Blood & Tacos #2 (7 page)

"Now what?" Mathes said to Tinh from the corner of his mouth.

A raucous laugh rose from behind the shack in the center of the yard. "What
are these vermin we’ve caught?" A voice in Vietnamese. "Too
skinny for wharf rats!"

"It’s Son Tinh, you toothless fuck. Call off your dogs."

A tiny man came around the shack, his rusty M-16 as big as he. When he laughed
again, Mathes saw his mouth, as black as the ace of clubs. "Gimme one
good reason I should help you, Son Tinh!"

"Because if you don’t, Gummy Ba, I’ll rape that toothless
hole in your head right here in front of your men."

None of Gummy Ba’s men blinked, but they all racked the slides on their
pistols.

"Jesus Christ!" Mathes said. "The fuck you say to them?"

"Ha ha!" Gummy Ba said. "Your ladyfriend is jealous, Son
Tinh! Better send her back to Hollywood!"

"You like?" Son Tinh said. "I was going to trade you something
else for help, but …"

"What’re you talking about?"

"We need your help to fight Thuy. Now’s your chance to get back
at him for making you look like a faggot back in ’55."

Ba pointed the M-16 at Tinh’s face. "Help you? Gimme one goddamn
reason!"

"The case of American cigarettes we got in the jeep."

"Yeah, that’s a good one." Gummy Ba lowered his weapon. His
men lowered theirs. "Hey, Joe," Ba said to Mathes in English, "you
got smokee? Why the fuck you no say?"

An hour before, these gooks held guns on him. Now they were getting
him absolutely polluted on rice whiskey and Mu’o'i Bu, the shittiest beer
Mathes had ever eagerly guzzled in his life. As the sun went down, they cooked
chickens on a spit over an oil drum, a leaky tarp keeping most of the rain off
them. The wind whipped rain in at them occasionally, but it wasn’t long
before they were too drunk to care.

"The fuck’re these guys again?" Mathes said.

"Các Binh Si Cu," Tinh replied, lighting Mathes’ cigarette.

"The Old Soldiers, Joe!" Gummy Ba shouted in his face. Even past
the booze and meat, Gummy Ba’s breath smelled like twice-cooked shit.

"Uh-huh," Mathes said. "Like ARVN?"

"Fuck ARVN!" Gummy Ba said. "Fuck ARVN, fuck the Minh, and
fuck fuckin’ Uncle Ho! You like that, Joe?"

"Sure thing." Mathes smiled. Gummy Ba laughed some more and wandered
off for another beer. Mathes turned to Tinh. "How do you know these nutjobs,
Sarge?"

Tinh took a long pull from his bottle. "Long time ago, there was the
Binh Xuyen. Like ARVN, but not as shitty. We were an independent army inside
the VNA. Part of it, but we run our own business."

"Used to be you boys’ outfit, huh?"

"Yes, a good outfit. We fight the French, fuck them up good. But they
drive us south anyways. Binh Xuyen good soldiers, but better gangsters."

"Gangsters?"

"We fucking owned Saigon, Joe!" Gummy Ba said, loping up to them
with a fresh beer in each hand. "We smuggle, run protection, kidnap rich
fucks. We owned this town!"

"It’s true," said Tinh. "We kept the Viet Minh and
the Red Chinese cocksuckers out of Saigon. But then our leader, our general,
Bay Vien, he fuck up."

"He try to take out Diem, Joe! How you like that? The fucking president!"

"He fuck up bad. Have to … what you say? Exile?"

"Exile, yeah."

Gummy Ba puckered his lips and batted his eyelashes. "He go to gay Paree!
Become dancing girl! Make boom-boom with boo-koo French soldiers!" And
then he laughed from deep in his chest.

"Bay Vien exiled to Paris. Binh Xuyen all over with, far as we’re
concerned. I joined ARVN. Ba stayed with his crew."

"What’s left of it," Ba said.

"And Thuy?" Mathes said. "He a part of all that?"

"Mm. He went with Diem. For a time, anyway."

"Fuck Diem," Gummy Ba said with a sneer and sulked off.

"The regular VNA kicked the shit out of us. Ran us out of Saigon, pushed
us back into the jungle. Rung Sat. And we kept fighting anyway. Had nothing
else to do. One night, middle of a firefight, Thuy was about to slit Ba’s
throat until I showed up. We fought, but it was a draw. It was always a draw,
since we were kids."

"Kids?"

"Mm. He had a knife, gave me this." Tinh pointed at the scar on
his brow. "I took it away from him, though, tried to put it through his
heart, but only managed to slice his arm open. And then Ba cold-cocked him and
we got the fuck out of there."

"You guys knew each other when you were kids?" Mathes said.

Sergeant Tinh sighed. "Mathes, it’s late. We got a day and a half
hump to talk about all that."

"Oh, okay," Mathes said and drained his bottle. Then he spit it
all out. "Fuckin’ day and a half?"

It was just over a day’s haul down the Saigon River to the
Mekong. Gummy Ba and his crew had a gunboat that had seen its best days in the
Big One. There was barely enough room for the eight of them, but they were too
wired on booze and impending combat to give a shit.

As they approached Vi Thanh, Ba killed the engines. They left the boat in a
meander, the trees creating something like a cave. Mathes had never seen such
pitch black before. He longed for the streetlights of the city, any city.

"Let’s go," Sergeant Tinh said.

They humped through the jungle, Mathes weighed down with a heavy pack full
of rations. They didn’t plan on being in the jungle for long but, as Ba
put it, "Nobody plans to starve to death, Joe. It just happen!"

Tinh, Ba, and his men each had M1 rifles. Ba was armed with his trusty, rusty
M-16. And one man, Lang, had an AK.

They had not walked long when Lang, on point, held up a hand. They all stopped.
Ba and Tinh whispered in Vietnamese. Ba signaled to Lang. Lang melted into the
jungle.

"Now what?" Mathes said.

"Lang’s going on recon," Tinh said. "Smoke ‘em
if you got ‘em."

"Where are we? Do we even know where we’re going?"

"Yep."

"Well, how? How do you know where this Thuy is holed up?"

Tinh lit himself a cigarette, the light of the flame cupped in his hands. "Because
we grew up here."

Two hours later, Lang was back with the skinny: four huts formed a square in
a small clearing two klicks away. Ten men patrolling the grounds. Lights on
in one hut, but men in and out of two of the other three. A creek ran along
the east of the clearing, spanned by a rickety wooden bridge. Half a klick north
of the bridge was a tunnel entrance. There was no way to know how many men were
down there, waiting for them.

"Only one way to find out," Tinh said.

As they approached the clearing, the rain tapered off and then stopped altogether.

"Good deal," Mathes whispered.

"Mm," Tinh said, "not so much. We could have used the cover."

"You want cover, Son Tinh?" Gummy Ba said. "We can do that."

And he hurled a grenade towards the clearing.

The bullets whizzed above Mathes’ head as he followed Sergeant Tinh to
the tunnel entrance, the yellow trails of the bullets in the air like fireflies.
Thuy’s men sounded the charge, but Gummy Ba’s crew remained relatively
quiet, their bursts of rifle-fire short and sharp. The answering fire was long
and scattered, giving Ba and his men plenty of time to maneuver while the enemy
fired wild into the bush.

Mathes felt his throat dry up, nearly closing. He wished for the first time
since he’d landed in this soggy nightmare that it’d fucking rain
again. He held his service revolver in both hands, covering the Sarge’s
back. As they neared the tunnel, one of Thuy’s men popped out like a jack-in-the-box.

Tinh was on him with his KA-BAR in an instant, giving the gook another smile
under his chin. The next man out of the tunnel got Tinh’s boot in his
face. Mathes heard the man’s nose smash into his own skull, and his K-rations
started coming back on him. Tinh stomped the man’s face twice more, just
to be sure. "Let’s go."

The tunnel was small, the ceiling so low that even Tinh had to hunch over.
Mathes’ knuckles were almost to the ground. There was little light, a
low red glow, but Mathes never determined the source. He just stayed on the
Sarge’s heels, almost bowling him over each time they came to a cross-tunnel
and the Sarge stopped to listen for approaching enemy. Mathes had no idea how
long they were down there, time a distant memory, like pussy or joy. The weight
of the earth above, the jungle, the foreign men and their foreign war, they
all pressed down on Mathes’ head, until he felt like screaming his throat
raw.

At the next cross-tunnel, two men approached from their left. Tinh let the
first one crawl past, and then jammed his knife into the neck of the second
man. He died silently, his windpipe neatly sliced in half, but as his body collapsed
to the ground, his buddy turned. He drew in a breath. Mathes raised his pistol.

"No!" Tinh said, but Mathes pulled the trigger and blew the gook’s
brains out the back of his hat. The shot deafened them both, and for a second,
Mathes wasn’t sure that he hadn’t just shot himself in the head.

Tinh didn’t take the time to explain that Mathes had ruined whatever
stealth they’d had. He just worked the strap of the AK off the nearest
dead man and took point. He moved dead ahead, heedless of any cross-tunnels.