A Weldon Family Christmas: A Southern Steam Novella (Weldon Brothers) (7 page)

He looked like Heaven and Hell, like a savoir who’d fought through demons to reach her.  His face and green shirt were streaked with sweat and dirt.  He had his rifle slung over one shoulder and a large backpack strapped on.  He was capable, deadly, and haunted.

“I’ll tell you the story when we’re safe.  Right now, we need to put some distance between us and the downed heli.  Anh Dung thinks Charlie will come back again this morning and I agree.”

Tears stung Emma’s eyes as she wobbled to her feet.  Asleep from being cramped in one position too long, Emma’s legs burned and tingled.  “They died.  The pilots and Ginny died.”  She shivered again.

John reached out and pulled her into his arms.  “I know.  I’m sorry.  Thank God, I found you.”  He bent down and brushed her lips lightly with his, then groaned and kissed her again.  Deeper and harder as he slid his tongue searching for hers.  She fell against him in relief and reached for him, but pulled away and cried out in pain as her shoulder wrenched with fire.

“Em!  What is it?  Where are you hurt?”

“My shoulder,” she gasped.  “Just a cut from shrapnel during the crash.  I’ve bandaged it pretty tight to stop the bleeding, so it can wait until later.  We should be able to move quickly.”

“I got these from the Huey.  They were in a pack in the cargo.  You need to wear them or the mosquitoes in this jungle are going to eat you alive.”  He handed her a pair of drab green pants and a section of rope.

He and the boy turned their backs and she exchanged her skirt for the pants, using the rope for a belt.  The pants instantly made her feel better equipped to face the jungle.  She just wished he’d had a shirt so she could get rid of her blood-stained one.  “I’m ready.”

“Come on then,” John turned and dug several things out of the large pack he had with him.  He gave them to the boy.  “You are a brave, young man, Anh Dung.  Courageous and strong.  Your parents have named you well.  I give you these things, but you must keep them hidden and let no one know that you have them.  If the enemy finds you with them, they might hurt you.”  John handed the boy a Hershey chocolate bar, some Vietnamese money, and a large military grade knife.

The boy took the candy bar and the knife.  “This I eat.  This I say I stole from dead soldier.  I no take the plasters.  Will only lead to pain.”

Emma handed the boy his pocket knife and pack of rambutans.  He shook head.  “Tinh Nhan—keep as gift.  You boil skin for wound.  Keep you well.”

She started to say no, but John brushed her hand and whispered to her.  “To turn down his gift would only hurt him.  He would then feel the gift was unworthy.”

Emma smiled at the boy and told him how grateful she was for his help and his gift.  The boy left, smiling from ear to ear.

Emma sighed.  “Taking from him makes me feel badly.  He has so little.”

“In material things, yes, but not in his heart.  He is a very rich boy.  His name means strong hero in Vietnamese.”

“I must really be hallucinating.  Surely I didn’t hear the pessimistic and cynical John Weldon say all of that.”

John winced.  “Uh, I’m a changed man.”

“Since when?”  Emma narrowed her gaze at him, still in disbelief he was here with her.  His crystal blue eyes met hers.  She was surprised to see him blink back tears.  Since God answered my prayers and I found you alive, Emma Rollins.”  He swung her into his arms and started walking into the dim jungle.

“Good Heavens, John.  Put me down.  I can walk.”

“I know, Em.  But right now I want to hold you, and we don’t have time to stand still while I do it, so I’m just going to have to walk while I get my fill of you.”

Emma really couldn’t argue with that.  She wanted to be in John’s arms, too.  She thought he’d tire after a few minutes, but he just kept going, ducking in and around trees and brush, doing little to disturb the integrity of the surrounding foliage.  An hour later, he came to a stop.

Emma slid her palm to his cheek.  “I can’t believe you are here.  I can’t believe you found me.”

John’s crystal blue gaze met hers.  They were burning with passion.  Intense and vivid.  He let go of her legs, allowing them to slide slowly down his hard body.  He brushed her lips with his.  “Emma Rollins, you may think me crazy, but there isn’t a jungle deep enough or a hell dark enough that will keep me from finding you.  You’re in my heart, woman.”

Emma’s stomach flipped-flopped, and her pulse raced.  She leaned into him, savoring the feel of him pressed tightly to her body.  Every part of her tingled.  “I’m crazy, too.  You’re in my heart, John.”

His ravaging kiss stole away anything else she’d planned to say.  They were both breathing heavily before he came up for air.

“I need you to stay hidden here.  I’ll be back in thirty minutes or less.”

“No!”  She grabbed his arm.  “Don’t leave me.  You can’t leave me.  Let me come with you.”

He wrapped his arms around her again.  “I’ll be quick.  I need to go back and cover our tracks so no one can follow us.  I promise I won’t be long and we won’t be separated again, but I have to do this.”

Emma sighed.  “I’m holding you to your promises, John Weldon.  If you break them and get yourself captured or killed, I’ll hunt you down and haunt you even if I have to go all the way to Hanoi Hilton.”  Stories of where POW’s were kept at the end of the Ho Chi Minh trail and the conditions they lived under were horrible.

“I never break my promises, Em.  And that’s a promise.”  He slid off his pack and pulled a MCI can from it then unstrapped a canteen of water.  “Eat while I’m gone.  And just keep in mind that Char-uh-C-ration tastes better than anything I could cook.” 

She reluctantly grinned and he disappeared from her sight, carrying only his rifle and machete.

Vietnam
December 1971

J
ohn walked away from
Emma wishing he’d had something more than a Charlie rats meal to offer her.  And he’d lied.  He could make a mean mac and cheese—from a box.  He also wasn’t exactly telling her everything about their situation either, and wouldn’t until he was sure he could get them safely out.

His radio hadn’t survived the parachute jump yesterday.  He was now likely listed as AWOL.  The heli transporting Emma had been way off course.  John had only found her because the Vietnamese had a fairly efficient grapevine when it came to news and the villager he’d spoken to had heard of a helicopter crash.  He had traveled throughout the night to reach the crash site.  Though most of the marijuana stash had been burned or stolen, John had found enough residue in the cargo area to deduct why the Huey was so close to enemy territory and far from where it should have been.  The pilots had made a drug pick up.  Weed and heroin use among the troops wasn’t wide spread but it did exist and the bozos had used the lax Christmas Day atmosphere to pull off an unauthorized stop.

The further John walked from Emma’s hiding place, the harder his stomach churned.  Every possible what if’ scenario raced through his mind.  What if he were caught or killed?  What if she was discovered before he returned?  The odds of that happening were slim, but then the odds of everything that had happened had been minimal—yet what could go wrong had gone wrong.  The sun had barely risen and his window of opportunity to do what needed to be done was short.  Only something in his gut wouldn’t let him keep walking away from her.

She was right.  They had to stay together; yet, the soldier in him demanded that he do something to conceal their trail.  Carrying her and only leaving tracks for a single person had been a good move, but he needed to do more.  Staying close enough that he could hear her scream, he compromised.  He erased his tracks as he doubled back a short distance then set a decoy trail that went west toward the mountains and caves.  Before returning to Emma, he did a quick recon of the surrounding area and felt fairly confident they were alone…for now.  Halfway back he heard a distant drone.  At first he thought it was a search and rescue fly over, but as the noise increased his heart raced and his stomach sank.  It sounded like an entire squadron was flying north.  That could only mean bombers were launching an attack on Charlie, swatting the hornet’s nest while he and Emma were out in the fray.  He’d known something big had been in the works when his R&R had been cut.

John ran to Emma, sliding into the small space she hid in.  She turned to him, looking worried and confused.  The sparkle of stars in her gaze had been replaced by fear.  Before he could say a word, distant explosions ripped through the quiet morning.  Then an explosion even closer rocked the ground, and she launched herself into his arms.  He pulled her tight, noticing her wince as she moved her shoulder.  She needed medical attention.  Even minor wounds in the jungle could be deadly.

That last bomb had been within ten miles of them.  Had it been an accidental drop?  Or were enemy troops in the area?  Either way, he had to find a safe place for them to lay low for a while.   The mountains to the west had caves and tunnels, good places to be during a bombing campaign.  Only John’s instincts were telling him to move toward the river, which was further south and closer to American troops.  His desperation to keep Emma safe had him tied up in knots.  He hugged her again, still not believing that he’d found her and that she’d survived the crash. 

“How is your shoulder?” he asked as he stepped back to study her face.

Emma frowned.  “Bombs are exploding and you want to talk about my shoulder?  Tell me what’s happening!”  Her peach skin had been washed ghost white, and her hands shook as she grasped his arms.

“I think Nixon is sending Pham Van Dong a message about the breakdown in the Peace Talks.”  He forced a grin, hoping to ease her fear then brushed her cheek with his finger.  “We’ll be fine, Em.  I do need to check your wound soon, but if we can move out of this area before we rest, it would be good.”  He handed her a canteen.  “You need to drink.  You’re probably dehydrated.  When did you last relieve yourself?  Anytime today?”

Emma’s widened in surprise.  “Not since we left Long Bình yesterday afternoon.”

“You sure only your shoulder was injured in the crash?  Any bruising to your abdomen or back?  Any pain?”

She shook her head.  “No, just a few bruises on my legs.”

“You need to drink a little every few minutes.  When I was a POW, dehydration was our biggest problem.  In this heat, it happens in a heartbeat.”

She gasped and slid her palm to his cheek.  “You were a prisoner?  When?  Why are you still serving then?”

“It was just after my platoon put boots on the ground last May.  We were ambushed on a mission and five of us were taken prisoner.   By the time we escaped a week later, only two of us were still alive.  I stayed on so I could make a difference.  Not in the war against communism, but in rescuing other POW’s.”

“And me,” she whispered.

“And you,” he said softly.  Sliding his hand over hers, he kissed her palm. 

More planes sounded overhead.  John wasn’t sure about anything, but moving to where they could see beyond the jungle canopy and be on the fringes of the targeted area could only help.  Erasing any signs of their presence, he shouldered his pack, slung on his M16, and took her cold hand in his.  “Stay either at my side or immediately behind me.  Don’t wander in any direction or touch anything.  There are booby-traps everywhere.”

“How do you know where they are?”

“You don’t, really.  You tread carefully, pray hard, and avoid any commonly traveled routes or junctions.  Toe poppers, punji traps, and the Bouncing Betty are the worst, in my opinion.  I’ll tell you about them sometime.  For now, let’s move in silence.  The jungle has ears.”

For the next two hours Emma kept pace and didn’t utter a sound.  They reached a small tributary that flowed to the main river until John came to a stop.  Along with junctions and common routes, riverbanks were another booby trap hot spot.  The bombing, which had remained consistent, had grown more distant.

Emma gripped his hand tight and he shifted his gaze to the far right down the riverbed, several feet from the trail they were paralleling.  A local man had fallen prey to spiked ball trap.  When he’d hit the trip wire, the ball suspended overhead had arced down and nailed him to a tree.  Parts of his decaying corpse hung, impaled by the poison-tipped, fire-hardened bamboo stakes.  Her body began to shake.  She looked paler than earlier.  John steered her away from the sight.  When they were a good distance away from the river, but still near the water, he stopped.  “Let’s make camp and rest.”

She couldn’t go further and he needed to be on the top of his game in this territory, which meant he needed to rest, too.  He was working on over twenty-four hours with no sleep and had been moving at a fast pace for the past fourteen hours.  He found a narrow area about three feet by ten feet that was surrounded by thick bamboo.  After assuring the jungle floor wasn’t rigged with a trap, he set about creating a safe shelter for them to rest in.  Palm fronds stuffed sideways between the bamboo shoots, camouflaged them from view and made a decent floor.

“I think that water I drank is working.  Can I find a bush and then go down to the creek to clean up?” Emma asked shyly.

“Not until I can check for booby traps.  Their favorite areas to rig are places a man tends to let his guard down.  River and creek banks are prime territory, too.  I’ll make you a bathroom and bring you some water to clean up with, okay?”

“Sure.”  She sounded a little uncomfortable and he wanted to put her at ease.

“Give me five minutes.”  More palm fronds and a little bit of shoveling about ten feet from the shelter made a private toilet and his helmet filled with water made a sink.

“Your throne awaits,” John said.

She laughed.  “You’re pretty handy to have around.”

“Good.  I plan on being around for a long time.”

“I’d like that,” she said, softly.  Their gazes connected, and he felt as if she’d handed him the moon.  “Stay here.  I’m going to check out the area, and then we’ll take a look at your shoulder.”  He left her to have some privacy and focused on his tasks at hand—making sure they’d both be around for a long time.  The bombing continued in the far distance.  He found five additional traps in the area.  The ones he could soundlessly disable he did, the ones set with crude explosives meant to maim and alert anyone in hearing distance, he left alone.  All of the traps appeared to have been set some time ago, so he hoped there weren’t any enemy troops too close.  But just in case, he set up a few perimeter trip lines to alert him if anyone passed by.

Forty minutes later, he returned with firewood and a few other things he’d foraged from the jungle.  Emma was sitting just outside the shelter and peeling rambutans with a dark scowl across her brow.  She was mainly using her left hand, which told him her right shoulder had to be hurting badly.

“A penny for your thoughts?” he asked.

She looked up and winced.  “I’m not ungrateful for the food, but these things look like alien monsters.”

“Spikey Tribbles?” he asked remembering the
Star Trek
episode.

She laughed, and he saw the sparkle of stars come back into her eyes.  “Yes, that’s a great description.  I loved that episode.  I can’t believe they canceled the show.”

“Me either.  Washington isn’t the only place with idiots in high places.”

“You got my letters then?”

“All three of them.  I can’t tell you how much it meant for you to write to me.”

Her cheeks flushed red.  “I enjoyed sharing my thoughts.”

He fisted his hands as his stomach clenched with desire.  All he wanted to do was sweep her into his arms and kiss her senseless again, which made him more of an idiot than the rest of the world.  She was injured.  After the bombing, Charlie will be on the warpath and he and Emma had yet to reach safe ground—if there was any safe ground to be had now.  He cleared his throat.  “We need to save the peelings.  I’ll boil them and do as Anh Dung suggested.  It would be ironic if something as simple as a jungle remedy would help fight jungle rot.”

Her eyes widened with alarm.  “I’ve seen the ulcers on the men in the hospital.  I thought it only infected the legs and it was because of the muddy, leech-filled swamps they had to walk through.”

“Not to frighten you, but I’ve seen it all over the body.  In this heat, any wound is susceptible, which is why we’re going to take care of that wound now.  It’s more painful, isn’t it?”

She nodded.

“Come on.”  Helping her up, he led her into the shelter.  Placing his poncho on the palm fronds he’d made into a pallet, he urged her to sit down and handed her his poncho liner.  “I’m going to set things up.  Meanwhile, I need you to take off your shirt.  You can use that to cover yourself, okay?”

She nodded and he left.  A pinch of ignited C-4 beneath his mess kit pot boiled the rambutan peelings and water quickly, as well as sterilized his K-bar knife.  The firewood was to keep the mosquitoes at bay closer to dark, when the chance of smoke being seen was low.  Once he heard her movements inside the shelter still, he called out.  “All set for me to come inside?”

“Yes.  I’m good.”

Entering, he sat next to her with his supplies and rucksack before him.  She’d wrapped the poncho liner around her and tucked it like a sarong.  She’d done an excellent job of bandaging her wound in the first place.  She winced hard as he undid the dressing to expose the angry gash between her upper breast and collar bone.  It hurt him to see her injured.  To see the peaches and cream perfection of her skin marred in any way.  Gritting his teeth, John set work.  He cleaned the wound then cursed.  “Damn it, Emma.  You’ve got shrapnel embedded in your wound.”

“I know.”

“But you said earlier that you only had a cut.”

“I didn’t want to delay us.”

“Do that again and I’ll—”  John bit his tongue, deciding to yell at her later.  Her wound was more extensive than he’d thought, and he wanted to finish as quickly as he could.  Her rapid breaths, dilated pupils, and pale complexion told him how much pain she was in.

“I’m sorry…this is going to hurt.”  She groaned as if stabbed when he wedged the shrapnel from the cut and felt as if he would pass out himself from having to cause her any pain.  “I’m sorry, Em.”

She forced a smile even as she gasped for breath.  “I’m okay.”

“Good news.  It’s not deep and bleeding is minimal.”  He liberally cleaned the wound with the boiled rambutan water.  Then using a clean cotton sock as a dressing, he used the elastic from her bra to secure it all.

She rolled her shoulder.  “Thank you.  It feels a lot better without the shrapnel.  Can I see it?”  The tears in her eyes cut him.  He wanted to spare her every painful moment.

John rinsed off the mangled piece of Huey and handed it to her.  She fisted it in her hand, tight.  “I want to keep this.”  She looked up at him, her blue eyes lost in a sea of pain.  “It’s my fault that Ginny died.  I’m the one who suggested Maggie trade assignments with Ginny yesterday.  It should have been me who—”