“Not Mr. MacVee, dammit! MACV headquarters! United States Army, dammit!”
He lit a long cigar while he waited for the call to go through. He was working on a pretty good ash by the time the call went through and someone answered.
“Sergeant Major Bennett here. I'd like a patch through to II Corps HQ at Pleiku, please.”
“One moment, Sergeant Major,” said a woman's voice. The Sergeant Major puffed on his cigar. Five years of war had come to this: WACs answering the phone at MACV. What in God's name could be next? Dependent housing at the base camps? Day-care centers on the firebases?
The phone crackled and spat static in his ear and a voice said:
“II Corps, sir.” Very businesslike. Very spec-4.
“This is Sergeant Major Bennett down in Saigon. Who am I speaking to, please?”
“Spec-4 Glaxon, sir,” said the voice.
“Glaxon, can you put me through to Sergeant Major Perkins over at the 25th Infantry Division HQ?”
“One moment, Sergeant Major,” said the Spec-4.
The phone crackled and spit once or twice as the regular telephone line was patched down to a field phone land-line. He heard the distinctive whir of the field phone ringing.
The voice answering the phone was low and sounded very, very far away, an effect of the patch-through to the direct-current field phone, the Sergeant Major knew.
“Twenty-fifth,” said the voice, with no further elaboration.
“Give me Sergeant Major Perkins,” commanded Sergeant Major Bennett. He pulled the cigar out of the corner of his mouth and blew smoke at the sunrise. Amazing. At least the WACs hadn't penetrated the division headquarters level out there in the field.
“Wait one,” said the voice.
The Sergeant Major puffed contentedly on his cigar. That was the thing about a war. You could get up in the morning and have yourself a stogie and a cup of coffee to get your heart started and there wasn't a damn thing anyone could or would say about it, he thought. No sirree bob. Not in this man's war, anyway.
“Sarenmajor Perkins,” growled a voice.
“Slim? It's Ted Bennett. How're they hangin'?”
“Teddy? Damn. Somebody told me you lassoed yourself a club at Cam Ranh Bay. That so?”
“You bet, Slim. I got both the NCO clubs up there. You've got to come down for a visit. I'll treat you to an Omaha steak, right off the CO's plane.”
“Shit, I'll take your ass up on that one, Teddy. When can I come down?”
“Not for a while, Slim. I'm . . . I'm ... off duty for a while, you know what I mean?”
“Sure. Where you at?”
“Saigon for a while.”
“Must be nice to be a rich man, Teddy. I always knowed you was going to make out, if they let you keep your stripes long enough.”
“I want a little loose information, Slim my good buddy, a little dip into that vat of Texas bear grease that keeps the gears turnin’.”
“What can I do you for?”
“I need to know what happened to the weapons platoon out there in the Triple Deuce.”
“You ain't asking for much, are you, Teddy? You just want to know about the hottest damn potato I've had my hands on in all my days in this man's Army.”
“I need to know, Slim. I do.”
“What's up, Teddy?”
“The kid that commanded the platoon? Blue? He's my old battalion commander's son. I owe one here, Slim. A big one. The old man pulled me out of a crack deep as the Grand Canyon. I owe my life to him, Slim. I'd never have my clubs right now, wasn't for what he done for me.”
There was a long pause punctuated by soft bursts of static as Perkins chewed over what he'd been fed. Finally he cleared his throat and mumbled something and cleared his throat again.
“What'd you say, Slim?” asked the Sergeant Major.
“They're gonna boil that kid alive,” said Sergeant Major Perkins.
“I've figured out that much.”
“I mean, I don't know what that kid done, or who's behind them charges they filed on him, but I been in the Army thirty-two years and I never seen anything like it. Never.”
“What happened to his platoon?”
“Disappeared.”
“Reassigned?”
“Disappeared.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?”
“They'll never find those poor fuckers. They burned their 201s and shit-canned their pay records. It'll take somebody six months of digging in them record warehouses in St. Louis and Indianapolis to even begin to get a handle on where they sent those guys, how they got ‘em there, anything else about ‘em. They'll be civilians by the time anybody gets to them. It'll be way too late for the kid by then.”
“Christ,” muttered the Sergeant Major.
“You said it, Teddy.”
“You're sure every piece of paper is gone on that platoon, Slim?”
“Hey. You know who you're talking to, Teddy. I know my shit when it comes to my unit, and this shit I know forwards and backwards.”
“They put you in the middle of it?”
“I didn't see nothing, Teddy, but I had to sign off on the initial release.”
“I get you.”
“I got a number for you, Teddy.”
“What's that?”
“Zero.”
“What'd you say?”
“I said zero. They left nothin’ behind on this one, friend. Not a single footprint in the dust. They done scorched the earth this time. Nobody will ever prove anything. It was done black, Teddy. They were screaming national security and all kind of shit like that and pulling stuff I've never seen pulled before and I hope I never see pulled again.”
“I'm beginning to get your drift, Slim.”
“Anything else you want to know?”
“Who was the first sergeant over there at the Triple Deuce?”
“Dude by the name of Connors, Keyson Connors.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Me neither. He was a ghost when he got here and he's a ghost now he's gone.”
“He's out of there?”
“Him and every other son of a bitch that ever saw a piece of paper on the weapons platoon in the Triple Deuce. I'm telling you, Teddy. They ran a damn vacuum cleaner through here and sucked up every scrap of shit they could find. There may as well have not been a weapons platoon over there in the Triple Deuce. They did everything to that poor little platoon but take its tracks.”
“The tracks are still there?”
“Yeah, same tracks. That was the one thing I noticed. Everybody gone, all paperwork burned, every swingin’ dick disappeared, even their weapons sent south, but they left them tracks behind bigger than shit.”
The Sergeant Major thought over what his friend had said, then he blew cigar smoke into the morning air and said:
“Hey, Slim. Let me give you a call when I get back to the Club. I'll send a bird for you and we can get stinkin’ and eat some steak and chase some skirt, you hear?”
“You got your own bird?”
“Two of ‘em.”
“Sign my ass up,” said Sergeant Major Perkins.
“Done,” said Sergeant Major Bennett. “And thanks, pal. I'll treat you good, don't you worry.”
“I got my bags packed, Teddy. Anything to get my ass outta this chickenshit outfit.”
“I'll call you,” said the Sergeant Major. He hung up the phone and turned to find the Colonel standing in the balcony door dressed in Levi's and a white knit shirt and sneakers. He didn't look like a man forty-five years old. Without the gray hair at his temples and the deep squint lines along either eye, he could have passed for a young company commander rather than a man who'd already had his own Battalion.
“What have you got, Top?”
“Our first break, sir.” The Sergeant Major grinned and pointed his cigar behind the Colonel. Breakfast was waiting for them on a table by the balcony doors.
“They left them tracks behind at the Triple D
euce, sir. I talked to the top sergeant up at 25th Infantry Division, an old buddy of mine from Benning, name of Slim Perkins, and he told me they disappeared everything on that platoon but them tracks. Burned 201s and pay records, reassigned everybody that ever set eyes on that platoon, even the first sergeant, and he said the guys in the platoon . . . nobody'll ever find them. They're smoke, sir. But not them tracks. They're still up there, big as life.”
“And you figure the weapons platoon 113s have got something to tell us?”
“Sir, did you ever know a troop that didn't stash his stuff in every nook and cranny available to him? Those tracks are a damn library of the last few years in their lives, sir. I know it. I can feel it.”
“Let's eat, Sarenmajor. That's good news. I'm sure you're right.”
“What time you got to meet the lawyer, sir?”
“Noon. It's right near here, over at the Continental. He didn't want me coming to his office, and I must say I agree with him. I'd just as soon continue my low profile here in Saigon.”
“I know what you mean, sir. We're gonna get ourselves ready for them. I'm gonna bleed them tracks dry of poop, sir. They're going to talk to me in my language, and I don't mean French, sir.”
“When are you going, Sarenmajor?” said the Colonel, a forkful of eggs poised before his lips.
“After we go to see the lawyer, sir. I ought to be back sometime this evening.”
“Righto,” said the Colonel.
Captain Terrence W. Morriss was waiting for them in the lobby of the Continental Hotel, but they didn't see him when they walked in. He was the guy sitting on the wicker sofa reading the morning edition of Stars and Stripes with a St. Louis Cardinals cap tilted jauntily on the back of his head. He was dressed almost exactly like the Colonel—a pair of old Levi's and a tennis shirt with HARVARD on the pocket and a pair of old sneakers—but he didn't wear the outfit with quite the aplomb of the older man. When he stood up, an enormous pot belly preceded him across the room, and the tennis shirt, while doing its best to contain the belly, didn't quite make it.
“Sergeant Major! Over here!” Captain Morriss called as the two men headed through the lobby toward the desk.
The Sergeant Major whispered something to the Colonel and they walked over to Morriss's corner of the lobby, by the windows overlooking the garden.
“I'm Captain Morriss, Lieutenant Blue's lawyer,” he said in a low voice, looking over the shoulders of the Sergeant Major and the Colonel.
“I'm Matt's father,” said the Colonel. “This is Sergeant Major Bennett.”
“Teddy, sir.”
“Right. We spoke on the phone. Nice to meet you.”
The three men sat down.
“I've got some good news, but I'm afraid I've got some bad news as well,” said Captain Morriss.
“Shoot,” said the Colonel. “Let's have it.”
“They released Lieutenant Blue to my custody last night—” Morriss began.
“They released him?” the Colonel said, leaning forward in his chair. “Last night? What the hell happened? They wouldn't even tell me where he was yesterday. The Sergeant Major told me you were talking about a writ of habeas corpus.”
“Yes, sir, I was. I was as surprised as you are at this turn of events. Somebody pretty high up must have issued the order, because they tracked me down at a bar across the street at about ten o'clock and told me to take delivery of the prisoner. They had everybody hopping. The prosecutor was pulled out of a card game and—”
“Yes. Yes. But where is he?” the Colonel asked.
“I'm afraid that's the bad news, sir,” said Morriss. “I can't find him.”
“You . . . you . . . you . . . can't find him? What do you mean, Captain?”
“I checked him into the BOQ with me last night around midnight, but when I got up this morning and looked in on him, he was gone. His bed hadn't been slept in, either. He must have taken off sometime last night.”
“Or someone took him off,” said the Sergeant Major, extracting a fresh cigar from his shirt pocket and beginning the elaborate process of getting it going.
“What do you mean by that?” Morriss asked.
“I just got off the phone with a buddy of mine up in the 25th,” the Sergeant Major said, striking a match on the arm of his chair.
“He said they disappeared the whole weapons platoon. Poof. One day they were there, next day they were gone. Maybe somebody decided to disappear the Lieutenant.”
The Colonel coughed to clear his throat.
“Sorry, sir, I didn't mean to—”
“That's okay, Sarenmajor,” said the Colonel. “We've got to consider all the possibilities, and from the looks of things, that is certainly one of them.”
“I feel like a damn fool coming over here this morning without your son, sir, when I had him in my room only last night. I guess I should have made him sleep on the sofa in the next room. I'm . . . I'm sorry, sir. I feel like such a damn fool ...”
“Knock it off, Captain,” said the Colonel. “It's not your fault. If I know that boy, and I think I know him pretty damn well, he'll show up with some kind of elaborate excuse this morning. Maybe you'd better call the BOQ and have them give us a call if he comes in.”
“Do you want me to notify the MPs, sir?”
“No! No MPs . . . sir,” said the Sergeant Major out of the corner of his mouth, teeth fixed firmly around the freshly shorn end of his cigar. “Last thing we need is a bunch of damn shake-'n'-bake rinky-dink soldier boys playing cop, chasing around Saigon, stirrin’ things up.”
“I agree, Top,” said the Colonel. “That boy of mine can take care of himself. He'll turn up.”
“I'm going to call the BOQ,” said Captain Morriss. He walked over to the front desk and asked for a phone.
Just then, the Lieutenant and Cathy Joice came down the stairs behind him and headed for the front door. He had a hand on the door when the Colonel called to him.
“Matt,” said the Colonel.
The Lieutenant wheeled around, eyes wide and bloodshot, every muscle in his body tightened, on edge. He was holding Cathy with one hand, the other poised on the door, ready to bolt. He did not look like the boy his father had put on a plane the morning he left for Vietnam.
“Over here,” said his father.
The Lieutenant swiveled to his left and saw his father. His shoulders dropped and he exhaled a deep breath and took Cathy by the hand and led her to the corner of the lobby.
“Jesus, Dad ...” He walked into his father's embrace and wrapped his arms around him and rested his head on his father's shoulder.
The older man patted his back and whispered his name.
The Lieutenant raised his head and broke the embrace and reached for Cathy's hand.
“Dad, this is Cathy Joice, she's .. . she's ... a friend, Dad. You can trust her.”
The Colonel took her hand and trained his wide eyes on her.
The Sergeant Major cleared his throat.
“Matt, this is Sarenmajor Bennett. He's . . .”
“I know who he is, Dad. He was with you down in the Delta. Nice to meet you.” He shook hands with the Sergeant Major.
“Same here, sir.”
The Colonel wrapped his arm around the Lieutenant and led him to the sofa.
“Sit down,” he said. “We've got some talking to do.”
Captain Morriss walked up as the three men and Cathy Joice sat down.
“Sir . .. he's here! I mean, you're here!”
“Hi, Captain,” said the Lieutenant. “Sorry if I gave you a scare. I just had to talk to somebody, and you said—”
“I know what I said,” Captain Morriss interrupted. “As long as you're okay, I don't care what you told her.”
“I didn't tell her anything,” said the Lieutenant.
“He didn't, Terry,” said Cathy Joice.
“Whatever.”
“Matt,” said his father. “Captain Morriss—”
“Terry, sir,” said the la
wyer.
“Okay, Terry. He says you haven't told him much. We need to know what happened. You've got to tell us everything that happened in the last few weeks preceding your arrest. I can't believe that the officers in your Battalion are so venal and corrupt that they would bring charges against you for no reason.
Something must have happened, Matt. Something must have gone wrong. We've got to know what put this nightmare in motion.”
“You've got to be kidding me, right, Dad?” the Lieutenant said. “You're sitting here telling me that you believe the damn Army on this? You think I did something wrong?”
“Son, all I know is I've never seen anything like this happen in the Army I grew up in, the Army I've served proudly for more than twenty years.”
“Well, this is a different Army, Dad. You wouldn't believe the crap that's going on over here, the way they're fighting this so-called war. It's a shame, Dad. A real shame. Every day, lives are wasted on both sides. And for what? So we can save our honor, some shit like that? So politicians back home won't have to admit that we got into this war for all the wrong reasons, and we're losing this war for all the right reasons. Come on, Dad. Tell me you don't still believe what we're doing over here is right.”
“Son, I understand what you're saying, and I know that a lot has happened here in Vietnam that shouldn't happen anywhere, to anybody. But it's the Army, son. You're talking about our Army. You're talking about the Army in which Army both of your grandfathers served honorably for decades. You're talking about the Army to which I have dedicated my entire life. Don't ask me to believe that the Army has disintegrated to such an extent that this whole business is just wrong.”
“That's what I'm asking you to do, Dad. Listen. You've got a choice. Either you accept what I say and you believe in my innocence right here, right now, right from the start... or you just continue believing in your almighty Army, in this stupid fucking war. You can't have it both ways, Dad. If you are going to fight me on this, if you're going to try to go down the line with your belief in the Army and the war, you're going to lose me. I'm gone. Because this is a dirty, corrupt little war, and these are dirty, corrupt little charges that have been brought against me by dirty, corrupt little men. This isn't World War II, Dad. God knows. It isn't even Korea. This is fucking Vietnam. This is a piece of shit.”
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