Court Martial (26 page)

“Damn you!”
James was livid over being tricked and scared by a rotting tree.

Spencer heard the rounds. He paused and thought hard. He was sure that James had fired eight rounds from the Army-issue .45
caliber pistol. The clip held only eight rounds, so unless James had taken extra ammo from the MP, the gun was empty.

Barnett used the echoes from the rounds to locate James’s position in the swamp, and he smiled. James was slightly to his
left rear, exactly where he wanted him. He would be far enough ahead to cut to his left in a few meters and ambush James.

The tracking dogs sniffed Spencer’s T-shirt and bayed. They wanted to get to work. Woods reached over and tried taking the
M-16 out of the hands of one of the infantrymen standing nearby.

“Hey! Man!. you try that again and I’ll blow your ass away!” The paratrooper wasn’t about to part with his weapon.

“Trooper, give him your rifle,” Major General Koch’s voice left no room for argument, “and your web gear.”

“Yes sir.” The paratrooper obeyed.

Woods took the gear. “Thanks… That’s my buddy out there and I have to help.” His voice was apologetic.

“No problem, as long as the general said so.” The paratrooper wasn’t going to take on a general, and he was happy as long
as his honor wasn’t fucked with.

The dog handlers unleashed the first two hounds, who shot around to the back of the building and paused only for a couple
of seconds before they ran over to the Cyclone fence and started baying next to the pole and the disturbed concertina wire.

“They crossed the fence here.” The lead MP waved for an engineer holding a pair of bolt cutters to come over and cut a hole
through the fence. They weren’t going to waste any time circling the whole camp and then having to walk a couple of miles
through the swamp just to reach the same place.

Woods paused as he slipped through the hole in the fence and looked back at the Army ambulance that was loading up Sergeant
Arnason’s body. He blinked back his tears. There would be plenty of time later to cry. Right now he was going to hunt down
and kill James, and God help the man if anything happened to Spencer.

* * *

Spencer paused to listen. The swamp to his left had become quiet. He could hear insects and frogs to his right and behind
him, but the area immediately surrounding him and to his left rear was quiet. He was sure that James was far enough to his
left rear for him to cut over and get ahead of him.

James had slowed his pace. He was getting very tired. He stopped to rest in an open, sunlit spot on the ground and swatted
at a horde of mosquitoes circling his head. The loud sound of a semitruck filled the swamp. James’s head snapped around to
face the sound. He smiled and jumped up on his feet. He
was
within a few hundred meters of a road. The sound of the semi gave him renewed strength and he started running in the direction
the sound of the truck had come from. James ran up against a solid barrier of brush and thick grass that bordered the wide
ditch running parallel to the raised highway. He paused and looked both ways and saw that the thick band of vegetation went
in both directions. If he wanted to reach the highway, he would have to break through the brush and wade through the ditch.
The sound of a car passing by on the highway only a few meters away made up James’s mind for him. He was only a short distance
from the road.

Spencer broke out of the brush and saw James’s muddy wet tracks on the pine needles. He looked in the direction the footprints
pointed and realized that he had just missed him. He didn’t allow himself the luxury of becoming angry. Spencer was hunting
and he had all his energy concentrated on the spoor of his prey. He searched the area for an ambush and he crouched low to
the ground before moving out after James.

The brush was so thick that James couldn’t see his feet. He felt the warm water flow over the tops of his low quarter military
shoes and realized that he was nearing the flood ditch. He pushed aside the brush and saw the embankment of the highway on
the other side of the twenty-foot-wide ditch. He figured that it would be deep and he would have to swim a couple of strokes,
but that wouldn’t slow him down now that he was so close. James turned his head to look down the ditch but was too late to
prevent the coiled six-foot-long cottonmouth from defending its territory from the intruder. It slipped off the log it had
been sunning itself on and swam toward the creature who had disturbed its rest.

James saw the huge snake and realized that he could never make it back to dry land before the creature reached him. He locked
in on the gleaming eyes as the cottonmouth swam with its head held high above the water.

“Get the fuck away from me!” James pointed his pistol at the snake and pulled the trigger. The click sounded louder in James’s
ears than it actually was. He screamed and threw the pistol at the reptile. It landed a foot in front of the snake and only
made the huge snake madder. It opened its mouth and showed James why it was called a cottonmouth.

Spencer heard James’s scream.

The snake bit into James’s leg three inches above his knee
.
James could feel the hot fluid pumping into his flesh. He used his fist to hit the snake’s head but succeeded only in pushing
more of the deadly venom out of the snake’s glands.

Spencer arrived just in time to see the monster snake release its hold on James and swim downstream to another log to finish
its sunbathing without being disturbed.

James saw Spencer approaching.
“Help me! Please help me!”
He thrashed the water.

Spencer stopped on the edge of the ditch and watched James struggle through the shallow ditch over to the embankment. The
water had looked deeper than it actually was. Spencer looked for the snake before crossing after James. He found the Death
Angel lying alongside the asphalt road, breathing heavily.

“Man! Put a tourniquet on my leg! I can feel the poison burning!”

Spencer dropped down in a Vietnamese squat and watched James struggling with his pants leg. He finally gave up and unbuckled
his pants. He pulled the black web belt free of its loops and shoved his pants down below his knees. Spencer could see the
swelling puncture marks of the cottonmouth’s fangs. A little excess venom oozed out of the holes.

“Help me!”
James screamed.

Spencer watched.

A car drove past and braked hard, leaving rubber streaks on the hot asphalt. The driver threw the car into reverse and veered
off to the side of the highway. He jumped from his car and ran over to where James lay screaming.

“What happened?” He looked first at James and at Spencer, who squatted there watching James die.

“Snakebite! Please help me!”
James grabbed the man’s leg.

“Sure, son....
Let me back my car over here and I’ll get you to a hospital.”

“Leave him be.” Spencer’s voice carried so much threatening hate that the man felt a cold rush along his spine.

“Are you crazy?” He felt fear.

“Leave… him… be.”

The man stumbled back toward his car. “I’m going to get the sheriff!” He threw it in gear and drove off down the highway.

“Come back! Don’t leave me!”
James screamed after the disappearing car. He rolled over onto his stomach and touched the hot road. “Oh! Help me…”

A shudder rippled through James’s body. The large dose of venom had started reaching his heart. He opened and closed his mouth
in an involuntary muscle contraction.

Spencer remained squatting there, staring at James. He heard the sound of dogs baying back in the swamp and turned his head
slightly toward the ditch. He saw the fat six-foot cottonmouth curled up in the crook of a huge log and stood up with a handful
of small rocks he had picked up from the side of the road.

“Git!” Spencer threw a rock at the snake. It landed about a foot in front of the log. The cottonmouth raised its head off
its coils and stuck out its tongue to sense the air. Spencer threw another rock and it bounced off a small branch on the log.
The vibration from the rock got the snake moving into the water. It started swimming toward Spencer. He threw another rock
in front of the reptile and it changed direction.

“You aren’t very smart for as big as you are!” Spencer chucked a couple of more rocks at the retreating cottonmouth.

The first dog broke through the underbrush and entered the water. She swam directly over to the side of the ditch Spencer
was on and crawled out. She took one long sniff of Spencer, threw back her head, and bayed.

Spencer patted his leg. “Come here, girl.” He made a clicking noise with his tongue. The hound stopped baying and nuzzled
his head. Spencer looked over at James and saw that he was going into convulsions.

The brush parted and Woods broke through the undergrowth with his M-16 held ready to fire. Sweat streaked his face and saturated
his khaki uniform. He had stayed behind the dogs and was a good three hundred meters ahead of the rest of the patrol.

“Yo… David… up here.” Spencer waved to his teammate.

“You all right?” Woods gasped for breath.

“Yeah. Hurry up or you’ll miss it!” Spencer waved for Woods to run.

“Shit! I’m fucking dead!”

“Then you won’t feel the pain. Hurry up!” Spencer squatted again and scratched the dog behind her ears. She moaned with the
pleasure the human hand brought her.

Woods struggled up the steep bank and saw James lying next to the road. “What happened?”

“Snakebite.” Spencer nodded downstream at the still-visible cottonmouth swimming slowly away.

James gagged and vomited.

“Shouldn’t we do something for him, Spence?” Woods didn’t like just watching and doing nothing, even for James.

“I am.” Spence smiled. “I’m watching him die an
easy
death.” He reached over and pulled a stem off a clump of wild grass and carefully cleaned it before slipping it between his
teeth.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Well the trial is over and things are pretty much getting back to normal. Spence is fine and will be heading back with me.

You know sometimes things really got a little hairy, but we always made it through, and now that Spence and I are back together
the Viet Cong better watch out.

Your loving son,

David

With good training, luck, and raw courage you could survive the killing zones—but nobody can take away the scars, or prepare
you for “The World.” Spencer Barnett had lived through a hellish NVA torture chamber despite the active collaboration of white-hater
Mohammed James. Now James is standing trial in the States—and Barnett, struggling for his sanity, is the star witness against
him. David Woods into a different kind of battle. A bloodthirsty black supremacist group has infiltrated the military base.
They’re out to free Mohammed James—and kill their way to glory.

From the heartland of America to the heart of war, they were the friends, the enemies, and the true heroes of the place called
“NAM”

COURT-MARTIAL

SURVIVOR OF NAM #4