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 at 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, a 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."
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"Please let me go. I already paid the ransom," I say.
The leader smiles, a mean smile coming from the slanted-up corner of his mouth. "You paid the 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 the 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.