For the Sake of All Living Things (31 page)

Dusk settled on the border mountain. From the peak of Hill 982 Nang took last note of the camp’s preparations. He thought of the report he would send to Met Sar. Barbed wire barriers have been restrung and tightened, he imagined writing. Foot traps and mines were laid along obvious approaches. Huge stocks of food, water and artillery rounds have been delivered and stored in open pits or in bunkers.

On 1 November, Firebases Annie and Susan had been abandoned after four thousand rounds of NVA heavy mortar, rocket and howitzer fire rendered them undefendable. More supplies had been brought to Bu Prang.

Every structure on Firebase Kate, seven kilometers south of Bu Prang, had been leveled by 1500 hours on the 1st yet the defenders had fought on. At 1530 hours the NVA artillery units in Cambodia switched to air-burst shells, raining steel shards into the foxholes. American and Mountaineer defenders tightened the perimeter. Two of their five howitzers were destroyed. All that night the NVA guns from Cambodia continued firing, blasting the small hilltop. On 2 November the Allied commands refused reinforcements. Two more howitzers were destroyed.

On Hill 982 Nang had heard Major Bui lament to Bok Roh, “Why don’t they take the bait? Why?”

“What bait?” Nang had asked aside.

“We’re the bait,” Bok had explained. “We must entice the Americans and their lackeys from the lowlands to the border camps. With their troops in the mountains, we’ll slip through the valleys and attack the pacification centers in the lowlands. We’ll make the cities bleed.”

“I want to join them,” Nang had said.

“We’ll see.” Bok had laughed at the boy. “With those artillery bases destroyed, Bu Prang is vulnerable.”

“What of the bombers?”

“They’ll be needed elsewhere,” Bok had said. “Elsewhere.”

Early evening, 3 November, the NVA had offered the defenders of Firebase Kate a break. The surviving American advisors and Mountaineers pounced. Racing from bunker to bunker the officers and NCOs had quickly organized a withdrawal. Under cover of darkness the soldiers spiked the only working howitzer with a thermite grenade then crawled through the concertina wire and raced down the steep slope toward Bu Prang. Twenty seconds behind them, a regiment of NVA soldiers had swarmed the hill. The entire NVA force now was free to concentrate its destruction on the Bu Prang Special Forces camp.

Midnight arrived. The main assault was delayed. Around Bu Prang tunnels, trenches and bunkers were extended toward the camp. As planned, most of the B-52s were diverted elsewhere. Fifteen hours earlier, timed to coincide with Richard Nixon’s television speech half the world away, NVA and VC units had shelled forty-five Allied bases and towns and attacked eight more outposts along the border and the coast.

At Firebase Ike, twenty-six kilometers northeast of Tay Ninh, in a two-hour pitched battle, U.S. helicopters killed forty-eight soldiers of the Viet Cong 9th Division; all but two were Northern replacements. At Firebase Ellen, southwest of Song Be, an element of the Dong Nai Regiment wounded sixteen Americans. Five kilometers away, at Firebase Burton, Dong Nai and NVA 88th Regiment troops breeched the wire and minefields but withdrew under immense firepower, leaving fifty-five bodies. Finally, at 0120 hours on 5 November, heavy shelling of Bu Prang began.

Vathana retched. She covered her mouth, forced the vomit back. She paused, leaned against the wall of her apartment building looking up at seemingly swaying concrete and glass. She panted. The pain eased momentarily. I should have stayed at the pagoda, she thought. I must get home.

Ever since the incidents with the border children and the dead boy on her barge she had spent an hour each morning at the wat in prayer. Even as she’d left the apartment for the quarter-mile walk she’d felt ill, but nothing compared with this horrible, nausea-producing cramping pain—at once constant and throbbing. She breathed slightly deeper. Her vision cleared. She stepped through the main door into the small courtyard and toward the stairs. Again she paused. The proximity of her apartment pulled her. The stairs looked formidable. She grasped the railing, forced back another heaving. Again her vision blurred, her hearing dulled as if her ears were stuffed down deep with wet clay, her sense of balance waned, she swayed, gripped the railing more tightly.

I must get there, she told herself. Must. Must. Up a step. Must. She squeezed the railing until her knuckles whitened. Someone come by and help me, she thought. Why, of all times, are the stairs empty? Up. Up. Must. Labor isn’t like this, she thought. This is too early. Three more weeks. Mother was never so sick. Aunt Voen never said she was sick. Up. Must. Up. At her crotch she could feel warm liquid, a trickle. She squeezed her thighs together but her expanded pelvis held them so far apart the squeeze was useless. On the last flight the trickle reached her ankles. Up. Must. Only a little more. I have calls to make. Three more weeks. Oh, just one more week. The shelter. The barge. Mister Pech. The new oil tanks. Vathana lifted her skirt to see the fluid, the water. Her ankle was bright red. Blood oozed to the top of her foot. The sight shocked her. The pain surged. She vomited, the effluent gushing with such force its spatter splashed back from the few stairs yet to be ascended, splashed over her feet, against her skirt, blouse and shawl, tiny globs hitting her cheeks. The sight and smell disgusted her but much more was the fear. What’s happening? I’ve been so careful. Not a thing have I stitched shut. Not a doorway have I lingered in. What’s happening to me? What’s happening to my baby?

“Teck.” Vathana’s voice was weak. Her foot smeared blood on the floor as she wobbled toward the bedroom. “Teck,” she called. Her husband was still in bed. “Teck,” she panted. “Wake up.” Her voice was shallow, hollow, fearful. “Please wake up.” She shook him. The agitation set off a burst of pain stabbing outward from her abdomen, reaching her entire body, splitting her face, forehead. Teck lay like a corpse, cool like a corpse. “Teck!” Vathana forced a wail. Still he didn’t respond. “I need you,” she whimpered. Tears flooded her eyes. “Why? Why do you do this? I need you.”

She began to sit. How easy to let herself fall, let her knees fold, to collapse beside her husband in his deep heroin-slumber. She straightened. The pain throughout her abdomen was as if a vise were gripping her, the screw closing down with constant increasing pressure. She vomited again, dry bile phlegm. Her long black hair stuck in slithering coils to her sweat-wet face like snakes of the Gorgon Medusa. Again she tried to wake Teck. Still he slumbered. The hemorrhaging flow increased as the placenta, in partial previa, split.

In adversity, in sorrow, in the presence of greed, corruption and evil, in the wake of the killing of the bandit boy by her barge crew and the turning out of the border children by Teck, Vathana had become more Buddhist, more giving, more concerned. With it came more business success, more business, more social responsibilities. Throughout the summer and fall there had been a steady trickle of refugees from the Northeast and border areas seeping into Neak Luong. Most had moved in with relatives, unnoticed, without social burden to the community or the government. Yet an increasing number arrived without money, without food, without shelter, without destination. They slept in parks, along byways, on riverfront piers. They ate by begging. In her fifth month of pregnancy Vathana, her skills sharpened through business, organized through the monks an assistance shelter supported by half a dozen local businessmen, staffed by a dozen volunteer women from apartments and homes. In two months the program had expanded to include a small house for orphans. Each day Vathana split her time between prayer, business and volunteer work. Each evening she remained alone as Teck went to dance halls or to share a pipe with his friends.

Vathana stared at the photo album. Teck was beyond waking. She concentrated on the album’s cover as the pain overwhelmed her body. Her face felt swollen, her eyes forced to squint through puffed skin slits. She had made the call. Help would come. Now she could let go, let what would happen happen. Her eyes pushed closed. The album faded to a negative retinal image, then to nothing. Her hand groped, found the Buddha statuette at her throat.

Vathana woke with a needle and red tube in each arm. The pain had subsided. Her head was clogged. About her dozens of people were attending patients on steel beds in the cold clinic ward. Teck’s face hung over her, looked down at her, seemingly suspended from the ceiling or floating in air. She closed her eyes.

She opened them again. One arm was plumbed with clear tubing. Teck had vanished. “Welcome back, Angel,” a stout border woman whispered in French. Vathana could see tears in the woman’s eyes but she didn’t know why she was crying or who she was. “You’ve crossed the great ocean alone,” the woman whispered. “You have a son. The grandfather has called him Pech Samnang.”

“They were both Royal soldiers,” Tung said to Chhuon. Chhuon sat on the ground. His legs were spread. He leaned forward and beat the ground rhythmically with his fists. Tears of despair seeped from his eyes. Do not kill the living creatures, he thought. Do not kill. Do not kill. It was a basic tenet of his Buddhist morality, of his righteousness. Through all the struggles he had been able to maintain his integrity, his inner purity. Perhaps he had transgressed on occasion but never had he killed a living thing. Never had he killed a human.

“Uncle, I think they were an assassination team. They would have killed another village leader had they not walked into your trap.”

Chhuon continued to pound the earth with his fist. To him they could have been devils and the words would have made no difference.

“Blood for blood, Uncle,” Tung said. “Blood for blood. Your own words.”

Chhuon rocked farther forward. Had they been yuon, he thought, then it would have been just. “But,” he cried, “they were Khmer boys.”

“Just like those who killed my mother,” Tung said bitterly. “Perhaps like those who killed the monk.”

“We don’t know who killed the monk.”

“Uncle, I’m certain it was Royal treachery. It’s Prince Sihanouk’s wish to punish the Northeast.”

“I can’t believe it.”

“It makes no difference, Uncle. In the eyes of the Royal army you now are a criminal. You can no longer stay in the village unless the village defends itself from the Prince’s troops.”

Nang carried ammunition for Bok Roh. The giant carried an assault rifle and a lightened pack. They moved quickly through tangled vegetation, off Hill 982, into the jungle to join troops poised for the attack. They crossed defoliated swaths, moved down onto narrow paths marked with short white stakes, down toward the river. They paused to rest with a three-man cell of infantry troops from the NVA 272d Regiment. From every direction, unseen in the night, cells moved forward, merged to form fire-teams, combined to form squads, converged to form platoons, rivers of men surging toward final staging, five thousand Communist troops coordinated for the clockwork attack, waiting for the signal.

The NVA plan was simple. The 32d Regiment would launch a broad frontal attack from the east, over Bu Prang’s airstrip and POL storage points, attempting to pull in as many defenders as possible. Then the 165th Regiment would assault the southwest perimeter. Finally, when the defenders were bogged down, pinned down or dead, the 272d would concentrate a pinpoint force against the north berm, would blow through the wire and overrun the hill. From Bu Ntoll the 66th Regiment’s heavy artillery would soften up the foe, and its 82mm mortar teams, dug in and supplied at five points about the camp, would support the infantry. The 40th Artillery Regiment with 120mm mortars could move to reinforce the 66th or deliver knockout blows. Support units included a company of elite
dac cong
, combat engineers or sappers, plus command and control posts, communication and transportation companies, and the ever-present custodian-guides. In reserve were the 24th and 174th Infantry Regiments.

Nang was shocked, frightened. Even with his exceptional training he had never seen a unit as well concealed and camouflaged as the new 272d. Had the guides not known their positions, Nang would have walked through without sensing their presence. The surprise infuriated him. How? he asked, how did I let them do this to me?

Heavy crashes, NVA shell explosions on Bu Prang, reverberated and shook the cool night air. To Nang the sound was beautiful, exciting. The tempo picked up. Nang’s shock gave way to an anxious itch to experience the death of the hated Americans. Bok had encouraged him to remain at the observation post on Hill 982 but Nang had insisted and Bok had agreed he could accompany him to the
giua binh tram
, the midjungle post. With each kilometer Nang had expanded, until he no longer resembled the boy, the pet, the aide, but now appeared strong, hard, a midteen athlete-soldier.

An immense concussion rocked the camp on Bu Prang. Volcanic flames shot skyward, lighting the base and surrounding ridges. A 130mm shell had scored a hit, the POL dump exploded. Flames silhouetted bunkers and howitzers then swallowed themselves in billowing black clouds. Outgoing fire from Bu Prang shrieked.

Bok squeezed Nang’s shoulder to indicate his joy. The shoulder was thick, hard, like a pick-and-shovelman’s. Bok dropped his hand. Before thought could form, the sound of the 155mm battery at Duc Lap pulled his attention to what seemed coordinated salvos sent into Cambodia. The Bu Prang batteries, too, came to full life firing preset defensive targets far beyond the concealed regiments creeping toward their perimeter. Again and again and again for two hours Communist heavy guns scored, their projectile trajectories adjusted from Hill 982—walking the airstrip, the perimeter, trying to knock out Bu Prang’s defenses.

The wap of helicopter rotors sounded above the valleys and over the peaks. “Wounded,” Bok whispered. “They’re for wounded.”

Beside Nang a soldier raised his AK-47 as escort helicopters approached low, circling the camp below shell trajectories. Nang grabbed the man’s wrist. “Don’t fire,” he whispered. “Only when they land.” Bok overheard him and wondered who had taught him that.