Night Work: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 2)

by Dennis Foley

  “Bui?” she asked. “Is Bui your name?”

  He didn’t know that she already knew his name, that it had been written on his chart after one of his interrogations that had been interpreted by the old woman. He also didn’t understand everything she said, but he liked hearing her say his name. He repeated it again and tapped the tip of his nose, then nodded his head affirmatively.

  “Well, Bui. I’m Kathy.”

  “Kat-te?” Bui said, unsure of his pronunciation.

  “No. Kath-ee,” she corrected.

  “Kath-ee,” he repeated.

  She smiled, and he knew he had said it right.

  She was called to another bed before he could exchange any more words with her. But at that moment he decided his future would be in learning her language.

  He had spoken to the old woman and found out that she had learned to speak English working as a laborer while they were building the large base camp for the hospital he was in. She had grown too old to carry the heavy stones and clear the tree roots, so she worked her way into an interpreter’s job with the security police and then the hospital.

  Bui was sure that learning the language would help him survive. He feared the VC response if they ever caught him. He was also sure they would dispose of him as worthless if they ever got hold of him again. He had resigned himself to the knowledge that he would never walk again without a seriously halting limp. A man who could not run could not be a VC.

  Chapter 5

  THE NOISE LEVEL ROSE and fell as the plane full of Vietnam-bound passengers continued through the sequential steps of what the army called “pipeline.” Pipeline was a long series of events, stations, processing phases, and preparation that ended in soldiers finally getting to Vietnam.

  It was easy for Hollister to tune out the racket in the jet as it turned toward Hawaii after lifting off at San Francisco International. He thought about Susan. It seemed that there were only two things he ever thought about anymore—Susan and Vietnam.

  The last night with Susan was at the Guest House at Fort Mason, near San Francisco’s North Beach. Susan wanted to travel west with him to see him off. She had to leave their quarters at Fort Benning because dependents—how she hated that word—were not allowed to stay on post while their husbands were overseas. Since she was moving back to New York to write, there was no need for them to say good-bye in Georgia.

  Christmas leave en route to Vietnam had been warm but short. Before they knew it, the visits with his family and hers came to an end and they were on the West Coast.

  Fort Mason sits above the bay, barely a few city blocks in size. Over the Officers Club there were two rooms for transient officers. Hollister and Susan checked in for their only night together and decided to go out on the town. After some barhopping, they walked arm in arm along the strip in North Beach. It was the height of the nude and topless bar phenomenon, and the streets were filled with rowdy customers, hippies, and the dregs of life from the Tenderloin district.

  Thinking of Susan, Hollister smiled as he recalled how they were enticed into a particularly loud and well-packed bar named the Condor. They both knew it was a topless bar and decided to go in on a lark to see what the fuss was all about.

  Hollister followed Susan as they paid the cover charge and stepped through the heavy velvet curtain that blocked the view of the stage from the street. Just inside the smoke-filled room Susan stopped and gasped. “Oh, my God, Jimmy. I don’t believe this!”

  He stepped up next to her and stopped long enough to peer over the heads of the crowd at what Susan saw.

  There, on the elevated stage at the front of the room, was the most famous dancer in San Francisco—Carol Doda. She wore a small bikini bottom and fishnet stockings but was naked to the waist. Unaware of his response, Hollister let out a whistle. “I have never seen anything like this before!”

  Susan playfully elbowed Hollister, who was staring at the two huge, swaying, naked breasts that held every man in the room transfixed.

  Susan and he just stood at the back of the crowd, amazed at the sight of Carol Doda energetically go-go dancing while taking every opportunity to exaggerate the movement of her triple-D breasts for the cheering audience.

  Suddenly, Carol stopped, raised her hands to her brows to shield her eyes from the stage lights, and bent forward for a better look, her breasts dangling, pendulumlike, to a stop as inertia and gravity collided. “Hey! You two back there by the door,” she yelled.

  Susan and Hollister looked around to see to whom she was talking.

  “You two.” Carol pointed directly at Susan. “You, honey. You and your boyfriend. C’mon down here in front.”

  Susan looked at Hollister and shrugged. She led, he followed, and they threaded their way through the crowd that had gone quiet trying to figure out what Carol Doda was up to.

  As Hollister and Susan reached the front of the room, Carol pointed to a reserved table, then raised her hand for an unseen waitress. “Hey, somebody get these folks something to drink on the best set of tits in San Francisco.”

  She next bent over even farther and lowered her voice. “You two drink up and enjoy the show. GIs are always welcome in my place. Not all of us are peace pussies.”

  Hollister, surprised that Carol Doda had recognized him as a serviceman by his haircut, felt good when those nearby heard her words and started applauding Susan and him.

  They laughed as they walked up the hill from the Condor to their room over the Officers Club. Hollister remembered how with each step they each knew it meant there was that much less time until he had to leave her.

  By the time they climbed the narrow, winding stairway over the bar, they had stopped laughing and Susan held his hand tight.

  It was well after midnight when Hollister stepped out of the shower. It was small and worked poorly, but he knew enough to appreciate it. It would be a long time before he would see one as good.

  He turned off the bathroom light and walked into the small bedroom. To his surprise, Susan still wasn’t finished for the evening. She sat, propped up by a stack of pillows, against the headboard of the small double bed. Her long brown hair flowed across the pillows and her bare shoulders as she held the rough white army sheet to her breasts.

  A burning sensation stabbed Hollister’s midsection. He was taken with her beauty and pained by the thought that he would have to leave her in the morning. He stood near the bed taking her in until she reached out and placed her fingers on his backside and pulled him toward her—as she pulled the sheet away from her nakedness.

  Their night was filled with lovemaking and the emotions of his departure. She was so afraid that she would never see him again. Susan was normally very strong. But that night he held her close while she quietly cried, her tears running down his chest.

  By dawn they were completely exhausted from trying to pack a year’s worth of emotions and lovemaking into one night.

  The noisy chatter in the plane had dropped to a hush when the first passenger spotted the coast of Vietnam and pointed it out to the others. Faces were soon pressed against the cracked and discolored windows until the stewardess announced landing instructions. By the time she got to the words “tray tables,” the din had picked up again as the men in the cabin, mostly first-timers, started comparing notes on what they had seen out the windows.

  As the plane banked to line itself up to land on the tire-marked concrete runway, Hollister could see how the little town of Tan Canh, the only civilization near the natural deepwater port, had exploded into a bustling GI town just outside the protective wire.

  He sat back in his seat and wondered how much of Vietnam had seen the same kind of growth as Cam Ranh Bay had. Certainly the business of soldiering in Vietnam hadn’t changed as much as the building and expansion of the physical support structures of the war—or had it?

  The noise level again dropped as the plane taxied to a stop on the apron of the runway—only to jump up again as the forward compartment door opened up and all got
their first smell of Vietnam.

  After much confusion getting hand baggage out of the overhead bins and from under seats, the passengers walked down the truck-mounted stairway that had been pulled up to the fuselage of the 707.

  Cam Ranh Bay looked nothing like the pristine little South China Sea port that Hollister had first seen almost two years before. The sandy white beaches and unmarked dunes had been covered up or edged out by miles and miles of concrete, piers, runways, warehouses, docks, barracks, endless rows of concertina wire, minefields, and gun towers. He would not have been able to recognize it if he didn’t know it was Cam Ranh.

  The blast of hot air was every bit as solid as real brick. Although it was nearing sundown, the oppressive heat, coupled with the humid wind coming off the water, painted each of the deplaning soldiers with a wilting welcome blanket.

  “All right! Don’t just stand around! Get on those buses! I want army on the first two buses and all other services on bus number three. Now let’s get this show on the road,” yelled a wiry little army staff sergeant with an armband that read: IN PROCESSING.

  On the bus the newly arrived servicemen kept up the chatter. Their voices filled the metal cavity as they moved to their seats.

  “You been here before? Huh, sir?” asked a young PFC whom Hollister hadn’t noticed on the plane earlier.

  Realizing that the soldier had taken the cue from the Combat Infantryman’s Badge pinned above the ribbons on his wilted khakis, Hollister looked up at the PFC stowing his bag in the overhead rack and getting ready to sit next to him. “Sure have. Where you headed?”

  “Don’ know, sir. I’m just assigned to the Replacement Battalion for further reassignment,” the soldier said, sliding into the aisle side of the bench seat, taking his hat off, and folding it across his lap.

  The crossed rifles on the brass disk on the soldier’s left collar were immediately evident to Hollister. “With your MOS there’s bound to be a vacancy for you somewhere in-country,” Hollister said with a smile.

  “I’m afraid yer right, Cap’n. I don’t mind tellin’ you I’m scared shitless.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Good? What’s good about being a giant jellyfish?” the soldier asked, surprised at Hollister’s response.

  “You don’t think that everyone else on this bus is as afraid as you are?”

  “No, sir. They all seem to be holdin’ it together. I wish I could be that cool about the whole thing,” the soldier said.

  “If you aren’t scared, you won’t do your job right, and that’s what’ll get you and others around you killed. You get too damn casual out there and Charles will have you for lunch. You do what you’re told, watch the old-timers, and listen to the NCOs, and you’ll be on one of these buses again in a year.”

  “I sure hope yer right, Cap’n. I’m sure lookin’ forward to that bus ride,” the soldier said as he self-consciously looked around the bus at the others. He seemed to be satisfied that there were no other officers close enough to hear him, and he turned back to Hollister. “Sir, I appreciate what you’re sayin’—you being an ex-enlisted man and all.”

  Realizing that the soldier had been sharp enough to spot the Good Conduct Medal on Hollister’s shirt, he simply nodded. He had forgotten how soldiers look for any sign, any indication of who an officer is and where he has been. The Good Conduct Medal was a dead giveaway since only enlisted men and NCOs are awarded them.

  Someone, somewhere in the back of the bus, had a small tape recorder that was pounding out “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf. Hollister looked out the side window at the rows of two-story barracks, office buildings, and Quonset huts that had popped up since he was last there. He was amazed at the expansion and the great numbers of Americans walking along the asphalt roads.

  The buildup represented all the services, the Red Cross, government agencies, construction contractors, and even commercial vendors. It was not at all what Hollister had expected to find. Sure, he expected to see signs of the escalation of the war, but not to the degree he witnessed in the streets of what had become the largest deepwater port on the South China Sea—Cam Ranh Bay.

  They were ushered into a comfortable briefing room that had rows of backless benches on tile floors. Hollister stepped into a row and slid to the end of one bench, dropping his gear at his feet before sitting.

  As the others were staking out their own seats, a young Signal Corps second lieutenant wearing stiffly starched and pressed jungle fatigues, spit-shined jungle boots, and full-color metal pin-on collar insignia walked to the front of the room and mounted the foot-high platform.

  “Good evening, gentlemen.”

  There was an indistinguishable meshing of the many grumbling replies that came from the group.

  The lieutenant chose to ignore the low-level discontent and launched right into his prepared speech.

  “On behalf of the Commanding General, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, the Commander, U.S. Army, Vietnam, and the Commanding General of Cam Ranh Bay, I am pleased to welcome you to the Republic of Vietnam. I am Lieutenant Fox, and I will be giving you your initial in-country briefing before your in-processing begins.”

  There was another audible grumble in response to the thought of having to sit through a briefing.

  The lieutenant smiled. “Look at it this way, people. Every bit of the briefing and the in-processing counts on your time in-country and gets you that much closer to the exit briefing you will get here or in Saigon.”

  The remark was met with a cheer and a few wolf whistles. The lieutenant raised his palms to quiet the room. “If you will let me continue, I will get through this and get you all to some hot chow, showers, and some clean sheets.”

  Clean sheets? Hollister had not expected to hear that. Clean sheets and Vietnam didn’t seem to work together in his mind no matter how much he stretched his imagination. There was so much change that he was going to have to get used to. Vietnam had certainly come a long way if the troops could get a chance to sleep in clean sheets. The last clean sheets that Hollister had seen in-country were in the recovery ward after he was wounded on his first tour.

  The briefing lieutenant’s voice droned on into the uninteresting details that were old hat to Hollister. His mind wandered to what was ahead of him. With orders to a leg infantry division, he had every expectation that he would be commanding a rifle company within hours after his in-processing was over.

  He wondered if he was in good enough physical shape to withstand the acclimatization that he remembered from his first time in-country. On his first tour it had taken him two weeks to stop dripping sweat just standing still in the shade. He hoped that this time his body would remember and snap back into being accustomed to the heat.

  His mind started to wander down the organized checklists of things he had to remember, get prepared to do, and promise himself to do on the job as CO of a hundred grunts. As soon as he realized he was getting his act together on autopilot, he felt better and even started to get excited about the possibilities and the demands of being a rifle company commander, the most revered job an infantry captain could hold.

  He knew the job was filled with endless opportunities to fail, screw up, or even die. Still, it was a challenge. And it was one he was ready to face if someone gave him the chance. As always he found himself making little promises. He promised to go that extra mile, to do those things that all ideal commanders should do.

  A touch of reality crossed his thoughts. He knew that no company commander could do everything, so he tried to establish some hasty priorities in his mind. Communication and security within his new company were the first items that he mentally moved to the top of his list.

  Remembering his days as an enlisted man and a junior NCO, he promised never to let the troops bed down for the night without making sure that each one of them was told, through the chain of command, what he was doing, what their mission was, and what they had accomplished on that day. He knew how important it was for the t
roops to know what was going on. He knew that even if it was bad news, they appreciated being cut into the net, rather than being treated like shit and kept in the dark.

  Security. He would personally walk the perimeter every single night, before and after dark, to make sure that he saw each of the troops, that they saw him, and that he knew exactly where the perimeter ran. He knew how easy it was to get overwhelmed with last-minute details before dark and not get around to checking the perimeter laid in by the platoon leaders and the platoon sergeants. He also knew that if he didn’t check the perimeter in the daylight, it was foolish to try to check for the first time just after dark. That was asking to get killed by your own men.

  The row in front of him stood, snapping him out of his thoughts. The briefing was over, and they were filing out of the room to get back on the buses to be taken to the billeting area for the night.

  Outside, the buses were joined by a smaller, GI version of a community school bus. It held no more than twelve passengers, and the officers were loaded onto it.

  Hardly a man on Hollister’s bus missed the last sliver of the sun dropping behind the Annamese mountain range, which ran down the center of Vietnam, west of Cam Ranh. As they watched, each wondered what the next year held for him. The level of anxiety and hope was unmistakable, although silent. The silence continued as they weaved through the crowded streets of Cam Ranh’s sprawling base.

  As dark closed in on them, the bus stopped in front of a two-story transit BOQ and off-loaded most of the officers. Hollister and one other man ended up being driven to still another building, where they were met by a Specialist 4, who took them inside and gave each of them a bunk—one upstairs, one downstairs—and instructions on how to get to the mess hall and the Officers Club. His last remark told them they were expected to remain on the base and report to the orderly room behind the BOQ at zero seven hundred in the morning.

  It was too early to sleep and too quiet to sit and do nothing. Hollister looked around the BOQ, disappointed to see that there were no other temporary residents—only other empty army bunks, with their thin mattresses stripped and s-rolled at the foot of each bunk.