Hale noticed that two lieutenants and a sergeant were standing in the corridor which led to the stairs. They looked like they were trying to decide whether to come in or go out. The radio operator at the big radio had become very interested in his log.
“What the fuck do you want?” Hale said. “Get out of there and kill the enemy.”
The officers left.
Then Hale turned to Jackson and said, “You stay here. You go AWOL again and I’ll ship your ass out to Hanoi.”
Hale went into his cubicle, slamming the only door on the fire-base behind him, brought from the air-conditioned office Hale once had in Pleiku.
Jackson lay down on his cot, breathing hard.
I can go live out in the bush if I want, he thought. No more “fish on the bank.” Light’s going to make fucking sure nothing happens to me.
CHAPTER
7
The NVA made it hot at the fence. The engineers measured their progress in meters. An enlisted man might dump a bag of concrete in a mixer and then spend the next hour flat on his back while the infantry tried to flush out a sniper. After weeks of work, only fifty meters of wire had been strung, most of that filled with holes from attacks by sappers.
Hale spent the time screaming over the radio at his platoon leaders down in the Cunt. Jackson was beginning to fear that Hale was going to go down and direct operations personally. Hale often cursed Light for not living up to his reputation as a killer of NVA.
It had just turned dark, and there was a firefight in progress in the Cunt.
“Goddamn, I don’t care if you’re understrength!” Hale shouted into the radio. “Keep them off the fence!”
Hale slammed down the handset.
Jackson noticed a soldier had come into the TOC. The man walked over to Hale.
“Major, I wanna join up with you,” the soldier said.
“What’s your name and unit, soldier?” Hale asked.
The soldier drew himself up straight, almost coming to attention, and said, “Private Savitch, Sir, Twenty-fifth Engineers.”
“You’re AWOL,” Hale said.
“I’m not going back,” Savitch said.
Jackson thought Hale would explode, but instead the major laughed.
Hale said, “No one volunteers for the infantry.”
“I’m volunteering,” Savitch said.
“Two Corps sends me replacements,” Hale said. “Why should I take you?”
“I’m better at killing than stringing wire,” Savitch replied.
“I should send you down to take the place of that goddamn sorry reserve lieutenant. He don’t like it here at all. He wants to be back in his fraternity house,” Hale said.
Savitch laughed and said, “I’m no college boy.”
Hale had Jackson raise Little Tit on the radio, and after Hale promised the engineer CO two engineer replacements, the CO agreed to let Savitch stay. Hale told Savitch he could sleep that night in the TOC and in the morning he would assign him to one of the platoons. Then the major left.
Jackson learned Savitch was from Chicago and, like Jackson, had been drafted after high school. He had already been in country six months.
“Lemme tell you why I got away from the motherfucking engineers,” Savitch said. “When I get in country they assign us to paving this road out of Bong Son over on the coast. Charlie don’t like paved road. Can’t mine it. First morning we go out Charlie hits the lead and rear trucks with B-40s, so our ass is stuck right there. By the time the gunships show up, me, O’Brien, and Washington are the only ones left alive out of the new guys. O’Brien got himself killed at the fence last week. Washington wasn’t good for nothing after the ambush. They sent him home. That fence is worse than a hundred fucking Bong Sons. All those motherfucking engineers is gonna die.”
“Tom Light’ll kill the dinks,” Jackson said.
“Yeah, I heard about that motherfucker. He’s not so good. The dinks have been kicking ass,” Savitch said.
“You wait, you’ll see.”
“I don’t believe those stories. Yeah, he’s greased a few dinks. He’s not that good. Nobody is. Harry is as good as Light. Maybe better.”
Then Savitch told him about an Australian mercenary named Harry.
“They were paying him $100 a man, $500 for officers,” Savitch said. “After I finish my tour, I’m going into business for myself just like Harry. He gave me his address in Sydney. He’ll show me the ropes, but he said I gotta have experience. If I don’t get me some experience, I’ll have to go back to Chicago. What’s for me in Chicago? Nothing. Steal cars, maybe knock off a liquor store. I’ll end up in Cook County Jail. All my friends are there. I can’t be a fucking mercenary if I spend the war working on roads and fences. Men like Harry and Light can name their own price when the war’s over.”
“I want to go home,” Jackson said.
“I’m not going home to work in a gas station.”
“My cousin Leland does. What’s wrong with that?”
“Not a thing, if you want to watch other people driving the big cars and getting the good-looking broads. Getting it whenever they want it. Everyone is making money out of this war but me. The chopper pilots are shooting tigers out of their ships and selling the skins in Hong Kong. They got a piece of the action in some whorehouse in Vung Tau. They’ll go home rich.”
“I’d pump gas the rest of my life if I could get out of here right now.”
Savitch laughed and said, “Are you a farm boy, Jackson?”
“We run a few cows and some chickens. Only eighty acres. My daddy works at the steel plant in Birmingham,” Jackson replied.
“You come to Chicago after the war. One week with me and you won’t want to go back to the farm,” Savitch said.
Jackson liked Savitch because the man was not afraid. Jackson wished that he could be like Savitch, go through the war without being afraid all the time.
“Don’t you worry about getting blown away?” Jackson asked.
“Naw, I don’t think about it. Sure, it could happen. Harry told me he liked it out in the bush. Things make sense out there. Did Tom Light tell you he was afraid?”
“No.”
“I heard you spent the night in the bunker with him.”
“Yeah.”
“What did you talk about?”
“He doesn’t talk much.”
“Light’s good. Harry’s good. But I’m going to be better. Tell me one thing Light said.”
“He said to keep my head down.”
Savitch laughed and said, “Jackson, if you stayed here a hundred years you’d always be a fucking new guy.”
The rest of the night Savitch talked of the money he was going to make as a mercenary and the broads, cars, and boats he was planning to buy with it.
In the morning Hale assigned Savitch to one of the platoons. After a few days, Jackson learned from Hale that Savitch had repeatedly volunteered for point.
“They can’t kill Savitch,” Hale said to Jackson one night. “Goddamn Light is probably dead. That son of a bitch Savitch smelled out an ambush yesterday. Lieutenant Hightower’s platoon got three kills, the first ones that goddamn reserve lieutenant has made. You know what Savitch did? Put a bayonet on his rifle and practiced sticking dink corpses. Said he wanted to make sure his bayonet worked.”
Hale laughed, and Jackson felt his stomach tighten.
“Morton can have Light back whenever he wants him. I got my own killer,” Hale continued.
And then Savitch graduated from point man to infantry scout. One night in the TOC, Jackson watched Hale show Savitch a spot on the map where the Cunt narrowed into the gorge.