Nam-A-Rama
Page 16
“Yes, certainly the devil of a war,” he said again, sounding British.
I have always liked the British. They have this tendency to say things like “Hello. What’s this?” when their arms are blown off or they spot a farthing on the sidewalk. Even with his nervousness, the man carried that British ability to make the rest of us seem underdressed or in the wrong place. He was sloppily clad in a dark suit, a striped tie hung loosely from the neck of his damp white shirt, and black lace-up shoes bereft of polish completed the outlandish garb of a gentleman in a whorehouse in a war zone. Gearheardt was in a camouflaged flight suit, the front zipper undone down to his pistol belt. I had on a new lightweight jungle-green flight suit that the gunny had stolen from the Air Force and traded to me for a forged pass to Na Trang.
Now the would-be contact lit a bent cigarette and, after putting the blown-out wooden match in his side coat pocket, cleared his throat.
“Yes, well, devil and all that.”
“Are you the fucking spy posing as an Australian weapons dealer that we’re supposed to meet?” Gearheardt asked suddenly.
The man straightened himself and again glanced around the bar. None of the Marines or whores seemed to be interested in the conversation.
He pulled a chair out from our table and sat down.
“Actually, Mr. Enderby sent me. From Hong Kong, you know. He said you would be expecting an Australian gentleman. Mr. Enderby said that the devil greeting would be the sort of—”
“Password?” I finished for him.
The man smiled at me, acknowledging my presence for the first time.
“Oh, jolly good, yes, the password. Are you Narsworthy or Dexter, sir?”
Gearheardt became alert.
“I’m Almost Captain Gearheardt. Never heard of those other guys. Maybe Mr. Enderby of Hong Kong sent you to the wrong Qui Nhon. There’s one in Oklahoma, you know. Goddamned Okies, but salt-of-the-earth people.” Gearheardt was in one of his moods.
“No, I’m quite certain that I am in the proper Qui Nhon, Almost Captain Gearheardt. I am also aware that you, sir, are Narsworthy, and this must be Almost Captain Armstrong, known to the CIA as Tom Dexter. Am I correct, sir?” He smiled at me, and I thought I saw the flash of a gold tooth.
“Buy this man a beer, Jack, I mean Tom,” Gearheardt said. “He can’t help where he was born. Can you, Mr … . Mr … .”
“Oh my, rude of me. Yes, I am … Gon.”
Gearheardt snorted. “Well we are … here.”
Gon shook our hands, knocking over Gearheardt’s beer glass.
“Oh, dear, let me buy you another beverage. Seems appropriate, doesn’t it, Mr. Narsworthy. The spilled American beer, I mean.” His smile was becoming a bit irritating as he flashed it at Gearheardt who looked at me and raised his eyebrows in the universal sign for “watch my six.” He motioned for me to lean away from the table and brought his head close to mine. “Give us a minute, Gon,” he said.
“Jack, you notice anything funny about the British accent?”
I started to reply, but he went on, looking back at Gon.
“The guy is a fucking Mexican.”
Now that I looked closely, I noticed that Gon’s face was brown and he had straight black hair. A gold tooth flashed as he smiled back at my rude stare.
“Why would they send a Mex … ?”
“Goddam spies can’t do anything without jacking around. I would imagine that Taco Tom here just needed something to do.” Gearheardt held up his finger toward Gon, indicating we would be with him in a moment. Gon was picking his teeth with the corner of the menu and nodded okay.
“All we need is for this guy to tell us the name of the beer. We were supposed to give him a contract, which we don’t have, and then he would help us in Hanoi, where we are going but don’t know when. The President blames the delay on that dope with the greased-back hair. He says Nixon has found himself an advisor with the curliest hair above waist level and—”
“Gearheardt, could you just stick to the current situation and tell me about your conversation with the President later?”
“Can do, Jack.” He straightened and turned back to the table.
“I’ll tell you what, Gon old pal, I have no idea what you’re talking about, but we’ll pretend to be Narsworthy and Dexter, who are code-persons for me and Jack and who are supposed to meet a Brit MI6 guy sometime before we go on the mission to Hanoi, which I am awfully anxious to do if the President would get off his ass and get the orders to me. Now are you happy?”
One of the interesting things about Gearheardt was that he would sometimes wake up in a funk (this was one of those days) and not be able to tolerate beating around the bush.
After a moment, Gon answered. “Yes, quite so.” He leaned back to allow the shriveled mama-san to place the new beverages in front of us.
The Mexi-Brit leaned forward and rested his arms on the table.
“So then, gentlemen, I take it from that remark that you do not have your orders yet. Nor, would it seem, do you have in your possession the contract. Would I be correct in that assumption?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Of course I was aware that Gearheardt was also a CIA agent and had supposedly sworn me in and that the CIA was somehow involved in the mission to Hanoi. But contracts?
“Don’t jump to any conclusions, Gon,” Gearheardt said. “Jack here doesn’t have pizza clearance. Maybe you and I should have a chat while Jack amuses himself with one of the better-looking women of this establishment.”
“I have no intention of screwing one of them, and I think polite discussion is out of the question, Gearheardt. Just because you—”
“Fine with me, Jack.” He turned to Gon. “What say we just go ahead and chat about this contract that I am unfortunately missing?” He winked at me as Gon once more surveyed the sad Third World bar, sad war-torn people, and happy, gun-crazed warriors.
“Yes, Captain. First, I must tell you that I am Cuban. After the Bay of the Pigs, the Americans promised me a job spying for the British. I have spent my years in the Cuban jail learning a British accent. To get ahead in this world, one must … but that is another story. I am your contact and the contact for the mad Cuban in Hanoi. That is why that—”
And we might have found out a bit more about what the hell we were supposed to do in Hanoi, but the door burst open and six Air Force officers, in stunning jungle fatigues, ties with matching breast handkerchiefs and Italian leather flight boots, stumbled in. They were a couple of Jolly Green crews, also stationed in Qui Nhon, to provide Search and Rescue for the A-1 fighter/bomber squadron there. From the look of them, they were well oiled and besotted. One had a bandage around his head, blood seeping through, and blood besmirching the front of his tailored fatigues.
“Have you boys been fighting?” Gearheardt yelled above the noise they brought in with them.
They stopped, turned their heads like drunken bovines, and spotted Gearheardt.
“GEARHEARDT, you rotten bastard!” they all cried at once. It was pretty much his full name outside of his small circle of close friends.
The Air Force pilots would have attacked him in force but evidently couldn’t figure out how to get around the table and chairs blocking their way. Two of them sat down heavily and began to draw a flight plan on the table top. One was trying to get his emergency radio to work as another, evidently not quite as drunk, was trying to convince him that calling in an air strike on Gearheardt wasn’t possible at the moment. The remaining two, including the one who looked like the flute player in the revolutionary war painting, just grinned foolishly and weaved.
“Look at that disgusting sight, Jack,” Gearheardt said. “Grown men acting like grown men.”
Gearheardt and the Jolly Green pilots had a wary respect for each other’s flying ability and mission. That was not why they hated him. They hated him because he had tried to use their air-conditioned, tiled, and always freshly cleaned shitter, complete with uniformed attendants. T
hey caught him on the pot, newspaper scattered, cigarette butts strewn about, and tossed him out on his ass. “Took five of them,” he said.
Now they suspected it was Gearheardt who had poured Agent Orange on the putting green that the Air Force had painstakingly constructed and nurtured behind their flight line. It was. He carried a putter over to their flight line for weeks after it had become black sand, asking the duty officer, “Okay if I use the putting green, Lieutenant?” I had no idea where Gearheardt got a putter.
The Air Force crew had aroused the other patrons, and the Number One Beer House was rocking. The air circulated by the grunting air conditioner was mostly smoke. The jukebox suddenly came alive with Chuck Berry singing “Maybelline.” The voltage differential had him singing it chipmunk style.
Gon leaned toward Gearheardt and cupped one hand beside his mouth.
“Do you know Battambang?” he yelled in Gearheardt’s direction.
“Town in Oklahoma?” Gearheardt yelled back.
“Forget the Oklahomans, Captain. Banambang is beer we will represent. Named after … where I meet Rico … can’t impress you eno … must tell Juanton to …”
I could make out only so many words, and I could tell that Gearheardt wasn’t even listening. Sounded too much like directions or something, probably. He looked at me and shrugged his shoulders.
The Mexi-Brit grabbed Gearheardt’s arm.
“Please listen, Captain. I need to give you some information.”
A slow, mellow ballad by a Vietnamese singer started. It sounded like someone playing the musical saw, but conversation was possible now.
“The British team in Hanoi has been compromised. They—”
“Got caught screwing a woman?”
Gon ignored him.
“They are expecting the contract from the President.”
“Last one I signed got me sent here,” Gearheardt said.
“Would you shut up and listen, Gearheardt?”
“Quite right, Almost Captain Armstrong. This is important.” He reached into his rumpled but nicely tailored suit and drew out an eight-by-ten photo. He unfolded it to reveal a glossy shot of an extremely attractive and scantily clad young woman. The photo was creased and worn.
“You haven’t been yanking your crank with that thing, have you, Gon? What are all those spots and—”
Gon blushed. “No, Almost Captain Gearheardt. Those are simply … That isn’t important. This is the woman that you are to meet in Hanoi. This is Barbonella.”
“The broad parachuting into the commies’ HQ?”
“The same. She is instructed to eventually get you to your meeting. At that time, the—”
“Any chance of holing up with her for a while? You know, just to do spy stuff. Right, Jack?” He was grinning and holding the photo up to see it better.
“Please be serious, Captain. There are a number of very powerful businessmen and government officials who have been—”
“Trying to hole up with her? I’ll bet they have.”
Gon deflated and sat back in his chair. After a moment he shrugged. “Perhaps we will meet in Hanoi.”
“Vaya con Dios, senor,” Gearheardt said.
“Gracias,” Gon replied, and then grinned sheepishly. He rose and adjusted his tie.
I tried, he seemed to say. He retrieved his cigarettes from the table and left the bar. Later we would learn that he had attempted to drive to Battambang from Qui Nhon and experienced an unfortunate run-in with the Korean troops, who mistook him for a Mexi-Russian. He was “barreled” with two Viet Cong for half a day until the Koreans needed the fifty-five-gallon drum to construct a piss tube and let him out. He was bent double and close friends with the two enemy soldiers, although he hadn’t caught their names.
“I would imagine he’s a barrel of fun,” Gearheardt said. But I was still worried that we didn’t get any helpful information from him that we might need.
“Jack, trust me. We’re getting full instructions from the President of the United States. I was warned that the Brits would try to horn in on this deal. I was just trying to confuse him.”
“I hope it worked on him as well as it did on me.”
On the way back to the Marine hooches, I tried to find out more from Gearheardt about the “beer” issue and the British participation in our Barbonella mission. I had taken some comfort in their involvement. The British seemed more serious about things and less likely to go off half-cocked.
Gearheardt ignored me.
It was getting dark and as we passed the flight line we saw Grady, one of the junior pilots in the squadron, putting away his mess gear and tidying up the cockpit of the H-34 where he lived. He had been late for three flights in a row, and the Skipper had ordered him to move his gear into the aircraft and live there so he could be on time for any launch that might come up.
“Any action out there, Grady?” Gearheardt asked, looking up at the lieutenant as he brushed his teeth.
Grady spat into his canteen cup and smiled down at us.
“An ARVN unit is getting the shit kicked out of them somewhere on the road to An Khe. They have about a dozen Special Forces guys with them.”
“Did the squadron try to get any of them out?”
“Murph tried a medevac about an hour ago, but couldn’t land because of the fifty cal fire. I think we’re going to stand by until morning and hope they make it through the night.”
“Let’s go over to the operations hooch, Jack. This sounds like a job for Super Pilot.”
“You’re drunk, Gearheardt. They won’t let you fly. And you’re not on the medevac schedule anyway.”
“The day they won’t let you fly night medevac drunk is the day we throw in the towel,” he said, dodging Grady’s emptying of his canteen cup. He took off for the operations hooch.
Inside, another new pilot, Lieutenant Ross, sat at the desk listening to the ops radio. It monitored most of the channels in the area. He looked up as Gearheardt and I approached.
“The answer is no, Gearheardt,” he said.
“He can have my job,” one of the flight crew lounging on the reclining chairs in the ready room called out. “I was hoping not to die tonight anyway.”
“See, shithead,” Gearheardt said to Ross.
I already knew that Gearheardt would end up on night medical evacuation duty. The thought of missing action was more than he could take. And if Americans were wounded, he would fly a rickshaw through a monsoon shitstorm to get the troops to a med station.
After a moment of haggling and threats, Gearheardt and I went to the back room and retrieved our flight gear. We were replacing Tooms and Woods as one of the two crews on standby.
“Now we get to fly together, Jack. No one is going to go wake the Skipper and tell him we’ve taken over night medevac. Anyway, they probably know we don’t have our orders to go north yet. Suspicious assholes.” He was smiling, as he always did when he sensed a bit of action.
And we got it.
Around 0100 the squadron received a request to extract two of the Special Forces troops from the An Khe road battle.
Lieutenant Ross, still yawning after the loud phone buzzer on the ops radio had awakened him, briefed us.
“They got a couple of guys with wounds that they don’t think can wait until morning, Gearheardt. One guy has a head wound and the other a sucking chest wound and a bullet in his spine. You game?”
“Give me the fucking coordinates and call signs, Ross. You know we’ll go.”
A shaken backup crew stood behind us. New guys who had had just enough taste of night medevacs and stories of Gearheardt’s escapades to wish they were somewhere else.
“They’re on the side of a hill, Almost Captain Gearheardt,” one of the pilots said. “You’ll have to hover to load them. No landing spot.” This turned out not to be true but just a report from an earlier crew that had been lost and making up excuses.
Gearheardt was eating it up. He liked nothing better than a challenge to his fl
ying skills, danger to his life, and a bunch of pilots scared shitless surrounding him.
“You ready, Jack?” he asked. “Did you copy down all that call sign and coordinate crap?”
Walking in darkness to our aircraft which the alert ground crew had preflighted and started, Gearheardt stopped and listened for a moment, “Do we really want to stop all this, Jack? What will we do next?” It was rhetorical, and he hurried to the side of his helicopter.
A gentle rain was falling and affecting my sphincter. Night medevac in the rain. Damned Gearheardt.
It got worse. As I reached the flight line, I heard an argument between Gearheardt and one of the other pilots. Gearheardt’s position was that the flight was too hairy for the new guy and that I should take his aircraft so that we would have both choppers piloted by more combat experience. Gearheardt was probably right, but I would have preferred flying with him. I realized, however, that this new arrangement meant that I probably would not be required to make a pickup. Gearheardt could get both wounded, while I circled comfortably out of range of ground fire. I enjoyed the adrenaline rush of combat flying almost as much as Gearheardt, but unlike him, I didn’t crave it or seek it out like an idiot.
Gearheardt won the argument and I strapped into the pilot’s seat of Papa Tango Three Six, with Lt. Brown as my co-pilot. Bunting climbed into the co-pilot’s seat in PT Two Two with Gearheardt.
In the blackness we taxied to the runway and rolled down it for takeoff. Easier than lifting off as we normally did. I followed the flame coming from Gearheardt’s exhaust and joined him in a climbing turn over Qui Nhon and then inward toward An Khe.
Each of us had two crew on board, manning the M-60s. This was one of the crappiest jobs in the war, riding around in the belly of choppers piloted by wild-assed Sky Kings. They had to keep the aircraft running, shoot back at whoever was shooting at us, help get the wounded into the aircraft and, if possible, attend to their wounds as best they could on the way to the medical units. They all loved the job.