the Vietnam war. Very young, but most probably a fighter. During the latter years, the Vietnamese drafted everyone including women, grandmothers, and children into the continuing fight against the strangers on their land. It was this action on their part that had led to some of the major atrocities of the last war. U.S. troops in the field began to distrust small children, knowing that the Vietnamese were not above strapping booby traps on the children's backs and sending them off to beg food from the all-too-generous American troops. More than one woman had been sent to decoy other men, playing on their great weakness and loneliness, and then slitting a man's throat at an intimate moment.
From this elevation, I could see the progress of the fire in the jungle below us. It was moving rapidly, and had already encompassed the area where I thought the camp was. I gave silent thanks that I'd made a complete visual record of it, knowing that the memories contained in it were now lost forever. Mine would be the last ? and only ? record of those messages echoing down through the decades.
I am dying.
The fire was following a general westerly course, leaping back and forth on either side of the creek bed we'd followed. It was approaching the position we would have been in had we not cut up the side of the mountain, and I could see now that there had been no chance of our outrunning it.
Additionally, it was creeping up the sides of the hill, more slowly than its forward progress, but still clearly moving. It was a long, narrow wedge that broadened gradually, eating up the countryside around it.
Than appeared to be unworried. He watched the fire with me, then said, 'To the cave. We have preparations to make.'
It isn't the heat of the flames that always kills men in fires. The dangers, even for those that are out of reach of the more obvious threats, are more subtle. Fire requires oxygen to burn, and a good forest fire will suck the oxygen away from areas near it. You can survive the heat and flames and still suffocate, and I was afraid that would be what would happen to us.
The men were moving now, filing into the cave with their packs.
I could hear the fire now, chomping the valley as it moved toward us like a giant beast devouring the terrain. It was punctuated by high-pitched squeals, as the heat flashed moisture inside large tree trunks into steam, splitting them open like roasted pigs. The wind was picking up now too, rushing in toward the fire, billowing up smoke in huge gouts into the sky.
We were all inside the cave now, and men were pulling large, folded packages out of their packs. Clear sheets of plastic, heavy lengths of canvas. I watched as they rigged them over the door, dousing the canvas first in water from their canteens, then covering it with plastic. The canvas faced outward, the plastic inside. They worked carefully but quickly by the light of flashlights, fastening the canvas and plastic securely to the edges of the entrance into the cave, driving metal spikes into the wood and then positioning clamps on those.
'It keeps the air inside,' Than explained briefly. The force of the wind outside was already sucking the canvas up against the edges of the cave entrance, and it billowed away from us, creating what appeared to be an excellent air trap.
'Are there any other air vents in this cave?' I asked.
He glanced briefly at the ceiling, then shook his head. 'I am not certain, but I think not. You see the smoke ? it pools near the top, not rushing out.' Now I knew why he had lit the candle shortly after the men had started erecting the barricade.
'Where did you learn this?' I asked.
He shot me a dark look, then said, 'Experience. We know to come prepared.'
'I wonder how the fire started,' I said.
Another unreadable glance from Than, and then he turned away. Something in his response puzzled me. While he was often providing less than complete explanations for what we were doing, he normally had at least some response. Then it hit me.
The MiG. The fire. There was one thing I knew far too well that could ignite incendiary fires across a wide swath of country. While not the only cause, certainly, a ground-strike attack with heavy weapons could do just that.
We had seen it too often even during practice runs. Even practice SAR missions, where troops on the ground drop smoke flares and then wait for helos, could fan into brush fires, particularly under the heavy downdraft of a rescue helicopter. Another lesson we'd learned during Vietnam.
The MiG ? the damaged MiG. And how had it been damaged? Through some mishap in a routine training mission?
From Than's response, I thought not. It had been in air combat, and that left just a few possible candidates. The Chinese to the north ? or the Jefferson to the east. And if Than had a radio, he would have known what had happened. Known, and been prepared to move out and flee from the fire.
The fire was on us now, the noise all-consuming. It sounded like a tornado, or the sound of some odd jet engine spooling up. The canvas and plastic barricade was sucking hard against its clamps now, and the men were lining the entrance, adding their strength to hold it in place against the difference in pressure between the inside of the cave and the outside. The canvas itself was smoking, and I could see a thin layer of smoke trapped between the canvas and the plastic.
How long could it hold? Even wetted down with water from our canteens, the canvas would soon dry into a thin, combustible layer. The fire was on us now, dancing and howling just past the thin temporary air lock we'd jury-rigged out of what we had. Flames danced and skittered along the canvas, sheets of fire steaming off the last remnants of water. The canvas was beginning to smoke. Or burn. The noise was unholy, and the small cavern was filled with groans and creaks of rock heating and expanding. A new danger now ? that the flames would crack the rock, opening air vents to the outside and quickly sucking out our oxygen.
The men were crouched around the lower edges of the canvas, which was stretched tight to immobilize its top, holding it with all their might against the rock walls. The clamps alone could not hold. The heat was unbearable, radiating in and raising the temperature inside to excruciating levels. I had thought the jungle hot, but it was nothing compared to the scorching, killing heat.
One of the men standing along the right side of the entrance let out a low, howling moan. He swayed, and I could see the canvas corner he was holding sag. There was a thin, whistling scream of air escaping. I jumped forward. Just as he collapsed, I seized the edge he'd been holding and slammed it hard against the rock. The whistling stopped. He went down with a dull, sickening thud into the rock floor. Than grabbed him by the collar with his one good hand and dragged him back away from the barrier.
I could feel it full force now, the heat, the unbearable heat. Fire swirled just inches from my fingers, kept at bay only by the canvas and plastic. I could feel the heat redden my fingers, scorching them now, and still I held on. It was not a matter of courage ? there was simply no choice.
Just as suddenly as it was upon us, the main fire stormed past. It was consuming fuel at a prodigious rate, and the scant vegetation around the cavern gave out quickly. I could hear it as it passed, the Doppler lowering of the frequency of the noise, just like the change in sound an aircraft makes as it passes overhead, or a train whistling off into the distance. The heat abated noticeably, but was still well above my pain threshold.
The air was hot, almost too hot to breathe. I took shallow breaths, sucking it in between clenched teeth and trying to let what little moisture remained in my mouth cool it before it seared my lungs. We were all breathing like that, short quick pants, held uptight and in place only by fear and adrenaline.
But there was hope now, as there had not been before. The temperature continued to drop, and I felt the tug of the canvas in my hands decrease slightly. The wind continued, though, as the fire sucked in fresh air behind it. Still, we held on.
It might have been minutes, it might have been hours. I'd lost all sensation of the passage of time, my world defined simply by the urgent need to hold onto the fabric in my hands, the dead, throbbing pain in my hands. We waited, silent.
Than spoke. 'It is safe now.' Still, I held on, and it wasn't until one of the other men pried my hands from the rock wall that the reality sunk in.
We were alive.
My fingers refused to move at first, locked into position by fear and heat. The men were oddly gentle now, easing me back from the wall and gently prying my hands off the canvas. I sank back against the wall, slid down into a sitting position, and studied my hands. They were red, blistered, and crusted now, black in a couple of spots.
