The majors beside him backed up a step, wanting to agree with the senior ranking officer, but unsure...too many strange things had happened...too much blood and death, and in a place like Vietnam it was too easy to believe such things could exist.
"I know how this all sounds, but what has happened to your men was not the act of war fought by men—this was a crime reeking of an evil you cannot face without us." Father Bishop spoke with one hand and with the other kissed his rosary.
"Oh," Colonel Giles snickered. "I've seen plenty of manmade evil in this place that would turn your hair white. No offense, Father."
"Something has the locals spooked, sir. Our interpreter said they were saying one word, over and over. Krasue. And what about the VC?" Captain Harris interjected, gesturing to one of the maps behind them, pinned to a board. Red x's were drawn in several looking camps. "We didn't engage them...something else did, the same something that slaughtered our men. Now I don't know what that something was, vampires or otherwise...but something got to them."
Colonel Giles looked at the Captain and then back to the table, quiet and thinking, unable to dispute the younger officer's logic. "And what does the CIA have to say on the subject?"
The man in the suit exhaled smoke. "Well, officially the CIA is not here—but I would agree with Captain Harris. We didn't kill those VC, and I seriously doubt they killed themselves. Whatever got to them most likely is the same something that got to our boys. We need to find out what or who that something is."
Nodding agreement from those around the table.
"Fine," conceded Colonel Giles, "where do we start?"
Ben cleared his throat. "Would it be possible to speak to the survivor, Private Summers?"
A wicked smile broke across Colonel Giles strained features. "I'm sure that can be arranged." And then he started laughing, as if to some inside joke.
Chapter 34
Private Summers had been kept in camp instead of flown to the main medical station in Saigon. Colonel Giles didn't want to ship him out, not yet anyways, not until he learned the truth about what had happened to the rest of his Recon platoon. Why had only one survived while the others did not? Who had the means? What was the purpose? All this he told Ben and Bishop. Captain Harris escorted them from HQ across they way and down a row of large green tents to one designated with a large red and white cross. Along the way, the passed no one. Ben had been right in his prognosis - the Camp was nothing more than a ghost town. Inside the medical tent it was dark and quiet. All the beds were empty, all but one. Ben found the image strange, to see so many empty beds, especially in a zone that had seen a lot of action since the Tet Offensive, just like a lot of other places. But then again, he remembered that there had been no other survivors.
Just one.
Private Summers.
A blond-haired boy no older than nineteen. Drafted into a war he understood little about. Only that his country needed him. And that he had the worst luck with the lottery. Captain Harris had told Ben, on the way over, Summers was from some town called Sunnydale, California. He'd been a decent surfer. Never went to college; okay scores in high school. After basic he was assigned to the 9th Infantry with IV Corp. At first, he was doing river boat patrols. Not too long after he was assigned to a long-range reconnaissance platoon. According to his Squad Leader, one now deceased Sergeant Riley Finn, Summers was a natural LRRP. He was small enough to get into Củ Chi tunnels without being seen or heard. He was quick on his feet. Could find his way in the dark. An athlete whose mind remained steadfast, unlike some of the others who too often saw things in the shadows and squeezed off a trigger, ruining an entire recon mission. He never lost his cool, even under fire. He didn't drink, and he didn't smoke dope. At base camp when he wasn't on mission, he wrote home to his mother.
Captain Harris gestured toward the end of a row of foam mattresses cots where a soldier lay asleep, twitching, jerking his legs and arms, which Ben noticed were restrained.
"For his protection, Summers woke from a nightmare last week, he stumbled around camp muttering—all most as if he were sleep walking. And then he tried running outside the wire. The sentry had to tackle him. He hasn't said much else since. Honestly, Mr. Harker—I understand you wanting to do your due diligence, but I don't know what else you can get from him." Harris spoke from behind Ben's ear, nearly whispering as if there were other patients in the room he dared not wake.
Sliding over a folding chair, Ben sat quietly and watched the soldier dream.
Father Bishop sat on the cot opposite them, praying into his closed hands.
Harris stood nearby and waited.
For a while, nothing.
Just the soldier kicking and moaning to some unknown, unseen bogeyman.
He looked so incredibly young to Ben. Much too young to be here in this place, restrained to this bed in this war. He looked no older than seventeen really, malnourished perhaps, highly defined cheek bones, hollowed out like a skull, but a boy nevertheless...until said boy eventually opened his eyes, and then Ben woefully realized Summers had been aged beyond anyone else of his generation. No flowers or protests or marches or promises could ever change that. Was this right? For the young to take the place of the old? Maybe it should all be done differently, Ben pondered. Maybe instead of the young sleeping and eating with death before their time, whenever there's a big war comin' on, we should rope off a big field...and on the big day, we should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put 'em in the center dressed in their underpants, and let 'em fight it out with clubs. The best country wins. That would be better, he thought, better than for him to sit here and look into this old child's eyes. Summers may have thought it beautiful to die for his country. Maybe his daddy told him so, maybe his preacher or teacher, someone he trusted. The first bombardment, the first mortar, the first engagement taught him better—when the shit hits the fan, when it comes to dying for country, the truth is discovered that it is better not to die at all.
"Private Summers?" Ben whispered.
The boy nodded.
Ben swallowed. How ghastly it was to peer into those stone soulless eyes. Like a bottomless pit, like a reflection of hell itself.
"Do you know where you are?" he continued.
Again, the soldier nodded.
"Do you remember what happened?"
More nodding.
"Can you tell me?"
Trembling now. But no tears.
"Its okay, Summers, you're safe now. You're safe."
The soldier shook his head.
"No?"
A horse shriek crackling across the boy's lips. "Shh...eee."
"Yes. I know," Ben nodded, reaching out and touching gently on the soldier's chest. "But where? Where is she? What did you see?"
Sobbing now, tearless dry sobbing. "She..."
"Yes?"
"She wants..."
"Go ahead, son, tell me."
"She wants you, Benjamin Harker."
"This thing knows your name?" Harris commented behind him.
"She wants you!" Summers screamed.
"It's okay, its okay. Calm down, son." Ben cooed.
Again, and again, the boy howled and spit the words until finally his eyes drooped and fell back asleep just as steadily as he had woken.
Father Bishop resumed his prayers.
"Jesus...what the hell is going on? What did he mean by that? She wants you? I don't understand." Harris was frustrated but kept his voice down.
Ben continued gazing down at the young soldier. Thinking. Wondering.
"Mr. Harker?"
"Yes, Captain Harris. The vampyre know my name. She knows my name. We have a history, her and I. A history it would seem she wishes to end. Private Summers has just confirmed my suspicions of what her intentions are."
Harris sounded as if he were struggling to find some rational explanation. "But...but...but why you? Why is this thing so interested in you?"
Chapter 35
It hadn't taken
much to persuade Colonel Giles to allow Ben his mission out to Hill 750—one of the red marked areas on the maps in HQ. Deep down, Ben imagined the hardened Army officer was just glad to be rid of him. What was there for him to lose? An old black man preaching about things best left in Strange Tales comics and horror novels and movie films. The greatest risk was to somehow be proved wrong. And how the earth would shatter at his jungle boots if the man ever believed there was such a thing more evil and vile than mankind.
Ben watched from the open hatch of the Huey as it ascended the Chau Doc mountain ridges, the blades of the helicopter whooping and whining as the turbo revved and shot the passengers skyward. Around them green tree tops whipped by in a blur of gray. Out from his peripheral he could see Captain Harris talking into his headset, most likely giving base camp a sitrep—or maybe talking with the pilot or one of the other Huey trailing behind them, maybe even that spook, the man in the suit, Agent Oz who demanded to join Ben in his hunt on the mountain peak—to see for himself this evil he called the vampyre. There were two other soldiers with them, five more in each of the other two choppers, with a total of fifteen souls. He couldn't recall most of their names, he knew them simply as replacements, fresh meat sent into the grinder of Nam. Eighteen and nineteen somethings from the bottom of the barrel America. Kids too poor to say otherwise. How different things had become from his own generation, and the one after—the war to end all wars had been written in the sand, washed away by the blood spilled on the shores of Normandy, Bulge, Auschwitz, Midway, Solomon, Iwo Jima. And now here in Ia Drang, Khe Sanh, Tet, Ấp Bắc—chasing the ghost of communism.
He was glad Bishop stayed back in camp, much to the young priest's displeasure. One less thing to worry about, one less death to stomach witnessing. It would be best for him to stay and pray over Private Summers. And besides, what good would a man of faith do out here in this place? No. Faith has no use in this play on the chess board. Here, Ben was moving the pieces into position, Knight to take the Queen. Her or him or both, it didn't matter to him anymore. At sixty-nine, he'd never come so close. Recompense for his lost beloved Mina was coming—and he was glad to be with at least a few gnarled Vietnams among the fresh faces who wanted a little payback, to the VC or the vampyre, blood is blood, death is death, ash is ash, it washes down all the same. Men like Sergeant Danny Strong and Jay Shimerman, and Corporal Angel Boreanaz and PFC James "Spike" Marsters, each had friends who were slain among the 9th Infantry LRRPs.
There was some chatter inside the Huey. The soldiers in green fatigues began taking off their steel pot helmets and sitting on them. Harris scooted over to Ben, whispering loudly, "We're heading in to the LZ. Here." He handed Ben a spare helmet.
Ben looked at it and back at Harris, unsure of the purpose.
The Captain leaned back in and whispered loudly again, "The VC like to take shots at the birds as they come close enough."
Still Ben couldn't help but feel confused.
"You sit on it, so you don't get your balls blown off."
Ben nodded and quickly placed the helmet under him.
Rumbling now, the Huey jerked and dipped, sending Ben's heart into his stomach. He leaned on his cane, his other hand keeping the helmet from slipping out from underneath him.
As the ground came closer, the soldiers around him dawned their helmets and readied to dismount the chopper.
Captain Harris counted down with his hand.
And they were off, dropping down into tall grass, spreading out into a defensive posture of the bird took back to the sky.
Ben rolled over, hurting his knee a bit as he had landed, watching as the large Huey became a dot in the otherwise sunny sky. The whorl and whoomph faded and Harris collected the troops into two lines.
"You okay?" he was standing over Ben, looking down.
Ben shielded the sun from his eyes, looking up into the officer's face, a mix of slight concern and sarcasm. "I'm fine."
Captain Harris offered a hand and hoisted Ben from the ground. "We've got about a five-mile hike from here to the grid point on the map. You gonna make it?"
Ben dusted his olive pants and scuffed jungle boots. With his cane in hand, he started for one of the line formations. "I'll be fine. Let's get this show on the road. The sun won't stay with us forever."
Captain Harris watched him off, giggling to himself.
* * *
The mountains of Chau Doc were steep and thick with cypress trees. A thick fog hugged them three feet from the ground, bathing the line of soldiers in a white milky mist. Along the way they passed a nearly forgotten massive statue of Buddha, vines once kept trimmed now growing and twisting along the stone throat. One of the soldiers passing it, Ben saw, snorted and spit a wad of phlegm at the once dignified deity.
Ben, somewhere in the middle, just behind Agent Oz, looked up into the tree tops, listening.
Captain Harris looked too and then back to the old man. "What?" he asked quietly.
"Nothing. Absolutely nothing. It's as silent as a grave," Ben remarked, gripping his hawk handled cane tighter.
Both Oz and the young officer looked around again, now with a more rigid expression.
Corporal Angel Boreanaz, who everyone just called Angel due to his smooth creamy skin and bright blue eyes, came up beside Captain Harris handing him the radio mike he carried on his back.
As the squad pressed forward, Harris spoke quickly and quietly into the radio. Finished and trotted back up the line to Ben and Agent Oz. "First squad says there's a hooch village up ahead. They're sitting tight until we catch up."
Ben looked ahead up the trial, as if he could see where it was. "What did they say?"
"About the hooch? Nothing much."
"Any activity?" Agent Oz asked.
"Dead quiet, they said."
* * *
Ben had never set foot in a hooch village before. What he'd seen was only on the news. Huts made of straw and bamboo, linked together in a sporadic pattern—typically as he had noted on the news, filled with villagers, old men, women, and children usually. The younger men were normally off fighting as an ARVN or as a VC. There would normally be livestock of some kind, pigs, chickens, dogs, and sometimes even goat or cattle, if they were prosperous enough. Not here. There was not a sign of any sort of life nor sound. Only the gentle whistle of the wind.
"Where the hell is everyone?" Agent Oz remarked.
"Its like a fucking ghost town," Captain Harris whispered before joining his radioman and giving HQ and Colonel Giles a situation report.
Oz pushed his thick black glasses back up on his nose, stooping to examine some disregarded hut shaped straw hat laying on the ground. "Reminds me an abandoned VC stronghold, like the ones in the northern provinces."
Sergeant Danny Strong, prodding a hump of hay with his M16, asked, "Is this what you think this place is? Some kind of strong hold?"
Agent Oz shrugged, standing now, squinting up on the sun, which had fallen remarkably fast from when they first touched down on the LZ. "Could be," he said.
"I don't think this is what this place is," Ben remarked, walking farther into the forlorn village.
Oz and Strong followed closed by as Ben went into one of the hooch's. Inside, they all looked down at a low set table with plates and cups.
"Look, there's still food on the table," Strong suggested.
"Doesn't mean anything. Maybe someone tipped them off we were coming," said Agent Oz.
"Maybe," Ben agreed, but not completely. There was something about this place, something horribly familiar. According to the map back at HQ, this had been the supposed last destination of the doomed 9th Infantry LRRPS. The place Private Summers had been and walked away from...searching for the ones who carved Ben's name into the belly of one of his comrades. He turned to Agent Oz. "The photo you showed me, the one with my name, where did you find the bodies?"
Agent Oz looked up from the spoiled food on the low table to Ben's dark weathered face. He frowned. Thinking. "In Muong Valle
y, why?"
Ben held his breath. Glaring at Oz and past him, somewhere beyond where his thoughts converged. "And where is that? Is that valley nearby?"
Agent Oz pushed up on his glasses. "Just east of here, Muong Valley connects this mountain peak, Hill 750 to the other side, Hill 751. Why?"
Ben looked away, his thoughts racing through him. He began pacing, holding tight to his cane.
Agent Oz crossed his arms over his chest. "Mind filling me in?"
Sergeant Strong watched, his face creased in confusion.
Ben spoke with his back to them. "I believe your assumption of this place is correct—as indicated on Colonel Giles map. This was the place Private Summers had been—the last stand of your Recon team."
Agent Oz licked at his dry lips. "We ascertained as much, assuming they followed the most likely trajectory up the mountain path. Cambodia is only a few short miles away and the VC are known to use our diplomatic restraints like a security blanket. But what makes you so sure?"
Ben turned to face them. "Because I do not think this is some VC stronghold, I think the villagers have—"
Outside somewhere nearby, a piercing childlike screech shattered the silence of the village, followed closely by shouting protesting men as they gave chase.
* * *
It was not what Ben had expected. If he had expected anything at all. Standing in the epicenter of the hooch village, a little Vietnamese girl no older then ten. She was crudely dressed in shards of some kind of ao dai dress. She was covered in mud and dirt and dead leaves of the cypress trees. Her hair matted in places. Her narrow eyes wide in fear as a group of soldiers circled around her.
"What the hell are ya'll doing?" Captain Harris yelled above his troops.
The Last Hellfighter Page 20
