P. O. W. (2 page)

“Sir! I have been working on the American soldier, but he has been very stubborn during interrogations.”

“You mean to tell me that you cannot break one seventeen-year-old soldier?” The senior officer’s voice was filled with contempt.
“Should I send a
professional
officer to your camp to
help
?”

“No sir! I am sure that I can break the soldier and get the information we need!”

“If the devices our friend Mohammed James showed us had been removed
professionally
, we wouldn’t still be waiting!” The old intelligence officer was angry with the woman because she had allowed the six seismic-intrusion
detectors to be moved that the American named James had shown them before checking to see if they had been booby-trapped.
All of the devices had special tilt mechanisms in them, so that once they had been implanted and turned on, they couldn’t
be moved without a small explosive charge destroying the insides of the green boxes. “I want the other six sensors found before
the end of this week! Do you understand me, Lieutenant?”

“Yes sir!”

“We have already lost over five hundred replacements because of those sensors, as well as sixty trucks that cannot be replaced!”
The officer’s voice was rising in anger. “If James didn’t know about the destruction devices, I am sure this other American
doesn’t know about them either!”

“Sir… he won’t talk about anything! He won’t even confirm his
name
!”

“Get him to talk! Or you’ll be back in the field as an intelligence officer at Cu Chi!” The telephone went dead.

She placed the receiver back in its cradle and went over to the open window that was covered with shutters to blot out the
light at night and to keep out the rain during the monsoons. She knew that she had to do something fast about Spencer Barnett,
for two reasons: her honor, and because she knew that she couldn’t survive living underground in the tunnels at Cu Chi. There
you could live for six months underground without ever coming to the surface. She hated tunnels, and the intelligence officer
at division knew that about her.

“Sergeant!” She screamed the word through the open window. A small, chubby man in his late fifties popped into her office.
He was a well-decorated NCO and had fought in some of the great battles for independence, including Dien Bien Phu. The years,
plus being wounded eight times, had forced him to serve in a noncombatant role, and he was very unhappy.

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

“I want a detail platoon ready to depart tomorrow at dawn.” She turned her back on the sergeant. “Have them bring the fish
nets and the large rice bags from my office.”

“Do you want them to forage again this week?” The sergeant was slightly puzzled, because they had just foraged from two smaller
Montagnard villages up the valley, and there was plenty of fresh meat in the village for the camp cadre.

“No… we are going hunting for
wild
game.” She smiled and added an afterthought. “Make sure Dong Bec is a member of the detail. He was a professional trapper
back home, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, Lieutenant. He says that he’s even trapped tigers.” The sergeant’s eyebrows rose slightly.

“Good! Make sure they are ready!” She left her office and strolled over to the hooch where the American lived with his Montagnard
girlfriend.

The water was cold, but not as cold as her burrow. She took her time entering the water and swam just under the surface with
only her head above water. A view from directly overhead made her look as if she were floating in the air.

The river water was crystal clear. A large garfish darted out of her way and hid under a rock overhang until she had passed.
The river narrowed between two flat boulders and formed a short rapids that forced her to take to the land for a short crawl
of less than a hundred meters before the river widened again and formed a series of large, deep pools. There her favorite
basking place was on the surface of a house-sized flat rock, which was positioned near the edge of the river where it caught
the earliest rays of the morning sun. She approached her rock from the river and took her time bringing all of her thirty-six
feet of coils up on the dry stone.

Lieutenant Van Pao smiled. She was on time as usual. A shiver rippled down the NVA lieutenant’s spine. The python was even
larger close up than she had anticipated. One of the soldiers in hiding stifled a scream and tried backing up to get away
from the huge reptile. None of the NVA platoon had been told
what
they were going to capture and take back to the camp. The python was absolutely huge, and the soldier was small for even
a Vietnamese. The cold barrel of a pistol against the back of his head made him reconsider leaving his place in the semicircle
that had been formed before the large rock. The fish nets had been spread out behind the rock just in case they were needed.
Now that the lieutenant saw the snake up close, she wondered if the fine nets would be effective.

Private Dong Bec swallowed hard. He had trapped many animals for zoos and private citizens during his life, but he had never
even heard about a reticulated python as big as the snake on the rock. He had traveled fifty miles as a young boy to see a
python that had been captured in the rice fields west of Hanoi, but that snake had been only twenty-one feet long and much
skinnier than the one he was looking at. The wet skin contrasting against the dry rock made her look even
bigger
. He knew the fish nets wouldn’t slow her down even a second if she decided on going back into the river. The only way to
capture her would be to have the whole platoon grab her and stretch her out so that she couldn’t use her coils.

Lieutenant Van Pao caught Dong Bec’s attention and nodded for him to start moving his capture team in from his side of the
rock.

She flicked out her tongue and sensed the air. A pungent ammonia odor forced her to clean her tongue rapidly and sense the
air again. She had never sensed the ammonia odor of living animals as strongly as she was now experiencing. One time she had
crawled into a herd of wild pigs, and an ammonia odor had reached her when several of the pigs urinated at the same time,
but this was much stronger. She turned her head and sensed the upriver direction, and the same odor reached her. She raised
her football-sized brain cavity and sensed with her tongue the green jungle wall behind her, and again the strong ammonia
odor. The only direction that was free of the smell was directly over the river. She started to slowly slide toward the river,
not alarmed, just very cautious because of the new smell.

Dong Bec saw her start to move toward the water and knew that once she had even a portion of her mass in the fast-moving river,
she’d be free. It would be suicide to get into the water with her; once she decided to, she could move very fast. He yelled
for the rest of the platoon to follow and ran out on the warm rock in his bare feet.

She sensed the vibrations but ignored the threat of the small beast running toward her on her rock. She continued slipping
toward the water, not really in a hurry, just moving in that direction with the majority of her mass still coiled in a large,
three-foot-high pile.

Dong Bec reached down and grabbed her head right behind her jaws. He had underestimated the effect the water had on her hide,
and his hands slipped as she flexed her muscles and pulled three feet of her body through his grip before he realized what
was happening. She turned her head and instantly bit down on the NVA soldier’s forearm.

Dong Bec screamed.

Lieutenant Van Pao saw what was happening and yelled for the rest of the platoon to run and assist the trapper, who was himself
rapidly becoming trapped. The python, uncoiling from her sun basking, thrashed her coils against the soldier. She had the
bite she needed on her prey, and now it was only a matter of starting to coil around it and remove the air from the ammonia-reeking
animal’s lungs.

“Help him!” The lieutenant screamed. She saw the whole platoon standing in shock, watching the snake coil around their comrade.
Lieutenant Van Pao removed her pistol from its holster at her side and fired a round over their heads. “I will start shooting
to kill!”

She meant every word. She was not going to report back to Division that she had lost a man to a snake that she had been trying
to capture.

Dong Bec screamed again, but this time it came from the very pit of his stomach as he felt the first coil wrap around his
leg and cold water touch his ankle. The python was pushing him into the river.

The platoon reacted to the wrenching scream and attacked the snake in unison. The platoon sergeant found her tail and started
pulling back on it, and slowly they had enough of her stretched out so that seven men could grab hold and lift ten feet of
her off the rock. Too late, she realized what was happening to her, and before she could release her prey and escape, another
ten feet of her body was lifted up in a nearly straight line and held off the rock by the ammonia-scented creatures. She was
losing her traction; there was nothing to pull against.

Dong Bec fell down on the rock, bleeding profusely from his left forearm. He was mumbling a Buddhist prayer that he had not
recited since he had become a Communist.

“Good! You have her!” Lieutenant Van Pao ran over to the line of soldiers and smiled.

“Right now I don’t know who has who, Lieutenant!” The platoon sergeant released his hold on the python’s tail, and immediately
the short, two-foot length tried wrapping itself around the next man in line, whose eyes bulged in fright.

“Hold on!” Van Pao said, as she looked around for the large burlap rice bags they had brought along to put the snake in. She
had had two of the bags sewn together and double lined, just in case. The lieutenant was very glad for this extra precaution
now that she saw how big the python was close up.

The platoon eased the snake into the sack slowly, ensuring that the head stayed inside the dark bag. They didn’t need to worry,
because the python had mistaken the sack for a burrow and was cooperating, thinking that she was escaping from them.

“Excellent!” Lieutenant Van Pao was thrilled. “Tie the sack shut and cut a sturdy bamboo pole for carrying her back to camp!”

The lieutenant took a seat on the warm rock and lit up a Russian cigarette. She noticed that her hands were shaking when she
held the match against the dry tobacco.

The platoon sergeant and the platoon medic were helping Dong Bec. The medic was bandaging his arm where the python had left
rows of teeth marks that would leave deep, permanent scars. The platoon sergeant had removed Dong Bec’s shorts and was rinsing
them out in the river. The soldier had defecated and urinated during his struggle with the monstrous reptile.

Lieutenant Van Pao smiled and then took a long drag from her cigarette. She now had a tool that could be put to very good
use in her business.

Colonel Garibaldi and Corporal Barnett had been locked up in their bamboo cages for the night when the NVA hunting party returned
to the compound. The Americans were kept in individual cages, while the more numerous South Vietnamese and Montagnard CIDG
prisoners were kept chained up in one of the new longhouses. The small POW camp held only the two American prisoners, but
it had room for two more. Colonel Garibaldi’s weapons systems officer had been held in the cage across from Barnett until
he had died the month before from malaria, and James had spent his first and only night in the cage to the left of Barnett’s.
The new cage had been built in the exact center of the small American area and was no farther than ten feet from any of the
POWs.

Lieutenant Van Pao led the detail carrying their cargo. There were three NVA soldiers at each end of the sagging bamboo pole.
Barnett watched and could see that the load they were carrying was heavy. Van Pao stopped in front of the low cage they had
just finished building and spoke in rapid Vietnamese to the detail. Two soldiers hopped up on top of the cage and untied the
trap door, while the rest of the detail struggled to lift the large rice sack high enough to clear the top of the cage. Barnett
smiled as he watched the soldiers struggle. The cargo shifted and moved inside of the sack, which made it even more difficult
to handle. As Lieutenant Van Pao glanced over at Barnett and caught him smiling, she flashed a look of pure hate at the American
and screamed at her soldiers to hurry up. The sack had finally been placed on top of the cage and the tied end positioned
over the open trap door when Private Dong Bec climbed up on the structure, holding a bamboo rod with his good arm. Beaming
with pride, he carried his bandaged arm like a baton of honor. He would be the hero for a couple of days in the camp with
the rest of the NVA soldiers. Dong Bec loosened the strings that held the sack shut and directed the opening of the bag down
into the cage.

Sensing the fresh air, she moved her head out from the safety of her coils and started crawling out of the uncomfortable burrow.

Garibaldi’s and Barnett’s lungs stopped functioning at exactly the same instant. It looked as if the snake would never stop
coming out of the rice sack. She was circling the cage, looking for an opening to escape. Garibaldi had estimated when he
was building the cage that it was about fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. Barnett had commented on its chest-high height,
and now they knew why; it had been built especially for the python.

“Do you like my new pet?” Lieutenant Van Pao suppressed a giggle. “Well, Spencer Barnett… Do you like my pet?”

Spencer heard his own voice answer the woman. “Nice… real nice, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

“I
am
, Spencer…. I
love
snakes.” She laid her hand against the side of the cage where the snake was circling and tapped the bamboo with her blunt
fingernail. “You might have a chance to meet her… very soon.”

Colonel Garibaldi shuddered. He knew what Sweet Bitch had in the back of her mind. She had interrogated him enough for him
to understand her level of reasoning.