Scott Ely
Starlight
CHAPTER
1
Jackson watched the chopper float in to land on the pad, the ship shimmering before his eyes in the heat waves, the rotors kicking up a cloud of red dust. Then the ship flew off, the pilot hugging the mountaintop to avoid exposing himself to fire from the NVA who owned the gorge below and the mountains into Laos. Tom Light walked out of the slowly settling dust cloud and stopped, turning in a slow circle as he looked over the firebase.
“Goddamn, why did he have to come here?” Jackson muttered, spitting to clear the taste of the red dust from his mouth. “The bad shit is on us now.”
“Better stay clear of Light,” Major Hale said.
“Nothing but fucking trouble where he goes,” Jackson said.
“Goddammit, he won’t stay here. Not at my firebase. He’s going out in the bush.”
Not unless Tom Light feels like going, Jackson thought. Hale liked to make threats he did not have the power to carry out. The men laughed at him behind his back.
Light was still on the pad, looking up at the sky like he was expecting the chopper to return. Jackson hooked his hands through his shoulder straps to ease the weight of the heavy radio he wore on his back and waited.
Jackson had heard all the stories. Light had at first been treated as an ordinary soldier, but the troops who went out with him had all died. Only Light survived a long list of ambushes: the Ia Drang Valley, Dak To, the Mang Yang Pass. Finally no one would go out with him, and the army made him a solitary sniper.
Three hundred days left. Now that bastard’s here. I’ll never be short, Jackson thought.
Light walked off the pad. His hair was clipped almost boot-camp short, and he was dressed in cut-off fatigues and an army-issue wool sweater. His legs were covered with jungle sores. Instead of boots he wore a pair of sandals made out of rubber tires.
His skin was unusually white, too white for a man who spent all his time under the tropical sun. Perhaps he had contracted a fungus during the rains, but that was hard to tell.
Light stood before them, cradling in a poncho what Jackson thought must be a rifle.
“What the fuck place is this?” Light asked in a tired voice.
“Desolation Row,” Hale said.
“I’m supposed to be on R&R in Vung Tau,” Light said to Hale. “Pilot who dropped me off said I could catch a chopper out here. Where is it?”
Jackson wondered what R&R was like for a man who walked the jungle alone for months at a time. Hale said Light lived off the land, ate snake jerky.
Hale took a step closer to Light and said, “Didn’t they tell you at Two Corps?”
“They didn’t tell me a fucking thing at Pleiku,” Light replied in a slow, indifferent voice. “Got on a chopper at Pleiku. Thought we were headed for Vung Tau. I got my seven kills. They owe me.”
“Orders say you come here,” Hale said, talking fast like he always did when he got excited.
“Young trooper, will your radio reach Pleiku?” Light asked, turning to look at Jackson.
Jackson felt uncomfortable with Light’s eyes on him. He shook his head and looked out across the green folds of the range the Montagnards called the Truong Son, the Long Mountains, into Laos. The mountains, most of them scarred with brown patches from napalm strikes, ran down the spine of Vietnam, some spurs running into the sea a hundred miles away.
Light continued, “We’re up high. It’ll reach.”
“No way,” Jackson said.
“It ain’t that far,” Light said.
Jackson looked over Light’s shoulder at the green mountains.
Nothing out there, Jackson thought. A few abandoned Montagnard villages, the people relocated near Pleiku in planned villages built by the Americans. No roads. Just jungle and NVA. Not companies, divisions. The firebase had just one understrength battalion of two companies. Even fire support from the big 175-millimeter guns at Firebase Mary Lou ten miles away would not save them if the NVA attacked in strength. Only the threat of B-52 arclight strikes kept the NVA divisions in their sanctuaries in Laos.
“Put the whip on it and try,” Light continued. “Major, tell your radio man to call me a chopper.”
“Hold it, Jackson,” Hale said. Then turning to Light, “I want you out in the bush now!”
“Call Two Corps back,” said Light, his voice hard with anger. “Tell them they owe me a fucking R&R.”
“Two of your kills were unconfirmed,” Hale said. “You know the rules.”
Both men stopped talking and stood watching each other like two dogs getting ready to fight. Hale, the shorter man, stood stiff-legged, raising himself on the toes of his jungle boots as he tried to stare down Light.
Although there were other radio telephone operators and communications specialists at the firebase, Jackson was Hale’s personal RTO. Hale had a fear of being left without communications. During an operation near Saigon, he had become separated from his RTO, and the colonel in charge of the brigade had given Hale a poor efficiency report. That had kept him from becoming colonel.
“You’re going out,” Hale said.
“I’m going to Vung Tau,” Light said.
“Then walk. You’ll not ride a chopper out of my firebase. You’ll not sleep here.”
“I’ll sleep on sheets in Vung Tau.”
Hale hesitated, already beginning to back down.
Jackson hoped Light would not end up sleeping in the Tactical Operation Center. In the TOC, Jackson slept on a cot just outside Hale’s cubicle. The men often asked Jackson if he was required to go to the latrine with the major. But he did not care what they said, for as long as he was Hale’s RTO he could spend most of his three hundred days left in country in the safety of the TOC, the deepest bunker at the firebase. Hale often bragged he planned to make colonel without having to step outside the wire.
“I’m Two Corps here,” Hale finally said, talking fast. “This firebase is my own little piece of hell. You do what I say.”
Light unwrapped the poncho from around the rifle, a .303 instead of the standard issue M-16. The gray fiberglass stock was chipped and cracked in places, the larger cracks repaired with yellowish epoxy, and on the top was mounted a long, black starlight scope, the tube at the big end at least six inches in diameter. The barrel had been painted with a grainy, gray paint to match the stock.
This was the scope the Montagnards believed Light used to raise the dead, Jackson thought. But that was not surprising because the Yards believed that trees and rocks were inhabited by spirits. They sacrificed pigs to cure illnesses.
“You go out there,” Light said, offering Hale the rifle.
“You’re going to end up a stockade child, soldier!” Hale screamed, the veins standing out on his neck. “They’ll lock you in a connex at Long Bien Jail, and I’ll be a goddamn grandfather before they turn you loose! Get out there and hunt!”
“After my R&R,” Light said.
“Now!” Hale shouted. And then in a lower voice, “I’ll not have a mutiny over you like at Firebase Mary Lou.”
“LBJ sounds OK by me,” Light said in a bored voice as if they were discussing the next place he would spend an R&R.
“Soldier, don’t you start fucking with the way I run this firebase. Get out there and kill the enemy.”
“Not a fucking chance,” Light said.
“Your mail’s coming here now,” Hale said. “Already got a letter for you. Two Corps told me you like to get mail regular. You won’t get it staying here.”
Light paused a moment and said, “I’ll go in the morning. I want the letter before I leave.”
“You’ll have it,” Hale said.
Then Light began to wrap up the rifle in the poncho. Hale stood and watched him.
Jackson knew Hale could not afford a mutiny. Duty at the firebase was his last chance. Hale kept a set of stateside colonel’s insignia so he would be ready for the day when his promotion came through. Jackson sometimes had to polish the silver eagles.