The Howling Cliffs

by Mary Deal

  “And intending to make a break for it.”

  Esmerelda dabbed at perspiration with the back of her hand. Sara passed her a tissue from her back pack. “He didn't know when or where Betty fell. He had been prodded forward at gunpoint and wasn't allowed to turn around to look backwards.” It was good that Esmerelda had learned from previous trips to forsake the use of makeup, at least while in the jungle. “If my daughter was one of the first to fall, when we find her it might make it easier to find some others.”

  They couldn't stop now, had to have those permits and visas issued regularly.

  Due to their large entourage of extras, including videographers and spotters carrying rifles to ward off everything from large wild animals to slithering tree snakes, Huxley had hinted that the Vietnamese government would not again permit another such grand procession.

  “Every year, Huxley and some high-ranking retired veterans, along with the American government, have to convince Vietnam officials to issue permits for yet another trip.” Sara wondered what she might do to promote the permit approval but any possibility of that from her seemed nonexistent.

  The group had already found the meager remains of one man four years earlier. “So if my Betty was the first to get sick, have they figured out how that man died?” She thumbed backward to the area they had long passed on the trail, where his remains were found.

  Sara grimaced. “Huxley thinks he was shot. His remains were found a few yards off the trail.”

  “Must have tried to make a break for it.” Esmerelda stared at the water, shaking her head. “If his remains were found that far off the trail, maybe some others went the same way. They may never be found.”

  “Trust the dogs we have along, Esme. That's why they're so vital.”

  Mosquitoes and other flying pests dived and swarmed around them. Sara retrieved a can of insect repellant from her backpack, liberally sprayed it onto her palm and fingertips and then wiped it over her face. She swiped a layer over Esmerelda's face. For the very reason of warding off biting insects, most in the group wore gloves, long sleeves and pant legs tucked into boots until the men could no longer stand the heat and began peeling off their clothes.

  Most of the team wore a new line of clothing with insect repellant built into the fibers of the fabric, even into their boots and other accessories. Their hats were equipped with drop-down face netting, but repellant lotion applied to the skin was the best protection for faces. The humidity was stifling, made worse by the amount of gear they had to wear. No one complained. They had a solemn mission to accomplish.

  Huxley and others in the group who had been studying maps laid out on the ground stood. It was time to push on. Thanh readied the HRD dog, Iwi, a German shepherd male trained to detect human remains.

  Dogs trained for this work could detect the boundaries of ancient graveyards hundreds of years old, as long as remains existed below the surface of the ground. Despite the fact that the ground in Vietnam was considered so highly acidic that it destroyed human tissue and clothing, no one could take a chance of missing what remains might be left.

  A second German shepherd male was also brought along. Laka was trained to detect metal and only metal. Laka wouldn't react to human remains if they rubbed his nose in some. Trained forensic dogs were amazing creatures. Considering the team had every advantage at their disposal, everyone stayed as positive as possible and kept a tight rein on desperation.

  Chapter 3

  Sara helped Esmerelda into her small backpack, used for carrying water and some nibble food. As determined as Esmerelda was, it didn't make sense to load down a woman in her mid-seventies with a full pack, even if she projected a prodding mother whose strength never quit.

  Huxley, Thanh and several others joined them. Huxley gave Sara a squeeze around her shoulders and a special smile. She could never get enough of looking into his eyes. She and he had been, after all, a couple for years. She had reached midlife and Huxley was four years her junior. Friends speculated they would one day marry. It might happen. They shared the same energy levels, much the same each had in youth. Now they shared a common purpose in life that bonded them. Sara and Huxley had long ago sealed their commitment to one another and talked of marriage, but plans never matured. Sara came to realize that Huxley would not allow himself much happiness till he brought his brother Rockford home before his aging parents passed away.

  This being their third Vietnam trip together, Sara turned over her renovated Victorian mansion in the Sacramento River Delta to the control of artist and lifelong friend Daphine Whelan for charitable events that took place while she was away.

  After purchasing the Victorian that Esmerelda once owned, and then finding Esmerelda's long missing and murdered husband's body buried on the property, Sara felt something shift inside her, something emotional that helped cement her feelings for Huxley. She felt great empathy for those who had lost a loved one. Then Sara and Huxley decided to join purpose and commitment in searching for cold case missing persons.

  In her more quiet moments at home, Sara's ability to quickly create cyber games on DVD continued to earn her a fortune. Sara quietly sponsored the cost of Esmerelda's trips. She loved this stoic woman and felt her pain, and because the MIAs needed to come home.

  “See here.” Huxley held the map and ran a finger along one of the lines representing the trail they followed. “Thanh said this stream used to have a deeper horseshoe curve.” He also held up a page of yellow note paper on which Thanh had drawn the trail as he remembered it from years past with a much deeper bend.

  The group had already been on the trail more than a week covering areas previously searched, but this time making a sweep with the new dogs. The trail skirted rivers and streams at water's edge where some in the prisoner group could have drunk tainted water. Only at one point did the trail take them to the top of a sheer rock cliff overlooking a massive swiftly flowing river.

  If anyone had fallen from there, or been killed by the VC and pushed over, it was certain their bodies would be swept away, or eaten by the vicious and hungry crocodiles.

  Strong wind passing between the monolithic stone facades on both sides of the river made them sound like howling cliffs. That, the dense jungle and the raging river sounds would drown out any screams of prisoner slaughter.

  They had entered a deep valley heading around the bend in a stream. According to the map, the flow came from the southeast on their left, crossed in front of them heading north, and then doubled back heading northeast on the right before it straightened heading north again.

  “If Thanh is right, where we are right now is part of the new flow after the stream changed course.” Huxley couldn't hide his excitement. “The older flow where the prisoners were led is not more than quarter mile from here.” He shook a finger, pointing westward and turned to Palmer. “You don't remember this bend being deeper?”

  Palmer shook his head. “I was too sick. What I remember was that after we crossed the stream, we were forced through nearly impenetrable jungle till we came to where the stream straightened.” He motioned with the sweep of an arm to the north. “In that direction.” He, like all the veterans Sara had met, still remembered nearly all details of the traumas their lived through.

  Huxley studied the map intently. “So while we've been looking for remains along this portion of the stream, we should have been searching ahead there where the stream used to flow.” He seemed filled with a new energy and waved the map as a sign to the others.

  “Move out!” He gestured the direction they were to head.

  Others in the group, retired officers and enlisted alike, all carried metal detectors. Two Vietnamese cooks accompanied the group. When not preparing meals, they acted as spotters for the sharp-shooters. At any time, an animal might lunge out of the bush, not to mention the menacing snakes that sometimes hung out of trees and could slither down in front of your face. Thanh's cousin, now an expert marksman and another Yard carried high-power rifles. The man and wife ph
otographic team from Honolulu shouldered their gear. The single vehicle, a refurbished military Humvee rigged for rugged terrain, carried tents, food supplies, ammunition and bare necessities of living on the trail. Oftentimes, the trail had narrowed, overgrown with trees and shrubs. If they couldn't be hacked away, the Humvee had to find an alternate way to advance and later meet up with the group. The vehicle was also for Esmerelda's benefit, but she never once used it as transport.

  The next time Sara looked, Esmerelda was already crossing the stream, hopping from one rock to another. The thick cut branch she used for a walking stick helped keep her balance. To fall into the water was to invite a host of leeches. Since defoliation, those blood-suckers had returned like a plague, if they ever totally left. Esmerelda kept her head down and shoulders hunched, searching for any sign at all that someone's remains lay just below the surface, even in the stream.

  Sara caught up to her while some of the men found a less rocky crossing point for the Humvee. A commotion caused Sara to look back again. One of the scantily clad Hmong cooks braved the stream by wading through the water. Several men yelled, frantically reminding him to stay on the rocks and boulders. Surely no fish thrived in that stream. Even if found and caught, they couldn't be eaten due to Agent Orange contamination. Now the medic would need to stay behind with him to burn away the many leeches clinging to the Hmong's calves and shins. If not removed quickly and treated, in tropical climate the lesions could become badly infected, in many cases, leading to death. Fortunately, the team was medically prepared for such emergencies.

  “He's lucky he didn't meet up with a water snake.” Sara had to smile but also grimaced in disbelief. Vietnam was home to some of the world's deadliest snakes, such as the King cobra, Asian cobra, krait, coral, vipers and pit vipers. A sobering thought.

  Esmerelda never hurried, studying every inch of ground along the way. The dogs were used to double search every inch of ground and, as well, through the brush at the trail sides.

  During the war, once a person died on the trail, the body could be shoved into the brush and out of the way. The dogs dictated the pace of progress the group made. The canines were allowed to rout where they may and usually left an area when not detecting anything.

  Sara also searched, poking and probing with her own walking stick. Surely, with the news of a new search area, a few heartbeats quickened. The quarter-mile patch of new forest between the stream and where it had previously flown had not been traveled. Sara hacked at the shrubs with a machete. One of the Yards came to lay waste to some stout hanging vines, clearing a new passageway for the others.

  At a thinning of the overgrowth, Esmerelda pushed ahead impatiently and then stopped and screamed. “It's here! Thanh was right. It's here!”

  The old stream bed was nothing more than a dry wash littered with rocks and boulders. The accumulation of boulders could only have been placed there by forceful running water. Bare patches of ground had settled, were smoother, and clear. They were warned that Agent Orange might still be strong in the soil, including the dry stream bed. The shrubs and trees were gangly, as if struggling for life, with no mangroves having been planted at this abandoned site.

  Huxley and Palmer joined them. With no trees growing along the stream bed, the area was open and the sun shone through. Palmer gasped as he looked fifty to seventy-five feet across a smooth flat stretch. “We were here! I can feel it!” He pointed to the other side. “There, we walked that low embankment that followed the stream, over there.” He and Huxley bent over the maps again.

  Esmerelda moved ahead and Sara caught up. Along the embankment, it seemed the trail had been widened with some boulders placed on the shoulder of the path to prevent anyone from falling over the edge. They began examining the ground and along the embankment.

  Sara was following behind when Esmerelda looked ahead a short distance then stopped suddenly. Sara watched her curiously.

  Esmerelda seemed to spot something. Then she began moving ahead in a hurry. “Over there, something… shiny!”

  Sara followed, noticing that Esmerelda kept her gaze locked.

  They stopped at a patch of ground three or four feet above the dry streambed. Esmerelda kept her sight trained on one particular area near some shrubbery, hunched over closer to the ground, and slowly scanned every inch of soil. Then she gasped. “I've found something.” Then she yelled. “I've found something!”

  Sara stooped down. Something shiny lay on the ground. Nothing was wrong with Esmerelda's old eyes spotting the sun glinting off that tiny object. Deep scratch marks in the dirt indicated that an animal had dug up something but evidently found it inedible. A tiny piece of broken material lay bare. Metal would have rusted or rotted over the decades. This was yellow and gleamed. Surely, it was gold.

  Chapter 4

  Sara rose from her knees, stuck her fingers into her mouth and whistled shrill enough to scare away any marauding forest creature. “Hey! Get the dogs over here!” Then she spat out the taste of bug repellant from her fingers.

  As soon as Huxley and Palmer saw what lay on the ground, they exchanged slow wide-eyed stares. Sara's intuition read more into those secreted looks than she would speak at that moment.

  Finding remains of anything had started adrenaline flowing.

  “Clear the area, please, everyone.” But Huxley didn't move. Instead, he clasped his hands tightly, interlacing his fingers, and brought them to his face and bowed his head. It seemed he was the one who couldn't move.

  Huxley had been the initiator of the continued searches for this particular group of MIAs, driven by the fact that Rockford was among them. Sara stepped forward again and wrapped an arm around his waist. Only then did he return into the moment and himself step aside and wipe his eyes.

  The others had watched, caught up in a moment for which each lived and breathed; that of possibly locating another of the group of eleven kidnapped nurses, of which four had been women.

  Laka, the metal detecting canine, sniffed the piece of gleaming gold and sat down, panted and wagged his tail frantically. This time no one needed a dog to tell them what was found. The gold fragment looked to be nearly two inches of links from a heavy chain necklace for a man. It looked to be in good shape. Surely, it was real gold. But why would anyone fighting a war wear a gold necklace? Many years had passed and it was possible someone else using the trail had lost a valuable piece of jewelry.

  All GIs wore standard issue stainless steel beaded chains that carried two embossed dog tags. They had edges, bound with rubber silencers to keep them from clinking together and making noise. Silence was of utmost importance in battle situations. Surely, someone using the trail through the years had not haphazardly discarded a broken chain. Would anyone actually cast aside something as valuable as gold?

  They kept an eye on the canines. Iwi wandered down the embankment and along the side of the stream. Just as Sara hoped him to be following a scent, he began wandering aimlessly, a sign of detecting nothing. When Laka was led away from the gold fragment, he pulled against his leash. Laka kept his nose to the ground easing down the shallow rocky embankment a couple feet to where some shrubs struggled to thrive. He sniffed over one small area, pawed, then sat down and waited. Again, his tail frantically flipped back and forth as his entire body squirmed in excitement. That meant more metal lay beneath the surface. Thanh threw a biscuit into Laka's mouth and led him away to continue searching nearby areas.

  Iwi was brought back by the second handler in hope of him detecting human remains. He never once sat down. Finally the film team, who kept cameras rolling, stepped up to photograph the piece of gold linkage where it lay and the area over the embankment. Filming continued as the area was marked off for digging before the first speck of dirt was brushed away.

  The main players on this team had long ago been instructed about how to turn the soil or clear the dirt from a find, dust speck by dust speck, inch by inch. Esmerelda sat on the ground and used a sifter to shake the moved dirt through, look
ing for more metal. She was methodical. Not a speck of dirt missed her scrutiny. Every clod of dirt was broken down. Every speck of dirt was pored over for shards of bones, not that Iwi had indicated any were present. Anything that sparked interest would be photographed and then bagged to take back to the United States for examination.

  The digging and sifting of soil continued from the gold links to where Laka sat down a second time just over the embankment. One of the vets was down on his knees on the incline. He moved more dirt and suddenly gasped. “More gold!” By this time, most in the search team had crowded in as close as possible. The vet climbed the embankment and nervously stood aside for the filming. Then the piece was brought out of the ground.

  Huxley got down on his knees and measured off the distance between where the first links were found and the second. Slowly, he straightened, holding the piece in his gloved palm. “Something broke this chain.”

  Palmer reached with gloved hands to hold the piece. “Could have been animals.”

  It was quite possible that if the gold wasn't discarded by a local person but worn by a G.I., after the person fell and died, animals could have ravaged the body. But would animals actually pull on the sturdy necklace so hard as to rip it apart and open those links at the breaks? It was also possible that a prisoner could have been brutalized and, while struggling with the attacker, broke the attacker's necklace.

  Sara cringed at the thought of what might have happened that broke the neck chain. Once dead, the body could have been thrown into the rushing water and washed away as it decayed. Who knew how many and where bodies might have lain in water, surely tainting it. Wise old Esmerelda's changing expressions said she might be having similar thoughts.

  After more digging and poking, nothing was found at the second spot. Laka was brought back for a final check. This time he sniffed and then began using his paws to scratch the hole deeper. He was led away. Huxley used a machete and chopped branches off the nearby bushes, clearing space to crawl around. Disregarding warnings of Agent Orange lingering in the soil, he took a turn at eagerly digging with his gloved hands. Finally, he accepted a shovel and dug a hole deep and wide, yet came up with nothing.