The President’s Daughter

The Medevac helicopter drifted across the Delta at a thousand feet. Cazalet had hitched a lift because it was calling at a fortified camp at Katum and they needed him there to interrogate a high-ranking Vietnamese regular officer.

Cazalet was only five feet six or seven, with the kind of hair that had red highlights. His eyes were brown, his broken nose a legacy of boxing days and, in spite of the tan, the bayonet scar that bisected his right cheek was white. It was to become his trademark in the years ahead.

Sitting there now in his camouflaged uniform, sleeves rolled up, the Special Forces beret tilted forward, he looked like what war had made him, a thoroughly dangerous man. The young medic-cum-air gunner, Harvey, and Hedley, the black crew chief, watched him and approved.

“He’s been everywhere, or so they say,” Hedley whispered. “Paratroops, Airborne Rangers, and now Special Forces. His old man’s a Senator.”

“Well, excuse me,” Harvey said. “So what do you get for the man who has everything?” He turned to toss his cigarette out of the door and stiffened. “Hey, what gives down there?”

Hedley glanced out, then reached for the heavy machine gun. “We got trouble, right here in River City, Lieutenant.”

Cazalet joined him. There were paddy fields below and banks of reeds stretching into infinity. A cart was blocking the causeway that crossed the area and a local bus of some sort had stopped, unable to continue.

Harvey peered over his shoulder. “Look, sir, it’s pajama night at the Ritz again.”

There were Vietcong down there, at least twenty, in their conical straw hats and black pajamas. A man got out of the bus, there was the distinctive crack of an AK47, and he fell. Two or three women emerged and ran, screaming, until the rifle fire cut them down.

Cazalet went to the pilot and leaned over. “Take us down and I’ll drop out and see what I can do.”

“You must be crazy,” the pilot said.

“Just do it. Go down, drop me off, and then get the hell out of here and fetch the cavalry, just like good old John Wayne.”

He turned, found himself an M16 and several pouches of magazines, and slung them around his neck. He clipped half a dozen grenades to his belt and stuck some signaling flares in the pockets of his camouflage jacket. They were going down fast and the V.C. were shooting at them, Hedley returning the fire with the heavy machine gun.

He turned, grinning. “You got a death wish or something?”

“Or something,” Cazalet said, and as the helicopter hovered just above the ground, he jumped.

There was a call. “Wait for me.” When he turned, Harvey was following him, his medical bag over one shoulder.

“Crazy man,” Cazalet said.

“Aren’t we all?” Harvey replied, and they ran through the paddy field to the causeway as the helicopter lifted and turned away.

There were more bodies now and the bus was under heavy rifle fire, windows shattering. Screams came from inside, and then several more women emerged, two of them running for the reeds, and three Vietcong emerged on the road farther along, rifles ready.

Cazalet raised his M16 and fired several short bursts, knocking two of them down. There was silence for a moment and Harvey knelt beside one of the women and tried for a pulse.

“She’s had it, for a start,” he said, turning to Cazalet, and then his eyes widened. “Behind you.”

In the same moment, a bullet took Harvey in the heart, lifting him onto his back. Cazalet swung, firing from the hip at the two who had emerged on the causeway behind him. He caught one and the other slipped back into the reeds. Now there was only silence.

There were five people left alive in the bus, three Vietnamese women, an old man traveling to the next village, and a dark-haired, pretty young woman who looked badly frightened. She wore a khaki shirt and pants and the shirt was stained with blood, someone else’s, not hers.

She’d been speaking in French to the old man earlier, and now he turned to her as a single bullet hit the fuel tank of the bus and flames erupted.