The plane halted and its jet engines screamed a final time, then died; a hatch door opened beneath the nose, just behind the forward tire of the tricycle landing gear, and almost immediately two aviators descended, waved to the crowd, then got aboard a little car that had come for them, while Russian ground crew attended to the airplane.
“Oh, he’ll make us wait, of course,” one of the Russians said.
“The bastard. Nobody hurries him. He’d make the party secretary wait if it suited his fucking purpose!”
There was some laughter, but after a while, another figure descended from the aircraft, climbing slowly down, then landing on the tarmac. He wore an aviator’s black jumpsuit, but he was no aviator. He carried with him something awkward, a long, flat case; a musical instrument or something?
He turned to look at the greeters and his face instantly silenced them.
He was a wintry little man, late thirties, with a stubble of gray hair and a thick, short bull neck. His eyes were blue beads in a leather mask that was his grim face. He had immense hands and Huu Co saw that he was quite muscular for so short a fellow, with a broad chest and a spring of power to his movements.
No salutes were offered, no exchange of military courtesies. If he knew any of the Russians, he hid the information. There seemed nothing emotional about him at all, no sense of ceremony.
A man rushed to him to take the package he carried.
The little fellow silenced him with a vicious glare and made it apparent that he would carry the case, the severity of his response driving the man back into humiliated confusion.
“Solaratov,” said the Russian intelligence chief, “how was the flight?”
“Cramped,” said Solaratov. “I should tell them I only fly first class.”
There was nervous laughter.
Solaratov walked by the colonel without noticing him, surrounded by sycophants and bootlickers. He actually reminded Huu Co of a figure that had been pointed out to him back in the late forties, in Paris, another man of glacial isolation whose glare quieted the masses, who nevertheless—or perhaps for that reason, indeed—attracted sycophants in the legions but who paid them no attention at all, whose reputation was like the cloud of blue ice that seemed to surround him. That one was named Sartre.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Vietnam leaped up at him as if out of a dream: green, endless, crusted with mountains, voluptuous, violent, ugly, beautiful all at once. The Land of Bad Things. But also, in some way, the Land of Good Things.
Where I went to war, Donny thought. Where I fought with Bob Lee Swagger.
It wasn’t a dream; it never had been. It was the real McCoy, as glimpsed through the dirty plastic of an aircraft dipping toward that destination from Okinawa, where grunts headed to the ’Nam touched down on the way back from R&R. Monkey Mountain loomed ahead on the crazed peninsula above China Beach, and beyond that, like downtown Dayton, the multiservice base and airstrip at Da Nang displayed itself in a checkerboard of buildings, streets and airstrips. Hills 364, 268 and 327 stood like dusty warts beyond it.
The C-130 oriented itself off the coastline, dropped through the low clouds and slid through tropic haze until it touched down at the ghost town that had once been one of the most populous cities of the world, the capital of the Marine country of I Corps, home of the ruling body of the Marine war, the III Marine Amphibious Force.
The palms still blew in the breeze, and around it the mountains still rose in green tropic splendor, but the place was largely empty now, its mainside structure shrunken to a few tempo buildings, an empty or at least Vietnamized metropolis. A few offices were still staffed, a few barracks still lived in, but the techies and the staffs and the experts who’d run the war in Vietnam were home safe except for the odd laggard unit, like the boys of Firebase Dodge City and a few others in the haphazard distribution of late-leavers across I Corps.
The plane finally stopped taxiing. Its four props ended their mission with a turbine-powered whine as their fuel was cut off. The plane shuddered mightily, paused like a giant beast and went still. In seconds the rear door descended, and Donny and the cargo of twenty-odd short-timers and reluctant warriors felt the furnace blast of heat and the stench of burning shit that announced they were back.
He stepped into the radiance, felt it slam him.
“This fuckin’ place will git me yet,” said a black old salt, with a dozen or so stripes on his sleeve, and enough wound ribbons to have bled out a platoon.
“Ain’t you short?” someone asked.
“I ain’t as short as the lance corporal,” he said, winking at Donny, with whom he’d struck up a bantering relationship on the flight over from Kadena Air Force Base on Okie. “If I was as short as him, I’d twist an ankle and head straight for sick bay.”
“He’s a hero,” the other lifer said. “He ain’t going in no sick bay.”
The old black sarge pulled him aside.
“Don’t you be takin’ no bad-ass chances in the bush, you hear?” the man said. “Two and days, Fenn? Shit, don’t git busted up. It ain’t worth it. This shit-hole place ain’t worth a thing if you ain’t a career sucker gittin’ the ticket punched one more time. Don’t let the Man git you.”
“I copy.”
“Now git over to reception and git your grunt ass squared away.”
“Peace,” said Donny, flashing the sign.
The sergeant looked around, saw no one close enough to overhear or overlook, and flashed the sign back.
“Peace and freedom and all that good shit, bro,” he said with a wink.
Donny hit reception with his sea bag, to arrange temporary quarters for the night and the soonest chopper hop back to Dodge City.
He felt … good. A week on Maui with Julie. Oh, Christ, who wouldn’t feel good? Could it have been any better? Swagger had slipped him an envelope as he’d choppered out after debriefing, and he’d been stunned to discover a thousand dollars cash, with instructions to bring none of it back. Why would Swagger do such a thing? It was so generous, so spontaneous—just a strange-ass way of doing things.
It was—well, a young man back from the war with his beautiful young wife, in the paradise of Hawaii, under a hot and purifying sun, flush with money and possibility and so short he could finally, after three years and nine months and days, see the end. See it.
I made it.
I’m out.
She said, “It’s almost too cruel. We could have this and then you could get killed.”
“No. That’s not how it works. The NVA fights twice a year, in the spring and fall. They fought their big spring offensive, and now they’re all stuck up in a siege around An Loc City, fighting the ARVN way down near Saigon. We’re out of it. Nothing will happen in our little area. We’re home free. It’s just a question of getting through the boredom, I swear to you.”
“I don’t think I could stand it.”
“There’s nothing to worry about.”
“You sound like the guy in the war movie who always gets killed.”
“They don’t make war movies anymore,” he said. “Nobody cares about war movies.”
Then they made love again, for what seemed like the 28,000th time. He found new plateaus from which to observe her, new angles into her, new sensations, tastes and ecstacies.
“It doesn’t get much better than this,” he finally said. “God, Hawaii. We’ll come back here on our fiftieth anniver—”
“No!” she said suddenly, as sweaty as he and just as flushed. “Don’t say that. It’s bad luck.”
“Sweetie, I don’t need luck. I have Bob Lee Swagger on my side. He is luck itself.”
That was then, this was now, and Donny stood at the bank of fluorescent-lit desks in a big green room that was reception until a buck sergeant finally noticed him, put down the phone and gestured him to the desk.
Donny sat, handed over his documents.
“Hi, I’m Fenn, 2-5-Hotel, back from R&R on sked. Here’s my paperwork. I need a billet for
the night and then a jump out to Dodge City on the 0600.”
“Fenn?” said the sergeant, looking at the order. “All right, let me just check it out; looks okay. You’re one of the guys in the Kham Duc?”
He entered Donny’s return in the logbook, stamped the orders, adroitly forged his captain’s signature and slipped them back to Donny, all in a single motion.
“Yeah, that was me. My NCO pulled in some favors and got me R&R’d out for ten days.”
“You’ve been nominated for the Navy Cross.”
“Jesus.”
“You won’t get it, though. They’re not giving out big medals anymore.”
“Well, I really don’t care.”
“They’ll probably buck it down to a Star.”
“I have a Star.”
“No, a Silver.”
“Wow!”
“Hero. Too bad it don’t count for shit back in the world. In the old days, you could have been a movie star.”
“I just want to make it back in one piece. I can pay to see movies. That’s as close to movies as I want to get.”
“Well, then, I have good news for you, Fenn. You got new orders. Your transfer came through.”
Donny thought he misunderstood.
“What? I mean, there must be—What do you mean, transfer? I didn’t ask for a transfer. I don’t see what—”
“Here it is, Fenn. Your orders were cut three days ago. You been dumped in 1-3-Charlie, and assigned to battalion S-3. That’s us, here in Da Nang; we’re the administrative battalion for what’s left of Marine presence. My guess is, you’ll be running a PT program here in Da Nang for a couple of months before you DEROS out on the big freedom bird. Your days in the bush are over. Congratulations, grunt. You made it, unless you get hit by a truck on the way to the slop chute.”
“No, see, I don’t—”
“You go on over to battalion, check in with the duty NCO and he’ll get you squared away, show you your new quarters. You’re in luck. You won’t believe this. We closed down our barracks and moved into some the Air Force vacated, ’cause they were closer to the airstrip. Air-conditioning, Fenn. Air-conditioning!”
Donny just looked at him, as if the comment made no sense.
“Fenn, this is a milk run. You got it made in the shade. It’s a number-one job. You’ll be working for Gunny Bannister, a good man. Enjoy.”
“I don’t want a transfer,” Donny said.
The sergeant looked up at him. He was a mild, patient man, sandy blond hair, professional-bureaucrat type of REMF, the sort of sandy-dry man who always makes the machine work cleanly.
He smiled dryly.
“Fenn,” he explained, “the Marine Corps really doesn’t care if you want a transfer or not. In its infinite military wisdom, it has decreed that you will teach a PT class to lard-ass rear-echelon motherfuckers like me until you go home. You won’t even see any more Vietnamese. You will sleep in an air-conditioned building, take a shower twice a day, wear your tropicals pressed, salute every shitbird officer that walks no matter how stupid, not work very hard, stay very drunk or high and have an excellent time. You’ll take beaucoup three-day weekends at China Beach. Those are your orders. They are better orders than some poor grunt’s stuck out on the DMZ or Hill 553, but they are your orders, nevertheless, and that is the name of that tune. Clear, Fenn?”
Donny took a deep breath.
“Where does this come from?”
“It comes straight from the top. Your CO and your NCOIC signed off on it.”
“No, who started it? Come on, I have to know.”
The sergeant looked at him.
“I have to know. I was Sierra-Bravo-Four. Sniper team. I don’t want to lose that job. It’s the best job there is.”
“Son, any job the Marine Corps gives you is the best job.”
“But you could find out? You could check. You could see where it comes from. I mean, it is unusual that a guy with bush time left suddenly gets rotated out of his firebase slot and stowed in some make-work pussy job, isn’t it, Sergeant?”
The sergeant sighed deeply, then picked up the phone.
He schmoozed with whomever was on the other end of the line, waited a bit, schmoozed some more, and finally nodded, thanked his co-conspirator and hung up.
“Swagger, that’s your NCO?”
“Yes.”
“Swagger choppered in here last week and went to see the CO. Not battalion but higher, the FMF PAC CO, the man with three stars on his collar. Your orders were cut the next day. He wants you out of there. Swagger don’t want you humping the bush with him no more.”
Donny checked in with the PFC on duty at 1-3-Charlie, got a bunk and a locker in the old Air Force barracks, which were more like a college dormitory, and spent an hour getting stowed away. Looking out the window, he could not see a single palm tree: just an ocean of tarmac, buildings, offices. It could have been Henderson Hall, back in Arlington, or Cameron Station, the multiservice PX out at Bailey’s Crossroads. No yellow people could be seen: just Americans doing their jobs.
Then he went to storage to pick up his stowed 782 gear and boonie duds, and lugged the sea bag to supply to return it, but learned supply was already closed for the day, so he lugged the stuff back to his locker. He checked back in at company headquarters to meet his new gunny and the CO; neither man could be found—both had gone back to quarters early. He went by the S-3 office—operations and training—to look for Bannister, the PT NCO, and found that office locked too, and Bannister long since retreated to the staff NCO club. He went back to the barracks, where some other kids were getting ready to go to the movies—Patton, already two years old, was the picture—and then to the 1-2-3 Club for a night of dowsing their sorrows in cheap PX Budweiser. They seemed like nice young guys and they clearly knew who Donny was and were hungry to get close to him, but he said no, for reasons he himself did not quite understand.
He was tired. He climbed into the rack early, pulling clean, newly issued sheets around him, feeling the springiness of the cot beneath. The air conditioner churned with a low hum, pumping out gallons of dry, cold air. Donny shivered, pulled the sheets closer about him.
There were no alerts that night, no incoming. There hadn’t been incoming in months. At 0100 he was awakened by the drunken kids returning from the 1-2-3 Club. But when he stirred, they quieted down fast.
Donny lay in the dark as the others slipped in, listening to the roar of the air conditioner.
I have it made, he told himself.
I am out of here.
I am the original DEROS kid.
I am made in the shade, I am the milk-run boy.
He dreamed of Pima County, of Julie, of an ordered, becalmed and rational life. He dreamed of love and duty. He dreamed of sex; he dreamed of children and the good life all Americans have an absolute right to if they work hard enough for it.
At 0-dark-30, he arose quietly, showered in the dark, pulled on his bush utilities and gathered up his 782 gear and headed out to the chopper strip. It was a long walk in the predawn. Above him, mute piles and piles of stars were humped up tall and deep like a mountain range. Now and then, from somewhere in this dark land, came the far-off, artificial sound of gunfire. Once some flares lit the horizon. Somewhere something exploded.
The choppers were warming up. He ducked into the operations shack, chatted with another lance corporal, then jogged to the Marine-green Huey, its rotors already whirring on the tarmac. He leaned in, and the crew chief looked at him.
“This is Whiskey-Romeo-Fourteen?”
“That’s us.”
“You’re the bus to Dodge City?”
“Yeah. You’re Fenn, right? We took you outta here two weeks back. Great job at Kham Duc, Fenn.”
“Can you hump me back to the City? It’s time to go home.”
“Climb aboard, son. We are homeward bound.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“You will crawl all night,” Huu Co explained to the Russian. “If you
do not make it, they will see you in the morning and kill you.”
If he expected the man to react, once again, he was wrong. The Russian responded to nothing. He seemed, in some respects, hardly human. Or at least he had no need for some of the things humans needed: rest, community, conversation, humanity even. He never spoke. He appeared phlegmatic to the point of being almost vegetable. Yet at the same time he never complained, he would not wear out, he applied no formal sense of will against Huu Co and the elite commandos of the 45th Sapper Battalion on their long Journey of Ten Thousand Miles, down the trail from the North. He never showed fear, longing, thirst, discomfort, humor, anger or compassion. He seemed not to notice much and hardly ever talked, and then only in grunts.
He was squat, isolated, perhaps desolated. In his army, Huu Co’s heroes were designated “Brother Ten” when they distinguished themselves by killing ten Americans: this man, Huu Co realized, was Brother Five Hundred, or some such number. He had no ideology, no enthusiasms; he simply was. Solaratov: solitary. The lone man. It suited him well.
The Russian looked across the fifteen hundred yards of flattened land to the Marine base the enemy called Dodge City, studying it. There was no approach, no visible approach, except on one’s belly, the long, long way.
“Could you hit him from this range?”
The Russian considered.
“I could hit a man from this range, yes,” he finally said. “But how would I know it was the right man? I cannot see a face from this distance. I have to hit the right man; that is the point.”
The argument was well made.