Eagles Cry Blood

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Donald E. Zlotnik—Eagles Cry Blood

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  Control North compound. He had only had two years in grade as a lieutenant colonel, and hadn’t even been expecting to be considered for promotion for at least another year. The new colonel smiled as he thought about his wife and children and how proud they would be. Colonel Clewell forced his thoughts back to business and Lieutenant Bourne.

  Three weeks had passed since the enemy ammunition depot had been destroyed. Paul had reconnoitered the area surrounding the depot and found only old signs of enemy activity. The NVA had left in a hurry, abandoning a lot of equipment and some small stores of emergency food supplies. Paul was living off what he could find growing wild in the jungle and some food items left by the NVA soldiers. The pickings were getting very lean. Paul looked down at the torn and filthy camouflage uniform he was wearing and noticed that the ground-in dirt had turned the color of the cloth a medium brown, almost the color of the NVA battle uniform. The camouflage paint had worn off his face and he was feeling tired most of the time, a sure sign of malnutri-tion. A few days earlier his teeth had begun to ache, and a constant headache throbbed behind his eyes.

  Paul opened one of his survival packs and removed a fishing hook and line from the kit. Today he was going to try and catch some fish down by the river. He carried only his combat gear with him as he carefully picked his way down a narrow deer trail. He paused to locate his position on his pocket map, but he had long since walked out of range of the map. He could see the glimmer of open water ahead of him through the trees. He crouched down to crawl under a low overhang of bamboo crossing the trail and froze. A bright green two-foot-long snake hung down over the trail from one of the bamboo stalks. Paul locked his eyes on the bamboo viper that his recon team had been named after and tried skirting around the reptile. There wasn’t enough room to slip past the deadly snake without leaving the trail and creating a great deal of noise breaking through the dry bamboo, so Paul used the barrel of his CAR-15 to try and poke the snake off the branch. The reptile opened its mouth and revealed a set of one-inch fangs. Paul stepped back. Tales of bamboo vipers were constantly being told at CCN. The snakes were extremely dangerous to recon team members because of their highly toxic poison and the long fangs the reptile owned that could embed the amber liquid deep into a human muscle, normally in the neck or face of its victim. The snake dropped down on the thick matting of dead bamboo leaves and curled up ready to strike. Paul unholstered his silenced .22-caliber pistol and lined up the front sight bead between the bright yellow, eyes. He had been told during his training in the Special Forces School that snake meat was full of protein; he wondered how the snake would taste cold.

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  The river was the size of a wide stream and was filled with rocks as it cut between a pair of low mountains. Paul found himself a promising-looking hole in the riverbed and baited his hook with a small piece of the bright-green snake skin. The first underhand cast brought a quick strike. Paul hauled out a two-pound fish that closely resembled an American rock bass.

  The warm sun on the river rocks extracted the tension from Paul’s muscles and gave him a pleasant two hours of fishing. The fish he caught would give him the much-needed protein that his body was demanding. All he needed now was some fresh fruit to balance his diet. He smiled as he recalled all the Tarzan movies from his youth, where the ape man would reach up into a tree and pull down hands filled with ripe fruit. The jungle wasn’t really like that. You rarely found any ripe fruit hanging from the trees. The monkeys and the birds ate anything before it got half-ripe for human consump-tion, and the insects would get the fruit that did make it down to the ground.

  Paul picked up the half-dozen fish he had caught and strung them on a thin vine before walking back to his camp site. He planned on eating his fill and then heading north.

  Paul had restrained from calling his relay site for the past eight days because he had had nothing important to report, but he figured that since they might be getting worried about him he would make a short broadcast before he left the ravine ridge. The danger from making broadcasts was getting worse each day because the North Vietnamese were using direction-finding equipment in the area. Paul figured that he could hide for no more than another week before he would need to be extracted.

  The raw fish tasted better than the oily flesh from the snake and settled his stomach. Paul carefully buried the remainder of the fish after he had eaten his fill, and then removed all of his equipment from his cave. He was going to take the secure voice radio and the NVA documents that looked important and bury the rest of the items.

  He felt a sense of insecurity when he departed the familiar ravine and merged into the dark green underbrush. Paul took his time pushing through the thick jungle, and stopped often until he found a suitable piece of high ground to make a radio broadcast from. The sun was halfway through the afternoon and was starting to send long shadows across the jungle floor when Paul dropped his pack and started assembling his radio. The anticipation of hearing a friendly voice after being alone for so long caused Paul’s hands to shake. He turned on the switch and waited an unnecessary couple of minutes for the set to warm up. The static emitting over the earphone was very weak, signaling that the battery was nearly dead. Paul squeezed the transmitter switch and spoke, “Hickory . . . Viper . . . over.”

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  The static resumed. Paul began wondering if he had walked out of the range of the powerful Hickory relay-site transmitter when the radio crackled weakly. Paul pushed the receiver tightly against his ear and listened.

  “Viper . . . Command One . . . Keep your handset keyed so that we can home in on your signal . . .”

  Paul obeyed and keyed the handset. Ten minutes passed and the drone from a large aircraft could be heard high up beyond the thick jungle growth.

  Paul called, “Command One . . . Viper . . . over.”

  No answer. The radio battery had gone dead. Paul dropped the handset to the jungle floor and tore at his pants pocket until he could free his URC-10. He placed the selector switch on the emergency frequency.

  “Command One . . . Viper.”

  The large aircraft answered almost immediately, “Viper, why are you using this frequency?”

  “My secure voice set has lost its power. My URC-10 is all that I have left.”

  Paul looked around at the quiet jungle and sensed danger. “I can’t talk long . .

  . please monitor this freq at all times . . . out.”

  “Command One . . . We roger your last transmission . . . We want you to come up on this push every four hours and listen for any traffic that we may have for you . . . out.”

  Paul disassembled the secure voice radio set and opened the latches that secured the boxes. He used his Randall knife to cut through the wiring and printed circuits. Paul buried the two boxes, scattered some of the critical components around the jungle, and pushed some of the parts back in his pack so that he could hide them along the trail.

  A mile away from his broadcast site he stopped and adjusted the straps on his rucksack. The lost weight felt good. Paul recalled the conversation with Command One. The voice had sounded familiar. He stopped and found a hiding place on the jungle floor. He had to take some time to think, and he couldn’t concentrate while he traveled in the jungle. When he moved, all of his thoughts were on the jungle and its occupants. Paul leaned back against his pack and thought. The voice coming over the radio was someone he knew— LeBlonde!

  Mister LeBlonde rested his head back against the soft-cushion chair in the borrowed Air Force Airborne Command Center. The special command and control aircraft was loaded with electronic devices and secret equipment that could simultaneously monitor hundreds of radio channels. The Air Force used the aircraft to control long-range air strikes and flights of
fighters that went into North Vietnam. The crew for the C-141 Starlifter was composed of twelve highly trained radio experts and four senior military officers from all of 286

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  the services who were authorized to make high-level command decisions involving the immediate movement of two ready-action army divisions and over a thousand aircraft. General Pick had given LeBlonde command of the task force, which had been assembled with the sole purpose of getting Lieutenant Bourne out of the NVA-controlled area alive.

  LeBlonde threw his handset against the panel of buttons on his radio console. “Damn it! Piss poor luck! He had to lose power to his secure voice now!”

  Major Galviston and Lieutenant Loveless sat in the seats near the special agent.

  LeBlonde glared at Galviston before he spoke. “Why in the hell don’t your people carry spare batteries!”

  “Sir, our people carry a heavy load as it is when they’re inserted . . .

  Anyway, who would have thought that he would have survived on the ground alone for a month!”

  “Yes, sorry . . . You’re right.”

  Galviston drummed the tabletop with his fingers and frowned. “We must get him out of there soon. He’s been on the ground long enough.” Anger flashed across the special agent’s face and he continued speaking. “I have already lost the best team of agents we had in the area.” LeBlonde shook his head as he thought of the three Montagnards who had been caught earlier in the week by the North Vietnamese while they were trying to infiltrate through the enemy cordon that had been established around the area Paul was operating in. An intercepted NVA radio message had identified the Montagnards as Mauk, Pra-Teup, and Tru. LeBlonde shivered. He knew that for the three men to have given their real names to the North Vietnamese the torture must have been severe.

  “Could we send in a Brightlight Team?” Jay spoke to Galviston.

  “No . . . the NVA have secured the area surrounding Bourne and are in the process of tightening the circle. They really want to capture him, and will shoot down anything that even comes close to him,” LeBlonde answered Jay.

  “I’m afraid that the only hope Lieutenant Bourne has is in finding a gap in the NVA cordon and slipping through on his own.”

  The room became very quiet with each of the men slipping into their own private thoughts. Paul’s chances of getting out alive were very slim—and getting worse with each passing day.

  Lieutenant Bourne was puzzled as to why LeBlonde was getting involved with his mission. The only thing that he could think of was that the Agency was trying to link up one of their special teams to him. Paul thought for a few more minutes and was sure that was what they were trying to do. He knew that he would have to become even more cautious now when he traveled 287

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  through the jungle, to ensure that there would not be any chance meetings where he would be forced to shoot before he had a chance to identify the people. Paul didn’t realize it at the time, but the extra level of alertness would soon save his life.

  One of the NVA patrols that had been assigned to track down the lone American stopped for a rest break less than a hundred meters from Paul’s temporary hiding place. The monkeys gave a warning scream and scampered through the jungle growth above Paul’s head. The serendipitous warning forced Paul to alter his course and bypass the large enemy patrol.

  Paul had noticed that during the past nine days a larger number of NVA soldiers had entered the area, and instead of traveling very relaxed through the jungle, they were now very alert and moved as combat units. The destruction of the ammunition depot farther to the south wouldn’t have been enough to have alerted troops so far to the north. Paul noticed that the enemy soldiers he was seeing were wearing heavy camouflage and crept through the jungle as if they were hunting for someone. He didn’t need to guess for whom. Five times during the last week, Paul had heard dogs barking in the distance and had changed his course to avoid them.

  Paul had no way of knowing that his picture and a daily story was being run as headline news back in the States and that the Stars and Stripes and local newspapers in Vietnam were also running daily stories on him. The NVA received copies of the newspapers being published in South Vietnam almost as soon as senior American officers did, and because of the publicity wanted to either kill or capture Lieutenant Bourne—preferably capture him, so they could use him for propaganda purposes.

  The small cave provided Paul with a small sense of security under the jungle canopy, but he realized that his time was running out. He quickly decided that he had to walk out of the NVA-controlled jungle on his own and not ask for help from his headquarters. He knew that they would sacrifice a lot of men to rescue him, which would be too much for him to live with, especially if Coop or Jay were killed trying to save him. Paul flexed his jaw muscles and picked up his nearly empty rucksack. He would walk east until he ran into the nearest American base camp.

  The drone from a passing aircraft reminded Paul that it was almost time for his radio message from Command One. He pulled out his URC-10 and held the small walkie-talkie sized radio up next to his ear and listened.

  A few minutes passed and then the silence was broken.

  “Viper . . . Viper . . . Command One . . . Command One . . . Blind broadcast follows . . . NVA have established a large cordon around you . . . We cannot Brightlight . . . If you make contact . . . turn on your homing device and we’ll saturate the area surrounding you . . . We have . . . bzzzzz . . . whoossshhhh . . .”

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  Paul looked at his radio and tapped the case against his leg, but there wasn’t anything wrong with the device. The NVA were jamming the broadcast. Paul turned off his radio to keep from draining the battery. He was glad they had decided not to send in a team and sacrifice people trying to get him out, but, being human, Paul felt the fear of being left alone. The NVA were trying in earnest to find where he was hiding, and where before they had ignored thick bamboo patches, they were now taking the time to search.

  The olive-drab compass case glimmered from the sweat coming from Paul’s palm. He shot an azimuth and continued walking east along his escape route. The thick jungle growth started thinning out and began turning into rolling hills with tall grasses. Paul halted and knelt on one knee when the sparse jungle cover broke on the edge of a large rubber plantation. The trees were neatly spaced in long rows and had small cups attached below series of

  “V” cuts in the bark. Paul backed into the jungle and turned south to skirt around the open plantation. He walked for almost an hour before he reached an area that was filled with huge boulders and tough shrubs and vines. He climbed carefully along the military crest of the rockpile, looking constantly for hunting cobras, until he found a spot that gave him a commanding view of the plantation and surrounding jungle. The main house of the plantation was at the far corner of the huge field of rubber trees and glimmered white in the hot sunlight. A Frenchman, probably, was the owner of the large plantation and was paying the North Vietnamese taxes so that they would allow him to grow and ship his rubber. Capitalism had a funny way of getting what it wants, even from the most devoted communists, he thought. Paul caught a glimmer of red streaks in the western sky and turned to face the beautiful Vietnamese sunset. Clear bright colors burst out over the robin-egg blue background, sending strips of flaming red and glaring blue over the trees spaced with dashes of yellow. Paul realized that he was watching the most beautiful sunset he had ever witnessed, each color sharp and clear without blending in with the next one. He placed all of his attention on the sunset and forgot about the enemy.

  The roar from a large engine brought Paul back to reality. He had been so engrossed with the beauty of the sunset that he had lost his orientation and couldn’t place the direction from which the engine had sound
ed. Paul waited for the machine to crank up again. Five minutes passed; then he heard a clicking sound coming from a starter motor, and a diesel engine started. The noise came from the rubber trees located three hundred meters away from his location. The engine sound was followed by another and another until the quiet sunset was broken as the plantation came alive with the roars of heavy engines idling—and then the sound of tank treads. The NVA had hidden a battalion of tanks on the plantation during the day, to protect them from searching American planes.

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  Paul wondered if he should risk a radio message, knowing that if he used his radio he would have to travel through the jungle during the night.

  He decided quickly. “Command One . . . Viper . . . over.”

  Major Galviston scraped his knuckles against the radio console as he grabbed for the handset in front of his chair.

  “Viper . . . Command One . . . come in . . . over.”

  The rest of the crew in the C-141 came alert when they heard the call.

  Jay rubbed sleep from his eyes and sat up straight in his chair to listen.

  “Viper . . . I’ve located a large rubber plantation.”

  Galviston cut in on the broadcast. “Roger . . . I’ve plotted that location earlier today . . .”

  LeBlonde and Galviston had talked about the large French-owned plantation. LeBlonde’s people had been observing the activity around the plantation and knew that they were paying off the NVA to operate in peace. Though the NVA used the plantation occasionally as a staging area, they had never been caught in the act.

  “It’s filled with NVA tanks . . . Russian-built, and big ones!” Paul paused and caught his breath. “I’d like you guys to get them before they can leave . . .

  I’m running . . . out.”

  The transmission ended.

  Paul slid the radio back in his pocket and started moving fast away from the rubber plantation down the backside of the rockpile. The NVA guard saw him first and broke the rhythmical sound of the tank engines with a short burst from his AK-47 assault rifle. Paul felt a flash of searing pain in his left thigh and flipped sideways behind a protruding rock for protection. A siren filled the early evening air followed by the sound of dogs barking on the plantation. Paul was in trouble. He pulled himself around a corner of the rock and saw the NVA soldier walking slowly toward the spot where he had made his original appearance. The NVA soldier had made a fatal mistake. The round from Paul’s .22-caliber pistol entered through the man’s left eye.