Warren Murphy - Walking Wounded

"Not me," said Remo, shaking his head.

"They're gonna need you to save their raggedy butts," Youngblood whispered to Remo. "I carried 'em this far. I'm countin' on you gettin' them home."

"We're all goin' home," Remo shot back.

"I hear you," said Youngblood. And without another word he charged back to the tank. Its rumbling engine started up immediately.

The old T-54 rolled past them and Dick Youngblood shot them a lazy wave of the hand before he buttoned up the driver's hatch and sent the grinding machine sliding down to the beach.

"There goes a man," a voice said. "Amen. "

"Save the prayers for church," Remo barked, his eyes anxious. "Dick won't be able to buy us much time. We go in twos. Starting-"

The gunfire started up again. The sounds of bullets ricocheting wildly off plate metal came to their ears. "Now!" Remo said, pushing the first two off.

He watched as they worked down the tree line; running parallel with the T-54. They reached the water unseen and unhurt.

"Next!" Remo yelled.

And so it went. The first three teams got to the water while the Vietnamese peppered the T-54 with machinegun fire. By then Youngblood's tank was cannon-to-cannon with a heavier T-72.

"What does he do?" someone asked. Remo noticed it was one of the Amerasians, Nguyen.

It became immediately apparent what Youngblood was up to. When the T-54 cannon barrel rammed the heavier smoothbore, the dummy bore began to splinter. The tanks kept lurching at each other.

But out of the driver's hatch, Dick Youngblood arose like a genie from a lamp. He leapt to the other tank and popped its turret hatch, raking the interior with his AK-47.

Then he disappeared inside.

"That hulking sonovabitch," Boyette said in awe. Youngblood, obviously in command of the T-72, sent the cannon swiveling toward the remaining line of tanks. He began firing. Shells coughed out explosively. The concussions hurt their ears.

"Now!" Remo yelled, jumping to his feet. "Everybody!" They raced for the beach. There was so much noise and smoke and confusion that even if they were seen, they were a minor factor compared with the rampaging T-72. Remo made sure everyone got into the water before he turned to see about Youngblood.

Youngblood's tank was indistinguishable from the others. It was like bumper cars played with military equipment. Tanks rammed one another blindly. Men ran in all directions. The Vietnamese military had reverted to its fundamental mind-set: every man for himself.

Remo was about to plunge in when one of the American POW's began calling for help. Remo turned. It was Colletta. Too weak to swim, he was going under.

Remo hesitated momentarily, but in the end he had no choice. He plunged in after Colletta.

Gripping the man's chin in the accepted rescue headlock, Remo swam for the sub. All around him, the others were paddling for their lives, their weapons left behind.

Chiun's head bobbed up to one side.

"Take this guy, will you?" Remo asked him. Seawater squirted from Chiun's mouth.

"Why?"

"I've got to go back. Youngblood's still on the beach." Chiun looked to shore. Each time a shell or tank exploded, a ball of fire climbed heavenward like a raging fist and a wave of heat struck their faces.

"If your friend is there, he is lost."

"Take him!" Remo spat.

Reluctantly the Master of Sinanju took charge of the semiconscious Colletta. Remo struck back for shore. By the time he stepped onto the open sand, the conflict had settled down. Broken, flaming tanks lay strewn everywhere. The one surviving gunship sat like a broken dragonfly, abandoned and shot to pieces. It had never gotten off the ground.

Remo ran from tank to tank, avoiding gasoline fires, and kicked hatches open in a vain effort to find his friend.

"Dick!" he called. "Dick! Damn!"

Remo found Dick Youngblood half in and half out of the driver's hatch of one T-72, his face pressed to the deck.

Remo turned him over. His face was gray and bloodless, his eyes open as if seeing everything and nothing at the same time.

Frantically Remo pulled Youngblood onto the deck. He slammed his doubled fists over the man's heart. "Come on, come on," he said, applying mouth-to-mouth. Dick's breath smelled like a pulled tooth.

Youngblood suddenly coughed. His eyes fluttered. His lips moved weakly.

"Give it up, man," he whispered. "I'm gone."

"No!" Remo shouted. "I came all this way for you. Breathe!"

"Hey, give it a rest." Youngblood's voice was gentle.

"Phong died for you, dammit," Remo said, shaking him. "Don't you understand? I left you behind the first time. I won't do it again. This can't all have been for nothing."

"It ain't, man. It ain't, 'cause I'm dying free." Then the breath went out of Youngblood's body in a slow, deflating rush.

"Dick . . ." Remo said, hugging the man tightly. "You waited so long. So damn long. Why did it have to be you? Why couldn't it have been one of the others?"

When the tears stopped, Remo pulled the body of his friend free. Dick Youngblood's massive body, for all its bulk, felt strangely light in his arms-as if the best part of him had deserted the physical shell.

With unseeing eyes, Remo walked toward the surf. He. was oblivious of the sight of his fellow Americans climbing into the submarine's deck hatches. He didn't notice the man with the iron-gray hair and military bearing crawl out from under a disabled tank, pick up a fallen Kalashnikov rifle from the sand, and point it at his back.

"You!" the man called in heavily accented English.

"Go away," Remo said dully. "It's over."

"I order you to surrender."

"Who are you to order me to do anything?" Remo asked stonily.

"I am the defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam."

Remo stopped suddenly. An odd light leapt into his eyes.

"That means you're in charge of the Vietnamese military, doesn't it?"

"Yes. Now, drop that man. Quickly!"

Remo did as he was told. He placed Dick Youngblood's body on the sand with infinite care. He turned to face the man with the iron-gray hair.

"You speak English?" Remo asked.

"I participated in the Paris peace talks."

"Then you're just the man I want to talk to," Remo said, advancing grimly.

"I cannot allow you to live," cried the defense minister. And he opened up. Remo veered to one side, evading the bullet stream. The second burst was corrected for his new position, but he wasn't there either. The Kalashnikov ejected its last smoking cartridge. Remo let the fact that the weapon was empty sink into the man's astonished mind.

Then Remo took the rifle and reduced it to splinters and metal grit.

Remo jammed the defense minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam up against a decapitated tank. He rifled his pockets, finding a wallet. The wallet contained several folded sheets of paper.

"These will do," Remo said.

"What do you mean?" the defense minister sputtered.

"Can you write English as well as you speak it?"

"Perhaps. "

Remo scrounged through the man's pockets until he found a pen. He turned the man around and slapped the paper and pen onto the tank's flat superstructure. "Write," Remo ordered.

"What shall I write?"

"A surrender treaty. Unconditional surrender."

"I do not understand."

"You were part of the Paris talks. You signed a treaty there. This treaty will replace that one. The terms are simple. Unconditional surrender to the American forces. Me."

"Such a coerced document can mean nothing."

"Humor me," Remo said, forcing his finger into the small of the man's back, where it caused the lower vertebrae to grind together painfully. The defense minister gasped for breath. He began writing.

When he was done, he handed the scraps of paper to Remo with shaky hands. His eyes were stricken.