The Shadow of Arms

by Hwang Sok-Yong

  At the same time, ten o’clock sharp, other units of the 434th Special Action Group also executed their missions. The first unit attacked oil storage facilities near China Beach, the second unit hit the barracks at a detachment of the ARVN First Division, and the third unit bombed the main gate at MAC headquarters.

  The first unit had assembled in the slums of Somdomeh and from there penetrated into the vicinity of the navy hospital overlooking the oil terminal at China Beach. They each carried a revolver or a carbine and the team was equipped with a 107mm Chinese-made short-barreled rocket launcher. Each carried over his shoulder a canvas bag containing two rocket projectiles, making a total of ten. At the appointed time, they launched five rockets from a range of about three thousand feet, three of which hit the target. Immediately afterwards, they launched three of the remaining rockets toward the heliport on the other side of the navy hospital, then withdrew as quickly as they could. If they were not gone within ten minutes the launching point would be traced by US radar, and gunships would be sent after them while ground forces sought to encircle their position to foreclose escape. As it exploded, one of the oil reservoir tanks shot lumps of flame in all directions, causing the fire to spread to other tanks nearby.

  The third unit set off a bomb at the main gate of the MAC headquarters. Instead of using blasting caps, they detonated the bomb using an electrical switch wired from the site to a hiding place in the campside slums nearby. The guard station at the gate was blown up and the wall and the barricades left were broken into rubble.

  Charged with the mission of hitting the barracks of an ARVN battalion, the second unit mobilized two vehicles and made a frontal assault on the sentry box at the main gate of the barracks, mowing down the guards with AK-47s. Then they torched the main barracks, tossing hand grenades in and spattering the building with automatic rifle fire, while the backup force lobbed smoke shells into other parts of the compound to sow confusion. The soldiers inside tried to mount a counterattack, but they were in disarray after being awakened and the guerrillas inflicted more casualties and then slipped away under cover of the smoke.

  The separate operations by the four units were all executed concurrently and took less than ten minutes from beginning to end. In one instance, the whole attack was over in less than five minutes.

  The charge exploded at the Grand Hotel had been an anti-tank mine. The streets shook when it went off, and many houses along Doc Lap Boulevard had all of their windows shattered by the shock. At the sound of the blast, Colonel Cao, who had a woman in his arms as he sat with Frank in the glass room at the Sports Club, had a dazed look. Losa from Sri Lanka, who had been necking with Frank, let out a piercing shriek. Water began to pour down from the cracked glass walls, and suddenly the water burst out of the aquariums and there were live fish squirming around on the carpet amidst the broken glass. Cao and Frank, being men familiar with the battlefield, kicked open the door and ran outside. The customers who had been drinking in the outer room were all cowering down on the floor with the waiters. Cao dashed to the door. His driver and bodyguard rushed up, breathless.

  “What’s going on?”

  “We have no idea, sir.”

  “Which direction was it?”

  “From the north, looks like.”

  “It seemed very close.”

  Cao and his men ran outside to the police car. As they approached it, suddenly another car parked nearby turned on its headlights. Frowning, Cao instinctively held one hand in front of his forehead. The car lurched straight toward him, a submachine gun firing from within. Hit more than a dozen times, Cao tumbled to the ground. His driver and bodyguard pulled out their guns but also fell before they could fire a single shot. The car paused in front of the Sports Club long enough for the occupants to throw two hand grenades inside and to rake the building with gunfire, then it roared away with tires squealing.

  Hae Jong sprang up in bed. Mike, who had been sleeping like a log beside her, awoke at the same time and in an instant had rolled onto the floor and crawled under the bed. The sight of his behind disappearing struck her as funny, somehow, but quickly she threw off the sheet and was on her feet. With nothing on but a robe she rushed downstairs, running into Lin, also dressed in a gown. After the first enormous explosion, there had been a lull, followed by a series of shots from somewhere very near.

  Lin embraced Mimi and said, “We must escape quickly. It’s the Viet Cong. Oh, Beck, where are you?”

  Beck soon appeared hopping down the stairs in pajamas. They huddled together and crossed the garden. There was an air raid shelter in the backyard that had not been used for a long time. On the way, Hae Jong pulled away and started to go back.

  “Mimi, where are you going?” Lin asked.

  “Mike’s in the room.”

  “Don’t call him. An American soldier is dangerous.”

  Still, she turned back. She could not leave Mike. Not because she had slept with that ordinary-looking American several times. In such danger, she would not have gone back for Pham Quyen if it had been him lying under that bed. But Mike was a finance officer at headquarters. If he died, she would lose the key to US dollars. Especially now, when a single day seemed to her like a dozen years. Again there was the noise of a grenade exploding. She rushed into the room.

  “Mike! Mike!”

  He crawled back out from beneath the bed.

  “The Viet Cong are here. Quickly, get out!”

  Hae Jong covered his naked body with a sheet and pulled him along by the hand. He was trembling like a leaf.

  Madame Lin was waving from the entrance to the air raid shelter. “This way, Mimi.”

  The four of them lay down in a clump on the damp cement floor spotted with puddles. Another fusillade could be heard outside. Then all the lights went out. When it quieted down, Lin was weeping softly.

  They heard a loud siren, followed by the sound of a car pulling to a stop. They heard voices shouting back and forth in Vietnamese. Beck craned his head out of the entrance of the shelter and then said, “Sounds like government forces . . .”

  “We don’t know yet. If it’s not Americans, then we can’t be sure yet of our safety,” said Madame Lin, tugging at her husband’s pajama leg.

  “She’s right,” Hae Jong agreed. “You can never tell who’s who among the government forces. Don’t go out until you hear English.”

  Mike was shivering inside of his sheet. As an administrative officer from the American Northeast, he was the sort of soldier who, after holding a rifle a few times in basic training, had seldom been away from his air-conditioned office at headquarters, where cold drinks were always available for the asking. He had heard gunfire a few times, but never before had he experienced a firefight in close proximity like this. Hae Jong kept patting him on the shoulder.

  “I’m an American soldier; the guerrillas will kidnap me,” Mike kept moaning. “They’ll drag us all away.”

  Hae Jong hugged him. “It’s all over now, don’t worry.”

  They heard the clomping of heavy boots, then warning shots, loud enough to deafen you, came from close by. Then another burst of automatic weapons fire tore through the darkened club. After the sound of glass breaking, several dark figures of men appeared on the terrace.

  Beck yelled out, “Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”

  They heard someone say something in Vietnamese, and this time Hae Jong shouted back, “Nguoi mi, toi la nguoi Dai Han.”

  Flashlights shone down into the shelter. At the order “Lai, lai” Beck went out, his hands raised. Hae Jong helped Mike, while Madame Lin, still skeptical about the situation, followed last with her back stooped low. The soldiers were an airborne squad belonging to the provincial government security detachment.

  A lieutenant came up and asked Beck, “Isn’t there anyone else inside?”

  Beck recognized the face of this lieutenant; he was one of Colonel Ca
o’s men. “No, only us,” he said. “But there were others inside the club. The colonel, what happened to Colonel Cao? Frank was also there. What about the other customers?”

  The lieutenant shook his head. “The colonel was the enemy’s target. They did him in on the street.” From inside the club the Vietnamese staff and the hostesses began to emerge and the lights came on again. When she saw the bullet-ridden bar and the wretched condition of the interior and furniture, nearly demolished by the two grenades, Madame Lin broke down and cried. The wounded were still strewn all about. In the hall could be seen the blood-soaked corpses of three men and two women. The body lying under the arch at the entry to the hall turned out to be Frank’s. Beck spoke to the terrified employees and hostesses.

  “Now, the men will clean up the broken glass and the rest of the damage, and you women should go back inside to the house and get some rest.

  He gently nudged his wife on the back. “I can deal with the soldiers here, so you go ahead.”

  Madame Lin was still covering her mouth to stifle another outburst of weeping, and Hae Jong escorted her back to the residence. Mike, who had been squatting on the terrace with a blanket, followed the two women into the house.

  “Go back to the room,” Hae Jong said to Mike, “I’ll look after the Madame.”

  The two women went into Lin’s bedroom suite. After helping her to lie down on the bed, Hae Jong took a bottle of whiskey out of the liquor cabinet.

  “Here, have a drink. Then sleep a little, and before you know it everything will be in order again.”

  Lin finished the glass in a single gulp and then heaved a great sigh. “Another, please. Nobody knows how hard it was for me to make this club, and now it’s all gone. Now you see why I was so insistent about keeping Vietnamese out of this place.”

  “Poor Frank! Did you see his body?”

  “Horrible, I couldn’t bear to look. Mike, where’s Mike? He was with us in the shelter.”

  Hae Jong handed her another scotch and soda. “He’s back in the same room as before.”

  Drinking more slowly, Madame Lin gradually recovered her wits.

  “Wait, Mike said something very important.”

  “Yes, and believe me, I haven’t forgotten, either.”

  “That the military currency will be changed . . . isn’t that awfully important?”

  “It is,” said Hae Jong. “You and I just grabbed a golden opportunity. We saved Mike’s life.”

  “Mimi, what time is it now?” Lin asked, gazing about.

  “A little after eleven.”

  Lin sat up in bed. “It’s still early then, eh? We’ve got a lot to talk over with the captain.”

  Hae Jong got up. “I’ll call him.”

  “Hold on a minute. No rush. First, we need to figure out what sorts of things will happen when the old currency is swapped for new. Right away many people will go into a frenzy to exchange before the old currency is no good. You’ll be able to get a commission for changing it, and the commission will grow as time runs out. By the last day, you’ll be able to buy the old currency dirt cheap with piasters, like it was wastepaper.”

  As the effect of the whiskey spread over her face, Lin was gradually being transformed back into the old, sly owner of the Sports Club.

  “The best time will be right at the very end, after the deadline,” Hae Jong said. “Because we’ll be in no hurry. I mean, as long as we can count on Mike’s help. The lousy commissions are for the moneychanger or the little guys—as for us, we’ll just collect worthless military currency and cash it in for new money.”

  “But Major Pham must have large amounts of military currency, don’t you think?” Lin asked. “We have quite a bit, too.”

  “We’ve been changing it into greenbacks each month. Of course, we were planning to change them all into checks for remittance later, but . . . Anyway, what military currency we have, we can always get Mike to handle that. The big question is, how much time can Mike give us after the deadline has passed?”

  By this time Lin was wide-awake and sitting straight up in the bed. “We’ll propose that we collect the military currency and split the profit with him.”

  “I’ll go bring him back here.”

  When she came into the room, she found Mike sitting there with only his army pants on, drinking a Coke. He seemed to have recovered his composure a little. He must have had a shower, for he was wiping off his forehead with a towel draped around his neck. Hae Jong sat across from him and took out a Marlboro cigarette. Mike lit it with his lighter.

  “Thanks, Mimi. They’re all dead, I mean, Frank and the colonel.”

  Hae Jong reached out with her hand and ruffled Mike’s brown hair. “Don’t be a baby. You’re a soldier and this is a battlefield.”

  “I have no overnight pass and I’m getting worried about getting back. It’s time . . .”

  Mike was looking at his bare wrist and then started searching around the bed for his watch.

  “It’s not even twelve yet,” said Hae Jong. “You said you needed to be back at dawn. Before daybreak, Beck will take you back in his car. By the way, what you said earlier, is that true?”

  “What did I say?”

  Hae Jong took a deep puff on the cigarette and, exhaling smoke in Mike’s face, said in a cynical tone, “So, it’s supposed to be top secret, huh? You said they’ll change the military currency.”

  Mike jumped up. “Did I say that? When? Who heard me? I’m in deep shit now.”

  “You said it in this room to Madame Lin and me, nobody else. You don’t need to be so surprised. Mike, you know you almost stayed behind in that room with Frank and Colonel Cao. We were the ones who forced you out. Maybe we should have left you there with them and let you die. That way the secret would’ve been kept, all right.”

  Mike raised his arms, as if in surrender. “It’s an order from headquarters in Saigon. From next Monday, the exchange period is one week.”

  “Then after noon next Saturday, even the American soldiers won’t be able to use the old military currency at the PXs, right?” Hae Jong thought back to those little commotions in the campside villages. Suddenly, all the American soldiers vanish from the bars, the brothels, and the souvenir shops. A desolate night descends quietly on the campside village, which starts to seem like one of those Gold Rush boomtowns occupied only by ghosts after the mine is shut down. The colorful signs, the gaudy red lights, the whores with their hair dyed yellow and their nails painted red, black, or silver—this rainbow spectrum loses all of its color the moment the link to America is cut off. The specious carnival suddenly reveals its true self. Chocolate drops and candy bars in fancy wrappers, smooth soaps smelling of fragrant dreams, cigarettes adorned with silvery scripts and graceful logos, all sizes and shapes of liquor bottles; these PX goods all lose their magical powers and are degraded into isolated things as soon as the people who consume them have disappeared.

  Mornings in the campside villages are always desolate, like the stage in a theater where daylight has intruded. When a rumor circulates that the GIs will change their money, the bar owners, the dry cleaners, the pimps and the whores, even the shoeshine boys all go crazy. All they talk about is dollars, and they vent their indignation at the betrayal by the GIs. When the last day comes, they resolutely burn the most omnipotent little picture-bearing papers on earth. Touched by flames, those oily little sheets turn dark and shrivel before disappearing. The whores do not cry as they peer at the flames. So-and-so lost this much, so-and-so got an advance warning and bought such-and-such goods, so-and-so wallpapered her room with worthless notes, and so on and so forth, all sorts of stories make the circuit through the grapevine until the American soldiers reappear on the scene.

  When they come back, all the inhabitants of the campside village soon forget about the money consumed by the flames. They feel relieved that living things have regained t
heir livelihoods with the mediation of the American military. The posts of the US Army are firmly linked to such relief, such anesthesia. Think of a shoeshine boy who instantly can be reconciled to his wretched fate because a Salem cigarette is glowing with a bluish light at the tip of his filthy fingers. This carnival can last only as long as the Americans stay. All the goods and all the ornaments with which the festival is festooned manage incessantly to reproduce, making a solid network among themselves lest anything leak out.

  Dollars tossed onto that field of blood, the realm of Caesar, make a blood-red mold from which blossoms emerge—dollars are the money-medium of the world, an instrument of control. The dollar is the leading edge in the imperialist order and the American ID is the organizer. Blood-red flowers are blossoming as part of the aid that spreads military and political power ever more widely over the entire world, aid providing rich nutrition for American capital acting through its network of multinational enterprises, aid to replenish the supply of dollars used as an important medium of international settlements, a medium of savings and of trust, and the solvent that assures prosperity for the international banks.

  Hae Jong thought of her first night with Jerry, the American master sergeant back home. The filthy pink curtains, the cheap wallpaper, the 60-watt bulb, the fly shit, the neon light blinking all night through the dirt-smudged window, the odor of Jerry’s chest like that of a rain-soaked dog—she had laid her cheek on that pillow smeared with hair oil facing the wall and tears had streamed down over her face. Jerry stuck his dollars on Hae Jong’s pillow the same way he put paper in his typewriter at the office. The sound of his boots as he trudged away, the long honk of the car, the pop song by Mun Ju-Ran, the aroma of a salty croaker roasted on the fire, the Korean men in pajamas with toothbrushes in their mouths—through the narrow window up by the ceiling, Hae Jong had gazed over the fence of the American army base. The morning sunlight shone through the chain-link fence, casting shadows in ever-repeating shapes. Dollars—greenbacks with an image of ivy vines in a blue rainbow pattern, drawn as though powerfully and insidiously alive—that crisp, lofty paper money used to stare up imposingly at Hae Jong’s naked figure from that filthy satin pillow.