The rescue chopper arrived an hour later. The pilot looked at the burning camp, the dead strewn like fallen timber, and the mud-caked man standing guard over six shivering ghosts.
The first burst caught the youngest prisoner in the back. He fell without a sound.
The first night, he found the camp. It wasn’t hidden. It was a boast. A stockade of sharpened bamboo, watchtowers with searchlights, and in the center, a cage. Inside, a skeletal thing in rotted fatigues clutched a tin cup. The man’s lips moved. Help us.
Rambo’s breath went cold. He notched an arrow.
He had brought his own war home.
“They drew first blood,” he said. “Not me.”
Rambo didn’t move. He counted. Twenty guards. Two machine-gun nests. A stockpile of Russian ammunition. And a sadistic little officer with a scar like a lightning bolt across his face.
The rescue chopper arrived an hour later. The pilot looked at the burning camp, the dead strewn like fallen timber, and the mud-caked man standing guard over six shivering ghosts.
The first burst caught the youngest prisoner in the back. He fell without a sound.
The first night, he found the camp. It wasn’t hidden. It was a boast. A stockade of sharpened bamboo, watchtowers with searchlights, and in the center, a cage. Inside, a skeletal thing in rotted fatigues clutched a tin cup. The man’s lips moved. Help us.
Rambo’s breath went cold. He notched an arrow.
He had brought his own war home.
“They drew first blood,” he said. “Not me.”
Rambo didn’t move. He counted. Twenty guards. Two machine-gun nests. A stockpile of Russian ammunition. And a sadistic little officer with a scar like a lightning bolt across his face.