The Summer Garden (109 page)

Richter listened with wide eyes, and then laughed. “Unbefucking-lievable. You come here and in ten hours my world is turned upside down. I, a lieutenant-colonel, am taking orders from a fucking major, Anthony is having Vietnamese babies with whores, we’re single-handedly and without authorization invading North Vietnam, and
Tania
loves Vegas. Is there anything else you want to shock me with?”

Instantly brought right back to earth, Alexander stopped smiling. “No,” he said, giving him a careful pat. “Nothing that comes to mind.”

Richter also grew serious. “Alexander, do me a favor. When we go in, don’t talk to me like we’ve been friends for twenty years.”

Alexander saluted him. Richter saluted him back.

“Good night, Colonel Richter,” said Alexander.

“Good night, Major Barrington.”

In his one room hooch, Alexander undressed and fell down on his bed. He lit a cigarette, smoked it down, lit another one, and smiled, staring at the ceiling.

“Ant, come here, I want you to play dominoes with your mother.”

“No! Why? I never win.” Anthony had just come home from his first year at West Point. It was June 1962.

“Well, I know,” said Alexander, “but I’m going to watch you two play. You play your mother, and I will watch her and figure out how she cheats.”

“Don’t listen to your father. I don’t cheat at dominoes, Ant,” Tatiana said. “I use all of my vital powers. That’s different.”

“Just draw the tiles, Tania.”

“Yes, just draw the tiles, Mom.”

There were twenty-eight domino tiles. Seven went to Anthony, seven to Tatiana. Fourteen remained in the draw pile.

Alexander watched her. She sat impassively, putting her tiles down, drawing new ones, humming, looking at her son, at her husband. Soon all the tiles were gone except what remained in Anthony’s hand, and in Tatiana’s. Five to seven minutes each game. Each one won by her.

“Have you figured it out yet, Dad?”

“Not yet, son. Keep playing.”

Alexander stopped watching the tiles. He didn’t watch what went on the table, he didn’t watch what was drawn, nor what was put down, not even who won or lost. He was intently studying only Tatiana’s cool, unflappable face and her bright, clear eyes.

They played again and again and again.

Anthony complained. “Dad, we played thirteen games, all of which I lost. Can we stop?”

“Of course you lost, son,” Alexander said slowly. “Yes, you can stop.”

Thus released, Anthony fled the kitchen, Alexander lit a cigarette, and Tatiana calmly collected the tiles and stacked them back in the box.

She raised her eyes at him. His mouth widened in a grin. “Tatiana Metanova,” he said, “for twenty years, I have lived with you, I have slept in your bed, I have fathered your children.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and leaned across to her. “Tania!” he said exaltedly. “I almost can’t believe it’s taken me this long to figure it out. But—you count the tiles!”

“What?”

“You count the fucking tiles!”

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said blankly.

“When the draw pile is gone, you know what’s in Ant’s hand! You keep track, you know what tiles are left! At the end of the game, you know your opponent’s move before they can breathe on a domino!”

“Shura—”

He grabbed her, brought her on top of his lap, kissed her. “Oh, you’re good. You are very good.”

“Really, Alexander,” Tatiana said calmly. “I simply don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He laughed, so joyously. Letting go of her, he went to the cabinet and pulled out a deck of cards. Rummaging around, he found two more decks. “Guess where you and I are going next month for our twentieth wedding anniversary, my little domino counter,” he said, sitting at the table and shuffling the three decks of cards, with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.

“Um—the Grand Canyon?”

“Viva Las Vegas, baby.”

And here in Kontum, in the midst of chaos and misery, not knowing if his son was alive or even saveable, Alexander, usually reminded so painfully of his own humanity, this time was reminded blissfully of it, as only humans can be—finding one strand of comfort amid a covering quilt of anguish.

A package came by express delivery for Alexander. He was surprised; he’d been in the country barely two weeks; who would be sending him a package already, and why? When he got to the post barracks, he saw a long and heavy box. It was from home. Elkins and Mercer were even more surprised as they tried to lift it.

“Some care package,” said Mercer. “What’s in here, bricks?”

They had to open it on the ground, in the dust, in front of the mail room. It was too heavy to carry. Inside Alexander found a very long letter from Tatiana that began, “
O husband, father of small boys, one of your sons has lost his mind
.” And inside the box were sixteen punji sticks, each five feet long, carved out of round planed wood, notched at the tip, and sharpened like needles on both ends, for easier insertion into the ground, and greater penetration. The letter taped to them, in block handwriting said,
“Dear Dad, You are going to need these. Insert diagonally into ground at 45° angle. Also Mama says watch out for bears. Your son, Harry.”

“Your
kid
made these for you?” Mercer said incredulously.

“Can you believe it?”

“And your
wife
shipped them express mail?” said Elkins. “That I can’t believe. She must have had to mortgage your house to do it. I don’t know who’s crazier, the son for making them or the wife for shipping them.”

“How old’s the boy?” Mercer asked.

“Ten on New Year’s Day.” Harry was born on the first day of the new decade.

Mercer and Elkins whistled and stared into the box. “Ten. Well, that’s something. These are nearly perfect,” said Elkins.

“They
are
perfect! What the fuck do you mean nearly?”

Tatiasha, my wife,

I got cookies from you and Janie, anxious medical advice from Gordon Pasha (tell him you gave me a gallon of silver nitrate), some sharp sticks from Harry (nearly cried). I’m saddling up, I’m good to go. From you I got a letter that I could tell you wrote very late at night. It was filled with the sorts of things a wife of twenty-seven years should not write to her far-away and desperate husband, though this husband was glad and grateful to read and re-read them.

Tom Richter saw the care package you sent with the preacher cookies and said, “Wow, man. You must still be doing something right.”

I leveled a long look at him and said, “It’s good to know nothing’s changed in the army in twenty years.”

Imagine what he might have said had he been privy to the fervent sentiments in your letter.

No, I have not eaten any poison berries, or poison mushrooms, or poison anything. The U.S. Army feeds its men. Have you seen a C-ration? Franks and beans, beefsteak, crackers, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, coffee, cocoa, sacks of sugar(!). It’s enough to make a Soviet blockade girl cry. We’re going out on a little scoping mission early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I come back. I tried to call you today, but the phone lines were jammed. It’s unbelievable. No wonder Ant only called once a year. I would’ve liked to hear your voice though: you know, one word from you before battle, that sort of thing…

Preacher cookies, by the way, BIG success among war-weary soldiers.

Say hi to the kids. Stop teaching Janie back flip dives.

Do you remember what you’re supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.

Alexander

P.S. I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory.

I love you, babe.

Deadfall in Kum Kau

Two days later, barely at dawn, all saddled up
, Alexander, Tom Richter, Charlie Mercer, Dan Elkins, Ha Si, Tojo, and a six man Bannha Montagnard team, one of whom was a medic, twelve Special Forces soldiers in all, flew out in a Chinook with a large red cross on its nose, three hundred miles north into the Laotian jungle.

They were escorted by two Cobra gunships from Kontum. They had to refuel once. They brought long dehydrated rations, regular C-rations, heat tabs, water, plasma, and arms for a hundred men.

The insertion point was barely a meter inside the Laotian border, seven kilometers west from the mapped-out location of Kum Kau. The hook flew high through the mountain pass, because just last week a Huey slick was flying too low above a valley and was fired at by an RPG-7. It went down; the pilot, the co-pilot, the gunner, and two of the Indians were killed. So this time Richter ordered the chopper to fly above cloud cover to escape detection and not take any short cuts through valleys.

They were inserted without incident in Laos, and then set off to walk through the jungle in the north central highlands, a thousand meters above sea level, deep in the high plateau of enemy territory. On the chopper, they had drunk coffee, smoked, talked bullshit, cut up, joked, but here in the woods, everyone became somber and silent, not speaking, weapons raised, trying not to disturb the fern. Richter made Ha Si walking point, Mercer slack man, Alexander third, and Elkins fourth. Tojo, the Bannha who was nearly seven foot tall, was the drag man at tail—he, apparently, was always at drag because he was like a stone wall. In front of Tojo was Richter, constantly and quietly on his radio, and in front of Richter walked six more Bannhas.

The trail they laid was just noticeable enough for them to make their way back. It was an early December morning, dry and a little cool. The jungle was tall and verdantly dense. After hovering over the men in a holding pattern until they disappeared, the chopper flew thirty kilometers south to the SOG base that was the standby reaction center for the mission. Six Cobras waited there and a medic slick—just in case. The pilot told Richter not to get into trouble for an hour. After refueling, he was ordered to wait for further instructions.

The troops were dressed in jungle camouflage battle fatigues; even their steel helmets and lightweight nylon and canvas boots were camo. Over his tunic, Alexander wore a combat vest stuffed to bursting with 20-round cartridges. The bandolier over his waist was filled with an assortment of 40mm rockets that flew farther than hand-thrown and were most useful for close combat. He had on a demolition bag of miscellaneous rounds for his pistols and extra clips for his rifle. He wore another bag holding three Claymore mines, plus clackers and tripwire. The M-16 was in his arms, with the rocket launcher already affixed below the rifle mount. He had with him his lucky Colt M1911, plus the regulation Ruger .22 with the silencer attached. He carried an SOG recon Bowie knife and an excavating tool that could also be used as a piercing weapon. His ruck was filled with medical kits and food. He had at least 90 pounds of ammo, weapons and supplies on him, and he was 50. In the mountains of Holy Cross he was 25, and carried 60 pounds of gear. That was a physics problem worthy of Tania herself. And he wasn’t even carrying Harry’s heavy punji sticks or extra rounds. The Montagnards were carrying those, plus the awe-inducing 23-pound M-60 machine gun with a tripod,
plus
their own 90 pounds of gear. Without the Yards, the never-complaining, silent, helpful, mountain people of South Vietnam, who were trained by the SOG to be efficient killing machines and who fought alongside the Americans, search and rescue missions would have scarcely been possible.

It had been twenty-five years since Alexander led the 200-man penal battalion for the Red Army through Russia, through Estonia, through Byelorussia, through Poland and into Germany. Back then they had no food and barely any weapons or ammo—he didn’t know why his gear had weighed as much as 60 pounds. His men had been political prisoners, not Special Forces commandos; his men were not trained; many of them had never held a rifle. And yet somehow they managed to get all the way into Germany.

And before Holy Cross, Alexander defended Leningrad. For two years he defended it on the streets, across the barricades, and across the Pulkovo and Sinyavino Hills, from which the Germans bombed the city. He defended Leningrad on its rivers, and its Ladoga Lake. He drove tanks across the ice, he shot down German planes with surface-to-air missiles. And before that, he fought against Finland in 1940, underfed, under-clothed, undersupplied and freezing, armed barely with a single-bolt rifle, never dreaming that one day he would be walking through the triple-canopy jungle in Vietnam searching for his son while carrying a weapon that could fire 800 rounds a minute, discharging each round at over 3000 feet per second. Yes, the third-gen M-16 was an unbelievable rifle.

But he had liked his Shpagin, too, the Red Army standard-issue for officers. It was a good weapon. And the men under his command, they were good men. His sergeants, even in the penal battalions, were always fighters, always brave. And his friends—Anatoly Marazov, who died in his arms on the Neva ice. Ouspensky. They had been fine lieutenants. Ouspensky protected Alexander’s hide for many years, even as he was betraying him, fiercely protected the man who was his ticket out.

Except for Richter, Alexander didn’t know the men he was going into the heart of the jungle with—and wished he did. He wished he had heard their stories ahead of time, before they reached the mountains of Khammouan. He knew the lives of all of his lieutenants and sergeants in the battalion. Yet he had no doubt about any of the men with him now. Because they were Ant’s men. And he knew his son, and had no doubt about him. Mercer, Ha Si, Elkins—they were Ant’s Telikov, Marazov, Ouspensky.