Unconventional Warfare

by Chris Lynch

  “Yeah,” I say, “and the rich food you were forcing on me. What was that, anyway? I was afraid to ask before, but since I won’t have to eat it anymore I guess I can know without puking. Was it snake? It was snake, I’m guessing.”

  He hesitates before answering, the steady clomping of our boots up the path making it more noticeable.

  “It was not snake.”

  “Don’t tell me it was some kind of rodent.”

  “I will not tell you it was some kind of rodent.”

  “Can I get a hint?”

  “I suppose, sure. Let’s say it would make sense to find that you’d gained weight from eating the flesh of this particular creature.”

  For a few seconds, I’m finding this almost fun, this guessing game, this distraction from the mess we’re in and the danger ahead. For a very few seconds. Then the fun ends with a thump.

  “Let go of me!” I shout, pulling away from the colonel. He tries to hang on to me, but doesn’t use too much of his superior strength. He lets go, and I spin away from him, into the low green growth beside the path, onto my hands and knees.

  I spend what feels like an hour down there, heaving my empty guts out, until I topple sideways and prop myself on one hip and one hand. Macias is right there beside me, clasping my shoulder.

  “He saved your life, Dan. Try and see it that way.”

  “I killed him,” I say. “He gave me life, I gave him death.” And for the first time I can remember, and possibly the first time in my life as far as I can think, I start crying, sobbing and bawling into the ground. I punch the earth with my free hand and let myself fall face-first into the foliage. “He saved my life and I took his. That’s great, Col. Macias. That is just fantastic. You should have just let me die. You had no right. No right to do—”

  In his swiftest and strongest move of the day, Col. Macias grabs a fistful of shirt at the back of my neck with one hand, yanks me up toward him, and smacks me mightily across the face with the other. My mouth feels instantly puffy, but my crying ceases, as if he has ripped my tear ducts right out. My bandages are more soaked and rotten smelling than ever.

  “Grow up, soldier. Grow up and live. There was zero chance I was going to allow you to die then, and there is zero chance I am going to allow it now.”

  “Yes, sir,” I say as he pulls me all the way to my feet with the strength of his one arm.

  “Do you hear that sound?” he says, gesturing up the hill, where the engine of some small aircraft is buzzing away on the other side.

  “Yes, Colonel.”

  “Good, because we have to run into position to signal that aircraft before it flies right over us and away again.” He takes out his signal mirror and points straight uphill. “I can’t drag you now, Daniel, so I’m going to scramble as fast as possible to the first viable clearing. You make your way up there any way you can.”

  “If I can,” I say, though I don’t mean to say it, wish I hadn’t said it.

  “Are you developing a taste for slaps or something, Manion?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You were trained for this, soldier. Now do it.”

  “I will,” I say firmly, and he starts hightailing it up the hill. “Might even pass you before you get there!” I add, just a bit of the old spirit creeping back up.

  “That’s the stuff,” he calls back.

  That feels good.

  It is, however, the only thing that feels good right now—in my head, in my stomach, in my heart.

  The truth is, I crawl like a baby most of the way up the hill. It’s been my big baby day, I guess, with all the crawlin’ and bawlin’.

  I get far enough to see when Col. Macias’s mirror catches the attention of the spotter plane. It’s an extremely cool O-2 Skymaster, the kind they call Mixmaster because it has front and rear propellers for hoverability, and a twin-fin tail. I see the flash of the O-2’s response, followed immediately by first one and then a second jumper, parachuting toward the ground before the plane turns for home.

  This is a great sight, a welcome sight, and the last real thing I see for quite some time, as my crawl up the mountain takes me another couple of hours.

  When I finally reach Col. Macias, plenty has happened. The rescuers have already found him, and they’re all huddling over the colonel’s map-shirt. For a moment it feels as if I wasn’t even expected.

  Then Lopez looks up.

  “Hey! Hey!” he calls, scrambling down twenty feet of ground to meet me. He picks me up off the ground and hustles me up to where the other two guys are sitting.

  “Where have you been?” Col. Macias says with a slight smile. “Another ten minutes and we were going to leave without you.”

  “I was taking advantage of the rare opportunity to see the country right up close,” I say.

  Macias laughs. Lopez takes my chin in his hand and examines my face intently.

  “What happened to your eye, Bug?”

  “What, this?” I say, pointing at my pirate patch. “It just got a little irritated, from that fight we had. But because you’re such a patty-caker it took forever to even swell up.”

  “Well, then, good for me,” Lopez says, “because you look a lot better this way.”

  “Actually, I hit him,” Macias says, not inaccurately. I look up in his direction again and only just notice that the man standing beside him is Henry, and he’s carrying the radio on his back.

  “Henry!” I say, very happy to see him still with us. Then I think on it. “Where are Cabot and Lodge?” I ask cautiously.

  “Got themselves killed,” Lopez says. “Not long after your chopper was shot down.”

  “The way I understand it,” Macias says, “it was friendly fire. As they were trying to run out of the camp.”

  “Friendly?” I ask, looking toward Lopez. “Who was it … you?”

  He smiles broadly at me, then points a friendly-fire finger in the direction of Radioman Henry.

  I look to Henry, who gives me a shy, modest smile and then goes back to studying the map.

  “Right,” Macias says definitively. “Time to call this in.”

  Henry hands him the radio as Lopez leans close to me and says, “See that radio thing? Comes in handy, you know? Might want to think about taking one with you next time you go out on a field trip.”

  “Please, Gust,” I say. “Not now. Go easy on me, here. I don’t think I could handle it just yet. Still a little bit weak, you know?”

  “Okay, weakling, you got a deal. For now. But I brought you something that I think you’ll be able to handle pretty well.”

  He reaches into a pouch attached to his web gear and pulls out a stack of letters. Letters addressed to me, in a familiar fancy lettering.

  “They’ve been coming every day or two lately,” he says, laughing as I snatch the whole bunch out of his hand in a wink of one good eye.

  Dear Son,

  I am still here. Wherever you are, I am still here. I will always be here, waiting for you to come back. I never doubt for one moment that you’ll do just that, and I will be waiting. Maybe you’re on your way to home right now, for all I know.

  I don’t need to know everything, and I don’t expect to know everything. Whatever you’re doing, I’m certain it’s important and that you are carrying out your duties with such skill and courage that I would be bursting with pride.

  I am, in fact, bursting with pride, despite not knowing.

  Not knowing, I have to confess, is supremely difficult.

  Write soon. I’ll write sooner.

  Love,

  Dad

  Dear Daniel,

  People ask about you every day. Without fail, every day. Folks at the printing plant, at the market, even teachers at the school, when I have to go down there and deal with some episode or another involving those scamp brothers of yours. Oh, they’re fine. They are good boys, just in need of a bit more than most, in terms of guidance. But you’d know a thing or two about that, wouldn’t you, my boy?

&nb
sp; You know, I almost miss it. Even your rambunctious mayhem.

  Who among us would ever have thought that possible, eh, my boy?

  Mr. Macias isn’t at the school anymore, which apparently I’m late in knowing. He reenlisted in the service. Why anyone would want to do that in this day and age, with the way things are going, is beyond me entirely. Do you know anything about this? Speaking of guidance: That was one person who did you a great deal of good. A fine man there, Mr. Macias. I hope he’s all right.

  You take care of yourself, Dan. I still expect to see you strolling through the front door any time now. But perhaps you should give me a bit of advance notice, so that you don’t give me a stroke or anything. I don’t suppose either one of us would like that very much, would we?

  It would still be worth it, however, just to see you back and safe.

  My good eye is going all gooey at this point, to the extent that it’s getting nearly impossible to read. I keep dabbing and wiping and reading as best I can.

  Why would he say something like that? About a stroke? How is he? This must be killing him, all these questions about where I am. I am going to write him a million letters as soon as I get back to camp, let him know everything is all right.

  His calligraphy isn’t right. That last letter looks like someone else wrote it, it’s so shaky and rough. It’s better than anybody else’s calligraphy, of course, but not altogether up to my dad’s usual standard. I hope he’s all right. I hope my ratface brothers aren’t making things difficult. I’ll kill them. I know how, fifty-five different ways.

  Dad shouldn’t have to go down to the school to sort them out. Mr. Macias would have sorted them out, sorted them right out, if he were still there.

  But he’s not. He’s here. Sorting me out.

  “Daniel,” Col. Macias says. Then both of his hands are on my shoulders as I begin tearing open the next letter.

  I look up into his suddenly soft face.

  “Those will have to wait, son.”

  “My dad says hello,” I say. “And thanks.” I’m finding myself getting weary and bleary.

  “What?” the colonel says, startled.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “He doesn’t know you’re here with me. He’s talking about before. Back home. School … and the rest. Says you’re a fine man.”

  “Ah,” he says, relaxing slightly and then looking sharply into me. “Well, your father is as fine a man as they come. I’m planning on telling him that myself when I get back. But right now, we have a rendezvous to make. The timing must be precise or it won’t happen. And, if I may be blunt in the interest of brevity, you dying here, over the fence, means your father will never know what became of you.”

  If ever there was a cold splash of water to snap a soldier to attention, that was surely the water.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  By now it must simply be reflex for him, but on the word go, Col. Macias seizes me in the old familiar three-legged race grip. He’s got my arm slung over his shoulders and his arm around my back. He’s already leaning into the first strides of the trip to rendezvous when we’re accosted by Lopez, who jumps into our path.

  “Sir,” Lopez says, “two highly trained, equipped, and well-rested Special Forces operatives have been sent out into the field to retrieve two weary and wounded Special Forces brothers. Could you allow us to do that, please?”

  While I’m getting more drained and disoriented by the minute, I can still recognize that as a major-league jump into the breach from my old pal Gustavo Lopez.

  And even better, Col. Macias recognizes it as such. He gives Lopez a look that says, “Maybe just this once,” then hands me over to Gust. Henry leads us along the assigned path, to the tiny patch of opportunity that awaits us a half mile uphill.

  * * *

  Because there’s nothing remotely resembling a landing zone anywhere around here, and because the whole once-sleepy two-mile radius around our beloved waterfall has become increasingly hot with VC snipers, we have few options for this operation.

  We hear the chopper coming very low over the hill, just above the treetops, when we gather ourselves at the tiny clearing, no bigger than a picnic table.

  “Right, now, just like this,” Lopez says, producing out of his web gear a canvas belt that looks like it was made for strapping heavy loads together on a moving van. With that belt, he binds me to him so tightly that we have to take turns breathing. We are belly-to-belly, and as the chopper comes loud and close but still out of view, he hugs me hard and tells me, “We got this.”

  A couple of feet behind me, I hear the same exchange between Henry and Macias.

  “We do,” says Macias, because he can never just listen and accept something. “We got this.”

  In less than an instant, the chopper has found us. The way it’s bearing down, hovering directly above our ridiculously tiny opening in the lush Laotian canopy, it feels as much a threat as salvation. The power of the rotor rush practically flattens us to the ground. But with Gust and Henry in charge, nothing like that is happening here.

  “Hold tight,” Gust says, “like you never held tight before.”

  I do exactly that. And the next thing I know, the two of us have grabbed on to the rope ladder lowered from the helicopter. Gust practically has to drag me, but between the two of us we make it up two, three, four, five rungs, enough for the other pair to climb on behind us.

  “Go, go, go, go!” Henry calls, when he and Col. Macias have secured themselves to the ladder.

  The chopper pilots don’t have to be told twice, much less four times. They take off, up, and away, with such thrust that we’re trailing behind the helicopter like a kite tail.

  When we’ve gotten some height above the tree line, one of the crew shouts down, “Don’t climb. We’ll reel you in.”

  In a couple of seconds I realize why he had to say that, as I feel Henry’s head bumping up against my butt. Those guys were anxious enough to get aboard that they were willing to pass us by to do it.

  They’re anxious for good reason.

  We’re not more than sixty seconds out of the pickup zone when the sound kicks off.

  Rattatataaatatatatatattaaatatata!

  The rifle and machine gun fire feels like it comes at us from all angles. We’re a blimp above a baseball game, where the first, second, and third basemen have AK-47s, and the pitcher, catcher, shortstop, and outfielders are all aiming up with snipers’ rifles.

  This area surely has become hot since we first arrived at the waterfall. It’d be nice to think that it was all because of us.

  I feel a bullet tear into my upper right thigh. Then another one burns through my left calf.

  The heroic crew member who shouted at us to just hang there is now hauling us up through the hail of bullets, like the world’s bravest, craziest, strongest marlin fisherman.

  When he’s finally hauled all us fish on board, I can barely look around me. I still hear the bullet rounds pinging across the chopper, inside and out. I sense that all four of us are laid out along the deck of the helicopter as at least two medics work us over. Then the bullet pings are decreasing, and I raise my head to look to my right, past and over my bad eye, trying to get a half-decent look at the other guys along the line.

  While nothing is at all sure in this moment, I think I see the last man lying is Col. Macias. He has pops and punctures pulsing blood out of him anywhere you care to look.

  I decide I don’t care to look, which is just as well, because at that instant a medic jams a needle into my arm and all is swiftly gone to black.

  Hey Ho Danno,

  In case you didn’t guess, this isn’t Dad. I started out trying to do his stupid cally-graphy thing, but that wouldn’t have fooled you, either.

  Don’t know where you are, or what you’re doing, but I just hope you are killing heaps of the people who need killing. Not that I have any respect for you or anything, but I bet you are. And I bet you’re doing a good job of it.

  Okay, thoug
h, see, Dad’s not all that good. He doesn’t go to work a lot of days. You know the plant and how they treat him with his polio and stuff. They are great. He’s not great. He wasn’t even able to keep writing, really. Not the way he wanted to, but he kept on trying. When he got too shaky, can you believe he even tried to go back to the right hand to write to you? THE BAD ONE. That’s when I had it, Danny Boy. That’s when I had to take over. Took his pens right away from him and everything.

  I’m not supposed to be doing this. He made me promise I would not do this. But hey, who knows better than you do about doing what you’re not supposed to do? Right? Who taught ME about not doing what you’re supposed to do and doing what you’re not supposed to do?

  But anyway, he’s not doing so good. Just so you know. Just so somebody told you. Because he never would, and anyway now he can’t even if he wants to.

  Not that you will even know, or even get this. Not that you could even do anything about it if you did get it. But somebody should at least try and tell you. Wherever you are.

  Where are you, Dan? Are you even out there? Are you even Dan? Where are you?

  Well, that’s that, anyway. If you do come home, I’ll slap you silly.

  See ya.

  Edgar, your Lord and Master

  I have two medical operations in Thailand, where I do officially exist. They completely undo and redo my eye, bringing it to the point of viability, if not complete functionality. There are at least two more operations to come once I return to the United States.

  But whatever I wind up with, it’s already a given that Col. Macias saved both my life and my eye.

  Of the trailwatch team of highly trained, dedicated Special Operations operatives I started out with—overseeing movements on the Ho Chi Minh Trail—there is now only me.

  Technically, they’re all gone, like they never existed. While I get to head back home.

  But I remember. I remember every one of them, and I carry them home with me. And in that small way, at least, no one gets left behind.

  Dad,