Once an Eagle (126 page)

He winked once. “Maybe I'll sidestep him.”

“Don't be facetious,” she snapped. “You're not thirty-five anymore, Sam. I don't want you out there, wallowing around in rice paddies and jungle. You'll come down with something horrible.”

“I've already got everything horrible you can get.”

“No you haven't, and you know it.” Her agitation had grown with her talk rather than being diminished by it. “Probably they want a sacrificial lamb. Someone they won't miss—that's why they're calling you back. If it's a political thing …”

He eyed her askance, soberly. “That's possible. I thought of that. But I don't believe the Chief would do something like that.”

“You sound awfully sure of yourself … How long will it be for?”

“Honey, I don't know.”

She began to walk up and down in the bedroom. “—I don't see why you have to do this,” she explained. “Jesus, war is vile …”

“Isn't it.”

“I know I'm too old and foolish for it, but there are times when I wish I were a pacifist. An out-and-out pacifist. Sometimes I think the only truth is in peace. You know—what they say: Speak truth to power.”

He nodded. “Yes. Sometimes I do, too. The only trouble is, power exists in the world. There it is—and the only way is to deal with it, face it out … Or anyway, that's the crummy old way I see it.”

“No,” she said after a moment. “I don't suppose there's any other way.”

His eyes shot up to hers—a startled, anxious glance, almost frightened.

“What's the matter?”

“Nothing. Nothing.”

Standing at the foot of the bed she watched him as he took off his field shoes, yellowed now with the adobe clay the house sat on. She could tell: it was going to be an adventure; he was going to go forth to do great deeds. The idiot! But she loved him: he was all she had and she loved him. It was wrong, all wrong—they had
left
the Army, they had bought this house on a home loan, they had found new friends and old friends and a new rhythm—and now it was all to be torn apart because some officious, misguided fool in the office of the Chief of Staff had had a brainstorm. Ridiculous. He drew off his sweaty T-shirt and her eyes darted swiftly over the scars: the scorched and puckered skin, foreign and rubescent, above the breast, the unpleasantly smooth purple grooves and triangles on the shoulder and back. His left arm and shoulder were thinner, more pinched than his right. He will be killed, the thought struck her like an open hand; if he goes this time he won't come back. She remembered the crazy masked ball at Garfield and Ben in the outlandish bummer's costume, and the quarrel with Massengale, and her sudden, awful premonition, prevision, whatever it was. But Ben had been only a friend—

“—Don't go.”

She had never said anything like this before; anger and pride had always checked her. But now she didn't care. She thought of Jean Mayberry, and Mae Lee, and her own long, desolate war years, with a shiver of revulsion: she didn't want to be separated ever again from this worn, silly, earnest, lovable, maddening old man. She came up to him and put her hand deliberately on the slick, lacerated flesh. “Don't go, Sam. Please. I don't care who's a Communist or Fascist-imperialist or necrophilist or any damned thing else. Tell them you're not going. Please …”

He gazed at her very somberly for a moment, chewing at the inside of his cheek. “Honey, on Pala when I was hit, an Imperial Marine dumped a grenade in the CP hole and all I could do was lie there and look at it. And the only reason I'm sitting here right now looking at you is because a boy threw himself on it to save my beat-up old hide. And his name was Joe Brand.”

“Oh,” she said faintly. “You never told me that.”

“No … So if they want me now, do you think I've got the right to sit back and let things float along? after that?”

“—But he wanted you to
live,
” she protested.

“Yes. He must have.” His voice was hard as flint, without inflection. “And frankly, I doubt very much if I was worth it.” He stared off at the tortured black limbs of the pines above the canyon. “It involves China,” he said. “The two Chinas, I mean … It's a very explosive situation they've got out there.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “China …”

“Yes. The Chief was talking to me for a minute or two himself.”

She locked her fingers together.
“China—”
she burst out, “—do you mean to tell me they're actually—”

“All right,” he answered, in the tone she'd heard him use with troops, the tone that nobody went on arguing against. Smiling faintly he patted her on the hip. “Now I've already told you more than I should have. And only because I know you're such a good, disciplined little camp follower.” Pressing down on his thighs he heaved himself to his feet. “Honey, it's a pretty crucial affair, I think. I've got to go—and I've got to give it all I've got.”

She put her hand to his cheek. “Zu Befehl, Herr old General.”

“That's the pitch.”

Listening to his voice on the phone she got out his Valpac and B-bag and his service suntans, and began transferring the ribbons with deft care, as she'd done for years. There were so many: the baby-blue rectangle of the Medal of Honor with its five staggered white stars, all by itself at the top; the Distinguished Service Cross with cluster, the Silver Star three times, the Purple Heart with cluster, the decorations from France and Great Britain and Italy and Portugal; the festive little parade of service and theater medals. The Presidential Unit Citation alone he would not wear: because of Court Massengale. Court was there now in Khotiane as head of the advisory groups, surrounded by his retinue of sycophants and hatchet men.

“Lion's den,” she muttered crossly, working: apprehension had always made her sullen. “Walking into a lion's den. Cobra pit, more likely.”

From the bathroom he called: “You say something, honey?”

“No. Nothing …”

She was rummaging around for underwear and skivvy shirts and socks when she came upon the piece of twisted iron, lying in a little box among some belts and shoelaces; black as lava, contorted. The Tweaker had dug it out of his back on Palamangao, probably to the tune of some esoteric and ribald remark. Scrap iron from the good old USA, Sam had said, come home to roost. She thought of Bert MacConnadin standing spraddle-legged in the middle of the croquet lawn that sunny December morning, his round, red face defiant and amused. What had he said? He'd wanted a return on his investments,
that
was what he cared about: now: today.

Sam was in the shower now; he started to sing—he had always loved to sing in the shower—and then broke off, as though he realized that she would hear him and construe it as high spirits.

“Go ahead,” she called in bleak distress, knowing he could not hear her, “I don't care, go ahead and sing … ” Laying out his green fatigues, pale with wear and launderings, his gleaming field shoes, groping deep in the back of his closet for his web belt and canteens and poncho and mosquito net. She felt stiff with resentment and fear. There was no end to it, no end at all, and they didn't care. There on the other side of the world in some dripping nipa hut her counterpart was sorting out
her
man's gear with a desolate, frantic heart. What did it matter whether Khotiane was controlled by Communists or a Fascist junta or an imperialist viceroy or a sun worshipers' convention? All
they
wanted—she and that wiry little Khotianese woman—were their men, safe at home, sweaty, carefree, singing in the shower …

The bottom drawer of his dresser held some khaki shirts. He'd been using them for work shirts, but three or four were still in good condition and nicely laundered. She lifted them out—and saw in the far corner of the drawer the little pink-and-blue papier-mâché marshal's baton from the Jongleur Ivre, crushed and half-unraveled at one end. Gazing at it she began soundlessly to weep, her tears staining the starched khaki.

2

The hills were
a deep green; far below they heaved and sank like the backs of restless animals and in the valleys the rice paddies lay in feathery, pale lime patterns, flashing silver when the sun struck the water. Listening through the earphones Wodtke the crew chief had given him, Joey Krisler heard a voice say: “Tango Tiger, this is Three-zero-five. I am thuh-ree minutes from target. Over …” He looked up, encountered the leathery, wrinkled face of Sam Damon, who winked at him somberly. He winked back, and over the shuttling roar of the rotor mouthed the phrase:
Here—goes—nothin' …

No matter how many times you did it, jungle or fir forests or barren, frozen hills, there was always that sharp, electric surge deep in your chest, like a blast of cold air; the old adrenalin pumping hard. And hard on that the pictures came racing the way they always did: Karas with his hands over his belly and his mouth wide, gasping: Ogline's back laid open, jacket and sweater and shirt and flesh and bone in a raw, streaming crater: the little medic sitting in the doorway staring in silent terrible awe at where his leg no longer was, Jensen on fire from his own flamethrower, rolling and writhing in the snow, turning it black—and through and over and inside all these the utterly stupefying blows on his arm, in his face, like the blunt end of an axe—and the searing pain and then the great, weak, liquid flooding. All the things that could happen to a man at war: all the rending possibilities. He knew so many of them now.

Wodtke clapped the little Khotianese squad leader on the shoulder, then turned to Damon and held up two fingers. The Old Man nodded once and picked up the '03, which looked slender and antiquated in the company of all the newer, grosser weapons. Krisler watched the General's hands lift a clip from his belt, tap the points once, smartly, on the stock, and insert it, his fingers flowing over the nicely templed bolt. Old Sad Sam, he thought: going to another war. No end to them.

He had spent half his convalescent leave from Korea with the Damons, waiting to find out what his face would look like, trying not to worry, telling himself it didn't matter: what was a chewed-up cheek and jaw compared to the loss of a leg or an arm, or a piece of your jewelry? Before then Tommy had always made him nervous—her quick, mordant wit had hit him on his blind side, so to speak; she seemed always to be judging him. He knew what it was—she was measuring him against Donny and finding him wanting more than a little. Which was natural enough: Donny had been tall and graceful and he had a terrific mind, whereas he himself was short and had never looked very special—and what was he going to look like now? But down at Benning, then, he'd come to be very fond of her: most of that wild, cantankerous side had vanished. She'd fed him, fattened him up, changed his dressings; it had been she who had driven him home after the plastic surgery bouts and bucked him up when the results weren't all they might have been. “They'll get it next time, you'll see—it's a hundred percent better.” And when he'd gloomily protested, she had straightened him out: “What do you expect to look like—Tyrone Power? They can't improve you that much. You'll never make it in the movies, anyway—none of you Krislers ever had any dramatic talent …”

Which wasn't so, to hear Sam tell it: according to Sam, his father was a fantastic actor with troops. After the arm had healed and the plastic surgery was over, they had gone on some great pack trips together up in Canada and out in the Cascades, fishing mostly. Sam had told him about Moapora and the native outriggers, and the ruckus over the ITC stenciling, and the yellow scarf, and the time on Wokai when the whole regiment was pinned down under some of the heaviest fire Sam had ever seen and his father had said to Bowcher, in his best parade-ground voice: “Stan, there's a raft of saki in those caves and if we don't get up there and take 'em the greedy little muff-divers are going to drink it all up …” His father had had color to spare—which was more than he could say. He could make it on his own, get a job done; and that was about all. Like Paprika Ben, he hated routine; he'd been delighted when Sam had asked for him for this mission. There were times when all the Army seemed to be full of was school or passing papers around. Jane hadn't liked it very much, but she was a sensible gal: she knew it was what
he
wanted, and that was good enough for her. It wouldn't be long, and the experience on a politico-military junket like this would be invaluable …

Some of the invaluable experience was rising toward him now. The helicopter began to vibrate sharply as the rotor shifted to maximum pitch. The Khotianese were peering through the open door, their mouths open, doubled over their weapons. Krisler took off the earphones, zippered up his armored vest and picking up his carbine inserted a banana clip in the breech. They were dropping fast now, slipping down a vast mountainside; the effect was of sinking, heavily weighted and pulled by a strong current, through water. The green blur on their left became high jungle. Sergeant Wodtke snapped himself into the long safety belt that was made fast to the helicopter door and picked up the wicked-looking M-14 with its blocky pistol grip and tubular flash hider at the end of the barrel. Krisler just had time to think of a guerrilla team sprawled behind an automatic weapon bore-sighted for the landing-zone approach, and to feel the curiously unpleasant sense between his legs, of descending so indolently, of being
above
fire. Then they were sweeping in low over the tall trees, a valley fanned out below them green and marshy, and a clearing. They sank like autumn leaves on a windless day and hit with a jar, and the high swamp grass swept back from the blast of the rotor, a tiny hurricane. Wodtke tapped the shoulder of the squad leader; he dropped out of sight, another, another, gripping their rifles high. Krisler moved forward behind the Old Man, and jumped. His feet went deep into muck, a big splash. He straightened, and moving away from the chopper he heard the old, familiar uproar of gunfire. Sam was standing perfectly motionless, waiting, as Gene Villarette, their interpreter, and Bob Forbes, the Old Man's junior aide, hurried toward them from Three-oh-seven.

“Did you see it?” Forbes asked. “That gun?”

“No,” he answered. “Where?”

“Low on the hillside. Near that little creek. Four or five rounds. Like a BAR on slow rate.”

There were huts in a dense cluster, their palm thatching withered and white against the rain forest. Soldiers were moving through them in a line, firing. Near one hut some Khotianese women stood in a tight, small group as though, huddled together, they could protect one another, render themselves immune to danger. They wore the typical ankle-length dresses of black or brown homespun, with a single broad hem of red-and-white embroidery. Captain Desautels, one of the MACK advisers on the sweep, was shouting something and pointing, and up ahead Krisler could hear the thinner snap of a small-caliber weapon. On the left there was a hue and cry, and turning he saw a slight figure splashing through the far end of the paddy, arms flailing, the water dancing around him in high, bright sheets. There was a burst of firing but the boy—it looked like a young boy—slipped into the reeds bordering the edge of the paddy, scrambled up the bank and vanished into the forest.

Krisler frowned. Damon was walking along behind the line of Khotianese soldiers, his rifle held easily in one hand. Ahead now there was the cough of grenades, but muffled, as though discharged underground. They had reached the huts; the women, some of them with babies at their breasts, were crowded around Desautels now, moaning and wailing. He was shaking his head at them sternly, his hand moving in peremptory demurral. A body lay nearby in the grass and mud, face down; a thin, wiry body in a long-sleeved jacket and loose black trousers. He was wearing sandals of tires held by thongs made from inner tubes. There was a narrow piece of webbing around his waist, and hanging from it what looked like a large ball of suet. There was no weapon. Krisler bent down and turned him over; the man's face was blunt and sturdy; so much blood was streaming from his nose and mouth it was impossible to tell where he had been hit. Krisler picked up the ball of suet and found it was a lump of glutinous rice wrapped in parachute nylon.

“He dead?” Kettelson, another of the advisers, was standing above him. He nodded, rose and moved on. The sweep was moving quickly through the huts now. A soldier just ahead of him called, “La dai, la dai!” and a bent old man with a white beard came out of the hut nearest them, his eyes narrowed. The soldier motioned him away sharply, slipped a grenade from his belt and pulled the pin. The old farmer's eyes went wide; he croaked something inaudible and waved his arms. The soldier lobbed the grenade into the entrance and ducked away quickly. The old man shouted something that sounded like, “Po ban nah!” and started back for the hut, coming right past Krisler, who stared at him in amazement—then caught him around the waist and flung him to the ground as gently as a gesture that violent could be, falling with him, watching the soldier scuttle away from the entrance. At that instant there came the thin, choked squalling of a baby from the hut. Lying there on his belly, Krisler thought with the brevity of dread, Four second lag—nothing to do; then: Oh Jesus—that's why he wanted to get back in there; then: Maybe it's a dud, it might be a dud, if only it's a—

The explosion was sharp and violent. Dust boiled sluggishly and bits of mud and earth spattered out of the entrance. Silence. He ran forward, stepped inside. In the center of the hut was a funny little bunker, like a squat beehive of dried mud; its side had been blown out by the grenade, and he peered in. Several forms in a dark tangle of limbs and strips of clothing and bits of pottery and a great deal of blood. The small bodies were mangled and limp. None of them moved. He stepped back.

“What is it?” It was Sam, behind him in the dim light.

“Two children—it looks like two children—and the mother and a baby.”

They glanced at each other tensely, looked away. Then the General turned and they went out—to run against another soldier holding a flaming stick to the thatched eaves.

“What are
you
doing?” Damon demanded.

The Khotianese obviously knew no English. Nervously he smiled, and his free hand rose all at once in a graceful pantomime of conflagration. Then he darted off down the row. Several of the huts were already on fire; smoke rolled thickly around them, foul and stifling. Krisler could hear more shouted commands and the troops kept moving on quickly, grenading the huts and burning them; the wailing of the women and children rose still higher. Krisler swallowed and wiped his mouth. The old farmer was on his knees where Krisler had tackled him, facing his blazing hut, his thick, gnarled hands pressed together at his temples. With a curious deliberateness he rocked up and down from the waist, his seamed face convulsed with grief. His long white hair ruffled in the wind.

Jesus Christ, Krisler thought. He hurried after Sam, who was walking quickly toward two of the American advisers.

“Captain,”
the Old Man called. His face was fearsome. He did not shout, but his voice carried clearly against the wind and explosions.
“Captain …”

Desautels broke away from the other officer and said, “Yes, General?”

“You are firing these huts.”

“Yes, sir. Those are my orders. All hooches containing bunkers.”

Damon stared at him. “Bunkers—those pitiful little mud shelters …?”

“Yes, General. They are to be considered of an offensive nature.”

“But you're firing their clothes, too—their food, their rice—how are they going to live?”

Desautels frowned. “They're to be relocated, General. The whole village.”

“Who authorized this action?”

“General Tho Huc, sir. And General Bannerman concurs.”

The Old Man closed his mouth. “I see. Carry on.”

“Very good, sir.” Desautels trotted off toward what looked like a storage shed at the far side of the village.

Sam shot Krisler and the others a quick, furious glance and said, “Come on. Let's see it all …” They went on. Nearly all the huts seemed to be on fire, their roofs seething in a crackling roar through which showers of sparks swirled and rained like mica. Everywhere there was the rancid stench of burned food and clothing.

In the clearing before the storage shed a man was crouching on the hard dirt, a boy of perhaps seventeen or eighteen. He was squatting on his thighs; he was naked to the waist and his hands were tied behind his back. A Khotianese regular was bent over him, speaking to him imperiously and persistently. The boy made no reply. At the end of each sentence the soldier would strike him across the face with a slender bamboo strip, and a fiery red welt would rise on his face or neck. The others stood watching, in silence. Finally the boy said something, and looked down.

“What did he say, Gene?” Sam asked Villarette.

“He says he is a rice farmer, he knows nothing about the Hai Minh.”

“—He is a liar and a pig,” the interrogator said. He was a sergeant, a short, powerfully built man with a heavy jaw and a small, pinched mouth. He said something in Khotianese, took his bayonet out of the scabbard and repeated the question. Then with a deft, tantalizingly casual motion he drew the point across the prisoner's chest. Blood leaped out in a lazy curve of bubbles and the boy winced, then stiffened again.

“For Christ's sake,” Forbes said angrily.

The sergeant smiled; lowering the point of the bayonet he held it against the boy's belly, very low, his fingers pressing gently on the haft, and repeated the question. The boy said nothing. The interrogator pressed a little harder, and the blade entered the flesh. Sweat was running in great streams down the prisoner's lacerated face, and now blood began to seep into his trousers, staining the dark cloth; his teeth were bared.