by Chris Lynch
“You understood once, Danny, that when I point and say kill, that you kill. No questions, no hesitations. Your questions and hesitations could be somebody else’s death. The wrong somebody. One of the good guys. Maybe me.”
“We’ve arrived at our destination, Colonel,” the pilot calls out. “We’ll be dropping down in just a minute.”
“Very good,” Col. Macias calls back. Then he turns to me once more. “I know you know, Danny. But sometimes we need to be reminded that we know what we know. You know?”
“I … know,” I say sluggishly. Whether it was his intention or not, I can’t stop the flood of rememberings, good and bad and worse.
Of course it was his intention. Everything is always his intention.
As we pass over a clearing, down in a low hollow in the jungle, the pilot and copilot both point out my side of the chopper. Something’s there. Then, Macias sees it and joins the pointing party, urging me to see.
Then, as if these things are connected, he says, “You can’t be questioning your team, either. Guys doing what they have to do is hard enough without being challenged by their closest buddies.”
“We’ll put you guys down in the clearing higher up,” the copilot says as we bank away from the scene down below. The scene I finally caught. “Then we’ll take off and be back for you again in one hour. Make sure you’re at the pickup zone. That should give you plenty of time to get it done.”
Now I really do want to be thrown out of the airborne helicopter.
Except that I’d probably land on top of that great, sad, unlucky beast, still wandering in circles, still streaked with blood from Lopez’s bullet.
* * *
Time to get it done.
“You couldn’t really be telling me to do this, Colonel, sir.”
“Why couldn’t I? And also, I thought we just established that you weren’t going to be questioning my decisions anymore.”
I’m following Col. Macias as we hike down a tricky stretch of dense hillside jungle. I’m as close behind him as I can be without stepping on the heels of his boots, just close enough that we can communicate without risking being heard.
“With all due respect, sir, that wasn’t a question. It was more of a speculation.”
“Daniel, you are reminding me more and more of that wise guy kid who maybe should have been sent to jail by the judge.”
“I swear, that is not my intention, sir. But … what does my shooting an elephant contribute to the greater … ?”
“That is a question,” he says before I can even complete it. Then he raises his hand sharply to cut off any more discussion.
Several stumbling, scrambling minutes later, we emerge onto the periphery of the small clearing where the elephant has secluded himself. I have deep scratches over my hands, arms, and neck from battling through the foliage, but nothing like what the elephant is dealing with. In addition to the bullet wound in his neck, he appears to have scuffs and angry abrasions on his shoulders, his trunk, and his backside. Col. Macias has signaled for us to get down on the ground, where we’re now both lining up the target the way snipers do.
I watch the elephant through the scope of my gun. He’s banging himself into the trunk of one tree, then another. Then he rubs himself, too hard to be comforting, against the hard wood. He looks both crazed and innocent, trying to work out what is killing him and to fix it with even more pain.
He looks almost foolish, with his big baby head and his relatively small ears. He has two tusks of different lengths, and they look like white cigars tucked under his lip on either side of his trunk. The longer tusk, maybe a foot and a half long, also seems to be bothering him. He rams it every few seconds into a tree.
I feel my breath quicken, feel my chest pushing me up and down, off the dense turf. I think of how terrified I’ve been at every dentist appointment of my life. I try to imagine what an immense tooth like that must feel like when it’s aching, and how madly unfair it is for him to have a bad tooth on top of everything else.
He swings his head back and forth like a crazy thing, rolling his eyes up to the sky and down to the ground, as if he is thinking, Why me, why me? And why shouldn’t he be asking that now?
“Manion,” Col. Macias says firmly, having given me all the time to get used to this he can allow.
I have never had this kind of trouble focusing on a target. I’ve never had any trouble whatsoever focusing on a target. The gun is steady, my hands are steady, but I blink and I blink and I blink, trying to blink this whole thing away. I’m almost convinced that after one more I’ll open my eyes and find it’s all over, one way or another.
“Manion,” Macias says once more, with decreased patience and increased anger.
He’s suffering, I finally tell myself. That poor beast is in pain. He is hurting, and now he’s hurting himself.
I keep my eyes wide and dry now, as I aim true at his earhole.
Suddenly, as if he hears us or smells us or whatever magical sensory thing elephants can surely do, he turns squarely our way. He works up a head of steam, and he is charging hard—straight enough that in another five or so seconds he’ll have us trampled into mulch.
The first shot rings out, slams into the front of his bulging skull, and he stops short. He stands there, confused and looking like his feelings have been hurt as much as anything else.
Then he turns ninety degrees, giving us the full side view.
“I did my part, Manion,” Col. Macias says, lowering his weapon. “Now, you do yours, or I swear I will send you all the way back to that judge’s courtroom.”
The elephant is suffering, I say again to myself. This has to be done. There’s no other way. Do it, Dan! Do it!
Craack. The rifle kicks. The smoke curls straight back to my nostrils.
The great big toy of a creature stumbles sideways with his two front legs, while the rear of him tries to stay planted. Then his back legs stagger into place. Then his front knees buckle and he’s in praying position. His trunk rises and he attempts what was probably once a mighty trumpet.
Struggling hard, he gets back up on all four legs, only to have the back half of him give up.
Craack. I can’t take it, and I shoot him again. His knees buckle again, and he’s all down, legs under him like a defenseless newborn calf. He looks around for answers, does not appear to find any up in the sky, and so gives up on everything and topples all the way over.
The way he lands, he winds up with his trunk pointing in my direction, like an accusation. Blood is pooling under him from the head and neck wounds. He tries to look right at me with his good eye, as well as the goopy hole where I’ve shot the other one out.
I don’t even notice when Col. Macias gets up, until he kicks me medium-hard in the side to get me moving as well.
If he’d kick me much harder I might feel better.
* * *
Regardless of rank or respect or any other unreal factor of this military life, there’s no way any colonel or general or commander in chief of the United States Armed Forces could force me to speak as we make our way back to the pickup zone.
Fortunately, whether it’s because of uncommon perceptiveness or something else, Macias has no interest in trying.
It’s starting to feel as if we truly do know every in and out of the jungle, all along the Laotian stretch of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That’s helpful as we make our way silently back to the spot where we’ll rendezvous with our extraction helicopter. The only sounds I notice are the calls of birds, the minimal crunching of branches underfoot, and the screeching of all those memories I’m now ordered to live with.
Until we hear the sound of chopper blades. As we climb to within approximately fifty yards of the landing spot, Macias starts double-timing his march, crawling up the forest wall. I stick close behind, out of blind instinct and good training.
We scramble to thirty yards, then twenty, and we can see the perfectly timed descent of our fly-boy pals coming to extract us from the dangerous
and decidedly unpleasant tropical killing zone we’re in.
When the thwopping of the rotor blades becomes the only sound we can hear, we accelerate toward it, timing it to get there when the skids finally touch the ground.
But another sound intervenes.
Schwoooop … booom! A rocket sails nearly straight over our heads and slams into the side of the chopper. A half second later, a second one from the opposite side of the hill hits with a tremendous bu-hoom!
We lie flat on the ground to watch the helicopter with our two pals tilt sideways and hack away at heavy woodlands. The trees sound almost as sickening as breaking bones as they snap and crunch.
The chopper is mostly gold fire and black smoke as it thuds to earth and explodes on impact.
There’s nothing for us to run to at the top of the hill anymore, and everything in the world to run away from.
So before we join the bonfire and the casualties list, the colonel and I angle toward a spot halfway between the two rocket nests and start barreling back down the hill, as fast as our legs will carry us.
And when our legs won’t carry us, we stumble and crash and skid and somersault and jump and dive and flop our way down.
“Can you get up?” Col. Macias asks, slapping both of my cheeks to wake me up.
“How come you get to ask questions if I can’t?” I say by way of response.
He smiles broadly, close in to my face.
“That is a question, Manion. But I’m glad to see you are still with us. That was quite a tumble.”
“It was quite a whole bunch of tumbles,” I say.
I landed awkwardly, almost on all fours but more like an NFL lineman in his three-point stance just before the snap. Also like a lineman, I appear to have attempted to tackle a sturdy tree, which is where my shoulder is now embedded. The tree seems to be okay, though the jury is still out on me.
Macias is addressing me from the opposite side of the tree, with his shoulder leaning into it as well. Maybe I did knock the tree off its cleats, and the colonel is propping it up.
I don’t believe that, but I do think it. Because it seems I got my bell rung during my personal avalanche down the hill.
“Time to take inventory,” he says, reaching around the tree to get a firm grasp of my upper arm.
Slowly, I go with the momentum of his effortlessly powerful tug. I can hear all my bones and joints creaking, like the splitting old wood of a dying tree. It feels like not one square-inch patch of my surface has escaped a pulping. And nothing beneath the surface has gotten off any lighter. My elbows, shoulders, knees, and ankles feel like some sadistic torturers have been twisting them all in directions they were never intended to twist. Bruises are already whispering nastily about how they’re going to torment my muscles three days from now.
But nothing appears to be broken. And there’s no blood exiting my body from anyplace dire. I get to my feet and address my commanding officer in what I feel is a steady, sturdy military stance. All things considered.
“Aside from the broken nose, the blood, and whatever that slurry is pouring out of the bottom of your eye, I’d say you came away from our little mishap largely unscathed.”
Unscathed. Unscathed? This is not unscathed. This is somewhat scathed. Unscathed is what Col. Macias is right now, after enduring the exact same little mishap. Aside from maybe a scuff on his forehead, he stands before me as the same cast-iron character I’ve known since the first time I met him.
I think now maybe even the forehead scuff is just something I’m hallucinating. It’s getting watery and blurry the more I look for it.
“When we get back,” he says, “we should do a little extra work on your land-and-roll technique, so you don’t get so banged-up next time.” He tugs gently at my belt, leading me away from where we landed, and farther away from where the wrecked helicopter never quite landed.
“My land-and-roll isn’t bad. It was all those stupid trees.”
“Yeah? Well I wish all my guys were as sturdy as those stupid trees. And as trustworthy, may I add.”
I follow as closely as I can, but Macias is hard to keep up with at the best of times. Now my head is thumping, my body is creaking, and suddenly it’s getting difficult to see. We cannot slow down, though, or Charlie will find us for sure. We have to get clear of this area.
“Are you saying I’m not trustworthy, sir?” I ask. And that thought hurts as much as everything else combined.
“Absolutely not, Danny. It’s the Meo boys. I don’t know which one, but somebody in that group betrayed us to the enemy. That was an ambush. They were waiting because they were tipped off. Our little errand was unofficial, off the books, and only a very few guys knew about it. We’ll know who did the ratting when we get back and see who’s deserted camp. Assuming they have the sense to run before I get my claws into them, which I sincerely hope they do not.”
I don’t know if this distressing information has anything to do with it, but I’m rapidly running down, losing power as well as sight. We cross a shallow stream about two feet deep and maybe ten yards across, when suddenly I pitch forward into the water face-first.
Next thing I know, the colonel has me up and is carrying my soggy, sorry self to the far side of the stream and several yards beyond. He sets me down in the first available foliage, propping me in sitting position, with my back against the base of a tree that’s angled like a recliner. It is not, however, relaxing.
“There’s a problem,” he says as he looks into my eyes with a mini pinpoint flashlight.
“Oh, is there?” I ask, trying to sound less like a wise guy and more like a numbskull.
“Ah,” he says with his broad toothy smile, though I can only just about make it out. “That, my friend, is why you’re here. Coolness under pressure. Or possibly just a very useful insanity.”
“Either way, I’ll take the compliment, Colonel. But maybe now you should tell me what the problem is.”
He starts flicking the light this way and that—up and down and left and right—making me follow without moving my head. The watery blur effect is increasing, and there’s an unfamiliar strain while I’m muscling my eyeballs all around.
“How do your eyes feel?”
“Up until just this minute, my eyes were the only spots on my whole body that were not in pain. The right one is all out of focus and syrupy, though. And there’s a scratchy feeling, right around here.” I point to the spot behind my right eye bone, the part that’s tucked safely inside my skull, unless I look sharply to the left.
“Look sharply to your left for me.”
I do my best to follow his order, and this is where things start to intensify. The scratchy feeling gets worse, like a cat is clawing away up there. And the muscles behind the eye—which I had never thought about even once in my life—feel like someone is working on them with a soldering iron.
I growl as quietly as I can, and involuntarily pull my head away from him. He’s seen enough, however.
“Okay, Daniel, let’s get right to it. You are not only losing blood, but your right eye has been punctured. The vitreous substance that makes up your eye structure—the egg white, basically—was stabbed from the corner by a rock or a pointed tree branch or something. That egg white, along with blood, is leaking out of you at an unsustainable rate. If something isn’t done about it, your eye will be flat like a leaky tire by the morning.”
Among Col. Macias’s many gifts, both as a military leader and a high school teacher, is the ability to spell something out in such crisp detail that if you don’t get his point, you deserve whatever happens to you.
“You know this for certain, sir?”
“I do.”
I’ve found that stress and fear—which in this moment are both present and accounted for—have the effect of making me diversionary and inquisitive. “Just out of curiosity, Col. Macias, do you know … actually, everything?”
“I do, yes.”
That should probably make me feel better. It does no s
uch thing.
“But specific to the matter at hand, I’ve seen this injury before. Once, on a survival exercise, I accidentally stabbed a man in the eye.”
“How do you do that accidentally, if I may ask, sir?”
“I was trying to stab him in the temple.”
I am almost out of steam, and surely out of casual questions. Wooziness is taking hold.
“Colonel, what do we mean by if something isn’t done?”
He takes a moment, and a deep breath, which is not his usual way.
“I need to stitch your eye.”
“You mean, like, around my eye?”
“Soldier, I have to put a couple stitches into your eyeball, to halt the exodus of your vitreous. Otherwise you are going to lose your eye.”
“The exodus of my vitreous. You make me sound a lot more complex and substantial than I deserve.”
Col. Macias leans in so close I can almost see the details of his rugged warrior–guidance counselor face. “You deserve it.”
Then he pulls back and slips off his web gear, which is a sort of complicated fishing vest for carrying the department store of survival items we’re required to carry in the field. It’s not nearly as loaded as usual, likely because of the unofficial, unmilitary, and frankly unnecessary nature of our outing.
He takes off his shirt, lays it out on the ground, and studies the highly detailed cloth map of the area that he’s sewn in there.
“What we need,” he says, snorting at whatever he’s finding on the map, “is to get to that waterfall. Chopper guys have been using it as a marker for nearby LZs pretty regularly. If we can get there, we can buy ourselves a little time and breathing room, ’til somebody up there spots us. Charlie doesn’t have a lot of use for that area. It’s too far off the trail, and doesn’t really lead to anyplace strategically useful.”