The muddy yellow river swung up to smash me like a flyswatter in the hand of a giant. Just before I hit I caught one fleeting glimpse of thick green jungle lining either bank like a solid wall. Then I smacked the water and everything went black.
Well, as Carmody, the guy who taught me how to fly in India, used to say, any landing you can walk away from is a good one. I have a hunch even Carmody would not have thought much of the way I hit that river. Yellow-brown water smashed over the bubble canopy as we hit the surface with a jolt that knocked me against the panel. When I came to I had a cut on my brow streaming blood. I ached all over like one big bruise. But I was alive, at least.
But that belly flop had sprung leaks in both pontoons and they were filling up fast. I tore off my safety harness and inflated a rubber raft. Then I grabbed the emergency gear, prepacked in a knapsack for just such a spot, and got out.
The knapsack was packed with everything from snakebite serum to signal flares, and it made a bulky package. I wrestled it into the bobbing raft and climbed out dizzily. One pontoon was underwater already and the chopper was riding at a forty-degree angle, just about to slide under. I pushed away from the pontoon with one paddle, backed water a bit, and sat glumly, watching my one link with civilization go under. Then I roused myself and took along sour look around at the depressing scenery. The jungle was packed, green and thick, on either side of the river. It looked unpleasant. But with the raft I could get downriver and maybe be lucky enough to find a settlement of some kind. I began to paddle a bit, but the river whipped right along and I didn't need to work very hard to keep moving.
Pretty soon I was soaked with sweat and busy keeping off the bugs. The air was thick and soupy and hot. It stank of stagnant water and rotting vegetation and slimy mud, but I wouldn't have traded that river for the jungle. I could stand flies and stink and sweat, but the jungles hereabouts are somewhat less wholesome. They are crawling with unfriendly creatures, of which cobras are only one variety. Not to mention tigers and wild boar and elephants. I would take my chances with the river.
After a while, I sat and rested aching arms and sourly watched endless jungle whip by on either side of me. The Cambodian jungles are among the world's least hospitable places, thick with teak and dense bamboo and rubbery rhododendron bushes, the ground a sloppy quagmire of knee-deep leaf mold and greasy mud. I had carried off a machete from the helicopter, but I had no desire to have to use it. Let the river current do the work, was my motto. If worst came to worst, I was perfectly willing to simply glide downstream all the way to the sea.
I began to do some serious thinking about where I was. Our base at Hon Quan was some ten miles or so on the other side of the Cambodian border, but the Mekong itself lay farther away. I cudgeled my memory, trying to picture the maps I had seen. There was a map case in the bubble canopy, and a compass as well, but I had gotten out of the chopper so fast they had been left behind.
Could this be the Mekong? As far ac I could remember, the Mekong at its closest point to the border lay some fifty miles northwest of Hon Quan. Was it possible I had flown that far afield while searching for a spot to bring her down safely? Well . . . it was possible, but just barely. A chopper eats up the miles unobtrusively. I could have come that far, but I wondered: could this be another river? I recalled to mind the maps of Cambodia that I had studied. In the center lay something called the Tonle Sap, the Great Lake. This, I vaguely remembered, was supposed to have been the last shrinking remnant of a mighty prehistoric sea. Lots of rivers fed into it: I might have crashlanded on one of these tributaries and not on the Mekong. In which case, God alone knew where I was being carried by the swift gliding current of the muddy waters.
It was late afternoon by now and getting dark. The startlingly sudden night of the jungle was coming down across the sky. And here was another problem. Up to now I had been kept busy not so much by paddling, for the current was very swift, but by the necessity of shoving my rubber raft clear of half-sunken teak-wood logs and other river debris. All I needed was to brush up against one of those half-submerged snags. My raft would tear and sink in seconds. Then I would really have problems!
But how could I continue keeping the raft clear of snags when the impenetrable darkness of the jungle night closed down over the river? As it would be doing before very much longer ....
I decided on the only course that seemed advisable, and began to put in towards the nearer shore. I would just have to take my chances on spending the night in the jungle, and push on down river with dawn.
It was tough work breaking free of the rushing current, and it was pitch dark by the time I came to shore. I got out, my boots sinking to the knee in the foulsmelling mud, and dragged the lightweight raft up out of the water. It was marshy and soft on this part of the bank, and I fought my way through tall stiff grasses up to solid land, tying the raft securely to the limb of a fallen tree.
Then I sat down on the log and made a meal of sorts out of the emergency rations, washing it down with a swig of fresh water from one of the canteens. I was thirsty enough from the sweltering heat of my river journey to drink the whole canteen, but I knew that would be most unwise. It might be days before I came to a riverfront town or settlement, and I would need every drop of my water supplies. I had half a pack of cigarettes, so I rationed them as well. I sat and smoked and batted flies and watched the stars come out by the score. They burned bright and fierce against the night, like fistfuls of blue-white diamonds strewn across black velvet.
It was a beautiful sight, but I was in no mood to appreciate beauty just then. I began to wonder how I was supposed to sleep. I could lie down on the ground and take my chances with the cobras, or I could curl up in the rubber raft. But the raft would hardly be a barrier to any really determined cobra, and anyway there were other creatures infesting these jungles who might be inclined to come down to the barks of the river for a little drink.
The only alternative was to climb a tree and find a comfortable crotch. Then all I would have to worry about was falling asleep―and falling out. But it was too dark to see clearly and most of the trees nearby were unclimbable.
And then I saw the light.
It shone in the heavens above like a pale beacon. I froze, snuffing out my cigarette in the leaf mold, wondering about Viet Cong. Who else would have a searchlight operating in these jungles? If this was Cambodia, there certainly could be no friendly American camp nearby.
And I began to sweat again.
I was in enough trouble already without falling into enemy hands. I had seen some examples of what happened to Americans during "interrogation" at the hands of the Viet Cong. I began to wish I had kept going on the river awhile longer.
The light shone on. It was pallid and ghostly, a stationary pillar of faint light standing up against the stars. It seemed to waver rhythmically. It throbbed. It pulsed like a beating heart. My curiosity became overwhelming. And I knew that I could never dare sleep this close to whatever was making that jungle beacon without satisfying my curiosity. I had to discover the cause of this mystery.
Whatever was causing the light was not very far inland from the river. A few hundred yards at most.
Surely, if I watched my step, I could make my way close enough to the source of the weird pulsing column of light. I resolved to try, anyway.
Taking up my machete and slinging the pack across my shoulder, I started straight for it. I went slowly and tried to be as careful as possible, to avoid making any more noise than was necessary. But I really didn't have to worry about the noise my passage made as I squeezed through the thick underbrush. For the whole jungle had come alive around me with the onset of darkness. For night is the jungle's day. The big predators are aprowl, and the little scuttling things scurry through the brush seeking food and water. Only the monkeys sleep in the trees above, huddled together along the branches.