Part 4 (1/2)
He had beaten the charge when it had turned out the trawler was armed and had shot at Frederick two days in a row while he had been leaving the target area.
WHAT U LOOC LICE, he asked Frederick.
SHORT, SQUATTY. THIC SHOULDERS. BLAC HAIR. BROWN EYES. SORT OF APEY.
Flak paused and formed a picture in his mind. He was having a hard time keeping the mosquitoes off him. The pain was returning to his body as his initial flush of adrenaline wore off. He asked Ted Frederick what clothes and goods he was supposed to have.
EEL.
PJS s.h.i.+TCAN MOSQ NET CUP SPOON STRAW MAT, Frederick tapped.
NO HAVE NET CUP SPOON MAT OR PJS.
THEY NO LICE U.
Flak digested that bit of information. So far he had always had to eat with his fingers from a bowl, and at no time was he protected from the mosquitoes. He found some solace that this was the cool time of the year and the mosquitoes were not too thick. The only clothes he had now were the rough blue shorts he wore, and at night he was often cold.
He had been issued some maroon-and-gray pajama-style s.h.i.+rt and pants. He wasn't sure what had happened to them.
He had a vague memory of their being blood soaked and torn from his body.
Maybe they didn't ”like” him. His interrogation had taken many zigs and zags. At first he had been treated with incredulity as he had been trekked up to Hanoi through every village along the route from Vinh. The soldiers had led him by a rope around his neck. The peasants had spent a lot of time touching and rubbing him as if he had something on his skin that would rub off. Flak Apple had figured it out. The only black men they had ever seen before, if any, were the Senegalese in the French Foreign Legion that had fought their Indochina war thirteen years before.
At each village, after Flak had been exhibited, one of the men in the entourages political officer, Flak finally reasoned-would begin speaking to the peasants. Beginning with normal cadence and gestures, the man would build up to a frenzy of words and wild gestures. Under his guidance, the crowd would become a screaming ma.s.s that would then begin hitting Flak with sticks and stones and pummeling him with their fists.
As it would almost always happen, the soldiers would have to hustle him away so he wouldn't be killed.
The soldiers couldn't believe that Flak was an officer and a pilot. They knew the blacks were downtrodden and used as slaves in America. Once he was in Hanoi, the more sophisticated Vietnamese probed him for antiwhite and hence anti-American sentiments. He made it abundantly clear he came from a country that believed in meritocracy. White or black, work your a.s.s off and you will profit.
At first they were easy on him as they a.s.sessed his potential as a propaganda tool. They presented stilted antiwar statements they wanted him to sign, and said he could make a tape recording to his loved ones at home if he did as they wanted. Certainly he could get better medical attention for his arm and leg, and burnt face. (They had made the most perfunctory attempt to doctor his wounds. The result was he had thick scabs on his arms and leg. He had no mirror so he didn't know about his face, but it hurt, felt puffy, and was terribly tender.) They told him he could meet with various American and European ”peace groups.” They even hinted at letting him go home if he was ”cooperative.” When he was not ”cooperative” by his third week in captivity, that was the end of their a.s.sessment. He was a hard nose, so they put him in a dark hole for three more weeks, and started progressive torture that culminated in the ropes and his signed ”confession.”
He had broken in the ropes. To even think of the torture brought sweat to his body and curdling fear to his stomach.
A torturer with small pig eyes had used ropes and straps to tie and stretch him into a ball of shrieking pain. He had been fed his own toes while his arms were tied flat together behind him, nearly dislocating his shoulders and causing his sternum to feel broken. He doubted if he could take it again without losing his sanity.
He rolled to the wall and tapped to Ted Frederick.
ANYBODY ESCAPE. Before he could hear an answer, his cell door burst open.
”No talk, no talk,” a guard screamed at him. He ran to Flak and grabbed him by his badly healed broken arm and shook it.
Flak roared in agony. ”AHHH. STOP, AH G.o.d, STOP.”
A Vietnamese in civilian black pants and white s.h.i.+rt entered behind the guard. After he spoke a few fast words, the guard stiffened and went out the door. The man stood next to the slab, looking down at Flak Apple.
”Did you enjoy your conversation with that criminal Frederick?” he asked.
Flak Jay sweating and trying to stifle his moans. He looked up at the man in the dim light and said nothing. He could see the Vietnamese had prominent front teeth and a pulled-up nose. He looked like a rabbit. The rabbit spoke again.
”Oh, yes. I know you knock on wall to each other. He will be punished because of you. You are new, so I make special privilege for you. You want talk, I have someone for you to talk.” He stopped and pulled his lips back, exposing his yellow teeth in a grotesque smile. ”Someone is here from United States and they want talk to you. You will like. They have black skin just like you.”
0645 HOURS LOCAL, SUNDAY 28 JANUARY 1968.
JOHN F. KENNEDY SQUARE, SAIGON REPUBLIC OF VIETNAM.
Army Lieutenant Colonel Wolf Lochert stood in front of the Catholic Cathedral in John F. Kennedy Square in Saigon. In his late thirties, Lochert, whose christened name was Wolfgang Xavier, was a broad-shouldered, stocky man of medium height, with dark hair shaved so close to his skull it looked like a dusting of black powder. The sleeves on his blue sport s.h.i.+rt were rolled up sausage-tight on his thick biceps. His muscled forearms were matted with dark hair.
Next to him was a thin Vietnamese man named Huey Dan.
He wore a white s.h.i.+rt and baggy black pants. The twin spires of the red-brick cathedral rose high in the heavy dawn air behind them, pointing like fingers to the low black clouds scudding furiously across downtown Saigon. The morning wind had picked up, and blew bits of papers and leaves around in tiny cyclones. Thunder over the city muttered nearby.
”What did you want to show me, Bee Dec?” Wolf Lochert said, his bushv brows knotted. Both men were gaunt and hollow-eyed. 'they had returned the day before from a longrange patrol in Laos that had lasted four weeks: a patrol that had been more harsh than productive. Good men had been killed; a main mission objective to set up a pilot-rescue net in the mountains and on the plains of Laos had not been accomplished. There had been too much fighting with the enemy when there should have been contacts and arrangements made with the friendlies. Wolf Lochert wasn't used to failure, and he was raging and searching inside himself for the clues as to why. Was his leaders.h.i.+p at fault? Was he losing his trail craft?
Wolf had been on many operations with Huey Dan, a former Viet Cong soldier who had rallied to the Saigon Government under the Chieu Hoi program years before.
Wolf had judged him intelligent, loyal, and extremely competent. Huey Dan had saved his life on their first patrol.
Another time the two of them had served together as altar boys at a Catholic Ma.s.s held in a Special Forces camp. But the Vietnamese had been acting increasingly strange as of late. On the patrol just ended, he had been less than cooperative, and had once disappeared for several hours. Several critical hours, it had turned out. A North Vietnamese patrol had savagely mauled Wolf's team before they could escape.
His team, call sign Dakota, had been there to find downed American crewmen, as well as try to set up a rescue net. They had not been on a search-and-destroy mission; they were to fight only if cornered. Huey Dan had returned after the attack, saying he had been cut off. It was this incident that had started the uncomfortable feeling in Wolf about Huey Dan. Or was he suffering paranoia and blaming external forces for his own failure? Wolf didn't know. He only knew that under no circ.u.mstances would he allow a man he could no longer trust to be on patrol with him.
Immediately upon return from the mission yesterday, Wolf had been debriefed by his boss, Colonel Al Charles, a barrel-chested black man with a square face. Several others had listened in a small room at the rue Pasteur headquarters of the Special Forces unit called by the innocuous name Military Advisory Command, Vietnam, Studies and Observation Group, or simply MACSOG. Wolf, standing over his map, had concluded his debrief with his reservations about Huey Dan. An older man in civilian clothes who had not spoken nodded as if familiar with the case. Although Wolf had never seen him before, he had been treated with deference by Al Charles. After a nod from the man, Charles told Wolf to terminate Huey Dan's contract, that his services were no longer required. No explanation was given. Wolf an eyebrow raised nodded, and said, ”Yessir.”
Late that afternoon Wolf had told the Vietnamese Huey Dan he no longer had a job with the United States Studies and Observation Group. Huey Dan had nodded, said he understood, and had quietly asked Wolf to meet him for seven o'clock Ma.s.s the next day at the big Catholic church in Saigon, that he had something interesting to show him.
”What do you want to show me?” Wolf repeated. The first spatterings of heavy raindrops stained the pavement.
Huey Dan motioned with his head and started across the square to one of the many trees lining the sidewalk. Wolf thought Huey Dan walked as if he were on a patrol about to be ambushed. ”Over here, Trung Si,” Huey Dan said, his eyes as expressionless as gutter water at midnight. Wolf caught up to him by one of the large tamarind trees that lined the sidewalks.
Huey Dan pointed to the base of the tree. ”There,” he said. ”Down there.” The rain started to fall with increasing power.
Wolf bent over to get a better look, then abruptly twisted sideways as he sensed rather than felt a quick movement made by Huey Dan. He turned his head to see the Vietnamese thrust a stiletto directly toward his groin. Reaction based on his years of combat tensed Wolf's entire body, and jolted his system with a rush of adrenaline. He whirled to face the attack, trapped Huey Dan's outthrust arm against his body with his right arm, and threw his left knee into his groin as he tried to lever the Vietnamese against the tree. In a flash Huey Dan ducked out of the hold and, rising like a striking snake, thrust up again with the rapier-thin blade.
Wolf leaped to one side, slammed into the tree, and fell off-balance as Huey Dan's lunge continued. As he fell, Lochert deflected the thrust with a sideswipe of his left hand, slid his right hand over Huey Dan's outthrust arm, clamped onto his wrist, and pulled the Vietnamese down with him. As Wolf hit the ground, he twisted out of the way-still holding Huey Dan's slender wrist-and plunged the stiletto into the falling man's stomach. The force of the impact was so great, the point of the stiletto protruded from the back of the Vietnamese as he slammed to the ground.
In one motion Wolf rolled to his feet. He stood for a moment, panting.
Hard rain smashed the streets, and the trees and the leaves, and water ran down his face. With his toe he turned the man over and looked at his face. He squatted next to him and slowly pulled the b.l.o.o.d.y stiletto from Huey Dan's stomach. He nodded slowly as he remembered he had been told over a year ago that Huey Dan had picked up a knife near Wolf, just before they had ridden out of an ambush zone on a rescue helicopter.
”You took this from me on that first mission, didn't you?”
He looked at the tree, and back into the face of the dying man, comprehension dawning. Huey Dan's eyes slowly focused on him, and flickered with hatred and loathing. He spoke with effort. ”You will die by that knife. Someday you will die by that knife. 1, Than Lan, the Lizard, say this.”
Suddenly Wolf knew. A year earlier he had killed a young man who had just exploded a bomb in the Catholic church.
He had killed him with the same stiletto and at very nearly the same spot on this street. ”What was he to you?” Wolf demanded.
The black eyes flared. ”My seed,” he whispered, ”my son.” Slowly his mouth collapsed and went slack, and his eyes became dusty. His body seemed to flatten and shrink into the ground. The eye sockets started pooling with liquid, distorting the pupils, making them look alive and flickering.
Wolf Lochert glared at the stiletto, then at the dead face, He savagely wiped the blade on the gra.s.s and tucked it into his sock. It all became clear. The death of Menuez on that first patrol, the failed missions, the deaths of others, maybe even the C- 1 30 that had disappeared after flying the Dakota team to a night drop zone in Laos.