by Rick Boyer
Roantis had reappeared in the doorway, a glowing joint clenched between his lips.
"Now where the hell did you get that? " asked Mary. "Jack just rolled it for me. Nice kid."
I went to the bottom of the stairway and yelled upward at the darkness, like Ahab.
"I thought I told you guys not to smoke that stuff anymore! I thought we agreed —"
"We're not. Mr. Roantis is!"
"Don't get wiseassed. That stuff screws up your chromosomes!"
"Booze kills your brain cells! You're living proof!"
Well, I was about to go right up there and kick some ass. Yes sir. If I hadn't been so under the weather I would have just gone right up there and done just that. Except those snotnose punks now outweigh me by twenty pounds each and row varsity crew. Oh well, I'd let it pass this time . . .
Roantis was filling the room with pungent smoke when I returned. Mary and I had coffee. I had added a wee drop of Dewar's to mine. I lighted my cigar again and we listened.
Roantis's blue eyes took on a languid softness from the dope.
"The special long-range patrols . . ." he said. Then, as he squinted in recollection, the eyes became focused, sharp, steely gray blue. He hesitated for an instant, fixing the scene in his mind, then continued.
"The special long-range patrols were officially called reconaissance patrols. We did recon work, sure. But our job was really to search and destroy. This was always behind enemy lines. We carried only small arms and took Russian Kalishnikov rifles so we could use enemy ammo if we had to. We were to radio back the enemy's size and strength. Whenever possible, we were to snatch a man or two and interrogate them to see what they had planned. We would then destroy the staging area and as many of the enemy as possible, moving on to the next target."
"How did you find these targets?" I asked.
"Walked onto 'em. Looked for tire tracks in mud or packed dirt. Fresh oil spots on roads, reflections from windshields . . . you know. But mostly just walked through the countryside until we spotted something . . . or heard some commotion. Oh, they had the stuff hidden from the air. You bet. But not from ground level. They weren't expecting any GIs within eighty miles."
"Then you'd blow up the supplies?"
“Uh-huh."
"But if you packed the stuff in, how'd you carry it all?"
"We dint. We dint carry the explosives. It was all done from the air. All we carried to do our work were dozens of little transmitters no bigger'n a pack of butts. They had metal spikes on their side and bottom: you could stick 'em into the ground or onto trees. Some had li'l magnets so you could stick 'em on a vehicle. Just make sure their li'l red eyes are pointing up, that's all. Then you'd set them so they'd start to transmit all at once at a prearranged time. That beam guides the smart bombs right down on top of them. If you encircled a camp or supply depot with four or five of these, there's no way it could remain on earth—not with those two-thousand-pound bombs coming down on it. So we didn't take anything but small arms and the transmitters. We just didn't need anything else. A B-fifty-two can fly so high it's silent and invisible from the ground. Under the jungle canopy, where the Panvin and VC hid all their stuff and men, there was no way they could know what was coming down on them until it happened. Until it was just too late. That's how the eight Ducks did all that damage. And by the time it happened we were always miles away, walking through the darkness under that canopy. They never knew what hit them."
He paused to snuff out the remains of the joint. When it had cooled sufficiently, he took the roach end and popped it into his mouth, swallowing it with a gulp of Scotch. Then he lit a Camel. Roantis's body was doomed to a continual barrage of punishment, if not from military foes or crazed karate opponents in white robes, then from his own excesses.
"We'd start these li'l country walks from a secret base in Thailand. Be lifted out either in a chopper or a fixed-wing transport like a Hercules C-one-thirty. If it was by chopper we'd drop into the LZ in the dead of night. If we jumped in—which was rare—we'd do it at dusk so if we hit a hot spot we could evade in cover of darkness. Sometimes the drop zones were picked by other recon teams in the bush. These men, on their way out, would be our reception committee when we hit the zone. The insertion point was usually a two-day walk from the beginning of the staging areas."
Roantis got up from the table and paced around the porch. He stretched and grunted to relieve the tension that had crept into him. He strolled over to the window, peered out quickly, and returned to the table.
"We'd move out right away, putting a few miles between us and the LZ, then go to earth for the night. Then, before dawn next morning, we'd head toward the staging areas near the Vietnamese border. We just walked, single file, sixty feet apart, and as quiet as cats along these jungle and mountain trails. If we had to cross open plains or marshes—and there are a lot of these in Cambodia—then we'd wait and rest under the foliage until dark, then sneak across. We worked as we went. Twice we wasted entire villages because the enemy had commandeered them and were using them as bases. We knew there were women and children in those huts, too. That was one of Charlie's favorite ploys. We never got over it though. It drove Royce nuts later. He never was the same. But in those two villages alone we killed over six hundred enemy soldiers.
"After about eight to ten days of this, we'd head for the border and link up with friendlies. Then, at the first fire support base or special forces camp, we'd lift out to Nha Trang and debrief. After four days of R and R, we'd go back at it again, this time starting from Vietnam. We'd walk into and through Cambodia back toward the remote boonies, where we'd get airlifted out again to Thailand. So there we went, back and forth, back and forth. Just find the enemy and mark him for the kill. No combat. There were lots of these teams operating up and down the border between Tet and late sixty-nine. I tell you, it worked like downtown. And we gave them no peace."
"How long before the Reds caught on?" I asked.
"Hah! Not long, man. They knew right away that there were recon men operating in their midst. How else could we be hitting them square on the noggin each time? I tell you Doc, we made each of those blockbusters count. We hit 'em each and every time—and know what? We scared the shit outa them. Those huge antipersonnel bombs open up a thousand feet above the ground. Each of them spit out twenty canisters of grapeshot. These would fall another five hundred feet, fanning out. Then they'd
go off together, taking every leaf off every tree —"
Mary had had enough. She interrupted to say goodnight, and leaned over and kissed Roantis on the side of his haggard face.
"That's for saving my husband's life," she said, then looked at me, "although it turned out not to be worth it. Goodnight everyone. And don't drink any more, Charlie. You're in enough trouble already."
She left us alone. Whether Roantis had actually saved my life or not, he had certainly saved me from a hell of a beating. Four months earlier, two South End bloods jumped me in the parking lot near the BYMCU. One whanged me a good one on the head when I foolishly tried to fight back. I had learned just enough self-defense stuff from Roantis to try it. It was no go. His pal was coming at me with a knife, blade low, edge up, when Roantis blew in on the scene like a dust devil. In less than ten seconds it was all over, though I was on the ground and barely conscious enough to witness it. Roantis was all hands and feet, moving like lightning. Now, as I stared at the weary face of the fifty-five-year old veteran, it was hard to imagine he'd been so swift and lethal. They led one punk away in bracelets; the other one needed a stretcher.
"Thanks again for saving my skin in the parking lot, Liatis. You knew when you called tonight I couldn't refuse you."
He pointed a stubby and stained linger at my chest.
"Now Doc. Maybe you've been wondering why I invited myself here. It wasn't just to mingle with all those fancy people and drink free booze."
"Well I know it wasn't for the fancy people anyway. I assume that your surprise visit, besides enabling you
to consume twenty bucks worth of free hooch, has something to do with the statue."
"Uh, right. It's all gotta do with Siu Lok's loot. That's why I brought the pictures."
"But we only saw one picture," said Mary, reentering the porch with a mug of warm milk.
"Decided to hear more of the story?" I asked.
"Uh-huh. Besides, I'm so edgy I couldn't sleep now if I tried. Okay Liatis, I'm all ears again."
"Oh yeah," said Roantis, "the other picture." He produced another folded snapshot. He placed it on the table between us. The picture ran horizontally, with the crease running through the middle from left to right. In the picture were eight men: three standing in back and five kneeling on one knee in front. Rather like a sports team. The white crease lay above the heads of the kneeling men and across the stomachs of those standing. It obscured nobody's face. The men wore camouflage fatigues, but not any fancy insignia or headgear, nor any badges or rank. No weapons were visible. Roantis, looking deeply tanned and quite a bit younger and thinner, was standing proudly in back center, his hands clasped behind him. He was obviously team leader. Two of the men were black, and both wore mustaches. Two seemed to be Hispanic, and one of them wore the trim, lean mustache so favored by many Latinos. One of the kneeling men had a broad, flat Asian face and small tight eyes. Two of the men were very big: one of the blacks and a tall, blond giant with a big gold handlebar mustache.
I saw that three of the men had black X 's marked on their chests in pen.
"These guys dead?"
"Yeah. Well, two are dead and the other guy might as well be. Hill Royce, an air force commando, went nuts in seventy-two. He's still in a hospital in the Philippines. This guy here, Larry Jenkins, was an SF trooper who worked with me several times out of Long Binh. He did long-range recon work all over Laos, too. After the Daisy Ducks, he went back to Laos to recruit and train more mercenaries. He was missing in action on the Plain of Jars up there. Larry was the best of the best. This guy here, Ton Youn, was a Korean. ROK special forces. Great soldier. Mean sonofabitch, too. He was our interrogation man. He was hit on the outskirts of Saigon in seventy-one by a sniper."
"So there are five Daisy Ducks left?"
"Right. Mike Summers here was the other black guy besides Jenkins. Ghetto kid from Chicago. Tough as hell, and hands quick as lightning for a big guy. You can see how big he is. Got him from the one-oh-one. Good man. Solid and brave. He's back in Chicago now. South Side. Now this guy, the other spic besides Vilarde, is a Puerto Rican named Jusuelo. Jesus Jusuelo. Now he just might be the best soldier of all the Ducks. He was a navy SEAL. Anyway, Jusuelo's a merc now, just like I used to be, somewhere in Africa I think."
"Do you know where in Africa?" Mary asked.
"Nah. He probably moves around. Hell, there are twenty places right now in Africa where a good merc can find work."
I tapped the man with the big gold mustache.
"This guy looks right out of the SS."
"Hmmmmph! Yeah, could've been, twenty years earlier. Dat's Fred Kaunitz. Big fella from Texas. Heard he can wrestle a bull to the ground. Not a steer or calf, a bull. He's slow and deliberate, and very careful. He was a smart kid, Fred, but quiet. Strange maybe. Never talked much. Like I heard that bull story from a friend of his, not from him. He never talked about himself. A loner and a perfectionist. The best shot of all of us. Rifle or shotgun, still target or moving, if it was in front of Fred's muzzle it was gone."
"And where is he now?"
Roantis shrugged his shoulders.
"Don't know. Last I heard, back on the family ranch in Texas. I'll be tracking him down, but I'm sure he doesn't keep in touch with the army guys. It wouldn't be like him, you know? As soon as the job was done, he just went back to Texas. This one's Vilarde. He's the one I want to find. That's why I came here tonight."
"Yeah? Well forget it, Liatis. I know I owe you a big favor. Someday, if you're unlucky in a fight, I'll fix your jaw for free. I'll pull all your family's teeth out—no charge. But I'm not having anything to do with these guys. No way."
"Amen," said Mary.
"Vilarde is as solid as they come. He was second in command in the Ducks. After the Ducks, I quit the army. I knew we weren't going to win over there and I guess I was sick of it. I'd been in one defeat already, up at Dien Bien Phu. I didn't need another one."
Roantis was getting morose again; I persuaded him to put the booze away and switch to coffee.
"Well here's what happened," he continued. "It was on one of our sweeps eastward, from Thailand toward the Vietnamese border. On the fourth day out we came up to a little hillside at dusk and made dry camp. No lights or noise. There was a tiny village down below us in a river valley. We glassed it in the dying daylight just before we turned in. It was only thirteen or fourteen hooches, some of them for three families. It was built along the river, and there were all kinds of boats pulled up on the bank. We planned to get moving before dawn and just bypass it, crossing the river and then following the jungle and mountain trails looking for tire tracks.
"About four in the morning, Jusuelo wakes me up and says there's noise in the bush. It was a platoon of Khmer Rouge moving up and over our little hill. We snuggled down and froze and let them go right over us. If we took them on we'd give away our position and get badly chewed up, too. They went over the hill and down to the village. We used a starlight scope to track 'em and could see clear as day. They surrounded the village, and at first light they stormed in there fast and got all the villagers out of their huts.
"Then they rounded them up in the central clearing and made them sit down. Then they started the usual shit, you know, hitting the wives and kids with rifle butts, cutting a guy's head off —"
"Usual? Usual! " Mary had risen from her chair and was staring balefully at Roantis, whose manner was that of someone recounting the details of a church rummage sale.
"Yeah. See Mary, Asia isn't like Europe or America. It just isn't. Not even in the most modern places. The standard drill for these guerrilla groups is to enter a village and terrorize it. Shows the people who's boss. Shows them they better not screw around. So anyway, they killed two of the strongest men and beat up some other villagers pretty bad. Now we thought of going in right then, but we decided to use the terror to our own advantage."
"So you stood by," said Mary, "and let this happen so when you showed up you'd be the good guys."
"Right."
"You're no better than the Khmer Rouge, Liatis."
"You're wrong, Mary. Know what? We were worse. Because if we weren't, we'd be dead. So anyway, they left in midmorning after taking all the rice and dried meat they could lay their hands on. We went in at noon and helped bandage the wounded and bury the two headless corpses. We were the heroes. We talked to the old chief Siu Lok, for a coupla hours. He was real steamed of course because one of the guys they killed was his son. We told him he was next—him and his whole family—and he had about nine kids. He seemed to know this, and told us the Khmer Rouge would probably return that night to take the young men away for soldiers. So we fixed a plan with Siu Lok. We decided to stay awhile in the village. They gave us food and all the women we wanted."
Mary's lip curled in disgust.
"Remember, Mary: not like Europe or America." He patted his shirt and sides for butts. I offered him a cigar but he declined. Then he vanished again and hiked upstairs. He returned shortly with a cigarette rolling machine and paper. I knew where it came from. He rolled several cigarettes made with my pipe tobacco, lighted one, and returned to his story.
"So, toward late afternoon, the Daisy Ducks fanned out from the village. Summers had a li'l Chinese mortar with him that he'd gleeped off a dead gook, and that was going to be the diversion. At twilight we hunkered down in the bush along the route we thought the enemy would take. Before long we heard that hissing, snapping sound in the jungle that means men approaching.
Soon, Kaunitz and I located the point of their patrol. They were walking exactly wher
e we thought, and Summers had his mortar sighted in. We went to earth so they'd go right over us."
"Just a sec," said Mary. "You keep saying you let these guys walk over you. How come they never saw you?"
The Mongol eyes crinkled again in a grin.
"Mary, in dim light I could hide here in this room so you'd never see me . . . until it was way, way too late to save your skin. In a jungle it's a piece of cake. Anyway, when the patrol got past us, heading toward the village, we closed in behind them, and on their flanks, too. Those Khmer Rouge were sure of themselves and moving fast and noisy, never suspecting that we were behind them and on both sides. They don't know they've got bad company. just before they get to the village—boom. Off goes that Chink mortar, and Summers, who's firing it from the riverbank you see, has put the first round right on the money, so that takes out four guys right there. He keeps the bombs coming too, as fast as he can drop them down the tube. Then we'd planted some claymore mines right where they'd entered the clearing before. Sure enough, they come streaking in there again and we triggered four of them by wire, which took care of eight or nine more. By now they're sorry they came back. Then all the Ducks got going with the automatic small arms fire from three sides. That and a few frag grenades finished them. Two guys were still kicking afterward and we interrogated them. Found out a whole battalion wasn't far away and was getting closer, and that they had a big ammo dump and field hospital nine clicks away. So we knew where we'd be headed next.
"But before we took off Siu Lok and the villagers were so grateful they cooked a pig for us. We feasted and partied, and then Siu Lok appears with a sackful of goodies for us. Most of it was gold pieces and some pearls, but he had ivory too. At first we refused it. But then all of us were thinking about the cash value of this stuff, you know. I mean, you can't help thinking about it. He kept insisting we take it. He knew that the village was doomed and that sooner or later the Reds would take it all anyway. All the Ducks had done was buy him and the villagers at little more time, and we all knew it. So we divvied up the stuff. Everybody took some except me, and Siu Lok was disappointed. Then, in the dead of night, Siu Lok himself woke me and led me up the hillside where the cooking wood was stacked to dry. There was a hollow space behind it and a narrow tunnel. We went in—he was leading the way or I would have suspected a trap—and after a ways it opened into a little chamber. As soon as I saw that chamber and what he had stashed in there, I knew Siu Lok was a river pirate. In that li'l cave was his treasure trove. And right inna middle of everything was this golden Siva. When I saw it, I knew it wasn't a Buddhist god but a Hindu god. The Cambodes are Buddhists. So one, I knew the Siva wasn't sacred to him: it was merchandise. Two, I knew he'd stolen it, or got it from another pirate. He really wanted me to have it. So I took it and put it in my pack. Then I thought, what if I get caught with this thing? As defined by the military code, taking anything not needed for military operations is looting. Period. No matter even if the people want you to take it. Now everybody knows Gls take a lot of stuff, but it's not big. This is a gold statue. So what if I—the team leader—get caught with it, eh?
