Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  They both started, wondering if they’d heard the faint knock. The sound of Allen’s quick movement toward the door sent them hurrying for the living room. They entered just as he opened the door to the hall and Dao stumbled forward.

  Allen caught her, scooping her up in his arms, not before Taylor and Ly saw the swollen discoloration of the side of her face. The left eye was a mere slit on an ugly swelling. Bruised lips drew tight, reflecting pain unseen. Her head lolled as he carried her to the sofa and she made a small coughing sound as he put her down, the good eye blinking shut momentarily. Her dress, dark blue and green, vibrant as always, contradicted her pale features. It clung to her sweat-dampened body.

  Ly was by her side before Allen was finished setting her in position, holding her hand in one while the other skipped from point to point, hovering helplessly over swellings and scrapes.

  Allen’s voice was metal on slate. “He did this, didn’t he?”

  Ly’s shoulders hunched in automatic defense at the menace in the sound. Dao remained silent.

  He took the hand Ly was holding in both of his. “Is he still at the apartment? Where is he, Dao?”

  She moved her head from side to side, swallowing as if even that effort hurt. On the second try, she strained one word as if through a gravel mesh. “Gone.”

  “Where?”

  She shook her head again, a little stronger. “Gone back outfit. Gone.”

  He lowered her hand. “I’ll catch him.”

  She strained to sit up, cried out and fell back. He came back to her, standing with his fists thumping his thighs.

  A single tear, enormous in its singularity, rolled down her cheek. “You make me cry, make noise,” she accused. “He hit me, hit me, try make me tell your name, say you live me. I never tell nothing, never cry. Now you make me do.” She twitched from a partially suppressed sob and more tears rushed after the first.

  Allen dropped to his knees next to the sofa and dabbed at her face with a jungle-green handkerchief that turned almost black where the moisture soaked in.

  “Can we get her to a doctor?” Ly asked.

  Taylor said, “Third Field—we’ll take your car. Let’s get her downstairs, Hal.”

  Slowly, painfully, Dao rose, warding off their attempts to lift her. “I not baby. I walk.” Taylor grinned at her courage and Allen’s mute mix of anger and pride as he steadied her. They inched downstairs, Dao leaning more and more heavily on Allen. Still, once in the car, she insisted they wait until she had a scarf and sunglasses properly oriented to cover most of her visible damage.

  Later, when the earnest young American doctor suggested a shot to “kill some of the pain,” she spat like a cat and heaped scorn on him in broken English that convulsed him and infuriated her further. After being treated, her bandaged exit was as close to flouncing as bound ribs and a limp would allow and Allen’s proffered hand was accepted with empresslike largesse.

  Taylor and Ly waited until she was out of earshot. “What do you think, Doc?” Taylor asked. “Any internal injuries, anything like that?”

  “I didn’t see any sign,” he said, and frowned. “She wasn’t very cooperative. Kept telling me what happened to her was none of my business. Nevertheless, I have to make a report. If the Captain—”

  Taylor held up a hand. “No, it wasn’t him. I’ll level with you, because we need your help. She belongs to a Viet Colonel. I mean, belongs. He found out she’s in love with the Captain. If the Colonel finds she’s been treated, he’ll find out where. Then he’ll find out who brought her. There’ll be more beatings.”

  The doctor drew up, stiff and distant. “I don’t understand, Major. I saw a lady who’d fallen downstairs, but no one who’d been beaten. Lady named, ah, yes, Nguyen.”

  Ly smiled at him and the aloofness disappeared. “That help?”

  “I owe you one, Doc.” Taylor shook his hand.

  The doctor said, “Try to keep her out of trouble. She’s too pretty for that kind of treatment.”

  When they rejoined Allen and Dao in the car, she was leaning heavily against him, her breathing deep and regular enough to suggest sleep.

  Allen caught Taylor’s quizzical look and said, “Reaction, I guess.” His own features glistened with strain. Dao greeted them by opening and closing a lackluster eye. Allen continued, “She was running on nerve. As soon as we sat down, she was through.”

  Dao opened her eye again, working to focus on Ly. She spoke in Vietnamese, the tones stressed and distorted. “The pain in my face is less, but I hurt inside and I am very tired. And ashamed that I have caused you so much trouble. Are you all right?”

  Ly’s eyes shone with their own tears when she reached to brush a wisp of hair from Dao’s forehead. “I am fine. You rest.”

  Dao’s try at a smile was distressing to see, and then the good eyelid slid closed again. Allen lost himself in her face, leaving Taylor and Ly to drive back to the apartment in a silence even the traffic failed to dent.

  Despite the previous tension and the shock of Dao’s injuries, the car seemed to drift along in a feeling of relief, of mutually shared inner awareness. He stole a chance to look at Ly. She watched the people and machines mill around them with an almost detached air, her apparent disassociation mirroring his feelings.

  “Ly?” He waited, watching her readjust her mental focus. “How’re you feeling, honey?”

  She indicated Allen and Dao with a delicate motion of her head. “I’m fine. I was just thinking about them, and us, everything.”

  It satisfied him inordinately. Part of his mind ridiculed the words as no answer at all while the other part told him she was thinking his own inarticulate emotions.

  He pulled into the apartment parking area and again Dao insisted on making her own way. She accepted help with less disdain, moving with diffidence for muscles beginning to tighten. Awareness of pain in his own temples alerted Taylor to the clenching of his own jaws. In answer to Ly’s unspoken question, he indicated for her to go with the others while he finished parking. She was waiting for him when he entered.

  “I expected you to stay with Dao.”

  Ly looked helpless. “She insisted she felt better. I didn’t want to force myself in. Hal will take care of her.”

  Then she was looking at him, expectation clear in her face, and the earlier sensation he’d felt in the car returned like a wave of fullness. He took her in his arms with deliberate tenderness.

  “For all our troubles, Ly, I’m happier than I’ve ever been. I’m a very lucky man.”

  Her voice vibrated against him. “We are both lucky. I looked at poor Dao and all I could think of was how much trouble they have. I wondered what my life would have been if you had not come, and it frightened me.” She squeezed him very hard. “Could I be as brave as Dao? What would I do if someone beat me?”

  “Don’t think about it. Don’t worry about it. No one can know until it happens and I’ll never let it happen to you.”

  She chuckled and looked up at him, devilment in her eye. “How do I know you won’t do it yourself? I’ve seen you struggle with your temper. What if you should lose sometime? What then?”

  For an instant his eyes went bleak and then he smiled. “I promise you your face will not be damaged.” A faint alarm lifted her eyebrows and he warmed to his speech. “It wouldn’t give me any pleasure to see your beauty marked, but I’ve always enjoyed the way you walk. It might be fun to fix it so you can’t sit down for a day or two.” He dropped a hand down her back. “And the area I have in mind fits my hand perfectly.” Her eyes closed and the quality of the smile altered subtly and she pressed against him, her head on his chest again. The smell of her hair flooded his senses and he tilted her head to kiss her.

  At the sound of the doorbell he was suddenly standing alone and Ly was scampering into the bedroom, hands fluttering panic. Taylor shouted at the door that he’d be a minute and twisted at his trousers, trying to convince himself that no one would notice anything unusual about his condi
tion. He swung the door open and tried to hide behind it with a nonchalance that failed but was unnecessary in any event.

  Allen was in no mood to observe anything. He stepped past Taylor and said, “I hate to bother you, Tay, but she’s asleep and I have to talk. What am I going to do? After I’m gone, what’ll happen to her?”

  Taylor smiled to himself before answering. The rush of the shower told him Ly had found a way to avoid any sly looks and her own blushes. He sat on an easy chair across from where Allen perched on the edge of the sofa.

  “We’ll look after her.”

  “He’ll be back,” Allen went on, unheeding. “He’ll wait until I’m gone and he’ll be back, and who’s going to protect her?” He laughed suddenly, the sound reminding Taylor of mornings with the taste of bile in his throat. Allen said, “I haven’t done much of a job of protecting her, have I?”

  “Don’t start up,” Taylor said. “You might as well be realistic. If you’d been there when the bastard showed, you’d have thumped him and the law would’ve thumped you. And Dao would have gotten beaten another day. And probably worse. What’s important is to figure a way to keep it from happening again.”

  Allen nodded grudging agreement.

  “Has she got any relatives who’ll cover for her until she catches her plane?”

  “Not that I know of, except some cousins way up in Da Lat.”

  “Shit. That leaves one place. Here.”

  Allen objected. “Oh, no. No way.” He shook his head. “Forget it.”

  “The women’ll sleep in the bedroom and I’ll scrounge up a cot to sleep on out here. The Colonel doesn’t know anything about Ly, does he?”

  The beginnings of relief carried away some of the lines in Allen’s face, and Taylor reflected that it was a face that had aged a great deal today and was now trying to regain lost ground.

  Allen said, “No, I’m sure he doesn’t. But—”

  Taylor moved to grab him by the upper arm and lead him to the front door, ignoring confused protest. “Go on back to her. I’ll explain things to Winter. Tomorrow we’ll take her out and smuggle her back into the garage in the trunk. She’ll tell the apartment guard and some friends she’s visiting those cousins in Da Lat and stay in Ly’s and my place until the plane leaves. If the Colonel even smells anything wrong, he’ll never think to look for her one flight upstairs. Everything’ll be fine and I’ll put her on the plane myself. Now go on. I’ll see you in the morning and if Dao’s OK, you can ride back to the villa with me in the jeep.”

  Allen stopped in the hallway and turned around. “I’ll never forget this.”

  Expressionless, Taylor said, “You may live to curse me.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, she’ll be sleeping with Ly, you know, and they’ll be talking about men and all that, the way women do, and she’s going to find out what it’s been like for Ly. Being with a Marine, I mean. I’m not sure you can stand the comparison, to tell the truth.”

  A strangled “Sonofabitch!” struck at the door as Taylor clicked it shut.

  Ly’s call interrupted his amusement and he answered as he walked toward the bedroom. She waited until he came in, confusion troubling the face above the wrapped-around towel. “What did you mean, that last thing you said to Hal?”

  For a moment he stammered and then noticed the corner of her lip fighting to avoid curling upward and only then did the hidden laughter in her eyes register. He moved toward her. “I’ll explain. In detail.”

  She raised her arms to him, laughing from deep inside. The towel slid away. “I hoped you would,” she said.

  * * *

  They said their morning goodbye lingeringly. He held her chin in his hand, admiring her face against the first angry slash of the rising sun and tried to make a joke of it. “I don’t know why we make such a production of me leaving. I’m only going to be a few miles away and I’ll be back tomorrow evening.”

  She remained sober. “It’s not a question of time or distance. It’s because of the past. We have found each other and yet each day is so very—” She caught her lower lip between her teeth, searching for a word. “Our days are so very fragile,” she finished.

  He went through the mandatory denials, not wanting to spoil the day by starting it with another argument over marriage. It was better to accept the dull pain of silent acknowledgement than to be exposed again to spoken refusal. He kissed her, a utility-clad commuter off to the office. The scene was still playing in his mind after he’d picked up Allen and they were driving from the parking garage onto the street.

  The morning traffic was already in full swing, a shade worse than usual this morning by virtue of the three-wheeled passenger jitney stopped dead across the street, its tail-lights winking a puny red warning at the oncoming machines. The driver poked at the engine and his lone passenger sat in the semi-darkness with his unread newspaper on his lap. The headlights splashed them and then the nose of the jeep was on the downramp to the street and they were out of the direct glare. The passenger spoke to the driver and lifted his paper to take advantage of the brief illumination. The driver straightened and looked across at them over his shoulder, then bent under the hood again.

  A break in the traffic materialized quickly, a combination of one man deciding to slow down and another deciding to speed up. Of such things are our days made, Taylor thought, and released the clutch. The jeep sprang forward and left, blending in past the three-wheeler. The two men with it were caught by surprise at the unexpected rapidity of the movement, but still managed to bring their weapons up and fire point-blank as the jeep swept by.

  The attack numbed Taylor but his instincts drove the gas pedal to the floor. The jeep, still in second, responded with a scandalized leap. Allen’s head snapped back and then he rolled forward to a slumped position, his body tucked beneath the plane of the hood. As quickly as the shooting had started, it was over. Taylor shifted to third, moving away from the area as best he could, not troubling to look back. There would be no pursuit by the ambush and those who did it would have fled. The discordant horns and screeching brakes faded behind them, and still Allen remained doubled over.

  “Are you OK?” Taylor shouted.

  Allen remained curled and turned a white, agonized face to Taylor. His voice sounded like panting. “I’m hit. My leg. My leg!”

  Taylor leaned on the horn. “Third Field!” he shouted unnecessarily loud and unable to do anything about it. “We’ll go straight to Third Field! Hang on!”

  He asked if it was a bad wound and Allen unbent, eyes fixed on his right knee. Both hands gripped it as though they could fend off the pain. Blood gushed between his fingers and his trousers leg was sodden.

  “Get your belt off,” Taylor snapped. “Get a tourniquet on the goddam thing!” Allen looked at him dumbly. Pain and confusion and disbelief were pulling him down into shock. Taylor clamped a hand on Allen’s bicep and squeezed mercilessly, shaking the other man like a child. “Move, you simple bastard! Get the bleeding stopped!”

  Allen grunted with pain, mumbled, and snaked the belt off. He wrapped it around the leg and stopped, looking for something to twist it with. He was looking more alert, but also more frightened.

  Taylor said, “Use your fucking weapon.” Obediently, Allen twisted the tourniquet tight with his .38. Sweat ran from his face, but the blood slowed to oozing. Then he leaned over the side of the jeep and was sick, roaring heaves that lasted until the jeep slid to a stop in front of the hospital. Taylor pounded on the horn and yelled for a medic.

  They came running, wheeling a gurney. Professional eyes accustomed to timing lives noted the tightened belt and the reduced blood flow, saw decent color remaining in Allen’s face, and headlong rush slowed to deliberate haste.

  The same young doctor who had administered to Dao appeared by Taylor’s shoulder and when the Marine turned to him, jammed his hands in the hard white coat pockets and raised his eyebrows in silent question.

  Taylor gestured weakly, signaling his h
elplessness. “Two men,” he said. “Nailed us right on the street. We were turning. They only had a shot at him.” They set out behind the gurney.

  “No one you know?” The doctor spoke quietly, his eyes straight ahead on the form under the blanket.

  “Strangers, Doc. Propaganda makers, that’s all.” He forced the words, each one unaccented.

  The gurney disappeared through shining swinging double doors that winked like heliographs. The doctor turned to Taylor. “This is where you stop and I start. I’m sorry your friend got hit. We’ll give him our best.”

  “Never doubted it. What d’you think?”

  “All I’ve seen so far is blood. Check with us in a couple of hours, OK?”

  “Yeah. Right.” Taylor turned to leave.

  The doctor called after him. “Hey, it’s not as bad as that. It’s hardly lethal. He’ll get an R&R out of it. At the very worst, he’ll be going home early.”

  Taylor continued on, not turning, merely raising his voice. “You better hurry, then, ‘cause he had one and a wake-up.”

  “Aw, Jesus.” The drawn-out words drifted in the echoing hall and Taylor decided it was as complete a sentiment as any of them could come up with, and probably more than most would get.

  Outside, the sun was risen in uncaring beauty. Taylor inspected the jeep, noting the single bullet hole through the hood, marveling that it had knocked out no wires or the carburetor and made them sitting targets. The other seven entry holes were all on the right or right rear of the vehicle. Silver metal, brittle in the morning sun, surrounded the wounds in the gray paint.

  He climbed in and started the engine when above that sound and above that of the machines rushing past on Vo Thanh he heard the fly. Fat-bodied, self-important, it sawed past his ear and settled on top of the passenger’s back rest. It ducked its head, stroking with hairy legs, then lifted off and buzzed down onto the seat and walked forward to the edge of the gummy scarlet stain just beginning to give up its color. It bent to the wetness and Taylor was suddenly flailing at it with his cover and whispering obscenities until the cloth was soaked and the fly’s body was no longer distinguishable.