Men in Green Faces (10 page)

“You’re not listening to what I’m telling you,” Marc shouted.

“The hell I’m not,” Gene yelled back. “Heard everything you said, and none of it makes sense.”

“Sense, by God,” said Brian. “I’ll put five bucks on Gene if they get into it.”

“I’ll take two of that.”

“Roland, you don’t know. Five on Gene. Put your money up.” Willie grinned.

“Goddammit, I came here to play cards,” Doc yelled. “We gonna play or not?” He scratched at his moustache, a sure sign of impatience.

Brian handed Doc the deck. “Deal. All bets are off.”

Gene began to laugh. A second later, Marc joined in. Doc called for them to ante, and dealt.

Roland was funny, Gene thought, watching him. He’d always tip his hand, always go for the draw. If he didn’t get his cards, he’d always say “Shit,” in a muffled voice, then try and bluff. Everybody knew what that meant, so they’d bump the bet, and Roland would throw his money in. When he did get his cards, he’d smile and fidget in his chair. Before he could place a bet, everybody would fold and let him have the few dollars in the pot. He’d get so pissed off. Never did learn that he signaled his hands, and they’d just let him feed the pot.

Roland drew three cards.

Gene waited. The others leaned toward Roland, listening.

“Shit,” Roland muttered.

“I’ll cover and raise,” Gene said, and grinned. Game was off to a good start.

After four hours, he was up about thirty dollars, and Roland was down about a hundred. Since they always played payday stakes, the amount of monies won or lost was kept in a record book. You-O kept it.

Gene glanced at his watch: 2400 hours. “That’s it for me, buddies. Appreciate the contributions.”

The group broke up, Roland griping as he stood, “Lousy cards. All fucked up.”

Gene, hearing him, chuckled as he folded the blanket.

“Are y’all going tomorrow?” Willie asked quietly.

He nodded. “Sure.”

“Good,” Willie said, and left.

“Question,” Marc said, stretching, then bending over to work some of the kinks out after sitting so long.

Gene put the blanket down, turned to look into ice-blue eyes. “What?”

“I was just wondering…sort of curious, all of a sudden, since I…well, I just wanted to know. Before you thought about joining up, being a SEAL or anything, what did you want to be?”

He really did want to know, Gene realized, and he wanted a straight answer. “I grew up in the church. All my friends were from the church, all my social life revolved around it. You know I got married when I got into SEAL Team? And that we’re going to have a baby in a few months?”

Marc nodded.

“Well, my wife—Karen is her name—I met her through our church group. We wanted, for our church, to become missionaries and serve in Africa.” He took a deep breath. “So that’s what I was going to be. A missionary in Africa.”

“And now?”

“And now I’m a SEAL and I’m here, and my family is back in The World.”

Marc bit his lip and thought for a moment before asking, “And now you’re not ever going to be a missionary?”

“No. I’m a SEAL.” He looked at Marc, quiet now, head down. “But I’ve kept my faith. I’ll never lose that. And you? What did you want to be?”

Marc didn’t look up. “You won’t laugh?”

“Hell no, I won’t.”

“A poet. I wanted to be a poet.” He wrapped his arms around himself as though he were cold. “Thought I’d go up in the redwoods, have a little cabin, maybe close enough that I could see the ocean, and write poems.”

After a long silence, Gene cleared his throat. The Eagle. A poet. Just shit-hot in battle. God knew they’d been in some hellish firefights. A poet and a missionary. Lord. “And now?” he finally asked.

Marc straightened, looked at him. “I’m a SEAL, same as you. But sometimes…”

“Sometimes?”

“Sometimes I think about it. Sometimes.” He frowned, rubbed his hand lightly over his bandages. “Guess I’m sort of beat. Later. Okay?”

“Okay.”

So who’s the real Marc? Gene wondered, watching him walk away. Jesus. A poet with a 60. Just never knew.

He shook his head and went outside. He wanted some fresh air and a few minutes of peace and quiet before hitting the sheets. Starry night. Billions of stars, horizon to horizon. He stood there awhile, just looking, before pulling out his Bible. For a moment, he just held it, felt it there in his hand. He’d kept his faith. At least he had that. He bowed his head and asked God to look out for Karen and himself, to take good care of her and their unborn child.

As if in answer, far off on the dark horizon, against the starry night, the jungle lit up with tracer-sparklers amid huge white flashes. Darting within them, tiny silhouetted planes—jets on a bombing run—drew fire from the ground.

Beautiful to look at. A miniature light show on a distant stage, with the night sky for a backdrop. A poet could write it down, could tell it. But not a silent poet. He turned away, went inside.

0500 hours came early. He sat up, still very tired, surprised at how weary he was. Didn’t feel very well. Black-and-blue bruises everywhere. Ached all over. Shake it off, he told himself. Grin and bear it. He rubbed his eyes, dropped to the deck, and got on with it.

In jeans, carrying his 60, with eight hundred rounds of bandoliered ammo wrapped over his cami shirt, he walked slowly to the helo pad.

Willie and Sean were waiting, with a group of Kit Carson Scouts.

“About time,” Willie said.

“Sure began to wonder,” Sean added.

Gene looked at his watch. He was five minutes early. “Fuck off.”

They laughed.

He waited while Sean got the Kit Carson Scouts to start boarding the chopper. The new KCS, Tong, boarded first, he noticed, even though his face showed he feared getting in the helo and flying. Watching them, Gene listened as Willie and Sean briefed him on the members of Tong’s family—how many and who they were—that they’d be bringing in.

“With the new KC going,” Willie said, “location and identification will be easy.”

“We’ll pick them up,” Sean put in, “place them on the second helo, and return to camp. They’ll be set up in a new home and taken care of like the rest.”

Against the noise of the choppers warming up, Gene said, “Let’s KISS. We need to get in, get out. No contact. This isn’t even counted as an op.”

They climbed aboard.

Taking off in a helo was one hell of a ride. He sat, legs hanging out of the open doorway, holding on. The engines revved and suddenly the ground fell away. About fifteen feet up, they hovered for an instant. The horizon tilted as the nose tipped. He caught his breath when they suddenly dropped, fast, almost straight down, to pick up speed. At the last instant before hitting water, the horizon tilted the opposite direction, and they were climbing.

At three to five thousand feet, he was in no hurry to land, sitting in the door with his feet dangling. This was the part he liked best. No doors to stop the air rushing past his face. Down below, the rice paddies were white, shining blankets, spread out and tacked down by dirt-brown hems, surrounded by jungle in all shades of green.

“Almost there,” Willie called.

Gene turned to look forward. Rising smoke hung, a tattered curtain of dirty gray, against the dawn sky. “Something’s up,” he called back.

The pilots dropped the two helos to treetop level on the approach to the village so any enemy below wouldn’t hear their engines until they landed. Gene leaned forward, not wanting to miss anything, loving the great feeling of flying along in the breeze like the birds.

The helo peeled off the treetops and down into the clearing like water over a fall, and landed like a falling leaf.

The entire village reminded Gene of the inside of a fire ring on the beach. Some of it still burned. Smaller structures, collapsed, were charred heaps on blackened ground. Thick, pungent smoke stung his nostrils and eyes. Everywhere he looked, he saw dead bodies.

They jumped off the choppers, followed by the Kit Carson Scouts, who ran through the village yelling. Except for one. Tong stopped over a body, then grabbed it up into his arms and started to cry.

The more Gene saw, the worse he felt. Obviously the colonel had returned early, found out somehow that the village chiefs son, Tong, had become a KCS, and ordered the village destroyed.

Watching Tong, seeing the destruction, the many dead, Gene felt his chest constrict. He felt sick. These people hadn’t wanted to. They were happy just being farmers. They wanted to be left alone. By both sides.

He joined Willie in searching for any wounded, any survivors. There were none. The colonel had killed every man, woman, and child. Including Tong’s little girls. One had been only two and a half, the other four.

Behind him, Gene heard Doc talking.

“They raped Tong’s wife too,” he said, “before shooting her in the head. From where the rest of the bodies are, it looks like she was raped in front of the entire village before they were all gunned down.”

Charred wood crunched under Gene’s feet. The acrid stink seemed to cling to his face. Ashes puffed into small clouds with every step. The taste of charcoal lay on his lips. He looked through narrowed eyes at Tong, crying, his dead wife held tight in his arms. Naked from the waist down, her top still on but ripped open, her bare arms hung down, fists clenched in death.

“Let’s pull out,” Sean ordered. “The colonel’s not that far away. Load up.”

The biggest hootch wasn’t completely burned yet, so the colonel and his men hadn’t been gone long. Sean was right. They had to leave, and now. With Willie at his side, Gene walked toward the helos. Halfway there, he looked back. “Willie, Tong…”

Tong hadn’t moved. Still held his wife, crying. Together, they returned for him.

Putting a hand on his shoulder, Gene talked, motioning, even though he knew Tong couldn’t understand him, trying to get him to lay his wife down and leave. Willie, opposite, tried as well. In the end, Gene forcibly held Tong while Willie pulled his wife’s body from his arms and lay it on the ground. Gene waved two KCSs over to take Tong away.

As they left, he bent to straighten the body and again noticed the clenched fists. Something was in her right hand. He pulled the colonel’s shoulder epaulet out of her bloody fist. She must have fought like hell. Tore her fingernails off on that shoulder insignia. But she got it, and now he had it.

The world went purple. He leapt to his feet, triggering the 60, firing into the jungle until all the rounds in the belt were gone, but still pulling the trigger on the now silent gun and screaming at the top of his lungs. “I’m going to kill you, you fucking asshole. You’re a dead man. I’ll not rest until I find you, you son of a bitch!”

Willie yelling. “Gene! Come on! Let’s get out of here! Gene! Gene!”

“Aaaggghhhh!”
he howled, words no longer sufficient.

Willie screamed in his face. “Gene!”

And he heard. Blinked.

“Let’s go. We have to get out of here.”

Gene stared. “Sure.”

The blades were turning, the engines revving. “Willie,” Gene yelled, “give me two minutes. I’ll be right there.”

Without waiting for a reply, he headed back out to where the two little girls’ bodies were. Half-blinded by tears, he lifted them—so small, so light—and lay their battered bodies together. He put the 60 aside, pulled the Bible from the pocket of his jeans, took off his shirt. Kneeling, he carefully covered their tiny bodies with his cami, then placed his Bible on top.

Picking up the 60, he ran to the waiting chopper, boarded, and, once again, sat in the open door. This time with eyes closed. God help him, he’d get that colonel, that fucking asshole, somehow, someway. God, bless those little girls. God. Why God?

Behind him, Tong cried and cried and cried.

G
ENE WAS FIRST OFF
the chopper when the two Sea Wolves landed on Seafloat. While the Kit Carson Scouts, accompanied by Sean, boarded boats to cross the river between Seafloat and their camp on the Son Ku Lon’s bank, he stood silently, staring down into the river’s brown water.

“Friend,” Willie said, resting his hand on Gene’s shoulder, “don’t let the pain go too deep. Plain and simple, the colonel lied about when he’d be back. There wasn’t a way we could check the intel and get there to take Tong’s family out before his return. He knew that.”

Gene nodded, looked out over the jungle, trying to block out the image of the little girls lying there. He clenched his teeth, afraid he’d cry if he answered Willie. Wouldn’t be able to stop it.

“It’s so hard,” Willie said. “I know it’s hard. Nothing can change the evil that’s been done. All we can do is try and stop that butcher from slaughtering. Mourn those poor souls, yes, but don’t let it keep you from remembering what we’re here for. The colonel is not alone out there.”

“No,” Gene said, thinking tactics already, forcing emotions back inside their cold, hard shell, “but we have to take him out. He’s the worst.”

“So far as we know now.”

“I’d better report to Jim.”

Willie nodded, red hair shining in the sunlight. “And we’d both best report to Johnny over at NILO. Gene, you all right?”

“Sure. And Willie, thanks.”

But he’d never be all right again in a world where men could do such unthinkable things to tiny children. Could order them done and have other men willing to abandon every shred of their humanity to obey.

In the center of the hootch, Jim was sitting on an ammo crate pulled up to the table in the intersection, having a beer while he did paperwork. He looked up.

“Well, how’d it…What happened?”

He looked like a teenager doing homework. Gene stared down at him in the dimness. The breeze from the fans ruffled the edges of the papers under the PL’s tanned hand.

Jim frowned, a look of concern on his face. “Gene?”

“Jim, we were too late.” He tried to swallow. Couldn’t. He took a deep breath and said it fast. “Prior to our arrival, the NVA advisor, Colonel Nguyen, returned to the village with the NVA forces under his command. The village was completely destroyed. Burned to the ground. The indigenous population were annihilated. No one…” His voice shook. He stopped, fought for control. “The indigenous are all dead.”