by Peter Gilboy
“That’s not our area, sir.”
“And I asked if that’s a problem for you.”
Towers looks to me for an answer. But it’s his decision.
“Well, Corporal?”
He looks down. “I guess not, sir. As long as it’s official.”
“Very official. Screening room, then. We’ll go for a spin. We’re gonna take you to Nam, son. You been there?”
“No, sir.”
“It’ll be fun,” Alec says.
Towers doesn’t look so sure. “If you say so, sir.”
14
A VILLAGE IN SOUTH VIETNAM
DAY 9
HER SHOULDERS HAD SHRUNK. Her stomach was knotted. Lieutenant Pavlik was approaching delirium. She knelt at the door of the hut, begging for food, even shouting, to anyone passing by. Her head hurt so continuously that she could no longer feel the pounding.
But they still allowed her only water.
Then, on this morning, they moved her outside. Maybe it was because of her smell. Two men in black pajamas watched over her. They hammered a cuff with a chain around her leg, like the elephants she had seen at the circus. The chain was short and attached to a tree, but it was long enough for her to go under the leaves behind her so she could relieve herself. But she had nothing in her stomach. Patricia could smell herself. The filth and the crust. She could feel every beat of her heart. The wound on her head hadn’t fully healed. It wouldn’t close.
Some of the villagers passing by looked like they wanted to help her. But they continued on. Others ignored her completely. What did they want? Maybe they wanted her to beg in their language. She tried hard to remember the words in Vietnamese. When the next person passed, she pointed to her mouth. Thức ăn, she said: Food. The man nodded, but kept going. What did they want?
That afternoon, a brown, wrinkled woman she had not seen before brought her water. She also brought a needle and a thin wire. Patricia realized that the woman wanted to stitch her forehead to close the wound. The woman also brought some sort of salve and rubbed it over the wound. It numbed the area. Patricia sat motionless as the woman did her work. She was surprised at the woman’s skill. It hurt less than she had expected.
When she was done, the woman poured water from a canteen into a cup. There was dirt in the water, and some kind of bug. As Patricia drank from the cup the woman whispered to her: “Xin cần thức ăn.”
She understood now. They wanted more than for her to beg. They wanted her to say please. In their language. Patricia waited until the woman was gone, then got the attention of the two VC guards. She pointed to her mouth. “Xin cần thức ăn.”
They laughed at her pronunciation, but this time one of them rose and went away, then came back with a ball of rice. She lobbed it to Patricia. The rice broke apart but Patricia caught most of it. The rest she picked up piece by piece in the dirt.
They waited. She was supposed to say more.
“Cảm ơn,” she said. Thank you.
They smiled. They unlocked her leg irons, then led her back to the hut. She was grateful.
She knew her indoctrination had begun.
That night Patricia Pavlik awakened with a start. It was pitch black. She was immediately vigilant, searching the darkness. Something was over her. Had he come back? Had they all come back? She jerked her arm to force them off her. A cloud of mosquitoes rose from her body then settled again like a single fluttering blanket over her. She screamed and rolled and slapped wildly at her arms and head and clothing. The cloud rose again and moved with her as she rolled to get away; mosquitoes in her face, her hair, their high-pitched vibrations a loud chorus in her ears. Their stingers jabbing through her clothes. There was no way to escape.
She realized that she had fallen asleep without the mosquito net. She groped in the darkness for it now. The net wasn’t there. She sat up and continued to flail her arms to keep the mosquitoes away while trying to find the net.
She caught movement by the door, a silhouette entering. Forgetting the mosquitoes, she frantically reached around for something, a rock, anything. She had only her fists. She readied them.
The silhouette shuffled toward her. It was a man, thin and stooped. He had a stick, like a cane. Lieutenant Pavlik drew back. But the man spoke softly as if not wanting to alarm her. He lit a small lantern made from a perfume bottle. The light was low, a tiny halo, too low for her to see his face. But almost immediately the mosquitoes retreated from the odor of the kerosene.
“Dừng sợ,” he said softly, as one speaks to a trembling bird, telling it not to be afraid. “Dừng sợ,” he repeated.
He had brought a cloth and a basin of water. He reached out and moved the cloth over Patricia’s face, wiping the crushed mosquitoes from her cheeks, then her ears. His hands were hard, calloused, but his touch was so gentle. “Dừng sợ,” he said again. She struggled to see him better, but in the dim light she couldn’t see his face.
He left for a time but returned with more water, cool and clean. It had to be from a well. He did not seem bothered by her smell. He wiped her hands and wrists, holding them as gently as a doctor checking for broken bones. Then he wiped her neck again, her ankles and feet. She smelled something. Food. Rice. He held up a small bowl then scooped the rice kernels into his hand. He held it to her mouth. She wanted to weep with relief. Someone was helping her. Patricia accepted the rice from his hand. It was cold, but she ate it quickly.
The man nodded to her then. She still could not see his face. He found the mosquito net behind her. He hooked it to the wall and the ceiling. He lowered it around her. He picked up his walking stick. He turned off the lamp.
“Hello,” he said.
Without another word, the man left.
15
JANUARY 16, 2006
SECTION ONE, 8:10 A.M.
CONSIDER THIS: THERE ARE no true war stories. None. All war stories all false. At least in part. How is that possible? Easy. It happened. Something happened. It really did. But the mind has to make sense of it, turn the chaos into something comprehensible. We need that. We need to remember it differently. Even just a little. The sensation. The emotion of it. The sounds. The smells. We need to find some rule to lean on. Maybe some moral conclusion that’s on our side. A virtue of some sort. Or else the story can’t be told.
Going for a spin. That’s what we call journeying the skies in real time. Sort of like an afternoon ride in the country, but from much higher up. This time it won’t be over the street corners and alleyways of Riyadh or Sana’a or some other Middle Eastern town. We’re going for a spin on the other side of the world. If we can get a hold of a ’74.
Our screening room is a good-size space, enough for about twenty-five, with plush chairs and a mahogany table in the center. There’s a picture of the president on the wall, along with the director of the CIA and the head of NSA. A massive LED screen fills an entire wall. Think of it like a movie projector room, but with more buttons and switches than a 727. From here we could peer down at almost any spot on earth.
Alec turns to Towers. “Blue safe. Drawer three. Spiral disc.”
Yes, we use safes. Because they’re safe. That’s why. No password to save or lose. Nobody hacking their way in. Most agencies have returned to safes. Very retro. Very safe.
In a minute Towers returns with the spiral disc, the latest encryption key.
“Lock the door,” Alec commands.
Towers goes back and locks it. He sits at the controls then, with Alec behind him. I’m already at my own controls with rows of swivel sticks and lights, knobs and thumb bars.
“And don’t leave any fingerprints,” Alec tells him.
“Are you sure this is authorized, sir?” Towers asks.
“I’m authorizing it, Corporal,” he answers with a grunt. “And it’s on a need-to-know basis, like nobody needs to know?”
“Okay, sir.”
Towers plugs in the spiral disc, then toggles a sequence of switches.
“Which un
it, sir?” he asks me.
“Let’s try their UT51,” I say. “Section Three keeps it in hold mode over Thailand.”
Hold mode is just a way of speaking, of course. The unit is about two hundred twenty-five miles up and traveling at four hundred sixty meters per second, which is the same speed rotation as the earth—twenty-three hours, fifty-six minutes, and four-point-zero-nine-zero-five-three seconds. For all practical purposes, it’s stationary; what they call geosynchronous.
I watch as Towers enters a series of numbers, then cancels and tries again. Alec is right. The kid is good. Reminds me of a younger me, only better.
“What’s the hold-up, Corporal?” Alec asks.
“I’m transmitting, sir, but it’s not accepting the signals.”
“Just do it,” Alec commands. “And hurry it up.”
We wait as he goes through a dozen more sequences and cancellations. No luck.
“They must be using a newer encryption,” Towers says.
“Or they’re using an older one,” I tell him. “Try the elysian switch and work it back into previous modes.”
Towers fiddles. Five minutes pass. Ten minutes. Finally he sits back with a grin.
“Good boy,” Alec tells him, then turns to me and nods a thank you.
“Now wed it to one of our downstream terminals,” I instruct. “Otherwise it won’t decode.”
“I know, sir.”
“And no fingerprints,” Alec emphasizes.
“They’re called ‘tags,’ sir. And I’m trying.”
“You know what I mean.”
A few minutes later the satellite is ready, but it’s still blind. Towers looks to me.
“You’re up, sir.”
I punch in our relay codes that connect the unit with one of the RQ-179s in the sky. These are rotating drones, Lockheeds, which will transmit images to our NSA receptors in Alaska, which is where Section One grabs its data.
In a short time we’ll have ground images, temperatures, wind speed, humidity, elevations, and levels of solar radiation. Everything but the mosquito count. There isn’t a number big enough for that.
Next is the best part. My favorite. I always feel like a child with his new Tinker Toys.
I punch the double bar key. I sit back and take a breath, waiting for the first image. It always startles me.
The curve of the Earth.
16
A VILLAGE IN SOUTH VIETNAM
DAY 19
DAYS BLURRED. A SINGLE ball of rice each day. Being led to the latrine. Waiting. Sleeping. Waiting. Sleeping. She was growing weaker with each day. Her hands shook. Again and again Patricia wondered about T.R. and her husband, Brian. They seemed, now, like images in some far-off dream. Everything from before was just a dream. Everything here was real. Everything here was all there is.
Now Patricia Pavlik crouched in the corner of the hut again, her arms around her knees. She looked up as someone entered. A man. He removed his cone hat and moved slowly across the little room.
Was this the man who had forced her? She readied for a fight. Then she saw the cane. And that he was shuffling with a limp. It was the other man, the one who days before had brought her rice; the one who had cleaned her feet and face.
In the daylight, she could see his dark, weathered skin and his long face with webs of deep creases. He was dressed in black pajamas like all the others. Wisps of white hairs fell from his chin. Low on his bony cheek was an ancient mole with long thin hairs. Patricia recalled hearing that in this country, long mole hairs represented age and stature, and that long fingernails were a sign of wealth and leisure because they indicated the person didn’t have to work with his hands. She checked his nails. They were broken and short.
“Hello,” the man said. He leaned toward her and swished some mosquitoes away from her hands and bare ankles. He smiled at her. Then he squatted in front of her on his haunches, inspecting her face, her hands, her arms. After several minutes he spoke.
“Bạn có nói tiếng việt?”
Still weak, her head was a heavy weight. She struggled to sit straighter, look him in the eye. She felt nauseated.
“Bạn có nói tiếng việt?” he said again, and continued to study her.
She stared back, uncomprehending. He reached out to her easily, almost gracefully, and moved her hair to the side of her face. She could see his thin delicate lips and his dark teeth. He continued to study her, his chin in his hand as his elbow rested on his knee. He was thinking. After some time he smiled.
“Parlez-vous français?”
The words were familiar, but she could only stare. Exhaustion controlled her mind.
“Parlez-vous français?” he repeated.
Minutes of silence as he waited patiently. She knew he was trying to communicate, but the words wouldn’t come to her. Finally, he stood and moved to the door.
“Wait!”
Patricia struggled again to remember, her mind reaching back to her studies. Finally she had it.
“Un peu,” she said in a soft, raspy voice.
He beamed and came back to where she sat. He squatted and continued slowly. “Je m’appelle Vang.” He waited and then repeated it. “Je m’appelle Vang.” He pointed to himself. “Vang. Vang.”
She repeated it. “Vang,” she said.
He smiled and nodded. He pointed to her. “Comment vous appelez-vous?” Her mind refused to cooperate. He pointed at her again. “Vous. Vous. Comment vous appelez-vous?”
She understood. Excited, she sat up straight, now at eye level with him. “I am First Lieutenant Patricia Pavlik of the United States Army.” She gave her serial number. She waited.
He had a quizzical look on his face. He scratched his chin and smiled as he watched her. He nodded and spoke again. “S’il vous plaît dites à nouve.”
“Where is my friend?” she asked.
“S’il vous plaît répéter votre nom.”
“My friend. Is he alive?”
He shook his head that he didn’t understand. He repeated the questions. She understood.
“Pavlik,” she said. “Patricia Pavlik.”
He nodded. He tried to form the words with his mouth. “Phatri,” he said, and nodded to himself again. “Phatri.” He continued to look at her. After a long time he spoke again. “Bientôt,” he said. “Bientôt,” he repeated. “Vous allez bientôt rentrer chez vous.”
She didn’t understand. She shook her head.
“Soon, Phatri,” he said. “You…go…home, Phatri. Soon.”
He smiled again. It was almost a kindly smile. Maybe he was a friend. Maybe not. Maybe this was all part of the indoctrination. She could not imagine what his thoughts were, or his past and present, just as she knew he could not imagine hers.
“Phatri,” he said again. Then he reached out with both hands and lifted one of her hands in his. He shook her hand like a Westerner, but awkwardly.
“Hello,” he said.
Then he left.
After he was gone, a young VC woman entered and brought her a ball of rice in a bowel. Without looking at Patricia the woman set it down a short distance from her and left. Patricia reached out and pulled the bowl toward her. She ate it quickly.
Soon, the man had said. Soon.
17
JANUARY 16, 2006
SECTION ONE,
8:50 A.M.
BREATHTAKING DOESN’T DESCRIBE IT; the earth below and the blue-black dome of the stratosphere above, as the satellite sensors provide us with a continuous stream of EMR images.
EMR is electromagnetic radiation. It’s a big word to describe the light waves emitted from the earth. We have a word for those light rays. We call them “colors.”
Simple enough.
I take over from Towers and close in on the terrain. The sun is rising over Laos and Vietnam. No clouds. Looks good. In minutes our visual is only twenty miles up, about three times higher than what you see from a commercial plane. Even from this height it’s just a wide mass of land that c
ould be anywhere. But I know that’s the Mekong down there, visible even from this height. Laos is there to the north, of course. Cambodia to the southwest. Cambodia; a great vacation spot if you like a million buried mines left over from the war.
“Go to 4-0,” Alec says.
I move us to forty thousand feet, about five miles up, airplane height. Below now are long shadows from the rising morning sun. South China Sea to the east. Mekong snaking its way south. Hills and jungle.
It’s a myth that we can look down through thick jungle canopies. Yes, we can track heat signatures of missile launches halfway around the world; and yes, we can get an infrared or a remote thermal read on a passenger in a car or bus, or even someone moving from the living room to bedroom in a one-story home. But a tall jungle is different. Double and triple canopies is just one problem. An ambient temperature of 101 degrees is another, because then it’s nearly impossible to get a read on a live body with a temperature of 98 or 99 degrees.
That’s what I’m thinking as I scan over the verdant landscape.
Alec points. “What are those black areas?” he asks.
They’re not black, really. They are deep green, greener than green; green like you can’t imagine. But from this height they appear black.
“It’s what they call their ‘bio-diverse’ regions. Which is just a euphemism for We have no idea what the fuck’s there. Full of ancient forests, steep highlands, tall canopies that go on forever. Hamlets so small they don’t have a name. Mosquitoes carrying malaria, yellow fever, and dengue fever.”
“Wouldn’t want a vacation home there,” Alec says.
I edge closer. I overlay a road map. Now we see Vietnam’s Highway 17 running mostly east and west, curling through hills of Dak Lak Province. I toggle even closer. We’re at a kite’s height. We see Lambrettas, trucks, a Mercedes, some indistinct sedans, Nissans or Toyotas most likely, their headlights sweeping ahead of them through the dark curves. The road is too rough for them to move fast.