He’d arrived in sunny South Vietnam three and a half months ago, and so far, he couldn’t figure out what all the whining and puling were about. This shit was great. Better than great. Eighteen years old, with a rock-hard piece of dangle, plenty of script for spending money, and all the LBFMs—Little Brown Fucking Machines—that he could handle. And he could handle a bunch of them. Hell, he’d put up with a thousand dead bodies for this assignment, even the stinky ones, and in the three months he’d been at the U.S. Army Mortuary at Tan Son Nhut, a thousand wasn’t far off what he’d handled. It was okay for the most part, as long as he didn’t think about the fact that all those dead Joes were the same as he was. Exactly like he was, really, except dead, that is.
The mortuary at Tan Son Nhut Airbase on the outskirts of Saigon had been running for only a month or so when Spec-Four Dawkins arrived. The army, with its losses mounting daily, had taken over the identification operation from an overtaxed air force. The air force was glad of it. It would be months before the cramped facility was expanded and another year before the army got the smaller Da Nang Mortuary into operation. Now, in the early fall of 1966, Tan Son Nhut was crowded and understaffed and overworked.
The goal was simple on paper and noble to the ear.Concurrent Return is what it was being called in Pentagon briefings and press releases and testimonies before Congress. It was official Department of Defense policy. No more hoarding up lost souls in temporary graveyards a half-globe away, waiting for the end of the war so that they could be returned home. There might not be an end to this war; Korea had taught the country that little historical fact, if it learned nothing else. Now the goal was different; now the goal was to get the body from the battlefield to the flight line as quickly as a chopper could fly it; from the flight line to the mortuary in another thirty minutes or so; ID it in an hour; embalm it in two, maybe two and a half if it was messy; finalize the paperwork over the next eight hours and check to see the embalming took; load it up, and ship it out.
Concurrent Return.
Total time at the mortuary, less than thirteen hours—on paper.
Time from death to funeral, about a week—on paper.
If the rice paddies of Vietnam were the bloody killing factories of the war, then the mortuary operations at Tan Son Nhut certainly could pass for an assembly line.
Thaddeus Dawkins examined the muddy green body bag on the table. From the outside, the bag looked like the other thousand he’d unzipped; as uniform as the bloody hamburger he knew would be inside it.
Another young spec four was standing at the foot end, having accompanied the bag on the “meat run” in from the field. Another 57-Foxtrot. His green-and-black nametape readHUSTON , and he looked less than enthusiastic about being there. Truth be known, Huston was trying to recall the exact words that the army recruiter in Columbia Falls, Montana, had used to motivate him into signing up. Whatever he’d said, he doubted that “Join the army, and you’ll get to accompany stinking, bloated, dead bodies to a warehouse filled with other bloated, stinking bodies” had been any part of it. Somehow, it had sounded much more glamorous and exciting at the time, but then a great many things sounded more glamorous and exciting than staying in Columbia Falls after high school.
Dawkins grabbed a yellow paper tag at the head end of the body bag and flipped it over so that he could read it. It was muddy and smeared with dirt and body grease.
BTB TRIMBLE, Jimmie C., HM.
“Know him?” Dawkins asked the escort.
“No,” Huston replied. “Simply got the honor of sorting the maggot bags at the collection point.”
“HM?” Dawkins asked, looking at the paper tag again. He had reluctantly learned the army ranks—you had to or some pissant officer would have you holding a salute through your lunch break—but this wasn’t an army rank. It was navy, and he was rusty on navy ranks. They didn’t see many of those, and then never the same two twice. He looked at Huston for help.
“Hospital something-or-other. A corpsman…you know…like a medic,” the young soldier replied. “He was with some Marines that got their asses handed to them up near Da Nang last week. A dozen or so others came in on the same bird.”
“Oh yeah?” Dawkins responded. “I wonder if this is the one the captain was telling me to be on the lookout for. He said some medic was coming in with a load of shot-up Marines…apparently they’re writing him up for like a friggin’ Congressional Medal of Honor or something.”
“Dunno,” Huston said. “I’m just the delivery boy.”
Dawkins shrugged. Medal or no medal, the guy was dead now. He bent to work.
The exterior of the bag was greasy and covered with little crusty pieces of black, charred tissue. There was a faint smell of cooked meat that lasted until Dawkins cracked the zipper. Then all the pent-up smells of six days of jungle heat working on burned, shredded human tissue were released.
Dawkins flinched.
Huston didn’t.
Despite his working at the mortuary for three months, heavy decomp cases still evoked a slight gag reflex in Dawkins; not because of how they looked—hell, a burned, decomposed body is about as abstract as a piece of modern art—no, it was a normal reaction to the incredibly powerful smell. Like something absolutely unholy. And this one was bad. It was greasy and wet and bubbling and so loaded with crawling and jumping maggots that it seemed to ripple. Dawkins took shallow breaths through his partially cracked mouth. He wasn’t even going to take this guy out of the bag; just unzip it enough to fill out his charts and leave it for the embalming guys to deal with. Nothing bothered those friggin’ zombies.
Specialist Dawkins gloved-up and gingerly picked at the remains. He took hold of a short stiff stump that looked to have once been a left arm and levered the torso to its side so that he could examine the back. Nothing jumped out at him, except the maggots. He wiped the grease from his gloves on the side of the body bag and picked up his clipboard. On top was Department of Defense Form 893,Record of Identification Processing, Anatomical Chart. He checked the tag on the zipper again—Believed-To-Be TRIMBLE, Jimmie C., HM.He transferred the information and then slowly began to shade in the diagram of the body to show what was missing—everything from about the waist down. There was a charred stub of spinal column sticking out of the bottom of the blackened mass of cooked organ tissue and muscle. The arms were pulled up like he wanted to fight—the morticians who ran the place called that the “pugilistic pose”—common in burn cases. The muscles had actually contracted so much that the forearms snapped in two and were folded over amid the knot of muscle and tendon. The fingers were burned into short rounded knobs that looked like radio buttons; so were the facial features. The tongue had swollen and was sticking out like it was mocking the living.
Dawkins manipulated the arm stumps, stiff and hard from burning, unrolling the muscle and bone so that he could account for both hands. He was looking for a watch or ring. He found none. “No personal effects?” he asked Huston.
“In the PE bag,” Huston said, referring to a small green bag buried at the foot of the pouch. The Graves Registration guys at the field collection point had already segregated the personal items.
Dawkins unzipped the body bag further and retrieved the small PE bag, turning his head to the side to avoid the newly stirred smell. It contained a ball-and-link chain with two dog tags that had once been taped together with hundred-mile-an-hour tape that had melted into a green-black glue. He peeled the tags apart:
TRIMBLE, JIMMIE C.
4410597
A POS
PROTESTANT
The bag also contained some stainless-steel Kelly forceps—either the guy really was a medic or he liked a toke now and then.
Maybe both,Dawkins thought.Hey, no problem with that.
There was nothing else.
“Not much to work with. Can’t estimate stature very well with the arms busted up and the legs missing. Maybe get something off a humerus—it’ll mean cutting it out, though. Looks like a w
hite boy,” Dawkins was commenting for himself as much as for Huston’s benefit. “Looks young, maybe my age—our age.”
Specialist Dawkins completed coloring his form and looked over at his tool tray. “Hand me that pry bar, will ya, Ace?” he asked Huston. Huston responded by picking up a small metal bar from the tray and holding it for Dawkins to take. “Trade you,” Dawkins said as he handed the clipboard to the young soldier and took the bar in his right hand. He always hated this part—splitting the jaws—but you had to see the teeth. Had to make the ID somehow, and there sure weren’t any fingerprints left on this stubby charcoal briquette.
With his hand placed on what was left of the face, Dawkins used his left thumb to spread the charred lips; they crumbled into oily yellow and black flakes. He paused to wipe them away before he slowly levered the bar past the swollen, protruding tongue, prying it up and down until he was able to open the mouth. Sometimes, if the tongue wasn’t out and the mouth was closed, you chipped the teeth all to hell—especially if rigor was bad, and then the morticians got all bent out of shape and chewed on your ass.
Screw them. Friggin’ undertakers. Nothing but goddamn ghouls.
But not this time. This time the mouth resisted only momentarily and then opened easily as the charred masseter muscles crumbled and fell away. Dawkins traded the bar back for the clipboard. He wiped his glove on the exterior of the bag again and then turned to the second page: Form 891,Record of Identification Processing, Dental Chart. He picked up a pencil and started charting the teeth, drawing in each restoration that he saw. He honestly liked this part—probably because he was good at it. He started with the lower right jaw and used his finger to wipe the grit and ash off the teeth.
Number 32—present, virgin; Number 31—occlusal amalgam; Number 30—looks like a mesial-occlusal amalgam…
“This guy’s got a shitload of dental work. Should be an easy ID if he’s got any antemorts,” he commented as he colored his diagram of a mouth. Huston looked on quietly.
And it was. The identification specialist—one of the morticians—working that shift took less than two minutes comparing the charting that Dawkins had made and the antemortem dental records for HM Jimmie Carl Trimble, 4410597, U.S. Navy, that had come down from Da Nang by special escort. It was him. No doubt. Perfect match. Didn’t really need to do much else except type up the paperwork and have a dental officer initial off on it.
Thad Dawkins made it a point to check the status of the case when he reported for duty the following morning. Usually he didn’t give a rat’s stinky ass, but this case had all the officers and the GS-mucky-muck-12 morticians all spun-up like it was General Patton or something. He opened the large paper logbook and flipped back to yesterday’s cases. His glass ball was gone. The casketed remains of HM Trimble had been on a C-141 headed for Travis Air Force Base in under twelve and a half hours.
“Shit. Maybe not a record,” Dawkins told himself, “but pretty damn good.”
Chapter 8
U.S. Army Central Identification Laboratory, Hawaii
MONDAY, AUGUST15, 2005
It was a little after six o’clock in the morning, with the sun just showing in an otherwise clear, blue Hawaiian sky, when Kel arrived at the CILHI. He was still jet-lagged enough that he had been wide awake and staring at his bedroom ceiling for the last several hours, so he figured he might as well go to the office and get a head start on his backlogged work before the rest of the staff began filtering in after seven o’clock. Once that started happening, he’d be chasing his tail until at least midafternoon, and perhaps even longer. He often told people that a normal CILHI workday was something like having your hair set on fire when you first walked in the door; you then got to spend the rest of the day trying to damp down the flames.
The first trouble sign was visible as he neared the end of the long, palm-lined straightaway that led to the CILHI—his deputy’s car was already in the main parking lot. That ordinarily wouldn’t set any fire bells to ringing, since D.S. usually got to work before him—but 6:00A.M. was early even for D.S.
Kel swung his own car into his parking space and switched off the ignition. He rested his hands in his lap and sat while the engine cooled and ticked, looking out the window at the entrance to Pearl Harbor less than two hundred yards away. This was becoming a ritual, and he remembered enough of his freshman cultural anthropology class to recognize avoidance behavior when it presented itself. If he avoided eye contact with the Lab, maybe it wasn’t real, if even for a moment. Instead, he watched the coconut and date palms slowly ripple and frill in the early morning breeze. By midmorning the trade winds would be kicking up and the leaves would be rattling, but at this hour it was a gentle ripple. The sound was hypnotic, and the sky was a soft mixture of gold and blue, devoid of any clouds this early, devoid of any strife and problems. You could smell the salt even with the windows rolled up. Warm and comfortable and full of promise.
It really was a magical place to work, he reminded himself, both the place and the mission. That too was telling. He didn’t use to have to remind himself. In the almost fifteen years since he first arrived at the CILHI—first as a junior worker bee and for the last twelve years as the scientific director—he had never once rolled out of bed and not wanted to come to work, and while that was still true, lately he’d found himself sitting in his parked car longer and longer in the morning. Slow to initiate the day. Slow to engage the storm. Having to remind himself that what he did was worthwhile. The unflagging pace of the Lab was taking its toll, both on him and on his family, and he felt the numbness of burnout starting to chill his limbs. It was like the slow onset of frostbite, and the question was becoming one of life versus limb. Maybe it was time to consider life after the CILHI. Maybe it was time to sever the limb.
Maybe. But not today. Today there was work to do. Worthwhile magic still to perform.
Kel finally entered the building. The duty sergeant at the front desk, thinking it might be the CILHI commander, started to rise and call the almost empty building to morning attention. With obvious relief she saw that it was the scientific director, and more important, a civilian not requiring military formality. She settled back into her chair and simply smiled and waved in acknowledgment. Kel waved back out of reflex. He didn’t recognize the woman. She was very young and black and looked totally out of place in her camouflaged uniform and her slick, conked hair. The organization had outgrown the cozy little family atmosphere that had prevailed when he first started and now was large, and complex, and formally efficient, and largely staffed with a host of dedicated young men and women that Kel couldn’t have picked out of a police lineup if they’d mugged him first.
He shot a quick look at the commander’s office as he entered, to verify that it was indeed empty. Admittedly, it was early for the colonel, and his car hadn’t been in the parking lot, but sometimes he rode his bike from his nearby quarters so his car wasn’t always the most accurate weather gauge.
Kel was relieved to see that the office was still dark. He wasn’t in the mood to have his chain jerked this early in the morning, and the commander was an acknowledged master of tying your dick tightly in a knot exactly when you needed it the least. Like this morning. It hadn’t always been like this. The previous commander, Jim Costello, had been a good guy, supportive of the Lab, smart, decent, dedicated, and hardworking, despite being slightly rotund and having a predilection for taking frequent naps. His only real fault was an acerbic sense of humor that left a wake of victims in his path, each one of them plotting some unique form of revenge. But his replacement, Colonel Boschet—more commonly known to the staff asInspector Botch-It —was a different story. Ring-knocker Adjutant General branch, and borderline moron.
But so far so good. Neither the commander nor the deputy were in yet, and Kel made it all the way down the hall to the double glass doors that opened into the Lab without seeing anyone, except the duty sergeant. He shifted his backpack to his left shoulder and held his identification card again
st the electronic reader by the door. It beeped its verification, and he waited for the soft metallic click that signaled the lock opening. He pulled the door open.
He knew it was too good to last.
The examination floor was completely lit up, and he saw that the light on the alarm box was showing a solid green, indicating that the Lab’s security system had been disarmed. D.S. hadn’t left his car parked here over the weekend; he was in extra early as well.
Open Zippo, light hair.
“Morning.” D.S. smiled as he gophered his head out of his office. He’d heard the door lock click open and wondered who else was venturing in so early. “What brings you in at this hour—gluttony or dedication or something else? My money’s on jet lag.”
“How about some combination? But I could ask you the same question, couldn’t I? A bit early for a Monday mornin’, even for a lark like you, isn’t it?”
“Like you gotta ask,” D.S. said as he shrugged in resignation and returned to his desk. It was awash with memos and reports. Davis Smart removed his “Deputy” hat and became the acting scientific director in Kel’s absence, which meant, among other things, chasing a seemingly endless pile of paper around and around the tree in administrative circles until they turned to butter. Now that Kel was back, D.S. would wash his hands of it as quickly as he could—even if it meant coming in extra early to get it accomplished.
Kel had to smile at the sight of D.S. and his desk. “Better you than me—if only for a few more hours,” he said. He was still smiling as he fished the noisy tangle of keys from his pocket and unlocked his office door. His smile faded immediately.
“Good God,” he said as his door swung partially open to reveal a new pile of accumulated case files and paperwork. Predictably, he hadn’t gotten out of the office at noon the previous Friday as he’d intended; it had been closer to three o’clock when he finally closed his door, but before he left he’d managed to clean the mass of files up off his floor. Now it had reappeared in his doorway, or another pile exactly like it—if not larger. He’d left work the Friday before right in time to catch the vanguard of Hawaii’s famouspau hana rush-hour traffic. It had taken him an hour and fifteen minutes to drive the seventeen miles home, and that had provided more than ample time to think. And one of the many stray thoughts that coursed its way through his mind as he sat inching along toward home was whether or not the office elves would be active over the weekend. TheMenehune, as they call them in Hawaiian, little elflike creatures that build monumental structures overnight. Legend said they worked with lava rock and coral. Kel knew that stacks of administrative paperwork were an equally creative medium. That he opened his door to discover that they’d indeed been active didn’t really surprise him, but the size of the newly created pile of work did. Sometimes instead ofMenehune, he envisioned sooty, sweaty men stoking coal into a blast furnace, only their shovels were piled with brown file folders and the firebox was the inch-wide gap under his door.
One Drop of Blood Page 7