by Peter Gilboy
“Is there room for more heroes?” she asked.
T.R. gasped audibly and stepped away from her.
“Will more be coming?” she went on.
Ông giải phóng turned toward her. He answered simply. “Yes.” He looked at her solemnly. “Our country is cemetery, Lieutenant Pavlik,” he said. “And many not buried because we not find them. After your bombs, we search the trees.”
She would not be taken in. “Why are there no farm tools here? Where does the village get its food?”
“Other villages are taxed.”
“You mean you steal from them.”
He shrugged. “Some do not want to give. So we take from them. They have enough and we do not. We do not take all. Everybody hungry, Lieutenant Pavlik. Except the Americans.”
“I am an American. And I am starving.”
“But the doctor is not starving,” he said with a slit of a smile. “You are starving because you are not yet worthy of our food. Maybe soon you will learn to be worthy.”
He turned and walked back toward the hamlet. They followed behind him until he stopped and turned to them.
“In our cities where the Americans are,” he said, “do you see the children with no families? They are in the streets and run after your jeeps. When you see them, you want to feed them?”
T.R. spoke up. “Of course we want to feed them, Ông giải phóng.”
The man laughed. “Of course you do. Because of sympathy. Or guilt. You are Americans. You not like to see people suffer. Americans are generous. But if you not see them, you not think of them. That is you way. That is easy for you. You have food and money to feed them. More than enough.”
His tone changed. “But our brothers in the North,” he said, “they come here and they different. They not feed our children. They say there not enough. Only enough for them. That what they say. The revolution must continue, they say. And they right. So they eat and let our children starve.”
He turned back in the direction of the Heroes’ Cemetery, then to Patricia. “But we village fighters—you Charlie—we different. There not enough food for us and the children. But still we feed them. These our children. Not the North’s. We feed the children and still we fight.”
Ông giải phóng continued back toward the center of the hamlet. Patricia and T.R. followed slowly, not like prisoners now, more like visitors. She saw a chicken pecking for bugs at the corner of a hut. She saw a scrawny dog asleep in the shade. A man with one leg sat on the ground next to a hut. They approached the men at the card game again. The one with a sunken eye socket snatched his AK and pointed it at them. He made hacking gun noises. The other men laughed uproariously. They looked at her coolly, then turned back to their game.
Ông giải phóng continued ahead of them, back to the other side of the hamlet. T.R. helped support Patricia up the slight incline.
On the other side of the hill Ông giải phóng stopped at her doghouse. She could not go back in there. She couldn’t. She had been out for hours and the doghouse was even more revolting now. She could not believe he would make her go inside again. She braced herself as she stood at the door of the cage. She would not give him an ounce of pleasure.
“Are you going to lock me in again?” she asked.
“You stay here. No lock, now. So you can use latrine.”
“And him?” She motioned to T.R.
“He stay in village. He has duties.”
“Why can’t I stay in the village?”
“Because you not worthy,” he said. He pointed through the door. “Inside,” he commanded.
She crawled inside.
Ông giải phóng turned his back on them. He casually walked away.
T.R. followed slowly after him.
33
JANUARY 17, 2006
SECTION ONE,
1:00 P.M.
WE DIDN’T PLAN THE brotherhood. It grew on its own every time we were ambushed. We lost Ted Wilson in one ambush. We lost Tiny McLaughlin in another. The next day we lost J.D. No one knew his real name.
So, the brotherhood wasn’t planned. We were scared. We were pissed. The brotherhood grew because we needed each other. It was spontaneous. A realization. Now we were one. Now we worked as one. We thought as one. Black or white, we were one. Rank didn’t matter because we were one. Stupid or smart, we were one.
And the brotherhood had rules. You never take dope on patrol. Never. We’d heard too many stories. Everyone shares smokes. Everyone shares pictures from home. Someone covers your back when you take a dump on the trail. Always. He doesn’t mind the smell. You can even lean against him if you have to. No problem. He’s in the brotherhood, see? And if you’re hit, we’ll be there. Always. We’ll get the doc. We’ll fly the fucking chopper if need be. We’ll stop the war if that’s the only way. One thing: Don’t fuck with the brotherhood.
After the car dealership, I drop Julia back at the apartment and return to Section One. I brief Alec about Smith and what happened at the Wall and at the Chapman dealership. I leave out the part about Julia being with me. Then, along with Towers, we head to the screening room. We’re going to look over the terrain again and see if we can find where Patricia Pavlik may have gone.
It’s 2:10 p.m. our time, which means it’s 4:10 a.m. over there. Towers has reconnected us to Section Three’s NROL-74 and to one of the RQ-179 drones that relay on to the receptors in Alaska.
A few minutes later and we’re looking down from forty thousand feet. Middle of the night there, so it’s dark, except for a few lights that seem to blink up at us; maybe from cars, but some seem to be flickering as if from lanterns or campfires.
“Smith said she was in Savannakhet.” I tell Alec. “Laos. And that she must have followed the valleys east. He figures she’s heading toward the sea.”
“Who’s Smith, sir?” Towers asks.
“He’s Magellan,” Alec explains.
“But who’s Magellan?”
“Don’t worry about it,” I say.
“Yes, sir.”
“Go to SAR,” Alec says.
SAR is synthetic aperture radar. We’re using a SAR-11, the latest, which gives us three-dimensional images, exposing elevation and vegetation zones. I turn the knob and the dark land mass suddenly shifts to a spectrum of colors—deep purple to shocking pink. Roads are still black, though. Water is bright yellow. Day or night, the SAR creates these colors with three-dimensional images. From this high up the planet looks psychedelic.
“Ten thousand feet,” Alec says.
I move closer.
“Thirteen degrees north,” he says, “and one hundred and one degrees east. Then hold.”
It’s the ROWBEC location again, now lit up even brighter than daytime. I overlay the ROWBEC letters. The SAR shows that the letters were spread out in the middle of a low-vegetation area, now in a light rose color. The vegetation that rises around it is marked by crimson, changing to violet, and then a deep purple as it turns to jungle.
“Okay, let’s say it is her,” Alec says. “How’d she get there?”
With a laser marker I trace the network of valleys and ridges stretching east from Savannakhet toward the ROWBEC location. In places, the valleys crisscross each other like one of those children’s games where you find your way out of the maze. I trace the valleys’ downward slopes, going east, just like Smith said. But with all the valley mazes there’s no way to predict which route she might have taken.
“Could she have done it by river?” I ask.
Towers points. “What’s that river, sir?”
“Sepon,” I say. “It borders Vietnam and Laos. It was part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. But it doesn’t connect going further east.”
“She could have used it,” Towers says, “and then crossed country.”
“Let’s try this,” Alec says. “Let’s say that she did come east from Savannakhet to where the ROWBEC letters were. If she kept going east from there, where would the valleys take her?”
“The sea,
obviously,” I say.
“Yeah, but where?” Alec takes the laser marker and points. He slides the marker east from the ROWBEC site, following the valley slopes across Dak Doa, Mang Yang, and An Khe. Farther east is Binh Dinh Province, and then finally the South China Sea.
Towers says. “She’d have to cross two main arteries, roads 670 and 669.”
“That’s right,” I say.
“Wouldn’t she ask for help?” Towers says.
“She wouldn’t know who to trust,” Alec tells him. “But she might be trying to make it to a Red Cross station or some Anglo company that would help her.”
“But which one?” I say.
Alec says, “Switch to COMEN.”
COMEN is combo enhancement, a combining of infrared, ultraviolet, and optical searching. Suddenly the night looks like daytime. I move the camera north along the coastline. We’re at three times a kite’s distance.
“Overlay the province map,” Alec say.
I do, and we see QL 1D Road running north and south just inland from the coastline. A few vehicles are out this late. We can see their headlights.
Alec says, “That Marine told you she was caught at some leper place, didn’t he? Remote, right? And on a beach.”
“Yeah. Towers found the place on a map.”
“What was the name?”
“Cuy Hoa,” Towers replies.
“Pull it up,” Alec says.
I scan the coast to the north. Nothing remote in that direction except rocks and cliffs. I look south. White sands and palm trees stretching for miles and miles. It’s beautiful down there. There’s a mountain just off the coast with a faint road heading around it to a village. The overlay marks the village’s name: Cuy Hoa.
“That’s it,” Alec says. He points. “But what’s that?”
I move us closer. It looks like a bunch of shacks in a row. I move us still closer, and we see a line of tables set up near what looks like a large parking area. I go to thirty feet. Then ten feet. I go to three feet, and now we see that the tables have signs in English. They’re selling things: sea shells and cone hats and Coca-Cola.
“It’s a fucking tourist trap,” Alec says.
“And those huts look new,” I say. “Can’t be from the war.”
“Maybe the original village was destroyed,” Alec says, “and the Vietnamese government made it into yet another tourist place, like they did with tunnels at Cu Chi and the killing area at My Lai. Tourists could then say they’ve been to a real leper colony.”
He turns to me. “What now?”
I shake my head.
“Can we find her from the sky?” Alec ventures.
“Huge area,” I say.
“We think she’s alone,” Alec continues, thoughtfully. “We know she’s not in a car. And we know she’s hiding. Probably in the jungle somewhere. Separate, but close to populations. We can use the R24 and scan for isolated thermal signatures on the outskirts of towns.”
“Sir, the R24 can only target a hundred square yards at a time. And there’s hundreds of square miles to cover. Even if we scanned it on auto, it could take weeks.”
“So we got nothing, is that it? What do you think, Quintyn?”
“Me?” I say. “I think I deserve the rest of the day off.”
“What the hell for?” Alec demands.
“I’m on my honeymoon, gentlemen. Remember? And there’s something I need to take care of. Do a little fishing.”
“Need some help, sir?” Towers asks.
I shake my head. “Thanks, Jodee, but I already got someone in mind.”
34
A VILLAGE IN SOUTH VIETNAM
DAY 110
THE NEXT MORNING, PATRICIA and T.R. sat facing each other at the side of the doghouse. They had few words for each other now. She could see the shame and apology on T.R.’s face, that soon he would walk away. Then it would be just her again, her and the cage and the clearing outside.
The clearing wasn’t ominous in itself, especially now in the speckled sunlight as leaves tossed in the air. But when night came, the insects would arrive too, and she would have to flee under her net in the darkness, nine thousand miles from that other lifetime; all alone and listening to them swarming, hearing the night choir of their wings.
“What do you believe in?” she asked T.R.
He thought a moment. “Honestly?” he asked. “I believe I will never see home again,” he said softly.
“Why?”
“They talk about release, but I don’t think so. Not really.”
She was quiet for a time. “But what do you believe in, T.R.? In God?”
He moved his feet and recrossed his legs. He took off his hat and twisted it in his hands.
“What?” she demanded.
“I believe in nothing,” he finally answered. “Maybe evolution. The survival of the strongest. That’s our history, isn’t it? And human history has never been good.”
They heard a helicopter again, a mile or so distant, a dull throbbing beat, and then some gunfire. T.R. gestured toward the sound of the helicopter. “This is as far as we’ve gotten in history,” he said.
“But you help them,” she said.
“They need help. Everyone does.”
After a while T.R. stood and said he’d be back within a month to check on her; that he’d been assigned to her. He told her that he had requested more food for her, twice the rice and a quarter of a fish each day. The dentist then reached into his sack and took out four green capsules, then some white tablets, and then a bottle of red liquid.
“That’s all the cod liver capsules I got,” he said. “Just these four. One a week. And some sulfa quinidine tablets.” He handed her about a dozen. “They got a midwife here, but I’ll be back before that. But they’re givin’ you a choice, Patricia. I can still fix it, if you want.”
“No!”
“You don’t need to suffer for no reason.”
That seemed to be the funniest thing. She laughed out loud. She did not tell him that the thing inside her was her strength. That hate was her strength; hate, the fiercest weapon of all. Perhaps T.R. did not hate enough, she thought.
He got to his feet and picked up the machete. He made a show of adjusting his yellow hat, like a cowboy with a ten-gallon. “I’ll just be goin’, ma’am.”
She did not smile back.
“Well, suit yourself,” he told her.
Patricia watched as he walked slowly up the incline toward the village. He looked back only once, giving her a mock salute. Then he disappeared over the crest.
For the next weeks, a boy brought additional food each morning. A large bowl of rice and two small pieces of fish. Sometimes three pieces. The boy had odd bulging eyes. He was probably made fun of in the village. He was homely, yes, but his smile was every boy’s with a missing front tooth. At times he seemed awed by her green eyes and her nose that was prominent rather than flattened. She named him Tonto. Her sidekick. Yes, Tonto, and she laughed at that. Ông giải phóng had given her Tonto. He had serious tasks now: to watch her eat, to make sure she consumed every morsel. Maybe they thought it was their baby who was inside her. But it wasn’t theirs. It was hers. All hers. Nobody else’s.
Her liberator’s lectures continued over the next weeks. Always the same. She could have repeated them from memory: How the American protesters at home—what he called “the Second Front”—were helping bring peace to the world. How American workers were starving because of greedy capitalists. How blacks were enslaved and forced to work in cotton fields. How the puppet government of South Vietnam could not defeat the righteous cause of the North.
Ông giải phóng smoked American cigarettes as he spoke. Winstons, and sometimes Newports. He always offered her one too, as if they were colleagues of some sort, friends. Sometimes she smoked with him. It tasted bad, but it was a diversion that she welcomed. Her teeth hurt. She cleaned them with a stick each morning and night, but she was sure they were rotting.
She wondered
about Vang, in that other village. What had happened to him? He had to have been only a village leader, not a communist fighter, so perhaps they had killed him by now. She remembered how Ông giải phóng was startled when she said the words that Vang had taught her—“Một cây đứng cao cho đến khi nó chết.” She sensed that the words were about death; that somehow they were powerful words. Maybe these words were a weapon for her. Yes, maybe a weapon.
Another week, and she was even stronger. Much stronger. Maybe it was the added fish. And with this strength came the firm realization that she would survive. That she would live through this. She recalled clearly now, the man who had come each night and forced her; she remembered his breath, his grunts over her. And now the thing inside her—it was hers, not theirs. It was hers only. And they did not know how much she hated it. How much she hated all of them, the lies, the brutality, the pain, the idiotic propaganda. And it, the thing. It was hers, but it was also one of them. Now she would use this thing inside her, use it to hate, because hate is a powerful weapon. An antidote.
But she would put her survival even before her hate; and the thing inside her was the key to her survival. They would not kill her now because they would not hurt it. At least for now she would feed its body and her own. She would make its little life work to save her. She could feel its tiny will to live and she would steal its will for herself. It would give her strength.
Yet at times she thought differently, that this thing inside her was a friend after all. That the miracle of life doesn’t take sides. Maybe it was innocent and as precious as every baby. No. It was the enemy. Her mind went in different directions. Hers. Not hers. Her enemy. No, her only companion. Her sustainer. Sometimes she wept in her confusion. Sometimes she loved the child inside her.
There was so little to love here.
At times she found herself talking to it when she was alone. No, not alone. She had it. Sometimes she could feel it, how small, how vulnerable, how terrible, maybe how wonderful. When she talked to it, it was always in a soft voice, soothing. It wasn’t the enemy. Or maybe it was. Yes, it was. It was one of them. No one would know how she did it, how she kept going. It was because of her hate. Her hate would keep her going. She would escape again.