Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

“What, do you think we’re fucking idiots?” It was Stein who was walking now. He went right up to Walter’s back and said, “We know. We know.” Walter’s head was spinning. He had the look of a man about to pass out. The rules of the game were shifting. “Now sit,” said Stein.

There is no such place as Na Trang and no one knew that better than Walter. But he remembered it. He’d spent the last thirty years trying to forget, but he remembered it. They dropped him by rope because they were too scared to put the helicopter on the ground. Too many warrant officers had touched down, never to rise again. As he reached for the rope, the crew looked at him in a way that Walter knew meant they never expected to see him again. He was less than an hour from a little village, no more than a collection of shacks and huts on the outskirts of a vast rice field. The map they gave to Walter was the only one this place appeared on. Not even captured VC maps showed anything here. Perhaps two or three hundred people lived and worked in what Headquarters had named Na Trang. They chose the name because it closely resembled the sound of a popular Vietnamese slang for “shithole.” Another helicopter had gone down in this area the day before. The crew was killed except the pilot, who suffered injuries to his legs, but had survived and radioed his condition and location back to base. Then communications were lost. Na Trang, that shithole of a village in the middle of fucking nowhere, was the only place a captured American who couldn’t walk could be taken. Walter’s job was to locate him and bring him back. Nobody told him how to do it, just do it.

Crawling through the wet rice paddies, ducking down under the water whenever he thought he heard someone, Walter approached the tiny village at dusk. He carried his rifle, his bayonet, a 45-caliber sidearm, and eight grenades. His face and hands were covered in charcoal. The nearest he could get to the shacks themselves was about fifty yards beyond a small hut standing between him and the center of the village. As he lay in the wet rice-it sure seemed like weeds to him-he saw four young men, one in uniform, all armed with rifles. They emerged from one shack, stood in the dirt path outside, talking, and then three of them seemed to be getting instructions from the one in uniform, who turned and walked away, leaving them standing there. The three went back into the shack. A few minutes later, Walter saw the uniformed soldier return, accompanied by another soldier also in uniform. They entered the shack together. None of the other three had left. There were at least five men in there now. The American was undoubtedly there too. The sun was almost completely gone, Walter’s vision already compromised. He decided to stay put. No one was looking for him, and with nightfall nobody seemed likely to stumble upon him. He didn’t smoke and had no fear of being discovered. He’d adjusted to the water. He had brought a Milky Way bar with him and pulled it out of the small pack he wore on his back. He was careful to put the empty wrapper in his pocket.

The scream was so loud Walter thought it was right next to him. It was followed by another, and then a third. The horror increased in each one. The anguish and pain subsided slowly to a moan. He heard choking sobs. Two or three voices, all speaking Vietnamese, were yelling at the same time. More screams, and finally a moan that was endless. He couldn’t lie there any longer. Clearly the man he was looking for was inside being brutalized. God only knows what they were doing to him. Walter scrambled out of the rice paddy. The small hut fifty yards away stood between him and any attempt to rescue the downed pilot. Walter looked, but there was no way around it. He would have to sneak past it. There were people living there. He saw light inside and the smoke from a cooking fire rising from the top of the roof. He crawled quietly, passing only a few feet from the hut. Whoever lived there was still inside. The awful moaning ahead never stopped. And then more bloodcurdling screams. Now they too were unending. He had to hurry. He took a big chance. He ran the last twenty yards. The screams and the moaning so close to him were more than he could stand. Walter looked through the loosely attached walls of thatched reeds and large, heavy leaves. He could not believe what he saw. The American, blonde, in his mid-twenties at most, lay on a wooden table. He was naked. Both legs were mangled at the knees, crushed in the crash of his aircraft. A knife was embedded in the table and stuck through his balls. Half his penis had been cut off. It lay to the side, still bleeding. Two of the men were slicing the fingers off at the first joint. The fingernails had already been torn out. Another was doing the same to the American’s toes. The uniformed soldier, the last one to have joined the group, was actually skinning the man alive. He made long, thin cuts across the abdomen, and peeled the skin away as if he were cleaning fish. The longer the American remained conscious the more horrific his ordeal and the more gruesome his death. Walter could not imagine what sort of sanity could possibly remain in the man’s brain. There was no way he could save the pilot, not even if he killed the five men and carried him away. The captured American would just as certainly bleed to death being carried by Walter as he would at the hands of his captors.

Walter did what he thought to be the most humane thing possible. He tossed a grenade through the open window. The explosion killed the American and the five Vietnamese. It blew the hut to pieces and started a small fire. Walter hit the ground in anticipation of the blast. Now he jumped to his feet and entered the smoking rubble. He grabbed a severed foot, knowing it was the pilot’s because the toenails had been pulled out. He found the stub of a hand, a piece of skull, half an ear, each one obviously from a white man. He shoved the body parts into his backpack. Walter heard the village come to life. A fire had begun just behind the now demolished shack. People were running toward it. He removed two more grenades from his belt, pulled the pins, and threw each of them as far as he could into the darkness in opposite directions. Two explosions rattled the night. More fire. More screams. More casualties. Now people were racing in all directions, some ducking behind huts, others fleeing toward the rice fields. Voices everywhere, all yelling in Vietnamese. Walter understood nothing. He needed to deflect their attention to make his escape. He spotted the American’s dog tags and reached to pick them up. A piece of skull with blonde hair spared by the flames lay next to them. He put both in his backpack.

Backing away from the village, the same way he had entered it, Walter had to pass by the outlying hut again. This time he could not move unnoticed. The family living there was standing outside, huddled together in fear, watching the chaos from a distance. There was no way for Walter to crawl past them. He decided the safest passage was the most direct. He moved out of the shadows and began walking slowly, but at a steady gait. He was only a few feet away when he could see them and they could see him. A man, a woman, a much older woman, and two small children looked straight at him. At that moment they realized what and who had approached their home. Walter returned their stare. Then, the man-Walter could not be certain how old he was-dashed into the hut. Instantly, he reappeared, holding a rifle he pointed at Walter. And just as quickly Walter shot him. The old woman rushed at Walter, her high-pitched scream barely audible through her tears. She lunged at him, grabbing his shirt and tearing the top button off. Walter shot her and she fell to the ground. The younger woman, undoubtedly the children’s mother, drew her children to her. They held tightly to her side and she laid a hand on the head of each. All three were weeping. Walter stood there, looking at them, unsure what to do next. The shots he fired gave him away, and he could hear the villagers behind him. He had to go quickly. They would catch up to him in less than a minute. Which direction should he go? This way? That way? Whichever way he chose, this mother and her children would tell the others. He pushed them into the hut. They disappeared in the darkness, but he heard them. He heard the children crying and the mother trying to calm her babies. It may have been a strange language, but Walter knew she was comforting them, telling them, “It’ll be alright. It’ll be alright.” He tossed the grenade into the hut and began running. The explosion was the most violent thing he had ever heard, much louder than its actual sound. It was the sound of a mother and her children being attacked by millions of tiny pieces of sharp metal, a shower of death. He did not stop and he did not turn around. He navigated the rice paddies and made it into the jungle on the other side. The search for him was relentless. He evaded soldiers and villagers day after day, hiding in empty caves, climbing trees, taking cover in leafy swamps. He ate insects when his meager rations were used up. Three times he stole food, again picking on the most remote hut farthest from its village. The first of these huts was empty and he walked off with enough to eat for almost a week. The other two times he killed the occupants and took their food. Once he sneaked up behind a teenage boy who had lost his right leg at the knee. He cut his throat. The last time he beat an old man and his wife to death with the butt of his rifle. He needed to eat to live. On the twentieth day since being lowered into the high grass on a rope, he spotted a patrol of American soldiers. He didn’t have the slightest idea where he was, but he knew he had made it back safely. The odor from his backpack sickened the soldiers who rescued him, but he refused to take it off until he could deliver its contents to Headquarters. Walter’s report described everything that happened to him, down to the smallest detail. It made difficult reading for some. There were others who found it thrilling. All those who read it looked at Walter Sherman with a mixture of awe and fear. And there were the rumors. In time, Walter heard them all. He never believed them, but could not totally dismiss them. He’d been gone three weeks. In Vietnam that’s as good as forever. Had officers at Headquarters really placed bets on whether or not he would return? Had members of his own unit done the same? After the first week, had some demanded payment? When the Colonel smiled and promoted him to sergeant, was he counting his money?