“Men, our mission is to protect those engineers,” Hale began.
They stood beneath the hot sun and waited for Hale to get around to whatever he was going to talk about. And Hale stood before them looking down at the ground as if he was having difficulty deciding what he was going to say next. The men, sensing his nervousness, began to whisper among themselves.
“The engineers are here to build a fence,” Hale finally continued.
He nodded to two sergeants who pulled back the parachute to reveal a map.
“It’s going to start here,” he said, pointing to a spot on the big map which Jackson recognized as the Cunt.
He paused again, looking up at the high blue sky like he wished a voice would come out of it and finish his speech for him. Then his audience would have to believe. The major took a deep breath.
“We’re going to fence every valley so the NVA can’t infiltrate into Two Corps,” Hale said, talking fast, tracing with the pointer the path of the fence on the map. “That fence could change the whole course of the war. If the NVA can’t get into ’Nam there’d be no war. Then we’d just have to fight Charlie. We kicked his ass during Tet. We’ll do it again.”
Everyone was silent.
Then Raymond said, “That’s a fucking great idea, Major. Fence those bastards out!”
And Reynolds sang, “There must be some kind of way out of here/Said the joker to the thief.”
“Make it a big fence. Ten foot tall. Fucking little dinks’ll never climb it,” Raymond continued. “Me and my buddy Reynolds will be proud to help.”
Reynolds continued to play his M-16.
“They’re fucked up again on speed,” a sergeant said to Hale.
“Goddammit! How’re they getting drugs? Get ’em out of here,” Hale said.
Everyone laughed, and the sergeant led Reynolds & Raymond away.
“That goddamn fence is going up on schedule!” Hale shouted.
“Bullshit!” Leander shouted, the pith helmet pulled down low over his eyes.
Now a kind of collective growl came from the battalion, and Jackson, who was standing behind Hale, wondered if he was watching the beginnings of a mutiny.
Hale said, “I know what you men are thinking. You can frag me and my officers.”
One of the lieutenants flinched at the mention of the word frag.
“The brass at Two Corps wants this fence,” Hale continued. “It’s going up.”
“Yeah, it’ll go up. You’ll make colonel. We’ll all get fucking wasted!” Leander yelled.
“I see you one more time with that goddamn gook helmet on, and you’re busted,” Hale said.
“You’re gonna see plenty of these fucking helmets,” Leander said.
Everyone laughed.
“Leander, the only way you or anybody else is going to get off Desolation Row is to build that fence,” Hale said. Then he paused and continued, talking fast, “I’m going to tell you men why we’re going to build that goddamn fence. They wouldn’t tell you why in the Russian army. Remember that. Some general at Two Corps has a son-in-law who’s in the chain-link fence business in Chicago. This goddamn civilian son-in-law got himself a contract for one thousand miles of interstate highway fence. Paid off some congressman. But didn’t pay off the right one or pay enough because he lost the bid on the contract. Got himself stuck with all that goddamn fence. Daddy the general found a way to take care of his own. Goddamn, men, a two-star general can do any fucking thing he wants!”
No one laughed.
“You mean some asshole general is gonna fence the dinks out of ’Nam with a fucking playground fence?” Leander yelled. “That dude is crazy.”
That set everyone to laughing. Hale patiently waited for them to stop.
Jackson wondered what he could do to escape Hale. He could ask to be transferred, but that might mean he would end up as a rifleman in some company that stayed out in the bush for months at a time, far away from Light’s protection. With an extra long whip he might be able to reach Saigon and tell the commander of American forces what the general was trying to do. Or better yet he might have his signal relayed to the states by ham operators. Jackson tried to remember the chain of command, those pictures he had seen in company orderly rooms ever since basic training. The Joint Chiefs could be told or even the President. He imagined the Secretary of the Army flying into II Corps and relieving the general of his command.
The men were quiet and Hale was talking again as Jackson returned from his reverie of escape.
“We’re going to fence this country all the way down to the goddamn South China Sea!” Hale said, speaking very fast. “It’s going to work. We can’t go up to Hanoi and kill ’em all. The politicians won’t let us fight this war. Fence ’em out! Put a mile of cleared ground on either side of the fence and kill any goddamn thing in it that moves. The commies did it in Europe. We can do it here. It’ll be a goddamn chain-link curtain!”
No one laughed, and Jackson realized it was because the men knew they were trapped.
“Those hard-core NVA won’t let that fence go up without a fight. They’re sitting in Holiday Inn base camp right now over there in Laos waiting to see what we’re going to do. They probably already know if those goddamn sorry ARVNs are in on this,” Hale continued.
Jackson had heard of Holiday Inn base camp. Once, two battalions had been sent to attack it, and only parts of them had returned back across the border. Soon after he had arrived at the outpost a rumor had started that they were going into Laos after it. He had been unable to eat or shit until he had discovered that they were not going after all.
“One of these days we may have to go over there again,” Hale said. “This time we’ll run ’em all the way back up to Hanoi!”
Now Hale had become very excited, waving his arms about to emphasize his words.
Jackson wished he was out in the bush with Light. Once work on the fence started the builders and their defenders would be easy targets for the NVA. He hoped Hale would not decide to go down there to direct the defense personally.
“I know you’ve heard stories about that base camp. The NVA are tough. They’re hard-core,” Hale said. “But you can be just like them. Men, back in high school, out in the piny woods of Louisiana, I used to play football for a coach named Hog Willis. Goddamn, but we loved that man. Hated him too because he worked us. Made us mean. Hog got his name from catching razorbacks barehanded down in Honey Island Swamp. Wrestled ’em down and tied ’em up with barbed wire. Coach hunkered down with those hogs in the mud. You got the hunker down with the goddamn NVA! What will it be men? Are you going to let the enemy run us off this mountain?”
“Hell, no, Sir!” one of the lieutenants shouted.
Hale looked hard at the men, waiting for them to take up the yell. But they were silent, most of them staring down at their boots. Even Leander had nothing to say. Hale dismissed the battalion.
Jackson wished he could call for a chopper on the radio and fly away from Hale and the fence and the war and Light. Fly home to the farm: fields and pond and pasture and woods and the white frame house where he could sleep safe in his bed and wake to the sound of a mockingbird singing its heart out, not to the thump of incoming walking heavy across the compound.
CHAPTER
5
During the next few weeks shipments of wire, steel poles, and concrete started arriving at the engineer camp, brought up from Pleiku by the big helicopters, the sky cranes. Jackson thought the sky cranes looked like huge wasps bringing food back to their nests, the cargo dangling between their long legs on steel cable. Gradually a mountain of wire began to grow at the camp until it seemed to him that there was not going to be room for the men.