by Ron Lealos
Still holding out the dollars, I stared at Luong for a few heartbeats.
“Okay,” I said, “but you earned it,” putting the money back in my pocket.
I touched Luong’s arm and passed over the girl I held. He was right.
“Go home to the Highlands,” I said. “You’ve saved my life enough times. I’ll tell them you died inside.” I looked at the flames across the street, then back to Luong. “Take care of the girls and yourself.”
This wouldn’t be sealed with a hug. Luong’s heart was buried somewhere beneath visions of torched Montagnard villages. Public displays of affection were taboo in the Montagnard culture anyway. He bowed and walked away, a girl under each arm. But something had changed since I watched him let Tran suck on his finger. My last view was their backs vanishing in the shadows. I headed for the Majestic.
In the morning, I walked to Phoenix headquarters. The house doctor at the Majestic had bandaged my wounds and gave me a few painkillers, allowing a few hours of sleep after a long shower.
Clean and groomed, I walked through the door into the bustle of a building on alert. Somehow, one of their family chiefs had been killed. I wondered who would replace Comer and Molar, but I didn’t really care. I was getting out soon one way or another, and there was no more time to send me out into the bush. No way I would accept another assignment even if these fuckheads tried.
On the way to the late Comer’s office, one of the familiar spooks, named Filgram, stopped me.
“Did you hear about Comer?”
“No,” I said.
“He got killed last night. Him and Molar were over at Vice President Ky’s son’s place.”
Luck. Sometimes the grenade bouncing into your foxhole didn’t explode. Or the mortar at your feet was a dud. Comer must have been into it deeper with Ky than even I imagined. Couldn’t tell anyone else at Phoenix his greedy schemes. No one was rushing to put me in handcuffs and haul me to LBJ. I wouldn’t even have to explain about Luong. If I was right, nobody still alive even knew he was in Saigon.
“Any idea who did it?” I asked.
“Must have been a squad of VC. They burned the place after the shooting. Found Comer by the stairs with a bullet in his head. Not much else was left, but you could see the entry wound in his skull.”
“Do you know who I should report to? Comer was my CO.”
“Guess you better go see Williams. He’s acting chief of station.”
If there was one shitbird left in ’Nam I detested, it was Williams. He didn’t have the cowboy bullshit act of Comer or teeth around his neck like Molar. But he was a Harvard grad, one of the hundreds recruited by the Company over the years. Harvard had a nickname. Langley North. And the arrogant assholes that came from there firmly believed their shit wouldn’t burn in kerosene. It was made of gold. I walked down the hardwood floor toward the end where I knew Williams hung out, his office next door to a Rand computer.
No uniforms here. No salutes. Phoenix people like to believe they were fooling everyone. That’s why every rickshaw jockey, cabbie, or cyclo driver in Saigon knew exactly where to go if you said “Phoenix.” No address needed.
In all the rooms, fans turned lazily on the ceilings, and most desks held a smaller one, trying to keep the temperature of all the secrets from imploding. Men, and a few women, in chinos and short-sleeve shirts or lightweight skirts, hustled from room to room, clutching pieces of paper. Saving the world. Most windows were open, except in the front of the building where a sapper could toss in a surprise. Most of these personnel hadn’t seen a firefight except on the news. The white walls and brown floors were scrubbed daily, and it smelled like chlorine. Enough electricity was used fueling the bright lights to keep the neon of the Pussy Parlor downtown going for a year. I walked into Williams’s office and stood in front of his gray metal desk. He had his WASP face stuck in a file. I cleared my throat.
Williams looked up. He sat strack straight, the military jargon for stiff as a fucking pile of mortars. Or a prick from the Ivy League with a KA-BAR jammed up his ass believing he was better than anyone stupid enough to hump it in the bush.
“Morgan,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for you to make an appearance. Sit down.” He motioned toward a folding chair covered with a stack of yellow files, some marked SECRET in bold red letters. I dropped the pile on the floor and sat.
“I suppose you’ve heard Comer is dead,” Williams said. “When did you last talk to him? Isn’t he your case chief?”
What little was left of Williams’s hair was peppered with gray. While his back was nearly as rigid as a dead gook forty-eight hours dead, his chin drooped, the victim of too many vodka tonics and beer. No evidence of a need to shave, it didn’t seem like his face had hit puberty. His ears stuck out so far, no Gerber could have taken more than one easy stroke to slice them from his skull. Sweat stains turned the armpits of his collared white shirt gray. He was more dangerous than Comer and a fuck of a lot smarter. If I was going to escape LBJ, this dance had to be the pageant winner.
“Yes,” I said. “Filgram just told me. Sorry to hear it.” I looked at the floor and hesitated a few seconds before I lifted my face. “Last time I saw Comer was a few days ago. He sent me to the Majestic. Said to take it easy. I only have a few days left on my tour. He told me to check in here or he’d send me a message at the hotel. He said he might have something local before I go.”
If Williams even had a whiff of how I really spent last night, the Colt I knew was at his waist would already be aimed at my head. He tapped his pencil on the desk.
“What about the bandage on your head? Where’d that happen?”
“One of my last missions. Got ambushed just outside the base. That’s why Comer brought me in. This ain’t no climate for healin’. Just keeps oozin’ like it’s a tube of Brylcreem.”
“I seem to remember something about that in an action report. Weren’t most of your Hoa Hao’s killed?”
Somewhere in the piles on Williams’s desk was an account describing everything about that day. And every day I spent in ’Nam. Williams was playing games, and I knew where he was headed.
“Yes,” I said. “I hid in a hole. Covered myself with leaves and dirt. Lucky to make it back through the wire.”
“Didn’t you report to Viper?”
There it is.
“Yes,” I said.
“What do you think happened to him?”
“Don’t know. I was in the bush. Heard it was a VC sapper.”
“That’s the way it looked. But it could have been one of ours. Did he have any enemies beside the VC?”
“Can’t say everybody loved him, but I don’t think anybody hated him enough to cash his chit.”
“There were some rumors you and Viper weren’t the best of friends.”
“Can’t say we threw back a lot of stubbies together. But we had a professional relationship. You know, respected each other’s skills.”
If the bullshit got any deeper this old villa would drown. I had two things going. First, nobody really liked Viper. Williams was just going through the motions of a spook bureaucrat covering his ass. Following up in case there was some story he didn’t pursue. If he had any proof, I’d be sweating a lot more than I was now. Or dead. Second, nobody knew I was out with Comer last night. No reports filed. Comer would only have written down his dealings with Ky if it could advance his position with Phoenix, not when it was growing his Swiss bank account. But the most surprising part of this chat was I still didn’t give a shit. Steadily, over the last twelve months, the “I don’t care if you blow my shit to Guam attitude” only got stronger. Now, I was slowly realizing Liem’s murder made me as disposable as the bodies bulldozed into trenches by the Corps of Engineers if the VC weren’t fast enough to retrieve them. But I did want Luong and the girls to make it to the mountains. I did want this Harvard prick to finish.
“Well, I don’t know how sincere you are,” Williams said. “But there’s no evidence to contradict what you�
�re saying. With the mess around here this morning, not much I can do but send you back to the Majestic until things settle. Get some rest, Morgan. There might be a problem I need you to resolve. We’ll talk.”
Williams looked down at the desk and slid a file in front of his face. I was dismissed. And it didn’t piss me off.
R&R at the Majestic only lasted three days. My wounds weren’t bad enough for more idle time. I was ordered into the Phoenix office, and Williams told me one more mission was required before I rotated out. It was in Saigon and involved one of ours.
Intel had tracked the leader of a group formed by an ex-Ranger captain, Anthony Donaldson. The clandestine squad was formed to help deserters use an underground railroad for escape to Thailand. Donaldson’s nickname was “Rooster.” Rumors of the “Westend Boys” were whispered at every base and camp in ’Nam. Their title was a combination of our commanding general’s name and what they hoped would be his future. If I came back with his dog tags, I would be on the next Freedom Bird leaving Da Nang. If not, the unsubtle threat from Williams was “an after-hours Board of Inquiry that might delay your trip for a very long time.” While I didn’t much care about any late-night execution by Phoenix, Rooster sounded like someone I’d like to meet before checking out of this fucked country or getting a bullet in the back.
Donaldson was rumored to hang out above one of the filthiest bars in Saigon, the Last Hope, near the river and surrounded by tin shacks, rickety bamboo boardwalks hugging the water, sagging palm trees, and the smell of weed burning. Phoenix had infiltrated his group, and Donaldson was supposed to be at the Last Hope tonight.
Desertion was one of those topics the brass tried to squelch like the sanitizing of vils by killing every man, woman, and child. My job was to see a dead witness was better than a live one. At any time, there were hundreds of deserters hiding in Saigon, trying to get to Sweden, the Promised Land. MACV didn’t want the troops to have any hope and certainly didn’t want Walter Cronkite making the group a lead item on the six o’clock news.
At 2200, dressed like a grunt just out of the boonies, filthy and fatigues torn from having rolled in the dust behind the Phoenix Building, I carried an M16 into the Last Hope. The bar was in a dark alley off Ben Ham Tu Street, butting against the river. There were no sarcastic greetings, secret handshakes, or slaps on the back. The few grunts at the chipped Formica tables only glanced at me and returned their focus to the cans of beer in front of them. A Doors album played on a turntable in the back of the small, dark room, the sound coming from two twelve-inch Akai speakers with the felt covers ripped and hanging loose. A fan pushed the humid, smoke-filled air around the ceiling. It was well over ninety degrees even at this time of night.
The beer was cold, and the mama-san didn’t smile when she put the can in front of me. No b-girls in this dump.
“No chit,” she said. “Piaster.” She meant no MSC, military script currency. I reached into my pocket and dug out a few notes.
All insignias were ripped off my fatigues, and there was no name tag. I picked up my can of Lucky and walked over to a table where two grunts sat, facing the door.
“What unit you guys with?” I asked, pulling out an empty chair.
Both were in civvies, but were unmistakably boonie rats by the hardness in their gaze and the way they stared through me into the jungle, scenes of fire and death playing a never-ending film on their consciousness. The man on my right took a swallow of his beer.
“Not a good question,” he said. “Why do you want to know?”
“Just makin’ conversation,” I said.
“The rule here is the war doesn’t come through the door. Stow it outside, troop.”
“I’d like to stow it a lot further than that. You guys heard of Rooster?”
They didn’t tense. Nobody would be in here unless they were looking to get out or were CID. I had been in too many firefights to have the smell of a cop.
Both the men wore khaki shirts and shorts. No shoes or socks meant they lived somewhere nearby. Probably in one of the lantern-lit rooms on the second floor I had seen from outside. The man on the left fired up a Camel with his Zippo.
“Rooster?” the man said. “Don’t know no Rooster.”
The M16 rested against my thigh. I took out the Hush Puppy and laid it on the table.
“Pay attention, assholes,” I said. “I could have played this another way. Walked in with my M16 on rock and roll and blown you away. I wouldn’t have spent a minute in LBJ. In fact, I would have gotten another commendation in my file.” I touched the silencer on the barrel of the Hush Puppy. They knew what a Hush Puppy was, and it wasn’t standard issue for a grunt. Only spooks. “Or I could have snuck upstairs and put one bullet from this in Donaldson’s head.” I patted the silencer. “Those were my orders. You know, a firefight in the streets of Saigon gets a lot of publicity, but a dead deserter bleeding onto his sleeping mat in a dump like this don’t mean nuthin’.” I sat back, taking the Hush Puppy with me. “You’ve got two choices. Either tell Donaldson I want to rap or I go home and say he wasn’t in. That way, they’ll be back with the flamethrowers to burn you and this place down. After they shoot you. No court-martial, boys. Bad PR.”
If they were scared, I couldn’t read it. Grunts get so used to fear that it becomes the natural state, and sitting in this bar facing one man didn’t compare to listening to Charlie’s taunts of “You die, GI” in the night.
The men glanced at each other, and the one smoking the Camel nodded. The other man got up, his chair scraping on the floor, and walked toward a beaded curtain in the back.
The remaining man flicked his package of Camels, and one smoke popped out. “Coffin nail?” he asked.
I took the smoke, and the man lit the end with his Zippo. RANGERS was engraved in the metal.
While we talked, the Last Hope emptied. Not in a rush, but the grunts who witnessed the conversation got the vibe and disappeared like tigers in the mist. The mama-san changed the record to Buffalo Springfield. Posters of Jimi Hendrix in his Ranger uniform were scattered around the walls. Smells of dead dogs and cats drifted from the river, and the cigarette smoke couldn’t mask the stench. The windows were open only because there was no glass in the panes. One of the walls leaned outward, showing cracks in the wooden beams.
The man who left came through the curtain and motioned me to follow. I picked up the M16 and put the Hush Puppy into my pocket, nodding at the Ranger with the Camel in the corner of his mouth.
On the other side of the curtain, the man held open a door that led outside to a bamboo ramp that swayed to the waves on the river. Giant fern and banana leaves hung to the broken railing. Muted light came from reflections off the river and the lanterns inside the Last Hope. River sampans were moored to the walkway with frayed hemp ropes. After ten meters, we were at the bottom of a stairway that looked like it was only attached to the Last Hope by two nails and a roll of twine. The man started up, and I waited for him to reach the top, not believing the staircase could hold two of us. The man stopped and turned.
“Don’t be scared, spook,” he said. “But if you fall in the river, close your mouth.” He opened a screen door and went through.
Inside, a muscled, shirtless man sat on a cot, the blankets untucked, holding a half-empty bottle of Old Grandad. RANGERS was tattooed on his right bicep and dog tags hung from his neck. An American flag was pinned to the wall, framed by pictures of Che Guevara and Bobby Seale. The room smelled of burning ganja, and a roach still smoldered in an ashtray made out of a twisted piece of shrapnel. Candles burned on an empty C-rat case table. A Colt pistol sat next to the candles.
The man who led me upstairs went back out the door.
Donaldson watched me and took a pack of Marlboros out of the pocket of his shorts. He lit one with a strike from a wooden match against the C-rat case.
“Have a seat,” he said, pointing to a stack of ammo boxes, the only possible place to sit in the room other than the cot. He took a slug fro
m the whiskey bottle and held it out to me. “Drink?” he asked before I could sit. Three steps and I covered the distance between us, taking the bottle in my hand and swallowing half of what was left. I walked backward until my calves touched the ammo cases and sat, leaning the M16 against the wall.
“All of the body bags that leave Ton Sen Nhut aren’t filled with casualties from gook fire,” I said. “Some of them won’t be buried in Arlington. Some of them won’t be listed in the statistics. Their records will disappear.” The Hush Puppy was in my palm, and I could feel the coolness on my hand. “I was sent here to make you one of the ‘Lost Ones.’ The brass thinks you’re a criminal. And a coward. You wouldn’t still be here if that were the case. Nor would you have that tattoo.” I nodded toward his arm. “Tell me why.”
Donaldson laughed. The cynical sound of an innocent man raging at the hypocrisy of the judge.
“Ain’t it sweet,” he said. “The pogues order us out to kill baby-sans and list their burnt flesh in the body count. We spray Agent Orange on rice paddies so the locals will starve. We poison their wells so they can’t drink. We rape their daughters for fun. Too many times I was ordered up the same hill just so my captain could brag that we had captured the high ground for the day. Too many times, I lost buddies to machine guns that were carried back up that same hill during the night after we left. And all for what? We ain’t gonna win this war. All we’re doin’ is givin’ the liars in Washington a chance to feel like men and help the machine churn out dollars.” He spat on the floor and then drained the last of the Old Grandad, throwing the empty bottle on a pile of dirty clothes in the corner.
Nothing in what he said was untrue. And I could add pages to the list. Innocent women assassinated because they wouldn’t fuck. Indiscriminant bombing of civilians. Denied incursions into neutral countries. Torture. And I had participated. No more. I emptied the Hush Puppy magazine and put the pistol on the floor.
“We could debate all night,” I said. “But I agree with you. The facts are that you’re a condemned man. The CID knows all about you. If I don’t come back with your dog tags, I’ll be dead. And that won’t save you.”