Into the Treeline

by John F. Mullins

  “Most people wouldn’a known that,” he said. “Looky here. They had dual firing circuits on this baby.” He hefted the tape-wrapped packet. “We took it out from in front of the firewall. They wanted to get you, all right. Two pounds of C-4, shaped like a platter charge. Would’ve sent a fireball right into your gut. Had one circuit hooked into the ignition system, and another to a trembler switch. Looks like they made it from the spring from a ballpoint pen and a piece of copper wire. Had enough of a gap that it probably wouldn’t have gone off when you got in the jeep. That way if something had gone wrong with the ignition circuit, the first time you hit a pothole the two wires in the trembler would have made contact, and you’d be a memory.”

  “Not too much chance of this one being made by some amateur, was there?” Jim asked. He wondered at his ability to hold it together when all he wanted to do was scream and cry.

  “Amateur? Fuck no! Whoever made this one knew what he was doing. Or she was doing. Some’a these cunts are gettin’ as good at making bombs as the dicks are. Nah, you got a pro here. And you’re one lucky sonofabitch. Ain’t you the one who got shot up in the jeep the other day? You got more lives than a fuckin’ cat. Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes.”

  Jim thought this an amusing statement from a man who disarmed bombs for a living. The humor of it brought him back to himself. He laughed aloud.

  The EOD sergeant took it as bravery, someone who didn’t care what happened, a man who cou d defy the odds and win. He wondered what made up such a person. His own job he took as a matter of course. “You want to keep this?” he asked, offering the device. “I’ve disarmed it,” he added, needlessly.

  “Sure. Why not.” He had noticed that the sergeant had been wearing gloves. “Might even be able to get some prints off it. Though I can’t for the life of me think of what good they’d do us. But we might get lucky. And if not, think of what a great souvenir it will be. It and fifty cents of scrip might get me a beer at the club.”

  “You come around the club any time I’m there, sir, and I’ll buy you that beer. Hope you last that long.”

  I hope I do too, thought Jim. I sure as hell hope I do.

  “This is getting ridiculous!” said Copely. Jim had been called to his office as soon as he had heard about the bomb. “I’m going to call up the ROIC and ask that you be recalled. You’re becoming a danger to the entire compound.”

  Why you beer-bellied asshole, Jim thought. You could give a shit about what happens to me, you’re just afraid that one of the other people around here could get hurt in the fallout. Like yourself.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’m going to move in with the PRU. I trust them.” More than I do you, he thought, but did not say. Then, unable to resist the cruel twist, he added, “Whoever did this came from the inside. One of the guards, probably, or maybe the cook, or a houseboy, or one of the girls some of your people keep bringing back here. And I don’t want to be around for them to try again. Hell, they may not have been trying to get me, anyway. It was your jeep.” Leaving the POIC to wrestle with that thought, he walked out. In an hour he was packed and moved. Vanh gave him a cot next to his own.

  For the next week he bunkered up, ventured outside the compound not at all, and within it very little. His requirements he communicated to Vanh or to the intelligence sergeant. At times the reasons for the requests were obvious, at others they made no sense at all. But by now Vanh knew to trust in his friend’s instincts, and asked no questions. Jim worked late every night, took all his meals with the PRU, ate quickly and went right back to work.

  When, during the second week, Jim continued to do the same Vanh began to worry about him. He looked haunted, blue bags under his eyes, weight falling away from him. Vanh had grown to like and admire the American, a feeling he had never thought he would have. He did not want to see anything happen to him. And it looked as if he was going to pieces.

  “My friend,” he finally said, “come. The PRU wish to have a celebration. It is a Vietnamese holiday, and they would be honored if you would share it with them.”

  Jim frowned down at the mass of scribbling on the papers in front of him, unwilling to break concentration for even a moment. “Tell them I appreciate it,” he said brusquely, “but I’m way too busy. Maybe next time, after I finish here.”

  Vanh shook his head. “No, not next time. I wish you to come now. It is important. Important for them, important for me, but most important for you. In this I must insist.”

  Jim looked up in surprise, saw the look of concern in Vanh’s eyes. Felt gratitude, affection for the little captain. Realized that he did want to give up, just for a little while, the project. Strange that the only person who cared whether he lived or died was this Vietnamese. And Al. Perhaps Roger, though he could not be sure. No one else.

  “You win,” he said, grinning, a flash of the old spirit showing on his face, heartening Vanh. “Let’s go to this celebration. But if you try to get me to eat hundred-year eggs again I’m gonna break both your legs.”

  “What are we celebrating?” he asked later, noticing that his tongue was not working well. Must have been the half bottle of Johnny Walker, he thought.

  “The liberation of our country,” Vanh replied. He was smiling happily, well lubricated by the scotch himself. “One of the many liberations. We have been fighting the outsiders for so long. The Khmer, the Chams, the Chinese many times, and the French. And we have always won. Sometimes it took hundreds of years, but we won in the end, because we knew that as long as we fought, the outsiders would inevitably grow tired and decide that we were not worth the trouble, and would go away.

  “But now,” he said, and the happiness left his face, “I think we lose. Because we are not fighting against someone from the outside, but against our own brothers. Our brothers who are infected with ideas from the outside, alien ideas, ideas as foreign to our culture as the French were to our country.

  “And how do you fight against ideas? How do you combat madness, for madness it is? Especially when it is an idea that, on the surface, seems to make such good sense. I, too, at one time was a Marxist. When I was young, at university. That is the best time to be, when one has unbounded faith in the inherent goodness of man; when one believes that people should and will work together for the betterment of mankind. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.’ It’s a very seductive idea, especially when all that you have seen is the gap between the rich and the poor, and how the poor seem never to be able to shake that condition.

  “Then you see the reality. You see that Marxism does not change things, that there are still two classes. You have merely changed one set of oppressors for another. A hereditary elite for an ideological one. And have got in the bargain an economic system that simply does not work. One in which you must suppress the natural instincts of man, usually by violence. As happened to the farmers in the North shortly after the Communists took over. As happened in Stalin’s Russia, when all the Kulaks were killed. You look at me in surprise that I should know such things? Like you, I am not just a simple soldier. I am a soldier because that is the only way I can attempt to keep away the horror I know is to come. But it will come, no matter what we do. You, too, will sooner or later grow tired of us, and will think that it is better that we be left to ourselves. A pox on both your houses, is that what one of your writers said? You will go away, and we will fall, and I will die.”

  “Bullshit!” Jim said. “We sure as hell aren’t going to abandon you. Not now, not when we’ve got this much invested in you. No way the American people are going to let us lose a war. That has never, never happened, and it isn’t going to happen now. Shit, you got me here to cheer me up, and now you’re bringing me down. Got any more scotch?”

  Some time later Vanh got up, silenced the soldiers with a shout. Speaking slowly in Vietnamese so that Jim could understand, he said, “Men of the PRU! Tonight I wish to honor those who have shown bravery in the face of the enemy, both living
and dead. For the dead, who are with us in spirit, we offer prayers. And recognition. The government of South Vietnam has authorized the Cross of Gallantry with Silver Star for the following men.” He read off the names, and presented the medals to the operations sergeant, who would make sure they got to the families. “And for those who live, please come forward.”

  What we will do for a little piece of ribbon! Jim mused. Who was it, Napoleon, who said give him enough colored ribbon and he would conquer the world? We fight for it, we die for it. Not for the ribbon itself, but for what it says about us, for the recognition we see in other men’s eyes.

  He was startled by the sound of his name. “For Captain James Carmichael, I am authorized by my government to give the highest award, the Cross of Gallantry with Gold Palm Leaf. Captain Carmichael has shown bravery far above what we have seen in other advisors. He has been there with us, has fought at our sides, has suffered and bled for a cause that is not his own. He is our brother, and our friend. What we give him is a small thing. But soldiers know what it means. And that is enough.”

  It is enough indeed, Jim thought as Vanh pinned the medal to his chest. It meant more to him than the Silver Star he had been awarded by his own government. This was given by soldiers he liked and admired, not by some faceless bureaucrat. He felt tears start to his eyes. Abandon them? Never.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said to Vanh two days later. Vanh followed him into the small office where he had been closeted for so long. Taped to the walls were sheets of butcher paper, their surface covered with blocks connected by lines, names in most of the blocks. Other pieces of paper covered the small desk, some stacked so high they were in danger of spilling on the floor. Vanh recognized his writing on much of the material, that of his intelligence sergeant on more. The rest he could not identify. The staleness of too-often breathed air hung about the room. It smelled of frustration.

  “Help me, Dai Uy,” Jim said. “I think I’ve put part of the puzzle together, but there’s some things I don’t know.”

  Vanh walked closer to the wall charts, read some of the names. Some he did not recognize. Others made him blanch.

  “Yeh,” said the American. “Pretty nasty shit here. Connections all over the place. Right here we’ve got the right-hand man of the chief Buddhist monk, his private secretary, cooperating with the military proselytizing chief of the VC. Meets him regularly when the man comes to the temple disguised as a monk. Over here we’ve got the province chief, who also talks to the secretary on a regular basis. Even got the Catholics in this. Some of them on the neutralist side don’t appear to be so neutral.”

  “You got all this from the Chieu Hois?”

  “Not all of it,” Jim admitted. “I have a few other sources of my own. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t ask about them. What I don’t understand is, if I could take a few days and figure all this shit out, how come nobody did before?”

  Vanh did not answer, instead focusing his attention on the charts. The connections were, indeed, everywhere. Some of them confirmed long-held suspicions. Others were completely unexpected. One name stopped him short. He hoped that the surprise he felt was not reflected on his face. Why was this man here! Vanh vowed to find out.

  “Perhaps they have figured it out before,” he said. “And for some reason of their own have left it alone. Until they decided to use it for their own purposes. It would not be the first time, Jim, that your CIA has done things that no one else knows of. In fact, I would be surprised if someone does not already know. Someone high. Perhaps Roger McMurdock?”

  That brought Jim up short. For the last few days, as the information kept pouring in from the Chieu Hoi interrogations and the reports from Chandragar, as the connections kept forming, he had been haunted by the feeling that forces were at work here that he did not and could not understand. Forces that were far above him, and more powerful than he could imagine. Roger a part of it? Couldn’t be! He trusted Roger, trusted him instinctively and with perhaps unreasonable force. Still, he had to admit that it was possible. Roger was a pro. If there was a good purpose behind what he was doing, it could be that he did know, and did not trust the information to anyone else. Even someone for whom the information was vital. Whose life depended upon it.

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I intend to find out. Question is, what do we do with it? Sure as hell can’t trust anyone else with it. And I don’t think we can get away with pulling in most of these people for interrogation.”

  “How about the proselytizing chief? He’s VC, been on the blacklist for a long time. A big target. And one that shouldn’t be too hard to hit. We wait until he comes back in for a meeting, pull him in, talk to him, find out what’s going on.”

  “Good idea,” Jim said. “We’re going to have to keep it damn quiet, though. Don’t think we should bring him here. If this is what it appears to be, we don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of keeping him for more than a couple of hours.”

  “I’ll set it up. I have a house outside the city no one knows about. We’ll use only a few of the most trusted PRUs. We’ll keep him until we get what we want, then decide what to do from there. You know that we may have to kill him afterward?”

  Jim shrugged. Such deaths bothered him far less than they formerly had. He hardly wondered at his callousness. “If that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is. Let’s worry about getting him first.”

  “Dai Uy,” said the PRU soldier, “you have visitor.”

  Jim shook the sleep from his eyes. After leaving Vanh to study the materials in the room, cautioning him to make sure to lock it up after he left, he had come to his cot and flopped down for a much-needed sleep. It seemed that he had just closed his eyes, though looking out the window at the setting sun he realized several hours had passed.

  “May I come in?” asked Alfred Fitzwilliam. He was at the door, the PRU soldier standing suspicious guard.

  “It’s okay, Tu,” he said. “Come on in, Fitz. What can I do for you?”

  “I brought over your mail,” the young CIA man said. “Thought you might like to have it. Didn’t figure you’d come back to the compound to get it.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate it. How are things going?”

  “Much more quietly. No more bombs, no shootings. Boring, in fact.” Fitzwilliam smiled. “Copely is much more happy. Some of the rest of us aren’t.”

  Jim looked at him in surprise. He had been looking at the envelope, seeing it was from Lisa.

  “I just wanted to tell you,” Fitzwilliam continued, “that some of us think it’s pretty shitty, Copely being so fucking scared that you have to live over here. Not much we can do about it, but we did want you to know. And that if there’s anything we can do for you, please let me know.”

  “Thanks.” He was genuinely touched. There was little they could do, but the offer was appreciated. In fact, since he’d had time to think about it, he was just as happy he’d moved out. He was a danger to the other Americans, and they were very little help to him. He didn’t want to die, but he wanted even less to die and have innocent bystanders killed because of someone’s determination to get to him.

  “Just wanted you to know,” said the CIA man. “We appreciated the training you gave us. We’re still the amateurs you called us, but maybe a little bit less so now. Anyway, I’ll keep up with your mail for you.” He turned to leave.

  “You guys take care of yourselves. Maybe you aren’t the shitheads I thought you were.”

  Fitzwilliam turned at the door, smiled. “Nobody is the shithead you thought we were,” he said. “Except maybe Copely. We’re just a bunch of people with very little useful training, no experience in this sort of thing, no guidance as to what to do, trying to muddle our way through and even do some good, if we can. Not that we get much of a chance for that.” He left.

  Jim began reading the letter from Lisa.

  I know I said that I would wait for you. But something has happened. I have met a man, another who was sha
ttered like you, but unlike you will bear the burdens of his wounds forever. You know of him, though you never met. His name is Neil Cable. Colonel Cable introduced us, thought that it might help him to talk to someone. It did. We have grown very close in the short time we have had together. Not as close as you and I, but I don’t think anyone will ever be like you.

  Unlike you, he needs me. As I told you once, you need no one. I doubt that has changed. You are a very self-sufficient man, and as I also said before, a survivor.

  I cannot turn my back on Neil. He is very fragile. Since we have been together he has started to think once again about life. I cannot take that away from him.

  I hope you will understand. I think you will. We had wonderful times together, and I will always think of you and wish that it might have been different.

  Take very good care of yourself. Come back home from that war. Build a life for yourself that does not include hate and killing. You deserve it.

  Know that I have loved you as I never loved anyone before, or ever will again.

  P.S. I will continue to keep your secrets until you need them.

  Didn’t need anyone? He had never felt so alone in his life.

  Chapter XIV

  Vanh left the compound the next day. He’d sent a message notifying them that he was coming; a risk, he knew, but one he felt forced to take. He took pains not to be followed and was sure that he had not been. His destination was just outside Hue, in one of the few outlying villages that had not been totally destroyed during Tet. It looked, in fact, hardly scarred by the war. Water buffalo slept in the shade of the banyan trees, occasionally flicking away the flies with their tails. Elders squatted in the town square, slowly chewing their betel nut and spitting the blood-red juice at their feet. The heat beat down, shimmering. Dust devils sprang up here and there, carrying the dirt and omnipresent trash high into the air. He was being watched, he knew, from the shadows behind many windows. He felt safe. His cousin was, after all, the village chief.