Balefires

by David Drake

  "Oh, well," the Frenchman said with a deprecating shrug. "Your defoliation, you know? A few months after your squadron pulls out, the planes come over. Poof! Plantation Seven is dead and I must be transferred. They grow peanuts there now."

  Herrold laughed. "That's the nice thing about a job in this country," he said. "Always somethin' new tomorrow."

  "Yeah, not so many VC here as up there," Murray agreed.

  Crozier grimaced."The VC I am able to live with. Like them? No. But I understand them, understand their, their aims. But these people around here, these Mengs-they will not work, they will not talk, only glare at you and plant enough rice for themselves. Michelin must bring in Viets to work the rubber, and even those, they do not stay because they do not like Mengs so near."

  "But they're all Vietnamese, aren't they?"Ginelli asked in puzzlement."I mean, what else could they be?"

  The Frenchman chuckled, hooking his thumbs in his trouser tops. "They live in Viet Nam so they are Vietnamese, no? But you Americans have your Indians. Here are the Montagnards-we call them the Mountaineers, you know? But the Vietnamese name for them means 'the dirty animals.' Not the same folk, no no. They were here long before the Viets came down from the North. And the Meng who live here and a few other places, they are not the same either; not as the Viets or even the Montagnards. And maybe they are older yet, so they say."

  The group waited a moment in silence. Herrold opened the Mermite can that served as a cooler and began handing out beer."Got a church key?"he asked no one in particular. Murray, the only man on the track with a knife, drew his huge Bowie and chopped ragged triangles in the tops. Tepid beer gurgled as the four men drank. Ginelli set his can down.

  "Umm," he said to his TC, "how about the co-ax?"

  Herrold sighed."Yeah, we don't want the son-of-a-bitch to jam."Joints popped as he stood and stretched his long frame.

  Crozier gulped the swig of beer still in his mouth. "Indeed not," he agreed. "Not here, especially. The area has a very bad reputation."

  "That a fact?"Herrold asked in mild surprise. "At the troop meetin' last night the ole man said around here it'd be pretty quiet. Not much activity on the intelligence maps."

  "Activity?"the Frenchman repeated with raised eyebrows."Who can say? The VC come through the laborers' hootches now and again, not so much here as near A-Shau, that is true. But whenI first was transferred here three years ago, there were five, maybe six hundred in the village-the Mengs, you know, not the plantation lines."

  "That little place back where we left the hardball?" Ginelli wondered aloud. "Jeez, there's not a dozen hootches there."

  "Quite so," Crozier agreed with a grave nod of his head. "Because a battalion of Communists surrounded it one night and killed every Meng they found. Maybe twenty survived."

  "Christ," Ginelli breathed in horror, but Herrold's greater experience caused his eyes to narrow in curiosity.

  "Why the hell?" the tall track commander asked. "I mean, I know they've got hit squads out to gun down village cops and headmen and all. But why the whole place? Were they that strong for the government?"

  "The government?" the civilian echoed; he laughed."They spat at the District Governor when he came through. But a week before the Communists came, there was firing near this very place. Communist, there is no doubt. I saw the tracers myself and they were green.

  "The rest-and this is rumor only, what my foremen told me at the time before they stopped talking about it-a company, thirty men, were ambushed. Wiped out, every one of them and mutilated, ah… badly. How they decided that the Mengs were responsible, I do not know; but that could have been the reason they wiped out the village later."

  "Umm," Herrold grunted. He crumpled his beer can and looked for a litter barrel."Lemme get on the horn and we'll see just how the co-ax is screwing up." The can clattered into the barrel as the TC swung up on the back deck of the zippo again. The others could hear his voice as he spoke into the microphone: "Battle five-six, track seven-zero. Request clearance to test fire our Mike seven-four."

  An unintelligible crackle replied from the headset a moment later. "No sir," Herrold denied, "not if we want it working tonight." He nodded at the answer. "Roger, roger." He waved. "OK," he said to his crew as he set down the radio helmet, "let's see what it's doin'."

  Ginelli climbed up beside Herrold, slithering his pudgy body over the edge of the track with difficulty. Murray continued to lounge against the side of the track. "Hell," he said, "I never much liked guns anyway; you guys do your thing."Crozier stood beside his friend, interested but holding back a little from the delicacy of an uninvited guest. The machine gun had once been co-axial to the flamethrower. Now it was on a swivel welded to the top of the TC's dome. Herrold rotated it, aiming at the huge tree in the center of the grove. A ten foot scar streaked the light trunk vertically to the ground, so he set the buckhorn sight just above it. Other troopers, warned by radio what to expect, were watching curiously.

  The gun stuttered off a short burst and jammed. Empty brass tinkled off the right side of the track. Herrold swore and clicked open the receiver cover. His screwdriver pried at the stuck case until it sprang free. Slamming the cover shut, he jacked another round into the chamber.

  BAM BAM BAM BAM BAM

  "Goddamn it," Herrold said. "Looks like we gotta take the whole thing down."

  "Or throw rocks," Ginelli suggested.

  Herrold cocked a rusty eyebrow. Unlike the thick-set newbie, he had been in country long enough to have a feel for real danger. After a moment he grinned back. "Oh, we don't have to throw rocks," he said. He unslung his old submachine gun from the side of the dome. Twenty years of service had worn most of the finish off its crudely stamped metal but it still looked squat and deadly.

  Herrold set the wire stock to his shoulder; the burst, when he squeezed off, was ear-shattering. A line of fiercely red tracers stabbed from the muzzle and ripped an ascending curve of splintered wood up the side of the center tree.

  "Naw, we're OK while the ole greasegun works," Herrold said. He laughed. "But," he added, "we better tear down the co-ax anyhow."

  "Perhaps I should leave now," Crozier suggested. "It grows late and I must return to my duties."

  "Hell," Murray protested, "stick around for chow at least. Your dinks'll do without babysittin' for that long."

  The Frenchman pursed his lips."He'll have to clear with the colonel," Herrold warned.

  "No sweat," the driver insisted."We'll snow him about all the local intelligence Jacques can give us. Come on, man; we'll brace him now." Crozier followed in Murray's forceful wake, an apprehensive frown still on his face.

  "Say, where'd you get these?" Ginelli inquired, picking up a fat, red-nosed cartridge like those Herrold had just thumbed into his greasegun.

  "The tracers?" the TC replied absently. "Oh, I found a case back in Di An. Pretty at night and, what the hell, they hit just as hard. But let's get crackin' on the co-ax."

  Ginelli jumped to the ground. Herrold handed him a footlocker to serve as a table-the back deck of the zippo was too cluttered to strip the gun there-and the co-ax itself. In a few minutes they had reduced the weapon to components and begun cleaning them.

  A shadow eased across the footlocker. Ginelli looked up, still holding the receiver he was brushing with a solvent-laden toothbrush. The interpreter, Hieu, had walked over from the TOC and was facing the grove. He seemed oblivious to the troopers beside him.

  "Hey Hieu," the TC called."Why the hell'd the colonel stick us here, d'ya know? We get in a firefight and these damn trees'll hide a division of VC."

  Hieu looked around slowly. His features had neither the fragility of the pure Vietnamese nor the moon-like fullness of those with Chinese blood. His was a blocky face, set as ever in hard lines, mahogany in color. Hieu stepped up to the wall before answering, letting his hands run over the rough stone like two dried oak leaves.

  "No time to make berm," he said at last, pointing to the bellowing Caterpillar climbing
out of a trench near the TOC. The D-7A was digging in sleeping trailers for the brass rather than starting to throw up an earthen wall around the perimeter. "The wall here make us need ti-ti berm, I show colonel."

  Herrold nodded. The stone enclosure was square, about a hundred yards to a side. Though only four feet high, the ancient wall was nearly as thick and would stop anything short of an eight inch shell. But even with the work the wall would save the engineers on the west side, those trees sure played hell with the zones of fire. Seven of them looked to Herrold to be Philippine mahoganies; God knew what the monster in the middle was; a banyan, maybe, from the creviced trunk, but the bark didn't look like the banyans he'd seen before.

  "Never saw trees that big before," the TC said aloud.

  Hieu looked at him again, this time with a hint of expression on his face."Yes," he stated. "Ti-ti left when French come, now only one." His fingers toyed with the faded duck of the ammo pouch clipped to his belt. Both soldiers thought the dark man was through speaking, but Hieu's tongue flicked between his thin lips again and he continued, "Maybe three, maybe two years only, there was other. Now only this."The interpreter's voice became a hiss."But beaucoup years before, everywhere was tree, everywhere was Meng!"

  Boots scuffled in powdery dirt; Murray and the

  Frenchman were coming back from the TOC. Hieu lost interest in Herrold and vaulted the laterite wall gracefully. The driver and Crozier watched him stepping purposefully toward the center of the widely spaced grove as they halted beside the others.

  "But who is that?" Crozier questioned sharply.

  "Uh? That's Hieu, he's our interpreter," Murray grunted in surprise. "How come?"

  The Frenchman frowned…"But he is Meng, surely? I did not know that any served in the army, even that the government tried to induct them anymore."

  "Hell, I always heard he was from Saigon," Herrold answered. "He'd'a said if he was from here, wouldn't he?"

  "What the hell's Hieu up to, anyhow?" Ginelli asked. He pointed toward the grove where the interpreter stood, facing the scarred trunk of the central tree. He couldn't see Hieu's hands from that angle, but the interpreter twitched in ritual motion beneath the fluid stripes of his fatigues.

  Nobody spoke. Ginelli set one foot on the tread and lifted himself onto the flame track. Red and yellow smoke grenades hung by their safety rings inside the dome. Still lower swung a dusty pair of binoculars. Ginelli blew on the lenses before setting the glasses to his eyes and rotating the separate focus knobs. Hieu had knelt on the ground, but the trooper still could not tell what he was doing. Something else caught his eye.

  "God damn," the plump newbie blurted. He leaned over the side of the track and thrust the glasses toward Herrold, busy putting the machine gun back together. "Hey Red, take a look at the tree trunk."

  Murray, Crozier, and Ginelli himself waited expectantly while the TC refocused the binoculars. Magnified, the tree increased geometrically in hideousness. Its bark was pinkish and paper thin, smoother than that of a birch over most of the bole's surface. The gouged, wrinkled appearance of the trunk was due to the underlying wood, not any irregularity in the bark that covered it.

  The tall catface in front of Hieu was the trunk's only true blemish. Where the tear had puckered together in a creased, blackened seam, ragged edges of bark fluttered in the breeze. The flaps were an unhealthy color, like skin peeling away from a bad burn. Hieu's squat body hid only a third of the scar; the upper portion towered gloomily above him.

  "Well, it's not much to look at," Herrold said at last. "What's the deal?"

  "Where's the bullet holes?" Ginelli demanded in triumph. "You put twenty, thirty shots in it, right? Where'd they go to?"

  "Son of a bitch," the TC agreed, taking another look. The co-ax should have left a tight pattern of shattered wood above the ancient scar. Except for some brownish dimples in the bark, the tree was unmarked.

  "I saw splinters fly," Murray remarked.

  "Goddam wood must'a swelled right over'em," Herrold suggested. "That's where I hit, all right."

  "That is a very strange tree," Crozier said, speaking for the first time since his return. "There was another like it near Plantation Seven. It had almond trees around it too, though there was no wall. They call them god trees-the Viets do. The Mengs have their own word, but I do not know its meaning."

  A Chinook swept over the firebase from the south, momentarily stifling conversation with the syncopated whopping of its twin rotors. It hovered just beyond the perimeter, then slowly settled in a circular dust cloud while its turbines whined enormously. Men ran to unload it.

  "Chow pretty quick," Murray commented. It was nearing four o'clock. Ginelli looked away from the bird. "Don't seem right," he said. The other men looked blank. He tried to explain, "I mean, the Shithook there, jet engines and all, and that tree there being so old."

  The driver snorted. "Hell, that's not old. Now back in California where they make those things"-his broad thumb indicated the banana-shaped helicopter-"they got redwoods that're really old. You don't think anything funny about that, do you?"

  Ginelli gestured helplessly with his hands. Surprisingly it was Crozier, half-seated on the laterite wall, who came to his aid."What makes you think this god tree is less old than a redwood, Joe?" he asked mildly.

  Murray blinked. "Hell, redwoods're the oldest things there are. Alive, I mean."

  The Frenchman laughed and repeated his deprecating shrug. "But trees are my business, you know? Now there is a pine tree in Arizona older than your California sequoias; but nobody knew it for a long time because there are not many of them and… nobody noticed. And here is a tree, an old one-but who knows? Maybe there are only two in the whole world left-and the other one, the one in the north, that perhaps is dead with my plantation."

  "You never counted the rings or anything?" Herrold asked curiously He had locked the barrel into the co-ax while the others were talking.

  "No…" Crozier admitted. His tongue touched his lips as he glanced up at the god tree, wondering how much he should say. "No," he repeated, "but I only saw the tree once while I was at Plantation Seven. It stood in the jungle, more than a mile from the rubber, and the laborers did not care that anyone should go near it. There were Mengs there, too, I was told; but only a few and they hid in the woods. Bad blood between them and my laborers, no doubt."

  "Well, hell, Jacques," Murray prompted. "Whendid you see it?" Crozier still hesitated. Suddenly realizing what the problem might be, the driver said, "Hell, don't worry aboutour stomachs, fer god's sake. Unless you're squeamish, turtle?" Ginelli blushed and shook his head. Laughing, Murray went on, "Anyhow, you grow up pretty quick after you get in the field-those that live to. Tell the story, Jacques."

  Crozier sighed. The glade behind him was empty. Hieu had disappeared somewhere without being noticed."Well," he began, "it has no importance, I am sure-all this happened a hundred miles away, as you know. But…

  "It was not long after Michelin sent me to Indochina, in 1953 that would be. I was told of the god tree as soon as I arrived at Plantation Seven, but that was all. One of my foremen had warned me not to wander that way and I assumed, because of the Viet Minh.

  "Near midnight-this was before Dien Bien Phu, you will remember-there was heavy firing not far from the plantation. I called the district garrison since for a marvel the radio was working. But of course, no one came until it was light."

  Herrold and Murray nodded together in agreement. Charging into a night ambush was no way to help your buddies, not in this country. Crozier cleared his throat and went on, "It was two companies of colonial paras that came, and the colonel from the fort himself. Nothing would help but that I should guide them to where the shooting had been. A platoon had set up an ambush, so they said, but it did not call in-even for fire support. When I radioed they assumed… " He shrugged expressively.

  "And that is what we found. All the men, all of them dead-unforgettably. They were in the grove of that god tree, on both side
s of the trail to it. Perhaps the lieutenant had thought the Viets were rallying there. The paras were well armed and did much shooting from the shells we found. But of enemies, there was no sign; and the paras had not been shot. They were torn, you know? Mutilated beyond what I could believe. But none had been shot, and their weapons lay with the bodies."

  "That's crazy," Ginelli said, voicing everyone's thought. "Dinks would'a taken the guns."

  Crozier shrugged. "The colonel said at last his men had been killed by some wild tribe, so savage they did not understand guns or would not use them. The Mengs, he meant. They were… wilder, perhaps, than the ones here but still… I would not have thought there were enough of them to wipe out the platoon, waiting as it must have been."

  "Howwere the men killed?" Herrold asked at last.

  "Knives I think," the Frenchman replied, "short ones. Teeth I might have said; but there were really no signs that anything had fed on the bodies. Not the killers, that is. One man-"

  He paused to swallow, continued, "One man I thought wore a long shirt of black. When I came closer, the flies left him. The skin was gone from his arms and chest. God alone knows what had killed him; but his face was the worst to see, and that was unmarked."

  No one spoke for some time after that. Finally Murray said, "They oughta have chow on. Coming?"

  Crozier spread his hands. "You are sure it is all right? I have no utensils."

  "No sweat, there's paper plates. Rest'a you guys?"

  "I'll be along," Herrold said. "Lemme remount the co-ax first."

  "I'll do that," Ginelli offered. His face was saffron, bloodless beneath his tan. "Don't feel hungry tonight anyhow."

  The track commander smiled. "You can give me a hand."

  When the gun was bolted solidly back on its mount, Herrold laid a belt of ammunition on the loading tray and clicked the cover shut on it. "Ah," Ginelli mumbled, "ah, Red, don't you think it'd be a good idea to keep pressure up in the napalm tanks? I mean, there's a lotta Mengs around here and what Murray's buddy says…"