Fortunate Sons

Chapter 25: All tracks lead to the same place: Dien Ha Outpost

Taylor's feet fell from heel to toe on the bamboo floors of the only building that remained in tact. He paced up and down the line of prisoners they had taken, shooting them an icy glare with his cool blue eyes. No one dared to move or do anything that might have gotten them killed. These men may have survived the fight, but that didn't mean they would survive if they incurred the wrath of this red-headed nightmare.

"So," Taylor said, breaking the long silence. "Any last words before we haul your raggedy asses out of here?"

No one spoke a word. Either they were too dumbfounded by the events of the last few hours or they remained silent out of defiance. Two of them whispered to each other in their native language, thinking Taylor was too dumb to understand.

"You know I can understand you two idiots, right?" he replied.

The two men were shocked that Taylor had pronounced everything perfectly. Now they had reason to fear him even more. There would be no keeping secrets at all.

"Anybody who's ready to talk, you'd better do it now," he warned. "Because it's a long way down to the bottom of the river."

The smallest of the bunch, a young man who the others called Ngo Tien Duc, offered to speak. He didn't want to, but the rest of his comrades didn't care. They only wanted to save their own skins.

"I.....I have something to say......" Duc replied.

"Go ahead and say it," Taylor told him. "You have any information regarding this man?"

Duc took a closer look at the small black and white polaroid Taylor held in front of him. "Yes," Duc replied. "I know that man."

"You fool!" one of the other prisoners hissed. "You would give information to these white-faced devils?!"

Taylor grabbed the pressure point on the insubordinate's neck and gripped until he began begging for mercy. "You've got two seconds to shut up or you're going to drop like a rock," Taylor warned him.

The man relented and Mitch and Dix finally removed him and the others from the place, leaving Taylor, Duc, Thom and Ma Ahn. Duc couldn't have been older than eighteen with short swathes of black hair brushed out of his face and a pair of round, wire rimmed glasses that were a bit larger than the ones Mitch wore. He wasn't muscular at all like some of his counterparts. Duc was a twig with a visible collarbone and his clothes were as loose-fitting as fishing wire.

"Smoke?" Taylor offered, taking the pack of cigarettes from his front pocket.

Duc nodded as Taylor handed one off to him and lit it. "I'm very sorry about all of this," Duc apologized. "I didn't want to fight but they made me."

"What do you mean they forced you to fight?" Taylor questioned.

Duc took a long drag on the cigarette before blowing out a puff of deep grey smoke. "Do you know of the Dien Ha massacre?" he asked.

Taylor shook his head.

"The man you're looking for entered our village four weeks ago with an entire battalion of North Vietnamese fighters," Duc explained. "We tried to fight back but.....but there were too many of them. Three hundred people were killed by the end."

"My girlfriend's aunt said that something similar happened when she was in Hue," Taylor told him.

"I didn't want to fight," Duc continued. "But if I refused I would have wound up with a bullet in the head. I had to pretend I was one of them in order to save mine and everybody else's lives."

Taylor had heard it all before of young men and women forced to fight some other coward's battles. He pitied Duc, but he didn't trust him at all. He was afraid that the kid would find a chance to turn on them and betray them to the enemy, just as he had to the other survivors of the battle.

"You give me a damn good reason to trust you and maybe we'll accept help," Taylor told the young man.

"Anything you want from me you've got," Duc said. "I'm your prisoner now.......so do with me whatever you will."

He passed Taylor the unfinished cigarette and Taylor breathed in a long drag before turning his attention back to Duc. "We need to know how to get to General Cao," Taylor informed him. "We know where he is, but we can't get anywhere near him."

"That's because you need a proper army," Duc pointed out. "He who has strength in numbers is sure to win ten thousand victories. Five men are no match for an army of twenty five hundred."

"You know where we can get help?"

"My home village," Duc answered. "Almost everyone there is willing to fight after what happened."

"Can you take us there?"

"As I said before," Duc said with a humble meekness. "I am your prisoner and you may do with me what you will."

Taylor gave it some thought and had concluded that maybe this was would pay off in the end. "Take us there."