by Gus Lee
Children began running to Song Sae. Automatically, both women embraced the returning children.
It took a while, but I picked up Jimmy. His chest moved in small sharp shudders. I had to hurry for him. There was another reason for urgency. My brain was fogged.
I shook my head, generating deep, dark inspirations of profound cranial pains and solicitations of dry-land nausea. A vibration in my throat: I was moaning. I stopped it.
I struggled to arrange my thinking, but the grenade had scrambled it, shuffled it and then tossed the remains into the solvent-stained street, where they blew away in a sour wind.
All I could remember was that something bad was going to happen. Something about tigers.
29
FIT FOR WOMANKIND
According to habit, I led a disreputable band into camp, exuding swamp gases and worrying sentries. Min's reckless driving revived me. My ears ached with a high-band tone.
Somehow, the abbreviation of senses brought to me the sea air from Cara's balcony. I felt the sweet, aching acceleration of her, her pulsing irresistibility, the vision of her clearing fogs in my mind and giving light to failing day.
MPs did double takes at the two bodies roped onto the hood. We passed the gate and I felt an attachment to Cara with the militant belief of a survivor of catastrophe. It was a stupendous feeling, as bright as the August sun on the Long River, as fixed and enduring as a Chinese commitment. I loved her. I had made a remarkable and stunning discovery of the obvious. I felt stupid, happy, liable, labile, brilliant, mindless.
Magrip and I untied Willoughby and Fleeg at the stockade. Levine quietly held Jimmy's head in her lap.
I looked up. “It's a beautiful day.”
Magrip squinted doubtfully at the dark sky. He got in the jeep. Min raced for Second Med.
McCrail, Levine had shouted, was still secure at Naktong.
The stockade bulls scooped the two men like street debris. Staff Sergeant Scranton Plum was the warden who had allowed Nagol to hang himself. He was smelly and sawed-off. He perused a Playboy, lips moving slowly as he listened to Buck Owens and the Buckaroos. He reeked of tobacco and rotgut and couldn't care less that a TIG had brought him business without a hint of paperwork. He took the prisoners with the consideration of a cow consuming grass.
'T'm deaf,” I said to Plum. “Give me the paperwork and get a medic for them.” I filled out forms, using question marks.
Plum kicked both men in the gut. Fleeg threw up.
“Don't need no medics, sir,” mouthed Plum. “These boys are squared away.”
“BULL!” I shouted. He and his men jumped, dropping cigarettes. “Do that again, I'll make you walk funny.” My ears hummed. His eyes swelled. ” Hold them in solitary. No contact with anyone but medics, whom you will search and pat down.
“You're not doing another Nagol on me. Sergeant, don't screw this up. The guys they'd call would put a bullet in your head and will not remember you on Veterans Day.”
He had slid from gentlemanly reading to sweating his retirement to winning a hole in his skull. He looked at Fleeg and Willoughby without affection. “Full cavity search,” he growled. I took names; stockade duty invites sloth. I left them Dentyne.
Major Foss's hut was warmer because I was getting used to Korea. I dropped the AK-47s on his desk. He looked at the rifles’ tool-dye stamps, recognizing them as Chinese manufacture. “Wonderful. Now IGs are using these crappy guns.” He sniffed their muzzles.
“Major, get your men to sit on the Wizard now. I'll do the paper to arrest him.” I lifted his typewriter. “May I?”
“Sure. The only damn working typewriter in Korea. Take my desk. Want my jeep? How about my stinking job?”
I think that's what he said; my ears were still ringing. “Make the call, sir.” He did, sending MPs to LeBlanc.
“Willoughby and a guy named Fleeg are in D Cell for attempt One-Eighteen on three officers and a ROK civilian, using these AKs. Can you print these, and can Plum hold them?”
Foss pulled latent print tags from his blouse, filled them out meticulously and tied them to the rifle straps. “Pit's got two months to retirement. He'll do it right.”
“Sir, need you and an armed West Point 0–3 at the Med.”
“You're a piece a work. Heart attack on wheels.” He went into a latrine. A Sergeant Myers stepped into the office and tied a chain of custody form to the rifles, signed them and bagged them.
From the latrine, Foss shouted, “Myers—do a chain of custody on those AKs!”
Myers bagged the rifles for printing and left with them. Foss came out and finished his coffee, burning himself.
“Damn! Get me Childers! And Myers—bag those rifles!”
Grumbling, his watch cap low, Foss drove fast up the main drive, talking to himself as he peeled around a convoy of mud-packed armored personnel carriers with bright red Live Ammo flags, dumping soil tracks like sick pachyderms.
I wrote a note for Childers as the jeep bounced.
I looked at Foss. “Sir, we got our boy back. Thank you. I owe you big.”
Foss turned off the drive. “I figure you do. Thanks for getting me out of that reveille run. The PM, he don't like you. Says you woke him. He have a Blue Heart in his bunk?”
“That, or a very funny-looking GI.” He chuckled. “Never thought I'd see anyone take down the Wizard. When you gonna nail the PM?” My hearing was making a rebound. “Soon.”
Foss nodded and radioed. “Pit, this is Foss. If the old man tries to see the JAGC folk, he don't. No one but yours truly….” He laughed. “Uh-huh. That chink captain who rang your bell is future Army Chief of Staff and he heard you say that…. No, he ain't deaf Pit, I don't give a damn what he said. He's the IG. Out here.”
Levine stood under the med door light, her overcoat collar up. I wanted to hear about McCrail and how she had gotten out of Naktong. She took the typewriter from me. She put it down.
She put her arms around me, her face in my neck. I held her to give comfort. Her quivering inspired an image of Song Sae and the bui doi being shredded by AKs. I held her as she squeezed, and I saw Beth and the boys and felt the nearness of losing Jimmy, Magrip, Song Sae and Levine, in a single moment. I closed my eyes tight. We held each other with raw strength, the power of those who had survived a swarming of wolves.
In time, her breathing smoothed and her tremors stopped, reducing our need to hold each other. Now our touching, our closeness, meant something else. We sighed, our breathing one. A low voice. “Jackson, this is crazy.”
“I told you,” I said softly. “I'm an insomniac. You're crazy.” I felt her every breath. I felt her legs. She was whispering.
“You know, when this mission is over, I could mature you. Make you emotively insightful. Fit for womankind. To be someone a woman would want to grow old with. Someone who'd talk, be attentive, not watch TV all the time. Love, and like, care and cry.” She was talking into my neck. Her breath was warm. “You have the potential. You're evolved past the primary male emotion—anger. And you have good Jewish blood.”
I shouldn't be holding her. Not like this. I thought of Cara.
“She dumped you, right?” she asked.
“Maybe. I haven't dumped her.”
More emotionally advanced, Levine leaned back a little. Southside had loosened our emotions. Her mouth was near laughter, her eyes closer to tears. She was lovely. I wished I didn't think so. She licked her lips, tossing her short hair. “Do you love her?” The large dark eyes, the warmth of her.
“Yes.”
“Super. I knew that. If you didn't love her, you'd bore me. Well. Table for one.” She stepped back with a devastating smile, sardonic and sensual. “I'm so happy you're a good man.” She pushed me. “Get out of here, Kan.”
“I think I'll just stand here in the cold for a few minutes.”
I did not watch her as she walked away. I thought of baseball. How about those Giants.
Magrip was sitting on the floor of ER. Medics, orderl
ies and doctors moved in methodical chaos. I felt the memory of Levine's legs, her great face. I had a headache.
My back hurt, but I sat on the floor. “Good evening.” I put the typewriter between us.
“Everyone says that. No one means it anymore. What—now you want me to type for you? I already got ajob.”
“Son, the Army's not ajob, it's an adventure.” “The Army's not ajob,” he said. “It's a blow job.” I laughed. “Magrip, you're as much fun as a truck hitting a dog.”
He nodded. “We all got our strengths. Got Buford's wife on the horn. She said some crap about kissing you but I'll pass if that's okay.”
“Please.”
He yawned. Adrenaline dissipation. “Doc Purvis saw Buford. You treat heroin OD with intramuscular Narcan and methadone detox. Like food and sun and vitamins, not at Casey. They'll medevac him to Yongsan.”
I glanced at him. He looked like I had ruined his life.
“Why don't you get out?” I asked.
He studied his hands. “Oughta. Get tired of being pissed. Miss cherry farms and fishing. Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. You knew everyone. Cops'd give you a ride home.” He shook his head. “Miss it. Had hints of it at the Academy and in Nam.” He picked at knuckle scabs. ” Damn hard ways to get a community.
“Then I became a lawyer and learned the good old days maybe weren't. Families were screwed up, but quiet about it.”
I rubbed my scalp. “I believe in the good old days.”
Magrip sighed. “Oh, hell, so do I. They were a kick.”
“You kicked Willoughby so good I threw up.”
He smiled, happy, and the doors banged open and medics brought out Jimmy on a gurney with IVs, pallid under a wool OD blanket. He looked great: no sucking chest wound; no steel in his body; head, limbs, external organs intact; dog tags bright.
I took his cold hand. “Jimmy, this is Butt Kicker Magrip. He called Beth, so they know you're okay. Nothing personal, but all she talked about was kissing me.”
James Thurber Buford showed some color. He nodded at Magrip. He squeezed in a weak grip. “She always lahked y'all more. Hey, Magrip, thanks, man.”
Magrip coughed. “Get well, Buford.”
“Bee, you gotta fly. Places to go.”
“Thangs ta do, people ta see, thangs ta understand.” He grinned and the sun came out, making me blink fast.
They took him into the cold and loaded him in the medevac on the illuminated pad. I yelled at the crew chief to wait as the turbine whined angrily. An MP jeep screeched around the med, throwing snow. An armed MP officer emerged, taking long strides. Captain Childers.
I pointed to Jimmy in the bay. “IG. Kidnapped and loaded with heroin by American officers. They want him dead. Stay close to him. Expect trouble. I'm Kan. No one but us sees him.” I gave him the scrawled description of our IG team. “Keep him safe. Until relieved.”
Childers jumped on board next to Jimmy and strapped in.
Magrip squinted in the rotor wash as the medevac pulled pitch and took a sharp attack angle on the wind, whumping thuddingly. It was a familiar sight. I remembered hot, bloody days, when angels were helicopters and tomorrow was a crap shoot.
I willed the light-flashing medevac to get out of the range of small arms fire, as if this were a jungle clearing and enemy guns could still claw it from the sky. Foss looked at his watch. I looked at mine; it was gone. I checked my pockets and laughed; Jimmy had slipped it off my wrist.
Purvis was in the hallway, writing charts. “Hey, Ludwig!” he greeted Foss. “Hey, Doc,” said Foss. “‘Ludwig’?” I asked Foss. “Drop it,” he snarled.
Purvis steered me away. “You're great for bringing me patients, but you need therapy yourself.”
“If everyone followed your advice, you'd be unemployed.”
He smiled. “Buford's febrile. May have hepatitis, has circ problems. Needs a week in detox with antibiotics. They'll medevac him to Walter Reed. Near his family.”
I shook his hand, too hard. “Thanks. Where can I type?”
“My office. Got incoming inhalers. Q fire.”
Foss and I stopped. “Where?” we asked.
Purvis was gone.
“Screw it,” said Foss through thick chow. “Let the fire-fighters hack it. My ass is grass.” He hitched his trousers. “You wear me out.”
Purvis's office was, unlike our Q, orderly. Ludwig Foss spat in the waste can. Magrip collapsed in a chair. I rolled the Form 15–74 onto Foss's typewriter and hit the keys.
I named James T. Buford and Patrick T. McCrail as victims and witnesses for preferral of charges against COL Frederick C. LeBlanc, Judge Advocate General's Corps. I got him on Articles 84, 92(1), 92(3), 121, 128, and multiple Article 134 specifications—effecting fraudulent enlistments, black-marketing, dereliction of duty, larceny, graft, assault, battery with deadly force on an officer in execution of duties, kidnapping.
I would have charged more, but I was in a rush. I smelled smoke. Levine walked in, breathing hard. Magrip sniffed the air and nodded at Levine. “Hey,” he said, making me smile.
“Hey, yourself,” she said.
I ripped out the 15–74 and showed it to her.
“Typos,” she offered.
“Hey, man, we're in the field.”
“Jackson, you called me ‘man.’” She arched an eyebrow.
I laughed. “I only meant well by it.” I took back the form, signed and dated it, and gave it to Foss. He had been studying Levine and jerked. He read it and whistled.
I hammered out 15–74s for Willoughby and Fleeg. Battery, interference with investigation, attempted murder and kidnap, and charges on the other JAGCs for obstruction of justice with a wiretap on Willoughby. Levine read them, making corrections which I initialed. I signed, dated and gave them to Foss. “Major, the men in D Cell are incommunicado until lunar New Year. No res-cues. Get LeBlanc.”
Foss smiled at the report like it had kissed him. He winked at Levine and strode out, a cheerful bear, as Purvis came in.
I stretched my back. “We have a date in Suwon.”
And twelve Inmingun running in our rear area.
“Oh, Jackson, no,” said Levine, “not the MSR. Please.”
“Forget it. You need rest,” said Purvis. “People with unresolved combat fatigue need to get their jammies on. Now.”
“No time.” I looked at my wrist; my watch wasn't there.
“Horse pucky. Rest, or I'll order you quarantined.” “What, for bad manners?” “For being a hazard on the road.” I laughed. “That won't work. We're in Korea.” “Levine, how'd you get out of Naktong?” asked Magrip.
She sighed. “I inspired a riot. By the staff.”
“Fuck them,” said Magrip. He liked her.
“Not a good idea,” Levine said, turning to me. “Jackson. There's something I need to show you. Right now.”
30
MAP
Our bare Q light glared. She handed me an accordion file with Asian rice-paper invoices: twenty thousand Chinese AK-47s, a ton of Soviet plastique with det cord, detonators, and Czech timing devices. Plastics. Stable, transportable, hard to detonate, and incredibly destructive when properly triggered.
LeBlanc loved automatic weapons. Why the plastique?
On our pocked desk, Levine unrolled a KAMS— Korean Army Map Service 1:50,000 map of the DMZ and North Korea. We pinned its corners with boots and a Lady Clairol hair dryer.
“This,” she said, “is the Wizard's. I took his map and overlay and hung an identical KAMS sheet in its place. There was this fire. All I could grab was the accordion file.” She rummaged her hair. “I smell like smoke. It destroyed my hair.”
I looked at the map. “Very impressive.”
“My hair or the map?”
“Both.” It depicted the area above Casey—the pink DMZ and the dark North Korean mountains above. The ranges funneled toward Tongducheon, becoming the Valley of War.
She unrolled the clear acetate over the map and we re weighted the co
rners. I studied it; it told me nothing.
“This is his original overlay. For this, I committed larceny.” She smiled. “Like it?”
The acetate was blank. Erased. I looked at the shiny surface.
I leaned close and huffed onto it, fogging it with condensation. Minute dents on the acetate surface held my breath like peaks hold mist and fog. Indentations in the plastic were highlighted. I huffed, seeing where pencils had made tracks.
“Grease pencils,” I said. Levine gave me red and black. I softly marked red lines for movements, black circles for objectives and staging areas.
Lines ran from two circled towns in North Korea to our circled forward camps and Casey. They were named Fchon and T'osan. Where the advance lines crossed the DMZ into South Korea, they thickened.
Something was there, speaking to me. The phone rang. I picked it up. “Foss here. Wizard Q was torched. I figure the Wizard did it—used the smoke and confusion to hit the road. My guys lost him. The Wizard's loose and we're looking…. Don't hassle me—we know what he looks like. Hey, you didn't tell me why you want those boys in lockup until the lunar New Year.”
Levine checked a set of olive drab rucksack straps. She casually put them in her pocket.
“Can't say, Major. But if I were you, I'd work that day.”
“Hell, it's a dammed Monday. I gotta work anyway.” “Good, because something is going to happen then.” “Like what, Counselor?” “Beats the hell out of me.”
He slammed down his phone, making my ear ring.
31
NAKTONG BLUES
I contemplated a queasy burger while Magrip reviewed the evidence. He read like a lawyer, taking indented notes and making sucking sounds. He was bound for G-2 to see what they thought of LeBlanc's map work.
I had conspired to steal a map and had busted Carlos's orders. Stay in your lane, he had said, and I made McCrail our new mission; no deals for LeBlanc, and I offered the Wizard a way out; Levine was to go to the embassy and I sent her to Naktong; Magrip was to go to Naktong and I took him to Southside. So the hell with it; I was phoning Cara. What could Carlos do, send me to Korea? The lines to the U.S. were busy.
