The Cascading, Book II: Fellow Girl

by CW Ullman

  “Tiger Girl, want to fire a weapon?’ one of the men asked.

  She was going to correct him and say her name was My Ling, but she hesitated and decided she liked the name Tiger Girl.

  ‘Yes,” she answered.

  The man said, “Okay, we’ll try one more.”

  The man set an M60 machine gun on the ground, adjusting the kickstand tripod at the end of its muzzle.

  “Back here, on top, is the door you open, and load in the ammo belt. As long as you got ammo, this baby will light up the countryside. Every fifth bullet is a tracer so you know where you aiming. The barrel gets real hot so you got to let it cool periodically. Ready?” the man asked.

  He instructed My Ling to lie behind the weapon and he pointed to the gunsight for aiming. He lay next to her, holding the belt to feed ammo into the gun.

  “I’m going to tap you on the head; that means “go.” When you’re firing the gun and I tap you on the head again that means “stop.” Understand?”

  She nodded.

  He yelled, “Fire in the hole” then tapped My Ling on the head.

  She squeezed the trigger and blew the bark off a tree one hundred fifty yards away. After a few seconds, he tapped her on the head and she stopped firing.

  “Want to see your target?” he asked.

  They walked to the tree to check My Ling’s results. When they were twenty yards away the soldier was surprised to hear a cracking sound as the tree fell over.

  “Tiger Girl, your grouping was so tight, you cut the tree down. That’s shooting!” he exclaimed.

  My Ling was very proud. “Can we do it, again?” she implored.

  “We need to conserve ammo. We were running low before we commandeered Pok’s barge,” he explained.

  The whole exercise made her feel close to her father because together they had frequently broken down guns and cleaned them. She also enjoyed the texture, feel, and control of weapons. She loved squeezing the trigger, the kick of the rifle butt into her shoulder and finally surveying the target. The greatest power she had ever felt was shooting a belt-fed machine gun.

  “You like guns, don’t you, Tiger Girl,” he remarked and she nodded with a sheepish grin.

  My Ling found the girls and brought them to the front porch of the main house to talk.

  “Are you bruised because of Mr. Pok?” she inquired.

  Dao nodded and Di.u answered,” He beat us a lot. When we asked for food or did not want to go with the men, he would hit us. It was bad, My Ling.”

  My Ling listened to Di.u’s story and felt a growing rage, the same intense anger she harbored for the sailor on the U.S. warship. Mr. Pok forced the girls to be with men to get the supplies and weapons he wanted. He had not been coerced to bring the guns up for gangs, but bought them to sell for his own profit. Whenever there was a hitch in the negotiations he would offer up the girls for the seller’s desires. Once, he tried to sell Dao, but Di.u made such a scene that it drew unwanted attention from a nearby crowd. When My Ling could hear no more, she grabbed a gun from a soldier and ran toward Mr. Pok’s cage. While she was cocking the weapon to shoot him, Colonel Cin intercepted her.

  “Not now. Not here,” Colonel Cin stated.

  “You don’t know what he made the girls do,” she hissed.

  “I promise you’ll get your chance,” Colonel Cin offered calmly. “I need the best route out of here and he knows the area better than anybody.”

  Colonel Cin had his arm around her and she felt as though her entire body was a flexed muscle. He had fought side-by-side with many men, come up against some very tough characters, and been challenged by some of the most formidable, but he had never encountered anyone like My Ling. He appraised her force of will and thought he would never want to be on her wrong side. The longer he was in her presence, the greater his admiration and fascination. While her age may have been thirteen, she possessed a maturity, wisdom, and confidence of someone older. Again, he thought, “Where are you from?”

  The advancing Khmer Rouge took two days longer to get to the site of their impending ambush. Evacuation of the compound presented a problem, no one wanted to address what to do with Elvis. My Ling was already ahead of everyone else. She had been taking Elvis out of the cage for frequent strolls and put a change on Elvis’s nose ring. While it did provide some control, if Elvis saw something of interest or hostility he was not the picture of restraint. Once, when Elvis saw a deer in the woods, he low crawled to a point where he could pounce, towing My Ling behind him. She struggled to get in front of him and when she did, she punched him on the nose. Elvis looked forlorn while she gave him a tongue-lashing. After she was done, she turned her back and folded her arms. He circled her, rubbing his body against her. Eventually, she relented in tormenting him, hummed “Adoration,” then rubbed his chest. Elvis extended his foot long tongue against her face.

  Colonel Cin received word from the advance reconnaissance squad that they could see the Khmer Rouge’s lead element. Cin told the men to assemble in the compound’s center yard and have their gear. The girls wore rucksacks as did Huyen, Bi’ch and Mr. Pok. Cin looked for My Ling, but she was not to be found. He asked if anyone had seen her.

  There was a long pause before Di.u stepped forward, “She left.”

  “What do you mean she left?”

  Di.u was reticent to say more as she kicked at the dirt.

  Colonel Cin got down to Di.u’s eye level and asked gently “Di.u, what do you know?”

  She twisted like an eight year old caught telling a fib and then blurted out, “Okay, she’s going to be real mad at me if I tell you; so you can’t tell her I told you. You have to promise.”

  Colonel Cin suppressed a smile, “I promise.”

  “She told me not to say anything, but she thought you’d go that way and that’s the way she went,” Di.u said in a rush.

  Colonel Cin stood up wondering why My Ling would leave ahead of the contingent, when he remembered the cage; Elvis was gone. She took Elvis to get a head start in order to avoid an argument with him as to whether Elvis should be left behind. While he contemplated dealing with a huge tiger in the Cambodian jungle, his radio squawked. It was Thanh.

  “We made contact with the Khmer Rouge. It’s not the fifty that Pok said,” Thanh radioed. “It’s closer to two fifty. We blew the Claymores and mortared them, but we have to leave before they get any closer. You need to exit the compound quick.”

  Cin ordered everyone into two columns then gave the command to evacuate. He road his horse to the front and told the company leader he was going ahead to find My Ling. He had galloped three hundred yards when he saw them: My Ling, with the violin case strapped to her back, and Long riding in the carriage atop Elvis.

  When he caught up to them, he asked, “Do you think we should have talked about your traveling circus here?”

  “I knew you would have said no which meant I would have had to stay in the cage with Elvis and Long and be killed by the Khmer Rouge or go off by myself,” she stated. “This made more sense.”

  He rode alongside a short distance fuming. “By the way, we’re not going in this direction,” then rode off to join the others. My Ling followed, using the ring leash on the cat. She had tried something once when they were in the cage and wondered if she could do it out in the jungle: ride Elvis. She pulled slightly on the ring and he stopped. She pushed down on his back and he lowered his front legs. She crawled onto his back, slapped his right front, and Elvis moved out. She directed him by leaning over his head, pulling the ring and pointing where she wanted him to go. It was an imprecise endeavor, but he eventually caught up to the columns of men and walked alongside Cin’s horse. Cin ignored them for awhile.

  “You know when these cats are in cages they eat a lot less than when they’re moving around?” Cin remarked.

  “I have a plan. We kill prey for Elvis,” My Ling offered.

  “Your job is to make sure he’s got food…and he doesn’t eat any of my men,” he said as he tur
ned about and went to check on his troops.

  My Ling’s biggest concern was not food for Elvis, but how would he react if they came into enemy contact. She was about to find out.

  They broke out of the brush and crossed a plateau with gorges and valleys below. Colonel Cin took in the panorama and saw problems. The Khmer Rouge were spread out below. They were going to be forced into a dry riverbed that led them into a forest where the trees would shield them. Cin thought he could bottle them up for awhile, but eventually they would get through and if that led to a battle in the open, he did not like his chances. He decided to head into the forest with a squad and set up an ambush.

  He took fifteen men, gave the horse to his cousin, and told the column to head across the field and get to higher ground.

  Colonel Cin and his men set up in the forest and waited for the Khmer Rouge to gather its largest numbers in the gorge before they opened fire. When about fifty of the enemy was gathered in the hollow, Cin had his men commence firing. They took down many of the enemy, but he had miscalculated. The only men in the gully were the fifty. On the flat land above them, the other two hundred enemy troops had been waiting and now opened fire. Colonel Cin’s Degars had been under fire before and knew that it usually occurred in spasms. After the first fusillade, the Degar hugged the ground or hid behind trees. Then for thirty seconds, they opened fire on the Khmer Rouge on the plain in front of them. Cin gave the cease fire to see what fire would be returned. Before the Khmer Rouge returned fire, there were a few moments of silence and Colonel Cin thought he heard a violin.

  The enemy came back with a longer, sustained volley of fire with a disturbing element: they were advancing while shooting. Cin’s squad was in the precarious position of being overrun on their left and right flanks by an enemy that was spread out for mile.

  The Khmer Rouge ran under cover-fire from their comrades stopping after fifty yards. Cin gave his men the signal to retreat. The colonel did not want to get bogged down in a firefight in the forest where his men would be taken by an enemy with superior numbers. The Degar pulled back, shielding themselves by running from tree to tree for shielding. They broke out into the open field and ran toward the tree line to join the others.

  Thanh delivered some bad news, “We have a hill to our east and we’re exposed if we go that way. If we take the river to the south we’re sitting ducks. We’re penned in here. Got any ideas?”

  Cin looked back at the woods and figured there was about a half hour before the Khmer Rouge broke through and then it would become a battle that he did not have enough men to fight.

  “We’re going to make a stand here, have the men spread out, and wait for the gang to come out, then open up,” Cin ordered. “Make every shot count.”

  The men set up the weapons facing the forest and waited for the Khmer Rouge to burst out of the trees. The colonel walked up and down the line encouraging each rifleman and pointing out their field of fire. He came back to the position next to Thanh and scanned the tree line waiting for the enemy to show themselves. Lying on their stomachs, M16s at the ready, Thanh and Cin braced themselves, and Cin asked a question.

  “Earlier…did I hear a violin?”

  Thanh, while staring down the barrel of his gun, said, “Elvis was anxious.”

  “I got to tell you, it’s crazy to hear a violin when people are trying to shoot you,” Cin said wryly.

  Colonel Cin was focused on the forest, waiting for the Khmer Rouge to come through, when he was tapped on the shoulder.

  “Tiger Girl, what are you doing up here?” Cin was astonished.

  “What’s your plan?” My Ling inquired. “Because I have an idea.”

  “I’m sure you do. Go back to Elvis, because all hell is about to break loose.”

  “You need to keep the Khmer Rouge in the forest,” My Ling suggested.

  “We can’t do that, so we’re going to pick them off when they come out,” Colonel Cin countered.

  “I have a better idea,” My Ling stated.

  Colonel Cin was amazed at her audacity.

  “Once the whole group has entered the woods, drop mortars behind the forest so they can’t leave and drop mortars in front so they can’t come out this side,” My Ling suggested.

  “Until we run out of mortars -,” Cin interrupted.

  “No. Then you’re going to shoot flares,” My Ling explained. “It’ll work, you’ll see.”

  Colonel Cin studied her with curiosity. He looked past her at Thanh who shrugged with a bemused smile.

  “Okay, go back with the menagerie,” Colonel Cin ordered. He walked down his side of the line while Thanh went down the other side giving new instructions. He took her suggestion because he figured the enemy would hold up behind trees and wait out the Degars until they ran out of ammunition or food.

  Cin waited until he could see the first Khmer Rouge at the forest’s edge. He then gave the command to fire mortars. Once the first mortars hit, he watched as the enemy pulled back from the face of the forest. His mortar crews then changed the angle of the tubes, and fired toward the far side of the forest. Cin hoped this was not a waste of mortar ammo. After the mortar fire, they shot flares into the sky, so the brilliant glare could illuminate the dark forest like falling suns.

  Colonel Cin was stunned by the mayhem that happened in the forest. The first flares initiated a crescendo of animal shrieks and human screams as thousands of monkeys, which My Ling had spotted earlier, swept down from the tree tops to avoid the falling suns He watched the terrorized enemy scurry from the monkey onslaught only to be picked off by his Degar marksmen. The Khmer Rouge still stuck in the forest suffered the wrath of hysterical monkeys biting and ripping at them. These were not bespectacled langurs either, but much bigger baboons. The chaos drove the Khmer Rouge into Degar gunfire, or they shot one another trying to kill the baboons that were attacking in packs.

  The rampage lasted less than thirty minutes. Then, it was quiet, except for the intermittent shriek of a monkey. While Cin surveyed the carnage in the forest, he became aware of the sound of the violin. He turned around and fifty yards behind him was My Ling swaying with the violin, along with the girls, and about ten men humming “Adoration.”

  Cin turned to Thanh in bewilderment, “In your life, have you ever seen anything like this?”

  “Tiger Girl, the monkey army, or a big cat that reacts to a violin like he’s on heroin?” Thanh retorted.

  Cin gave Thanh the order for everyone to prepare to leave in five minutes, “We’re going back to Vietnam. When the Khmer Rouge finds out about this,” pointing to the forest, “they’ll be hunting for us in Cambodia.” While Thanh rounded up everyone and relayed the new plan, Cin went back to My Ling.

  “How was Elvis?” he asked.

  “With “Adoration” he’s better. Long…pants a lot,” she said.

  “We’re going back to Vietnam,” he continued. “There is an orphanage on the border where I want to put Huyen, Di.u and Dao.”

  My Ling verbally agreed with him, but had no intentions of leaving the girls anywhere but with their relatives. She figured she could make her case with the colonel while on the trail.

  Over the last year, she had grown very close to the sisters and had become like family. When Mr. Pok would leave the camp, they sat next to her cage, petted Elvis and Long, and hatched escape plots with My Ling, all which eventually were foiled. The girls snuck food out to the pen for My Ling and sometimes Di.u would put her hands through the cage’s bars with twine and play Cat’s Cradle with My Ling.

  The person who tormented the girls the worst was Huyen. When Huyen became Bi’ch’s indispensible attendant, she grew overbearing and mean. Even Mr. Pok had grown wary of her, but did not interfere. He considered selling Huyen, but that meant he would have to look after for Bi’ch, and he would rather be held captive by the Khmer Rouge than have that duty.

  My Ling understood Huyen’s meanness and cautioned the girls about how to avoid being punished by her. She told them
Huyen was jealous of their closeness, and the way to counter it was to go out of their way to do things for her, and to be careful when it came to being with My Ling. They tried to satisfy Huyen’s demands, but their efforts were never enough, making Huyen even more vituperative.

  After the arrival of Cin and his men, she was powerless over the three, so she tried to foster a friendship. My Ling saw through her scheming and was not fooled when Huyen cozied up to her and the girls. She had grown to trust the instincts of her animal cellmates. Whenever Huyen came near, Elvis furrowed his brow and Long uttered a low growl.

  The colonel surveyed the columns of men and found them ready to move out. He looked at Dao and Di.u standing next to My Ling and asked, “Have you two ever been on a horse?” The girls shook their heads.

  Cin picked up Di.u and put her in the saddle and placed Dao behind her.

  “Hold on and I’ll lead,” Colonel Cin offered.

  The girls giggled with nervousness as Cin walked the horse holding the reigns. As Cin walked, he mulled over the obstacles that lay ahead. He knew that waiting for him somewhere across the border was the 320A Division of the North Vietnamese Army. The 320A had been in battles for the last five years mostly in the Central Highlands of Vietnam against American military units, including the 101st Airborne, the 1st Air Calvary and the 173rd Airborne. The Americans never took the 320A seriously until the NVA unit launched a surprise countrywide attack February 1968 during Tet, the Vietnamese Lunar New Year, inflicting many casualties.

  Until that attack, the 320A concerned itself mostly with intimidating villagers in the Central Highlands. Hiding in caves during the day, they invaded villages at night, forcing the people to hide weapons for them, and forced men and boys to help them. If the village did not cooperate, they killed the leader of the village.