THERE BE DRAGONS (18 page)

Dragon Master shouted towards the door in Vietnamese.

NVA soldiers entered, five of them, all carrying water jugs. They placed them on the floor of the hut and left.

“We have a healthy supply of water here,” said Dragon Master to Jacobs as he tugged at his wet hair so the solider looked at him.

“Good, because I am very thirsty,” said Jacobs between coughs. Blood had started to run again from the cuts on his face. The water had cleaned his appearance but since he sat upright again and had spoke with anger, they began to dribble.

His head was smashed into the bamboo table and the process began again.

• • • • •

Agent Moore exited the tent; Sergeant Stephens followed on and said quietly to him, “I ain’t too sure of the meaning of that answer … or more precisely the hidden meaning. Just how will they be taken care of?”

“Introduce me to the men. Don’t be concerning yourself with hidden meanings.”

The men Stephens had selected were already standing in a line.

“This is …” Stephens pointed to each soldier as he spoke their name, “Corporal Cage, Private Diaz, Private Jackson, Private Smith, Private Teacher, and our RTO, Buttons.”

“I’m agent Moore. I’ll be your guide, and until we start military operations, your new boss. We have orders to attack and destroy an NVA base. If we complete this mission, you will all be rewarded with a cushy job back in An Khe. You’ll be far from the action; you can sit out the war. I trust that is good enough reward?”

Some of the men nodded but none spoke.

“Good. Then we leave now. I trust you have them loaded up with fresh supplies and equipment for our journey, Stephens?”

“I did the best I could. It would be easier if I knew how far we had to travel,” answered Stephens.

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.” Moore started to walk towards the jungle. “Let’s move out.”

None of the men moved. They kept their eyes fixed forward.

“You heard the man. Saddle up,” said Stephens. “Diaz, get on point, and follow the directions Moore gives you.”

They started for the jungle.

“Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet,” said Diaz as he made the sign of the cross and kissed his crucifix.

• • • • •

In the blackness, he walked on a floor of nonentity.

The naught had a shine. A gleam. Like oil.

Jacobs was in the line drawn between the middle and the bottom of the top of what is known and what is not.

His walk became more difficult, his feet heavy. He had to pull them from the obscure with force.

He looked down at them.

He saw the dark was stuck to him. It covered his feet and was halfway up his shins.

He was sinking.

He was being sucked into the opaque.

He didn’t want to be in the shadow, in the gloom, in the wrong form.

As the dark continued to consume him, he saw a light. It shone from up ahead.

It was white, see-through, but solid, strong in its density, but soft in its flow, a flow that flowed like a tepid river, a flow like smoke and vapor, but with power, like a rock fall and an avalanche, like lava, but not at a temperature that could burn, but at a heat that would embrace.

The despondency of the dark crept up his body.

Up over his chest now.

He felt it inject his heart with venom. A sting of the wicked, that started to turn his veins black. It brought them to a visible level on his body, all over his skin they pulsed. It was as if they wanted to erupt from him, to ingest him from the inside out.

The obscure black, the naught, the nonentity, the nix, had choked his neck and he now ingested it through his mouth, through his nostrils, through his eye sockets.

His eyes turned to shadow.

His face became the murk and he disappeared in the obscurity of the dark.

An abomination that ate his body, turning it into mush, mixing him with the oil of nonentity in the line drawn between the middle and the bottom of the top of what is known, and what is not.

• • • • •

Jacobs sat upright on the table. The water jetted from him. He was exhausted. He looked it, and blood was sneaking free on his face once more.“I’m winning the game, Lynch,” he said through quick gasps of air. “I’m testing the patience of the Dragon Master for sure. After every soaking his anger is growing. So is his frustration.”

“Dragon Master? Ha! I like that. That is the first moment of clarity you have had so far. But in regards to the game, this is but the first day of our fun. Tonight you will spend in a cage. A cage that is hung halfway into water. The cage is too small to stand in and because of the water filling it halfway, it is too small to lay in.”

“Sounds comfy,” said Jacobs.

Dragon Master slapped him across his cheek.

“He’s becoming more insulted by each piece of my wit he’s fed, Lynch.”

Dragon Master gave an order in Vietnamese.

Jacobs was pulled from the table by the NVA. He fell to his knees and was kicked in the back.

He dropped onto the hut’s floor. His chest burned as it impacted.

A hand clawed into his hair and picked him up. “I’m sure I must have a bald patch by now, Lynch.” His scalp was bleeding.

NVA Torturer held a rifle, an AK; he used the barrel of it to poke Jacobs out of the hut.

• • • • •

Jacobs stumbled down the hut’s steps into the dark of the base. His legs were like jelly. He had difficulty holding his body upright. He was swaying side to side. He almost tripped over his own feet.

He could see guards through the blur of his vision and barracks made from bamboo. Everything else was too hazy to confirm.

A light lit him.

He looked up to see a guard tower that was shining a beacon directly on him. The tower was wavy. The normally straight edges of such a structure rippled. Very much Daliesque. He felt his stomach turn again. He retched and water came up.

He was poked and prodded by the AK of NVA Torturer to a bamboo bridge that crossed a river. On the bridge sat a bamboo cage. Objects had become grey and speckled. He had fuzz over all he saw, like a snow, a blizzard for his eyes.

By the cage stood a man in the same uniform as Dragon Master, the black camo. Another Russian. The Russian soldier opened the door to the cage.

The NVA pushed Jacobs into it and said something to Cage Guard.

Jacobs wasn’t sure what language it was. But he knew it made no sense. “I don’t think even English would make much sense at the moment, Lynch. See? I couldn’t even understand myself then.”

The cage was lowered by rope from the bridge.

Sure enough, it sat halfway into the river and Jacobs had to crouch.

The light from the guard tower shut off. He was in blackness and water.

“The one thing I’ve had enough of for a while, Lynch.”

Then he heard the thunder … and the shriek of One Eye.

• • • • •

Diaz chopped some of the growth away and revealed a river. The sun shimmered over small ripples in the water.

Moore stopped Diaz from continuing forward with a hand on his shoulder. “Hold it a second, Private,” he said, as he consulted his map. “Okay, this is it.” He looked back down the line and signaled for the men to get low.

Everyone on the team took a knee.

Stephens duck-walked to Moore. “What we got?” He spoke in a whisper.

“Beyond the tree line is a river. We need to take the river, heading west, for a good while. It will get us to the base much quicker than hiking.”

“We’ll be in the open, plus we don’t got a boat,” said Stephens.

“We do, we just haven’t boarded it yet,” said Moore.

“I don’t follow.”

“Come with me, Sergeant.”

Moore duck-walked from the jungle, to the edge of the river.

Stephens followed and said to Diaz as he went by, “Stay alert, Private.”

“Yes, Sergeant,” was the reply.

• • • • •

Moore and Stephens knelt just beyond the trees on the threshold of the murky water.

Moore gestured with his chin.

Stephens saw a brackish inlet and a crudely fashioned hut made from corrugated metal and bamboo. It was perched above the river, supported by skeletal tree roots that projected from the bank.

On the structure were two ragtag Vietnamese men.

One wore long shorts cut just after the knee, earrings, necklaces, and a torn cowboy hat. His hair was greasy. Sweat filled. He had three wristwatches on one arm and gold bracelets on the other. A revolver was stuck into the waist of his shorts.

The other man had a shaved head and wore only American Army issue underwear. His whole upper body was covered in tattoos. He had no teeth, only gums. The gums gripped a lit cigarette.

Rested near the men, next to a plastic chair none of them sat on, were two AK-47s and a case full of beer. They each held a can of the intoxicating amber.

The man of gums, Gummy, chugged his beer down and threw the empty container into the river.

The Cowboy took a few sips then poured the remainder on his face, the bubbles and foam lingering on his eyebrows and lips. He shook his head. Then he spat some of the alcohol he had been savoring in his mouth onto the back of Gummy, who had just grabbed a new can from the case by the chair.

Cowboy laughed a belly laugh as Gummy turned and shouted obscenities at him in a foreign tongue.

Gummy opened his new drink, put some of the liquid in his mouth, then spat. It landed on Cowboy’s hat.

Cowboy removed his revolver and pointed it at Gummy. He screamed more foreign words at him. He pulled the hammer back on the pistol and stabbed the gun forward in the air.

Gummy backed away with his palms raised and spoke in quiet tones.

Cowboy frowned and took a silent moment to think. He then lowered the gun.

Gummy came nearer, he bowed, praying style, both palms together, the tops of his finger tips just under his chin.

Cowboy pistol-whipped him across the head and laughed.

Gummy stumbled. He took a second to wipe the blood from his temple. He chuckled then both men hugged before they got more drinks.

Stephens saw a dilapidated sampan boat that wallowed in the water next to the hut. Its deck housing was made from corrugated metal and bamboo, just like the hut.

“Please tell me these pirates ain’t our ride?” Stephens asked Moore.

“I can’t do that,” said Moore.

“So, how does this work?”

“We go introduce ourselves and pay them what they asked for.”

“I don’t like this.”

“Duly noted, Sergeant. But they are good cover. Like you said, we’d be in the open on the river. This way, we all hide in the boat and they cover us if we run into any NVA.”

“You sure they’d do that? They’re gooks, after all,” asked Stephens.

“They’ll do anything for money. They get half now and the rest when we get to our destination.”

“Okay then, let’s go meet the neighbors. Did you bring the pie?”

They both stood and walked along the river’s edge.

As they got nearer, Cowboy saw the two soldiers and grabbed his AK. He raised it at them. Gummy grabbed for his weapon and did the same.

Stephens was fast, he already had his CAR-15 at his shoulder before Gummy had gotten a lock on him.

Moore spoke in Vietnamese to them.

They answered.

“Lower your weapon, Stephens,” commanded Moore.

“Them first.”

Moore spoke to them again.

They responded.

“They would like you to do it first, Sergeant. We’ll be okay. Lower your rifle.”

Stephens did, very slowly.

Cowboy and Gummy placed their AKs down into the restful position by the chair.

Cowboy walked forward with his hand outstretched.

Moore shook it and said something to him with a smile.

The pirate smiled back, his teeth black. Then the pirate frowned.

Cowboy and the agent briefly looked at Stephens before they turned back to each other to speak. Moore removed American dollars from his pocket. Stephens didn’t have time to guess the

amount. It, however, looked substantial.

“Get the men, Sergeant. We start underway immediately.”

• • • • •

Once all the men arrived at the sampan, they started to board.

Stephens entered the boat first. He squatted and made it in under the low roof.

Most of the space in the sampan was taken up by junk; the boat was jam-packed with scavenged and looted trash. Empty Coca-Cola cases, rusted hubcaps, an old radio, two old TVs, one of which had a broken screen, mildewed books, some dead chickens hung from the its roof, an ice cube try, a bicycle with no wheels, an outboard motor, some ammo cases, a shotgun fastened to the wall, some American comics, superhero type, a US soldier’s helmet, and a small shrunken head.