Mike Donovan darted across the mud flat, bullets spraying the ground around him. Even as he picked up speed, he prayed that the bullets being fired at him would continue to miss hitting their intended destination in his flesh. He searched desperately for a place to hide as the helicopter continued to dog his movements, but found nothing.
He turned, cradling his camera, to see the chopper hovering a few feet away from him. Realizing that he was most likely going to meet his make in the next couple of minutes, Mike defiantly lifted his camera to his shoulder and began shooting directly at the two men in the helicopter. As the chopper moved closer, Donovan peered sharply at the man sitting next to the pilot.
Shock reverberated through him as he recognized Ham Tyler, former CIA agent, Ex-Army Ranger. It wasn't the first time Tyler had held a weapon on him, but if was probably going to be his last.
It was a mild March afternoon in 1970, and Sergeant Hamilton Tyler lay behind his m-2 50 caliber machine gun. He squinted as he stared through the eight power Unertyl sniper scope mounted on the top, right-hand corner of the machine gun's receiver. His spotter, a robust Staff Sergeant named Christopher Faber, silently crouched next to him and looked through an m-49 twenty power spotting scope, watching for the enemy.
Corporal Mike Donovan lay on his stomach on the other side of Faber, his green eyes searching the terrain surrounding them through the scope of his own standard issue rifle. He couldn't help admiring Sgt. Tyler's rifle, even if he'd rather die than admit it. He didn't like Tyler. The man seemed to think that his status as a Ranger meant he was better than everyone else.
No matter what rank Tyler held, he'd never be the man Major Coleman Devan, Mike's CO, was. Major Devan was sprawled a few feet away with some of the other men in Donovan's unit. Tyler and Faber were not a part of the unit, but were on a special assignment with it.
"Heads up."
He heard Faber mutter. Donovan sited down his rifle and spotted a teenager on a bicycle grow larger in it. A troubled expression crept across Mike's face as he caught sight of a number of rifles-four dangling from the handlebars, two on each side, and three more tied sideways beneath the bicycle's seat.
He made out a dirty green haversack hanging from the center of the handlebars, bulging fat with hundreds of rifle cartridges packed in bandoleers or loaded in a dozen banana curved magazines protruding from beneath the flap of the old canvas pack.
He felt a sickening knot form in his stomach. The kid appeared to be only a few years younger than him, but he was not ordinary boy. This teenager was a Viet Cong re-supply 'mule', carrying arms and ammunition to an enemy patrol. When night fell, that patrol would turn the weapons this boy now struggled to deliver, directly on his fellow soldiers.
As the bicycler teetered closer, her heard Faber giving Tyler the coordinates he would need to make the kill shot. His own hand tightened reflexively on his own rifle, imagining each step Tyler took before he fired his weapon. His thumbs rested firmly on the butterfly-shaped trigger, which was mounted between the handles at the gun's butt. He adjusted the scope's hairs onto the front wheel and fork of the boy's bike, pressed down on the trigger, and sent a bullet ripping into the bicycle's framework.
Donovan watched in horrified fascination as the teenager somersaulted over the handlebars and crashed into the red dust that covered the road. The boy's deadly cargo scattered, and he hoped the boy would run away and leave the work of death to men. That hope vanished, as the teenager rolled to his feet and dove for one of the scattered rifles.
He heard Major Devan call out for the men to break cover and converge on the teen before he got his hands on a rifle. The boy came to his feet, firing, the gun toward a line of soldiers converging on him, and Donovan saw two of them fall. The bark of a rifle, slightly behind him, had Mike whirling around, ready to shoot an enemy, but found Tyler instead.
The two men glared at each other over the length of their rifles, before turning their attention back on the scene at hand.
Now as he waited for Tyler's gun to end his life, the helicopter suddenly lifted, turned, and flew away.
"What the hell?"
Donovan turned around to see what had spooked the helicopter into taking off, and nearly dropped his camera. Even as his startled eyes took in the huge saucer shaped craft drifting toward him over the mud flats, his ears made out a low, pulsing hum.
His shocked mind screamed at him that Tyler must have killed him, because he couldn't be alive, and seeing a real life UFO. Automatically his finger tightened on the shooting button, as he began to record the incredible vision he was witnessing. The ship was huge! It had to be at least a couple of miles wide.
Distantly he became aware of his friend, Tony Leonetti, calling out his name, as the spheroid came to a hovering stop above him. He tilted his head upward, continuing to film the ship a few more moments, before finally turning and running to meet Tony. He couldn't wait to get back to Los Angeles and share the incredible story of how the sudden appearance of a UFO had saved his life.