Bobby had managed to get the casualties to the top of the hill. He arranged them alongside the rest of the wounded. They were all lying in a row under ponchos, most had serum albumin drips dangling next to them from sticks or rifle butts. Bobby asked Lopez if he had spare water. Lopez turned so that Bobby could get a canteen from a rucksack pouch. Bobby got the water, then stopped and stared at the canteen. There was a fragment of gray flesh with hair attached stuck to the canteen cap. Bobby flicked the meat off with his middle finger, unscrewed the cap and offered the water to one of the wounded.
Some of Kim’s CIDG had begun to clear a landing zone. They were down on their hands and knees probing for mines with knives and pieces of stiff wire. They were making slow progress and had uncovered only four mines, none of which seemed to be part of a logical mine laying pattern. Lopez was concerned about the mines, but also concerned about the time it was taking to clear them. Some of the wounded were hemorrhaging to death and others were going into terminal shock. The rain pattered down. They had finished burning the shit at Nui Hoa Den.
Lopez sat down, got out his map to see if there was a safer place to bring in a medevac. Kim was standing above him studying his own map. His feet were straddling a tuft of grass directly in front of Lopez’s face. Lopez didn’t know why, but something in that tuft of grass drew his eyes like a magnet. Then he saw it. Concealed in the grass between Kim’s legs and half buried in the ground was a ‘Bouncing Betty’ – a World War II mine that leaps four feet into the air before detonating, thus much more efficiently scything the area with shrapnel than an ordinary land mine. Ly saw what Lopez was looking at and grabbed Kim by the shoulders. ‘Don’t move, not even a centimeter.’
Bobby came over. He looked anxious. ‘When are we going to get this medevac in. Some of these people are looking really bad.’
‘Listen,’ said Lopez, ‘this place is fucking lethal. No way are we doing a medevac here. No way. It’s all a fucking mess.’
‘So let’s try the other end of the hill. Phong says he thinks it’s pretty clear.’
Lopez hadn’t considered that part of the hill at first because it was too exposed to ground fire from Phu Gia, but his concern for helicopter pilots was waning. They couldn’t wait any longer. He got on the radio and said that they were ready for the medevac.
It didn’t take long to move the casualties – some had wilted to a pale etiolated color – to the place Bobby had suggested. The ground was rougher and looked as if it had been ignored by the minelayers. There hadn’t been time to check it out, but a number of CIDG were walking around the area without getting blown up. Lopez thought it was stupid they hadn’t tried there sooner.
Twenty minutes later the river valley was echoing with the racket of the medevac helicopter and her escort gunships. Lopez marked the LZ with a yellow smoke grenade. There was a small hitch when the smoke blew back over the wounded and it looked like the helicopter was going to land on the casualties, but he radioed corrections in time. It took only a few seconds to load the wounded, dead and dying on the helicopter – the pilot made it clear he wasn’t going to hang around – and soon the dust had settled and all was still again.
Lopez was asking Kim the best way to get the civilians to the refugee camp at Que Son when Bobby brushed past and said, ‘Can anything else go wrong?’ Lopez watched Bobby walk back across the landing zone to where he’d left his rucksack. He shouted at his back, ‘Could have been a whole lot worse.’
Bobby was at the very spot which had been directly underneath the belly of the helicopter. The pilot had been lucky: the medevac’s landing wheels must have straddled the mine. This was a mine designed to destroy vehicles, not just foot soldiers. It probably contained enough explosive to make a jeep turn a somersault or blow the track off a main battle tank. It blew Bobby’s legs off and tossed what was left of him ten feet into the air. But it didn’t kill him.
The medevac pilot refused to return for Bobby; he said the landing zone had not been properly cleared and marked. When, however, they realized the casualty was an American, one of the escort gunships turned back and picked him up.
It was, in the end, easy to find a way out of the minefield and down the hill. The Phu Gia civilians showed them a safe route. They had known the whole time.
LOPEZ GOT THE CIVILIANS TO QUE SON in the late afternoon. He had expected to be met by the Duc Duc district chief and his adviser, but the only official there was Launcelot Krueger accompanied by his two Korean bodyguards. Krueger was wearing tan chinos and a shirt decorated with bright tropical birds. He was leaning against a bamboo gate at the entrance to the refugee camp. Lopez went over to him: ‘I’m supposed to see the senior district adviser.’
‘Who’re these fucks?’ Krueger nodded towards the swarm of Phu Gia civilians.
‘They’re not your problem.’
‘That’s right, they’re not my problem, because I don’t go around breaking international law by using military force to remove civilians from their homes. You’re in fucking trouble, Lopez, big trouble.’
‘Keep your nose out of this, Krueger. It’s none of your business.’
‘Who authorized you to move these people?’
Lopez didn’t say anything.
‘Go on, tell me. Was it my pal Archie? Did Archie tell you that you could get away with this?’
‘I brought these people out as POWs. If the district chief doesn’t agree with that, he has to accommodate them in the resettlement center or in a refugee camp.’
‘Who told you that? Did you get it in writing? Didn’t you at least take minutes of the meeting?’
‘You are one prime fucking asshole, Krueger.’
Krueger gave a signal and one of the Koreans took Lopez down from behind and starting choking him in a hammer-lock. The other bodyguard had grabbed his rifle.
‘Let him up.’ There was the sound of a helicopter in the distance. ‘I’m not going to waste any more time on you, Lopez: you’re too insignificant. I just want you to know one thing: it’s GVN policy, and US policy too, to accept no more refugees. No more refugees. So send these fucks back.’
The helicopter was circling to land on the soccer field. It had the red, white and blue livery of the agency’s fake civilian airline, ‘Air America’. Lopez knew that he was a fool, a completely powerless fool. Krueger and the Koreans boarded the helicopter and took his rifle with them. After taking off the pilot hovered at about fifty feet above the ground; Krueger picked up the rifle and threw it to the ground. Lopez wondered what other infantile gestures he had in his portfolio.
It was getting dark and too late, Lopez hoped, for the civilians to try to make their way back to Phu Gia. He had to warn them that they would be killed if they went back. It was raining again and they had no shelter. There was a wide sandy river beach at Que Son where a number of boats had been pulled up. Lopez saw that a lot of the Phu Gia people had gathered there to find shelter by huddling in the lee of the hulls.
Lopez saw Mister Kim sitting beside a boat with an old man dressed in white in his arms. ‘Kim,’ he said, ‘what are you doing?’ The old man he was holding seemed completely limp. ‘Kim, can’t you see the guy’s dead? Just leave him.’
Kim, still cradling the man like a Pieta, looked at Lopez. ‘He thought I was his son, Van Troi. But he also knew that Van Troi was killed years ago. I think this old man was very confused.’
Someone had found some ragged plastic sheeting. The stronger of the Phu Gia people were making shelters to protect the weakest and oldest.
‘He looked after the ducks,’ Kim went on, as much to himself as to Lopez. ‘He was eighty-two years old and had no one, so he looked after the ducks. When I told him he had to leave, he got very upset. He asked me, “Did you ever keep ducks? Because if you did, you would know that you can’t just leave them – they are constant trouble, and such careless parents.” I told him I had a soldier who was a renowned keeper of ducks, and promised to leave him behind to guard his flock. “When are we coming
back?” he said. I lied. I said, “Very soon". He got up, then suddenly sat down again in the dust, “I have seen eighty-two years and am very tired.” I had to carry him most of the way. I gave him water and food, but he couldn’t keep it down. He got weaker and weaker – and he started calling me Van Troi. He was very cross that I had been away for such a long time. I told that I had come back to do my duty as a true son. And I promised that I would never leave him.’
‘So what will you do now, Kim?’
‘In the morning, I’ll see that he has a proper burial, and I will look after the shrine myself.’
Lopez sat down next to Kim. The old man’s eyes were half-open, showing dull white, his mouth gaping and dry.
‘Is something wrong, Trung Uy Lopez?’
‘You are, Kim. You are.’
Lopez looked up and saw Ly, the interpreter, hauling a heavily pregnant woman towards him. The woman was full of anger and spitting at Ly, waddling and stumbling as he dragged her along.
‘Ly,’ shouted Lopez, ‘what the fuck are you doing?’
‘Trung Uy, Trung Uy Lopez, this is Xuan Houng. Famous Viet Cong family. Everyone in Phu Gia knows about them. Her husband is a sniper, probably same sniper who tried to kill us.’
It all seemed so stupid, so irrelevant. Lopez couldn’t understand why Ly was so intense. There had been so much death and mutilation already that arguing about this angry red-faced eight-months-pregnant woman was merely tiresome. Lopez was sitting cross-legged like a Buddha. He could no longer hear Ly’s voice or make sense of his angry gestures. Finally, Lopez shouted, ‘Stop.’ Ly froze and the woman was suddenly silent too. Lopez felt like a potentate in a tiny shitty kingdom. All was stillness. ‘Let her go.’
Ly flung the pregnant woman in the dust in front of Lopez. Her blouse was torn and he could see her breasts, firm and swollen with maternity.
Lopez leaned on his rifle, although broken and useless, as if it were a scepter. ‘Is your name Xuan Houng?’
The woman raised herself, thrust back her head and then spat in Lopez’s face. Ly lunged forward to strike her with his rifle butt.
‘No,’ shouted Lopez. He was beginning to like being a god. ‘When did you first know we were going to attack?’
The woman frowned and counted on her fingers. ‘Three days.’
‘How did you know?’
‘We always know.’
‘Did you know where the land-mines were buried?’
Xuan Houng stared for a few seconds into Lopez’s face, then blushed and giggled like a girl admitting to a stolen kiss. ‘Yes, it’s the job of the women and children.’
Lopez looked at her, a plump unremarkable woman – ridiculously pregnant – making admissions that, uttered in front of Redhorn or a lot of other officers, would have left her disemboweled. Was she mocking him, his weakness? ‘What happened on the way up the hill?’ he said.
‘Your soldiers made us walk in front, to step on the mines. We lost my cousin Linh Hai, and my nephew Kieu had his foot blown off.’
‘And you knew all the time where the mines were – you just walked over them to pretend you didn’t know?’
Xuan Huong nodded.
‘What made you show us where the mines were, so we could get off the hill?’
Xuan Houng smiled. It seemed to Lopez that her face was flushed with pride. ‘When the big American was blown up, we knew that we had done enough. We had to kill at least one American.’
Ly stepped forward again with his rifle butt raised to smash in her face.
‘Ly!’
The interpreter paused, then chambered a round in his rifle. ‘Don’t worry, Trung Uy Lopez. I’ll take her down to the river and shoot her. No rape, no torture, just shoot her.’ Ly smiled as if he understood what was required.
‘No, Ly, just let her go.’
The interpreter lowered his rifle and watched Xuan Houng waddle back to her people. He smiled at Lopez and patted his own stomach. ‘I could have killed two VC with one bullet.’
The bombers came the next day, but Phu Gia was not totally obliterated. In the aftermath of the Tet Offensive there weren’t enough planes available. Nonetheless, more than half the village had been ‘craterized’, and the remaining fields sprayed with waste sump oil. As soon as the aircraft had gone, the Phu Gia people went back to their village for they had no place else to go.
For the next few days Lopez closely monitored all the agent reports. The sniper husband was still alive, and the Duc Duc district Communist cadre had provided emergency supplies of rice, tinned Russian mackerel and cooking oil while the people cleaned up the fields and dug new bunkers.
‘I GUESS HE SHAT HIMSELF as soon as he felt his foot depress the plunger on the mine. They often do – shot-down pilots are especially notorious for losing bowel control. But we cleaned up your young sergeant, and we didn’t do such a bad job – considering.’ The doctor was still in light green theater dress. Lopez thought he sounded like a car mechanic describing a smashed-up car he had lovingly restored – except that cars that badly wrecked went straight to the breaker’s yard.
‘The fireball from the explosion caused third degree burning – total charring – of his sex organs and anus. If you like, I’ll show you the pre-op photos’
‘No thanks, I’ll take your word for it.’ Lopez noticed that the doctor, a small wiry man with glasses, had a slightly deformed earlobe, as if someone had slit it with a razor.
‘We had to remove what was left of the penis and testicles. Then we had to do a double hip disarticulation. One of the stumps was a total mess and definitely had to go. We thought about trying to save the other one, but it would probably have turned ischemic – and, in any case, what was left would have been unsuitable for fixing a prosthetic device. We also had to remove a piece of large intestine.’ The doctor held up his fingers as if describing the size of a small fish. ‘Not much. By the way, did you ever see one of these ops?’
Lopez shook his head and wondered why the doctor had even asked.
‘You have to work at an awkward angle – almost like gyno or obstetrics – in what we call the “head-low position”, with the table tilted at forty-five degrees and the buttocks hanging over the edge.’ The doctor continued talking and miming the procedures with his hands as if Lopez and Dusty were medical students. ‘I’m awfully glad he wasn’t a rare blood type; he used up twenty-six pints of O positive. Must have been one hell of a mine.’
A woman nurse arrived wearing the silver rank insignia of a first lieutenant. ‘They’re ready in number five, doctor.’
‘Bombing error on the road to Hue. Splattered a platoon of ARVNs.’ He turned to the nurse. ‘These men have come to see Sergeant Hatch. Can you take them down to Intensive?’
The nurse led them along a corridor that smelled of disinfectant and was littered with push-chairs, trolleys and soiled linen bins. There was something zombie-like about her. She spoke without looking at either man, her eyes fixed on some invisible point in the distance. ‘Sergeant Hatch has been a very naughty boy. He tried to kill himself last night.’ She showed them into a six-bed ward.
There were two drip-stands next to Bobby’s bed. A urine catheter connection tube led from under the covers and emptied into a bottle fixed to the side of the bed. The liquid was cloudy and bloody. Bobby seemed to be sleeping, but his lips were moving. Lopez put his hand on Bobby’s arm – it was hot and dry. Both arms had been tied down with restraint straps. ‘Hey, Bobby, it’s me. Dusty’s here too.’
‘I want my daddy, please, I want my daddy.’ Bobby twisted and strained against the straps. His voice was piercing. ‘Where’s my daddy?’
Dusty gently touched Bobby’s face with his fingertips. ‘Bobby, look at me. What’s my name?’
‘Daddy, you promised we’d go for that canoe trip soon as the weather got better. You said we’d go in May – before anyone else – when it’s still nice and fresh and the river’s full of melted snow. And you said we wouldn’t turn back. We’d go all the way
to the sea, all the way to the sea!’
The nurse was replacing one of the drips. ‘They hallucinate,’ she said, ‘as the morphine wears off.’
Bobby seemed to have fallen back to sleep, but Lopez could see rapid eye movement behind his lids. He hoped that they were happy dreams.
The nurse looked hard at Lopez. ‘Did Sergeant Hatch kill anyone?’
‘No.’
‘He thinks he did and he’s really upset about it. Last night he was talking to some little Vietnamese girl. He kept asking, “What’s your name, little sister? Why do you want to talk to me? What’s your name?” Then he sat up and started screaming “No, no, no!” I asked him what was wrong. He said he looked under the girl’s hat so he could see her face, but there was nothing there – just darkness. He said he heard her say, “I have no name, you killed me". Later he smashed a bottle of saline solution and tried to slash his wrists. That’s why he’s tied down.’
Lopez thought of the water-buffalo girl with the beautiful smile. He had seen her on Hill 60 with the Phu Gia people.
Suddenly Bobby was awake again. He was staring at the ceiling and shouting, ‘Daddy! Please, daddy!’
‘It’s me, Bobby, Dusty. And Lieutenant Lopez.’
Bobby focused on his real visitors. Reality flooded back and Bobby was racked with tears – they weren’t his family, this wasn’t Vermont. He was in the 95th Evacuation Hospital at Monkey Mountain, in the Republic of Vietnam.
A River in May Page 22
