M.I.A. Hunter Read online

  M.I.A. HUNTER

  Stephen Mertz

  Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

  © 2012 / Stephen Mertz

  Copy-edited by: Kurt M. Criscione

  Cover Design By: David Dodd

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  "Go with us as we seek to defend the defenseless and to free the enslaved."

  —from the "Special Forces Prayer"

  Prologue

  Xieng Khouang Province, Laos

  Home.

  It was all he could think of.

  In another twenty-four hours Corporal Ky Dac, a regular in the North Vietnamese Army, would be home in the suburbs of Hanoi, joyfully reunited, if only for a week-long furlough, with his friends and family.

  Ky Dac wished there were some way he could will the time to fly faster so he could be gone that much sooner from this desolate hellhole in the mountainous rain forest of east-era Laos that had been his duty station for this past year, since his mandatory induction into the army at age sixteen.

  It was almost dawn. The darkness was muggy, oppressive. The only sounds to be heard by the young sentry, as he patrolled his rounds, were the symphony of nightlife—bats, birds, monkeys, insects everywhere. This was the least populated section of the country. Laos wasn't as pretty as Ky's home in Vietnam. For one thing, there was a rainless summer here and the foliage held more brown than green.

  Hardwood trees and some pine grew to within five feet of the eight-foot-high bamboo fence that was the perimeter of this small prison sub-camp in the middle of nowhere, utilized by the army for the interrogation and detention of special prisoners.

  After his week's leave, Ky would return to this duty for another year of service. But a week would be adequate; at least, he knew, to remind himself of the world that existed beyond this secluded clearing amid the ever-encroaching elements where a soul could go mad if one allowed oneself, to forget that other world—the real world.

  For the Americans imprisoned here, of course, this was their world. All of it. And Ky Dac had seen many lose their sanity. Suicides, yes.

  Yet only two of the Americans had died in the year Ky had been stationed here, one a suicide, one of starvation.

  The American prisoners seemed a breed apart. Their lives a never-ending hell, these men grew more stoic with each long, passing year of their captivity.

  The American P.O.W.'s at this camp were among those lost souls listed as missing in action by their own country. For the last ten years these miserable devils had been shunted about Vietnam and Laos, from camp to camp, until now they functioned as slave labor at this small installation established some years ago, when much of Laos had been utilized as a staging area for the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia.

  Ky often marveled that the brass in Hanoi even remembered this out-of-the-way camp where he had the misfortune to be stationed. Yet they must have remembered. In twenty-four hours Ky would be on his way home...

  Ky saw that something was wrong when he was within ten paces of the cages where the American P.O.W.s were kept.

  The cages were several feet off the ground, mounted on upright logs, and were barely illuminated by a lamp across the compound, near the thatch-roofed huts of the officers and guard personnel. The cages, or cells, were ten feet square, built of bamboo poles that had been nailed and tied together with rope. The cages were roofed with bark and leaves, the door of each cage secured with a heavy chain and padlock.

  One of the cage doors was open!

  Ky Dac stopped thinking about home.

  The sentry swung around his Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifle from where it had been riding strapped over his shoulder. He advanced cautiously on the cages.

  There were four prisoner cages in a row, a dozen feet in from the fenced perimeter. Ky Dac could discern the shadowy figures of the other three prisoners, supposedly asleep, weary from their long days of harsh labor and the brutality of the day guards.

  But yes, the middle cage was vacant!

  A prisoner was missing!

  Ky mentally groped for the name of this prisoner even as he drew nearer to the cage to confirm what he was already sure of.

  Bradford. That was the man's name. Colonel Alex Bradford.

  Ky glanced frantically about. There was no sign of the missing prisoner. The young soldier felt his throat go dry. These prisoners were his responsibility. He had been on guard duty since midnight, he and one other man, and the prisoners were in Ky's sector of the compound. Yet he'd heard nothing. Ky hoped fervently that this would not endanger his furlough. He must alert Captain Chong immediately.

  The sentry half-turned toward the huts across the clearing. A flurry of movement engulfed him out of the gloom. Ky somehow sensed the striking blow an instant before it connected with the base of his skull. Then everything went black for him. The sentry pitched to the ground, unconscious, without making a sound.

  Colonel Alex Bradford charged through the dense undergrowth of vegetation as if the hounds of hell were after him, which indeed they were.

  He'd shed his crude tire-tread sandals. Bare feet propelled him along across the caked red earth. He was clad in a soiled shirt and grimy U.S. fatigues that had long ago been torn away to just above the knees.

  He had to keep shaking his head to toss off salty sweat that stung his eyes like hot needles, blinding him from time to time as he ran. But he did not stop running.

  He would make it!

  His heart pounded against his ribcage and in his ears like a berserk jackhammer. He dashed madly through the forest with the silence and speed of a cat. The only sounds he made were the whisper of parting branches as he hurtled along, and his ragged breathing that seemed too loud to him, but which he could not control, gasping with the effort of this long haul, from not being in shape. His years of imprisonment had taken their toll. He had no idea how long he'd been a P.O.W.—Ten years? Fifteen? Bradford felt lightheaded. He wondered how much longer he could push on before he dropped.

  You have to make it! his mind screamed. Stop and you're dead! Chong would kill him by slow inches.

  The eastern sky was tinged with the first pink traces of dawn.

  The running man felt the sweat that bathed him all over grow clammy with a new fear that suddenly gripped him. He had expected to find a river; he thought it might be the Mae Nam Mun, a tributary of the Mekong, that he knew flowed eastward, less than three kilometers from the Viet prison camp.

  But there was no sign of the river.

  Was he lost?

  He charged on. Go, go, go! his mind raged. His heart pumped even faster. Don't stop! Don't die! Not this close to freedom!

  These seven-thousand-foot mountains were deadly frontier, Bradford knew. In addition to the Viet military outposts, often manned by troops dependent on terrorizing and pillaging Laotian villages for their food, there were also gangs of wandering cutthroat hill bandits as well as hungry, desperate refugees trying to reach Thailand, and the ever-present patrols of the
feared Pathet Lao, the Communist military force that supposedly ruled these highlands.

  But once he reached that river, he would be all right. He could move southward toward Thailand. He could still survive in the jungle on his own. He knew he could. It hadn't been that long since his intensive training at Bragg. Well, okay, maybe it had been a while. Sometimes he felt as if he had known no other existence but the slave labor and the bamboo cages and the taunting, torturing guards and officers, as if everything before that had been only a dream now barely remembered. But Alex Bradford would not admit defeat. Hell no! Not with the sentry's AK-47 gripped in his hands and the soaring quest in his heart and soul that drove his pumping legs onward.

  He would make it.

  Once he reached that river, he could move along it until he found a trail or commandeered a peasant's sampan. He would travel by night, mostly, in an appropriated native outfit. He would reach Thailand. The Free World. He would return to the land of the living! And he would return with help for his buddies—Mandrell, Wilcox, Dermeer—who were still back at the camp. He would return to take vengeance on the camp's bastard commandant, Captain Chong.

  Bradford owed Chong a very special blood debt. Alex had witnessed two of his buddies' deaths in the past month: Clayton from starvation, Buford when the poor slob just couldn't take it anymore and disemboweled himself with a sharp piece of bamboo in the middle of the compound while Alex screamed at him not to do it, and the guards stood and watched, some of them pointing and laughing. Chong had watched the awful act from the doorway of his hut, with those snake eyes gleaming and a bemused smile on his thin lips.

  You'll die, Chong, sang Bradford's mind. I'll come back and things will be set right. But first—Christ—first I've got to get away. Get free. Bring help. To my family. Sweet Christ, my family! Nora and the kids. Dear God, let me make it—

  It was a chance in a million that had gotten him this far from the prison torture camp. The kid soldier on night guard duty—Ky was the boy's name, the only partly humane guard in the bunch—had seemed preoccupied when he locked up Alex and the other Americans late last night while talking to another sentry about his anticipation of an upcoming furlough that soldier Dac was to embark on when last night's duty was ended. Alex had fallen into sleep, or the fitful discomfort that passed for it in the cage, listening to the young sentries talk. He awoke sometime during the night to find that his mosquito net had slipped. He was being mauled by insects. In turning to swat them away and replace the net, Bradford's elbow had bumped against the door of his cage and the door had swung open.

  Ky Dac had damn well had something else on his mind!

  Alex slipped from his bamboo cage and checked the padlocks on the other three cages. The guard had not repeated his fuckup. The cages of Mandrell, Wilcox, and Dermeer were securely locked as usual.

  The other three P.O.W.'s quickly came awake. During the hurried, whispered conference that followed, it was decided that Bradford would make a break for it, to get help. One man alone could travel fast and true.

  Mandrell, Wilcox, and Dermeer played possum when the young sentry returned on his rounds. Bradford popped the kid and grabbed his AK and extra ammo, then searched Ky for the key to the other cages. The key wasn't on the guard; it had probably been returned to Chong in case the commandant took it upon himself to "interrogate" one of the American P.O.W.'s as he often liked to do when he was drunk. The interrogations generally consisted of little more than the captain insulting or spitting on a prisoner, then perhaps urinating on him. But it could be worse—and it had been worse. The missing joint of Bradford's right index finger was proof of what Chong was capable of.

  Alex had set out on his own. To have searched the camp for the key, even if the other three did have weapons to fight with when they were freed, would only have ended in the death of all four outnumbered P.O.W.'s. The other three prisoners had urged Bradford to hurry on his way before he was discovered.

  It was daylight now.

  They would be tracking him soon, Bradford knew; if they weren't already. Where's that damn river? He had to get out. He had to tell the world—a world that didn't even know that Alex Bradford and those other U.S. soldiers existed! Why should the Viet government admit to M.I.A.'s like them, at the expense of losing a lifetime of free slave labor?

  Bradford knew he would stand and fight if it came to that. He would kill himself before he went back to that hellhole camp. But they wouldn't catch him. He would make it. I'm coming home, Nora. He was almost delirious with the thought but he pushed on, running running running.

  The sweat was in his eyes, blinding him, and he did not see the ankle-high twist of vine that tripped him, spilling him forward. The violent green of the jungle seemed to reach out to strangle him. His forehead struck a half-buried rock. The green became black as Colonel Alex Bradford lost consciousness.

  Ky Dac was yanked from the dark womb of unconsciousness by boots jabbing him painfully in the ribs. The sentry forced his eyes open to find himself lying on his back on the ground near the P.O.W. cages.

  The first metallic light of day cast Ky's surroundings in a ghostly illumination that clearly showed the one empty cage with the yawning door. The young sentry abruptly recalled what had happened.

  Sergeant Binh was kicking him awake.

  Ky realized with a sinking feeling that he was in the worst trouble of his life.

  "Wake up! Wake up, scum!" Binh was barking, over and over. "Answer our questions! Where is your prisoner?"

  Captain Chong stood next to the sergeant. Ky saw that the three remaining American P.O.W.'s were awake in their cages, watching the scene. The other guards and personnel stood in a half-circle behind Chong and Binh, also watching. Ky sat up, remaining on the ground. He stared wide-eyed at Chong and Binh, who towered above him.

  "I was attacked!"

  The sentry barely recognized his own voice.

  "What time did it happen?" demanded Binh. "How long has the prisoner been gone?"

  "I—I checked the time just before someone hit me," gasped Ky. "It could have been no later than oh-six-hundred hours."

  Binh delivered another kick, particularly vicious.

  "You were thinking of your furlough, damn you," he rasped. The sergeant turned to Chong, indicating the sentry cowering at their feet. "What shall we do with this one, Captain?"

  Chong was already turning back toward the main hut as he spoke.

  "This man's failure is inexcusable," hissed the commandant. The pistol holstered at his hip seemed to leap into his fist.

  "No!" screamed Ky.

  Captain Chong aimed the pistol almost casually. When the barrel was less than twelve inches from Ky's shrieking face, the commandant triggered two rounds that burst the sentry's head into a froth of red and gray and flying chips of bone, and nailed Ky Dac to the ground amid a fast-spreading pool of blood that was as red as the clay beneath him.

  "The prisoner's trail already grows cold," Chong snapped at Sergeant Binh. "Post guards with the prisoners who remain. You and your men and I will form a hunting party. This is the first prisoner escape ever from this camp. Colonel Bradford has not yet made good his escape. We will find him. Then he will pay."

  Chapter One

  Southern California

  Mark Stone dropped from the high brick wall and landed without a sound.

  A gibbous moon rode the cloudless night, but the shadows of the brick wall cloaked him until he darted like a silent wraith away from the wall toward the massive, vague shape of a structure on higher ground.

  Conditions were far from ideal for a night test operation, but they would have to do. Other variables in this equation had already been set in motion, and Stone would not have aborted this action even if he could.

  Stone was a big man, outfitted totally in combat black for a night hit. He had applied black facial goo that camouflaged him completely in the darkness.

  He was traveling light. A 9mm Beretta 93-R rode snugly inside leather below his left shou
lder. Stilettos and other accessories were attached to his belt, as were a full complement of stun grenades.

  He reached the shadows of the elegant but dated two-story stone house, pressing himself flat against the front wall of the structure, and angled toward the front entrance.

  A sentry stood posted there, cradling an automatic assault rifle across his cocked left arm. The sentry was clad in student garb, a casual sweater and slacks, but there was nothing casual about the way he kept scanning the darkness in front of the looming building.

  Stone sailed in from the side and zapped the guy with a judo chop before the sentry realized he was under attack.

  Stone was halfway to the front door when another guard sauntered around the corner, strolling directly toward him.

  Guard Number Two's eyes and nostrils flared in alarm as his rifle's muzzle rose toward the intruder.

  Stone's right arm flashed outward from his combat utility belt. The sentry took a stiletto high in the chest and collapsed next to the first guard with barely a sound.

  Stone stepped over the prone bodies, palming the Beretta. He cocked back his right foot and sent the front double oak doors of the house slamming inward off their hinges with a powerful kick. He entered the house low and fast, his left hand unhooking one of the stun grenades.

  Three more sentries, all of them heavy with side arms and automatic rifles, stood stationed around the closed door midway down the corridor. All three rifles tracked upward as one in Stone's direction, but Mark had already pulled the grenade's pin and was tossing the grenade in vital milliseconds that made all the difference.

  Stone sensed another presence closing in on the threesome in the hallway from the opposite end of the corridor.

  It was the powerful, bearlike figure of Hog Wiley, the ugliest man Mark Stone had ever known. Hog was a bearded, wild-haired behemoth of a "good old boy" from east Texas, a dirt-track racing driver with a disposition that favored demolition derbies. Hog was an expert wheelman with any vehicle, and was happiest in a fight, in a woman, or bathed in grease, working mechanic's magic on a dismantled engine. Wiley was the kind of go-for-broke wild-lifer who had already probably tried all three at once; or more than once. He also happened to be one of the five top combat-specialist mercs for hire, an expert in light weapons and a disciplined master of hand-to-hand combat. Hog had a gruff, raunchy, but honest quality about him that Stone enjoyed. But the big man could be sudden death in a fire-fight. Stone knew this from firsthand experience. He and Hog had served together in Nam.