Walk on the Wild Side

by Bob Mayer

  Kane indicated the paper. “At least this asshole is no longer part of it. The cop who broke the case didn’t even get to be in on the bust.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s black. Higher ups took it from him.”

  Pope snorted. “NYPD. Still the province of the Irish. They’ve forgotten when it was the Irish who were looked down on and spit on.” He was still on Berkowitz. “The reporter who caught the lead describes him as ‘pleasant-looking’. Why the hell would you describe a killer like that? Lousy writing.”

  “At least the cops got him,” Kane pointed out.

  “Yeah,” Pope groused. “Took ‘em long enough.” He held up his thermos. “Would you like some tea?”

  Kane hesitated.

  “It is tea.” Pope produced another cup from next to the stack of papers. “Been waiting for you.”

  Kane accepted the cup and Pope poured. “Why is that?”

  “Haven’t seen much of you lately. Been worried about you.” Pope glanced left and right and lowered his voice. “Plus, there’s the fellow we killed in the backyard yesterday. What happened to the body?”

  “It’s been taken care of,” Kane assured. “And ‘we’ didn’t kill him. I did.”

  “Taken care of?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Kane took a sip. It was tea. “Actually, the best thing to do is pretend it never happened. Wipe it from your mind.”

  “Down that path lies danger,” Pope said. “The very essence of my occupation is the truth.” Pope closed his eyes for a moment. “Was the truth.”

  “Hey,” Kane said. Pope looked at him. “I like the tea.”

  Pope gave a wan smile. “I told you a little about why I came to the States. Too young for the service so I became a reporter. Did you believe it?”

  “Sure.”

  Pope shook his head. “You’d make a sad reporter, William Kane. You take things at face value without digging. Yes, I was too young. Lots of lads were too young to sign up on their own. But they did anyway. They got their parents to sign releases. Or they forged papers.”

  Kane waited.

  “I couldn’t get a waiver because my parents were killed in the Blitz. No close relatives. Even then, the military would’ve taken me. It was after Dunkirk. They’d have taken anyone breathing who could hold a gun.”

  Kane opened his mouth to say something, then didn’t.

  “I was in the flat when the building was hit and the whole thing came down around us. The bricks. The plaster. The dust. Strange, that. I remember the dust most of all. In the air. Then slowly settling down, like ethereal snow. Covering everything.”

  Pope was staring off into the distance, a look Kane had seen before. “I was pinned. And my mother. She was looking at me across the living room. What used to be the living room. Except her eyes were like the chap yesterday morning. I was trapped in there until there was no more dust in the air. My father was gone.” Pope held up his tea cup. “So, my young friend, don’t ever mention my tea again, you hear me?”

  “Apologies.” Kane said. “Didn’t you want to avenge her?”

  “You think it was personal?” Pope asked. “That the Jerry flying that bomber meant to kill my parents?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “No. I never wanted to hurt anyone. I thought if people knew the truth, they’d change. I wanted to write the truth. Tell people about the world. I think I had this naïve notion that if we really understood, maybe we wouldn’t have another war like that.” He shook his head and indicated The Post. “Now the truth is going, too. I’m old and I’m tired and I get to spend my days as a I like.”

  “I don’t know how much people can change,” Kane said. “Truth or no truth.”

  Pope didn’t say anything to that. He gathered the papers as dusk descended. “You’re right, though. They did catch him. The city can sleep a little better tonight. It’s been a hell of a summer.”

  “That it has.” Kane stood and gathered the tea cups and thermos. He walked up the stairs with the older man.

  “Is it going to get better?” Pope asked as he opened his front door. “What about what happened this morning?”

  They walked to the kitchen and Kane put the cups in the sink. “I’m working on it.”

  “Perhaps I need a bigger gun?”

  “They’re coming for me,” Kane said. “I don’t plan on sleeping here for a while. You’ll be fine.”

  “Where will you be sleeping?” Pope asked.

  “Here and there,” Kane said. “As long as I keep moving, I’ll be all right.”

  “And then?”

  “I don’t know,” Kane said, an edge of irritation slipping through. “I’m just here to grab a quick shower and a change of clothes.”

  Pope put his hat on the hook and sat at the table. He twisted open a bottle and poured a generous dose into a tea cup. “I’m not meaning to be rude, but you bring an element of danger into the lives of those around you.”

  “Do you want me to move out?”

  “I didn’t say that, lad.”

  “What are you saying?”

  Pope sighed. “What are you hearing?”

  “I don’t have the time or the energy for this,” Kane said. “I’ll be gone in ten minutes.”

  He went out the kitchen door, down the steps to the backyard, where he’d killed Dale. It was already dark. He checked that the tell was in place. He unlocked the back door. Kane made sure the place was clear, then stripped down. He did an abbreviated workout on the peg board above the bathroom door, starting close in with the pegs doing chin ups, then spreading them wider. It only took two minutes but his arms were burning at the end and he felt slightly better.

  He turned the water on and took a quick, one-minute Navy shower as his father had taught all of them as kids. A house with four children and two adults and one bathroom made both time and hot water valuable commodities. He dried off and then grabbed a fresh set of similar clothes. The most time-consuming part was threading his belt with the garrote on the inside through the loops on the black jungle fatigue pants as well as the leather holster for the forty-five and the sheath for the knife. He grabbed the map case with the High Standard and other items.

  He looked about the tiny apartment, no longer a safe haven.

  He startled as the phone rang for the first time. He stared at it for several seconds, trying to recall who would have the number? Reluctantly he picked up the receiver.

  “Hello?”

  “Will? Will Kane?” A woman’s voice, but not Toni. Not Caitlyn. He recognized it but couldn’t place it with a face or name. “Is this you?” She whispered as if someone is listening in.

  “Yes?”

  “There’s an Indian in the audience and he’s scaring me. He’s in the back and just staring and he’s not pretty like the other one, Jazzie, and I’m scared, because, well he’s scary, you know?”

  “Truvey?”

  “I gotta go back on stage in two minutes and if he’s still back there I don’t know if I can remember my lines because, well, you know, it’s hard when you can’t focus and someone killed Selkie and the other Indian, Jazzie, he was asking me about Selkie and I just don’t know what to do.”

  “Where are you?” Kane asked.

  “The theater,” Truvey said. “Performing.”

  “What theater?” Kane patiently asked.

  She hurriedly told him. “The Roundabout. Three-three-three twenty-third. Isn’t that address far out because it’s easy to remember and I gotta go, ‘cause this is really my scene, it’s my best, but he’s gonna make me screw up.”

  “Don’t leave,” Kane said. “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

  Someone was whispering in the background to her. “Gotta go.” The line clicked.

  8

  Tuesday Evening, 13 May 1969

  THE PARROTS BEAK, CAMBODIA

  The crew chief waggles a single finger in Kane’s face as the helicopter flies just above the jungle canopy. Then the chief resumes his position, hands g
ripping the M-60 machinegun, peering into the darkness, ready to fire it they receive incoming.

  “One minute,” Kane shouts into Merrick’s ear, barely audible above the sound of the Huey’s engine and blades. Merrick passes the word to Thao who is on the canvas seat next to him. Kane checks his CAR-15, making sure there’s a round in the chamber, even though he knows there is.

  Merrick leans close and shouts into Kane’s ear: “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my.”

  Kane responds. “Yea, though I walk through the valley in the shadow of death I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest motherfucker in here.”

  “But watch out for the flying monkeys,” Merrick says.

  The chopper has already touched down twice in small clearings, false insertions, to confuse NVA listening teams as to where the team is actually going. It’s accepted, after the disappearance of the last two recon teams, that something is seriously wrong with the cross-border missions and there is a very good chance enemy intelligence knows they’re coming. The final decision on which landing zone, LZ, had not been made from among six possibilities until they were on board the helicopter and in the air.

  Kane, Merrick and Thao are running this cross-border mission under a different guise than normal, seconded to Project Gamma, a secret organization under Detachment B-57 of the Fifth Special Forces Group (Airborne) that has the mission of intelligence collection in Cambodia.

  The jungle gives way to a scene of utter devastation: splintered and leveled trees; gaping craters partly filled with water from the previous evening’s downpour. Not a tree is standing. It’s as if an army of crazed loggers have come through and torn everything down, but instead of hauling the trees away, blew them to bits leaving all the shattered debris behind.

  The pilot drops even lower, just above the destruction that stretches for a kilometer across and as far as they can see in the perpendicular directions. Then the chopper abruptly pulls up as living trees loom ahead. They fly over them for two hundred meters, bank hard left and land in a small opening in the jungle.

  Kane, Thao and Merrick jump off, sprinting away from the chopper into the trees and then dropping in a tight bunch, weapons at the ready. The engine whines and the Huey lifts and is gone. As the sound fades into the distance, Kane experiences an almost overwhelming feeling of isolation, shielded only by the presence of Thao and Merrick. They are in a country they aren’t supposed to be in, where thousands of enemy troops are encamped.

  And the last two teams never returned.

  Merrick stirs, standing up. He’s wearing tiger stripe fatigues, LBE, an ALICE ruck with essentials; the same as Thao and Kane. Their faces are smeared dark green and black from camouflage paint, the goal not so much to blend as to reduce the reflection of any light from their skin. Merrick does a compass check. Kane and Thao follow as he leads through the dark jungle. There is no point trying to keep a pace count for distance due to the difficulty of pushing through the undergrowth. They will know when they reach their destination. They move slowly, carefully, sliding through the vegetation. It’s really a matter of luck. What if an NVA unit is bivouacked along their route? What if survivors of the bombing are in the jungle, licking their wounds, thirsting for vengeance. What if—

  Kane shuts down what-iffing because they are here and they have a mission and they have prepared as well as they can. There is no South Vietnamese with them and word of this recon has been kept tight. The false insertions should have confused the listening posts. Both sides are just as lost in the dark jungle, blundering around, a potentially fatal game of blind man’s bluff.

  The problem is there are a lot more NVA and it’s a long way back to the A-Team Camp. They do have a plan for that; besides their regular exfiltration they have two alternate pick up zones and then an emergency E&E, escape and evasion, plan.

  So did the two previous teams.

  Step by cautious step they make their way to the objective which is the devastated landscape they’d flown over. Intel indicated it had been the base camp for an NVA regiment. Had been, was the operative word. The night before this, B-52s had dropped tons of bombs. They’d felt the earth shake back at camp and saw the horizon flicker from the bomb blasts.

  The question someone is wondering, and it’s the team’s to answer, is how effective those bombs have been. ‘Looked good when it left here’ is a mantra of artillery and bombers. What it looks like on the receiving end requires, as always, boots on the ground. Someone higher up, very high because the bombings are so secret, wants pictures from the ground. Merrick’s take on that was they should come along.

  Two hours to move two kilometers. A snail’s pace. Merrick halts and Kane and Thao move forward and flank him. They are at the edge of the devastation. While Merrick remains in place, Kane and Thao split off, reconning the edge of the surviving jungle, making sure it’s clear of enemy and searching for a hide site.

  Kane goes fifty meters, then returns. Merrick is kneeling, CAR-15 to his shoulder. Kane kneels next to him.

  “Anything?” Merrick asks in a harsh whisper.

  “Clear,” Kane answers. “Nothing jumped out at me as a patrol base. Farther in the jungle is my suggestion.”

  Merrick nods, but doesn’t say anything.

  After four minutes Thao appears.

  “Clear,” Thao says. “There is a tree that has—” he searched for the right word—“leaned over by bombs. Hole where the roots were. Tight. Good hide.”

  Merrick lets Thao take point. They move to the tree at the edge of the devastation pushed over by the Arc Light mission. It’s still alive. The branches are meshed into the trees farther away. The trunk was pushed enough that the roots closest to the target area were ripped from the earth. A narrow darkness beckons in the now-exposed tree well.

  “Too small,” Merrick whispers.

  “We can fit,” Thao assures. He slides in, disappearing abruptly from view. They can hear his machete cutting roots, the sound echoing dangerously, but actually not much. Thao’s hand reaches back out. “Rucks.”

  Merrick passes his and then Kane’s. Thao disappears, then is back. “Come.”

  Merrick gives Kane a dubious glance. Neither see how the big man can fit. He hands his rifle to Kane, sits down, pushes one foot in, then another. Scoots forward. Farther. Gets stuck. Thao is pulling from the inside. As Merrick forces his way into the dark womb, Kane gathers splintered and broken branches, the leaves still alive and places them within reach of the entrance, weaving a pattern of camouflage. He leaves one last piece to pull in after.

  It takes fifteen minutes for the smaller Thao, working from the inside, and the much larger Merrick, from the outside, to clear a path and space. Finally, Merrick is gone from sight. Kane extends first one weapon, then the other. Invisible hands take them. Then it’s his turn. He hesitates, closes his eyes, takes a few calming breaths, then slides his feet in. Torn and splintered roots grab at him, at his LBE. Merrick has cleared the way in larger than Thao had, so Kane’s entrance is easier than his team sergeant’s. Severed roots fill the space, hanging snake-like from the tree. The smell of wet dirt and rotting vegetation permeates the still air inside the narrow hide.

  Thao is right. This is a superb site. Dark inside except for entrance which is very narrow. Kane pulls the vegetation he’s prepared into place, leaving just a narrow space, about six inch in diameter with a clear view out.

  They are, of course, also trapped if someone comes to the tree. But why would they?

  An hour after dark it pours, soaking everything. Water accumulates in the hole, up to their ankles in mud. The downpour ends after forty minutes.

  Night wears on. They are pressed tight against each other in the damp hole, more intimate than lovers. The three men have been eating native food for months, ever since arriving at the camp. Kane can smell Thao and Merrick’s sweat and imagines his is the same. Local. If he has to defecate, the same, but he never has to take a shit on these kinds of missions. His body seems to understand and shuts down hi
s digestive track.

  Kane leans his head back and closes his eyes; the long wait. His mind wanders, and he thinks of Taryn and ‘Lil Joe. Back in New York City with her family. They are much farther away than the other side of the planet. They exist in a reality that is faint to Kane, almost a dream. He’s finding it hard to picture Joseph’s face. He wonders if Merrick or Thao are—

  He hears light snoring and feels Merrick next him, chest moving in concert with the noise. Kane shakes his head and closes his eyes, waiting for the night to pass.

  Shortly before dawn, Thao nudges Merrick, which also alerts Kane. He opens his eyes but it’s still dark. Nothing to be seen. Then he hears it. Voices. Orders being called out.

  They are being searched for.

  The voices slowly approach. From the sound, there’s a large number. At least company sized. Soldiers stumbling in the dark. The clank of metal on metal from gear not properly secured, but this is their place, their sanctuary, they don’t have to worry about noise discipline. When death comes for them it’s from the sky.

  The sounds are closer and now the voices of the soldiers, talking among themselves in a normal tone drift through the darkness.

  Someone laughs.

  A harsh voice snaps an order. Kane doesn’t understand the words but knows the intent. Soldiers complaining, NCOs keeping the men in line, officers doing what officers do.

  Closer. Very close. Kane can recognize two distinct voices, having a conversation. Twenty meters away. Ten. The flicker of a flashlight passes over the vegetation Kane placed in the narrow entrance. His hands are sweaty on the pistol grip of the CAR-15.

  He feels Merrick’s body pressing against him, no longer snoring. He knows the team sergeant is thinking the same thing: if they’re spotted, kill the closest enemy and bolt from the hole, into the jungle.

  If they survive the initial contact, then it will be a deadly pursuit. The chopper can’t come to the Emergency Rally Point during the day so they’d have to keep running.

  Kane brings the CAR up, pointing the short-barreled version of the M-16 at the opening.