Hour of the Assassins (6 page)

They'd taken Chong alive, Caine thought. That had been his fault. So many things were his fault: Lim, the child—No, he didn't want to go on any more guilt trips. Emotion is wasted energy, Dao would say. He remembered Dao laughing, sitting around the fire and all of them drunk on the potent com liquor passed around by the spirit doctor, the
tu-ua-neng
. Chong was playing those strange plaintive sounds on his
khene
and then all of them were laughing, because Caine had suggested taking a prisoner and getting information.

“Prisoners,” Dao laughed. “There are no prisoners in this war.”

Christ, how do you turn it off, he wondered. C.J. lay quietly beside him, her breathing deep and regular. He got up and, still naked, walked into the living room and took some brandy from the bottle left on the coffee table. Then he went out on the balcony and stared out at the pale froth of surf crashing against the deserted beach. Far to the south, he could just make out the lights of the Palos Verdes shore. He drank the brandy with a sudden gasp, shivering in the cool sea breeze.

We just don't fit, he thought. Like the kiwi that belongs to the sky yet is born without wings. L.A. is filled with refugees caught at land's end. The reason the pioneers stopped in California wasn't because they had found what they were seeking, but because they ran out of land. They simply couldn't go any farther. Well, what happens when you come to the end of yourself? Do you just stop? he wondered. We lost our cherry in Asia. We thought we were going to defeat the enemy. Nobody told us we
were
the enemy.

He was really cold now and he stepped back inside, closing the glass balcony door against the chill and the tireless pounding of the surf. C.J. was sleeping on her side, her long hair tangled on the pillow. He looked down at her and gently stroked her hair away from her face. Her skin tan, almost the same color as Lim's and her body delicately made, like Lim. But how could you explain C.J. to Lim or Lim to C.J.? Poor C.J., he smiled. Trying so hard to be a liberated lady. And Lim, for whom the concept didn't even exist. Christ, why don't you just drop it and get some sleep, he thought.

He got back into bed and put his arm around C.J. She lay curled away from him, her hair tickling his lips. It would be easy to fall in love with someone as bright and beautiful as C.J., but who could afford it, he thought. We give our heart away for free, but it costs us so much to get it back. Like Lim. Was it really love with Lim, or pity? From the beginning the two emotions had been part of each other. Even that afternoon when she came to his hut, the monsoon rain clattering on the bamboo roof, the green hills hidden in gray clouds. Caine had been clumsily trying to sew a rip in his pants.

She stood before him, wearing the black shirt and trousers of the Meo women, a red sash about her slender waist. She wore a black turban and around her neck three heavy silver rings, her dowry. Her skin a light tan, oval eyes dark, and her only really oriental feature was her slightly wide nose. On her feet she wore plastic shower shoes made in Japan. At first he didn't think of her as being pretty, but later he learned to look at her the way he looked at white women and to see how beautiful she really was. She smiled shyly and said, “I am Lim, lord. My Uncle Chong has given me to you in exchange for the rifle you gave him.”

Flustered, he dropped his sewing, then picked it up and threw it on his bunk.

“I don't understand. Tell your Uncle Chong that he doesn't owe me anything.”

“But I belong to you, Tan Caine. I am your woman now.”

“People don't belong to people,” he snapped. “Go home to your uncle.”

“Please,” her voice trembling. “All is yours now,” taking off her silver neck rings and holding them out to him. “I will do everything to please you.”

“Christ,” he said, running his hand through his hair. “I can't take you, Lim. I'm a soldier, an American. Surely there's some other man, one of your own people.”

“No, there is no one,” she replied morosely. “Since the war there are few men, many women. If you do not take me, no man will. And besides”—pointing to the bracelet Dao had given him—“you are Hmong now. Or is it because you already own a woman? I have heard that Americans may have only one wife. Is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Only one wife?” Lim asked, puzzled. “How can a man live with only one woman?”

“I don't know.” Caine laughed. “We're not very good at it either.”

She knelt before him and touched her forehead to his hand.

“I am yours for as long as you want me, Tan Caine. All men have many women and you have none. Please don't send me away,” she pleaded.

Touched, he put his hand to her cheek and said softly, “You know that before the monsoon ends, I'll have to go back to the war.”

“I know, lord.”

“And don't call me lord,” he shouted. “You're a free woman.”

“Yes, lord,” she cried happily, hugging him tightly.

They made love throughout the long rainy afternoon. Although she lacked the languorous sensuality of the Lao women, her body heaved against his with a dark and primitive intensity. Drowsy with lovemaking and the rain, he fell asleep. Some sound, something woke him suddenly. He grabbed his .45 automatic and stealthily got out of bed. As Lim began to stir, he crept to the door, threw it open, and found himself aiming at a ten-year-old girl sitting motionless under the eaves of the hut. Although her face was without expression, Caine remembered thinking that she was the most beautiful child he had ever seen. She didn't look at him, but continued staring into the rain. He scooped her up in his left arm and brought her into the hut. Lim was awake, her eyes wide with fear.

“Who is this?” he demanded angrily.

“My daughter, lord. I was afraid to tell you”—her voice trembling.

“Then tell me now. What's the matter with her?”

“She has a great sadness. Her three souls have been stolen by evil
tlan
and have left her body behind.”

“Fine. Now tell me what happened to her,” his eyes blazing.

“I cannot,” she sobbed. “It is a great shame for me.”

It was Dao who finally told him about it at dinner the next day. Lim had roasted a chicken, and as protocol demanded, Caine offered the head to Dao. Dao crunched noisily and sucked out the brain before he finally answered.

“The child has lost her mind. There is nothing to be done, Tan Caine.”

“Damn it, I want to know what happened,” Caine said, his voice soft and cold.

“Why?” Dao demanded. “It will not make you any happier to know.”

“What are you afraid of, Dao?”—his voice challenging, mocking.

“Lim and the child were in Muong Ngom. She is such a pretty child, that was the problem.”

“So what?” Caine put in.

“Muong Ngom was one of our villages. The Pathet Lao held it for over three months until we pushed them out. Some officer must have taken a fancy to her. For three months she was kept naked in a small cage for the use of all the troops. She was raped hundreds of times in the most brutal fashion. You see,” he sighed. “There is nothing to be done.”

“Where are the guerrillas who occupied Muong Ngom now?”

“We think they've moved north, near Nong Het.”

“Well, there's still some killing to be done,” Caine said quietly.

“There are NVA in that area as well. It's too dangerous. And besides, that won't help the girl. Nothing will, except perhaps death.”

“We won't be doing it for the girl. We'll be doing it for ourselves,” Caine replied.

As it turned out, it took them over a year of fighting before they reached Nong Het. Lim was pregnant then, with a son, she assured Caine proudly. And so that the son-to-be would be strong, she continued to labor in the poppy fields despite Caine's objections. Throughout the long hot days the women worked in the fields that were bright red patches in the sun, like splashes of blood on the green hills, harvesting the opium for shipment to the heroin factories in Vientiane, Bangkok, and Saigon.

That last night Caine came back to his hut from the radio shack to find Chong playing his
khene
, his thin oriental face almost drowsy, like that of an opium smoker. Caine had just been arguing with Cunningham, demanding a flight of B-52's from Thailand to hit Nong Het once the trap was sprung. The plan itself was quite simple. Chong would take Nong Het with a Meo company and, acting as bait, would draw the Pathet Lao into an attack on the village, while Caine and Dao would take the rest of the Meo force and seal the valley. Chong would dig in and the bombers would then saturate-bomb the valley, leaving Caine and Dao to move in and mop up. Caine also wanted some bombing in the neighborhood of the camp in order to protect their base, which would be defenseless once he moved out. Cunningham, of course, was furious.

“Damn it, Caine. How in hell am I supposed to get you a flight of bombers when officially we don't exist in Laos?”

“The flight is checked out for a strike in Nam. They just hit the wrong target Accidents happen all the time in war,” he said.

“No go, buddy. You're not only exceeding orders, you're blowing us wide open.”

“Bullshit, Cunningham. Stupidity is being unable to do anything other than follow orders,” he had retorted angrily. “Fuck orders, because I'm going in and unless you support me, the Meo force will cease to exist.”

He went back to his hut confident that Cunningham would come through. People will do anything in the name of military expediency. The one great advantage they had in Laos was that officially they didn't exist. Cunningham more than anyone else should appreciate that, he thought. Not like those poor bastards in Nam who had politicians running the army, fucking things up all the way down to the company level. When he got back to the hut, he was disquieted by Chong's fatalistic calm.

“You're sure you'll be able to handle it, Uncle Chong? We only have this one chance to trap them,” he said as Chong finished playing. In the corner Lim's daughter sat like an icon, staring into the fire. Her eyes were flames, the only thing about her that was alive.

“Rest easy, Tan Caine. You will lead us to victory as you have before. We will destroy all of them, God help them.”

How can Chong not hate them, he wondered. He remembered the time Chong had straightened the contorted limbs of a guerrilla they had killed in an ambush, so that his soul would rest more comfortably.

“Leave him alone,” Dao demanded angrily. “He was a Communist.”

“He was a man,” Chong had answered simply.

But it was Dao who had been right, Caine thought. Compassion was weakness. Perhaps it was compassion that had made Chong hesitate that fraction of a second and led to his being captured. Death is nothing; it's dying that is so hard, he decided. And Chong's calm. He couldn't understand that either. Perhaps he'd had a premonition. Lim had a premonition and it made her anything but calm. He'd awakened in the middle of the night to find her trying to stifle her sobbing so as not to disturb him.

“I'm so afraid,” the words bursting out of her. “When you are gone, who will look after us? Who will protect your son?”

He cradled her in his arms as though she were a child, gently stroking her long black hair. What the hell, he thought. What the hell.

“Perhaps you'll find another man, who will give you a dozen sons,” he teased.

She shook her head wildly. “I'm yours forever,” she cried desperately.

“Only death is forever,” he said.

Nowhere in the record of propaganda called history will one find any mention of the battle of Nong Het. The Communists never talked about their defeat, the Laotians publicly ignored it, and the Americans officially weren't involved. Sure, Caine thought. Tell that to Chong and the thousands who filled that valley with the stench of death. More than anything, he remembered the stench of blackened corpses when they finally took the village.

He had found Chong's naked body tied to a stake at the edge of the village, recognizable only by the necklace around his neck. The flesh below his knees had been beaten off with bicycle chains and bones gleaming white in the sun were all that was left of his legs. They had gouged out his eyes and cut off his ears, nose, lips, and genitals. The wounds were black with maggots and fat swarming flies. With a shudder, he cut Chong down and forced himself to straighten the limbs as Chong himself had done.

Lynhiavu came up to him, smiling, proudly holding up a severed head for Caine's approval. The dusty street was full of bodies and by the thorn fence dozens of bodies were piled in a loose tangle. Sporadic fire and grenade explosions still echoed in the remorseless heat as the mopping up went on.

“There are many prisoners in the big hut, Tan Caine. What should we do with them?” Lynhiavu asked, grinning.

“Don't waste ammunition,” Caine replied tonelessly. “Secure the hut and set fire to it.”

He was damp with sweat as he got out of bed to get another cigarette, lighting it from the still burning butt in his mouth. A gray misty dawn was breaking over the beach. He noted with satisfaction that his hand wasn't trembling as he lit up. When he turned around, he found that C.J. was awake. She regarded him seriously, a vague concern mirrored in her soft blue eyes.

“You smoke too much,” she said quietly.

He found that wildly funny and let out a short harsh laugh. Nobody in Indochina ever figured that they'd live long enough to get cancer. What do they know anyway, he thought. He remembered telling the psychologist during his exit interview in Langley that he didn't want to burn down any more huts with screaming gooks inside.

“What else is bothering you?” the psychologist had asked, as if that wasn't enough.

If they couldn't understand that, how would they understand how he found Lim when he returned to base? The camp had been hit by a cluster bomb and most of her body was a festering blob of flesh and insects, indentifiable only by her plastic shower shoes. The stench was indescribable and he was retching with the salt taste of tears and sweat on his lips. Nothing was left of the little girl's body, except for a few tatters of rags and charred bones, and all he kept thinking was, we did it. It wasn't just the gooks or Charley, it was us, and he knew that he had to quit.