Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  The man said, “I should come with you. I could—”

  “I have told you what to do,” Chi interrupted. “We will do what we do best, and this time there may be more than watching. No job for a file clerk, cousin. Leave it to me.”

  Without waiting for further argument, Chi kicked the motorcycle to a roar and sped away. At the next corner he turned out of the storm of lights and machines and the next corner doubled him back on the dark back street paralleling Plantation Road. With his engine barely ticking, he pulled beside one of the houses facing the scabbed back walls of the bars and shops, so different from the garish enticements on the other side. He wheeled the machine around the house, where a boy of about twelve sprang through the back door ahead of a woman’s brittle voice.

  “Pay the boy now!” A moment later her face appeared in one of the two unglassed windows and although the only light was the glow from the night-action a block away, it showed lined features as hard as her speech.

  “Are you so afraid I might die before you get your money?” Chi said, and laughed at the woman’s irritated discomfort. He handed the boy the piasters and faced her again. “Has there been any question about us being here? Has it been noticed?”

  The woman laughed, barely parting lips that revealed scattered remaining teeth. “Notice? Questions? We are not fools around here.”

  Chi moved to the side of the building, squatting with his back against one of the concrete block piers holding the small building off the ground. He ignored the passage of time, sure this was the door Miller would come out. His primary question was if he would walk or be carried.

  There were distractions. A group of youngsters, the ones the Americans called “cowboys” roared down the street on their motorcycles, nervous in this white man’s ghetto, their bravado failing to disguise their hurried passage. After a long period of quiet a young American staggered down the street bawling a song, only to stop and fall heavily against a wall. There was a wedge of illumination at the corner, thrown by a streetlight that seemed to regard the rest of the street as beneath consideration. The boy was at its edge and Chi watched for a while as he tried to empty his stomach. The sounds struck Chi as only slightly less unpleasant than the singing.

  The few lights in the neighboring houses had been out for some time when the door across the way opened. Chi shifted gingerly, loosening joints, prepared to move if the need arose. He continued to flex muscles as two men came out and looked over the alley. Chi curled a lip in contempt for people who left a lighted area for a dark one and pretended to search it. Two more men followed, half-dragging a third between them. Chi needed no light to know he was looking at Miller. Two more men followed the trio. One of them spoke, and Chi was trying to decide if it was Mantell’s voice when the larger of them answered, and this time he was certain he heard Lenemann.

  “I don’t give a shit what he said, Bobby, I done made up my mind. This has to be the sumbitch.”

  Again, the smaller man said something in a voice too quiet for Chi to catch.

  “Blow the deal, my fuckin’ ass!” Lenemann’s anger rang through the darkness, the rest of the group stirring at the volume. “Ain’t no deal, asshole! It’s a con’s what it is. Look, he the only new contact we made, ain’t he? And now the heat’s comin’ down! Use your fuckin’ head!”

  Miller moved, stood a little straighter. When he spoke, only the pain carried across the street, and that was interrupted by the sound of a fist on flesh. Miller and the two men holding him recoiled.

  “You said all I want to hear,” Lenemann said, a thickening accent making the words ever more difficult for Chi. The large figure moved toward the door. “Make a example o’ his ass. Beat the fucker ‘til nothin’ left to break an’ then dump him in the river to drown. People got to learn not to mess in our shit.”

  Miller managed a single note of protest that ended in a screech and then he was doubled over and stumbling from one to the other of the men ringed about him. It looked almost playful, like children in a schoolyard game, except for the deep grunts and Miller’s weakening cries. Then he fell and was silent and even as Chi thought to himself how his tormenters made up for expertise with sheer force, one of them left the ground in a leap and when he came down, something cracked through the night like a breaking branch. One of the men gagged and walked away, headed toward the house. Chi drew his .45 and aimed carefully. There was another crack from the circle and the man approaching Chi stopped and heaved with earnest, wrenching spasms.

  Keeping the automatic firmly pointed at the sick man’s middle, Chi was thankful he was making so much noise. Finally the group was quiet, save for the sibilance of labored breathing. Then there was a short command and one man detached to hurry down the street. The rest, including the sick one, rolled Miller against the wall and positioned themselves in front of him.

  Chi crept to the back of the house where his motorcycle rested. The boy slept against it. Chi wakened him silently and they muscled the machine away from the house, quartering across a construction site to the street perpendicular to Plantation Road. At that point, Chi dismissed the boy and waited. A darkened car, silver light reflection slipping along its sides, crunched down the street and stopped in front of the waiting group. Straining, Chi was sure he saw only one man get in with the driver while the others threw Miller into the back. He kicked the engine to life and rolled down the street and across Plantation Road, where he turned, parked, and waited again, feeling the muted thunder of the powerful engine under him almost as an extension of his own power as he considered what must be done.

  The car followed a few minutes later, turning onto Plantation Road. He allowed some of the now-sparse traffic to fill in and swung in behind. The car proceeded with no precautions, and again Chi was moved to marvel at the ability of the Americans to rely on such things as the spoken word or good luck. He reflected that Sergeant Miller might never do so again if, indeed, he was still capable of doing anything.

  The car left the main street and Chi revised his opinion of the driver. Now the narrow streets and lack of traffic would make his following headlight noticeable. It would also lessen their chances of being caught up in curfew enforcement. Further, they were nearing a neighborhood where a body could be thrown from the bank onto the mudflats of one of the minor creeks feeding the Saigon River. The men ahead were not entirely stupid.

  Chi did what he could, dropping back and turning off his lights, pulling off to hide, but forced to hold close enough to keep them in sight. When the car stopped, he knew he’d won because the river bank was only meters away from them. He cut his engine and coasted into an alley where he got off quickly and peered around the corner. The car was still, silhouetted heads in the front seat turning from side to side.

  Far to the east shots were fired and a flare briefly challenged the starlight, too distant to be more than a thing to draw the eye. As it died, Chi moved forward, slowly, carefully, using the night. He was wedged in a crouch at the base of a tree when the car door opened and he was close enough to hear the click of the latch before it swung wide. A voice from the other side of the car said, “We’ll get him out over here.” When the driver moved to the side of the car away from him, Chi scuttled across the open space and stopped, his heart pounding, pressed against the chill metal. He heard the slither of Miller’s body being pulled from the back seat and moans. He heard Miller’s feet hit the ground as they pulled him free of the car and the scream that was a weak squeal.

  Mantell said, “Save your breath, mother-fucker. You need it all in the river.”

  Chi rose and braced his arm on the roof of the car, the extended automatic mere feet from the two men who each held one of Miller’s wrists. Mantell said, “Who the fuck—?” before Chi shot him in the face, the impact of the heavy round lifting him clear of the ground in a clumsy backward flight. The other man ducked before Chi could properly aim and the bullet merely hit his shoulder. He spun away, landing on his face, and rolled over on his back. As Chi trotted t
oward him he covered the wound with his remaining functional hand and dug his heels into the ground to push away like a crippled lizard. He screamed and wriggled, making Chi’s aim very difficult and aggravating him because there were already shouts and lights coming from the neighboring homes. The whites of the eyes and gleaming teeth flashed and bobbed and Chi finally shot into the chest, which was an easy target and stilled the motion, and then shot the man in the head.

  Hurrying now, sweating a bit, he ran to insure that Mantell was also dead, rolling him over and noting the ruin where the back of his head had been. He wiped his hand on Mantell’s shirt and ran to Miller.

  The excitement in the background was growing stronger, especially now that the shooting had stopped. Chi muttered to himself when he couldn’t find a pulse and smiled when a faint rhythm at last trembled against his fingertips. He ran then, shouting for someone to call the police, started his engine and roared away. After driving for a while, he stopped under a street light and inspected himself carefully for any stray blood.

  He cruised easily in the direction of his cousin’s house, letting his nerves calm, reviewing each step of the night’s activity.

  It was all going according to plan. Lenemann would be the first major dealer to pay to continue selling his product. There would be others. Until it became possible to eliminate them. It was all going according to plan.

  He let the cool night air carry away more tension, refusing to think of anything except the messages of his senses—the breeze, the vibrations of the machine coursing his body.

  A child dodged across the street in front of him and yelled its fright at being paralyzed on the spear from the headlight. Chi swerved, cursing, seeing not the child, but the unwanted memory of Miller being beaten. He regained control and admitted to himself that the plan had not considered Miller or what happened to him. Not originally.

  Each man had his fate.

  Still, it angered him that they had done that to Miller. It was a rueful admission and he decided he might as well be honest with himself. He wished it had not happened. Worse, he could already feel the urge to make the man Lenemann pay for what had been done.

  He picked up speed and made a face into the darkness.

  * * *

  The parking lot was empty, the swimming pool silent, and the few lights in the windows of BOQ One only enhanced the peculiar aloneness weighting Taylor. He climbed aboard the jeep with great care, telling himself that getting busted for drunk driving after curfew would serve as no memorial to Duc.

  What would?

  Certainly not a bitter six-man wake in a dingy room that ended with the last man out standing by himself asking useless questions of the night.

  Memorials?

  You went to the funerals and you tried to say a comforting thing to the wives and children and the women thanked you while their eyes hated your life and the children tried to understand and you hated yourself because you were glad to be alive and because there would never be answers for the children.

  When it was done, the burying and the words and music and flowers, nothing was changed. Another piece of you was in the ground, waiting for the rest. That was all.

  Chapter 44

  Taking casualties is a natural function. Peacetime has its training accidents and the root of combat is the sacrifice and exaction of injury or death. The number of men lost by the Records Research Unit was abnormally high for a Saigon-based group, but not to be compared with the abuse taken by any average infantry organization. On the other hand, there is a peculiar psychology involved in group morale in combat circumstances.

  A unit may take incredible casualties without any outward effect. On the contrary, not only the survivors but replacements take on a unique hard-bitten quality that eventually defies the enemy, the weather, or bad leadership to do their combined worst.

  Headquarters all learn quickly to depend on those units. In the attack they are given the honor of leading, of battering their way through the enemy’s defense. They are allowed to execute the brute brawling that leaves only winners and dead in order for other units, blessed with greater élan, to exploit the gap and pursue the defeated.

  In defense the rawhide units are never the counterattack force. Again, to them falls the higher honor, the privilege of digging in at the farthest reach, throwing out patrols to determine the numbers, route, and rate of movement of the advancing forces. If the patrols avoid being engulfed they rejoin the unit and participate in absorbing whatever means of destruction the enemy can deliver. If eventually forced to retreat, they hold until softer-skinned rear elements can scurry away.

  They share certain universal characteristics. They have an irrational dislike of night operations, not from any fear of the dark or esoteric psychology, but because they know all headquarters personnel forget it takes all day to organize a satisfactory night move and it takes all night to execute it and the people involved ought not to be asked to continue to function the next day as if nothing had happened. They hate listening posts, don’t think much of any sort of outpost duty, and vastly prefer combat patrols to reconnaissance patrols, being devoutly convinced that when you find an enemy you don’t snoop on him, you kill him.

  Occasionally such a unit will pull up, crippled with the inexplicability of an indomitable horse broken down by a minor stumble. The collapse isn’t so invariably fatal, but it’s sudden and can be generated by something as normal as one casualty. It need not be a glamorous leader, someone popular, or a talisman-figure. One day, one average individual—and almost to a man the unit reviews the myriad honors it has enjoyed and suspects they will never end. The idea grows that these things are no more than a visitation by a God motivated exclusively by caprice and malice.

  There is no sorrier lament than the silence of such men.

  All those things ran through Taylor’s mind as he watched the medical personnel load Miller’s white-wrapped broken body into the plane taking him to Japan.

  It was absurd to compare this Unit with any kind of combat outfit, he told himself. No matter how many casualties they took, they ate hot food from plates, slept in beds, bathed as often as they wanted—hell, they lived in Oriental splendor. He wondered if his inability to speak was a morbid carryover from an earlier time. It was conceivable that Winter’s silence was a result of the same attitude, but how to explain Harker? His long-range patrols couldn’t qualify as common infantry work.

  They waved one last time and walked back to the jeep. Taylor smiled to himself at the prospect of the Records Research Unit (American Contingent ) fitting into a jeep with one seat left over.

  Abreast of Two Hundred P Alley he took his eyes from the road long enough to look at Winter in the next seat. “I got the impression Denby didn’t want to come today,” he said.

  Winter kept his eyes straight ahead. “He didn’t. He’s not very good at goodbyes, you know. And he’s got a lot of last-minute stuff before he leaves.”

  “The sooner the better.” Harker’s bitterness was enough to make both men flinch perceptibly. “I can’t believe Willy was into that shit alone. I think it was a piss-poor operation and he’s taking the fall for Denby.”

  Winter said, “That’s prejudice talking, Bill. I’ve had Carl working on an op plan to nail our slumlord Major. What he came up with is nothing spookier than a financial investigation. His reasoning is that, if we can get him for tax evasion, we can probably squeeze him for everything he knows. And we can do it stateside, where the goddam press won’t make a circus out of it. It’s a good plan and it means the Army doesn’t have to run the investigation. There was nothing in it about infiltrating the drug outfit. Miller told us that, and he was being honest, not noble.”

  Conversation died again as Taylor pulled up to the gate and started again once they were clear of the guards.

  Harker said, “I still say Denby should have had a closer leash on Willy. We all knew he was nuts when it came to drug pushing.”

  Still conciliatory, Winter said, “The be
st way isn’t necessarily the most popular way. And I’m the man responsible for the decisions, right or wrong. If Colonel Denby was lax in his control, it’s as much my fault as his. I happen to think he did everything he was required to do.”

  Some of the venom faded from Harker’s voice. “I’m sorry, Colonel. I know I don’t have all the facts and so on. But I saw Willy. Everybody knows that Major was into heroin up to his ass and he’s the only American we had a decent lead on and he’s been home for almost two weeks. Even Colonel Loc suspects we let him get away clean because he’s an American officer. I keep thinking if Denby’d moved faster, been willing to work with Willy, we’d have busted the sucker and taught a lot of people a lesson.”

  The crunch of gravel underlined the indictment as the jeep coasted to a stop in front of the villa. It seemed a particularly welcome place to Taylor at that moment, a familiar spot where he could relax.

  Winter continued the conversation on the way up the stairs. “Maybe you’re right, Bill, perhaps I should have pushed harder. But let’s assume I did and we pinned the Major to the drug business. Can you see the headlines?” He stopped at the door, his hand on the knob. “And another thing, I don’t think we could have put together a legal case. He’s too smart, was too well protected here. But we know he’s guilty, just as we know things about other people and can’t prove them. Would you have had me pass sentence on him? And who would I send after him? Think about it.”

  Taylor froze his face to a noncommittal stare while Harker flashed an angry glare from one to the other of them.

  “If he was selling heroin, he’s killed some of our people,” he said. “If all you were concerned about is who to send after him, you should’ve said something. It’d be a pleasure to waste him.”