Afterburn (4 page)

He'd be in the air another thirty seconds. He turned his beeper off to conserve the battery, give the North Vietnamese a harder time tracking him, if they were around. A low haze hung over the forest, which rose toward him, a green floor. He maneuvered his parachute toward a knoll that looked as if it had recently taken some fire; perhaps RESCAP knew the terrain. In a few minutes Blue flight would hook up with the KC-135 refueling tankers that circled in a racetrack oval in a safe area, then would return to establish radio contact. A-1 Skyraiders and a RESCAP AC-47 would come in for flak suppression, if there was any, while a chopper would drop straight down on the knoll to pick him up. Sometimes it worked, other times went wrong. A pilot's beeper failed, the sky got dark, chopper failure, navigation error, heavy ground fire.

The wind ripped at his parachute lines. Under his feet the trees became distinct. No fire. He tensed and relaxed his calves, awaiting the shock of the ground. The knoll came up quickly now, and he picked out a place to hide the parachute. Then, toward the west, the sun glimmering off their rifles, he saw a Vietcong patrol cutting through ground vegetation. They didn't want just him, they wanted to position themselves for a flak trap on the rescue attempt. Rescue pilots were taught to troll for fire to expose ground forces. But the VC were capable of unholy restraint, willing to use a dead pilot's beeper to draw a rescue attempt and then wait out a cautionary rocket attack by the Americans. Now one of the VC watched him with binoculars and told the others which direction to go.

He landed, rolled, stood up. He tore off his helmet but couldn't remove the cumbersome G suit without staying in the open for a minute, too dangerous to do. He stepped out of his parachute and ran to the edge of the knoll, pulling the chute with him. He found a low place covered with vines and wriggled inside, then sat sweating in the leaves and insect hum. He checked his flight watch, took the safety off his pistol. Either the patrol had encountered difficulty hacking through the underbrush or it was waiting for the rescue effort. He spied a blackened crater ten yards away. Probably caused by a stray rocket or mortar round and better cover in a firefight—better, anyway, than vines and leaves. He scrambled forward on his hands and knees over blackened roots, rolled into the hole.

It contained a charred corpse, eyes burnt out, face cooked tight over the skull. Judging by the sandals, VC. Hey, buddy, he thought, fuck you. The air was hot. So quiet. It seemed he could just stand up and wait. He checked his watch again. Larry. Larry's wife. The arrival of the Air Force sedan outside the base housing, the two officers easing slowly from the car—the wives knew what that meant. Ellie would whisper, "Oh no." Then he saw the Phantoms high up in the sky. He turned on his beeper. They would establish a circling pattern at about six thousand feet and direct the slower craft to the knoll. The RESCAP prop plane came grinding over the jungle, an ugly, blunt-nosed piece of machinery. It would establish a tight orbit at about two thousand feet and be the middle tier of the rescue operation.

A low rumble over the earth, choppers. He'd have to show himself. At that moment the RESCAP gunship started to circle, continuously firing its 20-millimeter cannons. He put his head against the burnt soil and counted to thirty. The two airmobile choppers, big green insects, rose above the edge of the forest. Took a certain kind of guts to fly air rescue. The door gunners sat behind their miniguns. He pulled on his helmet, jumped out of the hole, and ran to the middle of the clearing. One of the choppers dropped over the trees and lifted its nose, readying to land.

From the other side of the clearing came a flash. A shadow movement in the green foliage. One of the door gunners lurched backward, clutching his neck. The chopper lifted up to suppress the ground fire. He retreated to the edge of the jungle. The choppers gained altitude, under steady fire from the Vietcong, then banked back toward the clearing, machine guns and pod rockets blasting. They raked the other side of the clearing. The RESCAP plane lifted up. A flight of A-1 Skyraiders dropped low in front of him and began to release a string of rockets. They came right at him, buzzed within forty yards on either side. The explosions caught up—thumping the air. He lay against the earth, his head buffeted by the shock waves. The Skyraiders lifted up, tipping their wings. Smoke rose from the jungle. Time to move. He couldn't believe the Vietcong had survived.

One chopper descended and the other circled the clearing at high speed, door gunner firing. He ran through the flattened elephant grass toward the first chopper as it hovered waist-high off the ground. The door gunner aimed the gun, then motioned him to duck. Rounds whipped over his head. He scrambled forward on hands and knees, thirty yards to go. Fire came from all directions, rounds ping-pocking the side of the chopper. He glanced back to see a Vietcong soldier step forward from the jungle with a rocket-powered grenade launcher on his shoulder. The chopper's gunner signaled to the pilot to lift up. Now he stood up to run the last fifteen yards. Something whistled by him and fire billowed out of the chopper, blowing the pilot door open, shattering the windscreen. He fell to his knees. The chopper blades slowed in a ball of flame and the whole rig sagged to the ground. Burning men leapt to the grass and flailed about. The heat pushed against him and he scrambled away from the fire. Then the chopper's gas tanks exploded and he was slapped to the ground, a burning wheel landing next to him.

He lay still. He waited.

Automatic rifle fire. The screaming of men. The shots slowed. Voices searching. He assumed a dead position. Two more shots,
pop-pop
. Voices closer. Kill me now. I'm sorry, Ellie. I thought I was going to be okay. I love you, Ben. I love you, Julia. Voices in the grass. Something grabbed his ankles and turned him over. Their eyes met. Then they were clubbing him with their rifles, he knew that.

SURFACING FROM A DARK DEPTH.
Light refracted, sound diffused. He discovered his own existence. Then he felt the pain, something wrong with his back. He opened his eyes to see that he sat inside a low hootch on a wooden crate, hands bound tightly in front of him. His survival vest and gun were gone. His head felt cottony. A North Vietnamese officer stood studying a slim volume. An interpreter, a short man with a happy expression, watched. The officer looked up, then read a few sentences aloud and the interpreter translated: "You never return to United State, you must understand this now. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam fight for fifty year. It is nothing, we fight for independence two thousand year. Mongolian, Japanese, French, American, you see, it no matter. Your United State government do not understand, we see. So, for you no go back. Captain Charles Ravich, you war criminal. I say to you, if you cooperate with question, you may live with peace. If you say no, you receive some punishment. Maybe it hurt. Your forces give much death to our comrades. We are intelligent people. You do not know us. We are good people. We do not ask you to make this decision very fastly. We know you make ideological change to us. We know you trained to not do, to resist. I say to you, Charles Ravich, consider what your heart say, not what United State say. You understan?"

There was some discussion in Vietnamese.

"What kind of jet you fly?"

In a near-whisper he said his name, rank, and serial number.

"We have seen the tag on your neck, yes. I ask what jet?"

He repeated himself.

"The jet. Say it."

"No." He looked at the interpreter. If they thought he would cooperate, they had the wrong guy. "I will not."

"We will wait some time, Charles Ravich. You think. Maybe think where you are now." The officer left. The question of the plane was only a beginning. They knew it was an F-4.

"Now," the interpreter said. "You talk soon."

A soldier brought him water and a pasty, fibrous gruel—mashed rice and bamboo sprouts. The soldier motioned him to eat, which he did, hungrily, with his hands.

Then he felt clearer. He knew where he was. His job was to endure all physical and psychological torture until he lost either his mind or his life. Resist making propaganda statements. When no longer able to withhold information, he'd lie or divulge innocuous data. Hard to judge the sophistication level. Some of the North Vietnamese had studied in French educational systems, some were opportunists, others Communist zealots. Tell them your parents were Iowa pig farmers. Where was he? Just north of the DMZ? Eastern Laos? Somewhere a North Vietnamese officer could go about in uniform, but southern enough that the Vietcong served as soldiers. He hadn't watched his direction in the last minute. A few degrees on the compass might mean the difference between liberation and long-term incarceration. No way to know. Insist on food and medical treatment. The better care he received, the better he'd withstand punishment. The Air Force trained pilots not to crack but assumed they would. Every man had his breaking point. All information and training could be divided into three categories: Most important were systems and weaponry capabilities—the USSR and China could find that information useful in other parts of the world; somewhat important were specific mission and strategy information; and least important—and first to be divulged under torture—were training techniques and Air Force policy. If a pilot was captured and not immediately taken to Hanoi, then the longer he survived, the better the chance of rescue by American or ARVN forces.

AFTER SEVERAL HOURS
the officer returned. He opened a slim file.

"Captain Charles Ravich, we start."

He lifted his eyes.

"You see we move you to big trail soon when repair. Soon. Now you must listen—"

"I am a prisoner of war and an American officer. I—"

"Charles Ravich, you criminal! You criminal of war. I explain to you. We will teach you before difficult question. Show criminal of war Charles Ravich first photograph."

The soldier brought in three small albums bound in black.

"The first photograph is boy who stand by railtrain track when your jets strike. You look at it." The officer stood over him and put his hand around his neck, forcing his face to within inches of the color photos, which were small and square. "These pictures are what your bombs do to my country, Charles Ravich. Little proof, they are little, little proof. You are accountable. Many dead. Too many. Look at next photograph, look . . . sixty-two-year-old woman. She make fixing her own house when your jet attack. You see, this is the napalm. She live four day and then die. Now, you know Western philosophy. Man sum of action. Man accountable. This is Western, you believe. I say to you, as one human being to another, why you do this to us, why put the bombs on our children? People of my country die. You say maybe this is normal way to treat criminal pilot. No. I try to be civilize with you, Charles Ravich. But I say to you I want to kill you fast. My people are farmers. Now I ask you—do you have a young son? Young daughter? Ah, your face change. Daughter. Now I ask you . . . Next photograph! Do you make this of your responsibility?
This!
Or, next photograph,
this
? These your acts. You Western man, you individual responsibility. Why you make yourself a criminal?"

After the first album, they showed him two more. He recognized background structures. Depos. Bridges. Truck camps, railyards. He'd seen them. He'd bombed them.

DUSK.
Insects swarmed around a lamp hanging from the thatched roof. The officer dabbed at his mouth with a handkerchief. The hours passed. His back stiffened. A soldier came into the hootch, talking quickly. Some kind of emergency. They tied a crusty, gasoline-fumed rag around his head. He heard a whisking sound, a broom over dirt. "Down!" the interpreter yelled, striking Charlie in the face. He sank to his knees and felt the earth. "In!" the interpreter cried. A foot caught him in the ribs, pushing him into a hole—the fuckers were going to kill him in a hole. He didn't know his children yet, he hadn't had enough time with them. He crawled forward and then suddenly down into a chute. Someone pushed him from behind and he heard the whisking sound again. Now his shoulders rubbed the tunnel wall. He stumbled forward on his hands and knees as a voice behind him cried, "
Nanh len!
" Hurry. Adjusting, using his hands to guide himself, he learned the width and height of the tunnel. Surprisingly regular. The earth beneath his hands and knees was cool, packed. No light. Someone shuffled behind him, urging him on with a rifle. They crawled a long time. His hands ached. The crawling made his back worse—something was cracked or chipped or broken in the lower vertebrae. Periodically he crossed flat pieces of wood, distance markers perhaps. He tried counting paces between markers but lost count as the tunnel dipped and turned. Once he heard the rush of water. Other times voices, near, far, singsong, echoing eerily, laughing, whispering, perhaps even the cry of a baby, followed by the windy static of a shortwave radio. The Vietcong mountain cities. He came to divergent tunnels, judging by echoes and an odd feeling of the air moving around him. The rifle muzzle touched him, indicating which way to go. The air was fresh, then putrid, foul. Underground burial pits. That would be like the Vietcong. Removing their dead to conceal losses. Or just rotting fish? The tunnel rose and curved, branched off, fell. Then he heard a rumbling so portentous it seemed to come from the very center of the earth. The walls of the tunnel shook. By instinct he threw himself flat. "
Nanh len!
" the soldier behind screamed, punching him. He scrambled to his knees and scurried forward, roots tearing at him, the tumbling roar approaching, wavelike, bearing down, rippling the earth, gaining. He bumped into a tunnel wall. The soldier poked at him to go right but grabbed his shoulder. He could hear the soldier breathing, mumbling to himself in Vietnamese, perhaps counting intervals, listening to the explosions above the earth. They were close. How far underground were the tunnels? Moisture content of earth . . . detonation height . . . He tried to recall how deep a five-hundred-pound bomb cratered the earth. The B-52s also used thousand-pounders . . . The rumbling seemed almost above them now. The soldier sang to himself in terror, awaiting some answer. He understood—one tunnel cut away from the bombing vector and the other led beneath it. The earth shook. He hunched on his hands and knees, paralyzed, seeing nothing but black, feeling the hot, dank air.