Targets: A Vietnam War Novel

by Don McQuinn

  The pilot turned until they pointed away from the building, then moved forward in the peculiar nosedown configuration that Taylor assumed had something to do with building up air speed. Whatever the reason, he was glad when they leveled and gained altitude. The woman turned away and looked out her side, closing him out.

  The city lounged in sprawling shadow, wearing a softness he had never seen before. They flew over the Phu Tho race track and the normally unremarkable flat expanse was a watercolor image, pleasantly diffuse in the waning light. Looking back, he saw the spoked-wheel shape of the Trung Tom Cai Huan, euphemistically the Reeducation Center, but actually a grinding harsh prison. They went into a banking turn, heading more directly to the south. Ahead was the square hulk of the riverbank market, the Cho Binh Toy. A sense of discord in his spirit distracted Taylor and he glanced straight down at the markers of the Quang Dong cemetery, where he’d known it must be. The beauties of the late afternoon disappeared in the bile that burned the back of his throat. He moved his bundle to a more secure position between his feet and leaned back, eyes closed, waiting out the ride.

  The woman turned her eyes to their limits in his direction, like a wary animal assuring itself that a watcher slept. His thinned lips twitched and she turned away again.

  The attitude change of the descent galvanized Taylor to action. He leaned forward to tap the pilot on the shoulder and motioned to use the co-pilot’s microphone. The pilot shrugged approval and Taylor took the helmet.

  "I want you to put us down on the opposite side of the village from the two Saigon Colonels running the show down there.”

  The pilot looked suspicious. “Why?”

  “Because the lady’s afraid of them. She doesn’t really trust them, you know?”

  The pilot nodded. “That don’t surprise me. What’s she got to do with all this?”

  “She’s the one who’s going to get those people out of the ground.” He pointed at the village, the search parties clearly visible now, prodding the earth and kicking at brush, eddying outward from a knot of personnel easily identified as the command group.

  “I’ve gone along with you this far,” the pilot said. “I’ll let you out right over there.” He pointed and Taylor gave him a thumbs-up. The co-pilot retrieved his helmet with the aggrieved air of a man imposed upon.

  A few moments later the helicopter was whirling in dust, bobbing on the air trapped under the rotors until it forced its way onto the ground. Vietnamese soldiers watched with mild curiosity when Taylor and the woman with her child tumbled out and trotted beyond reach of the blades. Another storm of dust erupted as the pilot lifted off. Taylor peered through it, a hand shielding his eyes. He spotted what he needed quickly and, motioning the woman to remain, hurried toward a trooper carrying a radio. A few words of explanation to the startled Vietnamese Lieutenant and he was using it, in contact with Winter.

  “What are you doing on the wrong side of the village?” Winter demanded, scorning radio procedure. “If you’ve got information, get it over here. Was that a woman got off with you? What the hell are you doing?”

  “Finishing this thing. Have you been using a speaker for your negotiations?”

  “Affirmative. What’s that got to do with you?”

  “Checking, Colonel, checking. You used it from where you are now?”

  “Yes, goddamit! Time’s running out! If you’ve got something, you get here with it! Now!”

  Taylor handed the microphone back to the radioman and faced the Lieutenant. “You are to move your men. Report to the helicopter pad as quickly as possible. It is urgent.”

  The Lieutenant, fighting the shock of an American fluent in his language, hurried to obey. He shouted orders and non-coms repeated them and in minutes the last of the troops were moving into the gathering dusk at a trot. Impatiently, Taylor waited until they were completely out of sight, then grabbed the woman’s shoulder with a muttered apology and hustled her forward toward the village. At the edge of a field, he stopped her. Before them, large-leaved plants almost as tall as his head whispered in the evening breeze, geometric ranks across the ten or fifteen yards to the first houses.

  Taylor opened his bundle and extracted a battery-powered loudspeaker. He aimed it across the stroking leaves and spoke, the sound harsh on the gentle night.

  “Binh! Nguyen Binh, do you know who I am? My name is Taylor and my wife is dead because of men like you! Do you hear me?”

  Across the village Loc’s eyes widened in amazement. Winter flinched as if struck. The only one of them to speak was Harker, and he repeated, “Oh, no. Oh, no,” until Winter glared him to silence.

  “Is he mad?” Loc asked Winter.

  “I don’t know. I’m afraid—”

  Taylor’s amplified shouting interrupted him. “Answer me, Binh! Have you already cheated me and blown your rotten head off? I hope not, because I have a surprise for you!”

  Binh’s answer, muffled and impossible to locate, floated out of the village.

  “I have heard of you, Taylor. I did not know of your wife. How could I know anything of your misfortune?”

  “Because you made it possible! You did not shoot the rocket, but you planned its shipment, arranged the hiding place, everything!”

  Binh’s answer dragged like something from a grave. “I have spoken to Colonel Loc and Colonel Winter. They wish me to surrender and I have told them I may. Now you come with curses. What assurance do I have that I will not be killed as soon as you see me?”

  Winter spoke into his loudspeaker quickly. “You have my word, Binh. Neither you nor any of your men will be harmed in any way if you surrender now! I promise you that, as does Colonel Loc!”

  “And yet your Major screams at me from the other side of the village. I will need time to think.”

  Winter looked around, seeing the last quarter of the sun above the horizon and felt Binh slipping away the same way. He pounded the horn of the speaker into the palm of the opposite hand. A gust of wind rustled the thatched roofs in dry laughter just as Taylor’s voice rose again.

  “Binh! Before you crawl back into your hole, there is someone here who has something to say to you!”

  Winter looked to Loc. “What’s that maniac—?” he managed and then the woman’s high singsong filled the air.

  “We are here! He says—!” Abruptly, the amplifier was turned off. Without the loudspeaker she was barely audible, a faint shrillness that crept between the empty houses.

  “Jesus,” Winter breathed, then harshly, to Harker, “Get over there. Take some troops. Stop that crazy bastard. Move, goddamit!”

  Harker was running, pulling confused Vietnamese in his wake when Taylor started again.

  “There’s more, Binh, much more. I told you my wife died? She was pregnant, you sonofabitch. Maybe my child would have been a girl. Think of that, Binh, and listen.”

  Silence washed over the entire village, even Harker and his party stopping in their tracks. A night bird called, a minor note sliding downward in lament. It faded in the dark and then there was the child’s cry. One word—“Father!”—and a scream that struck into the brain like opposing electric currents that first numbed and then replaced that small mercy with liquid fire.

  Winter was on his speaker as soon as he could make his hand move. “Binh! We have men moving to stop him! Don’t do anything! We will stop him now!”

  “No!” Taylor’s voice cracked, the metallic shriek appalling. “If you send anyone after me, I’ll blow them apart, I swear it! And if that bastard does not come out of his hole, he can listen to them die. You hear, Binh? And if you die first, you make their path no better. They will pay for your death. You have ten seconds. Do you want the child to speak again?”

  “Do not!” The voice was higher pitched. “Colonel Loc! Colonel Winter! You are soldiers, you cannot let this happen!”

  As Winter raised the speaker, Loc placed a hand on the arm. The larger man halted, his lower lip writhing from the action of teeth chewing the inside of
it. Loc took the instrument from him. Corporal Minh chose that moment to trot up with flashlights. Loc carefully tested his before switching on the bullhorn.

  “Binh.” The penetrating voice was a vast change from what had gone before. “We are helpless. We have opposed each other a long time, seen many things. We know we are caught on a river of events. This is a thing we can do nothing about. It is your choice.”

  A hush unfolded across the village and the personnel watching it. It spoke falsely of rural peace, but was none the less embraced by all. Unnoticed, darkness had moved in, as well. In the void left by the unspeaking bullhorns, insects broke into tremulous chorus. Then, as if reopening a wound, the child began to cry. The sound seemed not much louder than the buzz of the gnats rising from the brush and it was met by a concurrent taking in of breath by everyone hearing it.

  Binh said, “If you will come to the center of the village, I will surrender to you, but first I must see my wife and child.”

  Pre-empting Winter and Loc, Taylor said, “Impossible. I will bring them close enough for you to see and I will come unarmed, but you will surrender before you speak to them.”

  Beaten, Binh said, “I agree.”

  The two Colonels hurried down the dark street, flashlights knifing their way, more in search of Taylor than Binh.

  A Vietnamese stepped into the street through the door of a house in the center of the village. Shorter than average, he posed in a wary crouch that accentuated his smallness. The M-16 cradled in the crook of his arm was loosely directed at Loc and Winter. Even as he straightened from the crouch, his final posture was stooped, as if the weight of the weapon hampered him. Lines of exhaustion as telling as fissures in sun-dried paddy riddled his face.

  “I am Binh,” he said.

  The announcement shocked Winter. He had believed this round-shouldered little man was no more than an advance, sent to test the opposition’s integrity, and it was in fact the man he’d sought for years. Now he stood revealed by the merciless flashlights as a picture of ineffectiveness, ragged in filthy khaki shorts, threadbare shirt, and sandals made of tire tread.

  Winter’s first reaction was irritation. The man who’d eluded him for so long shouldn’t look like an incompetent ragpicker. It was demeaning. He searched for something he could respect and when he finally sought the other’s features, not as a captor but as one man trying to see another, he found it in Binh’s determination to disguise the fear and depression of this moment. Their eyes locked and Winter would have sworn the Vietnamese strained to lift his chin. He was certain he saw something in the return stare of the weary eyes, something that spoke of pride and an intent to forge better days. It made Winter feel much better.

  “Where is your Major?” Binh demanded.

  “Right here,” Taylor answered. He switched on a flashlight and the beams from the others homed on him instantly. Binh inhaled sharply at what they revealed.

  Taylor grinned wildly, squinting in the light. He had the child in his arms, left nestling the body, right hand pressed against her head, partially obscuring the face. The hand also held a grenade. The woman hovered behind him, her nervous mincing reminding Winter of a moth pinioned by the accusing light aimed at the man in front of her.

  Taylor said, “I cannot see you very well, Binh, but I see the rifle in your hands. You know the pin is pulled on this grenade. Let yourself be searched, call out your men, and give up your rifle. Then I will let these two speak. I do not trust you or them and I have told them if they try to give you a message or if you try to give them one, you will all die right here.”

  Binh moved the rifle suggestively, but only said, “You are surely the son of all the evil in the world.” Without removing his gaze from the girl, he called out over his shoulder.

  Men began to file from the building, dirt from the tunnels tumbling from their clothes. Business-like troops collected their weapons as if charging admission to the bright lights that made the prisoners wince and turn away. The speechless responses of the captured to the infrequent curt commands of the captors merely heightened the eerie efficiency of the operation.

  The group of six in their elongated formation with Binh in the center concentrated on each other. Taylor’s wolf-like mask drew Binh’s eyes like a magnet and each time the round-shouldered man looked at it his hands trembled on the weapon he still held.

  When the final man was led away Binh gave his rifle to Loc without a word and stood unmoving while a trooper conducted a careful search of his body. At its completion Winter curtly ordered Taylor to free the child.

  Slowly, he lowered her, keeping her within the circle of his arms while he replaced the pin in the grenade. He made several efforts to insert it without looking and it was only after Winter grunted impatiently that he was willing to take his eyes from Binh long enough to do the job.

  When he pulled his arms away with the now-safe grenade in his hand, the little girl winced at the dazzle of flashlights suddenly striking her face. She raised her hands and cried out, dodging behind Taylor and running for her mother. As the woman was scooping up the child, Winter was past Binh and across the ground separating him from the Marine. He brought his light up and across, the beam disappearing with the solid crunch of the plastic case against Taylor’s jaw.

  Taylor’s cover flew to the side and he staggered back, catching himself on the corner of one of the houses. Harker ran toward them, his light flashing across Taylor’s face, picking out the trickle of blood from his cut cheek. Still clutching the grenade, Taylor dabbed with the back of his hand at the stream.

  The woman rushed forward as quickly as the burden of the child permitted. “Colonel, Colonel! You must not hit him! We helped him!”

  Winter looked dazed and angry. “Helped?” he repeated.

  Binh virtually screeched. “You tricked me! That is not my wife and child! This is some bitch you—!” The ranting stopped as Taylor brushed past Winter and moved on him. The beam of Harker’s light held fast to the cold face as if the weight of the illumination would arrest him. It merely accentuated the unheeded blood flowing down his right cheek. Loc shook himself into motion, but it was Winter who first reached Taylor’s side, holding him by the arm. He spoke rapidly in an insistent voice that carried to the others only as bass vibration.

  Taylor acted as a man called from sleep-walking, life coming back to his face in hesitant steps. Binh watched him carefully, understanding exactly what he was seeing and prepared to run if the process changed unfavorably.

  The woman advanced, tugging the reluctant child. Taylor heard her, looked back, and when he again looked at Binh, he was smiling. It was a hard smile with the madness gone from the eyes above it.

  He said, “Binh, I want to introduce Nguyen Thi Oanh, the widow of Major Nguyen Ngoc Duc. The little girl is their youngest daughter.”

  Harker’s flashlight swiveled to her face and Winter said, “Oh, God,” very softly. She stepped up beside Taylor, glaring at Winter before addressing herself to Binh.

  “These men have kept your wife and child hidden and protected. Because of them, your family lives.”

  Binh’s eyes darted around the half-circle facing him. His mouth worked as the implications of the two short statements reached him and in the end he sagged. His sloping shoulders rolled forward, pulling his torso off center and giving him the look of a man hitched to a plow. Just before he dropped his gaze to the ground he glanced at Loc and flat eyes spoke the totality of his collapse.

  Loc snapped his fingers and Corporal Minh materialized from somewhere to lead Binh away.

  Winter extended a hand to Taylor. “God, I’m sorry,” he said. “It was so real, and after—after everything—” He waved the other hand uselessly. “I should have known. I wish I could tell you how sorry I am.”

  Taylor pulled his hand from the grasp and reached for the cut on his cheekbone. Ba Oanh clucked at him and caught the hand, calling sharply into the darkness for bandages. A trooper ran toward them with a first-aid kit. They all
watched with quiet amusement as she commandeered the equipment and dismissed its owner before ministering to the wound herself. The child clung to her trousers and watched with rapt attention.

  While she worked on him, Taylor said, “It was necessary for you to believe, Colonel. You’re not that good an actor. It was what we needed to convince Binh.”

  Loc said, “Am I the only one who wasn’t tricked? I remembered Tu. I only wondered how you had convinced Binh’s wife to help save his life. I never thought of Ba Oanh. That was very clever.”

  She sniffed. “That man is one of the enemies my husband fought all his life. When Major Taylor came to me, I was ready.” She patted the last strip of tape in place. “There. Now I will leave you to talk.”

  Minh reappeared, as if on cue. Loc said, “We must wait for morning to leave here. A tent is being put up for you and your daughter and, of course, there will be food. Corporal Minh will show you.”

  She thanked him and turned to leave and he said, “One more thing, please. I want to tell you you are a very brave woman. Your husband would be very proud.”

  She blinked rapidly, finding a small smile for answer. Her daughter watched carefully and, taking her cue from her mother, essayed a smile for Loc, half-turning with shyness. He smiled broadly and then turned away himself. Ba Oanh bowed quickly to the others and moved toward the fires where the troopers were already preparing rations.

  Loc doused his light, reaching for a cigarette as he did, offering one to Taylor. Harker turned off his light. For a full minute, they all stood in silence.

  Winter broke it. “It doesn’t seem real. The fact of it hasn’t really come through yet.” He gently shook Loc’s bicep. “We’ve got him, old friend. He’s a prisoner.”

  They moved toward the troops in step, Loc agreeing as they went. “It’s true. Now we must hope he will tell us the things we need to know.”

  Winter spoke over his shoulder at Taylor and Harker. “We’re indebted to you two.”

  Taylor nodded thanks, leaving the oral performance to Harker. He knew courtesy required words of some kind but he was too spent to think about them. He lost himself in observing the scene around him.