Red Flags

by Juris Jurjevics

  A short-time girl wore thirty-eight Ds.

  Rather much for a Vietnamese.

  So they searched her with pleasure. And discovered this treasure.

  One grenade, one plastique, two punjis. Oh ...

  My name was on the clinic list for the afternoon. I walked into town, not expecting to sit again that day. The clinic's six beds were occupied by sick and injured Montagnards surrounded by their families. Relatives prepared meals in the aisle and slept under the beds, on the floor, even in beds with the patients. I had to step over several napping Jarai to reach the dispensary. Roberta, harried with cases, whipped through the prep for my shot, then stopped, amused that I still had my pants on.

  I was sweating profusely. Besides the embarrassment of baring my butt, I hated hypodermics and grew queasy at just the thought of sharp metal driven into my body. Even a dentist's syringe made me anxious. The end of my second tour, my buddy Stolz and I had sat outside the Air Force snack shack in Pleiku forging the mandatory vaccinations on each other's shot cards to process out. The shots for Viet Nam were a bitch: black plague, typhoid, yellow fever ... but the absolute worst was gamma globulin for hepatitis.

  "Which is it," she said, "me or the spike?"

  "Usually it's the needle. This time I'm sure it's both."

  She couldn't resist teasing. "Valiant captain enfeebled by a syringe. Tell you what," she said, lighting up a Salem. "You're going to be sore afterward. It's intramuscular. But I'm very good at this. I can do it with my eyes shut—and I will—if you'll just bring your backside in range."

  She took a step closer and shut her eyes, cigarette burning. I bit the bullet, tipped myself over her exam table, and slid my pants down.

  "You there?" she said, blowing smoke past me.

  "You're not doing this with your eyes closed."

  "You want them open?"

  "I'd prefer you see your target, yeah."

  "Your call." She stubbed out the cigarette.

  I tried to block thoughts of the steel sliding into flesh but failed. My body temperature rose with a rush of adrenaline and turned my hands clammy. She impaled my buttock as expertly as promised, but the pain began to spread almost immediately.

  "Hey," she said, slowly pushing the plunger on the huge dose. "It's a fair turnaround. It's not like you haven't seen me ... compromised. It was you on the parapet that night, wasn't it?"

  "Is this some new interrogation technique?"

  "You might have turned away."

  "You might have stopped."

  "That was unlikely at that particular moment," she said. "Besides, I kind of liked being watched. I'm afraid I'm long past being shy."

  "Ahhh."

  "First one done." She withdrew the hypodermic. "You okay?"

  "No. What do you mean first?" I exclaimed. "Two?"

  "Double-header. You had close exposure. You get two."

  "Hey, it wasn't like Doc Wright and I were dating," I argued. "Haven't even shared a meal with the guy."

  The second shot jabbed my other cheek unannounced and I groaned.

  "You jungle warriors are such wimps." The plunger took forever and the serum was growing larger in my backside. "Done." She swabbed the site. "Cute ass, Captain. Aha, what's this? Nice stitching job. Not much scarring."

  "Doc!"

  "Okay, okay. I was just admiring the handiwork. Glad they missed your ... vitals."

  She paused, and then said, "I did want to thank you."

  "For what?"

  "For not saying anything. For being discreet. I worry for the colonel if it gets around. He's married. Loves his wife. Loves his Army. I'm just ... here."

  "Thanks." I pulled up my fatigue pants and wobbled away, aware for the first time that an audience of curious Montagnard patients and their visitors crowded in the doorway, probably discussing the strangeness of my body hair and whatever else they'd seen.

  I didn't care. Roberta had installed doorknobs in my hindquarters and had eyes only for the colonel.

  She reminded her Bahnar nurses to make up some permanganate solution and have the staff wash their hands with it immediately. The young patient they'd been handling was suffering from bacillary dysentery. Her attention swung back to me.

  "Rider," she said, filling in my shot card. "Can you spare half an hour? There's a problem at a village and I need some backup."

  She handed me a hemorrhoid cushion and pointed me toward her Land Rover. I got in gingerly and tried to find a comfortable position on the doughnut, but it only felt like somebody was twisting the new doorknobs in my ass. Roberta came over and got in, flashed me a sympathetic glance, and pulled away, trying to keep the vehicle from bouncing.

  "Tell me about the wound," she said.

  "Professional curiosity?"

  "I wouldn't have said anything if it was just a dimple."

  "Got wounded two months into my second tour."

  "They ship you home to recover?"

  "No such luck. I rehabbed at the field hospital in Pleiku. There were a bunch of us shot—ah—similarly injured and recovering on our stomachs. A friend of mine brought me my Purple Heart. Read out the citation and pinned it to the seat of my pajamas."

  "Did it scare you, getting wounded?"

  "Yeah. But afterward it was like being initiated. I'd made the fraternity."

  "How long were you laid up?"

  "About four weeks. Never felt more like a soldier."

  "You make it sound almost enjoyable."

  "Getting hit wasn't, but the hospital stay was a lark."

  "What do you mean?"

  "On either side of me were a private and a sergeant. One steamy evening the Sarge and I stole half a gallon of ice cream from the hospital mess. A nurse let us hide it in a refrigerated medicine cabinet for a share and got us spoons. We waited for lights-out. Instead, sirens went off and they blacked out the hospital. The staff rushed everyone to the bunkers. Except the Sarge and me. I retrieved the container and we slipped under his bed. While a mortar barrage rained down somewhere close, we were in hysterics, joking. Then, in the dark, I felt this odd wet warmth creeping along my body."

  "Snake?"

  "No. We were feasting on this beautiful cold ice cream, lying in a warm puddle of his blood."

  "He had popped his stitches."

  "Yeah. I thought, Wow. We're really here."

  The Rover hit a pothole and bounced.

  "Christ," I moaned.

  "Sorry."

  "We shouldn't go anywhere too remote," I said. "I'm in no shape to run."

  "It's about a kilometer and a half. Right off Road Two."

  Yeah, right. She had no idea how far out we were. She was just making it up, little realizing the odds were excellent that I would have gone to hell and back if she had asked me to.

  "Okay," I said. "So what's happening there?"

  "Fuck, it's just so discouraging. ARVN keep uprooting Montagnards from their villages in the mountains and shoving them into government hamlets close to the main roads and the district seats. ‘For their protection,' Chinh says. The Vietnamese are screwing the Yards out of their land, forcibly relocating them and pretending it's for their own good. The tribespeople hate it and sneak away first chance they get."

  "You think they'll go off the reservation again and revolt?" I said.

  "I wouldn't blame them if they did, but I don't think they'll ever overcome their tribal feuds and wars. The clans hate each other as much as they hate Vietnamese." She looked over. "The Jarai really botched the uprising last December." Roberta braced against the dash. "We're here."

  The old Jarai village was flanked by fruit trees and surrounded by small steep hills covered with brush and grasses twice the height of a man. Outside the village fence, the whole community—men, women, grandparents, and little kids—were stacking long, freshly cut bamboo logs. Tough as they were, the Montagnards looked worn and badly bruised by the hard labor.

  Half a dozen Vietnamese soldiers lounged in the shade of the fruit trees, helpi
ng themselves to bananas they'd cut down and drinking from coconuts they'd appropriated and gouged open. Fifty yards off lay a water buffalo, hobbled by bullet wounds. They'd been amusing themselves taking target practice on the animal, shooting out one leg at a time. Embracing the suffering creature, its six-year-old herdsman wailed over his beloved beast. Roberta was seething. She got out and confronted their sergeant, went off on him in Vietnamese, the vessels in her neck and forehead pulsing as she waved her arms at the injured animal and the large cache of wood: six stacks of long bamboo logs piled chest high in alternating, perpendicular layers. The sergeant smiled benignly, as if everything were swell.

  "Shit," she exclaimed, turning away from the impassive clutch of Vietnamese to talk to the old chief and his deputies standing nearby.

  "What's going on?" I said.

  "The whole village is being disciplined. They have to harvest bamboo."

  "What are they being punished for?" I said.

  "Their old chief had the temerity to complain to Chinh about their measly rice rations." She stood with hands on hips.

  "Where's all this bamboo going?"

  "The province warehouse. It'll get sold in a few days or weeks, and the money—lots of it—will go into the province chief's pockets. The village will never see a dime. The bastard's taking a page from the French planters' book. Forced labor. Corvée."

  The Vietnamese soldiers continued to peel bananas and chat languidly. Roberta stomped over to the pile of their stuff and pulled a live trussed chicken from an empty sandbag. She untied the bindings and freed the flapping bird the troops had obviously confiscated. The soldiers looked resentful but did nothing to stop her. Roberta continued her rampage through their rucks, yanking out tobacco leaves, yams, marijuana plants, spilling coffee beans all over the ground.

  The Montagnards watched their doctor storm. I was glad I had my rifle, in case the ARVN stopped grinning like fools and decided to give us the water-buffalo treatment.

  She returned to my side, cheeks pink, breathing hard.

  "I know their military doesn't do right by them, but they've got to stop pillaging the Yards at every opportunity."

  "I think you've made your point. Are the Yards done with their—their punishment?"

  She called out to the dozen Jarai standing silently by the cut bamboo. A toothless old woman answered.

  "She says the villagers can do no more today. They're exhausted."

  "Right. All done," I said to the sergeant and made a point of waving the soldiers away with my left hand—a huge insult. "Di di. Go. Go." The gesture wasn't lost on the Yards. Or the sergeant, whose face went slack. They slowly gathered up their rucksacks and sauntered off toward town.

  The chief borrowed my pistol and went over to the wounded water buffalo to console the boy and dispatch the stricken animal. Roberta got out her medical bag and set up a quick sick call, treating the deep cuts and welts inflicted by their harsh labors, while I carted two sacks of rice from her Rover and presented it to the village chief. More patients appeared as word of her presence spread. She had me record their names and illnesses on cards and note the medications she handed out and the dosages. Malaria, dengue fever, vitamin and iodine deficiencies, intestinal parasites, toothache, skin infection...

  "Most of them suffer from the same half a dozen illnesses," she said. "A reasonably adequate nurse could handle most of this. I've got to get more of them trained."

  After an hour of her impromptu clinic, the line had barely decreased. Montagnards kept appearing to replenish it.

  "Appreciate your help, Captain Rider. You'll tell your colonel about this crap of punishing the village, won't you? See if he'll raise some hell with the province chief."

  I said I would, though I didn't think for an instant it would do much good. Neither did she.

  "You got somebody back in the world?" she said.

  "Not since my ex dumped me."

  She flashed me her best smile. "You should put some work into that situation."

  "Don't smile like that," I said.

  "Why not?"

  "Makes my head swim."

  She looked pleased.

  "Everything in the army is hard and coarse," I said. "After a while, what you miss most is a woman's softness. It's like an ache."

  "And you don't think women find this place hard-edged or have longings?"

  I brushed back sweat and handed her the tube of ointment she pointed to. "You should drop by the compound some evening when we've gotten in all the reels of the same movie. I'll drive you back afterward."

  "Thanks. I could use some American company. But if you're asking me on a date, that might be inadvisable."

  An old man stepped forward to present an elbow with a festering sore.

  "So it's not just a wartime fling?"

  "I was hoping it was." She winced. "I outsmarted myself."

  "How so?"

  "I fell in love."

  Roberta drained the sore and wiped it with antiseptic, and swabbed again with a dark salve before applying a dressing.

  "Not exactly the guy I expected to fall for," she said. "I mean, he's a professional soldier in the business of inflicting harm. Here I am, repairing the sick and damaged." She laughed. "We're kind of a ridiculous pair."

  "How do you explain it then?"

  "He's just the kindest, smartest, most sincere man I've ever known. The Montagnards think he's favored by the gods."

  "Does he know how you feel? How much you care for him?"

  "Not from my lips, but maybe. Probably." She thought a moment. "It would be hard to miss."

  "What are you going to do?"

  "Suffer. Eventually I'll suffer more. For now, I cherish every minute we can steal from this damn war."

  "You don't mince words," I said.

  A mischievous grin crept onto her face. "Life's too fucking short, an insolent young officer informed me recently."

  I grimaced. "Yeah. Captain Badass."

  She finished wrapping the wound and tied off the white bandage. "You remember when you asked if I'd like to be a Montagnard?"

  "You said no but wouldn't say why."

  "Because I'd have to stand in the river with my lover and eat shit off a stick, that's why. That's their punishment for adultery. It's sort of smart, if you think about it."

  "There are worse things than guilt, Doc."

  "Yeah? What beats it?"

  "Regret."

  She took me in with a sidelong glance. "I'm not sure I want to know how you came by that piece of insight." She turned to the next patient. "I appreciate your not judging me."

  A bullet buzzed by, the report echoing through the hills a fraction of a second later.

  "What the hell?" she blurted out, her head swiveling as the line of patients scattered. I pulled her behind the Land Rover. "What was that?" She started to stick her nose up over the door.

  "Keep down. Listen to me. He's a ways off. He'll need time to sight between shots. We have to move after the next one."

  "Oh my God. We're being shot at."

  "Yes, and we need to move."

  "Can't we stay here, behind the Rover, where we're safe?"

  "Only works in the movies, Doc. He's using an assault rifle, a Kalashnikov. It'll bang right through."

  I pulled her behind the engine. She cried out as a round punched straight through both front-seat doors, leaving a gaping hole. Trying to be clever, I peered into it, lining up both punctures to see where the shot might have come from. All I could make out was a tangle of scrub. No landmarks. Still, it gave me the hillside he was on. Roberta shrieked again as I popped up to spray a burst at the slope: eighteen rounds in a blink.

  Nobody hearing intermittent gunshots would pay attention. Maybe more sustained fire might be noticed, an alarm raised. I was about to do it again when a third shot struck the ground near my feet.

  I fired off another magazine fast and said, "Move!" Grabbed her by the elbow and hauled her across open space into the banana leaves. When al
l lines of sight were blocked, we moved laterally. I pushed her into a crouch. We inched forward.

  "VC?" she said, gasping, as she wrestled with the idea of an indifferent stranger intending her harm. A shot hit the fronds where we'd entered the foliage. I pulled her farther back.

  "Yeah, VC or our southern allies expressing their feelings about being humiliated earlier." Sweat dripped from my chin. "Vietnamese either way. Though probably not NVA."

  "What makes you say that?"

  "They're better shots."

  "God, Rider. Anything can happen to anybody in this place and who would know."

  I pulled her deeper into the leaves and had her squat next to me again. We waited. The afternoon was hot and peaceful. Everything normal, except somebody was out there looking to kill us. My inoculated backside felt like it'd been shot again. Luckily the locals weren't great riflemen. Ammunition was scarce. The VC didn't expend much of it practicing. Neither did the South Vietnamese, who got plenty of ammo from us but were lackadaisical about training.

  I peered through the large leaves, praying there weren't enough gunmen out there to maneuver around our side. Nothing. Minutes passed. No more shots. The guy was gone, or very patient.

  "A lone sniper, most likely."

  "You sure?" she said.

  "I'd bet my life on it," I quipped.

  "Don't kid."

  "They would have tried to flank us by now if there were more of them. It's just the one guy."

  A hot and empty day in the tropics: a hundred and twenty in the shade. We shared my canteen. I was dying for a cigarette but thought better of risking the smoke giving us away. A large spider ambled down the trunk of the banana tree behind her.

  "You ever married?" I said.

  "No. Never had the time to think about it when I was studying and one day it was too late."

  She tried to peer out around the broad leaves but I shook my head no.

  She said, "You know the colonel well?"

  "Not very. Company-grade officers aren't exactly chummy with field-grade officers."

  "So you wouldn't know why he's disappointed with his career?"

  "I don't know that he is." Did she really think captains did career counseling for colonels?