The Uvalde Raider by Ben English (great books for teens TXT) 📕

As Micah began to get his breathing back under control, he glanced over at the aviator who lay there with chest heaving, still looking hard at Templar. The sergeant reached into a side pocket of his jungle utes, producing a round chocolate treat saved from his breakfast of C-rats. The grunts referred to them as “shit discs,” but the emaciated naval officer gobbled it up like it was a sixteen-ounce Kansas City steak. The Marine reached back on his war belt for one of his canteens, twisted the cap off, and handed it over. The man drank the water greedily, small rivulets running out both corners of his mouth.

Temporarily satiated, the straggly man in the ruined flight suit leaned back and continued to stare bullet holes through the Marine as the incoming fire slacked dramatically. On their side of the river, the sounds of grenade launchers, machine guns and rifles also began to fall silent. Only the shrieks and roars of the exploding mortar and artillery rounds kept on. But they were walking away from the opposite bank, pursuing whatever was left of the enemy back to where he had come from.

Still looking straight into Micah’s own eyes, the exhausted naval aviator finally spoke.

“Sergeant, you have a really big mouth,” he stated in an emphatic, almost insulted tone through cracked and sunburned lips.

“Yes sir,” replied Micah laconically. “And you are?”

“Lieutenant JG Thomas A. Eggers III, lately of VA-164 ‘The Ghost Riders’, off the USS Hancock.” The hard look disappeared from the man’s face, replaced with a large, beaming smile. He offered a grimy right hand and Micah took it.

“Welcome back, sir” was all that Micah could think to say.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

The four of them laid there under cover for some time. Micah and the two other Marines listened to Egger’s harrowing tale of being shot down in pitch blackness and of his long journey in solitude from his crash area, traveling generally north and away from Laos.

But the naval aviator had never really been totally by himself, the unwanted company behind him had pursued doggedly throughout his ordeal. Day and night they played an unending, torturous game of cat and mouse through the unforgiving mountains, valleys and jungles along his escape route. Each time the young LTJG thought he had lost them; they would reappear on his back trail like some mixed breed of human bloodhounds.

The emergency rescue transmitter he was issued had been lost when he punched out of the rapidly disintegrating Skyhawk. His survival rations had given out, and his issued water did the same sometime before that. He ate what little he could find along the way, and drank wherever it looked safe enough to do so. Sleep became a lost luxury, he grabbed small, fitful naps when and where he could. The one time he managed to sleep well, he had come within an eye blink of being captured.

This went on for over ten days, and the young pilot had just about given up hope of ever getting away when he saw the most beautiful sight in the world. It was a Marine Huey chopper off in the distance, and he knew that someone other than his enemies were in the area. On occasion, he also began to hear the far-off sounds of a ground war making its way toward him.

Then he saw more helicopters from afar. They were a variety of Hueys, Sea Horses and Chinooks, like worker bees going to and from a hive. Eggers changed his northerly course to follow those dull green bees of salvation, and to find their hive which turned out to be Firebase Razor. He knew the NVA were hard on his heels that morning, close enough to hear them to his rear. He was searching for a relatively safe place to cross the river and struggling with the rising fear of having to expose himself in doing so, when Micah called out to him.

Once deemed safe to do so, the four men cautiously moved out of the defilade and back through the perimeter set up by First Squad. After a ‘well done’ for all they continued up the slope, accompanied now by a corpsman who kept a sharp eye on Eggers. While off to the side, the corpsman advised Micah and Lieutenant Johnson the aviator was in far worse shape than he would allow for, and needed to be medevacked as soon as possible.

The lieutenant and his sergeant agreed. A stretcher was brought up despite Eggers’ protestations and the corpsman started an IV feed to replace badly needed body nutrients for the wizened, sickly man. Four Marines from Third Squad were assigned to the stretcher by Lieutenant Johnson and stood ready to carry the JG up the ascent to Firebase Razor. Before leaving under the power of his newly acquired ‘four by’ mode of transportation, he asked to speak with Micah.

”Sergeant Templar, I just want to say thanks for everything” the JG said.

“Well sir, I wasn’t the only one. You might say you were a community project from the get-go” replied Micah good naturedly.

“I know Sergeant, thank the others again for me.”

“Will do, Lieutenant,” acknowledged Micah, “and if you get the chance, you might also thank that 81 section at Razor. Those guys laid down a solid wall of bad juju and it was dead on. Without them, we would have had a really rough deal. Might also thank Fox Battery, too. Every little bit helped.”

“I’ll do that, Sergeant” said Eggers. The aviator was silent for a moment, lost in his innermost thoughts.

He looked up at Micah. “You know, I never really understood loneliness until that first night in Laos. The things that go through your head and what your imagination can do to you. It’s as if you’re the only one of your kind left on earth. Everything else around you is either an enemy or