim knew that his lungs were filling up with liquid.

  The others were, in varying degrees of seriousness, like him. And it wasn’t just young
men of combat age, like the wounded at the other end. There were several women and, worst of all, at least three children.

  As he watched, a couple of the medics picked up one of the bodies, obviously now relieved of his pain, and started to carry it toward the rear door. A black, leathery chunk of skin slipped off from where one of them had grasped him and the body dropped to the floor. It made a curious thunk, like a full watermelon.

  He stepped around the corpse, looking for Glenn Parker. Was this what Korhonen had meant, when he said Glenn was sick?

  If so, it was a hell of a lot worse than being sick.

  “What the hell happened here?” he asked, aware that Korhonen was close behind him and glad to hear that the other man was having as much trouble with the smell as he was. It was almost as if you were afraid to take a deep breath, fearful that whatever had afflicted these people would find its way into your lungs as well.

  “The Communists,” Korhonen said. “They did it.”

  The jungle is an unforgiving place. Leave a scratch unattended and it is likely to become the home of pathogens yet unknown to modern medicine. For many years the tribespeople had depended upon their own healers, men and women who knew what fungus or chunk of bark or plant was good for what ailment. And the system had worked reasonably well. Sometimes you got healed, sometimes you didn’t. If you didn’t, it must mean that the gods that inhabited the rocks and trees were angry with you.

  Then the French had come, and after them the Americans. Bringing ampoules and pills and injections that cured the infections like magic. No longer did you have to worry about malaria—it could be cured, or better yet, prevented. Children stopped dying of diarrhea. Women were more likely to survive childbirth than not.

  So the old ways went away, were remembered only dimly by the eldest of the tribe. Why search for magical bark when you could go to the dispensary and come away with all the pills you needed?

  Then the Americans left, and the diseases came back even worse than before, because in the intervening years the tribespeople lost the immunity gained from having the various diseases in lesser degrees of seriousness, and surviving.

  Parker had been visiting one of the outlying villages, Korhonen explained. Since his rescue he had made it a practice to make the rounds of the places where the dependents of Sarpa’s group hid away in the jungle, providing what help he could, using the drugs left over from the camps from which the Montagnards had fled in advance of the North Vietnamese final assault.

  “They heard a plane flying over,” Korhonen said. “Didn’t worry too much about it. They were well concealed, just like this place. Had bunkers to get into if there was any sign of an attack.

  “Then the rain started to fall. They were surprised. It was the middle of dry season, no rains for weeks, and none expected. Still, they didn’t think much of it. The drops hit the trees above, came wafting down through the leaves, and they put their pots out to catch it.

  “But it wasn’t like any rain they’d ever seen. The drops were yellow, sticky. What is this? some of them said. One man took a bit of it onto his finger, tasted it.

  “By then they were burning. It felt like someone had poured acid on his skin, Glenn said. He had sense enough to cover his head, pull his shirtsleeves down, try to get to shelter.

  “What you’re seeing here are the survivors of a village of over two hundred people,” Korhonen said. “Most of the others died on the spot. Throwing up and shitting, all at the same time. Skin falling off in sheets. Some of them went crazy, running around until they were exhausted, then falling down to die. The man who had put a drop on his tongue choked to death, his tongue so big he couldn’t get air around it.

  “And they continued to die, the survivors. Each day there are fewer. Some will make it—not many.”

  No wonder he wants to kill them all, Jim thought of Willi Korhonen. Anyone who could do this, deserves to die.

  And I think I might just help him.

  “Where’s Parker?” he asked, steeling himself for the sight of his old friend.

  “Down here,” Korhonen replied, throwing aside a mosquito net to reveal the figure on the cot.

  Jim’s first thought was that Glenn didn’t look so bad. Certainly not like the others on the ward.

  Then he saw the burns at the corners of his friend’s mouth, the redness around his nostrils, the great patch of hair that had fallen from his head and was now lying beside him on the pillow.

  Oh, shit, he thought. Where he had worried about getting a resisting Korhonen into a Skyhook rig, he knew now that it would have been an easy task compared to getting Parker out of here. There was no way he would survive the shock.

  “They’ve been keeping him sedated,” Korhonen said. “If we had enough drugs, we would do them all.”

  “I’ll get you the drugs, and anything else you want,” Jim replied. “Where are my quarters? We’ll take him there. I’ll take care of him myself.”

  He felt helpless. There wasn’t a great deal he could do for Glenn Parker, other than try to keep him comfortable and treat the symptoms. It wasn’t as if there was some wonder drug, some antibiotic that he could administer that would suddenly, almost magically, cure him.

  He racked his brain for dimly remembered treatments for chemical burns, because that was obviously what he had here. Like the mustard gas used in the First World War, it blistered wherever it touched, burned the lungs, and when it was ingested, burned the intestinal tract as well.

  Keep him hydrated—that was the first and probably most important step. He’d already given Parker one of the two bags of serum albumin he carried in his rucksack, would give the other before the night was out. He wished he had some way of intubating the patient—getting liquids down past an obviously damaged esophagus—but didn’t have the equipment.

  He’d already administered a quarter-grain of morphine when Glenn showed signs of coming up out of the drug-induced coma the Montagnards had put him in. It just showed, Jim thought, how much they valued the Americans, that they would expend precious morphine on an American and leave their own people to suffer.

  Tomorrow he’d summon Dickerson and Hauck in, get the resupply drops ordered, request special items to take care of the casualties. Knowing that Korhonen was an active part of Sarpa’s plan had at least removed one of his worries. He’d kept the team split in case of double-cross, but that seemed to be the least of the problems at the moment.

  That the NVA, or someone, was using chemical warfare was beyond doubt. Against all international norms, but then the Viets had never worried too much about various conventions and treaties.

  But who was supplying it to them? Jim didn’t know a lot about chem/bio—only the very sketchy briefing all the officers had received in the Advanced Course—but was fairly certain it required a fairly sophisticated laboratory and well-developed expertise. The NVA were unlikely sources of the substance.

  Russians? Chinese?

  Did it matter?

  He watched the hissing flame of the Coleman lantern.

  Alix would say you’ve gotten yourself in way beyond your depth, he thought.

  And I’m not sure she’s wrong.

  Jimmy Hauck made his slow, careful way down to the stream to fill the canteens. Every few moments he stopped, intently scanned the terrain, listened for any noise that shouldn’t be there. He paid particular attention to the jungle floor—few people were good enough to walk through it without leaving at least some sign.

  Satisfied finally, he would walk a little farther.

  Though there was no outward sign, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. The hackles at the back of his neck stood up, and often he thought that if he could just stare through the foliage a little farther he would see someone.

  If he was the point man on a patrol he would have halted them, they would have spread out and would have made an area recon. If someone made contact they would instantly execute an IAD, an immediate action drill. Whoever made the contact would
let loose with a burst on full automatic, somewhere in the area of where he thought the enemy to be. No aimed fire—the purpose wasn’t to kill anyone. It was to make them keep their heads down.

  IADs made someone think twice about following you. Especially when they’d know from experience that you were probably also sowing toe-popper mines on your backtrack.

  But he wasn’t point man, and there was no one to back him up, and they needed the water. You could get by without food for a long time, but the jungle heat dehydrated you so quickly that if you didn’t get at least a quart every two hours, even at rest, you’d soon lose all effectiveness. You’d be stumbling and running into things and given enough time would drop from heat exhaustion. Or worse, heatstroke.

  He’d emptied his rucksack back at the hide site, now had it full of collapsible canteens. Easy moving at the moment. Only weight was the irreplaceable weapons belt and the rifle. Wouldn’t be that way on the way back, with the rucksack full of water. And it was all uphill.

  Not for the first time he thanked Captain Carmichael for the punishing physical training they’d done as a matter of course back in Bad Tölz. Oh, he’d hated it then. A couple of years at Bragg after the last tour in Vietnam, not a lot to do except go to the Sport Parachute Club and drink beer, and his formerly whip-thin frame had filled out so much he’d had to get his fatigues let out. The only PT he’d gotten had been trying to outrun the MPs on his infrequent trips down to Combat Alley—Fayetteville’s notorious bar section. And, he admitted, he hadn’t done very well at that. Mostly he’d ended up in back of the patrol car, new lumps on his head.

  He sure as hell wouldn’t have been able to make the last few days if he’d stayed like that. Bad enough that his ankle still hurt like hell.

  He stopped again, watched for foliage that moved in a direction other than that determined by the slight breeze that came through the trees. Nothing. The only sounds were those of the denizens of the jungle. The far-off howls of a tribe of monkeys. Closer in the clacking of the mandibles of a swarm of leaf-cutter ants, steadily reducing a bush to nothing more than branches, then bearing the leaves like conquering heroes on their way back to the den.