Starlight

by Scott Ely

  “Loretta! Loretta!” Jackson shouted, suddenly feeling the sticky tar of the sandbags beneath his hands instead of the wet litter of the jungle floor.

  CHAPTER

  11

  THE REPLACEMENT FINALLY ARRIVED for the communications specialist killed while serving as Hale’s RTO.

  “There’s a new radio operator coming in today,” Hale said. “Name’s Labouf. What kind of goddamn name is that?”

  “Don’t know, sir,” Jackson replied.

  “You meet him at the pad. Help him get squared away. Don’t get him fucking around with Light, Jackson.”

  “Yes sir,” Jackson said.

  Jackson went to the pad and found a soldier sitting on a footlocker which had chain wrapped around it secured with padlocks.

  “Labouf?” Jackson asked.

  “Yo,” the dark-skinned man said and grinned. “We’re all going to die up here, right?”

  Labouf was a short man with curly black hair. Maybe a Greek.

  “It’s not that bad,” Jackson said.

  Jackson liked playing the role of a veteran. But he noticed Labouf’s uniform was not new.

  “That’s not what I heard. If it wasn’t bad, I wouldn’t be here,” Labouf said.

  He knelt down and began examining the footlocker, running his fingers along a small crack along one side.

  “Those dickheads threw it out of the chopper,” he complained. “Didn’t even give me a chance to help them with it. Fucked it up.”

  Jackson had never seen a replacement arrive with a footlocker before. Soldiers in Saigon or one of the big base camps had foot-lockers but not at Desolation Row.

  “What you got in there?” Jackson asked.

  Labouf smiled. “Personal stuff. The army lets you keep personal stuff in a footlocker,” he replied.

  Labouf lifted the footlocker to his shoulder. Whatever was in it was not that heavy and did not make noise.

  “Where’s the radio?” Labouf asked.

  Jackson led him to the TOC where they found Major Hale working at his map tripod.

  “What the hell have you got in that footlocker, soldier?” Hale asked.

  “Personal stuff, Sir,” Labouf said. “Like to keep it down here.”

  “Go ahead,” Hale said. “Jackson here is buddies with Tom Light. Those that hang around with Light get blown away.”

  “He’s still alive. Must be lucky,” Labouf said.

  Jackson liked the sound of that. Someone considered him lucky.

  “No one’s lucky enough to get close to Light,” Hale said and left the TOC.

  Labouf shoved his footlocker under a cot. Jackson learned Labouf was a first-generation American whose family was from Lebanon and now lived in Philadelphia. He had been drafted and sent to Vietnam where he had gotten into some sort of difficulty while working in Saigon at American headquarters.

  “Hey, I got some good stuff,” Labouf said. “Want to smoke.”

  “Sure,” Jackson said.

  The found an empty bunker. Labouf had cigarettes, the tobacco taken out and replaced with marijuana, the ends twisted to hold it in.

  Jackson filled his lungs with smoke. Soon he was feeling good. He saw Labouf smiling at him.

  “I’m going home rich,” Labouf said. “You want to make some money?”

  Jackson remembered Savitch.

  “You running drugs back to the States?”

  “Shit, no. Too risky. I had a buddy. The fucking FBI delivered his stuff to his house after he went home. They got dogs sniffing every package, all the hold baggage. I ain’t stupid.” Labouf continued, “I was playing the black market money game, doubling my paycheck every month and then doubling that. The CID got on to me, but I made a deal with them, put the finger on the guys that’s really cleaning up. They promised I was going home. Next thing I know I get orders to come up here. They’re trying to kill me. Nobody’s going to be killing Ernest Labouf. All I had time to do was grab my stash. No chance to get it home. Couldn’t walk into the Bank of America and deposit fifty thousand dollars. The CID guys were probably waiting for me.”

  Why was Labouf telling him what was in the locker, Jackson thought.

  “I heard about Tom Light,” Labouf said. “No one is going to fuck with his friends. This locker will be safe in here. Help me guard it. Keep your mouth shut. You can have a cut for your trouble, a couple of thousand. We’ll smuggle this out in our baggage when we go home. Maybe I can get back to Saigon. I got this contact at the Bank of America who maybe can get it out of the country for us. But not right now. Too hot to risk it.”

  “Hale will never let us go to Saigon,” Jackson said.

  “I’ll think of a way,” Labouf said. “I don’t want to get blown away fucking around with Light.”

  “Don’t worry about Light. He’s covering my ass,” Jackson said.

  “What can he do for you from out in the bush?”

  “I go out there. With him,” Jackson said.

  Labouf laughed and said, “I’m not going out.” He paused before he continued, “Any asshole fucks with this footlocker I’ll kill ’em.”

  “The guard at the TOC won’t let an enlisted man near the entrance,” Jackson said. “Hale’s afraid of getting fragged.”

  “They sure better not fuck with my footlocker,” Labouf said.

  After that, Jackson occasionally wondered if Labouf was lying and considered prying open the locker to have a look. But he was afraid it might be booby-trapped, and he believed Labouf’s threat.

  Then Jackson noticed Reynolds & Raymond began to shadow Labouf. Jackson stood at the entrance to the TOC and watched Labouf walk across the compound. Reynolds walked in front, playing his M-16, and Raymond behind. They reached the TOC and Labouf turned on Raymond.

  “Keep the fuck away from me,” Labouf said.

  Reynolds sang, “Take anything you want from me, anything/Fly on little wing.”

  “Hey, money man, we’re watching out after you,” Raymond said.

  “Quit calling me that,” Labouf said.

  “It’s the truth ain’t it. Ain’t you the money man. Got his foot-locker filled with money.”

  Reynolds giggled.

  “You better not be out here when I get off duty,” Labouf said.

  Reynolds put his M-16 behind his head and played it.

  “You hear me,” Labouf continued. “Keep the fuck away.”

  Jackson followed Labouf into the TOC.

  “What do those two fuckers want?” Labouf asked. “You didn’t tell ’em about my money?”

  “Hell, no. Those two are so fucked up on speed they’ll never come down. When they do, the crash’ll sound like an arclight,” Jackson said.

  Labouf continued to threaten them, but Reynolds & Raymond paid no attention to him. Wherever Labouf went in the camp, Reynolds & Raymond were with him, one walking in front and one behind.

  Jackson had gone to sleep on the cot when he heard something rattling. He opened his eyes and saw Reynolds & Raymond sitting on Labouf’s footlocker. Labouf was not at the big radio or on his cot. The radio operator on duty sat with his feet up on the table and his bush hat pulled down over his eyes. Asleep.

  “Where’s Labouf?” Jackson asked.

  “Gone,” Raymond said.

  Reynolds played with the chain on the locker and examined one of the locks. Jackson wondered if he could pick it.

  “How did you get in here?” Jackson asked.

  “Guard’s stoned,” Raymond said. “Raymond played him a little ‘Purple Haze,’ on his ’sixteen and he said drive on.”

  Jackson said, “Hale’ll be down here anytime.”

  “Up in the tower,” Raymond said. “Labouf’s with him.”

  Reynolds tugged at the lock.

  “Leave that alone,” Jackson said.

  Reynolds began to beat out a frantic rhythm on the top of the locker.

  “Alabama, when you going out to Tom Light?” Raymond asked.

  “Don’t know,” Jackson
said.

  “We want to talk to him.”

  “You know where he lives.”

  “There’s dinks out there. We’ll be safe if we go with you.”

  “You’d get wasted.”

  “Tom Light can bring back Jimi.”

  “You don’t really believe that shit?” “The slopes believe it. Light can do it. Does it with his starlight.”

  “Light wastes dinks with it. Don’t raise anybody.”

  “That’s not what we heard. Yards say he can do it. Dinks in Vung Tau say he can do it.”

  “You heard a bunch of fucking lies.”

  “He can do it.”

  “You’re as stupid as the fucking dinks. Get out of here!”

  Reynolds stopped beating on the footlocker. He picked up his M-16 and began to play it.

  “Never saw so many locks,” Raymond said, tugging at one of the padlocks. “You got the key?”

  “No,” Jackson said. “You better leave that alone. Labouf said he’d kill anyone who fucks with it.”

  Raymond whistled and dropped the lock.

  “Labouf got drugs in here?”

  “Just letters. Personal stuff.”

  “Think he’d let us watch him open it?”

  “Shit, no.”

  “You ask him, Alabama. Tell the money man we’ll help him guard it.”

  “He’s no money man. Get off that locker. Don’t come down here again. You do, I’ll personally kick your ass.”

  They stood up and Jackson pushed the footlocker back under the cot. They would be back, and when they killed Labouf to get his money, they might kill him too.

  “Tell the money man we’ll come again,” Raymond said as they left the TOC. “Can’t hide the smell of money.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  JACKSON, SITTING WITH THE radio on the TOC’s overhead cover, heard the pop of enemy AK-47 rifle fire from the ridge and saw green tracers shoot up into the night sky. He wondered if a patrol had been ambushed by the NVA.

  “Jackson, you there?” the words came out of the handset, hissed instead of spoken.

  Jackson gulped air. “It’s me.”

  “I’m on the rock,” Light said. “They got me cornered.”

  Now a light machine gun was firing in short bursts.

  “I’ll call Major Hale,” Jackson said.

  Light spoke quickly, “No, you get ’em on the guns quick. Fire on my position.”

  “We’ll kill you too,” Jackson said.

  “My position, quick!” Light said.

  A long burst of green tracers came from above the rock and an explosion which sounded to Jackson like a frag.

  “Your position?” Jackson said.

  Light did not reply.

  Jackson slid off the bunker and ran for the mortar pits.

  The mortar squad lived in a tent ten meters away from the nearest gun pit.

  Jackson yelled into the tent, “Fire mission!”

  “Shit, man,” a voice came out of a darkness which was lit only by a single candle. “FDC ain’t called from the TOC.”

  “He didn’t call fire direction control,” Jackson said. “He called me.”

  They were all stoned. He could smell it.

  “They’ll kill him!” he yelled, now inside the tent, wondering how these men were going to save Light.

  “Fuck it—oh, I’m so fucking short,” a soldier moaned. He lay sprawled face down on a cot, so stoned he could barely talk.

  “Five fucking days,” the soldier continued.

  “We’ll catch Green’s shorts,” a soldier said.

  The stoned men of the mortar squad began to giggle, all except Leander who wore his pith helmet pushed back on his head.

  “Who you talking about?” Leander asked.

  “Light, they’ll kill him!” Jackson said.

  Leander laughed and said, “Nobody’ll kill that fucker. I told you stay away from us.”

  “Go—the rock—come on!” Jackson said, pulling one of the giggling men to his feet. “Get out there or I’ll kill you!”

  For the first time Jackson noticed the man was dressed in a suit with wide lapels and bell-bottomed trousers.

  “Hey dude, don’t mess with my threads,” the man said. And then to Leander, “Light’s bro gonna bring down the bad shit on us.”

  Jackson realized the soldier had probably been to Hong Kong on R&R and was showing off his new, custom-made suit to the squad. Three other suits hung from a rope stretched across the top of the tent, the suits encased in clear plastic bags.

  Leander leaped across the tent and pushed Jackson up against the sandbags stacked along the wall. Jackson felt the point of a bayonet at his throat.

  “Fucker, I’m gonna kill your goddamn honky ass!” Leander said.

  “My position, quick,” Light’s voice came out of the handset, no longer whispered but strong and urgent.

  Everyone on the squad heard it. Leander lowered the bayonet.

  “They’ll kill him—come on—the guns!” Jackson said.

  Led by Leander, the squad ran out of the tent for the pits. The men began carrying ammo up from a bunker.

  “Where?” Leander said.

  “The rock, on the ridge,” Jackson said.

  Leander called fire direction control on the land line, and in a few seconds he had a setting for the gunsight and a number for the charges which he yelled to his gunners. As one man sighted the gun on the candy-striped aiming, stakes, the men were cutting charges, pulling off the thin white squares of TNT stacked at the base of each shell like a deck of cards.

  “Tom Light, Tom Light,” Jackson said into the handset.

  From the ridge came a long burst from the light machine gun, followed by the heavy crack of Light’s .303.

  “Tell that fucker to keep his head down,” Leander yelled at Jackson.

  “Tom Light, rounds on the way,” Jackson said into the handset.

  Leander checked the sight and gave the signal for the other guns to start firing.

  Men began dropping shells down the tubes, and Jackson counted fifteen shells in the air. They waited for the first impact, seeing the flash on the ridge, followed a few seconds later by the crack of the high explosive. Then the others were falling.

  “Add fifty,” Light’s calm voice came out of the handset.

  Fifteen more shells went out.

  “Left, Twenty-five,” Light said.

  The guns fired. Jackson noticed Green standing atop one of the sandbag walls that surrounded the mortar pit.

  “Five days,” Green yelled. “Tom Light I’ll fuck your sister.”

  And Green, stoned out of his mind, continued to laugh and yell from the top of the wall.

  “Add one hundred, airburst, they’re running,” Light said.

  “Set ’em for six seconds,” Leander yelled.

  Again the gunners sighted the tubes and cut the charges. A gunner set a timer on the nose of each shell which would set off a charge to explode it before it hit the ground, spraying shrapnel downward. The soldier worked quickly, and Jackson thought the man missed one. As the crewmen began dropping the shells down the tube, Jackson watched the shell the soldier had not touched.

  Then as a soldier started to drop the shell down the tube, Jackson knew that time had not been set.

  “Wait—” Jackson said, stepping forward, already realizing that it was too late. “No time!”

  The shell disappeared out of the soldiers’ hands.

  “Short round!” Leander yelled and everyone along with Jackson hit the ground.

  Jackson looked up and saw a soldier stand up and try to pull Green down off the wall.

  A great roar and bright flash filled up the night as the shell went off twenty meters out of the tube, the time set on zero. Jackson looked up and saw the soldier who had been trying to pull Green down running across the pit on the stumps of his legs. Green still stood on the wall laughing. The man ran into the sandbag wall and collapsed, lying there screaming with a s
trange high-pitched wail that made Jackson want to laugh. But instead Jackson threw up.

  “We got ’em,” Light’s voice came over the handset.

  “More rounds?” Jackson said, spitting to clear his mouth.

  “Negative, it was beautiful,” Light said. “Not a whole dink out there.”

  Jackson replaced the handset. Leander was kneeling beside the soldier who lay on his back at the base of the sandbag wall screaming for his mother. The sweet scent of blood filled the pit.

  One of the men went for a medic.

  “Shut up!” Leander screamed at the soldier. “Shut the fuck up!”

  The soldier continued to scream. As the men tied tourniquets around the stumps, his screams turned to animal-like groans. Then the groans stopped. Jackson was grateful for that.

  “I’m so fucking short,” Green said, still standing on the wall.

  The squad ignored him.

  “Green’s shorts didn’t do Calvin no good,” a soldier said.

  “Light’s bad luck stronger than that man’s shorts,” another said.

  “Maybe the major’ll write it up as enemy action so his family can have a medal,” a third said.

  Leander stood to one side, looking out toward the ridge.

  “I’m sorry—” Jackson began, walking toward him.

  “Fucker, you stay away from me. I’m squad leader. I should’ve checked. Williams is fucked up enough when he’s straight. I should’ve known he’d fuck up, I should’ve known,” Leander said.

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Jackson said.

  “Light, you cocksucker!” Leander screamed out toward the ridge. “Sitting out there laughing at us. Put willie peter on that mo’fucker.”

  And Leander opened a cardboard tube which contained the mortar shell and began stripping charges off it.

  “Be cool,” a soldier said. “You saw what happened to Calvin. Light always brings down the shit on people.”

  They wrestled Leander to the ground.

  “Get out of here!” one of them yelled to Jackson.

  He walked off past the mortar squad tent, large holes torn in the canvas by the shrapnel. At the mortar pits the men were still arguing with Leander over dropping white phosphorus on Light.

  Jackson pressed the transmission bar and said, “Tom Light, Tom Light.”

  Only white noise hissed out of the handset, but he kept calling.