Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  “Then what is a war crime, if in war some things happen that you can’t help?”

  “What the hell happened here? Are you a news reporter? You don’t have to answer that. I don’t really much care if you are. I don’t know what war crimes are.”

  He was silent for a moment, considering his answer. Somehow it seemed extremely important.

  “What I do know is that there are some things I won’t do. I won’t shoot unarmed people who represent no danger to me and my troops. I won’t inflict pain for pain’s sake. If I have a POW and the situation is such that I can get him out alive, I will. I won’t kill him because he’s too much trouble.” He was silent for a moment, thinking of the wounded men in the Valley of the Fan. Had he compromised his principles there? Yes, he had. And he still didn’t know why.

  “Do you think assassination is a legitimate weapon?”

  “Perfectly legitimate,” he answered, glad for the slight change of subject. “What I said about aggression and aggressors I very much believe. There are some people out there who very much deserve to die. I find no moral compunction against assisting them along. But I absolutely refuse to assassinate beautiful young women who have entirely too many questions. Unless they really just keep at it. You want to tell me what this is all about?”

  “Just curious, I told you.” Her hand moved up from where it had been resting on his thigh. “And now my curiosity is satisfied. Let’s talk about something else.”

  “Not good enough.” He grabbed her hand to stop what she was doing. “How long did you say you had known Mark?”

  “A year or so,” she answered, rubbing her wrist where he had squeezed it.

  “To my knowledge Mark spent the last year in Vietnam. Tell me another lie.”

  “It’s not a lie,” she protested. “That’s where I knew him from.”

  “You were in Vietnam? Bullshit!”

  “It’s true! I work for USAID. I met Mark in Saigon, at the Duc Hotel. Ask him if you don’t believe me.” She swung out of bed and grabbed her panties. The slim line of her back and silhouette of one breast made a picture that was hard to resist.

  “Hold it. Don’t get pissed. I believe you. But that still doesn’t explain why you asked all the questions. You’ll forgive me for being a bit paranoid, won’t you?”

  She turned back to him. “And now it’s you asking all the questions, isn’t it? Don’t. It’s not important anyway. Give me a sip of your brandy.” She leaned across him. Her full breasts pushed into his stomach.

  He woke, hours later, to a hand roughly shaking him. “C’mon troop,” said Al Dougherty. “Drop your cock and grab your socks. We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  He looked for Moira. She was gone, only the smell of her perfume on the sheets hinting that she had been there. “Was anybody in here with me when you came in?” he asked.

  “Nobody but you. I saw you leave with the lady in glasses last night. So did Eileen. She was pissed, but consoled herself with me. Think I’ll follow you around from now on and pick up your leftovers. Come on, man! You’ve got about thirty minutes to shit, shine, shower, shave, and shampoo. That big-assed bird ain’t going to wait for us.”

  They were the last two to board. As soon as they sat down the door was closed and the engines started. Mark had saved seats for them in the rear.

  “Sorry to run off and leave you guys this morning,” he said. “But I needed to make a run for provisions.” He unzipped an AWOL bag. It was filled with bottles of vodka. “That dry run from Travis was bad enough,” he explained. “Didn’t figure we’d want to go through it all the way across the Pacific. Now if we can just find some OJ…”

  “Leave it to me,” Finn McCulloden said. “That one stew has had her eye on me since San Francisco. Don’t matter that she’s about a hundred. I’ll sacrifice myself for the cause.”

  All of them agreed that such an action was admirable, and that it would deserve a medal. “Hell,” Al said, “I’ll give you one or two of mine.”

  “And where the fuck would I find room for them?” Finn asked. “As it is, all of us got so many there won’t be room to close our caskets.”

  Jim waited until Al was asleep before asking Mark about Moira. By this time he was feeling a pleasant glow from the vodka. Not that it was difficult to achieve a glow, with all the residual alcohol from the last two days in his body.

  “She told me she knew you from Vietnam.”

  “That’s true,” Mark admitted. “I met her at the Duc Hotel.”

  “So far, so good. She said she worked for USAID?”

  “Is that what she said? Then I guess that must be the truth. I don’t really know her all that well.”

  “Then how did she end up at your house?”

  “Don’t know. Guess I must have given her the address at one time or another. I’m going to get some sacktime, okay?”

  Jim found Mark’s uncharacteristic evasiveness troubling. What did he mean when he said if she had said she worked for USAID it must be true? CORDS was a part of USAID, wasn’t it? Did she have something to do with that? Was there a purpose in seeking him out? Or was he just being paranoid? Would he ever know, one way or the other? Would he ever stop asking questions?

  He went to sleep, a slight headache nagging at his brain.

  Chapter IV

  The familiar smell of Vietnam struck him as soon as they opened the door of the plane: an amalgam of JP-4 jet fuel, unwashed bodies, the dank rottenness of decaying vegetation, and the sweet odor of burning shit. Pillars of smoke rose from hundreds of cut-off fuel drums used as field latrines. Early on in the war it had occurred to someone that they had a sanitation problem. There were so many troops clustered together producing so much human waste that the old methods of getting rid of it would not work. There was, obviously, no sewage system. Then some unsung hero devised an elegantly simple, if smelly, solution to the problem of disposal of the by-products of several thousand well-fed Americans. Fifty-five-gallon drums were cut in two and placed beneath the holes in field latrines. When half full they were pulled out, doused with diesel fuel, and set afire. You could always tell when you were getting close to an American base. The columns of smoke rose thousands of feet.

  “Funny thing is,” Jim said to Finn, “every soldier I’ve ever talked to, when I asked him what he did, he was out fighting the Cong.”

  Finn agreed, yes, that was about his experience too.

  “Well, if everyone was out fighting the Cong, what I want to know is who burned the shit?”

  Al allowed as how that would be an appropriate subject for some learned research paper, and perhaps he would be just the one to write it. “Hell,” he said, “I’ve got a high school GED. That’s damn near a doctorate, ain’t it?”

  The noises too were familiar; the roar of fighters taking off, the whopping of helicopter blades, the distant boom of artillery.

  “Home again,” Al said. He smiled.

  “Seem like we never left,” Jim replied as they walked down the ramp and out onto the hot tarmac. They moved with a slow, energy-saving gait. Everybody sweated in the heat, but the new men kept trying to wipe it away. They let it soak them, knowing that the infrequent breezes would cool them better this way.

  “FNGs think this is all a game, don’t they?” said Al.

  “And so did we. We were fucking new guys, once. Back when we were young kids. Five or six years ago. Remember how the old WWII and Korea vets used to give us hell? Where did Mark go? Sonofabitch disappears faster than anyone I’ve ever seen.”

  “I saw him just a few minutes ago talking to someone in civvies. Let’s get into the building. This concrete is cooking right through my fucking shoes.”

  Inside they headed for a sign that said “Officers.” A bored-looking NCO checked their names on a roster, told them that transportation would soon be there to take them to Long Binh, and pointed out a spot where they could wait. Al turned his body slightly so the NCO could see his combat patch. It irritated him to be treated in such
a cavalier manner. Didn’t seem fair somehow to be treated as a second-class citizen in the United States and then come here among one’s own and get the same.

  It didn’t seem to matter to the NCO. He waved them on through and went back to his roster. His voice droned through the same litany for someone else as they walked away.

  They waited for an hour, sweltering in the heat. Typical army bullshit, Jim thought. Hurry up and wait. He was now very glad for the Hawaii interlude. No one seemed to care that they were two days late. He assumed a rice paddy squat against the wall and let the crowd swirl around him. If someone had asked him what he was thinking he couldn’t have told him. His mind wandered, at points touching on Lisa, and snatches of combat, and wondering what the future would bring, all in a swirl of color and feeling and noise.

  Al nudged him, breaking him out of the reverie. “Here comes Mark. Already changed into civvies. The guy with him looks familiar. You know him?”

  “Take away the beard and a few years,” answered Jim, “and he’d look like Sergeant Major Slim Feltrie. I heard he’d retired, but I didn’t know he was working for these guys.” The sergeant major was a legend in Special Forces, which contained more than its share of larger-than-life characters. He had been the most experienced warrior the organization had. He’d started his career with the Canadian-American 1st Special Service Force in World War II, had been in the Dieppe raid and the Anzio campaign, transferred to the Rangers, and had been at Pointe du Hoc on D-Day. He’d been wounded there, shipped back to a hospital in England, had gone AWOL from the hospital and rejoined the unit, fighting his way across France, Holland, Belgium, and Germany. In Korea he’d served with the United Nations Partisan Command, conducting guerrilla raids in North Korean territory. He’d been on the White Star mission in Laos, then to Vietnam with one of the first teams deployed there. Like most Special Forces soldiers, he didn’t look the part. He was tall and skinny, talked with the twang of his boyhood Tennessee, and liked to let people think he wasn’t too smart. His manner hid a first-class mind.

  Jim nodded to the sergeant major, not knowing if he wanted their past association acknowledged. “You got changed fast,” he said to Mark.

  “Feltrie tells me you know one another,” answered Mark.

  “Slightly. The good sergeant major straightened me out when I was a young soldier. Young and dumb,” he amended.

  Feltrie smiled. “Still fighting with your fists, Jim?”

  “Nope. Gave that up after our last ‘counseling’ session,” he replied. He explained to the others that Feltrie had been his company first sergeant, back when he had first joined the army. Like most young airborne troops, he had thought he was a real badass. Liked to go to town and get into fights. After one such, when he had taken on a group of MPs, the sergeant major had decided to teach him a lesson. Gave him a choice of nonjudicial punishment, Article 15, or the first sergeant’s own punishment. He had thought he could do well against an old, skinny fart. It was a mistake. By the time Feltrie had gotten through with him he was begging to go to the stockade. He hadn’t gone out to look for a fight since.

  “You weren’t too bad, for a young kid,” said Feltrie. “But not as good as I was. You’re looking good. Guess they’ll make anyone an officer now. Heard you had a little bad luck upcountry. Ran into Zack Osborne last time I was in Nha Trang and he told me all about it. How you feelin’ now?”

  “I’m not going to win any footraces,” answered Jim. “But I never won any before either. I imagine I can still hump a rucksack.”

  “Why don’t we get out of here,” Mark interrupted. “You guys can talk over old times at the Club later.”

  “We’ve been waiting for transportation to Long Binh,” said Al. “Looks like they forgot us.”

  “Forget about Long Binh,” said Feltrie. “Mark tells me you guys are interested in working for us. I’ve got a truck outside. Throw your stuff in it and we’ll head for Saigon.”

  “You sure about this?” Jim asked. “I’d hate like hell to be AWOL my first day back in country.”

  “You’re already cleared,” answered Mark. “You are now assigned to MACV CORDS. Orders to follow. Trust me, guys. If we wait until you get processed through Long Binh we won’t see you for a couple of weeks. And we need you right now.”

  Jim looked at Al, who shrugged as if to say, Why not? Stranger things had happened to both of them.

  Petrillo turned to Finn McCulloden. “How about you?” he asked. “You want to join us?”

  Finn shook his head. “Promised old Sam Gutierrez I’d take the Mike Force,” he said.

  At the mention of a familiar name Jim’s head jerked up. “Gutierrez? I thought he was dead.”

  “Damn near,” Finn replied. Sam Gutierrez had been their team leader back when both had still been medics. Harder than Chinese arithmetic, they said about him. Then all of a sudden he was gone, to points unknown. The next they heard about him was the Group rumor that he’d been shot to pieces, was not expected to survive.

  “Took something like seven bullets,” Finn continued, “and a whole shitload of shrapnel. When I ran into him back at Fort Bragg, it didn’t look like he’d ever been hurt. Told me he’d had worse times back in Texas. He’s the commander of C-2 now, a light colonel.”

  “Army’s screwin’ up,” Feltrie said. “Promoting somebody that’s half-assed competent. Next thing you know, the officer class will know what the hell they’re doing. Not like now. Present company excepted, of course.”

  No one believed that the sergeant major was actually excepting the present company, but nobody wanted to challenge him on it, either.

  “Well, watch your ass,” Jim said.

  “Ain’t mine that’s got so many holes in it you don’t know which one to shit out of,” Finn replied. “Y’all take care.”

  They shouldered bags and followed Feltrie to the exit. The MP was shown a card. It was amusing to watch the man’s face, his expression going from disbelieving suspicion to awed compliance. “My get-out-of-jail-free card,” Feltrie explained when they were outside. “Works every time.”

  Their transportation was a new Ford Crew-Cab pickup with Vietnamese plates. Jim was impressed. “Nothing but the finest for the troops,” quipped Mark. “Besides, this makes sure we don’t look like everyone else. Wouldn’t want the VC to assassinate the wrong guys.”

  “Glad to see logic still has a place in the world,” said Jim. On the four-lane highway going into Saigon he got his first look at the devastation of the Tet Offensive. There were few undamaged buildings. Most had been leveled in the attack or in the counteroffensive.

  “Looks nice,” said Al. “Urban renewal by B-52. They leave anything standing?”

  “Shit, this is nothing,” scoffed Feltrie. “Wait until we get into Saigon. Cholon is pretty well gone. The area around the zoo you wouldn’t recognize. We had a hell of a fight out by Tan Son Nhut; had to bring in the Delta Rangers to help out.”

  “My old outfit,” said Al, “How did they do?”

  “Damned good, after the first day. That first few hours wasn’t too much fun. City fighting takes a little getting used to. The VC dug in at the bases of the buildings, which gave them good fields of fire down the roadways. Chopped us up pretty good until some bright boy from Delta decided that if we couldn’t get them away from the buildings, we’d bring the buildings closer to them. Like right down on their heads. Got some ninety-millimeter recoilless rifles and a few truckloads of ammo, shot the supports out, buildings collapsed right on top of them. Was a lot easier going after that. News media gave us hell for it, of course. ‘Destroying a village in order to save it,’ that kind of shit. Kept asking us what about the civilians in those buildings. Civilians! Anybody who wasn’t a VC had long since gotten their asses out of there. Most of them before the attack took place. Anyway, the VC got so chopped up they’re having trouble mounting platoon-sized attacks.”

  “I was going to ask about that,” said Jim. “Last time I was down this road, a
year ago, there were troops all over the place to keep it open. I haven’t seen any since we left Bien Hoa.”

  “It’s the same way all over the place,” replied Feltrie. “Big patches of the countryside are up for grabs. Places you couldn’t get into without a battalion and a B-52 strike, you could walk through now. Hell of an opportunity, but nobody seems to want to take advantage of it. Except us. That’s why I’m glad you gentlemen want to volunteer. We need you.”

  “Far as I know,” Jim drawled, “we haven’t volunteered just yet. Thought we were going to Saigon for a briefing. See what happens after that.”

  Feltrie shot a look at Mark, who felt compelled to say, “Of course you haven’t. What Slim meant to say was, we feel pretty certain you’ll want to after you hear what we have to say.”

  I wonder, thought Jim. Just too many coincidences piling up. Where had Mark called from to get Feltrie out from Saigon to meet them? There hadn’t been time after they had arrived. And how had he gotten them assigned to CORDS? It look longer than thirty minutes to get orders cut. Especially from the personnel center at Long Binh, which was notoriously slow and inefficient. Everyone had heard the stories, apocryphal or not, of people who had been assigned to the replacement center, got lost in the system, and turned up a year later to rotate home.

  He decided to wait and see what happened. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Though, he thought, being paranoid didn’t preclude the possibility that someone might be after you. Besides, being paranoid had so far been a pretty good survival tactic.