Running with the Enemy by Lloyd Lofthouse

Author:Lloyd Lofthouse
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Vietnam War, Love story, interacial love story
Publisher: Three Clover Press
Published: 2013-12-13T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Ortega leaned over the table and studied the map tacked to its surface. He marked his present location, a village near Ban Sa Ngam inside Thailand, near the Cambodian border.

An old woman's head stuck on the end of a pole leered at him with black teeth. The air in the village was rotten with the stench of death, but that didn't bother him. His father, an enforcer for Puerto Rican gamblers, had taught him at an early age to ignore the smell of death. The old man forced him to do his first killing at fourteen.

Owen Pacer, an army captain assigned by General LaBourne to work with Ortega, came out of a hut. Pacer had a bandana across his mouth and looked as if he were about to be sick.

Pacer knew nothing about Ortega's illegal businesses, and it was obvious he did not like being ordered around by a CIA agent.

The sight of the man triggered Ortega's memory of LaBourne's rage when he'd learned that Ethan Card had avoided capture again. Fucking generals were stupid bastards that thought they owned the world, but the world belonged to people like Ortega. If LaBourne pushed too hard, he'd get his fat throat slit like Wilson had.

"See any dead Americans?" Ortega asked.

Pacer shook his head. "No, but there's fresh sign that a group of thirty of forty men arrived a few days after the slaughter then went south toward Cambodia."

"Any sign that one of them was Card?"

"There was one set of boot prints similar to what would have been issued to a U.S. Marine serving in Vietnam."

"That's our man," Ortega said. "Get your ass moving. LaBourne said you were good at this tracking shit. After all, you are Green Beret." He said the last words with an insulting nasal sound. "You can prove how good you are by finding where this bastard went. I do not want to see you again until you know where he is. You hear that, man?"

Pacer bristled and started to speak.

"Don't say nothing, man," Ortega said. "Just fucking do it. Take two of the Montagnards with you."

"I'd rather—"

"Do as I say, Captain," Ortega said. "I do not want to hear what you'd rather."

Pacer's face swelled with rage before he walked stiffly away.

Ortega asked himself why Ethan had gone to Cambodia, and wondered who were the fucking men he was with. For an American on the run, Cambodia was the wrong direction, and wasn't any safer than Laos had been.

He returned to the map and traced the most likely routes. If Ethan went into Cambodia, he might come back the same way. The Khmer Rouge controlled most of the land south of these mountains, which left few choices for the return trek.

Scratching his head, Ortega thought about ambushing Ethan and the people he was with.

Then after the ambush, he'd fly back to Vietnam in the remaining Cobra and contact Giap and talk the son-of-a-bitch into moving the strike date up to destroy that ARVN ranger camp in the highlands near Kon Tum.

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