Dead To Life

Chapter 3

Chapter 3For years, Huxley and a search party of veterans had scoured an overgrown trail and peripheral areas for remains of the Navy nurses. They were forced by the Viet Cong to hike through the jungle. The group was kidn*pped outside the NSA Hospital in Da Nang in 1972. Rocky, one of the nurses, was reported missing in August.

Sara and their mutual friend, Esmerelda Talbot, had been allowed to join Huxley and the veterans on several of the searches. During Sara and Esmerelda's last trip, the remains of Esmerelda's Navy nurse daughter, Betty, had been located and returned to her.

This, especially, deepened Huxley's desperate longing to find his brother. His strain and disappointment lurked under the surface of the facade of motivation. He had been the one to present Esmerelda with her daughter's remains. It wasn't only because they were close friends. It was because Huxley needed the feeling of completion, the experience of being rewarded for years of trekking through that desolate poisoned jungle. If he couldn't present his parents with his brother's remains, presenting Esmerelda with her daughter's remains helped him feel the release that came with knowing her search was over.

Then Huxley learned of a young Hmong boy in a jungle village. He wore a key on a string around his neck. His aging uncle gave it to him and told him that someone may come looking for the key. He was to give it to them because it belonged to them.

Huxley's veteran search team was invited to join JPAC out of Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. Instead of following the former trails the veteran's team searched, a separate JPAC group would scour that area again. Another JPAC group, including Huxley and several of the veterans, broke away and went directly north to the area where the key was found. There they searched for additional remains.

They learned that the young Hmong boy's uncle who found the key had long since passed away. He had, however, taken the boy to the spot where the key was found. The boy, now a grown man still wearing the key, then led the team to an overgrown spot far north along the disappearing trail. Forest detritus nearly hid the pathway, but the narrow footpath was being used again by the local Montenyards, the Hmong people of the jungle. Some were daring to return to their jungle homes even though, after nearly fifty years, the ground was still contaminated with Agent Orange.

As with the previous searches, former Honolulu policeman turned forensic dog trainer, Thanh Van Thuy and his two German shepherds, Iwi and Laka, accompanied the search party. The search was made over a wide area away from the path because of the location of the key off the trail. Rocky may have made a run for it. Maybe he hadn't, but they needed to assure no remains were missed.

Huxley unclasped his hands, looked up suddenly, and found Sara eying him lovingly. “I'm alright.” Yet, his expression was distressed. “Was just remembering what it was like being in the area where Rocky may have died. Trying to feel what may have happened to him.”

Sara took his hands in hers. “Like Esmerelda digging in the dirt, trying to find more of those gold chain links, or the other half of the dog tag.”

“And not knowing till later that she was sitting on the very spot where her daughter died. Those few bits we found were her daughter's only remains.” Huxley seemed to cave in momentarily. Finding remains and identifying them seemed the only event that could test his emotions. He straightened in his chair. “Maybe I walked on the same spot on this earth where my brother met his end.” He shook his head as if denial might make Rocky's death untrue. Huxley's blue-topaz eyes held a distant look.

Sara waited, knowing she needed to allow him to talk, to voice his feelings and frustrations. “Is there a chance they could find more?”

“If this key matched, if it belonged to Rocky, I'd like to go back to the spot where he died, just sit there a while. And… maybe I could do something for those Hmong people who protected this key all those years.”

Sara hurt for him. “We have to verify the key first.” She knew it was a long shot. So did Huxley. Rocky was listed as an MIA in 1972. Tracing Emma Ellis over the decades seemed futile.

Huxley motioned to the box. “You ready for this?”

She nodded, sat, and drew her chair alongside him. As she got to know him, when he felt uncertain, she noticed he liked to feel her close to him. Now she moved her leg to touch his and left it there. She slipped out of a shoe and placed her bare foot on top of his shoe. She loved Huxley with all her heart and had cried with him over his missing brother. His elderly parents needed to know their son's whereabouts or receive something of his remains before they, too, passed away.

Huxley reached for his wallet and removed the old silver key. He ran a thumb over it and finally laid it on the tabletop. The groove the bullet made told a harrowing story of its own.

The key was a Yale 1960s apartment key with a manufactured hole in the round head. It also contained what was judged to be the markings of a bullet that had hit the key and ricocheted. It could mean that Rocky had been shot and the bullet ricocheted off the key and possibly hit his heart or lungs.

According to Palmer Dane, a Marine accidently nabbed with the Navy nurses and who later escaped, the Viet Cong used AK-47s, 7.62x39mm, which were made in Russia. Since the key was found in the ground a few feet off the trail, Rocky may have run but was shot while escaping. Whether shot from close range or running, Rocky never knew what hit him. Unless his killer faced him or stood nearby, he may have seen it coming. If the bullet ricocheted as was thought, Rocky didn't have a chance.

Huxley was only eight years old when Rocky went into the Navy in 1970, ten years old when Rocky went missing in 1972. Once grown and committed to the searches, Huxley had a lot to learn.

“JPAC hasn't sent word of any new findings so far, but they're still out on this year's trip. I hope they don't make this their last trip for our group.” He took a breath and expelled it in frustration. “Emma may be our only chance to verify this key belonged to Rocky.” His gaze became pensive again. “If we find the match, then we can assume my brother died in that forlorn jungle, even if they don't find dog tags or bone fragments in that acidic soil.”

He had run ads in the San Francisco newspapers, continued to scour the Internet, f*******:, Twitter, and numerous other sites to find Emma or her sister, Evelyn, but to no avail. Despite his numerous government agency connections, he remained a civilian and not allowed to secure information about their Social Security accounts. Whether or not they were presently being used, and where, could have the potential to tremendously shorten their search efforts.

“What if we find Emma and she kept her key, but the keys don't match?”

“Then Rocky's still an MIA or worse.” Huxley slowly shook his head. “He could to this day be held in an undisclosed prison camp or died there. It's been forty-seven years. He'd be seventy years old now. If he was held in a prison camp, he could have died from malnutrition or disease.” Huxley grimaced, surely not wanting to believe any of it. He reached for the key but stopped himself. “This key may be all we have left of my brother. Emma is our only hope.”

“Even though she may have moved on with her life.”

“Wait till we read the letters.” Huxley finally opened the flaps of the box. “Mom and I read most of them together when I was in my late teens. I guess I asked her too many times about Rocky, so she filled me in. That's when I decided I'd search for him. We need to glean as much new information from this mail as we can. The way Emma spoke of Rocky; he was her one and only. I'm praying that no matter where life took her, she kept a matching key.”