HANGMAN
SAN FRANCISCO SLAUGHTER
Jack Badelaire
Copyright © May 2014 by Jack Badelaire
Cover by Rebecca Frank
http://rebeccafrank.design
Published by Post Modern Pulp Books
Published in the United States of America
ONE
He was finally going back into the jungle.
The Kingbee vibrated under his body, the feeling as intimate and familiar as a lover’s heartbeat. The scent of hot metal, aviation fuel, and machine oil was her perfume, the safety strap he was clipped into was her loving embrace. They had been together for two years, and he thought he would never be held by her again, but there he was, back inside her, the wind and rotor wash whipping through the open doorway and battering at him endlessly. It was a sensation that was almost sexual to him, and he didn’t dare check himself for fear of finding that he was hard from the experience.
He wasn’t alone with her. Packed into the troop cabin alongside him were six Nung mercenaries, small brown men with wiry bodies and hard, impassive faces. Each man was cradling a Kalashnikov and wore a bandolier of thirty-round banana mags, with grenades and combat knives clipped to their web gear. The Nungs fought light, carrying only a rifle, ammunition, and a few throwable presents.
He, on the other hand, was loaded for bear. His CAR-15 sat between his knees, muzzle on the deck, eighteen in the box and one in the pipe. She was ready to rock and roll, and he had two dozen reloads pouched and pocketed all over him. He was also carrying his Colt in a hip holster, cocked and locked against regs but that’s the way he liked it, so they could all go fuck themselves. His Randall was tucked into his right boot, keen as a razor. He had a half dozen mini-frags pocketed here and there, along with a Willy Pete, a thermite, CS and signal smoke, one apiece. Although to the untrained eye they might all look alike, He could instantly tell the difference just by a light touch and their positions on his body. On top of that he wore a light ruck carrying a couple of canteens, an emergency signal radio, first-aid gear in the side pouches, a couple of C-rats just in case, and two changes of dry socks.
He looked left and right, out the open doors and into the night sky. They were in the middle of a twelve-helo formation, a Hatchet Force of SOG veterans and their indig allies going to drop the hammer on the other side of the border. He hadn’t been on a Hatchet raid in a long time, and it felt good to know that it would be a hard, fast fight. He was tired of days and nights sneaking about in the bush, afraid to take a piss for fear that the sound of his stream hitting the leaves would draw a battalion of NVA down on their heads.
And then came the pain. Dozens of tracer streams rose up out of the darkness, like fingers reaching out to grab the Kingbees and bring them down into the jungle. The helo pilots, fearless motherfuckers one and all, began their evasive maneuvers, but already one of the troopships on the left was hit. He watched as the flaming comet that used to be ten men disappeared into the triple canopy below like it had never existed. To his right, a second Kingbee took a hit, then another and another. Pieces of fuselage and men were tumbling through the night sky as the helo dissolved under fire, as more and more anti-air batteries found it and tore it apart. Another ten men vanished into the jungle below, swallowed down into the belly of the beast.
The door gunners tried to return fire, the M-60s and heavy fifty-cals sending their own streams of tracer fire down into the jungle. But the range was too great, and between the distance and the erratic movements of the Kingbees, the gunners were ineffective, their fire going wide or lacking the range and power to cover the distance and get through the heavy jungle below. The gunners continued to blaze away, knowing their actions were futile but refusing to sit in their helos and do nothing while the enemy clawed their bellies with fire.
They were only five minutes over the border, and he watched another Kingbee get ripped apart, a lucky tracer round tearing through a fuel tank and turning the helicopter into a ball of fire and exploding ammunition. If this kept up, there wouldn’t be a Hatchet Force left by the time they made it to the target.
And then, of course, his helicopter was hit. The effect of a 23-millimeter cannon shell on the human body was catastrophic, to say the least, and one of the Nungs across the fuselage from him simply exploded into a slurry of human wreckage, whipped through the interior of the helicopter like a gigantic blender, slapping all of them with hot meat, blood, and bone fragments. Another Nung screamed as a shell fragment tore through the belly of the Kingbee and slashed through his inner thigh, resulting in a jet of blood three feet long spraying around like a nightmarish water pistol.
There was an incredibly loud bang from overhead, and without warning the Kingbee lurched and rolled onto its side as smoke and leaking hydraulic fluids whirled through the compartment. He found himself hanging from his safety harness out the left-hand side of the helo, his legs flailing in the open air. The Kingbee continued to roll, and he dreaded the thought of his feet falling into the rotor blades as the helicopter went belly-up. But before the mortally-wounded bird rolled over completely, another burst of anti-aircraft fire chewed into the Kingbee, and suddenly he was falling away, his safety harness torn by a scything fragment.
His Airborne training took over without conscious thought, and he twisted and turned in the air until he was falling belly-first, arms and legs splayed out to stabilize him even as he plummeted to his death. Glancing back, he saw his Kingbee upside down, bodies spilling from it, dark flames licking out from the engine compartment. He imagined the crew, trapped in the doomed helicopter’s cockpit, and decided in an instant he preferred his fate to theirs.
He turned back and looked down as the jungle rushed up at him. Down and slightly ahead of him, he saw the dim muzzle flashes of an anti-aircraft position firing at the other helicopters. Fumbling hands found his rifle, still clipped to his body, and he brought the weapon around. Sighting down the CAR-15, he flicked the selector to full-auto and burned through the mag, hoping against hope he could take at least one of those little motherfuckers with him before he slammed into the jungle at over a hundred miles an hour. His rifle dry, he fumbled and pulled his Willy Pete grenade free, tugging the pin out and letting the spoon fly. Holding the grenade in front of him, he stretched his body out like a living bomb, aiming for the gun emplacement.
Five seconds. Four. Three. Two. One.
The jungle swallowed him, and he set it on fire.
TWO
Jamie Lynch snapped awake, his breath coming in gasps, body soaked in sweat. The room was dark, with a glimmer of moonlight cutting through the window. To his right, the dim glow of his luminous watch dial drew his attention, and he reached out and picked it up. 0230 hours. With a shaking hand, he put the watch back on his nightstand and shifted his legs off the edge of the bed, pushing himself up into a sitting position, his feet touching the floor.
He felt the mattress shift behind him. “You okay, babe?” a sleepy female voice murmured.
“Yeah, I’m good. Just a bad dream,” Lynch replied.
He felt her sit up in the bed. A bare breast pressed against his back. “Was it the war?” she asked.
He nodded in the dark. “Yeah, but its okay. Nothing real, just some weird nightmare shit. Nothing to worry about, I’m fine. Go back to sleep.”
She lowered herself back onto the mattress, running her hand down his shoulder and caressing the small of his back. “You gonna lie back down? We could make it again, if that helps you sleep.”
Lynch reached back and caressed her bare thigh. “Nah, I’m good. Just gonna get up for a sec, I’ll be back before you know it.”
He stood up and walked naked into the kitchen, finding a glass in the c
upboard and the bottle of J&B on the kitchen counter. He opened up the freezer and scooped up several ice cubes, dropping them into the glass and pouring in a generous amount of whiskey. He did it all without turning on a light, working by the dim moonlight coming through the sliding glass door behind him. He still felt most comfortable at night without the lights on, finding safety in the darkness, relying on his superb night vision and a well-developed sixth sense to move about unerringly in the dark.
Drink in hand, he padded across the cool kitchen tiles and slid open the glass door, stepping out onto the second-story balcony. Mission Beach stretched away a hundred yards to the Pacific Ocean, where the softly-rolling surf churned into phosphorescent foam along the water’s edge. As he leaned against the balcony railing, the cool ocean breeze evaporated the sweat from his body, giving him a chill and raising goosebumps all over his skin. He took a long drink from his glass, feeling the cold Scotch burn down his throat and warm his belly.
Lynch heard sounds of laughter floating out of the darkness, and he turned to the left as a young couple in their swimsuits walked by hand-in-hand. The girl was giggling, her steps uncertain in the soft sand. She was pulling her companion along behind her.
“Nice night for a stroll,” Lynch called out.
The girl waved up at him. “Forget that - I’m trying to get laid!” she laughed.
Lynch waved back as the two lovers continued north up the beach. He could hear the faint sounds of someone’s hi-fi through an open window several houses away, and the sounds of a party continuing on into the early morning hours. He knew most of his neighbors up and down the beach for a couple hundred yards in each direction, and guessed it was the bungalow with the college kids three houses to the south. He’d catch a whiff of grass from their place almost every night, and they’d been kind enough to invite him to a few cookouts, even knowing he’d been in the war.
Lynch sipped from his glass again and looked out across the waves. The navigation lights of distant ships winked at him as they traveled up and down the coast, moving to and from San Diego harbor. His mind wandered across the water, flying over the ships, across the Pacific, to the coast of Southeast Asia. He imagined passing over the jungle, over the American firebases now dark and unoccupied, and his body shuddered as he remembered the nightmare.
So far, they hadn’t been so bad. While he still dreamt of the war every night, most of them weren’t nightmares. Instead, he relived intense firefights and daring escapes, or tense moments along a dark mountain trail, the team lying silent and undetected as hunting NVA patrols moved right through the team’s position. But now and then, his dreams turned dark and surreal, and he’d find himself in battles where the enemy couldn’t be killed, or his rifle jammed with every shot, or the jungle reached out with grasping vines and branches, entangling him and holding him fast as the baying of the enemy’s tracking dogs grew ever closer.
But the Kingbee nightmare was new, and it disturbed Lynch more because in the dream, he’d realised time had passed; he’d been gone and returned, longing to be back in the jungle again, back in the war. That was the first time he’d had a dream of the war where he’d returned to fight again, and he knew it was his subconscious mind, his id, knocking on that trap-door, demanding attention.
Lynch heard bare feet on the kitchen floor, and turned as Stacy stepped onto the balcony behind him. She was also naked, her skin glowing in the moonlight, blonde hair moving in the ocean breeze. As she moved closer he reached out and ran his hand up the curve of her hip, along her waist, continuing up until he cupped one of her full breasts, the nipple taut and hard in the cool night air. Lynch guessed she filled a C cup, perhaps even a D, and they were the perfect shape, that firm, buoyant roundness that only the fitness of youth provided.
He and Stacy had been screwing for the last two weeks. In the nine months Lynch had been out of the Army, he’d slept with a dozen women, and Stacy was by far the best lay. Twenty-one years old, she was a junior at SDSU studying English, and he’d met her at a bar one night while they were both a bit drunk and looking for some fun. Turned out she waitressed at a diner a mile to the north of his apartment, and so they’d been hooking up either before or after her shifts every night since. She was smart, funny, and didn’t mind that he woke up shouting about being in a firefight some nights.
Some of the guys he’d served with liked visiting whores. He’d gone a couple of times early on in his enlistment, but as a guy who’d never had trouble getting attention from women before the war, the idea of paying for it was a major turn-off. For one thing, he’d never found the Vietnamese women very attractive. All too often they had lean, boyish bodies and expressions that didn’t do much to hide their boredom, or worse, their loathing. Maybe it was just his ego, but when he made it with a chick, he wanted to be sure she wanted it as much as he did.
And then, there was always wondering if you were being set up to get robbed, or have your dick sliced off, or a Chinese-made hand grenade tossed into the room as the whore stepped out for a moment. None of these concerns did anything to help keep an erection. Lynch had been virtually celibate his last two years in-country.
But now, he was making up for it. Stacy reached out and took the glass from his hand, raising it to her lips and taking a long sip.
“I like it cold and watered down a little like this,” she said, handing back the glass.
“I like this cold too,” Lynch replied with a grin, dragging his thumb across her hard nipple.
Stacy gave his hand a playful swat. “You keep doing that, you better take me back to bed.”
Lynch finished off his Scotch, then tossed the ice cubes out into the sand before placing the glass carefully on the wooden rail. Then, he reached out and grabbed Stacy by her hips, lifting her into the air and sitting her on the rail in front of him.
“Nice night out here, babe. No need to go back inside,” he said.
Stacy grabbed him by the shoulders and wrapped her heels around his back, pulling him between her thighs. Lynch’s hands found her breasts, and he leaned in and started kissing her neck. Stacy reached down and found him ready, and she let out a soft moan as she guided him into her.
The night air didn’t seem so cold anymore.
THREE
Lynch was up and jogging along the beach before the morning sun rose over the tops of the bungalows along Mission Beach. In the first six months since his return to the States he’d put on fifteen pounds, getting fat and slow and lazy like all the other civilians. Living along the beach, he bought most of his meals from beachfront food stands, eating hot dogs, hamburgers, and French fries, or visiting the Mexican street-vendors and buying tortillas loaded with meat, rice, beans, and cheese. Sitting on the beach or in a bar drinking cheap beer and whiskey didn’t help matters, either.
For the last couple of months, Lynch had been watching what he ate and working out. He ran in the morning and in the evening, went swimming in the surf after each run, and pushed himself daily through a harsh calisthenics routine; push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, jumping jacks, stretches - anything to keep him fit and limber. He doubted he’d ever get back into the shape he was in during his Recon Team days, but then again, he doubted he’d ever need to hump a sixty-pound ruck up and down some mountains covered in jungle while living off of C-rats and adrenaline for days at a time.
By the time he’d returned to his apartment, Stacy was gone for the day, a steaming cup of coffee waiting for him next to a banana and a small bowl of oatmeal. Lynch shook his head and jumped in the shower, emerging naked five minutes later scrubbed clean of sand and saltwater. He dressed in shorts and a t-shirt, then took his breakfast out onto the balcony, grinning to himself while thinking of Stacy’s expression as they made love there a few hours ago. He sat down on a folding beach chair and balanced the bowl on his knee while he ate his banana and drank his coffee.
The beach was already populated with other runners, as well as some early-morning swimmers and some of his neighbors simply enjoyin
g the view. As always, or so it seemed, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just a clear blue horizon from north to south as far as the eye could see, the only irregularities a handful of ships miles from shore. Sometimes Lynch idly wondered if the ships were really travelling from one destination to another, or if they simply cruised up and down the coast for no other reason than to give a measure of perspective to the immensity of the ocean.
Lynch finished his breakfast as he stared out over the ocean, his mind working on a nameless problem that worried away at him like terrier with a chicken bone. At first, he’d relished the freedom that came with being back in the States, living off his saved military salary and some money his stepfather had put aside for when he got out. He’d found this apartment, located over a surfing supply store, a week after he’d gotten to San Diego. The owner was an older guy in his forties, a Marine who’d served in Korea. He was more than happy to rent the place out to a newly-discharged vet, and to give himself some busy-work, Lynch even worked downstairs a few hours a week, mostly waxing boards, unboxing and shelving inventory, and other menial chores. He didn’t mind the work because it gave him something to organize his life around.
The store also helped expose him to people. Returning home at the end of the war, Lynch had steeled himself for the haters and the protesters, and he’d experienced some of the anti-war sentiment early on, but more than anything, he found mostly indifference from the people he met who learned he’d been in the Army. The war, for America, was effectively over, and people just wanted to move on with their lives. Downstairs in the surf shop, people simply wanted to talk boards and waxes, waves and breaks. There was no politics, no hate, just people coming together to enjoy the sun and surf and be at peace.
Unfortunately, peace was his problem. After years of life and death in the mountains and jungles, the civilian life just wasn’t cutting it. He tried to keep himself active, hiking and exercising, going out on the town and chasing tail, but the restlessness only grew worse, a little dog with a bone between its jaws, and he could hear those small, sharp teeth grinding away. Lynch knew he needed to do something before that bone splintered and cracked under the pressure.
San Francisco Slaughter Page 1