Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  The words were a mix of hurt and confusion and Taylor rushed to apologize. “I did not mean the effort would be wrong. My meaning was that any step outside the law could destroy him. You have seen it. To people like Barline, we are the enemy. Whatever Han does or has done, he is already forgiven.”

  Duc sighed. “I know. I am too easily offended.” He ducked his head, almost shy. “Sometimes when you speak of us you speak as of a bad dream that will go away in one year. Even when I remember that your lives are in danger, too, I know the danger will end for you when you go home. I—my family—we have no such home.”

  “Many times I have wondered how you live with that, and then I have to ask myself what would happen in my country if my people had to face your problems. Would they fight the terrorists or talk about ‘inevitable social change’ and surrender?”

  Duc made a forceful, if transparent, move to change the subject. “Speaking of change, I forgot to tell you I have something that will interest you.” He tore through the papers on his desk, sending strays drifting to the floor. He surfaced with a report form.

  “In my last meeting with Tuyet—you remember her, from the interro—” He stopped at Taylor’s curt wave and started again. “She has been invaluable.” Again, he stopped short, this time with an almost furtive air that troubled Taylor. His curiosity faded as Duc pressed ahead.

  “A new girl started working at the Friendly Bar almost two months ago. Tuyet says she was the girl friend of a party official for a while and puts on airs, hinting that she knows many secrets. Probably gossip, but she may know something of interest and Tuyet has arranged for me to meet her at a small restaurant this evening.”

  Taylor sat through it with an occasional move of his head and an infrequent grunt, a facade of polite interest. His mind refused to focus on chatter about a possible new low-level source. Awareness of his lack of attention nipped at his conscience briefly and died.

  Images were crowding in on him, more of them this time, the accumulation of his dwindling year. In a few weeks all the faces around him would be new, except for the Vietnamese and Winter and possibly Harker. The thought of Harker was unpleasant. Shock raised his eyebrows as he realized how many of the images were unpleasant—the desperation oozing from Miller, Harker’s raw ferocity, Denby’s lurking malice. He wondered what his mind would have done with that cast and situation had he not met Ly.

  He put a tentative hand to his face, once more wondering if some mystery had happened there that would surprise him the way Harker and Miller had. Duc chose that moment to look up and he dropped the hand quickly.

  Even the interruption failed to dispel the mental searching. He asked himself if he would be able to regain his balance the way Winter seemed to have done. That thought was incomplete and it bobbed out of reach like a lost object escaping in a stream. He managed to catch it.

  Everyone had altered but Winter. He had bent and come back to standard.

  No matter what his mood, he pursued the war with dogged belief and one prime target. What would happen to that when Binh was captured? More than that, what would happen if he were killed instead of captured?

  These were inconsequential questions, he decided. The major issue was to understand that they were all changing and to insure that the changes weren’t entirely destructive. Ordway was a better man for his experience, surely. Allen had Dao and maybe in time he’d adjust to losing his leg. Hell, yes, he’d adjust. What else? The leg was gone, and that was that.

  The unsympathetic finality of his own reaction depressed him, and he could produce nothing sufficiently positive about the rest of them to offset it.

  Was that to be the sum total of his year, to carry away as little personal damage as possible? Was that the psychological reward for doing what everyone said was the right thing to do until someone was actually called on to do it?

  Duc was asking a question. The words hadn’t made it through his own thoughts and the pudgy features were puzzled by the unresponsiveness.

  Taylor shook his head and apologized.

  “I asked if you know her home, Phu Thuan.” Duc apparently attached some significance to the name and he stressed it. “It is hard to imagine a Phu Thuan girl becoming a prostitute like Tuyet, but it is especially sad to learn that she was involved with one of the enemy.”

  Taylor tried to generate some interest. “Why is this place so special?”

  Duc said, “I thought even the Americans all knew about the hamlet of Phu Thuan. For a while, every foreign writer was obliged to write about it, where everyone resists the VC, where the people are so anti-communist the Tet offensive avoided them.”

  “I remember the name now. One of their girls went wrong, did she?”

  “It’s more than that. The people are almost one family. They are quiet, keep to themselves. They pay their taxes, send their sons to fight. Because they are who they are, the girl is almost a symbol.”

  Involved now, and feeling better for it, Taylor said, “You make too much of her, Duc. Her morals are not the concern. What she can tell us is.”

  “I know that.” Duc made a face. “I cannot seem to stop myself. More and more, I look for things, you know? Signs. Symbols. Portents. There has been so much trouble for so long. The French. The Japanese. The French again. And now, ourselves, exceeding anything in the past. I look for a guide, like a man lost.”

  A compound of frustrations welled in Taylor’s throat. Rather than force words that wouldn’t say what he wanted, he shrugged and reached for his cigarettes. Duc took the one offered and they smoked a few moments before Duc spoke again. He kept his eyes lowered, protected.

  “I sound defeated. I am not. But I am very tired and I feel alone. Without a leader. In our history we have always had leaders. Now we have only figureheads and advisors.”

  He shifted nervously. “If it were not for the Americans, we would all be part of the northern machine. No one doubts it. But no American seems to understand the price you ask of us. You speak of freedom and we have none.”

  Taylor felt the flush spread across his face. Without looking, Duc seemed to sense it and rushed on before his friend could argue.

  “We are told we must be in your image, and we have tried, but we do not fit your culture any better than you fit our clothes. Many of us—most of us, I think—would prefer our old mandarins. To westerners, that is alien, so undesirable, but when it was properly administered, that system insured that only the most qualified men were promoted to positions of responsibility.”

  “When it was properly administered,” Taylor repeated with heavy inference.

  Duc continued to stare at the floor. “Is your own democracy so free of error? And what difference would it make if it was?” He could stand it no longer and he stared into Taylor’s face, locking eyes with the other man as if seeking a physical bond. “We are told we must continue to fight the communists in order to be free, and yet we must adopt a form of government that is as foreign as communism in order to get help to remain free. In my heart, I am a small man—a shopkeeper, a minor executive, a civil servant—I want to live in a peaceful place where I can go home to my family, sure they have survived the day. If we did not know what communism means, do you really believe we would resist it only to be blessed by what we have seen of your democracy?”

  When Taylor didn’t answer, Duc rose to leave. As he passed behind the seated figure he hesitated, his features belying a final thought struggling for expression. After a moment he raised a hand and patted his friend’s shoulder and continued out the door.

  Chapter 41

  Duc dabbled at his bowl of soup absently. His seat in the corner afforded a clear view of the restaurant’s kitchen entrance as well as the front door. Through the shop-windows flanking the latter he unobtrusively scanned all passers-by. He noted Corporal Minh across the street in frayed shorts and old cotton shirt, squatting against the wall and looking exactly like what he was, a country boy still uneasy in the big city.

  Duc smiled to
himself until his eyes fell on his watch.

  The stupid woman was almost an hour late. He had told Tuyet to make it very clear his time was important and he demanded punctuality. Now he’d had to order a second bowl of soup and the waiter was having difficulty hiding his amusement at the impatience of the man in the darkest corner of the restaurant.

  The bitch! He pictured her, spreading her legs for some drunken fool while he, Major Duc, aged in this miserable place. The thought heightened his fury for a moment and then he wondered about himself. Did he have the right to be angry with the woman because she was earning a living the only way she could? Was it not worth some of his time to allow her to make a few piasters? He rotated the spoon in the bowl while he examined the question from all angles. No, he decided, it was not worth his time. It was not even worth the time of the Corporal, immobile against his wall. What she was selling to her grunting customer would be the same tomorrow night and the customers were as plentiful as mangoes on a tree. Information could be very fragile. A few miserable piasters, animal release for some stranger who would never recognize her if he saw her again—these things did not count at all against endangering the quality of the information she might provide and the impertinence of willfully keeping two men, and one of them a Major, waiting. He jabbed at the greens in the soup. When she came, she would get a lecture she would never forget.

  Perhaps he should beat her a little. Nothing serious, just a few good slaps to impress her. He cupped his chin in his hand and considered that move. A determined memory of Tuyet screaming boiled to the surface of his thoughts and he forced it back. After all, he was not considering torture. More on the order of a fatherly chastisement. Some women needed a man to act like a stern father with them.

  He thought of his children, so shamefully spoiled. Stern father, indeed.

  He would not strike the woman.

  The decision was saddening. A Major engaged in secret work, and one who had certain hopes for continued promotion, should not be so concerned over the feelings of an insignificant whore.

  Another glance at his watch brought back his earlier anger. A full hour! After all the warnings about punctuality. The woman had no consideration, that was all that could be said. He summoned the waiter.

  “There is something wrong with the soup?” A smirk dusted the waiter’s features.

  “No worse than I expected.” Duc dropped his money on the table carelessly.

  The waiter said, “It loses flavor when it grows cold.”

  “How could it lose what it never had?”

  Duc’s voice warned that the conversation was over, had gone too far already. The waiter swept up the bowl and other utensils, hurrying into the kitchen. Duc watched him go with the first satisfaction he’d felt since sitting down. Relishing having had the last word, he couldn’t resist a last look. He turned as he stepped onto the street and caught the wide grin before the waiter had a chance to pull his head back inside the kitchen entryway. Fury burned Duc’s cheeks again.

  Corporal Minh watched Duc’s solo exit, saw the quick scene with the waiter, noted the rigidity of Duc’s back, and groaned. It was bad enough that the meeting had failed, but the added aggravation of the waiter was fuel to a too-hot fire. Minh resigned himself to hearing some hard language before the night was over.

  Duc turned the corner and Minh began to count. On one hundred, he stood, scratched his crotch, and ambled off in the other direction. At the intersection he crossed and continued parallel to the street Duc had turned onto. Halfway down that block he stumbled slightly, turning to see what tripped him, and checked back the way he had come. No one was following. At the next intersection he turned right and entered a small shop crammed with food and household items. Duc waited at the end of the single narrow aisle. At Minh’s approach, his impatience showed in the way he rubbed forefinger and thumb against each other.

  Minh spoke quietly. “No one followed before you turned the corner, Thieu Ta.”

  Duc nodded curtly and led the way back to the street. Once outside, he snapped, “Of course no one followed! Why would anyone follow a man who has spent an hour dawdling over two bowls of tasteless soup? Who would trouble with such a fool?”

  Minh hurried to keep pace with Duc’s agitated stride. “I do not know, Thieu Ta.”

  “Do not know what?” Duc demanded in a voice full of preoccupation.

  Panic blew through Minh’s bowels. What did he answer? Inspired, he said, “I do not know what went wrong, Thieu Ta.”

  “How could you know?” Duc glared at a man on a bicycle, daring him to interfere with his progress through the intersection. Minh dodged behind the protection of the Major’s bulk. The man on the bicycle pedaled off, muttering. Duc resumed his angry conversation, unmollified by his minor triumph.

  “You are not supposed to know of my arrangements, so how could you know what went wrong? You are supposed to insure that I am not followed, that is all. Farm boys are not entrusted with sensitive situations.”

  “Yes, Thieu Ta.”

  “Yes, what?”

  A drop of sweat trickled through Minh’s eyebrow. He wished it was a river and would carry him away.

  “Yes, farm boys are not entrusted with sensitive missions.”

  “See that you remember that. Your job is to help, not interfere.”

  “Yes, Thieu Ta.”

  A full block passed in grim silence and Minh strained to think of something to establish his eagerness to help.

  “Is it possible the woman misunderstood the time of the meeting, Thieu Ta?”

  Duc stopped as if he’d hit a wall. “Woman?” he said. “What woman? Who said anything about a woman?”

  “You did, Thieu Ta!” His effort to swallow the tones of indignant protest was successful, but it caused his voice to break like a youth’s. He stared at the ground and continued. “You told me to see if the person you were to meet was followed. You said ‘she’ very clearly. Then you said when ‘she’ left, you would wait a short while before you came out and I was to see if either of you was followed. I would have done my job, but there was no chance, since she did not come.”

  He wanted to bite off his tongue.

  Duc said, “I know she did not come!” He imitated Minh’s country accent, throwing in a rendition of the earlier squeak for good measure. “I am the one who made the arrangements. Do not be presumptuous because you remembered one simple fact. Did the thought of the woman excite you? Did you sit there in the dark and play with yourself?”

  Minh looked Duc directly in the eyes, no longer a Corporal speaking to a Major. He addressed Duc with the dignity of a plain man. “It has been over a year since I saw my wife. I have been with no other woman. If I should touch myself and think of a woman, no one would have to ask.”

  Duc struggled to maintain his scowl, feeling it crumble. Laughter roiled in his throat and he forced it back, only to have it explode through his nose in a sneeze-like snort. At that, he abandoned all restraint and leaned against a wall and roared, the sound finally dwindling to wheezes and giggles. When he was able, he turned to find Minh still staring at him in reproach. It set him off again for a few moments.

  “Corporal Minh,” he said at last, “you are a man of character. It is no fault of yours that my meeting was a failure. The woman is the one to blame. You did everything that was asked of you, as you always do.”

  “Thank you, Thieu Ta." Minh’s starved lungs sucked air in blessed relief. Trying not to move his shoulders, he wiped his wet palms on his shorts.

  Duc checked his watch. “I know where she lives and she does not work at the bar tonight. I will go to her room.”

  Minh’s instant frown caused Duc to explain with chopping hand gestures. “She could be of great value. She has spent much time with Trung and the man who drives for the American, aside from her connection with her VC lover. We may learn much. It is a breach of security and procedure, but I must go.”

  “You could arrange another meeting, Thieu Ta. Going to her hom
e—” He dropped the sentence with a nervous shrug.

  “It is wrong. I admit it. But I have the feeling that I am a step away from something very important.”

  He laughed again and Minh winced, but he only stepped off briskly, so Minh fell into place beside him. He made no attempt to keep step, Duc’s mincing cadence far too rapid for his own longer stride.

  Minh remembered the embarrassment of finding that even his walk marked him as a villager. He thought to hide his lack of sophistication behind a closed mouth only to have his feet betray him. The city people moved so much more quickly, like the small brown birds that flew up to catch insects and returned to their perch before a man’s eyes could focus. The more he watched the city people, the more they reminded him of those birds. For all their flits and twitches, they never went anywhere. Pride surged in him, the awareness that, even if he was an ignorant farmer, he moved steadily in the direction he chose. He wondered if that was a disrespectful thought and decided it couldn’t be, because no one would ever know of it.

  That was one of the many ways the Americans were different. Was there anything they would not say to each other? He remembered the conversation between Thieu Ta Taylor and Ordway at the banquet and his stomach muttered. But Ordway and Taylor had been close, afterward. And now Ordway was gone and Thieu Ta Taylor was always just outside everyone’s reach.

  Duc would have been astounded by the direction of Minh’s mental exercise had it occurred to him to consider what Minh might be thinking at all. As it was, he began the last leg of the walk to the jeep by twirling his present problem around in his head. The difficulty was that the more he turned it the more sides it seemed to have and the faster it went until now it was a mass of whirling indecision.

  Colonel Loc had been very interested in his initial report about the woman. It was one of the few times Loc ever urged speed in an operation. The pride in that eventually overrode his unease at Loc’s insistence that nothing of the woman’s association with Han, Barline’s driver, should be made known to the Americans. He chewed his lower lip, hopeful he was doing the right thing. Balancing Loc’s desire for quick results against his constant demand for secure procedures was a problem that allowed no mental errors. He’d been very lucky in the matter of the youth on the motorcycle. It would be foolish to hope for such luck again. On the other hand, when good fortune was present was the time to act.