Another War, Another Peace

by Ronald J. Glasser

  Tom shifted himself sideways so that he could see the jeep. “Didn’t burn, huh?” David tried to get him to lie back, but Tom refused. “The inside’s still okay,” Tom said. “I mean, the seats and stuff. Nothin’ burned up.” He seemed to gather some strength. David started to open the surgical pack.

  “Your shoulder don’t look so good.”

  “What …”

  “And your nose looks broken.”

  “They’ll mend,” David said.

  Using the scissors from the surgical kit, he cut off Tom’s T-shirt. The two holes were an inch below his shoulder. David put the pack over both of them and taped down the edges. Tom started to breathe easier, but David couldn’t be sure how long the seal would hold. Tom was looking past him at the road.

  “I’m going to have to go and get some help. I want you to finish the water while I’m gone.” He held up the canteen for another drink, but Tom started to cough and turned his head away.

  “Tom, you’re bleeding into your chest. You’ve got to drink to keep up your blood volume up.”

  “In the canvas bag.” David put the two canteens down next to him. “In the canvas bag,” Tom said again, “in the back of the jeep. It’s got to still be there.”

  “What does?”

  “In the back under the tarp.”

  David thought Tom might be hallucinating.

  “Go on, get it! We ain’t got all that much time. Go on, damn it … they may come back.” Then he started to cough again.

  Reluctantly David went back to the jeep. He pulled what boxes and gear were left out of the rear and then took off the tarp. A canvas bag fell out from under it. He stared at the bag and then, with a sense of relief so real that he could feel it wash over him, he tore loose what remained of the adhesive that held the bag to the seat. Opening the straps, he slid out the grenade launcher. There was a shotgun round and grenade taped to the stock. He quickly loaded the launcher and looked up at the road again, only this time with confidence.

  “Found it?” Tom said. “Been there a long time; put it there the first day. Remember, you didn’t want no weapon.” His voice was almost a whisper. “You know, I can’t see so clear anymore.”

  “You got that cut on your head. There’s blood getting into your eyes, that’s why you can’t see,” David said comfortingly. “It’ll be okay.”

  “Yeah,” Tom answered as he wiped his forehead. But when he looked at his hand there was no blood. “Yeah,” he said softly. “Must be all the blood.”

  But David didn’t hear. He was beginning to think about what to do. He couldn’t be sure who the Vietnamese he saw at the turn were; they looked like the ones who had been on the road right before the mortars hit. They weren’t carrying weapons so maybe they were only refugees or villagers using the road. All anyone else on the other side of the depression could know was that the jeep had made the turn and not come out from around the bend. Without seeing what had happened, no one would know if they were okay or not. They wouldn’t know if they’d used the radio, whether an air strike or a gunship was already on the way. But if he walked out, whoever had ambushed them would know something was wrong. Of course, there was a possibility that whoever had ambushed them was gone already. They wouldn’t want to stay around and be caught in the open by a couple of fighter bombers.

  They could wait here, but for what? No one even knew where they were. He’d been filing routes that they weren’t taking. It would be getting hotter as it got closer to noon. Tom wouldn’t be able to stay out much longer, not in this heat. There wasn’t any choice.

  “Tom,” David said, “I’m going to have to leave.”

  “Give it to me … no,” Tom said, waving away the launcher that David handed to him, “the M-16. It’s no good; see, the breech is broken. What were you going to do, throw it at ’em? Come on … give it here. Don’t worry,” Tom said. “I’ll be okay.”

  David took off his shirt and stretched it across two rocks to help shade Tom’s face and chest.

  “Here’s the water,” David said. He had put the canteens where Tom could reach them. “Drink as much as you can, a little bit every couple of minutes. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Tom grabbed his arm. “I should have figured it out, shouldn’t I … if them gooks knew what they were doin’, I should have known. It ain’t all that hard.” He stifled a cough. “Damn, how the hell did I miss it all …” But it wasn’t a question anymore.

  “You didn’t miss anything,” David said. “I did. I’ll get back as soon as I can.”

  Tom, glancing past him at the road, suddenly looked very weary. “It’s all inches over here. There never was much margin.” David started to say something. “No,” Tom said, stopping him. “Happens all the time. But it’s not so terrible. The bad thing’s when they beat you when you’re at your best. No, I mean it. We was into somethin’ else, fixin’ people. Gettin’ good at it, too. Damn hard to do two things real good. You always get sloppy at one, lose the edge …” His voice trailed off. But he didn’t sound disappointed, only tired.

  David handed him the M-16.

  Tom took the rifle and put it across his lap. “Just point the launcher in the direction you want to fire; the shotgun round will blow away anything in front of you up to fifty meters. Something further, use the grenade round.”

  “I’ll hurry back.”

  “Sure … Doc?” Tom looked at him, his eyes sharply focused, crystal clear again as they used to be. “You think I could have done it … become a doctor?”

  “Yeah,” David said. “If I was ever sure of anything, I was sure of that.”

  Tom looked relieved. “Yeah,” he said proudly, “I could have done it; college at least … huh.”

  He shifted the rifle so that the trigger was closer to his right hand. “See you when you get back. Better go,” he said. “No sense standin’ around.”

  David did not hesitate at the turn. In a world once filled with possibilities, there were now only two. Either the VC or NVA were there, or they weren’t. He ran past the bodies of the Vietnamese. A half-mile ahead he saw three figures moving across the flats at right angles to the road. He ran past the shell craters. Nothing happened. Finally he forced himself to slow to a pace he knew he’d be able to sustain. It was no longer a race to be won but a race not to be lost. He looked up at the sun. It was almost directly overhead.

  After a quarter-mile the stiffness in his right side subsided to a dull ache, and he was able to increase his pace. The heat that had been such a burden in the past became an asset. It worked on his arm and shoulder, loosening his sore muscles, soothing the pain.

  He ran on, the sweat dripping down his neck and back. The flats soon became a blur. He kept running, moving through endless curtains of heat, the only sound his boots pounding on the rock-hard earth. It became a kind of cadence, a drumbeat that was all that mattered. He didn’t have to think anymore, he only had to listen.

  He’d slow down but the rhythm would push him forward again. The launcher became a counterweight to his injured right side, acting as a kind of pendulum, keeping his balance, dragging him forward. Rocks and shadows shimmering in the distance moved closer and disappeared, only to be replaced by new rocks and newer shadows. There was a moment when he moved so effortlessly that he thought he’d dropped the launcher and was surprised to see it still there, swinging at his side. He ran on past exhaustion, past feeling, back into a world before oxygen, a place where nothing mattered but physics, where all that kept him going was his own momentum.

  He tripped and managed to keep his balance. But the effort left him drained. He wanted to stop, to rest, to be able to breathe again. But somehow he was still moving and that seemed all that mattered. How long he ran on like that he never knew.

  Slowly, almost imperceptibly, he became aware that something was wrong. He kept running but knew that it was not the same anymore. He managed to lift his head and look around, but nothing had changed. Still, the feeling that something was different ke
pt intruding. It was like a dull but persistent pain that at first could be ignored, but after a while, never leaving, began to work on you, forcing its way by degrees into your consciousness, until … Suddenly with what seemed to be his last bit of energy, he realized it was his footsteps. The sound of his footsteps had changed. They were no longer muffled, distant. The sound was sharper, crisper. It was as if someone else were running. But there wasn’t anyone else.

  He forced himself to look down. It was the road. David could barely see through the sweat and exhaustion, but the road had changed. He tried to understand. Then it came to him like a revelation. The road was paved! Gasping, his lungs burning, he managed to stop. It took him what seemed like minutes to straighten up. He was on the main road, but which way had he turned?

  He’d have to go back to where the two roads met. But where was that? Which way, right or left? He tried to remember, forcing himself to concentrate, fighting the numbness that threatened to overwhelm him. He looked at his watch, barely able to keep his eyes in focus long enough to see the dial. Almost an hour since he’d left Tom. The sense of panic returned. It was a long time. There was something else to remember, something Tom had once said. They had been on the ridge, looking through the binoculars. Of course, David thought. Suddenly he was thinking again. You hitchhiked on paved roads. There were trucks!

  David lifted the launcher and started to run again, though it was really no more than a shuffle. It no longer mattered which way he’d turned. He hobbled and dragged himself along for another twenty minutes before he saw a tiny speck moving across the flats. It vanished and reappeared. David sat on the edge of the asphalt, the launcher between his legs, and waited. He was too exhausted to feel relief.

  The truck slowed and came to a stop a few yards in front of him, the motor running. Two soldiers opened the doors and looked around nervously before they climbed out of the cab. The driver stayed close to the truck. The other trooper continued to look around as he crossed to David’s side of the road. To stand, David had to use the launcher as a crutch.

  “You okay?” the corporal asked, still glancing around cautiously.

  “Yeah,” David answered. “I’m a doctor at the 40th. My driver and I got hit ten, twenty kilometers from here, down one of the dirt roads. He’s still out there.” David started to limp toward the truck. “We got to get him.” The corporal followed. The driver, a sergeant, didn’t move. “The road’s about a mile back.”

  The corporal, uneasy, stopped a few feet behind David. “Well, sir, we don’t exactly know what’s still out there.”

  David didn’t hesitate. As he turned around, he raised the barrel of the launcher so that it was level with the corporal’s midsection. “The road’s clean. I just came down it. Now you or your buddy can either come or stay.” His finger tightened on the trigger.

  It took less than five minutes to reach the turnoff. David sat, eyes closed, resting his chin on the barrel of the launcher. The hot breeze coming in through the open window was all that kept him awake.

  He had them slow as they came to the straight stretch of road. The mortar craters ran for a hundred yards right up to the turn. Suddenly he sat bolt upright. “Stop!” Opening the door to the cab, he jumped down. The bodies of the Vietnamese were gone. As he ran, a terrible premonition took hold of him.

  He didn’t stop at the turn but ran on across the road to where he could see the ground on the other side of the depression. The jeep lay where it had been, but the ground around it had been picked clean. The broken cartons and bottles were gone. David, unmoving, just stood there.

  The corporal walked up beside him. “That him there, sir?” They’d stripped his body and left it sprawled on the top of a small slope.

  “Bring up the truck.” David left the edge of the road and started across the flats to where they’d dragged Tom’s body. He should have stayed. Or else he should have checked the road and then come back to give Tom the launcher. But he hadn’t.

  David slowly stopped walking and stared. “My God,” he whispered. They had cut off Tom’s ears and nose and hacked off his arms and feet. There was no way of anyone knowing who he was anymore; all that was recognizable was the gash running across what was left of his face. David no longer felt or heard a thing; the heat, his exhaustion, the noise of the truck, his fear. He’d been a fool; yet with a sudden terrible clarity he understood that he’d been sent away, and that from that moment on, no matter what else happened, there would be no way of knowing who had really left the other.

  The motor was still running as the sergeant and corporal walked past him. “We’ll pick him up, sir,” the corporal said.

  David continued to stare. He heard nothing. Of course, he thought, Tom had to have known how badly injured he was. He had to have known that without help an hour in this heat would be too long.

  David waited until they carried the body past him and then walked over to where he’d left Tom and picked up his shirt, torn and bloody, from the ground. He left the rifle where it was. A few moments later the corporal came back.

  “We’ve got him loaded, sir.” David didn’t answer. The trooper hesitated. “Maybe he was dead before they did all that stuff,” he said.

  “Did you find the rest of him?”

  “Well, no, sir,” the corporal answered. “We tried but we couldn’t.” Nervously he glanced back at the driver, who had walked up and stood beside the overturned jeep. “Sir,” he said, “it’s gettin’ late. We should get out of here.”

  “I’ll start with this gully. You two start over near where they left him … he liked using …”

  “Captain!” David felt something hard pushed into his back. “Don’t turn around, sir. If you do, I’ll kill you.”

  “Jim, take the launcher.” The corporal walked in front of him and took the weapon from David.

  “He’s dead, sir,” the corporal said gently, as if apologizing for the driver. “He ain’t gonna know nothin’. You’re pretty close to collapsing yourself. Your arm’s broken or something and you’re all cut up. Besides, it’ll be dark in a few hours. Come on,” the corporal said. “We got some water in the truck. It don’t make no sense to stay out here; you can come back in the morning. If his … well, if they’re here now, they’ll be here tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” David said, as if surprised to hear the word.

  “Jim!” The driver pointed to the west. Two pillars of smoke were rising off the plateau. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Sir, come on. He’s dead. It ain’t gonna do you no good to get yourself killed.”

  Chapter 30

  DAVID AND THE CORPORAL carried the body off the truck. Within minutes Tyler was at the dispensary, Thorpe and Plunkett no more than a few seconds later. David paid no attention to any of them. He put the body into one of the treatment rooms and then walked back outside. A few of the base personnel were standing around the truck. Brown had arrived, and he and Thorpe were talking to the driver. Everyone stopped and stood silently as David walked past them. He opened the truck door and took out the grenade launcher.

  Tyler walked over to him. “I’m going to have them take Tom to the morgue. I think we’d better fix you up. Come on, it won’t take long.”

  Plunkett sewed the lacerations on David’s face. Tyler had them take X rays of his shoulder. It wasn’t broken, but his clavicle was dislocated and two of his ribs had been fractured.

  It took a half-hour to finish suturing the cuts and remove the smaller pieces of shrapnel from his chest and shoulders. In the dispensary Tyler supervised the treatment while Thorpe asked questions, careful to stick to the essentials. David answered calmly, precisely, telling Thorpe about the cairns and the groups of Vietnamese he and Tom had met, the booby-trapped hamper, though he hardly heard his own voice.

  He was sure that whoever had ambushed them had seen the jeep drive across the flats to the rockpile and then had watched through binoculars when they’d stopped the second time. Tom had been right. They didn’t know exactly
what they’d found, but someone else was worried that they did.

  “The NVA are moving their troops across the plateau,” David said in answer to Thorpe’s question about why he thought they’d removed the bodies. “Assault troops for sure, and hard-core regulars. That’s probably why they went after us. They saw the antenna and thought we had a radio; someone must have figured since we’d already found one of their rest areas and might find more, it was better to take the chance of getting rid of us than run the risk of our finding something else and calling in some choppers. They got rid of the bodies because they didn’t want them lying around for anyone else to find. Maybe they were NVA so they buried or hid them.”

  Thorpe wasn’t convinced. “But they let you go,” he said.

  “Yeah,” David said softly, “they let me go.”

  “If they’re going to go to all the trouble of hiding dead bodies, why not go after you, too?”

  “Why not,” David answered wearily, his own exhaustion protecting him from whatever Thorpe was asking. “I don’t know,” David said. “Maybe they weren’t so sure what to do. They knew they didn’t get us. We made it to the turn. They couldn’t see us anymore. For all they knew, we’d already called in their position. It was easy to decide to kill us, not so easy to decide what to do when they didn’t succeed. When I walked out, they didn’t know what the hell was going on. Maybe they thought if they let me go, the Army’d write it off as just a random sniping, something without any purpose, another one of those things. I don’t know. They might have pulled out, got around the turn and seen the jeep was a wreck. But who knows? All I do know is that they’re still out there.”

  Plunkett finished taping his shoulder. “Okay,” Tyler said, interrupting, “you’re done. Why don’t you go get some rest. The major will talk to you tomorrow.” Thorpe didn’t argue.

  “When’s the body going out?” David was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  “Tomorrow,” Tyler said. “There’s a supply chopper scheduled in around noon.”