Bayonet Skies

by John F. Mullins

  Give it up, Jim. The die is cast, as the cliché runs. Andyou sure as hell can’t change anything now. Get this thing done, get it out of your system, and maybe you can go back and be the husband and father you should be.

  If there’s anything there to be a husband and father to.

  Bangkok. It hadn’t changed much over the years. Hot, dirty, incredibly crowded. The ride from Don Muang airport to the hotel just off Patpong Street took well over an hour, though it was only twenty miles. The exhaust fumes from thousands of vehicles hung blue in the air, almost obscuring the jungle that still pressed in to the sides of the road. Unlike traffic jams in every other place in the world, there was no sign of impatience in the unfailingly polite and cheerful people. Thailand was a world unto itself. Jim had almost forgotten how much he loved it.

  But he really knew he was back in Southeast Asia when he got into the room in the distinctly spartan hotel. The Army certainly wasn’t paying for frills on this one, he thought. The walls were of plaster over concrete block, green in places with the ever-present mold of the tropics. An air-conditioner in the window blasted away, raising a chill where the sweat had popped out on the ride from the airport. The bed was of cheap, unpainted teakwood, with a thin cotton pallet serving as a mattress. There was a freestanding sink in one corner, and in another a concrete partition hiding the toilet and shower. He looked in, could visualize the various fungi and bacteria waiting there to jump onto his feet, was glad he had remembered to bring shower clogs.

  It felt like home.

  By the time he had taken a shower to rid himself of the fatigue of travel, Jerry was banging on the door. “You feel like takin’ a little walk down Patpong, just for old times’ sake?” he asked.

  “Hell, why not,” Jim replied. They had the remainder of the evening and night free, before having to report in to the military mission at the Embassy in the morning. “Might be just what I need. How about Dick? He want to go too?”

  Dickerson came down the hallway dressed in a very loud shirt, shorts exposing legs as skinny as those of a black stork, and Ho Chi Minh sandals. That answered the question.

  “You’re about an ugly motherfucker,” Jerry told him.

  “Yeah, well, the gals on Patpong ain’t gonna give a shit about that, are they?” Dick laughed. “Especially when I got a pocketful of beauty and personality right here.” He flashed a roll of greenbacks.

  “Gets right to the heart of the matter, don’t he?” Jerry said, joining in the laughter. Clearly Jim’s two sergeants were in high spirits, looking forward to once again living the good old days. And what days they had been!

  “En avant, mes enfants,” the captain said. “Probably gonna be the last chance you’ll get.”

  Their first stop was Lucy’s Tiger Den bar, just off Patpong. Lucy’s had been a hangout for servicemen, expatriates, hangers-on, and other such riffraff for more years than anyone could remember. A sign on the wall grandiosely announced it as VFW Post Number One, the Claire Chennault Chapter. You wanted to find a particular American in Bangkok, you went to Lucy’s. Sooner or later he would turn up there.

  Lucy’s was also one of the few serious drinking places around. It had bargirls, of course; tiny vivacious things who tried to finagle you into buying bogus drinks off which they got a percentage; girls who, given the right circumstances and an appropriate amount of money, would accompany you back to your hotel room for a couple of hours, a night, a week. But at Lucy’s they weren’t persistent. If you told them you weren’t interested, they left you alone, went off to find a more likely prospect. Not like the places on Patpong where they would harass you all night, or until you gave up and in surrender ordered them a Bangkok Tea.

  “Goddamn, muthafuck, you!” said the bartender upon seeing Dickerson. “Long time, no see, Dirty Dick. You still love me too much, you sumbitch?”

  “Of course I do, Annie,” Dick said, leaning across the bar and giving her a big kiss. Annie, also, had been a fixture of the bar as long as anyone could remember. Once she had probably been very pretty. That beauty had departed long ago, along with youth. But everyone still loved her, not least for what was probably the foulest mouth in Southeast Asia. Of course, she had learned it from the best.

  “Three Singha, Annie,” Jerry Hauck ordered. “And anything anybody else is drinkin’.”

  “I know you,” she said, peering at him closely. “You crazy muthafuck. Alla time fight-fight. Like get nose bloody more than get pussy. You no fight tonight, okay? Or I shoot you ass.” She displayed an ancient sawed-off shotgun, which to anyone’s knowledge hadn’t been loaded since World War II.

  “No sweat, Annie,” Jerry declared. “I no fight nobody. No like to fight anymore. I’m a lover now.”

  Annie’s expression showed just what she thought of that lie, but she let Jerry kiss her anyway. “I think I see you too, long time ago,” she said to Jim. “You Special Force, right? Alla you crazy muthafucks Special Force.”

  “Not anymore, Annie,” Jim lied easily. “Out of the Army now. Workin’ the oilfields down in Indonesia.” It was a cover story that wouldn’t hold up too well if anyone started asking too many questions, but that shouldn’t be a problem. The patrons of Lucy’s Tiger Den studiously avoided asking too many questions. Such things could be dangerous.

  “Hokay,” Annie said, mollified. Three frosty Singha beers were procured, and quickly drunk. With the sharp tang of the beer even more memories flooded back. Jim had only been in Bangkok once during the war, and that by a mistake of the Army. He and his team had been scheduled to launch into Laos from the base at Nakhon Phanom, Thailand, but had been weathered out. It was a policy of the Thai government that no indigenous personnel from Vietnam could spend the night in Thailand, so the Montagnard members of the team had been flown back to Danang. The weather had stayed bad, and the mission had been scrubbed. Air assets were at a premium at the time, so the two American members of the team, he and Jerry Hauck, had been told to make it back to Vietnam any way they could. It was an opportunity not to be missed. The two men caught a helicopter going to Bangkok, and of course could find absolutely no way to get back to Vietnam until they were both so sick of the debauchery that going back into combat seemed infinitely preferable.

  As expected, three bargirls came up and tried to make conversation. They were quickly sent away. Jim had no intention of availing himself of their services, and the two sergeants were saving such things for later in the evening. The girls were disappointed, but not too much. It was early, and there would be more marks coming in. They got enough income off the regulars to support themselves, anyway.

  “Welcome home,” Jerry said, clinking his bottle to theirs.

  “Seems like we never left,” Dick agreed. “Caught in a goddamn time warp or something.”

  Jim looked at his companions, saw the sadness that underlay their present high spirits. This was where they belonged, and they knew it. Why had they left? they were wondering. He knew that, because he was wondering too.

  Am I the same way they are? Can I define myself only in war? Jesus Christ, Jim, are you going to keep asking yourself these same questions? Does it do a damn bit of good? Tomorrow you go back into the black hole, it sucking you in as surely as they say the ones in outer space do any matter unlucky enough to get close. Tonight you damn well better enjoy yourself. It’s the last chance you may ever have.

  “You guys about ready for another?” he asked after draining half the bottle in one long gulp. “I feel like gettin’ shitfaced tonight.”

  They drank enough in Lucy’s to get that pleasant fuzzy glow that makes everything, if not all right, at least bearable, then went back to Patpong. The street was lined with bars, barkers outside extolling the beauty of the women inside, neon signs bright as the sapphires and rubies you could buy for next to nothing in the hundreds of jewelry stores around the city. In the bars girls dressed in little more than smiles gyrated to the beat of rock and roll songs, standing on the tables and waving almost hairless pu
denda at the eye level of jaded patrons. The only change from the sixties that Jim could see was that most of these patrons were now from Germany, Japan, or Saudi Arabia, replacing the GIs on R&R who had formerly filled the bars.

  As soon as you went in you were surrounded by girls, each vying for your attention, each coyly asking if you would like to talk with them, if they could sit at your table, if you would buy them a drink. Jim didn’t mind, even bought a couple of drinks. They were all beautiful, with that delicate grace only Thai women seem to have. All desirable, all available for the right price. In the old days he would have done as Jerry and Dick were doing, scanning the group, selecting the one or ones he would have for the night. On the last trip he and Jerry had bought all the girls in one bar, took them to the huge suite they occupied in a hotel not unlike the one in which they were now staying. Had run them back and forth between the beds, vainly attempting to enjoy them all. But that was in the old days.

  I’m married now, and can’t do that, he told himself.

  Wonder how long that will last?

  Through tonight, anyway. Have another beer, Jim. And keep your dick in your pants. You’ve got enough guilt without adding to it.

  The evening got more and more hazy. Soon he lost count of the number of bars they’d been to, far less the number of beers he’d consumed. Jerry and Dick had rejected this girl and that, searching for something that only they knew of, that perhaps didn’t exist.

  At one point Jerry had gotten incensed that the few patrons didn’t seem to be paying enough attention to the dancers. He had gotten up on the bar and joined them, stripping off clothes to wild applause. Soon people were coming in off the street to see the crazy American who was taking off his clothes. He gave, Jim thought, a very credible performance. The Mama-san thought so too, congratulating him on his dancing after he had stripped down to the buff. Jerry was visibly pleased.

  “Only one thing wrong,” she said. “You have good body, but very old balls.”

  Later, after the two sergeants had finally found a couple of girls that satisfied them, they went back to the hotel. It was past midnight, just the time, they thought, for a swim in the hotel pool. Everyone stripped off and jumped in, the girls at first shy, then visibly enjoying the frolic. They ordered more beer, added shots of tequila. Jim realized he was getting very, very drunk. But who gives a shit?

  The waiter who brought them the drinks was very worried that Jim didn’t have a girl.

  “I can get you very pretty one,” he said. “Maybe you want virgin? Or very young? Black? You tell me, I get.”

  This went on through several rounds of drinks, the offerings getting more and more exotic as the man ran through every variation known to man, and some that Jim had never even heard of.

  Finally, tired of it, Jim growled “I don’t like girls. I like fat little boys.”

  The waiter’s face broke into a smile. “You wait right here, I get,” he said, turning to leave.

  “No! Shit! I was just jokin’,” Jim said, panicked. Christ, that’s all I need. “How about you just bringin’ us another round, and shuttin’ the fuck up?”

  The man, disappointed, finally left him alone. “Damn, Dai Uy,” Dickerson said, “I thought maybe you’d decided to change your luck there. You know how the story goes. Rather hear a fat boy fart than a pretty girl sing.”

  “Yeah,” Jerry chipped in. “Always did wonder about him. Sleeps real close to you out in the jungle, he does. Try not to bend over in front of him.”

  “And fuck both of you very much too,” Jim said. “Buncha assholes.” He took a shot of tequila, chased it with the beer. Was aware of a wave of affection for the two men. It’s gotta be done, I couldn’t do it with anybody better.

  And I better get to bed, before I get maudlin with it. Must be like they say, you get more emotional in your old age.

  “You guys have fun,” he said, getting out of the pool. “Just be ready at 0800.”

  “No sweat, Dai Uy,” Dickerson said. “I’m probably gonna be up all night anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Jim said. “I’ll just bet you are.”

  Chapter 7

  Captain (P) Finn McCulloden sat on a small knoll and watched the candidates for admission to the Thai Border Police go through their graduation exercise, and thought that for a bunch of raggedy-ass recruits they weren’t doing all that badly. Not that they were great, far from it. But they’d made a good start.

  The current exercise had them assaulting a dug-in position. Live fire. One squad was laying down a base of fire—Finn noted approvingly that they were applying very good fire discipline—while the other maneuvered into position, then took up the base of fire while the first squad jumped up and ran, ducking and dodging the imaginary return fire, until they flopped down into whatever slight cover the terrain allowed, whereupon the whole process was repeated.

  The idea was that you kept the enemy’s head down, degraded his ability to direct effective fire on your troops while you maneuvered close enough for the final assault. The truth was that, absent a very good artillery barrage, it was damned difficult to push someone out of a good defensive position. They had all the advantages—good fields of fire, overhead cover, little exposure of their bodies to the direct fire you tried to use against them. Usually you had to have a numerical advantage of at least ten to one when assaulting a fortified position. The Thai Border Police would never have such an advantage.

  And why would a Border Police unit have to use such tactics? one might very well ask (and a congressional delegation had asked just such a question not more than a month ago).

  Because you weren’t facing a few refugees, Finn had told them, with an expression on his face that had clearly said, What a dumb-ass question to ask. (That expression had earned him a truly inspired ass-chewing from his commander, Lieutenant Colonel (P) Sam Gutierrez.

  “You don’t fuck with the congressmen,” Gutierrez had said. “You say, yes sir, no sir, three bags full, and continue mission. Haven’t worked this hard to make you a general someday, have you fuck it up now.”

  Both he and Gutierrez had been equally amazed when their names came out on the promotion list, hence the (P). Someday, probably in the far distant future, they would be promoted, Finn to major, Gutierrez to full bird. Given their proclivity for staying in special operations units far past the time they should have, neither of them expected to go much beyond what they had. Finn had, in fact, rather expected to be RIFFED (Reduced In Force) back to his permanent enlisted rank.

  It hadn’t helped that, after a short stint in the United States after his last tour in Vietnam, Finn had volunteered to “advise” the Thai Border Police—clearly a special operations assignment. The Border Police were a paramilitary outfit—had to be, given the situation—and as such bore little resemblance to police forces one might run into anywhere else. Thailand shared a common border with Burma, China, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia. As Finn had told the congressmen, they lived in a bad neighborhood. Jewel and drug smugglers from Burma regarded the border as nothing more than an arbitrary line that meant little or nothing. China was actively supporting the insurgency that smoldered in the northern provinces. Refugees from the wars in Laos and Cambodia flooded the camps just to the other side of the respective borders, and not a few of these were either common criminals or infiltrators also interested in assuring the downfall of one of the last remaining free countries in the region. Malaysia, back when it had been Malaya, had suppressed, with British help, a Communist insurrection, and large numbers of the hard-core supporters had taken up residence in southern Thailand.

  “Why are they being trained as military?” Finn had answered the congressmen. “Because they’re fucking well fighting people who damned well are military. You send someone out, tries to ‘reason’ with these folks, as you suggest, he’s going to be found in pieces. If he’s found at all. With all due respect, you don’t understand this neighborhood. I do.”

  That he had not yet been relieved and sent home
was a constant source of amazement for both him and Sam Gutierrez.

  Special Forces had been working with the Thai Border Police for a long time. Way back in 1965 the Thai government had struggled with insurgencies along the border with northeastern Laos and on the southern border with Malaysia. The insurgents called themselves various names, but there was no doubt they were Communist-inspired. Hence the Thais called them CTs, Communist terrorists.

  The Thai government had asked for help, specifically, Special Forces help. They didn’t want massive numbers of U.S. troops—far from it. The government understood, as perhaps few other governments have, that the deployment of a division or two of Army or Marine Corps would do more harm than good. Sure, you could flood an area, suppress the insurgency for a while, but the very fact that the troops were there was a flash point in itself. One little incident and the populace would be turned against you. You lost legitimacy, were subject to the Communist label of lackeys of the imperialists, and before long things were worse than they were when you started.

  Special Forces, on the other hand, kept a low profile. There were few of them—the initial deployment was a temporary 128-man group that arrived in April 1966, their assignment only to last for the traditional six-month TDY tour most often used when you didn’t want to send people over for assignments lasting a year or longer. The Army, in its infinite wisdom, had decided that you could pay temporary duty pay—that is, reimburse the soldiers for the money they had to put out for lodging and rations—for six months. Not a day more. After that it was a permanent change of station (PCS), which meant that the Army had to provide all of the above, something it was manifestly not prepared to do at this early stage. It also meant that the dependents of the SF soldiers, who came from the 1st Special Forces Group in Okinawa, would lose their government quarters and have to be transported back to their homes of record in the United States.