Men in Green Faces (15 page)

The table was cleared and fresh drinks were brought. But Gene, no matter how hard he tried, kept seeing the burned boy in the hospital ward, Tong’s little girls, Truk, the five SEALs in the morgue, and for spaces of time he went silent. Coming out of it, he’d apologize and try harder to make the evening enjoyable for Sara.

“Do you dance?” she asked.

“Dance?” He blinked, brought into sense what she’d asked. “Would you like to dance?”

She smiled. “Yes. I would.”

They didn’t leave the floor for a long time. To dance was to hold someone and Gene hadn’t been held for too long. Neither had Sara. By the time they checked the hour, curfew had gone down. Sara couldn’t be on the streets.

Gene excused himself, went to the barkeep, and rented one of the rooms the military called back-berthing rooms. He intended to give her the bed and take a chair or the floor for himself. He’d told her he was married and that he and Karen were expecting their first child. She’d told him about the computer engineer awaiting her return and about their plans for marriage.

It wasn’t until after midnight that they really began to share their Vietnam experiences. They saw tears in each other’s eyes, heard the huskiness of grief and loneliness in the soft, hesitant sound of each other’s voices. It was even later when, on the dance floor, their lips first briefly touched.

In less than an hour, they went upstairs.

They lay together in the small bed—at first, side by side. Gene almost held his breath, afraid to move, the feel of Sara going clear through him. He needed her beyond description. Music drifted up from below, but the room was very dark. A warm breeze blew softly through the screened window.

She held his hand. He waited, hoping, and felt her fingertips move against his open palm, over his fingers. His whole body tingled, heating with her touch. As one, they turned toward each other and the length of their bodies met. He almost cried out.

They held onto each other, limb-to-limb, cheek-to-cheek, eyes closed. They didn’t move, just held on tight.

Gene, so much bigger, so much stronger, tempered his strength so as not to overwhelm the fragile body in his arms. Her breasts felt like satin pillows against his chest. Her stomach, hips, thighs, imprinted his body, held there by his arms. One hand with fingers stretched wide covered her buttock, the other her shoulder. Both of her arms were around his neck, and he could smell the clean scent of her hair.

For a moment, he saw Karen’s face, felt her body, and loosened his hold on Sara. Shouldn’t be here…shouldn’t touch…

It was too late to stop. Too late to think. Her fingers were in his hair, tracing his face, touching him, and he began to kiss her, tasting her, caressing her, with a kind of hunger and need he’d never experienced before.

By dawn, it was over. Dressed, they paused at the door before opening it to leave. The knob was cool in his hand. Outside, a woman’s voice calling, a child’s answering.

“Thank you,” he said, looking down at her, knowing it was probably for the last time, once he left.

Her eyes widened slightly. “And you.” She glanced at her watch. “Time to go.”

When he dropped her off, she shook his hand. “Fare thee well,” she said, her voice soft, each word distinct. “Fare thee well.”

He waited until the double doors closed behind her, then drove to the airfield on a road made wavy by tear-filled eyes. At the field he parked, got out, took a deep breath, and banished from his mind everything connected with Sara. He boarded the chopper headed for Seafloat. Before they were airborne, Willie’s foolhardiness and Twin Rivers were in command of his mind, as was Colonel Nguyen.

G
ENE CHECKED IN AT
NILO immediately after landing on Seafloat. “Johnny. Anything on Colonel Nguyen?”

Johnny stood to shake hands. “Not so you’d notice. Rumors. Not even soft intel. Gene, I’m sorry you had to be the one to ID the chopper victims, but you were the only Seafloat personnel there. A tragedy. We appreciate your help. It meant a lot.”

Terry Taylor. Gene nodded. The corner of the map, behind and above Johnny’s head, had torn away from the dull metal thumbtack and peeled downward into a roll.

“How is Truk?”

“If he’s really lucky, he’ll be able to get around with a cane someday.”

Johnny moved the Annapolis class ring around his finger with his thumb. “Damned shame. But at least he’s alive. If it hadn’t been for Truk, Willie…”

“Yeah. Too close, that.” Gene frowned. “Not out again, is he?”

“No. He’s with Sean, over at the KCS camp.”

“Anything new with Twin Rivers?”

“The riverboats are still operating twenty-four hours a day to prevent any crossings. No supplies are coming in or going out of die Twin Rivers area. No hard intelligence from any source on what’s down there, other than a possible weapons factory.”

Johnny leaned his chair back on two legs. “We’ve got to get into that area. It’s frustrating. Every operation that’s gone down, whether riverboats, zippos, or South Vietnamese troops, have all come out running for their lives, or they just never come out. You already know that. Something has to change.”

“I’d better check in with Jim.”

Johnny stood to shake hands. “Glad you’re back. Good news that Truk’s going to make it.”

Jim thought so too. “Poor bastard. But at least he’s alive. For a change, Willie will be able to deliver something better than funeral news to a KCS family.” He pushed his chair back. “Let’s go outside.”

They eased down against the plywood wall of their hootch and squatted side by side in the shade. “So what’s up?” Gene asked.

“It’s time to go into Twin Rivers on a recon op. We need to find out exactly where they are, what they have, how many villagers are in there, and how many NVA and VC.”

Gene looked off down the jungle-edged Son Ku Lon. “What’s the plan?”

“An op to collect intelligence. Not to search and destroy.” Jim lit a cigarette, took a long drag. “Not yet anyway. We have to know more of what we’d need to bring in, to search and destroy, and what the odds are against us. Don’t want to lose anybody. Remember the Green Beret advisor?”

“The captain? Yeah.” He remembered, all right. A bad op. Two Green Beret advisors, actually. They were going to take some South Vietnamese troops into Twin Rivers. He’d walked up to the new arrivals, told them he was a SEAL, and told them what had been going on in the area. He knew that they, like the SEALs, had no intel on what was in there. The captain had looked him over.

“What’s your rate?”

Gene stiffened. They never wore anything that would give away their rank or connect them with the SEALs. There was a price on their heads and they all knew it. “Seaman. E-3.”

“Where in the hell,” said the captain, “does an E-3 get off telling me I shouldn’t go down there?”

Too bad, Gene thought, staring into the captain’s narrowed, pale blue eyes, that the man’s brain wasn’t as active as his ego. He’d tried to fill him in on the area. What to expect. Tried to advise him not to go down. The captain preferred to run shit down his neck. His background and experience meant nothing, apparently. Too bad. He was looking at a dead man. He told him so.

Veins bulged in the captain’s neck. “Get the hell out of my way.”

Gene stepped back, watched the two advisors and about twenty South Vietnamese board boats and move out. It was 1200 hours.

At 1500 hours, the boats returned, having penetrated less than five hundred meters into Twin Rivers. They’d been hit hard. One of the advisors had taken a claymore in the face; most of his head was blown off. Others of the South Vietnamese had numerous shrapnel wounds or had been hit with rounds. About half of them made it back to the boats, carrying the two Green Berets. The rest were dead.

During triage of the wounded, Gene walked by the captain, who lay bleeding. He wasn’t going to be taken to the operating room. The doctors knew he was going to die, so they had patched him up, shot him full of morphine, and left him, in order to tend to others who had a chance of living. The captain knew it. All military advisors had advanced medical training. He stared up at Gene wet-eyed.

Gene looked down, his own shadow stretching over the bloody deck, making a dark slash across the man’s body. Too late for anybody to help now. You dumb shit, he thought. I told you. Jesus. He shook his head and walked away.

Yeah. He remembered the captain. “Yes,” he said to Jim. “Safety’s paramount.”

“We’ll go down a small river,” Jim said, “that’s two rivers to the east of Twin Rivers, and be inserted by a single MSSC.”

Insertion took place at 0200 hours. The night was dark and windy as they moved slowly down the narrow river to a point deep in the jungle. Clearance on both sides of the boat measured about three feet. The squad sat silent, half-crouched, bulky with full combat gear, their faces grim under green and black paint.

If they were hit, Gene thought, they’d have to open the MSSC up full bore, lay down fire as the boat went through a series of pivot turns to get around and head back through the ambush to get to the Son Ku Lon. There was only three feet of clearance on each side to do it in.

Twenty minutes after entering the narrow river, the rain came.

A downpour. He could hardly see the jungle just feet away. He shivered. The cold rain soaked his clothes, ran down his neck and into his eyes, but it made the mission safer. Its pounding snare drum sound masked noises; the densely falling drops screened them from sight. At the insertion point, the MSSC tried to turn its bow into the bank but only came around thirty degrees. Silently the SEALs inserted, setting security as the boat pivoted to idle quietly back down the narrow river where it would wait for their extraction call.

Under the dripping triple-canopied jungle, the squad waited until the MSSC’s diesels could not be heard. Ten more minutes passed.

Gene heard nothing unnatural in the wet darkness and was grateful for the rain keeping the mosquitoes down. They could nail you through a cami shirt, through your blue and gold. God, those bloodsuckers were big.

Jim gave the hand signal to move out. Brian took point and disappeared into the dark. Jim rose from the mud and brush, followed by Roland, his radioman. Then Gene stepped off, the 60 cold and heavy in his hands. Behind him, Alex, Cruz, and Doc separated from mud and brush to follow.

Sheets of rain masked the slight sounds they made moving through the dense foliage. It covered the sucking noise of their boots. With the hard sound of the rain covering them, the squad moved faster. It could be seventy-two hours before they returned home.

Gene moved in and out of the brush and trees, listening for the slightest sound of man. He smelled the air for the scents of cigarette smoke, body odor, defecation, or urine, his adrenaline pumping.

All prior operations had failed, and people had died. Now it was their turn. But they were coming in the enemy’s back door, or at least past all the claymore and rocket teams protecting the river. He hoped and prayed that was the case. If the squad didn’t go deep enough into enemy area before connecting with Twin Rivers, they could find themselves in a bloodbath.

After three hours, he caught himself remembering the Green Beret captain lying outside of medical, waiting to die. He had to get the picture out of his mind. Stay alert, use senses to the max.

Concentrate on every step. Listen. Look for booby traps the three ahead of him might miss. Concentrate…

The rain finally stopped after dawn. Pale sunlight slanted thinly through the dripping treetops above. Automatically the squad adjusted to put more distance between each man as they snaked through the jungle. If a booby trap was tripped, only one would get it.

Depending, Gene reminded himself, on the type of explosive and how close to each other they were. During the night hours they’d been very, very close. He saw a hand signal.

Stop.

Jim was moving forward, but Gene couldn’t see Brian. Then Jim was out of sight. The rest of the squad knelt or squatted where they were, maintaining their fields of fire.

Gene peered through thick leaves. So far into the enemy’s backyard, time slowed to a crawl. But it was a relief to stop and rest. His muscles ached, he was tired. Watch over us and protect us, he prayed.

Jim appeared and sliced his hand across his throat. The signal passed down the line, back to Doc at rear security. Danger crossing.

They’d reached the first river.

Gene moved to their left flank with Alex. Cruz and Doc moved to the right. Brian slithered into the dirty brown water and moved slowly across, trying not to cause even so much as a ripple. As he approached the far side, his AR-15 followed his eyes. Slowly he pulled himself out of the water and disappeared into the brush.

The squad waited.

Brian reappeared and gave the thumbs-up signal. Jim started across. As he reached the halfway mark, about four or five feet from shore, Roland followed. Gene went next, then Alex, Cruz, and finally Doc. When they’d all crossed, Gene lifted the cover over the face of his watch. They’d made watch covers out of the leather tongues of old boots. They’d put snaps on them and fastened them to their black nylon watchbands, so the glow of numbers and hands on the watch faces was concealed. It was 0945 hours.

Neither he nor anyone else could tell exactly how far they’d patrolled during the night. They’d had to do a lot of weaving to get to where they were. But they knew the next river was the objective area. Twin Rivers.

Shit could hit the fan any minute, Gene thought. They could walk right into hell and never come out. Here, they were without support. No boats, no choppers, could come in if they needed help. They were on their own.

The squad moved out. After a hundred feet, Brian signaled a halt. Everyone froze.

At his signal, Gene moved up to Jim, who pointed to bunkers made of branches and logs packed in mud. Brian’s AR-15 rounds couldn’t penetrate them. Gene nodded and took point with the 60. Brian went back to take Gene’s place between Roland and Alex. If someone opened up from the bunkers, the 60 could rip apart the structure and anyone inside.