The Pilgrim Strain

by Edgar, C. P.

  “You don’t want to see this.” He said to her in a hushed tone.

  “Thanks, I’ve read up on the psychology of it but I don’t think now is the time to study the medicine of torture. When will you allow me contact with the WHO so that I can advise them on the situation?” Rainer hadn’t allowed Merissa access to the outside world yet.

  He was still worried about getting his team out of the country and he didn’t fully trust the doctor yet. He knew she definitely wasn’t a Chinese spy though. She was genuinely concerned about the welfare of the refugees and the people of Sudan.

  Rainer understood the predicament he and the team were in. The job came with a massive amount of risk. They were more like criminals than patriots now. If they were to get away from this, she may have to be silenced. He hoped they could find another way though.

  “Let me get the answers you seek so you have something to tell them. Get something to eat, this may take a while.” He left her there in the front room with Chek and Daggan who were cooking up dinner.

  Rainer reentered the backroom where Kef and Einberg had already mounted Brewster, which obvious to them now was a cover name, to the wooden plank. It was elevated at an incline using a small wooden box. A hose was snaked through the back window of the building and lay on the floor at Kef’s feet.

  Brewster was laid with his feet bound to the board at the top of the incline and his head toward the floor. He was blindfolded with his hands bound to the board at his sides. He couldn’t move his head which had been bound to the board by a large piece of duct tape. They hadn’t stripped him yet, although if they had to, they would.

  Rainer grabbed the hose and opening the nozzle doused him from head to toe and back again. The water was exceptionally cold. It hit the old man and his body involuntarily tensed. Rainer turned off the water and spoke softly, “What did you deliver to Doctor Manzak, Brewster?”

  He remained silent although he was shivering all over. He admitted inwardly that he was scared but he refused to comply. Rainer nodded to Einberg who placed a thick dark towel over the man's face covering his nose and mouth. Rainer turned the hose back on and doused the towel. Rainer could tell that he was holding his breath and he anticipated this. He would leave the water running for as long as it took for him to try to breath.

  Moments later the old man gasped and tried to breath and choked on the water. He tried to shake his head from side to side to find air but he couldn’t break free from the tape. He began to visibly panic, an automatic bodily reaction.

  Rainer turned off the water and repeated his question. The old man remained silent other than his violent gasping for air. After about thirty seconds the towel was replaced and the act continued. On and on this continued for the next several minutes. He continued to remain defiant although he was showing signs of fatigue and possible hypothermia.

  He started to fade in and out of consciousness. His body would continue to fight for air with each drowning. This was involuntary and his mind didn’t need to be present for his body to do the work—his memory drifted off to the past.

  ***

  He and Bob had ejected at the very last moment before the SAM had collided with their A-6 Intruder. One moment they were sitting next to each other within the confines of the familiar cockpit. The very next moment each man had reached up overhead and pulled hard against the black and yellow striped ejection handle initiating the boosters that first jettisoned the cockpit canopy, then launched Douglas and Bob out of the aircraft.

  Douglas remembered how hot and close the explosion of the surface-to-air missile against the A-6 had been. He didn't recall feeling the shockwave wash over him or hearing anything beyond the air rushing past his helmet, but he distinctly remembered the heat, like being placed inside a flash oven.

  Shrapnel from the exploded aircraft had careened off his ejection seat tearing chunks of material with it as he first soared upward and then plummeted downward in search of enough momentum to open the trailing parachute.

  They had somehow managed to land near each other in the dark of the night. The OD green parachutes billowing in the night's air and tangling with the trees that they had fallen between.

  Douglas had broken his left leg during the landing. They were at least fifteen kilometers behind enemy lines and the enemy offensive had the North Vietnamese Army regulars in large clusters throughout the area. They were going to be captured, Douglas was certain of it.

  They made it through the first night by hiding in the thick brush. Bob had built a splint out of branches and secured Douglas’ leg the best he could using cloth torn from the wreckage of their ejection chairs. The bone was protruding from the skin but it wasn’t bleeding heavily. They both knew he had only a few days before it got infected and they needed to be rescued if he was to have a chance.

  The second night they could hear the enemy search teams looking for them. Bob had dragged Douglas through the jungle about a kilometer from their initial landing site during the night. He had tried his best to move Douglas about a hundred meters at a time and then would go back over the area masking their movement and drag marks. They knew however, that when the NVA found their ejection apparatus that they would be tracked soon after with ease. Bob had the only working transponder and they hadn’t seen any rescue aircraft yet. It wasn’t looking good for the two downed airmen.

  Douglas uttered those words again, “Please take this letter to my wife and son.”

  Bob wouldn’t take it. He refused to be part of that and told Douglas over and over that he should deliver his own message to his loved ones. Douglas remembered having written the letter one evening in his rack on the USS Kitty Hawk.

  He had maintained a feeling of dread all week, and had been unable to shake his uneasy feeling. It was known to all that an offensive campaign was approaching, and Douglas had just felt it in his bones that he wasn't going to make it to the end of his tour alive. He simply wanted his wife and son to know that he would always love them. So he wrote the letter and had been carrying it ever since.

  The third night Douglas was in and out of consciousness. It had been wildly humid during the day and his wounded leg had festered. The jungle was relentless in its obsession with reclaiming any life that fell to decay within its unassailable sanctum. Flying insects had beset themselves and were a cycle of constant bombardment upon his open wound. One of his last clear memories of that day was Bob wrapping his leg tightly with portions of his BDUs and then burying him with heavy moss and with loose brush. He tucked the transponder into Douglas’ coat pocket and buttoned the pocket shut. He hugged Douglas and kissed the man on his forehead before stating, “Go home Doug, your family needs you,” and then he was gone.

  Douglas lay there amongst the brush and the decaying earth. He remained in-between worlds of consciousness. He spoke with apparitions as they appeared, happy to have the company and to no longer be alone in the dark, heartless land. He was rescued thirty hours later by a five-man ARVN Sea Commando element that had locked onto his transponder signal.

  Douglas recuperated slowly. Days after being rescued he found himself back on the USS Kitty Hawk within the infirmary. Douglas impatiently waited to see his friend appear at the hatch to his room. Day after day, he asked his visiting attendants whether Bob had been found and rescued.

  “Robert Sandean. Have they rescued Robert Sandean?” He would constantly ask of anyone he came in contact with.

  The days ticked past. Bob remained in MIA status even after Douglas had returned to the States, his injuries deemed too serious to allow him to return to the fighting.

  Upon his return to the United States, Douglas was reunited with his beloved wife and son. There was no big party. There were no streamers or flowing booze. They had no other family but themselves, and nobody else seemed to care. Douglas and his wife had grown up poor and alone, finding themselves in their teens. They had been inseparable until his draft into the military. They had nothing but each other and their son, which was everything.
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br />   The times were different back then and he remembered wanting to just melt away from society. Not wanting anyone to know who or what he was, or the things that he had done. Quickly and quietly, time turned over and it became just the three of them sitting on the worn fabric couch, listening to the old time radio, and talking into the early morning hours.

  That very first night was timeless. Douglas’ son had fallen asleep in his lap as he and his wife made their plans for the future. Douglas became absorbed in the comfort and safety of his family. He had missed them so much, believing he would never see them again but now they were together and the future seemed brighter to him like the dawn’s light. His hands playing with his son’s beautiful, long hair. The fell asleep like that on the couch, all three in a bundle.

  Douglas’ wife let him sleep in that morning. She had been aware of the strain that Douglas had carried back with him. She remembered how full of life he was before he left, and how utterly shattered he looked when he had stepped off that airplane. She had barely recognized him, looking right past him when he had materialized at the aircraft door, wondering when her husband would be getting off.

  She took the child to the store to get food for a big breakfast once he woke. She was excited about nursing Douglas back to health and he needed sleep as much as sustenance.

  Susan was carrying two paper bags of groceries in her hands and Jacob was playing with a stick when they were run down by a drunken motorist on their way back to Douglas. The drunk had lost consciousness and control of his truck. He had careened off the road onto the walkway killing them both instantly.

  Douglas remained in a state of shock for many weeks. After the police came to the door and uttered those words he had cried out and fell to the floor. Most everything in this world having been destroyed or killed before his eyes. After that, he was just carried from moment to moment in a dream state.

  He did not remember much. Bits and pieces really. His son’s hands when he was forced to identify him. He remembered his hands and his hair. He barely knew the boy but he would be haunted by seeing his hair on that table. He only vaguely remembered the small funeral. Just a handful of people coming to show their support. Mostly people he did not know or care to know any longer. They had come to him in the moments and said things to him that were stupid and only meant something to them, not to him.

  He remembered watching as their bodies were put in the cold ground. He remembered the anger then, the demons that entered his body, mind, and soul as his family was taken to the ground. They filled his soul with hate and mixed themselves with the savage memories from the war.

  Douglas drank whiskey after that. He slept only after having passed out, and then he would wake in a scream announcing to the world his pain. He would wake fully clothed and walk around calling out for his wife and son only to remember they were gone forever. He would find the closest bottle and drink some more, and continue the cycle of pain and sadness.

  Douglas would spend hour after hour toying with the idea of killing himself. More than once he placed the barrel of his .38 revolver into his mouth and pressed his finger against the trigger. Each time stopping just short of killing himself.

  He would cut himself just to make sure he felt something. He carved a sun into his wrist and filled its open center with a bloodshot eye. He stared at it while it wept his own blood. The symbolism of it not lost on him. He reached over to the table nearest where he sat on the floor and found a disposable pen and broke it open with a snap. Dripping the ink into the deep, fresh wound. He didn’t want this symbol of pain and hate to ever go away. He wanted to look at it all the time if he was to live in this godforsaken world. A tattoo, etched from the fire of the hell he was surrounded by.

  More weeks passed. Douglas lay on the floor of his wretched, YMCA apartment one morning, having lost the house months prior. He lay there with his lips just barely touching the ground. He was shallow breathing onto the stained and soiled floor watching the vapor from his lungs manifest itself like a ghost onto the linoleum, only to quickly evaporate. It reminded him of love or life.

  He heard the knocks on the door but he ignored them and rolled over searching for something to cover his head with or anything to block out the noise. Three more loud knocks and he was up. With the .38 in his left hand, he whipped the door open looking for a fight.

  Standing there was Bob Sandean in a pair of jeans and a sweater. Douglas just stood there looking at him for a minute and then cried for the first time in a long while. He cried as if he was being baptized. He wept while Bob held him up from falling, until Douglas had no more use for the sobbing and finally stood on his own shaky legs. “How?”

  Bob sat and gently recounted his story to him. He had been captured by the NVA and had spent his imprisonment at the Bo Giuong camp, nicknamed the Dogpatch. He explained his exposure to insurmountable torture while there but had survived.

  Bob told Douglas in detail from the moment he walked off that night, taking the NVA trackers with him, to the moment of his release. He spoke of the horrors, of the pain, of the loneliness, of the terror.

  He talked of the evildoings of men. He took Douglas’ hands in his and said, “But I would do it all over again so you could have that one night with your wife and son.”

  Douglas regained his life at that very moment. He should have died in that jungle but he was instead given a gift. He was given a single night with his loved ones and it had been worth it. He vowed complete allegiance to Bob and never left his side again. They were both changed men having been touched by the Devil, and by God, and they strayed between both worlds from that point forth. The two remained together until the day Bob died.

  Douglas was drowning again. It stopped suddenly and he gasped for air. He heard a distant voice ask, “What did you deliver to Doctor Manzak?”

  He saw a vision of Bob sitting on the floor in his tattered POW clothes, bleeding around the left eye and his knuckles were bared to the bone. His knees were infected from being placed on them for hours on end, the puss oozing from each. Bob looked up at Douglas, smiled, and spoke softly, “Tell him Doug. Your family wants you to come be with them now. We want you to have peace.”

  ***

  Douglas was slapped hard by Einberg who had a penlight and was shining it in his right eye looking for dilatation. Douglas coughed out some water and regained some composure. Einberg looked to Rainer with a note of concern.

  Douglas whispered in a hoarse voice, “the Pilgrims.”

  “Who are the Pilgrims?”

  “You mean what are the Pilgrims.” He was laboring to get his words out.

  “What are the Pilgrims?” Rainer played along.

  “They’re weapons. They are sent out to create a new world, to rid us of our oppression as a species. To rid us of ourselves. They are traveling to develop the new world.”

  “Tell us about the Pilgrims.” Rainer was looking uncomfortable.

  Douglas spent the next few moments describing the weapons program that had been developed, and the operation that was already underway. He disclosed to Rainer how he had used him and his team, for years, to collect the pieces needed for the program. For the release.

  Rainer was swimming in the information and was having some difficulty keeping it all together. The old man was rambling slightly, but he was telling them the truth and it was like a total stream of consciousness.

  Rainer jumped up and grabbed a pen and notebook from an attaché case sitting in the corner of the room on a small table. He wrote down as much of what he had heard so far while the old man labored for breath. He was still physically upside down.

  They hadn’t moved him for fear that it would alter his mental state and give him pause. He continued describing what the weapon was and how it was administered by Doctor Manzak at the refugee camp. Rainer continued writing.

  “How can it be stopped?” Rainer asked reviewing his notes. There was no response.

  Douglas was staring back through dead eyes. Einberg saw th
e change, the slack in the muscles, and the lack of respiration and went to work on him. They cut him loose and let him fall to the ground, and Einberg started pumping his chest. He blew a solid breath into Brewster’s lungs using his hand as an oral barrier filling his chest. Einberg pumped and pumped.

  Kef grabbed a blanket, which was more like a canvas rag, and tried warming him. Brewster didn’t respond and died on the water-soaked concrete floor having succumbed to the massive heart attack.

  Rainer stared at the body for a minute, even possibly longer while all was quiet, less the sound of water finding a place to drip and drain. “Do a complete forensic workup on him. I want photos, prints, mouth swab, and blood,” Rainer stated solemnly to Kef and Einberg, who only nodded their agreement.

  ***

  Rainer exited the room. He saw Merissa first and then shared a momentary glance with each of his men who were standing about the room soberly. Daggan hadn’t even bothered to look up. He just stood there leaning against the wall flicking open his tactical folding knife and then closing it, only to flick it back open again. They had all heard the frantic attempt by Einberg to revive the man to no avail.

  Rainer was ashamed at having let him die. He hadn’t gotten nearly enough information out of him and he had wanted him alive so that he could eventually leverage Brewster with the authorities whomever they may be. Without Brewster, the authorities were still going to need to hang someone for this.

  “Shit!” He yelled at no one in particular and then fell silent.

  Merissa waited for a few moments and then quietly asked, “Did he tell you anything?”

  She didn’t want to upset Rainer, but she wanted to know what she personally had done. She wanted to know what she was accountable for. She desperately wanted some insight into what course of action she allowed to be set into motion days ago. She also felt sick for wanting information that was just extracted from someone who had eventually expired from the effort. Her feeling of disgust was detached however, and she felt like it was almost expected of her but not how she wanted to truly feel.