Chapter 14

 

Frank’s Time Bomb

 

Frank returned to Vietnam as soon as he could and stayed there until the end of 1971, when the Americans had almost completely withdrawn from Southeast Asia, and his talents were no longer required. During that time Frank improved the skills he’d acquired during his first tour, becoming an excellent long-range recon operative. Everything he learned he mastered out in the field, not at some distant training ground back in the United States. His superior officer, Greg Barret, was proud of him, and glad that he’d decided to return to his true calling.

Even though Frank and Greg rarely talked, they had arrived at an understanding rarely achieved between men. They were kindred spirits, most at home alone in the dense, deadly jungle. Frank idolised Barret. During the long hours of watching and waiting out in the field, Frank had nothing better to do, and he started fantasising about them together as lovers. Now there was no-one left for him to write to back home, he spent his spare time writing in his diary. Just in case someone picked it up, he described his unrequited love for Greg as longing for a woman he’d met in New York. He named her Gloria, after the drag queen Gloria Beehind.

Frank wanted to reveal his true feelings to Greg, but he didn’t dare. He knew a lot about Barret’s mind, but the officer had made it obvious that he was only interested in women, even though he rarely availed himself of a prostitute’s services. Frank began to feel overwhelmed by his own desires, the only emotions left in him that hadn’t been securely contained by his thick, iron-hard shell.

Sometimes he wished those feelings would disappear as well, but no matter how hard he tried, how many cold showers he took, they always returned to assault him at the most inopportune moments. He even considered requesting a transfer, just to get away from Barret, but he knew that would be detrimental to his career, and probably wouldn’t work anyway. He’d just transfer his desire to some other unsuspecting officer.

At the beginning of 1968, just after NVA main force divisions lay siege to Khe Sanh in the north, a staggering 84 000 communists sprang out of seemingly nowhere. Towns the length and breadth of Vietnam exploded into violence. 36 of Vietnam’s 44 provincial capitals, 5 of 6 autonomous capitals and 64 of 242 district capitals were hit. Several battalions from Camp Forsythe were called to Saigon to help defend South Vietnam’s capital.

Despite US vigilance, communist forces had managed to infiltrate deep into Saigon without being detected. For months they had come in dribs and drabs, smuggling rifles, machine-guns, grenades, explosives and ammunition. Some weapons were even brought in concealed in coffins. The unmarried fighters followed, slowly filling up positions in hotels. Then they waited for the go-ahead, the Vietnamese New Year celebration, known as Tet. The Year of the Monkey began with a bang. VC sappers moved in to link up with the cadres already present. Using hijacked cars to get around, spearhead forces made for key centres – the presidential palace, radio stations, barracks – while larger groups followed later. The VC even attacked the US embassy. It took the marines some six hours to win back total control of the compound.

Well-coordinated, these attacks often left the VC deeply entrenched and difficult to dig out. Bloody, street-to-street battles followed, with US forces sometimes having to fight for each individual building. Scores of civilians were forced to flee as their homes exploded into balls of fire and ash.

It was during the nightmare struggle for Saigon that Officer Barret’s intestines were shredded by a barrage of bullets. He survived and was evacuated. Frank learned later that he’d lost several feet of intestine, and would have to spend the rest of his life shitting into a plastic bag. And, just like that, his army career was over. He would be given a medal, his discharge papers, and a small pension. Then he would be expected to live the rest of his life like a regular Joe.

Frank knew Greg would rather be dead. If the same thing happened to him, he would want a gun beside his bed.

Tet was called the turning point of the war. Even though ARVN forces did not defect in droves, and civilians did not take to the streets in protest, Tet still proved to everyone that the communists were running the show. They had shown that they could sneak into cities, towns and villages right under unsuspecting allied noses, then rise up on a given day as one cohesive unit and wreak havoc. Even though the allies prevailed, the communists’ spirit was far from broken, and they rose up again in the summer, initiating another wave of attacks that came to be known as “mini-Tet”.

The US commanders rethought their entire military strategy. Back home in the US, the anti-war movement was increasing in strength, as people were bombarded every day by images of death and destruction emanating from their TV sets. The eugenics cult-leader Azharoth stepped up his own campaign against the war, ensnaring more loyal followers from the swollen ranks of students and conscientious objectors. One of his demonstrations turned violent during a clash with police. Some 50 individuals were injured, and another 300 were arrested and taken away. Police tried to arrest Azharoth himself for inciting the riot, but he slipped through their grasp and disappeared. All attempts to locate him failed, and none of his followers knew any details about him, not even his true name or where he lived.

He was a man without a past, a strange, sylph-like figure who emerged to whip people up into an almost religious frenzy, then magically disappear when things got too hot to handle. Even the FBI’s Azharoth file was distressingly slim, despite J. Edgar Hoover’s valiant attempts to bring this vile radical to justice.

Attempts to bring the Vietnam War to a close over peace-talks in Paris were deadlocked almost immediately. General Westmoreland returned to the US, and was replaced by General W. Abrams. Richard Milhous Nixon was elected President of the United States because he promised to put a stop to the war. He introduced the concept of “Vietnamization”, which entailed re-equipping the ARVN so it would be able to stand alone against the communists, allowing a gradual US withdrawal. Troops did start to return home and the intensity of the fighting lessened, but fierce skirmishes like the battle of Hamburger Hill reminded everyone back home that GIs were still dying. The revelation of the My Lai massacre, in which between 172 and 347 old men, women and children was murdered by US soldiers, underlined the plight of Vietnamese civilians.

The Doves were far from satisfied.

To make matters worse, the conflict was expanded in 1970 with the US invasion of Cambodia, intervening after a pro-America coup. Their aim was to sweep the Parrot’s Beak and Fish Hook regions free of Vietnamese communists. Another search for COSVN was initiated, but again the fabled communist headquarters eluded the Americans’ grasp. The process of Vietnamization continued, with the majority of border defence now being undertaken by the ARVN.

The devastation continued in 1971, as US operations expanded into both Cambodia and Laos. B-52 bombers blasted the Laotian countryside, making refugees of 700 000 of the two million population. When the bombing failed to have the desired effect on the communists, operation Lam Son 719 was launched, which also failed. US troop levels continued to drop, but morale was also falling, with drug addiction approaching endemic proportions. Refusals to obey orders and fraggings were on the increase. Everyone just wanted to go home. Sometimes Frank felt like he was the only one still putting his heart into the job. When the time came for him to return to the World, he left hesitantly and without jubilation, dreading what he would find after four years. At the age of twenty-three he had seen more war and killing than most soldiers experienced in their entire lifetime, but instead of wanting a break, he wanted to stay.

After his return, he followed the rest of the war’s progress on the TV and in papers. On 30 March 1972, the North launched a full scale offensive against South Vietnam. Although all US ground support had been withdrawn, ARVN and US tactical airpower proved sufficient to blunt and defeat the final NVA offensives. Haiphong Harbour was mined to keep Soviet supplies from reaching the city, and Hanoi was “bombed back to the conference table”. An uneasy peace was finally achieved in 1973.

However the communists continued to consolidate their strength in Southeast Asia. On 17 April 1975, the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, fell to the Khmer Rouge, and Saigon fell to the North on 30 April. In both cases the US had held back, unwilling to intervene. The longest and bloodiest American military adventure of the Cold War had finally ended in total and humiliating defeat. Some 45 000 US soldiers had lost their lives.

Frank wondered why the Hell they had bothered.

 

On his return from Vietnam, Frank applied for officer training at several different military academies. He wasn’t aiming for the top school, but he was hoping for something since his performance in Vietnam had been so exemplary. Therefore when his application for West Point was accepted, he couldn’t believe his eyes. A letter of support from Colonel Hallam, himself a West Point graduate, had done wonders for his career. He made arrangements to pay his way with money from the sale of the old Promise Falls house.

Frank was happy to attend the prestigious West Point military academy, but it didn’t take him long to feel like an outsider. In amongst all the fresh-faced kids straight out of school and rich offspring from career military parents, he stuck out like a sore thumb. Of course he wasn’t the only war veteran to undergo officer training at West Point, but his kind still seemed few and far between. Because the Vietnam conflict had become such a sore point with everyone in general, Frank couldn’t discuss his experiences with his classmates. Not even potential military graduates wanted to hear war stories about that unpopular conflict.

Frank started down the path already taken by so many Vietnam vets and began to withdraw into himself, speaking only when spoken to. He became a quiet loner, eventually earning himself a reputation as “that big, spooky Texan”. He communicated with other vets through mail, but a lot of them didn’t want to talk about their experiences, preferring to try and get on with their lives.

In his youth Frank had imagined people hanging on to his every word while he recounted his war experiences. But no-one gave a shit now. The streets were full of long-haired weirdos, drug addicts, and men and women who dressed in unisex clothing and couldn’t be told apart. People listened to strange, drug-fucked music and talked about sex in public. The world that he had grown up in had transformed into something unrecognisable, and he didn’t know what to do or where to turn. For the entire time he was at West Point, he was twisting and turning in limbo, alone and friendless.

Had he not learned to wall off his emotions, his depression would have killed him. But like all other sensations he didn’t want to experience, he simply shoved his feelings of loneliness, alienation and sexual frustration down into the dark pit with the rest, to lie there and simmer until he figured out what to do with them. He knew that one day in the future he would have to approach that scary place, drag the chains from its doors and fling them wide. He often envisaged his forgotten emotions surging forth like a swarm of hungry bats; flapping, screeching and devouring everything in their path. Shivering, he would push the images from his mind.

Already something was happening down there. He could feel a deep anger developing, pounding at the doors and making the chains rattle. Where did it come from? What did it mean? Was it his frustration at no longer being able to creep through the jungle shooting gooks? Or was it a combination of all the emotions he no longer wanted to experience, mixing together to form a single, primal fury? Was anger the colour that all feelings made when they were mixed together? Like the muddy black that was left over after you swirled all the colours on your palette together? God only knew what would happen to him if it got out. He only hoped he would be able to come to terms with his feelings before that happened.

At the end of his last tour in Vietnam, Frank had reached the rank of platoon sergeant. Although he mostly went out on long-range recon missions with a maximum of five other guys, he sometimes commanded larger squads during more conventional operations. When he emerged from West Point as a second lieutenant with honours, he found himself at the bottom of the heap once more, a junior officer who had to jump to attention every time a higher rank passed. He found himself leaping to obey orders from snooty officers who’d never seen combat or earned a medal. His past experiences no longer seemed to matter, and for a long time after graduating, he wondered if he had made a mistake. Perhaps he should have stayed an enlisted man. He could have become king of the roost.

But that didn’t fit in with the grand plan he had formed as a child. He was going to be a great general, and then everyone would have to listen to his orders. That dream often gave him solace during the long, quiet nights while the rest of his classmates were off getting pissed or chasing skirts. Neither alcohol nor female company comforted Frank any more. It seemed the amount of booze he’d consumed during Vietnam had pushed him over the edge into some place where it no longer affected him. He could knock back an entire bottle of whiskey without any ill effect, other than a full bladder and a headache the next morning. Prostitutes had also stopped being a substitute for the male company he craved. It seemed with each woman he visited, his sexual tension increased rather than decreased. Eventually he stopped indulging in both pleasures, giving people even more reason to call him strange.

Being a decorated war hero offered no protection against the barbs of snot-nosed rich kids, although when these youngsters did insult him, they made sure they were in a very large group. Frank had gone to Vietnam as a hefty teenager and returned a hulking young man. He mightn’t have grown any taller, but he was exceptionally well built. He worked out at the gym four nights a week, and everyone had seen him crush a coconut in one hand to win a bet. The same graduates weren’t sure if the rumours that he’d strangled dinks with his bare hands were true, but he was still someone not to be messed with.

Frank hadn’t been particularly good at essays at school. His lack of writing ability was undoubtedly what caused him to miss out on officer training when he was drafted, but now he more than made up for his previous shortcomings. His years of keeping a diary in Nam had paid off. Now he could rattle off a report in five minutes flat, without any spelling or grammatical errors. He didn’t particularly enjoy spending his days writing reports and letters, collating statistics and sorting files, but that was what being a junior officer was all about, and like always he was determined to do his best. He was confident in the US’s ability to involve itself in other countries’ conflicts, and his tenacity paid off. He began to rise in the ranks.

By the late 1970s Azharoth and his mysterious Nethermind had disappeared off the face of the earth as though they had never been. Frank often wondered if the FBI was still looking for the barefooted rabble-rouser. When he asked other people if they remembered Azharoth, he was more often than not met with blank looks. It almost seemed as though Azharoth had taken people’s memories with him when he left. Only a few remembered him, and even then they couldn’t describe him. When Frank tried to find a back issue of the magazine his mother had cut up, he couldn’t. The ever paranoid Frank wondered if some gigantic conspiracy was afoot to rub Azharoth and the Nethermind out of history completely, as though their sudden appearance had been some sort of huge cosmic mistake.

By this stage Joe Citizen’s attitude to Vietnam had softened. In Washington a large memorial engraved with the name of every soldier who had lost his life during the conflict was dedicated to all the vets. The 1980s had brought with it a whole new attitude to life. Gone were the days of peace and love, and tuning in, turning on and dropping out. In their place a new dawn where greed was considered good, and everyone was trying for their little piece of the action.

Frank might have spent a large portion of his early career as an officer in obscurity, but in the early eighties the top brass finally began to notice him. Previously they had thought he was just another psycho Vietnam vet. But he had five years of experience as a grunt on the ground, lightning reflexes and the wits to match. His fitness and substantial survival skills enabled him to exist almost anywhere, he was trained in surveillance techniques, and he was a dead shot. And most importantly he was completely unfazeable. There was nothing he wasn’t prepared to do. The generals decided he was perfect for special operations into areas where the US was not officially supposed to go. In conjunction with the CIA, Frank took part in several black ops in South America and the Middle East. As always he performed to the best of his ability, with excellent results.

He was finally rewarded with another war when conflict flared in the Gulf. By the time it ended, he was a major with three more medals for his collection. He’d become the Army’s golden boy at last. His reputation as a hard-ass preceded him wherever he went, and the guys who’d hassled him at West Point gave him the respect he deserved.

However, as always, beneath Frank’s stoic exterior lay a seething cauldron of secrets. Anger continued to simmer deep inside him, and it now had a new friend; fear. Not the quick, adrenalin pumping fear most soldiers experienced in combat – he hadn’t felt that since his very first fight. No, Frank’s fear came from a ticking time bomb inside his bloodstream. Sometimes fretting about it kept him awake at night.

During the late 1970s, when prostitutes ceased to satisfy Frank, he spent a long period trying to overcome his homosexual urges. He didn’t want to jeopardise his military career with his silly fantasies about other officers. It didn’t work. They were one part of him he could not control, and it rose to plague him constantly.

Frank cultivated a careful plan, prepared as meticulously as one of his covert missions. He would remove his dog tags and anything else that identified him as military, then go out and rent a cheap hotel room under the assumed name of John Carter. From there he would contact a male escort service. It had taken him a number of attempts to track down such an agency – they didn’t advertise in the type of magazines he normally read. When he finally found a place, called “Big Boys R US”, he attempted to call up, but his hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t dial. Only three quarters of a bottle of whiskey later was his hand finally steady enough!

The agency receptionist asked him what kind of a man he wanted, and he replied simply; “someone who knows what they’re doing, ‘cause I sure don’t.”

Half an hour later there was a knock at the door, and with his heart in his mouth, Frank answered it. Outside stood a tall, slender man with long blonde hair pulled back in a ponytail. He had nicely bronzed skin and a cute smile with deep dimples. He was wearing tight black jeans, a black singlet that showed off his impressive pectorals, and black leather jacket. “Hello, my name is Pete. I’m from the agency.”

“C-come in,” Frank stammered, pulling the door wide and stepping aside. Even though he had taken numerous precautions, he was still fearful of being found out. But despite his nervousness he had a boner that could have knocked down a door. The male prostitute stepped into the sparsely decorated hotel room. Frank glanced down the corridor, making sure no-one was watching, then closed the door and bolted it.

“Take a seat,” Frank offered. “You want a drink?” He gestured to the three-quarters empty whiskey bottle.

“No thanks. I don’t drink on the job. Anyway, alcohol and I don’t get along. It makes me stupid.” Pete slipped off his jacket and hung it over the back of the lounge.

Frank picked up the bottle. “I don’t know why I drink this. It doesn’t affect me anymore.” He was about to mention the gallons of booze he’d consumed during Nam and stopped. He had vowed not to talk about any aspect of his past. He sat down beside the guy, hands on his knees, trying to keep from fidgeting. He ached to grab Pete, pull him close and end the burning inside him, but he was too nervous. “So how do we start this, anyway?”

“Well, if you’re apprehensive, we could talk for a bit first,” Pete offered.

“Yeah – okay.” Frank looked away, scratching the back of his neck. “It’s not like I haven’t done this before – I have, but that was years ago when I still a kid.” Suddenly, he found himself telling Pete all about Pinky. The words poured out of him like he’d opened a floodgate. He couldn’t believe it. He had never revealed so many personal details to anyone – save Pinky. He almost told Pete the truth. Almost. Caution won.

“So, what do you do for a living?”

“Nothing glamorous. I’m a garbage man.” Frank rubbed his forehead. “I really don’t feel right about this. I’m a married man. Three kids. I love my wife, but … but…” He tailed off, not sure how to continue.

“She doesn’t do it for you anymore?”

Frank nodded. “I can’t stop looking at other men, and I keep having all these fantasies about the guys I work with. If I don’t do something soon, I think I’ll go crazy.”

Pete touched him on a shoulder. “It’s okay John. That’s why I’m here.”

“I don’t even know why I’m like this. I thought the affair I had when I was a kid was a one-off. You know, one of those silly teenage things, when most boys don’t know whether they’re Arthur or Martha. When my wife and I first met we didn’t have any problems for years.”

“It often happens like that. Society forces gay men to deny their natural urges so when they surface later on, they suddenly feel like they’re strange or abnormal.”

“’Gay’ men?”

“Homosexual men. Haven’t you heard that term before?”

Frank shook his head. “Where I work, they’re usually called poofters or faggots.”

Pete continued to stroke Frank’s shoulder sympathetically, each touch sending shivers of desire down Frank’s spine. He couldn’t take much more of this. He turned, facing the young man and tentatively reaching for him. Pete didn’t flinch as Frank’s broad, callused hands slipped around his slender waist and drew him close. Pete slid his own arms around Frank’s shoulders, and from there everything progressed as smoothly as a well-oiled fantasy.

Frank had paid for Pete to stay with him the whole night, and they made love four times. Frank didn’t sleep a wink, but he didn’t care. For the first time in years he was completely satisfied and at peace with himself.

Following that night, every month or two Frank would rent out a different hotel room, always under an assumed name, and consort with male prostitutes. Sometimes he got them from agencies, other times he picked them up from the street. He preferred agency boys because they were cleaner, but the street boys were cheaper and more willing. Often prostituting themselves to pay for their drug habits, they did whatever was asked of them, no matter how bizarre.

Not long after his first encounter with a male prostitute, a strange disease began to strike homosexuals and intravenous drug-users down, and no one could figure out where it had come from or how to treat it. It spared no one. Young and old, rich and poor – all succumbed in the end, and the doctors could do nothing. For a while Frank ignored it, thinking that it would never attack him. He could count all the times he had been sick in his life on the fingers of one hand. A few colds and flues as a child, superfluous injuries, some bacterial infections in Nam, nothing serious. Why would he catch this disease, first known as GRID, then as AIDS?

However as more research was conducted into this disease, it was revealed that no one was safe, no matter what their previous state of health. It was caused by a virus called HIV, and was transmitted predominantly through blood and semen. When Frank finally realised that the deadly virus could also be incubating inside his blood, an icy chill ran down his spine. What would happen in the future when his own immune system turned against him and everyone realised that he had AIDS? For a start, he would be kicked out of the army. Then he could look forward to a slow, lingering death as the illnesses he used to shrug off slowly consumed him. He would die disgraced, alone and afraid in some impersonal hospital ward.

That was what he feared.

 

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