THERE BE DRAGONS

by Peter Hallett

  Stephens entered the boat first. He squatted and made it in under the low roof.

  Most of the space in the sampan was taken up by junk; the boat was jam-packed with scavenged and looted trash. Empty Coca-Cola cases, rusted hubcaps, an old radio, two old TVs, one of which had a broken screen, mildewed books, some dead chickens hung from the its roof, an ice cube try, a bicycle with no wheels, an outboard motor, some ammo cases, a shotgun fastened to the wall, some American comics, superhero type, a US soldier’s helmet, and a small shrunken head.

  The rest of the men followed on and they somehow managed to all fit. They had to sit with shoulders touching.

  Moore sat nearest the entrance. He called out in Vietnamese and the sampan started to drift into the river. The motor kicked in and they were underway.

  • • • • •

  Jacobs was still in the cage, the sun now burning down on him, his eyes trying to shut. His back was sore from the crouched position he had fixed himself in all night and his legs had gone numb.

  He felt the structure move as it began to get pulled from the water. The liquid drained through the bamboo bars.

  The cage, with him inside, was soon back on the top of the bridge.

  On the bridge waited NVA Torturer and Cage Guard. The Russian opened the cage door after he had cut through some rope binding that held it tied shut.

  NVA Torturer signaled with his AK for Jacobs to exit and stand on the bridge.

  Jacobs did so and as he stepped from the cage, he straightened his back. It was a difficult task. It was like trying to straighten a bent metal bar. He could feel the blood slowly start to flow through his legs. They tingled, pins and needles everywhere.

  He was stood fully upright now but was swaying back and forth. His vision was still blurred. He tried to position his feet in a way that would keep him perched upright.

  NVA Torturer saw him do so. He smiled at Jacobs. Then he kicked his legs from under him. Jacobs lifted up off the wood for a second before his body cracked down on it. He let out a small

  cry as air expelled from him. He was winded. He wheezed.

  Cage Guard laughed.

  Jacobs saw the commie remove some of the rope binding from the cage. He wrapped the rope around his right hand, so it covered his knuckles. Much like how a boxer wraps his hands in bandages before he puts on a glove.

  NVA Torturer pulled Jacobs to his feet and held him upright with his non-Kalashnikov-full hand.

  “Standing is a struggle, Lynch. It’s a brawl with gravity and the unseen power is hitting me, hard.” His words were barely audible.

  Cage Guard began to punch Jacobs in the face. “Now a commie is hitting me, hard.”

  Some of the shots glanced off Jacobs’s skin. The rope burned and cut him. The scrape marks stung as sweat ran into the wounds.

  NVA Torturer shouted an order, in Vietnamese.

  Cage Guard stopped. He unwound the rope from his fist. The rope was stained with Jacobs’s blood.

  Jacobs was dragged away from the bridge by the NVA. As he stumbled over his marionette feet, he tried to take in the camp’s setup once more, this time with the aid of daylight. It was no use; his eyesight was worse than it had been last night.

  Jacobs was dropped into the dry dirt in front of the hut being used as a torture chamber. Dragon Master exited down its steps and came to stand before him.

  “How was your first night in the cage?” Dragon Master asked.

  Jacobs tried to answer but his mouth was too dry to push any sound from it. So he just knelt in silence.

  NVA Torturer gave him a nudge with the butt of his rifle, trying to voice a reply, but Jacobs didn’t.

  “We could end all this, if you answer my questions. What is your name?”

  No answer.

  “Do you have a wife?”

  No answer. Jacobs refused to satisfy him.

  “Do you have brothers or sisters?”

  No answer. Even though every part of him was in agony.

  “Okay then, GI. We will start the pain for the day.”

  Dragon Master went back into the hut and NVA Torturer took ahold of Jacobs’s hair. He jerked him to his feet. Jacobs couldn’t even muster a noise in reaction to the pain.

  He was shoved up the steps.

  • • • • •

  Jacobs fell into the hut and landed face down on the floor.

  He was hit by a kick to his lower spine, making his back arch for a moment. Then he turned over to face the roof.

  An NVA boot dropped down onto his ribs. His body doubled and as he sat upwards he was hit in the face with the butt of the rifle again.

  • • • • •

  They had sailed for an hour, give or take, with only the sight of Cowboy’s and Gummy’s legs visible to them through the opening. A smell of opium drifted into them.

  “I know what that smell is,” said Teacher.

  “You would.” Jackson smiled.

  “I’m a few cans shy of a six-pack, Stephens,” continued Teacher, “but I think travelling with pirates up a river into NVA and dragon infested jungle is, what’s the word? Crazy!”

  “I ain’t a fan of the idea, but Moore knows what he’s doing. Don’t you, Agent Moore?”

  “Yes.”

  “See?” said Stephens.

  “I still say it’s crazy,” said Teacher.

  They heard another motor, a louder one, and shouts in Vietnamese.

  They kept silent.

  Then they heard a shot.

  The sampan stopped moving.

  They flicked the safeties on their rifles off. Teacher racked his shotgun. Cage loaded the Blooper.

  The Vietnamese voices continued to shout.

  They could see the lower limbs of Cowboy and Gummy, tense, stay still and then grip at the floor with their toes.

  “Cage,” whispered Stephens.

  “Yeah?”

  “Come with me.”

  Both of them moved through the group of sweaty, nervous, and tort bodies, to the cusp of the covered area, to be at Moore’s side.

  The agent arched his neck to try and see beyond the opening, to see what the commotion was over.

  Stephens pulled him back and shook his head.

  Moore nodded.

  Then in their line of sight, they saw a fresh set of legs drop onto the deck.

  Those legs wore NVA issue boots and trousers.

  They saw Cowboy walk to and begin to lean into their area. His eyes were wide. He kept his hands in front of his mass, so the man behind him couldn’t see them. He ran his thumb over his neck, ear to ear.

  Stephens removed a knife from his boot. One side of the blade was thin and sharp. The other side had a jagged razor edge. He placed his CAR-15 down, ever so gently.

  Cowboy was now under the cover and in the rear of the boat with them, the unwanted guest following on.

  The NVA soldier had no time to react. He had looked down at his feet as he came into the sampan, trying not to trip on junk.

  He saw the Americans for only a second before Stephens grabbed him into the boat fully out of view.

  Stephens covered the NVA’s mouth with his free hand and sliced the commie’s throat with the knife in his other.

  Moore had to look away as blood gushed onto his face. It stained the agent’s cool façade with NVA rubicund. He blinked to keep it from running into his vision.

  Stephens nodded a thank you to Cowboy.

  Cowboy nodded back and removed the revolver from his pants’ waist.

  Stephens placed the knife back in his boot and took ahold of his CAR-15.

  Moore spoke in a very low whisper to Cowboy, the hum of their conversation covered by more foreign shouts outside.

  Cowboy answered and Moore shared the reply, quickly and quietly with Stephens. “NVA Navy, patrol boat, a captured US navy gunboat, massive, a deck gunner with an RPK, cannons, and more.”

  Gummy fell down onto the deck, dead. His body had been shattered by fire from the RPK.

>   Stephens was fast to act. He yanked a grenade form his webbing, pulled the pin, and jumped out into the open air of the deck.

  • • • • •

  Stephens fired his CAR-15 from the hip and threw the grenade.

  Cage joined him just as the grenade exploded on the deck of the gunboat.

  The NVA who had manned the RPK burst. The weapon blackened, warped, now of no use.

  Cage fired the Blooper at the bridge.

  An explosion engulfed the crew inside with flames. Glass shattered and metal bent.

  Some of Stephens’s wild shots hit the captain, who was standing on the deck with a pistol held in his hands.

  “Start the engine!” Stephens shouted over the sound of weapons fire.

  Cage did so and the sampan started to move away as bullets from AKs tore up the deck just inches from Stephens’s feet. He stumbled back. He fired.

  Moore exited the covered area, rifle to shoulder and shooting.

  Rat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat.

  The agent cut down two of the NVA who stood firing from the ex-US Navy boat.

  Stephens shot another man.

  That NVA fell into the flames of the bridge. He screamed as the fire took ahold of him then jumped from the boat into the water.

  The sergeant shot the man when he bobbed back to the surface.

  Cowboy joined them on the deck. He dodged bullets that cut into the corrugated metal behind him.

  Some choice English curse words from Teacher echoed from inside the sampan’s cover. “You damned sons of bitches!”

  Cowboy raised a rocket launcher to his shoulder and took aim down the sight. He fired.

  The weapon jerked and a flame shot from its rear.

  Moore ducked the backfire, fell onto Gummy; blood stained his new fatigues.

  The gunboat’s superstructure erupted with a roar as the RPG struck it. Pieces of metal and bodies streaked across the sky. Quick secondary explosions followed from munitions. Then the fuel tank blazed with a whoosh.

  Cowboy dropped the launcher overboard. He shouted at Cage.

  Cage moved from the motor and Cowboy took over.

  Stephens shot some NVA survivors who swam in the river. Their blood turned the water red.

  He expelled a magazine, clipped a new one in. “Cage, back inside!”

  Cage did as ordered.

  Stephens picked Moore up off the deck. “You okay? Are you hit?” he asked.

  “No. I’m fine.” Moore then spoke to Cowboy and translated his answer. “He said, throw his buddy overboard.”

  They picked up the body of Gummy and did as the pirate had told them.

  The body floated away from the sampan.

  Cowboy looked over his shoulder. No one followed.

  “Tell him thank you,” said Stephens as he ducked back inside.

  Moore did. Then joined the team.

  • • • • •

  Jacobs was in a hospital.

  His grandfather lay in bed, attached to a drip. He was dying. He was aware of his surroundings, though, and of his grandson’s presence. He held on to his hand. His grandfather looked to him and saw the wounds that covered his body. The claw marks on his shoulders, his bloodied shins, and his scratched and battered face. Water dripped from him. “Who … or what did that to you?” he asked through a wheeze.

  “The dragons and their master have created the wounds that cover me,” said Jacobs.

  His grandfather coughed. His breathing was shallow. “Please keep talking to me,” he begged.

  “The dragons I’d once not believed in, and the Russian, have caused all this mayhem and agony. My body is a mess. I’ve never felt pain like I’m experiencing now. I’m a broken man. Are you sure you want to hear this?”

  “Please.”

  “Once an animal breaks you, it’s impossible to doubt their existence. No matter how much you wish you could … and I do wish I could. Because doubting their existence reminds me of an easier time, a time when things made a bit more sense, a time when dragons were but a flight of fantasy and not of real danger … and the architects of my stinging hurt.”

  “Pain … can make you see things … you haven’t noticed before.” His grandfather squeezed Jacobs’s hand tighter.

  “The dragons have made me question everything … or is it Diaz who has made me question it?” Jacobs thought for a second. “Stephens would be able to offer his view on the matter, if he was here. It would be a counterpoint to Diaz’s ideas. It might of been able to settle my racing thoughts, balance my brain, stop it from teetering, see-sawing back and forth between each camp of thought, to level the madness to a platform bearable to stand on … for the moment.”

  “You always want to be lukewarm? Always the line down the middle and not stood to any side of it?” his grandfather asked.

  “I just wish I didn’t have to deal with this.”

  “Everyone has to … at some point.”

  “What has happened to my platoon? Did any of them survive the attack? Am I thought dead? Will people be searching for me? Why would they waste time looking for me? I’m just another … MIA. Missing In Action.”

  “We all are … until we pick a side.”

  Jacobs stood, took a wet sponge and damped his grandfather’s forehead. He sat back down and looked to the floor.

  “You look troubled, Grandson.”

  “I feel a surge of discomfort … and it’s flowing through my form in a wave. I felt the need to call out, to ask for help.”

  “Help from whom?”

  “Could I be seeking some kind of reconciliation with the Great I Am, since the probabilities of my death are great? Isn’t that an easy out, to wait until your deathbed to start believing? Faith built on fear. Would God accept someone who found him that way? Someone who was desperate, maybe covering his bases just in case he had been wrong all his life?”

  “God will accept you anytime … I know.”

  Jacobs didn’t even acknowledge the statement. “Not so long ago I was wishing death upon myself … now I’m afraid of it? That’s a dramatic shift. How have I come to this? It must be the war. Not the dragons. Not Diaz or Stephens … but the war. Seeing men die … and killing men, really makes you consider mortality, to look at it in more detail.” Jacobs’s brow furrowed. “I need to stop wasting energy thinking about all of this. My energy would be better spent fighting. If I’m afraid to die … then I will fight to make sure I don’t.”

  “I have done what you wonder.” His voice was very weak now.

  “What have you done, Grandfather?” asked Jacobs as he moved closer.

  “I have … on my death bed … given my life to God.” He smiled and then he died.

  Jacobs looked to the doorway. He saw himself standing with his mom. He was only ten years old.

  • • • • •

  The sampan came to a stop and Cowboy ducked into the covered section. He spoke to Moore, who then turned to the rest of the team and said, “This is where we get off, gentlemen.”

  The men disembarked. They jumped upwards onto the bank. The orange soil that formed the edge of the land broke free as their boots touched down. It fell into the water and clouded.

  Cowboy was still on the boat when Moore handed him the rest of his pay.

  The Vietnamese man counted all his new transcontinental cash. Once he’d finished the math, he pulled the revolver from his waist pointed it at the agent and started to shout.

  All the men readied their weapons, looked down their sights and kept aim on the hostile.

  Moore shouted back at Cowboy. His CAR-15 hanging from his shoulder, untouched. He gestured with a open palm for Cowboy to lower the pistol.

  Stephens started to walk forward. He cross-stepped slowly towards them. His rifle was held tight and the safety was off. “What is he shouting, Moore?” he asked.

  “He wants more money, to cover the loss of his friend. If we don’t pay, he won’t wait here for us. He says he’ll leave us stranded.”

 
Stephens shot Cowboy through his tattered hat. Blood dyed it and his body fell into the river with a splash.

  Moore turned to face Stephens.

  The rest of the team lowered their weapons.

  Diaz shook his head.

  “What are you doing, Sergeant?” shouted Moore.

  “Securing our ride home. Now we’ll have the boat waiting here for us.”

  Moore went to speak but stumbled over his words. He made a noise but it wasn’t language.

  “Agent Moore, which way?” asked Stephens.

  Moore removed his map, consulted it, and pointed through the trees, due north.

  “Okay, Diaz, get on point. Listen to Moore. Let’s find this place,” said Stephens.

  They started to walk.

  Diaz cut a path with his machete.

  Moore was ten yards behind him, reviewing the map again.

  Stephens was ten behind him; ten yards separated all the men. Jackson was at the rear, same routine as ever.

  “Agent Moore?” said Stephens as he continued to walk.

  “Yes.” Moore didn’t look back. He placed his map back into his chest pocket.

  “Do we need to call our position in?”

  “No. Radio silence, unless I order it. Okay?”

  “Sure, this is your party.”

  “You did the right thing with that Cowboy. It just shocked me,” admitted Moore.

  “I know I did. Why did it shock you, though?”

  “Are you used to killing?” asked Moore.

  “Yeah, nothing to it.”

  “Do you enjoy it?”

  “Kinda.”

  Moore swallowed. “I can’t seem to …”

  “You have killed, and killed well. I saw you kill those NVA soldiers, the ones on the boat.”

  “Yes, but did you see my reaction to the incident in our sampan?”

  “You mean the throat cutting?” asked Stephens.

  “Yes.”

  “First of all, you’re right, it’s an incident. It ain’t an event. Killing at distance is easier. Killing up close is difficult for most … at first. But like everything, it becomes easier. Like the way my practice with the bow made shooting an arrow as simple as breathing.”