Tunnel Rats

by Vincent Zandri

  Turning quickly, he spots a familiar face.

  Channy.

  Sam takes aim, but Channy fires first. The bullets miss Sam. One hits Cindy in the left thigh. She drops on the spot. Sam can’t help but gaze at her.

  “Cindy,” he says.

  “Just kill him, Sam,” she barks.

  Sam refocuses on Channy.

  Channy has shouldered his AK-47, and he’s already planted a bead on Sam. Sam hits the floor and hears the blaze of bullets hissing past his head. Glancing up at Channy, he sees something that takes his breath away and sends cold shivers down his spine. The terrorist isn’t only firing on Sam and Cindy. He’s firing on his own men and women, dropping them like clay pigeons along with the many innocent men, women, and children who surround them.

  Channy is a true psychopath . . .

  Sam fires at Channy. But from down on the floor, the angle is difficult, and he misses. His magazine is empty. Dropping it, he reloads his final mag, fires again. But Channy has him pinned down with a fully automatic weapon. Sam manages a quick glance at Cindy. A pool of dark blood is forming beneath her leg.

  Is she hit in the femoral artery? Sam asks himself. If she is, there will be no way to get her the medical help she needs before she bleeds out.

  Even now, with her life’s blood draining from her, Sam sees how she manages to rally her strength. Enough to take aim and fire off several rounds at Channy. The terrorist spots her, and he returns her fire. The rounds find their home in Cindy’s chest and back. She drops hard. A distraught Sam knows for certain his partner, fixer, and lover is now dead.

  Enraged, Sam gathers himself, launches onto his feet. His 9mm held out before him, he fires at will . . . fires at Channy. But the terrorist is quick and rolls onto his side. Sam fires the entire magazine until he is out of bullets. He tosses the now useless gun at Channy, and even that misses. No choice but to take the man on mano-e-mano—hand to hand combat. Sam thrusts himself at the terrorist at the exact moment Channy raises the stock on the AK-47 brings in down swiftly onto Sam’s skull.

  Sam blacks out.

  Sam opens his eyes, he’s lying flat on his belly with a dull, but profound, pain in the back of his head. He can’t see anything, and his mouth is drier than the Sahara. He needs water.

  Sam is acutely aware of the silence. The shooting has stopped along with the explosions, the screaming, and the sirens. All is quiet, as though what happened at the InterContinental was but a dream. It’s not dark, it’s more than dark. Darker than it was inside the underground prison.

  He tries to raise himself up, but his back is immediately met with a hard surface. He shifts to his right, but there’s no room for him. He goes left, and it’s the same story. It’s like he’s been placed inside a coffin two sizes too small. A bright light pierces the darkness directly in front of his face. His phone. Problem is, he’s packed so tightly into the space, he must shift himself in a way that frees one of his arms. Only then can he retrieve the phone.

  Gazing at the phone’s screen, Sam sees he’s got a multi-media text. He quickly maneuvers until his arm is able to reach the phone. He clicks on the text. Channy appears in a video.

  “Greetings, Sam,” the terrorist says, smiling. “You’ve been sleeping for a few hours. If you are watching this video, then you are no doubt awake again. That was some event at the InterContinental Hotel, was it not? The NVC has taken full responsibility, and we are the talk of the world. It’s a shame it cost Cindy her life. But she was playing both sides of the equation, and she needed to die for her traitorous actions, don’t you agree? In that sense, I have done us both a favor.

  “Now, I suppose you’re wondering how you ended up in the position you are currently in. You are in just one of many dozens of tunnels all connected to the same network. They are left over from the American war . . . when the B52s would drop their bombs, and my people had no choice but to survive underground. These tunnels run for miles and miles, some of them leading to nowhere, some of them leading to the Saigon River, and others gradually get smaller and smaller until, before you know it, you’re horribly stuck and can’t possibly pull yourself out. You have no choice but to lie there and die a very, very slow, claustrophobic and lonely death. Still, other tunnels lead to openings that access the above-ground and your freedom.

  “Here’s what I want for you, my friend. You are to navigate your way along the tunnel system. If you find your freedom along the way, then I won’t stop you. You may go back to your agency office in Washington D.C. and report that Channy is alive and well and that more incidents like the one that just occurred in Ho Chi Minh City are in the planning stages. But, if you get lost and never find your way out, or you should happen to get stuck forever and ever, well, that’s just your bad luck. Consider it payment for your brothers in arms who killed and maimed scores of my people all those years ago.

  “That’s all for now, Sam Savage, my good friend. Good luck, farewell, and I wish you the happiest of endings.”

  The message ends. Sam’s heart is pounding in his chest, his brain buzzing with adrenaline, his mouth dry. Being a Sky Marshal inside a long metal tube for up to fifteen hours at a time is one thing . . . this defies claustrophobia. It’s a like being buried alive, yet somehow living through the nightmare. But what if he can message someone to rescue him?

  He taps the keypad icon on the phone and waits for the dial pad to show up. But instead, all he gets is a warning indicating low power. Then comes a written message about plugging in the phone to a power source immediately or switch out the battery. Then the phone goes dead, returning the tunnel to absolute darkness.

  “Christ,” Sam says aloud. “Channy left me just enough power to deliver his message.” He slams the now useless phone down onto the hard, dirt-packed surface. “Son of a bitch.”

  Sam knows he’s got a choice. He can either lie there on his belly, feel sorry for himself, and eventually die. Or he can try his best to get the hell out of the underground labyrinth. But what if he goes the wrong way? What if he ends up crawling his way to nowhere? Or even worse, what if he gets irreparably stuck? Sam is never one to back down from a fight. He’s always been able to control his fear but being trapped in these tunnels is testing every ounce and every fiber of his constitution. How in the world did he end up here?

  If only he didn’t know what he knows about these rat holes. His army superiors who’d fought in the Vietnam War would tell spine-tingling tales about the tunnel rats who would volunteer to climb down into the narrow underground tubes to hunt for enemy Viet Cong. Some of them would encounter the enemy and win the day in hand to hand combat. Others would lose their way in the pitch-dark tunnels, never to be seen or heard from again. Some would get stuck in the very trap Channy described earlier—a horror in which the tunnel would gradually become narrower until it was impossible to move one way or another. That’s exactly the challenge Sam finds himself facing.

  He breathes in the hot damp air. He has no choice but to do everything in his power to survive. And if he is to survive, he’s got to find his way out of this subterranean maze and do it as quickly as possible.

  He crawls.

  Inching his way forward, Sam is careful to feel the walls that flank him. What he needs to find is a tunnel that might contain some sunlight. Sunlight would indicate an opening, and an opening would almost certainly mean a way out. Since he can’t use his eyes, he has no choice but to use every other part of his body—his fingertips for feeling, his skin for sensing a sudden shift in temperature which may indicate an opening close by, and lastly, his gut instinct for a sense of direction.

  He shuffles forward, his heart pumping inside his chest and the sound of it pulsing in his head. His hand seems to slip through the wall on his right. It’s another tunnel. His instinct is to pat the floor of the connecting tunnel. He gazes into it but doesn’t see a light. However, the tunnel does feel cooler than the one he is presently trapped in. Could the cooler air indicate a way out? Perhaps the cool air mea
ns the connecting tunnel leads down to a river. The Saigon River maybe. If that’s the case, Sam knows precisely where he is— Cu Chi. Makes sense too, because Cu Chi is where Channy was born, where his family comes from, where the U.S. dropped tons upon tons of bombs and where the Viet Cong hid inside a massive network of tunnels, just like the one he occupies at the moment.

  “Cu fucking Chi,” he whispers as if saying it out loud helps him think straight. “If only I could order an airstrike right now on this shithole of a place. That would show Channy and his New Viet Cong. Show the terrorists they can’t possibly win.”

  Inhaling another deep breath, Sam shifts himself to the right. His gut tells him he should make every effort to ensure the tunnel isn’t narrower than the one he’s in now. But then, the cooler air coming from the connecting tunnel also tells him it could represent a way out of this hell on earth. He enters the connecting tunnel.

  For the first time since he regained consciousness inside the cramped tunnel system, Sam feels a distinct sense of optimism. He also knows when he finally gets free of this place, he is not going to turn tail and head back to the U.S. He’s not leaving without Channy. As soon as he is above ground, he is going to hunt down the terrorist rat and bring him to justice. Not only for slaughtering all those innocent people, but also for murdering Cindy in cold blood. When Channy killed Cindy, he made it personal.

  Sam slowly crawls, careful not to be careless, not to give in to temptation—the temptation to race through this newfound tunnel to a freedom he only imagines. But the more he slides himself along the packed gravel floor, the cooler the air seems to get. He begins to smell something fishy, and he hears what he swears is the sound of rushing water.

  “The river,” he whispers to himself. “Only a few yards away.”

  Defying his own sensibility, Sam speeds along the tunnel, crawling as fast as he can until suddenly, he comes to a dead stop. He’s not stopping because he wants to stop or needs to stop, but because something makes him stop. His heart jumps into his throat, and his entire body goes cold, despite the heat and humidity.

  He’s entered into a trap.

  The promise of escape lured him into a tunnel he should have avoided like the plague. How could he have fallen so easily for the trap, he has no idea. He wasn’t trained that way. But he’s desperate to get the hell out of the tunnels, desperate to find Channy, desperate to avenge Cindy’s murder.

  Bracing himself, he shoves himself back the way he came.

  But he doesn’t budge.

  He tries once more.

  Still stuck.

  Sam is impossibly stuck inside a narrow underground tube in the pitch dark. His pulse is racing, his heart beating so fast he fears he might pass out.

  “Calm down, Sam,” he says aloud as if the sound of his own voice will provide some pacification. “Calm down and think this thing through. Use your military training to get yourself out of this.”

  He fully realizes he can’t just push himself back out. He’s in too tight, and his body is too big for the space. He must find a way to make himself smaller, thinner. To do this, he’s going to have to suck in some air, narrow his waist while, at the same time, elongating his body. He brings both arms forward, locking his fingers together. He then stretches his legs out, presses them together. Sucking in a deep breath, he begins to slither his way backward.

  He feels movement. Not a lot, but something.

  He exhales, takes a break. Then, sucking in another breath, he holds it in and shoves himself backward again. More movement. Could he actually be freeing himself? Another thrust backward. This time he feels himself gaining an inch or two. Another push and he moves another couple of inches. One more shove and he’s able to reverse a few more inches until he’s entirely free.

  “Yes!” he barks.

  He’s so pleased he’s able to escape the trap, he wants to break out in laughter. But then he realizes he’s still trapped deep within the tunnels, still surrounded by total darkness, and still without any idea of how to proceed other than reversing himself and returning to the original tunnel. Realization sets in. A wave of ice-cold dread washes over him.

  He slithers his way backward until his feet hit the wall of the original tunnel. As he attempts to retake his original position inside the underground tube, something important dawns on him. Somebody had to have physically placed him inside that first tunnel. Sam is five- feet-nine inches and one-hundred-ninety pounds of solid muscle. No way they could have dragged him inside such a cramped space for much of a distance. In fact, there’s no way they could have dragged him at all without having had to crawl through many meters of dark tunnels on their own.

  That said, what if they didn’t drag him into the tunnel at all, but instead, simply placed him inside of it, dropping him near an opening? If that’s the case, he should not continue crawling away from his original position, but instead head back in the direction from which he came. If he can get himself back to the place he occupied when woke up, he can get himself the hell out. In theory, that is.

  “Go left, Savage,” he whispers.

  He proceeds to retrace his movements back to the place he woke up inside the tunnel. But he’s learned an invaluable lesson. This time he moves slowly, despite the nagging need to go like hell. He knows the same kind of trap could be easily waiting for him in this portion of the tunnel. Or perhaps another variety of trap. Something that could stab him, shoot him, or poison him. If the Viet Cong were one thing, it was inventive when it came to creating ways to kill or maim a man.

  Sam crawls for maybe ten minutes, though it seems like ten hours. When he spots the little crack of sunlight peering through what looks to him like an overhead opening, he knows his instincts were balls-on correct. Now, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass how fast he goes. At least, that’s what he mumbles to himself. He crawls as fast as he can through the tunnel until the small crack of overhead light becomes bigger and bigger.

  The exit tunnel on his right-hand side is vertical and angled at thirty-five degrees. It’s partially covered by an old wood trap door. The wood door must have broken at some point over the many years of its existence. No one from the NVC thought to repair it. That’s their mistake, or so Sam thinks. Moving swiftly, he climbs upward through the tunnel but stops just short of bursting through the opening. What if some of the NVC are standing there? What if they fully anticipated his escape?

  Bringing his face to the opening in the wood trap door, he attempts to make a quick survey of his surroundings. But the angle doesn’t allow him to see a whole hell of a lot, other than treetops. From what he can gather, the coast is crystal clear. Or so it seems. He takes a moment to listen. He hears nothing but insects buzzing, birds chirping and cawing, a monkey or two howling off in the distance, and what he thinks is a four-legged rodent scurrying past.

  Slowly, he opens the door and slips out. From down on his chest, he takes a far better look around. Still nothing. He jumps to his feet, stands a bit wobbly and out of balance as the blood rushes to his lower extremities. Now, he takes a three-hundred-sixty-degree survey, spinning on the balls of his feet. Nothing but second-growth jungle and a narrow trail that must lead to Channy’s jungle headquarters—that’s what Sam’s gut is telling him.

  He takes a moment to gather his bearings. Maybe he can’t see it with the naked eye, but he knows the Saigon River is located on his right in an easterly direction. He knows the tunnels connect to the river and also to the NVC compound and headquarters. That means it’s located either directly in front of Sam or behind him. Since the narrow path is non-existent behind him, his gut tells him he’ll find Channy laying low in his jungle hideout in the not too distant territory before him to the north.

  Sam walks.

  He’s feeling a little vulnerable if not naked without a weapon. Maybe, if he stumbles upon an NVC soldier, he can disable the terrorist and steal his weapon. But it’s something he can’t count on. It may very well be that Sam will have to confront Channy with only his b
are hands. If that’s what God has in store, then so be it. He walks on. But before long, he feels the fine hairs on the back of his neck rise up.

  What if the path is booby-trapped? Sam thinks. This is the New Viet Cong we’re dealing with here. If they are anything like their Viet Cong predecessors, they are masters of booby-traps that aren’t engineered to kill, necessarily, but to terrorize and injure. To make a man suffer terrible pain.

  Sam pictures punji stick traps constructed of long, sharp spikes smeared with urine and feces, so they not only inflict serious damage to the poor soul who steps on them, but they also cause horrible infection. He’s thinking about snake pits and spike-covered bamboo whips. These are just a few of the potential traps Sam studied during his Ranger training in the late 1990s.

  Options, Sam tells himself. You can either continue walking the trail and pray it’s not bobby trapped. Or you can bushwhack your way to Channy’s camp.

  It doesn’t take a whole lot of thought since it’s not his brain he’s relying on so much as his gut.

  “You know what they say, Sam,” he whispers. “U.S. Army Rangers lead the way.”

  He decides to bushwhack.

  The jungles of Cu Chi are once again lush and thick. At one time, during the war, American B52 high altitude bombers and their incendiary, Napalm-filled bombs decimated the original forest, reducing it to a moonscape. But now, more than forty years later, the jungle has returned and along with it, thick brush and tall trees. Not to mention all the insects and wild animals that go with it. Sam shoves his way through the foliage, wishing he had a machete on him.

  The going is slow, and he’s careful to be as quiet as possible, but in his heart, he knows he’s doing the right thing by bushwhacking. His field of vision is not so great, but so long as he keeps the river on his right, he knows he’ll eventually come upon Channy’s headquarters.