Death in the Jungle Page 20

  “Okay, Smitty! Get the sampan!” Lieutenant Meston yelled when the firing stopped. I took my K-bar knife, which I’d had in my hand, stuck the blade between my teeth and struck out after the sampan. I took a last look at the runaway boat before the flare extinguished and I was left in total darkness. Actually, I was in the worst of conditions, as my night vision had been wiped out and I saw only white spots before my eyes. In other words, I was swimming blind.

  Continuing my strokes regardless, my nose picked up the strong odor of blood on the surface of the water. Obviously, that told me that somebody was bleeding. Because I was sucking on a very large and very sharp knife, I hoped it was not my own blood.

  Taking the knife out of my mouth with my right hand, I immediately felt better. Too many movies had depicted some gallant hero paddling away with a dagger between his lips, but now I knew what a sham I’d been handed. Knives and lips and teeth were not made for one another, I could assure the world.

  A few seconds later, I assured myself that the blood in the water was not mine. It was definitely someone else’s. At the moment of my relief, a second flare burst in the sky over my head, and there was light in my tiny world again.

  I saw the sampan hung up by overhanging branches alongside the opposite riverbank. After swimming forty meters to the craft, I grabbed the bow and looked inside. There I saw the bullet-riddled body of a man dressed in the green uniform of the NVA.

  I didn’t look twice. I freed the sampan from the low tree limbs and started back toward my teammates with the boat. The going was not impossible as the current was laggard. Still, I was swimming against the flow of the water, and that made it tough enough.

  By the time I reached the riverbank, McCollum and Funkhouser pulled me and the sampan with the dead body ashore. I took off my fins and climbed to my feet as the light from a third flare died out.

  “One confirmed kill and one probable,” Lieutenant Meston told me. “Get your gear and get ready for extraction.”

  I couldn’t see spit again, but somehow I managed to find my backpack and web belt. Pearson walked with me back to the others and gave me some news that broke my heart.

  “When we fired when you were in the water, I fired your shotgun. Only thing is, I accidently got mud jammed in the barrel somehow before I fired. The barrel’s blown apart.” Pearson handed me the shotgun. I slid my hand down the barrel and found the end expanded and split apart. The gun was ruined.

  “Sorry,” Pearson muttered an apology.

  Sweet Lips was only a gun, I told myself. There were other guns. Don’t get melancholy over a gun.

  I heard the hum of the LCPL in the distance. It was a sound I’d been in love with ever since my first extraction. When I heard one of our boats coming, I was reminded of my mother’s humming me to sleep when I had been a little boy. It was a sound that said, “Have no fear. All is well.”

  As I waited with the others for the boat, I touched Sweet Lips’s barrel again. For some reason, I reflected back a half dozen years to when Barbara, the love of my youth, had left me for a truck driver. I had told myself then that it hadn’t mattered, and that there were many girls. But Barbara had been one of a kind. When I lost her, I lost a piece of my heart. I’d never before had a gun like Sweet Lips. Yes, I’d need to choose another companion now, but nothing would replace my faithful, tried-and-true shotgun. Somehow, she had not been just a shotgun to me. She had been my nerve and my spirit, my link to the living. “I got his weapon, papers, and documents,” I heard Ty tell Mr. Meston, referring to the dead enemy lying in the sampan.

  “Good,” Lieutenant Meston replied. “Let’s get the hell outta here.”

  The LCPL cruised up the stream toward us, and it was a sight for tired eyes. When the boat bumped against the riverbank, I climbed aboard with Sweet Lips for our last trip home together.

  Two dead bodies were left behind for whoever or whatever found them first.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I left the mess hall after a hearty breakfast and walked to the base armory. I walked past a couple of armory personnel and went to our platoon’s cubbyhole where the weapons were stored in cabinets. Only the members of Foxtrot Platoon had access to this particular area. I’d stored Sweet Lips there after cleaning her every part, unusable though she was. The shotgun would be shipped back to the States eventually, and the receiver with the serial number would go to the Naval Weapons Center in Crane, Indiana.

  Next to Sweet Lips rested my new weapon, an M-16/XM-148 combo that I’d used on the past three missions. This weapon consisted of a basic M-16 rifle with a grenade launcher installed below the barrel. The trigger for the XM-148 was easily adjusted to sit an inch forward of the M-16 trigger on the right hand side. Having been trained on the use of this versatile combination, which I liked, it was my first choice as a replacement for Sweet Lips. I favored the shotgun in the thick jungle for close range encounters, but the shotgun, I kept having to remind myself, was dead.

  I’d fired about seventy 40mm HE rounds through the XM-148 into the Dong Tranh River for practice, and I shot very accurately with it up to two hundred meters. I intended to increase the distance of precision shooting to 350 meters.

  “Whatcha doin’?”

  I looked up from making a minor adjustment on the grenade launcher’s trigger and saw Funkhouser entering the room.

  “I’m all done,” I answered, turning away from my teammate and propping my new weapon back up in the gun cabinet. “I just moved the 148’s trigger a little more forward. No biggie.”

  Funkhouser and I left the armory and walked toward our barracks.

  “Some of us are makin’ a run to Saigon at 1100 hours,” Funky informed me. “You in?”

  “What’s the plan?” I asked.

  Funkhouser told me with a grin, “The usual! We’ll hit a couple bars, wink at the women, eat lunch at the Continental Hotel, go shopping at the PX in Cholon. Sound good?”

  I pondered the offer for all of two seconds.

  “Yeah,” I said, slapping my roommate on the back, “I’m in.”

  Funkhouser chuckled. “What convinced you, Smitty, the women, the bars, or both?”

  “Neither,” I lied, keeping a straight face. “It was the lunch.”

  Funkhouser guffawed, causing me to laugh, too.

  “Lunch?” he cracked. “Lunch with who? Nga, or Chi, or that sweet young thing that hangs around the Continental Hotel?”

  We entered our barracks, laughing. Doc Brown heard us and met us as we approached our cubicle.

  “What’s so funny?” he wondered aloud.

  Thinking fast, I responded, “The sight of you sticking a plague shot in your own ass!”

  Funkhouser gave me a wide-eyed look, then almost died laughing. I just grinned at Brown, who didn’t crack a smile. He simply watched Funkhouser carry on for several seconds before sticking a hand out in front of my face, with the palm up. What I saw wiped the grin off my face.

  “Time for your malaria pill,” Brown told me as he shoved the large, yellow pill closer. I stared at the thing, fully aware of the diarrhea that accompanied it.

  Funkhouser’s laughter suddenly died when he spotted the unwelcome pill in Doc’s hand. “For cryin’ out loud, Doc! You’re the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever known, and I mean that literally. It’s Thanksgiving Day, for cryin’ out loud!” Grabbing the pill out of Brown’s hand, Funky tossed it into his mouth and swallowed it.

  “There!” Funkhouser spit. As he walked away and into our cubicle, he called back, “When the thunder starts rumblin’ in two hours, Doc, I’m comin’ to your cubicle! And when the lightning strikes in three, I’ll be sittin’ on your bed!”

  Funkhouser disappeared, and I was left staring at a second pill which Doc had placed on his upturned palm.

  “Your turn, Smitty,” he said.

  I grabbed the pill. “You really enjoy makin’ us suffer, don’t you!”

  “Suffer?” he said with a mischievous grin. “Hell, I’m constantly savin�
� your mangy lives around here! Now, swallow the pill!”

  “I will,” I grumbled, walking away with it in my hand.

  “You better!” Brown barked after me.

  I entered my cubicle. Funkhouser was standing next to our new apartment-size refrigerator, which we had bought together in Saigon, chugging a shot of whiskey. He gulped it down, burped once, then looked at me. “I’m tryin’ to kill that pill before it kills me,” he muttered.

  I nodded my head, fully understanding what he meant.

  “Did you take yours?” Funkhouser inquired of me.

  I held out my hand and showed him the yellow monster. Then I took the pill between my thumb and index finger of both hands and snapped the pill in two. “Will you pour me a shot?” Without hesitation, Funkhouser opened the refrigerator and took out the bottle of whiskey. Filling the same shot glass, he held it out to me.

  “May you outrun the runs,” Funky said as a salute.

  I took the glass, popped a half of the pill in my mouth, and swallowed it along with the whiskey. Smacking my lips, I gave the glass back to Funkhouser.

  “What about the other half?” he questioned.

  I stepped beside my bed and slid Bolivar’s wooden cage out from beneath it. I unlatched the mesh-wire lid and swung it open. The boa constrictor struck suddenly and bit at my hand, just missing.

  “Why, you little ingrate!” I growled at my pet. “You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.” I flipped the half pill into the cage, then closed and latched the door. Funkhouser started chuckling as I shoved the cage back under my bed.

  “Don’t want him to catch malaria,” I quipped, smiling at my roommate.

  Funkhouser laughed harder. “This should prove interesting. I’ve never seen a snake with the squirts before.”

  “And you prob’ly won’t this time, either,” I countered. “You’ll be too busy takin’ care of your own.”

  We spent the next couple of hours staying close to the latrine, lying in bed and listening to country-and-western music, courtesy of Armed Forces Radio, on my portable radio. I was enjoying the music immensely when I heard, “Oh, no.” Funky crawled out of his bed and broke into a run for the john. I laughed so hard I cried, knowing that Funkhouser, like all true SEALs, wasn’t wearing any underwear to “detain” the problem.

  Twenty minutes later, I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was perched on the pot in the john next to Funkhouser. Next to him on the other side sat McCollum, another victim of Doc’s “cure.” The smell was intolerable, but there was nothing I could do but bear it. A bad case of diarrhea greatly limited one’s travel options.

  “Hey, Smitty!” My roommate got my attention. “Is half a pill any easier on you than a whole one?”

  “Not hardly,” I replied. “Next time I’m gonna try just a quarter.”

  A few seconds of silence slid by, then Funkhouser said, “Let’s dissolve the other three-quarters in Doc’s coffee.”

  I thought I heard Funkhouser giggling, but the sudden sounds erupting in my own stall demanded my total concentration.

  An hour later, we found ourselves in our black Chevy pickup truck and on our way to Saigon. Pearson was driving fast, as usual. Flynn and Brown were seated in the cab with him. McCollum, Moses, Ty, Funkhouser, and I were drinking plenty of beer in the box. Brown, Moses, and Ty were packing pistols for our protection.

  “No snipers today!” Moses announced after we reached the outer limits of Saigon.

  “Not on the way in,” agreed McCollum, “but this is a round-trip excursion. We might run into trouble on the way back.”

  Funkhouser finished a can of beer. Then he said, “Let’s have fun first, and we’ll worry ’bout the trouble later.”

  As we progressed into downtown Saigon on a tree-lined avenue, I studied the sea of humanity. The sidewalks were crowded with hucksters peddling their wares. Vendors with two-wheeled carts full of coconuts and bananas seemed to be everywhere. Many people rode bicycles that were stacked high with boxes and sacks. Young men on motorbikes zigzagged through intersections, ignoring stop signs. Simply put, the place was clogged.

  The first place we went on that day was to the Continental Hotel for lunch. Pearson parked the truck in a luckily found spot a block away, and all eight of us bailed out and walked to the open-air terrace cafe. We confiscated two small tables beneath the veranda and sat down, four men to a table. The cool, shaded area under the roof quickly revived me, as the stifling heat of the city had caused me to feel faint just a minute earlier. So many people, so much traffic, so much carbon monoxide was in this place.

  Soon, a waiter came to take our orders. All of us wanted a cheap, cold Tiger beer, except Funkhouser, who decided to splurge and drink a Heineken.

  “I’ve had a rough morning,” Funky declared, giving Doc Brown the evil eye. “I’ve had enough cheap shit for one day, so I’m gonna put something of quality into my system.”

  I looked at Doc, who was smiling. Don’t worry, Doc, I said to myself, we’re going to pay you back. And payback can be hell.

  I caught the waiter before he left and ordered a Chinese soup with noodles, pork, and red peppers.

  “Easy on the peppers,” I told him. “It’s hot enough today without burning up my throat.”

  “Da,” agreed the waiter as he imitated the wiping of sweat from his brow. “Very hot.”

  “Also, I want some fried rice,” I added.

  “Com,” he said, writing it on his pad as he walked away.

  The eight of us kidded around for a few minutes until the waiter returned with a tray full of bottles of beer and glasses. He set four bottles and four glasses on each table, making sure the Heineken went to Funkhouser.

  “I’ve got a Thanksgiving Day toast to make,” announced Funkhouser, holding up his bottle. The rest of us lifted our bottles in the air. I glanced at McCollum, who saw my look and shrugged.

  “This is a toast to the three sins of stealing, lying, and drunkenness,” Funkhouser stated with a smile. “If you must steal, steal away from sin. If you must lie, lie with one you love. If you must drink, drink with me, for I am your friend.”

  Funkhouser tipped his bottle into his mouth and drank.

  “Aw, shit,” muttered Brown, “wasn’t that nice?” I gave him a hard look, but he was smiling. When he sipped his beer to honor the toast, I drank mine, too.

  “Where’d you get a toast like that, Funky?” asked McCollum after a long swig from his bottle.

  “Out of a toaster.” Funkhouser grinned.

  “Very funny,” McCollum retorted sarcastically.

  “Actually,” returned Funkhouser, “I made it up.”

  Everyone chuckled and hooted at this apparent lie.

  “Made it up, hell,” spat Brown, who was sitting at the other table. “A moron couldn’t come up with something that good.”

  We laughed. Funkhouser didn’t. Instead, he raised his beer bottle before his eyes and stared at it. After a moment’s reflection, he said, “Then let me offer another toast from a moron’s perspective.” The rest of us hoisted our beers as Funkhouser continued slowly and carefully, “What goes around, comes around, and no one can escape this rule.” He paused to think, then added, “So here’s to one who thinks he will, but he won’t, I assure you, to Doc Brown, the fool.”

  “Hoo-yah!” I whooped, and everybody laughed except Doc this time. Then down the pipes went the beers.

  Two dozen beers and ten dozen laughs later, we were all done with our lunches and headed to the post exchange in Cholon. As we traveled there, I studied the masses of people on the sidewalks and crossing the street. As always, I was amazed that we were totally ignored. No one waved or smiled at us. No one uttered, “Chao” or “Cam on ong.” No one yelled “Good afternoon,” or even “Kiss my ass.” Yet Katsma had given his life for these people’s freedom. And I might even have to give mine. Or Funkhouser. Or McCollum. Or one of the others. That was why a smile would have been nice. Just one to have given me a little peace. But as I w
atched the hundreds and thousands of faces, I saw not one.

  At the PX, all eight of us collected our month’s supply of liquor and wine. I picked up Early Times whiskey and some Italian wine. Then, while the others paged through mail-order catalogs and perused the floor merchandise, I decided to take a walk by myself outside on the street. Perhaps, I thought, the people would greet me if I was alone and on foot.

  It took but a block of walking to realize that only the hawkers would address me, and they only in an attempt to get at my money.

  “GI, buy naked virgin very cheap?” a young male peddler called to me from behind his little table on the sidewalk as I stepped past. I glanced at the statues of nude maidens he had stacked before him and shook my head.

  “No, thank you,” I pronounced over my left shoulder while accidentally bumping into someone with my right arm. I turned back to apologize, but no one acknowledged the slight collision. No one looked at me; everyone just kept walking.

  Continuing my journey, I traveled a couple more blocks as an insignificant part of a maze of pedestrians. I walked past the peddlers and their wares: the hanging parrot cages, ceramic elephants, cheap jewelry, watches, seashells, and Chinese herbs.

  An old woman shoved a tin cup under my nose and begged, “Please?” I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out a ten-piaster coin, which I dropped into her cup. She smiled at me, revealing broken teeth. The teeth were stained reddish brown, which was common among the Vietnamese who chewed betel nut.

  There! I thought. I had gotten a smile. Of course, I had paid for it, but what the hell.

  I decided to walk back to the PX on the opposite side of the street, so as I reached the next intersection, I started across the roadway. I dodged a boy on a bicycle and moved around a slow-moving old man wearing a black Chinese Mandarin robe. While passing the man, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He had a yellow, wrinkled face with a long, thin, white goatee. His eyes were bloodshot, and overall he looked sickly.

  Not wanting to stare and thereby give insult to the fellow, I looked away and kept walking. But after a few steps, I heard a “thud” behind me. I took a peek over my shoulder and saw that the old man had collapsed onto the street. The sight caused me to stop in my tracks.