P. O. W.

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  “You’ve got one hell of a good dad there….” Woods nodded his head.

  “I know.” Reggie Sinclair smiled proudly as his father left the ward.

  Sergeant Shaw pulled the canvas cover over the cases of supplies they had loaded up at the Da Nang depot. He had the two-and-a-half-ton truck loaded all the way to the rear tailgate with boxes of hard-to-get items.

  “Simpson! Stay with the truck while I run inside and get the paperwork!” Shaw hiked up his jungle fatigues and hopped up the three wooden steps to the depot office. He was in a good mood, despite the heat.

  A staff sergeant major sat behind a Plexiglas wall in a corner of the long office building, smoking a cigar. Shaw entered the office without knocking and felt the cool blast from the air conditioner operating at its highest level. “It’s pretty damn hot out there!”

  The senior sergeant ignored the comment. “Well! Are you satisfied?”

  “Almost… I sure would like to get a dozen or so of those new CAR-15s….”

  “So would everyone else in Vietnam.”

  “Keep me in mind.”

  “I will.” The sergeant major tapped the edge of his cigar against his desk over a wastepaper basket. “Ahh-hem… Do you have something for me?”

  Shaw reached down in his side pocket and removed a thick brown manila envelope. He tossed the package on the desk. The senior NCO tore open a corner and peeked inside before pulling open the top drawer of his desk and tossing it in.

  “Aren’t you going to count it?”

  “I trust you.” He inhaled a deep lungful of blue smoke and blew it toward the air conditioner. “When are you returning for another load?”

  “I don’t know… maybe a month.”

  “I rotate back to the States in three weeks, but there’ll be someone here to take care of you.”

  “Why are you going back?”

  “The colonel is forcing me to rotate. I think he’s getting a little suspicious, but it’s about time I get back home and check up on some things. My new house is about done in Petersburg, and my wife says it’ll take two hundred thousand to furnish it….” The sergeant major shook his head. “Fucking woman spends money like I’ve got a footlocker full of it.”

  Shaw raised his eyebrows and smiled.

  The senior sergeant laughed and slapped the top of his desk. “If she only knew!”

  “What have you told her?”

  “Poker winnings!” He chuckled. “You know I’m lucky at cards!”

  “Yeah… me too.”

  Shaw left the office and hurried over to the truck. Simpson was waiting for him, leaning against the shady side of the vehicle and smoking a machine-rolled marijuana cigarette.

  “I told you not to smoke that shit while we’re working!” Shaw was mad at the black soldier.

  “You’re working, Sarge….” Simpson opened the door to the passenger seat. “When we stop in An Khe, I’ll go to work.”

  “I don’t know if we’ll have time to make a stop.” Shaw started the engine. He didn’t trust Simpson to drive when the truck was loaded with his personal supplies.

  “You make time, Sarge.”

  “We’ll see.”

  “We’ll see shit!” Simpson clenched his teeth. “I helped you, you help me now, or one of us is going to get fucking fragged!”

  “Stop the bullshit, Simpson. I’m just fucking with you.” Shaw slowed the truck down at the gate and handed the supply depot guard his paperwork. The guard casually checked the manifest and looked at the covered supplies. He gave the sergeant a knowing look and handed the papers back to him.

  Shaw shifted gears and pulled out onto Highway 1. “If that fucking Woods isn’t waiting out in front of the hospital, we’re leaving him! I ain’t driving back down to An Khe in the fucking dark, and I don’t give a fuck what they say about the road being secured!”

  Woods sat next to the machine gun bunker at the main entrance to the naval hospital and smoked a Kool. He felt good for the first time since the ambush. Colonel Sinclair had made a lot of sense; it wasn’t a matter of guilt, but of what they could do to get Spence back from the NVA POW camp. He felt sorry for Reggie because he had lost a lung from the bullet wound and then had to stay in the Special Forces camp three days waiting for the weather to clear, but at least Reggie was alive and he didn’t smoke, so one lung would last him for the rest of his life. Reggie had told him that they were going to try to ship him home at the same time as they shipped the kids back. David smiled. The two Eurasian kids would find a good home with the Sinclairs. Reggie was half Korean and so were his sisters. Jean-Paul and Trung would fit right in with their family.

  Shaw honked the truck horn. Woods grabbed his CAR-15 and ran across the highway to where the truck idled. “You’re late.”

  “Get in!” Shaw nodded for Woods to take a seat on top of the supplies.

  David laid his CAR-15 on the canvas and then pulled himself up. A corner of the canvas flipped up, and he could see the pallet of sundry supplies. “Hey, Sarge… where did you find the sundries?”

  “Pull that canvas down!” Shaw was angry. “You didn’t see shit! You hear?”

  “Sure, Sarge.” Woods .realized the sundries weren’t for the battalion, but had been bought by Shaw to black-market.

  A helicopter passed by, flying low to the ground. Woods had no way of knowing that Master Sergeant McDonald was on board heading to the Command and Control North compound located next to Marble Mountain. Woods looked up at the chopper and saw the skull wearing a Green Beret painted on the nose of the aircraft and wondered what Special Forces unit the chopper belonged to. A puff of black diesel smoke made David turn his head away and slide over to the opposite side of the truck. Shaw shifted gears, and the overloaded vehicle pulled away from the side of the road.

  Simpson turned around on his seat and called back to Woods, “How’s Sinclair doing?”

  “Great! He’s being shipped back to the States this week, and they’re going to try and ship Jean-Paul and Trung back at the same time.” Woods adjusted his CAR-15 in his lap so that the charging handle was off his thigh.

  “Is he still fucking around with those half-breeds?” Shaw yelled over his shoulder, keeping his eyes on the road.

  Woods paused before answering the sergeant. Shaw was an easy man to hate. “Colonel Sinclair flew in from the Pentagon to pull some strings for the kids—”

  “Sinclair’s father is a colonel?” Simpson interrupted.

  “A full bird colonel.” Woods smiled, knowing Shaw wouldn’t like that at all. “He was at the hospital.”

  “Why would a colonel want to fuck with some Vietnamese street kids?” Shaw still couldn’t understand Sinclair’s motivation—and considering what made Shaw tick, he probably never would.

  “Reggie’s an Amerasian….” Woods twisted sideways to light a cigarette.

  “A what!” Shaw shifted gears and had to yell to be heard over the engine noise.

  “Man! I know what an Amerasian is!” Simpson felt smart, and the marijuana cigarette he had just finished made him feel talkative. “That’s half Vietnamese and half American.”

  “I still don’t know why a colonel would want to have two lice-ridden, snot-nosed brats living with him back in the States…. Unless he needs a houseboy to shine his shoes.” Shaw smiled, having figured out why the colonel would take the kids back to the States with him.

  “I doubt that…. Do you know how Vietnamese treat half-breeds, Sergeant?” Woods didn’t give the NCO a chance to answer. “They can’t attend school, own land, or hold jobs that full-blooded Vietnamese want. They’re considered the unwanted offspring of the defeated French. There are even cases where Vietnamese mothers have abandoned their Eurasian offspring so that they wouldn’t be associated with having had sex with a Frenchman.” Woods looked at the back of Shaw’s head and added, “About the only job a Eurasian girl can get is as a whore.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” Shaw looked at the windshield. “Those are some be
autiful women!”

  Woods agreed that Eurasians were often beautiful people; they seemed to have taken the best features from both races. “Would you want your daughter to be a whore?” Woods couldn’t resist making the comment.

  Shaw turned around on his seat and pointed back at Woods. He held the steering wheel in one hand. “You watch your fucking mouth!”

  “I thought so…” Woods took a deep lungful of smoke and smiled at the corrupt sergeant.

  “Watch the fucking road!” Simpson grabbed for the wheel as the truck veered off onto the shoulder of the road and a red cloud of dust billowed up behind them that covered the windshield of the truck following them.

  Woods leaned back against the railing and relaxed for the long drive back to An Khe. He was feeling better than he had felt in months. The talk with Colonel Sinclair had taken a burden off his shoulders that had been destroying him.

  Simpson sat thinking on the passenger seat. The THC from the marijuana cigarette had mellowed him out. He reached into his pants pocket and removed a bundle of MPC ten-dollar notes, counted out two hundred of them, and replaced the thick rubber band around the rest. He turned around on the seat and handed the money to Woods. “Here, make out a money order and send this to those kids. Tell the colonel to buy them something nice and let them know that it’s from Tousaint Simpson….” He thought for a second and added, “Have him ask them if they still remember me from An Khe.”

  Woods took the money. “Thanks! I’ll do that!”

  Shaw looked over at Simpson with an expression on his face that said the soldier had just thrown two thousand dollars out of the truck.

  Colonel Sinclair left the hospital and drove back to the XXIV Corps Headquarters where he was staying while he was in Da Nang. He was sharing a room with one of his classmates.

  The colonel spoke to the driver. “Drop me off in front of my BOQ and you can turn the jeep in to the motor pool…. Thanks.” The soldier nodded his head and smiled. He had a trip ticket that was good for the rest of the day and he was going to use it. A steambath and a couple of cold Ba-Moui-Ba beers would hit the spot.

  Colonel Sinclair hurried over the cement sidewalk to the building, saluting a group of NCOs on the way. He entered through the rear door and nearly knocked his roommate down.

  “What’s the rush, Reggie?”

  “Sorry, Clyde…. I want to change jackets and find a secure voice radio. Do you know where I could use one?”

  “Sure… We’ve got a couple secure radios in the G-3 shop…. Who do you want to call?”

  “I need to talk to Jack Seacourt back at Pentagon East.”

  “Brigadier General Jack Seacourt?”

  “Yes… he’s been given the mission for POW recovery, and I need to talk to him.”

  “I can do one better for you.” The lieutenant colonel nodded his head toward the door. “Let’s go over to my shop; I have a direct secure voice land line to the J-3 in Saigon.”

  “That’s great, Clyde!” Sinclair pulled on his clean jacket and followed his classmate out of the building. The sidewalk was lined with banana plants and allowed for the officers to walk in the shade to the large, two-story Corps Headquarters building. The entire structure was made out of wood, screening, and cement-covered sandbags.

  Colonel Sinclair took a seat in the private office and placed his call to Brigadier General Seacourt. The general was the highest-ranking member of his graduating class and had been promoted below his promotion zone ever since he had been a second lieutenant. Sinclair had done extremely well and had received numerous accelerated promotions also, but Seacourt was the master politician.

  The land line crackled with a little static, and then Sea-court’s voice filled the wire. “Reggie! It’s good hearing from you again!”

  “Hi, Jack. Congratulations on your assignment.”

  “Well, I don’t know if congratulations or a sympathy card is in order. You know, we’ve never had a successful POW snatch, and there is a lot of pressure on this particular program right now.”

  Sinclair smiled to himself. He knew that Seacourt had too much political savvy to take on an assignment that would end up making him look bad, especially a combat one. “Well, I’m sure you’ll be able to work something out.”

  “Say, Reggie… I left an important meeting to take your call. Is there something I can do for you?” Seacourt waved his hand at the captain, who was signaling him that his staff was waiting.

  “Yes, Jack. I need some information on a missing soldier who we think has been captured by the NVA in the A Shau Valley.”

  Seacourt adjusted the receiver he was holding in his hand against his ear and became very interested. “You say he was captured in the A Shau?”

  “Yes… about a month ago…. His name is—”

  “Spencer Barnett.”

  Sinclair was shocked that the general knew the name of the soldier.

  “Or is it Mohammed James?” Seacourt’s voice dropped in question.

  “No, it’s Barnett.” Sinclair became very cautious. “He was one of my son’s teammates in the First Cavalry Division.”

  “How’s Reggie Junior doing?”

  “Fine. He lost a lung and is going home to be discharged.”

  “Sorry to hear that…”

  “He’s alive, Jack; my wife and I are thankful for that.”

  “So! What do you want to know about Barnett?”

  “Well, has he been taken prisoner, and is he still alive?” Colonel Sinclair looked over at his classmate, who was trying to act busy, but was very interested in the conversation. “And are you going to try and form a snatch team?”

  “You know, Reggie, this is a very interesting telephone call. I know you work for the chief of staff back at the Pentagon, but Barnett and James are very hot items right now in-country.”

  “We’re on a secure line, Jack, and I have a clearance that is about as high as you can get….” Sinclair left the sentence open.

  “Oh! I’m not worried about that, Reggie!” There was a pause and then Seacourt sighed over the line. “Shit! Let me brief you quickly on it. My staff can wait a few minutes.” Seacourt’s voice settled in for the story. “Last week a young Montagnard boy—about ten years old, maybe younger—came out of Laos to the Special Forces camp at A Shau. He demanded to see the American camp commander and presented the captain with a Polaroid snapshot of Barnett and James.”

  “A photograph? Were they alive?”

  The general paused and then spoke in a very low tone. “Yes, they were alive. Barnett was tied to a bamboo pole and James was whipping him with a bamboo rod…. At first we thought the photo was an NVA-staged shot, but experts have blown the photo up, and you can see the actual pain on Barnett’s face and…” The general paused to swallow. “And the… expression of sheer enjoyment on James’s face.”

  “Enjoyment?”

  “I’ve had a lot of experts look at the photograph, and all of them agree that James would have to be one hell of a good actor along with Barnett to pose a picture like that. We had the portion where Barnett’s feet were exposed—actually, we could only blow up a portion of his left heel up to the ball of his foot, but it was enough to see that Barnett’s feet had been severely beaten.”

  “How did the Montagnard boy get the photograph?”

  “This is very secret, Reggie… I don’t even know if I should say it over this secure telephone… but… the boy said an American gave it to his grandfather and asked if he would deliver it to the Americans at A Shau. From the boy’s description, we think the American was an Air Force colonel who was shot down quite a while ago.”

  “Are you planning a mission?” Sinclair was getting excited.

  “Yes. We think they’re being held near the Laotian village of A Rum, about three miles inside of Laos.” Seacourt nodded again at the captain, who stood impatiently waiting. Sinclair had no way of knowing the meeting concerned exactly what they were now talking about on the telephone. “I’ve got to run, Reggie. My
staff’s been waiting for me.”

  “Just one more thing, Jack… A big favor.”

  “Sure. Ask it.”

  “There’s a young soldier in the First Cavalry who was with Barnett when he was captured. It’s very important that he gets on the mission team.”

  “I’ll see what I can do. What’s his name?” Seacourt picked up a pencil.

  “Specialist Fourth Class David Woods. He’s with the First Brigade’s Recon Company.”

  “David Woods… got it. I’ll have him involved with the rescue operation in some way. I understand what’s going on…. I may be a politician, but I still understand troops.”

  “Thanks, Jack. I owe you one.” Sinclair hung up the telephone and felt good about his day’s work. He knew that he couldn’t mention the telephone conversation to Woods because it was highly classified, but if he knew Seacourt, Woods would be picked up before sundown and be briefed even better than Sinclair himself had been as to the extent of the mission.

  Master Sergeant McDonald sat on the nylon mesh seat in the CCN helicopter and watched the trucks on Highway 1 passing the PSP helipad they were landing on. He did a double take when a heavily loaded deuce-and-a-half’s front tires went off the asphalt onto the dirt shoulder, sending up a cloud of red clay dust. He swore that the man riding on top of the load was carrying a CAR-15 submachine gun. The chopper’s struts scraped the steel planking, and the rotor blade changed pitch as the aircraft shut down.

  A black jeep with the Command and Control North unofficial crest painted under the windshield pulled up and stopped. The driver rested his arms on the top of the wheel and waited for the sergeant to unload. He was the only occupant on the chopper. McDonald dropped his bag on the rear seat and slid his leg over the passenger seat. He could feel the heat coming off the canvas. The jeep had been sitting out in the hot sun, and the seat was hot enough to be very uncomfortable.

  “I’ll walk. Drop my gear off in the BEQ by the club.” McDonald didn’t wait for the NCO driver to comment. He was in no mood to be fucked with, and the Green Beret sergeant sensed it.

  “There’s a piece of cardboard in the back you can sit on.” The sergeant tried making up for the crude trick they played on Saigon and Nha Trang staff personnel. The jeep had been left out in the sun intentionally. Most of the staffers would suffer sitting on the hot seat rather than comment to the combat reconnaissance men that the jeep seat was too hot. McDonald had called his bluff.