Into the Treeline Page 12

  Fitzwilliam chattered all the way to the room. “You’re in the Annex,” he said. “We figured you’d like it better that way because of all the strange hours you people keep. Nobody to bother you, and you won’t bother anyone else. I trust you’ll find the accommodations suitable.”

  “I’m sure I will,” Jim replied, as pleasantly as possible. No reason to antagonize the little twit further. He probably couldn’t help being an asshole. “You people have a tendency to do things up right.”

  As, indeed, they had. His quarters would have made an army general envious. He had two rooms, a bedroom with full-size bed and real mattress, and a sitting room with a couch and chairs. A full bath was located just off the bedroom, with a shower, tub, bidet, and a real flush toilet. There were two large air-conditioners, a small refrigerator, and even a TV set. Trust the Agency to think of everything.

  “I’m sure you’re bushed from the trip and want to get settled in, so I’ll leave you now and get back to my post,” said Fitzwilliam. “I believe the province officer in charge would like to see you first thing in the morning.”

  “And what time would that be?”

  “Oh, right after breakfast. Say, nine o’clock. If that would be suitable for you.”

  Jim, who was used to much earlier hours, said that nine o’clock would be fine. He bade the duty officer good-bye, then proceeded to unpack. He placed his CAR-15 carbine on a chair in the sitting area, draping the heavy web gear full of magazines and other necessaries over the back. The Browning nine-millimeter he slipped under a pillow. He had been issued four sets of tiger fatigues in Saigon, and these he hung up. They were sterile, had no insignia of any sort. From now on he wasn’t a captain in the U.S. Army, he had been told. He was a mister, a civilian advisor on assignment to the embassy. It was a cover that fooled no one, but the Agency insisted upon it. The tiger stripes, uniforms, and a couple of knit shirts and tan slacks were his only baggage. He had long ago learned to travel light. It was a pain in the ass to have to carry a lot of heavy baggage around in the heat of Vietnam. Besides, the houseboys would steal anything remotely valuable, so why bother.

  He turned off the air-conditioners and opened the windows, was glad to see they were screened. At least he wouldn’t have to sleep under a mosquito net. There was no way he could hear suspicious sounds over the roar of the air-conditioners, so he would have to sleep hot. He had little faith in the guard force. Time once again to depend upon his own senses and instincts. Not long until dark now. He pulled a packet of long-range patrol rations out of his bag, reconstituted them with the hot water from the tap, ate them slowly, and waited for the dark.

  The next morning he woke, as usual, at five o’clock. He had little doubt that few other people would be up yet, so to kill time he exercised in the room. The leg was bothering him less and less. Shouldn’t be too much trouble humping the jungle, he thought. After showering, shaving, and donning clothes it was still not even seven o’clock. He decided to see if the mess hall was open. The Agency would be horrified to hear it referred to as a mess hall, he was sure. They probably called it a “dining facility.” Just for a moment he wondered if he were being too hard on them. No, he decided, he wasn’t.

  He was the first one there. The attendant, obviously surprised to find one of the Americans there so early, made a big fuss over him. Coffee was brought, real brewed stuff, and good. The food was excellent, many choices, and all obviously prepared by a skilled chef. As he was eating other Americans filtered in. None sat with him. From time to time he caught them looking at him, but nobody said anything. He had obviously been a subject of much discussion. Fitzwilliam did not show up.

  He finished breakfast and, since it was still too early to see the POIC, took another turn around the perimeter. He was happy to see that the guards seemed to be taking more interest in their duties.

  The POIC looked at him from across a broad, paper-strewn desk. Disapproval was written across his face. “Fitzwilliam tells me that you were very rude to him last night. That you even threatened him. What do you have to say to that?”

  Jim shrugged. “Fuck him if he can’t take a joke,” he said.

  The gray-haired man stiffened. “I’m not sure I like your attitude,” he said. “We have a tough enough time over here without having to deal with conflicts among ourselves.”

  Looks like you have a tough time of it, Jim thought, noticing the basketball-sized belly that hung over the man’s belt. He decided that it would not be good practice to antagonize him more, however. Hard to tell whose ear he had, and Jim didn’t need a lot of enemies in high places.

  “I was probably a little too rough on him,” he conceded. “But I hope you realize you’ve got a bad situation here.”

  “What do you mean?” the man demanded.

  “Pretty simple. I took a look around the perimeter last night after all the lights were out. You want to know how many guards I found awake? Two. One on the front gate, and one on the back. You’ve got ten firing bunkers around the perimeter. In eight of them everyone was asleep. The other two were empty. I suspect those guards went to visit their families through one of the two holes I found in the perimeter fence. For Christ’s sake! This is the compound that was overrun a month ago. Your predecessor is either dead or spending his winters in an air-conditioned suite in Siberia because of it. As for Fitzwilliam, why wasn’t he out making perimeter checks? Or isn’t that part of the duty officer’s job description? Let’s face it, Mr. Copely, they could take this place with a platoon of Boy Scouts.”

  “Well, Mr. Carmichael, since you seem to know so much about it, you’ve just been appointed the compound defense officer.”

  “Accepted, and gladly. Free hand in what I want to do?”

  “Within reason, yes.”

  “That include giving some training to the Americans, and being able to use them on the perimeter in an emergency?”

  “I suppose so, though I think it will require quite a bit more than a little training.” Copely grinned in a rather shamefaced manner. “These are not warriors, I’m afraid. You’ll have your work cut out for you, trying to make them so.”

  “Leave that to me,” Jim said. He rose to go. “I’m sure that things will work out just fine between us. I’ll go and visit the PRUs now, if you don’t mind.”

  “And there you’ll find your work really cut out for you. They’ve been quite uncontrollable since we lost the last PRU advisor. Don’t want to follow orders at all. Haven’t run an operation for at least a month. Good luck.”

  The PRU Chief, Captain Vanh, refused to shake his hand. In perfect English, he said, “We do not need an advisor, Mister Carmichael. We have been fighting this war for over ten years now, and each advisor they send us is worse than the last. They come here with their American ideas and their American squeamishness, and complain when we do the things we must do. Might I suggest to you, Captain, that you go to the Embassy House and stay there. Continue to provide us with our pay, and we will continue to find and kill the VC. This way each side will be happy. Your superiors will commend you for doing such a fine job, and give you medals, and you will go home safely and be promoted and have a wonderful career. We will have the means to continue the fight and kill as many of the murderers as we can before we too fall in battle. It is a fair trade, n’est ce pas?”

  Jim smiled amicably, recognizing the tactic. Make someone angry and find out more about him. He refused to rise to the bait.

  “I understand your concerns, Captain, and believe me I would like nothing better than to go away and let you fight your own war. But that’s not the way it’s going to be. Your government and mine have decided differently. They have decreed that we will work together. And as honorable men, we have to do the best we can with our orders. That doesn’t mean that you’ll have to like it, or me, or that I’ll have to like you. But it does mean that we will have to put up with one another. And since it is my government that is putting up the money, it means that you will have to listen to me. Oth
erwise, I’ll cut off your pay. For my part, I’ll try to give advice only when necessary. As you so aptly stated, you’ve been fighting this war a lot longer than I.” He thought that not too long ago he would have added in his mind, “and not too well, either.”

  “I expect to learn from you,” he continued. “But perhaps I can teach you a few things. After all, is it not an old Vietnamese saying that it is a truly stupid man who thinks he has nothing more to learn?”

  Captain Vanh looked at the young American appraisingly. This one would not be so easy to fool, he thought. There was a hardness about him that belied his years. If he was competent as well as tough he might be useful. He would see. Abruptly he said, “We have some new men going through training now. Would you care to observe them?”

  The men were being taught the painstaking art of silent movement. Jim could see that the training was good, as far as it went. They were instructed to lift the leg high, point the toe down, carefully feel for twigs and brush with the toes, move them out of the way before putting down any weight, settle on that foot, then bring the other leg forward and continue the process. It was an extremely slow method of progress, sometimes measured in less than a hundred yards per hour. It also required good balance, something a man was not likely to have when he was tired, or excited, or frightened. In enemy territory one was likely to be all three. He watched for over an hour as the recruits tried to learn the technique. Finally he got tired of watching them stumble and fall.

  “With your permission, Dai Uy?” he asked Vanh.

  The captain nodded, curious to see what the big, clumsy-looking American would do.

  Jim took off his boots and socks and rolled his trousers up to the knees. He moved forward, keeping his feet close to the ground, stepping down on the outside edge of the sole, keeping his weight always on that edge. There was adequate sensitivity on the edge of the foot to feel for noise-making obstructions, and the exposed flesh of his lower legs would alert him to tripwires. Moving this way his body was alternately shifted from side to side. Thus he was always in a fighting stance, and had less body exposed.

  Vanh watched him move up behind the training NCO, one of his best men. He would not have believed, had he not been watching, that the American could move so quietly. It was obvious that the advisor’s concentration was intense; sweat poured from him, dripping into his eyes, yet he seldom even blinked. Vanh had seen the same singleness of purpose in the stalk of the jungle tiger, the same concentration on its prey.

  The NCO, concentrating on his troops, heard nothing but their stumbling. He was disgusted. Would they never learn? He missed his dead comrades. These clumsy fools would never be able to replace them.

  Then he felt the hair at the back of his neck riffle in a warm breeze. He turned his head, found himself looking into a pair of blue eyes from two inches away. “Choi oi!” he yelled, jumping back. “American devil, where did you come from?”

  “Very good, Captain Carmichael,” said Vanh. “This is an American technique that we have not yet learned. Would you care to teach us?”

  “Gladly,” said Jim. “But it’s not an American technique. It’s Japanese, a Ninja movement, one they used to approach their assassination targets. It’s one of the reasons they got their reputation for being ghosts. I always believe one culture can learn from another, don’t you?”

  Vanh smiled. And what will you learn from us, young American, he wondered. Will you learn to lose your humanity, as I have? Will you learn to die inside, to become as hard and unfeeling as it is necessary to be to survive? Will it destroy you as it did so many of your predecessors? The ones who turned to drink, or drugs, or took so many risks they achieved the death and expiation that they sought. Or will you become one of the dead-eyed ones, the killers, the stalkers of the night? Such as I am, such as I must be. It will be interesting to see.

  Jim helped the recruits for the rest of the day. They caught on quickly. Many of the older PRUs came out to watch, and soon were trying the new technique. He did not fool himself by thinking that he had won them over. But it was a start.

  At dusk they broke off training. He was invited to share dinner with them, a courtesy they did not expect to be accepted. Most of the Americans preferred to dine with their own kind. He surprised them by saying yes, then by eating the simple fare with apparent gusto.

  From them he confirmed that virtually no operations had been conducted since the Tet debacle.

  “Because of the need to replace your losses?” he asked tactfully.

  “No,” Vanh replied scornfully. “We have enough experienced people to go out and do what we must. But the province chief will not let us. He says that we must wait, that the enemy is too strong and we are too weak. That we should let the Americans fight the enemy while we bide our time. We have done nothing since Tet except train, and perform guard duties.”

  The training NCO chimed in. “We are soldiers, not guards! Each time we propose to go out we are stalled with one excuse or another. The time is not propitious; the target has moved; there is no backup support if we get into trouble. As if the PRU needs backup! We want to be guards no more. We want to kill the VC.”

  “Have you told this to the POIC?” Jim asked.

  “We have, and it has done no good. He is afraid to cross the province chief. The chief is a powerful man, with many friends in Saigon. So the murderers go free, the ones who have killed so many of our people.”

  From their tales, it was not hard to understand why they were so eager to go out. It was blood vengeance, pure and simple. All had lost family members during Tet. Since the VC had been unsuccessful in getting to them, they had taken it out on the innocents. Captain Vanh had spent the days after Tet searching for his family in the sand dunes, finally digging them all up: wife, four children, mother, and ancient grandfather. They had been herded there and shot, all except the children. They’d had their brains bashed out with rifle butts.

  One of the younger PRU soldiers told him about his brother, who had witnessed the massacre. “They tied their hands behind their backs with string. He said it cut through his flesh, but he was so afraid that he didn’t notice the blood dripping on his legs. They marched them out of Hue in a long column, the old and the young alike. Anyone who fell was kicked and beaten until they got up again. If they could not get up they were bayoneted, and an oxcart at the end of the column picked up their bodies.

  “They got to the place and saw that a long trench had been dug. They were made to stand at the edge of the trench and look down into it. In it were the bodies of those who had dug it. Some of them were still twitching. The smell of blood was heavy in the air. Some started to wail, the women pleading for their babies. They offered them to the soldiers, kill us if you will, they said, but take the children away. The soldiers laughed.

  “It started at each end of the trench. Two men, two rifles. Each person was shot once. The wailing grew louder, people tried to escape. They were pushed back into place with bayonets. It was more cruel this way, waiting as the executioners worked their way down the line, seeing the others die and be pitched into the pit. Some begged the Communists to open fire all at once, kill them all so that they would not have to wait for death. It would have been easier to take. But the Communists are always careful to save bullets. So they had to wait their turn.

  “Finally they came to my brother. He felt the bullet hit him in the back and fell into the pit. He was stunned, but not dead. He felt the other bodies fall on top of him, cover him up. Their blood was mixing with his. He thought he would die then, but he didn’t.

  “Then he heard the roaring of an engine. The Communists, having no one left to cover the bodies, had taken a bulldozer from a nearby construction site. He could not see anything, but felt the earth shake, and the sand started pouring in on him. More and more, until the sky was blotted out. Then he knew that he must be dead.

  “But still he was not. Buddha must have smiled on him. For he could still breathe, and after a while found that he co
uld move, though the pain from his shattered ribs was great. He started digging, pulling the sand down, and just when he despaired of ever reaching the surface, he felt air. By then he did not care if the Communists were still there, let them shoot him. It would be better than slowly dying, buried there with the others. They were gone. He hid in the bushes for a long time, and finally went back to the city. He was not even badly hurt. The bullet had broken two ribs and punctured his lung, but had hit nothing else. He is one of the recruits you were training today. Now you see, Captain, why we wish to fight? The blood of our families cries out. Blood must be answered by blood.”

  That night Jim lay awake for a long time. The stories told him by the PRU had the ring of truth, and confirmed his resolve to do something about it. He’d heard stories about the province chief from a whole series of briefers. The man was regarded as one of the most venal and cowardly of all those in Vietnam. And that was saying a lot. He had to find a way to break the PRU loose from his grip. But no ideas came. Finally he got up and checked the perimeter. Already there was an increase in alertness. Apparently the night before, when he had woken sleeping guards with a blade at their throats, had had its effect. He was even challenged a couple of times. He found no one asleep, although some of the bunkers were still not manned. One thing at a time, he reminded himself. If there was one thing one learned from the Asians, it was patience.

  The next day he left the compound in a jeep that had been assigned to the PRU. He was careful to check in the rearviews often, took a roundabout route, and performed several switchbacks. By the time he reached the Perfume River he was reasonably sure there were no followers.

  Still not completely satisfied, he parked well away from his destination and proceeded on foot. The street was crowded with Vietnamese, but there were enough Caucasians that he was not overly conspicuous.