The Fury of War Chapter 1 – My Mother Has the Classified Documents Concerning U.S. POW/MIA

Vietnam is a country located in the Mainland Southeast Asia, a region of peninsulas and islands. Saigon is the capital city and commercial hub of Vietnam. The country has a population of more than 90 million inhabitants called Vietnamese.

Near Saigon, the Mekong Delta region contains rivers, swamps, and islands. The Gold Nuggets River in Saigon and the Mekong Delta River join to form a single channel flowing out to Thienchua International Seaport, which is situated at the beginning of the ocean, on the coast of the south China Sea. Cruise ships and merchant ships come into the port always.

Cu Chi District is near Saigon. the district is the lowest place on Earth in terms of feet below sea level. The Dead Valley runs through the district.

Dragon Kingdom is a neighboring country of Vietnam. Yulu is the capital city of Dragon Kingdom. The country has a population of more than 1.9 billion inhabitants called Dragonese. The military headquarters and the famous Health & Wisdom Game Market are in Yulu.

Yulu and Saigon share a common border. The Gold Nuggets River flows through Saigon. Vietnamese and Dragonese can cross the Herculean Bridge spanning over the river, to come and go between Saigon and Yulu.

The Dragon Mouth Sinkhole is located in the Gold Nuggets River, and the nearby Dragon Way Cave straddles the river. Dragon Kingdom has claimed possession over Saigon and the Gold Nuggets River, all is based on the merits of the word "Dragon" being part of the names of the sinkhole and the cave situated in the river.

For as long as history is recorded, Dragon Kingdom and Vietnam have wrangled over territorial status of Gold Nuggets River and Saigon.

The Vagabond Characters (VCs) train in Dragon Kingdom. They have dug extensive networks of tunnels running underneath the ground from Vietnam to Dragon Kingdom. The tunnels form the link of VC support bases for VC guerrilla activity.

In Vietnam, the tunnels are heavily concentrated in the underground of Saigon, Cu Chi City, Assassin Jungle, Iron Triangle Forest, and the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) next to Saigon. All these places are in the Cu Chi Region.

The VCs have launched guerrilla warfare against the Vietnamese. So the Vietnamese Army has formed an alliance with the American Army, to fight against the VCs and their harboring host Dragonese.

The VCs often remove the tires from the American military trucks, cut the tires into sandals, and the inner tubes into straps. The VCs don't wear military uniforms, but they wear pajamas and truck tire sandals, making them look like farmers.

The VCs live in the tunnels on the Vietnamese side. They use the tunnels as underground routes to transport communications and supplies. They lay booby traps in the tunnels to capture their enemy soldiers. From the tunnels, they launch surprise attacks on the American Army and Vietnamese Army, and afterward disappear into the safety of the sprawling network of tunnels.

I flick my eyes open, and listening for a few minutes, I realize I've been awakened by the sound of footsteps pattering outside. I glimpse at my alarm clock standing on my nightstand, reading 3:43 A.M.

I sit up on my bed placed directly under the wrought-iron window that dominates the front wall. I put my face to a lower corner of the window, and letting go of the breath I've been holding, I look out of the window.

I see faces peering in through the window, and also see the VCs pacing around all over the front yard.

The front door is kicked in open and it bangs against the wall, and the VCs rush into our house. I turn on the light.

A VC grabs me by the hand and yanks me off the bed. "Where's the suitcase containing the classified documents relative to U.S. Prisoners of War and Missing in Action?"

Mom appears at my bedroom door. "Please leave my daughter alone. She knows nothing of this. The suitcase is there on top of the kitchen cabinet."

I recall clearly I've never seen the suitcase on top of the cabinet before.

The VC Lieutenant Commander straightens his posture, and stands with both his arms outstretched. He turns to look at the suitcase with a look of triumph in his face, and barks, "Stand back, everyone. Comrade Marine Gunner, take the suitcase down."

The VC Gunner slowly takes the suitcase off the kitchen cabinet, slightly tilting the suitcase at angles, and there's a weird thumping sound of something rolling around inside the suitcase.

The VC Gunner Lowers the suitcase and rests it on the floor, saying, "Comrade Lieutenant Commander, There's a stick bomb inside."

The VC Lieutenant Commander gestures towards a VC woman comrade crouching down by the suitcase. "Comrade Weapons Detection Specialist, are you able to open it?"

The specialist picks the suitcase lock with a paper clip, and opens the suitcase lid. She motions with her hands to what's lying inside the suitcase. "What is this supposed to mean? All we want to do is just find the POW/CIA documents, but instead we've ended up with a bamboo flute."

I've bought the bamboo flute as a souvenir of my school trip to the Great Wall of Dragon Kingdom. I rack my brain to remember whether I put the flute in the suitcase.

The triumph in his face turned into malice, the VC Lieutenant Commander growls, "We've got intelligence all wrong. Useless VC Informer. After all, someone selected by me should have what it takes to fulfill the VC Party's expectations. I'll let the useless informer know what stuff I'm made of." He waves his hand at his comrades and storms out of our house, followed by the comrades.

At the bottom of our dirt driveway, a mimosa tree stands on one side of the driveway. LED light fixtures installed on top of the poles standing by the tree illuminate the whole area of our house.

From the window, I watch the VCs walk away and come up to the jeeps parked haphazardly by the tree. A man hops out of the nearest jeep, walking over to the VC Lieutenant Commander.

Drawing the attention of our neighbors gathering nearby, the VC Lieutenant Commander grabs the man's shirt by the collar, and keeps jabbing his finger at the man's face as he speaks. The man just stands with his head hung low as he listens to the commander.

I see American Military Police jeeps coming from the direction of the Army National Military Cemetery. The VCs all hop back into their jeeps, and pull them out of the parking space, the engines surging in a wild high speed and the tires scraping against gravel as they drive away.

The tiled wall behind the kitchen cabinet splits open along a perpendicular caulk line, and in the opening, Mom stands holding a stack of what looking like document papers.

"Mom, did you…And the wall?" I stammer, but shut up when I see Mom gesture for me to keep quiet. Then she says, "It would be better not to talk about this here. Now go back to sleep, Mai."

The light goes dark behind the wall.

The Fury of War

Chapter 2 – Climb Tree to Go to School

I wake up to the sound of my alarm clock going off, the red digital numbers on the clock reading 7:01 A.M. I'm lying curled up under warm blanket and mosquito net. I turn on my back and crack open one eye. There's something different about the backyard. Bananas! A huge bunch of ripe bananas hangs on the tree.

Our home looks like a military barrack. One side of the house bumps up against a high concrete wall. It extends from the front of the house to the back, and still miles farther away, all the way to the border between Vietnam and Dragon Kingdom.

When you walk right inside the house, there are two beds and a table with two stools, then next is the living room. Take a few steps, and you'll be under an open-air concrete backyard with a water tank attached to the wall. In front of you is the cooking area with a roof of corrugated tin sheets, and with tools, fire pits, and pots and pans.

I had dug a banana shoot bud out of the Assassin Jungle, and planted the bud beside the water tank.

A banana tree starts out as a shoot bud that first grows straight up into a tube. The top one-third of the tube unfurls to form the first leaf, and the bottom two-thirds remain furled to become the initial tree trunk. A banana leaf can grow to be twice as big as me! After the first leaf has come, all other leaves coming after it are developed in the same way, with their bottom two-thirds rolled around the growing trunk.

A ruby bulb, rounded like a very long egg with one pointed end serving as the tip of the bulb, has grown out of the top of the tree trunk, and the bulb has grown into bananas. Now a bunch of sunny bananas has come out on my tree when I least expect it.

I hop off my bed, run to the water tank, and climb onto it. I pick a perfectly ripe banana, then rummage in an earthenware crock to find one remaining boiled cassava. Now I have banana and cassava for breakfast, a total treat. What should I do with all these ripe bananas before they go bad? Definitely make something to sell!

Mom says from her bed, "I saved the shrimp lomein for you. When I came home yesterday, you had gone to sleep instead of waiting up for me to return. Do you want to eat before going to school?"

I'm running late for school and afraid to face Miss My Lai. She teaches history and English, very strict. She would lash a thick rubber ruler on the knuckles of her students who are late. I say, "I'll eat banana and cassava. Did you see the bananas? How is it possible?"

Mom comes out and stands beside me, smiling. "Green bananas have been there, hidden under the leaves. They must have turned yellow overnight."

I rinse my mouth with salt water without brushing my teeth. I throw on my school uniform, scoop up my schoolbag, and slide my feet into pink plastic sandals.

My friend, Hoa, comes by my house to collect me so that we can go to school together. She has just transferred to my school. Today is our first day of school.

She moves away in a hurry, saying, "Catch up, Mai. Better to cut class than to come to Miss My Lai's class late."

I try to catch up to her, and once getting near her, I reach for her shoulder. I say, "Wait, Hoa. We can quickly go to school by way of shortcut enabled by the banana tree in my backyard. We climb up the tree and get on top of the high wall. Then climb down the starfruit tree on the other side of the wall to get onto the road. We go to the park next to St. Vincent Church, go through the alley behind the church, and come up to the school fence. We can climb the fence to get into Miss My Lai's classroom."

Hoa flinches. "Too much climbing. I don't want to ruin my new school uniform. Couldn't you offer me a much more sensible choice than climbing up your banana tree to go to school?"

I say, "I know there is no choice but to climb."

Hoa says, "I've resigned myself to running all the way to school, and to submitting to being lashed on the knuckles by Miss My Lai's rubber ruler. But wait a moment. Gee, let me think a minute. Oh, let's climb the tall banana tree!"

We go back to my house. Hoa turns and smiles at me, gesturing for me to lead her to the backyard.

I climb onto the water tank, followed by Hoa. A peppermint plant poking through a crack in the wall, I pluck a stem and chew on it. I pull myself up on a banana leaf, but it would be much easier barefooted. I scramble on the smooth leaf, and finally get on top of the wall, sitting there waiting for Hoa as she fumbles around on different leaves. She finally comes up on top of the wall, out of breath as she sits down beside me.

We grab starfruit tree branches to climb to the ground. While Hoa struggles to get down, the twigs she's clutching snap, sending her tumbling down along with the starfruits and landing on her butt.

She dusts off the seat of her black pants, shaking her head in disgust. "No, look what you did, Mai!"

I stifle a giggle so that she doesn't get angrier with me, saying. "That's not my fault. I'm trying to save our knuckles."

She purses her lips. "Oh, I don't know. I'd rather get my knuckles lashed than have the seat of my pants soiled on my first day of school."

I'm trying to get up my courage to tell her that the back of her white shirt is also soiled, but I decide not to point that out. I let go of the branch and drop to the ground, landing on my hands and feet.

"You're up a tree, eh, girls," A boy says.

Three other boys roar with laughter. "Oh, wow, two girls up a tree."

"It's about time someone told them off for their bullying behavior," I say.

Hoa walks up to them, staring them down, saying, "No, we're down a tree. What do you see up a tree now? Stupid bullies."

I run up to Hoa, and pulling her by the hand, I say, "Let's get away from them. I'm sure they will deck us."

We keep on running to school, but stop when we see a lot of kids standing at food stands on the roadsides. My stomach growls when I see a girl lick a banana cracker and then throw it away. I feel regret as if I threw it away myself. Where did I leave my banana and cassava breakfast? I'm going to make banana crackers to sell when I get home today.

We trot in silence through the alley behind the church, and come up to the school fence. There's a bomb crater at the fence. At the edge of the crater, we hold up the barbed wire for each other as we crawl under the bottom to get into the schoolyard.

Our school is actually a closed military base. The open-air pavilions on the base have been converted into the classrooms. We approach our classmates still standing with Miss My Lai in front of our classroom. Many other students are walking away from the school.

"Don't we have school today?" I say.

The girl who has licked her banana cracker and then thrown it away says, "We're allowed to go home. A bomb fell on the ground during the night. Fortunately no one was here."

No one hurt. No school today. Hoa and I walk home.

The Fury of War The Fury of War Chapter 3 – I Bathe in the River

It's amazing our first day of school has been cancelled due to a bomb having dropped a few meters away from the classrooms. I try to figure out how I shall pass the time until I have to do my chores for the day.

At home, I change into my patched outfit. I've maintained the outfit by patching the blouse and pants with durable fabrics, doubling the patches serving as pockets. Some kids used to make jokes about my unusual fashion, but now they even think my patched outfit is cool, although they wouldn't dare wear the same.

I head out for the Gold Nuggets River, mainly to bathe in the river.

The Skyscraper Tree stands on the riverbank. The tree has sweet juicy fruits called Inrimanna coming in many colors. The trunk is at least fifteen meters in diameter, and about 195 meters tall, with the branches growing sideways all around and along the trunk. Some lower branches hang down so low that their tips dip in and out of the water, the submerged leaves twirling in the circular ripples, and small gleaming fish nibbling on the leaves.

Perching in the treetop, I can see the activities in the streets of Saigon. Pedestrians, food vending carts, motorcycles, tourist cyclos, bicycles, cars and buses zigzag between one another. Trucks loaded with ammunition, military trucks carrying soldiers, and armored fighting tanks also move in the city traffic, making Saigon look like it's involved in military operations.

The children jump up to catch the low branches, which swing them out until they let go of the branches and plunge into the water. They swim fast to the opposite bank, do a flip turn, swim back, and scramble back up the tree, foamy water dripping onto friends trailing them from below. They keep repeating the process.

After playing with friends on the tree, I slip away to go to my bathing haunt bordered by fences of hedge and trees, at another section of the river. Milky Way Galaxy vines climb up the trees, spread along the branches, and hang down from the branches to the ground. The hanging vines form curtains hiding my bathing haunt.

I had chosen this site for my own bathing, but at first there was no easy way in or out of my bathing haunt. I made a narrow gap at the bottom of the hedge by hitting on the twigs, until a gap opened up wide enough for me to crawl in or out of my bathing haunt.

I scamper along the hedge, looking for the gap. Could it be behind this elm tree branch? I drag the branch out of the way, and there it is. I look around the area and see no one, then although a bit unnerved by the hiccup, I crawl through the gap to get into my bathing haunt.

I stand in the river, feeling all excited seeing glowing rocks accumulated abundantly in the riverbed today. I call the rocks glowing gently "baby Moons," and the rocks shining brightly "baby Suns."

At the foot of my bed, I've piled the moon rocks in one corner, and the sun rocks in the opposite corner. They shine 24/7, so when I go to sleep and don't want light, I push my blanket with my feet to cover them. When I'm in a poetic mood, I let the moon rocks shine, but cover up the sun rocks, and when I want a sunny bedroom, I let the sun rocks glare.

On the days when the big Sun doesn't come out in the sky, and I have to study, I take a few sun rocks and put them on my study table, so that I can study by their light.

The jasmine plants shed their white flowers into the water flowing over the rocks. Aloe Vera plants grow at a sandy part on the riverbank. At the entrance of the nearby Dragon Way cave, there're icicle-shaped pink limestones.

I crush a baby Sun and a baby Moon and a piece of limestone together into powder. I combine the powder, mineral-rich river water, mashed jasmine flowers, and Aloe Vera pulp, and knead the mixture with my fingers to make a paste.

Cleaning your body with this paste makes your skin clear and smooth, and makes you smell as if you've just been washed with expensive soap. Also when you rub the paste on your cheeks, even if you have sunken cheekbones, you'll look like you have exquisite high cheekbones praised by beauty seekers.

I mix the paste together with the juice of a reddish Inrimanna to make eyeshadow, and smear it on my eyelids. I look into the water and see my brown eyes under the stunning eyeshadow, framed by my shiny black hair. I say to myself, "Wow, Glowing Goddess! Marvelous!"

I'll make cosmetics to sell. But I need to make sure the makeup won't cause rash or mar the skin. I wouldn't like to have you come after me! But I need to learn first how to manufacture makeup in large batches, in case I get many customers, as making cosmetics on the rocks won't do so well in the business. There're consequently many things to learn, also many possibilities. I don't even know where to start.

Mom has combed my long shiny hair smooth and put it into two braids, and put rubber bands at the end of the braids to hold them. I remove the rubber bands, slip off my sandals and lay them on the riverbank, and patter into the water. I submerge myself in water, wearing my outfit, and the braids unravel and my hair hangs loose down over my shoulders.

I've finished bathing, get out of the water, and sidle along the hedge to get to the gap, and crawl through it to get out of my bathing haunt.

I'm afraid that I would lose face if anyone sees me bathing in this manner. I must save face for makeup advertisements, to tout my clear smooth skin and influence people to buy my cosmetics. Nobody would buy makeup from a lost-face beauty maker.

Sun coming down through the trees' branches to shine on the fallen leaves on the ground, I lie down on a heap of crackling leaves, to dry myself in the sun before going home. I watch the baby birds' heads bobbing in a nest in a tree. Hearing the baby birds chirping for worms from their mother bird, I feel hungry. Um, thanks, but no thanks. I'm not hungry for birdy food.

The Fury of War

Chapter 4 – Wonder Who This Woman Is

After having taken a bath in the river, while I'm still lying down on a pile of leaves to dry myself before going home, I feel sleepy and doze off.

"Hi Mai! Glad I found you," a woman says in a chirpy voice.

WHAT! I lift myself up into a seated position. A woman is standing beside me, smiling. Despite scattered strands of gray among her jet-black hair, her skin has the smoothness of youth.

Ha! She's the old woman who sells all kinds of merchandise, including freshly brewed coffee and tea, at Good Choice Flea Market located on the side of Khe Sanh road leading to Cu Chi City.

But why is she here? It's hard work walking through the undergrowth to get here. She might have been watching me coming here, and even have discovered my bathing haunt. Also thinking who else might have come here, I'm nervous and upset. Where will I go for bathing after this?

I tug at my damp blouse clinging to my body. "Excuse me, ma'am, but are you OK with plodding over the rough ground?"

She says, "Don't worry, I'm so used to plodding around here, so I never think anything about it. Besides, you get used to it after a while."

She hands me a square package wrapped in beige paper, with a handwritten name MAI in pink letters on it, saying, "I really have come here to give you this. I hope you'll like it. Open it and see the contents."

I rub my hands against the fallen leaves, to rub the dirt off my hands, and then tear off the wrapping paper. She has given me the very thing I need - a new outfit contained in a clear plastic bag with adhesive on the flap. I want to take it home right away to show Mom.

The woman beams with satisfaction when I accept the clothes with delight and an enthusiastic expression of gratitude. She says, "Wait a minute. I've intended to tell you that the Good Choice Flea Market is hosting the 'World's Greatest Yard Sale.' There're a lot of unusual things that would pique your interest. Come and have fun."

"Thank you for letting me know, Mrs. uh…," I say. "Excuse me, but I don't even know your name!"

With the pain in her voice, she says, "I'm sorry. Forgive me. It bothers me to keep my name secret from you, but I can't reveal my name."

"What should I say to my mom when she asks me who gave me the clothes?" I say.

"I guess you could say an old woman vendor at the flea market gave them to you," she says.

Upon reaching home, I dash to where Mom sits, cooking. I stop behind her and flap the clothes bag on the top of her head. "Ta Da! Mom, look what I got!"

"Why are you home already? Who'd you get this from?" She peels open the flap of the bag.

I giggle. "There was a bomb at the school overnight, and school was dismissed, so I played at the river. That nice old woman vendor at the Good Choice Flea Market came and gave brand-new store-bought clothes to me!"

"Beautiful. Put them on," Mom says.

I've put my new clothes on, and come out to show Mom. She brushes her hand up and down the fabric, saying, "It feels soft and silky."

I change back into my patched outfit to do chores around the house. I carefully store my new clothes.

The Fury of War

Chapter 5 – Saigon Food Vendor

Mom makes food for me to sell. While I'm peddling food on the street, Mom catches up with other work and makes dinner for us. She also cooks food for customers' parties, for which I'm a great helper. On the occasions when Mom is too busy to finish making all the foods for me to sell in the day, I finish making the rest.

Mom brightens up, saying, "Oh, I'm glad you've come home. I need to prepare food to cater for a party, so you have to finish making the rest of the food you need for your food sale for today."

I'm ready to make banana crackers with the sunny bananas from my tree. I whip out the cleaver from its holder, climb onto the water tank, and hack at the thick stem of the banana bunch with the cleaver. The bunch comes down heavily onto the water tank, and then slides down onto the floor. I try counting the bananas but keep losing count and having to start all over, so I give up.

I climb over the high wall, get down to the ground on the other side of the wall, and dig up cassava roots. There is no possibility of lugging the roots over the wall. I search along the foot of the wall, clawing out the dirt at any likely hole I find. Two loose bricks sticking out of the wall, at a level with my backyard, I pull the bricks out, and pass the cassava roots through the opening.

Back in the backyard, I peel the bark off the cassava roots, and wash them, the roots looking slick white after having been washed. I fill the big copper cauldron halfway with water, the cauldron hanging from an overbuilt chain. I put kindling straws in the fire pit supported on a tripod, stoke the smoldering embers, and high flames flare up. I pick up the cleaned cassavas one by one, and put it in the cauldron, the boiling water raising bubbles each time I drop a cassava in.

I add sweet potato flour to the boiled cassavas and pound the mixture into dough. I make smooth dough balls out of the dough.

I can make ten crackers out of each dough ball. On a well-floured cool table surface, I roll out a dough ball to a long rectangle sheet. Then I cut out ten dough circles for ten crackers from the dough sheet. To cut out each circle, I place the lid of a small cooking pot on the dough sheet and cut out the circle by moving the pointed tip of a bamboo stick around the lid's edge.

After each group of ten crackers has been cut out, I place slant-cut banana slices on them, and then I brush them with ginger syrup. I lay the moist crackers on a rectangular wooden frame crisscrossed with bamboo laths.

After having used up all the dough, I climb up the water tank and bring the frames up to the kitchen's rooftop, and I lay them out flat in single layer on the rooftop, to dry the crackers in the sun.

Since this is my first-time making banana crackers, I basically have fumbled along the way, and ruined many bananas. Although I'm a little frustrated, however, I'm just glad to have figured out a way to use the ripe bananas, the yellow hue of which has haunted me since I have first discovered them on my tree.

Mom throws charcoal chips into a small fire pit and makes a fire. She roasts the dried crackers over the smoldering fire, flipping and turning them to roast evenly, until they reach golden brown.

I have to make Vietnamese spring rolls. Hoa and Tin come just in time to make spring rolls with me.

A good spring roll is crispy in the crust and moist in the filling. You only need to chew lightly, and the whole thing breaks up into morsels. As you chew, you can hear the crust crackle like crinkling tinfoil, and feel the juice from the filling swapping around in your mouth. While eating a spring roll, you can smell the delightful aromas of an outdoor farmers' market and see in your mind the ingredients that go into making the rolls: mushrooms, beans, herbs, lettuce, crabs, shrimps, hens, ducks, roosters, cows, pigs.

But the secret ingredient to the good taste of my spring rolls is the freshly picked crabmeat from the crabs caught from the field behind my house.

Hoa and Tin and I run along the base of a winding hill, and we come to an area of a streambed full of rocks where the crabs gather. We pry them off the rocks with metal rulers, the crabs flailing their pincers clanging against the rulers. We collect the crabs into a rattan basket.

I've steamed the crabs, and Hoa and Tin pick meat from them. I put lean pork, chicken and beef on a thick chopping board. With a cleaver in each hand, I alternately move my hands up and down, chopping the meat until it becomes a paste. The dried mushrooms have been soaked in water and drained. I mince the drained mushrooms.

Into the mixing container, I put crabmeat, minced mushrooms, meat paste, shredded carrots, bean sprouts, shredded yucca roots, Indian taro, softened vermicelli noodles, two dozen eggs, five tablespoons of sugar, a teaspoon of salt, and seven shakes of ground black pepper. I pour a bottle of beer into the mixture, then glancing at Hoa and Tin to see if they are watching, I stick out my tongue and turn the empty bottle upside-down above the tongue, to get the last drops. I mix the ingredients all together by hand.

Mom cuts the rice paper sheets into quarters for bite-sized rolls, and shows Tin, Hoa and me how to make the rolls. To make each roll, she first softens a piece of rice paper with beer, because beer makes the spring roll skin crispier when fried. She scoops a tablespoon of the filling mixture onto the softened rice paper, folds the right and left sides in, folds the bottom edge up and keeps rolling from there to form one spring roll.

Our rolls are not as neatly rolled as the sample of Mom's work.

Mom puts on her apron to fry the spring rolls in a large wok filled with sizzling vegetable oil. She stirs them with a pair of long chopsticks until they turn to a pleasing golden brown.

Hoa and Tin sample a whole bunch of spring rolls, and Mom lets them.

I gather all the goodies we've made for the day onto my vending tray, laying them out neatly in their proper groups. The tray's loaded with spring rolls, broiled shrimp paste wrapped around sugarcane segments, tapioca coconut pudding served in plastic cup, and rice crepes filled with shiitake mushrooms and roast pork.

With the tray full of goodies on my head, my hands balancing the tray in place, I walk all over the place in Saigon to peddle to passersby. Within just two hours all the foods have been completely sold out.

I plan to spend the rest of the day catching up on my homework.

Hoa shows up at my house as I start doing homework. She says, "I guess you want to go to the 'World's Greatest Yard Sale,' don't you?"

The Fury of War Chapter 6 – The VC Recruit Kids to Serve as Their SpiesThe Fury of War Chapter 7 – The VC Demand Ransom to Set Us Free

Hoa says, "Mai, from what the VC woman said before Tin was taken away, I gather that the VCs would put him in a tunnel beside the retaining wall for the river's bank. I recall seeing a retaining wall near the Herculean Bridge. Let's go there."

We walk along the retaining wall, peering at the wall for any hole with smoke coming out of it, but seeing no suspected hole.

Hoa says, "Let's stick to this area for now, but look for smoke coming out of the ground."

"It's a good idea," I say. "The problem is how we can figure out where to find the ventilation hole leading back to the tunnel where Tin is staying?"

Hoa says, "We face daunting task of figuring out how to find the right tunnel, but First things first, let's try to find a hole with suspicious smoke coming out of it."

We come up to a spot where water is gurgling out of a tube going through the retaining wall. Nearby, smoke smelled of cooking food is squirting out through the leaves of a low tree, its branches hanging down to the ground. Hoa pokes her head into the leaves, saying, "The smoke is coming out of a ground hole!"

I pull on the leaves, and a leafy branch comes away from the tree easily. I make a hollow tube out of my hands, and placing it on the ground hole, I speak into the hand tube, "Tin, are you in there?"

No answer.

As we turn to leave, Tin's voice coming out of the ground, "The VCs have grounded me for telling you guys about their secret activity. You guys get away from where you are, now. Be careful. Don't get caught."

I say, "Tin, I still have a full bag of cotton candy. Can I give it to you?"

Tin says, sounding glad, "Oh, sure. Thank you. Stuff it into the hole and push it down with a stick. Then go away."

I stick the blue cotton candy bag in the hole, and Hoa pokes the bag down the hole with a stick.

A man says in a rapid-fire riff from the underground, "What're you doing in that corner? Who's talking to you?"

Tin yells, "I'm unclogging a vent hole, and talking to myself."

At the sound of stomping feet, Tin screams, "The VCs are coming out! Go!"

Before we can run away, a man VC and a woman VC rush forward, pointing their guns towards us. I hold up the wedge. Picking the stick back up and grabbing a handful of stones, Hoa holds them out towards the VCs. She swings the stick at the man, hitting his gun muzzle.

I say, "Please let us go, and the boy, too."

The man says, "You can pay ransom to VCs, and we'll let you three go."

I turn to Hoa, saying, "Do you have any money with you?"

"Five dollars," Hoa says.

The woman says, "Not enough. I want fifteen dollars. That's the deal."

"I don't have that much money," I say.

The man's face hardens as he says, "Take it or leave it. Pay ransom or go away." He grabs Hoa by the arm. "No, you can't go away. We'll put you two to work."

The woman snatches my shoulder. "So you stay, too."

"Wait, let me go. I'll get the money," I say.

The woman turns to Hoa, saying, "All right then, you'll stay here until your friend comes back."

"Hoa, I'll be quick," I say.

The woman says, "All right then, we'll see you back here. Don't let us wait too long."

I run home. Mom's busy in the backyard. I dash to my bedroom, then run to the flea market.

"Come out and sell what you don't need," a peddler says in a convincing tone. She carries her wares in two baskets, each hung from an end of the bamboo pole balanced across her shoulder.

"Ma'am, How much can I get for this brand new outfit?" I say.

"Fourteen dollars and fifty cents," she says.

I repeat the price to myself, disappointed, but there's no time to haggle. I accept the money and hand over my precious outfit. I hope the old woman will understand.

The VC woman has taken the ransom money from me, and motions her hands towards the rocks. Tin and Hoa come out of a camouflaged swing door set in a stack of large rocks, with a teenage VC holding a rifle pointed at their backs, the man VC covering the door back up with leafy branches.

Tin looks at the VCs with a defiant facial expression, and then grabs Hoa by the hand and pulls her towards me.

"Let's get away from the VCs, quick," Hoa says.

"I need to go back to the riverbank to retrieve the wedge," Tin says.

"Gold Nuggets River region is full of mysteries," I say.

Tin removes the metal wedge from the hole with the hammer lying beside it. The name TOM is engraved on the wedge. I pull the other wedge out of my pocket, and the name MARK is engraved on this wedge. The two wedges look identical in structure.

Tin says, "I found two wedges in a Cu Chi tunnel, one having the name MARK on it, and the other having the name TOM. I hid the MARK wedge in the Skyscraper Tree trunk, and used this TOM wedge to dig holes for the VCs. I guess Mai is holding the MARK wedge that has come from the tree's trunk."

I say, "I suppose you're right, because I've gotten the MARK wedge from an old woman. She said she found the wedge in the Skyscraper Tree trunk."

Tin says, "Mai, would you like to keep this TOM wedge, too?"

I say, "Oh, Thank you, Tin. I'd love to keep both wedges. Let's go to the Skyscraper Tree to play with other kids."

"And to celebrate Tin's freedom," Hoa says.

We're heading to the Skyscraper Tree. Upon hearing other kids' laughter echoing from the tree, we pick up our pace. We skip, skip, dodge, skip, dodge, and skip, striding over rocks and dodging low-hanging branches. We join other kids climbing up the tree, dropping into the river, and climbing back up the tree.

The Fury of War Chapter 8 – We Must Outwit Them

I've decided to try my hand at making cosmetics to sell. I've finished collecting a bag full of the ingredients in nature, to be used in making cosmetics. I'm lugging the bag to the Gold Nuggets River where Hoa and I have planned to meet up, so we can go to my house to make cosmetics together.

I've reached the riverbank. As I'm about to go through a line of trees, I spot a hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground, with the bill's one end tilted slightly up at an angle by a transparent white fishing line.

I'm afraid the bill would be taken by someone else before I could get my hand on it. But a hundred-dollar bill lying on the ground is too good to be real, so I'm beginning to have an uneasy feeling that someone is trying to pull a trick on me.

I remain staying in place and staring at the bill. There're many footsteps facing different directions all around the bill. I don't know if I should just go ahead and snatch it up and immediately run away. I say to myself, "Stop worrying about it and go for it."

But all I do is keep staring at the bill until I can make out a fishing line with its bottom end attached to the underside at the end of the bill, with the line running away from the bill, over a tree branch, and across a road.

My eyes tracing along the fishing line, and I land my vision upon an isolated house, which is set among the papaya trees, just a few meters back from the road. The house is made of straws mixed in mud, with a roof of palm thatch.

As I'm trying to decide whether to come out and take the bill, Hoa rushes in long strides towards the bill, carrying a thick wad of lottery tickets.

Hoa and her mom have fallen on hard times after her dad left his family for a girl working in Saigon Bar. Hoa has resorted to selling lottery tickets after school to help her mom make ends meet.

Hoa stoops down to pick up the bill, with her face turning toward the house. Instantly she drops the bill and lifts herself up into an upright position.

The house's front door opens, and two boys, whom I recognize as the bullies who teased Hoa and me when we climbed my banana tree to go to school, come out of the house and dash towards Hoa.

Hoa turns in my direction and throws her wad of lottery tickets, and it lands among the persimmon trees.

I drop down on my knees, put my head in between the tree trunks, and peer down at the bases of the trees. I retrieve the wad of lottery tickets and a clear plastic bag containing money tied to the wad with rubber band.

The bullies come up to Hoa and shove her toward the house. The door opens, and they push Hoa in, and then the door closes.

I stamp my feet in dismay. What can I do to help Hoa? I've thought of running away to get help for her, but I hate to leave her here with the bullies. I dash around and find a small hole where a swarm of fire ants crawling around. I put the lottery ticket wad and the money bag in the hole, and snatch handfuls of grass and cover the hole with it. The ants crawl up out of the grass.

I come up to the door and stand outside listening. From inside the house, a boy says, "Give over the lottery tickets and all your money to us. Don't expect to get out of here without giving in to our demand."

I pound on the door as confidently as I can. I know from peddling that with mean people, I must act assertively, or else they may toy around and give me trouble.

The door opens a crack and a boy says, "Oh wow, look at who's here! What do you want?"

"Let the girl out," I say.

The door opens wider, and two other boys look out at me. "Oh, you're a poor girl. Go away." The door slams shut in my face.

"I won't, unless you release the girl," I say.

The door opens again. "Oh yes? What will you do if we don't?"

"I will report you to the police," I say.

"Don't you dare report on us, or you'll be sorry! By the time you come back here, we won't be here."

I turn to look around the area surrounding the house and see no one. Then I see Tin coming through the trees, carrying a toolbox.

It has been an insufficient tactic for the Tunnel Rats to go into the Cu Chi tunnels to scout for the VCs. So the Tunnel Rats have initiated the "Open Arms Program," to encourage the VCs and their supporters to defect to the side of the American Army and Vietnamese Army.

Tin has participated in the program, and the Tunnel Rats have offered Tin a job of a Tunnels Detection Specialist, to come up with a method that correctly identify the tunnels with VCs living in them.

I run up to Tin, pointing to the house and saying, "The bullies are holding Hoa in that house, and they have demanded the money and lottery tickets she has with her. But she had thrown them over to me, and I've hidden them in a fire ant nest."

"How many bullies are in there?" Tin says.

"I think three," I say.

Tin says, "That house is an abandoned VC post. I know what to do to rescue Hoa. You go knock on the door and distract them with talks, while I get into the tunnel under the house and manage to get Hoa out by way of the tunnel." Tin runs away into the woods.

I dig up Hoa's money bag, take some coins out of the bag, and put it back into place. I walk up to the door again and knock on it.

The door opens and a boy says, "You've been here before, but what are you back for?"

I say, "I have the girl's money bag, and I'm going to give it to you, so that you let her go. But I want to talk to all three of you. Would you all please come out here and talk to me. But you must stay at a distance from me, and I will throw the money to you and run away."

They come out and stand facing me in a line in front of the door.

I say, "You stay where you are while I walk away, and once I gain some distance from you, I'll throw the money bag to you."

At about fifty feet distant from them, I throw the bag containing ten quarters wrapped in a piece of paper far away from them, and they run for the money.

As the boys run towards the money bag, I see tin and Hoa wave for me to come to them from the back corner of the house.

When I join Tin and Hoa, we run into the woods, and keep on running until we're sure the bullies can't find us, and stop.

Hoa says, "Thank you guys for saving me. They demanded I hand over the lottery tickets and money. When I said I didn't have them, they slapped my face."

I say, "Oh, yes. Do you know where your lottery tickets and money are?"

Hoa says, "I threw them to you. I saw you lurking behind trees, and figured it was better you get them, instead of the boys. I am smart, you see?" she taps at her temple.

I say, "I know you're smart. But why did you pick up the 100-dollar bill without first looking around out of caution. Yes, I got your tickets and money, and hid them in a nest full of fire ants. I used a little of your money to lure the bullies out of the house."

We take the lottery tickets and money bag out of the nest of fire ants.

The Fury of War Chapter 9 – A Rich Woman Haggles Over a Few Pennies

I load up my food vending tray and go out to crowded places to sell food. Soon I have only six crackers left on the tray.

A woman is in the process of closing down her shop for the day. She has a five-story building built in French country style, with a balcony with ironwork railings on each upper floor from the second floor and up. The building sits on a corner of the Freedom Square, on the side facing the popular Saigon Bar.

A jewelry store, with its dominating front wall made of glass, is situated on the ground floor. Inside the store, a chandelier glows with dazzling gleams, and in the showcases, hanging gold necklaces glitter, and diamonds sparkle on their trays.

All around the outside of the building, stalls on wheels, protected from the weather by colorful canvas roofing, carry household goods, shoes, fabrics, popular liquors in the world, and fruits and vegetables.

Her workers are busy wheeling the stalls into the storehouses inside the building, while she stands looking on and bossing them.

I imagine she uses the ground level for business, and enjoys four big open floors for her family. I would put my new makeup business on the ground floor, the sitting and kitchen area on the second floor, my bedroom on the third floor, and Mom's bedroom on the fourth floor. I would keep the top floor empty for Dad to use at his discretion if he ever returns.

I say, "I have only six crackers left to sell. Would you please buy them, ma'am? So I can go home."

"I already had dinner," she says, frowning.

"But the crackers are for snack."

"How much do you want for them?" she says, her face relaxed into a closed-mouth smile.

"I'm selling them for five cents apiece now. It was twenty-five cents apiece," I say.

She says, "How about five of them for fifteen cents. I don't want the one that is chipped off and sagging at the edge."

"OK," I say.

She removes the safety pin which holds the top edges of her blouse pocket securely together, and takes out some coins from the pocket and counts them into my palm. She says, "Oops! I pay a nickel too much." She quickly plucks a nickel out of my hand, and drops the nickel back into her pocket, again the safety pin securing the pocket closed.

I wrap five crackers in a lotus leaf piece, wondering what need she has to haggle. In Vietnam, child peddlers are so common that no one feels sorry for them.

The Fury of War

Chapter 10 – Where the Cows Go

I lie on my back on the floor in my living room, with my legs up against the wall and my feet resting on the windowsill, studying for a school assignment assigned by Miss My Lai. The assignment is to be done in English. The assignment includes writing an essay on the Battle of Saigon, and later reciting the essay in front of the class.

I haven't started writing the essay, but now lying on my back on the floor, I recite from my improvisation of the Battle of Saigon in English.

I hear kids' voices coming from the front of my house, and look out of the window to see what's going on. I see my neighborhood's kids sitting along the top of my concrete fence, so I say, "What are you guys sitting here for?"

"We like to listen to you speak in English. It's so cool you can speak English without skipping a beat. Can you tell us the easiest and best way to learn to speak English?"

I say, "Don't sweat it, I'll teach you to speak English almost as well as native. But take notice, I only speak English in a mechanistic manner of a parrot, rattling off the Battle of Saigon, reciting it but hoping no one will ask what my words mean."

They say, "But it's still cool to be able to speak English in any way, so please tell us how to do it."

I say, "When you have to learn to speak a foreign language, say it out loud, because saying it in whisper will take longer to stamp words on your memory. By saying it out loud, you make the sounds with your mouth, hear the sounds with your ears, and get the words into your head to learn how to speak quicker. I tell you what, that's how it works for me. Try it for yourself."

They say, "Are you sure we can learn to speak English that way?"

I say. "Hey! It's free advice. If it doesn't work for you, you don't get your money back because you didn't pay me in the first place."

We scurry into Miss My Lai's classroom. She stands looking down at her watch and holding up her rubber ruler at the ready, to smack our knuckles with it for being late. She counts, "Seven, six, five,…"

Tin says, "We're four seconds early."

With a small smile on her lips, Miss My Lai lowers the ruler and lays it down on her desk.

Clapping her hands, Miss My Lai says, "Hand in your essay on the Battle of Saigon, then come up one by one in front of the class and recite it in English."

Hoa's the first one to walk up and put her homework on the teacher's desk, and the other students do the same. Tin has just joined our school, and he also hands in his homework. Miss My Lai looks on, twice glancing towards me, but I remain sitting. I've missed handing in three homework assignments so far this year. But I have a good memory and always do well with reciting and saying out loud my homework.

I've finished reciting my improvised essay on the Battle of Saigon, and the whole class claps loudly.

Miss My Lai claps fast, a broad smile on her face. "Cool speech! Now answer the question. When the cows are not roaming freely on the Hamburger Hill, where do they go?"

I'm stumped by the unexpected question. How do I know where the cows go? I don't remember Miss My Lai saying anything on this subject in class. I recall the part about Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell ordering a bulldozer delivered by air to the Hamburger Hill, and then having a crater dug with the bulldozer, to expose the VCs living in the underground tunnels. Hamburger Hill lies in the Cu Chi district, and many tunnels are dug under its ground. I can only guess at the answer. "The cows go into the Cu Chi tunnels."

Miss My Lai is so delighted that she jiggles her feet while clapping. "Yes, they go into the tunnels through the camouflaged swing doors set in the rocks."

Tin says, "How does Miss My Lai know this? After Mai and Hoa had paid ransom money to the VCs, they released me by letting me go through a swing door in the rocks."

I glance down at Miss My Lai's feet. Good thing she's not wearing tire sandals.

Miss My Lai grins. "Mai recited an eloquent speech and gave the correct answer. I give Mai 98 out of 100 points, with the two points short for not handling in the written essay.

Tin has finished reciting his essay, and Miss My Lai gives him 100 points without asking him any question. After Hoa is done reciting the essay, she stands, waiting.

Miss My Lai smiles. "In the Battle of Saigon, the VCs were trying to ambush the American soldiers from under the ground surrounding the Skyscraper Tree. The VCs gave candies to kids and told them to point the American soldiers to go toward to the tree, so that the VCs could attack the American soldiers. But why did the VCs lose the battle?"

Hoa says, "The kids had accepted fresher candies from the American soldiers and taken their side. The kids tied ropes to the tree branches, and they told the American soldiers to climb onto the tree by way of the ropes. After waiting for a long time, the VCs came out of the ground and moved to the tree. The American soldiers jumped down from the tree and attacked the VCs."

Miss My Lai nods. "The VCs ran away to a swamp full of alligators, but they had to cross the swamp to escape. There were star fruit trees going all the way across the swamp. The VCs feared getting eaten alive by the alligators, so they surrendered. What could they possibly have done to escape across the swamp?"

Hoa is stuck by this question.

I raise my hand, saying, "I will answer the question if I am allowed to."

Miss My Lai nods, saying, "Go ahead and answer the question, Mai."

I smile. "They could climb up the star fruit trees and move across them, to get to the other end of the swamp and escape from there, hoping the branches wouldn't snap."

Tin looks at me. "But that would still put the VCs at risk with falling to the alligators. It would be safer for the VCs to go through the swing doors set in the rocks, to get into the Cu Chi tunnels, which are everywhere."

Miss My Lai looks at Tin with her eyes wide open and her mouth dropped. "Wow, children, you all gave good answers. I give Mai 99 points, Hoa 100, and Tin 101 points."

The Fury of War Chapter 11 – The VC Engage in Fierce Shooting with the American Soldiers

Hoa, Tin and I are going to the "World's Greatest Yard Sale." We jostle our way among rows of merchandise, and then come up to the midway area where the rides and carnival game booths are set up in rows.

We stop at one game booth, which offers a winner the best reward of a big flat-screen high-definition TV. In this game, the players must pick up the giant squid from a tank with an extra pliable fishing rod, which has a triangle-shaped iron hook attached to it by a string, and put the squid in the next tank.

It costs 15 cents each time you play the game. I've paid 15 cents and played one time, but lost. I've paid for Tin to play two times, but he also lost. Hoa has lost two times, but on the third try, she gets the squid to curl its tentacles around the hook's edges. She gets so excited and flings the pole too hard, and the squid falls smacking on the tank's edge, slides off it, and lands flopping on the sandy floor, almost dies.

The game owner stares at Hoa. "You're not playing anymore. I absolutely forbid it."

"Tin, what school do you go to?" I say.

"I don't go to school now," Tin says.

"I suppose you want to go to the school where Mai and I are going, don't you?" Hoa says.

"Oh I'd love to!" Tin says.

The three of us scamper through grass, and get on the nearest walking path. Iron Triangle Forest is on our left. A voice comes through a line of tall trees at the edge of the forest, "Tom, hang on, help is coming. I'll get you out of here."

To get to the tree line, we must cross a field of sword grass. Because of the grass blades having serrated edges that prick skin, we break twigs off a hibiscus plant, and use the twigs to push the grass blades aside as we walk toward the trees.

We look through the trees and at a group of the American soldiers gathered on a clearing in the forest. A soldier is holding a wounded soldier, whose head rested on his comrade's thigh. The wounded soldier is unresponsive, foam trailing down the side of his limp mouth, his eyes rolled up into his head so that only the white of the eyes is visible.

The tending soldier pulls out a folded paper from the wounded soldier's shirt pocket. Waving the paper to unfold it, he looks at it, saying, "This paper shows the name 'Tom' as the recipient of the Medal of Honor from the United States government."

A MEDEVAC Black Hawk helicopter, painted with the Red Cross markings on its belly and side, designed to evacuate wounded troops, hovers in one spot in the air without moving, at tree top level, its rotating blades glistening in the sun. A soldier hangs on its landing skid by one hand, waving his other hand to the ground soldiers, saying, "The helicopter cannot touch down under sniper fire. Bring him to helicopter."

Empty hammocks are hanging on the defoliated trees in the clearing. A soldier drops a hammock from a tree, and the rescuers put the wounded soldier in it.

The paramedics are carrying the hammock, with another paramedic moving alongside it, holding up an IV bag above the wounded soldier, tied to the hammock and not moving at all. The paramedics make their way towards the helicopter.

Ropes are dropped down from the helicopter. The American Marines fast-rope down to the ground from the helicopter by way of the ropes. The Marines have hooked the hammock carrying the wounded soldier across two ropes, and the hammock is pulled up. Then the Marines fast-rope back up to the helicopter by way of the other ropes.

A group of stationary trees move, then they fall to the ground. The VCs burst out of the fallen trees, and charge toward the helicopter, as they shoot at it with machine guns. With the hammock carrying the wounded soldier and the two Marines dangling on the ropes outside the helicopter, it lifts straight up and swerves away toward the Mekong Delta River, fire blazes flying toward the helicopter.

As soon as the evacuating helicopter is out of harm's way, The American soldiers open fire on the VCs.

The Fury of War Chapter 12 – I Am Pulled Up into a Tree

Besides selling food, I work for the seafood merchants of small businesses. They often hire kids to mark out the baskets containing the choicest seafood for them to buy, and they pay the kids tiny wages. On the days when fishing boats come back from the ocean into the dock, kids looking for menial work hang around on the quay, to be hired on the spot by the merchants.

From the Cu Chi mountaintop, I identify the boats carrying a large catch of seafood, based on the number of baskets filled with seafood in the boats, when they are still at a distance of about 3 miles. When these boats come near, I jump down into the water, and swim over to them.

At each boat, I clamber up its side planking, get into the boat, and mark all the baskets containing choicest seafood. I mark each basket by dropping an object, which I can later identify as mine, on top of the seafood in the basket. I repeat the process of marking seafood on each boat.

The merchants, after enjoying their breakfast and coffee in the beach huts, waggle over to the quay to pay for the baskets marked by their hired pickers.

Unusually after marking the basket I have selected, I would Stand with the other dripping kids, to wait for my merchant boss to finish loading her boat with the new inventory, and slap 60,000 dong in my hand (that's about 3 U.S. dollar).

Hoa and Tin have asked me to train them on how to identify baskets containing choicest seafood and mark them for the seafood merchants.

In my carefree mood inspired by the quiet and peaceful nature, I saunter along Ho Chi Minh Trail with a springy step and with my arms swinging. A thick root running from the Assassin Jungle all the way into the trail, I step up on the root to cross over it. As I stand on the root, the wind blows sand into my eyes, and I toddle on the root and slip off it, landing on my feet on the other side of the root.

The ground vibrates when I land. I'm standing on a spread-out fishnet partly buried under dry leaves and scattered piles of dirt. The flood must have washed the net here, or some fisherman must have discarded it. But how strange is the way the net is laid out on the ground.

What's happening? The net is closing up around me in irregular, jarring movement, dirt clumps falling out between the knots of the net. I fumble in the net, and get angry as my limbs keep getting stuck in the tangled cords. I claw at the cords to rip them so that I can get out, and yelp at the stinging pain in my fingers, worrying that I've cut my hands.

AHHH! I'm up in the air, and pulled into the Assassin Jungle and up a tree.

The Fury of War Chapter 13 – American POW/MIA Camps Are on the Jungle Trees

Trapped inside a net hanging from a fig tree, I look through the net and see a thick root running from the treetop to the ground, across the ground, and all the way into Ho Chi Minh Trail. The root must contain a spring mechanism that has pulled the net carrying me up this tree.

I look around me and through the mass of leaves. The light filtering into the tree reveals a man in army fatigues lying on his back in a hammock, made of the same material as that of my net. The hammock is hanging on the same tree that I'm staying.

I could feel my heart pounding as I peer through the dimness and see a soldier snoozing in the tree, his hands tied to the hammock's edges, and his shackled feet clad in army boots sticking out of the torn hammock cords. We're not alone – this tree is filled with hammocks carrying soldiers.

I survey beyond the tree, and see more hammocks hanging on the surrounding trees. In the distance, the Skyscraper Tree stands high and majestic against the clear blue sky. I wonder if Hoa and Tin are still waiting for me at the quay, or in the nets hanging in some other trees, or even in this very tree. I cry out in distress, "Hoa. Tin." No answer.

I stare at the man. "Can you at least try to get out of the hammock and help me please?"

He remains silent and lying still, his closed eyelids fluttering and his chest moving up and down. Once, he flicks his eyes open and then quickly closes them.

My feet are above his head, so I kick toward it, but the taut net prevents my foot from reaching it. He's so weird. Maybe he thinks I am his enemy, and that only the other people lying in the hammocks are his allies in fight. But I'm standing in a standing hammock, so I'm his ally, too. How can he rudely ignore a new captive? I bounce on my feet and slam my foot down on his head, but my foot's impact with his head hasn't had an effect upon him.

He turns his face toward me, and lookat me with such intensity that it makes me nervous. He says, "Where're your parents?"

I say, "My mom, Thu, is at home and probably has no clue where I am. My dad was an American Army Officer, probably a POW/MIA Officer. Can I be called a POW? This is during the war, and I'm a prisoner on a tree, so I'm qualified to be named as Prisoner of War. Is that right?"

He runs his palm over his eyes. "I'm an American POW. But what happened that you were pulled up the tree?"

I say, "The VCs have booby-trapped me with the net in which I'm staying." I pause, deciding if I can trust him. "Hammocks on trees are for wounded VCs. How did you get the privilege of lying in a hammock hanging in a tree? Are you a VC spy?"

He shakes his head. "The VCs captured me after I had been wounded. They tied me up and put me up here. We're in a VC Tree Hospital. Only wounded American POWs are held in this tree."

"Oh, why would they put me in this tree hospital?" I say.

He takes a heavy breath. "Probably they think you're an American kid spy."

I say, "Being a spy may be a good idea, come to think of it. I love to be a CIA spy, so that I can use the CIA's intelligence to find my dad. How did you get wounded?"

He scrunches his forehead, and then looks at me very carefully again, but this time in a relieved manner. "In the Operation Crimp, The U.S. Eagle Support helicopters had sprayed herbicidal chemical Agent Orange in the Iron Triangle Forest, to remove the leaves from the trees and plants, destroy VCs' crops, and improve observation of VC activity.

"There were no shadows for the VCs to hide in, so they cleared out of the forest. I moved into the forest, along with a Combat Engineer unit and a Sapper unit, of the U.S. Marine Corps. The Combat Engineers had cleared a path through a minefield, and the Sappers were detecting and disarming mines, to create a safe path for troops and equipment.

"The VCs ambushed us from the underground tunnels, from where they shot rifles up through the ground holes. We scattered and ran toward the trees to take cover. A shrapnel shell exploded. Fortunately the force of the blast only threw me into the rice paddy in the Assassin Jungle."

"You were lucky you didn't get killed," I say, thinking this wounded POW and the wounded soldier in the Iron Triangle Forest may be the same person. "Is your name Tom?"

He says, "Tom and Lieutenant General Marv…uh …Marvin…What's happening in my head? One moment I remember in details, but the next moment recall in snatches. What did you ask me? Tom fell…captured. I tried…But he was…dead. Not..."

I can't believe what I'm hearing. "What were you trying to do with Tom?"

He breathes hard. "Some Combat Engineers and Sappers had waded out of the rice paddy, and moved into the forest. One moment Tom was ahead of them, and the next moment he was on the ground being attended by the engineers. He must be dead."

I say, "No, he was still alive, and flown by helicopter toward the Mekong Delta."

The POW opens his eyes wide. "Mekong Delta River, We were in cages in the river." He closes his eyes, shaking his head and breathing fast. He remains quiet, as if worn out from talking.

"What happened next?" I say.

He opens his eyes, scowling. "I dropped underwater at an eddy sinkhole in the rice paddy. When I resurfaced, I saw bullets whizzing over the paddy. The rest of the Combat Engineer Unit and Sapper Unit scrambled to get away, their hands pulling along a metal cable strung across the paddy.

"Standing on the dike of the paddy, the Chief of Engineers shouted into his radio clipped onto the breast pocket, 'This is Ricepaddy Pounder Unit. We are at the rice paddy in the Assassin Jungle. We're getting away from the rice paddy. I need a dust-off for a wounded troop. Mark target to identify for rescue: The dike across the rice paddy in the Assassin Jungle, on the side facing the Iron Triangle Forest. Over.'"

The POW pauses, as if listening, and then continues, "A Sikorsky HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter hovered over the dike while I was still at the sinkhole. I held my arms high and waved.

"A paratrooper jumped out of the helicopter, and signal flares went up in the air, illuminating the area. I could only move by grabbing the rice stalks and pulling myself on them toward the plane. A rope ladder was dropped down for me, and I reached my hand up to catch it, but the helicopter flew away as shots rang out."

"Did the plane come back for you?" I say.

His face turns red. "As the plane turned around and headed back, a VC hollered, 'American Down.' Other VCs rushed out and swarmed over the dike, their guns pointing at me. I was captured."

"Why did they tie your hands and feet?" I say.

"They do that to all POWs, to prevent any escape attempt," he says.

"Do they stow other things on the hammocks, or just POWs?" I say.

"They also store spare medical supplies, machine guns, grenades, and mortar shells," he says.

"Why did you act as if you were a dummy when I was first pulled up the tree?" I say.

A smug smile comes to his face. "Bring your ear close to me so that I don't have to speak aloud," he says, waiting.

I crouch down and tilt my head, trying to get my ear as close to him as I can.

He says, "I first acted in such a manner because I thought the VCs might be at the tree. Whenever I have detected a hint of the VCs coming around to this tree, I pretend to be in a fog and go crazy, to avoid being questioned. They keep looking for a chance to interrogate me when I look alert. They would hold jangling dog tags before my eyes, and watch for my reactions that give me away.

I think about Dad. He may be on this tree, but I don't know his name. I call aloud, "Is there a Tom on this tree?"

No answer.

The POW opens his eyes. "The VC spies often sneak to the trees, carrying ladders. They brace the ladders against the tree trunks, and climb up the ladders and perch on the rungs, to eavesdrop on the POWs' communications."

"They may be eavesdropping on our conversation right now," I say.

He nods and then shakes his head. "More likely they're meeting to discuss the imminent bombing, aimed at the Assassin Jungle, by the American Army."

"How can you be sure that an imminent bombing of the Assassin Jungle is coming?" I say."

He hesitates a moment, staring at me, and then says, "A VC eavesdropper sat astride a branch thick with leaves above me, and he was carrying electronic spying gear, which collects radio communications from the US Intelligence Radar. The screen of the spy equipment was tilted downward, and it enabled me to see the intercepted signals indicating the American Army will soon bomb the Assassin Jungle."

Oh, no. Not with me in it. What is Mom going to do if I can never go home anymore? I say, "What are the VCs going to do with the POWs on the trees in the Assassin Jungle?"

He looks troubled. "The VCs haven't known that I can understand Vietnamese. I also act as an interpreter. The VCs treat me as a lunatic, so they usually speak in Vietnamese without reserve when I'm around. I heard them say they wanted to move the POWs away from this area of the jungle before the bombing begins. This would be the second time they have to transfer the POWs."

"What happened the first time?" I say.

He says. "In a joint special operations mission called Operation Ivory Coast, the American Green Berets, Army Rangers, Delta Force, and Pararescue Jumpers joined in the mission to rescue U.S. Prisoners of War in Vietnam. The joined forces rehearsed the operation at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida. The operation involved a fleet of 120 aircraft and 4 aircraft carriers.

"On the day of the rescue operation, the AH-1Z Viper Attack helicopters dropped U.S. Navy boats into the ocean at Thienchua International Seaport. Then the U.S. Marines and Navy SEALs fast-roped down into the boats from the helicopters.

"While descending from the helicopters, the Marines dropped flare bombs giving out flames in different colors, and shot rounds of blank bullets ricocheting with theater sound effect, to scare the VCs out of their wits. Also, while the Marines descending from the helicopters hovering in a line, an extra-large American flag rolled open across the fast ropes. On the flag, there was printed a silhouette of a prisoner of war before barbed wire and a guard tower. The word "POW/MIA" appeared above the silhouette, and the words "You Are Not Forgotten" appeared below the silhouette.

"The Combat Search and Rescue teams attacked the 12,000 VC troops, to draw them away from the Hanoi Hilton Hotel, nicknamed for the biggest POW Camp, situated on the bank of the Mekong Delta River.

"The Combat Search and Rescue teams found the camp empty. The VCs had moved the 500 POWs away from the camp and into the Assassin Jungle, put them in hammocks, and hoisted the hammocks up into the trees with pulleys."

I say, "Why do you act so indifferent despite the coming bombing? Don't you even care for the survival of your own, and of the others on the trees? Oh yes, your head must not be working right from being wounded."

A voice in the tree says, "He's being incoherent again, babbling to himself and talking crazy all the time over there. Please disregard his stories. They're baloney."

Others join in putting him down for what they regard as foolish talking.

I look back at him. "Please don't give up on life and freedom. Now you really need to get your head together, and try to figure out how to get me out of the net. When I'm free from the net, I'll tell the Vietnamese Army Commander, at the Cu Chi Army Base, about the American POWs in hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle."

He jiggles his hands and feet. "I can't break free of the shackles."

I sigh. "Has the U.S. Army trained you how to get another prisoner out of a net, while you are lying in a hammock, wounded and restrained with shackles? When I get out of the net with your help, I'll run to the field hospital to get help for you. I'll ask the American Ambassador to inform President Truman about the American POWs being imprisoned in the Assassin Jungle. No doubt President of the United States will order the Pentagon to send the U.S. Special Operation Force Commandos to rescue the POWs."

He says, "No I've never been trained in rescuing a prisoner from a net."

"I give up!" I say, looking across the Assassin Jungle and the Iron Triangle Forest to the Skyscraper Tree. The sound of rope snapping makes me look back down at him.

He looks cheerful, opening and closing his hand, saying, "I was able to get one hand free." He taps his fingers on his shirt pocket, and pulls out a cigarette lighter. He moves his hand holding the lighter towards my feet, with his thumb keeps flicking on the lighter.

"What're you doing?" I say.

He says, "I'm trying to burn a hole in the net so that you can get out."

The melting plastic cords splattering hot wax onto my feet, I yelp, "Ouch, you are burning my feet."

Then the lighter runs out of fuel.

I just roll my eyes and reach inside my pocket. "Wait, I think I can cut the net cords with this metal wedge."

He stares at the wedge, unblinking. "Where did you get it?"

"An old woman gave it to me," I say.

"The old woman who lives near the Gold Nuggets River?" he says.

"Yes. You know her?" I say.

He says, "Oh, never mind. Did she tell you where she got the wedge?"

I say, "She said she found it in the Skyscraper Tree trunk,"

He frowns and shakes his head, saying, "That's not where it should be." Then covering his head with his hand, he says, "Can I see it? Please drop the wedge into my hammock. Try to avoid my head if you can."

I drop the wedge through the net without being able to aim very well, and the wedge lands between his jaw and shoulder.

He studies the wedge, cheering up. "This wedge has the name MARK on it. I wonder where the one with the name TOM on it is."

"I have that wedge, too," I say. "A boy, kidnapped by the VCs, used the wedge with the name TOM on it, to dig holes in the banks of the Gold Nuggets River for the VCs."

"I want to see that wedge, too. Can you please throw it down?"

I throw the second wedge down.

He looks at both wedges. "MARK and TOM are code names. MARK is my code name. TOM is the code name of Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell who fought in the victorious Battle of Saigon, on the Hamburger Hill."

I say, "Oh my God, Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell is the dad of the kidnaped boy who gave me the TOM wedge. But wait, MARK is your code name, so what's your real name?"

He scrunches his forehead and narrows his eyes. "My name is…," he pauses, shaking his head. "The VCs put me in the Chilling Chamber, making me forget certain details."

I say, "So is it possible that the wounded soldier named Tom and Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell is the same person?"

He shakes his head with a look of frustration in his eyes. "At times, I get mixed up about names and sequence of events. You're right. My mind is not working right. But wait, I just recall something else.

"Dragon Kingdom had the documents related to their work of COVID virus creation, and the VCs helped their Dragon Kingdom hosts to hide the documents in a Cu Chi tunnel. Tom and I discovered the location where the documents were buried, and we drew a map together. We made two identical wedges, and hid a half of the map in each wedge. We hid the wedges in a spot we thought hard to find, but they went missing.

The Assassin jungle is plunged into darkness. I toss about in the net from the boredom, peering into the darkness, trying to deal with the unknown in whatever way I know how, but nothing is working.

I doze off and wake up many times throughout the night.

The Fury of War Chapter 14 – I Jump Out of a Helicopter Fleeing the VC

At the break of dawn, feeling a breath of chilly wind on my face, and in my sleepy stupor, I reach my hand out to grab the blanket to pull it over my head. Feeling something strange to the touch brushing against my hand, and trying to figure out where I am, then I realize I'm not in my bed, but in the net hanging on a fig tree in the Assassin Jungle. I flick my eyes open and see my hand clutching the net cord, becoming wide awake.

All of a sudden I hear riot jeering coming from the direction of the rice paddy in the jungle, and my eyes dart to the figures hurrying up out of the ground in a clearing, and I recognize them as VCs. They rush to the tree and stand gazing up it. They gibber in monotone like they're robots. "Here's the person of interest."

They must be mistaken. No one is interested in me.

A VC girl winces, pulling her head down between her shoulders, her eyes blinking nonstop. She says in a choppy voice, "They'll take her to the Chilling Chamber, to chill her up just a little to make her talk. That's what the VCs did to me."

"I don't know anything," I say.

The VC Lieutenant Commander, who led the search of my house in the early hours of the morning, in the hope of finding the POW/CIA documents, rushes to the tree. He wears truck tire sandals, black khaki shorts, bright green pajama top with a blue tie with slanting red stripes, and a dark green cap with a red fabric star in the front. He looks at me and barks an order, "Take the decoy to the Cu Chi tunnels."

Decoy! How am I a decoy? Does it mean that the VCs will use me to lure my dad into their trap? If so, my dad has not fallen into the hands of the VCs?

Suddenly the POW's hammock is adjusted and he hangs in an upright position, his hands free from being restricted by tethers.

He pulls himself upward so that his face is at level with mine.

He slips the wedges into my hands, saying, "Keep them for me. In case I'll still be alive, I'll go look for Tom and you."

I slip the wedges into my pockets.

He looks down at the gawkers, beating his chest like a gorilla and yelling like Tarzan.

The VC leader stares at the POW. "Tie the lunatic back up." He gestures with his outstretched arms for the other VCs to move back, and then he points one hand toward me and flicks it downward.

My net drops to the ground, and stops just an inch above the ground.

The gawkers stare at me. "The girl in a net."

"Please let me go. I already paid ransom," I say.

The leader smiles, a mean smile coming from the slanted-up corner of his mouth. "You paid ransom, but to the leader of a different section of tunnels. Now you pay ransom to me, or I'll put you to work."

"Can I write you an IOU and you let me go?" I say.

"I don't have paper and pen ready," the leader says.

The VCs nudge me toward a waiting helicopter, taking me to the Cu Chi tunnels. The acrid smell of burned fuel makes my eyes water, the plane's whoomp whoomp sound deafens my ears, and the wind created by the plane's rotating blades keeps blowing me backward, so I hold my head sideways as I move forward.

It's a Black Hawk helicopter. The VCs must have downed the plane, captured the pilot and the troops in it, and made them POWs. They must have painted a bold red star, overlaying the painting of the Statue of Liberty on the side of the plane.

I crouch on the floor of the plane. At the open door, the VCs stand guard with their machine guns pointed downward to Earth. The plumes of white cloud, against the backdrop of the clear blue sky, flow across the door.

When the plane flies over the Cu Chi mountaintop, where I was supposed to train Hoa and Tin on how to mark seafood baskets for the seafood merchants, I see Hoa and Tin pacing around on the mountaintop. They look up and wave, and then turn away to look toward the distance across the ocean.

The plane hovers low over the American Airforce Base near the mountain. I spring to my feet and bolt toward the door, my feet hardly touching the floor. The guarding VCs swing around, training their machine guns on me. As if an invisible hand lifts me, I find myself ejecting out of the plane.

When I fall out of the plane, the cold needles of wind sting my face, and jab against my body. Fly or drop. I choose to fly. But where is my parachute? I keep pressing at spots all over my body, hoping maybe I will hit a right spot, and a parachute will spring up and bloom out full above me.

I scream, "Ahhh! Dirty VCs! Dirty VCs! Dirty V…Cs! I will tell on you that you keep the POWs in the hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle."

My voice echoes so loudly that the people on the tarmac look up with their mouths wide open.

I see the boats of the seafood merchants, and drop myself into the ocean. I swim to a near boat and climb up its side flanking, just as Hoa and Tin get into the boat on the opposite side.

The Fury of War Chapter 15 - U.S. President Orders the Bombing of the Assassin Jungle

It turns out I have dropped myself from the helicopter into the boat of my seafood boss. I say, "Hi, Boss. Long time no see. Why do you and other merchants sail out this far into the ocean, instead of waiting on the quay?"

My boss says, "Actually, we're leaving. The fishing boats are stuck in a storm out at sea, so they are not coming back today."

"Yes, they are. See?" Hoa says, pointing toward the fishing boats coming over the curving surface of the ocean.

I point to the lead fishing boat made of black pearl. "Now we can swim to that boat."

Hoa and Tin and I jump into the water and swim to the boat, and climb into it. On the floor, a loudspeaker is lying beside a spread-out black flag printed with a white skull and cross swords. Hoa and Tin are also looking at the flag.

"There're only two baskets covered with seaweed on this boat," Hoa says.

"Let's mark these baskets," I say.

Tin shakes the baskets by the handles, and the seaweed sloshes around. I dip my hand all the way to the bottom of each basket, and feel only seaweed.

I grab the loudspeaker and shout, "Let's get off this pirate boat."

I jump down into the water, followed by Hoa and Tin. I hold the loudspeaker above the water with one hand, and swim back to my boss' boat with the other. Tin and Hoa get on the boat, and then reach their hands down and pull me up.

"Give us back our loudspeaker," a pirate says.

"Make a pirate swim over and get it," my boss says. Then she stands up and says into the loudspeaker, "Attention please. There's a pirate boat with number plate 653 parked in our Delivery Express Lane."

The surrounding boats fire SOS red flares. The John F. Kennedy Aircraft Carrier is stationed nearby. Inflatable life rafts are falling from the aircraft carrier onto the water. The leading raft announces on loudspeaker, "We're coming up to the pirate boat." The pirate boat speeds away.

I speak into the pirate loudspeaker, "Attention all fishing boats. We're on boat number 976. We don't have enough markers to mark all of your filled seafood baskets, but we reserve all the baskets you have."

Seafood merchants trot over to the quay, looking happy. My merchant boss says, "I thought I would have to go home empty-handed, but now I can go to markets with loaded seafood baskets."

My boss acts as a seafood baskets distributor, and pays Tin, Hoa, and me a wage of 5 dollars each.

I slap my forehead. "Oh, Hoa and Tin, the VCs caught me in a fishnet trap, and pulled it into a fig tree in the Assassin Jungle. Hammocks carrying POWs were hanging on the tall trees in the jungle. An American POW in a hammock in my tree told me that President Truman had authorized the bombing of the Assassin Jungle. The bombing would be soon."

Hoa says, "Let's quickly go to inform American Ambassador Martine Bailey who, in turn, can inform President Truman about the American POWs being held in the hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle."

On our way to the American Embassy, I say, "Oh, Tin, I'm sorry to tell you this. The POW also mentioned Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell and the wounded soldier named Tom, who was being tended by his comrades in the Iron Triangle Forest. But the POW's mind was not working right because, as he said, the VCs had put him in the Chilling Chamber, which messed his mind up."

"Really? Did he say where my dad might be?" Tin says.

I say, "No, he didn't. But he didn't remember many things because his head got mixed up."

At the American Embassy, Marine Security Guards are walking around the ground. I briefly tell them about the American POWs in the Assassin Jungle, and ask to speak to the American Ambassador.

I tell Ambassador Martine Bailey that the American POWs are imprisoned in the hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle. I also tell him that I was on a fig tree that served as a hospital for the wounded American POWs. I ask him to help me talk directly with the President of the United States. He dials the White House number 202-456-1111, and asks to speak with President Truman. After a while, he hands the phone to me.

"Hi, President Truman," I say.

"Yes, it's me. Who are you?"

"An undercover informant," I say.

"What do you want to tell me?" he says.

I say, "Mayday. SOS. President Truman, your American POWs are in the hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle, at the area facing the Iron Triangle Forest. Please don't bomb the Assassin Jungle. Mayday. SOS."

President Truman says, "You seem to have an inside knowledge of our CIA covert operations. You also clearly have inside information that allows you to know what I want to do. Hold on, let me check out your intelligence."

He gets back on the line. "You gave me false information. There are no POWs in the area where you said they are. Commandos raided the jungle, but found only empty hammocks hanging on the trees. Now I can go ahead and order the Assassin Jungle to be bombed to shreds, to destroy the grounds furthering VCs' guerilla activity."

"Excuse me, Mr. President, you're crazy."

He raises his voice. "I am not crazy, but I'm a very stable genius. Ambassador Martine Bailey has told me that you were held along with the American POWs on a tree hospital?"

I say, "Yes, I was imprisoned in a net hanging in a fig tree that served as a hospital for the wounded American POWs. The VCs took me off the tree to take me to the Cu Chi tunnels. While they were transporting me to the tunnels in a confiscated American helicopter, I escaped by jumping out of the helicopter and into the ocean. I'll try to get more information about the POWs' whereabouts, and will call you back."

President Truman sounds a little annoyed, "You sound very young and inexperienced. How old are you?"

If I tell him my age, he won't take me seriously. "This is a matter of spy secret."

"Are you a double-agent spy?" He says.

"No, I'm a spy for the American POWs," I say.

He says, "OK, next time you must have valid information, or stop wasting my time."

I say, "Thank you, Mr. President. I'll gather accurate information, and pass it on to you when I get it."

"I have a President's Busy Schedule, so you must have all your information accurate in our next conversation."

I don't have to call President Truman back. The POWs are no longer on the trees in the Assassin Jungle, and I don't know where they are.

As I get in my house, I hear Mom's sandals clacking on the floor. "Mom, I've come home."

She comes in from the backyard and embraces me, crying. "Are you OK?"

"I'm OK . See, Mom?" I open my arms wide and turn my body around and around to show Mom I'm unhurt.

After holding me for a while, Mom releases me. "Flee from the VCs by any means."

The Fury of War Chapter 16 – Our Life in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ)

Mom and I live in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) situated in Saigon. Hoa's family also lives in the zone. Their house is in the middle-class section, and our house sits between a mansion and the high wall.

Most inhabitants of the DMZ work hard to make a living. Our neighbors often gather at the neighborhood communal area near the mimosa tree, and make mundane conversations that bore you to death, so boring that it makes you pretend to have an urgent business, and politely rush off to avoid participation.

Coming back from school, I try to make my way through my lively neighbors gathering in front of my house.

Mrs. Tiny puts out her hand to stop me, saying. "I caught five turtles today from shallow water at the bay. Turtle meat gives you a long life."

I push my way through the crowd to get to my house, saying, "I have a long life ahead of me, so I don't need to eat turtle. OK, maybe sixty years from now. But thank you anyway."

Miss Loan holds a tray piled high with roasted locusts out to me, saying, "Hi, Mai. Try some roasted locusts. They have nutty, buttery taste of avocado, hazelnut and chocolate. They are high in protein and low in fat, and contain nutrients which give you energy and make your hair shiny. You can't go until you've eaten at least one of these."

I stare at the locusts. They have a slick body with powdery wings, hairy legs, beady eyeballs, and antennas extending above the head of the insect. I'm hard-pressed to lower one into my mouth by an antenna, keeping my eyes closed. I chew the locust one time and hold it in my mouth.

"It's so good, isn't it? You can eat another one for sure!" She says.

"No more, thank," I say, ducking under her tray and running into my house. I spit the locust into the kitchen sink.

My neighbors scour the land for the furniture or TVs they need. I'm not interested in spending time looking for discarded items. But I've heard that some people have made interesting finds while scouring the land. So I ask Hoa to go scouring the land with me, to see what interesting things we can find.

As we scour the woods in the DMZ, I find a rumpled army parachute stiff with dirt. I soak the parachute in a stream, spreading it out in the water, and scrub it clean of dirt with a rock. I wrap the washed parachute over a horizontal tree branch to dry.

Hoa says, "Look at what I found. An army combat helmet, with a POW and MIA Dog Tag with chain tucked inside the helmet. Do you want to keep them, Mai?"

I say, "Wow, a POW and MIA Dog Tag with the words 'Never Forgotten' engraved on it. I'll turn it over to the American Ambassador."

At home, I fold the dried parachute in half, and sew it to make it into a big bag. Then I stuff remnant fabric pieces into it, and sew the seam opening closed, to make a mattress. I lay the new mattress directly on top of my flimsy one, and my bed is bouncy.

The power in the DMZ is shut off at 9 p.m. Tonight is the "Food Night for the Dead," a ceremony when people offer food to their dear departed family members or relatives.

My neighborhood kids hang out at the ceremony sites where the foods are placed, to steal them and eat them. I would never eat the ghost-infested foods, because ghosts are all air, and I don't want air to waft up and down my stomach.

On this special event "Food Night for the Dead" tonight, I stay in and read. I don't want to use the baby Suns for reading light, because my loitering neighborhood kids would want to find out where to get the glowing rocks, and follow me to my bathing haunt. I decide to use the light from fireflies.

I catch fireflies, and put them in a glass jar, which has a lid with nail-punched holes in it. When I hear a firefly ticking and see its light flashing among grass blades, I cup my hand over the firefly, and then reach the thumb and forefinger of my other hand through the cupped hand, and gently pinch the tail of the firefly. I put the fireflies in the jar, throwing in some green grass blades for them to munch on.

It's eerie to read ghost stories with the flickering light from the fireflies. There's an abandoned haunted house in the woods behind our house. As I read, I hear the ghosts' panic moaning running from the haunted house to the ground under my bed.

On this humid night, Mom and I like to watch the bright stars from our backyard. I stop reading and sweep the floor of the backyard clean, so that we can lie down on it to watch the stars.

On the other side of the high wall, a pool shaded by mangosteen fruit trees is a breeding ground for mosquitoes. They lay eggs that hatch into larvae, which grow to become mosquitoes. I crush lemon leaves and fruits together, and make an effective natural mosquito repellent.

Mom and I rub the repellent on each other. Smelling like lemon trees, we lie down on the floor, and watch the bright stars in the dark sky.

Gazing at the glowing stars, I associate which star I was born under, which star for Dad, and which for Mom. Whether my star is lucky or unlucky, I cannot decide. I consider maybe it is lucky because Mom and I live together.

"Mom, tell me more about Grandma and Grandpa," I say.

Mom says in a choking voice, "Grandma and Grandpa were merchants. Grandma was fond of diamonds and had many of them, some as large as five carats. They owned a merchant ship sailing in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On each trading run, the ship carried imported gourmet foods and liquors.

"South Korean Army and American Army units frequently carried out joint training exercises along the usual sailing course of Grandpa's ship. The North Korean Army had been threatening to fire bombs on them.

"Grandpa's sailors worried that his ship could not withstand North Korea's bombing. But Grandpa assured them that his ship could beat the system, because it was bomb-proofed with sturdy materials made in the USA."

"Oh, no! Grandpa was too optimistic," I say.

Mom says, "When the ship moved across the sea channels of the North Korean Peninsula, a sea mine exploded. Grandpa and his men went down with the ship into the ocean."

I sob. "Then what happened to Grandma?"

Mom says, "On the day the bad news came, Grandma said to me, 'Thu, the VCs will come and steal our property. I have an idea to hide our property title and my jewelries inside camouflaged rocks.'

"How come the VCs had so much control of the district where my grandparents and you lived?" I say.

Mom says, "My parents and I lived in the Ben Suc village, near the DMZ. The VCs launched a major surprise attack on the American and Vietnamese soldiers maintaining an outpost in Ben Suc, on a day that the VCs called for a cease fire, causing the American and Vietnamese soldiers to flee to the DMZ.

"The VCs had kidnapped the village chief of Ben Suc, and set up a full governing apparatus of their own in Ben Suc, and turned it into a strategic village for the VCs. In the first months after taking over Ben Suc, the VCs called several village-wide meetings. Every village inhabitants were ordered to attend all the meetings.

"In the meetings, the VCs leaders usually opened with a glowing praise for the good job the VCs did defeating the Americans and Vietnamese soldiers, emphasizing in particular the disabling of tanks and the downing of helicopters. Then the VCs leaders followed up their praise with impassioned speeches calling on the village people to work together with the VCs in order to totally regain freedom from the Americans."

I say, "So how were the rocks camouflaged to hide the property title and the jewelries?"

Mom says, "We collected rocks in the swampy creek on our land. I hollowed out the rocks, and Grandma put the jewelries and property title inside the rocks. She coated the rocks with a slimy-looking, brown-green paint, to make them look rusted and mossy. We buried the stuffed rocks among the protruding rotten roots of a bare tree at the edge of the creek."

I say, "So the VCs have been staying in your mansion without getting the property title?"

Mom says, "Three days after we had hidden the property title and the jewelries, The VCs came. I was outside the house and heard a voice say, 'You must hand over everything you own to our VC organization. Where's your property title?'

"Grandma said to them, 'I don't know where my husband put it.'

"Then A VC said, 'Take her away for interrogation.'"

I say, "Oh, poor Grandma. Where were you when the VCs were questioning Grandma?"

Mom says, "I was out at our backyard fence, chatting to a neighbor boy. I wanted to come to Grandma, but the boy held me back and said the VCs would take me away too if I came in the house. The next day, more bad news came from the VCs that Grandma had drowned while swimming across a canal to escape."

I sniff, brushing tears off my eyes, saying, "VCs stop taking my family away from me, already first grandpa then grandma, then next my…" I trail off, not wanting to imagine what might happen next. "But then the VCs might be lying. Grandma might not have drowned."

Mom sniffs. "Who knows? The VCs would do anything."

"How old were you when this happened?" I say.

"I was eighteen."

I say, "The VCs missed the hidden treasure. Grandma's jewelries were worth a lot of money. Why didn't you use the jewelries to buy a big modern house?"

Mom says, "The VCs walked around each room in the house with metal detectors, to search for gold. They made me stay in the same room where they were searching, giving me almost no food or drink for the entire time. Three VCs stood watching my eyes for my reactions each time a detector beeped."

"And after that they confiscated the property?" I say.

"The VCs have been staying in the mansion since then."

"Where did you get the money to buy this house?" I say.

"I used the cash that Grandparents left in the bank."

"Mom, why do you like to eat tamarinds so much?" I say.

Mom says, "Although they are only elongated pods with a woody shell, they contain edible brown pulp that tastes sweet and sour, and is full of vitamin C and antioxidants. Besides, they remind me of your dad."

Mom is beautiful and the best at crafts. She is also a bit fragile and absent-minded, and I think it is because Dad is not here.

"How did you meet Dad?"

Mom says, "The American Embassy in Saigon was hosting a Spring Fling party. I was walking on the beautiful cobblestone walkway in front of the embassy, and stopped when I saw plump tamarind pods swaying on the tree by the embassy's fence.

"A voice said, 'Do you want me to pick some tamarinds for you?'

"I turned around. A gallant American Army Officer stood leaning against his jeep, looking handsome in the soft sunlight. I nodded."

I say, "So you got married with him just because he picked tamarinds for you. (Just kidding!) And how did Dad go missing?"

Mom says, "He often went on missions, and always came back. But he disappeared under suspicious circumstances when you were only a month old."

Now I'm sixteen. I'm desperate to know what Dad looked like and sounded like. Sometimes I ask Mom to draw a picture of him. I like to lie on my stomach, with my legs bent up at the knee, and draw Dad. I think I can remember Dad a bit, but I may be confusing my dreams with real memories. People say you can't remember things when you're that little.

I always think about the tragedy befell my grandparents. I wonder how different our lives might have been if my grandparents were still alive. I can't help but imagine all those riches dispersed in the water, wealth evaporated in an instant, and Mom being thrown into rough circumstances. I work hard to help Mom out.

Lying on the hard floor, I think of money-making ideas in disjointed sequence, and what money can buy. I fall asleep before getting to my homework.

The Fury of War Chapter 17 – An American Marine Working behind Enemy Lines

At a creek, the water gurgles as if someone is wading in it. Hoa, Tin and I follow the gurgling sound to a culvert on the opposite side of the creek. We sit down on a low pile of smooth rocks along the creek's edge. The Skyscraper Tree is nearby.

More bubbles coming to the water surface, tall grass stirring and then having been parted, then a face with glinting eyes pops through the opening in the parted grass. The face is camouflaged with each eye underlined with a thick black stroke, and with curving green stripes all over the face. We run away.

After running a few paces, I say, "Stop! The face looks familiar, and I want to find out about something. I was trapped in a fishnet and pulled up into a fig tree in the Assassin Jungle. A POW was lying in a hammock hanging on the tree, restrained by hand and leg cuffs. He talked to me the whole time. The face coming through the grass looks like the POW's face."

As we turn around to go back, shouting voices rise from the woods, and the face sinks back into the water. We dash towards the Skyscraper Tree, and snatch at the low hanging branches and swing up them, and crash into the tree. The birds cease their chatters, monkeys rush about, snarling and waving their front paws at us, and dogs ferociously bark from the woods.

Hoa says, "I hope the noises from the animals and birds will not attract attention."

The noises quiet down in a few moments. We sit on the branches and watch for the face to reappear.

The face reemerges from the reeds at a different area in the creek. I say, "Here it comes again."

An army man stands up in the water. He makes a small movement and looks towards the Skyscraper Tree.

Savage roars come from the direction of the cemetery, and guerrillas wearing truck tire sandals rush forward.

The army man turns his head to look in different directions, and bolts away in the direction of the American Embassy, identified by the American flag billowing on the flagpole.

Red tracer bullets flying in one single line trailing him, he runs in stoop and flings himself into the Gold Nuggets River. Bullets strike at the water around him as he swims, and they pass close above his head each time it comes out of the water.

Hoa says, "Oh my God, do they have to use so many bullets on one man? Dirty VCs."

"The VCs are surely dirty," Tin says.

The man mostly keeps his head in the water as he swims, bubbles coming out of a hollow grass stem that comes straight up from his head. The VCs run along the riverbank, shooting into the water.

Long streaks of blood expand in the water, turning it red, and the man sinks out of sight, vanishing in the water. When he comes directly under the Skyscraper Tree, he turns his head sideways and looks up the tree. We wave to him, but he doesn't wave back.

The VCs trot along the riverbank, looking at the red water. The leader says, "Cease shooting and retreat. We can't see him to shoot him dead."

They turn around, swinging their rifles over their shoulders, and march away along the riverbank, still looking at the water.

We slip down the tree, and go in search of the escaping man.

A head bobbing up and down in the waves, I say, "That may be him."

We jump into the river and swim out to him, but he is dead, floating face down.

I move over and touch him, and detect light twitching in his arm. I poke him at his armpit, and feel him stiffen up. I say, "He is still alive. Turn him over on his back and shove him to shore."

We turn him over. As I tilt his head above the water to keep him from choking, he opens his eyes and stares in my face. "You again. And what are you kids doing around here?"

"Trying to find you," Tin says.

"Are you really OK, with so much blood loss?" I say.

He says, "I released red dye in the water so that the VCs could not see where I was."

I say, "You were unharmed, so why did you lie face-down in the water?"

"I thought the VCs were coming for me," He says, turning to look at me. "I tried to play dead, but couldn't because you tickled me."

Then he says, "Thank you kids for saving my life by turning me over on my back."

Tin says, "We didn't save your life. You were in no danger of dying or drowning."

The army man says, "You turned me over, and that prevented me from being choked to death if I stayed longer in the water."

"You are full of it," Hoa says.

"Tell us what you are doing here," I say.

"It's secret," he says.

Tin says, "I think you are a Marine and you spy behind the enemy lines. You try to detect the positions of the VCs, their bases and their infiltration routes, so the Marine Corps can block them up."

The army man says nothing, just smiling.

I say, "What with all the bullets whizzing around you, you wouldn't swim around here again to save your life, would you?"

The army man says, "I'll think about that. He points to a wall that has the same make as the high wall at the side of my house. "It's dangerous around here now. You kids should get out of here by climbing up the trees and get over that wall."

We get down to the other side of the wall, and crawl through a barbed wire fence, and plop down onto a field of dry grass. At the sound of an airplane taking off, I look around and see the sign on the top of a building, "Tan Son Nhat Airport."

The American Army Base is next to the airport. Fighter airplanes and helicopters are gathered on the ground. It looks like the Allied Marines are preparing for combat.

At the entrance gate of the American Air Force Base, an American Marine stands by his jeep parked halfway on the sidewalk and halfway on the road. "Hi kids. Come over here for a moment."

We cross the road and come over to him. I stare at his face. "You're still alive! What happened to the other POWs in hammocks hanging on trees?"

"I escaped," the Marine says. "But the other POWs were moved somewhere else."

I look at his clean-shaven face, and Tin and Hoa are looking, too.

The Marine smiles. "Don't you recognize me? I was also the escaping Marine in the red water."

Seeing him now makes me think of my dad. "Excuse me, Sir. Do you know of an American Army Officer who is looking for his daughter?"

He looks at me, shaking his head. Then he pats my head, "How old are you?"

"I am sixteen years old," I say.

He says, "I have a daughter, and she is living with her mother in America. When my tour of duty is over, I'll leave the Army and go back home to the United States." Then he raises his brows. "POWs in cage! Immersed in the Mekong Delta River! He is there!"

"Who's he? Do you mean my dad?" I say.

But he only shakes his head.

Hoa says, "He's going crazy. Let's get out of here." She pulls Tin and me to go away.

The Marine puts out his hand to stop us. "Wait, I have something for you all."

Tin says, "Watch out. He may try to do something crazy."

The Marine reaches into the back of the jeep, picks up cans of food, and drops them into a bag. He hands the bag to me, saying, "This is for you all to share."

In the bag, there are cans of army foods: pickled hot dogs, ham and cheese, egg and ground pork, fruitcake, fruit cocktail, peanut butter, and chocolate.

The Fury of War Chapter 18 – I Didn't Know I Had a Cousin

Mom and I walk in the woods behind our house. At the side of the riverbed where I catch crabs, a coffee tree heavy with berries stands beside an oak tree.

Mom says, "It will be nice to have a cup of freshly ground coffee, with the aromatic beans from these berries."

I say, "And better yet, I can make coffee with the beans from these berries, and sell the coffee. I will ask the old woman at the flea market to let me sell coffee at her stand."

Mom says, "Wait here, I'll be right back."

She runs back home, and comes back holding empty rice sacks, saying, "We'll put the coffee berries in these bags."

I take the bags from Mom's hands, saying, "Mom, you stay down here. I'll climb up the tree to pick the berries. Each time a bag is filled, I'll drop it down to you."

When I get on the coffee tree, squirrels are chasing one another on the branches, chattering noisily. They scurry to the higher branches, rattling the leaves. I pick the ripe berries and put them in a bag. When it's full, I pull the strings and tie it up, and drop it down. The loaded bag breaks the leaves and twigs as it falls, and whips up a cloud of dirt when it lands on the ground.

Then I open the next bag, and pick the berries and drop them into the bag.

I have the last bag to fill. I peer at the higher branches to look for more ripe berries. A squirrel sits on a branch thick with plump berries directly above my head. The berries sway as the squirrel plucks them with its front paws, and eats the meat of the berries, dropping the coffee beans on the ground.

I reach my hand up to the berries. Scratch, scratch. I say, "Well, really! Angry squirrel!" Lucky for me, the squirrel scratches on my sleeve, but not on my hand.

Clusters of acorns dangling on the oak tree beside the coffee tree, I yell, pointing to the oak tree, "You are on the wrong tree, squirrey! Go eat the acorns."

The squirrel makes a high pitch sound and chatters its teeth. Other squirrels come to join the alerting squirrel, and together they munch on the berries in a defiant manner, ignoring me.

I must get rid of the squirrels. I stomp on my branch to scare them off, but the branch snaps and hangs from the bark that has peeled off the trunk, but still clinging to the trunk. I fling myself onto another branch, catching it with one hand. As I pull myself up on the next branch, the broken branch breaks off the tree and falls on the ground, scattering the berries.

The squirrels scuttle to the tips of the branches of the coffee tree, and fling themselves onto the oak tree, and immediately gnaw away the shell of the acorns.

I have filled the last bag, tie the strings, and drop the bag down. Mom puts all the coffee bags together at an almost hidden passage in a bush, at the side of the haunted house.

A mother monkey darts out of the bush and stops in front of us, its eyes watching us. It's holding a baby monkey in its mouth, with the baby's tail flapping at one side of the mother's mouth, and the baby's tiny head poking out at the other side. The mother monkey sprints to the haunted house

I start toward the passage. "Where does this passage go?"

"Believe me, you don't want to know. Don't tell anyone about it either," Mom says.

Mom's iPhone starts ringing, and she talks on the phone. She turns her phone off, saying, "Mrs. Loan is in urgent need of a roast pig for her daughter's wedding tomorrow. She has asked me to make a roast pig. We have to go to a pig farm to get a pig. I've hired Mrs. Tam to butcher the pig. We'll roast it this evening."

We take a bus to the Mekong Delta, and then walk to the farm known for selling pigs at good prices. We pass by a farmers' market, and it's at the end of the market day. There's a pile of discarded vegetable trimmings and fish entrails on the ground, and a farmer wearing a straw hat is shoveling the food waste onto his two-wheeled cart.

"Excuse me, Sir, what do you do with the food waste?" I say.

"My wife turns food waste into slop for the pigs on our farm. Our pigs are for sale," he says.

"What's the name of your farm?" I say.

He has filled up the cart, and starts pulling it away by the handlebars, saying, "Jungle View Farm."

The farmer has left. As we stand looking around, a stout woman pushes a cart that carries a jute bag with something wriggling in it towards us. She says, "You can get this pig for cheap."

I look at the furiously wriggling bag, and imagine I would be suffocating in it.

"How much does the pig weigh?" Mom says.

"It weighs 120 pounds. I want 30 dollars for it." The woman says.

"Wow! It's about 25 cents per pound. You should buy it, Mom."

The woman smiles and points towards the foot of a nearby tree, saying, "I have one more pig over there. If you want, you can get both pigs for $45."

The bag at the tree doesn't wriggle, but it shivers.

Mom pulls me aside, saying, "Mai, stay here with the woman so that she won't leave. I'll go to borrow some more money from Aunt Bebe, to buy both pigs, and in case we run into more good deals. But don't go away with anyone. Run away if there's a problem."

I don't like the look of the pig kicking in the bag. It would be terrible if it were me fumbling inside of it. Maybe the pig is actually a kid. She may kidnap me, put me in a bag and sell me off at another market. I decide to stay at a safe distance, and be ready to run away as soon as she starts to act weird.

I sidle away from her and move to the roadside to pick flowers, all the while keeping my eye on her. But I must try to find out whether or not a kid is actually inside the bag. I come back to the cart, and prod the bag with my fingers, hoping whatever in the bag will make some sound, but it makes no sound. The woman is looking toward the road, and I put my face close to the bag. Whatever in the bag kicks vigorously, and I receive a kick in the face, right above my right eye. Zillions of colorful stars shooting out from my eye into space, I reel back and rub my eye.

The woman puts one hand on my shoulder, pointing her other hand to the road. "Oh, here she comes."

I don't look to where she's pointing. She must be trying to get me to look away, and snatch me when I let my guard down. I squirm to break free of her hand and crawl away, and spring up as I catch some distance.

I dash over to a group of women who are picking pawpaw fruits from the trees on public land. They move their hands through the leaves and pluck the fruits, and put them in their soiled fabric bags. As I come near them, they raise their eyes with the look that freaks me out. I am afraid these people are conspiring with the pig vendor to kidnap me, so I run away. They laugh out loud. Creepy!

I run without looking to see where I'm going. I stop when my head collides with someone's body. I look up and see…"Mom!" I wail.

Mom rubs my head, waving the money in my face. "Are you ready to help me make roast pig tonight?"

I say nothing, just shaking my head. I feel bad for making us lose the opportunity to make a good profit from the pigs.

Mom stoops and looks closely at my face. "Oh, you have a little bump above your right eye. Are you OK? What happened? Is the woman still there?"

"Her pig kicked me from inside the bag. Let's go back to see if she's still around," I say.

We hurry back to her, but she's gone.

Mom looks upset, her face stiffened up, her lips pressed tight together, her mouth turned down at the corners. Then she opens her mouth. But before she says anything, I push the bunch of flowers toward her, and she smiles.

We stop at food stands, a rare treat. Mom has a bowl of steaming beef noodle soup called Pho. I have a plate of steamed rice crepes wrapped around a filling of ground pork and chopped mushrooms, garnished on top with bean sprouts and cinnamon basil. For refreshment, Mom gets Vietnamese iced coffee, and I get fresh coconut juice prepared by chopping off the top of a green coconut. I suck the refreshing juice through a straw, forgetting all about suckling pig.

We've finished our lunch. Mom says, "I want to return the money to Aunt Bebe, and then we'll go on to the Jungle View Farm to get a pig."

Aunt Bebe looks surprised upon seeing us. She says, "Oh, Thu, you've come back here with your daughter, my niece. And hi Mai, I haven't seen you in a long time. How you've grown." She embraces me.

Mom holds out money, saying, "Aunt Bebe, I want to return borrowed money to you."

Aunt Bebe straightens her posture and steps back. "Uh…Thu, why do you return the money so quick? Don't you need it to buy the pigs?"

Standing with my head bowed and both my arms hanging at my sides, I turn to Aunt Bebe, saying, "Oh…Aunt Bebe, it's my fault. Mom told me to stay with the pig vendor so she wouldn't leave. But I was afraid she would kidnap me, so I ran away."

Aunt Bebe giggles, taking my hand and gently pinching my cheek. "When I was thirteen, I was always afraid of being kidnapped whenever I was left at home alone while Mama went to market."

She pulls out a ten-dollar bill from her shirt pocket, and slides it into my hand. She turns to Mom, smiling. "Thu, you can pay me back later. Oh, by the way, you remember our cousin Nina? She and her son have just moved from Da Nang and came here to live. Their house is only two miles away. If you and Mai want to go visit them now, I'll take you there."

"How old is her son?" I say.

"He's sixteen. His name's Nam," Aunt Bebe says.

I can't believe this. "Oh wow! I have a cousin. Mom, I want to visit them."

"Oh, yes. Let's go now," Mom says, looking happy.

The Fury of War Chapter 19 – Secret Shortcut We Can Take to Make It Quick to Get Home

Aunt Bebe skips into the street to hail a cyclo. The driver pedals his cyclo faster and stops in front of us.

Aunt Bebe says, "Please drive us to the Market Square first, and wait for us while we shop."

At the market, I keep looking at the mannequins wearing girl clothes in a store window, and Mom's also looking at the window. Mom pulls my hand to lead me away from the store.

"Let's come inside the store to look around a bit," Aunt Bebe says.

A lady comes to the front of the store. "Hi, Bebe. Are you looking for any clothes in particular?"

Aunt Bebe smiles brightly. "Hi, Sen. How does it feel to run your own business? My niece, Mai, admires the clothes in your store window, so I take her in here to take a good look around."

The owner looks at Aunt Bebe, and then at Mom. "I would like to show Mai the clothes that just came in." She takes my hand and leads me around the store. She takes a shirt and a pair of pants from the same clothing rack, and hands them to me. "I'm sure these will look good on you. Please go into that fitting room over there and put them on."

I come out and walk toward Aunt Bebe and Mom. They smile and nod.

Aunt Bebe pulls out some bills from her purse, and gives them to the store owner while looking at me. "Mai, the clothes look good on you. Keep them on. You're going to meet your cousin for the first time."

Mom looks at Aunt Bebe. "You're being so kind to us."

"It's all right, Thu. You can pay me back later," Aunt Bebe says.

The cyclo driver drops us off in front of Aunt Nina's house, its front yard looking like a landscaped park. Through the wrought iron gate, I see a plump woman sitting on a rock bench under a white beech tree, sipping coffee. In the middle of the yard, a water fountain flows into its ten bowls arranged at different levels. Marble frogs and turtles affixed to the bowls' edge spew water from their mouths, and water lilies float in the bowls, and big gleaming goldfish swim among the flowers.

Aunt Bebe calls through the gate, "Nina, guess who's coming? Here are Thu and her daughter, Mai. They come to visit you and your son. Mai is so excited to meet her cousin, Nam."

Aunt Nina looks up, puts her coffee cup down, and scrambles to get on her feet, smiling broadly. She opens the gate and immediately puts her arms around Mom and me, and holds us for a long moment. Then she calls toward a boy standing in the front doorway, "Nam, come out here and meet Aunt Thu and your cousin, Mai."

He comes and stands beside me. "Hi, Cousin Mai."

I stare at him. "Hi, Cousin Nam. I'm happy to meet you. Now I know where you live, and I'll ask Mom to come here to visit more often."

Aunt Nina says, "Oh, yes. Please do. You're welcome any time, and we'll come to visit you. Please do come in our house."

When we're in the house, a maid brings out Mooncakes and tea served on a silver tea set.

After half an hour, Mom says, "It's so nice to be here. We'd love to stay here longer, but I'm so sorry that we are in a great hurry today. I got an order to make a roast pig for a wedding tomorrow. We came here to buy a pig for roasting. But we'll come back to visit you another day, soon."

Cousin Nam says, "Ma, why don't you stay home with the aunts. I'll show Mai around the city, and then take her to get a pig."

Mom puts money in my hand. "Pay for the pig with the money."

When we're outside, Nam says, "Where do you live, Mai?"

"Near the Skyscraper Tree by the Gold Nuggets River."

Nam brightens up. "Oh, really? I know where it is. I've been there a few times with friends. I even know a shortcut through a dried-up culvert to get there."

"Can we go to the Jungle View Farm to get a pig?" I say.

Nam says, "Okay, sure. The farm is on the bank of the Mekong Delta River. After we get a pig, do you want us to walk it through the shortcut to your house?"

I say, "Wow, that's amazing. Okay, take the shortcut. Will we walk through it again to go back to your house?

Nam nods and walks toward an open shed, and pulls out a wooden tow cart with wheels and pulling rope loops. "We'll put the pig on this cart, and pull it through the culvert. By the way, the Mekong Delta region is the land of adventures. I'll take you on adventurous excursions when you have more time."

"Oh, Cousin Nam, I'll make time for it. And I'll bring my friends along, if that's OK with you."

At the Jungle View Farm, a girl about my age stops playing and yells, "Mom, you get customers."

A woman comes out of a house and walks toward us. The girl comes and stands beside me, grabbing my hand. "Do you want to go to a pigsty of Kobe pigs to pet them?"

I scrunch up my nose. "Yuck, they are too dirty to pet."

Her mom chuckles. "No, these are the specially raised Kobe pigs, and they must be kept clean and healthy, to make the good quality marbling in their meat.

"How much does one Kobe pig cost if I buy it?" I say.

"$450," the girl says.

"How much does one common pig cost?" I say.

The mother says, "$45. The marbling in the meat of a common pig is not so well defined as that of a Kobe pig."

I say, "Do your common pigs eat the slops collected from a field market? A man shoveling the slops at the market told me that."

The woman says, "Yes, to keep the costs down."

I buy a common pig. We set it in crouching position on the cart, and tie it so that it can't stand up. Cousin Nam and I pull the cart by the rope loops into the culvert. Where the passageway in the culvert slants down, we use our strength to restraint the wheels from rolling too fast, to prevent the pig from falling over. The culvert comes out right near the Skyscraper Tree.

Nam stares at the high wall beside our house. "You know, your neighborhood used to be an army base. Sometimes my friends and I come to play at this long wall, at a section a mile from your house. We dared one another to walk on the wall. But I dare not walk on it again."

"So you walked on it before?" I say.

"Yes, once. I took one step, but got scared and sat down straddling the wall."

I clap my hand, delighted. "At least it was the first step. Did any of your friends take more than one step?"

"Yes, one friend did. The guy climbed onto a tree and got on top of the wall. He took two steps, and then grabbed a tree branch and climbed down it, crying.

Nam leads the pig into my front yard, and leashes it to a big rock in a corner. "You can keep this cart. I'll make another one for myself."

We take the same culvert shortcut to go back to Nam's house.

When we get back, Mom and the aunts look at us. "Where's the pig?" Mom says.

Nam says, "At your house, Aunt Thu. We walked the pig through a shortcut to your house."

Before we leave, Mom promises that we will come back to visit them again soon.

Outside the house, Mom says, "How did you two get to our house and back so quick?"

"Mom, Cousin Nam knows the quickest route to our house. It's through a dried-up culvert that branches off the Mekong Delta River. We walked the pig home using this route."

Although Mom is reluctant, she agrees to take the shortcut to go home. When we get out of the culvert, Mom is so delighted. "I don't feel comfortable going through the culvert, but only do it when necessary."

The Fury of War

Chapter 20 – Make Roast Pig

Mrs. Tam stands at our door. "Hi, Mrs. Thu. I'm here to work on the pig."

In the pig-roasting business, you don't make much profit by buying cleaned pigs from butchers and roasting them. Instead, you buy pigs, and if you don't like the messy task of butchering, you hire neighbors to butcher and clean them. You can pay neighbors for their work with money or with the chitterlings from the pigs they clean. They can sell the chitterlings at roadside markets. They can sell pig tails, for large sums of money, to Chinese men who are bald in the front of their heads, but still having a little hair in the back.

Mom says, "Hi, Mrs. Tam. I'm glad you prepare the pig for me. Can I pay for your work with the chitterlings?"

"Sure, Mrs. Thu. Can I take the pig tail?" Mrs. Tam says.

I say, "Our pig has a loose-coil tail looking like a stretched spring. I don't know if a Chinese man would wear a wavy tail for a pigtail."

Mrs. Tam smiles. "The Chinese man, to whom I'm going to sell this special pigtail, will dye it with gold dust and attach it to his little natural hair in the back of his head, and wear it as a golden pigtail."

Mrs. Tam unleashes the pig. It darts toward the back of our house, lifts its two front legs and jumps over a wire fence, and plunges away into the woods. Our neighbor men are playing poker in the outdoor, and they jump over the fence to chase the pig. After about five minutes, they come back carrying the pig over the fence and into our backyard.

The cleaned pig is hung upside down where the circulating cool air keeps the meat fresh. Mom rubs a mixture of five-spice powder, crushed herbs and garlic, brown sugar and salt inside the pig. I brush the red food coloring on the pig's skin. The pig is allowed to stay undisturbed for at least two hours, for the meat to absorb the seasoning flavors before roasting.

The roasting pit is eight feet wide and ten feet high, and can roast up to three pigs at the same time. The pig is hooked head-down, and the hook is hung from the thick iron bar, which is placed across the top of the pit. At the pit's bottom, a round iron ring with legs stands in the fire, and it holds a wide copper wok to catch the grease dripping down from the sizzling pigs. A small rectangular opening in the pit's wall near the ground provides air circulation to keep the flames burning.

A roasted pig for a wedding must be able to stay upright when it's put on a wooden board. While preparing the pig, Mom had cut the pig's leg joints so that the legs wobble. And now when she puts the pig on the board, it rolls over and rests on its side on the board.

Someone is passing by our front door, sobbing. Mom runs to the door. "Wait, Wait a minute. Please come in my house. Why are you crying?"

The crying girl steps in the doorway and stands with her protruding tummy. "My lady of the house told me to leave her house because I'm going to have a baby. I'm a week away from delivery, and she doesn't want to keep a maid with baby. I do all the house chores and run errands for her. I have nowhere else to go around here."

I bring out the chair from my studying table. "Please sit down."

Mom makes her a plate of white rice topped with roast pork and omelet. "Where do you think you can go to now?"

"I want to go back to my parents' house in Danang. But I have no money for bus fare."

"How old are you?" Mom says.

"I'm sixteen, and my name is Bong."

Mom gets a cyclo passing by our house, to take the girl to a bus stop. "Bong, take care of yourself and the baby. Promise me that you don't do anything rash. Everything will turn out all right."

The Fury of War Chapter 21 – An American Soldier Has Saved Me from Being Bombed to Bits

I meet up with Mom after our business errands, and we have lunch at a sidewalk coffee shop. She has black coffee and two tamarind cupcakes, and I get a chocolate strawberry milkshake and a slice of butter pecan pie.

Mom says, "I heard on the radio that there's major fighting in the Mekong Delta area today, and bombing has destroyed many big farms. Refugees are leaving their homes and coming to Saigon City. We'll go by the Saigon Central Railway station, and look around to see if we can spot Aunt Bebe, or Aunt Nina and Cousin Nam among the refugees."

I peer up the tracks toward an oncoming Saigon Express train, its wheels rolling fast. The train slows down and stops by us.

The passengers carrying their belongings on their heads get off the train and onto the platform. Mom and I follow them into the train station.

I walk up to the girl from the Jungle View Farm where I bought a pig, and tap her on the shoulder. "Excuse me, is your family farm still there?"

"No, it's gone," she says, crying.

Above the gate of platform 9, a sign says REFUGEES. We crowd through this gate, and get inside the train station, and come to a lounge where people sit beside their strapped suitcases and bags.

I look toward the far corner of the lounge. "Oh, there they are, Mom. Cousin Nam, Aunt Nina. And yay, Aunt Bebe."

I run ahead of Mom toward them. Cousin Nam puts his arms around me, lifts me off the floor and whirls me around. Mom and the aunts embrace one another, chattering and laughing.

Cousin Nam pulls me by the hand into the concession area. He buys all kinds of food and drink. I gobble two sandwiches and drink up a bottle of refreshing sweet pennyroyal juice.

Mom says, "Why don't you all come and stay in our house until the bombing is over. Nam can keep Mai company for a while. They get along well."

"Mom, our house is not good enough for them to stay in. And we have no extra beds," I say.

"It's OK, Mai. I brought along sleeping air bags," Nam says.

The bridge crossing the Gold Nuggets River at the Skyscraper Tree is ruined by bomb, and part of the bridge fell into the river. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is building a dirt causeway for a makeshift bridge. They let us go on the partly finished causeway, to go to our house.

As we enter our neighborhood, Hoa runs up to us. "Refugees are fleeing the Mekong Delta countryside that's being bombed, and moving into the woods behind your house."

"What're our neighbors doing?" I say.

"They're digging trenches in the ground, and building bomb bunkers for the coming bombing," Tin says, showing up behind Hoa.

"But the DMZ is a no-fire zone where bombing and shooting are prohibited," I say.

Hoa says. "Helicopters flying over the DMZ have announced that the VCs have removed the tires from the trucks parked in the American Army Depots, and that the VCs shot at the guards while getting away with the tires into the tunnels under the DMZ ground."

Tin says, "Now the VCs are being hunted. The Allied Command Operations center has ordered the people to build bomb bunkers, and get into them before bombs start falling on the DMZ."

Refugees are still moving into our neighborhood. On a motorcycle, a man sits in the front with his hands on the handles, a woman holding a baby sits behind him, and then a little girl, and then a little boy at the end. Their belongings are piled into the sidecars of the vehicle. The loaded motorcycle moves into the woods behind our house.

Nam, Tin, Hoa and I run into the woods. On a patch of land surrounded by barbed wire fence, evacuees pitch tents with rice sacks, bedsheets, and sheaves of palm leaves, and fasten the tents to the pegs stuck in the ground with ropes. Mantle Lamps are hung from the tents' ceiling, and loofah gourds containing drinking water hang on posts supporting the tents.

My neighbor kids and refugee kids get together and play, and catch rabbits and fish for meat. Refugees are cooking food in the makeshift camp. Meat vendors bring the cows charred by bombing fire in a van to the refugee camp. The van is parked in front of the haunted house. The refugees buy the burned cows. Nearby, a truck lies on its side, with its tires missing and its metal water tank lying against a hedge.

So many people crowding the neighborhood, but markets are not open because of the coming bombing. It's difficult to get enough food to cook for a large crowd. The beef noodle soup called Pho can be cooked in large batches, but we need big cooking pots.

Mom says, "We should cook Pho with the burned cows, using the abandoned water tank as a cooking pot."

Welders cut an opening on the tank, and make a lid with the cut-out metal sheet. People dig a ditch in a clearing in the woods, and set the empty tank on it. They put dry wood logs into the ditch and make a fire. They put beef bones and meat into the tank, and fill it with water from the hoses connected to the water tank in my backyard.

American and Vietnamese Marines march into our neighborhood, and stop in front of our house. A soldier reaches his water canteen toward me. "Please fill this up with water for me."

Other soldiers reach their canteens out to other kids.

We fill their canteens with water from our water tank. A soldier drinks water from his canteen, and as he closes the lid, a monkey flings itself down from a guava tree by my front wall, and perches on his shoulder, its front paws rummaging in his hair.

"It's looking for lice to eat," I say.

"Oh, you speak English very well. Can you get the monkey away from my hair?" he says.

I get a ripe banana, and dangle it in front of the monkey. It reaches a paw toward the banana, but I throw the banana away, and the monkey scurries after it.

Straw mats are set on the ground, and the soldiers and civilians sit in groups on the mats and eat Pho.

The soldiers march away in the direction of the Assassin Jungle.

Military airplanes are flying in a line, and bombs are falling from the bomb bay doors at the bottom of the planes.

A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter and the parachute carrying him swings and comes down toward my rooftop. The kids push me to lead them to climb onto the rooftop. We wave at the descending paratrooper. He comes down so close overhead that when he stamps his feet down, I react by dodging my head. But the parachute swings away toward the Assassin Jungle. We climb down from the roof and run to the jungle.

The ground soldiers have marched away from my neighborhood, and come to the jungle. the paratrooper lands on the ground and joins them. Together they march forward, but the paratrooper backs away from the group and ducks under a bush.

We follow the track of the paratrooper. Moments later, the sound of gunfire comes from the bush, followed by shouting, "Help! Alligator bit me."

When we pull him out of the bush, one of his pant legs has a bloody hole in it. We put him in his parachute, and carry the loaded parachute to the field hospital.

The doctor at the field hospital has fixed him up. "Your wounded foot is OK now, Captain Webfoot."

Captain Webfoot sits with his back leaning against a tree trunk. The kids sit in a semi-circle in front of him.

A boy says, "Captain Webfoot, why did you back away while your platoon marched forward?"

Captain Webfoot says, "Uh…I saw the bush and thought the VCs must be hiding under it, so I dived into it to catch them."

Tin says, "Weren't you trying to desert, so you jumped into the bush to hide?"

Captain Webfoot says, "Okay, here's the deal. I jumped into the bush because it was where I used to play as a kid."

I say, "So you were reliving your childhood memory, and parachuting into a kid playground, and jumping into the bush. I understand."

"But what happened to your foot?" Hoa says.

Captain Webfoot says, "An alligator bit me, and I touched my gun and it went off."

His platoon coming back for him, and Captain Webfoot struggles to his feet, saying, "Good evening Sergeant Major."

The Sergeant Major scowls at Captain Webfoot, saying, "Soldiers, perform running exercise with Captain Webfoot so that he can test out his foot. I'll put him first in the front line as soon as he can at least hobble."

After the exercise, the soldiers march toward the Gold Nuggets River. When they reach the river, they stop at the water's edge.

Carrying his backpack loaded with army equipment, Captain Webfoot jumps into the water. Holding his rifle above the water with one hand, he paddles and kicks his way to the opposite bank in a flash. The rest of his group wade across the river at the shallow water, with their rifles raised over their heads. They take a long time to wade across to the other side.

A siren sounds to signal impending bombing, and searchlight beams reach across the sky. A helicopter is broadcasting an order for the citizens of the DMZ to get into bomb bunkers. The kids run back to the DMZ.

My neighbors have finished making bomb bunkers with sandbags. I want to be in the bunker where the teens stay. They have iPhones and portable game consoles, so we can listen to music and play games.

The bombing comes while I'm searching for a bunker that I like. I jump into a bomb bunker crowded with old women playing mahjong and sipping teas. I look out through an opening between the sandbags and the bunker's roof, and see the sky glowing with fire.

"Oh my God! The doom of the end of the world," a woman says, making the sign of the Cross.

I move toward the entrance to get out, but the woman reaches her hand across in front of me, saying, "You can't go out yet. The bombs are falling."

"But I want to be with other kids," I say.

She hands me three French baguettes, saying, "Share these with your friends. And be careful. Duck into any bunker when you have to."

I gather the bread loaves into my arms, shouting, "Thank you," and dash out of the bunker.

Cousin Nam hangs out with his friends. It's so humid inside our bunker, so Tin and Hoa and I drag my bouncy mattress out and lay it in the open air. We lie down on the mattress. I hear cracks of gunfire and the whizzing sound of flying bombs, and feel the ground shaking with the exploding bombs.

A shadow of a body plunges toward us, and the three of us are shoved down a sloping embankment. A bomb explodes at our mattress, blowing it to shreds.

Moments later, neighbors come to us. "Are the three of you OK?"

"We're OK. Who pushed us?" Hoa says.

"I did," A voice says.

Someone lifts a lamp toward the voice, and the lamplight reveals his face.

"Captain Webfoot," Tin says.

Captain Webfoot takes us to a ventilated bunker. "You three sleep in there tonight," he says, walking away.

The Fury of War Chapter 22 – The VC Capture Us Again

On our way to school, the road is blocked, so Hoa, Tin and I take a path across the Evergreen Forest. The lights at the tops of the lamp posts along the path shimmer in the fog. Through dense clouds of vapor, the VC guerrillas move among the trees, their rifles swinging above the back of their shoulders. A shot rings out, scattering leaves above our heads, so we get behind a tree trunk.

Tin looks around the tree trunk, saying, "I don't see the guerrillas now, but we better take a different route."

We go through a ravine between a parapet of sandbags on one side and trenches on the other, and come out at the National Military Cemetery.

We come up to a tomb surrounded with walls carved with elaborate Oriental designs.

Hoa says, "Let's move on. It's too eerily quiet around here."

Tin says, "But first, let's come in this impressive tomb and take a quick look."

We put our book bags down behind a bush, and go in the tomb. There is a picture of a girl on the headstone. There're picture frames on the walls, and each frame contains a picture of the same girl, along with a eulogy poem from her grieving parents.

I bend over to look at a small hole at the base of the headstone. The sounds of talking and bumping of bodies against wood come from inside the grave. I say, "Corpses coming back to life."

Tin says, "The VCs must be staying inside the coffins. They do this when they are preparing for their attacks on the American-Vietnamese Allied Armies."

Hoa says, "I heard that the VCs come out of the coffins and kidnap people who are visiting the cemetery. Let's get out of here."

When we get back out of the tomb, we see foods set on a wooden table at the tomb entrance. I say, "The foods were not here when we came in the tomb. There are no footsteps on the ground, but look, there are grimy handprints on the table's surface."

"This cemetery gives me the creeps," Tin says.

We pick up our book bags and run away.

Taking a long way home from school, Hoa, Tin and I reach a downriver section of the Gold Nuggets River. I see the water glowing, and looking down into the water. I say, "Hoa and Tin, look at the glowing rocks in the water."

Hoa says, "You told me the glowing rocks have gradually disappeared from the place where you've been collecting them. Maybe the water current carries the rocks away from your area."

I say, "And it's possible the rocks are carried to here." Let's pick these rocks and we can make cosmetics to sell, huh?"

"That sounds like a good idea," Tin says.

Hoa says, "Now you can be a makeup manufacturer, and we'll be your employees."

I say, "But I will pay you only when the makeup is sold. Is that OK?"

"Wow, it's a deal!" Tin says.

I roll up the hem of my pant legs, and wade into the knee-deep water. I see the reflection of gun muzzles pointing at me. Afraid to look up, I keep staring into the water, and then see feet wearing tire sandals.

I look up, swinging my arms to shove away the gun muzzles pointing at my head. Tin and Hoa stand under a pine tree on the riverbank, also with guns pointing at them.

"It's uncivil to point guns at kids," Hoa says.

"Do you expect the VCs to be civil?" Tin says.

I say, "No, I don't expect it. If they were civil, they wouldn't be called Vagabond Characters."

The same VC Lieutenant Commander, who I'm so familiar with, says, "Take them to the Cu Chi tunnels and put them to work."

Hoa says, "Oh, no! What do you have us do at the tunnels?"

The Fury of War Chapter 23 – The VC Put Their Kidnaped People to Work

The woman VC Lieutenant Junior says, "There're a lot of things to do in the tunnels. You can help the cooks, grow crops, make tofu and wine, dig tunnels, make traps and tire sandals, steal American supplies, and catch wildlife animals for meat."

The VC Lieutenant Commander smirks. "You can use exploded artillery shells to make spikes, and then use them to make booby traps. At first, you keep practicing on the same trap until you get good at it."

The VC Lieutenant Junior says, "Every night before you go to sleep, you must write a confession of what wrongs you've done in the day. If you confess, we give you easier jobs to do. If you refuse to confess, we put you in the Chilling Chamber for a little bit, to chill your head up so that you would confess."

I observe the VCs carrying out their routine activities in the tunnels. The women cook, wash dishes in earthenware basins, wash clothes, and feed their little children. The men stage guerilla combats. The crouching girls dig into the earth walls with a short-handled garden hoe, to make more tunnels, and put the dirt in plastic milk bottles with the top cut off. The boys make airplanes from brown construction paper, and paint them white. They paint the word AMERICAN in block letters in neon orange on the planes, and hang them dangling on strings from the tunnel's roof. They shoot their pretend rifles made of tree twigs at the paper airplanes, while making the "boom boom" sound with their mouths.

The VCs set out supplies in front of me, and give me a piece of paper with hand-written instructions on it, on how to make a trap. They hang around and watch me make a trap.

It takes me 2 hours to make a trap. I look up, seeing eyes gawking at the trap, saying, "OK, Mr. VC Lieutenant Commander, this trap is as good as I can make it. Try it out and see."

The VC Lieutenant Commander lifts the trap and then gazes at it, examining it like he's trying to make sure everything is up to his satisfaction. "An awesome trap. Let's try it out in a hole at the Skyscraper Tree."

Many VCs gather at the tree. The Lieutenant Commander grabs the trap by its door. "Ouch! My fingers are stuck in the unmovable door!"

A VC teen boy pries the metal spikes loose with a crowbar, to release the Lieutenant's fingers.

The Lieutenant Commander scowls. "The trap has an impressive spring mechanism, but the door gets stuck. Stupid girl. Keep wasting materials. Why can't you learn? I'll put you to work at digging tunnels. You have three choices for a digging tool, a teaspoon, an ice cream scoop, or a ladle."

I say, "I need a ladle. At the rate of digging tunnel with an ice cream scoop, or a teaspoon, I'll never finish and get out of the tunnels."

A girl says, "You can't get away from the tunnels because they set traps everywhere. If they caught you trying to escape, they'd put you in the fortified tunnels."

Hoa says, "Mai, choose the teaspoon. With the VCs, there is never an end to work. The more you dig, the more digging you're assigned. They make you dig until your hair turns white."

"Where do I put the dirt after I dig it up?" I say.

The Lieutenant Junior says, "You put the dirt in your lunch bag, and dump the dirt in a bomb crater outside the tunnels."

I say, "Give me a teaspoon then. I'll take my time digging tunnel and spooning the dirt into a bag."

The Lieutenant Commander says, "I let you dig a new tunnel with a pair of chopsticks. When you have finished with this first tunnel, you must dig the rest of the unfinished tunnels leading to the underground railroads. If you do a good job, you get candy."

"What're the underground railroads for?" I say.

"For moving the American POWs around," Tin says.

I say, "Tin, I don't think I can survive digging tunnels with a pair of chopsticks, or any of the other tools the Lieutenant Commander has mentioned."

The Lieutenant Junior says, "You must do what you are told, to survive."

When we are out of earshot, Tin says, "We must figure out some way to escape."

"What do they have you do, Tin?" I say.

Tin shrugs his shoulders. "I have to make sandals out of truck tires. I must hold workshops to teach other kids to make sandals and camouflage them with green dye, to make them look like leaves."

"What kind of dye you use to make green sandals?" Hoa says.

Tin says, "I melt some tire rubber, and add green seaweed powder into it. I brush the green liquid rubber on the sandals."

Hoa says, "They put me in charge of a group of children. We go through the Ho Chi Minh Trail and to the Evergreen Forest to scavenge for supplies. We're ordered to steal supplies from the American Army Base in the DMZ."

Hoa leads a whole bunch of children, and they climb up to a trapdoor in the ceiling of the tunnel, and get out from there. They come back carrying boxes loaded with used American Army uniforms, and set them down on the floor."

"Where did you steal these uniforms?" I say.

One kid standing beside Hoa says, "From the Soldiers Field House Pool at the Evergreen Forest."

I say, "What are the VCs going to do with the American Army uniforms? They certainly are not going to wear them, because they wear peasant pajamas."

Tin nods. "I'm ordered to hang the uniforms at the camouflaged doors and ventilation holes of the tunnels. American troops walk around with sniffer dogs at areas suspected of having tunnels. When the dogs smell the familiar American smell from the uniforms, they don't bark."

A woman walks in from a nook in the walls, carrying vegetables picked from the outside gardens. "Since the three of you are new here, I want to introduce myself. I'm the cook of this tunnel. You can call me Mrs. Hen. I have thirty years of experience in French cooking in restaurants, but ten years of grudging cooking in the tunnel."

"If you begrudge working in the tunnel, why don't you just leave here?" Tin says.

"I must stay here for my daughter," Mrs. Hen says.

"Were you and your daughter kidnaped? Both of you can escape with us," Hoa says.

"No, I can't. The VCs have my daughter somewhere else," Mrs. Hen says.

"How did you and your daughter get caught into the tunnel?" I say.

Mrs. Hen looks upset. "We had immigrated to Paris a long time ago. We owned five restaurants on Rue Bonaparte, one of the prettiest streets in Paris. My daughter and I came back to Vietnam to visit. The VCs kidnaped us and took us to the Cu Chi tunnels. They made me sign the restaurants over to them. My daughter's name is My Lai. She was twelve years old when we were kidnaped."

"Does your daughter have a tiny mole on the side of her chin?" Hoa says.

"Oh, you've seen her?" Mrs. Hen says.

I say, "Miss My Lai is our history and English teacher. She teaches our classes every other day. She is mean when we are late for class, and hits our hands with a rubber ruler. She is not being held captive. You must get away from the tunnel with us, and come to stay at my house. I'll take you to school to see your daughter."

"I bet that Miss My Lai escaped from the tunnels through some swing door in the rocks," Tin says.

I hear the clanking of a train coming. "Are they moving the American POWs around?"

Mrs. Hen looks around at the walls. "Actually, now the VCs are moving American POWs into the tunnels. When a train drops the POWs off at stations in the tunnels, the VCs come out of the walls and whisk the POWs away to secret locations. But most of the time, when the VCs get information from their spies that the Tunnel Rats are coming to raid some tunnels, they herd the POWs onto the underground trains, and move them away."

"Where do you go for entertainment in the tunnels?' I say.

Mrs. Hen says, "Let's go to the Entertainment Hall."

The Entertainment Hall is a crater. Steps are cut into the crater's wall, to form benches for spectators. Each performer holds a gun in one hand while performing. Many VCs hold tear gas canisters in their hands, to use them on the Tunnel Rats if they invade the crater.

After one hour into the performance, air raid siren sounds. The performers drop through the crater's floor to get into the tunnels under the floor, and camouflaged tarps are pulled out to cover the floor. The spectators scramble out of their seats and run into the hollows in the walls. Mrs. Hen leads us through a tunnel entrance in the wall, and we get back to the kitchen.

Mrs. Hen smiles. "I'll make butter pecan ice cream, with the milk of the cows roaming on Hamburger Hill. Tin and Mai and Hoa, you go out to pick pecan fruits."

We go to a grove of pecan trees. As we loiter at a hatch door on the ground, a woman VC yells, "Move back. You're at a booby-trapped exit. You'll step on the wires that trigger the trap to pull you into a dungeon."

Mrs. Hen comes out of the hatch door. She looks at the other woman while holding three trowels and a bucket toward us. "I give these tools to the children. I want them to go and catch turtles for me to cook turtle soup."

The other woman says, "Tunnels are dug at four different levels. The first level is closest to the ground surface. It contains booby traps, air vents, and firing posts where we shoot up through the holes dug into the ground. The kitchens and sleeping quarters are on the second level. The third level contains hospitals, theaters, aid stations, and rooms for meetings, recreation, and socializing. The fourth level is at the bottom where the well, stream and entrances are located. We use boats to move around in the stream.

All tunnels come out at the Gold Nuggets River, Assassin Jungle, and Evergreen Forest. Some small turtles live in the stream, but bigger turtles stay at the river. Let's paddle to the river to catch turtles. I love to eat turtle soup."

We follow the woman to the bottom level. She gets a boat out of a recess in a rock wall, and sets it into the stream. We paddle the boat to the river.

The woman says, "Look at the turtles playing among the rocks at the water's edge. To catch turtles, you grab them by their back shell."

We put 15 turtles in the bucket, and get into the boat.

The woman says into a ham radio, "Tunnel Rats at the camouflaged entrance doors? I'll send signals to our comrades. Children, bring the turtles to the cook. Tell her I must go off on duty, and to hold off making turtle soup until I come back."

We bring the turtles to Mrs. Hen, and tell her what the woman has said. Mrs. Hen puts the turtles in a tank.

After we finish eating the ice cream, Tin and Hoa go back to work. Mrs. Hen taps me on the shoulder and motions for me to go to a hidden corner. "Go back to the well, and get me water for cooking. Try to look for escape ways. We need to know where they are for when we need to escape."

A note nailed to a wall reads: WELL. A bucket with a rope tied to its wooden bar handle sits beside the well. I tie the free end of the rope to my waist, and wind the rope around it, and get into the well. I brace my feet and palms against the opposite sides of the wall, to avoid falling to the water at the bottom far below. The rope unwinds and the bucket keeps dropping, and it stops dropping when the rope becomes taut. I move down with my feet and palms bracing against the wall until the bucket dips into the water. Then I move up the wall, with the filled bucket swinging on the rope, and get out of the well. I carry the bucket to the kitchen and pour the water into a tub, and a baby turtle falls out with the water. I make repeated trips between the kitchen and the well until the tub is filled.

When I'm done getting water, I go back to the well. This time I bring along a small rake, a pencil and some blank sheets of paper. I row the boat to the Gold Nuggets River, to where the Skyscraper Tree stands. I wish Tin and Hoa were with me now so that we could leave from here. If I escaped now, the VCs would make trouble for them and Mrs. Hen. I draw a map of a possible escapeway.

When I come back to the kitchen, Mrs. Hen says, "I make good shrimp lomein. I can make you a plate if you want."

"I love to eat shrimp lomein," I say.

Mrs. Hen says, "I need catfish whiskers. You take 15 catfish, one at a time, out of the tank with a green mark, and clip off two-thirds of the length of their whiskers into a colander, and put the fish back in the tank with a red mark, where they will stay until their whiskers grow back."

"How long will it take for the whiskers to grow back?" I say.

"In two weeks," she says.

She stir-fries the whiskers with some shrimps, and scoops the contents onto a plate, and pushes it toward me.

"Where are the lomein noodles?" I say.

"Catfish whiskers are used instead of lomein noodles."

I flip the slippery whiskers around with chopsticks. "Next time when I order shrimp lomein at a Chinese restaurant, I'll look carefully to make sure the noodles are not actually bleached catfish whiskers."

Mrs. Hen says, "We don't have many food choices in the tunnels. If you want to eat meat, you can go catch a fowl at the edge of the Assassin Jungle. I'll roast it for you."

The Fury of War Chapter 24 – A Daring Escape from the Cu Chi Tunnels

I stand behind a tree trunk, watching the chickens scratching the ground at the foot of the wire fence of a house. I reach my hands out to snatch the nearest chicken when a young lady comes out of the house, carrying a container of food. The chickens stop scratching and run away.

The lady is setting up a stand selling only rice soup served with a mix of different meats. She sets down a container full of shredded meat on the counter, and then walks back into the house. I dash to the stand, and grab a handful of the meat and stuff it into my mouth. The lady again appears at the door, and I run away.

She shrieks, "Who took some of the meat?"

Her voice sounds familiar, so I stop and then walk back. "Oh, Bong, that's you. Where's the baby?"

Bong says, "Oh, Mai. I'm happy to see you again. My baby girl is in the house with her grandma. We moved from Danang to here."

I smile. "If I were not in a hurry, I'd take you and your baby home to Mom. I'm sorry for ruining your business by eating some of the meat."

"It's OK. I'll make do with what I have," Bong says.

She ladles the rice soup into a bow, puts a lot of meat on top of the soup, and pushes the bowl toward me. "Go ahead and eat."

The backyard of Bong's house joins the backyard of a big house. A tributary of the Gold Nuggets River runs through the other house's backyard. There're glowing rocks in the tributary. I say, "What! How did the glowing rocks get here?"

Bong says, "Climate Change has caused the Gold Nuggets River to push the glowing rocks into this tributary."

"Can I take some of the rocks here?" I say.

Bong says, "The rocks are on someone else's property. You need to ask the owner. I have never seen the owner, but I've seen the VCs running around on the property. But why are you interested in the rocks?"

"I want to make cosmetics with them, and sell the makeup."

Bong says. "I guess no one cares if you take them. I'd like to bring my baby to show her to your mom, after I'm done selling the soup today, if it's OK with you. We'll see you at your house."

I say, "I'm sorry I can't be home today. "The VCs kidnapped me and my friends, Hoa and Tin, and put us in the Cu Chi tunnels. They had kidnapped a woman and her daughter into the tunnels ten years ago. The mother, Mrs. Hen, is now a cook in the tunnels, and her daughter, Miss My Lai, is now teaching at our school. Mrs. Hen has been thinking that the VCs are holding her daughter somewhere else, when her daughter has already escaped. Mrs. Hen, Tin, Hoa and I will escape together. I must go back to the tunnels now, because if I don't, I will cause trouble for them. Please tell my mom and Miss My Lai that we will be back soon."

Bong hands me a package wrapped in banana leaves. "I saved some meat for you to take back to the tunnels."

I walk into the kitchen, Tin and Hoa are talking with Mrs. Hen. I unwrap the package and put it down in front of them.

"Mrs. Hen, do you know of a woman named Tien Stilwell?" Tin says.

Mrs. Hen says, "Oh, yes. I saw her at an area of fortified tunnels where there are glowing rocks. Is she your mother?"

Tin smiles. "When we get out of here, I'll go look for my mom. Will you please go with me and show me where you saw her?"

"I'll go for sure," Mrs. Hen says.

The VCs walk in on us. The VC Lieutenant Commander glowers at me while pushing a stack of blank sheets of paper toward me. "Our spies reported that an American POW had communicated some secrets to you. You must write a confession of your crimes."

I scribble random alphabets in messy handwriting on the papers. My writing doesn't make any sense. I hand "the confession" in to the Lieutenant Commander.

He looks at it. "your confession sounds true, but you have messy handwriting, ignorant girl. But you'll get candy for your cooperation."

I go to the well and see a dog standing at the tunnel's entrance. The dog is holding a white envelope in its snout. I come near the dog, and it pushes the envelope toward my hand. I take the envelope, and pat the dog on its head. The dog wags its tail and runs away. I read the words written on the envelope: To Ma from My Lai.

I run to the kitchen. "Mrs. Hen, you've got mail."

Mrs. Hen rips open the envelop and looks at the letter, her hands shaking. "My Lai, my daughter. This is her handwriting." She hands the letter to me, saying in a choking voice, "Please read it to me."

Tin and Hoa come over and stand beside me, looking at the letter along with me. I read, "To Ma from My Lai. Tunnel Rats are entering the tunnels soon. Ma, Mai, Tin and Hoa must escape from the tunnels, to avoid getting caught in armed struggle. My drawings depict the actions you must do to get out of the tunnels. You must carry out the actions in the well in the bottom tunnel."

The VCs are running around in the tunnels, trying to get into hiding. We go down to the bottom tunnel, and it is deserted. We follow Miss My Lai's instructions.

Hoa says, "The first action is to let a dog get on the handle of the bucket. But where's the dog?"

The dog that delivered the envelope to me appears at the tunnel's entrance, and comes to the well and jumps onto the bucket's handle. Tin lowers the bucket halfway into the well, and the dog jumps into a square hole cut in the wall.

I say, "Let me tie knots on the rope to make handholds and footholds. Then we can take turns climbing down the rope and get into the hole in the wall."

Tin ties the free end of the rope to the iron ring bolted to the wall at the top of the well. Mrs. Hen climbs down into the well and gets into the hole, then Hoa, then I. We stand in the hole waiting for Tin to come down. We start getting worried when Tin comes into the hole.

The hole opens up into a wide tunnel. Tin says, "This is the main tunnel that allows cooking smoke from the kitchens of many tunnels to escape to the outside. This tunnel branches off onto a glowing tunnel." I walk to the end of the glowing tunnel, and look through the iron grate blocking the opening. I see my bedroom lighted by my baby Moons and baby Suns. I pull the bolt off the grate, and Mrs. Hen, Hoa, Tin and I crawl through the opening into my bedroom. We walk into the living room, and Bong holding her baby girl, Miss My Lai and Mom turn and look at us.

I say, "Mom, I found sun and moon rocks at a property, with its backyard joining Bong's backyard. there are tamarind shells at the backyard's fence of the property."

When we are by ourselves, Mom says, "When we have the time, I'd like to go with you to see that property."

The Fury of War

Chapter 25 – People Get Sick by COVID

On our way home from school, Hoa says, "I want to grow banana trees in my front yard, but the banana saplings are expensive. Where can I get some free saplings?"

"Get the same type that Mai has," Tin says.

"I started my banana tree with a shoot bud I had dug up from the Assassin Jungle," I say.

"Let's go to the jungle to dig up some shoot buds,' Hoa says.

In the Assassin Jungle, we come to the rice paddy dike, but a part of it has collapsed into the paddy. Sunlight comes through a patch of defoliated treetops, and shines on the dike. A soldier in bare back shovels and tamps concrete debris into the collapsed part where it's unhindered by foliage.

A helicopter hovers over the repaired part of the dike. With a Marine in full combat gear standing at the open door of the helicopter, it swoops straight down and lands across the makeshift landing pad. The soldier walks up to the Marine, and they communicate using the U.S. Army hand and arm signals. After a few moments, the soldier backs away from the helicopter. It lifts off toward the Mekong Delta.

We turn to leave, but the soldier waves for us to come to him. We walk onto the makeshift landing pad.

I stare at the soldier. "You were the POW imprisoned in a hammock hanging on a fig tree in the Assassin Jungle! You were also the drowning Marine! What have you been up to?

He only chuckles. He reaches into his pants pockets and takes out an apple, a pocket knife, and a military canteen. He cuts the apple in three, and gives a segment to each of us, and then he drinks water from the canteen.

"What are those creatures swimming in the paddy?" Tin says, pointing down toward the water by our feet.

The soldier beams. "They're Signal crawdads. I train them. They can fade their color out to evade capture, or they can fade their color in to come into view. They know where to find me."

At the sound of voices coming, the soldier dashes into the nearby trees. Two men pedal on their bikes onto the dike.

I say, "Ah, my cousin Nam. I hardly recognized you with your long bill baseball cap pulled down low over your face. Where are you and your friend going?"

Nam turns to his friend. "This is Chan. We're on a scouring adventure."

Chan smiles. "Actually we're going to the Dragon Way cave to catch crawdads."

Pointing downward, Hoa says, "No need to go there now. Look, good iridescent crawdads are right here in the paddy."

Chan lifts a net hanging from his bike's handle, and starts putting it in the water. But the crawdads fade their color out.

From behind the trees, the soldier says, "Don't catch my crawdads. Signals, it's OK to show yourself."

The crawdads return to their color.

Hoa snatches the net from Chan's hand, and plunges it at the crawdads. She lifts up the net and swings it hard, scattering the crawdads onto the surplus concrete debris.

I see more crawdads lying on their side at the paddy's bottom, and reach my hands toward them. They flip upright as if ready to fight, and come together to surround my submerged hands. They fan their wide-spread tails up and down, splashing water on my face, and I keep my eyes closed. When I feel no more water hitting my face, I open my eyes. The crawdads are crawling away on land among the Asian red poppies.

The soldier rummages in the concrete debris for the scattered crawdads. As he picks them up, they glare at him with bulging green eyes, squirting at him with the black ink coming out of their heads. When he finishes putting them back into the water, they dash around in a crazy manner. He takes out a retractable rod from his pocket, pulls the rod to its full length, and flips a switch on, and the rod glows with blue LED light. The crawdads grab the glowing rod with their pincers, regaining their balance.

The soldier hoots toward the crawdads on the field of red poppies, "Signals. Get back in the water."

The crawdads scurry back and drop into the water.

I look at a wobbling bridge. It is made by joining tree branches to make two parallel runners, and lashing bamboo poles across the runners, and braiding vines to make the handrails.

The soldier beams. "I made this bridge. I don't know why the Vietnamese would call a bridge of this type Monkey Bridge."

I say, "My grandma told me it's called Monkey Bridge, because this kind of bridge is so flimsy that as you walk on it, you must clutch the vine handrails, move in stooping posture, and balance your body against the wobbling movement of the bridge, so you don't fall off it."

The soldier nods. "That makes sense. Anyway, you kids can take this bridge to get to the Dragon Way cave, and get on the main road from there."

Chan and Nam pedal away. Hoa, Tin, and I cross the bridge and come up to a lagoon shaded by palm trees.

Tin says, "The soldier said we would come to the Dragon Way cave. Maybe we've missed a turn somewhere. But I somewhat know this place. We can get to the cave from here."

He leads us to swim under a bush suspending over the lagoon, but we come out onto a field with sparse trees, where some trees are cut and felled, and the stumps left in place.

Tin says, "Hey! We're so lost! But from here, we can see Yulu town."

Pointing to the border fence nearby in front of us, Hoa says, "Too bad we can't cross the fence to get into Yulu."

I say, "OK then, we can stand here for a little bit, and watch all the activities going on across the fence."

A building stands on top of the Nine Lives hill, and a sign on top of the building says "Level-4 COVID Lab".

Good Health Game Market sits in front of the hill. The market erupts in waves of shouting cheers and laughter. Nearby the market, a security hut stands over the water at the edge of a canal, which flows into a swamp, in which yaks wade with only their eyes and curved horns protruding above the watery surface.

At a meat stall, dangling on rope tied to a tree branch, a butchered yak hangs in a head-down position, with its head hovering over a thick chopping block. The butcher slips a plastic bag up the yak's head, and cuts it off, the bag bobing down when the head drops into it. He hands the bag to a waiting customer.

A stall serves ready-to-eat specialty food. I try to count up all the dishes contained in trays on the serving counter, but there are too many dishes to keep track of. On a carton board nailed to a wooden pole driven into the ground, the handwritten scribbles advertise the animals used for meat in the dishes: endangered spotted civet, blue-tail ostrich, wet mink, snapping turtle, Siamese crocodile, rice paddy buffalo, and owl. Prices are listed in U.S. Dollar value for the specialty dishes: Peking wet mink, $95; Elf Owl jerky, $75; pickled palm civet, $50; braised cobra, $30; Siamese crocodile kabob, $25; broasted rice paddy buffalo paw, $10.

At the same stall, the bar serves bat blood on tap, at $35 a shot. A van pulls up in front of the bar. The owner looks around for a long while, and then motions to his helpers. They reach under the counter, and pull out a rectangular cage full of horny scale pangolins, and a triangular cage of dragon-faced bats clinging to the net. While the helpers load the cages onto the van, the owner walks over to the van's driver side window. The driver reaches a stack of 100 dollar bills out the window, and the owner takes the money and slides it into a pouch tied to his waist. He scurries to the bar counter and disappears under it.

A boy comes out of a house on the Vietnamese side, and walks over and stands beside us. He says, "They've been having the Lunar Month Feast for the last four weeks. I hope they don't get sick from eating all that raw meat and drinking the blood of wild animals."

Red snakes are crawling on the ground. The workers skin the snakes, remove the meat from the bones, and slice the meat into a tub. They pour bags of fresh lotus flower petals and Dragon Fire spices, a product of Dragon Kingdom, on the raw meat. They roll up their shirt sleeves, and put their bare hands in the tub to mix up the contents, the juice of the mixture soaking up to the folded parts of their sleeves. A bald worker, with a bandana tied around his head, licks his fingers, saying, "Good! Serve up the Longevity Salad to the connoisseur mob!"

The trays of Longevity Salad are put on the serving tables with no refrigeration equipment. Customers fill up their plates with the salad, and go around and sit down where they can. At a rock ledge, a man pulls out a bottle of Sake wine from his pocket, pours raw bat blood into the bottle, and shakes it up. Then he pours the contents into the glasses of the people surrounding him. While eating the salad, they clink glasses and shout, "To your health and wisdom," and then drink up their glasses.

A woman among the group sways and lurches backward, clutching her chest. "Oh no, I can't breathe."

More people among the group clutch their chests, heaving and coughing. Five of them are carried away on stretchers, with their heads fitted tightly inside the empty plastic bags of the Dragon Fire spices.

A white van with a red cross painted on it rolls to a stop on the festival ground. Health workers wearing hazmat suits jump down the van. They swab the nostrils of the people acting sick, to collect samples for testing.

A loudspeaker announces, "So far, thirty thousand people are tested positive for COVID."

People at the market look at one another and go in different directions, leaving the tied-up alive animals flopping on the ground.

The Fury of War Chapter 26 – The COVID Comes from the Level-4 COVID Lab

Hoa, Tin and I go to Thienchua International Port, to see the visiting John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier. But we're told the arrival of the carrier has been postponed. A Comet Cruise Line ship carries passengers to a concert in Yulu, and we board the ship. It carries the passengers to the concert at Health Game Market. While the concert is playing, we walk around the market. Where the Lunar Month Feast has been held, the restrained animals are still flopping on the ground since three days ago, and the trays of dried-up Longevity Salad are still left on the serving tables.

Tin says, "The bar owner disappeared under the counter after he had delivered the pangolins and bats to the van driver. I wonder if there's a hidden route under the counter."

"Let's go there and see," Hoa says.

We start going, but stop when we hear through the trees people talking in cautious fearful voices. I look through the trees. "Oh, it's only Chan and Nam who are talking."

Chan says, "I work as a trainee in the Level-4 COVID Lab, a maximum security lab where some COVID virus is submitted to undergo many genetic mutations. My work is to research on the development of a COVID vaccine.

"A colleague of mine had dropped a basket containing vials of the live mutated COVID virus into a test tube washer, and the vials broke. She reported the incident to her supervisor.

"Health Officers showed up, shoved my colleague into the security hut on the canal near the market, and said, 'Don't be a whistle blower. You must not tell what happened. You will cause social panic.'

"Some people who work in the lab got in trouble for speaking up about the COVID virus gaining the ability to spread from person to person. Since I work in the lab, I fear for my safety. If you don't see me again, you know what might have happened to me."

Nam says, "There's a virus spread going on, but the authorities don't want anyone to hear about it. So they pretend things are normal. I wonder how has the COVID virus passed from the lab to the Health Game Market."

Chan says, "The water lines from the test tube washer lead out to the market, where the water is also used in preparing food."

From the security hut, a guard is walking toward Chan and Nam, and they run away into the Assassin Jungle. We run back to the dock, cross the gangway, and get on the ship.

As our ship is puling slowly into the port, a Port Security Officer speaks on loudspeaker, "Sail the ship back to Yulu. All passengers and the crew are to be quarantined in Yulu, and must be tested for COVID."

Crew members and passengers disembark from the cruise ship, and walk to the quarantine building.

People who show symptoms of being infected with COVID are hooked up to ventilators that measure oxygen level, blood pressure, heart rate, and respiratory rate.

Tin and Hoa have been tested negative for COVID, so they have been allowed to walk out the door. A Health Worker has collected my nasal swab sample for COVID testing. I start making my way towards the exit door in anticipation of a negative COVID test, but stop upon hearing the announcement: "The test reading machine is broken."

I'm put in a room with one glass wall facing the Level-4 COVID Lab.

Through the glass wall, I see a woman, wearing poncho even though it's not raining, walk in stoop. As she comes near the wall, she lifts up her face and I recognize Mom. I wave and smile, but she keeps on walking past the wall. I shout, "I'm in here, Mom," but she doesn't turn around.

I pound on the wall with my fist, and she pauses and turns around, blinking her eyes. Suddenly her eyes grow wide, and she quickly runs back to stand in front of me. I put my hands on the wall, and Mom puts her hand on mine on the other side of the wall.

A policeman comes and brandishes a club at them, and points them toward a road. They keep looking at me while backing away from the wall, tears streaming down their cheeks. When they reach the road, they turn and wave toward me before disappearing around the corner.

I sit down on the floor, blaming the reading machine for untimely being broken, and so putting me in a bind. Just as I'm about to doze off, Chan wearing a white lab coat comes in front of the glass wall, and holds up a placard with a handwriting statement that says, "Mai, you tested negative for COVID. You're free to go. Go to the exit door." Then he runs away into the trees.

I quickly make my way to the door, and walk out of the quarantine building, and head toward the Gold Nuggets River to go home. I sit down on the riverbank, beside a sign that says, "Floating Village." the village's inhabitants live and make a living by selling food and produce right from their boats. Tall poles are set upright from the boats, and other poles are set horizontally across the upright poles. Items representing what're being sold are hung along the horizontal poles.

A boat has long noodle strings hanging from its horizontal poles, and I order noodle soup with Peking duck from the boat. The vendor puts my steaming soup bowl and chopsticks and a spoon on one end of a wooden plank that rests across the flanks of the boat. Then she pushes the plank toward where I sit, until the plank's end carrying the soup and the eating utensils rests on the riverbank. I pick up my order, but keep the plank in place. When I finish eating, I put the empty bowl and the eating utensils and the money to pay for the soup on the plank. The vendor pulls the plank back into the boat.

I remain siting on the riverbank, taking a long look around at the vast area of water. I squirm at catching a glimpse of two faces in the undergrowth?

Hoa's voice comes from the undergrowth. "Mai's just sitting there."

"Hey, what are you two doing there?" I say.

Tin says, "We're on our way back to the quarantine camp to ask for you. When did you get out of there?"

I'm relieved. "I've just gotten here directly from the camp. Guess what, Chan managed to get me out of there!"

Tin says, "OK, you have Chan to thank for being able to be here now. He said he works in the Level-4 COVID Lab. Let's go there to check on him."

A voice comes from the trees, "I'm here going to work."

"Do you mind if we come along?" I say.

Chan pauses, and then says, "Sure, you can. But we should be very careful to avoid danger or trouble."

We reach a floating gangway, and cross it to get to the dock behind the Level-4 COVID Lab. A sign hanging on the back door says, "Closed."

Chan swipes his electronic card key through the card reader on the wall, and we enter the building. The door to the room where Chan works is wide open, but there are no lights on at all in the room. Chan flips on the light switch by the door, but it doesn't work. Spikes of sunlight coming through small glass panels set in the wall near the ceiling. He opens the grille of a wall cabinet, saying, "This is where viral test tubes are kept." But the cabinet has been cleared out.

Red light from the motion detector mounted near the ceiling starts blinking and emergency siren starts sounding. Chan herds us toward a narrow hall way. "We must get through the security hatch cut into the ceiling, and from there, we can get to the outside."

We patter on the ceiling until we come to a hissing brown wall, with electric sparks splattering from the wall.

"Keep away from the wall. It's electrified," Chan says.

A metal ladder is perched against the wall, with the top of the ladder leaning against the sill of a narrowly opened window on the wall. But the ladder is hissing, too.

"Is the ladder also electrified?" I say.

Chan nods. "I wonder why there is light in that normally isolated corner. You all stay right here waiting for me. I'll go and check. I'll be right back"

Chan comes back carrying a box containing folders of documents on research and development. He says, "Let's see if we can hide this box somewhere outside of this building."

I see a folder labeled "COVID for biological warfare."

"We can hide the box in a nook in the Skyscraper Tree trunk," Hoa says.

I look up at a hole in the ceiling. A cage with rattling pangolins inside is placed blocking part of the hole. I say, "We are under the counter of the stall bar at the Health Game Market. The market is closed at this time."

Chan rolls a utility ladder out of the corner, and places it under the hole. Chan and Tin climb up the ladder, and push the cage out of the way. Then we all get out of the lab by the ceiling's hole.

We hide the box containing the COVID lab's document in the Skyscraper Tree trunk.

The Fury of War Chapter 27 – The VC Capture Saigon

We walk on a path across the Evergreen Forest, and the lights at the tops of the lamp posts along the path shimmer in the fog. Through dense clouds of vapor, the VC guerrillas move among the trees, swinging their rifles around. A rifle muzzle is pointed in our direction, and a shot rings out, scattering leaves on a bush above our heads. We get behind tree trunks and wait.

I look around the trunk. "I don't see the guerrillas now, but they may still be around. We better take a different route."

We go through a ravine between a parapet of sandbags on one side and bushes on the other, and come out at the National Military Cemetery.

A tomb is surrounded with walls carved with elaborate Oriental designs. I look at the frangipani trees in full bloom around the tomb. "Frangipani flowers smell sweet in a way that makes you feel gloomy. But this is an impressive tomb."

"Let's move on. It's too eerily quiet around here," Hoa says.

"But first, let's come in the tomb to take a quick look," Tin says.

We put the bags down behind a bush and go in the tomb. There is a picture of a girl on the headstone. There're picture frames on the walls, and each frame contains a picture of the same girl, along with an eulogy poem from her grieving parents.

I bend over to look at a small hole at the base of the headstone. The sounds of talking and of bumping of bodies against wood planking come from inside the grave. "Corpses coming back to life."

"The VCs must be staying inside the coffins," Tin says. "They do this when they are preparing for attacks on the American-Vietnamese allied armies."

At the tomb entrance, there are foods set on a wooden table. I say, "The foods were not here before. There are no footsteps on the ground, but look, there are grimy handprints on the surface of the table."

"This cemetery gives me a creep," Hoa says.

We stare at one another, and snatch up our bags and run away.

An alarming new escalation in the Vietnam War is occurring. Most schools will remain closed for the rest of the school year.

When we come around a bend in the road, I smell a sickening stench of dead body, and see human limb bones slant up out of the fresh dirt on top of a concrete tomb set apart from others.

A woman stands at the fence, which encloses the front yard of a house by the cemetery. She says, "My husband and I have lived here for 30 years. Lately there are a lot of noises coming from the graves. Our Meals have been disappeared after they were set up on the dining table, while the doors and windows were locked. For over a month, radio and TV networks have been covering the VCs' heightening activities, in preparation for their upcoming attacks on the Allied armies, to wrest power from the Vietnamese government. I suspect that the VCs have removed bodies from the coffins, and put ammunition in, and stay in the vacant coffins."

At a rectangular clearing with trampled grass in the cemetery, a group of VCs sit on the ground, with the American officers interrogating them.

An American Lieutenant Colonel stands over the VC Lieutenant Commander on his knees, whose fingers were stuck in a trap I made when I was in the Cu Chi tunnels. The American Lieutenant Colonel says, "Noi, noi."

The VC Lieutenant Commander remains on his knees.

"Again, I tell you to noi," the Lieutenant Colonel says.

The VC stirs, but remains on his knees.

The Lieutenant Colonel shoves the VC off his knees, and he falls on his back, his bended knees hanging in the air.

I tap the Lieutenant Colonel on the shoulder. "I know you meant to say 'ngoi,' meaning to sit down, but you pronounced 'noi,' meaning 'cooking pot.'"

The VC says, "You speak English, so you can tell him to pronounce correctly. I thought he called me 'crackpot,' and that's why I didn't respond."

People are trying to flee Vietnam before the VCs take over the Vietnamese government. With so many people crowding the streets, I can make good money selling food on the street. I've asked the old woman, Tin, and Hoa, to join us in our kitchen to make food to sell.

On my way back from ordering food ingredients in Chinatown, I stop by the flea market, to bring the old woman to my house for the first time. The old woman stands at the gate of my house, saying, "Huh, Thu! You, you, you…are my daughter."

Mom sits in the kitchen, cooking. She leaps to her feet and runs to us, crying. "Ma, you're still alive. And you're the old woman at the flea market?" Mom gently pushes the stray hair strands away from the old woman's face. "Only a few gray hairs. Ma, you're doing well. Mai is your granddaughter. And Mai, you've got a Grandma."

I stare at Grandma. "I knew something was not right about the VCs' report of you as having drowned while swimming across a canal to escape. Grandma, you're one tough cookie, and I'm so happy to have you back."

We celebrate our reunion with the inhabitants of the DMZ. There are all kinds of dishes, Pad Thai, fried green plantain, spring rolls, jellyfish salad, just to name a few.

We embark on a new business of making a lot of food to sell on busy streets. The plan is for us to make food together, for Mom to stay home to clean up, stock supplies, and make dinner for us, for Grandma and me to sell food at the American Embassy and Air Force bases, and for Tin and Hoa to sell food at other places.

I get many customers. I've wrapped up two banana crackers, and while I hand it to a girl, a radio announces, "Mother wants American Marines to call home. Temperature is 105 degrees, and snow is melting at the American Embassy."

I say, "Snow's melting in April? Could it mean that snow cones are melting? Maybe they're handing out snow cones at the American embassy. I'll go there and get some."

A man customer wearing tire sandals says, "It's a coded message to command the American Marines to come to the American embassy. The Marines fly helicopters carrying Vietnamese refugees from the embassy's rooftop to the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier, which is moored in the South China Sea."

"How do you know that?" I say.

"Because he's a VC spy," a Vietnamese soldier customer says.

Other customers look down at the VC's feet. One customer says, "No wonder. But why does he smell like a dead body?"

The VC slips away into a crowd of people.

The soldier customer says, "The VCs drop snow from helicopters. The snow clouds up the air at the embassy's rooftop, hindering the evacuation of the refugees. The American Marines use flame throwers to fire balls of flame to melt the snow."

A woman passerby says, "Right now they're evacuating the refugees at Tan Son Nhat airport. Big airplanes can land and take off from the tarmac there."

I've sold out my food. I find Grandma and hand my tray to her. "Grandma, I'm going to the American embassy, because I think I'll have a good chance of finding Dad there."

On the streets, there are refugees carrying suitcases, farmers wearing tire sandals, with guns tucked into their waistbands, and armed soldiers standing guard along the streets. The American Embassy provides bus service to the refugees so that they can get to the embassy. A double-length bus stops in front of the Majestic Plaza hotel, where refugees stand waiting. I follow them onto the bus. It moves a short distance and stops at a spot where soldiers are filling a pothole, which lies across the lane divider on the Saigon Boulevard. A crumpled light pole sticking above the edge of the pothole, and the soldiers remove the light pole, and fill the pothole with rocky dirt. The people on the bus shout at the soldiers for them to move out of the way.

"You'll get the bus stuck if you run it over the pothole," a soldier shouts.

The bus backs up and rams into the divider. Now there is a long gap in the divider, and the bus makes a U-turn in the gap and gets onto the opposite traffic on the other side of the divider. A regular bus also carrying refugees gets in front of the double-length bus. Two more buses coming out of alleys join the bus line. A shiny black car with an official-looking sign on the license plate moves up the exit ramp of a parking garage, and stops at a closed steel gate. The gate lifts up slowly, and the car moves out through the gate, and gets in front of the caravan of buses.

A Vietnamese soldier standing guard on the street points at the black car. "That's the car carrying the American Ambassador and his entourage to the airport. Follow it and the buses will be allowed to enter the airport."

Suddenly the lead bus swerves and then stops. Its windshield has a hole with spider-web type cracks around it. A military police woman says from the street, "The driver of the lead bus has been hit by a sniper's bullet. The driver is found slumped over the steering wheel."

The people in the lead bus get off and scatter on the street. The buses behind our bus back away into alleys. But our bus moves ahead around the lead bus, to keep up with the black car.

On the TV in our bus, video footages show the VC fighter planes dropping bombs on Tan Son Nhat airport. Debris strews along the runway and piles up on the tarmac. The ruined tarmac and runway prevent airplanes from landing and takeoff at the airport. Now helicopters land and take off from the grass fields and parking lots of the airport, to evacuate refugees. Helicopters also land on the rooftops, lawns, and decks of swimming pools of regular houses, to evacuate refugees.

Suddenly our bus stops on the side of the road. An old man on our bus says, "Get a move on, driver, or we'll be late for the evacuation at the airport."

The driver says, "I won't drive you to the airport now. My family is at home right now waiting for me, so I'll drive by my house to pick them up. Then I'll drive everyone to the airport."

The old man says, "Not enough time for all that you want to do. People on this bus, please give the driver some money."

Money is piled up on the dashboard. The driver sits up straight, smiling. "Now I can take you anywhere you want to go."

"You catch up with the Ambassador's car, and get us to the airport," the old man says.

The Military Police guards at the airport checkpoint do a military salute to the Ambassador's car as it moves into the airport. But they stop our bus.

"They come along with us," a voice yells from the car.

As our bus follows the car into the airport, the bombing starts again. The car turns into a narrow alley, but our bus gets out of the airport, and heads toward the Saigon harbor. At the harbor, people get off the bus and get on the boats, to be taken to the aircraft carrier. The driver takes the people who remain on the bus to the American Embassy.

American Marine Security Guards are at the front gate of the embassy. One guard says, "The Embassy's Regional Security Office (RSO) has instructed us to allow the refugees with official documents to enter the embassy. Acceptable documents can be a visa, or a Refugee Travel Document. People without proper documents must stay outside the gate."

The fifteen-foot wall surrounding the embassy is topped with barbed wire. The people outside the wall climb on one another's shoulders, to get up to the top of the wall. The people inside the wall climb up the wall in the same manner, and pull the other people into the embassy.

A woman carrying a baby shows her travel document to a Marine Corps Military Police Officer at the main gate, and he lets her in. Then she turns around and hands the baby and travel document and money to another woman. The first woman inadvertently lifts up her skirt, showing the hairy legs under the boxer shorts for men.

The same officer grabs her by the arm, growling, "You are a man. You have managed to bribe your way into the embassy." The officer pulls the man to the gate and pushes him out.

Outside the gate, people climb up an electric tower, and get onto the top of the wall, at spots where the barbed wire is cut and bent, and then they jump down onto the embassy's lawn.

The Military Police shoot their guns up into the air. "Get down. Get down."

I'm halfway up the electric tower, but when I hear them shout for people to get down, I jump down because I don't want to be shot at. I stand among the people outside the main gate, my hand clutching its iron bars. Something jangles under my blouse, and I pull it out. It's a dog tag on a bead chain given to me by Hoa.

The same officer reaches his hand out through the gate and takes hold of the dog tag. "POW/MIA dog tag. A girl with a missing Dad. Go to the back gate and I'll let you in."

He lets me in through the back gate, and hands me a chocolate bar and a piece of paper. He says, "I wrote this permission letter for you to board the helicopter on the embassy's rooftop."

People who are to board the helicopters must wear a nametag. I go into an empty office inside the embassy's main building, rummage in a desk drawer for a blank a nametag, but I find none. I rip out a blank empty sheet of white paper from a pad. I fold the paper into a rectangle, the size of a nametag, and write MAI DOE on it with a black marker. I put adhesive tape on the back of the nametag, poke a safety pin through the tape, and pin the nametag on my shirt.

The Marines search the people on the embassy's ground for weapons, and throw them into the embassy's swimming pool. The pool's bottom is already covered with guns, knives, and barbed wire cutters.

Grandma stands outside the chain-link fence at the back of the embassy, looking in at me.

I say, "Grandma, there's a ditch filled with dry leaves beside you. A guard is coming. Please get in the ditch and cover yourself up with the leaves."

The guard says. "Hey, what's going on here?"

A squirrel dashing out of the ditch, and scurrying up a pine tree, I say, "Sir, I'm playing with the squirrel."

He shakes his head while walking toward the front gate. "No time for playing. Hurry up to the rooftop. The helicopters can stop flying at any time soon."

I say, "Grandma, please get up and go around to the tamarind tree at the front corner of the embassy, and wait for me there."

I climb up the tamarind tree, and push a long branch down to a level where Grandma can reach it. "Grandma, please grab the branch and pull yourself up on it and get onto the tree. Then you can climb down the tree and get inside the embassy."

In the chaos, looters take furniture, liquors, and refrigerators, and cart them out of the embassy. Two women are arguing about a king bed. The embassy's lawn is now littered with broken jars of preserved food, tramped-on fruits, and empty carton boxes.

Small helicopters that can carry 20 refugees must land on the embassy's lawn, but bigger helicopters for 50 refugees must land in the parking lot. American Marines are lying on their stomach around the perimeter of the evacuating area where helicopters land and take off, with their machine guns pointing outward and their fingers on the triggers, at the ready to shoot at attacking VCs.

Special status refugees are evacuated on the embassy's rooftop. They must walk up to the rooftop, and from there, they walk up the two rolling staircases standing side by side, and get onto the helipad, a landing and takeoff pad for helicopters. With too many people using the staircases, they're ruined. Two metal ladders are set in place of the staircases.

To prevent the unqualified people from getting onto the rooftop, the American Marines bolt and lock all the unrestricted doors to the rooftop. They put large fire extinguishers on wheels, wall lockers ripped from the walls, and heavy desks against the doors. They also lock the elevators and the grill gates to the stairwells leading to the rooftop.

Rumors are flying that the VCs are riding into the embassy on tanks, and would run over the people standing in their way. The panicky people outside the main gate ram a fire truck through the gate, and surge into the embassy. They break all barriers, swarm into the staircases, and move up onto the rooftop.

Rooftop evacuation is now reserved for the embassy's VIPs. Major Steve Long radios to ask for the 101st Airborne Division troops to come and boost security at the helipad while evacuating the VIPs.

The CH-53E Super Stallion helicopter lands on the helipad. The American Marines jump out of the helicopter, and surge through the embassy building and out to the American Ambassador Martine Bailey hugging the tamarind tree.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps (CMC) raises his hand to his face in a salute. "Sir, President Truman has given us the order to carry you up the ladders and put you in the helicopter, if you refuse to go on your own two feet."

The Ambassador clings to the tamarind tree with his arms around the trunk. "Oh, no. I won't walk up the wobbly tall ladder to get to the high helipad. I'm a diplomat, so I want to stay here, and when the VCs come in the embassy on tanks, I'll use my tact to talk them into moving back into the tunnels."

The Marines tackle him to the ground, and stretch out his arms and legs. One Marine grabs him by his hand, and another Marine clutches his foot. Together they carry him up to the rooftop, and then climb up the two ladders, with the ambassador's face turning outward and eyes shut tight. The Marines get onto the helipad and swing the ambassador into the landed helicopter.

"Let's go home," Grandma says.

I say, "Grandma, I think I'll hang around here for a while. Maybe I can find Dad here."

Grandma and I are pulled into the helicopter, and we join the other refugees crouching on the floor. The American Ambassador crouches down beside Grandma, chatting with her.

The last Marine jumps in, carrying with him the American flag that has flown over the American embassy. The flag is folded and put inside a brown paper grocery bag.

I grip the ridges of the metal floor, and pull myself to the back of the helicopter. I look out of the open gangplank and toward the Gold Nuggets River and the Skyscraper Tree, then across the ocean to the horizon, then down to the embassy's ground. Tin and Hoa stand, looking up and waving. I shout, "Tin and Hoa, tell my mom that Grandma and I got in the helicopter by mistake. We're about to be flown to the United States. We'll find a way to come home soon. Please give this money bag to my mom." I throw the bag down to them.

Tin picks up the bag. Tin and Hoa nod and wave again, then walk away.

The Commandant of the Marine Corps announces on loudspeaker, "Panther is on his way to the John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier."

"Panther is my codename," the ambassador says to Grandma.

The gangplank at the back of the helicopter is drawn up to close. The plane lifts off, slanting up high in the air and straightening into horizontal position. The helicopter lands on the aircraft carrier's flight deck. The Governor of Guam Island and the Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier come into the helicopter.

The Marine puts down the bag with the American flag in it, leaps to his feet, and stands, raising his hand to his face in a salute. "The American Ambassador's onboard, too."

The Governor looks around. "Where is he?"

The ambassador raises his hand, grinning. A lady sitting with her arm around a poodle dog raises her hand, too. "I'm his wife."

People part to let her and the Poodle move and get beside him.

The Commanding Officer of the aircraft carrier and the Ambassador are standing on the flight deck. The Commanding Officer hands a phone to the Ambassador, and says, "50 American Marines are left behind on the American embassy's roof by mistake."

The Ambassador says, "Give me the loudspeaker."

The ambassador dials a mobile phone number, and speaks into the loudspeaker, "American Marines, I salute your courage in tackling me to the ground, carrying me through the American Embassy building and up to the rooftop, and then from there, deftly climbing up the wobbling ladders to the helipad, and lastly, throwing me into the helicopter. I've sent back the same helicopter to fly you out."

The aircraft carrier is crowded with refugees. The U.S. Navy personnel push the ruined helicopters off the flight deck and into the ocean, in order to make room on the flight deck for other helicopters to bring in more refugees.

The Fury of War Chapter 28 – My Cool Grandma Can Fly a Helicopter

The refugees arrive at Guam Island, and they are housed in tent cities while being processed for resettlement by the Refugee Processing Center (RPC). Most of the refugees are resettled in the United States, but some choose to return to Vietnam on a Vietnamese commercial ship named Thuong Tin. Grandma and I decide to return to Vietnam on the ship.

The returning ship docks in a wooded area on the border between Thailand and Vietnam. There are landed helicopters parked on a clearing, and one of them has its engine running. Men are unloading trunks from the helicopters, and carrying them into the woods, while singing pirate songs in Vietnamese.

The helicopters now stand untended on the clearing.

I say, "Too bad. If the pirates were not there, we could walk across the border and into Vietnam, and get home sooner. The pirates may be here for a while. Our flight to the DMZ will be four hours from now. How are we going to pass our time, Grandma?"

"I can fly a helicopter," Grandma says.

"So cool Grandma. How did you learn to fly a helicopter?"

Grandma says, "I was a flight instructor before I met Grandpa. One day, I landed a helicopter on his merchant ship. He treated me to fine dining, gave me diamonds, and would not let me fly off until I promised to marry him. I'll tell you more about this later. But now I can fly us home with a helicopter of the pirates."

We board the helicopter with its engine running. An air traffic controller has given Grandma a taxi clearance to proceed to the DMZ, "Everything looks normal. The next plane in line is cleared for takeoff."

"Uh-oh! The pirate helicopters are right behind us," Grandma says.

"Quick, Grandma, fly away from them," I say.

Grandma flies the helicopter without coordinates, making sudden turns. She takes the helicopter up high and brings it down in a nosedive. She turns the helicopter upside down, and takes it through zigzags and loops and spins. She brings the plane to pass over mountains, valleys, and ocean with rolling waves.

The helicopters flown by the pirates have caught up with the helicopter flown by Grandma, from different directions. Suddenly H-60 helicopters from the Department of Homeland Security swarm the sky, overpowering the helicopters flown by the pirates.

Grandma radios the Air Traffic Control, to request an urgent landing on the DMZ. The Air Traffic controller dispatches military security helicopters over to the DMZ. The leading security helicopter announces on loudspeaker, "DMZ inhabitants, take cover from the coming crazy helicopter. This pilot must be trained by the Japanese Kamikaze Team."

On the ground of the DMZ, our neighbors chop down trees with axes, and clear a patch for Grandma to land the helicopter. Grandma brings the helicopter down to treetop level, with the spinning blades clipping the top branches of the trees, and neighbors dive out of the way. The helicopter teeters on the touching tops of a clump of trees. I climb down a tree, and run into the arms of Tin and Hoa.

I get a ladder and perch it against a tree trunk, and Grandma climbs out of the helicopter and down the ladder. She stands on the ground, raising both hands high above her head, beaming at the applauding spectators.

"Call 911 to report a crazy Kamikaze."

Fire engines and police cars come. The police have the helicopter towed to the police station.

Tin, Hoa and I drag our feet into Miss My Lai's class.

"You are late to class," Miss My Lai says, waving the rubber ruler.

Tin says, "Miss My Lai, and please don't hit our hands."

Other students rush forward and push their hands toward the ruler.

"I won't hit my students' hands anymore," Miss My Lai says, dropping the ruler into the trash basket.

Tin lifts the ruler out of the basket. "I'll throw it away myself, in case you change your mind and hit us again with it."

After class, Tin takes Miss My Lai by the hand. "Would you please take me to your house to talk with Mrs. Hen about where my mom might be. I want Mai and Hoa to come along with me, if that's OK with you."

"I'd be happy to," Miss My Lai says.

I say, "I told my mom that Mrs. Hen said that she saw Tin's mom at an area with fortified tunnels and glowing rocks. I also told her that I found glowing rocks on a property behind Bong's house. My mom said that she wanted to help finding Tin's mom, and to see the property with glowing rocks. Miss My Lai, can we go to my house to get my grandma and mom, and then we go to your house together?"

"Yes, I think my ma would be happy to see you all," Miss My Lai says.

At Miss My Lai's house, Grandma says, "Since Mrs. Stilwell is held at some place where there are glowing rocks, and the backyard of the property behind Bong's house also has glowing rocks. Let's go to there."

As we stand looking at the property with glowing rocks, Mom says, "That's our mansion over there, the one the VCs have been staying in all these years."

I say, "I can't believe it's our mansion. The glowing rocks are in our backyard. Now I can have all the rocks for my cosmetics, and make as much money as I want."

We walk around the mansion. Inside the makeshift chain-link fence enclosing the mansion, prisoners wearing orange jumpsuits move around.

A prisoner says, "At least we can walk around in this prison camp. It's better to be imprisoned here than to be in hammocks hanging on the trees in the Assassin Jungle."

I say, "Aha! So the POWs in hammocks hanging on the trees were moved from the Assassin Jungle to here!"

Another prisoner says, "Yes, we were moved from the jungle into the Cu Chi tunnels. When the Tunnel Rats invaded the tunnels, we were moved to here."

One POW has his whole head covered in bandage, on which are left with two holes for eyes, one for nose, and one for mouth.

Tin says, "Oh my God, she must be my mom. I can recognize my mom from the way she moves when walking."

The prisoner with bandage-covered head comes to the fence, and Tin pulls Hoa and me to go and stand in front of the prisoner. Tin says, "Mom, is that you? This is Tin. You're wounded badly."

"Yes, I'm your mom, Tien Stilwell. Thank God you've come here. I've been looking for you. I'm not wounded at all. Mrs. Hen, a cook in the Cu Chi tunnels, told me that she overheard some VC say that your dad is probably being held somewhere in this area. She helped me to disguise as being wounded, so that I could stay in this prison, to look for your dad."

"So my dad is a POW?" Tin says.

"That's what Mrs. Hen said," Mrs. Stilwell says.

I say, "Mrs. Stilwell, I'm so sorry to hear that Lieutenant General Melvin Stilwell from the Hamburger Hill is a POW. But there are eight of us here, including Mrs. Hen, looking for you."

Mrs. Stilwell says, "Since the VC Lieutenant Commander has been captured at the National Military Cemetery, the VCs have retreated from this area. But some VCs are still guarding this camp."

Mom says, "It seems there is a lack of guards in this camp. Let's get these POWs out of here. All, follow me."

Mom leads us to go into a tunnel running under our mansion. We're huddled together at the foot of a wooden tower leading to the outside. At the top of the tower near the roof, the window is slightly opened. Rays of sunlight come in through the opening. There are bird nests on the beams supporting the roof, and sparrows fly out of the opening. We are about to climb up the tower when bats fly smacking into the handle of a rake leaning against a wall. I lunge toward the rake and catch it before it falls to the floor and makes noise.

"Hello comrades," a voice comes out from a room.

We climb up the tower to get out of the window. Mrs. Hen gets stuck in the window, and the people who have gotten to the outside pull her out.

I'm the last one to climb, and I swing myself up the tower and get outside.

We plop down on a grassy ground just two feet below the window on the outside. The sun makes a long shadow on the grass, and I look up to see the statue of the Virgin Mary, with the twin bell towers behind her, and I make the sign of the Cross. We are on the lawn of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Saigon. The bells are tolling, and people are walking to the church.

Mom leads the POWs to go through the hidden entrance in the rocks, near the haunted house behind our house, and take them into a cave for hiding.

It has been over a month since I last called the President of the United States. With a feeling of great satisfaction and pride, I dial the White House number 202-456-1111 on my mobile phone.

President Truman says, "Oh, you have been rather tardy in responding to my request. Do you have all your facts straight this time?"

"Hi, President Truman, I have your POWs," I say.

"Where are the POWs?" President Truman says.

"In the haunted cave under my mansion," I say.

President Truman says, "Are you that rich? I've always thought I'm a mart man, but you are smarter than me. Your story sounds crazy, but you sound credible. I'll award you a Kid Bravery Medal."

I say, "I don't want a medal. I want my dad back. He's a missing American Army Officer."

President Truman says, "I want to talk to you in person, to see what I can do about your dad. I'll have you brought to the White House."

I say, "You must allow my grandma and mom and my two good friends to come along, because I won't come to the White House all by myself."

"As you wish, formidable genius," President Truman says.

I want to return the wedges to Tom and Mark. I hope Tin and I will find our dads.