Club Saigon

by Marty Grossman

  The rain hit his face, stinging him into consciousness. He slowly opened his eyes, trying desperately to survey the situation. He tried to move his arms, but they were tied tightly with hemp to the bow of the dugout canoe. He didn’t have a shirt on, but he knew instinctively that he wasn’t in danger of freezing. He tried to move his legs, but they were similarly tied to the stern. He noticed the passing jungle foliage and knew that the boat he was tied in was moving with the current.

  Gunner . . . The name jumped into his fuzzy consciousness. Gunner and Xuan had done this to him. At least he wasn’t dead. But why hadn’t Gunner just killed him? He had no idea. It was unlike Gunner to be so generous with human life, especially with someone that had fucked him over and deceived him like Jerry had. All those earless Vietnamese in Little Saigon hadn’t been so lucky. He bet they wished they could have been set adrift in a wooden boat.

  Gunner was a perverse, tenacious human being. If he had let Jerry go, it was only because he expected something worse to happen to him than just dying by Gunner’s hands. Maybe he wanted to hang around and torture him but didn’t have the time? Maybe Frank was hot on his trail? No, Jerry gave up hope on that idea. Gunner had cut the collar off his fatigue shirt and buttoned it around his neck. He must have known all along that he had a transmitting device and where it was hidden. The guy had nerves of steel. If the transmitter was working, Frank was following him down this dead-end jungle tributary. He was sure Gunner had planned it that way to lead Frank on a wild goose chase.

  The ropes were tied around Jerry’s wrists and feet and then tied to the crossmembers of the boat. He tried to work out of the ropes, but the harder he struggled, the more the boat rocked. He came very close to capsizing the canoe twice before he realized that Gunner had planned this all along. He wanted Jerry to drown in some backwater cesspool deep in the jungle or be eaten alive by the voracious mosquitoes. Jerry was determined not to give him the satisfaction, so he stopped struggling.

  He wondered how long he could go without food or water. It seemed stupid to be so close to water and be worried about dying of thirst, but that’s the position he found himself in. The food was another matter. He looked down the length of his torso and realized that he could live off the fat of his own land for quite some time before he would succumb to death by starvation.

  The pain in the back of his head had begun to subside. He had to be able to think if he had any chance at all of surviving out here. His eyes glanced to the left and he noticed that the boat had begun to travel faster than it had earlier. He had no idea where he was or where he was heading. He shifted his weight forward, then back, trying to move the boat to the shore without it capsizing. But the current was too swift. He was traveling midstream, and the jungle canopy that had earlier shaded him gave way to direct sunlight. He felt the skin on his chest begin to burn. The humidity made him sweat profusely. He rolled his head from side to side, trying to catch droplets of the salty moisture on the end of his tongue. His head began to pound from the heat.

  Where the hell was Frank? Frank was supposed to be following him. He yelled as loud as he could. “FRANK! FRANK, HELP ME!” His shouts woke up the birds and monkeys, then they raised a noise that drowned out his pitiful cries.

  He had been on the river for several hours. He felt it getting wider and drastically picking up speed. The canoe bumped hard into a huge rock which almost capsized it. He continued to pick up speed. He hit another rock, then another. He noticed that the animal sounds had disappeared except for one. He was oblivious to the hot sun ravaging his body. The speed of the river created a draft across it, like a cool oasis in the middle of the desert. He must have been fading into delirium. His mind tried to sort out the only animal sound that he could hear. WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP. Could it be that it was not an animal? He vaguely remembered, as his delirium abated for a moment, that a helicopter sounded like that. He snapped up, straining at his bonds. Frank had followed him in his helicopter. He and Enrique were here to save him. He still hadn’t seen them when he heard the roar coming from downstream. He was still picking up speed and the boat had begun to slowly spin. It was like riding one of those carnival rides that his older brother used to take him on when he was a kid, only this ride had taken on the character of the fright house instead of the Ferris wheel.

  WHUMP-WHUMP-WHUMP. The chopper was directly overhead. He could see Frank leaning out the door, straining against his safety harness. He was lowering a hook on the end of a steel cable.

  Jerry yelled, “Frank. Frank, you found me!” But he was sure Frank couldn’t hear him over the roar of the falls.

  The noise from the chopper became secondary to him now. Here he was tied to a small boat, bobbing like a cork in a typhoon. He was about to be swept over what sounded like Schweitzer Falls. The sound was deafening. He really began to notice it and it had to be a high waterfall. Why else was he now aware of the rising mist falling all over him like a jungle monsoon rain? He closed his eyes and prayed. He asked the Lord to forgive him for all the things he had been forced to do in Nam. He asked Him to look out for Willy and, if He could, cure him of his alcoholism. But most of all, he begged Him to save him!

  The hook came down and paused above the boat. It was not steady enough. Frank made several stabs at hooking his ropes but failed. The hook hit Jerry in the face twice, then in the chest. If he could only get it near his hands, he might be able to work it over the ropes that held him. He wasn’t sure that they were strong enough to support him when the chopper lifted him and the boat out of the raging water. Without being able to see, he couldn’t tell if the waterfall was five feet in front of him or five hundred.

  The roar got louder and Jerry might as well have been underwater from the soaking he was getting from the mist. He looked up, praying for a miracle. There apparently was not enough time for the cable to be retracted, which told Jerry the falls were very near now. Frank wrapped his arms around the steel cable and began sliding down toward Jerry. He slid down his lifeline until he was just a foot above the boat, standing on the top of the hook. He reached down, glancing ahead, trying to grab hold of the boat. His eyes got real big as he held the gunnel, steadying the canoe with only one hand. He let go for a fraction of a second, then reached down again and slid the hook between his hands and the rope. No time elapsed between that movement and the time they flew over the end of the waterfall. Jerry looked down from his spinning boat and saw the river hundreds of feet below them. The cable slowly reeled them in and the roar of the falls gave way to the WHUMP-WHUMP – WHUMP of the helicopter.

  Jerry looked toward the cockpit but didn’t see Enrique. He didn’t recognize the new chopper pilot staring back at him through aviator glasses.

  Frank directed the helicopter back to the clearing where Enrique’s chopper had set down for the last time. He knew that he would not catch up with Gunner after he had been swallowed up by the jungle. Gunner was too shrewd for that. Frank also saw little value in destroying the cash crop on the ground, knowing a lot of innocent people would be killed in the operation. He knew that Gunner’s familial army would just set up in another area and be ready to ship in another three months’ time.

  Jerry got out of the chopper as it touched down in the clearing and walked over to where Enrique’s body lay, half exposed, in the pilot’s seat. Jerry noticed Enrique’s head had been taken and heard the incessant buzzing coming from the seat where his headless body now sat, becoming a meal and breeding ground for the blowflies. Instinctively, he knew what Gunner had done. Gunner had used the same stunt before in Nam. It was designed to frighten the enemy to slow down his advance on your position. It was an old Montagnard trick. Jerry had used it just like everyone else on the team. Gunner especially liked to use it when he was in Nam, and from the expression on Enrique Sandoval’s eyeless face, still found it a useful and intimidating tool.

  In ’67, they were on a recon mission near Ban Me Thuot. The regular Army had just gotten their asses kicked really bad by a combined force of NVA
regulars and Viet Cong. The team were sent in to cover their escape. Jerry thought it was odd that the Army would send in two Americans and a dozen Yards to keep “Charley” from overrunning two battalions of the regular Army. They had been used as cannon fodder by General ‘Waste-moreland’ before, and this was beginning to look like one of those times.

  Gunner was his usual self, the consummate jungle fighter, the macho man of Southeast Asia. They had just come through a village and encountered some resistance. “Charley” was hot on their heels and they hoped to lead them in another direction. A direction away from the main column of mostly wounded Americans that were down the trail about two ‘clicks’ east. Jerry’s field map said they were in a village by the name of Kon Ti Kia. The ‘Yards did a recon of the village and brought out two Vietnamese clad in black pajamas. Their Montagnard recon leader, a Banai Montagnard by the name of Kim, said they were VC sympathizers.

  That was all that Gunner needed to set him off. The next thing Jerry knew, Gunner walked out of a jungle thicket sharpening a bamboo pole he had just cut. He walked right up to the kneeling VC and jerked one up abruptly and began to question him, spitting out his questions like a madman. “You VC?”

  The man, his eyes looking at his feet, his hands tied behind his back, didn’t say a thing.

  Gunner pulled him closer. They were eye to eye now. “You VC, motherfucker?” he said vehemently as he kept eye contact. Jerry knew Gunner was looking for “the fear,” and if he didn’t see it soon he’d move on to the other prisoner.

  Gunner stepped back, and as he did, the VC looked straight into his eyes and boldly said in broken English, “Only mother I fuck, GI, is yours.”

  “You VC pig,” Gunner shouted. Then he thrust out with the bamboo spear and skewered the VC so hard that the spear went right through the VC’s heart and came out his back. It only took an instant. Gunner thrust forward, then put his boot on the VC’s chest and pulled the lance out of him. The VC fell dead, eyes glazed in shocked surprise, drooling blood, at Gunner’s feet.

  Jerry looked over at the other VC. He had “the fear.” In fact, he was scared shitless. Gunner pointed the bamboo spear at him then walks up and wipes the blood off it and onto the VC’s black shirt. Gunner took some blood off the prisoners’ shirt and traced his initials, R M, on each cheek. “You VC?” he shouts.

  The man looked at the ground from his kneeling position and spoke. “No sir, I no VC . . . I just a peasant farmer.”

  Gunner drew his machete out of its scabbard and pointed it at the prisoner. “You lie. You VC, motherfucker.” Then he swung the machete and the man’s head fell next to his kneeling body. Blood coursed out of his neck and covered the front of his shirt, dripping onto the ground at his knees. It all happened so fast that the prisoner’s dead body never fell over. Jerry figured it took a while before the man knew he was dead.

  Jerry asked himself why Gunner had done that. Why had he not given the prisoner a chance to answer? It was a rhetorical question. He knew the answer almost before the thought came into his head. Gunner didn’t want to find out that another VC had fucked his mother.

  As they left the village, Jerry noticed the head of the second prisoner was stuck on the end of a blood-soaked pole. Kim noticed his look of dismay. He walked up to him and said, “Old Montagnard tradition. VC do not follow us so fast after they see a VC head on the pole. They know we are ruthless if we meet in combat. They think twice before they follow us.”

  Frank checked the clearing one last time, then set two bars of C-4 plastic explosive. He put one on the front instrument panel and the other he stuck to the outside of the engine compartment. He deftly tied them together with a radio control detonation device wired to the blasting caps that he placed in each charge. “Let’s saddle up and get out of here,” he shouted to his other field commanders. “Back to Bangkok!”

  Jerry sat in the seat of his command chopper, still in shock from his ride down the river. Frank got into the helicopter and they began to rise, following the string of choppers heading back to Bangkok. Jerry watched Frank as he sat in the front seat. Frank pulled out the antenna on his handheld detonator and emotionlessly pushed the button. The enormous orange fireball turned Enrique Sandoval into a cinder propelled skyward, chased by a plume of blue-black smoke. The blast scorched the clearing, leaving the LZ fifty meters wider in diameter than it originally had been. Jerry had seen a lot of scorched earth back in Nam, and this was no different.

  THIRTY-ONE

  It was a nice afternoon for a riot in L.A. The veterans pushed and shoved their way across the sidewalk until they were nose to nose with Vinh Ho’s bouncers. Willy looked out at the assembled masses, wondering if any of the street vets could put the tae kwon do on the bouncers the way he had on Chou Lai. The guppies were attacking the oscars. A boot came sailing out of the crowd and hit one of Vinh Ho’s guards in the head, bloodying his nose and pissing him off.

  He unwrapped his arms from his comrades and headed into the crowd after the perpetrator. A grizzle-faced old-timer that looked to be three sheets to the wind tried to hide amongst the vets, but the Vietnamese goon was not to be denied.

  Willy watched in amazement as the street vets let the Vietnamese into their midst, then circled around him in a maneuver reminiscent of the Roman legions surrounding Spartacus. The Vietnamese crouched and moved on the old timer in a martial arts stance that looked like something out of a grade “B” movie. He grunted, kicked at nothing in particular, shouted, and jumped high into the air, doing spinning back kicks. The grizzled-looking vet just stepped backward, ducking unceremoniously under the barrage of kicks until his back was against the crowd. Then he stepped up and gave a shrill shout that temporarily silenced the crowd and his antagonist. He circled to his left then his right in random movements. He appeared to confuse the Vietnamese and take him out of his attack plan for a moment—and then, in the wink of an eye, the old veteran whipped out his bottle of muscatel and smashed the half empty jug over the head of his foe. The Vietnamese fell to the ground, bleeding profusely from a six-inch gash inflicted in his skull by the half-full bottle. Willy mused that a street drunk considered his bottle half full if he already had drunk it down to the label, but all full if used as a weapon. Street people seemed to always be pessimists. The old-timer began to cry after noticing that he hadn’t finished the muscatel before he used the bottle for a club.

  “What a fucking waste of good booze,” he cried, as tears streamed down his face while the rest of the vets kicked the downed Vietnamese into bloody unconsciousness.

  The Vietnamese guards locked arms again and wasted no time closing ranks. They totally disregarded their fallen, bleeding comrade as they set up a human barricade around the front entrance to the Club Saigon. Willy continued to be amused. Just like the ARVNs, he thought. They’re too chickenshit even to help one of their own. Some things never change.

  Willy continued to press the flesh while keeping an eye on the activities occurring on the street. He thought about how nice it was after all these years to have his own aquarium again. He heard a loud thumping on a microphone, coming from the general area of the stage. A well-dressed man of about fifty years old began to talk into the microphone. “Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention. Mr. Vinh Ho regrets that he is running a bit late. He has asked me to convey his apology. Please continue to enjoy the buffet and the hosted bar. He shouldn’t be too much longer.”

  After the well-dressed man sat down, Willy, who had initially moved close to the front podium to have better access to Vinh Ho, moved to the back of the room. He looked out the plate-glass window onto the street and saw that the “guppies” were surging closer and closer to the front entrance of the club. He also noted the distinct lack of police presence. No doubt there are a lot of ex-Vietnam vets on the force, he thought, allowing himself to smile briefly.

  The glass broke into thousands of shards, cascading inward on those watching the demonstration and right in front of it. Unfortunately for Willy Be
al, he was one of them. In an instant, his aquarium had been destroyed by the “guppies” who were now trying to breach the human wall thrown up by Vinh Ho’s soldiers. In his wildest dreams, Willy had never expected his street army to get this far. They were inflicting real damage on the VC. All the frustrations of twenty-some-odd years of government neglect, alienation by their own countrymen, and the loss of their homes and families had driven their torn bodies and minds into a frenzy. Ferocity and rage unseen since the Watts riots prevailed. For the first time in twenty-odd years, they had another chance to win the war in Vietnam and they’d be damned if they would let anyone or anything block their path to victory. They would not be denied, and Willy hadn’t counted on that.

  “You’d better call 911, miss,” he said to the girl who had greeted him at the door when the riot was just starting to escalate. She had a telephone in her hand but was sitting with her head down, shaking in fear, protecting herself from the falling glass. It was obvious to Willy that she was in shock. It must be genetic, he thought. As soon as the action starts, these people go into shock until it’s all over. Some things never change.

  “Miss!” he yelled. “You’d better call 911 and get the cops over here before those guys tear this place up. I think they’re really pissed!”

  “Yes, sir, of course, you’re right—I’ll call them now.” She dialed 911 and began to answer the first question asked of her by the 911 operator. “Yes. The address. Yes, it’s . . . ”

  Before she could finish, another rock sailed through the remaining glass and into the front of the restaurant. The girl dove under her table at the sound of the breaking glass and the telephone fell to the ground. Even though Willy had been the one to urge her to call, another impulse seized him as he picked up the phone and spoke into the receiver. “Riot? No, not here. I must have misdialed. Isn’t this information?”