Red Flags

by Juris Jurjevics

  We thanked Slavin for his candor and left him standing on the porch.

  Ruchevsky said, "What can you do to those fields?"

  "Bombard them with mountain goats," I said. "It's not likely we're going to get any more air assets. Sounds like Mr. Lund has really been studying his crop science and not just pushing new strains of rice, the smug bastard. Talk about not knowing which war you're in or whose side you're on. You think Captain Nhu is only collecting tribute at Chinh's behest?"

  Ruchevsky said, "I'll get my shop in Saigon to check out Nhu's family finances: work down the family tree, sniffing for money. Chinh's too. And Lund's. Wolf Man's agricultural adviser and air marshal needs to be shut down."

  The last stragglers were leaving. The guards made ready to withdraw. I went over to Miser at the beer cooler.

  "Get to the crypto rig and let Jessup know there's an American mixed up in all this."

  "Who?"

  "USAID man. Get the major to trace back Whalen Lund's time in country and see if he's done anything we can detain him for. I need to take him out of the equation here. He's collaborating with the hostiles, receiving kickbacks for expediting cultivation of certain agricultural products and maybe helping transport them. It would be a big help if Jessup could get him ejected from the country."

  "Like a transfer?"

  "Like arrested and deported. Hell, bust him for aiding the enemy and execute his ass. I don't care. Just run him the fuck out of Cheo Reo."

  13

  I DROVE COLONEL BENNETT to the stucco residence behind Roberta's clinic, as she'd requested.

  "Captain, you seem ... are you thinking I'm—"

  "Sir, I don't get paid to think. I'm just wondering what I need to do if there's an alert."

  "There's a field phone at the clinic connected back to our signal shack. Major Gidding knows to contact me."

  "Yes, sir," I said, thinking his career was toast if we got attacked while he was unaccountably elsewhere. Or worse still, if someone passed along information to the VC concerning his whereabouts. What was the bounty on a shiny new American bird colonel?

  "Thanks, Captain Rider."

  "You're welcome, Colonel."

  He looked guilty and a little forlorn. As well he might. The NVA were getting ready to launch some big operation, and we were that much more at risk without him in the compound. I put the jeep in reverse and backed out of the narrow alleyway into the bumpy street. Roberta was wrong. This wasn't some casual wartime romance for him either. He was closer than ever to his first general's star and risking everything for her. He had chosen her over us. I felt betrayed. Jealous too, since I would have made the same choice in an instant.

  I had just finished my evening round of radio contacts down in the commo bunker when a VC came up on the frequency to say in decent English that they'd be having their midday meal in our mess hall tomorrow. I took back the mike from the radio operator and said, "Yeah, hurry on over, fuckhead, and we'll hand you your lunch—personally. No problem."

  Miser came halfway down the steps and beckoned me outside.

  In the darkness, he whispered, "We got a situation."

  "What?"

  "Sergeant Rowdy. He's downtown, shacked up."

  "He broke curfew?"

  "Yeah. But that's not the problem."

  "Sarge, it's been a long day. What's the problem?"

  "There's VC in town tonight."

  "How do you know?"

  "We just got a call in the signal shack on the field phone from Dr. Roberta. She said to tell you right away. You'd know what to do."

  "Right." I pushed at my cropped hair, wondering what the hell to do.

  Miser said, "I should alert the duty officer and the guards on the wire."

  "For sure, but don't say anything yet about Rowdy."

  "Yes, sir."

  "Where is he?"

  "At the Brown Fairy."

  "Opium den?"

  "Seems like. Getting laid and blasted."

  "Shit." A military scrip dollar would buy him a dozen pipes, and I doubted he'd ask for change. By now he'd be too far gone to stand, much less walk.

  We set out over the gravel parking area toward the lone light of the night shift in the signal shack.

  "Don't call a full alert," I said. "Call Ruchevsky at his place and warn him. Kill the perimeter lights. Have commo notify Pleiku we've got company in the area and we need gunships on standby, and Spooky on station here with its Gatling guns, immediately."

  "And BUFFs?"

  "Buffs?" I said.

  "Big Ugly Flying Fuckers—B-Fifty-twos."

  "Christ, no!"

  Miser shrugged. "Okay, okay."

  "Did Rowdy just stay in town all day or sneak out after curfew?"

  "Crabbed out after the gate closed," Miser said. "His pals gave it up. They've got some secret back way."

  "They'll have to show me. I'll go out that way too."

  I went to gather my stuff. Miser jogged to the commo bunker to do his part. I burst into the signal shack, demanding to know Rowdy's trick. Geronimo escorted me to the wall of steel planks out back and showed me their "pet door," an eroded ditch where rainwater had dug its way underneath the barrier. The signalmen kept it covered with sandbags, which they pulled away to reveal a shallow depression. I took off my boots, shimmied through, and emerged into a dark world. I tied the laces together and draped the footgear over my shoulder.

  Muzzle angled down, I crept away, trying to keep the dry ground from crunching underfoot. I followed the curve of the compound to the corner of the bare field where we had watched the young Vietnamese gather ground wood. I felt around with my toes for the diagonal path, hoping that no Vietnamese garrison guard would hear me. At the end of the path, I stepped on the road to town and let it lead me to the main street.

  A single browned-out bulb was strung high on a bare pole, the town's lone streetlight. Reaching the edge of the deserted market, I sensed movement at the far end and heard men talking in Vietnamese. The rhythmic crunch suggested several of them, moving left to right, upright and confident. I didn't dare step out onto the wider expanse of the square. I hid in the blackness against the closed shop fronts and eased toward the alleyway that led to the clinic. More voices. Between the buildings it was so dark I couldn't see the sights on my rifle. I waded through the murk with my left hand outstretched, the pistol grip of the rifle in the other.

  Gas lanterns burned painfully bright in the clinic, its screened sides open to the night air. Roberta leaned over a gurney. All around her stood armed VC. A few of the men held the patient down and one barked at her as she worked on their wounded comrade. He swallowed moans and grunted and tried to keep from crying out as she explored a wound on his shoulder. He lost consciousness for moments at a time. They hadn't permitted anesthetic: he'd need to travel fast, away from Cheo Reo, as soon as she was done.

  Blood streaked her hands and arms to the elbow. She carefully withdrew a hemostat from the man's flesh as he winced and moaned. A shrapnel fragment clinked against the metal of a bowl. No sign of the colonel.

  The men in the clinic had no night vision at all in that harsh light. When the wounded man's loud scream caused them all to turn toward him, I crossed to Roberta's house and slipped in. Bennett stood just inside the door, rifle aimed at my heart. He lowered the carbine. I held up my hand, fingers spread, signaling five hostiles. He nodded, face shiny with sweat.

  The VC hadn't come for him or Rowdy—a relief. They'd come for Roberta's help. By the unwritten rules, since she was an unarmed female noncombatant, they'd normally leave her once she was done. But you never knew. Three missionaries had been seized years earlier and not seen again. There were no guarantees.

  Bennett and I stood by the windows, helpless, rifles at our shoulders.

  "The second from the left," he whispered, voice hoarse with fatigue and anxiety. "Wolf Man."

  "I see him."

  "Your eyes are younger than mine. If they make a move to harm her, drop him.
I'll go at the rest."

  We had Bennett's Viet Cong counterpart in sight, and though we were outgunned, we had all the advantage of surprise we needed to even the odds quickly. But Roberta was in the line of fire and there were undoubtedly more VC out there in the dark in blocking positions, securing the group's exit route. If a fight broke out, they could join in quickly.

  "Is anyone with you?" Bennett said.

  "No. I snuck over by myself."

  Me and my M-16, I thought. I'd brought extra ammo for us but he was carrying a carbine. Wrong caliber.

  The moans eased. The worst was over, or maybe the wounded man had fainted again. She worked steadily, sewing him up. The VC seemed less intent and anxious.

  "I guess we'll know the score soon," he said. "I hope you won't be sorry for coming to the rescue."

  Roberta worked on the wounded man for half an hour more, speaking easily to the circle in melodic Vietnamese. When she announced she was done, Bennett and I tensed and raised our sights. If there was going to be trouble it would be now. I estimated how many I could stitch firing on automatic. Wolf Man wouldn't be one of them. He was too close to her and too antsy, always moving.

  Spooky's twin propellers droned overhead, its machine guns ready to pour down a thousand tracer rounds a second onto the unfortunate enemy in an unbroken red ray. The VC froze, looking up toward the sound. Wolf Man barked orders at his cadre to help the wounded man. Two stood him upright between them and half carried him away. Wolf Man didn't say another word. Just left. The rest sped after him.

  Roberta slumped against the gurney for a few seconds, then stripped off her gloves, doused the lanterns, and crossed to the house. Once inside, she fell into Bennett's arms. She didn't even seem surprised to find me there. Her voice trembled as she talked herself down from the experience. Bennett asked about her patient.

  "He's Montagnard," she said. "Three of them were. The rest Vietnamese, including their leader with the stubble beard. He's fluent in Rhade, though."

  "That was a long procedure," Bennett said.

  "The bullet's in pieces. The smaller chunks were hell to dig out. He's bleeding still. I sutured what I could. They really shouldn't move him."

  Emotionally spent and exhausted, she sprawled across the thin mattress and the Western pillows that looked completely out of place. Three chairs, a table, and the plank bed were the only furnishings. She fell right asleep.

  A chair creaked as Bennett sat down. "She called the compound when her nurses warned us Viet Cong were in the town. If they had come in here, I'd be dead. She kept them away."

  "The doc takes charge."

  "She does." He stood, arching his stiff back. "I'm in trouble. There's a train bearing down on me." All I could make out was his white forehead. "Were you ever that taken with anyone?"

  "Once."

  "How did it work out?"

  "Train hit me and kept going."

  He nearly laughed until he realized it wasn't funny. "You like her," he said.

  "Yes, sir."

  He started to say more but stopped himself. It occurred to me at that moment that I wasn't there by accident. Bennett intended to lure me into their circle—Roberta and his. Like the drive to Mai Linh, when I first met her, our being together wasn't serendipity. The colonel engineered it. I was the fallback. If he went home to his wife, if the Army discovered his adultery and cashiered him, if anything happened to him, I'd be there. To console and distract Roberta, to be infatuated. My anger rose.

  I didn't want him to talk, so I said he should get some sleep too, that I'd stand guard. He didn't argue. He reversed his chair and sat backward on it, head resting on his arms, rifle across his lap. I leaned against the doorjamb and tried to see anything I could outside so as to distract myself and keep awake. There wasn't a lot. Toward dawn, I awoke abruptly, still standing, as vehicles screeched to a halt outside the house. With much shouting and gesturing, a large contingent of Colonel Chinh's regional militia pounded on the louvered door, demanding admission. Stripping off my fatigue shirt, I stood bare-chested in front of them, yawning. They all wore black pajamas and olive-drab hats strapped under their chins, and held their carbines at port arms. They were led by Captain Nhu, looking splendid in tailored fatigues and shiny insignia. He was clearly startled to see me, and slightly embarrassed.

  The militiamen attempted to barge past to search the premises, but I barred the way and said the doctor was fatiguée and pantomimed her sleeping. Nhu ordered them back. He said something about a Viet Cong being treated in the hospital. I explained that an emergency patient had come and gone in the middle of the night but that we knew nothing about his affiliation. Nhu scowled, snapped at his men, and strode away. The militiamen piled back into the vehicles and drove off.

  When the sun was fully up, I used the field phone at the clinic to call the compound and update Miser. After which I hiked down to Ruchevsky's house and borrowed a jeep to drive the colonel back to the compound. I picked him up and we drove to the Brown Fairy; I went in, and the colonel stayed in the jeep.

  The place was basic: a two-story Chinese-style shop with a hinged wood-paneled front that would swing open later in the day. Crude shelving held the pipes and paraphernalia. There was a small Formica table with low stools for socializing, and two plank beds toward the back for patrons to recline on and drift into reverie.

  The proprietress looked surprised to have a customer so early. How many pipes did I want? I brushed past her and roused Sergeant Rowdy from his narcotic slumber, his arms around a naked woman.

  "Captain—"

  "Morning, Sergeant."

  "Sir, I ..."

  "You know," I said, warming up to some real bullshit, "you hold an extremely high security clearance. I'm not sure you're aware that I'm authorized to shoot your ass to prevent your capture. And I will, if you ever fuck up again. You're restricted to the compound until I say otherwise. Get your sorry self in the jeep."

  The bare-chested girl stayed silent, only sniffed his cheek—a Vietnamese kiss. Rowdy dressed in record time and careened out the door. He froze, seeing the colonel, but recovered immediately and leapt in back. I tossed him my rifle.

  "Look fierce," I said.

  The perimeter seemed normal, the bunkers empty. Only one extra guard was on duty at the gate as the three of us rolled past like we'd been out reconnoitering. I don't think any of the men presumed anything. Actually, no one paid us much attention. They just seemed relieved to have made it through the long night without an attack.

  14

  MAJOR JESSUP'S RESPONSE to my inquiry came in the form of a radiotelephone call from an Army lawyer in Pleiku.

  "There's precious little to be done about Mr. Lund," the JAG lawyer said, "since he's a civilian."

  "Say if I'm wrong, sir," I said, puzzled. "I know the Uniform Code of Military Justice covers soldiers in combat and I thought also civilians in theater."

  "It would apply to our civilians in the Republic of South Viet Nam if a state of war existed here. But ... there's been no formal congressional declaration of the same."

  "So the code doesn't apply to them?"

  "That's correct."

  "Could the Vietnamese do anything about him, if we caught him dead to rights?"

  "As an American, Mr. Lund enjoys the same grant of immunity from the Vietnamese judicial system as you or I. We're all immune from their civil and criminal system."

  "They can't touch him either."

  "'Fraid not."

  "Do you suppose he's aware of these little loopholes?"

  "I wouldn't be at all surprised. Consider yourself lucky he's just a trafficker and not a murderer."

  "Not for want of trying," I said.

  An artillery battery across the street fired a salvo that screeched across the top of the compound.

  "Funny, I could have sworn it was a war," I said.

  The JAG major laughed pleasantly. "Conflict. The Viet Nam Conflict."

  I offered Ruchevsky some attitude about JAGs,
the code, and the Viet Nam Conflict. He laughed and ordered up an Air America helicopter. No door gunners or armament, just us and the pilots. It wasn't much but it was all he could think to do, short of taking Lund with us and tossing him out at a couple of thousand feet. The chopper flew us south to the coordinates where Judd Slavin had said the Katu transferred the opium to the transporters. We lay flat on the deck in back of the bulkhead behind the cockpit, doors open, and peered over the edge with binoculars. We couldn't spot anything until the copilot pointed out specks of red among the green. Poppies. They clung to a steep mountainside in an irregular patch. The Huey descended until we were within fifty feet. Two wooden boxes held Miser's Molotov cocktails, each glass jar with a primed grenade pickled in aviation gas, more volatile than kerosene. We dropped the glass jars onto the flowering buds. They broke on contact with the ground and detonated seconds later, igniting the av gas.

  We hovered, watching the last explosions and flare-ups. My sense of satisfaction was short-lived. The fires weren't efficient. The green growth and dew smothered them in short order. At best, we'd done little more than announce that outsiders were aware of the opium. Maybe we'd put a scare in the Katu growers though I doubted they'd be frightened off that easily.

  The helicopter swung south. We looked for the village but the Katu remained true to their reputation. A hundred longhouses, invisible. We followed their river, looking for the transfer point where the Katu delivered their crop. All we saw was a lot of wood debris floating downstream. Were they reinforcing their village stockade? Ruchevsky shot a roll of film and signaled the pilot to take us home.

  ***

  Colonel Bennett called me to an emergency meeting with Reverend Slavin and Joe Parks. We crowded into the tiny office. Audrey and Ted Baxter, the missionary couple who had come overland to the promotion party, had failed to confirm their safe return to their mission station.

  "Both were recently hospitalized for malaria and dengue," Judd Slavin said. "They may be really ill."