M.I.A. Hunter

by Mertz, Stephen

  Mandrell also had been a Green Beret, and there was no forgetting some of the training they had received at Bragg and elsewhere. It was in his blood, just like the love of being free, the hatred for the animals who had locked him up and treated him like so much garbage.

  He rolled up and out of his protective trench, no longer satisfied at firing from a safe position, anxious to be out there in the middle of the killing, doing his own share to cut the odds. A bullet grazed his shoulder, rocking him backward, but he faced the sudden blaze of pain with equanimity, a smile etched deep into his facial muscles.

  Despite his weakness, he was living. For the first time in a goddamned decade, adrenaline made him feel the life inside him again, and nothing short of death would slow him down this time. He found his feet, ignoring other bullets as they punctured flimsy walls and roof, tugging at his clothing, drawing blood from wounds he never felt.

  He made it through the doorway to surprise a squat Vietnamese who was attempting to find shelter in the shadows there. The gunner spun to face him, but he never had a chance with Mandrell's weapon leveled at his face. The three-round burst left his body sprawling almost headless in the dust.

  Mandrell sucked in a deep lungful of clear night air, relishing the smell of gun smoke. He was flying, soul no longer earthbound, finally free of all restraints, and nothing could have made him any happier unless it was to see…

  Commander Chong!

  Jack Mandrell saw the short Vietnamese officer through a swirl of battle smoke and knew him in an instant. Just a heartbeat's hesitation, grinding his knuckles into his eyes to remove the possibility of hallucination, and he looked again, confirming the first ID.

  It was Commander Chong, the very bastard who had made his life a hell these-past eight years, the rotten sonofabitch who had mutilated Alex Bradford as a punishment for his escape attempt, the slimy piece of filth who had derived so much perverse enjoyment from the grim captivity of others, making every day an endless nightmare.

  Mandrell was moving through the middle of the battlefield, unmindful of the gunfire around him, hearing voices calling to him to get down, to seek cover, but they didn't understand the sudden urgency he felt, the need that was as real as the need for oxygen.

  Chong saw him coming, but couldn't quite believe his eyes. The little Asian drew his pistol, leveled it unsteadily in the direction of his former prisoner, and Jack Mandrell unleashed a blazing figure eight that took him in the knees, exploding bone and cartilage to drop him backward on his ass.

  The little shit was screaming something Jack Mandrell would never understand, but he could get the gist of it, all right. He read the pain and desperation in the keening voice, and knew that Chong was finally finding himself on the receiving end of all the hell he had dished out across the years.

  It was a start, but it was damn sure not enough to satisfy Mandrell. Not yet.

  He saw a figure rushing toward him from the left, bayonet stretched out ahead of him like a jousting lance. Jack pivoted and let him have a three-round burst that opened up his belly like a rotten grain sack. The corpse reeled on for half a dozen strides, then folded over and collapsed onto the bloody ground, unmoving.

  And he turned his full attention back to Chong. The captain was enveloped in his pain, unmindful of the pistol lying almost close enough to reach. Mandrell half-wished that he would try for it, that he would make it easy, but a part of him was happy that the camp commander was unarmed. He had another sort of treat in store for Chong before he let him find the sweet release of death.

  Mandrell was on him now, slinging the AK-47 over his shoulder on its leather sling, reaching down to grab the squat Vietnamese beneath his arms. He started half-dragging, half-carrying the captain, making sure his shattered legs made contact with the ground at every lurching stride. Chong's screams were music to his ears, eclipsing everything else, drowning out the sound of automatic weapons all around them.

  And he never heard the second trooper coming, never saw the flash of firelight on the bayonet before it plunged into his back at kidney level.

  Mandrell died standing up, without ever really comprehending what had happened to him, toppling forward at the final moment, sprawling out across the wounded captain's shattered legs. That wrenched another scream from Chong, and Jack Mandrell was smiling as he slipped into the blackness with it ringing in his ears, a distant melody of sweet revenge.

  Mark Stone saw the P.O.W. die, and ripped a burst into his killer, spiraling out of it to let the wounded prison camp commander have his share. And then there was no-time for Stone to think about them, to lament the passing of a prisoner named Jack Mandrell, because the war was coming to him with a vengeance.

  The night dissolved into a string of grim, fire lit scenarios that would be emblazoned on his mind forever. Stone was choosing targets, killing, dodging slugs that sought him in return.

  And he saw Hog Wiley, reeling through the battle smoke with his carbine in hand. Alex Bradford rode his back like a child at play, both arms wrapped around his thick neck, legs about his waist, and the remaining P.O.W., Wilcox, had a weapon now, using it with grim determination as he watched their flank.

  Terrance Loughlin, on the other side of the encampment, was just emerging now from the hut that had sheltered him, diving into a shoulder roll as two snipers tried to throw down on him simultaneously. He came up, still rolling, still weaving, and he got them both, his automatic weapon flinging out a deadly one-two punch that blew them both away.

  And all around them, Pathet Lao and Vietnamese were busy killing and being killed, slaughtering each other in the confusion of the firefight. Those who saw the Westerners among them, those who realize the trap and recognized its danger, did not live to sound the general warning. They were busy dying, anywhere and everywhere that Stone and his companions found them and dug them out.

  Everywhere the smell of death and burning was oppressive, omnipresent, choking the nostrils and clogging the senses until it became everything, an end and a beginning.

  Stone emptied out his weapon and reloaded, emptied it again. The field was littered .with his kills and those of his companions, bodies lying frozen in the attitudes of sudden, violent death.

  He saw Lan Vang, machete in hand, astride the body of a Pathet Lao commando, slashing furiously at the mutilated corpse, a grimace of intense concentration on his oval face. He caught Stone's eye, flashed a quick thumbs-up, and bent again to his task with renewed vigor.

  Out of nowhere, a Vietnamese was on the little guide, his own knife rising and falling in the firelight. Stone moved closer, trying for a shot, but the two of them were locked together, tussling, no quarter asked or given. Both of them were wounded and bleeding heavily, but neither would surrender, keeping up the frenzied thrashing as they rolled in the direction of the nearest hut and finally sprawled inside the open doorway.

  Stone was closing on it when the hut exploded, something inside having been detonated by a bullet or grenade. The hut collapsed into fiery ruin, the concussion driving him backward and away. He grimaced, turned away from there, and went on about the business of his war.

  It required a moment for Mark Stone to recognize the sudden, ringing stillness. In a moment, almost before he recognized the fact, all firing ceased, and nothing else disturbed the silence of the village save the hungry hiss of flames in thatch behind him. Scanning, searching for some sign of life, he found Hog and his charges, then picked out Loughlin, rising from the shadow of another nearby shanty. The CAR-15 dangled from one hand, his smoking Browning autoloader in the other.

  And they were all alive, after all. Except for Jack Mandrell. They came together in the center of the destroyed village, exchanging glances that spoke silent volumes, sharing that brief moment. Stone explained the other prisoner's fate in solemn tones, and added what had happened to their guide in the last moments of the conflict.

  "That's too damned bad," Hog said, with genuine emotion in his gravel voice. "I kinda liked him."


  Wilcox cleared his throat and asked, "Can we find our way out without him?"

  "No sweat," Hog answered. "We're damn near home already."

  A strained smile passed around the little circle, living warriors grinning in the face of death, and Stone jerked his thumb to the east, where dawn was threatening to set the sky afire.

  "We'd better get a move on, then," he told them all. "We've got a flight to catch."

  "With pleasure," Loughlin told him.

  "Lemme at those friendly. skies," Hog beamed.

  They turned as one, and moved away from there, into the dawn, where Meyers and Hopkins still waited with the Huey that would take them out of that hellhole. The jungle closed behind them, blotting out the traces of their passage as if man had never passed that way and never would.

  Epilogue

  The jungle waits. It lives and breathes; it shelters secrets. Somewhere in its vastness, huddled in their cages, eyes turned skyward at each sound of planes or helicopters, other captives swelter in the hell that has become routine. Where consciousness remains, where sanity has clung in shadowed corners, they remember . . . and they wait.

  For tomorrow. For the next day. For some time. Someone must remember, come for them, expunge a people's debt of guilt and gratitude.

  Perhaps one man. One dedicated man, determined to repay that debt whatever obstacles may be erected in his way. A warrior of the old breed, more devoted to his honor and his duty than to mere convenience and expediency.

  Someday. One day.

  And still they wait.

  Look for more adventures in the M.I.A. Hunters series.

  Coming soon from Crossroad Press.