Chapter Twenty Three

 

Sweat was beading my forehead when I awoke much later that night. I found the tent door flapping in an early morning breeze. Moonlight flooded through the opening and concern glinted in Amber's eyes as she knelt beside me.

“Tom, you were having another nightmare.”

Our silhouettes formed dancing shadows on the canvas and outside an owl in a nearby tree hooted at the darkness. In pursuit of some hapless tiny creature, it flew away leaving only silence in the wake of a lusty rush of beating wings. Without replying to her concern, I crawled out of the sleeping bag and took a walk to the wash-house.

With the campground swathed in darkness, I did not bother dressing. A chill breeze and damp grass between my toes quickly made me regret that decision. Hurrying back, arms clutched tightly against my chest, I reentered the tent's catalytic warmth and found Amber bathed in the fluorescent glow of her battery-powered lantern. She shivered when I opened the door and the loose weave of the orange Afghan draped over her shoulders revealed goose bumps rising on her breasts.

Trying desperately to forget the dull ache behind my left eye, I shook away the chill. Instead of the shot of whiskey my body craved, I poured us each a glass of orange juice from the jar in the cooler. Then I popped two aspirins, hoping to relieve the pain and quell my heart, still thumping from nightmare-induced adrenaline.

“What were you dreaming about?” she said.

“Nothing,” I said, shaking off her insistent tone.

“Sometimes it helps to talk about it.”

“Just a nightmare.”

“But you just can't keep having them forever. Was it the War again?”

I nodded and Amber squeezed my hand and moved closer. Finishing her orange juice in a single swallow, she said, “It's over now. Let's get back to sleep.”

Amber let the Afghan slide off her shoulders. Crawling back into the sleeping bag, she opened the flap for me to join her.

“I'm wide awake,” I said. “I have too many things on my mind. Think I'll just sit a while.”

“I'll stay up with you.”

“I'm fine. Go back to sleep.”

Amber continued looking at me, leaning on her elbow and propping her head against her palm. “My college minor was psychology, you know?”

“Then you may as well try your hand at analyzing me, Dr. Armstrong. Everyone else has.”

“No analysis. I'm guessing your problem has a lot to do with guilt but that's just a guess.”

“Maybe not such a bad guess. Even now I rarely tell anyone I was in Vietnam.”

“Why?”

“Because lots of people still believe soldiers that served there are all drug-using, homicidal maniacs.”

“Not any more. Besides, don't lump me into that category. Why do you feel that way?”

“It started with my ex-brother-in-law the night after I returned from Nam. He and his wife invited Erin and me to dinner. Bobby got a little looped on his own scotch. During dessert, he asked me how many babies I had killed. Later he wanted to know how many mamasans I had raped. He tried to act as if it was a joke but he said it in front of his two kids.”

“Your own brother-in-law? What a jerk.”

“Oh he was that all right, exceeding the normal limits of obnoxious, even for a brother-in-law.”

Amber giggled and I allowed her to pull me down beside her in the sleeping bag.

“I'm sorry,” I said.

“About what?”

“Dragging you into this mess and exposing you to danger.”

“Hey, Troop,” she said. “I'm enjoying every minute of it. If I weren't here with you, I'd be chasing drunken college students in Brannerville.”

“It doesn't seem like we're making much progress.”

When she propped herself on one elbow I noticed her goose bumps had disappeared. A warm pink flush just below her neck replaced them.

“We probably already have the pieces of the puzzle in our hands. Professor Quinn says the simpler a possible solution, the more likely that it's correct.”

“Yeah, well where is he when we need him?”

This time Amber didn't answer. Instead, she pulled the folds of the sleeping bag around her neck and closed her eyes. I reached over and turned off the fluorescent lantern. Neither of us heard the owl returning from his hunt. With devils intact, despite my introspective conversation with Amber, I soon slipped back into the same dream as before.

***

Near dark, forty miles from Phuouc Vinh, flying low over the triple canopy jungle. In the distance, a cloud of black smoke hung just above the treetops and a row of tracers chased up through the vegetation. That morning Bravo Company had strolled into an NVA bunker complex and taken multiple casualties. Now they were disengaging, and we were arriving to take their place.

I sat beside the door gunner, my legs draped outside the chopper. Hanging on to the vibrating bird, I watched the chopper in front of us nose into a jungle clearing and quickly begin disgorging its passengers. Our Huey followed.

Grunts were already spreading out along the perimeter when I jumped from the landing rail and tumbled into the damp earth. Two medics bearing a wounded soldier on a litter rushed from the trees. They bent at the waists to avoid the chopper's whirling rotor. After depositing their bloody charge into the bird, they returned to the jungle for more casualties.

One at a time, exhausted grunts began emerging from the trees, replacing us in the awaiting chopper hovering in the clearing. In a rush of rotor-blown debris, the bird rose straight into the air, the sequence repeated by Huey after Huey until they had evacuated Bravo Company. Jungle silence quickly replaced their mechanized cacophony.

With daylight rapidly failing, we had no choice but to make camp for the night in a stand of bamboo and forget the bunker complex until the next morning. After humping a short distance into the triple canopy Lennie Dotson dropped his pack beside mine, his steel pot bouncing when it hit the ground.

“Damn it I'm sick to death of this crap,” he said. “I haven't had a real shower in so long that red shit is oozing from my pores.”

Dotson was twenty-three but already his Howdy Doody hair had begun to thin. Red clay caked his growth of beard. I had rarely heard him swear. Now his thin shoulders shook in a sudden angry quake. Along with red clay, orange freckles mottled the pasty skin on his thin arms. With a frown, he plopped against a bamboo shoot and closed his eyes. None of the other tired men seemed to notice.

“Get off your lazy ass, Dotson. You still got work to do.”

Patterson our E-5 shake-and-bake squad leader emerged from a tangle of vegetation, stumbling over to where we sat. Like Dotson's hair, his own was also curly but thick and orange instead of red. His eyes were also red—blood-shot red.

“Get up,” he said, kicking Dotson's boot. “String the Claymores and trip flares before it gets too dark. Johnson, start digging a hole.”

He swaggered away, not waiting for a reply.

“Little sawed-off dope head,” Dotson said, pulling himself slowly to his feet.

“Small man complex,” I said. “Don't sweat him.”

“He'll find a grenade in his hooch some night if he doesn't lay off of me.”

“Forget it, Lennie. You are a short-timer. You won't have to put up with him much longer.”

“You'd think the little prick would be a little more civil on a person's birthday.”

“It's your birthday?”

“Hell yes,” he said. “Happy birthday to me.”

“Happy birthday Lennie. Relax and I'll string the Claymores for you.”

“No way. I'm a big boy.”

“Birthday present,” I said, grabbing the bundle of Claymores, flares and trip wire, and then stepping out beyond our perimeter.

Monsoon season. Every night, just before dark, the temperature would drop a few degrees making it impossible for moisture-laden clouds to hold their burden any longer. Then it would rain, hard and heavy. I hurried out into twilight dimness beyond the perimeter, hoping to complete my task before the nightly deluge began.

First I left the clackers in the shallow hole Johnson had already started digging in loose earth. Then I walked three Claymores to the ends of their wires, faced them toward the jungle, and secured the blasting caps into their respective sockets. There I left them, armed and deadly. Fifteen feet beyond the Claymores I strung flares and trip wire in a semi-circle that joined with adjacent devices already set on either side. Finished, I started back to camp.

The light fails quickly in the tropics. It was almost dark when the unexpected happened. Someone tripped the wire behind me and there was a loud pop. Like a flaming torch, the detonated flare lighted the jungle. Thinking about Johnson sitting in the hole with his hands on the clacker I dived for earth and yelled 'friendly' at the top of my lungs. Not before two bursts from an AK-47 sliced through my chest and shoulder.

Then all hell broke loose. As I waited, my face buried in damp earth, for the Claymore in front of me to detonate and blow me to pieces, the gunner in the hole opened up with a sustained burst from the M-60. Zeroing in on the muzzle flash, our attackers cut loose into our position. Hot lead from two directions began whistling over my head, shredding jungle vegetation and filling the void around me with flying shards of sizzling shrapnel.

I tried crawling forward but found I could not move. My vision blurred and the explosions of light and sound around me began to dim. Weakened by rapid blood loss my mind slowed to a near halt, rapture replacing my fear-induced panic. Hot shrapnel whistling from every angle continued shredding my body. Even though I was keenly aware of its deadly effect, I felt no more pain than if I were high on Novocaine in a dentist's chair. I sensed I was screaming for help but my impotent cries were only muddy gurgles in a raspy throat.

Two smoke bombs exploded nearby, one so close I felt the concussion. Dark streamers of smoke, pink and purple in normal light, wafted up through the vegetation. I knew that the Captain had summoned a Cobra gunship and the colored smoke thrown to mark its attack pattern. When it arrived, it would come in hot opposite the streamers, mowing down plant and animal alike with twin mini-guns sounding like revving chain saws.

It didn't matter. My own reality was fading with the shank of the evening and rising euphoria began replacing my fear. I found myself a casual observer to my own imminent demise. Then someone's hand touched my shoulder and I vaguely recognized the voice.

“Hang in there, Buddy. I won't let you die,” he said.

Not waiting for my reply, Lennie Dotson wrapped his skinny arm around my body and lifted me into a half crouch. Slowly, he began dragging me toward the perimeter. When he took a hit in the leg, he grunted with pain and his body flinched. Both our bodies vibrated from the impact when another bullet ripped through his shoulder.

Behind us, the Cobra had finally arrived and had begun flattening jungle vegetation with a buzz of bullets and a hail of rockets. The attack lasted only a moment because Mother Nature, as if pissed off by man and his puny attack, responded with a deluge of her own. She quickly drowned out the noise of battle with the sudden eruptive dissonance of falling water.

When I opened my eyes engine drone and tremulous motion told me I was in a Huey. We were already in the air and an IV pierced my arm as I lay on my back in a litter. Blood soaked the hastily applied bandage around my upper body and when I tried to speak, I choked on it, along with gritty mud inside my mouth. The medic kneeling beside me put his hand on my chest.

“Hang on, sky trooper. You're going to make it.”

When I cocked my head, I saw the green body bag beside me.

“Who . . .”

“Relax and just be glad it ain't you.”

Struggling, I reached to grasp it. “Show me,” I said.

With an expression of resigned obligation, he unzipped the bag, pulling back the flap to let me see who it was. Howdy Doody hair curled into green eyes staring lifelessly at the Huey's vibrating ceiling. It was Lennie. He was dead.