The Cover of War (22 page)

47

Tan Son Nhut AFB

LZ-40

10°48'41"N
106°39'49"E

C
haske swung the jeep into the Air America compound.

At 0530, high
air pressure held the JP-4 fumes close to the ground. The oily taste of
kerosene collected in the tread of Chaske's tongue, and seeped down his throat.
He scraped his tongue against his front teeth. He was anxious to get airborne.

Most of the big
hangars were lit up and buzzing with activity. A procession of F-4 Phantoms
whined slowly along a taxiway; an AC-130 with a smoking engine landed and
turned sharply off the active toward them, a fire-tender rushing to intercept.

The jeep's
headlights revealed a figure beside the hangar, moving as if trying to keep
warm despite the eighty-degree air temperature. It was Jim Hurley.

Chaske parked
the jeep, slung the military issue cram-sack with Jim's fifty-thousand inside,
and said to
Cam
: 'Let's go.'

Without
speaking, Jim took them through a side-door, and into the hangar's dark,
voluminous interior. Jim flicked switches and the bright hangar lights came on
and an electric chain-drive began peeling back the main aircraft doors, letting
a pinkish haze leak in from the tarmac.

'Follow me,' Jim
said.

Chaske followed
him behind the tail of a Fairchild C-123 Provider, with the innards of its port
engine spread on the oil-stained concrete.
Cam
kept close behind him. The smell of hydraulic fluid, machine parts,
and kerosene worked into the space behind Chaske's eyes.

I hope I'm
doing the right thing
.

They stooped
under the trailing edge of the C-123's portside wing, and Chaske saw the
bubble-canopied Cayuse, crouching like a grasshopper at the hangar entrance. It
was almost new, and an M-134 mini-gun was bolted to its starboard skid.

He's outdone
himself-

'Take your eyes
off that,' Jim said. 'This is your machine over here.'

Behind the new
Cayuse, a second OH-6 sat on a wheeled dolly.

Chaske took-in
second machine's battered bodywork.

'She's a bit rough
round the edges,' Jim said. 'But it'll serve your purpose. She's got the
modified fuel tank that'll give you the extra range you need. Draw back is
you'll be right on the weight limit for take off. Spare fuel cans for the
return leg are in the luggage compartments - you listening?'

Chaske nodded
and ran his hand over the dented skin, which had been brush painted it in
flat-olive-drab. A large caliber slug was embedded in the plexi-glass bubble.

'Take it or
leave it, pal.' Jim said. 'Be quick. I've got other business.'

Chaske tossed
Jim the cram-sack. Jim caught it, smirked, and put the bag down. Jim then
unfolded a map on the hangar floor. 'Don't loose this map, Chaske; or you're
dead.'

Chaske thought:
Where
the hell is Golota?

The Phantoms'
roar filled the hangar as they took-off two at a time.
 

Jim tapped the
map. 'Follow the marked flight routes
exactly,
and you stand the best
chance of survival.'

Chaske's gut
tightened.

'Open the aux
fuel valve before the main tank hits reserve. Squawk is one-zero-six point
four. Your call-sign is Charlie-Tango-One-Niner. Make sure you clear yourself
into - and out of - all airspace, or you
will
be shot down. Home-plate
is
Da Nang
, okay. You won't
have enough fuel to make detours. Approach charts for
Da
Nang
are in the folder in front. You got all that?'

Chaske's eye
followed the zigzagging red ink that indicated the flight-path, and he thought:
What the hell am I doing?
'Yeah, got it, Jim.'

Jim scowled.
'Where's your pilot?'

Chaske looked
back to the C-123, expecting Golota to come under its wing at any second.

Where the
hell is he?

'Who
is
your pilot?'

'A pilot,'
Chaske said. 'That's all you need to know.'

'
Bull
shit.
That's my Goddamn machine.'

Chaske raised
his hands. 'John Golota.'

Jim's head went
up. 'He hasn't flown for months.'

'He's current on
the Cayuse.'

Jim nodded.
'Tell that cowboy to look after my girl.' Then he turned and spoke over his
shoulder: 'Nice doin' business with you, Chaske.' Jim got halfway across the
hangar and stopped. He held up the duffel bag. 'If it's not all there-'  

'The money's all
there,' Chaske said. 'I do my business above board.'

Jim left.

Chaske and
Cam
started loading the Cayuse.

'Will he come?'
Cam
said. 

Chaske heard
footsteps, and a human shadow stretched out from under the C-123. Golota
stalked across the hangar toward them. Chaske felt a rush of relief.

Golota smoothed
his spiked hair, glared at
Cam
,
and said: 'What the fuck are you lookin' at?' Then he looked around
theatrically. 'Where's the ginger ninja? I thought he'd be on this?'

'Blue couldn't
make it-'

'Knows a
bullshit mission when he sees one.' Golota pushed past
Cam
and looked inside the Cayuse, which had been stripped back to
metal. 'You expect me to fly this bucket of shit?'

'That's what I'm
paying you for.'

Golota eyed
Cam
. 'This the gook psychic?' He laughed.
'You're a fucking madman Thorn. This is fucked up.' He shook his head. 'I'm
gunna need another grand.'

'We agreed-'

Golota turned
and walked away.

Chaske thought:
I
can't let him go.

'Okay John,'
Chaske called after him. 'That's all I've got.'

Golota came
back. 'Okay, Thorn-'

'Let's just get
airborne,' Chaske said.

Golota climbed
into the pilot's seat and began moving the controls. 'Fucking bullet in the
glass.'

Chaske wondered
if Golota was wired. After this mission, Chaske planned to go to the
Station-Chief and have Golota removed from the unit; but right know he needed
him more than anything.

Golota got out
and began an external check. Chaske heard the clacking of metal clips as Golota
lifted the various cowlings to inspect the working parts. Golota gave the
thumbs-up, and they pushed the Cayuse onto the apron, which glinted with
psychedelic oil slicks, lit up by the rising sun.

Chaske climbed
in and put on his headset. Golota got in beside him, located the APU, and
ignited the starter. Behind them, the turbine began whining like a blocked
vacuum cleaner; the pitch increasing steadily as the engine came to life.

Cam
looked pale, and sat silently against the rear bulkhead. The
turbine hit its pitch and Chaske saw the gauges climb into the green. Through
the headset, he heard Golota contact the tower and receive clearance to takeoff
one-eight-zero degrees.

Golota slowly
throttled up and the Cayuse began to shake.

Okay,
Chaske thought.
Let's go.
Then he was struck by pure shock. A
face appeared at the plexi-glass. It was Blue.

Blue yelled
above the whine: 'Any room for an old cobber?'

Chaske beamed.
'You bloody bet, mate.'

Golota said:
'Fucking pansies.'

Blue got into
the back. 'Gidday. Who're you?'

Chaske could
smell Blue's alcoholic breath over the kero. 'Blue, meet
Cam
,' he said. 'What about your parents? It
meant a lot to you.'

Blue showed no
emotion. 'There'll be another time.'

Golota took the
turbine to full power and the rotors whirred overhead. The chopper lifted off,
tilted forward, and fishtailed nose-down across the active-runway.

Chaske heard the
female air-traffic-controller say: 'Charlie-Tango-One-Niner. Traffic bearing
one-zero-six is Stratofortress.'

They cleared Tan
Son Nhut's perimeter and banked North-West, gaining altitude in steps.

Chaske let out a
long, slow breath. A lot had come together quickly: The rest was up to the
Cam
.

48

T
he baby stopped crying and the door opened.

Danny pulled
back in anticipation of kicking boots. Something was shoved into the hole and
the door pushed quickly shut.

The bolt
crunched home and all of Danny's fears amplified into pure terror. There was
something in his cell - and it wasn't human.

What the fuck
is it?

Danny began to
hyperventilate.

The creature
crawled onto his legs; its fur bristly and course; its breathing heavy. Danny
drew himself into a fetal position against the back wall, but the animal moved
with him. He could taste its hot, stale breath, and he could feel its claws on
his thighs. It yawned and nestled into his groin.

What the fuck
is happening to me?

Danny tried
desperately to stay still, hoping that whoever put the creature in his hole
would come and take it out.

The high-wattage
bulb snapped on. The heavy darkness became bright light. He looked into the
snarling set of fangs, wrapped in pale pink gums.

Baboon!

The baboon
slammed into the roof and lashed out with its front claws. Then it fell back,
bounced off the door, and came forward again.

Danny covered
his face with his elbows and knew that he would die - ripped to pieces by a
wild animal, in an underground tomb, hundreds-of-miles from anywhere.

Why did Amai
do this to me?

* * *

Amai felt Triet's fingers lock into her
hair.

Face down, she
was dragged from her from her cell and into the main tunnel. Triet released her
and turned on the single electric light.

Amai held her
breath to listen. She could hear an animal and a man, screaming as though
locked in mortal combat.

Baboon,
she thought.

Triet laughed.
'He is so weak. What did you see in him?'

She realized the
screaming was Danny's, and her stomach dropped. Triet was torturing him, and
her torment she knew, would be to listen; to feel his pain; to imagine his
horror; and be powerless to stop it.

Amai knew what
Triet had done. She had heard of this kind of torture; it was unusually cruel
and normally reserved for hated political prisoners.

He's hurting
him to hurt me,
she thought.

She could taste
her tears, and she could hear herself screaming, hollow and mournful in the
deep cylinder of dirt. The thought of her beloved Danny, ripped to pieces by a
baboon was too much to take.

She lunged at
Danny's door, desperate to open it.

Triet dragged
her back by her feet. She clawed and kicked at him and screamed for him to
stop.

She knew he
would not.

* * *

The panicked baboon attacked and Danny felt
a strange sense of calm surround him.

The creature
would kill him, of that he was sure. But in an instant, something in his makeup
changed. A deep and suppressed urge took hold of him: the primal urge to
survive. 

Danny opened his
eyes and saw the lunging creature. He uncoiled himself from the pathetic
fetal-ball, braced himself against the floor, and slammed both feet into its
soft belly. The baboon snorted and Danny drove it back into the door, blasting
the air from its lungs.

It's him or
me!

The baboon
squirmed loose and squeezed down his left side. Everything became lucid. Danny
could see clearly in the bright light. He stared into the baboon's beady eyes.
Its snout peeled back, revealing sharp canines.

Adrenaline
flooded Danny's muscles.

The animal
lunged.

Danny knew what
was coming; and before it happened, he was already reacting. He caught the
animal by its gristly throat and dumped it on its back, slamming his own head
into the low ceiling as he twisted forward. Then Danny drove his knee into its
belly, gripped its neck as hard as he could, and throttled the baboon until its
body went limp.

The light
flicked off and the baby began crying. 

Danny slumped.
The adrenaline drained from his blood and the strength from his muscles. The
creature was dead.

He curled up
feeling shock and disbelief.
They don't care if I die,
he thought.
What's
happening?
If Triet was holding him as a bargaining chip, he wouldn't risk
killing him like this.

Then Danny's
disbelief turned to dread. There would be no deal, he realized. No tradeoff.

Triet will
torture me to death!

His body's
primal urge to survive had kept him from dying, but now, curled up in his cell
with the fetid stink of the dead baboon, his desire to live began to fade.

Amai,
he thought.
She's done this to me.
It's all her.

* * *

Danny's screaming stopped.

She had no idea
if he was alive or dead.

Then Triet
grabbed her hair and dragged her backwards. She scrambled on her knees to
lessen the pain, and crawled back into her cell without a fight. She was
crying. The cruelty burned her too deeply and her mind reeled with the anguish.

For a while, she
lay in her cell thinking a million thoughts of Danny. She had to assume he was
alive, even if he wasn't; otherwise her mind would wither and die.

I have to get
to him
, she thought.
I have to.

In the total
dark her vision was useless. As a result, her brain devoted all of its power to
hearing and touch. With these senses now honed to the point of ultra
sensitivity, her mind built up a picture of her environment. In her mind's eye
she could see each depression in the clay walls; the door; its hinges; the gap
along its opening edge; the main tunnel beyond; Danny's location; the
zigzagging tube that led to the surface; and the steamy jungle above.

Bodies scrapped
past her door. The guttural mumblings and laughter moved away into the depths,
quickly masked by the thickness of the earth.

The silence
crushed her. Amai had lived underground, ironically in this very complex, but
compared to this torturous hole, the two situations were poles apart.

Then she tensed
and put her ear to the door; the faintest of sounds had come from Danny's
direction.

He's alive
.

She yelled into
the door, desperate for Danny to hear her, but there was no response. She
thumped the edge of her fist against the timber, hoping he would feel the
vibration, but several minutes of thumping led to nothing.

This is
useless,
she thought.

Then it came to
her. She groped around the floor, running her hands over the smooth, compacted
clay. Where the back wall met the floor, her middle finger hit something hard
and she felt a rush of excitement: a piece of shale was imbedded in the dirt,
and her fingers automatically went to work on loosening it.

She dug around
it, wiggled it, and then pulled it free.

Amai held the
shale in her hand and felt buoyed. She took it to the door, guessed the
lock-bolt's position, and started boring into the wall on the door's opening
edge. The clay was hard, but she twisted and dug the shale into the wall,
determined to make a hole. Shavings of dirt dropped onto her pajama pants, and
every so often, she spread it across the floor, just incase Triet returned and
discovered what she was doing.

After time, the
chiseling became laborious. Thoughts and emotions entered her mind; emotions
that had to be controlled if she was to survive. She spread out more spoil, and
kept digging.

I failed to
warn the Americans of Tet,
she thought. She
pictured the slaughter.
I'm responsible. I'll never stop it now!
The
thought made her feel sick. She spread out more spoil and dug harder, feeling
blood on her fingers.
Triet's torturing the man I love.
She drove the
stone into the clay.
I hate him.

Then Amai
realized that she had succeeded in boring a small hole in the wall, and she set
about enlarging it.

Poor Danny,
she thought.
I love him so much. I have to get to him. I have to
get out of here.

All she had
wanted was to be with Danny; to get away from this war and this hate. She
wanted to wake up beside him in the mornings and listen to the sound of the
birds singing and their children playing.

I must
escape,
she thought.
I must get to him.

But she knew it
was next to hopeless and felt defeat return. She spread out more spoil and kept
digging.

Then she heard
sounds in the main tunnel. She put her ear to the door and heard bodies and
muffled voices and her heart sank.

Triet was back.