by Jeff Wallace
“What should we do with him?”
“No broken bones. We’ll take him to his BOQ to sleep it off.” He checks my nametag and dials a phone. Minutes later, they curl me into the back of the jeep.
BOQs line the airfield’s edge. Painted beige, the facades reflect the late-afternoon sunlight like sandstone cliffs. At Building 129, the jeep swerves into a driveway. The two MPs who unload me draw incurious glances from the Vietnamese gardeners who desultorily reposition the sprinklers to sustain the grass. The sprinklers spawn a swampy humidity through which the MPs lug me inside. In the hallway, they half-carry, half-drag me along the buffed linoleum floor. Like all military quarters, the place reeks of disinfectant and floor polish. A washing machine spins nearby. They find room 108 and drop me on the floor outside the locked door. I am patted for a key; none is found. A Vietnamese cleaning woman emerges from the laundry room, and they enlist her to open the door with her key ring. Inside, they dump me on the bed. I feel them unlace and tug off my boots.
“You hit the jackpot today, sir. If another sergeant had been at the gate when you showed up in this condition, he might not have been so sympathetic. But if I ever see you like this again, I’m going to write your ass up.”
“For Christ sake, he can’t hear you. Let’s go.”
But I can hear. The problem is not so much hearing but comprehending, for these men apparently choose their words out of a grab-bag and utter them like bingo numbers. I interpret no logic.
* * *
Night settles. I feel myself breathe. I’m aware of noises in the room.
I sit up in bed.
Somebody is bashing out the window with a chair. I rise and drift alongside. The figure pays me no attention. He tosses aside the chair and clambers out through the newly broken glass.
I decide to follow.
The tilt-out window doesn’t open very far, which is why he had to break the glass. The jagged edges slashed his thighs; blood drips from the cuts. Across the sopped grass he splashes. A gluey warmth dabs the backs of my legs. I reach down, feel the wetness, and lift a stained palm to the moonlight filtering through the swishing palms.
In my peripheral vision, I see a BOQ resident emerge. He must have heard the glass.
My clothes encumber me. I strip them off—pants, shirt, and underwear—and toss them on the wet grass. The oscillating sprinklers stitch my chest; the water dribbles to my thighs and turns red.
A shout from the reactive co-resident: “Hey, buddy, are you all right?”
I point to the chain-link fence wrapping the airfield perimeter. The man who broke my window is scaling over. Snagged in the barbed wire on top, he thrashes loose, drops to the other side, and resumes his run. Blood stripes his legs like peppermint sticks.
I follow. Dimly I apprehend that the runner knows where he is going. Various aircraft—fighter jets and helicopters—squat in the distance. I assume the helicopters are his destination.
A jeep engine roars; the wheels spray gravel. The vehicle swerves around a line of parked deuce-and-a-half trucks on the inner perimeter road. Behind the wheel, a black sergeant—he must be part of the logistical surge for the Cambodia incursion—shifts the clunky transmission. He switches the jeep radio to speaker mode, and I can hear his voice above the crackling static: “Hey, uh, Juliet niner, I’m by the east fence, and I’m driving up on some guy running naked…” crackle crackle “…bloody, cut thighs, beat up and bruised… running across the tarmac.” He adds, “Motherfucker’s headed toward the blue line.”
I’ve never seen the blue line and don’t think it’s really blue. It denotes a boundary on the airfield a safe span from military aircraft. Ever since the Viet Cong attacked Tan Son Nhut airbase on the first night of the Tet Offensive in January ‘68, the security detail has stayed jumpy. The sentries have orders to shoot to kill anyone who breaches the blue line without permission.
Pounding to catch up with the runner, I squint at the blinding lights ahead. Under them, the sentries raise their rifles to take aim.
The airfield siren goes off.
The black sergeant guns his jeep. All military jeeps have something wrong with them, and I hear the gears grind. The engine fizzes, loses power. Then it catches. Military jeeps are not built for speed. Driven too fast, they may become unstable. I hope the sergeant doesn’t push the machine too hard.
Ahead I make out the runner in the spotlights. He vectors toward millions of dollars of aircraft with their loads of 500-pound bombs and full fuel tanks. The shoot-to-kill orders are neither exaggerated nor discretionary, and I assume the sentries are about to shoot him when, behind me, the jeep engine changes pitch from a roar to a whine, coughs again. I hear a curse. A sentry traverses his rifle barrel, and I conclude he’s picking up the runner in his sights.
For safety reasons, the jeep has no windshield. It sports an upright wire cutter jutting from the front fender like a defiant middle finger. The cutter nudges to within a body’s length of me, and I muddle at why the sergeant follows so close. I puzzle too over why the sentries haven’t shot the figure I’m running after. Certainly he’s crossed the blue line by now—do they not comprehend their orders? As I ruminate, the jeep engine catches again, and I glance to see the sergeant aiming the wire cutter at my back. The jeep groans, the gears turn to mush, the speed droops. “Fuck you!” he curses. Suddenly the jeep leaps, and I stare at the wire cutter so much like an extended arm groping for me. I try to dart off to the side but it hooks me and the upright pole passes over.
Air Force security jeeps converge. Their downturned spotlights resemble the legs of an insect. Sirens wail, men shout, and in the bluish smoke of the burned rubber, the black sergeant dismounts. The sentries still aim their rifles. A bullhorn barks, “Put your hands in the air!”
The sergeant complies. Behind him, oblivious to this human welter, a jet with a full bomb load waddles toward the active runway for a night mission.
A lieutenant in a lacquered silver helmet liner, bullhorn in his white-gloved hand, struts up. “You’re seventy-five meters past the blue line, Sergeant.”
“I figured it was about that far, sir.”
“You can put your hands down. Let’s see what’s under your wheels.”
At the grill, two air policemen pluck me from underneath. The wheels didn’t go over me; the wire cutter swatted me like a cockroach into a face-down slide on the tarmac. I note two bloody tracks—the skin from my forearms—receding under the jeep. Aware that they pertain to me, not otherwise concerned, I twist my head to gaze at the rolling jet. Where did the runner go?
The lieutenant asks, “Who the fuck is he?”
“No idea,” replies the sergeant. “I figured I had to stop him before he got shot.”
The officer shines his flashlight in my eyes. “He’s on something, big time.”
An ambulance, siren ululating pointlessly, joins the corral. The air policemen lift me by the arms, a raw, bloody hunt trophy.
“Better cuff him,” the lieutenant says.
I oblige them by collapsing to the tarmac.
Day 13
__________
At the U.S. Army hospital, I occupy a private room on the second floor. My behavior alarms the staff, so they shackle my ankle to the bed frame. When this proves inadequate, they buckle a canvas strap over my thighs and band me to the mattress. Rubbing against the strap, my leg cuts bleed, and the sheet soon resembles a butcher’s apron.
I awake to a white-garbed doctor who jots notes on the clipboard at the foot of the bed. Short, balding, he wears standard black-framed glasses that magnify his eyes. I ignore him until he speaks. “Hello, Major Tanner. I’m pleased you’re awake. My name is Dr. James Wilcott. You can call me Jim. How are you?”
“Get out, you little fuck.”
“I just wanted to ask how you’re feeling...”
“I said GET THE FUCK OUT!”
Frowning, he departs.
* * *
Later Wilcott reappears, unlit cigar in hi
s mouth, ego resurgent. He examines the clipboard.
I ask, “Do you have another of those cigars?”
He seems to consider this. He sidles to the bed, reaches in his tunic pocket, and serves up a Havana. I hold it in fingers that poke from the gauze to jagged nails rimmed with dried blood. The gauze wraps my forearms to the elbows. Blood seeps through, polka-dotting the white.
“Right nice of you,” I say. “Got a match?”
Flicking a glance at the ceiling fan that turns in a hypnotic stupor, he remarks, “The air doesn’t circulate well in these rooms.” He shows his own cold cigar.
I glare at him until he hands me a Zippo. I manage to sit up.
“How about a mirror?”
He fetches a stainless-steel bedpan. In the distorted reflection, a bandage bridges my nose, a cayenne scar smears my cheek, and the black of my puffy eyes melds with the pan’s silver. As a kid in the little league, I saw a teammate errantly hit across the eyes with a baseball bat. I look like he did.
I set the bedpan aside.
He says, “I have some questions for you. About what you remember.”
“Go ahead.”
“You suffered a massive overdose from a narcotic, an opiate of some kind, injected crudely in your neck, some into the vein, more in the muscle tissue. It left quite a bruise. Nobody would inject themselves that way. Whoever did this probably intended to kill you.”
“Yeah. You should see the cowboy.”
“What cowboy?”
I don’t answer. I light the cigar, holding the Zippo until the yellow flame imprints on my retinas.
“You’re lucky to be alive,” he says.
I study the smoke that wisps elegantly. “I feel lucky.”
“Do you remember who did this to you?”
“Oh yes.”
“Who? The cowboy?”
I suck on the Havana. “Do you know what I’m going to do to him?”
“Who are you talking about?”
“Cobris. You’ve heard of General Cobris?”
In the smoke nebula, his eyebrows notch downward. “I’ve heard of him.”
“He’s the one who did this to me. He’s mine—you’re not going to get ideas about that, are you?”
He ticks disdainfully.
Holding the cigar like a scalpel, I draw a flat oval in the air above the sheets. “I’m going to run the tip of my knife around his head, just above his eyes, lightly at first, round and round, to let him know what’s coming. Then I’m going to turn the blade and cut. If a knife is sharp it cuts skin like paper, with the same crisp sound. I want him to hear it.”
Wilcott fidgets with the collar of his tunic. “I’ve got to get that ceiling fan speeded up. Not enough air in here.”
“After I cut him, I’m going to pull down the skin all around. Regular scalpings are up; they take the hair as a trophy. Not this time.”
“Regular scalpings?”
“Right. This time I’m going down, from the eyebrows to the chin, leaving his face hanging around his neck like a foreskin. He’ll scream, but I’ll have him trussed up so he can’t move.” I wag the cigar like an instructor does with a pointer. “I might have to needle him with adrenaline to keep him from passing out. No problem, but it’s worth considering.” Cigar in my teeth, I concentrate on this important detail.
“Could I have my lighter back?”
“You know why it’s done this way?”
“What?”
“Think about it. Why bother to scalp a man’s face down? Why leave the hair on top?”
“Let’s talk about something else.”
“The sequence is critical. First I hold a mirror in front of him.” I lift the bed pan to exemplify. “He’s going to see his mug in it and freak, straight out of a horror show. That’s not the best part. I’m behind him. In one hand I’ve got my .45, round in the chamber, the hammer cocked. In the other, I’ve got my hard dick. He looks past his face and sees the dick in the mirror, then the .45 aimed at the back of his head. Now he knows what’s coming!”
Up and down I begin to bounce. The strapped legs propel me, chafe my ankle against the metal cuffs. The leg scabs break and bright red blood seeps through the sheet. I extend the cigar and this time it’s the barrel of a gun. “Blam! A huge hole in his head. That’s why you can’t take the hair, see. You need it to grab!” With my other hand, I seize the imaginary dead head by the hair. The cigar has metamorphosed again. Now it’s an erect penis, and I pump it furiously. “I’m going to SKULL FUCK the bastard! SKULL FUCK HIM TILL HIS EYES POP OUT!”
The ashes range to Wilcott and speckle his white hospital tunic.
He exits in a hurry. Has the presence of mind to snatch the Zippo on the way out.
Day 14
__________
Immobile, I listened to Wilcott’s voice. Fatigue pressed me like a weight-bent coolie pole that in my delirium had become a cross, and I hung upon it to atone for the arrogance of America’s shooter-upper in Vietnam.
“You were given an opiate, possibly a cousin to morphine or heroin, and possibly doctored with an hallucinogen. We’re not certain of the chemistry. We don’t know how much of it got into your bloodstream. In this part of the world, people have been tinkering with opium derivatives for hundreds of years. Opium thrived because the colonial authorities exploited it—the drug helped subjugate the population. The Americans brought another boon—tens of thousands of cash-flush GIs willing to experiment. There have been so many addictions and overdoses, our soldiers are safer in the jungle. Your case is one of the strangest I’ve witnessed.”
“I apologize for whatever I did.”
“The narcotic put you in an agitated psychotic state for the past 36 hours. It’s best that you don’t remember. Means you’re recovering. Until the substance completely dissipates, you may undergo episodes and experience drug cravings. That’s why the ankle cuff and strap are still in place.”
“I have no craving for that stuff.”
“Let’s wait and see. We should be able to remove the restraints by tomorrow. You won’t mind them; your principal symptom will be exhaustion. You should sleep.”
“Where is Tuy?”
He canted close. “Say that again.”
“Tuy. Where is she?”
“I don’t know who she is. Sorry.”
“I need to find her.”
He drew back. “You need to find yourself first.”
* * *
The walls caught the light through the Venetian blinds. Half awake, I watched the sunlight doodle the shape of a wing, while in the distance jets roared off the runways. It occurred to me that God must be a graffiti artist. A door opened, the breeze rattled the Venetian blinds, and the wing shuddered as if it had been blown apart with flak.
Entering, Colonel Crowley. He sat on a chair situated to host spectators of the absurd.
“I’m glad you’re still with us, Tanner.”
With effort befitting America’s grand enterprise in Vietnam, I twisted my head on the pillow to face him.
He said, “I’ve been in touch with Trong, your Saigon police friend. He had news for you. First, your girlfriend Tuy is safe. She’s with his family.”
With his family? Why not at the shanty house...
“Kim Thi has been taken. Trong said the kidnappers found the place she had been staying. Another policeman was guarding her. They killed him.”
Giang.
“All this happened two nights ago, about the time you got run over at the airfield. Suspicions are that André Nogaret was behind everything. He’s a drug runner—no doubt he was responsible for the attempt to overdose you. Kim Thi was his employee, connecting him to Gerard Penelon. It’s all linked.”
All linked. How had André turned the phrase? It’s what an amateur says.
I’d told Cobris the location of the shanty house. He must have revealed it to Simone. The pain crunched my face. Crowley said, “Easy, Tanner. You’re going to be all right.”
I asked, �
�Where is André?”
“The Saigon police are looking for him. They haven’t found him yet. Maybe one of his gangster friends is sheltering him. The police are searching for the kidnapped dancer too.”
“She’s dead.”
“Dead? Hmm. I don’t think we’ve heard that yet.”
“It doesn’t matter what you’ve heard. She’s gone.”
Digesting this, Crowley wrinkled his face. “One thing is certain: your Saigon is living up to its evil reputation. For years we’ve been trying to keep this place afloat, good money after bad as far as I’m concerned.” He lit a cigarette. “I’m out, by the way. Next Freedom Bird.”
Maybe I looked puzzled, for he smiled the kind of smile that precedes an embarrassing revelation. “Cobris summoned me to see him yesterday. In my life, I can’t remember such a withering ass-chewing, and he didn’t even raise his voice. He said I’d worked with you long enough, I should have known what I was dealing with. You’re the kind of man…”
“Go ahead, you won’t hurt my feelings.”
“It’s not your feelings that concern me, rather your discretion. But what difference does it make now? He said you’re the kind of man who gets an idea in your head, and you won’t let it go, heedless of the consequences might befall yourself and others, even your own death, and theirs. He said that some people might confuse you with a soldier, but in reality what drives you is a selfish impulse, the opposite of what a soldier does. A delinquent, the word he used. For a person of my experience to tolerate your behavior, and to facilitate it to an extent, meant I was a damn poor officer.”
“What did you say?”
“I said I agreed with him.”
I agreed too, but said nothing.
“He offered me an early end of tour in lieu of relieving me from my post. A graceful exit I was happy to accept.”
“It’s an exit, not graceful. You can still go to General Abrams.”
“I would if I believed in your case. But I don’t. Your evidence is mostly conjecture. Cobris left my career intact. I’ll save my ammunition for a day when it really counts.”