Ed hurried into the master bedroom, where he found Driscoll and Mrs. Witherspoon standing just inside the door. The man from the photographs—an older version of that man—was standing among the shards of a broken mirror, wearing a gray bathrobe and holding a golf club in his hand. “It doesn’t help,” he was mumbling. To himself or to his wife, Ed couldn’t tell. “I can still hear him.”
Charles Witherspoon looked at his wife with unfocused eyes. “All the mirrors,” he said. “We have to get rid of them, Emma.” He looked down at the bits of glass scattered around his bare feet. “How many mirrors do we have?”
Driscoll stepped over to relieve Witherspoon of his seven iron. Mrs. Witherspoon went out to get a broom. Ed watched helplessly from the hallway just outside the bedroom door.
“Step carefully,” Driscoll said as he took the old man by the arm and helped him sit in a chair next to the bed. Witherspoon continued to mumble for a few moments, then fell silent. His wife returned with a broom and dustpan; Ed took these from her and made himself useful.
“It’s the mirrors,” she said to Driscoll. “He’s been getting worse these last few days. When he sees a mirror, he just… I don’t know why this is happening. He’s never broken anything in his life before this, not on purpose.”
Driscoll patted her arm gently. “He’ll be fine. You’re taking good care of him.” He glanced at Ed. “Would you mind if my friend and I speak to your husband privately?”
She left them alone, reluctantly, and shut the door.
Driscoll sat on the bed. Witherspoon was in his chair, watching the pieces of glass as Ed swept them into the dustpan. “Mirrors,” Charles said.
“What did you see in the mirror?” Driscoll asked him.
Witherspoon closed his eyes. “Can’t say.”
There was no sound except the tinkling of the broken glass.
“Charles,” Driscoll tried again, “I need to ask you a few questions about the work you did with Wensel and Kajdas.”
“Wensel? No! I don’t want to talk to Wensel anymore. He’s dead.”
Driscoll touched the old man’s shoulder. “Yes, he’s dead. You’re not talking to Wensel. It’s me—Ken Driscoll.”
“Kenny?” Witherspoon’s eyes regained their focus. “Oh, I’m glad to see you. Does Emma know you’re here?” He glanced at Ed, who had finished with the glass and was standing near the door. “Who’s that?”
“His name is Ed. Charles, I have some questions to ask you about something called Novus. Agent Kajdas mentioned it to me once, and I―”
“Novus?” Witherspoon’s eyes went wide. “You’re testing me, aren’t you? To see if I’ll talk about it. I told you I wouldn’t. Why won’t you believe me? Why do you keep threatening me?”
Driscoll glanced at Ed, who shrugged his shoulders. “I’m not threatening you. Someone told you not to speak about it? Charles, who threatened you?”
“I… can’t say.”
“If you don’t tell us, we can’t help you. Charles, there’s no one here besides us. You can tell me.”
Witherspoon’s hands were shaking. “He said he’d kill Emma if I told.”
“No one’s going to hurt Emma.”
A wild look came into Witherspoon’s eyes. “You’re not fooling me. I know who you are. Testing me! Well, I won’t talk!” He trailed off into incoherence, his chin sagging down to his chest.
Driscoll got up and walked over to Ed. “You want to try?” he whispered.
Ed shook his head. “I don’t know what else to ask him.”
“I didn’t bring you here to ask questions. I brought you so you could”— he waved his hands―”do whatever it is you do.”
“Oh. I can try that.” Ed went over and sat next to Witherspoon. The old man had fallen silent and was staring at the floor. Ed closed his eyes and entered Witherspoon’s mind.
6
Crossfire
As he fled through the dripping jungle with Angus and Plotkin, Danny found himself looking back fondly on the days he’d spent marching in the blistering sun with his lungs full of dust. They worked through the thick foliage for at least an hour in almost total darkness. Blair went in front, Plotkin followed with his hand on Angus’ shoulder to avoid getting separated, and Danny brought up the rear. They had left Plotkin’s gear at the clearing when the Viet Cong had arrived. Danny carried the radio in its harness on his back, in addition to his own things.
For the first twenty or minutes or so they had tried to move quietly, fearing that the enemy would hear them. But before long they realized two things: First, that they made as much noise when they tried to be silent as when they didn’t. Second, no one was coming after them. The bodies of Lieutenant Lonnie and Specialist Volpe had undoubtedly been found, and the VC men were probably no more eager to go running off into a dark jungle than Danny and the others.
So Angus had slowed their pace, taking time to make sure they were going in a sensible direction (uphill), and stopping every half-hour to drink some water. Danny wished, at first, that he’d thought to take the map out of the Lieutenant’s things. But soon he realized that they didn’t need it. As long as they kept going in the general direction of Hill 734, they would either run into an enemy patrol and be killed or run into the other half of their platoon, led by Sgt. Bottomley, and survive. There were other possibilities, but these were not attractive and Danny had not permitted them to enter his mind.
At midnight they found a sheltered spot and set up camp. Danny wanted to get out the radio and call for help. Blair argued against it. “We don’t know where we are,” he said. “No point making a call till we get somewhere they can pick us up. Save the battery. I think we’d better stay quiet for now.”
They shared some rations. Plotkin wrapped himself in his poncho and slept. Danny and Angus weren’t tired, so they set up some Claymores and then sat together against a pair of trees with their rifles in their hands and talked quietly about home. Danny told Angus about his sister and his mother and Mr. Fu, and realized that he missed them all terribly. Angus talked about his girlfriends. He had two, and he couldn’t decide which one he missed more. They both dozed off after a while, but their sleep wasn’t restful.
Dawn arrived, finally, and brought with it a hint of hope. During the night they had made their way to the top of a small rise in the terrain. In daylight they could see, on the other side of a valley, the hilltop that had been their original destination. The crown of the hill was clear of trees, but they couldn’t see any people or equipment up there. A short distance down the side of the hill, Danny was able to pick out a flat area east of the main ridge that had to be their rendezvous point with Bottomley’s group. It was only about two miles away, although it looked like a couple of very long uphill miles. There was no telling whether the Sergeant would have bugged out and left when Lonnie hadn’t arrived the prior evening, but they could only worry about so much at one time.
Hill 734 was almost due west of their current position. “Look at that,” Angus said, pointing to a valley just to the left of the hill, “that’s Cambodia. That’s Cambodia over there.”
Danny looked at Cambodia. “It looks a lot like Vietnam,” he said.
“I don’t like the clouds in Cambodia,” said Plotkin. There appeared to be a storm brewing in the west; the clouds there were almost black.
After eating a modest government-issue breakfast, Danny took out the radio and connected the short-range antenna, which he unrolled like a tape measure. There was supposed to be another antenna for longer-range transmissions, but it was missing—probably still with Brandon Volpe’s body. The handset was wrapped in a plastic bag to protect it from the elements. Recalling the lessons he’d gathered from Volpe’s thoughts during their weeks together in the field, he hooked up the battery and checked the dials. “Who do you want to call first?” he asked the others. “General Abrams? President Nixon?”
“Call my mom,” said Plotkin. “Tell her to send cookies.”
Danny turned on th
e power switch, held the handset up to his ear, and dialed in one of the presets. A sound of static burst from the earpiece. “Bingo!” he said. Then he pressed the talk button on the handset and said, “Uh… Hello? Can anyone hear me?” He released the button and waited.
The static died out.
“Shit,” said Danny.
Angus Blair poked at a couple of the buttons. Danny swatted his hand away and tried poking at the same buttons himself.
“Listen,” said Plotkin.
“What about the squelch?” Blair asked. “Did you adjust the squelch?”
“It’s not the squelch.”
Angus banged the side of the battery pack with his fist.
“Stop that,” Danny snapped.
“Shut up” Plotkin said. “Somebody’s coming.”
Danny switched the radio off and struggled to get it strapped properly onto his back in case he needed to run. He and Angus grabbed their rifles and dropped to the ground alongside Sammy, who was squinting down into the valley.
“Watch that brown area down there,” said Plotkin. They breathed slowly and watched the spot he had indicated, near the lowest part of the valley. After a few moments they saw a flash of movement among the trees.
“Animal?” said Angus.
Danny shook his head. “People.” He could see brief, dim flashes of thoughts coming from that direction. He broke into a smile. “I think they’re American.”
Plotkin jumped to his feet, swayed precariously, and leaned against a tree for support.
“Get the hell down,” Blair chastised him. But Sammy was already starting downhill. Danny and Angus looked at each other, then followed.
The rain started again as they made their way down the hill. A few fat drops fell first, quickly changing to a torrential downpour. Danny lost his footing several times in the mud, and soon he was covered in thick, reddish-brown mud. “Monsoon season,” Angus pointed out helpfully. “It’s finally here.”
They went straight toward the spot where Sammy had seen movement. Danny continued to reach out with his thoughts, guiding the others in the direction where the stream of thought-images seemed strongest. “It’s Bottomley,” he told them as the pictures became clearer. But the images he saw were dark and full or terror. “He’s lost men. A lot of them. He’s scared.” Neither Angus nor Sammy asked how he knew that.
It was difficult to hear anything over the pounding rain, so Danny was caught completely by surprise when a man in U.S. Army fatigues came sprinting out of the jungle ahead and ran right past him. Danny thought it might be Sgt. Bottomley, but it was impossible to tell. Three more soldiers followed close behind. They appeared and were gone before he had time to react. He looked at Angus, who looked back at Danny and slowly got down on his knees. “I think we better stay low,” he said, crouching down and pulling Sammy down with him.
A few seconds later, two men wearing green uniforms and the broad, bowl-shaped hats of the North Vietnamese Army came crashing through the underbrush in hot pursuit of the four fleeing Americans. Danny raised his rifle and put two bullets in one man’s back as he was running away. Angus took care of the other one. These were not the pajama-clad guerillas of the Viet Cong; they were uniformed NVA, trained soldiers from North Vietnam.
In all the excitement, Danny had forgotten that he was standing in plain sight. He dropped to the ground and crawled on his belly over to where Angus and Sammy were lying down in the mud. “Why d’you think four guys were running from two gooks?” Plotkin was asking Blair.
“Because,” Danny replied, speaking very softly, “there’s about five more right over there.” He pointed to a cluster of trees some fifty yards away. No men were visible, but Danny knew they were there.
Angus inhaled sharply. Plotkin muttered under his breath. Danny and Angus both checked their weapons one more time, just in case. Plotkin had no weapon other than his knife; he’d left everything back at the clearing when the mortar attack had started.
Danny was the first to spot them, since he knew exactly where to look. The other five soldiers were being more careful than the first two had been, staying behind cover with their AK-47s at the ready. They hadn’t seen Danny and the others yet, or else they would already have opened fire. But they’d heard the gunshots and knew which direction the sounds had come from.
“Hey Charlie Brown,” Angus whispered, “we’re gonna want to move from this location.”
“I’m pretty comfortable right here,” Danny replied. The NVA soldiers were starting to move out from their cover, and he didn’t see any way to move from their hiding spot without drawing attention.
“Look the other way, man. This is about to turn into a Delta Sierra situation.” That was a code phrase that meant dog shit—a situation that would end badly for everyone. In Danny’s opinion, their situation had qualified as Delta Sierra a long time ago. But then he turned and saw what Angus was looking at.
Bottomley and his three men had circled back around and were trying to flank the Vietnamese soldiers. Danny could see them sneaking through the forest, using the rain and foliage to conceal their movement. They were moving around to a location that would put Danny and the others directly in the crossfire.
“I think we’re about to find out whether Orlando was right about that whole Jesus thing,” said Plotkin.
“I’m going to try to signal the Sergeant,” Blair said, and he started to sit up.
Danny put a hand on his shoulder to stop him. “Those guys are panicking,” he said. “They’ll shoot at the first thing that moves. Just sit tight.”
“They’re coming this way. If we sit tight, they’ll trip over us.”
The argument became moot a few seconds later when the NVA soldiers opened fire. Bottomley and his men returned the favor. The Sergeant, normally quite taciturn for as long as Danny had known him, bellowed expletives at the Vietnamese and dared them to come out of their hidey-hole.
At the sound of gunfire, Plotkin decided he’d had enough. He scrambled to his feet, waved his hands in the air, and ran screaming toward the Americans as automatic weapons chattered all around him. He made it unscathed to Sgt. Bottomley and dove into the weeds for cover.
Danny considered doing the same thing, but decided it would be best to get out of the line of fire as quickly as possible. He nudged Angus to get his attention, then started crawling through the mud until the sound of weapons fire was some distance behind him. When he finally stopped and looked around, Blair was nowhere to be seen.
The gunfire died down after another minute or so. Rain was still falling heavily, so he couldn’t see at first which side had won the skirmish. When he recognized the silhouette of Sgt. Bottomley leading three others toward the cluster of trees, he let out a great sigh of relief and stood up.
“Sergeant!” he called. “American soldier! Don’t shoot!”
He realized, a few seconds too late, that this was not an intelligent move. They couldn’t see him clearly in the rain, and his uniform was so completely covered in mud that it would be unrecognizable to them. Bottomley, still full of adrenaline, spun around and aimed his weapon in Danny’s direction. His three men all did the same.
“Don’t shoot!” called Blair’s voice from somewhere behind the four soldiers.
But the men were already spooked, and hearing voices from all directions seemed to be more than they could deal with. One of them raised his rifle and peered at Danny through the rain. “It’s a goddamn gook!” the man said before pulling the trigger.
His aim was off. Danny was spattered by an explosion of mud when the bullets hit the ground near his right foot. He looked frantically for someplace to seek cover.
“We’re Americans, don’t shoot!” Blair shouted again. But now all four of them were shooting. Danny ran as fast as he could with his heavy gear strapped to his back. As he ran, he heard a deafening crack that was not merely a sound, but a jarring vibration of his whole upper body. A bright light seemed to flash behind his eyes. He tumbled to the ground an
d slid down a muddy hill. When he reached the bottom, he was dizzy and tired and wanted to sleep. But the raindrops kept hitting his face and waking him up. He was on his back with his pack under him, so he couldn’t sit up. Like a capsized turtle, he kicked his feet and flailed his arms until he managed to roll over. Then he got up and ran again, zigzagging not as a tactic but because he was having trouble going in a straight line.
He waded across a small stream and stopped to rest on the opposite bank. The water reminded him that he was desperately thirsty; he drank from his canteen and tried to figure out what to do next. Then he tried to remember what he had just been doing. He took off his helmet and scratched his head, and his hand came away with blood on it. That didn’t seem like a good thing. He examined the helmet in his hand and saw a deep furrow, like it had been struck with an axe. It was from a bullet, he realized. A glancing impact, luckily. But who had been shooting at him? He was having trouble remembering.
He dropped the helmet and looked around, suddenly feeling terribly anxious. He had been with people recently, hadn’t he? But now he was alone. Raising his hand to the top of his head again, he checked the bloody spot and found that it was not a large wound. But it stung sharply when he touched it, and he felt rather queasy. And his head was starting to hurt. He dipped the helmet in the stream to fill it, then used the cool water to wash his head and face.
The rain was stopping, and the sky overhead was starting to get brighter. Danny felt a strong urge to find a place to hide. He wasn’t sure who might be after him in this jungle, but whoever they were, he didn’t want them to find him. He forced himself to get back on his feet and keep walking. There was a narrow path leading uphill, parallel to the stream, so he followed it.
Every few steps, he looked over his shoulder and watched for movement behind him. If someone was following him, they weren’t being obvious about it. He went uphill for a while, and never once saw or heard any sign of pursuit. He tried reaching out with his mind to find out if anyone was nearby. But as he did so, a sharp pain rose in his head. The harder he tried, the more his head hurt, until the pain grew too severe and he gave up. That certainly hadn’t ever happened before. He tried again, straining until the pain was unbearable. After so many years of being able to do it, the loss of the ability was like being trapped inside his own skull. He felt like he was locked in a box. Fighting down panic, he tried again and again. Then he sat down on a rock and felt the growing bump on his head. Soon he felt tired, so he lay down and went to sleep. It was a sleep completely devoid of dreams.
The Music of the Machine (The Book of Terwilliger 2) Page 9
