Eagles Cry Blood

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  The numbness from the shock of the gunshot wore off within a hundred meters. Pain entered, and took control of his leg from the hip down. Paul stopped and forced air through his clenched teeth, trying to breathe in a counter-rhythm to his pulsating nerves. He took his first-aid packet from his rucksack and opened the dark-green box containing five morphine syringes.

  He removed two of them and sank the first needle deeply into the thigh muscle of his right leg, and slid the second needle a few inches above the hole in his left leg. The blood flow would soon remove the morphine from his body, but he was hoping that the medication would numb the pain coming from that portion of his body. Paul tied a clean dressing around the gunshot wound and stood to listen to the sounds of barking dogs echoing through the trees.

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  He reached back into his rucksack and felt until he felt a salt shaker. He pulled back the green cloth-tape cover of the top of the shaker and smiled as he sprinkled the white powder around the area where he had stopped to fix his leg. He hobbled away into the jungle, stopping periodically to sprinkle the white, powdered tear gas on the ground. Human eyes couldn’t detect the powder, but the extremely sensitive noses of the dogs would find it very fast.

  Paul half-walked, half-ran, to put as much distance between the dogs and himself as he could before they reached the tear gas. Time passed without Paul realizing the span. He had to concentrate on controlling the pain in his body and not running into an NVA patrol by accident. In the distance to his rear Paul heard the yips and cries of the dogs when they reached the tear gas and stopped tracking him. He smiled above his pain and then forced himself to listen to the jungle for short periods of time, but the extreme pain would flash across his vision in red streaks when given the smallest opportunity to do so. Paul knew that he had to find a place to rest, even if it meant that his chances of escaping would diminish. He searched the thinning jungle for a hiding place and located a small rise of the ground near a clearing in the jungle. Paul staggered toward the rough piece of open ground and lucked out when he saw a nearby bomb crater half full of water. He slid down the gradual slope and washed his leg and face with the cool liquid. The water felt good, and he chanced drinking directly from the small manmade pond without using water purification tablets.

  The short break gave Paul a chance to regain some of his lost strength; enough time to find a secluded spot under a bamboo overhang. Thinking of bamboo vipers and spiders, he crawled into the darkness under the low matting of inner woven branches. Paul stopped crawling and made a pillow for his head using his rucksack. He stretched out on the damp ground and didn’t move a muscle for over an hour—until the pain from his wound forced him to sit up and shove another morphine syringe through his pants leg into his thigh. The pain slowly left him, allowing a morphine-induced calm to take over his thought processes. He slid his hand down his pants until his fingers reached the hole in his leg that was located halfway between his knee and hip. He moved his blood-covered hand around to the rear of his leg and slipped it under the bandage to feel the exit hole—it was the same size as the one in front. The NVA had been using armor-piercing ammunition, which was a lucky break for Paul. Regular rounds would have mushroomed, causing a great deal more damage. The pain he was feeling came mostly from the round nicking the bone. He felt like he was suffering a huge charley horse. Paul sighed with relief and lowered his pants so that he could cover the wound with a better bandage. The effort was almost totally exhausting and he slipped into a deep sleep.

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  The morning rays of sunlight found him feeling much better and ready to travel once he’d spent a few minutes working the stiffness out of his worn muscles. He limped and used a trimmed tree branch to support him as he slipped through the jungle. He listened to the animals and insects as he wove his way around the big obstacles and thick bamboo patches.

  Paul stopped abruptly, almost gagging from the strong smell that assaulted his nostrils. A bamboo pole was tied between two trees above the shallow ditch that made up the homemade latrine. The ditch was nearly filled to the top with human feces, and was covered with a swarm of constantly moving flies. Paul realized that a semi-permanent NVA force was using the latrine on a regular basis because the top layer of feces was still wet. He slipped down into a crouch and searched the nearby jungle. All of his senses were trying to detect any signs of the enemy positions. Paul backtracked the path that led to the latrine and lost the trail when it went over a small rise in the landscape. He quietly skirted upwind from the horrible-smelling hole and walked parallel to the worn path until his eyes detected an enemy bunker with two soldiers sitting on top of it.

  Paul froze.

  The NVA continued talking to each other as Paul slowly backed away from the fighting position, using the enemy voices to home in on once he was hidden in the jungle. Paul saw an entrance cut into the side of the hill just as he was about to stand upright. A pair of NVA emerged from the man-sized door wearing green uniforms with red collar tabs and pith helmets bearing red stars. Paul lowered himself until his chest was pressing the leaves under him. A group of six NVA soldiers followed the two guards out of the underground bunker. Paul figured from the size of the mound of rocks and dirt that the bunker could take a direct hit from a two-thousand-pound bomb without those hidden inside receiving any damage. The group of North Vietnamese soldiers halted less than thirty feet from Paul’s hidden position.

  One of the older men started talking in a gravelly voice to the others, who were standing at varied positions of attention and respect. Paul figured that the speaker was a very important man. One of the officers facing the man kowtowed and answered him using a very humble tone of voice. Paul risked being detected and turned his head slowly so that he could get a better view.

  The NVA who had commanded the respect wore a perfectly tailored khaki uniform with two red-and-gold collar tabs. Paul recognized the insignia for a North Vietnamese general.

  The dreams Paul had had back at the Marble Mountain base camp of killing an NVA general were now real. Here was his chance, but it wasn’t quite the situ-ational terrain that he would have hoped to have for his escape afterward.

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  sunlight. Paul tried to decide if he should take the chance to kill the general or if he should just slip away in the jungle. NVA generals were targets that rarely presented themselves, and killing one of them would be a fantastic coup for his recon unit. The other side of the argument was that he would probably be killed before he could escape the area. Paul ran the chances of his survival through his mind, realizing that surprise and confusion would be on his side for the first couple of minutes—that is, if he weren’t hit by a stray round. He reached down and felt his leg. The pain was gone. The two NVA guards were the only ones nearby who had automatic weapons; the officers carried only holstered pistols. Paul’s mind drifted back to his leg. Hard running would surely break the wound open again causing him to bleed. He grinned, knowing that his chances of actually walking out of the NVA-held territory were almost nil anyway.

  A deeply hidden death wish emerged from the depths of his life force and began battling with his sense of survival while Paul unhooked his last NVA hand grenade from his web gear and pulled the pin. He switched the grenade to his left hand and drew his silenced .22-caliber pistol in his right. Paul took a deep breath and threw the live grenade, at the same shooting the NVA general through the left temple. The general stumbled forward and fell against one of the officers standing open-mouthed in front of him. Surprise at the totally unexpected conduct of the general forced the group of officers to step back into the blast from the hand grenade. The explosion covered the screams coming from the dyin
g NVA officers. Paul retraced his way back around the NVA bunker line and stopped long enough to watch the guards stand to look back toward their headquarters base camp. The guards didn’t show any alarm over hearing the explosion from within their base perimeter, probably assuming that a demonstration of some kind was in progress.

  Paul moved as fast as he could once he had passed the NVA bunker line.

  After running for an hour, he stopped long enough to catch his breath and look around at the jungle. The rolling terrain was becoming very familiar. He blinked his eyes and rubbed his head in confusion. He had seen the terrain stretched out in front of him before. He stood and walked forward for a hundred meters, and the jungle opened up to reveal the southern edge of Co Roc Mountain. Paul smiled, and started walking toward the familiar landmark, feeling that he had found an old friend. The excitement from the kill had released enough adrenalin into his bloodstream to keep him going for at least another thousand meters and to the safety of the cliffs fronting the mountain. The pain in his leg was almost unnoticeable and took second place to his excitement. He was almost home.

  Mister LeBlonde was shaken awake by one of the radio operators who was on late-night radio watch.

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  “Sir! Something big is going on!”

  “What in the hell are you talking about, Sergeant!”

  “Sir! The NVA have broken radio silence and are sending messages in the clear!” The seasoned sergeant’s voice nearly broke with excitement. “It seems as if someone had an accident with a grenade and killed General Ho Van Duc!”

  “The PAVAN Supreme Southern Commander?” LeBlonde shot out of his reclining seat onto his feet and hastened down the narrow aisle to the bank of radios monitoring the NVA military frequencies. LeBlonde stood behind the interpreters and listened to a very upset NVA radio operator talking in rapid Vietnamese. LeBlonde spoke the language fluently and followed the man’s story. The NVA radio transmission was stopped in mid-sentence. LeBlonde smiled. Someone had caught the transmission being sent in the clear, and had stopped the message. LeBlonde had heard enough to confirm that General Ho Van Duc and two other junior generals had been killed along with some staff officers by an accidental grenade explosion.

  A sergeant paused next to LeBlonde. “Sir, we’ve picked up some signals from Lieutenant Bourne’s homing device. It looks as if he’s located in the vicinity of Co Roc Mountain.”

  “Good! Let’s get our aircraft over him . . .”

  Lieutenant Bourne turned on his URC-10. “Command One . . . Viper

  . . . over.”

  Jay heard the first call and instinctively grabbed the handset. “This is Command One . . . over.”

  “Is that you, Jay?”

  “Yes, Viper . . . it’s me . . . What in the hell are you doing down there?”

  ‘Well . . . for today’s activity report . . .” Paul’s voice carried a joking tone,

  “. . . I think I’ve zapped an NVA general, and for seconds . . . I’ve taken a hit in my leg and got to run . . . I think I’m going to need help getting out of this one . . . good buddy . . .”

  LeBlonde leaned over Jay’s shoulder and listened. He might have known that with Paul on the ground that the NVA general hadn’t had an accident. LeBlonde took the handset from Jay and spoke in a tense voice to the lieutenant.

  “Viper . . . Leave your homing device on . . . The NVA have already located you . . . We’ll use your device to guide in air strikes all around you . . .

  We’re coming to take you home!”

  Mister LeBlonde was wide awake and started directing air strikes from the assets of his task force. LeBlonde was going to bring that boy’s body out of there alive—or die himself in the effort.

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  21

  Colonel Clewell read the message he held in his shaking hand for the sixth time:

  Pick sends

  Lieutenant Bourne has become a national hero. Do not allow interviews by the press with any Command and Control North personnel—Break—Congress has approved by special vote a Medal of Honor for Lieutenant Bourne—Break—You will have him extracted immediately and flown to Washington D. C. for the President of the United States to award the medal (I guess I’ve been outranked)—Break—Good luck—Out.

  Pick sends

  Clewell dropped the message down on his desk. He wished the brass would allow him to run his own unit. The politicians deciding when to conduct combat operations from their Washington offices had already caused a great many casualties in the Vietnam War. Human lives would be wasted trying to pull Bourne out of the jungle now. Hell, he didn’t know what was 295

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  worse, uninformed hippie doves or uninformed bureaucratic hawks. The colonel’s fingers drummed his desktop as he thought on a course of action.

  There was a loud knock on the colonel’s office door.

  “Come in!” Clewell folded the personal message and tucked it in his shirt pocket.

  “Sir, we’ve received a message from Command One.” The newly assigned second lieutenant hesitated outside the office door waiting to be invited in.

  “Major Galviston says that they’re going to extract Lieutenant Bourne.”

  “Is the lieutenant in trouble?”

  “Yes, sir; he’s wounded and has been running from a large NVA patrol that’s chasing him. A report just came in confirming Lieutenant Bourne’s claim to killing three NVA general officers . . . one of them was General Ho Van Duc.” The lieutenant spoke without force in his voice, not really believing what he was saying to the colonel. He really felt that he was being set up by the other officers in the TOC for some kind of initiation; after all, General Ho Van Duc was the Napoleon of North Vietnam. “Lieutenant Bourne is hiding on Co Rook Mountain.”

  “Co Roc?”

  “Yes, sir.” The new lieutenant’s face flushed, because the obvious mispro-nunciation had identified him as a newcomer to Vietnam.

  “Thanks, Lieutenant. Have the TOC radioman call General Pick on the secure voice scrambler. I’ll join you in the TOC in a few minutes.” Clewell went over to the hatrack against the far wall and removed his pistol belt and head gear.

  “Sir?” The lieutenant paused in the open doorway and looked back at the colonel.

  Clewell turned. “Yes?”

  “Is this Lieutenant Bourne real?”

  Clewell paused and smiled, realizing that the new lieutenant thought that he had been set up for a joke. “Yes . . . and he’s probably the finest recon man in the world!”

  “Oh . . . I thought the other officers in the TOC had sent me over here with that message to make a fool out of me.”

  “Believe me, Lieutenant . . . if you can accomplish a tenth as much as Lieutenant Bourne has done . . . you’ll have served your country well!”

  Paul moved slowly along the western slope of Co Roc Mountain. The NVA were known to use the mountain as a forward observer’s outpost to keep watch on American activity on the Khe Shan plateau. A well-used trail blended in with the natural ridgeline of the mountain leading to the top. Paul crouched down and slowed his pace. He slipped the selector switch on his submachine gun to full automatic. He sensed that the NVA weren’t far behind.

  A cluster of large rocks caught Paul’s eye near the top of the mountain’s western edge. He changed his course off the trail and slipped up to the strange-296

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  looking rock formation. Paul’s trained military eye recognized immediately that the rocks had been disturbed by human hands. Voices echoed along the rock tunnel that the wall of boulders concealed from view. Paul squinted and focused his eyes on the rock formation, trying to locate the entrance to the hidden tunnel. The boulders had been strategicall
y placed so they would protect the mouth of the tunnel from bomb blasts. The jungle had been cleared from the entrance in lanes, for well-constructed fields of fire.

  Paul slipped over the maze wall and pressed his back up against the rock wall next to the tunnel entrance. He listened to the voices filtering out from the long dark hole. Paul stepped into the darkness and paused to allow his eyes to adjust to the half-light. The tunnel turned immediately to his left and then zigged sharply to the right at a ninety-degree angle, a precaution designed into the outpost to protect the occupants from a bomb blast near the mouth of the cave. Paul placed his hand against the cool wall. It was solid stone, maybe granite, and smooth to the touch. The tunnel had been hewn through solid rock by thousands of hours of hard labor. Sweat broke out on Paul’s forehead even though a cool breeze was coming through the tunnel from the direction he was creeping. The tunnel took another sharp turn and then was filled with light. Loud voices bounced against the walls as two of the North Vietnamese soldiers started arguing with each other. Paul had reached the end of the maze. He reached down in the bright half-light and gently shook the thirty-round magazine, ensuring that it was securely locked in place and lined up to feed ammo to the weapon’s chamber.

  Paul stepped into the lighted chamber.

  One enemy soldier was lying on a bamboo-framed cot built next to the back wall of the large bunker. A well-built NVA soldier was looking out the observation slit holding a pair of high-powered binoculars to his eyes, and the third North Vietnamese was looking directly at Paul.