Snarling in his naked aggravation, Richter stood down and backed away. Alexander did not stand down. He knew what Richter was going through. He just didn’t want to hear it. And after five minutes and another glass of whiskey, Richter bowed his head. “What I don’t understand is why your whole fucking life has to be a redux of Tatiana’s commando mission in Berlin,” he said, much quieter. “Why can’t your life be about something else?”
“My life is about something else.”
“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Richter. “I don’t think so at all.” After two cigarettes, Richter was finally calm enough to call Ha Si and Elkins back into his quarters. A groggy Elkins ran to wake up Mercer. It was well after one in the morning. The four men stood at attention. Richter, in his agitation, forgot to release them.
Circling around the Montagnard he said, his eyes boring into him, “Ha Si, you know this terrain like the back of your hand, I know that, but... let me ask you something, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. That ville, Kum Kau, is far from here, far from your area of expertise. After all, you come from Bong Son, and that’s nowhere near there. Wait, don’t interrupt. Perhaps, just perhaps, do you think Kum Kau could be west of North Vietnam? Could it be a klick or two inside the Laotian border, in that mountainous Khammouan country? Maybe you made a tiny mistake. Hmm? Think before you answer.”
Ha Si thought before he answered. “I think,” he said slowly and quietly, “you may be right, Colonel. It could be just inside Laos. That border is very tricky through the mountains, and I don’t know the parts as well as these. I spoke too quickly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to amend. It is in Laos.”
“Good,” said Richter. “Because you know, Ha Si, we can do many things, but we cannot under any circumstances go into North Vietnam. If Kum Kau is there, we can’t at the outset define that as our mission parameters and go there to find this Moon Lai, and perhaps find out where our Captain Barrington is.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” Ha Si glanced at Alexander. “It’s definitely in Laos.”
Richter nodded. Finally, he put the men at ease. The five of them sat huddled together in his quarters, smoking, thinking, plotting.
“What I’d like to do—my preference,” said Richter, “is to send a small recon unit there first.” Alexander opened his mouth, but Richter cut him off. “But I know this better than anyone at this table”—he glared at Alexander—“if our men are detected, we’re goners. If there is an actual Extraction and Escape and Evasion situation in Kum Kau, we can only go in once. They don’t expect us; the element of surprise will be our greatest weapon. On the other hand, if we get into a position we can’t defend, we’re fucked. We simply can’t bring enough men to both escape detection and engage a superior enemy force. So this is what we’re going to do: we’re assembling an A-team and going on a top-secret, location classified and undisclosed, long-range recon mission to Laos. Do you hear me? Laos. We’re not calling it SLAM. Is that clear? We’re calling it recon. A little intel gathering. Maybe some supply disruption.”
“Understood, sir.”
“We go in unmarked. You know what that means. If you fall in North Nam, no one will find you. You will remain unidentified. I suggest you make all appropriate phone calls and write all appropriate letters before we move out. Personally, unlike Major Barrington, our intelligence advisor straight from Fort Huachuca in Arizona, I think Kum Kau is just a regular village.”
“Well, unlike you, gentlemen,” said Alexander, “I haven’t been on the ground since 1946, and I’m sure things have changed since then. And Colonel Richter may be right, having so much experience in this area. But let’s just approach it as if it’s a booby-trapped, mined, heavily-armed enemy camp. All the means with which we hope to achieve our objective, we have to bring with us. While I’m certain that all Vietnamese villagers are nothing more than innocent civilians, let’s just in fucking case bring enough ammo to raze Hanoi, not torch a mud hut.”
Richter glared sideways at Alexander. Everybody else glanced sideways at Richter.
“I’ll charter a hook to take us into Laos,” Richter said. “I’ll get us a medevac crew. That way it inserts us, flies back down south to refuel and waits for our call. There’s an SOG supply base just south of DMZ, I’ll get our support gunships to wait there, plus two extra Hueys if we need them, and a medic slick. But remember, even our classified mission is parametered to Laos. Six fucking snakes cannot fly to North Vietnam— because that would no longer be called combat support, it would be called a fucking invasion.” Snakes were Cobra helicopter gunships. “Everybody all clear on that?”
Everybody was all clear. Mercer was mulling. “Excuse me, Colonel. You keep saying, we. Are you... thinking of going, too?”
Alexander looked down at his hands so as not to see Richter sit defeated in front of his men.
“Damn it all to hell,” Richter said. “I’m way too fucking old for this. But I’m going in because it’s my ass if bad shit goes down in North Vietnam. There will be twelve of us. A six-man Yard team plus us. I’ll get Tojo to come, if he doesn’t have a heart attack first when he finds out I’m going. Elkins, Mercer, Ha Si, I’m assuming you’re all volunteering to go?”
The three men nodded and then turned to stare at Alexander.
“What the fuck are you all looking at?” he said. “Without me, you’d still be getting laid in Pleiku, eating cheese sandwiches, and lobbing grenades at the fish in the river. Of course I’m going.”
The men were quiet.
“Maybe you should stay back, Major,” Elkins said. “You did just say you haven’t seen active combat since 1946.”
“Active combat with a Donut Dolly doesn’t count,” Richter added bitingly.
Alexander said nothing. Richter obviously felt the need to have the last word.
“Does the colonel need to upgrade your security clearance?” Elkins pressed on. “Because that can take a month.”
“My security clearance has long ago been upgraded by the Military Intelligence commander in Fort Huachuca, thank you for your interest, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. The conversation was over. “Tom, can you walk me to my hut? I need sleep.” The other men stood, saluted them, and they left. Alexander turned to Richter. “Are you going to be able to get your shit together by tomorrow?” he asked as they walked to his hut.
Richter didn’t think so. “And we call it hooch, Alexander.”
“Hooch, hut, who the fuck cares. We’ve waited long enough, Tom. We have to go.”
“We’ll need a couple of days,” Richter said. “I have to commission a Chinook, we have to get our supplies, our weapons. You know better than anyone, we have to be ready. We get only one chance at this.”
Alexander agreed they needed to be ready. He knew they got only one chance at this.
When they stood outside Alexander’s barracks, Richter lit a smoke and said, “Alexander, you do know how small our chance of success is?”
“So you’re confident then?” In a more relaxed mood, Alexander patted Richter’s arm. “Tom,” he said. “You understand you’re talking to the wrong man about odds.”
“Don’t I fucking know it.”
“What were the odds of a five-foot-nothing woman who never shot a weapon in her life getting into Soviet-controlled territory not knowing where I was, or even if I was there, or alive, and then finding me— there and alive?”
“Better than ours,” said Richter.
Alexander shook his head. “One unarmed woman in a Gulag camp with machine-gun sentries every five inches,” said Alexander, nearly reverentially. “Not twelve guys, carrying more ammo than their combined body weight. And yes, the NVA are bad motherfuckers, but the Soviets weren’t ladies having finger sandwiches at the Kentucky Derby. They brought their artillery, too. And yet she found me and got me out. So sleep well.” But he couldn’t help thinking of what Tania had once said to him. We can rail all we want. But sometimes what we do is just not enough. He knew
something about that. He tried to push the thoughts from his mind.
Richter sighed, blew smoke from his cigarette, attempted a smile. “I’m surprised you and Tania have never used your abilities to beat the odds to your benefit.”
It was the first time since July 20, 1969 that Alexander laughed out loud. “Tom,” he said, lowering his voice and briefly putting his friendly arm around Richter. “Who says we haven’t?” A wide smile was on Alexander’s face. “It’s Las Vegas twice a year for us, baby,” he said happily. “The kids think we’re getting R&R in Sedona. As soon as we get there, we gamble for twenty straight hours. My wife is a roulette and blackjack queen.”
Richter’s mouth nearly fell open. “We’re talking about Tania?” he said. “Tania, your wife, at the blackjack table?”
Alexander nodded. “And Tom—she needs to be seen to be believed. We’ve been getting a complimentary penthouse suite at the Flamingo for seven years. The hotel gives her free chips, free food, shopping vouchers, it makes no difference—she simply does not lose. If she is cold, she doesn’t play. We went just a month ago to cheer ourselves up a bit, but she was cold, so we stopped playing. She kept getting dealt the queen of spades and busting. But that was an anomaly.” He broke off, then lowered his voice. “The dealers don’t see her coming. She sits at their tables, sips a little wine, dresses in pink, lets her hair down, jokes with them, and all their defenses are gone. They stand no chance. She is unbelievable.” He recalled her fondly. “Me, I’m a different story. I play poker. I win, I lose. She comes and stands behind me and cools the rest of the table, while I heat up. We do all right. But she loves to do it.”
Richter listened with wide eyes, and then laughed. “Unbefuckinglievable. You come here and in ten hours my world is turned upside down. I, a lieutenant-colonel, am taking orders from a fucking major, Anthony is having Vietnamese babies with whores, we’re single-hand-edly and without authorization invading North Vietnam, and Tania loves Vegas. Is there anything else you want to shock me with?”
Instantly brought right back to earth, Alexander stopped smiling. “No,” he said, giving him a careful pat. “Nothing that comes to mind.”
Richter also grew serious. “Alexander, do me a favor. When we go in, don’t talk to me like we’ve been friends for twenty years.”
Alexander saluted him. Richter saluted him back.
“Good night, Colonel Richter,” said Alexander.
“Good night, Major Barrington.”
In his one room hooch, Alexander undressed and fell down on his bed. He lit a cigarette, smoked it down, lit another one, and smiled, staring at the ceiling.
“Ant, come here, I want you to play dominoes with your mother.”
“No! Why? I never win.” Anthony had just come home from his first year at West Point. It was June 1962.
“Well, I know,” said Alexander, “but I’m going to watch you two play. You play your mother, and I will watch her and figure out how she cheats.”
“Don’t listen to your father. I don’t cheat at dominoes, Ant,” Tatiana said. “I use all of my vital powers. That’s different.”
“Just draw the tiles, Tania.”
“Yes, just draw the tiles, Mom.”
There were twenty-eight domino tiles. Seven went to Anthony, seven to Tatiana. Fourteen remained in the draw pile.
Alexander watched her. She sat impassively, putting her tiles down, drawing new ones, humming, looking at her son, at her husband. Soon all the tiles were gone except what remained in Anthony’s hand, and in Tatiana’s. Five to seven minutes each game. Each one won by her.
“Have you figured it out yet, Dad?”
“Not yet, son. Keep playing.”
Alexander stopped watching the tiles. He didn’t watch what went on the table, he didn’t watch what was drawn, nor what was put down, not even who won or lost. He was intently studying only Tatiana’s cool, unflappable face and her bright, clear eyes.
They played again and again and again.
Anthony complained. “Dad, we played thirteen games, all of which I lost. Can we stop?”
“Of course you lost, son,” Alexander said slowly. “Yes, you can stop.”
Thus released, Anthony fled the kitchen, Alexander lit a cigarette, and Tatiana calmly collected the tiles and stacked them back in the box.
She raised her eyes at him. His mouth widened in a grin. “Tatiana Metanova,” he said, “for twenty years, I have lived with you, I have slept in your bed, I have fathered your children.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned across to her. “Tania!” he said exaltedly. “I almost can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out. But—you count the tiles!”
“What?”
“You count the fucking tiles!”
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said blankly.
“When the draw pile is gone, you know what’s in Ant’s hand! You keep track, you know what tiles are left! At the end of the game, you know your opponent’s move before they can breathe on a domino!”
“Shura—”
He grabbed her, brought her on top of his lap, kissed her. “Oh, you’re good. You are very good.”
“Really, Alexander,” Tatiana said calmly. “I simply don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He laughed, so joyously. Letting go of her, he went to the cabinet and pulled out a deck of cards. Rummaging around, he found two more decks. “Guess where you and I are going next month for our twentieth wedding anniversary, my little domino counter,” he said, sitting at the table and shuffling the three decks of cards, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
“Um—the Grand Canyon?”
“Viva Las Vegas, baby.”
And here in Kontum, in the midst of chaos and misery, not knowing if his son was alive or even saveable, Alexander, usually reminded so painfully of his own humanity, this time was reminded blissfully of it, as only humans can be—finding one strand of comfort amid a covering quilt of anguish.
A package came by express delivery for Alexander. He was surprised; he’d been in the country barely two weeks; who would be sending him a package already, and why? When he got to the post barracks, he saw a long and heavy box. It was from home. Elkins and Mercer were even more surprised as they tried to lift it.
“Some care package,” said Mercer. “What’s in here, bricks?”
They had to open it on the ground, in the dust, in front of the mail room. It was too heavy to carry. Inside Alexander found a very long letter from Tatiana that began, “O husband, father of small boys, one of your sons has lost his mind.” And inside the box were sixteen punji sticks, each five feet long, carved out of round planed wood, notched at the tip, and sharpened like needles on both ends, for easier insertion into the ground, and greater penetration. The letter taped to them, in block handwriting said, “Dear Dad, You are going to need these. Insert diagonally into ground at 45˚ angle. Also Mama says watch out for bears. Your son, Harry.”
“Your kid made these for you?” Mercer said incredulously.
“Can you believe it?”
“And your wife shipped them express mail?” said Elkins. “That I can’t believe. She must have had to mortgage your house to do it. I don’t know who’s crazier, the son for making them or the wife for shipping them.”
“How old’s the boy?” Mercer asked.
“Ten on New Year’s Day.” Harry was born on the first day of the new decade.
Mercer and Elkins whistled and stared into the box. “Ten. Well, that’s something. These are nearly perfect,” said Elkins.
“They are perfect! What the fuck do you mean nearly?”
Tatiasha, my wife,
I got cookies from you and Janie, anxious medical advice from Gordon Pasha (tell him you gave me a gallon of silver nitrate), some sharp sticks from Harry (nearly cried). I’m saddling up, I’m good to go. From you I got a letter that I could tell you wrote very late at night. It was filled with the sorts of things a wife of twenty-seven years should
not write to her far-away and desperate husband, though this husband was glad and grateful to read and re-read them.
Tom Richter saw the care package you sent with the preacher cookies and said, “Wow, man. You must still be doing something right.”
I leveled a long look at him and said, “It’s good to know nothing’s changed in the army in twenty years.”
Imagine what he might have said had he been privy to the fervent sentiments in your letter.
No, I have not eaten any poison berries, or poison mushrooms, or poison anything. The U.S. Army feeds its men. Have you seen a C-ration? Franks and beans, beefsteak, crackers, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, coffee, cocoa, sacks of sugar(!). It’s enough to make a Soviet blockade girl cry. We’re going out on a little scoping mission early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I come back. I tried to call you today, but the phone lines were jammed. It’s unbelievable. No wonder Ant only called once a year. I would’ve liked to hear your voice though: you know, one word from you before battle, that sort of thing . . .
Preacher cookies, by the way, BIG success among war-weary soldiers.
Say hi to the kids. Stop teaching Janie back flip dives.
Do you remember what you’re supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.
Alexander
P.S. I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory.
I love you, babe.
The Summer Garden Page 85
