Profane Men

by Rex Miller

  “Large, coarsely toothed”

  Ewell, Andrew Llewellyn (24), Grenadier, Edina, Minnesota, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Canadian Burnet” (Sanguisorba canadensis)

  Means “to absorb blood”

  Hedgepath, Merlin Lyle (22), Special Weapons, Wooddale, Illinois, WIA, deceased

  Cryptonymic “Dayflower” (Commelina communis)

  “A native of Asia”

  Kuang, Tran Van (20), Indigenous Scout, KIA

  Cryptonymic “White Hellebore” (Veratrum viride)

  “Very poisonous”

  Laidlaw, William Lee (18), Machine Gunner, Weapons, Amazonia, Mississippi, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Blazing Star” (Liatris spicata)

  Other names include “gayfeather”

  McAllen, Thomas Joyner (20), Medical/Liaison, Blytheville, Arkansas, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Fly-Poison” (Amianthium muscae-toxicum)

  “Very toxic”

  Price, Robert Tinnon (19), Sniper, Fort Worth, Texas *see watch file e/e388-t

  Last seen: Iviza (Ibiza) Spain, 1982, present whereabouts unknown

  Cryptonymic “Catfoot” (Gnaphalium obtusifolium)

  “Thrives in waste places”

  Rodriguez, Albert (20), Radio Telephone Operator, Bettendorf, Iowa, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Fringed Phacelia (Phacelia fimbriata)

  “Handsome little plant”

  Smith, Merle Edward Neal (18), Rifleman, Special Weapons, Elmhurst, New York, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Viper’s Bugloss” (Echium vulgare)

  “Supposed to resemble the head of a poisonous serpent”

  Spangler, Roy (21), Topographical Exploitation Officer, Carson City, Nevada, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Black-eyed Susan” (Rudbeckia hirta)

  “An obnoxious weed”

  Warren, Cleotis (18), Rifleman, Richmond, Virginia, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Wild potato-vine” (Ipomoea pandurata)

  “An enormous root”

  Washington, LeRoi Malcolm (19), Grenadier, Special Weapons, Detroit, Michigan, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Erect trillium” (Trillium erectum)

  “Due to its unpleasant scent, this plant is sometimes known as Stinking Willie”

  Vandervoort, Franklin Thomas (21), Machine Gunner, Special Weapons, Chino, California, KIA

  Cryptonymic “Poison Hemlock” (Conium maculatum)

  “Deadly”

  Grein, Harold Ovid (20), Special Weapons, Machine Gunner, Demolition, Grenadier, Kansas City, Kansas. *see watch file e, e294-t Sep. certificates/reftel a-101M-3.

  Grein is carried as an open Watch File, officially listed “MIA,” subject probably deceased.

  A seventeenth team member, Cryptonymic “Common Speedwell” is officially deleted by Clandestine Services.

  Cryptonym “Hawkhead,” whose identity remains unknown even to ACCD (pronounced “acid”) administration, smiles at his own entry in the team report and closes the dossier. Once again, reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated.

  Chapter 29

  “Eat shit: 50,000 toilets can’t be wrong.”

  — latrine graffiti

  The young man had watched the building for many hours now, and yet he felt only exhilaration. He had always found offensive tactics a great stimulant. There was even backup in the form of an “insurance policy” of sorts, and the job was paying such a lot of money. Enough to take him far away. When he finally saw the car pull up to the front of the building and the two men emerge, he double-checked the small photograph he carried in his pocket to make sure that it was Toby Beals. Satisfied, he picked up his heavy bag of tricks and crossed the street, crossing in shadow, using the water-snake-across-the-bank glide as he had been taught.

  Princess had been clever, making sure that her friend’s lover had a key to the back entrance of the studio, where there were no surveillance cameras as there were in the front of the building. The young man entered quietly, carrying the bag with great respect. He had some firsthand experience in witnessing the destructive power of shaped demolition “satchel” charges such as this, and the detonating equipment in particular was extraordinarily sensitive.

  He used the key and quickly crossed the threshold of the back entranceway, pulling the heavy steel door closed and locking it soundlessly. He walked down the hallway, moving in the manner he had learned as the sliding-pu (literally, slide step or slide walk), which is a gliding, ball-of-the-foot-forward movement. He focused his energies on performing the step without sound, convincing himself that he was a deadly, invisible force. Deadly, yes. Invisible, not quite.

  Sorry, Princess, there were surveillance cameras in the rear of the building too. And at that moment when the young man glided up to the threshold of the first studio doorway, there were in fact eight men watching various monitors, who could attest to his being very visible indeed. There were eight watchers because Toby Beals did not acquire his twenty-eight mil by being stupid. There were eight watchers because Toby, Toby’s partners, and Toby’s real partners had all been warned that a penetration team was coming.

  Eagle operated within the need-to-know strictures, except when it was in his best interests not to. He waited until Hawkhead confirmed the termination of Operation Toledo Blade, and at that second signaled another party to tell “The Big Man” about the mission coming in to destroy KILL, and how Eagle’s team was drawing a line through it, true to the spirit of “their understanding.”

  Said gratuitous leak was tunneled outside his office, through what Eagle thought of as his independent channel, the Joint Chiefs having provided him with a thirty-year power base, and it became simply a thing of one general whispering in the ear of another. This last whisper, transmitted directly into the misshapen ear of The Big Man, was accompanied by a price tag to be eventually repaid in like coinage. Hot air rising. Thus did a prominent Saigon industrialist come to learn right from the dragon’s mouth — so to speak — of a skein of events that might result in jeopardy to KILL.

  So when the young man glided around the threshold of the doorway, he glided into a world of hurt. The fired projectiles of three automatic weapons, one of which immediately jammed, blasted their target in a hail of seventy-one rounds, an aggregate cluster of forty-three striking him somewhere on his body, all of this happening in that eye blink that it took him to fall from an erect posture to the bullet-pocked, blood-smeared wall, and down to the floor, death claiming him within that instant.

  Toby Beals and his partners did not die in the blast from the satchel charge that blew when the bag flew against the wall, the explosion taking four lives as it took out the entire back section of the building in which “China Production Services” made its tape-delay recordings for KILL’s main northern relay.

  They perished one minute and seven seconds later, when the timer clicked its red pointer to “zero” and two wires were allowed to touch, electrically detonating twenty-five kilos of high explosive up through the guts of the R-9K auto-destruct unit, blowing Beals Joint Ventures of Southeast Asia and all who sailed in her into a smoking pile of charred rubble and miscellaneous fragments of human corpses.

  When Kim Lee came in the front way with his package for Broadcast Control/Engineering, presumably to pick up the next day’s tapes, nobody thought anything about it as he walked past the surveillance monitors. And that was why, when the young North Vietnamese deserter had first heard about Princess’s offer, he had built his plan inside-out, having known Kim Lee since he’d defected to the south.

  He knew that Kim could easily slip behind the big transmitter, and simply press the round, red-colored activate button that was now being operated in the dangerous “on” mode. Kim Lee would then have one hundred twenty seconds to get as far away from the building as he could, having been taught how to easily defeat the alarms on the warning system of the au
to-destruct. The little boy had been an inexpensive insurance policy. Nobody pays any attention to the little ten-year-old courier always parking his bicycle in the foyer, always running a few minutes late. Besides, little kids don’t blow up production studios. So you don’t watch ten-year-olds. Especially not when you’re busy watching a mysterious intruder carrying a bag full of explosives who happens to be walking down your hallway. A little inadvertent misdirection as it turned out. Tick-tick-tick-tick . . . (Bannnngggg!)

  . . . Surprise!

  Abracadabra, you might say. Now you see it. Now you don’t.

  And of course the young man who came in KILL’s back door was a Vietnamese street cowboy who had been handsomely paid for his time and expertise. The young North Vietnamese deserter had done the only prudent thing. He had farmed out the contract.

  It amused both him and his ladylove to no end that the vastly wealthy Mr. Beals, forewarned and forearmed, surrounded by bodyguards and security systems, had been careless enough to let himself get offed by a ten-year-old kid. Xin Loi, motherfucker.

  Chapter 30

  “flash! bulletin! Kennedy slain in motorcade in Dallas. Bustit. Bustit. Correction. Kennedy wounded — ”

  Princess strode past some of the most beautiful flowers she had ever seen in her life, as commonplace here as the color green had been in Southeast Asia. God, she thought, what majestic beauty. She was so happy here. Her first week on the air had been a blast. Everybody loved her voice and people were falling all over themselves welcoming her to the station, telling her how great she sounded, and it wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  She’d never stay here, of course. Her standard of living had dropped to the basement, as she saw it, but she figured she’d enjoy the beaches and the natural beauty and the climate for a year or so, then make a move back up the ladder to one of the big metros. She could make a real name for herself here, where the competition was all but nonexistent.

  She’d found an apartment that was livable, if drab, typical of someone in her income strata, and she’d be able to fix it up. She was going to concentrate on enjoying life for a few months and just not worry about the money. With her American holdings, what she had in the Caymans, the South African Dutch Hartebeest stock, the old AT&T chunk, the low six-figure bundle that she planned to roll over again this year, and what was left in Switzerland, the ridiculous emolument the station paid would stretch.

  “Hi!” said the vapid but friendly switchboard girl.

  “Good morning.” Princess was not used to lots of employee warmth, and she made a mental note to remember to smile, chat a bit, renew some of the social graces.

  “How you like the Islands? Found a place yet?” the girl asked as she walked by the front desk.

  “Wonderful. I love it! And, yeah, they found me a cute little place.” Watch it, she thought in Chinese, don’t be too enthusiastic about everything. Remember you should act normally today. Don’t be too happy. Don’t be overly sad later. She had carefully practiced a calculated facade of astonishment with just the right edge of tragedy. Always the prepared pro, she knew it would play easily.

  “Hey, Priscilla, what’s cookin’, good lookin’?” Said without any great malice by a young engineer as she walked down the hall.

  “You are, handsome,” she flirted, my God in Heaven, friendly engineers. Can this be a radio station?

  Striding purposefully as always, she wheeled into the music room and began pulling the few records she would play during her three-hour board trick. It was an odd, heavy talk, music, and news operation playing “AOR-formatted” popular records. But the all-girl concept, the station calling itself Virgins 7, a spinoff of the frequency numbers, amused her, and she took the gig without any haggling. She liked being a big frog in a little pond, and being free.

  She was watching the clock, as always, with a practiced eye, and as the time inched toward the top of the hour, she went into the teletype alcove and ripped a five-foot length of yellow newswire copy off the quietly clacking machine. She’d have to remember to ask how to change the ribbons. She had exactly fourteen seconds left by the time she had her copy stacked and ripped, and popped open the control room door. The heavyset redhead who worked the shift before hers quickly cued a record and jumped out of the way saying, good-naturedly, “Hey, Pris, Jesus Christ, you don’t cut it very short or anything!”

  “Whatdya mean, Rusty, I had six-and-a-half seconds left!”

  They both laughed, and the scarred, pockmarked young woman from Vietnam opened her program mike switch with two perfectly manicured, blood-red nails and said, in a voice sexy enough to peel an unripened banana, “You’re in tune with Virgins Seven! Seven-ninety on your radio dial, K-Vee Radio for the beautiful Virgin Islands, from sun-splashed St. Thomas!” She touched a mercury switch, and the time jingle played as she segued into the news intro cart, cutting her mike for a moment as she stacked her two news spots. She was trembling slightly, which would appear to be normal new-station control room jitters to any staffer who might see it. She faded up her pot as the intro peaked, saying on cue in her lovely voice:

  “Vietnam War headlines: the news this hour on this metropolitan edition of K-Vee radio news . . .” She began reading the first stories on the war, the president, Congress, on down through the copy. Reading the phrases without having any idea what she was reading until she came to her first spot break and her trembling fingers hit the commercial cartridge and she cut her mike for a brief coughing spasm.

  Settle down, she gentled herself in Chinese. Be calm. Be at peace. You are safe now. Be careful. Just read the story in the usual way as if the words have no extra meaning, just as you would handle it under ordinary, normal conditions. Take a deep breath. The spot is ending. Open your microphone now.

  “Dateline: Cholon. Broadcast pioneer Tobias ‘Toby’ Beals, fifty-seven, of Nassau in the Bahamas, called one of the leading exponents of so-called ‘pirate radio’ operations, is believed to be among those persons killed in a series of explosions that rocked the Chinese section of Saigon in South Vietnam early Monday.

  “The remains of eight to ten other persons, allegedly including Saigonese industrialist Vo Phat Chin, and several other unidentified persons believed to be employees of China Production Services, were found in the wreckage of the Cholon offices of the production company owned by Beals Joint Ventures, the Southeast Asian division of the Beals broadcasting empire.

  “Toby Beals was acknowledged to be the pioneer of rebroadcast-style or pirate-type radio operations, with highly successful stations in England, Australia, and Europe. Police and military authorities determined the explosives had been planted inside the structure in which the Beals company China Production Services was housed. An unidentified official said the bombing is believed to be the work of Viet Cong terrorists.

  “On the lighter side of today’s news . . .”

  Epilogue

  Inside the womb of limitless infinity, a monstrous giant of unfathomable force is spawned from the titanic, cataclysmic afterbirth of colliding, exploding galaxies. Whirling, spinning, surging, radiating, self-replicating, unstoppable, blazing hot, this thing from deepest thermohell eats gravity, gobbles light, plays with time, turns space inside out, negates relativity, inhales matter, redefines mass, curves polarity, refutes direction — is at once blacker than any black hole and brighter than any sun. And she is female.

  The bitch goddess of destruction is asleep and her eye is closed so that nothing can be discerned. Inside her womb all is blacker than the darkest absence. A depthless, devastating domain of dimension lessness surrounds and blankets. Although she cannot be seen, she is very beautiful, seductively savage and fickle. She may decide to shelter you or destroy you in a quarter-second, taking you down and leaving you where no human will ever think to look for your remains. She can embrace you or show no mercy.

  I feel her tremble and the movement sends a shudder of chill
and fear through me. My body is stretched out flat, as close to her as I can get. I will myself to melt into her, for her to take me and hold me from harm. My eyes are fixed on the deep nothingness, but as she trembles, they open and squint ferociously into her absolute inkiness. Form in the formless black reshapes hallucinatory dragons and splendid pagodas and the bright jade eyes of a golden Buddha, imagined silhouettes and details in sickening and fearsome shapelessness, seen and imagined like the conjured figures in a faraway cloud bank. I shudder as she trembles, and my heart pounds to the mighty rhythm of the bitch goddess.

  My body aches against her cold, damp skin, and I know that I am far from safety and sanctuary, and this thought wakes me up and at once paralyzes me with fright. I have been asleep in her invisible soaring measureless black towers of night, vulnerable to her thousand million crippling and killing stings and stabs and slashes, inside the womb-temple of omnipotence and doom.

  I shake and come awake, terrified, straining to see, and — fingers spread — I awake caressing her slimy skin in the death grip of all-pervasive, absolute horror and shock. I am hurt, dazed, scared shitless, yet I am alive and torn from the womb of the mother.

  Coming back is a madness of weeks. Weeks lost to memory. Sleeping during the unbearable days. Traumatized and ravaged by fever. Drinking from leaves, Halazoned stream water, eating whatever didn’t eat me first. Following a blue feature that wound and wound, meandering without maps, going with the flow of the blue, moving only at night, giving myself to her. Weeks of hell mercifully lost. Only tattered fragments of the time of returning still remain.

  There is a memory of a time out there when all was lost. Out where the third layer of the triple canopy began to give way to sky; tiny slivers of sunlight filtering in amid the huge trees and sun sparkling like silver metal, like the blades of long, thin swords dipped down into her blackness. Like Toledo blades in black.

  Moving into more dappled sunlight. Thirty-five-, forty-, fifty-foot giants, then a riot of greens. Improbable, sky-scraping palms anchor themselves down in the muddy water’s edge. A woman with eyes downcast carries two tin pails suspended from a bamboo pole. She bends low over the dirty water as the pails fill. Slowly she turns. She carefully steps back up on the slick bank as two of her smallest children play naked in the water nearby. She does not look up at their screams or at the frond-covered sampan and the two men in conical hats who shout something.