Unstoppable

"At the very least, you could have spoken up and defended my honor," Shelley chirped, complaining about the drunken fool who insulted her at the party. "You should have stopped him!"

Seth maneuvered the car through the torrential downpour, working the accelerator to the beat of his throbbing head. "He was staggering drunk!" Seth retorted at a yell and nearly added a laugh at the end for his wife's idea of honor.

"You still should have stopped it!" she screeched. Since the time they had exchanged vows, not only did Shelley love to exaggerate the truth, she also needed to have the last word.

Seth pressed the gas pedal to the floor. How they ever lasted as long as they had was beyond him. "Stop it?" he thought. He wasn't even sure he wanted to stop the car until it landed on its roof in some washed out gully. "Put us both out of our misery," he thought again, but Shelley had finally closed her eyes, content with the last word. For Seth, the only concession was that she was guaranteed to ignore him for the rest of the night. All was not lost.

Shelley sulked herself to sleep, leaving him to the peace of the twilight. It didn't last long. Nodding off to a bad rerun, Seth's eyelids began twitching to the mercy of his unmerciful dreams. A cold sweat quickly glazed his body, while his every muscle bucked and convulsed. Everything inside his body struggled against it. It was no use. For years, his bouts with old demons came and went, but to fight them always proved futile. Even as he aged, his instincts to strike back remained strong. He couldn't help it. The nightmares seemed so real, especially since they were back in 1969:

Vietnam was hotter than hell and probably less hospitable. Assigned to a three-man long-range patrol, Seth Gisherman began his tour humping a PRC 77 radio and a 12-gauge shotgun with a duckbill flange at the end - to spray whatever lurked within the thick brush. The team's leader, Sergeant Jacob Evans, was a self-professed career man. It didn't take long to realize that this older scout's mind was more on his men than on his own promotional advancement. On more than one occasion, Evans displayed an incredibly lethal accuracy with an M-16 rifle. Better yet, no matter what went down, he was solid. Private First Class Denis Donovan completed the stealth-like trio. At 19, he contributed youth, though he looked like a skeleton wrapped in tanned flesh. Due to his lack of size and rank, Denis's two main duties were to flush out tunnels and walk point deep into enemy territory. The team's job was easily defined: Search out the enemy and report back the size of their units, location, activity and equipment. It was only easy by definition.

After three solid days of rain, the sun finally broke through when, just north of Danang, Jake's team hit a fork in the Ho Chi Min Trail. The team stopped long enough for a swallow of water when Seth caught something move past his tipped canteen. Slowly looking up, he nearly choked to discover it was a large unit of Vietcong on the move. They walked in file, one-by-one, not thirty yards from the small team's camouflaged position. He cautiously glanced over at Jake and Denis and met two giant sets of eyes staring back. They were obviously quite aware of the same nightmare.

Terrified to make a sound, Seth stopped breathing. His heart, however, wouldn't hear it. It pounded hard in his ears, making him fear the echo would travel out of his head and get them killed. Finally concentrating on his job, he turned off his radio and began counting numbers. He'd already reached sixty and still couldn't see the end. They kept coming. It had to be a company-sized element; some wounded, others healthy and prepared to kill. And, they were armed to the teeth. Suddenly, a drop of sweat rolled from the tip of Seth's nose onto a blade of elephant grass. He waited to hear the splash. Nothing… Still, they were coming. After a while, playing mannequin got easier with each passing VC. In fact, he probably could have gotten comfortable and sat there all day. That is, until one of the enemy soldiers stared him straight in the eyes.

Seth's heart jumped into his throat. Although their eyes never broke the intense lock, the Vietcong soldier was equally surprised. Amazingly, the jungle warrior slowed down, but never completely halted to react. There was no time to think. The shock wouldn't last forever. With no other option but to make the first move, Seth blasted away. With one squeeze of the trigger, he cut two of them in half and wounded the one he'd already met. Jake and Denis followed his lead. They unloaded everything they had and at a sprint, headed out in the opposite direction. Miraculously, the long train of Vietcong did the same. They were apparently thinking ambush, so most broke of off the trail and took cover. It wouldn't be long until they realized they faced only three.

The team literally ran for their lives. As Seth fumbled with the radio, Jake and Denis reloaded on the run and continued to fire wildly behind them. By the second reload, the Vietcong were returning fire. The three were now being hunted.

As they reached a rice paddy, the exact coordinates called in for their escape, Seth got back on the radio and warned the chopper pilot, "The LZ is hot!" Someone screamed back, but by then the radio was nearly submerged. Running with the wind at their faces, they only needed to cross the paddy and get to the other side, where hopefully, the chopper would be waiting. Seth hyperventilated with each step. His heart felt like it was going to explode. Suddenly, the chopper appeared out of nowhere and hovered, blowing large rippling circles into the water. A hundred more yards and they'd be there.

Seth looked back to insure Jake and Denis were still with him. He couldn't believe his eyes. Denis had fallen face down in the paddy and was lying still. Jake hurried back, lifted him onto his shoulder and continued moving. It was going to be a close one. The VC were no longer just hot on their trail, they were now swarming out of the treeline like an army of deadly cockroaches.

The chopper's machine gun began thumping away, while Seth spoke briefly to God. Two promises later, they reached it. The helicopter never landed. None of them really did in Vietnam. Instead, the pilot bounced the skids twice, giving everyone a fair chance to jump on. Seth went first, took Denis from Jake's back, but when he grabbed for his team leader, the grip was lost. For a moment, he cursed God for leaving his friend behind. The pilot, however, must have seen everything. In the midst of heavy fire, he bounced the chopper one last time. Jake Evans was bleeding profusely from his right leg as they shot straight into the Southeast Asian skies.

Ignoring his own pain, Jake shuffled over to Denis and screamed over the deafening roar of the chopper's blades, "You hurt?"

Denis nodded a negative. He screamed back, "I tripped. The weight of my rucksack must have kept me down?"

Jake looked over at Seth with murder in his eyes. Denis was never hit. He was just too small to lift himself and his heavy rucksack free from the rice paddy's suction. Seth forgot the fear and held his side in laughter. They'd made it out alive.

Throughout the flight, only two thoughts circled through Seth's head: The first was that Jacob Evans had not simply reacted, but needed to think about going back for Denis and that one decision made him a bonafide hero. The second was that Seth, himself, had only killed two. The fear was nearly paralyzing, but once the action got started, that anxiety was quickly replaced by an uncontrollable rage; a rage that he didn't want to stop. He wanted to kill them all.

Within the next two weeks, as Seth recovered from a mild case of malaria, Jake Evans finished his tour in Vietnam - as well as his career in the army. He had seen enough. Besides, his fiancée, Emma, was patiently waiting back in Massachusetts. Lanky Denis Donovan, on the other hand, was assigned to another team. One hot sticky morning, he and his new comrades marched off into the jungle. They were never seen again.

Seth's remaining ten months in Vietnam proved so exciting that it disturbed even him. He eventually took the lead of his own reconnaissance team and personally escorted them straight through hell and back.

Besides calling back scout reports, they quickly went above and beyond. Under the cover of darkness, Seth's team became quite proficient at sneaking into South Vietnamese villages to rustle up some action. Slitting the throats of uncooperative villagers became a competitive game. This quickly carried over to the dismemberment of bodies and the torture of suspected sympathizers. They did everything by the Black Ops book. Once they forged on, the piles of arms left behind stood as the perfect motivator for other Americans who followed. No one ever knew it was they who committed the atrocious acts. Instead, evidence such as North Vietnamese flags and other trinkets was left behind; anything that would point directly to the enemy. At one point, the team's covert acts became so consuming that they even stopped competing with enemy kills. It became impossible to differentiate between their enemy and their allies. Nobody could work that hard and keep count anyway. It was barbaric. It was inhumane. To Seth, once the fear subsided, it was like some animal deep inside him was unleashed to freely mutilate and annihilate anything that lingered in its path. It was more exhilarating than any experience he'd ever known. He never wanted it to stop.

Unfortunately, the first year raced to its end and although Seth earned more decorations than a Christmas tree, some Communist shrink refused his eager request for a second tour. He was out of the army; honorably discharged. Someone, other than the enemy, finally stopped him. The VC were lucky!

Seth awoke from his vile flashbacks and looked over at Shelley. Even in her sleep, she wore a smug face. Sitting up, he wiped the sweat from his forehead and lit a cigarette. "Sure, I could have stopped the drunk," he said to the darkness, "but who would have stopped me?"

The darkness never answered.