The windowless room had two beds and a dresser and a small wooden table. The tall doorway, which occupied one corner, had a glass transom above it. I flopped on my bed with a copy of Time. Riker stripped to his shorts and wrote at the table.
An article mentioned the transfer of General Kinnard, for whom we had the fly-by.
“Hey,” I announced, “they’ve written up Kinnard’s transfer in Time and there’s not one word about mine.”
After the fly-by, I had had to take a ship over to the river to wash it out. Long sat with me on the sandbar as usual and talked.
“I am sorry to see you go,” she said. Her English was improving every time I saw her. She was a self-taught genius.
“I’ll miss you, too.”
“Will you give your wife a present from me?”
“Sure, but you don’t have to give me any presents.”
“Not for you!” She giggled. “For your wife.” She removed her gold-wire earrings and held them out to me.
“No.” I shook my head. “You can’t afford to be giving me gold earrings, Long. I’m the rich guy here; I’ll pay you for them.” I reached into my pocket. She suddenly looked hurt, genuinely hurt. She was really just being nice.
“Okay, okay. No money. I’ll give them to Patience.”
She smiled brightly and handed them to me. I wrapped them in a piece of paper from my notepad and put them in my shirt pocket. “Thank you for the present. I’m sure Patience will love them.”
She grinned.
I patted my shirt pocket. Still there. Better mail them as soon as I get to the new unit. I wasn’t reading the words I looked at, so I put the magazine down. In the meantime, Riker had got in bed. My grandfather’s Hamilton said it was eleven o‘clock. Someone knocked at the door.
“Yeah?” I called out.
No answer. Then another knock.
“Who the fuck could that be?” I sat up.
“Probably the maid.”
I walked over to the door. “Probably.” If it was the maid, why was I afraid to open the door? I’m really coming apart, I thought.
When I turned the knob, the door shot inward, slammed into my boot, and stopped. I reflexively pushed back, and as I did, I came face to face with a frowning Oriental only a few inches shorter than I.
“Hey!” I pushed hard, trying to close the door. My boot slipped back as the door opened wider. I struggled harder. Altogether I could see four or five men pushing. Silently. Grimly determined.
“Hey, Riker! Get over here. There’s a bunch of gooks trying to bust in here!”
Riker paused for a second until he saw I wasn’t kidding.
“What the—?” He got up and ran over.
My boot slid back farther. The opening was almost wide enough to squeeze through. “C‘mon, goddamn it! Push this fucking door shut!” I yelled. My boot jammed under the door was the only thing that was keeping them out of the room. Riker pushed, stretching his long legs to the foot of my bed and his back to the door. When the door closed a fraction, I moved my boot ahead to lock it there. Then they pushed with a surge and the pressure on my toes grew until I thought they would crack. Hands came around the edge of the door and grasped air, trying to reach us. The only sounds were grunts and heavy breathing. Riker and I dripped sweat. As the heavy door groaned and thudded, the space was slowly getting smaller. Unbelievably, we were gaining on them. A hand grabbed the edge of the door as it got close to shutting. I smashed it with my fist. It held. I smashed it over and over until it let go and struggled back through the narrow crack of the door. As the fingers slipped out, the door slammed shut. Fumbling, shaking, wet fingers latched the lock and the extra safety bolt. Riker and I looked at each other in amazement. We were sharing a nightmare. Then we heard the thud of a body slamming against the door, and the door seemed to bend inward. The thudding repeated itself rhythmically, like a heavy heartbeat.
“Call the fucking desk!” said Riker.
I ran over to the night table and picked up the phone. Riker dragged the dresser across the room. It made a splintering sound as the veneer split against the tile floor. The desk phone rang.
“Are you calling them?!” Riker yelled as he struggled to get the dresser against the thudding door.
“Yeah. No answer.” I wiped sweat from my eyes. “They don’t fucking answer!”
After fifty rings I knew they would never answer. We sat across from each other on the two beds and watched the door moving with each animal thud. “Your derringer! Get out your derringer.” Riker brightened at the prospect.
“I sold it to Hall.”
“You sold it to Hall! I thought that was your fucking last-ditch weapon. Don’t you think this looks like an emergency?”
I nodded and shrugged. The gun was still sold to John Hall for twenty-five bucks.
“If that ain’t the dumbest thing I ever heard of…”
I nodded sorrowfully.
Crack!We both jumped at the new sound. They were throwing something metallic against the glass transom. Crack! Then chips of glass fell inside. The transom window had wire mesh embedded in it. At the center of the window a section the size of a fist was now bare of glass.
“Try the phone again,” said Riker.
I listened to a mechanical switch click and cycle a burst of ringing noise, then click, recycle, then noise. Riker took his bed apart. Under the mattress were hardwood bed slats. He smashed one down on my bed. It made a formidable club. I shook my head when he looked at the phone. Then I hung up. “Bastards!” Riker yelled.
At 2 A.M. the thudding stopped. Riker was asleep, proving that you can get used to anything. I sat up against my pillow with one of his bed slats on my lap. When the thudding stopped, I tried the phone again.
There was another small window near the ceiling at the other end of the room. While the phone rang, I looked up to see glass spraying in from it. Riker jumped up at the new sound.
“What the hell is going on here?” Riker pleaded.
I didn’t know. I’d been sitting on my bed for two hours, listening to the door being smashed, asking myself the same question. They are trying to kill us, aren’t they? Why didn’t they just blow up the fucking door? Or use an ax? Or fire? Or some fucking thing besides bodies? Maybe we should let them in and smash their brains in with our clubs. A quick no sounded in my head. I felt pretty brave at the controls of a helicopter while people tried to kill me, but trying to smash five darting Orientals with bed slats was just not me. I waited to see what developed. Soon the fuck-up at the desk would return from someplace and hear the ruckus and call the police There were police in Saigon, weren’t there? Or the people next door. They would get somebody. But the thudding went on and on. I wanted to scream at the utter unreality of the situation. But I could not scream, because I was a soldier. That thought made me laugh out loud. “GI Joe would’ve never let a bunch of dirty Nips get away with this,” I said. Then I visualized the myriad ways in which GI Joe would murder this mob. Of course, they were all centered around the fact that he always had a weapon stashed somewhere. I clutched my bed slat and waited. What I needed was a flamethrower.
The windowless room showed no light at dawn. My watch said it was six. The thudding had stopped. I woke Riker. We pulled the glass-covered dresser away and cautiously opened the door. There was some debris outside, but no people. Quickly we grabbed our gear and entered the hallway. All clear. As we walked toward the desk, we almost had cardiac seizures when we saw the clerk staring at us.
“Where the fuck were you last night?” we both yelled.
“Sir, I do not work at night. A man named Thieu does.”
“Well, where was he?” I said.