Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  He hung up and stared at the instrument as if he would smash it, thinking of questions he would put to Tuyet at their next meeting. And how he would put them to her.

  * * *

  He was already stretched out on the pool’s edge, drying in the sun when Chavez arrived. He was a swarthy man in bright blue swimming trunks, barrelchested. His arms hung out from his sides, adding to the over-all musclebound look of the short body. The face was pure Indian.

  “Be with you in a minute,” he said, “I’m going to get in a couple of laps.”

  Harker waved, unspeaking, unwilling to make an issue of the delay. He watched the heavy body bound into the air and splash mightily. What Chavez lacked in diving skill, he made up for with a surprisingly accomplished stroke that sent him slicing through the water, avoiding other swimmers in the crowded pool with ease.

  Harker set himself to be patient and found the shouts and laughter of the crowd strangely relaxing, suggestive of better times and places. The reek of the chlorinated water overwhelmed any alien smells. With his eyes closed, it was just like home. A perverse whim made him open them and the illusion exploded at the intrusion of the white barracks and the view beyond the distant fence. In addition, it was an odd sensation to be sitting level with the water and a good ten feet above the street.

  The pool was a huge cement box, above ground. Rumor said they couldn’t dig a pool because the engineers hit water and this monstrosity was the only solution. He smiled to himself, remembering how precious the great, ugly thing had seemed to him his last trip up-country. Going off watch, just before sleeping, he’d think of sitting, just like this, on the hot cement and then diving into the cool water to float, face down, as long as he could hold his breath.

  Chavez flopped wetly next to him. “Oh, that feels good. Someday I want one just like it. Full of beer.”

  “And I’ll come live at your house,” Harker said, but dropped the sociable facade immediately. “Listen, I’m going to pull off something very hot, so don’t ask questions that’ll screw things up, you dig?”

  Chavez rolled his eyes. “Oh-oh. More shit. I have to tell you, buddy, that prick Earl is all over my office now. He chewed one of my people the other day for saying ‘Ruff-Puffs.’ He says we have to call them Rural Forces and Popular Forces because Ruff-Puffs makes them sound ‘like something connected with the U.S. effort.’ ”

  “He’s not my problem. What I have to know is who’s got an operation going in the next few days, and the sooner the better. Something where they’re going to step in shit and they know it.”

  Chavez squinted. “You really are up to something.” He continued to watch Harker as he thought, then looked at his stomach and pushed water drops with a stubby finger.

  “Maybe I can help. Over by the border, there’s this Viet—a real tiger, part of the Phoenix program. He’s got the word on an NVA supply pick-up. Stuff’s coming in from Cambodia on barges. He’s kept it a secret. Only told me because he knows he’s going to need help if his information’s accurate.”

  “Why secret?”

  Chavez grunted. “He figures if we hear about it at MACV, they hear about it in Cambodia at about the same time. He may be right.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Maybe. You want in?”

  “When’s it go down?”

  “Night after next.”

  “Shit! That’s no time at all, man!”

  Grinning, Chavez flicked more water away. “You said the sooner the better. You said a bad operation. You get what you ask for and then you bitch. Can you lay on your own chopper?”

  Harker shook his head. “I want you to come to my boss. Tell him the supplies may be from dumps contaminated in Operation Earthmover. He was in on the planning for that and he’ll be curious about any results, so he’ll be glad to have me check it out.”

  “What’s Earthmover?”

  “It’s a Special Operations Group deal we got mixed up with. Just remember the name, Earthmover.”

  “Got it. I can get over there this afternoon. When do you want to go?”

  “Tomorrow morning?”

  Chavez gave him a thumbs-up. “Anything else?”

  Harker looked him full in the eyes. “We never talked about this. You thought of it this afternoon. You can’t remember who mentioned Earthmover to you, but you heard he had some connection with it so you thought of me as an observer. Winter’s not to know it’s going to be rough and you never told me. Whatever happens, me being near this thing is all a coincidence. Understood?”

  Chavez whistled. “Very heavy. Ve-r-r-y heavy, old buddy. I’m really curious to see what you’re building. But I can dig it.” He winked and got to his feet with surprising fluid movement and walked to the pool for another of his wave-making dives. Harker waited until he was at the far end and then walked to the shower room.

  He spent the afternoon closeted in his office, hearing the reverberations of other people’s conversations roll through the building. Even conversations upstairs were audible, if indistinguishable.

  He saw Chavez arrive in a Scout, heard the thumping steps go up and the drone of conversation, then listened to the steps leave and watched the Scout depart. He was waiting for Winter’s call but acted properly surprised during their talk. He returned to his office and watched the clock, lurching to his feet when the afternoon was gone and he could carry out his next move.

  A cyclo at the gate carried him to within easy walking distance of the nursery. He strolled past the front, pleased to see the three ferns lined up in their vases, indicating all was well. A few minutes later he was in the potting shed again. When Tuyet came into view her movements were less assured, suggesting unusual caution, and the thought brought a tight smile to his face. Her entrance was fearful.

  He reached past to help her until the door shut away the world and then his hand snapped to her throat. A thumb and forefinger vised inward directly below her jaw hinge and he lifted until her toes were barely on the ground. His smile still beamed.

  “You lied to me,” he said.

  There was a roaring in her ears, but his words came through clearly. She fought to keep her head despite the noise and the fear and the unremitting pain. She blinked and tears ran down her cheeks. His expression didn’t change but he relaxed his grip enough to allow her heels to settle back onto the ground. Hope leaped in her that he was weakening and then she looked into the eyes, unfeeling as a snake’s, and in that instant she no longer cared.

  Harker felt the sudden loss of resistance as a physical thing, as though energy had transferred itself from her body to his. An eerie ascendancy filled him and he knew he had only to ask and she would respond. The feeling was so awesome that, dropping his hand from her throat, he simply stood and savored while she rubbed at the welts.

  It was an effort for him to get to his questions.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you knew the man with Trung?”

  She stared at his shoes. “I think maybe use later.”

  “Why? I told you I’d try to help you.”

  “What I hear Americans call insurance. You have. I think good idea I have.”

  “Well, it was a very bad idea. Now I want to know exactly what they said to each other. And if you leave anything out this time your boyfriend’ll be gone before you know it. And he won’t be back.”

  For a moment the hard whore’s lines melted to the softer features of the woman who lived behind them. Her eyes came up to his face and drifted away, examined the unpainted boards of the wall as if hoping the calligraphy of the weatherchecked wood had a message for her. She spoke in Vietnamese, slowly, repeating phrases she considered important, offering no objection when he demanded greater detail or criticized her recital. When she was finished he asked questions, forcing her to practically re-tell the entire incident. Still her voice remained soft and when it became necessary for her eyes to cross his body to study a different section of the wall, they skimmed across the obstacle with no evidence of acknowledgement.
/>   The exhilaration Harker felt tailed off.

  Reverting to English, Tuyet said, “I know I do wrong thing, but I tell you all now. Please, you help me get married permission?”

  “You lied to me. Why should I help you?”

  Her nod summed up a lifetime of losing. “I think you say that. I go now?”

  He gestured and she moved to the door. He hissed a warning and she faced him with a touch of her old flair. “I be careful, not worry. Life maybe shit, but I not ready die yet.”

  The close of the door behind her cut at him like a knife.

  It hurt to lose the moment, the control.

  Never before had he felt so completely in command. He knew where to find Binh. He had the man responsible for crippling Allen in the palm of his hand. For several minutes he sat in the half-light with his back to the wall, draining the last pleasure from his success as a man squeezes the last best drops of juice from fruit.

  He shivered involuntarily as his consciousness dragged him back to necessities. There was a phone call to arrange.

  Outside, the nursery massaged his senses, the faint rustle of the heated breeze in the plants, the scent of rich earth and growth. The air around him felt luminous, alive.

  Chapter 48

  Blades hacking through the mid-morning haze, the helicopter cleared the red roofs and the dirty white buildings of the city and found the countryside of clear colors basking in unfouled sunlight. Harker felt cleansed as he feasted his eyes on the bitter chocolate of the paddies and the vibrant green of the rice.

  He remembered his meeting with Tuyet and realized his thoughts were in terms of highs and rushes and addiction and directed his attention outward again.

  They were closing on something white that moved on the surface of the paddy like a strayed cloud. He recognized it as a huge flock of ducks, small boys marching along the dike beside them as their charges dabbled and bobbed. The boys carried long poles and one of them smartly stroked a straggler back into the flock as the other two looked up and waved their sticks, teeth glinting in the sun. The pilot wobbled from side to side in reply.

  Small villages rose before them or off to the sides and passed behind. A farmer looked up from behind his water buffalo and his head turned in a steady arc, watching them with complete attention until they were long past.

  Harker wondered what could have been going through that mind. Was the farmer seeing again a gunship that shattered his family? Or a force that could relieve him of the burden of supporting a local NVA unit masquerading as rebels? Or was the man simply bored and watching because it was the one thing that would differentiate today from tomorrow?

  The pilot interrupted, pointing ahead and down. Rising as far as the seat belt permitted, Harker saw a village off to the left, a mud wall around it highlighted by watchtowers. The pilot and co-pilot searched the area carefully on their approach, maneuvering with professional precision. On the rough landing pad they waited until Harker was barely clear before lifting off again, roaring away tail high, the nose seeming to sniff at the ground while building speed. The pilot held it low for a hundred yards or so and then shot upward, the sound of the machine dwindling as it chuffed off to its next destination.

  When Harker turned, a deputation was coming through the gate to greet him, led by a short, slight man in peasant’s black pajamas whose confident stride threw his hips into an exaggerated sway. A .45, huge against his small frame, slapped his thigh at every step. The two men trailing him carried M-16s. They, too, wore the traditional black pajamas. Taller than the other man, they moved with more deliberation. Harker knew he was looking at a transplanted city man with two sturdy farm boys as his escort.

  The leader introduced himself. “My name Cao.” He strained for something else to say in English and Harker answered easily in Vietnamese. “I am Dai Uy Harker, a friend of Dai Uy Chavez.” Pretending not to see the small man’s surprise, he went on, “It is important that I speak to you privately. Dai Uy Chavez told me of an important matter in your area of responsibility. I think we can help each other.”

  Cao looked sour and when he answered his voice was pitched low enough to prevent his men hearing his comments. “I am Saigonese, Dai Uy, and I have worked with Americans enough to know you treasure directness. Very well. If Chavez has told you what we plan, then you have told someone. By tonight we will either be marching into an ambush or wasting our time.”

  Harker shook his head. “I hope not, because I will be with you. I do not think I would want these men to think I arranged an ambush for them. If the enemy did not kill me, I am sure they would.” He looked past Cao to the two escorts and was shocked to see how young the shorter one was. He was less shocked but less reassured to see his measuring stare.

  Cao said, “We have never had an American on one of our operations.”

  “You have never conducted an operation that was world famous.”

  “I do not understand.”

  “That is why we must speak in private.”

  Cao shrugged and gestured at the gate. “Come inside. Even if we cannot help each other, the people will be heartened to see that one of you is willing to visit us.”

  Staying an exact half-step in front, Cao led the way. They passed through a gate breaching the first obstacle in the village’s defenses, a double-apron barbed wire fence. Harker noted the precision of the posts and the sharpened punji sticks sown inside the hollow pyramid created by the strung wire. Tin cans dangled from the strands. A few feet behind the geometry of the double apron, coils of concertina wandered in seeming haphazard placement. Looking past them to the wall he saw most of the longer lines were enfiladed from portholes. The last obstacle prior to the wall itself was a moat. They crossed it on a drawbridge and Harker was certain the mud bottom featured more of the bamboo punjis that studded the red earth of the embankment. On entering, he jerked his thumb over his shoulder and said to Cao, “I am very impressed by your defenses, but I saw no mines or claymores. Would you like me to tell Chavez you need more?”

  For the first time, Cao smiled. It made him look much younger and, amazingly, much more dangerous.

  “We have plenty, thank you. We put them out at night. Always in the dark, always in a different place.”

  Harker was further impressed.

  The children, as always, were the first to shout welcome. Harker answered questions as quickly as he could, enjoying their incredible zest. There was something about the children that always filled him with an anomalous joy and simultaneous melancholy. Their untarnished laughter invariably reminded him of the sakura, the Japanese cherry blossoms, treasured for fragile beauty and the fact that their wondrousness could be terminated with terrible swiftness too many ways.

  Shy adults edged closer, spoke their greetings and laughed with naive pleasure to hear the tall, blond man answer in their own tongue.

  Dignity cloaking every move, Cao led the way into his house-cum-command post. “I live exactly as the people live,” he said proudly, indicating his two rooms with a glance. “This is my kitchen and our planning room. I sleep in the other room. We are a poor village, but free. And safe here. Our defenses are good and everything is salvaged, except weapons, ammunition, and our communications.”

  Harker noted the radio, Cao’s link with the government, incongruously technical on a slapdash wooden desk against a mud wall. Even more incongruous was the incredible firepower it commanded. Wryly, Harker thought how the hitch was that the enemy had long since learned to avoid villages like this one and the government couldn’t fortify all villages. Even without the government’s enemies screaming about coercion, the old strategic hamlet concept was an unbearable strain because the people needed to farm to live and to farm they needed to live near their land and as long as they were on the land and unprotected, the terror came with enough frequency to separate them from the government. Now the country lived in fear while suffering constantly alternating liberations.

  Harker dismissed all that and pressed his reason for
coming to Cao’s village.

  “Chavez told me you expect an NVA unit to meet supply barges and unload them tonight and you plan to hit them at first light. Why not report what you know and have a regular unit make the attack while they are busy with the transfer?”

  Cao motioned to a chair and settled himself on his cot. “For two reasons. First, as Chavez probably told you, I do not trust Saigon. I told you it is my home? Already I am afraid the operation is useless. But the other reason is the more compelling. The people in this area bring me information. They trust me. The enemy will use local people to move those supplies. If there is an attack before the supplies are safely stored, those people will die along with a few troops. But by waiting until the people are released, I will attack only the enemy. When the main unit hears the fight, they will come running to protect their people and their supplies. Then I will call for help.”

  Harker grinned and leaned forward in his chair. “I think I have found the man I need.”

  * * *

  The thirty-man patrol was indistinguishable behind Cao, their black clothes blending into the greater blackness of the night and the shadows of the houses. The slight man glanced Harker’s way before signaling his people forward. A shuffling sigh announced the departure of the first element.

  Whispering, Cao said, “You see, we go out over the wall, not through the gate. The first men carry mats to cover the wire. The rattling cans are already cleared. The mine party took them down.”

  “And the mines?”

  Cao’s teeth flashed in the dark. “Well marked. I hope.”

  Harker shifted the suddenly heavy M-16 slung on his shoulder. In a few minutes Cao tapped his arm and they were moving up and over the embankment.

  It was good to be moving, Harker thought, and his senses expanded in anticipation. The pieces of white cloth on the marked punjis and mines were like light bulbs and when extra effort forced a sound from one of the patrol he heard it with the clarity of trumpet notes.