For the Sake of All Living Things (50 page)

“Why do you talk to me?” Nang did not look at the man, yet he sensed and memorized his every feature.

“You are a great soldier,” the man said. “I admire you.”

“And you? Why don’t I know you?”

“You will. I’m called Rin.”

“Rin of Svay Rieng?”

“Yes.”

“Then I admire you also.”

“I must move on,” Rin said. “I wanted to meet you. Remember, warped thought can justify my action; any plan can be condoned, ay, not only condoned, embraced.” As Rin stood Nang’s eyes focused on the seated troops beyond. Soth was pointing to Rin and Nang, talking to a political officer. Nang returned to his rigid posture.

“Sir, I request permission to inspect the FANK task force.”

“Denied.” The conversation was not new. The lieutenant colonel was somewhere between irritated and apathetic.

“Sir,” Lieutenant Sullivan persisted, “then allow me to go with the ARVN.”

“Lieutenant”—the colonel stuck out his jaw, pursed his lips, fingered his chin—“you’re not an advisor anymore. We’ve no authorization...”

“Damn it, sir!” Sullivan rapped the colonel’s desk with a closed fist making the small triangular
MILITARY EQUIPMENT DELIVERY TEAM
sign jump. “The House of Representatives rejected that Cooper-Church amendment four months ago....”

“But the President announced his offer for a cease-fire-in-place! Remember?”

“That’s for South Viet Nam.”

“We can’t move.”

“Sir, Nixon and Kissinger are forcing this fully equipped main-force concept on FANK. That’s got to be authorization enough.”

“Look John,” the colonel said, “just between you and me....”

“Just between you and me, what, sir?”

“This is what I’ve heard.” The colonel raised his left hand, fingers extended, and with his right index finger checked off each point. “There are forces in Congress so strong, it looks as if they might just legislate us into forfeiture. I’m told to keep as low a profile as possible.” The colonel stood. He turned his back to Sullivan, continued. “All we need is for one U.S. troop to be killed,” he said, “and with the mood of Congress, this country, just like that”—he waved an arm through the air—“can be written off.”

“Sir, without us—” Sullivan began.

The colonel turned back, interrupted, his tone changed indicating the topic was no longer up for discussion. “Have you been able to get some supplies to that lady’s camp in Neak Luong?”

“Some.”

“Good. You know we’ve no authorization to do that.”

“Yes sir. But the task force...Damn it. Don’t blackmail me with that.”

“That’s the end of it, John. If Huntley can scavenge anything else for Neak Luong, well...I didn’t hear about it.”

Outside the office Huntley was waiting for Sullivan. Immediately the two walked from the embassy building, out through the compound gates and into the streets of Phnom Penh. “What’d the ol’ man say, J. L.?” Huntley asked.

“He said, ‘Don’t get caught.’ ”

“Why are all these hoodlums on the road?” Teck’s voice was nasty, accusing.

“They are on the road because they have no homes,” Vathana answered. “Surely you have homeless in Phnom Penh.”

Teck just scoffed. He had cornered his wife at the pagoda preaching hall, had forced her back toward the apartment so he could reprimand her in private. On the way they were verbally accosted by a group of young teens. Teck, in his new, spotless uniform and reflective sunglasses, snapped at them. In turn they increased their taunts. “Hey, she’s a good fuck, huh?”

“She’s my wife.” Teck was indignant.

“Last night she was my wife,” one boy yelled. “Without the uniform, she’s much cheaper.” Teck rushed into their midst. The boys parted about him. He returned to Vathana, grabbed her arm, pushed her onward.

Vathana had not seen him since the day the NVA had shelled Neak Luong. He had remained in the capital, sending word now and again. “I am a military adjutant.” “I must remain in Phnom Penh.” “I am with the finance branch.” “Someday, I will build a villa for us.”

Suddenly he had shown up. “You are my wife,” Teck said. It was a prepared speech. “Soon you will have our second child. You should be with me. You are my wife.”

Vathana looked at her husband. In his uniform, erect, directed, he appeared so different than he had in his dancehall clothes slumped in opium stupor. To her he was handsome. He’d changed, almost, she imagined, as if he’d taken on the countenance of his father when Mister Pech was young. “You are very different,” Vathana said softly. To herself she said, You are my husband but twice you abandoned me. Aloud she said, “What has changed you?”

“It is the army,” Teck said enthusiastically. “Our army has grown to a hundred thousand. The Republic is so strong...”

“But the Communists still hold the North....”

“A matter of time. My troops,” he said proudly, “they will liberate the North, then the Northeast. Everything is possible how. Lon Nol has promised...”

“He has promised many things,” Vathana said. She did not look into Teck’s eyes but she sensed an agitation beneath his enthusiasm, an agitation which went far beyond the street hoodlums. Still she thought, Twice...you should have stayed...here, with your son...with me. “What will he do for my camp?” she asked quietly.

“He will win the war so the people can go home.” As Teck spoke he clapped his hands as if applauding his own statement.

“In the meantime, how are the refugees to live? And you—how do you live?”

“With the best men I have ever known,” Teck said smartly. “We will win and we will be rich.”

“We were rich,” Vathana said quietly. “Your father...”

“I don’t mean like my father,” Teck said. “He was rich for a Khmer. I mean rich like the Americans.”

“Wealth,” Vathana quoted an old proverb, “like poverty, doesn’t last.”

“Dollars last,” Teck countered. “Now, come with me. An officer must have his wife with him. Besides...” Teck hesitated. The control fell from his features, abandoned his voice. “Besides”—he turned slightly from her—“my father would have wanted me to do the right thing.”

“Yes.” Vathana pondered his words, his countenance, as she spoke. “I will come. But”—she paused, formulating her thoughts—“first you must help me stock the camp. I will come when there are rations for three months.”

“Three months?!” Again Teck’s face became rigid. “Why should those people get so much? They do nothing.”

“Three months,” Vathana said firmly. “Then I will come to you.”

In their small forested hideout Nang nudged his old friend Eng. They laughed hard. Beside them Soth laughed too. By November new battlelines were drawn about Kompong Thom and the Northern Corridor. As the city tottered under the North Viet Namese siege, five armed forces—FANK, the ARVN, the NVA, the Khmer Krahom and the U.S. Air Force—converged. FANK’s task force, which had formed up on Highway 6 at Tang Kouk, thirty-three miles south of Kompong Thom, was a mishmash of ill-equipped infantry units with their stable of dependents, a few armored units which had allowed themselves to be mired in monsoon mud, and several artillery batteries which would fire support only if the request came between dawn and two p.m., and then only if it were accompanied by a
bonjour.
The task force had stalled at Tang Kouk for two months while smaller FANK battle groups supported (or stood by and watched) the ARVN at dozens of sites in the South, Southeast, East and near the capital.

On 27 November the FANK units rolled north. Nang guffawed from his observation point seven kilometers south of Santuk as he watched the slow parade roll, roll unhindered, being lured into a killing zone by lack of resistance, inviting an ambush because they had neither flank security nor point scouts; inviting disaster because they had neither spacing nor withdrawal routes. Nang laughed at FANK as the troops and dependents scattered with the NVA’s first shots. He joked to Met Eng, “What a rush they’re in,” as the North Viet Namese broadsided the procession with rifle and RPG fire and followed up with mortars—never actually engaging the column in battle, simply shooting ducks in a gallery. For two days NVA gunners chewed up the mired FANK task force as it attempted to turn, to withdraw. For two days Nang and other Krahom yotheas chuckled at the lopsided event.

Then at dawn on the twenty-ninth came a counterattack that NVA/KVM intelligence had misestimated. Between Sdau and Santuk, twelve kilometers south of Kompong Thom, two kilometers north of Nang’s position, an ARVN armored column crashed ferociously into the arena, smashed in from secondary roads, split, blitzkrieged north and south on Highway 6. Unlike FANK, the South Viet Namese columns, at the first sign of enemy, spread out and swept forward along broad lines, with M-48A3 Patton tanks at the points like the head of a hawk leading the wings—M-113 APCs—as all tracked through paddies, probing by fire, as unconcerned about native hamlets as the NVA, firing and advancing, meeting pressure head-on, Patton tanks forward and aft blasting their 90mm shells at a battery of NVA 130mm field guns set up only five hundred meters from the road. APCs swept forward, half mounted with 20mm Vulcan Gatling guns, half with a combination of shielded heavy and light machine guns.

Nang’s platoon ran, dazed, ran to escape the collision of titanic forces. They had been told to observe, to pick at the victor, to guarantee there would be no victor—but this battle was not shaping up like the June battle for Kompong Thom. Their orders, their expectations, did not cover such immense firepower. And they ran.

As Nang’s boys fled, NVA infantry gunners attempted to halt the ARVN armor, but their RPD light machine guns and AK-47s were no match for the ARVN fusillade. Two 130mm guns were destroyed after scrambling only a few salvos. Infantrymen were sacrificed to slow the ARVN advance while their armor, eleven kilometers northeast, maneuvered into secondary ambush positions.

“Come. This way!” Nang headed deep into the swamp. The ARVN column halted, withdrew a hundred meters to regroup and await air cover. “This way. No. Here,” All about them Krahom elements crossed and recrossed on camouflaged jungle paths. Soth snickered quietly at Nang’s confusion. It caught Nang’s eye, infuriated him. The badger, he thought. He waits. He waits to pick my bones. Be patient. An OV-1 Mohawk photo reconnaissance plane came on station. It circled high over the battle area relaying immediate visual sightings to the ground group commander. Later more targets would be ascertained by film analysis. The day became hot, still. The Mohawk’s twin engines droned. Peasants huddled in thatched huts as rice awaited cutting in the paddies.

Nang ran, kept running, west then north to where stagnant swamp water was thick with leeches. Behind him, his yotheas sloshed through. Clumps of grass and nets of vines slowed them but Nang refused to let them stop. They left the swamp, entered an area of intermittent forest. Soth called for a halt. The Mohawk circled lower, down to three thousand feet. Nang refused to halt. Then half a mile south of the city’s southern defense Nang abruptly stopped. He knew the spot well, had fled with Soth from Kompong Thom in June over the same trail. Where, he thought, where I was betrayed. From east of the highway he heard 12.7mm DShK antiaircraft guns pound like jackhammers chipping a concrete heaven. “Cockshit,” he muttered. “Eng,” he called.

“Here.”

“We must find a way into the city. The split-tail will bring the unseen bombers.” Eng said nothing, thinking, pondering the problem. He did not feel, did not understand, Nang’s urgency. “We can cache our weapons,” Nang whispered. “Change shirts, separate and enter...”

“Comrade,” Eng interrupted. “Why hide in the carrion? Why not ride the back of the tiger?”

Now Nang did not speak. Soth smirked, snickered again. Like the NVA, Nang had been caught off guard. To disengage? Nang thought. To pursue? Where would the NVA move? The ARVN, he knew, wanted the road, wanted to travel its length and enter the city. They wanted to battle the NVA but they wanted more to open the road. They would consider that a victory, even if in reality they would be like a hand passing through water. Nang also knew, had been told, the NVA command desired this battle. Like the Americans away from home, the South Viet Namese, the Communists believed, would tire and succumb to public pressure if their sons died on foreign soil—a nearly nonexistent concern for Northern leaders. Yes, the NVA would engage, Nang was sure, and from his position he would not be able to maneuver.

“Okay,” he said to Eng. “We’ll follow the tail, but not pat the tiger’s ass.”

The platoon began a slow backtracking. They entered the swamp. Hard growling broke from the sky. A squadron of T-28s, flying low level, roared over. From the east came the burp-bursting noise of grenade-cannon strafing. Then quiet. The sound had erupted suddenly, ceased suddenly.

Nang halted the platoon, backed them into the forest. Sporadic small arms fire snapped to the south. Cannons fired, not with the rapidity of intense battle, but casually. T-28s, their pilots conserving courage, swung in circles with ten-mile radii, setting up their low-level runs well to the rear of the ARVN column, skimming treetops for miles before making second, off-target bombing runs. The day wore on. Nang sat, angry, lost in self-renunciation at not being in a position to do anything, angry that no messenger had come with detailed orders.

The sun descended. From the swamp and the forest floor mosquitos rose. Battle noises moved far to the east. Half the platoon relaxed in net hammocks. The cautious and the scared had scratched narrow trenches beneath their positions. Others were dispersed, on guard. Light hung in the sky, darkness seized the ground. Artillery rounds from the FANK garrison sailed over the platoon’s position, rising, heading southwest toward empty swamp. Nang could not fathom why, how anyone could so waste ammunition. Farther to the southeast ARVN artillery launched shells; the muffled explosions seemed to burst around the village of Cheam, northeast of the city.

“Met Eng,” Nang said softly. He cupped a hand over his new cadreman’s shoulder. “I would make mistakes without you.”

“No,” Eng said. “There will always be someone to keep you from failing. It is the wish of Angka.”