A thunderstorm blew up that afternoon. Bamboo groves rattled and clacked in the wind. The rain swarmed down the road—they could see it come—and hit them. Hanson moved up against the side of a big tree that offered a view of the road and a little shelter, but the wind-driven rain worked through the leaves and branches, and he was soon wet to the skin, sudden furious gusts of hard rain stinging his face.
You don’t move in weather like that because you can’t hear. To be safe, you stop and wait it out. Hanson concentrated on a distant hilltop, imagining himself there, and soon he was watching himself from the hilltop, relaxed but alert, barely conscious of the cold. He sensed some disturbance and turned in time to see one of the Americans break through the brush below the road. His arms and face were scratched and he was shouting into the wind.
The minesweeping team hadn’t known to stop when the rain struck. They had continued on down the trail, and the rain, puddled in a dip in the roadbed, had prevented the mine detector from picking up a booby-trapped artillery shell.
Hanson and Quinn ran after the soldier, splashing and slipping in the red mud, rain and brush lashing at them, their packs and ammo pouches beating at their backs and thighs.
The ponchos the Americans were holding over the road had the sheen of rain and gray light. The acrid stink of explosive still hung in the damp air. Two of them were lying in the road—the buck sergeant and one of the privates who’d been in the trench the night before. Quinn knelt to check the buck sergeant. “Dead,” he said.
The private was lying in a puddle of muddy, blood-streaked water, and ponchos had been draped over his body like rubber blankets. Two soldiers were holding a poncho over his head to keep the rain off his face. He was almost bled out, his face a waxy yellow, his blond hair matted with mud and grit. It looked as though he were dissolving into the mud. Part of his right arm, ragged and torn away at the elbow, was sticking out from beneath a poncho.
One of the Americans whispered, “Look at his legs.” Hanson knelt and lifted the edge of a poncho, sending little rivulets of water and blood running off, and looked under. Both legs were gone. What was left of them still hung together by scraps of muscle and skin and pieces of fatigue pants. One foot, untouched and still in the boot, was twisted around backward, dangling just off the ground from a thick silver tendon. Above the knees his legs were full of holes, the thighs bent and bowed. They looked like the legs of an old discarded rubber doll, gray and decomposed with age, gouts of muscle tissue sticking out of the holes in the skin like pinkish-gray foam rubber.
“Hold that poncho down a little farther,” the lieutenant said as he stood, just looking.
The one who had told Hanson to look at the legs said something else, and the lieutenant said, “Just shut up.”
The wounded boy didn’t seem to be in any pain.
The water was speeding the flow of blood out of his wounds and putting him deep into shock. “Okay,” Hanson said, glancing at the lieutenant, “we gotta get him out of this water. Let’s get around him, all lift together, and get him over there on that piece of high ground.”
“Right,” the lieutenant said. “Let’s get him over there.”
Behind him, Hanson could hear Quinn yelling at the Vietnamese to set up a perimeter.
“Okay. Ready. Lift.”
Hanson lifted him by the hip and what remained of his left leg, but he couldn’t balance it and dropped him. The lieutenant, who should have lifted the other side, hadn’t moved. He just stood looking at the mangled leg, unable to bring himself to touch it.
Hanson saw Froggy standing back by himself.
“Froggy,” he said, “come over here and lift him by the ass. I’ll get his legs.”
“Okay, Sarge,” he said, and came over, past the lieutenant, and took hold.
The kid moaned as they lifted him, not because of the amputated limbs, but because of a small wound in his arm. The dangling foot kicked softly but insistently against Hanson’s hip as they moved off the road. The mine detector, still connected to a battery in the boy’s pocket, dragged through the mud beneath him.
Hanson tied off the amputated limbs with pieces of the mine detector battery cord. He pulled a canister of blood expander off his web gear, peeled open the canister, and removed a glass bottle of amber fluid, some IV tubing, and a large needle.
He had lost so much blood that it was difficult to find an artery in the arm he had left. Hanson stroked the artery inside the elbow and tried to slip the needle into it, but the flaccid artery kept rolling to the side. Hanson managed to pin it up against the inside of the arm, against the bone, and stick the needle in. He taped the IV to his arm, then got the blood expander, thick as honey, flowing down.
He handed the bottle to a skinny kid with acne. He was shivering, his thin, pocked face a pattern of blue and angry red. In a frightened, awed voice, as though he were having trouble remembering what it was he was saying, the skinny kid said, “Don’t worry. You’ll be okay.”
But the wounded kid was looking directly up at Hanson.
“I know you won’t let me die,” he said slowly. “You won’t. I’ll be on my way home in a few days.”
“What’s his name?” Hanson whispered to the skinny kid.
“Dave, I think. He’s a new guy.”
“Yeah,” Hanson said. “Just relax, Dave. I’ll take care of everything. Medivac’s on its way.”
“I know, Sarge. You won’t let me die. You know what you’re doing,” he said in a precise, almost disinterested monotone, as if he were talking about someone other than himself. “I don’t even care about my legs. I’ll make out. I still have a lot to live for,” he said. Hanson could hear Di Wee Tau shouting in Vietnamese and the medivac pilot breaking static on the radio.
“My mom and dad,” the kid said, “they’re really great. You should meet them. My girl Ann. She loves me. It won’t matter—about the legs. Just don’t let me die, okay?”
“No way you’re gonna die, Dave. Don’t even think about it. I’m taking care of everything.”
He smiled and closed his eyes.
Hanson took off down the road to look for a wide spot where they could bring the medivac chopper in, but he stopped for a moment and looked back to see the boy heave himself up on his one good arm and look down at his legs. His face was a combination of horror and utter calm.
Hanson found a bend in the road, skirting the river, where the trees weren’t so high. The chopper, if it couldn’t land, could at least get low enough to take on the casualties.
As he ran back to tell Di Wee Tau to secure the bend in the road, he could hear the lieutenant yelling, “Do I have to do everything myself? Doesn’t anybody else here have a brain? I’ve got a dead soldier and one that’s almost dead to take care of, and nobody…I’m gonna have some people’s asses when this is over. Try it again, Spangler.”
Froggy and the kid with acne were trying to make a stretcher out of a poncho and two lengths of bamboo, but it just wouldn’t hold the wounded kid’s weight.
The lieutenant was pacing back and forth while Froggy and the kid with acne struggled in the mud to adjust the poncho beneath the wounded kid’s back and roll it up on the bamboo. The kid looked scared. “Sarge,” he said when he saw Hanson, “I’m not gonna die. Tell him,” he said, looking at the lieutenant.
“Naw,” Hanson told him, “I’ll have the medivac drop a litter. We’ll use that. No sweat, Dave. I got it all under control. No problem.”
“Well, I see a problem,” the lieutenant said as Quinn stalked over. “What I see—” he continued, until Quinn wrapped a huge arm around his shoulders and lifted him to tiptoe.
“Sir,” Quinn said, “I need a little help with the radio, if you’ve got a second. Let’s ask ’em to drop a litter.”
The lieutenant stiffened in Quinn’s grip. Quinn whispered into his ear, and the lieutenant relaxed and walked along, his feet barely touching the ground.
The medivac chopper arrived on station, hovering, sideslipping, wa
iting. Hanson popped red smoke in the bend of the road, then crouched beneath a tree, covered his head with his arms, and hoped that the litter wouldn’t hit anyone. The chopper came pounding in, tail down, sucking the red smoke up through its rotor blades, blowing it out pink, lashing Hanson with leaves, twigs, and wads of mud. The litter sailed down, hit the roadbed on end, and somersaulted into the brush.
Hanson ran back with the litter, where they rolled the wounded kid onto it and carried him to the road, struggling to hold the litter level.
“Froggy,” Hanson yelled over his shoulder as he walked bowlegged, holding the litter with one hand and the bottle of blood expander with the other, “you two bring the sarge. Drag him. He doesn’t care anymore.”
At the bend in the road, the chopper hovered just off the ground, its blades chopping small branches off the trees. Hanson lifted his end of the litter up to the medivac attendants, handing them the still-flowing bottle of blood expander. The attendants and the door gunner had gleaming black bubbles hiding their faces. The huge flying machine hung in the air, and Hanson could feel the turbine shrieking in his back teeth.
They slid the litter the rest of the way over the lip of the open door, Dave’s back and buttocks scraping as they pushed him in. The rotor blast blew blood and water down the tilted litter onto the faces and chests of the soldiers holding the bottom. They stood the buck sergeant up, raised his arms as if he were surrendering, and the attendants grabbed his wrists and pulled him in.
The chopper rose slightly, seemed to hesitate a moment, swept into the wind, and was gone. Hanson slapped Froggy on the shoulder. “Thanks,” he told him.
Later that day they linked up with the other unit. A black GI came up to Hanson and said, “I know that buck sergeant who was KIA, but who was the other dude got his shit blowed away? Was he a brother or what?”
“Naw,” Hanson said. “White guy. His name was Dave.”
“Lotta Daves around. What did the dude look like?”
Hanson described him.
The soldier thought a moment, then brightened and said to another GI, “Hey, yeah. It was that ’cruit. That big blond-headed dude. He ain’t been in-country a month yet. Ain’t that some shit?”
By morning they had the company of Vietnamese strung out along the road at both ends of the bridge, waiting for the convoy to come through. As soon as it passed, they could start back for camp. The two American minesweeping units were camped together up the road.
The Vietnamese at the bridge were settling in for an easy morning, slinging their green hammocks and cooking breakfast. Quinn and Hanson found a shady spot near the bridge, and Hanson had his rucksack off, digging in it for a packet of coffee, when Di Wee Tau shouted from the other side of the road, “Trung Si, VC! VC!”
A noisy cluster of men formed, gesturing excitedly toward the river. Quinn and Hanson took their weapons and web gear and went over to see what was going on. Di Wee Tau turned to them, grinning. “VC go,” he said, pointing.
On the other side of the river, barely within rifle range, four Montagnard farmers and a pair of water buffalo were fording a waist-deep inlet. They were moving slowly, obviously not having seen the soldiers. Their conical straw hats bobbed brightly in the sun. The river glinted and flashed as it broke past them.
“Now fini’ VC,” Di Wee Tau said brightly, nodding his head in agreement with himself. He said something in Vietnamese to a young soldier hunched over an M-60 machine gun, who grinned up at them, showing black teeth. Another soldier, squatting near the machine gun, was eating his breakfast; squeezing a little plastic rice bag until a yellowish gob, a mouthful, oozed up, then biting it away.
Troc, the Montagnard interpreter, Mr. Minh’s nephew, watched from the tree line.
“Moc phut,” Hanson said to the machine gunner. “Wait a minute.”
The smile on Di Wee Tau’s face tightened. Officially Hanson and Quinn were only advisers, but unofficially they were in charge. The situation presented a delicate relationship of “face,” and by interfering with Di Wee Tau’s order to the gunner, Hanson had insulted him, humiliated him in front of his men.
“Little fucker needs the body count,” Quinn said to Hanson in a conversational tone.
Di Wee Tau was one of the many Vietnamese officers who had bought his rank in Da Nang. His boots were always spit-shined by his bat boy, his fatigues tailored ass-tight. Day and night he wore wraparound sunglasses, and the nails on the little finger of both his hands curved to yellow points an inch and a half long, a status symbol showing that he did not do manual labor. He used the nails to indicate routes and locations on field maps and to pick his nose and ears, imperiously probing them, examining his finds elaborately. He wouldn’t accept advice; neither would he admit mistakes. The day before, he had told Hanson and Quinn that they had flank security out. They’d checked and found that there wasn’t any. When they told him there was no security, he refused to listen, stridently insisting, “Have security. I see. I know,” then walking away.
“Well,” Quinn said, nodding toward the river. “Free-fire zone over there.”
“Yeah, but they’re just some old Yard farmers. It’s a nice day. I don’t really need it today.”
Quinn laughed. “Charlie eats their rice, you know…”
He was interrupted by a single shot from an M-16.
“Goddamn,” Hanson yelled, looking to see which of the soldiers had fired. “I said wait.”
The farmers, hearing the shot, began to beat the buffalo with their bamboo rods, making them rear and plunge toward the other bank of the inlet. Di Wee Tau was furious, jabbing his fingernail at the farmers, screaming, “Vee-Cee, Vee-Cee!”
The first two farmers were already splashing through the shallows, making for the trees on the opposite bank.
The machine gun opened up, too low at first, ripping the water in front of the farmers, throwing up a curtain of spray, red tracers glancing and droning straight up from the river. One of the buffalo went down kicking. A farmer tripped in the rocky shallows, lost his hat, caught himself with his hands, and stumbled toward the trees. He started to go back for the hat, then changed his mind.
The men around the machine gun, many of them holding bags of rice and steaming canteen cups, were laughing and shouting, swinging their arms, shrieking with delight.
The machine gun chewed across the shallows, sending up eruptions of pebbles and mud. The Montagnard who had lost his hat seemed to rise lightly on his toes and then, as though he’d been shoved from behind, threw his head back and slammed spread-eagled to the ground, embracing the earth.
The water buffalo was still thrashing around near the mouth of the inlet. The machine gunner walked a three-second burst into him, jerking him around. The dead animal spun slowly around as the current took it, pulling it downstream, a hairy gray carcass darkening the water.
Di Wee Tau turned to them, grinning, hating them, and made a thumbs-up gesture. “Number one,” he said. “Kill VC. Number one, number one.”
Quinn laughed ruefully, giving him a parody of a salute. “Yeah,” he said, “number one.”
The 3rd Mech lieutenant and two Americans ran up, out of breath. “What’s going on?” he asked.
Quinn jabbed a thumb at Di Wee Tau.
“Who shoot, Di Wee?” he asked him.
“We shoot, kill VC,” he said, pointing across the river at the dead farmer.
“Ah. Number one!” the lieutenant said. “Very good…”
“Hey,” Quinn said to Hanson, “let’s go finish making that coffee.”
Hanson pulled a wad of C-4 explosive off the end of a two-pound stick and put the rest back in his rucksack.
“Who knows,” Quinn said. “Those guys they just shot could have been the ones who set that booby trap yesterday. Them or their buddies. Those Yards ain’t all ours.”
“Farmers, man, just farmers,” Hanson said. He scooped out a small hole in the ground and set the halffilled canteen cup over it. He took a piece of C-4, pressed it
into a ball, and pinched a little sail-shaped fuse on one side, then rolled it beneath the canteen cup. The best way is to use several small pieces, feeding them in slowly. That way you use less. He touched a match to the C-4 and watched the orange flame spread around and envelop the little white ball. C-4 consumes itself evenly, from the outside in, the surface liquefying, then boiling and burning away with a faint hiss. He dropped in another small piece, and another—the C-4 is soft and a little gritty, like sugary bubblegum—until the water was just beginning to steam, nervous little bubbles breaking on the dull gray bottom of the cup. If you heated it any more than that, the cup would get too hot to drink from. Hanson lifted the cup, and the bubbles stopped.
“Well,” Hanson said, “what it all comes down to”—smiling now—“it raises just one question.” He paused. Then they both said in an exaggerated Texas accent: “Why…Vet-nom?”
“Maybe Di Wee Tau will put us in for a medal for however many gooks he decides he killed,” Quinn said. “I don’t have one of those little green ones they give out. It’d look good on my khakis.”
Hanson dumped in the packet of coffee and the one of sugar. The coffee hit the water, spreading out over the surface like a concussion blast. He stirred it with the little white plastic spoon he carried in his breast pocket and took a sip. It was just right.
MAI LOC — RAINY SEASON
It had been raining for two weeks. The medical bunker had a foot of water in it, and the stolen jeep was sunk to its axles in the mud out at the chopper pad. The typewriter down in the command bunker was getting rusty. The O and P keys kept sticking, reaching up like cadaverous little arms, and had to be pushed back down each time they were struck. At night the rats ran across Hanson’s legs and chest to stay out of the water in his bunker when artillery fire set off squeaking, mewling rat stampedes.
The rain stopped late that day and it turned windy and cold. The wire, the generators, and the mortar tubes had a dirty, dull sheen. Red mud was two feet deep in the road to the chopper pad. A pig was being slaughtered over in the Montagnard compound, its screams long and tapering, then silenced in mid-squeal.
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