“Sappers!” someone yelled. The phone rang and went dead.
“The guns, dammit! Where are the guns!” All over the ward, patients were running for cover. A burst of automatic fire cut through the wall above the bag line.
Joan stumbled through the dark, toward the traction patients. A mortar round, exploding with terrifying noise, took away the north end of one of the wings, sending fragments down the rest of the ward. People were screaming; fires seemed to be burning everywhere. She tripped, and was getting to her feet when a second round went off.
The blast came in through the window and, searing past her, lifted her up and threw her against one of the striker frames. The ward was a shambles. Bodies were sprawled all over the floor. Bed frames, twisted and broken, lay in the smoke and dirt. Corpsmen, coughing, on their bellies, were passing out M-16’s, sliding them along the floor, while right outside the wing a series of smaller, less powerful explosions were going off.
“Grenades...get your head up...shoot, dammit! Those are grenades, dammit, those aren’t satchel charges. They’re through the wire. Idiots...shoot! Grenades...grenades!” The sergeant in traction was still yelling commands when the first AK rounds cracked through the ward, killing the ward master and a patient near him. A moment later a grenade came through one of the windows, bounced once on the floor, and exploded. A second burst enfilated down the center aisle. Shadows moving against the flames ran back and forth outside the ward. Over the explosions was the sudden high-pitched cracking of M-16’s and M-60’s.
In the confusion and smoke the surviving corpsmen were sliding ammunition along the floor to the patients near windows and doors. A corpsman had just slammed a clip into his M-16 when a figure passed in front of the hole that had been blasted through the wall; he emptied the clip into the figure. In the dust and smoke, hardly able to breathe, two corpsmen, along with a patient, were crawling up to one of the walls when an exploding RPG blew it in and killed them. Stunned by the explosions, those who had weapons rolled over on the floor and began firing into the dust where the wall had been. Two figures came tumbling through the smoke, their AK’s bouncing along the concrete floor.
Suddenly the whole night was lit up by the blinding metallic flash of a star shell. It flooded in through what was left of the place. Then the gunships came in. They swung in above the ward, hovering protectively over its smoking ruins, firing in one long continuous roar.
A few minutes later, the camp’s reactionary force managed to secure the ward and the perimeter. When they found Joan, she was lying where she’d been thrown, crying, her left leg folded grotesquely under her.
“A lot of people are getting fat out of this,
the correspondents, the engineers, the
so-called consultants. They don’t have
to be there, Man, they ask for it, and
I hope to fuck every one of ’em dies.”
Trooper, 9th Division
Intensive Care Unit
U.S. Army Hospital, Zama, Japan
15
$90,000,000 a Day
LET ME TELL YOU about that defoliation program. It don’t work. No, I mean it. It ain’t done a damn thing it was supposed to do. I’ll give ’em there are a lot of dead people out there because of it, but not theirs—ours. The whole idea was to prevent ambushes, to clear the area. Some idiot somewhere sold somebody the idea that if the gooks couldn’t hide, then they couldn’t ambush you, and they bought the idea, I mean really bought it. The trouble with the whole thing is that the VC and NVA use guns in their ambushes instead of bows and arrows. Nobody mentioned that. They don’t have to be sitting on top of you to pull off an ambush. An AK-47 round is effective up to 1500 meters and accurate up to 600. So we’ll hit an area, like along a busy road, billions of gallons of the stuff, and pretty soon there’s nothing except some dead bushes for fifty or even 300 meters on both sides of where the road or track used to be. So the gooks will start shooting at you from 300 meters away instead of five, only now you’re the one that ain’t got no place to hide. Ever try running 100 meters or 200? It takes time, and they’re firing at you the whole way. And I mean the whole way.”
Thirty billion dollars a year, three million dollars an hour, and God only knows how much for a project that doesn’t work. Chemicals from Ohio, factories in Georgia, hundreds of trucks, a freighter a month, steel cylinders, diluents, cargo helicopters, squadrons of specially equipped duster aircraft, gauges and valves, contracts and subcontracts—it’s part of the other Nam, the ninety-million-dollar-a-day Nam.
“I’m sorry.”
“Look, it’s on your way—two, three minutes.”
“I’m sorry,” the pilot said indifferently.
Herman shifted the box to make it easier to carry. “There’s three hundred dollars in it for you.”
Amused, the chopper pilot stared up at Herman and then, ignoring him, picked his 45 out from under his pillow and slipped it quickly into his shoulder holster.
“Listen, kid,” Herman said, “that’s a hundred dollars a minute.”
He waited, while the pilot bent down and began lacing up his boots.
“Then you won’t do it?” Herman said. The kid didn’t bother to answer. “Look, it’s no skin off your nose. Just take the chopper there, hand it through the window. Ten seconds. No one even has to get out. I radioed; they’re expecting it. I mean, it’s important. Tell you what, I’ll make it four hundred.”
The pilot straightened up, picked up his helmet off the bedpost, and tucked it up under his arm. “Three hundred a man,” he said. “Three hundred for me; three hundred for the co-pilot; three hundred for the crew chief; three hundred for the door gunner.”
Herman looked at him as if he were crazy.
“That’s four hundred a minute,” the pilot offered helpfully. “Your company can afford it.”
“We’re a construction firm,” Herman said angrily. “Not diamond makers.”
“You could fool me,” the pilot said, ignoring him again while he fished for his flight glasses.
“Someone else will do it.”
“Then find him,” the pilot said. He left the engineer standing there in front of his cot and walked out of the hutch.
“Fucken kids,” Herman mumbled under his breath as he picked up the box and walked out of the empty room into the sunlight. The 115-degree heat of Nam swirled suffocatingly around him. For a moment he closed his eyes. God, it gets hot, he thought. Walking across the company area, he paid no attention to the choppers starting up all around him. By the time he reached the gate, he was puffing and his white shirt was soaked.
“Well?”
“Well, what?” Herman asked, walking around the front of the company jeep.
“They wouldn’t do it?”
“What the hell does it look like?” Herman said, dropping the box heavily onto the back seat.
Thompson moved the M-16 off the front seat to make room. “We told ’em we’d get it up to them.”
Herman, giving Thompson a disgusted look, climbed in as the first gunship, turbine roaring, cleared the wire a few meters in front of them. Thompson waited until Herman could hear him.
“So,” he said, leaning forward against the steering wheel, “what do we do now?”
“What?” Herman asked as a second gunship came whining out over them.
“What do we do now?” Thompson said louder. Herman waited until the chopper was gone.
“I offered him three hundred bucks and he so much as told me to get screwed. Three hundred, three hundred!”
“Maybe you should have offered him more,” Thompson said, reaching for the starter.
Herman gave him a quick, angry look. “I didn’t have to,” he said, wiping the sweat off the back of his sunburned neck. “He told me he’d do it for twelve hundred dollars.”
Thompson pursed his lips. “Hmmm,” he said, tilting his head as he started the engine. “Bit steep, even for Nam.” He was just putting the jeep into gear, when Herman stopped him.
“An idea?” Thompson asked, sitting back.
Herman picked up the box and climbed out of the jeep.
“Hey,” Thompson said, “this time pick a kid that’s just got over here, will you?”
Herman walked across the broken, dusty ground back into the compound. It was getting time to go, he thought. A third gunship careened out over his head. He held his breath against the noise and sudden down-draft, and then it was gone. Maybe if he’d go out in the field a few weeks and get back into some kind of shape, he’d be able to hack it better. The air conditioner was what was screwing him up. He had to do something, though. Thompson was getting on his nerves, and even his moose was beginning to annoy him. He walked right into the headquarters building. None of the guards challenged him or even asked what he was carrying. Nobody checked anything. It was almost as hot inside the building as out; all the windows were open. He walked up to the first desk.
“Can I help you?” The kid looked no older than the chopper pilot.
“I’d like to see Sergeant Kowlow. He was here last time I came by.”
“Sergeant Kowlow?” The Corporal looked thoughtful for a moment. “Sorry, I don’t think he’s here; I mean, I’ve never heard of him.”
“There might be a few sergeants around you haven’t...” Herman was about to remind him again that maybe he didn’t know everybody in the Army, when someone yelled from the back of the room.
“Hey, Cramer! Cramer!” the Corporal turned his head. “Better let the Old Man know that S-2 just called. Gunship and a loach got lit up near Qui Nhou.”
The Corporal waved and turned back to Herman.
“I think Sergeant Kowlow DEROS’ed back to the States almost two months ago,” he said.
“Who replaced him?”
“Sergeant Brown.”
“Brown?” Herman thought for a second. “Thomas Brown?”
“Sorry,” the Corporal shrugged. “I don’t know what Sergeant Brown’s first name is.”
“Is he in?”
“He might be. His office is the first one on the right.”
Herman turned away. Last year, he thought, as he walked sweating down the corridor. Even the money wouldn’t make it worth another. He reminded himself to send part of this month’s money to his second bank account. It was always good to be a little cautious. It wouldn’t do for his and his wife’s joint account to get too far out of hand.
He found Sergeant Brown in his office, sitting at his desk, a huge air conditioner blowing in over him.
“London...Herman London.” Brown said good-naturedly. Herman nodded and walked into the room. Brown, his wide face spread even wider, kept smiling, though he didn’t bother to get up from behind his desk. They had met each other over a year ago when Herman was up in I Corps, building the harbor at Danang, and Brown was working in the NCO clubs. They had hardly known each other. Herman was impressed that Brown remembered.
“Your kids are getting a bit more hard-nosed than they used to be,” Herman said wearily, putting the box down on the desk.
Brown stared at the box for a moment and then, motioning to the only other chair in the office, leaned back. “It’s not ’67,” he said, taking two cigars out of his pocket. Herman wondered about his pallor, but then he could not remember ever seeing him suntanned, even down in I Corps.
“No thanks,” Herman said, sitting down. The sweat was drying, making his clothes stick to him.
“I asked one of your pilots going up near Quin Yon to deliver that box to some of the boys working up near there, and he almost spit on me.”
Lighting his cigar, Brown nodded sympathetically. “It’s a different kind of war,” he said matter-of-factly.
“What happened to Kowlow?”
“He wanted to get out. He’d had enough.”
“How long was he here for?” Herman asked.
“A little over two years.”
“NCO clubs the whole time?”
Brown shook his head. “No, the last year he was working with the PX’s. Tape recorders, tape decks, turntables, that kind of thing.”
“Almost as good as construction work,” Brown said, giving Herman a small conspiratorial smile.
Herman let it go. “Do you think you could help me with that?” he asked, pointing toward the box. Brown put the cigar in the ashtray.
“I think so,” he said, moving his chair closer to the desk. Herman reached into his shirt pocket for a cigarette.
“I offered the chopper pilot two hundred to take it up to Ton Bi.”
“What’s in it?” the Sergeant asked, sliding the box a bit closer to him.
“Couple of fifths of scotch. They ran out and they’re having some kind of party up there tonight. They radioed down, and I promised I’d get it to them.”
“Who’s up there?” Brown said.
“Supervisors from AM and D. Doing some kind of on-site inspection.”
“Ton Bi,” the Sergeant said. “Hmmm, that’s pretty far.... Well,” he said, pushing back his chair, “I think I should be able to do something for you.” He put his hands on his knees as if he were about to launch himself out of his seat. “What were you offering again?”
“Two...three hundred.” Herman corrected.
“Good,” Brown said, standing up. “Be right back.”
“We’ll have to wait a couple of minutes,” he said when he returned to the office. “Don’t worry. I’m sure it will be OK.”
“Fine,” Herman said, getting up. “Listen, I have a friend out near the gate; I’ll tell him what’s happening.”
“Oh, London?”
“Yeah?”
Brown was still standing by the desk, next to the box. “Got any extra generators at your place? Not for good, just for three or four days?”
Herman could feel the heat from the corridor fighting to get past him into the room. “They’re tough to get hold of. They power this whole damn country.” He looked toward the big air-conditioning unit stuck into the window. “They’re like gold, only worse.”
Brown nodded soberly. “I really need one. I sort of promised...a real promise.” He sat down on the desk. “I move a lot of stuff around here. It would be worth your while.”
“OK,” Herman said. “We can always have one break down and have to ship it somewhere to get it fixed. You do fix generators here.”
Brown grinned. “We fix everything here.”
Thompson was waiting for him inside the building. “A few more minutes,” Herman said, walking up to him.
Thompson picked his rifle off the bench where he had laid it. “If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be riding back in the dark.”
“Could be,” Herman said.
“Look,” Thompson said seriously, “you do stupid things around here and you’re going to get yourself hurt. Just leave the booze. If they can get it out, fine; if not, we’ll come back and pick it up tomorrow.”
Herman checked his watch. “One minute,” he said.
When he walked back into the office, Brown was on the phone. He motioned Herman into the office. “OK, yeah, sure; give me a call when it’s loaded. And thanks, Grieley; it’s really appreciated.” He put down the phone. “It will go,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “There’s a lot of stuff happening up around Qui Nhou. We’ll probably have to resupply before it gets dark.”
“Sounds good,” Herman said.
“Want something to drink?”
“No thanks,” Herman said. “I just talked to my partner, and he wants to get back. If it would be OK, I’ll leave the box. If you can get it out—fine. If you can’t, we’ll come by tomorrow and pick it up.”
“Sure, anyway you want it.”
“You know, Sarge, that wasn’t the first pilot I tried. Just out of curiosity, how you gonna get it up to Bon Ti? Order one of ’em to take it?”
Brown looked amused. “If I did that, they’d break every bottle one by one.” He reached for another cigar. “They’ll do it, but they have to think it’s worthwhile. I mean, they know
where it’s going and what’s there.”
“So?” Herman asked.
“So,” Brown said, lighting his cigar, “I rewrap it, put some stickers on it, and it becomes penicillin, or plasma, or something.” He took a few puffs. “How much did we agree on?”
“Three hundred,” Herman said.
“We’ll have to pass it around a bit.” Herman remained mute. “Well,” Brown added good-naturedly, “it’ll have to do.”
Herman took three hundred-dollar bills from his wallet and handed them to Brown.
“Thanks. Tell me,” he said, “do they give you guys more for two-year contracts?”
“Yeah,” Herman said.
Brown nodded approvingly. “Tax-free, too. Hmmm. With odds and ends I bet you could triple that base salary in two years.”
“We work for it,” Herman said, putting away his wallet. “Anyway, thanks for taking care of the liquor for me.”
“That’s OK,” Brown said. “I’ll be in touch.”
It was only after Herman had left the room that Brown folded the money and put it into his own wallet.
“We should get out of this jungle war.
With our fire power, if we were up
against a regular army we’d wipe them
out. But we’re shooting at trees and
bushes.”
Trooper, 1st Air Cav
Surgical Ward
U.S. Army Hospital, Zama, Japan
16
Brock
YOU DON’T WEAR TIGER stripes in Japan. They’re not authorized. Jungle fatigues, regular fatigues, class-A khakis, summer or winter greens, even Army shorts are OK, but not tiger stripes. With their jagged slashes of black and green, it’s hard to pass them off as being defensive. They’re for the jungle, for tracking and killing without being seen. So to spare the sensitivities of our Japanese hosts, the United States Army had ruled that tiger stripes were not to be worn in that country. Every now and then, though, someone ignores the regulations. Usually, after a little official harassment, he gives in and takes them off. Some, though, don’t. A few, simply because they’ve been through it all and don’t give a shit; others, because even in Japan, their war’s not over; some, a little of both. These are the ones you can’t push around, and if you hassle them about anything—even their uniforms—you’d better be ready to go all the way, because they’ll take you there whether you want to go or not.
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