by Tom Wilson
Manny smoothed his just-sprouting mustache, deep in thought. Billy thought the mustache made DeVera look like a Mexican bandit.
He drank down half of his drink.
Tiny Bechler turned and gave him a friendly look. "The Bear told me you guys were Indian. I thought Indians had trouble holding their liquor."
"Some I know can't drink worth a damn," Billy admitted. "People say they go berserk and do funny things like stick knives in people for no reason at all." He finished the Scotch.
Tiny regarded Billy closer. "You seem to be able to hold it okay."
Billy sighed contentedly as he savored the drink. "I'm only half-Indian, and we're different. It's never happened to me yet, understand, but I hear one minute we'll be normal, and the next we'll be asking the bartender for a paring knife."
Tiny grinned his disbelief, but he started when Billy pushed back from the bar.
"See you guys later. My hold baggage shipment arrived today, so I've gotta go back to the Ponderosa and unpack."
"Be seeing you around," said Tiny Bechler. "Sorry about what happened to your family. Gets you good and pissed off at the gomers, doesn't it?"
The big lieutenant didn't know the half of it, thought Billy. He walked out the door into the heat of the tropical night, deciding to write the others in his family to tell them what had happened to Mal. Then he'd get on with what was expected of him.
0920 Local—Regional Hospital, Travis AFB, California
Captain Benny Lewis
Benny lay flat on his back, as the doctors demanded, for just a month earlier he'd ejected from his burning fighter and experienced a compression fracture of the back. Painful, but they said it wouldn't be overly serious if it was allowed to heal properly. He'd judiciously spent the month strapped to the rock-hard hospital bed, just as they'd wanted.
He'd thought a lot during that time about much more than his physical problem. In fact, when it wasn't hurting, the injury had been far down on his list of priorities. At first he'd reminisced a lot about the Bear, the Wild Weasel backseater who'd been shot down with him, and who had died there in the western mountains of North Vietnam. Sometimes, in his mind, he'd even talked with the Bear, held sort of a conversation with a voice that had been inside him since they'd put him on the hard bed.
They'd been close, he and the Bear. So close that when they flew together, they'd hardly had to use the intercom to know what the other was thinking. On the ground they'd complemented one another, his stodginess offset by the Bear's devil-may-care cockiness. He'd tried to keep the Bear out of trouble when he flew off the handle, and the Bear had tried to teach him to loosen up and enjoy life.
Now it was the voice inside him that laughed at him when his thoughts grew too inflexible. The voice that told him to joke more with the nurses and nicknamed the floor nurse Lady Dracula. He knew it was just remembering the Bear and wondering what he would have thought of this situation or that, but it certainly seemed like a voice was coming from within.
After they'd been shot down, the Bear had saved him, had fought it out with the gomers, holding them off while he was rescued . . . and his last words had been to take care of his wife and the kid inside her.
He would.
The voice in him knew he would.
And as he was thinking about her, Julie Stewart, the Bear's vivacious wife, came into the room, nodding and agreeing with the nurse the voice called Lady Dracula.
"Use bigger ropes on him," Julie told the nurse.
"I'm about to use a mallet," said Lady Dracula with a grimace. She was tall and angular, with severe features, and was infuriatingly efficient. "Every time I think he's listening and staying put," she complained, "I find him moving around or trying to convince a flight surgeon he feels better than he does." The rawboned nurse was adamant when it came to compliance with rules, and she'd argue with any doctor who thought that Benny was mending, saying he was still very fragile.
Julie looked hard at him. "Do as you're told," she scolded.
"Yes, ma'am." He tried to look repentant.
The nurse checked him over, gave him a scathing look to tell him to remain completely still during the visit, and left.
"You really should do as they ask," Julie chided.
Benny sighed mightily. "I'm tired of reading, the local radio news is antiestablishment, antiwar and prohippie, and the nurses won't let me go to the lounge to watch television. I'm also getting tired of counting the two hundred seventy-two tiles on the ceiling."
"You'll only have to put up with it for another few weeks, and then . . ."
"Maybe just a few days. The doc told me they might put me into a brace next week."
Julie shook her finger. "Benny Lewis, you've been all over these poor people, and it's only because you're bored."
He felt sheepish. She could make him feel that way when no one else could.
"The doctor said no matter what, it's going to take ninety days for your back to start mending, then three more months before you can go back to work even part-time."
"I had another flight surgeon look at my last X rays, and he says I'm starting to heal. He's going to see if they can't transport me to my next assignment after they put me in the brace. Says I can heal anywhere. He's also saying I may be released for limited duty after sixty days, not ninety."
She raised an eyebrow. "They're going to move you to Nevada?"
"Maybe. I'm going to be reassigned to Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, same place I was stationed before I went to Takhli."
"The nurse says you're not ready to be moved," she said.
Benny felt perversely pleased at her concern. "I'll be careful," he promised. "Anyway, nothing's definite yet."
He didn't tell her how he wheedled the flight surgeons at every opportunity, how he promised to take it easy and religiously wear the brace, but how much he'd like to be moved to the hospital at Nellis. He was anxious to get closer, at least, to a fighter base. The docs said it would be a year before he could return to flying status, probably longer. But surely, he thought, there were other things he could be doing.
He changed the subject. "How's the kid in the hangar?" She was four months pregnant.
"He's a hell-raiser," she said proudly. "I know it's early, but I'll swear he woke me up with a couple of good kicks last night." She laughed. "He's anxious to get on with things."
"Kid doesn't know when he's got it good," Benny joked. "Takes after his dad. The Bear was always in a hurry."
"Maybe, but Mal Bear knew a good thing when he saw it. He married me, didn't he?"
They laughed easily. They shared close feelings for the dead father. They'd gone through a long period of sadness together and only now were beginning to joke about things.
The Bear would have been disgusted with such behavior, thought Benny. The voice inside him told him so.
Benny had felt warm and at ease with Julie since the first time they'd met, and now his feelings for her grew in some indescribable manner each time she visited. He guessed it was protectiveness, but he knew he was happiest when she was around, somehow empty when she was not.
He thought of his possible departure in a week. He remembered the line he'd rehearsed. Then he muffed it.
"If they let me go, why don't you come to Vegas?" he blurted, surprised at the terse way the words emerged.
The voice inside groaned. Dumb fuck.
Julie was sitting in the chair beside his bed, staring at his face. She was likely startled by the boorish way he'd presented the offer, he thought, and he couldn't blame her for pausing for a long moment before answering.
"I'm a working girl, remember," she finally said. Julie was a stewardess with Pan Am.
"Quit," he croaked through his suddenly dry throat, again surprised at his boldness.
She just stared.
He tried again, using a different tack. "I'd worry about you if I was in Vegas and you were alone back here."
That's a little better, said the voice.
"T
he doctor says I'm a perfectly healthy specimen and should have no problems with the delivery. Anyway, you should stay here in the bay area until you're recuperated."
She glanced away, and he realized the conversation was becoming difficult for her. Still he couldn't help pressing on.
"I want to get to Nellis, so I'll feel useful again, Julie. But I treasure your visits, and . . . I want you around."
Not bad at all, said the voice.
She was quiet. Had he gone too far?
Words suddenly tumbled from her, and there was a catch in her voice. "I don't know what I'm supposed to feel, Benny, but lately I just feel numb when I think about Mal. He's listed as MIA, and even though I know in my heart that what you guys say is true, that he's really dead and gone, a tiny part of me believes he might be fighting to get back."
"He won't come back, Julie. He can't."
"But what if he did?" She sighed and shook her head sadly. "My mother doesn't help. Every time I talk to her, she tells me to be a good military wife and keep hoping for the best."
"He's dead, Julie."
"Not officially. Officially he's neither dead nor alive, just missing."
"And if his status was changed?"
"God, I loved him," she breathed. A long minute passed before she finally, sadly, shook her head. "But it would make things easier if I knew one way or the other, if they just called it like it is rather than generate this false hope."
He nodded.
She touched his arm reassuringly and spoke in a low, soft voice. "Benny, you're the best friend I could possibly have. I've relied on your moral support from the first, and I don't want that to change. I wish I could come with you, but . . . I just can't."
They started to speak about other things, and the air between them eased. At first they talked about his parents, who lived only an hour away in Santa Rosa and treated her like their own. Then she shared gossip about the various stews she worked with, and he told her the raunchy jokes passed on by a nurse on the night shift. A month before he'd never have shared the jokes with any female, but the voice was changing that. She enjoyed them and laughed with delight at the punch lines, which he was beginning to tell better each time she visited.
You're learning, said the voice.
After an hour she prepared to leave. As she rose, he said, "Julie, you make me feel good when you visit. I feel . . . easy around you."
She gave him her impish look. "Me too. If I didn't, I sure wouldn't be here. Why else would I visit a grumpy guy strapped to a board every single day I'm not flying?"
"Grumpy?"
"And who else could get away with asking me to run off to Vegas to shack up?"
He felt his face flush. "That wasn't what I meant."
"It's not?" She feigned surprise.
It's not? joked the voice.
"We'd get you an apartment," he sputtered, "and I'd stay on base."
She raised an eyebrow. She was back to her fun-loving self—which, since he was trying to make a difficult point, was downright irritating.
"No chance I could get you down there?" he asked a last time, wanting her to say yes.
She sighed and looked at him, then slowly shook her head. "I just can't, Benny."
"Then I'd better prepare for one hell of a telephone bill," he said.
"You'd better," she agreed, and then she got a catch in her throat and had trouble continuing. "You'd better."
That afternoon, after Julie had returned home across the bay in San Francisco and they'd given him his doses of muscle relaxant and painkiller, he napped and dreamed.
He heard the popping sounds of distant gunfire, and the sounds of the chopper coming for him.
When he awoke, Benny was determined to write the people at Takhli.
That evening, a Red Cross volunteer wrote a letter for him. It was addressed to Lieutenant Colonel MaeLendon, his squadron commander at Takhli. He told him he'd met with Bear Stewart's wife, and how she was having a difficult time coping due to the confusion about the Bear's status. He wondered if Mack couldn't have the matter reopened, and suggested that the Bear's official status be changed to KIA.
The voice inside him was pleased.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sunday, April 23rd, 0700 Local—HQ Seventh Air Force, Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, Republic of Vietnam
Lieutenant Colonel Pearly Gates
This time General Moss had summoned Pearly, saying he wanted to talk about the new OPlan he was writing, so there was no waiting around trying to get in. Pearly Gates hustled through the outer office, noting the secretary's perfunctory nod and the whisper, "He's smiling." He hesitated at the door long enough to run his free hand over his uniform. After smoothing his shirt and aligning his belt buckle, he stepped inside.
The general was alone, poring over a document with a white-and-red cover sheet marked TOP SECRET—SENSITIVE INFORMATION. Moss glanced up and said, "Have a seat," then went back to his reading. Periodically the corners of his mouth would twitch. He was in a pleasant, almost jocular mood.
Two silent minutes passed. Pearly bided his time by mentally measuring steel mesh panels half-hidden under the Air Force–blue curtains at the sides of the room's single window. During emergencies they were swung closed. The window itself was multilayer safety glass, thick and shatterproof. The precautions were warranted, for the Viet Cong had made infrequent rocket and mortar bombardments, as well as two sapper attacks, on Tan Son Nhut Air Base. In January they'd launched a serious one that had lasted three days.
Moss grunted, drawing Pearly's attention. "Intell was right about the security leak. The Smith Brothers confirm the NVA are getting target information, sometimes even before it's released to the units."
Appropriately paranoid, Pearly wondered if it had been wise to let the CIA in on it, Saigon contained a quagmire of spies, sympathizers, and double agents of various allegiances and motivations. Pearly trusted absolutely none of them.
Moss put the paper away, thoughtful as he carefully replaced the classified cover sheet. "I told 'em I want the source found. Someone's putting a gun to our pilots' heads, Pearly."
"Yes, sir."
"The Smiths say they're trying to find the leak, but I told them to by God work harder. I also called in the OSI to see if they can help."
Pearly regarded the OSI's effectiveness as just lower than that of the Keystone Kops. The Air Force's Office of Special Investigations was a sort of in-service FBI, normally kept busy tracking which black-market items the South Vietnamese merchants were coveting and other problems unrelated to operations.
"Have you picked out the first bridge target yet?" Moss asked him.
"Yes, sir." Pearly walked around the desk beside the general, leaned over, and spread out a detailed map of Hanoi and the immediate surrounding area. He pointed a forefinger at the northeastern section of the city, and the bridge, almost two miles long, which spanned the Red River, crossing from one shore, over a large river island, to the other.
"It's a big one," Moss said.
"Their most important bridge, General. It carries both rail and highway traffic. Traffic from both rail lines to China and from the port at Haiphong get into Hanoi over that single bridge. So does most of their road traffic." Pearly added three photos of the structure, slowly so Moss could digest each one.
"It's built mostly out of brick and concrete. Multiple arches, like the Romans taught the Gauls two thousand years ago. You see the same kind of construction in Rome and Paris."
"It certainly looks sturdy enough."
"The arches give it strength. Most of the North Vietnamese bridges are well built. The credit goes to a fellow named Paul Doumer, same guy they named this bridge for."
"French?"
"Right down to his spats. Doumer was an insufferable, turn-of-the-century frog-eater who thought of himself as a modern Napoleon."
Moss smiled, so Pearly continued.
"Back in 1897 the French were having trouble with the locals when Doumer arrived as the
new governor-general for the Indochina Union. He'd just suffered a political setback in France, but he didn't let that dampen his ambition. In fact, it just made him more determined to make a name for himself here in Indochina."
"Trying to win the people over?"
"He didn't care what they thought. He was a dollars-and-cents man, and only the bottom line counted. When anyone interfered, he used legionnaires to kick ass and take names, and they humiliated every prominent Southeast Asian that got in his way. Within a couple of years he had South, Central, and North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, all of them, saying 'yes, sir, three bags full.' He put French administrators in charge at every level of government and used the old mandarin bureaucrats to tell the people what was expected of them."
"A fucking accountant politician." Moss snorted. He'd been known to call the SecDef by the same title when he didn't call him the Edsel mechanic.
"Doumer set up complex infrastructures to sell off the wealth and rake off the profits. In the northern part of Vietnam, called Tong King, he shipped everything through Hanoi, where his people sorted and inspected it, then forwarded it to Haiphong for shipment. That meant he needed a good transportation network. Farm-to-market roads, highways, rail systems, and bridges, everything going through Hanoi. He had similar plans for the rest of French Indochina, but Tong King was his showplace. He wasn't doing the Vietnamese any favors by building bridges, just setting it up so France could take its share of everything."
"Imperialism."
"In its worst form. By the time he was done, Doumer had turned Indochina into a French money machine. He'd bred great animosity and created the environment for the various antiimperialist movements, including the "Workers' Party" set up by Ho Chi Minh."
"Why didn't the French get rid of him and bring in someone more popular?"
"Because he turned a hell of a profit. He made so much money for France, they recalled him and made him a senator. And his successors kept things going here just like he left it, because they were getting so much loot."
"Poison in the well."
"It's hard to fault the Vietnamese for hating the French. That's why the North Vietnamese call us imperialists when they want to rile up the people, and sometimes it works."
