© 2012 Steven W. Horn. Printed and bound in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system—except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine, newspaper, or on the Web—without permission in writing from the publisher. Request for permission should be submitted to Granite Peak Press, P.O. Box 2597, Cheyenne, WY 82003, or email: info@granitepeakpress.com.
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This book is a work of fiction. All references to real people, actual events, and places must be read as fiction. The characters in this book are creations of the author’s imagination, as is the town of Keotonka, Iowa. The dialogue is invented.
First printing 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9835894-6-4
LCCN: 2011940186
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“HEY GOOD LOOKIN’” Lyrics from the composition by Hank Williams Sr. © 1951 Sonyt/ATV Music Publishing LLC. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN, 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
To those who were there
and to those who remain.
Acknowledgments
With thanks to Jim Wangberg, Tonya Talbert, Michael and Kathleen O’Neal Gear, and Peter Decker who read and offered encouragement, as well as friendship.
I am indebted to Sue Collier for her expertise in the many aspects of book publishing.
Special thanks to my daughters, Tiffany, Melissa, and Amanda, whose edits were helpful and whose support was unfailing. This book exists because of the loving support and fierce advocacy of my wife, Margaret, who has never stopped believing in me.
CHAPTER 1
“He wondered if he ought to write a swan-song,
but laughed the thought away. There was no time.
He was impatient to be gone.”
Jack London
Martin Eden
5:15 a.m.
HE WOULD LET HER SLEEP FOR ANOTHER HOUR. The day ahead would be hard on her. He would go to the barn. Eden wanted things to be simple for her.
He picked up the letter. The Great Seal of the United States embossed in gold gave the letterhead its intended authority. The blindfolded lady holding the balance in front of her intimidated him. He knew there would be no balance, no justice. Her scales would be tipped decidedly toward meaningless partisan, political objectives. The United States Department of Justice had convened a grand jury. The Senate hearings had given the president and attorney general little choice.
Outside, the August corn flagged gently in the predawn Iowa breeze. Soon the fields would gain color as the sun crept above the wooded hills to the east. Already the peak of the barn and silvery dome of the silo were reflecting the first blush of day. When the sun reached the top of the barn door he would go.
Inside, the advancing light brought definition to the room. Every surface presented a memory of a life lived. Fifty-seven years of a man’s life represented by an odd collection of mementos: a pinecone from Scotland, an oak fern stand that was her grandmother’s, Buddy’s leather collar and tags. The room was comfortable. Photographs told the story, the epic that preceded him. Not the entire story, but the parts that should be preserved. Immigrants in ill-fitting clothes, babies in white christening gowns, graduations, hopeful couples—all represented by less than a second of their lives captured on film. Most were of Elizabeth’s side of the family. He had wanted it that way. It was her ancestral home and land. He was an outsider, a stranger passing by who had stopped to work for room and board. There were gaps in his story, dead spots that haunted him every day: holes that would soon be filled.
Jessica’s life visually unfolded from every available surface within the room. As their only child she did not have to compete for shelf space. The preteen years were the most photographed. By the age of fifteen her childlike cuteness had been replaced with the rebelliousness of a teenager. She’d quickly outgrown the defiant years and then she had been gone. She was thirty-four now.
Her life with him seemed so long ago, a patchwork of recollections captured as still life. But he could animate each photo. He could feel his lungs burn as he ran beside her bicycle, training wheels removed. He felt the heat of an Iowa July and the stickiness of sweat on his arms as he officiated the watermelon eating contest that she won. He could hear the crunch of dry leaves and smell the crispness of fall as he led her to the pumpkin patch down by the river where she always selected the most misshapen pumpkin for her Jack-o’-lantern. Unbeknownst to anyone, he still planted that lower corner of the field to pumpkins every year and then plowed them under in November. He loved his daughter as if she were his own.
Remembrances, the past reinvented, he thought as he slowly scanned the room. His life seemed an odd collection of memories, a collage of colorless images without order, separated by the unmemorable routine of making a living. Some had dimension, vivid reminders of what he wanted to forget, the ones that took his breath away. They were the ones he could not share with Elizabeth. They were the ones that the rest of the world now wanted.
Looking at the letter again, he read, “Dear Mr. Cain: You are hereby summoned to appear—” He inhaled slowly, his chest rising. He held his breath. Through flared nostrils he exhaled with finality. He felt strangely relieved. It had been a long time. There would be no resolution, no absolution, only a millisecond of peace. He placed the letter on the end table next to the revolver.
CHAPTER 2
“No civilised troops in the world could have
endured the hell through which they came. Their
business was to destroy what lay in front of them.”
Rudyard Kipling
The Light That Failed
1971
INCOMING! WE’VE GOT INCOMING! Rat Man’s dead! Jesus Christ! Get some air!” Eden yelled, his flight helmet visor awash in blood.
“Roger that, Cowboy,” Lonnie said as the Huey began to climb. “Did you get a fix?”
“I can’t see shit over here.” The glare of the morning sun on his side of the helicopter made the jungle beneath him appear silvery and without detail. The brass shell casings in the bandoleer feeding his M-60 reflected painfully into his eyes. “Looks like we took it from the port side. Little Nail, what the hell? Over.”
“Smoke,” Brad ‘Little Nail’ Holcomb yelled from the port gun bay. “We’ve got smoke at eight o’clock. Confirm.”
“Yeah, we’ve got it,” Lonnie said. The chopper pitched sharply to the left and downward. “Anything that looks like a possible LZ?”
There was silence as the four remaining crew members looked for an opening, a landing zone, in the jungle canopy. Rat Man, the radio operator, was slumped forward against his harness, his head uncomfortably turned sideways against the radio console. His face, with unflinching eyes, was turned toward Eden’s gun bay. His neck from just below the jaw line to his collar bone was gone.
There was a marshy area in the oxbow of a small river, but it was at least a half mile from the plume of white smoke drifting upward from a small clearing to the east. Muzzle flashes appeared along a perimeter on both the northern and eastern flanks of the ground recon team who had tossed the smoke canisters.
“Too tight,” John “Gaseous” Clay reported from the copilot seat. “We’ll slice and dice if we try to set it down in there.”
“Cowboy, you juice ’em when we come in,” Lonnie ordered Eden. “Little Nail, you drop the strings,” he said, referring to the McQuire rigs, a swing-like seat attached to a rope lowered through the trees.
“RT Yellowstone, this is Pony Boy come to save your ass. Over.”
“This is RT Yellowstone’s One-Two. It’s about time a Pony showed up. They’re all over us. No way we’ll make the river. Where’s your support? Over.”
“You’re looking at the extent of U.S. military involvement over Laos. How many are you? Over.”
“We be six.”
“We can take four. You decide. Any Yards?”
There was a short delay. “Pony Boy, this is the RT’s One-One. You’ll have to make two extractions. We will not leave our Yards. I repeat: We will not leave our Yards. Over.”
Lonnie could hear the full auto bursts of rifle fire through his headset. He knew how protective the ground teams became of their Montagnard trackers.
“We copy, One-One. Four strings are all we have. Double up if you can. No guarantees on a second extraction unless we get air support and we’d be calling them in right on top of you. Charlie is knocking on your door at less than a click. Over.”
“Hurry, for Christ’s sake. Out.”
“Show ’em what you got, Cowboy,” Lonnie said as the chopper came out of a steep bank and broadsided the east flank of North Vietnamese Army regulars who rushed angrily toward the trapped recon team.
Immediately, the muzzle flashes from below were followed by the stinging slap of bullets slamming into the armor plating of the chopper’s hull. Eden began spraying the jungle in a wide arc where he had seen the advancing line of NVA. The tracer rounds drew straight lines in the air. Hot, empty casings filled the bay at the end of his right swing. He did not aim at individuals. He wanted to slow their advance, pin them down, buy some time.
The Huey banked to a halt over the break in the trees. Lonnie pivoted the craft violently to port, allowing Eden to strafe the charging line from the north, then back to starboard. Brad tossed the strings, two from the port door and two from the starboard. Gaseous, leaning against the door, guided Lonnie by calling out the meters from the McQuire harness to the ground.
“Little Nail, give ’em some support on the north,” Lonnie ordered.
Brad crawled back into his gun bay and began firing, his barrel pointing acutely downward.
“Touchdown. Steady,” Gaseous said calmly.
“Pony Boy, this is Bird Dog. Do you copy? Over.”
“We copy, Bird Dog. Where you be? Over.”
“We be on the top, you be on the bottom. As it should be. Over.”
Lonnie twisted his head upward to see the little Cessna 0-1 Bird Dog high above them. “I need a minute, Bird Dog. We’ve got six on the ground, four strings, and we’re taking heavy fire. Over.”
“Pony Boy, this is Covey Rider. Over.”
“Oh shit,” Lonnie said before pressing his mike button. He knew that a Covey Rider in the right seat of a Forward Air Controller meant an air strike was imminent. “Go ahead, Covey Rider. Over.”
“Pony Boy, a covey is on the way with an ETA of forty-five seconds. I won’t wave them off. Make it good, make it fast. Over.”
“Where we at, Gaseous?” Lonnie said.
“Steady this son of a bitch. They can’t catch the strings. It’s a firefight down there.”
Brad and Eden shifted frantically in their seats, a blur of casings ejecting from their guns. Both lines of NVA had pressed forward to within fifty yards of the recon team. The Huey hovered just above the tree line. AK-47 rounds riddled the hull and ricocheted noisily between the gun bays. Seventy-five feet below, the recon team repeatedly attempted to reach the strings that danced temptingly in the small clearing. Each time, enemy fire drove them back into the bush.
“Cowboy, pop red smoke,” Lonnie said.
“Jesus Christ, Lonnie. Give ’em one more shot at it,” Eden said, his voice pleading. He swung the M-60 quickly to his left and cut down four NVA who had boldly rushed into the clearing.
“Lay it down now!” Lonnie ordered. “We’re out of time.”
Eden stopped firing and yanked a smoke canister from the door support. He pulled the pin and, leaning half out the bay, heaved the canister past the clearing toward the enemy.
“One away. Let me put another one down for some cover,” Eden said.
He tossed the second canister toward the other flank of oncoming NVA. His arm tingled and the fingers of his left hand felt stiff. He began firing. But he fired alone.
“Little Nail!” Eden yelled into the mike. There was no response. Looking to the cockpit, he saw Gaseous twisting in his seat attempting to look into Brad’s gun bay.
“Ten seconds, Lonnie. Give ’em ten seconds for Christ’s sake,” Eden said.
The dense red smoke engulfed the clearing. Eden could no longer see what he was shooting at, but he continued to lay down fire. The McGuire rigs disappeared into the red fog below.
“Pony Boy, this is Covey Rider. You have fifteen seconds. You’ll need half of them to clear the zone. Over.”
“We’re counting, Covey Rider. Out.” Lonnie turned toward Clay. “Tight-assed son of a bitch. You see anything, Gaseous?”
Gaseous had his head pressed against the bubble and stared downward. He did not respond. Lonnie reached over and grabbed his shoulder. “Gaseous?”
John Clay fell backward, his head bobbing against his chest. The hole in his visor was the same size as the one in the Plexiglas window below him. “Oh, sweet mother of Jesus!” Lonnie cried.
“Ten seconds, Pony Boy.”
The helicopter rose vertically, slowly at first, then quickly when Lonnie guessed the strings had cleared the jungle canopy. Violently, he banked to port and accelerated toward the river.
“Cowboy, what’d we catch?” Lonnie asked.
Eden strained against his harness to see below the acutely banked craft. Three men on two strings were clinging for their lives to the ropes that trailed almost horizontally from the steeply banked Huey.
“Three with one double,” Eden said. “We’ll lose the one if we don’t sit down soon.”
“We’re headed for the oxbow.”
Shadows swept over the helicopter, followed by a shrill roar that drowned out the sound of the rotor. Eden looked up to see the bellies of three F-4 Phantoms. They were so close that he could see the red nose cones on the 500-pound bombs strapped beneath their wings as they honed in on the red smoke.
The jungle in and around the smoke opened widely to expose the dark earth below its roots. Giant craters appeared and within a second were filled with an inward-rolling, orange flame. The fireball was surrounded by a dark circle of jungle expulsion; planetary fragments catapulted skyward.
A pair of F-100 Super Sabers followed, their cannons riddling the smoke-filled Laotian forest ahead of them. They dropped cluster bombs as they passed. Trees appeared to recede as they dropped on their stumps before gracefully falling over.
Eden fought the lump in his throat and ignored the wet, throbbing pain in his arm as the propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders lumbered by, their South Vietnamese insignia proudly displayed. He watched in horror as the horizon ignited in a rolling log of orange flames from the napalm they released. The sterilization was complete. All traces removed. There would be no evidence and no embarrassment to a president who convincingly lied to America that they were not in Laos.
CHAPTER 3
“A second convention was that we had no cruel
or ambitious or ignorant commanders…. disorganized
insanity … was not only foreseen but a part of
a grander strategy out of which victory would emerge.”
John Steinbeck
Once There Was a War
1971
THE SMELL OF ALCOHOL WAS SO STRONG THAT EDEN’S nostrils flared with defiance. The antiseptic smell competed with, but did not displace, the stench of urine and body odor that filled the makeshift hospital. The commotion was deafening. The Vietnamese language, a confusing garble of human noises uttered in fast-forward, filled the elongated Quonset. Dozens of refugees clamored for attention in the half-round corridor. There were no rooms. Faded signs written in French declared administrative and medical functions. Gurneys lined the curved walls. Bandaged GIs, many with their jungle boots sticking out from under blood soaked sheets, lay atop the wheeled carts. Plastic tubing from suspended IV bags gracefully enjoined the arms of both the conscious and unconscious. Bags of urine and large glass carboy jugs with drain tubes stuffed in their necks sat below the gurneys. The civilians, tiny and dark, lay curled on grass mats on the floor. Their relatives wailed above them.
Eden sat in an aqua-colored, contoured plastic chair with tapered metal legs that ended with pod-like feet. A scowling, elderly Vietnamese woman yelled with nonstop, staccato gibberish into his face. Her gold teeth sparkled amid red gums, stained from the betel-nut root she had chewed most of her life. Her breath reeked of nouc mam and cheroots, a lethal combination of rotting fish and burned rubber that made Eden light-headed. He had no idea what she wanted. His bandaged left arm burned and throbbed.
“Di di,” Eden said. “Di di mau.” He waved his right hand at her in a motion for her to go away. She ignored him.
“Go on. Git, you shriveled up old bag of shit,” someone said. A large olive drab figure suddenly appeared in front of Eden. The old woman was hip checked and sent to all fours among the mass of human squalor on the floor.
“Eden, you ole cowboy,” Ivan said, a wide smile across his face.
Eden looked up, puzzled. “What are you doing here, Goose?”
“Come to decorate you, shit for brains.” He thrust a small paper box at Eden.
“What’s this?”
“It’s your Purple Heart. You can open it later. Let’s get out of here. This place stinks.”
“How’d this happen? Who put me in for it? I just got here,” Eden said.
“Lonnie Webster, your pilot. I just pushed it around eight or ten assholes, got the general to sign the papers, and thought I would deliver it myself,” Ivan said. He grinned broadly down at Eden.
“What did she want?” Eden asked, nodding in the direction of the mamasan who was struggling to her feet.
“Oh, she was just telling you how much she appreciated American intervention in Southeast Asia. How much better off she is since we arrived. How most of her family has gone on to better lives as insects and lizards and those that remain really didn’t mind sacrificing their legs and arms. And something about a 10 percent discount if we visit her fifteen-year-old granddaughter who’s a whore in Da Nang.”
“Christ, Goose. I’m glad to see you’re as sardonic as always,” Eden said.
“Sardonic? That’s a pretty big word for a shot-up, dumb shit door gunner,” Ivan said.
Eden smiled as they made their way from the evac hospital. He tossed his paperwork into an overflowing trash can by the door. Ivan had been his friend since they had met in boot camp at Fort Lewis. Awkwardly tall and spindly with a cartoon-like Adam’s apple, the drill sergeant had told him he looked like a goose. The name stuck. Exceptionally high test scores had landed him a job as an aide to the commanding general of the XXIV Corps.
“Where we going?”
“I borrowed the General’s car and driver,” Ivan said, pointing to the shiny, black Fairlane 500 with a red three-star flag on the front fender. “We’re going to the USO Club at China Beach. Mamie Van Doren is singing. I saw her in Saigon. She acts like Marilyn Monroe with a brain injury. She dry humps guys from the audience and pretty much gives herself an orgasm with the microphone cord. You’ll love it.”
Somewhere near Marble Mountain, Eden began to cry.
Ivan said nothing. Instead, he squeezed the back of Eden’s neck and, without warning, punched his bandaged arm. “Let me give you something to cry about,” he said.
Eden took a deep breath, held it, and looked out the side window. Wiping the tears from his eyes, he continued to look away from Ivan. “Five of us left Da Nang less than ten hours ago,” he said. “Two of us came back.” He took another deep breath in an attempt to stop the tears. “We picked up three so I guess it was a wash. No, wait a second. We fried three of ours on the ground. So, of the eleven of us who were in Laos this morning, five are alive. Shit, we’re down six. Not fair. Whose turn is it?” he said turning to look at Ivan.
“It’s their turn, Cowboy,” Ivan said. “It’s always their turn.”
Illumination flares drifted slowly downward, their tiny parachutes caught in the evening breeze above the river. The outline of guard towers, sandbag bunkers, and concertina wire defined the perimeter of XXIV Corps Headquarters. Ivan had insisted that Eden stay with him that evening. They sat on the sandbag wall outside Ivan’s hooch, drinking warm Budweiser and smoking Salems.
“You’ve got to admit, she had great tits,” Ivan said suddenly, referring to Mamie Van Doren.
Eden continued to stare at the river. Just the ripples reflected the light of the flares. Half a dozen beers had not cheered him up. “What are we doing here, Goose?”
“Just putting in our time; it’s kind of like olive drab welfare. It’s a great way to get guys off the streets and put them to work for the good of the country. With good behavior, I’m out in four months.”
“No. I mean America. What’s the U.S. doing here?”
“You mean besides stomping out oppression and deterring the advancement of communist aggression?”
Eden frowned and shook his head. “This war is on political hold. It’s in a maintenance mode. We’re just going through the fucking motions with no intentions of winning. Christ.”
Ivan knew that Eden was in no mood for his humorous remarks. He drank from his beer can and looked out over the river.
“Nixon is a goddamn liar,” Eden said.
“No shit.”
“He’s got the public convinced that we’re not in Cambodia or Laos. Where the hell do you think I was this morning? The only offensive we’ve got going in this war is on the other side of the borders. We’re bombing the crap out of them in Laos. There are sorties leaving Da Nang and Udorn every hour around the clock. It seems like one of those flyboys goes down every other day. Then they send those gung ho mothers, SOG, into the bush to extract their asses. Who are those crazy bastards, anyway? Then we get to go in to pull the whole lot of them out. But not until they’ve got Charlie whipped into a frenzy.” Eden took another drink of beer. “You know how many pilots we’ve recovered in the last nine months?”
Ivan did not respond. He knew the answer.
“None,” Eden said. “Not a fucking one.” He lit a cigarette and coughed. “You know, I only smoke when I drink. Or is it I only drink when I smoke? It doesn’t matter.” He paused then looked squarely at Ivan. “I think our job is to ground-truth their location, to pinpoint their sorry little asses so the scorched earth brigade can toast them. I don’t even think those SOG recon teams are there to recover pilots. Why the hell would they be carrying twenty-two caliber pistols with silencers? The damn few we’ve pulled out are loaded down with recovered Viet Cong documents. Shit, Goose, they’re on intelligence runs. They’re not looking for flyboys. The dummies don’t realize they’re no better off than the pilots. We’ll tenderize and barbecue them too, if it looks like they’re going to get caught.”
“Look, my friend,” Ivan said. “You and I can talk about such things because we’re both Special Operations Group cleared. We’ve been through the drill. I’ve got the highest security clearances known to man. There isn’t anything they don’t know about me or my family. If you even hint of this to anyone else, they’ll never find your sorry ass. More than likely, they’ll cover up your carcass with mine. So be cool, man. Put it out of your head. Just do your job and get stateside.”
“I thought SOG stood for Studies and Observations Group,” Eden said.
Ivan chuckled. “That’s its new name. It sounds less Special Forces and more rear academics. You best forget about them both.”
“How do we know where to find the pilots?” Eden asked, ignoring the warning. “Sometimes they are miles from the crash site. Depends on where they bail out, I guess. But how do we get their coordinates?”
“They have radios.”
“That’s bull and you know it,” Eden said. “Even if they were using their radios deep in enemy territory, we still couldn’t get that exact of a fix. We fly right to them. If they are on the move when we get our orders, Da Nang calls and gives us the new coordinates sometimes within minutes of our arrival. We’re tracking them, aren’t we?”
“The bomber crews all have transponders sewn into their flight suits,” Ivan said. He turned away and followed a flare that drifted lazily toward the river.
“Do they know about it?”
“Eden,” Ivan said, with a strong note of seriousness in his voice. “You’re my friend. You need to be cool about all this. This shit will get you in big trouble. It’ll get us both in big trouble.”
“Do they know about it?” Eden repeated.
Ivan stared at him for a long moment. “No.”
“Are the transponders there so they can be rescued?” Eden asked.
“In theory. If it’s a cake walk, we’ll snatch ’em up.” Ivan paused. “But you said it yourself, our success rate sucks.”
“Depends on where they go down,” Eden said. “If it’s across the border, there’s no slack. The covey suddenly appears and we’re ordered to withdraw.” He took a long drag on his Salem, lifted his head skyward, and blew the smoke in a long plume into the warm, tropical night. “Our job is to confirm them, pop smoke, and get out of Dodge. Isn’t it?” Tears were forming in his eyes again. “They have no intention of rescue. Do they?” Eden took a deep breath and looked away.
“Come on, Cowboy, give it up. You’re getting in way over your head,” Ivan said.
“We’re whacking the good guys for Christ’s sake and I’m an accessory. Don’t tell me to give it up. You’re not the one doing the killing, you rear echelon motherfucker.”
“Neither are you. You’re just the guide. The hunters do the killing,” Ivan said.
“Three of my friends are dead, Goose. That’s the third crew I’ve had since coming into this country. You want to hear mortality rates? I don’t have a chance. I’m going to die trying to kill Americans.” Eden looked at his bandaged arm and laughed. “I’ve been shot twice and neither one of them is worth fifty cents. The million dollar wound just ain’t going to happen.”
“You never know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” Ivan said. “We may pull back and stand down. As you said, it’s a political war.”
Eden inhaled deeply and closed his eyes to stop the tears. The smell of the river was like that of any large river moving slowly into the sea, of mud and fish.
“Who gives the orders?” Eden said.
“For what?”
“Don’t fuck with me, Goose.”
“It depends. If it’s Cambodia, I get a call on the scrambler phone from General McCarthy in Long Binh. He tells me we have a Blue Arrow—a downed pilot—and gives me date, time, and coordinates. It seems like it’s always in the middle of the night. They come fetch me when the bells and red lights on the scrambler go off. I wake the Old Man, he dictates a message to the president, sends for a SPECAT from the Command Center.”
“What’s a SPECAT?”
“A Major with a handcuffed briefcase. The Major gives it to Crypto who sends it EO to Tricky Dicky.”
“What are Crypto and EO?” Eden asked, slightly annoyed.
“Crypto is where our cryptographers encrypt—place into code—messages. An EO means Eyes Only. The message is sent TS, SI, EO—Top Secret, Special Intelligence, Eyes Only. The Eyes Only designation means that nobody but the addressee can read it, not even the SPECAT.”
“Do you read them?”
“Nope. It’s the Old Man, a cryptographer, and the president. But I know what’s in them based on the Old Man’s response. He reads it and tells me to get the SOG chief. They chew the fat a bit and the Old Man tells me to call McCarthy on the scrambler and inform him that a Bright Light is in progress. A Bright Light is a rescue mission someplace we’re not supposed to be.”
“What about Laos?” Eden said.
“Same drill only without McCarthy and SOG South. The Old Man handles SOG North. All the incursions from Military Region One start right here.”
“I don’t get it,” Eden said. “Why would we need Nixon’s permission to engage in a rescue mission? We’re already there, bombing from the air and gathering intelligence on the ground, not to mention all the mercenaries and CIA-types running around. Why the cloak and dagger crap?”
“Those ring-knocking zoomie pilots fresh out of the Academy are the carnival kewpie dolls for Charlie. First prize! They have lots of credibility with the viewing audience. Their mere presence indicates we’re bombing. The president has assured the American public and the international community, especially NATO, that we have no military forces in or over Cambodia and Laos. It would be a major loss of face for him if we were discovered.”
“So let me get this straight,” Eden said, looking directly at Ivan, his eyes squinting. “We’re killing American pilots so Nixon won’t be caught lying. He authorizes each of their murders?”
“You know these airborne, gung ho, green-machine types. They have a code of honor that says they will leave no man behind, even their dead. We’ve lost a lot of men in this war trying to recover dead guys. Shit.” Ivan shook his head and spit, “At the same time, they’ll blindly execute an order even if it means eating their young. The commanding generals won’t order a tactical air strike on their own men, but they’ll carry out an order, especially if it comes from the commander in chief.”
“A Bright Light really isn’t a rescue mission?”
“Yes and no. When you get your orders, we give you a head start. We know your ETA. We then scramble air command for a strike at the same location. If you can snatch them quickly, they’re home free and the strike is waved off.”
“It hasn’t worked yet,” Eden said. “Not a single goddamned pilot; only a handful of those crazy bastards from SOG.” He flipped his cigarette butt toward the swirl of wire at the perimeter fence. “Does MACV know what the hell is going on here?”
“Not really. Damn it, Cowboy. Enough.”
“What about the Joint Chiefs?”
“No.”
“You mean to tell me—”
“I didn’t mean to tell you anything,” Ivan said, sharpness in his voice. “You need to stop asking so damn many questions. You know a hundred times more than any other stupid door gunner. You keep your pie hole shut and watch your back.”
Eden ignored him. “I read in Stars and Stripes sometime back that Congress had passed a law saying we couldn’t go into Laos.”
“That was the Cooper-Church Amendment. They were so pissed off when they found out about what we were doing in Cambodia, they thought they’d shut Tricky Dicky out of Laos. Ha! That’s why they call him Tricky. The son of a bitch has his own secret little war going on.”
“Why? What’s in it for him?” Eden asked.
“Man, you have no idea how close we are to losing this war. Nixon wants to kick ass and save face, but those bleeding hearts in Congress keep tying his hands. We’d of lost it by now except we’ve been so disruptive to Charlie’s build-ups in Laos. You mark my words, Cowboy, they’ll spill in from Laos and take Hue, Quang Tri, Da Nang, and the rest of Region One. As soon as they recover in Cambodia, they’ll do the same to Saigon. It’s only a matter of time.”
“Then why don’t we just go home and let the greasy little gooks have it?”
“What? And screw up Tricky Dicky’s reelection plans? I don’t think so. He hates Democrats more than Commies. The Dems in Congress have done everything they can to prolong this war and make Nixon look bad. The last thing they want is for him to win reelection next year.”
Eden looked at him with disbelief. “When do you make all this shit up?”
“Grow up, Cowboy. This war has nothing to do with truth, justice, and the American way. It’s about four more years of Nixon. Like a comedy routine, timing is everything. He’s trying to keep Charlie from kicking our ass long enough to let Kissinger do his thing in Paris. We’ll go home as soon as Henry can negotiate a politically acceptable out to this frigging mess. That, my friend, will occur when Tricky Dicky’s political strategists tell him it’s time.”
Ivan lit another cigarette. Exhaling a plume of smoke into the stifling night air, he shook his head. “God, you’re naïve. Where’d you go to school, anyway? Bumfuck U? Hey, were there any girls in Wyoming, or just sheep? Can you imagine Mamie Van Doren in a loose-knit wool sweater with no bra?”
A high-pitched ringing in Eden’s ears began to drown out Ivan’s words. A dull headache at the base of his skull throbbed in unison with the fiery ache in his arm. He wanted to lie down, curl into a ball, and sleep. When he awakened he would be in his own bed at the ranch, Elk Creek, murmuring among the willows, meadowlarks greeting the day.
“What about Mamie Van Doren, caught in a fence, with nothing on but a fleece jacket? You’re the herder,” Ivan said.
Eden felt too small for his fatigues as he disappeared into the heavy darkness. Grief overwhelmed him.
CHAPTER 4
“From too much love of living,
From hope and fear set free,
We thank with brief thanksgiving
Whatever gods may be
That no life lives forever;
That dead men rise up never;
That even the weariest river
Winds somewhere safe to sea.”
Algernon Swinburne
“The Garden of Prosperpine”
5:25 a.m.
HE WOULD SEE THEM PERIODICALLY—MOSTLY AT night, but sometimes during the day when he was tired—their olive drab flight suits moving among the shadows between the rows of corn. They were young and smiling, always silent. They gave Eden the impression of being reluctant participants in some elaborate practical joke. Nearly thirty years had passed, but they were as he remembered them.
He stared at his weak reflection in the glass door of the hall clock. The gold pendulum moved back and forth across his image, rhythmically meting out age. He was not as he remembered. The years were evident in his eyes. Eyes that appeared to have receded from a world he no longer wanted to see. In their wake were the creases of time, sharp angles that radiated outward, furrows created from the skeptical explosion within his eyes. Eyes that had seen too much. He righted the wedding ring on his swollen finger. Aging was exposed in the morning, he thought. Graceful, perhaps, but parts of him ached, some hurt. But he was alive.