Bayonet Skies Read online

  “You wouldn’t, of course, be speaking about me?” Jim asked.

  “Heaven forbid,” Jerry replied, assuming an expression of innocence. “Why would a lowly enlisted swine like myself presume to comment upon the psychological makeup of a person who would give up a perfectly good career as a pecker-checker to become a sorry-ass motherfuckin’ officer? Not that all officers are sorry-ass motherfuckers, you understand. Just most of them.” Jerry shook his head in sorrow.

  Next came the parachutes. Standard MC-1-1s with black canopies, as requested, with LOPO reserves in a piggyback configuration. Each man popped the chute, checking the ripcord very carefully for burrs or kinks. Finding nothing there, they spread the canopies out, checked them for holes and tears, followed the shroud lines to make sure they were clear and not twisted, opened and refolded the spring-loaded pilot chute, made sure the light canvas sleeve would slip off the canopy. Finding nothing amiss they assisted one another in repacking, being careful to flake the canopy properly, folding it more carefully than they would have a baby’s diaper. Each of them had been a rope jumper—everyone in Special Forces had started out with static line opening systems—in which someone else packed your parachute. There had been stories going around, probably since the first time someone had jumped out of an airplane, about the rigger who was drunk, or was mad at someone, and rigged the canopy so it would be sure to fail. Everyone with the confidence born of bravado and the sense that it couldn’t really be true—could it?—had shrugged off such stories and jumped anyway. But all, once they had started freefalling, had liked the idea of making sure, by packing it yourself, that if something went wrong it was your own damned fault.

  Finally, all was in readiness. Two hours before deadline, Jim thought.

  Ah shit, what the hell am I doing here?

  “Weather’s not looking too good,” Mark Petrillo said. “We may have to scrub tonight.”

  Jim had been watching the thunderheads gathering for the last couple of hours and was not surprised. He had no great desire to try to freefall into a thunderstorm. More than enough things could go wrong on a drop of this sort; you didn’t need to add to them.

  “When’s the decision?” he asked.

  “Right now,” Petrillo said. He looked outside the bunker, obviously didn’t like what he saw. Off in the distance thunder could be heard. The nearest thunderhead was suddenly backlit, a flash outlining the black/blue like a stage set designed by Picasso. “We’ll try it again tomorrow. We got a small club here. Want a drink?”

  “For everyone?” Jim asked.

  Mark looked offended. “What the hell do you think we are here” he demanded, “the regular Army? Thought you’d have known me better by now, Jim.”

  Jim, smiling, didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I know you’re probably still pissed off about how you were treated in Vietnam,” Mark said. “But I didn’t have a hell of a lot of choice in that. You had to be vetted.” Mark was referring to an occasion when he’d introduced Jim Carmichael to a young woman who later turned out to be a member of the same unit controlling the Phoenix Program, a woman who had done her best to see that Captain James NMI Carmichael had a very short lifespan.

  “You’d have done the same thing,” Mark concluded, lamely.

  “Sure I would have, Mark,” Jim replied, not meaning a word of it. You never treat friends like that, he was thinking. Of course, what ever made me think you were a friend?

  “Jerry, Dick,” he called, “come on. Happy hour. Unless you object?”

  “Shit, Dai Uy, thought you’d never ask,” Dickerson said. “I been smellin’ beer for at least an hour.”

  The club, a pale imitation of the one that had been there when the base was filled with fighter pilots, was still relatively merry when they got there. The pilots and crews of the Jolly Greens were there, as were the Blackbird people. Evidently they had been watching the weather even more closely, had come to the decision at least an hour ago that the mission would be delayed. Stacks of beer cans on the table testified to their pleasure at being allowed to live at least one more day.

  “Give these men a drink!” commanded a man in a flight suit with the wings of a master aviator and the shoulder insignia of a full colonel. “Gentlemen,” he said, sticking out his hand, “I’m Ben Jaworski, and I fly that big black motherfucker out on the runway.”

  Jim shook his hand, accepted the proffered beer. San Miguel, he noticed. It had been a long time since he’d had a San Magoo. The sharp bite of the Philippine beer was welcome on his tongue.

  “Thank’ee, Colonel,” he said. “Lookin’ forward to flying with you.”

  “You’re a lying motherfucker, your feet stink, and you don’t love Jesus,” Jaworski said, laughing. “You ain’t looking forward to flying worth a shit. You’re looking forward to getting out of it. Though why anyone in their right mind would want to jump out of a perfectly good aircraft is beyond me. Still, you snake-eaters are okay in my book.”

  “First of all, Colonel, ain’t nothin’ perfect. Second, damned few people been killed flyin’ in an airplane. It’s that hard landing that gets you. So we just avoid that part.” Jim took another swig of the beer, beginning to enjoy himself.

  Colonel Jaworski roared with laughter, ordered up another round of beers. Twenty-four hours of bottle to throttle was clearly not operative here. Just like the old days. Shit, Jim thought, why can’t life always be like this?

  Because, you asshole, you have to grow up sooner or later, the answer came, unbidden.

  Yeah, well, in the meantime I might as well enjoy it. May not be any later, anyway. Damned irresponsible, aren’t you, Jim?

  Yep. Sure am. What the fuck’s it to you, anyway?

  Ah, Alix, you never did really have a chance, did you? There is a mistress that is older than you, one I’ve loved longer than I can remember. And I can’t stay away.

  I’m so sorry.

  Ah well, hell. Might as well make the best of it. The younger officers were crowding around, eager to hear the stories they knew would come from this group. Jaworski didn’t disappoint them, telling of a time when he’d been flying Sandys—prop-driven aircraft that were the first line of defense for downed airmen—and had himself been shot down. He’d escaped and evaded—E&E in the jargon—for a few hours, then found himself face to face with an apparition. A camouflage-suited, face-painted Caucasian leading a group of tribesmen who had grabbed him up, told him to shut up if he wanted to live, and led him miles away to an LZ where a Jolly Green was called in. One of those goddamned snake-eaters, you know. Just like this motherfucker here.

  Jerry, not to be outdone, told about one of the recon missions he’d been on, one that involved being backed up against a cliff by at least a hundred North Vietnamese, calling for somebody, anybody, to come and help. And how a Spectre gunship had diverted, come in and hosed down the entire area with minigun fire, killing people, rocks, trees; making what had been jungle look like a football field. And then how they’d been pulled out by the Air Force.

  Christ, Jim thought, don’t we sound like a mutual admiration society. Maybe we are. For good reason. He’d been the one-one on the mission of which Jerry spoke, remembered the things that Jerry didn’t talk about. Like how they had discussed mutual suicide, should the choice be that or capture. The feeling of absolute desperation, knowing that they were about to die. The almost giddy sense of irresponsibility that feeling gave. You’re going to die, might as well go out with flair.

  At one point a rocket-propelled grenade had come in, exploded on the radio, filling both men with small pieces of shrapnel. That radio, equipped with the new KY-38 encryption device, had been giving them trouble the entire time they’d been out. Jerry had stood up in the middle of the firefight, shouted “Ha, ha, ha, you motherfuckers, it didn’t work anyway!” Jim had pulled him back down, threatened him with a voice that continually had to struggle against laughter, that if he ever did something like that again, the NVA wouldn’t get the chance to kill h
im, because he would himself.

  Godalmighty. Here we go again. “Give everybody here another beer,” he ordered. “Even these Air Force motherfuckers.”

  Chapter 9

  Two days later the weather, remarkably bad even for the early monsoon season, finally cleared. The team had used the time to constantly refine the plan. Still, the hours went slowly. Even Jerry Hauck got tired of the drinking, deciding instead to go through the library left behind by the departed Americans. He settled on Proust, Remembrance of Things Past, noticing that the spine looked unbroken.

  Jim wrote three letters to Alix and tore two of them up. The first, he decided, had a distinct tone of “I feel sorry for me,” and the second sounded entirely too casual about the whole thing. He felt anything but casual. In the last he just told the truth. That he loved her, missed her, and hoped she would be there when he got back. It was a short letter.

  Sergeant Dickerson came into the room just as he was folding it into an envelope. “Mind if I ask you something, sir?” he said, uncharacteristically formal.

  “Siddown, Dick. What’s on your mind?” He had noticed that Dickerson had become a little withdrawn in the last couple of days, not his normal cheerful self.

  The sergeant sat for a moment in silence, his brown face impassive. Then he flashed a smile. “I gotta tell ya, Dai Uy, I think we’re gonna get in some real shit here.”

  “No bullshit. Whatever gave you the first clue? You having second thoughts?”

  “No way!” Dickerson was horrified at the thought. He wouldn’t let down the other men now, even if he wanted to. And he didn’t.

  “Nah, it’s just that I want to ask you to do something, if I bite it. Not too many people know this, but I got a couple of kids back in the States. I know we did wills and all, but you know how things get screwed up. ’Specially since they don’t have my name and all. The lady and I never did quite see our way clear to getting married. You mind?”

  “Kiss my ass,” Jim said. “You seriously think I’d turn you down? Course I’ll take care of it. Not that I’ll need to. I plan to bring everybody back, and that includes your sorry ass.”

  “Thanks, Dai Uy,” Dickerson said, looking relieved. He handed the captain a piece of paper upon which he had written the names and addresses of his two children, a boy of six and a girl of three. He had seen them only a few times in between assignments, something he now deeply regretted. And there might not be any more chances to remedy that now. Despite what Captain Carmichael said, and he had every faith in the captain’s abilities, he had a strong hunch that this might be the one that gave him what he had been looking for for so long.

  Jim sat for a little while after the sergeant left, once again thinking about his own life. Christ, am I so different? I’ve pissed away everyone who ever loved me. I have a brother I haven’t seen for six years, a father I’ve stayed away from a hell of a lot longer, women who have loved me and whom I’ve abandoned, and a wife and unborn child I just ran away from. Maybe I ought to have asked for the same favor.

  No, goddamn it. I meant what I said. Everyone is coming back this time. I won’t leave anyone else behind. No matter what.

  His thoughts were interrupted by the weather officer, who told him that they had a window of at least four hours that night, and that it didn’t look like there would be any more for at least a week. Did they want to try it? The look the captain gave him told him better than words that he had asked a stupid question.

  They dressed carefully, slowly, like knights getting ready for the joust. Every piece of equipment was stowed properly; a place for everything and everything in its place. Camouflage jungle fatigues, made in Korea, no labels speaking of their origin. Jungle boots, same source. No socks or underwear. Fabric staying next to the skin kept it moist, made it an ideal home for the bacteria and fungi that teemed in the jungle, lying in wait for their next host. A couple of days and you would have a spectacular case of crotch rot and athlete’s foot. A couple days more and you were out of action, unable to move without screaming in agony as the skin flaked off in sheets.

  Next came the Air Force–type mesh survival vest with the strobe light, penflares, mini smoke grenades, URC-10 ground/air survival radio and extra battery, first-aid kit, and survival packet containing matches, fishhooks and line, cable saw, malaria suppressants, antidiarrheal tablets, razor blades, and signal mirror. Every single pocket of the vest was taken up with something important. The vest was the last thing you lost, because without it you were truly alone.

  Atop the vest was the STABO harness and pistol belt containing all the things you would need to fight. Over all this were the rough-terrain coveralls, a loose-fitting garment of tough canvas with extra padding on shoulders, elbows, knees, and buttocks. They would be jumping into the trees; could not depend upon finding a clear landing zone. Besides, there was too much chance the clear zones would be occupied by someone else. The coveralls and a tough plastic helmet with a mesh faceguard made it possible to land in the canopy without hurting yourself too much if you kept your feet together and didn’t get one snagged in the vee of a branch and rip it off.

  Already the men could hardly move. Next came the parachute, shrugged into and clipped together with quick releases in the front. The CAR-15 was slipped over the shoulder and tied down with string and a canvas band. Wouldn’t need it coming down—shooting at someone while you were hanging underneath a parachute canopy was strictly for the movies—but you wanted quick access as soon as you got on the ground. The heavily laden rucksacks had already been carried to the plane, as had the bundles they would be kicking. The rucksack would be attached to the rear of the harness just before jumping, where it would ride on the backs of the legs. No use being more uncomfortable than necessary. This was quite bad enough, thank you. Each man was sweating heavily even in the air-conditioned bunker, and when they waddled outside to get in the van they felt like they were in a steam-bath. Though, as Jerry was quick to point out, without some LBFM to give them a blowjob.

  The driver of the van, a young Air Force sergeant, asked him what an LBFM was. Jerry rolled his eyes.

  “Christ, where do they get these guys?” he asked rhetorically. “Little Brown Fucking Machine, of course.”

  Once on the C-130 they connected their facemasks to the oxygen console, started breathing pure oxygen. The cool dry gas was pleasant on the lungs, produced its usual slight euphoria. Jim settled onto one of the webbed seats, relaxed. There would be at least an hour of this as the system was scrubbed of nitrogen. Nothing much to do except sit back and look around.

  In the front of the cargo compartment, behind curtains beyond which mere mortals were not supposed to go, the technicians checked their magic machines. This one here would alert them to the presence of enemy radar. That one would tell them if they had been “painted”—locked on to by fire-control systems that would guide the guns or missiles to them. Yet another would blank out those fire-control systems, fill the screens with static, cause the missiles to fly out of control. If all else failed there were chaff dispensers to confuse the radar, flares to release to attract heat seekers. And if all that failed? he had asked one day while being briefed on just such an aircraft.

  Then you die, the pilot had said.

  The bundles with the equipment they would not be able to carry on their backs were strapped to the tailgate, parachutes attached, ready to go. The rucksacks were next to them. The crew chief was busy checking his baby. Every crew chief believed that the aircraft under his care belonged to him and him alone. The pilots were only the drivers, and not to be trusted. The crew chief knew the sounds she made, was alerted to problems and even the location of the problem by the slightest difference in hum or rattle. Could repair anything on the aircraft, at least long enough to get it back where it came from, with nothing much more than a crescent wrench, copper wire, and hundred-mile-an-hour tape. Woe be unto the unwary, treating the plane in a less than respectful manner, if the crew chief was around.

  Jim let
his mind slip into cruise control. How many times have I done this? My life is made up of the smells of avgas and hydraulic fluid, cordite and TNT smoke, shit and blood. Instants of peace, snatched where you can, before once again throwing yourself into the shitstorm. Colors of olive drab, camouflage, jungle green, melding into nothingness. And each time you ask yourself, will it be the last? Promise that if God will just allow you to get through it one more time it will be. That you’ll quit, never again allow yourself to be talked into such foolishness by anyone. Or by yourself. Resist the seductive talk of country and the cause—the devil’s temptations, all. Find another line of work, one that stands a bit better chance of allowing you to live longer than just the next few hours.

  And each time, after it is over, you think, that’s it! I’m free.

  And in a few days, or at the worst a couple of weeks, the bad parts start to fade. Increasingly, you think about the sheer exhilaration of danger, the adrenaline-fed battle euphoria that allows you to do amazing things. The indescribable joy of sharing a desperate cause with worthy companions. The pleasure of being just a little bit quicker, or smarter, or just luckier than your opponents.

  And you’re ready to go again; start to chafe when you can’t. And it goes on and on.

  Until, as the man said, you’re dead.

  With a hydraulic whine the tailgate closes. Another whine, the engines are starting. Out the window, should you care to look, the props are starting to turn. The vibrations possess the aircraft, inhabit the soul.

  The hums and pops of the machine, familiar from so many times before, feel like old friends. There is anticipation; the airplane is clearly struggling against staying, wanting to flee to the realm that is its home.

  Physical release; the brakes slip; movement. Gathering force, irresistible, though it is nothing more than air itself being pushed. Rumble across the pocked runway, unkept by the magic of technology since the Americans departed. Trees outside the perimeter shaking, small birds once again in fear scattering.