by Hart Rivers
JD’s jaw clenched. He hadn’t liked that. But he had been careful to appear not to care.
He remembered yet again how Kate touched his own neck, how her lips felt on his skin. The way she made him feel… it wasn’t supposed to be happening this way.
Maybe he could see Kate a little, just for a little while, maybe that would be okay?
He never lied to himself and so JD knew he was lying now. But he so wanted to be touched by her again like that. So… maybe it would be okay. Just for a little while.
He watched as the octopus changed color and became nearly invisible as it entered the small cave and then took its prey.
There were teachers everywhere.
JD moved the sling to the killing position; took a breath and dove down to the Grouper.
By Monday morning all the red eyes and major hangovers had pretty much subsided, though good spirits still lingered from Hertz’s birthday/beach party. Izzy noticed that even Peck was whistling “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” until he, and his pet lackey Sgt. Hayes, arrived at the LZ with the rest of their small group.
Peck planted himself on one side of the landing pad with Hayes, and like the flick of a light switch, quit humming, crossed his arms. Johnson did the same.
Despite his familiarity with aberrant personalities, Izzy just couldn’t get used to Peck’s Jekyll/Hyde thing, and not for the first time he wondered if Peck could have anything to do with the monster they were after—presuming there was one. Gregg had his doubts.
JD strode to the other side of the L.Z. opposite Peck. Despite their ongoing cold war, Gregg joined JD and Izzy did the same as the sounds of Santana concussed the air with “Black Magic Woman” and the eye-popping Crystal Blue Persuasion swooped out of the sky. Landing with bullseye precision on the chopper landing pad, up close the metallic purple and black attack helicopter looked even fiercer, whipping the wind with its blades like a chain saw slicing paper at Samurai speed.
As he had at the party, Rick Galt managed to make quite the entrance. He was in full Special Ops battle mode in faded tiger fatigue pants and black tee-shirt, a camo bandana and bush hat, and with two day’s growth of beard he looked like a twenty-first century pirate welcoming them aboard his Disney on acid ship.
“This is absolutely cool!” Izzy shouted above the bleating chopper blades while he and Gregg threw in their duffels. “I wish I had a camera to prove I got to ride in this thing.”
“I’ll send a note to your press secretary,” Rick shouted back and gave him a hand up, then lent Gregg the same assist.
JD hopped in by himself.
Peck, at the other side entrance, stayed put. Glaring at Rick, he yelled, “What the fuck is this kind of hot rod, Captain? This is not authorized transport. I will not ride in this!”
“Then I guess you can take the slow bus instead that has about five stops,” Rick yelled back. “I hear they are getting the shit shelled out of them up there, so they’ll probably make a couple of extra stops to pick up casualties, and be really glad to have you. Then again, with all the heavy stuff happening, you could be a casualty and never come back yourself, so good luck!”
Izzy slid a glance to Gregg and he grinned back at him as Hayes got in and extended a hand to Peck, who glowered at them all before sitting down in a huff across from JD. Izzy couldn’t help but think that he would sit anywhere but there if JD was looking at him like that. Not even a look really. The aviators reminded him of glossy black snake eyes, and his face was still and hard, like a hockey mask.
It was really unnerving, even more than a very first helicopter ride in something that looked like it came out of a futuristic comic book. As flashy and high-tech as it was on the outside with all its weaponry and rockets, though, the inside was as drab and utilitarian as a box. They all had seats on basically benches with web belts and most of the interior was evidently for the gunner and his huge machine gun.
Izzy could see the pilot and copilot up front nodding at whatever instructions Rick was issuing through a headset with a mouthpiece they must be using to communicate, and he wondered what Rachel would think, if she could even imagine him somehow part of a team with a Special Ops warrior and a spy. The chopper ride he would write her about. It gave him something exciting to bring to the table after Rachel’s latest rundown on the Rockefeller collections being introduced at the Met, but more significantly “still hanging out down in the Village, grooving, listening to Joan Baez. Just got tickets to another concert at Fillmore East! Bonnie and Delaney, you know them?” and no he did not.
There was no getting ready or a “fasten your belts” announcement before they took off, only the ear splitting sound of Jimi Hendrix, a neck snapping lift, and they were thundering through the sky in a gunship that was rising, spinning, banking off in a shuddering turn toward the sea, and then another turn, heading towards the dark green mountains known as the Highlands.
Izzy watched the countryside roll past beneath the swaths of dark green and light green, the rubber plantations and rice paddies and rivers and small villages, where water buffalo outnumbered the crude roads below. They were climbing higher now toward the mountains and the air was much cooler. That’s when Izzy realized that he was not sweating for the first time since his arrival in Vietnam, and the wind, amazing. He looked over at Gregg and smiled, and Gregg smiled and nodded back—then Gregg’s mouth opened in a stunned “O” and he was frantically pointing down as they dropped and headed right for a small group of men running across a narrow dike in the paddy. They had weapons and two of the men spun around, crouched down, opening fire on the helicopter that swooped down so fast Izzy’s stomach felt like it hit the ceiling while the rest of him remained paralyzed, watching in disbelief as their gunship, the one he was in, fired a rocket that just obliterated the two riflemen and then—
The Rolling Stones blasted “Jumping Jack Flash” from the huge speakers that pierced the air and the rocket ship skimmed the top of the dike toward some other men futilely running ahead while the guns opened up and then the ship was slowing and circling the carnage that had the pilots and their gunman whooping.
Izzy puked out the side of the ship. Someone handed him a green army towel.
“It’s good you got to see that, Doc,” Rick said close to his ear. “It’s war, and that’s what we do. It’s what the soldiers you see every day are doing, you know?”
No, Izzy did not know, so why he nodded as if giving some tacit approval he did not know either. He was glad that no one else looked at him as he wiped vomit off his shirt and the ship climbed up into the blessedly cooler air where he silently chanted his mantra of wake the fuck up, in between 351 and a wake up.
At some point his hands quit talking for him and his stomach settled down, and it helped that the ship was in even cooler air high up over the Central Highlands. Rick played personal tour guide, pointing in specific directions and explaining, “Here we have a string of outposts guarding against the incursion of the VC into what’s ours in South Vietnam. And over there, look over there, Izzy, that’s Ban Me Thuot.”
Even from the distance Izzy could see their destination was a long way from Nha Trang, which now compared to spending the war at the Plaza Hotel next to this place which looked like one big fort surrounded by the jungle on the side of a blasted hill.
No wonder these guys called them Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
Rick issued some order to the pilot through his headset and rather than fly directly toward the ugly blasted hill, the chopper banked to the right and went in another direction.
“Where are we going?” Peck shrilly demanded. “The base is over there!”
“Hang onto your panties,” Rick shouted back. “It’s a surprise, sweetheart.”
A few minutes and more than a few miles away, they circled a clearing and landed. Izzy did what everyone else did, jumping out with his own travel gear and extra Rx meds, which was no doubt different than whatever JD was carrying in the duffel he was the last to haul out. At Rick’s wave, the cho
pper took off.
Two jeeps were waiting nearby, apparently part of Rick’s surprise since they were parked in the middle of nowhere and he had the keys.
“Here you go, Major.” He pitched one to Peck who immediately handed it to Hayes. “Feel free to go get some lunch and set up at the clinic with your side kick while I take the rest of my guests for a little tour.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Take a look around! What you see from here is what you get in this hell hole. Where in god’s name are we, anyway?”
“Have you been outside the wire?” Rick motioned the rest of them into the jeep he was commandeering.
“Outside? Outside? Are you crazier than you already seem… what’s your name again? Give me your name. I am writing you up.”
“Captain Richard Galt, Special Ops. Feel free to write away. With any luck you’ll get promoted to my job. But…” Rick looked him over, shrugged with a “meh” kind of impression and concluded, “I wouldn’t count on it.” He got behind his own wheel, cranked the engine.
“Wait! This is a war zone, people are out there wanting to kill us. You can’t just leave us here.”
“Oh yes I can, and yes I will, asshole. In fact, I think it’s a great idea if you just stick around right where you are while we go sight-see and may or may not come back this way. You can wait for dark and probably get to be Officer of the Guard since we’re a little short in these parts and need all the help we can get.”
Rick peeled out with JD, in the front seat next to him, laughing with glee.
Gregg chuckled, and Izzy was happy to have even some black humor to offset the earlier gunning, so he kind of chuckled, too. But he was compelled to look back anyway, guided by that part of him that he never wanted to lose touch with, but seemed to grow fainter by the day, the part of his own humanity that divided him from some gunman doing his job, and enjoying it.
Izzy noticed that Gregg glanced back, too. He was glad not to be alone in that, and Gregg nodded when their eyes caught, then shifted ahead to where JD and Rick sat up front, carrying on a happy conversation about something Izzy couldn’t catch, but it didn’t matter anyway. Those two guys were as obviously in their element as he and Gregg were not, but there they were anyway, bouncing along in the back seat as Peck and Hayes sped behind them on the crude red dirt roads, splashing through the puddles of the heavy rain that had recently fallen. The tattered base called Ban Me Thuot, so quickly left behind in the air, seemed a booming metropolis compared to the remote wilderness they were in. Izzy had grown up surrounded by streets and buildings and people. There was absolutely nothing but nothing out here except the jungle.
Izzy put his latest helicopter-Alfred Hitchcock-scenario into the section of his mind he had begun relegating all such dark things to and tried to focus on how high and green the grass was, how bright the colored flowers on the vines climbing the trees they plunged past.
Suddenly, the jeep stopped and Rick turned off the motor.
“Okay, campers, we walk from here. We’ll keep it short because you have the good work to do and I’m the last person to keep you from it—trust me, that’s exactly where I want you because that’s where the men need you to be. But all that will still be waiting after I show you something you’ll never forget. Just bring water and cameras and of course your trusty weapons in case we are swarmed by the enemy.”
The last was clearly a dig at Peck, seething in the passenger seat of the jeep that had screeched to a halt behind them.
“I am not leaving this vehicle and entering this area,” Peck announced as Hayes revved the engine. “This is enemy territory, for Chrissakes.”
“Apparently,” JD concurred, stroking his chin as he put his aviator snake eyes on Peck, before politely inviting, “Sure you don’t care to join us, Major? After all, the only professional who knows his way around out here is with us.”
“Just be back in an hour,” Peck snapped, conceding ground but refusing to give up the whole farm. “If you’re not, then… then…”
“Then, what?” JD laughed. So did Rick. “Okay, mom, if we’re not back in an hour, then what?”
“I will call for support.”
“Okay, fine, and do you have a secret phone in your shoe?” JD inquired.
“Leave me the radio,” Peck demanded.
“There is no radio, you idiot,” Rick informed him, signaling the way forward with his M16 to the guests he had on board. Then as an afterthought, threw over his shoulder, “See if you can rig up two tin cans and a string. We’ll see you when we see you.”
Chapter 15
The group left Peck and Hayes behind, arguing. Rick signaled to Gregg and was speaking to him quietly. Izzy thought he heard “Nikki” mentioned and wondered if Rick even knew about her relationship with Peck. Probably not since Rick seemed the type to confront any competition head on. As for Peck? Izzy thought about that and decided Peck would be too smart and too cowardly to confront someone physically superior to himself. Instead he would retaliate in some covert-hostile way, get some revenge that would go behind your back, not put it in your face, and be structured for maximum toxicity. That’s how guys like him operated. Ugly. Sneaky. Effective.
Izzy didn’t want to intrude on Gregg’s and Rick’s conversation, so he hung back, not too much certainly, not out here, but as he tramped along behind them he was stunned by the beauty of a kind of nature he had never thought to see.
“My god, it’s like a sanctuary out here,” he exclaimed to JD, who had fallen in step beside him. “Look at the size of that tree—and, that bird that’s in it, just look! And all this bamboo, the color, the size, the—”
“Okay, Tarzan,” JD cut in, his voice very quiet but not his scary quiet voice. “Orientation number two: We are in the bush, you are entering the food chain right here, and you, with your skills, are no longer the top of the food chain. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now just remember to move a little quietly because this is not the Bronx Zoo tour, and also watch where your feet are because while you’re gawking at the trees you might miss one of the twenty deadly snakes… actually, Gregg? You might want to look up.”
“Holy shit!”
The snake dangling over Gregg’s head was brown with black markings, with a long, bright, flicking tongue. Gregg stood paralyzed, either too terrified to move or unsure if running would incite an attack.
Izzy’s heart hammered. He wanted to run back to the jeeps but didn’t dare take off solo on the barely visible animal trail they were on. So he backed up, very slowly, while JD drew closer to the snake, tilting his head.
“It’s just a reticulated python,” JD told them. “He’s not likely to bother you unless you bother him first.”
“Good call, Doc,” Rick said, clearly impressed, “where’d you learn about snakes?”
“Herpetology 101,” JD said. “Snakes are cool.”
“Want me to kill it?” Rick asked. “We could have it for lunch.”
At first, Izzy thought he was kidding, but when Rick reached down to his boot and unsheathed a knife, and it sure was not a nice silver steak knife like they had at Tavern on the Green, Izzy instinctively tried to stop him with a forceful, “No!”
Rick paused, frowned. “Don’t move.” Then he whipped the knife up and across so fast the next thing Izzy knew the knife was next to his boot pinning a snake’s severed head to the ground, its tongue still flicking.
“Monocled cobra,” JD noted, “About eight feet, looks like.”
“Yep, one bite and you’re good as dead.” Rick reclaimed his knife from the huge hooded cobra’s head, its jaws continuing to open and close in mid-air as Rick flung it from the steel tip.
“Wow Rick, that was amazing.” Gregg was absolutely agog. “Wow. I mean, wow.”
“Just a day in the life out here, pal.” Rick put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Let’s quiet down now guys and get a move on. Izzy watch your feet.”
“Trust me, I’m watching, I’m watch
ing.” Wake the fuck up… wake the fuck up… Boy what he wouldn’t give for some of his mother’s matzo ball soup right now, made from scratch, the simplest of meals, and he didn’t care how hot it was outside. Comfort food, comfort anything. Simple, normal, boring, everyday please let me someday get back to all of that… a monocled cobra, what the hell am I doing here?
Gregg rearranged his position to walk right behind Izzy, like he literally had his back, and JD was just a few steps ahead, making it look effortless as he pushed aggressively ahead while glancing back at them every so often.
Rick moved the same way, with a lithe grace, as if he was one with the soft green of the big bamboos swaying in the wind, the high grass of the meadow they were now crossing, the songs of the birds—
Rick held up his hand and signed for silence. JD stepped back and sank down, signaling for them to do the same. Izzy knelt in the grass, Gregg beside him, both of them too awe-struck to even blink as they watched the water show from perhaps seventy-five yards away.
Just a little below them in a hollow, where a small river broadened into a wide pool, there was a small herd of elephants. What had to be a mother elephant raised her trunk and trumpeted into the air while her baby latched on beneath her girth to nurse.
“They know we’re here,” JD whispered. His voice held the same reverence as the gaze he turned to Izzy, then back to the elephants bathing in a wide shallow pool below a picture postcard waterfall. The huge gray animals were filling their trunks and squirting water into the sunlight and making rainbows with their ponderous splashes as they rolled and played in the water.
The elephants, at some signal from the old matriarch, which JD pointed out to him, began to slowly move away, up the embankment and just to the right of them, and then behind the big stand of bamboo they had traversed to get here themselves.
