The Howling Cliffs

Chapter 2

Chapter 2During the Vietnam conflict, a young American junior senator turned his back on the Montenyards, who helped the U.S. military at every turn. Then most of the Hmong tribes people were slaughtered by the Viet Cong for their participation with U.S. troops.

Thanh's family were among the dead. Then Thanh and a group of refugees braved the Pacific Ocean in a rag-tag fleet of flimsy boats. Half of them died at sea. Boats broke apart and sank, drowning the occupants. Sharks attacked. Thanh's overcrowded vessel and two others barely made it to friendly waters off Hawaii. Fishermen rescued them. Thanh stayed, eventually gaining American citizenship and fulfilling a dream of becoming a Honolulu Police Officer.

While U.S. veterans were being compensated for their grave health issues caused by Agent Orange and other defoliants, Thanh and the Montenyards were denied benefits.

Thanh was retired now and donating his time working with HRD and other forensic trained dogs. Then along came Huxley seeking another animal for his next trip to Vietnam. Thanh found a new purpose when Huxley explained about looking for MIAs along a trail the VC used to march the prisoners. Hux and Thanh shared information, the most startling of which was Thanh's knowledge of many trails, particularly the one where Hux and other veterans had searched for MIAs each and every year for the past ten years. Thanh had been back to his home country and searched for surviving tribes people. He had traveled many of those same trails.

Before the s*******r, thousands of Hmong lived in the jungle. Over time, he found one cousin and few others. The Hmong lived their lives knowing about the acidic soil. The few Hmong remaining knew they would find no remains of their family and friends. Ruins of homes and other representations of life were still found, mostly metal items that wouldn't be claimed as easily back into the earth. Sometimes those scant remains were how the survivors found remnants of their former lives. While the Hmong had flourished living in the forests, they were now reliant upon their livelihoods from life in the villages that struggled to get restarted.

The biggest MIA lead came when Thanh told Huxley that the stream the search team followed had changed course more than a couple of decades earlier. They were missing a vital search area.

When Huxley was able to trust that Thanh would not lead them astray in the jungle as payback for U.S. war crimes, Thanh was accepted into the group to go to Vietnam with the HRD dogs. The former Marine 1st Lieutenant, Palmer Dane, was enthusiastic about having one of the Hmong participate. His feelings toward Thanh for the Montenyards having saved his life was overwhelming. Now the two were inseparable. One tall white-headed American and one short and stocky black-haired Vietnamese shared forgiveness that set them free.

“Hux's brother Rockford was a nurse, like my Betty.” Esmerelda continued to stare at the water gurgling around rocks below their feet. “Betty was elevated to 2nd Lieutenant when she enlisted, fresh out of nursing school in San Francisco.”

Sara was careful not to dangle her feet in the water. “You said she'd been here only two or three weeks.”

Esmerelda evidently needed to relive the memories made real again by their frequent trips. “They were working at the NSA naval hospital in Da Nang when they were kidnapped.” She shrugged in a sad way. “One by one, they were grabbed right outside the hospital or at the showers while cleaning up after some surgeries.”

“They took her in the dead of night.” Sara nodded, remembering what she had learned. “Along with a number of other nurses.”

“Palmer just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Esmerelda straightened her shoulders as if facing a bad memory head-on. “According to Palmer, they were bound, gagged and hidden in the backs of nondescript rickety old farm trucks and taken into the jungle. They were met by a large band of Viet Cong who marched them northward, possibly toward the Ho Chi Minh Highway. They thought they might be taken to a prison camp.” She sighed again with a far-away look in her eyes.

“That could have been true.” Sara had thought the same when she first heard the details.

“Maybe the Viet Cong were going to force them to treat their own wounded. The nurses didn't understand the language and really didn't know why they were taken or where they were in the jungle.”

Sara had heard most of the history. After a week on the trail, and judging by the purported actions of the VC, they and their hostages were lost. “Palmer said Betty was the first to get dysentery. Then he got sick.”

“Betty, a thin wisp of a thing, probably didn't last long before she dropped. To get dysentery that took them so fast, maybe they drank from a stream.” Esmerelda's eyes were glassy, the memory always bringing tears.

Esmerelda shouldn't dwell on how her daughter died. They needed to focus on finding her remains. “Esme,” Sara said, meaning to caution, but then hesitated.

However, knowing this, her third trip, or any trip could be her last if visas weren't approved each year, Esmerelda rested little and investigated everything that caught her attention. She admitted to feeling a great measure of peace just being in the jungle where her daughter last walked.

“Betty was allergic to bug bites, chemicals and lots of other stuff. The U.S. military was desperate for personnel if all they could manage was to send a person with her health issues to a place like this.” She shrugged and flashed a look of disbelief. “On top of all that, she had a rare blood type. AB Negative.”

“And that would affect her being here?”

“When she started nursing school, she used to donate her blood. Betty once commented that maybe the reason she was sent here was in case a wounded person needed her blood type.”

Sara shrugged, had thought the military was prepared for such emergencies with a stock of blood types. “Palmer told us Betty lagged behind because she had gotten weak. He was weak, too, so they forced him to leave the group. He was slowing them down.”

Though frustrated at hearing no new helpful information, Sara would help Esmerelda run through the details as many times as Esmerelda needed to hear it and no matter she didn't. “He ran into the bush with the VC shooting at him.”

“That's right. He took a bullet in the shoulder but found a place to hide and played dead, waiting for the entourage to pass.”

“And intending to make a break for it.”

Esmerelda dabbed at perspiration with the back of her hand. Sara passed her a tissue from her back pack. “He didn't know when or where Betty fell. He had been prodded forward at gunpoint and wasn't allowed to turn around to look backwards.” It was good that Esmerelda had learned from previous trips to forsake the use of makeup, at least while in the jungle. “If my daughter was one of the first to fall, when we find her it might make it easier to find some others.”

They couldn't stop now, had to have those permits and visas issued regularly.

Due to their large entourage of extras, including videographers and spotters carrying rifles to ward off everything from large wild animals to slithering tree snakes, Huxley had hinted that the Vietnamese government would not again permit another such grand procession.

“Every year, Huxley and some high-ranking retired veterans, along with the American government, have to convince Vietnam officials to issue permits for yet another trip.” Sara wondered what she might do to promote the permit approval but any possibility of that from her seemed nonexistent.

The group had already found the meager remains of one man four years earlier. “So if my Betty was the first to get sick, have they figured out how that man died?” She thumbed backward to the area they had long passed on the trail, where his remains were found.

Sara grimaced. “Huxley thinks he was shot. His remains were found a few yards off the trail.”

“Must have tried to make a break for it.” Esmerelda stared at the water, shaking her head. “If his remains were found that far off the trail, maybe some others went the same way. They may never be found.”

“Trust the dogs we have along, Esme. That's why they're so vital.”

Mosquitoes and other flying pests dived and swarmed around them. Sara retrieved a can of insect repellant from her backpack, liberally sprayed it onto her palm and fingertips and then wiped it over her face. She swiped a layer over Esmerelda's face. For the very reason of warding off biting insects, most in the group wore gloves, long sleeves and pant legs tucked into boots until the men could no longer stand the heat and began peeling off their clothes.

Most of the team wore a new line of clothing with insect repellant built into the fibers of the fabric, even into their boots and other accessories. Their hats were equipped with drop-down face netting, but repellant lotion applied to the skin was the best protection for faces. The humidity was stifling, made worse by the amount of gear they had to wear. No one complained. They had a solemn mission to accomplish.

Huxley and others in the group who had been studying maps laid out on the ground stood. It was time to push on. Thanh readied the HRD dog, Iwi, a German shepherd male trained to detect human remains.

Dogs trained for this work could detect the boundaries of ancient graveyards hundreds of years old, as long as remains existed below the surface of the ground. Despite the fact that the ground in Vietnam was considered so highly acidic that it destroyed human tissue and clothing, no one could take a chance of missing what remains might be left.

A second German shepherd male was also brought along. Laka was trained to detect metal and only metal. Laka wouldn't react to human remains if they rubbed his nose in some. Trained forensic dogs were amazing creatures. Considering the team had every advantage at their disposal, everyone stayed as positive as possible and kept a tight rein on desperation.