Warren Murphy - Walking Wounded

Chiun whispered and the elephant fell in behind the tank.

"Do not worry," Chiun said when the prisoners started to scramble for the front of the tank in fear. "He is on our side. I told him I would lead him to a nice place if he helped us."

"You can talk to elephants?" Remo asked.

"Mostly I listen. This is a very friendly elephant. I found him dragging a cannon. Peasant fighters were flogging him. I needed transportation because you denied me a ride in your tank, and dragging a cannon is a waste of a good elephant. So I liberated him."

"What's his name?"

"I call him Rambo."

"Don't you mean Dumbo?"

Chiun eyed Remo warily. "Are you certain your memory has not returned?"

"Why would it do a strange thing like that?" Remo asked innocently.

Chapter 21

The defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam put down the phone and walked back to the tactical table on which a plastic map of Southeast Asia lay flat.

Grimly he moved a black counter closer to the open sea. In a ragged line behind the counter, many red counters were strewn.

"They have a destination in mind," he told his top general, the only other man in the Hanoi operations room. "It is either a village or port. If they sought mere escape, they would have fled deeper into Cambodia, not back into Vietnam."

"A village or seaport on the Gulf of Thailand, obviously," General Trang said. "I will have the entire coast sealed off."

The defense minister shook his iron-gray head.

"No, we will let them reach the gulf. It may be that there are American rescue ships waiting off the coast."

"We could stop them before that, and wring the truth from their weak lips."

"These red counters," the defense minister said bitterly, "represent the latest Soviet military equipment. Modern tanks, Hind gunships, and self-propelled howitzers. This black counter is an old T-54 with a cannon that cannot even fire. Why do we move the black counter every hour, but every red counter we move into position stops dead?"

The general blinked. He wondered if the question was a rhetorical one. He decided to answer anyway.

"Because they have been destroyed, Comrade Defense Minister."

"Because they have been destroyer," the defense minister said woodenly. "Exactly. Everything we throw at them bogs down or falls from the sky. How is it possible?"

"I do not know."

"One tank. One American tourist. A handful of undernourished U.S. prisoners of war and an unknown number of mongrel bui doi armed with assault rifles and limited ammunition. Yet they win."

General Trang cleared his throat. "I am told they also have an elephant," he ventured lamely.

The defense minister raised a skeptical eyebrow. He shook his head silently. "This reminds me of the war."

"Which war?" the general asked reasonably.

"The war against the Americans."

"But we won that war."

"That is what worries me. We were the thorn in the side of the huge military machine. We expected to lose. And because we knew we would fail anyway, we kept fighting, for we had only the choice of victory or death."

"I do not follow, comrade."

"We beat the Americans for one fundamental reason. We cared more about winning than they did. But these," he said, tapping the black counter, "are not fighting for the glory of victory. They are fighting for their lives."

"But this time we are the huge military machine," General Trang protested.

"Yes. Exactly. That is what worries me. Summon a gunship to take me to the area. I will personally manage the ground campaign," he ordered. "If it is not too late," he added.

"But...but this is just a skirmish."

"So were Waterloo, Dien Bien Phu, and Khe Sanh." said the defense minister, picking up the ringing telephone with a distasteful expression, knowing that it would be more bad news. "The Tet offensive was a hundred skirmishes happening at once. None were decisive. In fact we lost most of those skirmishes. Yet it turned the tide against the Americans. I just hope we are not on the wrong side of this particular skirmish." He felt suddenly very old.

Remo sent the tank into the bush. Its tracks chewed up elephant grass until it reached a tree line. He braked and pulled himself out of the driver's cockpit.

"Gather up as much foliage as you can to cover the tank," he ordered.

"You heard the man," Dick Youngblood barked as he wriggled out of the turret. "Let's move, move, move. We ain't home yet."

The Amerasians got busy. Of the former prisoners of war, all but the ailing Colletta pitched in.

"You really kept up the discipline," Remo said admiringly as they broke branches and made a pile for the others to carry to the tank.

Youngblood cracked a wide grin. "You know it. When the last real officer died, morale was bad. That was when I turned into a real hardass. If I caught a man talking Vietnamese, I'd whip his raggedy ass. For a while it was rough on the men. I was pushing 'em one way and the gooks another."

"What happened?"

"Everybody found out I was meaner. The gooks started leanin' on me instead of the men, but I could take it. They'd starve me, but I was such a mother I wouldn't lose weight, just to spit them. They'd stick me in that ol' conex and when they'd come to get me out, I'd smile into their ugly faces and say thanks for the ride."

Remo grinned. "Same old Youngblood."

"Feel like Oldblood now, Remo. I've been holding out so long that now I can see freedom in sight, I just don't know if I have the strength to make it through the homestretch."

"Listen. We'll make it. Chiun will see to that."

"You got a whole new attitude toward ol' Uncle Ho now that we're on the loose."

"He should be catching up with us any minute," Remo said, looking around. "Listen, do me a favor. Stop calling me Remo."

"Why? It's your name, ain't it? Or did you forget that too?"

"I can't explain. And don't use the name in front of the men, either. You and Chiun are the only ones who know who I am. Let's keep it that way."

"Now, what the hell difference does that make?"

"A life-or-death difference. Just trust me."

"Okay, you're the man. Hey, don't this remind you of the time you stole that gook tank and ran it all the way to ... Now, what was the name of that little shithole hamlet?"

"Phuc Hu."

"Yeah. That's what we called it, all right. You know, rememberin' you drive that sucker in that day, with our side itching to blow you away thinkin' you was Charlie that was one memory that kept me going all these years. Funny what a man clings to when he's down to zero."

"I remember Khe Sanh a lot better."

"Yeah, Khe Sanh. It all changed after that, didn't it? And Tet. You remember Tet?"

"Yeah," Remo said, searching the road with troubled eyes. "I remember Tet."

They finished camouflaging the tank. The men began settling down. Remo set two Amerasians on sentry duty because they were fresher.

"Shit," Youngblood said, sitting down and putting his back against the grass-entangled treads. "Tet. Hey, you remember that cocksucker of a major we had at Khe Sanh? What's-his-name?"

"You mean Bauer?"

"Yeah. That was his name. Deke Bauer. Everyone hated him. Meanest sonovabitch I ever met. I used to lie awake in that conex and wonder whatever happened to him. Sometimes I'd make up grisly ways for him to buy it, just to pass the time."

"He died," Remo said distantly.

"Our side or theirs?"

"Neither. He bought it back in the world."

"The world. Man, I last saw the world when I was twenty. I'm over forty now. Nam sure took a big chunk of this old Leatherneck's life. Wonder if I can hack it back there now."

Youngblood suddenly looked up at Remo with skeptical eyes. "How'd you know Bauer bought it back in the world? I thought you couldn't remember nothing but Nam."