People give me room as I walk on my way, keeping the feet steady, the organs properly aligned. They know whom I am, most of them. They know what I do, and what I will do. To them, I’m just another imported killer. If they only knew the real score, that the only person I can’t kill is myself, because I know where I’ll go, and what will be waiting for me there. They’d understand, of course, because they know what else is out there, beyond the rotten water and decayed cement, past the jungle and heavy clouds always threatening rain. They know how other things pass over and take up residence here. I never did before, not being a churched-up boy and not allowed to go into the swamp where I would have learned all about what was really out there, but I sure as shit know now.
I’ll live as long as I can, and do what I need to do in the meantime.
It’s what animals do.
Survive.
It’s what animals who have never been animals do.
Endure.
I turn on my homing beacon and follow the current flow back to my apartment, head down, weaving through groups of expats, squatters, and day workers gathered at sidewalk noodle stalls. Drinking beer and smoking cigarettes and talking shit while slapping down tiles in games of tam cuc. Even though they know me, no one looks at me down here. I never could figure out if that was natural or by design. Could have been orders from the Triad that always filtered down and out into the street, up into the ramshackle slums, and into the temples, police stations, and government offices. Maybe I was a ghost already and didn’t know it, pantomiming a life to keep me from falling back into the void where it waited for me and me alone.
It didn’t matter. What was real and what wasn’t stopped having any meaning a long time ago. I didn’t know shit other than needing to get back to my four walls, fill my own sandbags and dig my 40 by 40, because the mortars were coming, forming up in the corners by the ceiling and arcing down to my bed. “Tube!” they’d yell, when the shell left the cylinder in some secret mortar position. “Tube!”
I think of Black Shuck and cross my fingers. I’ve been among the Vietnamese long enough to know that it doesn’t mean good luck.
10. The Mirage at the End of the World
With a controlled drop, the choppers shed altitude fast, handing it off to the slow rising sun as an even trade with the break of dawn over the eastern mountain range.
A layer of fog gathered below the clear brightening sky as the aircraft descended. Underneath the foam of mist, small points of white flames outlined a circular LZ large enough to accommodate the three helicopters.
The Chinook touched down first, coming to a soft landing inside the circle of C4 burning inside tin ration cans, joined by the two Hueys. Pilots and the five soldiers exited the aircraft as a crew of Hmong militia members emerged from the bushes, dressed in loose-fitting wool tunics and pants, stepping quickly in their tire-rubber sandals. They hauled long rolls of green netting and threw and draped it over the choppers, concealing the killer whale and its two identical escorts into shapeless lumps not much different from the landscape in less than a minute.
Broussard took in the base, which was entirely unlike the location they’d just left. Instead of being situated on a hilltop, it was cut out of a depression in the earth that resembled a crater left by a meteor impact a million years ago, poking a secret hole into the furred skin of the jungle. Trees rose up on all sides except to the south, where a vast granite cliff rose up through the fog and into the clear sky, absorbing heat from the rising sun the men couldn’t see down in the mist. There were two bunkers overgrown with living vines and saplings, not cut branches. The larger of the two bristled with radio wires and UHF/VHF mast antennae surrounding a large metal dish painted matte black. No foxholes broke up the ground. No perimeter razor wire, machine gun positions, or artillery units. Whatever this place was obviously didn’t fear attack or value a defensive posture other than remaining invisible from above. This wasn’t a fire base. It was for something far different, and it had been here for a while.
“Where the sam fuck are we?” McNulty said, putting to particular word what everybody was thinking.
“Gentlemen.”
The unfamiliar voice turned each head to discover a man walking from a doorway that seemed to materialize from the granite backdrop of the base. He was tall, farm-boy white, with shiny, almost playful gray eyes that added a youthful quality to the handsome collection of wrinkles etched deep by years of squinting into foreign suns. Eyes that took in too many secrets, which seemed to amuse and sadden him. His uniform was pressed olive drab, without patches or markings of any kind. The forearms poking from his tightly rolled sleeves were stained with a random smattering of old tattoos picked up at unpronounceable outposts before any of the men before him were born. Near his wrist, broad and faded green, was a silhouette of a raven.
The man stopped and clasped his hands behind his back. His expression was friendly, but grim. “Welcome to Echo Site 66.”
The men exchanged glances.
“Where are we, sir?” Render said.
“We’re exactly where we need to be, Sergeant Render. The true front line.”
“Which is?” Darby said.
The man turned to Darby. “Which is, Private Darby, the Royal Kingdom of Laos.”
The men looked at each other again, this time with expressions ranging from shock to fear.
Darby smiled, knocked his helmet back from his eyes. “Well, I’ll be goddamned.”
“Begging your pardon, sir,” McNulty said to the man, a touch of a Chicago accent hardening all of his r’s.
“Yes, Private Second Class McNulty?”
“Well, sir, we’re not supposed to be out here. Sir.”
“Is that right?”
“Uh, yes sir. I mean… Ain’t we?”
“I have a secret to tell you. Can I trust you with a secret? Can I trust all of you?”
No one responded. You never trusted anyone in Vietnam, especially the ones who insisted on it.
The man nodded, sensing the mood. “I get it. Believe me, better than most. But let me tell you this, from someone who would know: Trust is important out here, on the true front line. It’s probably the most important thing, aside from dry socks. We’re all we have now. We’re it.” He let this linger, as much out of staging as out of necessity. “I apologize if that comes as a surprise, which I have no doubt it does, but in times of war, no situation is concrete, no tomorrow set in stone. The only certainty we have is in ourselves, and our devotion to one another in the service of a cause. Does this make sense?”
The men nodded, some in spite of themselves. What else were they going to do? They were way, way off the reservation, with no feasible means of getting back.
“So I ask, can I trust all of you? I’m not asking you to trust me, not yet. But can I trust you?”
“Yes sir,” they all said in unison, with varying degrees of enthusiasm.
“That’s good. That’s what we need, as we go about our business.” The man began to pace slowly, digging into his thoughts, stopping occasionally for emphasis. “You see, I’m in the business of secrets. It’s what I was trained to do, and I’m just a byproduct of my environment, shaped on the anvil of experience and training. This mission and its conception is a byproduct of my environment. Do you understand?”