The Summer Garden (108 page)

“I’m sorry I ever gave you a fucking G-2 MI job!” yelled Richter.

“Well, it’s too late for sorrys. Now we have to go and get Ant.”

“Oh my God,” Richter gasped, “is
that
why you came here?”

“Why the fuck did you think?”

“I don’t go into North Vietnam!” yelled Richter.

“You’re going there tomorrow.”

“Like fuck I am.”

“The NVA have been breaking the rules and destabilizing supposedly neutral countries since 1954 to ferry Soviet-made weapons to South Nam so they can kill you,” said Alexander. “Destabilizing Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Papua New Guinea. Now you’re worried about breaking a little rule? They’ve been arming the 17
^th
parallel and the DMZ for fifteen years with their pretend civilian villages. You know that better than I do.”

“That’s right, but this isn’t the DMZ, this is actual North Nam, and you do realize we have no information on Ant! We know absolutely fucking nothing! Why are you against sending a recon force there first? Pinter will send a seven-man team from CCN in Da Nang; at least then we might find out what we need. What if he’s not there? What if we need a hundred men to extract him? What if we need just one, to carry his body? You did think of that possibility, did you not? God forbid, that he may be dead?”

“Alive or in a bag,” Alexander said with a clamped everything, “we are bringing him back from North Vietnam.”

“What if there is no Kum Kau, but I’ve sent twenty troops into enemy territory and they all get greased and I can’t explain what the fuck they were doing there?”

“So you think if you send Pinter’s men and they get greased, that’ll make you feel better? You won’t have Ant, but twenty of Pinter’s guys will be dead.
That’ll
be better?”

The two of them stood panting, facing off, two men, fifty years old, soldiers, fighters. The two of them at their wits’ end, two men who could not believe it had come to this. But come to this it had, and now it had to be dealt with.

“You are thinking only of your son, Alexander,” said Richter. “But I have to think of my whole command. There are a thousand guys I’m responsible for.”

“Tom,” said Alexander, “you
know
what the NVA and the fucking Cubans do to American soldiers.”

“Kum Kau is near the DMZ. The Cubans are in Hanoi and near China. We’re not going anywhere near China, are we?”

“North Vietnam has directly violated every sentence of the Geneva Convention, which, by the way, they signed. Our guys are turning up on the Trail dead, drowned, burned, mutilated beyond recognition because they can’t be released alive to tell the world how the NVA treat their prisoners of war and you want to leave Ant there?”

“They can release them or not release them,” said Richter. “Like the world gives a fuck how the NVA treats its prisoners of war. The world only cares what the Americans did at My Lai.”

“Yes,” said Alexander, “because
they
are judged mercifully for having no standards whatsoever, while
we
are judged harshly for failing to live up to our high ones. It’s like Carthage being regarded more highly than Rome. I
know
. More is expected from Rome. But the point is,” he went on, “you can posture all you like, with Elkins outside your door, but you know perfectly well that one way or another I’m going to Kum Kau to find out what happened to my son. I didn’t come to Vietnam to go to cathouses with you. We’re talking about Anthony.
Anthony
!” Alexander nearly broke down.

“I know who we are talking about!” Richter fought for his own composure. “I’ve taken care of him and protected him as best I could since he got here. He’s had the run of everything. I barely asked him any questions, as long as the mission was accomplished, he could do whatever the fuck he liked. I did this for him because that’s what he wanted.”

“Good,” said Alexander. “And this is what
I
want, just so we’re straight. Either you help me like you’re supposed to and meant to, or you stand there and give me five hundred more reasons why you can’t, but Anthony is not going to remain in North Vietnam.” Alexander’s fists remained down at the table. “Not my son, and not one more day.” He took a deep breath, not moving an inch, his shoulders up, the hair on his body standing on end.

Snarling in his naked aggravation, Richter stood down and backed away. Alexander did not stand down. He knew what Richter was going through. He just didn’t want to hear it. And after five minutes and another glass of whiskey, Richter bowed his head. “What I don’t understand is why
your
whole fucking life has to be a redux of Tatiana’s commando mission in Berlin,” he said, much quieter. “Why can’t
your
life be about something else?”

“My life
is
about something else.”

“Oh, I don’t think so,” said Richter. “I don’t think so at all.” After two cigarettes, Richter was finally calm enough to call Ha Si and Elkins back into his quarters. A groggy Elkins ran to wake up Mercer. It was well after one in the morning. The four men stood at attention. Richter, in his agitation, forgot to release them.

Circling around the Montagnard he said, his eyes boring into him, “Ha Si, you know
this
terrain like the back of your hand, I know that, but…let me ask you something, and I want you to think very carefully before you answer. That ville, Kum Kau, is far from here, far from your area of expertise. After all, you come from Bong Son, and that’s nowhere near there. Wait, don’t interrupt. Perhaps, just perhaps, do you think Kum Kau could be
west
of North Vietnam? Could it be a klick or two
inside
the Laotian border, in that mountainous Khammouan country? Maybe you made a tiny mistake. Hmm?
Think
before you answer.”

Ha Si thought before he answered. “I think,” he said slowly and quietly, “you may be right, Colonel. It could be just inside Laos. That border is very tricky through the mountains, and I don’t know the parts as well as these. I spoke too quickly. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to amend. It
is
in Laos.”

“Good,” said Richter. “Because you know, Ha Si, we can do many things, but we cannot under any circumstances go into North Vietnam. If Kum Kau is there, we can’t at the outset define that as our mission parameters and go there to find this Moon Lai, and perhaps find out where our Captain Barrington is.”

“Yes, sir. I understand, sir.” Ha Si glanced at Alexander. “It’s definitely in Laos.”

Richter nodded. Finally, he put the men at ease. The five of them sat huddled together in his quarters, smoking, thinking, plotting.

“What I’d like to do—my preference,” said Richter, “is to send a small recon unit there first.” Alexander opened his mouth, but Richter cut him off. “But I know this better than anyone at this table”—he glared at Alexander—“if our men are detected, we’re goners. If there is an actual Extraction and Escape and Evasion situation in Kum Kau, we can only go in once. They don’t expect us; the element of surprise will be our greatest weapon. On the other hand, if we get into a position we can’t defend, we’re fucked. We simply can’t bring enough men to both escape detection
and
engage a superior enemy force. So this is what we’re going to do: we’re assembling an A-team and going on a top-secret, location classified and undisclosed, long-range recon mission to Laos. Do you hear me? Laos. We’re not calling it SLAM. Is that clear? We’re calling it recon. A little intel gathering. Maybe some supply disruption.”

“Understood, sir.”

“We go in unmarked. You know what that means. If you fall in North Nam, no one will find you. You will remain unidentified. I suggest you make all appropriate phone calls and write all appropriate letters before we move out. Personally, unlike Major Barrington, our intelligence advisor straight from Fort Huachuca in Arizona, I think Kum Kau is just a regular village.”

“Well, unlike you, gentlemen,” said Alexander, “I haven’t been on the ground since 1946, and I’m sure things have changed since then. And Colonel Richter may be right, having so much experience in this area. But let’s just approach it as if it’s a booby-trapped, mined, heavily-armed enemy camp. All the means with which we hope to achieve our objective, we have to bring with us. While I’m certain that all Vietnamese villagers are nothing more than innocent civilians, let’s just in fucking case bring enough ammo to raze Hanoi, not torch a mud hut.”

Richter glared sideways at Alexander. Everybody else glanced sideways at Richter.

“I’ll charter a hook to take us into Laos,” Richter said. “I’ll get us a medevac crew. That way it inserts us, flies back down south to refuel and waits for our call. There’s an SOG supply base just south of DMZ, I’ll get our support gunships to wait there, plus two extra Hueys if we need them, and a medic slick. But remember, even our classified mission is parametered to Laos. Six fucking snakes cannot fly to North Vietnam—because that would no longer be called combat support, it would be called a fucking invasion.” Snakes were Cobra helicopter gunships. “Everybody all clear on that?”

Everybody was all clear. Mercer was mulling. “Excuse me, Colonel. You keep saying,
we
. Are you…thinking of going, too?”

Alexander looked down at his hands so as not to see Richter sit defeated in front of his men.

“Damn it all to hell,” Richter said. “I’m way too fucking old for this. But I’m going in because it’s my ass if bad shit goes down in North Vietnam. There will be twelve of us. A six-man Yard team plus us. I’ll get Tojo to come, if he doesn’t have a heart attack first when he finds out I’m going. Elkins, Mercer, Ha Si, I’m assuming you’re all volunteering to go?”

The three men nodded and then turned to stare at Alexander.

“What the fuck are you all looking at?” he said. “Without me, you’d still be getting laid in Pleiku, eating cheese sandwiches, and lobbing grenades at the fish in the river. Of course I’m going.”

The men were quiet.

“Maybe you should stay back, Major,” Elkins said. “You did just say you haven’t seen active combat since
1946
.”

“Active combat with a Donut Dolly doesn’t count,” Richter added bitingly.

Alexander said nothing. Richter obviously felt the need to have the last word.

“Does the colonel need to upgrade your security clearance?” Elkins pressed on. “Because that can take a month.”

“My security clearance has long ago been upgraded by the Military Intelligence commander in Fort Huachuca, thank you for your interest, Lieutenant,” said Alexander. The conversation was over. “Tom, can you walk me to my hut? I need sleep.” The other men stood, saluted them, and they left. Alexander turned to Richter. “Are you going to be able to get your shit together by tomorrow?” he asked as they walked to his hut.

Richter didn’t think so. “And we call it hooch, Alexander.”

“Hooch, hut, who the fuck cares. We’ve waited long enough, Tom. We have to go.”

“We’ll need a couple of days,” Richter said. “I have to commission a Chinook, we have to get our supplies, our weapons. You know better than anyone, we have to be ready. We get only one chance at this.”

Alexander agreed they needed to be ready. He knew they got only one chance at this.

When they stood outside Alexander’s barracks, Richter lit a smoke and said, “Alexander, you do know how small our chance of success is?”

“So you’re confident then?” In a more relaxed mood, Alexander patted Richter’s arm. “Tom,” he said. “You understand you’re talking to the wrong man about odds.”

“Don’t I fucking know it.”

“What were the odds of a five-foot-nothing woman who never shot a weapon in her life getting into Soviet-controlled territory not knowing where I was, or even if I was there, or alive, and then finding me—there
and
alive?”

“Better than ours,” said Richter.

Alexander shook his head. “One unarmed woman in a Gulag camp with machine-gun sentries every five inches,” said Alexander, nearly reverentially. “Not twelve guys, carrying more ammo than their combined body weight. And yes, the NVA are bad motherfuckers, but the Soviets weren’t ladies having finger sandwiches at the Kentucky Derby. They brought their artillery, too. And yet she found me and got me out. So sleep well.” But he couldn’t help thinking of what Tania had once said to him. We can rail all we want.
But sometimes what we do is just not enough.
He knew something about that. He tried to push the thoughts from his mind.

Richter sighed, blew smoke from his cigarette, attempted a smile. “I’m surprised you and Tania have never used your abilities to beat the odds to your benefit.”

It was the first time since July 20, 1969 that Alexander laughed out loud. “Tom,” he said, lowering his voice and briefly putting his friendly arm around Richter. “Who says we haven’t?” A wide smile was on Alexander’s face. “It’s Las Vegas twice a year for us, baby,” he said happily. “The kids think we’re getting R&R in Sedona. As soon as we get there, we gamble for twenty straight hours. My wife is a roulette and blackjack queen.”

Richter’s mouth nearly fell open. “We’re talking about
Tania
?” he said. “Tania, your
wife
, at the blackjack table?”

Alexander nodded. “And Tom—she needs to be seen to be believed. We’ve been getting a complimentary penthouse suite at the Flamingo for seven years. The hotel gives her free chips, free food, shopping vouchers, it makes no difference—she simply does not lose. If she is cold, she doesn’t play. We went just a month ago to cheer ourselves up a bit, but she was cold, so we stopped playing. She kept getting dealt the queen of spades and busting. But that was an anomaly.” He broke off, then lowered his voice. “The dealers don’t see her coming. She sits at their tables, sips a little wine, dresses in pink, lets her hair down, jokes with them, and all their defenses are gone. They stand no chance. She is unbelievable.” He recalled her fondly. “Me, I’m a different story. I play poker. I win, I lose. She comes and stands behind me and cools the rest of the table, while I heat up. We do all right. But she
loves
to do it.”