A Long Way Back by J. Everett Prewitt

Author:J. Everett Prewitt [Prewitt, J. Everett]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-9761927-1-8
Publisher: Northland Publishing Company via Indie Author Project

Chapter 45

D

espite orders to return to camp for new instructions and a new mission, Trung continued to search for the black soldiers. It was personal. Until they appeared, she’d been successful in every previous encounter. There’d be no rest until their story had ended.

It took one day to find their trail and half a day to close in. Trung took her men on a route that would intersect with the soldiers by midafternoon if she’d read the signs correctly.

Da led the eleven soldiers through jungles of eight-feet-tall elephant grass, that made them bunch up so they could see each other. Casper didn’t like it. They needed to be at least five meters apart. One grenade or booby trap and half of them would be dead.

Hours passed as the soldiers proceeded around two terraced hills before wading across a chest-high, mud-filled stream. The men held their weapons above their heads as they crossed, bobbing against the current.

After reaching the other side, they rested and removed the leeches that had attached themselves while they were in the water.

“Phew,” Robinson said as he pushed a fingernail down next to the oral sucker on Casper’s neck and pushed it away as Casper had taught him.

“You act as if you never seen a leech before,” Casper said.

“Yeah, but once I get stateside, I don’t plan on seeing another in this or my next lifetime.”

Afterward, the men crossed through rice fields punctuated with palm trees. Da pulled shoots from the palm tree, and berries and weeds for the men to eat.

Glover looked at Da when he first offered the food. “What are we supposed to do with this?”

“Eat, man. Unless you got a steak hidden in your shirt,” Frankford said.

“How far?” Warfield asked Da.

Not understanding, but sensing the question, Da pointed to a mountain range.

If we can get there fast enough, Warfield thought, we might stay alive for another day.

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