by Dale A. Dye
“That might not be a wise way to measure our relationship, Cleve…at least not until I retire. Let’s say we’ve been, uh, kindred spirits for the past three or four years.”
“Regardless, it’s been a profitable relationship, hasn’t it, Justin? For both of us?”
“I like to think it’s been profitable for the nation too, Cleve. We couldn’t have done what needed doing in Vietnam without Emory Technology. And there’s no doubt that technology will carry over into benefits for society at large.”
“There were a lot of bids on a lot of lucrative contracts. We were lucky to find you when we did…a right-thinking man in the right place, Justin. A narrow-minded military bureaucrat would have tossed those bones to the lowest bidder. That would have been a mistake. Lots of American boys would have been killed just to save a penny.”
“My sentiments exactly, Cleve. Just witness the debacle with the M-16 rifle when we first fielded it in Vietnam…a horror story. As I told you when we first met, I promised not to let anything like that happen so long as I was a procurement officer in the Pentagon.”
“I trusted you then…why not now?”
“And in the future?” The MACV colonel ejected the tape cassette from the recorder and dropped it into the manila envelope with the prints and negatives.
“The future beyond what, Justin?” Cleveland Emory forced himself to sit still and carry out the final round of negotiation.
“Beyond Vietnam, Cleve. Beyond my retirement.”
“It’s your ticket to write. There’s no reason why a man of your proven reliability shouldn’t start high in this organization and advance even higher.”
The MACV colonel retied his shoelace and smiled at his benefactor. “Look for two things to happen in short order. Massive B-52 strikes will obliterate the Ho Chi Minh Trail leading from Laos. At least one bomb will fall in every square meter of the area where Salt and Pepper’s unit was last seen. You have my personal guarantee on that.”
“And?”
“And you’ll be officially notified that your son has been killed in action against the enemy in Vietnam.”
The MACV colonel shook Emory’s hand and then relinquished the only proof that Salt and Pepper ever existed.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Willy Pud woke with a jolt and pawed desperately at the claws biting into his throat. Someone—something—was trying to choke him to death. Asleep on watch, goddammit! Fire the Claymores! Salt and Pepper…inside the wire!
Only Stanislaus Pudarski’s hammer-hardened hand and a stern blast of conditioned air kept him from murdering the row of cut-crystal liquor bottles arrayed just beyond arm’s length in the spacious backseat of the limousine. He dug at the cloying Leatherneck collar of his newly fitted dress-blue uniform, gazed out the window, and tried to unwind. No gooks in Georgetown...although there were concertinas of barbed wire left over from demonstrations staged by college students who supported them.
“Relax, Vilhelm. You’re home now.” Willy Pud smiled at the name. He hadn’t heard it said that way since he left Chicago back in ’64. Vil-helm. The Slavic pronunciation still lingered despite the fact that no one in his family had spoken Polish since his grandmother died almost 15 years ago. His old man never called him Vilhelm unless he’d done something extremely bad or extremely good. On neutral occasions—and that was most of the time around his father—he was called Willy with a W.
“Big day for you, Vilhelm. Have a little snort with me.” On the other side of the broad, blue velvet seat, Willy Pud’s father poured himself a second double-knuckle of the finest scotch whiskey Marine Corps money could buy. The preened and pressed Marine officer sent to escort them to the White House had asked Stanislaus Pudarski if there was anything he could do to make the ride more comfortable—and Stosh Pudarski had not hesitated to let him know there was.
“Later, Pop. I drink anything now and I’ll probably puke on the President’s shoes.” Stosh Pudarski chortled with glee at the image. What memorable highlights there were in his sketchy career as carpenter, framer, and cabinet maker centered on thumbing his fist-twisted nose at bosses and bureaucrats. Sitting around a rickety kitchen table Willy had heard the tales—and the gales of laughter they always inspired—from the time he was a little boy sketching clown faces into the wet rings left by his father’s sweaty beer bottles.
“Like that time we was framin’ them duplexes down in Skokie. Remember that story? Jesus! Me and Frank Hovitz got drunk and while the boss was chewin’ us out and tryin’ to can our ass, we unhorsed and pissed all over his shoes. Christ! You remember me tellin’ you about that?”
Willy Pud smiled. He remembered the story, but it wasn’t half as funny as the fiery red flush crawling up the buzz-cut neck of the Marine officer in the front seat. The man’s head turned in his dress uniform collar like it was mounted on a spindle. “There might be time for a quick one, Mr. Pudarski. We’ll be at the White House in about fifteen minutes.”
Willy Pud shook his head at the bottle his father inclined in his direction. His old man was getting nervous. The warning from the sideline had set him on edge. The final drink went down with a gulp and a grimace. Now Stosh Pudarski sat fussing with the unaccustomed wide lapels and tight trousers of the first new suit he’d worn in 20 years.
“Pop...be cool when we get there, OK?”
“I’m fine, Vilhelm. It’s this pansy-ass suit that guy at Monkey Ward talked me into buyin’. Like a goddamn cheap hotel—no ball-room.”
“You know what I mean. These guys are gonna talk...friendly and everything...but they don’t want to hear stories. You know…don’t start telling ’em how it was on a tin can in the Pacific or anything like that.”
A shadow fell over his father’s features. Maybe it was just the gate guard blocking the sun, but Willy Pud thought it made the man look old, lonely, and unloved, the way he’d looked when his wife died eight years back. As the limousine accelerated up the circular drive toward the White House, he reached over and felt for his father’s hand. Stosh Pudarski smiled and tapped the back of his only son’s hand with the hard ridges of his fingertips. It was the closest thing to an embrace between them since Willy Pud had come home from the war.
“If only your Mom could be here to see this...”
Willy Pud squeezed his father’s hand, then sat quietly, waiting for the limousine door to be opened by a Marine. He tried missing his mom, tried to conjure up enough emotion to match the tears welling in the old man’s rheumy eyes. Nothing. There was nothing. Down deep inside where remorse and grief bide until someone dies, Willy Pud was empty. All the other deaths had layered over his emotional core like thick scar tissue. He didn’t want to think about dead people anymore—not his mom or any other corpse. And he’d have to find a place in the White House for the old man to piss before he met the President.
j
Willy Pud stood paralyzed between his father and the President of the United States. While the old man tried to re-create the salty sailor smirk he’d worn in the photos from his Navy days, the President flashed a practiced grin that made his face into a long, beetle-browed wedge. Willy was doing his best to look pleasant, but he could feel the grin he’d plastered on at the beginning of the photo session distorting into a snarl. It was the stroboscopic flutter of flash units and the hot glare of the little goose-necked lights mounted atop the TV cameras that did it.
He’d just met the President and only just shaken the man’s hand while the resident White House photographer was applying pancake makeup to the Chief Executive’s shadowy jowls. Willy Pud had himself locked firmly into the here and now until they walked out of the Oval Office and smack into a press ambush. The bright strobe flickers reminded him of muzzle flashes. When the TV lights came on he felt like he’d been caught flat-footed and perpendicular to the deck with no cover at hand, as if he was sniper-bait hanging in the harsh glow of a mortar illumination round. His instincts urged him to seek cover, but the Commander in Ch
ief of the entire United States Armed Forces held him in place with a firm hand on his elbow.
The crush began to subside when two senior Marine officers stepped into the alcove. One of them guided Willy Pud’s father gently out of camera range and handed the President a large blue box like jewelers use for expensive necklaces. The other officer stepped up to a podium bearing the presidential seal and flipped open a file folder. He began to read in a firm, dignified voice that carried a hush over the room.
“The President of the United States, in the name of the Congress, takes pride in presenting the Medal of Honor to Staff Sergeant Wilhelm Johannes Pudarski, United States Marine Corps, for service as set forth in the following citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving as a squad leader with Company F, Second Battalion, First Marines, then Sergeant Pudarski was assigned to secure a strategic hilltop against enemy threat to the flank of his unit which was then engaged as part of a battalion-sized sweep of a major North Vietnamese Army stronghold in Quang Tri Province, Republic of Vietnam... “
He recognized his name but little else. Willy Pud had no idea who they were talking about as he listened to the saga of heroism unfold.
QUANG TRI PROVINCE—1969
“Hey, I made a mistake, all right? What are you gonna do? Shave my head and send me to fuckin’ Vietnam?”
Willy Pud smacked his squad radio operator on the helmet with the useless handset and thought about strangling the man with the cord. “I ought to send your dumb ass back down the hill to find that spare battery, Collins. You got any bright ideas about how we send our position down to Six or call for fuckin’ support if the gooks decide they want to take the high ground?”
Collins didn’t have a clue. And without a functional radio, neither did Willy Pud. Still, it didn’t make much sense to start another war. There was plenty to go around the grid square if the roar from the valley below their rocky pinnacle was any indicator. Stuck up on the scabby knob of a jungle peak with only ten men and a pop-gun 60-mm mortar, the situation could get tense in a hurry and Willy Pud didn’t need players who constantly dropped the ball.
“Get your ass up and grab an e-tool, Collins. Help Fowler and Martinez dig a hole for the tube. And tell Fowler I said you do most of the digging.”
He should have known better than to give Collins the radio. Should have humped it up the hill myself like the mortar tube…and about half of fat-ass Foreman’s gear. Should have, would have, could have. Shit in one hand, wish in the other, and see which one fills up first. What I need is a few more experienced bush-beasts in this short-handed squad. And the only other man besides Fowler that has more than a couple of weeks in the field got medevaced before we started in on this thing. Shit!
A guy like Collins made a big effort to let everyone know he was a draftee and never volunteered to be a Marine, so you knew right off he had the makings of a shit-bird. But Willy Pud also had at least three other guys in his squad who made it abundantly clear that they didn’t think there was one square inch of Vietnam worth the sweat off their balls.
Despite all that, Willy knew that there was no other option for him and his Marines. They’d have to just sit up here on this hill unless they got contrary orders…which they wouldn’t without a radio. He looked down into the valley trying to see some of the sweeping columns from the battalion going to the aid of the point element in heavy contact. There was plenty of smoke and noise, but he couldn’t spot maneuvering troops. What had him worried most was the possibility that the gooks tangling with the grunts below might decide to consolidate somewhere and make a stand. If they did that, they would sure as hell pick this hill as their Alamo. If he was an NVA commander under pressure, he’d head for the high ground to defend and this little hill was the highest ground around the battlefield.
The sun was about two fingers above the horizon and sinking. Willy Pud tried not to dwell on the difficulties of defending the hill. Hopefully, they wouldn’t have to anyway. The skipper sent them up here to guard the company flank. The skipper was solid. When he had the time to think about the situation on the flanking hill, he’d send reinforcements or orbit a helicopter if one was available.
“Somebody find Fowler and get him up here!” The nearest people were Stokey, the boot machine gunner, and Wop Gerardi, his assistant. They were digging a fighting hole for the M-60 near the military crest of the hill. The two men looked at each other over their entrenching tools and grinned, playing the age-old game: first one to jump at an order is a candy-ass.
“Pass the word, goddammit! Get Fowler up to me!” Voices began to call for Willy Pud’s first fireteam leader as he walked down slope and squatted next to a boulder where he might get some sense of the turmoil in the valley below.
It didn’t take a radio to discern that the battalion was in heavy contact. They’d been patrolling for the-past four days, poking and prodding in the thick bush to find a rogue NVA battalion that was troubling the ARVN units and the provincial capital of Quang Tri. They hit unwelcome paydirt shortly after Willy Pud’s squad reached the crest of the hill on their exposed right flank.
Smoke drifted in an angry grey pall over at least three large areas. Flights of tropical birds were being driven up through the thick canopy, into the darkening sky and away from the barrage of gunfire slicing into their nests. There was the occasional flash of tracer arcing through the green roof of the jungle. Willy heard the metallic thump of 12.7-mm heavy machine guns, the roar and sizzle of rocket-propelled grenades. That kind of firepower went with a battalion or regimental CP. His outfit had stepped directly into a large basket of shit, but there wasn’t much he could do about that sitting up on this hill.
“We might could dump a couple of sixty rounds down there just for drill...” Corporal Fowler, the guitar-picker from Austin, shucked his flak jacket and sat next to his squad leader. Willy Pud could tell from the contemplative grin on his face that Fowler wasn’t thinking about tactics or fire support. The Texan was twice wounded and short—with less than two weeks left in the Nam and on his last operation. He was delighted to be stuck up on a hill and out of the fight.
“Drill is all it’d be, Gordo. Can’t see shit down there. We’d wind up dropping H-E on our own people.”
“Don’t mean nothin’ anyways, Willy Pud. Word is we ain’t supposed to get in no runnin’ fights with the gooks no more. Ain’t you heard? Tricky Dick says it’s time for Marvin the Arvin to start kickin’ ass on Luke the Gook.”
“That’ll be the day.” Willy Pud lit a C-ration Lucky Strike and offered the last one in the four-pack to Fowler, but the Texan’s attention was riveted elsewhere. He stood and pointed to a spot on the horizon where the orange disk of the sun was dipping into the jungle.
“Ah reckon that’ll be in about the next thirty minutes, Willy Pud! Unless the NVA done shit themselves an Air Force. Them choppers yonder are gonna pull us out of here.”
As Willy Pud stood and squinted into the setting sun six helicopters rolled into a tight orbit over the jungle searching for a landing zone. Almost immediately a stream of green golf balls shot skyward as the NVA heavy machine gunners sent tracers up to search for the lucrative targets. Willy Pud quickly checked the sun, his watch, and the horizon for more helicopters. Less than an hour to dusk and only a few helos to lift the entire battalion. That’s typical for the Marine Corps in Vietnam, and it makes our chance of getting off this hill before full dark somewhere between mighty tight and fucking impossible. Still, weirder things have happened.
“Have everybody pack their trash in a hurry. It’s gonna be full dark before they get around to picking us up.”
Fowler sprinted up the hill, yelling for the squad to saddle up and fall in on him. Willy Pud turned away from the first helicopter lift staggering up into the gloom and wished he could trade Collins’ ass for a working radio. Surely they wouldn’t be left up here all alone until daylight. A night extraction in thes
e hills would be dangerous, but they’d try. Surely they would.
“OK, here’s the deal from what I can figure without a radio.” Willy Pud cut a lethal glance at Collins and then turned his attention to the heavily loaded grunts standing around the hole they’d dug for the tiny mortar. “Battalion ran into a shit-pot full of gooks somewhere down in the valley. Choppers are pulling them out right now. They’ll send a bird for us sometime tonight, I’m guessing. Probably after dark, so we gotta mark an LZ somehow.”
Willy Pud directed their attention to a clearing about 75 meters below the military crest of the hill: a long, oval hollow in a thicket of teak trees and bamboo. “Ain’t no level ground up here, so we’ll hump down there and set up a perimeter. Soon as we hear the bird, we’ll light up a bunch of heat-tabs and bring ’em in on that.” The faces staring back at him were hard to read in the gathering gloom but Willy knew what they were thinking. They may be dumb grunts but they can read a scorecard. “Any questions?”
“What happens if they don’t come for us?”
“Shut the fuck up, Collins. You did enough damage for one day. And I’m personally gonna see your ass gets back to the rear for Office Hours.” A few snickers escaped from the others who could envision draftee Collins filling sandbags and burning shitters while the real Marines sat around and watched.
“Shit…fuckin’ gooks are gonna want this hill. They’re probably on their way up here right now.”
“How long you been in the Marine Corps, Martinez? Ain’t nobody gets left hangin’. That’s the way it is. They’ll come after us and then the fuckin’ gooks can have this hill. Now, move out.”
Fowler fell in beside Willy Pud as they cautiously picked their way through the gathering shadows, over a rocky crest, and down through tall grass to the selected landing zone. “It was you told the first sergeant not to give me that job in the laundry before we come out on this op, wasn’t it?”
Willy Pud didn’t see any sense in lying. Fowler deserved the truth. “Yeah. It ain’t nothin’ personal, man. You know that. But look at the boot-camp assholes we got in this squad. I need your help to keep ’em in one piece.”