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Ted “Gomer” Pyle used the compass built into his wonder phone—he called it that because he wondered how it worked—to get a bearing of 280 degrees, almost due west. Osterchuk said something, and Gomer nodded as if he’d heard. Very few sounds penetrated the stiff and unresponsive membranes in his ears. Most of the time, it wasn’t worth the effort to ask for a say-again. He lived in a cocoon world of dull silence and had learned to fake comprehension long ago.
They hiked off at an oblique angle, keeping the marked trail on their left, and cut across country into a dense growth of jungle vegetation. If he tilted his head and squinted just right, Gomer could almost imagine himself back in Vietnam. Hawaii was similar but different. Not as hot. Not as buggy. Not as yellow. The yellow clay of Vietnam would stick to everything, not the least being a man’s soul. There were not as many people trying to kill him in Hawaii. Of course, after Hill 881, there would never be as many people trying to kill him, so maybe that didn’t count as an official “not.”
Gomer felt himself switching on—achieving a state of awareness in which every sensory input was amped up to max and he became a human radar, seeking threats, assessing the trail for booby traps and ambush points, and cataloging the flight of birds and how they reacted to their environment. Without his hearing, Gomer’s other senses worked overtime to supply information, which his brain sorted, weighed, and filed.
The first hundred yards passed easily enough, then the brush grew tighter, and picking through the gaps became more of a chore. Moving fronds out of the way, dripping sweat... yeah, this was almost a trip down memory lane. If not for his dulled hearing, bad knees, bad hips, and corrosive heartburn, Gomer was back there. All he needed was some Johnny Rivers or Tom Jones playing on a plastic transistor radio, and it could be Khe Sanh Combat Base all over again.
Stay focused, old man. No time to freeze up.
It didn’t happen as much these days as it once had, but the so-called episodes would strike when a certain smell or sight or combination of outside stimuli ganged up to cause a freeze-up. He would go into a catatonic state that would last for a minute or an hour. Betty said it was as if he turned to stone, and his expression scared her witless.
The conditions were ripe for an episode. Maybe a full season of episodes.
Osterchuk grunted, and Gomer—surprise, surprise—heard the sound. He checked over his shoulder. The big man was struggling to keep his balance over uneven ground. He’d slipped on a green rock and left a gash in the mossy covering. Osterchuk caught him looking and waved Gomer on with a gesture that said, I’m okay.
Khe Sanh Combat Base. A patch of red dirt slashed out of the verdant greenery of South Vietnam, pinched between Laos and the DMZ, covered with tents, sandbag revetments, and wood huts and crisscrossed by trenches. It stank of latrines, aviation fuel, diesel, and unwashed boys in sagging fatigues. Dominated by an airstrip long enough to take C-130s, the base provided overwatch of the Ho Chi Minh trail, which was heavily used by the North Vietnamese Army as a primary route to invade the south.
Gomer hadn’t thought of the place in... oh, at least four hours. Rarely would an entire day pass without one memory or another popping up. The most frequent recording on the playlist?
On 24 April, 1967, six months past his senior prom, eighteen-year-old Private First Class Ted “Gomer” Pyle had squatted in a firebase atop Hill 700, northwest of KSCB, with two of his squad members, Jimmy Dearborn and Jon Paul Riddeau. All three were with the 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, nicknamed the Walking Dead for the horrendous percentage of casualties they’d taken in the previous two years of combat. Most of the guys’ names Gomer didn’t know and didn’t want to know. FNGs now and for always.
Hill 700 was one of several that dominated the landscape and commanded the approach to the base. First and Third Platoon had established a mortar emplacement on 700 and were eyeballing 861 and 881 to the north. Pyle and his buddies were shirtless, smoking cigarettes, scratching bug bites, and talking either about girls or cars—because that was all they ever talked about. Pyle’s bare feet stuck out in front of him, covered in foot powder to counter the red, peeling fungus that threatened to crawl all the way up past his ankles and eat his balls.
Riddeau’s dissertation on the qualities of Holley carburetors was interrupted by distant sounds: Pop-pop-pop. Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah.
“What de fock?” said Riddeau, the Cajun.
Pyle twisted around, staring off to the north. “Firefight. Up there on 861.”
A five-man patrol had gone out to scout the hill earlier that morning. It sounded like they were in the shit. The captain sent a squad to check it out.
The squad tripped over swarms of NVA regulars—gobs and gobs of the hard little motherfuckers, as it turned out. The hills were riddled with bunkers and spider holes and jam-packed with enemy soldiers. The anthill had most definitely been kicked over.
A favorite tactic of the NVA was to ambush a patrol then fade back into the jungle before reinforcements could arrive, so Captain Sayers sent 1st and 3rd platoons—which included Pyle, Riddeau, and Dearborn—to cut off any NVA retreat and hit the North Vietnamese in the rear. Except the NVA weren’t in a retreating mood. Division 325C had been laying in supplies for a concerted thrust at KSCB and the Special Operations camp at Lang Vei, an effort interrupted by five unlucky-as-shit Marines scouting the hill.
Within hours, Pyle and the rest of the 1/9 were cut off at the base of Hill 861 and surrounded. Blistering fire pounded them from all directions. Riddeau caught a round in the throat that blew his neck in half. A mortar round landed on top of Dearborn’s helmet. Pyle fired his M16 until the action jammed, grabbed up a dead Marine’s M60 and kept shooting. He pissed himself at one point, partly in abject terror and partly because there was no time to take a leak.
The PAVN regulars wore green uniforms. Only their pith helmets distinguished them from Pyle’s fellow marines, and he prayed every minute that his bullets would find only the enemy. There was no way to know for sure.
For three days and three nights, PFC Pyle fought up and down that miserable rock. Cut off and with their airlift choppers hammered by mortars and unable to land, Company B absorbed too many casualties to move without leaving their men behind. They hugged the ground and called in artillery strikes so close to their own positions that Pyle ate dirt from the explosions. The brutal, mind-crushing, head-splitting roar of sound—cracking M16s and AKs, hammering M60s, thumping mortars, body-slamming crumps of artillery rounds—blew out Pyle’s eardrums and permanently ruined his hearing. He wore hearing aids at thirty and was 80 percent deaf at fifty.
Company K of the 3/3 relieved the Walking Dead on day four. The 1/9 had pushed the enemy back far enough that trucks were brought up to carry them away.
“Fuck that,” Pyle said, and the rest of the regiment agreed. They refused the trucks and marched out of that combat zone holding their heads up. The 1st of the 9th had stood toe-to-toe with a division of Vietnamese regulars and backed them right the fuck off. No way did they need a ride out of the combat zone.
In the days following his withdrawal from KSCB to the USNS Comfort, other Marines took Hills 861 and 881 away from the goddamn commies and killed a whole bucketload of them in the process.
When the Marines were finally done kicking the enemy’s ass, they were airlifted away from the top of that stinking hill, not the bottom. They had pushed the Vietnamese back into Laos and were not allowed to continue the chase.
Later, in 1968, the NVA came back and laid siege to the hill complex and Khe Sanh for three months. The Marines refused to budge, and the Vietnamese gave it up... which amounted to nothing in the end. The geniuses in MACV decided the strategic advantage of KSCB wasn’t worth the effort and pulled out. The NVA had marched into Khe Sanh unopposed and hoisted their flag. A great victory for the People’s Army.
Gomer was marching down a different hill today. In the jungle. On a mission.
Deja vu. If he tilted his head and squinted, he could picture Riddeau and Dearborn just over there, sitting on ammo crates and shooting the shit, smiling and laughing and dragging on their cigarettes on a foggy day in April, 1967... about to die for ground that didn’t matter, in a war that most people had forgotten and everyone else said was nothing but a waste.
“Semper Fi, boys,” he whispered.
#
FAIR BREEZES Cruise Ship, off the Coast of Molokai
Saturday, 8 May
1615 Local
Jan Osterchuk lounged on the sundeck of the Fair Breezes and sipped from her frozen—now slushy—margarita, enjoying the breeze, the sea, the slight buzz that tickled her nose, and a romance novel featuring kilted Scotsmen and English noblewomen.
The highest of the three decks on the pocket cruise ship, the sundeck seated twenty people max, but that afternoon, she had it to herself—under an umbrella, of course. Her blinding-white Minnesota body would burn to the color of a ripe tomato within minutes of exposure to the sun. A waiter magically appeared when her drink ran dry, but otherwise, she was left alone to read and doze as the mood struck her.
In other words, it was a perfect afternoon. If she chose to look, she’d see the green gem of Molokai rising from the ocean to her left, two miles or more away, while the sapphire of the Pacific stretched to the horizon on her right. Her book lay tented on her bosom while she sipped her drink. She set the glass on the table next to her, aiming carefully so as not to miss the coaster, and returned to the dozing phase of her quiet afternoon.
The sound of a small boat engine buzzed closer. It was too early for Danny and the others to get back from their hike, so she didn’t bother opening her eyes. A tiny needle of unease pricked her: maybe the party was returning early because her husband had suffered a stroke or a heart attack. The idiot seemed determined to prove that he was still a vigorous young man in his prime instead of a grandfather shaped like a department-store Santa.
The boat engine cut out. By the sound of it, the craft had docked in the ship’s boat well, which allowed the Fair Breezes’s rubber excursion boats to arrive and depart with minimum effort by the passengers. Someone had docked with the cruise liner. From the sundeck, she could not see the well, so she had no clue who it was.
Jan sighed and moved her book to the table in preparation for getting up. She really needed to check and see if everything was all right with Danny. Even when he wasn’t here, the man could try her patience worse than their four-year-old grandson. He could certainly find more trouble in a shorter amount of time, which was saying something.
Gunfire rattled from below. People screamed.
Knowing the world’s propensity for terrorism and active shooters massacring crowds of helpless innocents, Jan instantly recognized the situation: someone had boarded the ship with the intention of shooting people on board.
She and Danny held concealed-carry licenses and practiced at the range frequently to maintain their proficiency. Of course, they couldn’t travel with their firearms on a commercial airline, so her Ruger P85 rested snug in their gun safe in St. Cloud. Based on the woodpecker sounds of weapons on full auto, even if she were armed, she would be outgunned and outnumbered.
Which left one option. Jan stripped off her cover-up. She kicked off her flip-flops and tossed her wide-brimmed hat to the side—sunglasses too. In 1972, Jan had gone to the University of Minnesota on a swimming scholarship. She had set no records in the four years of her college, but she had a killer breaststroke. Of course, that was fifty pounds—well, sixty pounds—ago.
She was wearing nothing but her best-looking one-piece. Two miles of open ocean lay between her and the island, including some wicked rip currents and powerful tides. And sharks.
Gunshots ripped the decks below. In only a matter of seconds, they’d reach the top deck. Swim or get shot.
Jan Osterchuk ran to the edge of the deck and dove off.