So many roads, so much at stake,
So many dead ends, I'm at the edge of the lake.
Sometimes I wonder what it's gonna take
To find dignity. ~Bob Dylan 1994

Marvin Johnson looked from Sergeant Anderson's narrowed eyes to the sweating steel of the short-barrel shotgun, to the back of Lieutenant McKay's perfectly-groomed head. He could see no resolution to the bitter stalemate going on between the officer and the noncom, knowing that the platoon sergeant was determined to risk everything in order to save his friends on the ground, and Johnny McKay would risk the same to save his bird. With the pilot outranking everyone else on the transport, there was little the team could do to commence an unauthorized and dangerous search and rescue, but Anderson showed no signs of withdrawing his attempts to do so--even if he had to force McKay's cooperation.

Johnson had been successful in the past in helping to pull Zeke Anderson out of stress-induced adverse behavior, but with the sergeant's motivation being the welfare of the LT, Taylor and Doc Hockenberry, no amount of soothing would be enough to convince the man to stand down. Understanding that his intervention would not completely end the standoff, Marvin hoped that if he could just divert Zeke's attention long enough, Lieutenant McKay would have the team safely back at Camp Barnett before the sergeant could act on his impulse to coup the aircraft.

Before Johnson could formulate his words, Spec4 Ruiz interrupted the tense moment of silence when he pointed out the Huey's open door and cried, "Hey, Compadres! Look at that! That fog over there looks darker than the rest."

The comment was enough to snatch Anderson's concentration away from the trigger of his shotgun and he peered out the door, straining his neck to see past the machine gun that obstructed his view. Even with the sun slipping from the sky and the viscous cloud-cover being beyond anything he had ever before experienced, Zeke could see the large black plume of smoke filtering through the heavy green fog.

"X marks the spot, Sir," Anderson said bluntly, instantly removing any argument Lieutenant McKay might have had for not attempting to locate the downed sister-ship. The sergeant knew he would need not labor the point. It took less than a second for him to feel the pitch of the helicopter change.

With a flick of his wrist and a sigh of resignation, Johnny McKay abandoned his resolve. "I gotta be out of my fucking mind," he muttered as he spun his Huey around and punched the throttle. "I hope Goldman is alive because when we wind up kissing the dirt right next to that bird, I'm coming back to haunt his ass, and that's a goddamned promise."

********************

"What you mean are you LT, LT?" Marcus Taylor asked, unable to control his worry-induced temper. "Who you think you are? Nixon?"

Lieutenant Goldman seemed bewildered by the anger in the other man's voice and glanced at the medic as if asking for some kind of explanation for the hostility. When Myron tried to move away from the seething specialist, Private Hockenberry quickly placed a hand on the injured man's chest and held him to the ground. "Hold on, LT," Hock urged. "Don't try to move yet. Taylor, would you calm down? You're not helping."

"Calm down?" Taylor spat back. "What are you talking about? What exactly is it that I'm not helping, Doc? Looks like LT done lost his marbles and you're worried about me not helping?"

Realizing the futility of arguing with the agitated specialist, Hockenberry forced himself to ignore the tirade and turned his attention to Lieutenant Goldman. "Sir," he said, keeping his voice calm, "do you know where you are?"

Myron Goldman glanced at Taylor and flinched when their eyes met. The specialist's raw, barely-controlled emotion was worse than troubling and Myron immediately felt a need to pull away. Averting his eyes from the other man's piercing glare, Goldman slowly scanned the limited perimeter. He did not immediately recognize the fog for what it was, his mind searching for some frame of reference with which to explain his clouded vision and the pain in his head and shoulder.

Unable to associate himself to his surroundings, he meekly guessed, "Was there a fire?"

"Yeah, you might say that!" Taylor cried, now completely chafed. "There was one motherfucker of a fire and it looks like it done fried your brains, LT!"

With as menacing a look as the mild-mannered medic was able to muster, Hockenberry successfully halted whatever might have come next out of the mouth of the exasperated specialist. Unnerved by the detachment he saw in Goldman's eyes and the uncertainty in his voice, Hockenberry was anxious to determine the severity of the officer's mental condition and he could not do so with Taylor's continuous verbal onslaught. When Marcus fell silent, the medic continued.

"Sir, your name is Myron Goldman and you are in Vietnam,"Private Hockenberry explained calmly, as he began wrapping a bandage around the lieutenant's injured shoulder. "You are the commanding officer of Team Viking, a SOG team that was heading back to base after a mission. Our helicopter crashed and we don't know where we are or how to get back to Camp Barnett." Securing the gauze in place, Hockenberry looked into Goldman's eyes and sighed. "And you don't remember any of this, do you, Sir?"

Myron frowned. "No, I don't. I'm sorry."

"Oh, well, as long as you're sorry, I guess that makes it okay don't it?" Marcus Taylor's tone was having its effect on Francis Hockenberry who finally decided he had had enough.

"Taylor, shut up," the medic demanded as he grabbed the specialist by the arm and pulled him away from Goldman's side. "You're really beginning to piss me off now and if you don't knock it off, I might have to reconsider my position of not killing another human being."

Marcus opened his mouth to counter the threat, but the medic refused to allow himself to be interrupted. "Listen to me, Taylor. This is serious. I know what's wrong with him...at least I think I do. We studied something like this in my psyche course in college."

"You studied shell-shock?" Taylor asked, genuinely surprised.

"Well, no," Hockenberry admitted. "Unless this is the same thing. I think this is something called fugue amnesia."

The specialist did not reply but his perplexed expression begged for further explanation.

"It's a kind of amnesia caused by psychological trauma that the mind is having trouble dealing with. I think LT saw the same thing you did, only his brain has kind of shut down as a self-defense mechanism."

"Self-defense?" Taylor asked, the elevated pitch in his voice disclosing his refusal to accept the diagnosis. The concept of amnesia was incomprehensible to the specialist who had barely even survived the courses required to graduate high school. Trying to understand a psychosis was more than he could fathom, especially with the knowledge that in a combat-zone, there was no room for such a condition. "You're not serious, are you Doc? Getting out of here is going to be hard enough, but if LT can't even remember who he is, then is he going to know how to fire his weapon?"

"I don't know," Hockenberry conceded. "I studied memory loss for all of two days in Psych-101. How should I know what he's going to remember?"

"Great," Taylor sighed. "So how long is this gonna last? Or don't you know that neither?"

The medic's estimated prognosis would not be as reassuring as he had hoped. "This type of amnesia doesn't usually last long. A couple of hours...maybe as much as a couple of days."

"A couple of days?" Taylor replied, realizing that their ordeal had quickly gone from being difficult to desperate. "In a couple of days, we're gonna be dead. I can hardly walk, you won't shoot nobody and LT don't even know who he is, let alone what a gook is."

"He'll get his memory back sooner or later, Taylor," Hockenberry promised. "This ain't permanent."

Not satisfied with this ambiguous guarantee, Marcus Taylor offered his less than inspired solution, "Can't we just give him a whack on the head to get his memory back?"

Hockenberry stifled a laugh. "I'm not a doctor, Taylor, but I'm sure it don't work like that. This ain't the Flintstones. We just need to give it time."

"Well, we ain't got time," Taylor snapped. "If Charlie's in the area he's gonna be up our butts to make sure nobody survived that crash. We gotta get out of here. Now."

Private Hockenberry hated to admit it, but Taylor was right. The medic had been in-Country long enough to know that the Viet Cong would not ignore a helicopter crash. Not only was there the opportunity to capture survivors, but the intelligence that might be gathered from such a catastrophe warranted investigation. No, Taylor was right and the three members of Team Viking stood little chance against anything even as small as an enemy squad.

Hockenberry quickly started gathering in his supplies. He crawled back over to where Goldman still laid on the patch of dewy vegetation, and informed the officer of the grim situation. "LT, we have to move out. We're in danger here. Can you walk?"

Lieutenant Goldman rolled onto his side and with a grunt, got himself standing. "Yeah, I can walk," he affirmed, raising a hand to his forehead as he slowly tried to shake away the cobwebs.

As Goldman steadied himself, Hockenberry picked up his medic pack and walked over to Marcus Taylor. Without asking permission, he raised the specialist's right arm and slung it over his shoulder. When he felt Taylor's spontaneous attempt to pull away, the medic grabbed more firmly onto the struggling man's wrist and held it in place. "I don't have time to splint you yet, Taylor, and you can't walk on one leg. Since I don't have a pair of crutches handy, you're going to have to lean on me."

Taylor stopped resisting, but he noted with deep-felt contempt, "This sucks, Doc. This just fucking sucks."

"Yeah, well I could leave you behind," Hockenberry teased, allowing Taylor to hear the levity in his voice.

Taylor let the remark slide.

As the trio headed into the jungle and away from the smoldering remains of the Huey helicopter and its four lost souls, Lieutenant Goldman peered into the mist and asked, "Where are we going?"

"Unless you got a better idea," Spec4 Taylor responded, his tone less angry than before. "Anywhere but here."

*************

"I can't land, Sergeant," Lieutenant Johnny McKay announced as he neared the billowing black cloud. "It's almost dark and, I hate to break it to you, but we're in Cambodia, now."

McKay paused, amused by the expression that flashed across the face of his copilot, knowing that it probably mirrored the look on Zeke Anderson's face as well. Cambodia was off-limits. No exceptions. The consequences for going over the border were severe, yet somehow, the idea of breaking the rules spurred on McKay's cockiness even more and he made no effort to turn back. The chopper jock thrived by living on the edge.

Still, Johnny McKay knew his limits. "I shouldn't even be flying here," he confessed, addressing the sergeant. "Landing is out of the question. I'll take her in low enough so you can jump, but then I'm out of here."

"Roger that, Sir," Zeke acknowledged from where he stood on the Huey's landing skid. "I can handle this alone." The only thing Anderson wanted from the brash young lieutenant was to be dropped near the crash site. He had never expected McKay to land and join in the operation. McKay's presence during the search and rescue was not only unnecessary but unwanted. Sergeant Anderson knew he stood a much better chance of finding survivors on his own than with the hotshot lieutenant assuming command.

"Sarge?"

The sound of Danny Percell's voice failed to startle the platoon sergeant, but Anderson was nonetheless annoyed by the interruption to his thoughts. He did not bother to look at the man who he could sense was standing just behind him in the Huey's open hatchway. Instead, Zeke just stood there on the skid, staring into the murk. After a long moment of hearing nothing but the steady thump of the chopper blades...or was that his own pounding heart... Anderson heaved a sigh and replied sounding more brusque than intended, "What, Percell?"

Becoming the self-appointed spokesman for the rest of the team, Spec4 Percell swallowed hard and voiced the question he knew the others wanted asked, "Sarge, you do realize that we're going with you, don't you?"

Sergeant Anderson turned around and looked at the three men huddled behind him. Recognizing the intensity in their collective gaze as reflecting his own, he lifted his shotgun and, gripping the barrel in one hand, he quickly pumped it up and down, loading the bullet in one smooth motion. "Lock and load, Ladies. Charlie probably made it to the party first and we wanna make a good impression."

************

As the trio trudged their way through the bleary jungle, Marcus Taylor was uncertain of whether the fog was showing any signs of thinning. With the growing twilight, conditions were continuing to deteriorate and the soldier's gut instinct told him that unless they found a place to hole up for the night, they stood no chance of surviving until morning.

"Hold on, Doc," Taylor demanded as he pulled his arm away from Hockenberry's shoulder.

The medic did not restrict his comrade's movement, but he kept a hand wrapped around Taylor's forearm until the man gained his footing. When he was sure Taylor would not topple over, Hockenberry let go and glanced over his shoulder to make sure that Lieutenant Goldman was still with them.

Myron was standing several paces behind the other two men, looking around at his surroundings like a tourist in Central Park on a balmy New York afternoon. He had his hands thrust deep into his pockets and lightly rocked on the balls of his feet, easing his body up onto his toes and then gliding back on his heels. Forth and back he seesawed, a boyish grin lightening his more characteristically earnest features.

Hockenberry frowned. He was almost certain that he could hear the Lieutenant humming "Yellow Submarine."

Although troubled by the officer's unusual demeanor, the medic allowed himself to be satisfied that Goldman was alert and keeping pace and that would have to do. For now.

Returning his attention to Spec4 Taylor who was standing in a sizable puddle of mud, leaning on his M-16 for balance, Hockenberry rubbed the bridge of his nose and for the first time realized that he had lost his glasses somewhere along the way. "Taylor, we've only been humping for ten minutes," the medic observed, mindlessly scanning the ground to see if the glasses were somewhere in the vicinity. "What are you stopping for? Are you in that much pain."

"Shit, yeah, I'm in that much pain, Doc," Taylor huffed. The soldier seemed to enjoy letting everyone around him know of his discomforts, but he restrained himself, choosing to instead address his more serious concerns. "But that ain't why we're stopping. It's getting dark and..."

A burst of gunfire abbreviated Taylor's sentence and instantly sent the three soldiers scrambling for cover. Marcus dropped to his stomach as he gathered in his rifle and took aim into the brush where the sound of an AK-47 announced the enemy presence. Taylor tried to ignore the gunk that spattered into his eyes and sprayed the jungle with bullets, hoping like hell there was only one gook firing back at him.

"LT, fire!" Marcus yelled without taking his sight off the unseen target. His hope could only carry him so far and he knew he would need his lieutenant's backup before this firefight was through.

Hockenberry craned his neck to the left and saw that Lieutenant Goldman was crouched in the mud, staring at the rifle he had dropped at the first sound of weapons fire. The officer's posture and the look of terror in Goldman's eyes reminded the medic of a kid coiling away from a venomous snake more than a seasoned soldier facing a routine firefight.

"Sir, what's wrong?" Hockenberry called, belly-crawling his way closer to the lieutenant's position. "Are you hurt?"

Goldman shook his head. "Uh...no, I'm fine," he assured the medic, reaching forward as if to grab the muddy weapon but instead withdrawing his hand and raising it to his forehead. "I dropped my gun."

Hockenberry did not correct the officer's misused terminology for the rifle, noting that it was probably a good sign that the man at least acknowledged the tool as a weapon.

"LT, can you fire that thing?" Hockenberry asked, raising his voice to be heard over Marcus Taylor's private little battle. Watching Goldman's shaking hand swipe away a bead of sweat, the medic was hopeful that if the officer could just bring himself to raise the rifle, he would spontaneously know how to use it.

"Yeah...yeah," Goldman acknowledged, licking his lips and again extending his reach until his fingers barely touched the barrel of the rifle.

"Any time now!" Hockenberry heard the specialist prompt loudly. Taylor had to stop firing to reload his own rifle, leaving the area vulnerable to the enemy's persistent attack. Any compassion he held for Goldman's mental handicap had vanished the moment Charlie entered the picture. Taylor needed the lieutenant's help and he needed it now.

Private Hockenberry's anxiety mounted as he watched Goldman continue to hesitate, wondering if the man would be able to find the nerve to pick up his weapon. As much as he wanted to urge the officer on, Hockenberry could not bring himself to encourage Myron to do something he himself was unwilling to do...to kill another human being.

Hockenberry would never know what finally spurred the officer into action. Whether it was courage...or the desperate look in Taylor's eye...or some natural lust to play hero...Myron Goldman suddenly seemed determined to make a difference.

In a smooth motion that led the medic to believe that not all of Goldman's memory had been displaced, the lieutenant snatched up his weapon, took quick aim, and, biting his lower lip, joined the offensive. He fired the rifle once into the misty shadows, releasing and audible "Oomph" when the recoil pounded the butt of the M-16 against his injured shoulder.

Ignoring the pain, Myron stopped firing long enough to offer Taylor, who had made quick work of changing his magazine, a wide, boyish grin. "Let's get 'em!" the officer suggested more than ordered, with a giddy nervousness to his voice.

Marcus was unable to resist smiling back at his lieutenant's unexpected enthusiasm. "I can dig that, Sir," he complied, raising his rifle to take aim. Together, the two men showered the jungle until they could no longer hear any return fire coming from the AK-47...or the distant sound of Johnny McKay's Huey as it faded over the murky horizon, making its way home to Camp Barnett.

********************

"Oh, man, Sarge...this is bad," Danny Percell stated the obvious. McKay had zeroed in on the crash site and dropped the squad within fifty meters of the devastation. Following the smoke and the smell of burning engine fuel, the second half of Team Viking had no trouble finding the shattered remains of Blackbird Four. "This is real bad."

Sergeant Anderson felt no need to comment. He knew in his gut that the situation was even worse than Danny's modest assessment suggested. It was horrendous.

The ground was littered with scorched debris, some of it splattered with a dark red substance that could only be blood. Hundreds of shards of shrapnel wounded the soft trunks of saplings and a large piece of propeller was held precariously over their heads by nothing more than the slender fingers of a large, leafless tree branch. In the middle of it all, the charred carcass of the Huey smoldered under a thick black cloud, thin tendrils of smoky fog slithering through its open hull, wrapping the decapitated body of the pilot in an ethereal shroud.

"All right, you guys," Anderson said, smoothing out the kinks in his faltering voice as best he could. "Check it out. We need a..." He had almost said "head count," but remembering the gruesome sight in the cockpit, he shuddered and carefully corrected himself, "...body count here. Quick and easy, now."

He did not need a verbal wilco to know that the men were complying with the order. The possibility of survivors was remote at best, but they all remembered that Sergeant Anderson himself had once survived an equally terrible helicopter crash. Johnson and Baker, too. If those guys could walk away from a downed chopper, then maybe the LT and his men had been just as lucky. As far as the men of Team Viking were concerned, there had been seven soldiers onboard that Huey, and until seven bodies were accounted for, they could not give up hope.

Using his M-16 to filter through the unnatural ground cover near the Huey's fuselage, Danny Percell fought back the bile when he inadvertently exposed a human ear. It was only his second mission since being reinstated to the team after his breakdown, and though determined not to let the guys down again, he was suddenly unsure if he had really been ready to return to the field. Danny closed his eyes and took a deep breath, trying to regain control of his emotions.

"Danny? You okay, man?"

Alberto Ruiz had been keeping a close eye on Percell throughout the operation, providing the moral support he felt the soldier needed. If Danny so much as hiccuped, Ruiz was at his side making sure everything was under control. Alberto realized that, for the most part, Percell found his human shadow to be annoying, but that did not deter the machine-gunner from his personal mission to help his friend through these first few outings in the field.

When Danny failed to respond to his question, Ruiz clasped a hand on the sharp-shooter's shoulder and lightly squeezed as he asked again, "You all right, Percell?"

Danny slowly opened his eyes and forced himself to look at the ghastly sight that had caused his adrenaline to surge. Facing his fear, he realized, was the only way to move past it. "Yeah, Ru. It's just that..."

Stopping in mid-sentence, Percell abruptly dropped to one knee and reached into the debris, causing Ruiz to wince when he looked down to observe what the man doing. Seeing the severed ear lying in the dirt and thinking that Percell was going to pick it up, he scowled, "Ooh, Danny! What are you doin', Man?"

"Look, Ru!" Percell exclaimed, reaching past the ear and instead picking up a twisted piece of glass and wire. "Doc's glasses!"

********************

Specialist Taylor slumped back, and finding nothing against which to lean, he allowed his body to ease on to the ground, being careful not to let his head hit anything harder than the spongy earth. Lying on his back in the mud, he continued to have trouble catching his breath after the exertion of the battle, and the morphine was no longer enough to suppress the incredible pain in his broken leg.

After a long, agony-filled moment, Marcus closed his eyes and weakly gasped, "We're in deep shit, LT."

With less than an hour of daylight left of the shortened December evening, Taylor knew the obscurity of the Vietnam jungle would be made even worse by the chronic fog, and that navigation would be impossible under the starless sky. Matters would not be made any easier with Doc having lost his glasses and Taylor's own inability to maneuver through the thicket. He was not yet at the moment of panic, but Marcus could feel the first pangs of desperation creeping into the pit of his stomach.

"I can't walk no more and it'll be dark soon...," he vented, allowing his words to drift away with the fog, knowing that his meaning would still be understood.

Lieutenant Goldman was crouching next to Taylor, his elbows resting on the still-warm M-16 that was draped across his knees. He had one hand raised to his face, his index finger pressed lightly against his lips. Myron seemed to be listening intently to the other soldier's analysis of their predicament, and both Taylor and Hockenberry waited out the lingering silence, sure that their lieutenant would eventually offer a plan of action.

Instead of issuing a command, Myron asked a question neither of his companions would ever have expected at that dire moment.

"If my name is Myron Goldman, how come you two guys keep calling me El-Tee?"

********************

"Now, Percell, just 'cause you found Doc's glasses don't mean he's one of these here KIAs." Sergeant Anderson handed the broken spectacles back to Danny and curled his lips, not quite smiling, but attempting to soften the anguish he saw in the other man's eyes. "We know two of them are the pilots 'cause they're still strapped in their seats, and this other guy here is just too burned up to tell who he is. Could be anyone."

Percell was having a hard time buying into the argument. "Could be Doc," he insisted, absently sticking the glasses into the front pocket of his camouflaged shirt.

Zeke lowered his halfhearted grin until it disappeared into his tired eyes. "Yes, it could be," he conceded. "Or it could be LT or Taylor or the other guy from the chopper crew. The point is, until we know for sure, you can't go letting it eat you up. I need your head here, Son. There's only four of us. Y'hear?"

Danny nodded, lowering his eyes in shame for having to be reminded of his duty. "Yeah, Sarge. I'm with ya."

"All right then. Let's finish up here. Those ain't G.I. sandleprints we're seeing here." When Danny nodded his agreement, Anderson patted the young specialist on the back and added lightly, "It's gonna be all right, Percell. Taylor probably kicked poor Doc out of the chopper long before it hit the ground anyway."

Had the two men known about the sad fate of Blackbird's crew chief, they might not have chuckled so readily at Zeke's flippant remark.

******************

Doc Hock had to move quickly to maneuver himself between Lieutenant Goldman and the incensed specialist. Hockenberry could see Taylor's spontaneous intent to clobber Goldman, despite the man's rank and a consequential stint in Long Bihn Jail for striking an officer--even if that officer had asked a ridiculously asinine question.

"Calm down, Taylor!" Doc demanded, thrusting one hand into each man's chest and pushing them as far away from one another as his arm span would allow. "It don't mean nothin'. "

Feeling Taylor's muscles relax a bit, Hockenberry grabbed the lieutenant's arm and used it to turn Myron away from the specialist's line of site, but in the opposite direction from where the VC attack had occurred, and presumably where a dead enemy soldier still lay. "LT, you might wanna go sit over there for a few minutes while I check Taylor's leg." The medic gave a little push, indicating that the politeness in his voice did not mean that the invitation was open for debate.

Resigning himself like a schoolboy who had just been sent to the corner, Goldman stood up and reluctantly headed in the direction to which he had been pointed. Before he left, he turned around and looked Taylor in the eye, observing, "You know what, Man? You sure are moody. It was just s simple question."

Hockenberry had not removed his hand from Taylor's chest and when he felt the specialist lean into it, Doc locked his elbow and pushed the man back onto the ground. Afte he was sure Marcus was settled and Lieutenant Goldman was out of earshot, Hockenberry slid back so that he could examine Taylor's broken bone.

"It's not his fault, Marcus," the medic soothed, sliding his hand down Taylor's leg. "He has no idea what his responsibilities are and punching him out is only going to get you into trouble. Let it go."

Without giving the soldier time to respond, Hockenberry smoothly redirected the conversation to his more immediate worry. The swelling in the leg was worse than before and the medic knew Taylor would no longer be able to put any pressure at all onto it. Morphine might help the pain, but it could not strengthen the bone. "I'm gonna have to carry you out of here, you know. You can't walk on this anymore."

"On your skinny white-ass, Doc?" Taylor huffed, choosing not to battle the idea that he would have to be carried but knowing that the lanky medic would not have the strength to hump through the jungle carrying another G.I.. "There ain't no way."

Knowing it would, in fact, be a struggle, Hockenberry paused and tried to think of a better solution to the dilemma. Being in the middle of nowhere and having no supplies with which to make a stretcher, there was little alternative to having the crippled specialist be carried on another man's back. After a moment, the medic and Taylor locked eyes, both of them concurrently coming to the same conclusion.

"Oh, no," Taylor said, looking over at the pouting officer. "I ain't gonna be riding piggyback on the LT. No way."

"Yes way," the medic corrected. "He's stronger than me and he can see better."

"He ain't much stronger than you, Doc, and he's an officer," Taylor insisted. "There ain't no way he's gonna do this."

If Hockenberry agreed with the specialist, he refused to admit to it. "Yes he will. It's the only way we're going to be able to get you to shelter for the night."

Without bothering to stick around to further discuss the matter, Hockenberry got up and jogged over to the lieutenant, who was sitting with his elbows in his lap and his chin propped up by his raised hands. Goldman was obviously sulking and Taylor doubted the scatterbrained lieutenant would even understand the need for Doc's proposal let alone be willing to carry it out. Officers simply did not do such things. At least no officers Marcus Taylor had ever known.

Taylor could not hear the conversation that transpired between the medic and Lieutenant Goldman, but he could tell by the grin on the officer's face that Goldman had readily accepted the responsibility and seemed happy to do so. The lieutenant sprang up from the rock on which he had been perched and quickly made his way over to the specialist's side.

"Need a lift?" he asked with a smile, reaching down to take Taylor's arm. Without waiting for an answer, Hockenberry heard the lieutenant say the words he had heard a hundred times before, although never under quite these same conditions. "All right, then. Let's saddle up!"

Pulling Taylor's arm forward, Goldman got the injured man standing and with Hockenberry's help, maneuvered Taylor onto his back, carefully avoiding contact with his own wounded shoulder in the process. When they were all reasonably comfortable with the awkward arrangement, Myron turned around to give his rider what was obviously meant to be a reassuring smile.

"Good God," Marcus Taylor prayed with a disheartened sigh, "somebody just shoot me now."

*********************

"What do you think we should do now, Sarge?" Johnson asked, joining the group as they all gathered at the edge of the crash site. "Are we going in after them?"

By "in", Sergeant Anderson knew that Johnson was referring to the jungle. The chopper had made a sizable clearing on its way down, smashing the trees and weeds in its path, but it was still in the middle of miles upon miles of perilous vegetation. Whatever direction the team took, they would be headed straight into hell.

To make a bad situation worse, it was twilight now, and with the fog unyielding it stranglehold on the terrain, visibility was only a few feet. The Vietnam jungle could be a foreboding place in the daylight hours. At night, it was a nightmare no soldier voluntarily endured.

There were also sure signs that gooks had been in the vicinity sometime before Team Viking's arrival. Even if the VC were not expecting a search and rescue operation until morning when the weather conditions improved, it would still be reasonable to believe that they had set their deadly traps around the perimeter, ready to destroy anyone attempting to recover the bodies aboard this aircraft.

And then there was ol' Victor-Charles himself to consider. The enemy might not be out there waiting. But then again, he might. There was just no way to know. So far, the area had been quiet, with nothing more than a few sandal prints to indicate that the gooks had even found the Huey, but Zeke had been a soldier long enough to know that the squad was up against a formidable enemy--one that could...and often did...disappear without a trace, only to return as silently and as lethal as a python.

Zeke's mind whirled as he asked himself the questions for which he had no easy answers. Had the gooks left the area completely or were they just waiting in the shadows for night to fall? Had they gone after the survivors? Or worse yet, had they found the others and killed or captured them? Was Zeke's team now being watched like deer through a hunter's scope?

There was simply no telling what kinds of surprises the jungle held.

The fact that it was their friends and comrades stranded somewhere in the jungle complicated the decision even more. If they were out there, LT and his men were probably injured, hungry and cold, and in desperate need of being found. However, if Zeke's team went in after them and was killed or captured themselves, it might take days for the Army to find the site, let alone the survivors of the crash. That was assuming that the Army would be willing to go into Cambodia after them.

Which, of course, they would not.

Gut instinct told Sergeant Anderson that his little fragment of Team Viking was the LT's only hope at survival. Now it was Zeke's responsibility to find their best hope.

Going in or staying put. No matter what the decision, Anderson had put the squad in great danger. Navigating the jungle now would be a very stupid move but waiting out the night at the crash site could prove to be just as deadly.

Examining the sober faces before him, Zeke searched for any hint of what they secretly hoped their sergeant would do next. With the bland young expressions offering no insight into their thoughts, Anderson was left to make the final commitment on his own and hoped the men would understand, even if they did not necessarily agree.

"We'd better hold up here for the night," the sergeant finally decided, angry with himself for not being able to do more. When no one reacted, Zeke offered his justification. "It's dark out here and there are just the four of us. At least if we stay put, we have the chopper to use as one side of our perimeter. It ain't much shelter, but it's better than nothing."

Spec4 Percell shuffled his boot in the dirt, lightly tapping at a large rock that was deeply imbedded in the earth. He said nothing, but his curious interest in the rock did nothing to camouflage his troubled expression to the observant sergeant.

"Is there a problem, Percell?" Zeke asked, hoping like hell that he would not have to try to talk the man out of wanting to go into the jungle at night.

"Well, sort of Sarge," the specialist admitted, not immediately offering any further clarification.

When the silence hovered over the group for one more heartbeat than Sergeant Anderson was willing to be patient through, he prodded Percell for an explanation. "Come on now, Son. Say what's on your mind."

Danny stopped tapping the stone and looked around at the other guys. He was clearly embarrassed to say what he was thinking, so, having a good idea of what was on Percell's mind, Alberto Ruiz spoke for him.

"Sarge, it's those guys on the chopper," Ruiz explained. "That dude without a cabeza. It's spooky, Man."

Although he did not speak Spanish, Anderson understood that the machine-gunner was referring to the headless body of Lieutenant Frank Richards. Admittedly, seeing this kind of mutilation was unnerving, but a determination to leave the chopper could not be made on the grounds that it was "spooky" here.

"All right, then," Zeke suggested, coming to the conclusion that keeping the men busy might not be such a bad idea, "then let's get them buried and marked for graves registration. Anyone want to volunteer?"

Slowly, but not surprisingly, three hands raised into the air. Sergeant Anderson had fully expected that every team member would be willing to partake in the gruesome task, since he knew in his heart that each of them harbored the hope that, should his own time come, someone else would be willing to do the same.

"OK," Anderson began, putting the process to order. "Johnson, you watch the perimeter, Ruiz and Percell, you get started digging. I'll go unstrap the pilots." He paused a moment as he considered the situation more carefully. Realizing that the task might not be as simple as he had made it sound, the sergeant qualified his orders with one clarification. "But look here, they might be booby-trapped. If they are, then you guys are just gonna have to deal with them sitting there tonight. Spooky or not. You got that?"

The other three men nodded their agreement and broke away from the group to assume their assigned tasks while Sergeant Anderson made his way back to the cooling hull of the chopper. "The things I go through," the noncom muttered to himself. "I must've been out of my mind to give up Jennifer for this. McKay was right. LT better be alive because if he's not and I came back here for nothin', I'm gonna kill him."

*******************

Lieutenant Goldman was breathing heavily but made no indication that he needed to stop to rest. Taylor felt rather silly perched on the officer's back like a papoose, but with no other option, he quietly endured the humiliation. Private Hockenberry followed a few paces behind, rubbing at his sore eyes, overstrained by trying to see in the dark without his glasses. All three of them knew, shelter or not, they were going to have to settle in somewhere for the night.

"LT, we need to stop," Taylor pleaded as he shifted his weight to try to get a better grip around the lieutenant's chest. "You sound like you're gonna pass out."

Lieutenant Goldman's exertion was clearly audible, and had Taylor been able to see in the dark, he would have known that Myron's face had turned a bright, scarlet-red. Sweat ran freely down the lieutenant's forehead, stinging his eyes and leaving salty trails across his unshaven cheeks. When Goldman licked his lips, he found that his mouth was void of saliva and his tongue felt sticky and swollen against his lips. Still, he was unwilling to give up on his accepted task of transporting the other soldier to safety.

Gasping for a large enough breath to allow him to speak, Lieutenant Goldman panted, "No...I'm....all....right."

Hearing the exchange, Hockenberry moved up alongside the other two men and placed a hand to Goldman's forehead, stopping the man in his tracks. "No, you ain't all right, Sir. It looks like you got a fever going and you can hardly breathe."

Without comment, Taylor slid off the officer's back and propped himself against a nearby sapling. He watched as the medic tended the LT, but as the sounds of the jungle seemed to swell around them, the specialist began to listen with a growing interest...and concern.

Vietnam took on a whole new sound at night as the nocturnal inhabitants came out of their daytime slumbers, filling the jungle with their offensive noise. It was frightening to hear the animals off in the distance, but on this night, they seemed to be closing in, surrounding the small group with their hungry growls and angry screams. It might have been only his imagination, but Marcus Taylor was suddenly feeling claustrophobic.

What frightened the specialist even more than the ugly roar of the wildlife was the knowledge that the deadlier animals could not be heard. Snakes and scorpions owned the jungle and they could neither be seen nor heard until it was too late.

Lost in growing despair, Taylor was pulled away from his ruminations when, among the threatening din of the jungle, he caught the tranquil sound of a goat bleating nearby. Surely he could not have heard a goat over all the other racket going on around him. He must have been mistaken.

Shaking his head violently to clear his mind and his ears, Marcus listened again, but to his disgust and frustration, he now only heard the wild animals living their wild lives.

Drawing on instinct, Taylor decided it was better to proceed as if his ears had not betrayed him rather than disregard a possible warning. "Doc," Marcus whispered, realizing that if it had been, in fact, a domesticated animal that he had heard, the three soldiers could be standing in the middle of a village and not even realize it. "Doc, I heard a goat."

Hockenberry stopped fussing with the lieutenant's bandage, instantly understanding the ramifications of Taylor's declaration. They had stumbled across a dwelling of some kind, and it could be their best hope for salvation.

Or just as easily, be their doom.

*************continued with part 3***************