by Tom Wallace
Hannah leaned over the sink, retching. For ten minutes, her body tried to purge the alcohol and the memory and the terror of last night. When there was nothing left inside her, she covered herself with the robe and returned to bed.
She closed her eyes, softly whispered the Indian’s name, then drifted off to a troubled sleep.
Sitting at a booth in an Indiana truck stop, a half-empty cup of cold coffee in front of him, Collins stared absently at the television set perched high above the counter. His brooding eyes saw the pictures, his ears heard the words, but nothing registered. He was tired, drained. The television images and sounds flew by like a hurried dream.
The History Channel—what else at this hour?—was replaying a special on the current war in Iraq. Collins listened with growing interest as various personalities, some military, some civilian, all with proper credentials and speaking with absolute authority, dissected the reasons for our second incursion into that faraway country in a little more than a decade. And there was no shortage of reasons. Eliminate Saddam, regime change, locate and destroy weapons of mass destruction, spread democracy and democratic ideals in that region of the world. Take your pick.
There is, Collins knew, never a shortage of reasons for going to war. Some real, some imagined, some manufactured. In this particular case, the one that mattered most was seldom mentioned—oil. No matter what the so-called experts said, if Iraq had no oil, the United States would have no interest.
But Iraq did have oil, so young Americans were once again put in harm’s way for questionable reasons. No, Collins reminded himself, that doesn’t even rank as a questionable reason. Blood for oil is a devil’s bargain in every respect.
“Victory in Baghdad” was the cheesy B movie title they’d tagged it with. An entire war condensed into a neat, one-hour package. With plenty of commercials, of course. Leave it to the media to trivialize something as deadly and ugly and horrific as war, presenting it as though it were nothing more than a glorified video game. War must never be taken lightly, and no one knew this better than Collins. Shock and awe may have a nice ring to it, but it translates to death and destruction. Soldiers on both sides fight and die. The dead come home in flag-draped coffins. Families are shattered, cities and villages torn apart. Blood is spilled. That’s the reality.
War is the ultimate truth, and to portray it in such a clean and antiseptic manner is a lie. The dead and wounded deserve better. The country deserves better.
Collins was convinced that if politicians worldwide were forced to spend fifteen minutes in actual combat, war would become a thing of the past. That was an observation he once shared with Lucas many years ago.
“That’s a wonderful sentiment, my boy,” Lucas responded. “Wonderful, but inaccurate. Money is the engine that drives warfare. Politicians are only puppets on a string. So long as billions of dollars can be made, wars will continue to flourish. Never allow yourself to think otherwise.”
Staring up at the TV screen, Collins wondered how long it would take before the History Channel aired the sequel to this ongoing military entanglement, which would include Iraq, part two, and the war in Afghanistan. No doubt it was already in the works.
“We have kicked the Vietnam Syndrome,” commentators and politicians proclaimed after the first Gulf War. “America can feel good about itself once again.”
Hearing that, Collins could only wonder how many future war syndromes lay in store for the country.
That haunting question only added to Collins’s already heavy mood. What did it mean, anyway, kicking a war syndrome, be it Vietnam or Iraq? Nothing. They were only words spoken by a cheerleader with short-term memory and a long eye on popularity. Taken seriously, the statement was yet another slam at the veterans and the job they performed in shit-hole countries thousands of miles away. Men and women sent into combat with hands too often tied behind their backs, with shabby equipment, and for the most tenuous reasons. Soldiers fighting despite an appalling lack of support from the folks back home. It pissed him off to hear shit about how we “lost” in Vietnam. We didn’t lose in Vietnam. No way did we fuckin’ lose. And we won’t lose in Iraq. What will eventually happen is there will be a replay of what happened in Nam: our leaders, “the best and the brightest,” will one day simply decide to take the ball and go home. We won’t lose; we’ll quit.
Then we’ll be left to wonder why. To ask ourselves what it was all about and whether or not the results were worth the price we paid. All the while, as we seek answers to those questions, our next generation of the “best and brightest” will be looking around for the next war.
“We sure kicked ass big-time, didn’t we, Sally?”
Collins initially thought the question came from one of the History Channel commentators. It was only when he looked up that he realized the speaker was a man sitting alone at the counter. Tall—maybe six-five—and thin, he wore tight jeans, a tank top, leather cowboy boots, and a black Peterbilt cap. There was a tattoo on his left shoulder: a cross, under which was written, “Glory to Jesus.”
“I’d say you’re right,” Sally agreed, placing a cup of coffee in front of him.
The man wheeled on his stool, coffee cup in hand.
“We kicked old Saddam’s ass, didn’t we, partner?” he said to Collins.
Collins smiled, indifferent to the man and the question.
“Well, you do agree with me, don’t you, partner?” the man insisted, sipping coffee.
“Wrong enemy, wrong war,” Collins replied. “Bin Laden is the guy we want.”
“Yeah, whatever. But you gotta agree; taking out old Saddam was easy as takin’ candy from a baby.”
“Kicking ass is never easy,” Collins said.
“I don’t buy that,” the man said. “And I don’t imagine Saddam did either, especially when he was standing on the gallows with a rope around his neck.”
“You ever been in a war?”
“Nah, but I’d dearly love to have been in that first one. Or the one we’re in now. I’d like nothing better than to hunt down that coward bin Laden.”
“It’s an all-volunteer army.”
“Believe me, I gave plenty of thought to joining. Talked to the recruiter about it a couple of times. But I doubt they’d have me. See, my blood pressure tends to run a little high.” The man paused to stir his coffee. “But, hell, they don’t need me. Those boys did just fine. Women, too, although I have to admit I’m not all that keen on sending females into a war zone. But, shit, old Saddam didn’t know who he was messin’ with. Neither will Osama. We’ll blast him out of those caves. Wait and see. Before all is said and done, that Muslim lunatic will regret the day he decided to go against us.”
The man took a sip of coffee. Judging it too hot to drink, he added more cream.
“These Gulf wars—they ain’t like Nam,” he said quickly. “Over there, we let those little bastards push us around pretty good. Not this time. This time we went in there and showed ‘em who was boss. We flexed our muscles, you know? Showed the world we’re still the baddest ass-kicker on the block.”
Collins felt a strange mix of feelings toward this man-child. There was a certain appreciation for his simplicity, for that concise black and white outlook toward complex issues. Collins had long ago come to realize his own world would be easier if there were fewer gray areas. Conversely, he detested the man’s kick-ass mentality, the tough-guy posturing. Of all the misconceptions, that was the biggest. Tough guys don’t posture or bluff. They don’t feel the need. Tough guys merely do the job and let the job do the talking. Joe Louis didn’t brag. Lou Gehrig didn’t brag. They beat your brains in every day. Tough guys don’t stand on a ship and tell you, “Mission accomplished.” Of course, Collins understood the man was caught up in the fervor of an ongoing military campaign and the residual anger of 9/11. He was riding on a new wave of patriotism that had swept through the country like napalm on a hillside. In Collins’s view it was Super Bowl pizza party patriotism, more fashionable than heartfelt
. But maybe that was okay. Maybe that was what the country needed. It wasn’t his style, or to his liking, or something he could relate to, but that didn’t really matter. How could it? He was from another time, another era.
Another war.
The killing never ends, does it, my boy? It just goes on and on.
Collins signaled for another cup of coffee. The waitress brought it, answered his frown with a cheery smile, then sashayed away. He gazed deep into the dark liquid, his thoughts swinging like a pendulum, forward to Deke, backward to Snake.
At some point the machinery broke, causing the pendulum to become stuck in the past.
On Snake.
There was no mystery why Collins felt so down. Meeting Snake again, listening to his old friend’s troubled words, looking into those cadaver eyes—how could he not be down?
Snake had been to the abyss, peered into the darkness, and seen absolute evil. They all had seen the same darkness, the same evil. Been to the same abyss. They had negotiated its unique confines, performed their duties, then withdrawn to the light and its safety. All except Snake. The darkness followed him, pursued him relentlessly, trapped him, and ultimately swallowed him.
Snake was being held hostage by countless ghosts from his past. By the secrets left behind in those steaming jungles of death. His soul was on fire, and the flames were unquenchable.
“I hope you find peace.” Those were the last words Collins said to Snake.
Snake, his head lowered like a monk in prayer, didn’t answer for almost a minute. Finally, he lifted his head, directed those sad, hollow eyes at Collins, and said, “Not in this world, my friend. Not in this lifetime.”
Snake nailed it. There would never be peace, not for him. There would only be more pain and suffering. The Angel of Death offered the only means of escape, the only end to all his agony. Collins could envision it—Snake with a gun in his hand, his head in a halo of blood, or a rope around his neck, or a dirty needle in his arm … some shabby way to lay the monkey to rest, to finally set himself free. To leave the ghosts behind. One more casualty of the Vietnam War. How many more would there be before that war’s long arm of death ceased to harvest victims?
The killing never ends, does it, my boy? It just goes on and on.
Those dark thoughts followed Collins all the way to Chicago. So did the image of Snake’s tortured eyes. Even as Collins lay sprawled on the huge bed in his motel room, he heard Snake’s words rumble through his head like a locomotive. Words that pleaded for redemption and peace. Words Collins couldn’t allow himself to hear. They had to be erased, like the enemy.
Sympathy, pity, concern—the inevitable signs of weakness. And weakness led to defeat. There was no place for sympathy or pity, now or ever, not even for a wounded comrade-in-arms. He had to forget Snake; the man was lost. He had to be cold, indifferent, distant. There was no other way. Somewhere out there, Seneca was waiting. And Seneca pitied no one.
Neither could Collins.
Because it‘s time for Cain to be born again.
Pity was foreign to the great Cain. That’s why Lucas called for his resurrection. Pity, sympathy—they simply didn’t exist within him. Neither could they exist within Mickey Collins. In truth, Mickey Collins could no longer exist. He had to be discarded like an old suit of clothes, laid away until this drama was finished.
This was Cain’s time.
That meant journeying back to the riverbank, to the abyss, and looking once again into the darkness. For there, on the edge, he would rediscover the assassin’s heart.
Collins eased closer to sleep, his curtain of consciousness rising and falling delicately. Noises from outside the motel mingled with scattered, broken voices heard during a firefight. Automobile horns were in harmony with helicopter rotors. Dogs barked, water buffaloes bellowed. The chill air from the air conditioner was a cool answer to the hot breeze of the jungle. Two maids exchanged pleasantries in the hallway; two shadowy figures on a riverbank whispered in the early morning mist.
Because it‘s time for Cain to be born again.
As the abyss neared, a question arose: was he closing in on it, or was it closing in on him? He hoped for the former, would accept the latter. Either way was fine because, ultimately, it wouldn’t matter.
Cain was there … waiting.
First kill, sir?
In combat, life and death are always at the mercy of chance. Nothing else figures in. Odds against living or dying can’t be computed; therefore, any contemplation is a waste of time. The randomness of death is such that all calculations are useless. A mortar shell explodes fifteen yards to your right: you walk away unscratched; a soldier to your immediate left becomes hamburger meat.
How do you begin to account for such absurdity?
You don’t. You move on, hopeful that chance is on your side when the next shell explodes.
Collins seldom dwelled on such matters. He instinctively understood war, thus eliminating questions concerning matters beyond his comprehension. Understanding erased the mystery. Anyway, questions seldom led to answers, only to more questions. Questions also led to doubt, to undue caution: deadly traps for any soldier.
What he did know was this: he was still alive. Four months in Vietnam, countless firefights, and he was still breathing, still in one piece. In the end, it was all that mattered. Being alive, healthy, still functioning. He had been in country, in confrontations with the enemy, face to face with death enough times to understand war is a very elemental enterprise. War isn’t about nations or philosophies. It’s not about right or wrong. War is about surviving, about staying alive. It’s about killing the other guy before he kills you.
Pleiku was scalding on that March afternoon in 1967. The monsoons had ended two weeks earlier, replaced now by unrelenting heat. It was as if the whole world had become hell and the jungles of Vietnam were at the center. Lucifer himself would have trouble breathing in this furnace.
Collins guided his company through the steaming jungles surrounding a small village several kilometers east of Pleiku. The village, inhabited by fewer than two hundred people, was a suspected Viet Cong stronghold. Collins, only nineteen and already a captain in the First Air Cav, had been ordered to infiltrate, look for signs of Viet Cong activity or sympathizers, kill the sympathizers, and torch the village if positive evidence was found.
They entered the village at fourteen hundred thirty hours. An emaciated old man came out of his hut, approached rapidly on spindly legs, and in broken English told Collins that no Viet Cong sympathizers lived there. He cursed Ho Chi Minh, praised the United States, railed against the war’s toll, saying in a voice choked with emotion that he had lost two sons, a daughter, and a grandson.
Before the old man could finish his tearful litany one of Collins’s men emerged from a small building, holding a large burlap sack in each hand.
“It’s the mother lode, Captain,” the man said. “Weapons, Army rations, more than five grand in cash, clothes. Don’t listen to what he says, Captain. These dink pricks ain’t pure.”
Collins aimed his M16 at the old man’s head.
“Viet Cong?” Collins asked.
The old man backed away. “No Viet Cong,” he said, shaking his head frantically. “G.I. boo koo number one. United States boo koo number one.”
“He’s boo koo full of shit, Captain,” the soldier said, holding up the sack.
“Viet Cong?” Collins repeated, pushing the old man to the ground.
“No, no, no Viet Cong,” the old man screamed.
Then came the shots, pop, pop, pop, from behind and to the left. Automatic rifle, probably a single shooter. Collins dropped to one knee, let the old man go, then motioned for his men to fan out in all directions. More shots rang out—five to be precise, one smashing into Willie Dickinson’s chest. The young corporal fell backward, dead before he hit the ground.
Pandemonium was unleashed. Villagers ran screaming for shelter, women yanked crying babies out of harm’s way, soldiers struggled to
find cover.
Pop, pop, pop.
Collins heard—felt—a bullet whiz past his head. He fell to a prone position and began crawling toward a water trough. To his left, maybe fifteen feet away, another soldier took a hit in the lower abdomen. He fell to the ground, screaming. Someone called for the medics, but a second bullet, this one to the fallen soldier’s temple, arrived first.
“How many you figure, Captain?” someone asked.
“One,” Collins replied.
“You’re fuckin’ nuts,” the soldier mumbled.
The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion, and Collins would always remember it that way. Images moved in a halting, almost poetic way, voices and noises sounded as though they might be coming from a phonograph record played at the wrong speed. His own movements, slow and precise, were more dreamlike than real.
Straight ahead, directly in his line of vision, Collins saw the sniper darting between huts, running low, rifle in hand. Collins scrambled to his feet, raced to his right, intent on intercepting the sniper before he could disappear into the jungle or the network of tunnels running underground. Collins knew if that happened, the shooter, and any chance of killing him, would be lost.
When Collins came around the last hut, he saw the man running toward him, not more than thirty feet away, struggling to insert a banana-shaped clip into his AK-47.
The sniper stopped dead in his tracks. Collins raised his M16, sighted, squeezed off a single round. The sniper’s head exploded, coming apart like a watermelon dropped from a skyscraper. The bullet entered directly below the man’s nose, blowing out the back of his head, opening a hole the size of a grapefruit. Most of his teeth were splintered by the bullet’s impact, and his left eye, blown free from its socket, dangled on his cheek. Although he died instantly, his right leg continued to twitch for several seconds after he hit the ground.
