Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  “Before the attack on Major Taylor and Captain Allen, Barline and his driver interviewed people at IV Corps HQ, including the Colonel who claims Le Thi Dao as minor wife. The Colonel left there very angry, accompanied by the driver. We cannot account for the driver’s movements in Saigon, but we know they left Tan Son Nhut together to return to IV Corps. The next morn—”

  “I know.” Winter cut him off. Then, to Loc, “We have already had this argument. Can we link Barline, the driver, or the Colonel to the attack?”

  Loc’s lips pulled back from his teeth. “I said then, and others agreed, we need no signed confessions or fingerprints. We knew enough then and we know even more now. We know.”

  The sound of Winter’s drumming fingertips told Loc more about the tremendous struggle inside his friend than either of them would have wished.

  Winter said, “When you knocked, I was thinking it might be a good idea to eliminate as many of the opposition as possible. Right now. No arrests, no prisoners. Immediately before that I was telling Taylor I knew I’d lost a bit of control lately. I’m trying to be absolutely correct about this problem, Loc, find some kind of balance. I see the only difference between them shooting Allen down in the street and us doing the same thing to Barline is who squeezes the trigger.”

  Loc said, “Exactly,” in a voice that made Duc blink.

  Winter shook his head. “My friend. My old friend. I want to fight our enemies. I don’t want to think of myself as a simple murderer. Outright killing, just to be on the safe side—” He stared at the floor.

  Once again, a minute gesture from Loc galvanized Duc into action, this time up and off his chair and out of the room almost at a trot. Even after the other office door had clicked shut, Loc continued to watch Winter. Finally he looked away, polished jet eyes fixed on a point far beyond the drab walls.

  “This discussion sounds strange to me. If Barline is responsible for the attack on Captain Allen, and I say if he did nothing to prevent it, he is responsible, has he not chosen to side with our enemies? Is he not, then, an enemy? Why should we not treat him exactly as he treats us? We have handled this same problem before.”

  “But only when we had to. We can get this bastard without more killing if we go about it right. We don’t have to be thugs or backshooters, like them. Look at us! We’re so inured to bloodshed we’re starting to talk exclusively of simple-minded execution! Harker’s already fallen into the trap. And I’m responsible for that, Loc! I’ve trained him! I’m not afraid of death or dying or killing. But on a soldier’s terms, Loc. We’re getting to be more and more like the savages we’re up against. We can’t do that!”

  Loc remained motionless, a detached clarity in him noting a never-before-observed pulse in Winter’s throat, a dark blue worm of vein. It swelled and deflated, tale-bearing slave to the unobservable heart. It was almost vibrating.

  “I will have to think about what you have said,” Loc answered, continuing to study the vein. “If this—this insight—came to you so clearly and so suddenly, it is my responsibility to consider it very carefully and answer as wisely as I can. I will have to think. Will you excuse me?” Winter tried desperately to explain further as Loc rose with the slowness of pained effort. The unformed words worked his jaw spasmodically until he realized there was nothing more to be said and Loc was waiting with stoic patience.

  Finally, Winter closed the conversation, saying, “I would be grateful for your thoughts. I have asked for your help many times and you have never failed me. I am asking again.”

  Loc let himself out, each movement a deliberate action. He tested himself, observed his control under stress. He tried to force his mind blank, tried to imagine himself suspended in white clouds.

  It was impossible. Doubt tore his efforts to shreds and Duc’s body wrinkling the upholstery of his best chair refused to disappear behind any white clouds. Accepting a temporary defeat as gracefully as possible, he told Duc, “What you have told Colonel Winter and myself is to be repeated to no one. You will learn more of this driver. You will report only to me and only speech. There will be nothing on paper.”

  Duc nodded. “We will kill them?”

  “Only in a civilized manner.” Loc smiled, wanting to shout.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “There is a great lack of that,” Loc replied and Duc mentally threw up his hands. If Colonel Loc was going to be clever, there was no sense trying to understand him. He was relieved to be waved from the room.

  Alone, Loc stared at the point of a pencil, telling himself that Winter’s determination to avoid killing was nothing new. In truth, he had always been extremely cautious about such things, insistent on exhausting every possibility before lending his approval to direct action against a specific individual.

  He nodded unconscious agreement, remembering other times Winter had attempted to avoid such things and said it was because it was like the VC to behave that way.

  It was not an entirely new attitude, then, but he had never stated it so clearly or so strongly.

  He had said nothing like it when Taylor dropped the Chinese from the roof.

  He had said it so clearly now, for the first time, when the subject was influential, of international importance.

  When the target was white.

  Chapter 35

  Ly reached across the table to take Taylor’s hand, a corner of her mind remaining aloof from her desire to sympathize holding onto the hope that he, like her, would ignore the unremovable scratches in the cheap veneer. At the touch of her hand, he grasped it in his own with a reflex so quick it startled her. His barong tagalog blouse twitched, and there was more than responsive pleasure in his touch. She felt the tension, as she had on other occasions, and even as she wondered that she could know by the touch of his hand that he was troubled, complimentary tension built in her own body. She was glad she had chosen western dress, especially the dark green blouse and skirt. She felt the colors and style gave her an appearance of calm, no matter what her inner attitude. She bit the inside of her lip and wished he wouldn’t mention marriage this evening. Not this evening.

  His eyes studied hers, expressionless, as though she were a thing to be memorized.

  She decided to put an end to the waiting.

  “Something is making you unhappy, Charles.”

  “It’s the job.” He moved a hand in a tired swing. “It’s not exactly boring, but it’s not pleasant work. Does that make sense?”

  “Certainly.” She squeezed his hand. “You’re not doing what you should be doing. It would disturb anyone.”

  Instead of agreement, she received a sharp look and a bitter laugh. Offended, she withdrew her hand.

  “What did you think?” she demanded, further angered by the shrill hatefulness of her own voice. “Did you expect to spend your time in an American war film, no real pain, only healthy excitement? Everyone lives happily ever after?”

  He surprised her again, smiling that strange way that lifted the right corner of his mouth higher than the left. It made him look like a mischievous child. It was his smile for her and, as always, it banished her temper. He got out of the chair that always creaked relief when he rose and stepped behind her, leaning to press his face to her hair and cross his arms in front of her. His bare arm smelled of soap and the peculiar, almost animal smell of the Occidentals. She closed her eyes, rubbing her cheek on it. All irritation fled, replaced by an amusement with herself. The exotic smell generally repelled her and a room full of them at a party was almost overpowering, but he was different. He was excitement, a delicious feeling of desire and tenderness and—

  She frowned, searching for the word. Belonging. That was it. She took a bite of the arm, gently teasing the taut skin between her teeth, pleased with herself. She knew she felt good because they belonged to each other. She could think of herself with him and didn’t have to think of herself as of him.

  “I love you, Ly,” he said, the words muffled in her thick hair. He dropped his head lower
, repeated the words in a whisper by her ear, his breath a cold wave that shivered its way down her back.

  She pulled away from him and walked to the sofa where she wedged herself into the corner of the arm and the back, looking at him with a catlike intensity. He followed, planting himself in the easy chair, waiting.

  “Are you sure you love me?” she challenged him.

  His eyes widened. “I’m almost forty years old, Ly. I think I know that much about myself. Yes, I’m sure.”

  She slipped off the sofa and paced the small room. She had meant to be so clever, so subtle in her approach to this discussion, and the first question had blurted out with the delicacy of a horse falling through the door. She resolved to be more cunning.

  “I asked because I don’t always understand you, as Dao didn’t always understand Hal and as you both never understand us. And you are not almost forty. You are seven years older than me, that’s all, and I will not be called almost thirty.”

  He ignored the age matter. “You make all four of us sound like not-very-bright children. I can see why you might be upset with our situation, but at least Hal and Dao understood that two people in love should be married.”

  She whirled on him. “Ah! But who else knows that? In America, will your ‘real world’ be so real for Dao? Will it accept her?”

  “We’re a nation of immigrants!” He gestured his difficulty in expressing himself. “Dao’ll qualify for citizenship because she’ll be married to Hal. She’ll be fine. What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I know about your people. Your black people are immigrants, too, and there is much trouble. I hear disturbing things about Americans and Oriental people.”

  “I can’t argue that. Some Americans don’t like—hell, hate—blacks. Some hate Orientals. Some hate everybody. You’ve got people exactly like that in Vietnam, goddamit.”

  “You don’t have to swear. There’s no reason for you to be angry.”

  “Yes, there is. I get tired of hearing about our racial problems as if we’re responsible for the whole idea. The truth is, we’re the only ones who care enough to try to work it out without just killing off the minority.”

  She drew herself erect to remind him that Vietnam had no such problem and then heard her parents cursing the Chinese as late arrivals and immigrants and money-grubbers, threatening to take over the economy. Then she thought of the Vietnamese record with the original inhabitants of the land. She decided to think about it all in more detail before arguing further in that direction.

  “Very well. Dao will be accepted by some and not by others. What of social life? You know what it’s like for us now.” He darkened and she smiled understanding. “I am grateful for your thought, Charles. But will it be any easier for Dao in America? Can she go to the supermarket without being stared at? Can she go out to dinner with Hal and not be treated rudely by the waiter?”

  Taylor had to laugh. “I’d like to see the waiter offend Dao. If she didn’t scratch his eyes out, Hal’d pound him in the deck like a tent peg.” Concern lingered in her eyes and he grew serious again. “I can guarantee you there’ll be times and places where she’ll be badly treated, but they’ll be very few. She’ll be thinking of herself as an American in no time, and when she does, so will everyone else.”

  “In no time? A woman from this culture?” An out-flung arm encompassed millennia.

  “She’ll never stop being Vietnamese, for sure. But the point is, no one expects her to. She’ll be expected to be Dao Allen, and that’s all. But you started all this asking if I was sure I love you. If you think I believe you’re asking me about Dao, you’re crazy. You’re asking about Ly. Have you decided to marry me, after all this time and argument?”

  Her heart surged at the quiet, almost apprehensive question, as though he was steeling himself to certain pain. She pressed her hands to her sides, fighting the urge to throw herself into the comforting circle of his arms.

  Instead, she stepped to the window and looked down into the street. He waited, patiently silent, while she put thoughts together. A movement at the edge of her vision distracted her and she leaned forward to see a boy, his shirt gleaming white in the light pouring from a store entrance, the young face turned skyward in fierce concentration. Despite her own mental turmoil, her attention was drawn to a point above his head. A massive beetle suddenly hurtled out of the darkness, his path across the slash of light an impossible direct line sideways, altering hardly at all in angle and height. She realized the boy had the beetle tethered to a piece of cotton thread and was flying the insect like a kite, a game played by Vietnamese boys for centuries. For another second she enjoyed the nostalgic diversion, her mind seizing the opportunity to dismiss present tensions for the respite of childhood memories. The boy would play with the insect until he tired of it, she thought to herself, and then free it or kill it. It depended on his whim and his nature.

  She had to put her hands on the windowsill to brace herself. The boy and his insect, the cars and other vehicles grunting their way down the street, all wavered, and then she was steady again.

  “It’s true,” she said, “I was thinking of myself, wondering if I could live as an American.”

  She sensed rather than heard his approach and ached for his embrace, but he stopped, so close his breath stirred her hair when he spoke.

  “We can do it, Ly. If anyone can do it, we can. We’ve lived here almost like hermits. If we can survive that without tearing each other apart, think of the life we’ll have when we can be free!”

  She reminded herself to be practical. “We have been many places, Charles. To dinner sometimes, to the cai lung, even to my cousin’s house once.”

  “Once! And remember how he looked at me? Talk about discrimination! I thought I’d have to eat out on the sidewalk.”

  She giggled. “He is concerned about a woman of his family. You would be the same.”

  “That doesn’t have anything to do with anything. We’re talking about getting married.”

  “No.” She shook her head, more to chase the feeling that his words were hovering around her than to indicate disagreement. “You are discussing marriage. I am talking about a Vietnamese living in America. But I must ask you to answer one question and I will trust you to speak only the truth. Would you marry me because you felt sorry for me?”

  He sighed. “I do feel sorry for you. You’re crazy. I want to marry you because I love you. And I know you love me.”

  Before she was fully aware of what was happening, she had turned and pressed against him, tears burning their way under her eyelids. He was holding her, almost cradling her, and she was crying harder and telling him she did love him, that she always had, and now it was spoiled. Even if she could find the courage to leave with him, he would never believe her again. He acted as if he had not heard, continuing to rock her in his arms, and finally held a handkerchief up to her eyes. She took it and he still said nothing, but continued to hold her, one hand now stroking the length of her hair in slow rhythm.

  “You see what I have done?” Her voice was reedy and she winced, thinking how he must hate it. “If I had told you the truth at first and admitted I loved you, none of this would have happened. I didn’t know if I could leave here, be your wife. Now I want nothing else and I’m so afraid!”

  The tears came again and she squeezed her eyes shut and hid her face against his chest.

  “Afraid of what?”

  “That you won’t want me, that you won’t believe me ever again!”

  “Why? Because you said you didn’t love me at first? I knew you did, Ly. I wanted it so bad I had to know it was true, had to believe you were lying. So it didn’t count. Lies that no one believes don’t count. And I’m so happy you’re pregnant it makes me want to cry, too.”

  She felt her clothes had been torn off. She choked, looked up at him, not believing her ears.

  “You know? How could you know? It doesn’t show. Not yet. I have only been sure—”

  “A
bout two weeks.” He grinned down at her.

  She nodded, feeling her knees would fail any instant. “About two weeks. How could—?” She stopped, the words a tangled mass in her mouth.

  “Little things.” He still wore the grin. “Not so much the things you’ve said as the way you’ve said them. Caught you looking sideways at yourself in the storefronts. And then tonight, would I marry you because I felt sorry for you? How tricky can you get?”

  The warmth of him and the cold dread inside her fought for dominance. “You would not marry me only to have the child? It doesn’t change the way you feel about me?”

  “Certainly it changes the way I feel.”

  His smile dropped away and his eyes were the blank glass that said nothing. Her body seemed to melt under her head, a last breath evaporating halfway up her throat.

  “I loved you before,” he said, “as the woman I desired above all others. Now you carry my child. I love you more than I thought possible.”

  The tears started again, and this time she didn’t care, because she was too happy. She told herself she was being silly until finally he lifted her own hand to her face again and she realized she was still holding the handkerchief crushed in it. She pulled away from him and rushed into the bathroom to repair the damage to her appearance. When she returned to the living room he was waiting in the easy chair. She sat on the arm, leaning against him.

  “I was a fool, Charles. Our paths are one. I knew that. Even Chi Hong saw what would happen, long ago.”

  He snorted. “Even Chi Hong? Listen, that old woman’s smarter than all of us together. And a lot more observant. I’ll bet you anything she knew you were pregnant before you did.”

  A laugh bubbled up from her deepest sense of contentment, a sound that gave her pleasure in itself. The anguish of the past weeks was already a memory. She watched him take her right hand in his and stared down at the crown of his head, so nearly bald with its cropping. She counted the three scars, examining the especially bad one, and again considered asking how he got them and again decided to wait until another time. By tilting her head slightly, she could inspect the first gray flecks at his temple. She touched them gently.