P. O. W. Read Online Free Page B

reviewing anything he could find on North Vietnamese Army activity in the
     A Shau Valley and neighboring Laos. He knew a great deal already about the area because of his assignment with Project Cherry,
     which operated out of Command and Control North, a SOG unit.
    McDonald unconsciously rubbed his chest and side while he thought about his assignment with the top-secret project. He could
     feel the heavy scar tissue through the material of his camouflaged fatigues. An old fear released itself from the dark brain
     tissue he normally could keep locked up. He could remember everything in vivid detail: the jungle smells and the cool layer
     of dead bamboo leaves on the ground. McDonald blinked and shoved a forkful of fried rice in his mouth, but the mental vision
     would not go away. He heard the voices of the searching North Vietnamese and felt the fear deepen. The sound of returning
     helicopters eased the fear for a second, and then the heavy thuds coming from a Chinese-made 12.7mm machine gun brought the
     fear back again with an even greater intensity.
    “You all right, Mac?”
    McDonald blinked his eyes and saw one of the school cadre standing near his table with a tray of food in his hands. “Yeah…
     sure!” He could feel the sweat dripping off his chin and used his arm to wipe it off. The mess hall was cool inside, and there
     was no visible reason for him to be sweating so hard.
    “You sure?”
    “Yes… I must be having a slight touch of fever… malaria.” McDonald tried smiling and failed. He covered the attempt by placing
     his fork in his mouth. The other sergeant gave him a strange look. There was nothing on the fork.
    The vision came back the instant the man left. He could feel the blood soaking through his sweat-stained jacket. An army ant
     ran across his face and stopped next to his nose before deciding that he was too big to haul back to the main body of ants.
     He blinked his eyes, unable to move. The sound of a small snake sliding over the bamboo leaves reached him, and then the loud
     noise of the machine gun drowned out the jungle sounds. The weapon was close to where he lay on the jungle floor. He guessed
     that it was within a hundred meters. The last burst from the antiaircraft machine gun was answered by a blast of intense heat.
     McDonald felt the wave of extremely hot air pass over him, and then the heat was sucked back in the direction it had come
     from. A fast mover had dropped a napalm bomb on the machine gun position.
    The jungle became quiet. He liked it. It was better than having to listen to the NVA searching for him or the Chinese machine
     gun. He liked the quiet better. The first scream reached him only seconds after the explosion, but in his confused state of
     mind it seemed like minutes, or maybe a couple of centuries. The NVA gun crew was being roasted alive from the napalm that
     had stuck to their clothes and skin. He lay under the bamboo and thought about the sound of the screams and decided that he
     liked it. They had had no mercy for the South Vietnamese prisoners of war.
    McDonald blinked. He felt the fork dig into his lower lip. He had missed his mouth.
    The Project Cherry assault team had reached the edge of the prisoner-of-war camp and was under intense ground fire. McDonald
     knew that he couldn’t hesitate or the NVA would kill their POWs before allowing for them to be repatriated by the team. A
     light machine gun opened fire to his left, and he gave the command to take it out of action with an LAW missile. His forty-man
     team was extremely well trained. A slight hand movement from him would send a squad of men maneuvering instantly. He had spent
     three months training day and night with the prisoner snatch team, and they were good; they were the best.
    McDonald had no way of knowing the NVA had moved a battalion of regulars to a night rest site a few hundred meters away from
     the NVA POW camp. His team was destroying the camp guards, and they were within a