by Robert Mason
At 2 A.M. the thudding stopped. Riker was asleep, proving that you can get used to anything. I sat up against my pillow with one of his bed slats on my lap. When the thudding stopped, I tried the phone again.
There was another small window near the ceiling at the other end of the room. While the phone rang, I looked up to see glass spraying in from it. Riker jumped up at the new sound.
“What the hell is going on here?” Riker pleaded.
I didn’t know. I’d been sitting on my bed for two hours, listening to the door being smashed, asking myself the same question. They are trying to kill us, aren’t they? Why didn’t they just blow up the fucking door? Or use an ax? Or fire? Or some fucking thing besides bodies? Maybe we should let them in and smash their brains in with our clubs. A quick no sounded in my head. I felt pretty brave at the controls of a helicopter while people tried to kill me, but trying to smash five darting Orientals with bed slats was just not me. I waited to see what developed. Soon the fuck-up at the desk would return from someplace and hear the ruckus and call the police There were police in Saigon, weren’t there? Or the people next door. They would get somebody. But the thudding went on and on. I wanted to scream at the utter unreality of the situation. But I could not scream, because I was a soldier. That thought made me laugh out loud. “GI Joe would’ve never let a bunch of dirty Nips get away with this,” I said. Then I visualized the myriad ways in which GI Joe would murder this mob. Of course, they were all centered around the fact that he always had a weapon stashed somewhere. I clutched my bed slat and waited. What I needed was a flamethrower.
The windowless room showed no light at dawn. My watch said it was six. The thudding had stopped. I woke Riker. We pulled the glass-covered dresser away and cautiously opened the door. There was some debris outside, but no people. Quickly we grabbed our gear and entered the hallway. All clear. As we walked toward the desk, we almost had cardiac seizures when we saw the clerk staring at us.
“Where the fuck were you last night?” we both yelled.
“Sir, I do not work at night. A man named Thieu does.”
“Well, where was he?” I said.
“He was here all night, sir. He certainly was this morning when I came to work.”
“Bullshit!” I yelled.
The clerk flinched a little but said, “Was there something wrong with your room?”
“Some people tried to break into our room all night long, you fuck!” said Riker.
“Really? That’s strange,” said the clerk. “Did you call the desk?”
“Yes. Over and over,” I said.
“Well, possibly the phone is broken.”
“Even if the phone is broken,” I explained, “our room is at the most fifty feet from here. Nobody could have not heard that commotion last night.”
“I will inform the manager of this,” said the clerk. He looked at us quietly. His eyes told us he knew exactly what had happened last night and we could yell and scream and complain until doomsday. He was never going to admit it. We hoisted our bags and left.
Phan Rang is near the coast, about 160 miles south of Qui Nhon and 160 miles northeast of Saigon, but that’s not where I went first. First I signed in at the 12th Aviation Battalion’s camp near Nha Trang. Then I waited in a bar in a sweltering sea-level village and talked to a depressing, sallow, and lumpy engineer who worked for one of the many American companies in Vietnam.
“I hate it over here,” he said.
“Why don’t you go home?”
“Money’s just too damn good.” He swilled the last of his beer. “Besides, there’s no poontang at home like the stuff that lives over here. I got a bitch waiting for me back home.”
It all fit. Anyone who lived with Mr. Darkness had to be a bitch, and the only place in the world he’d get the poontang he wanted was where he was transformed into the Rich American Engineer. I nodded, but said nothing. He told me more about his job, his hooch, his lady, his stereo, his growing bank account. I almost fainted from boredom. At a lull in the drone I announced, “Gotta go.” The engineer nodded hazily and turned his snout back toward the barkeep. He tapped the mug on the bar and pointed sternly to it. “More,” he said.
The Huey landed on the sandy patch where I waited. The crew chief ran past me carrying a sack of mail to battalion HQ. I threw my gear on board and fished out my flight helmet.
“You’re Mason?” said the pilot. I nodded.
“Good. We’ll be leaving as soon as he gets back.” He pointed to the retreating crew chief.
I climbed into the idling Huey and smoked. It felt good to be back in a helicopter after wallowing around in air-force transports.
The crew chief returned, and the pilot lifted off through the swirling sand. As we moved forward, the wind felt cool against my skin.
Cam Ranh bay was the halfway point on the flight to the company. As we flew by, I saw scores of navy PBYs (seaplanes) anchored in the harbor. For the rest of the flight I had daydreams about owning a PBY and flying cargo in the Bahamas, or running a cross-Canada, lake-to-lake touring business.
When I saw the concrete buildings at the Phan Rang air-force base, I felt a moment of happiness. I was finally going to get to live like a human. But the Huey flew by the barracks and landed on a grassy field, a mile across the runway. I saw a familiar collection of dirt-covered, sagging GPs that I immediately realized was my new home.
The sun was red in the west and the ground was soggy. We squished across the field and left our chest protectors in a tent. The two pilots, named Deacon and Red, escorted me to the club.
“Well, well!” The major grinned endearingly. “Our second Cav pilot in two days.” Tall, dark-haired, and smooth-faced, he came over to me and shook my hand. “Welcome to the Prospectors. I’m the CO, and as you’ll find out, when I’m not around the boys call me Ringknocker.” The boys, about fifteen of them, sat around some tables in the bamboo-paneled, tin-roofed bar, their company’s club, and laughed. I nodded nervously, never having met a CO who was friendly.
“Pleased to meet you,” I said.
“You looked me right in the eye when you said that.” He grinned. “That’s good. Shows you’re not afraid.” He turned around to the boys. “That’s good,” he said. They nodded. I wasn’t afraid, but I was suspicious. What did he want from me?
“First things first,” said Ringknocker. “Hey, Red, take Mason over to your tent. He gets the empty bunk there.” I started out the door with Red. “When you get your gear organized, come on back. Chow’ll be served in about a half hour, and then we can talk.”
“Yes, sir.”
He beamed.
The tent floor was rolling red dust, but there was a plywood platform next to my cot. I sat on the cot, which was already made, and looked around. Red was smiling at me from his cot. God, they don’t even have a floor, I thought. “Why do they call him Ringknocker?” I said.
“He’s a West Pointer, wears a class ring.”
“Ah.” I had never met one before. Now his aggressive, cordial manner seemed appropriate. “Seems like a nice guy.”
“Yeah, he is. Lot better than our last CO. Nobody liked that prick. That’s why he woke up one night with a knife sticking out of his chest.” Red announced this as though that was the typical way in which incompetent commanders were dealt with.
“You’re kidding.”
“No. He was black and an asshole. We still don’t know who stuck him.”
“He was killed?”
“No. We got him to Cam Ranh just in time.” Red grinned. “It all turned out to the good, though. The replacement CO was Ringknocker, and he’s a natural leader. You know what I mean?”
Though I had never met one, I thought I knew what he meant.
The club I had been in was one half of the tin-roofed building. The other side was their mess hall. Dinner was served by Vietnamese waitresses to groups of four sitting at cloth-topped tables set with clean napkins and bronzeware. During the meal, Red told me that everything wa
s paid for out of club dues and the meal tickets. “But don’t get used to it; we’re never here anyway.”
Before we finished, I heard guitar music coming from the club on the other side of the bamboo partition. The building shook as a Phantom F-4C hit its afterburner on takeoff. This was an air-force base. The runway was a quarter mile from the Prospectors’ camp. The Prospectors were a little band of gypsies camped in a vacant corner of the walled city.
A voice wailed from the club as Red and I walked in.
Army Aviators sing this song,
It won’t be long for the Vietcong.
The sky troopers sail through the air,
To set our traps like catchin’ bears.
“Man, that’s horrible,” said Ringknocker.
“We can change it, but it’s a start,” said the singer, a captain named Daring.
“Haw, you can take that ditty and flush it, Daring, you asshole!” a pink-faced cherub of a man yelled from the bar. He was Captain King, otherwise known as Sky King.
“Okay, okay, goddamnit.” Daring glared at Sky King. “Let’s hear what you got.”
“What I got goes squish, squish between Nancy’s legs. Right, Nancy?” Nancy, a Vietnamese girl of twenty, had special permission to work at the bar until eight o‘clock. All other Vietnamese workers had to leave at dusk.
“Nooo! You bad man!” She blushed. To my knowledge Nancy never cooperated with any of Sky King’s vulgar requests, or anyone else‘s, either. She was beautiful, neat, efficient, and an excellent barmaid. To all advances she announced that she was married.
“Hey, Mason.” Ringknocker leaned back from his table when he saw me. “Do you recognize your comrade, here?” He pointed to a heavy-set man sitting beside him.
“No, sir, I don‘t,” I said. Ringknocker waved me over.
“This is Mr. Cannon, from…” He looked at Cannon.
“Delta Company, 227th,” announced Cannon.
“From right around the corner,” I said. “Nice meeting you.”
Cannon just nodded, looking worried.
“Yep. Cannon flew guns in the Cav,” said Ringknocker. “But in our company, we assign pilots to the guns by their weight. You now how weak those B models are, especially loaded up with ammo. So all our gunship pilots are skinny fucks, like you.”
A shock hit my body. That’s why Cannon looked so worried. Ringknocker was making him fly slicks. And he was going to make me fly guns.
“What’s the matter?” Ringknocker said, reading my face.
“I fly slicks.”
“Yeah, and I fly guns,” Cannon interjected.
Ringknocker lowered his eyebrows to a more official level. “Well, my policy is skinny guys in the guns, fat guys in the slicks. Besides, I don’t know what you’re worried about, Mason. Guns are a lot safer than slicks. Most of our hits are taken by the slicks. In the guns you at least have something to shoot back with.”
A Phantom roared on takeoff.
Daring changed a line: “Sky troopers sailing through the air…”
“I’ve flown six hundred hours of combat time as a slick pilot. All my experience is in slicks. And I’m still alive. I don’t want to change anything I’m doing at this stage of the game.”
“That goes for me, too,” said Cannon. “I’m still alive, and I don’t want to change nothing.”
“Six hundred hours?” Ringknocker looked impressed.
“That’s right.”
“Shit,” he said, “the most anybody, even Deacon, has in our company is three hundred.” Ringknocker tapped his ring on the table. “Flew your ass off, hey?”
“Yeah, and I understand slick flying.”
“And I understand guns,” said Cannon.
“Shit!” Ringknocker looked dismayed. “I have my policies, you know.” Cannon sat back in his chair, looking pissed off. I was thinking, Another fucking book man.
“Okay, okay, all right, fuck it,” said Ringknocker. “Fuck my policy. Cannon, you fly guns. Mason, you fly slicks.” Ringknocker grinned. “And that’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
“It’s a deal,” said Cannon.
“Settin’ our traps to catch them bears…” droned Daring.
“No, no, no.” Ringknocker suddenly leaned into the circle of songwriters. “Horrible, horrible, horrible.”
Sky King dropped to his knees, holding his hands on his ears. “I’m sick!” he yelled. He humped over and retched loudly.
“Look. We get a decent song, we get invited to Saigon for two days in the sing-off,” Ringknocker announced. “You wanna have two days to fuck off in Saigon, don ‘cha?”
I sat there dumbfounded as Ringknocker explained. A sing-off? Song contest? Cannon, arms folded across his chest, looked at me and shook his head. These guys are strange.
The songwriters argued; then Daring strummed once more. This time three other guys, out of the twenty in the club, sang along. While they sang I noticed something moving on the wall. A human skull mounted above the bar moved its jaw, clacking along with the song. Sky King was pulling the string that led from the skull to the end of the bar. “Sing it, Charlie!” he yelled.
“Charlie?” I said to Red.
“Yeah, Doc made him from a VC head we brought in.”
I nodded. What else would you call a VC head?
The song ended.
“Puke,” said Deacon.
“You really think so?” Ringknocker asked with a worried look. Deacon was one of the two platoon leaders in the Prospectors. He was also the company’s IP and part-time sage. He wore a graying flattop over a smooth and sincere face. Ringknocker trusted him implicitly.
“Yes,” said Deacon.
“Well,” Ringknocker shook his head, “we’ll just have to keep trying.”
The Prospectors left at dawn. I stayed behind with another warrant named Staglioni. We were to bring out a slick that was being repaired.
Staglioni told me that four or five ships in the company were already out in the field at Nhon Co. “That’s what we usually do. We have some guys go ahead and set up camp while the rest of us come back here to take a break.” Staglioni was tall and soft and dark. His accent was New York to me.
“Flatbush. That’s in Brooklyn,” he said.
“So, we just wait until the ship is ready and then fly out?”
“That’s it. Maintenance told me it should be ready tomorrow morning.”
We watched a flight of four Phantoms take off. When they hit their afterburners on the climb-out, it was like thunder. “Looks like fun.” I said.
“It is,” said Staglioni. “I tried it once.”
“You flew a Phantom?”
“Yeah. You could, too, if you wanted. They come over here all the time. They like to trade flight time.”
“They want to fly Hueys?”
“Yeah. They’re all the time betting that they can hover a chopper first time up.”
“I bet they can’t.”
“You’re right. None of them have so far. One of their pilots even flew a mission with us one day. He hated it. He felt like we were too close to everything, you know, right down in it. They really don’t see much on their strikes. They aim at puffs of smoke in the jungle, drop their shit, and bam, they’re back home. Their total time in the air from takeoff to landing is one hour and twenty minutes. It’s a quickie. Then they hop in an air-conditioned van and cruise back to the club. And that’s it for the day. A hundred missions and they go home.” He paused for a minute while a Phantom came in for a landing. “Can you imagine? A hundred missions? Shit, I’d be back home twice already.”
“You guys log missions?”
“No, not officially. I keep my own log. The last time I told one of the air-force guys how many missions I’d flown, he said, ‘What do you expect? The smart pilots are in the air force.’ That fucker.”
I watched another Phantom take off. If I had stayed in college, I lamented, I would be flying those and living on the other side of the ru
nway.
“It’s true,” I said.
“What is?”
“The smart pilots are in the air force.”
The camp was a dirty-fabric ghost town. The trail that led from the club past the row of ten GPs was completely deserted. Staglioni went to his tent and I went to mine.
I wrote Patience a letter to bring her up to date and give her my new address.
A Vietnamese woman dressed in black pajamas ducked in through the tent flaps. She nodded as she walked by. She walked to the other end of the tent and began to sweep the dirt floor with a bamboo whisk broom, drawing neat parallel lines in the dust. When she got to me she bowed slightly and then waited expectantly for me to raise my feet off the plywood platform. I raised my feet and she swept under them. Then she began making up the beds. There were four in the GP. When she got to me again, she bowed. Her smile was black from betel nut, and she waited for me to get up. I jumped up.
“Oh,” I said.
“Ah,” she said. She stripped the whole cot, remade it, and carefully rearranged my gear. Folded flak vest here, .45 and its holster on top there, just so. She stood back and shared with me her artistic arrangement and nodded that I could place my ass back on the blanket.
“Thank you,” I said.
She grinned betel black and ducked outside.
So, even if the army had drawn the dreary side of the field and the dreary domiciles, Ringknocker had gone to some lengths, allowing some luxuries to brighten the dreariness. I hadn’t seen anything yet.
I walked back and forth in the tent for a while. I ducked outside to watch a Phantom take off and nodded to a passing hooch maid. I wanted to go talk to Staglioni, but he had said he was in the middle of a good book. I remembered mine. I was in the middle of the second volume of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Gollum was slithering down cliffs head first as he followed Bilbo. I identified with Gollum and loved his voice. “Yesss,” he said. I tried talking that way back in the Cav: “Yesss, we likes to go on missionssss.” But people thought I was developing a lisp. No one knew who Gollum was. The most popular books were James Bond adventures.