by Dennis Foley
A couple of the Rangers lit up.
“I guess you all know we’re here about Mister Parsons.”
The Rangers didn’t show any reaction to the statement. They all knew Parsons’s pot smoking had come to Hollister’s attention.
“I’m not going to dump him unless you folks say so. I know the army is not a democracy, but a Ranger team is a special exception. I’m willing to give him a chance to soldier his way out of trouble if you are. But if any one of you doesn’t want to have Parsons watch your back in the bush—just say so. Just one of you, and he’ll be reassigned to some leg outfit here in country.”
Hollister looked at each man for a response. No one spoke, but each looked around at the others to compare reactions.
“Can you accept this?” Hollister asked Lieutenant Fass.
“Sir, if his team doesn’t want to nuke him—I don’t either. But if he gets caught again—”
“Count on it. If I even suspect he’s using drugs, I’ll kick his butt through the front gate. If we can’t trust him—we can’t use him.”
“That’s okay with me,” Fass said.
The others nodded in agreement.
“Let me make it clear. This is not a wink at drug use. It is a warning. This is an exception only because you all are giving him a chance. If he blows it—he goes.”
Hollister pushed the aluminum chow tray away from him and reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette. “So where do we stand?”
Captain Thomas flipped a page in his GI notebook and scanned his notes. “Near as I can figure, we’re about a day over on our schedule. We’ve made up most of the training we thought we wouldn’t get in by stealing instructors and training ’round the clock.”
“Can we get the extra training in before we launch the first teams?”
“Let’s send out our most experienced teams first and keep the others on the training schedule,” Browning said.
“Okay. Do it,” Hollister said.
“Captain Hollister,” someone yelled from the back of the mess hall kitchen, “phone call for you.”
“Hollister,” he announced into the mess hall field phone.
“Sir, an American called by radio and wants you to meet him out on the chopper pad in zero five,” the radio operator said.
“Who is it?”
“Platinum Warrior, sir. I looked up the call sign, and he’s the senior U.S. adviser for the province.”
“Okay. Tell him I’ll be there.”
“Top, I have to go down to the pad to meet a visiting fireman,” Hollister said as he entered the orderly room. He stopped in the doorway, surprised to find a trim female dressed in ARVN fatigues, her long black hair falling down her back, nearly reaching her beltline.
“Oh, Captain. I want you to meet your new clerk-typist. Her name is Miss, ah…” Easy struggled with the spelling on the card he held in his hand.
“Ray is what the Americans call me. But it is spelled with a J,” Jrae said as she turned and smiled at Hollister.
Without thinking, Hollister snatched his beret from his head and reached out to take her hand. He was surprised at her arrival, her pretty face, and the smallness of her hand in his. “Well, where did the first soldier find you?”
“It’s really amazing what you can do on the jungle drums if you sweeten the tune with a bit of aged bourbon,” Easy said.
“That tells me something, but not much, Top,” Hollister said, still looking at Jrae.
“Another old Bad Tolz buddy of mine is the Special Forces Group sergeant major. He’s closing down some resettlement ops hereabouts, and Miss Ray here is lookin’ for a new job.”
“I speak English, Vietnamese, Montagnard, and some French,” Jrae said.
Hollister released Jrae’s hand. “Would you like to sit down while I speak with my first sergeant for a minute?”
Jrae nodded and found a chair near the doorway.
“Close the door, Top,” Hollister said.
Easy shut the door to Hollister’s office with one sweep of his arm. “I know what you are going to say, sir.”
“And just what is that?”
“That we can’t have an indigenous female working in the orderly room.” He raised one eyebrow and almost asked for confirmation. “Especially one who is so good-looking?”
“You’re right. We can’t have her here, and she sure is good-looking.”
“Sir, we need the help. We got Viets and other locals who none of us can speak to. We have no translators and aren’t likely to get any. And I’ve been told I might get a clerk-typist sometime after hell freezes over.”
“So?”
“It means we take her or we go without.”
“What about security?”
“Oh, that’s the easy part.”
“You going to tell me she has a top secret security clearance?” Hollister asked.
“No, sir. But she doesn’t have any place to live either. She has agreed to live in the old guard hootch across the compound. That way, we can control her access to foreign nationals, and I’ll keep the classified stuff away from her.”
Hollister let it sink in for a bit.
“My instinct tells me we’re headed for trouble, Top.”
“My fatigue factor tells me if I don’t get some help around here, we’re going to start having some real admin problems.”
“What did your old war buddy tell you about her?”
“That she’s good people and she’s reliable.”
“Okay, Top. You keep her out of trouble and make sure she knows she’s on probation—indefinitely. And she doesn’t leave the compound unless she’s accompanied by someone from Juliet Company. If she can’t go along with it, we can’t use her.”
Hollister held his hand up to shade his eyes. The approaching helicopter was a vintage Huey repainted with glossy OD paint instead of the matte finish that had become the SOP.
He impatiently looked at his watch, preferring to be checking on training. He expected nothing much would come of the visit, and he could get back to the team training within a few minutes.
Once the pilot dumped the pitch out of the chopper blades, the dust settled, and Hollister could see an army colonel getting out.
What he wasn’t prepared for was Jarrold T. Valentine, his old chief of staff from Fort Benning. The last thing he needed was to be operating out of a launch site with Valentine as the closest thing to the landlord.
“Well, well, well … Hollister,” Valentine said, positioning his baseball cap on his head.
Hollister saluted and tried to fake a smile. “How are you, Colonel? I didn’t know you were in country.”
Valentine smiled back and returned the salute. “Yeah, they decided to give me a little more combat time while I’m waiting on my number to come up on the BG’s list.”
Hollister tried not to show his loathing for the way Valentine described province-level advisory duty as combat time. Equally offensive was the effort Valentine went to to make sure Hollister knew he had been selected for promotion to brigadier general.
Valentine pointed a finger toward the wire surrounding Hollister’s compound. “This your headquarters?”
“It’s our launch site. We normally base out of Bien Hoa.”
“I want to send someone down from my staff to act as a liaison. You know, so we don’t have any coordination problems.”
The word liaison registered as spy. Hollister didn’t want any of Valentine’s people nosing around his compound.
He scrambled for a reply. “That would be a real imposition on you, Colonel. Since we’re visiting in your AO, why don’t I have one of my people report to your CP?” He hastened to fill in the void and to not allow Valentine to decline. “I know how understaffed you must be, and I’ve always got a competent Ranger or two on light duty who can do the job in spades.”
Hollister could tell by the look on Valentine’s face he had no argument, and without any authority to insist, Valentine accepted.
“Oka
y. But if I find any lapse in coordination or language problems I’ll send my man down.”
“We’ll make sure we don’t have to impose,” Hollister said, parrying.
The phone line was bad between Tay Ninh and Long Binh, but Hollister had to get some help getting Valentine out of his business.
“I’m more concerned about you ruffling the ARVNs’ feathers than Valentine’s. Just dodge him where you can, and drag your feet when you can’t avoid him,” Michaelson said over the echoing phone.
“Things are going to be difficult enough around here without being oversupervised by someone who isn’t even in my chain of command.”
“I know Valentine from the war college. He was a slippery, ass-kissing, obnoxious SOB. Just goes to show you some real jerks slip through the net and make it to the next rung on the ladder.”
“Hell, sir, he wants me to forward copies of all our operational reports to his headquarters.”
“Tell him you are not authorized to put anyone on your circulation list because of the sensitive nature of the operations. If he wants copies, he can ask Long Binh to send them. Tell him it’s out of your hands.
“If it doesn’t work, tell him to go fuck himself. I’ll bring Colonel Terry up to speed about Valentine. Let the two old bulls measure peckers.”
“That’s good enough for me, sir. I’ll be as uncooperative as I can be,” Hollister said.
“Just be tactful. There’s no one more full of himself than a bird colonel on the BG’s list,” Michaelson said.
It was almost four in the morning when Hollister finally took his jungle boots off and dropped them to the floor in his room. He felt the sticky night air and the sweat in the collar of his fatigue shirt. He considered taking a shower but decided it would be just what he needed to wake him up after the hour of sleep he might get if uninterrupted by some emergency.
He lit a final cigarette and leaned back against the wall, his heels hooked into the side rail on his cot. His mind raced over the endless demands of the day and the one about to break. He watched the tip of his cigarette glow in the dark and then looked out the small window.
On the horizon, the lights of dozens of aircraft crisscrossed the black curtain of night. He watched the blinking navigation lights and then was distracted by a pair of flares wobbling under small parachutes of white nylon.
Somewhere out in the night, an American or ARVN was in trouble. He began to wonder why he was there. Why didn’t he just do what Susan asked? He had certainly given the army and Vietnam more than a fair share of his life and his dedication. Another flare caught his eye. There was someone out there who was every bit as worried and every bit as afraid as Hollister had been on so many nights. He would never be able to explain to anyone who hadn’t been there how uncomfortable the thought of leaving that unknown warrior out there while he went home felt to him.
He crushed out his cigarette in a C-ration can and stretched out—still in his fatigues. He closed his eyes and thought of Susan.
Sleep came over him in only a few seconds without his knowing it.
The team on the pad waited for launch as the first rays of light promised a hot day across the Cambodian border. They sat on the ground near the insert chopper while the crew made some changes to a relay that had gone bad on them only moments before.
“Sit. Don’t get up,” Hollister said a split second after one of the Rangers called attention—recognizing their commander.
Hollister reached the side of the chopper and spoke to the back of the command pilot’s helmet. “You going to be able to get this thing off the ground anytime soon, Chief?”
“Hell, if we could get some decent maintenance done we wouldn’t be in this fix,” the pilot said, throwing a switch on the console before turning to see who he was speaking to.
“What’s wrong with your maintenance?” Hollister asked.
“Mornin’, sir,” the pilot said. “Nothing, except we don’t have enough people to do the job.”
He moved the mike away from his lip. “We’re losing our best people, and there just aren’t any replacements. A guy gets malaria or the crud and gets evac’d to Japan, and we never see him again.”
“How do you take up the slack?”
“We do only critical maintenance, and little, pain-in-the-ass things like this bum relay show up during our flying day.”
“Is this serious?”
“No, other than it causing us to lose time we’ll never get back before dark.”
“How long?”
The aircraft commander looked over to his peter pilot. “What do you say?”
“We’re good now. We put enough baling wire and Seventh Army green tape on it to hold it ’til we get back to the barn tonight,” he replied.
Hollister slapped the side of the chopper door. “Good deal. Have a good flight.”
The pilots ran up the turbine engine on the chopper and continued their preflight checklist.
Hollister walked over to the team. Sergeant Iverson held his hand up to shield his eyes from the brilliant rays of the sun jumping Hollister’s shoulder. “Guess we’re ’bout ready, sir.”
“How you feel? You ready?” Hollister looked around at the others and scanned the equipment and weapons.
“Guess about every team leader’d like to have an extra day or two to prep.”
“You really think it would help you do something?”
“No, sir. Guess it’d probably dull the edge,” Iverson said.
“Can I do anything?”
“Yes, sir. Wish me luck.”
“You can count on it.”
“We oughta be lifting off here in a minute or so, sir.”
“Yep. We don’t want to waste any time getting your folks on the ground. We especially don’t want you peaking too early,” Hollister said with a smile.
“Don’t mind telling you just the word Cambodia puts a little bit of extra pucker in my ass.”
“Good. It’ll keep you sharp. You get in some shit—we’re there.”
“All right,” one of the seated Rangers said.
“Just do your best, and I’ll see everyone else is singing backup.”
“Airborne, sir,” Iverson said, raising his voice over the full RPM of the chopper blades.
Hollister reached out, shook Iverson’s hand, and nodded at the others. “Look out for them.”
The radios crackled with cross talk. The pack of cigarettes Hollister had opened just before shaving was almost empty. The first team was on the ground, and he was trying to resist the urge to leave operations, get in the C & C, and go on the last insert. But he knew he just had to let Thomas do some of the inserts without breathing down his neck. He had never really appreciated how frustrating it must have been for his company commander on an earlier tour when Hollister had Thomas’s job.
He drained the last sip from the cold coffee in his cup and walked to the door in the operations shack. He squinted against the bright sun and looked at the last team loading up down on the chopper pad.
Hollister watched Easy as he tried to make it look like he was unfazed by the artificial leg that didn’t flex at any point from where it attached to his stump to the toe of his jungle boot. Though Hollister couldn’t hear what Easy was saying over the sounds of the three idling choppers, it was clear he was busting the chops of a Ranger who had made the mistake of leaving his team hootch without some item of essential equipment.
Easy walked over to operations and simultaneously saluted Hollister standing in the doorway and offered up the morning’s mail haul for the two of them. “Somebody back where the peaceniks live found you and me, Cap’n.”
Hollister took the two envelopes Easy offered and stepped inside with him.
“Probably bills. No one else I know can write,” Hollister said. He recognized the top one as a bill from his insurance company. “Yep. Bills.”
Easy didn’t respond.
Hollister looked at the return address on the larger of the two envelopes and saw it was
from Susan. He opened it and flipped the handwritten cover letter from Susan over only to find the final court papers for the divorce he had known would arrive—eventually.
He heard Easy say, “I’m real sorry, Cap’n.”
For once there was no trace of bluster, humor, or sarcasm in his voice.
Hollister looked up at his old friend. “Goddamn this war.”
CHAPTER 21
THE LONG HOURS WERE beginning to draw off Hollister’s energy and his concentration. He paced operations, cautioning himself to let the first night of deployment take its course. He read over the operations log and compared team reports with their locations posted on a map near the radio bench.
He tried several times to write a letter to Susan while he listened to the last of the inserts and the few missed steps during the early evening. He finally gave up on the letter when he couldn’t put his feelings down. He realized if he had been able to do it in the first place, Susan might have stayed.
Around midnight, he gave up and went to bed. But sleep eluded him. He gave up on sleep, too, and returned to operations to just check on the teams.
“What’s this message from One-One?”
Lieutenant Hill was the duty officer. “They ran across a small trail, and while they were crossing it, they smelled the strong odor of gasoline.”
Hollister rechecked the time the report was called in. “This the time it happened or the time they reported it?”
“Both. They called it in just on the other side of the trail,” Specialist Loomis, the RTO, said.
“Then it was dark when they crossed the trail,” Hollister said. He handed the clipboard holding the radio log back to Hill.
“Meaning?” Hill asked.
“Meaning if what they were smelling came from something or someplace close, they might not have been able to see it. They could have walked right by a refueling point.”
Hollister walked back to the map and looked at it.
“There are enough trails in the area that it could well be something like that.”
“You want them to double back to the trail, sir?” Hill asked.
Hollister looked at his watch. It was almost three in the morning. “Are they still moving?”