Keeping Watch (9 page)

“Of him. Name of Brennan.”

“What do you know about him?”

“Not a thing. Has your squad got itself sorted yet?”

“Not really. Lieutenant Woolf was going to reorganize when we got back. Garrison's off on leave.”

“Who's squad leader 'til he gets back?”

“Well, Chris is.”

The sergeant's look said it all. “Who's next? Mouse?”

“Yeah.”

“How would he feel about being leader?”

Mouse would be fine as a squad leader if he made up his mind to get along with the others instead of growling at them, but it would be up to him. Allen said something of the sort to the sergeant, who nodded.

“Okay, I'll think about it, have a word with Lieutenant Brennan.”

Fifteen minutes after he'd gone in to see the new loot, the sergeant was rounding up all the squad leaders—including Chris, until decisions were made—to inform them that a new regime had begun. It would start with haircuts, clean shaves, no sideburns, and regulation Ts instead of the rock and roll T-shirts half of them wore. The squad leaders looked at each other with apprehension, and went to do as they were told.

When the sergeant came past, Allen called out to him, “Hey Sarge, has this guy ever been in the woods before?” He was voicing the concern of them all: If Brennan was new to jungle warfare, the platoon would be teaching a green officer the nitty-gritty about his job. Not an ideal way to begin.

“He's been sitting a desk for a while, but he's been here since sixty-five, and yeah, he's spent time in the woods.”

“But he still wants haircuts.”

“He wants the haircuts, he wants the men and the grounds cleaned up. And that volleyball net down. Now.”

“Shit,” someone muttered.

“And Lieutenant Brennan's not too keen on obscenity,” the sergeant added.

“Well, fuck me Brenda,” someone else said aloud.

Allen stifled a laugh, but it wasn't very amusing. The men felt bad enough at losing The Wolf, and to have the man replaced by an REMF was going to prove hard to swallow. The others were thinking the same, because after they were dismissed, Mouse, walking in front of Allen, said very clearly, “Boys, we got us a rear echelon motherfucker.”

But they scraped off their whiskers, stuffed the more offensive T-shirts back into their duffels, and at one time or another, most of them managed to pass by the platoon's canvas HQ in order to lay eyes on their new lieutenant. Strangely enough, considering Allen's first gut reaction, most of the guys thought he'd work out great.

It was funny, Allen reflected that night as he stared up into the darkness. You'd think men as hard-pressed as these would be so glad to rest in the relative safety of the company NDP that they'd drag their feet at anything threatening to push them outside the perimeter. Still, even if he didn't like the man, he'd give him a chance. He had to admit, life in camp was so boring it made his skin jump. If surface tidiness for an REMF was the price to pay for getting back out into the bush, then shave he would. Hell, he'd spit-polish his jungle boots if the bastard wanted him to.

Out in the bush, that was where he belonged.

Lieutenant Brennan—now permanently known as Brenda—had his platoon assembled on the clearing used by the supply choppers. Most of the men hadn't been at full attention in many weeks, and their bodies had forgotten how. The sergeant howled at them until they were more or less rigid—cheeks smooth, hair cropped, pants bloused into clean boots—then gave them permission to stand at ease.

The lieutenant stood before them, hands clasped behind his back, eyes invisible behind his black glasses, waiting for their attention to settle. Allen prepared himself for the standard lecture taken from an officer's handbook, under the heading “Speeches for a Company in Need of Discipline.” All around him he could feel his mates arranging looks of attentive receptivity on their faces, locking their eyes on the man while their ears shut down and their minds were free to wander. They might have granted him their conditional approval, but no loot new to the bush was going to command anything but the most surface obedience, not until he had proven himself.

The trim figure stood waiting. The platoon went quiet, and still he stood. The speech on Discipline and Pride did not begin, and one by one the eyes of the men came back to him, wondering what was going on.

For the first time, Allen noticed how small the man was, a good head shorter than Sergeant Keys. His features were delicate, with high cheekbones and narrow nose, but for his mouth, which was surprisingly wide and full. Dropped into a prison yard, Allen thought, the guy wouldn't stand a chance. Maybe that was why Brenda spent so much time on his physique: His upper body looked like it could do a hundred one-armed push-ups without breaking a sweat.

Only later did it occur to Allen to wonder why he had equated that proper military figure with a prison yard.

The black lenses hiding Brennan's eyes never wavered in the sunlight. The lieutenant stood like a statue while his men examined him, as they all began to wonder why he wasn't speaking, as their restlessness shifted into uneasiness. And only then, the instant before the first head turned to consult the man at its side, did Brennan move.

He reached up to pull off his dark glasses, revealing a pair of icy blue eyes, the irises so pale they seemed alien, or artificial. In the sunlight, the pupils were invisible, exaggerating the weird brightness of the blue. The eyes touched down onto each man in turn with a psychic tingle, as if they were some kind of a weapon with an electrical charge. It took a long time for him to make a reading of the thirty men now under his command.

Finally, he spoke, his light voice so low those in the back had to strain to hear. It may have been a deliberate technique, to get his troops to pay close attention in spite of themselves, but it certainly invoked a feeling of intimacy. It felt as if he were murmuring directly into each ear. What he said came as a surprise.

“You men have had an eventful few weeks. I trust that each of you is now fully committed to paying Charlie back. From here on out, this platoon will go hunting the enemy. From this time forward, I am your mama and your papa and your grade school teacher rolled into one, and when I say ‘Shoot,' you don't even say ‘Where?' Each confirmed kill earns a man an extra ration of beer and a free day back at base. I trust we understand each other, gentlemen. We will leave at oh six hundred hours. Dismissed.”

The glasses went back on, and the man was gone before anyone else could move. As Allen watched the trim lieutenant stride off, he was aware of the hum of talk around him. The others seemed eager to begin, pumped up by the promise of revenge.

So why did he feel as if a sleazy man in a bar had just muttered a proposition in his ear?

That night the Sarge came through, carrying a paper with the new squad assignments and leading two new faces who'd arrived on the night chopper. Bravo Squad was being re-formed, so the men who had been with Delta since the debacle at the river picked up their bags and split. The new faces were an FNG named deRosa, a swarthy boy with delicate hands and the eyelashes of a fashion model, and an Oregon logger named Penroy who was halfway through his second tour of duty. No one argued with Penroy's assignment as leader. The squad now consisted of Chris, Mouse, and Allen, de Rosa and Penroy, and Tim Balsam and Joey Thomas (who'd been with them for less than two weeks, and were known collectively as Tim-and-Tom). They'd also be getting another newby in a day or two.

Later that evening, Allen went to welcome Penroy and offer to show him around. Penroy had been in Saigon, and he thought Walter Cronkite was right, the war was lost. Then Allen asked him, “You hear we got a brand-new lieutenant?”

“Heard we had one, haven't met him yet.”

“Little guy named Brennan, weird eyes and polished—”

“Brennan?” Penroy swiveled to look at him, the shirt he was stowing forgotten in his hand. “Cal Brennan?”

“Don't know his first name. Sarge said he'd been in-country since sixty-five, but he's been sitting a desk for a while. Why? You know him?”

“Of him.” The new guy turned away.

“What have you heard?”

“Nothing. Just . . . Nothing.”

“Is there a problem with the guy? I mean, everybody else seems to think he's okay, but I've got to say he gave me the creeps.”

Penroy muttered something that Allen didn't catch, and he wouldn't repeat it when Allen asked, but it had sounded like “Sensible man.”

“Hey Penroy, look,” Allen persisted. “Tell me what you know.”

“Well, the man lost his platoon.”

“Lost it? What do you mean, like, misplaced it out in the bush?”

“I mean they walked into an ambush. Three men and Brennan came out. And when they went to get the bodies, they only found one—parts of one, and two mismatched boots. That's the story, anyway. Twenty-six men and their equipment got swallowed by the green, not so much as a dog tag left behind. Nobody could prove it was Brennan's fault, and the three guys with him swore he was a great leader, but they put him on a desk anyway. Guess he talked them into letting him back into the woods.”

Allen thought about the possibility that desk duty had taught some caution to the man with the strange eyes, thought about warning the others, and reluctantly decided that starting off with the entire platoon braced against the lieutenant would only make matters worse for everyone. “Might be better if the rest of the guys don't know.”

“They'll find out, soon enough.” Allen thought that the newcomer sounded grim.

Bright and early the next morning, the platoon assembled at the landing site, waiting for the Hueys. A heartbeat before the first vibration of the air heralded the choppers, Brenda walked up. He waited until the men were looking at him, and he raised his voice to give them his own version of an inspirational talk.

“Men,” he shouted over the sound of the approaching rotors, “I am your mama and your papa. Let's go kill us some gooks.”

If he expected the gung-ho cheers of a football team, he was disappointed, but the men happily waded through the flying red dust and prepared to be lifted far in-country. A long, cold ride later, they set down in one of the most inhospitable valleys Allen had ever laid eyes on, wide and exposed and bordered by heavily forested hills; the whole place reeked of VC. His squad hit the ground running, to meet up in the tree line. Brenda strolled away from his chopper like a conquering hero, and Allen wondered if he was the only one watching who fantasized a nice, tidy sniper bullet out of the green.

But in Vietnam there was no God, and Brenda made the trees unscathed.

The valley was reported to be sheltering men and supplies for an assault. No one seemed to know just where this information came from, and certainly the first couple of villes showed no sign of it. The planes came down and laid a strip of fire on the far side of a ville, the inhabitants came running out, and after the grunts sat them down and went off to check for VC and weapons, Brenda and the translator worked their way through the old men and women. Brenda had some of the villagers lifted out for further interrogation, but the only thing to indicate VC presence was a pair of rusty grenades and a rifle older than any man there.

At the second ville, a kid of around eight tried to ingratiate himself with the GIs; it was Chris, to Allen's amazement, who turned his gun on the kid and ordered him to
didi mau
. The child turned obediently and sprinted back in the direction he had come; only when the boy had joined the cluster of villagers did Chris put up his gun. He glanced at Allen, gave a shrug, and went on with overturning the ville.

That night their new lieutenant went through and corrected the digging of foxholes. Delta Squad was occupying two holes laid perpendicular to the perimeter, and Brenda didn't like it. However, rather than ordering the sergeant to have it changed, or telling the squad leader, Penroy, Brennan's eyes sought out Allen.

“I want these holes turned ninety degrees. Only one man in them would have a clean line of fire. I want them set parallel to our perimeter.”

“Sir,” said Allen, “if we lay them parallel to the perimeter, we're vulnerable to snipers from that ridge over there.” Indeed, a single machine gunner would be able to take out the whole squad just by lining up with Brennan's holes and holding in the trigger.

“That's what mortar's for, soldier. Redig those holes.”

Allen nearly retorted that it was reassuring to know that mortar would avenge the deaths of Delta Squad after they had been mowed down, but he bit his tongue and pulled out his entrenching tool. The lieutenant waited until they had started digging to his specifications, then left them.

“We not gonna sit in these here holes, now are we, Carmichael?” Mouse was stabbing petulantly at the ground. However, in Brennan's absence, Penroy reclaimed authority.

“Brenda's right,” he said. “We join up the ends, that way we'll keep both options open.”

The ground was rocky, and Allen didn't believe that the resulting L-shaped holes were what the lieutenant had in mind, but by dusk Brenda had other things to worry about than making the squad fill in the offending leg.

The night was hard. It was as if the countryside was a living thing, rallying its defenses against a thorn in its side, isolating the foreign body and bringing in blood to fight the infection. If you looked at the platoon from the air, Allen decided, you'd see a growing red welt all around it, puffy and ugly. And growing uglier with every passing hour.

The medevac helicopter had a hot LZ in the morning; the platoon moved off as soon as the wounded were away.

And halfway through the morning, they came to the elephant grass.

Elephant grass was hateful, terrifying stuff, a sea of head-high blades edged with flexible razors, tall enough to cut a man off from his companions as effectively as a bag over his head. Worst of all, Victor Charlie knew every square inch of it. While the grunt flailed around, blind and isolated and trying to keep from being flayed raw, entire companies—regiments—of VC could be hiding in the holes that flanked the trails and the trenches that threaded off in all directions. Charlie heard you coming, he knew just where to lay an ambush, and you had absolutely nothing to shoot back at unless you happened to fall off the trail into his lap. Elephant grass was the substance of nightmares, alive and malignant; it was the reason Agent Orange and napalm were invented, and Lieutenant Brennan marched them straight into the heart of the biggest, thickest, tallest patch of grass any of them had ever seen—acres of the stuff, like an expanse of mutant rice paddy.