Part 5 (1/2)
If you understand, nod your head twice. Nod your head twice. Make no noise when I release you. I am an American.
Nod your head twice.”
Toby nodded twice against the cloth, which immediately was pulled away.
He realized he was being cradled in the arms of someone behind him. He felt a sawing motion, then his hands were free. He slowly pulled them in front of himself. The man spoke into his ear again.
”You are doing.just fine, just fine. I am an American. This is a rescue, do you understand?” Toby lay back in the man's arms like a woman encircled by her lover. He nodded his head. He saw absolutely nothing in front of him or over his head.
The man whispered again. ”Nod your head twice if you can walk.” Toby nodded twice. ”Good,” the man said.
”Now I am going to give you some water. Take three sips, then hand it back, only three sips.” Toby felt a movement, then a plastic water bag was put into his hands. His hands felt numb and thick, and p.r.i.c.kly, as if on fire. He had difficulty, but he managed three sips of the purest water he had ever tasted in his life and handed the bag back.
”Very good, very good. You're doing just fine. Do not talk to me. Now listen to what we are going to do. Do not talk. We want to get you safely away from this camp without waking them up or alerting the guards. We are just here to get you, not to blow them away.” The man whispered in Toby's ear very slowly, and with careful enunciation, as if talking to a young child. ”Nod twice if you understand.”
Toby nodded.
”Very good. Outstanding. You are doing just fine. When I tap your leg, I want you to crawl very slowly, very slowly to your left around the tree. Take ten minutes, take an hour, but go so slow you make no noise. Someone will be there, laying flat. Tap his shoulder three times. He will tap back twice, then reverse himself and start to crawl away. You crawl behind him, holding on to his boot. This will all take time, much time. Pretend you are in a slow-motion movie.
We must make no noise. I think you can do all this, don't you? I'm going to put my ear next to your mouth. Whisper to me what I just told you.”
Slowly, as if in mola.s.ses, the man moved his head around Toby and positioned his ear next to Toby's mouth. He smelled faintly of pine or lemon, Toby wasn't sure which.
Then he realized the man's odor was the same as that of some of the plant leaves he had brushed by. The man's head felt greasy. Toby repeated the instructions. The man nodded, then put his lips back in Toby's ear. ”If something goes wrong, and the place lights up, one of us will grab you and lead you away. We are all wearing black pajamas and we have camo stick on our faces. There are three of us, all Americans. You seem very sharp. Prepare yourself. You will do just fine. Here is more water. This time slowly take three medium swallows.
There will be plenty more later. Toby realized that the man was rationing him so he would not gulp down the water then throw it right back up.
Toby drank ah G.o.d it was like no water he had ever tasted before-and handed back the bag to the unseen figure. When the man tapped his knee, he moved an inch at a time up from the man's body where he had been lying. Big hands helped push him up. He felt around for his sandals and slipped them into a front pocket, then crawled around the tree. He tapped the shoulder of the figure lying there, waited while he reversed himself, then crawled behind him.
It seemed like an hour before they were at what he estimated to be the camp's perimeter. He heard no noise behind or in front of him. His knees hurt, but feeling was coming back to his hands.
The man he was following stopped and rose to his knees.
Toby could feel steel and webbing on his torso. From behind came a shout in Vietnamese, then a shot. In seconds there were more shots, then the beams of several flashlights waved about the area. More shots sounded, then rippling bursts of a.s.sault rifles. The man in front of Toby turned and gripped Toby's arm like a vise. He spoke in a low, hurried voice.
”Okay, stick with me. We got to make tracks to the rendezvous point.
Grab the back of my harness and hang on.”
Toby slipped the sandals on his feet and started after the man, who walked crouched, elbowing his way among the growth, stopping every few minutes to peel back the cover of his fluorescent compa.s.s face and check his heading.
Back at the campsite the shots were scattered and not concentrated. Then an explosion that sounded to Toby like a hand grenade. There was silence for a while, then a huge explosion followed by cries and shouts.
”Hah,” said the man Toby followed. ”That was Ryder's Claymore. That means he's okay. Just a little while longer and we'll be at the re I ndezvous.”
Toby's legs felt rubbery, and sweat was gus.h.i.+ng from every pore in his body. His hands and arms had a dull ache, yet he felt totally exhilarated. The adrenaline of relief was flowing and he felt every milligram. They made the rendezvous, a point on a narrow streambed, and waited. There was no jungle canopy directly over the stream. Toby was able to see the bulk of the man by the faint glow of starlight.
”I'm Sergeant Lopez, Captain Parker, from the Special Forces Detachment at Lang Tri.”
Toby was startled. ”How do you know who I am?”
”You might not have known it at the time, but Hillsboro heard all your transmissions. They triangulated you to your crash site and notified us. Three of us went out in the bush and saw you come down and get captured. Nothing we could do against the patrol in the daylight. We restocked and have been tracking you almost from the beginning. Right now we're barely five klicks from Lang Tri. We'll hole up here for the night and make it to camp at first light.”
”How about some more water?” Toby said.
”Sure. Finish it off. You earned it.” Lopez handed him the water bag.
Toby drank half, slowly and with great relish, and handed it back. He felt a wave of relief and grat.i.tude, and something else. Hot tears sprang to his eyes. He didn't know why, they just did.
”Better take these,” Lopez said, giving Toby some pills.
”They're antimalaria and real stoppers for dysentery.
You're bound to get the trots after what you've been drinking.” Toby gulped the pills, took another slug of water, and made himself as comfortable as he could. Then he remembered why he was out there.
”Do you have a map, Sergeant Lopez?”
”Of course. But if you want to see it, we got to get under my poncho before I'll put a flashlight on. What do you want to know?”
”It's not what I want to know. It's what I want to show you. There are PT-76 tanks less than ten klicks from here, and I'll bet they are headed for Lang Tri and Khe Sanh.”
”Wait until the other guys get here. I don't want us under a poncho without a guard. Make yourself comfortable. I'll keep an eye out and wake you when they show. Then we gotta make tracks back to camp. Those guys were just waiting to hand you over to a bigger NVA unit that was going to run you up through the DMZ into North Vietnam. There are other big units all over the place. A big push is mounting and we're right in the middle of it.”
Toby was keyed up. He had to talk. In quiet whispers he told Lopez the whole story of the tanks, the camera flight with Brackett, and the shootdown. ”Yeah,” Lopez said.
”We searched the wreckage. We got your pal out,” Lopez didn't tell him they just had time to break the burned head loose from the body. There had been no dog tags. They had thrown the head in a body bag and sent it to Da Nang on a resupply helicopter, along with a piece of paper giving the location and type of aircraft in which it had been found.
That was standard practice on jungle-patrol body recoveries behind the lines. Generally there wasn't enough of a body to recover from crashed airplanes, not even the head. But when there was, they took only the head to save time and s.p.a.ce.
The teeth were all that could provide positive identification.
Toby finally wound down. When Lopez handed him a poncho, he rolled up, blinked once, and went out like he had been poleaxed.
Lopez shook him awake at first light, cautioning him to be quiet. Toby sat up. The poncho was wet with dew. Fog was overhead and hung in keep wisps in the trees. Lopez was hunkered down next to him. He was a broad-shouldered man, with a big square face showing generations of Hispanic bloodlines. His dark eyes matched his dark hair. He wore black pajamas and a floppy jungle hat. He carried an AK-47 slung under his right arm. In the early dawn he looked like a giant Viet Cong.
”G.o.d, you look good to me,” Toby said with a wide grin.
Lopez grinned back. ”Aw, I'll bet you say that to all your rescuers. Do you feel up to a bit of a trek?”
Toby slowly crawled out of the poncho. The swelling in his arms and hands had gone down, but his feet were like two open wounds, bloated and full of pus.
”Got to show you where the tanks are,” he said.
Lopez spread out his 1:50,000 map. Toby pointed to XD67253875, a spot barely three kilometers from where the two of them sat.
”There have never been any tanks on the Trail before,” Lopez said in a voice just short of total skepticism.
”There are now,” Toby answered. ”What's all that shooting I've been hearing the last days?”
”Nothing to worry about, just a major attack against the Marines at Khe Sanh,” Lopez said.