Disclaimer: This is a piece of fan fiction using characters from the G.I. Joe universe which is owned by the Hasbro company. It is intended for entertainment outside the official canon and I, in no way, expect to profit financially from the characters or images associated with this story. I am a fan of GI Joe and have been since the age of eight and am grateful for opportunity to express my ultimate devotion in the form of this series of stories.
Captain Calvin Copar listened another minute, but only static issued. The radio signal had cut out. Major Clayton Abernathy wasn't sending help. Calvin dropped the handset, leaned over the command bunker's plotting table, his sweaty head held in his hands. Droplets splashed against the topographic map spread beneath him. Perspiration or tears soaked into the paper fibers and darkened spots across the Vietnamese landscape like random bomb craters.
His chest tightened, breath stuttered. The North Vietnamese Army's 66th Battalion approached Firebase Yankee. They'd send waves of soldiers against his defenses, crashing the lines until they broke through and drowned the firebase in a wash of bullets. The bare light bulb dimmed as the diesel generator choked on dust and humidity. The earthen walls seemed to close in, the stagnant air turned heavy.
Buried in the bunker, alone with no help and no place to go, Calvin's thoughts whirled to home, to the places he'd never visit again, to the people he'd never see… to Caitlin. He pulled a creased photograph from his breast pocket where he kept Caitlin close to his heart all these years. He knew every line of her smile, every strand of her chestnut hair as it parted and hung straight, curling beneath her jaw line. He loved her, waited for her, fought to return to her and when she left him all that remained for Calvin was the war.
The staticy speaker crackled again. Calvin flinched, glared at the handset hoping to hear Abernathy say that help was on the way. But no voices spoke.
He bit his lip, closed his eyes. Calvin followed Abernathy's orders, interrogated prisoners in their native language and reported NVA movements. None of that mattered as rumors of torture moved up the chain of command. Major Abernathy distanced himself from Calvin, disavowed the information. He abandoned one hundred American soldiers, young men in the prime of their lives so he could earn a full commission.
Through the sand bags Calvin heard the last helicopter lift off and sail skyward south with two black body bags laid across its deck. Two of his men were headed home. As he stared at Caitlin, remembering her smooth skin and mild scent, a certain envy stirred. The tranquility, the familiarity of death called him home. He drew his service pistol, a Colt M-1911 A1 forty-five caliber automatic and smoothed his thumb over an image of a snake's head he'd etched into the slide the day he'd been issued the weapon, the day he deployed to Vietnam, September 7th, 1969.
So simple. One more trigger pull and he'd be finished with the war. He'd get his ride home.
More electric fuzz deadened the open line static. Someone was jamming the radio signal. The 66th was near.
Calvin leaned forward. Sweaty drips carpet bombed the map like a B-52. He stared at the topography, estimated the NVA's distance from Firebase Yankee. He could win this fight with reinforcements, some air recon and close support….
But there'd be no support, there'd be no one left to send him home. Not after the 66th overran his firebase.
There would be only death.
There was only combat.
Only the fight.
He blinked back tears, rubbed his eyes.
Calvin crumpled his photo of Caitlin, holstered his pistol and switched the handset off. He studied the topographic map again. If the 66th approached from the north, their flanking elements would follow the valley and engage from the east, draw fire and soften the front. Unless he stopped them…. In the jungle…. Face to face.
Calvin breathed deep. That's where his fight lay. That's where he could smash their flanking elements, then sweep around and hit the 66th where it hurt the most while his men rip into their consolidated waves.
He would fight his last battle, lead his men from the front so he wouldn't have to see them die. Calvin stormed out of the bunker into the hot late afternoon sun baking Firebase Yankee. The diesel generator jabbered to the wind. A thin wisp of fog flowed across the tree top canopy along the valley lows. He marched around the perimeter, checked the trenches, inspected the artillery pieces aimed north and lit the cigarette of a nineteen year old replacement whose name he hadn't bothered to learn.
Calvin tapped nine of his soldiers. They tailed him to a supply dump and loaded up for a heavy fight. All ammunition, no food. He saw the concern in the young faces. He couldn't look his men in the eye knowing they'd been abandoned because of the way he interrogated prisoners. One last conversation with the first lieutenant to let him know that Yankee was his and Calvin headed west into the sunset to obliterate the NVA.
Calvin ran at a near sprint into the jungle, his nine soldiers close behind. Through brush, over logs and rocks, the leaf litter crunching under foot as sweat drenched his head. Daylight faded, purple hues settled over the jungle's green, drew dark shadows over worried faces.
A few kilometers along the valley floor Calvin directed his squad into two columns of five. He ordered the point man to look for a clearing, someplace to ambush a fifty or sixty person platoon.
Leaves crackled right to left. Calvin and his point man raised their fists. Both columns halted, squatted and scanned the shadowy foliage through rifle sights for danger. Something moved. Something skittered over the leaves fast enough to be heard. Calvin swept his rifle side to side. Nothing. More noise, hurried, almost aggressive. It was too early. Calvin didn't have time to prepare, to form a front and plant claymore mines.
More crackling sounds. Calvin aimed deep into the thickets, strained his vision against the dark. The noises came closer. Sweat streamed down his head. He tasted it on his lips, mopped his brow against his shoulder. Something approached. Footsteps? The NVA flanking elements? Neither fit the sound.
Out of the bush, invisible, yet close and getting closer.
Calvin whispered ahead, "What is it?"
The point man didn't reply.
One meter. Half a meter. A long thin shadow sprung up in front of the point man. A full grown king cobra spread its shroud and bared its fangs. Its black eyes glittered like distant stars against the flat, gray jungle. The snake held the point man's stare, let out a long even hiss.
Calvin stood slowly, drew his machete. Steel slit the air. A meaty hack and the long shadow dropped into the leaf litter. "It's just a little bitty snake, get over it," Calvin said, as he sheathed his machete. "But something else is coming. It wouldn't have been found in the open unless it was running."
"From what?" the soldier asked, though the flutter in his voice suggested he knew.
"Something bigger than a platoon." Calvin spread his men out fifty meters in pairs with the heavy machine gun in the middle. He planted claymore mines ahead, wired the triggers back to this troops.
Purple twilight faded to gray dusk. Cicada's chirped, bats squeaked. A moldy earth scent rose, rich and ancient. Behind trees and rocks with time to listen, to worry, each man shoved sticks and dirt into berms, and built nervous forts around themselves.
A single shadow emerged from the creeping dark background, crouched, yet moving fast. Ten rifles trained on the prowler, but Calvin held everyone's fire. He needed the entire platoon to walk into his trap, not a single point man. He sneaked beyond the defensive line, hid behind a tree, then a bush. As the shadow stalked closer, Calvin drew his machete, stood tall above and swung. The shadow of a man collapsed into a heap, silent, headless.
Calvin sauntered back to the line giddy and light. Killing felt good. Alone in an endless jungle, cut off from support, Calvin was free and in control of the right battle. "No point wasting a bullet," he said with a low chuckle.
More black shadows followed, ten, thirty, two hundred.
Calvin shouted, "Attack!"
Claymore mines detonated, M-16s erupted, the M-60 in the middle laid down suppressive fire.
Human shrieks echoed above automatic gun shots. Kalashnikovs replied. Supersonic bullets tore overhead, hit rocks and trees and tiny berms. Grenades tossed back and forth. Explosions pounded. Hot metal shards zipped through the air.
Calvin keyed the radio handset, shouted, "The full battalion is approaching from the east. Redirected artillery! Repeat, redirect artillery east!"
The lieutenant replied from Firebase Yankee, "Mortars are coming in over here. Abernathy says to fire north."
"He's wrong—"
Another explosion. A rocket propelled grenade detonated. Shrapnel plinked off Calvin's helmet, burned into his legs and back. He dropped the handset, shot into the dark. Scores of shadows were shot down, yet the enemy flowed in one continuous wave.
A new scream, this one came from his side. Calvin glanced to his left. A soldier writhed behind his berm holding his stomach. His partner dead. The entire left side of his line had been killed. People moved past, attacked from the flank. Calvin fired back. And then his rifle jammed. He'd heard the clink before. An empty case jammed in the breech. No possibility to repair. He drew his Colt forty-five automatic, ran into the enemy blasting each silhouette as he passed. More explosions behind. More screams from his men. The pistol locked open. Calvin fed a fresh magazine, shot, shot again.
Blinding white, searing pain. Calvin staggered to his hands and knees, a high pitched ring drown all other sounds. He felt through the leaf liter for his pistol, then a rifle butt struck his head.
*2*
The pain had always been there. The screams, too. But they sharpened. Calvin reached back to the dark place where neither pain nor screams had bothered him. The dark place lightened, thoughts cleared, memories returned. Memories of screams, of explosions, of his soldiers dead. He searched for the dark place in his mind once more, but it faded away.
Calvin wrapped his head with an arm. Dirt and grit rubbed against his cheek. He ran a hand down his side, felt chunks of flesh missing, metal shards imbedded beneath tender burns. More memories returned.
The battle.
His head throbbed. A razor sharp pain pulsed through his brain with every heart beat. The shrieks outside his head became distinct, louder, sent chills over his sore flesh. Calvin opened his eyes to dirt. A dirt floor that met dirt walls. He looked up, shaded his eyes against the gentle morning gray. Dirt all around. He lay in a pit. Two meters deep and not much bigger around.
The screams were real. They came from humans nearby. Calvin didn't die, he'd been captured and soon the screams would be his.
A shout from above. Not a scream, but words. Calvin understood the language, he spoke Vietnamese. Six guards stood around the mouth of the pit, shouted racial denigrations. They held SKS rifles and spoke with a country accent. The guards weren't northern regulars from the 66th, they were local farmers pressed into duty and given surplus weapons.
One man slung his rifle over his shoulder, fiddled with his pants. Calvin rolled over, cupped his hands around his face as hot urine rained into the pit and splashed across his back. The other guards joined, cussed and spat, then moved along.
Calvin's wounds stung, soaked in urine. A mud puddle formed beneath him. He shoved dirt over it, but couldn't bury the smell. Flayed, burnt, insulted he curled into a cleaner corner and slipped between consciousness and dream.
The day warmed. Forty degrees Celsius and one hundred percent humidity. Calvin sweated, but it didn't help. No air moved in the pit. Nobody fed him, nobody gave water. His wounds, hot to the touch, radiated pain. Infection had set in.
Course shouts and begging denials became a background noise. Occasional gunshots brought moments of silence. Against the tortured screams, the thirst and infection, consciousness unraveled. Places past and faces from history captivated semi-lucid moments. His and Caitlin's wedding engagement. His father's used car lot. His desperate soldiers ripped in two. Happy times, mixed with horror, drew smiles and tears.
Patterns formed. Shouts, cries, shots and silence. Over and over until the shots became good. The bringer of peace, the end to pain.
Midday, of which day he no longer knew, the sun's heat beat into the pit and baked his flesh. He waited for the shot, yearned for its report, then silence. A hint of jealousy entered his mind. Death had been a constant neighbor, had called on so many since he'd arrived, yet never visited him.
Vietnamese shouts echoed in his pit. Calvin roused from a delirious torpor, raised his head to the source. Guards stood over. They threw a bamboo ladder down and ordered him to come out. Calvin blinked. His chance, his turn to welcome death. But he couldn't move. Hunger, dehydration, disease stole his ability. Two guards entered, yanked Calvin by the wrists and pulled him to his feet. The others drug him the rest of the way.
Calvin's legs collapsed, he crashed over his weak arms, his face planted in the dirt. More shouts to get up followed by a kick to the ribs. They lifted him standing and shoved him to a bamboo hut in the middle of the mid-sized camp chopped out of the jungle. Inside, a warm breeze blew over Calvin's face. A swamp cooler type air conditioner fanned the hut's interior, though the ambient humidity nullified its cooling effect. The guards sat Calvin in a metal framed chair and tied his wrists to the arm rests.
He faced the camp commandant, a short bald man in a decorated uniform seated behind a wooden desk. An electric light hung from the ceiling, dimmed and brightened with a diesel generator's hum from outside. A filing cabinet sat in the corner, its metallic smoothness looked out of place, out of time, with thatched walls and plank floors. In the other corner a radio transmitter sat on a table only wide enough for the device.
The Commandant took a cigarette and asked, "What is your name?"
Calvin breathed deep. The English words spoken in a heavy accent took a moment to register. "Captain Calvin Copar."
"Why do you come to my country to make war?" Smoke seeped between the Commandant's lips, trickled out his nose, swept away by the blowing swamp cooler.
"To help the Vietnamese people resist illegal communist aggression," Calvin replied in Vietnamese.
The Commandant's eyebrows rose, he jumped out of his seat, stepped toward Calvin and slapped him across the face. "A spy? Tell me who informed you. How did you know where the forces were?"
Calvin shuddered. His skin crawled, vision tunneled. He fought, clung to consciousness and thought with a faint notion of excitement. The beginning of the screams.
"Who told you?" the Commandant yelled.
He reached back, recalled the faces of the prisoners he'd interrogated. None of them knew details. A snake in the jungle gave the only clue. "The cobra told me."
One of the guards slapped his head.
"Who told you?"
"The… the cobra."
Another bludgeoning strike. Calvin felt his eyebrow split open, but no blood spilled. Too dehydrated to bleed. A sardonic smile spread at the thought.
"You can make this easy and just say who told you."
Calvin slipped into English, said, "The cobra. The cobra was there and told me."
Contempt burned in the Commandant's eyes. He took a moment, drew on the cigarette slowly, stubbed it out. A shaky smile cracked his stern composure. He said, "And who is the cobra?"
Calvin's head tipped up. He filtered the blurry vision. "Its… a snake…. In the jungle."
The Commandant exploded. "Tell me a name!"
A name? Its shroud wide, fangs glistening, the vicious beast raised a meter high, only one name fit. With due contrition, Calvin said, "King."
A heavy backhand smashed Calvin's cheek.
*3*
Calvin fell into his pit and wept dry tears. Not for the hours of interrogation, but because the shot hadn't come. He lived in violence, in agony and torment, broken and miserable. He broke his prisoners, too. Tormented them on Major Abernathy's orders. And with one newspaper report mentioning torture, Abernathy could no longer justify sending more men and material to a small firebase on faulty intelligence.
Alone in the pit, submerged in other people's screams, other people's gunshots, Calvin scratched at the dirt, tried to undermine the wall until earth caved in and swallowed him whole. But his strength faltered. His shaky arm fell limp and he shambled out of consciousness.
The next hour, or day, or week, Calvin couldn't tell, he and the Commandant had the same conversation. He gave the same answer. Calvin earned a new torture—electric shock. And it ended the same way. Alone in the pit. No shot to end his misery.
Curled fetally, broken and burnt, Calvin heard the outside noises change. The screams remained, the gunshots that made him hope still echoed, but the guards' chatter became louder, more excited. The words blended together in ways his addled mind couldn't follow. They didn't squabble over prisoners, food, or arms. They fought to maintain control over something unpredictable and dangerous.
The excited guards stood at the edge of Calvin's pit, scared, jumpy. From behind, the Commandant emerged, his face in shadow, and said in clear Vietnamese, "We've found your conspirator."
Calvin thought for a moment, tried to recall a conspirator. Then he shuddered. He clawed again at the dirt wall, but he couldn't cave it in.
"I think it's time you reacquaint yourself with an old friend…. Unless you tell me who told you where our forces were."
Calvin's lips trembled, a hiss seeped out.
"Tell me who. Give me a name!"
Calvin stuttered in a low whisper, "Co… cobra."
The commandant nodded to his guards. They stepped to the side of the pit, hung a brown gunny sack over the edge. Near panic rose in their voices as one man pulled a string and the other tipped the sack.
A four meter long king cobra fell into the pit. It slithered back and forth and sprung for the opening. The guards flinched, palpable fear in their eyes despite their guns.
The drab green animal raced across the floor, hissed at the guards above. Calvin held his breath, scratched at the dirt a little more. A shiver twitched in his arm. The snake coiled around, reared a meter above Calvin and blocked the sun, its hood surrounded in a golden halo.
A thread of a squeal slipped. The haloed serpent struck. Calvin chirped at the bite to his cheek. Then it struck again.
A shrill screech let out. Calvin covered his face with his hands, pushed himself into the corner of the pit. A new agony overwhelmed his other wounds. Fiery pain spread over his face from four tiny hypodermic pricks.
The guards laughed, amused by Calvin's suffering.
The king cobra turned and lunged toward the opening. The guards ran away.
*4*
Constant, horrid neurotoxin pain burned inside his face. Hazy, incomplete nightmares and thirst. Always thirst. Echoed noises permeated darkness. Cool scales caressed Calvin's limbs. Hallucination mixed with dreams. The Commandant, Calvin's dead troops, the haloed cobra, all spoke to him, told him who he was while depravation and infection ravaged his body.
Flittered licks tickled his nose. Calvin cracked one eyelid open, the other swollen shut. The cobra hovered beside his face with a cold, unblinking stare set against him. He shut his eye and let dreams cascade over the awful vision.
Screams and gunshots intruded on Calvin's delusional reverie. Jealousy returned at the moment of peace that followed. A peace denied to him. A new sensation, a pain he hadn't felt before ran up his leg in chunks. He opened one eye, took a second to focus as another chunky pain jolted his leg. A rat sat on its haunches, nibbled at a stringy piece of meat. He could feel its tiny claws scratch around the wound. Then it dug its teeth into his calf, nibbled and tore away another scrap of flesh. Calvin tried to move his leg, tried to yell at it, but only a high pitched wheeze let out. The rat continued.
Calvin watched, helpless as a dark resignation grew. Hope for a bullet vanished, replaced by a dread of surviving. More rats would come, strip his flesh and eat him alive.
A twinkling glint caught his eye. The distant point of light deep within the shadows of the pit captivated Calvin, drew his thoughts past the rat to a purity beyond suffering. A place outside his ravaged body where the single glint spoke to him without words and told him everything in the jungle was forgiven.
Beneath the surface of Earth, at the threshold of death, he communed with a star as the rat tore another bite off his leg. The star blinked, a dark cable shot from the shadows, struck the rat and recoiled into blackness. The rat bounced into the air and fell dead, its little foot twitching.
Then the star returned, lowered and moved across the dirt floor to the rat's head. Calvin followed the twinkle, recognized it in the cobra's cold black eye.
The cobra swallowed the rat. It slinked along Calvin's outstretched arm, slithered over his palm. He closed his fingers around the snake's body as it moved, felt the smooth scales, the lump of the rat. It no longer feared him and he no longer feared it. Calvin closed his eye, content, protected, and faded again into hallucination and dream.
*5*
Calvin drifted from a lucid dream where he stepped out of the pit and onto the top of the world. Human voices clarified, continued in logical patterns his dreamscapes didn't obey. People argued in Vietnamese about what to do with a dead body, his body. He didn't feel dead, but he couldn't be sure. None of the guards wanted to enter the pit, not with the cobra loose. The cobra protected him again. Calvin smiled, his swollen cheeks zipped open with pressure, but no blood spilled.
Another guard suggested burying both. The rest agreed and the chattering people walked away.
A tap on his face. Another on his ribs. Pops and splashes hit the dirt around him. Calvin covered his head, hid from the guards' urine. But a heavy din filled the jungle as rain fell. The cobra stirred, slid its head beneath Calvin's for shelter.
Calvin turned a palm up. Drops splashed away dirt. A small puddle collected, cool and pure. He brought his hand to his mouth, sucked the few drops, moistened his lips. Calvin shifted his weight, cupped both hands beneath the rain. The snake slid back, then tucked under his armpit.
Thunder rumbled far away. Another sip, then another. The sky cut loose and the din rose to a roar. He drank from his hands, quenched his dry throat. His body gained movement as hydration flowed.
Red drops leaked into his hands, but still he drank. Blood began to seep from gashes on his face around the snake bites. An astringent tang flavored the water, but Calvin drank unconcerned with blood or stale venom.
The ground turned muddy. The cobra slithered from beneath Calvin, curled over his shoulders. It slid close to his cupped hands, flicked its tongue, lowered its head and shared in his water.
*6*
Calvin nibbled the meat off a rat's leg, chewed its bones and devoured its guts. The cobra had left him breakfast. He'd come to enjoy the sharp bite of remnant venom. Some food, some water and his energy returned.
Sloshing footsteps and cursing approached the pit. Calvin shambled to his feet. The cobra slithered up his leg and sat across his shoulders. He wobbled, caught himself against the dirt wall. The clouds had burned off in the forty degree heat. A bright blue sky remained ringed by dirt above.
The first of three guards to look at Calvin cried out. He fumbled for his rifle, pointed it, though he didn't aim. The others both jumped at their first sights, too.
Calvin smiled, felt the gashes down his cheeks flay open. For all the guns, all their tortures and taunts, they trembled before a prisoner in a pit.
They yelled, "Lay down!"
Calvin stepped forward, raised his palm to the guards in a gesture of peace.
"Lay down now or I'll shoot," the guard with the pointed gun screamed. A squeaky crack in his country-accented Vietnamese betrayed his fear.
They seemed so much more frightened of Calvin than he would have thought. Something rattled them, something confronted a core belief, yet they fought this fear to perform their duty.
"I swear, I'll shoot," the guard said.
His hesitation intrigued Calvin. The guard had authority to execute any prisoner he wanted, but he only made threats.
"Don't make me kill you."
Calvin had wished for the bullet. He'd been denied its peace for too long. The guard promised, but Calvin no longer cared. He'd visited death. He'd visited worse than death. Beatings were all the same, bullets happened or didn't, but the cobra… the cobra had become his friend.
"I'll do it!"
Calvin touched the cobra's tail. The snake shot along his arm, leapt off his up-turned palm and bit the guard in the neck.
The guard grabbed the wounds. He glanced at the others, down to Calvin and watched the snake return to its master's hand. He fell to the ground, choking, gasping for breath. The other two glared at each other, stiffened, then dropped to their knees, bowing to Calvin.
"Bring a ladder," Calvin said in a high, unnatural rasp. He cleared his throat, but the tone persisted.
The guards returned moments later. Calvin climbed out of the pit, the cobra resting on his shoulders. Both guards bowed again, their faces to the muddy ground.
Calvin staggered to the Commandant's hut, exhausted, over-heated. He heard a far off shot, gave a word of thanks to the guard that brought one of his countrymen peace.
More camp guards ran to Calvin's side, their rifles aimed, and shouted commands to stop, to put his hands up, to lay down all behind the threat of death. Though sounds changed when they noticed the cobra. He pressed forward at the end of his energy, deliriously aware that people spoke, but he didn't respond. The first two guards ran into the crowd, yammering that the cobra's commander had returned. Some guards scoffed, some guards bowed, some guards ran away. All of them silenced their threats.
Calvin swayed on his feet, caught his balance and shuffled into the Commandant's office. Air blew over his face, cooled his feverish skin. The Commandant exploded from his chair. But one glance at Calvin's mutilated face froze him in horror, his wide eyes shook, cigarette jittering on his lips. He reached for his sidearm. At a touch the cobra leapt off Calvin's shoulders, raced across the desk top, and rose eye to eye with the Commandant, its hood spread wide, fangs bared.
He held his breath. He popped the latch on his holster, but before he could draw, the snake struck his upper arm.
The Commandant dropped his pistol, fell back into his chair, a hand to the bite, and yelled, "Guards! Shoot him. Shoot him now!"
Two guards stepped into the office, their rifles ready, but they didn't fire.
"What are you waiting for?"
One of the guards replied, a tremble in his voice, "Sir, he's the cobra's commander."
"I don't care about your peasant snake cults. Just shoot him."
Calvin looked at them and said, "This is my camp now. Free the prisoners."
The guards nodded obediently, cast a woeful glare at the Commandant and backed out of the hut.
The Commandant squeezed his upper arm, growled through his teeth. "Traitors! You'll all be shot, too!"
"Threats from a dead man?" Calvin tried to clear his throat again, bring back his usual baritone, but the high rasp persisted. "Relying on authority with venom in your veins. You should walk out and beg for help. But my guards are going to throw you in the pit. Try to find peace while you're down there."
*7*
Calvin hovered over a bowl of thin rice soup, stirred bok choy and sprouts, taking in the warm spicy aroma. Everybody in the camp ate and drank water and those with enough strength urinated on the Commandant's corpse. Forty-seven Americans, twelve Australians, two Canadians, sixty-eight South Vietnamese Army soldiers and a hundred and ninety-three frightened camp guards, fell under Calvin's authority, all tied together by a single king cobra.
He dined with the ranking Australian officer, a major by the name of Sebastian Bludd, who'd been blinded in the left eye, wore a gruesome wound on his face and lost most function in his right arm the night he'd been captured. They plotted their escape, covered details for security and agreed that their soldiers' health came first. Sebastian sipped the soup, asked an attending guard for more, when another guard entered the camp office. Excited and out of breath, he informed Calvin that a platoon of North Vietnamese Army regulars were approaching with more prisoners. The guard appeared nervous, caught between old loyalties and new allegiances.
Calvin sipped more soup, chewed a soggy green leaf. "Sebastian, can you put together a competing force with what we have?"
Sebastian nodded. "There's more than enough for me here."
"Good, bring me their officer, recruit as many as possible and kill the rest."
Sebastian's mouth pulled into an expression between a grin and sneer. He tapped a guard, jerked his head to follow and lumbered out of the hut.
The cobra slithered on top of the desk and dropped a juicy rat in front of Calvin's soup bowl. He petted his drab green snake, tickled it beneath the jaw and said in a whisper, "Thank you, my friend."
Calvin tore both hind legs from the rat, skinned them with his fingernails and added them to his soup. He stirred, sipped, the venom flavor hinting at the back of his tongue. The snake slid across the desk, doubled back and engorged on the rat headfirst. Calvin gazed upon the snake with fascination, admired its innate qualities. Its lightning speed, brutal strength, perfect camouflage and deadly poison. It didn't need arms and legs to be an apex predator and its armored scales emerged clean and smooth from every environment. The hiss, the hood, both terror signals that frightened tigers, leveraged by a bite to kill elephants.
Calvin nibbled at the rodent thigh and thought of his United States Army. So big and powerful, yet it couldn't earn local backing with all the bombs in the world. The North Vietnamese Army offered personal atrocity and won territories from people that couldn't care less about a glorious communist revolution. But the NVA could never rule the world either.
As the rat's tail slithered into the cobra's mouth, Calvin saw what both armies did wrong. And he recognized what both armies did right. One tiger versus one elephant, fast and nimble against big and strong, though both feared the elusive cobra.
*8*
Sebastian returned, shoved a NVA officer into the metal chair in front of Calvin. Guards tied his wrists and scurried out. The NVA officer flinched at the sight of Calvin, recoiled at the cobra.
"That went better than expected," Sebastian said. "I could win this thing with a couple divisions of them heartless bastards."
Calvin motioned and Sebastian exited the hut.
"Where is your battalion?" Calvin asked in Vietnamese.
The officer blinked, glanced at the snake and said with a stutter, "You are American?"
Calvin nodded.
"I… I recognize you," the NVA officer said. "You're the captain we captured a week ago."
Calvin nodded again. "So you understand why I want to know where your battalion is."
The officer twisted and bent his wrists against the ties. "It doesn't matter. You can't stop them. They're already two hundred kilometers south."
Camp Holloway, Calvin thought. Abernathy can hold his own. He touched the cobra's tail. The snake stirred, slithered around and faced the NVA officer. "They'll lay down their weapons when they understand the cobra's commander has returned."
The officer scoffed. "Nobody will follow your cult. The revolution has banished all religions."
The cobra moved forward, skittered side to side. The officer followed its movements, wrestled against his constraints. As the snake came closer to the officer's face, its hood expanded. The officer held his breath. Sweat ran off his head.
"And how is your godless system going to help you now? This seems an appropriate time to pray to this cobra's commander."
The officer trembled in silence.
Calvin touched the cobra's tail again and the snake struck out, bit the officer on the chest.
"You won't win. When I don't return, they'll send the battalion after me. They'll kill every one of you."
"Judging how easily you were taken by country farmers and starving prisoners, your threat means nothing."
*9*
Calvin keyed the radio transmitter in the corner and said with a warmth of pride in his voice, "Major Abernathy, the camp is secured. I've got one hundred and twenty-nine friendlies that need immediate evac and medical."
"Captain Copar? Is that you? You sound different," Major Abernathy said. "I'm sorry, Captain, but things have changed. We're buggin' out of the country. Kissinger's negotiating with the U.N. right now for prisoner releases. Just sit tight, we should have you home soon."
"No, Major, you don't understand. Send choppers. I've secured the camp. There's no—"
"Sorry Captain. Good luck to you."
Major Abernathy switched his radio off.
Calvin sweated, lost in the hut as the swamp cooler blew hot, stagnant air. He'd fought for Abernathy, went out on his own to protect Abernathy's firebase, suffered degradation and torture for Abernathy. He'd even secured a landing zone. But the Major couldn't manage to send helicopters to save the people who served him. Abernathy had been complacent with the attack on Firebase Yankee and now complacent with the rescue. Calvin saw the flaw in his commanding officer, a man more concerned with a career than with lives.
The cobra slinked around the corner of the desk, up the chair back, over Calvin's shoulder and settled in his lap. It hissed, low and rumbling.
He stroked the snake's head. It poisoned his face and left him for dead once, but it accepted him, and deep in the darkest pit, Calvin found a loyal friend.
Sebastian entered the hut, said, "The indigenes say the NVA's 66th Battalion is headed this way."
The cobra leapt off his lap and coiled on the desk. But Calvin didn't sense fear. The cobra was eager, it wanted to fight. Calvin looked up. Sebastian held a curious anticipation in his eye, like he wanted to fight, too.
The cobra jutted toward the door, hissed and angled back, it seemed to coax Calvin along.
The other cobra was right, Calvin thought. And my cobra knows what to do, too.
Abandoned and outnumbered, Calvin thought about his troops, wanted to run them into the jungle to hide. But they were malnourished and sick. They couldn't run fast or forever. All that remained was the fight. Calvin would fight the way he always had. He stood, said to Sebastian, "Gather your troops."
"We're gonna battle the entire 66th?"
Calvin nodded yes. "We're going to conquer the entire world."
Thank you for reading Cobra's Commander. Watch for the next segment of the series due next month on April 24, 2015 entitled, Code Name: Firefly. Enjoy and tell a friend.