The Daisy Ducks (5 page)

"About four in the morning, Jusuelo wakes me up
and says there's noise in the bush. It was a platoon of Khmer Rouge
moving up and over our little hill. We snuggled down and froze and
let them go right over us. If we took them on we'd give away our
position and get badly chewed up, too. They went over the hill and
down to the village. We used a starlight scope to track 'em and could
see clear as day. They surrounded the village, and at first light
they stormed in there fast and got all the villagers out of their
huts.

"Then they rounded them up in the central
clearing and made them sit down. Then they started the usual shit,
you know, hitting the wives and kids with rifle butts, cutting a
guy's head off —"

"Usual? Usual! " Mary had risen from her
chair and was staring balefully at Roantis, whose manner was that of
someone recounting the details of a church rummage sale.

"Yeah. See Mary, Asia isn't like Europe or
America. It just isn't. Not even in the most modern places. The
standard drill for these guerrilla groups is to enter a village and
terrorize it. Shows the people who's boss. Shows them they better not
screw around. So anyway, they killed two of the strongest men and
beat up some other villagers pretty bad. Now we thought of going in
right then, but we decided to use the terror to our own advantage."

"So you stood by," said Mary, "and let
this happen so when you showed up you'd be the good guys."

"Right."

"You're no better than the Khmer Rouge, Liatis."

"You're wrong, Mary. Know what? We were worse.
Because if we weren't, we'd be dead. So anyway, they left in
midmorning after taking all the rice and dried meat they could lay
their hands on. We went in at noon and helped bandage the wounded and
bury the two headless corpses. We were the heroes. We talked to the
old chief Siu Lok, for a coupla hours. He was real steamed of course
because one of the guys they killed was his son. We told him he was
next—him and his whole family—and he had about nine kids. He
seemed to know this, and told us the Khmer Rouge would probably
return that night to take the young men away for soldiers. So we
fixed a plan with Siu Lok. We decided to stay awhile in the village.
They gave us food and all the women we wanted."

Mary's lip curled in disgust.

"Remember, Mary: not like Europe or America."
He patted his shirt and sides for butts. I offered him a cigar but he
declined. Then he vanished again and hiked upstairs. He returned
shortly with a cigarette rolling machine and paper. I knew where it
came from. He rolled several cigarettes made with my pipe tobacco,
lighted one, and returned to his story.

"So, toward late afternoon, the Daisy Ducks
fanned out from the village. Summers had a li'l Chinese mortar with
him that he'd gleeped off a dead gook, and that was going to be the
diversion. At twilight we hunkered down in the bush along the route
we thought the enemy would take. Before long we heard that hissing,
snapping sound in the jungle that means men approaching.

Soon, Kaunitz and I located the point of their
patrol. They were walking exactly where we thought, and Summers had
his mortar sighted in. We went to earth so they'd go right over us."

"Just a sec," said Mary. "You keep
saying you let these guys walk over you. How come they never saw
you?"

The Mongol eyes crinkled again in a grin.

"Mary, in dim light I could hide here in this
room so you'd never see me . . . until it was way, way too late to
save your skin. In a jungle it's a piece of cake. Anyway, when the
patrol got past us, heading toward the village, we closed in behind
them, and on their flanks, too. Those Khmer Rouge were sure of
themselves and moving fast and noisy, never suspecting that we were
behind them and on both sides. They don't know they've got bad
company. just before they get to the village—boom. Off goes that
Chink mortar, and Summers, who's firing it from the riverbank you
see, has put the first round right on the money, so that takes out
four guys right there. He keeps the bombs coming too, as fast as he
can drop them down the tube. Then we'd planted some claymore mines
right where they'd entered the clearing before. Sure enough, they
come streaking in there again and we triggered four of them by wire,
which took care of eight or nine more. By now they're sorry they came
back. Then all the Ducks got going with the automatic small arms fire
from three sides. That and a few frag grenades finished them. Two
guys were still kicking afterward and we interrogated them. Found out
a whole battalion wasn't far away and was getting closer, and that
they had a big ammo dump and field hospital nine clicks away. So we
knew where we'd be headed next.

"But before we took off Siu Lok and the
villagers were so grateful they cooked a pig for us. We feasted and
partied, and then Siu Lok appears with a sackful of goodies for us.
Most of it was gold pieces and some pearls, but he had ivory too. At
first we refused it. But then all of us were thinking about the cash
value of this stuff, you know. I mean, you can't help thinking about
it. He kept insisting we take it. He knew that the village was doomed
and that sooner or later the Reds would take it all anyway. All the
Ducks had done was buy him and the villagers at little more time, and
we all knew it. So we divvied up the stuff. Everybody took some
except me, and Siu Lok was disappointed. Then, in the dead of night,
Siu Lok himself woke me and led me up the hillside where the cooking
wood was stacked to dry. There was a hollow space behind it and a
narrow tunnel. We went in—he was leading the way or I would have
suspected a trap—and after a ways it opened into a little chamber.
As soon as I saw that chamber and what he had stashed in there, I
knew Siu Lok was a river pirate. In that li'l cave was his treasure
trove. And right inna middle of everything was this golden Siva. When
I saw it, I knew it wasn't a Buddhist god but a Hindu god. The
Cambodes are Buddhists. So one, I knew the Siva wasn't sacred to him:
it was merchandise. Two, I knew he'd stolen it, or got it from
another pirate. He really wanted me to have it. So I took it and put
it in my pack. Then I thought, what if I get caught with this thing?
As defined by the military code, taking anything not needed for
military operations is looting. Period. No matter even if the people
want you to take it. Now everybody knows Gls take a lot of stuff, but
it's not big. This is a gold statue. So what if I—the team
leader—get caught with it, eh?

"Just as I'm considering this along comes
Vilarde—second in command—coming off sentry, and we get to
talking. Before long I've taken the Siva out of my pack and we're
both looking at it and trying to guess what the market value is. What
should I do? Keep it, he says. I won't say anything, he says. I'll
even cover for you. Well, I figure the guy's such a straight shooter
that I'll split it with him. The odds were pretty good that some of
us wouldn't make it back in one piece anyway. So what the hell. It's
funny the way you begin to think in combat. In action—especially
behind the lines deep in the boonies—a week is a long, long time. I
decided to go halves on that statue as easy as giving away a pack of
smokes. And I tell you both something, too: I never—until these
past few months—regretted it, either."

"And now you regret it," I said.

"Yeah, sure. But not because of Ken. One of the
reasons I split it with him is because I knew he hadda wife and kid
and they dint have much money. Also, if I was to get hit and the
guys'd find the thing in my pack, I'd want them to know I had at
least mentioned it to somebody else. And Vilarde, as it turned out,
was not only second in command but the only married guy. I thought it
made sense. So anyway, we moved out of the village and made our way
over to the ammo dump that we'd found out about."

"What happened to those soldiers who were still
alive? Did you take them with you or leave them in the village?"
asked Mary.

"Oh them. Well, they dint survive Youn's
interrogation. Nobody ever did. But what would we have done with them
if they had lived? Turned them over to the villagers, of course.
Either way, they were dead meat."

I couldn't conceal my revulsion at this, no matter
how necessary or expedient it might have been. Mary's similar
reaction was written on her face.

"Just before dawn we got to the ammo dump and
the main camp of the Khmer Rouge battalion. We placed the bugs and
split, walking away in dead silence with the clock ticking. We
radioed the secret frequency and the big birds came in overhead, way
high up and invisible and silent, and let go their payload. Two days
later we were back in Nam, then flown on to Nha Trang for debrief. It
was tricky, but we kept that statue out of sight from the brass. We
had a leave coming, and we all took off in different directions.
Vilarde and I went to Hong Kong with our friend Siva. Our first idea
was to sell the thing. But the dealers we tried wouldn't give us
squat for it. I think the best offer we got was ten grand. Screw
that. Besides, we were going back into combat: what would we do with
the money then anyway? We'd just blow it on broads and junk or get
ripped off in a cathouse. So we went across the harbor over to
Kowloon, where we figured things would be less rushed and more
honest. We went to the Barclays Hank and had one of their appraisers
look it over. He said it was worth over a hundred grand easy.

"But thing is, Doc, Mary: he wouldn't buy it, or
even give us a certificate of appraisal. Same thing was bothering him
that bothered everybody else: where'd we get it? Here we are, a
coupla army stiffs just off combat. We're not brass. Where'd we get
it? Was it stolen? Why would anyone wanta buy a stolen pipirce? For
ten grand maybe, but not for six figures. Too risky.

It was a question of loot again. These merchants and
bankers were afraid that the MPs or the British officials were going
to come down on them for fencing loot. Vilarde and I went to lunch
and thought it over. What was our Siva really worth? At that time and
place? About ten, maybe twelve grand. We decided the best thing was
to keep the statue until our tours were up, then take it to the
States and sell it there. That way the thing would increase in value
and we wouldn't blow the money in the meantime. We'd each have
something when we got out—a nest egg to take care of us, right? We
wouldn't tell the other Ducks. They'd gotten their loot and cashed it
in. And there was no way to divide that statue eight ways except to
cut it into li'l pieces, which would wreck it. The deal between us
was this: we each got a key to the box. If one of us got killed, the
other guy could claim the statue all for himself if he could show
that his partner was dead or if he brought in both keys."

"Couldn't that be faked?" I asked.

"Sure. But it was the best solution we could
think of at the time. What should we do? Unload it for a tenth of its
value? Naw. It would be damn hard for one guy to get the other's key
if he dint wanna let it go. I know it would take at least five or six
trained men to get mine—and, if they did, at least two of them
wouldn't be alive. Vilarde's the same. But the plan was mainly good
because we trust each other. You can't depend on a guy to keep you
alive every second of every day for two years and not trust him like
a brother."

Roantis paused here to sip coffee and light another
homemade cigarette.

"The bank had a deal that if you had a certain
amount of money in an account with them, you dint hafta pay box
rental. So Ken and I chipped in and opened the account, knowing the
statue would be safe there as long as it hadda be. They photographed
the piece, locked it up, and away we went. That was over ten years
ago. We got back to Saigon and then were flown to the Long Binh
special forces camp. Within four days were were back in Cambodia
doing the westward sweep toward Thailand again. On the way we
happened to be near Siu Lok's village, so we decided to sneak in
there and see what was going on. That's when we heard the story of
how remnants of the Khmer Rouge battalion fingered him for
collaboration with us and skinned him alive. There was almost nothing
left of the village, and needless to say the people dint welcome us
back. It sort of makes you sad . . . There's no way to win in a
situation like that.

"Well, after two more months of this, I was
tired and pissed off. When my tour expired I decided to leave. It
dint take a genius to see we weren't gonna make it over there, and I
dint wanna hang around and watch. Vilarde had almost a year left on
his tour, and told me he was going to re-up when it was over. He
wanted to be a career man, so I knew he'd stay in Nam as long as
America did. So we agreed when he mustered out stateside he'd look me
up and we'd fly back to Hong Kong together."

"Weren't you kind of impatient?" I asked.

"Well, yeah and no. I knew Ken wouldn't budge
until Vietnam was resolved. Secondly, since he was in constant
combat, I knew my odds of getting the whole statue to myself
increased the longer we waited."

"Isn't that pretty cold-blooded, Liatis?"
Mary asked. She had her chin in her hands and was eyeing the man with
a mixture of curiosity and horror.

"Maybe. Or maybe it's just realistic. I think,
considering the life I've lived, it's just natural. I knew as long as
Ken was soldiering and I was teaching karate in Boston, the odds of
my surviving were far greater than his. Therefore, my odds of getting
the entire sackful of cash were greater too. But he dint seem to
care. Don't forget, he wouldn't even have known about the Siva if I
hadn't told him. Besides, what choice did I have? I think both of us
had the same line of thinking about waiting to claim the statue. Then
money got scarce, so I worked awhile in Africa. Ken wired me there in
seventy-three to say he was ready, but then I wasn't. In seventy-six
I was set to go but he was in the Middle East, in Syria. He didn't
reappear until seventy-eight. He was about to do a tour in
Afghanistan. But I couldn't go. I was inna li'l scrape with the law
just then. Doc, maybe you remember it."