Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  “Tell him what else you found,” commanded McMurdock.

  “Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. Jewelry. Couple of rings. One of ’em a wedding ring. One necklace. Gave ’em to the German medical mission. They had belonged to the people who’d been killed. Neutrals. As if anyone could be neutral in this goddamned place.”

  Roger stared deeply into Jim’s eyes. As if to say, you see what we have to deal with? You still have compunctions about killing these assholes? These beasts who raped and murdered nurses who would give medical treatment to the Communists as quickly as they would anyone else? Where do you stand, Captain James N.M.I. Carmichael?

  Jim raised his glass in slow salute. They drank together, a tacit understanding reached.

  “Now,” Roger said, when glasses had been lowered, “where the hell is everyone? We have some distinguished visitors from Saigon, and I think we should subject them to your presence. You wait here, I’ll go stir them up.”

  “So what do you think?” Al asked after Roger departed.

  “Looks like I’m not going to get fired, at least.”

  “I’d say that would be the least of your worries. This guy is shit-hot.”

  “As long as he lasts.”

  “Hasn’t done too bad so far. He’s been over here four years now. And he likes us. So life isn’t too goddamned bad. Never lived so high. Bunch better than being out with an infantry company, isn’t it?”

  Jim started to agree, then wasn’t so sure. Roger was returning, Saigon visitors in tow. One of them was Moira.

  Chapter VII

  “These are my new young tigers,” Roger introduced them. “A week in the field and already they’ve done more than anyone else has in the last four months. Gentlemen, this is Eliot Danforth, and his able assistant, Moira Culpepper.”

  “The two captains and I have met,” said Moira. “Jim, Al, how are you? Looks like you’ve acclimatized rather well.”

  “I’d say they have,” said Danforth. He was a thin, aristocratic-looking man. Jim judged him to be another of the eastern power establishment. “Congratulations. Our selection process is obviously working, if we get people like you.”

  Moira had the courtesy to lower her eyes at the mention of the selection process. Was it embarrassment, Jim wondered, or was she modestly receiving the accolades for a job well done?

  “Mark sends his congratulations, too,” she said. “He’ll give them himself, next time you get down to Saigon.”

  “Yes,” said Jim, not trying to keep the edge of anger out of his voice. “I’ll be glad to see Mark again. We’ve got a lot to talk about.”

  Al, sensing the tension in the air, and aware of the situation between Moira and Jim, decided to get things moving. “Give these people a drink!” he demanded of the bartender. “And get us one too. And don’t stop bringing them. We’ve got some catching up to do. Roger, did I ever tell you about the time this asshole and I,” referring to Jim, “were coming back from Saigon and I got shot in the leg?” He launched into a long and involved story that included him as the hero and Jim as an unfeeling bastard who had told him to shove his neck scarf in the hole in his thigh and shut the fuck up while Jim concentrated on driving out of the ambush.

  Jim watched Moira as she listened to the story. Occasionally she glanced at him, but her look conveyed nothing more than general friendliness. A real pro, he thought. He had to admire her, even at the same time as he was feeling resentment for being so well and thoroughly fooled. His own fault. It had always been a tendency of his to take people at face value. And, he had to admit, he had little experience with, and less understanding of, women. But when someone told you something, you believed them. Until events proved you wrong. Now, he thought, trust was a commodity he could no longer afford.

  Other members of the mission began to drift in, aware of the visitors from Saigon and wishing to make themselves known. Gradually the place filled up. Moira was soon surrounded by a group of young staffers, each eager to vie for her attention. Roger and Eliot retired to a corner booth and engaged in whispered talk. Some deep spook shit, Jim supposed. He allowed himself to drink even more than usual. Partly this was a result of feeling relatively safe in Danang. The Embassy House here had none of the defensive deficiencies of the one in Hue. He had noticed upon arrival that the guard force was sharp, alert, and professional.

  Partly the drinking was to relax. He realized how tightly wound he had become in the last week. And partly, he admitted to himself, it was because of the situation with Moira. He hated to be fooled. And she had done a very good job of it.

  He became aware that Al was trying to get his attention. “Let it go, Jimmy,” he said. “Not worth it. Come on! Lets get some attention. How about a rendition of ‘Mary-Ann Barnes’?”

  Jim joined him in song. It was an old Special Forces ballad, sung at virtually every gathering. They sang loud and clear, stopping conversation. The young men around Moira looked at them in distaste, whispering asides to her that Jim was sure included reference to the crudity of these soldier types. Fuck them, he thought, singing louder.

  “Mary-Ann Barnes was the queen of all enlisted WACs,

  She could do the tricks that would give the boys the shits,

  Shoot green peas out her fundamental orifice,

  Do a double somersault and catch them on her tits!

  She’s a great big sonofabitch, twice as big as me,

  Hair on her ass like the branches on a tree.

  She can shoot, ride, fart, fuck;

  Fly a plane, drive a truck.

  She is the girl that’s gonna marry me,

  Special Forces, Airborne, Ranger, Infantry,

  Pathfinder tooooo.”

  Roger, who had halted his conversation with Eliot Danforth to listen, applauded heartily. He was joined after a few tentative moments by everyone else. Phony bastards! thought Jim. The boss likes it, so you do too.

  “You guys know ‘Blood on the Risers’?” asked the ROIC, leaving Danforth to join them at the bar, making everyone else wonder why these two crude soldiers had won the evident approval of a man they all regarded with some fear. The bolder among them drifted close, even attempted to join in some of the songs. The others continued to attempt conversation, and when that proved impossible because of the noise, drifted away to their comfortable rooms. The PRU advisors would be going back to the field soon, and good riddance. The club was a much more pleasant place without them.

  Moira stayed for a long time, listening and watching. She thought about the time in bed with Jim. He had been a good lover, considerate of her feelings and at the same time possessed of a passion that had overwhelmed her with its intensity, making her forget her professionalism for just a little while. A much better lover, in fact, than Eliot. Who, she saw, was making the little head inclination that signaled that he wanted them to leave. She sighed. Jim couldn’t do anything for her career. Eliot could. She left.

  Jim didn’t even notice that she had gone until much later. He was having fun. The drinks flowed free and fast. As so often happened, they seemed to energize him, rather than infect him with the lethargy they seemed to induce in so many people. The group dredged up songs from memory, quickly running out of military ballads, going to rock-n-roll from the fifties. One of the older CIA men suggested “Lili Marlene.” The high point of the evening came when Al, in a heartbreakingly clear tenor, sang “Danny Boy.” When he had finished all seemed to tacitly agree that any more singing would be anticlimactic.

  Things started breaking up around midnight. Roger, protesting that he had to work on the morrow, adamantly refused the “just one more drink” and left. The other employees of Embassy House departed soon after. Jim was left with Al at the bar. They dismissed the bartender, telling him that if they wanted another drink they could get it themselves.

  Jim felt a great wave of affection for his short, powerfully built companion. Al’s shock of black hair was down in his eyes and he was trying to explain some profound truth, slurring his words enough
to be completely unintelligible. The language, Jim decided, was a mixture of bourbon and Greek.

  “How long we been together, Al?” he asked. He was aware that his speech was none too clear either.

  “Long fuckin’ time.”

  “Yeh,” he agreed. “Long fuckin’ time. Only friend I got. Don’t you ever get killed, you sweet motherfucker.”

  “Me? Fuck that. Too permanent. I know people that was killed back in 1963. And you know what? They’re still dead! Personally, I think dying is a highly overrated thrill.”

  “Me too. Think you can stand up? Not sure I can, and I sure as hell don’t feel like sleeping on the floor.”

  Supporting each other, they ricocheted down the long hallway to the rooms they had been assigned. Al gave Jim a big slobbery kiss on the ear, as Special Forces men are wont to do, and gravely entered his room, where he fell across the bed fully clothed, snoring loudly.

  Jim, feeling for a moment very much in control of himself, locked Al’s door, opened his own, slowly and precisely took off his clothes and hung them up, turned back the bed covers, and crawled in. Got up after a couple of moments of shivering and turned the air-conditioner down. Got back in bed. The room started revolving around him. He put one foot on the floor. It stopped. Got up after a few moments and went to the bathroom, where he heaved up his guts. After the first great wash of liquid there was little else. Still he retched, his body attempting to rid itself of the poisons he had so happily put into it.

  When the retching finally stopped he clung to the porcelain stool. It felt wonderfully cool on his face. Thought about sleeping where he was, then reluctantly dragged himself off to bed.

  In her own room Moira tossed restlessly on the bed. Eliot had been particularly unsatisfying tonight. He always made love in such a cool and detached manner. As if this was a task that he thought beneath him. As she always was. He only liked the one position. For him it was a control thing. He could never let her forget that she was subservient to him; at work, in bed, when they talked of other things. She wondered if she hated him. Probably not, she thought. In a way she admired him. Aspired to be like him, always in control. And as much as he was using her, she was using him.

  But at the moment there were other needs to be filled. And she thought she knew just where to go to satisfy them. At four o’clock she got up, put on a thin robe, and went out into the hallway.

  Jim heard the knocking as if from afar. It seemed to go on for a long time. He dragged himself from the bed, head still muzzy from drink, stumbled in the dark toward the banging, opened the door to see her standing there. She pushed her way inside without waiting for him to invite her, went to the bed and sat down, smiled invitingly.

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing here?” he demanded.

  “Now, is that any way to talk to an old friend? Come over here. Sit down beside me. I want to talk to you.”

  The light from outside streaming through the window was enough to illuminate the curve of a breast where her robe was falling open. She looked alluring, mysterious. Bitch! he thought. He flipped on the overhead lights.

  She squinted nearsightedly in the sudden glare. “Do we really need that?” she asked, a little girl’s plaintive quaver in her voice.

  Oh, you are good, he thought. Despite himself he was attracted. Mentally he scoffed. Just call me Mr. Gonad. What an asshole I am! She fucks me to get information, leads me around like some sort of tethered bull, gets what she wants, and splits, and when she shows back up again all I can do is stand here with a hard-on.

  “What do you want this time?” he asked, standing where he was. He did not trust himself to get too close to her. “You found out all you needed to know in Hawaii. Obviously I passed your little test. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

  “Oh, that,” she said, dismissing it with a gesture. “I wondered why you were so unfriendly. Surely you can’t think I went to bed with you just to get you to talk. If you’ll just think back over that night, you’ll realize I didn’t have to. You were talking plenty without it. I went to bed with you because you attracted me, because you turned me on. You still do. Now will you come over here and sit beside me? What on earth do you think I could want out of you now? We know everything you do.”

  That you probably do, he thought. Despite prior good intentions he wanted more and more to go to her, hold her, make long and passionate love with her. The incipient hangover he’d woke up with had gone away. The residual alcohol still coursing through his body energized him. But still he stood his ground. Goddamn them anyway! They needed to know that they could not control him. And it might as well start with her.

  Her eyes narrowed. She did not like rejection. She well knew the power of her body. With it she could get anything she wanted. She always had. She got up, walked over to the switch and turned out the lights. Went over to where he was still standing like some ridiculous statue, pressed herself to him and kissed him full on the mouth. At first he didn’t react. It was like kissing a stone. Then as she worked at him his lips softened, responded. She felt him swelling against her belly. Grasped him, pulled him to the bed, pushed him down. She placed herself astride, pushed down on him. His body remained rigid and unmoving for a few moments. It was almost as if she were raping him. It excited her.

  Finally he began to move, slamming himself into her, an act of anger more than of love. She didn’t care, anger, love, it was all the same. She used them, just as she was using him, to get what she wanted.

  When finally she had exhausted her desire she fell forward onto his chest. He remained hard. I don’t remember if he even came or not, she thought. Not that it mattered. She rested for a few moments, then got up and put her robe back on. Smiled at him where he still lay as she had left him. Blew him a mocking kiss and slipped out the door.

  He lay awake for a long time, half amused and half pissed off. Slut! The word seemed appropriate, for himself as well as her. And he still desired her. If she came back in right now he had to admit that he would probably do the same. He thought wryly back to what an old team sergeant had once said.

  A hard dick has no conscience.

  Roger looked not a bit the worse for wear from the alcohol he had imbibed the night before. Jim wondered how he did it. He had a headache nagging behind the eyes that had not yet responded to the three aspirin he had taken upon finally getting out of bed. And Al looked like he was really suffering. His eyes were blood red, body reeking from the chemicals it was throwing off.

  It was Al who spoke first. “Can we go back to the field?” he asked. “I don’t think my body can take much more of this.”

  Roger laughed. “Might have known the younger generation couldn’t handle it,” he said. Then he grew serious. “I want to tell you exactly what you can expect from me. Your mission is simple. As the people in Saigon say, ‘Neutralize the VC Infrastructure.’ You do that, in whatever way you can,” he fixed them with his eyes when he stressed the “whatever,” “and you’ll find that I back you. One hundred percent. I’ll keep the MACV brass, Agency honchos, press, everybody, off your backs. So far you’ve shown that you can handle it. You think you can go on doing that? Think about it before you answer.”

  Al looked at Jim, who nodded.

  “You guys aren’t stupid, but allow me for a moment to treat you as if you were. As if I wasn’t quite sure you understood what I was saying, and so I broke it down into the simplest possible terms. No more bureaucratic euphemisms. You will be participating, indirectly and sometimes directly, in assassinations. And assassinations are forbidden by every military convention. You are still military men, even though you have been seconded to us. So if you got caught, if this thing were to come out, you could be subject to general courts-martial, and charged with murder. And the penalty for murder, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, is death. There is no statute of limitations on murder. So this could come back and bite you in the ass twenty, thirty years from now. Now, I don’t think anything like that is going to ha
ppen. Hasn’t so far, and there’s no reason to think it will. The brass, all the way up and down the line, and that goes to the highest levels, know what happens here, and have been satisfied to be blind to it. But you can damned well bet that if anything ever happens, they aren’t going to be the ones who take the blame. It will go right down to the lowest levels, and that means you. Now, do you still feel the same way?”

  “Like you said, Boss,” Al said, “we ain’t stupid. We just look that way sometimes. We pretty well figured all this stuff out before. But somebody’s got to stop these cocksuckers. And if not us, who? And as for getting nailed for it, so what else is new? That’s happened before, it’ll happen again. If I remember my history right, the Brits did it to some poor Aussie asshole named Morant in the Boer War, and there are probably thousands of other examples that I don’t know about. The guys at the bottom always get the shit. Sometimes you just can’t bail it out fast enough.”

  “Then I’ll tell you one more thing,” Roger said. “Like I said, I’ll back you to the hilt. You go down, and you can bet your ass, I’ll be there with you. That’s the way I work. But there might come a time when I’m not around anymore. These things happen. So cover your ass. Any time you go out for a mission, make sure you have a signed arrest order. And find yourself a safe place, preferably out of this country, and make sure a copy of that order, or any other paperwork, goes there. Keep it, forever. It’s the old story of cover your ass with paper. People have much less of a tendency to point a finger when that finger points right back at them.