Kinson turned his attention to the countryside. He had heard that given the number of flights in and out, if Hotel Three was lumped in, Tan Son Nhut was the world’s busiest airport. Just outside the fences that protected it were rice paddies where farmers used water buffalo to plow. People lived in thatched hootches without the benefit of indoor plumbing and electricity. The whole family lived in one room, ate rice boiled from a huge black pot over a fire and watched as modern technology laid waste to everything around them.

  He settled against the back of the pilot’s seat where he didn’t have to look outside. As they reached altitude for their trip to Tay Ninh, Kinson relaxed. The air blowing in the open doors was cool. The sweat dried quickly, and in a few moments it was almost cold in the chopper. Kinson looked at his men and then tilted his head back against the hard ceramic of the armored seat and closed his eyes. There was nothing to worry about until they reached Tay Ninh, a good thirty minutes away.

  And then, there wasn’t anything to worry about there, either. Just pick an LZ that looked promising, move five or six klicks away from it and wait for nightfall. It’d be twenty-four hours before there was anything to worry about.

  That’s what he told himself, but somehow he just couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

  Reed rolled over and glanced up at the bright window. Sunlight was streaming in, heating the tiny bedroom. He was alone in bed, Thi having sneaked away earlier. He reached to the right, where a small black lacquered table stood, and picked up his watch. He blinked, trying to focus on the tiny numbers, but his sleep-blurred eyes were making it impossible.

  Thi entered then, carrying a small tray that held two steaming cups. She crouched next to him and smiled. “It is a good morning.”

  Reed groaned and rolled onto his back. “You should have awakened me. I’m going to be late now.”

  She stood up and dropped the silk robe she had been wearing. Now she was completely naked. A slight body with small breasts and not an ounce of fat on her. She stood, hands on her hips, looking down at him.

  “Maybe I don’t care if I’m late,” he said, changing his mind. “What are they going to do, send me to Vietnam?” He had heard soldiers say that dozens of times, indicating that there was nothing worse that could happen. It could only get better.

  “You want coffee?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, nodding for emphasis. “I need coffee.” He sat up and let the sheet drop away so that he was naked to the waist. He propped up a pillow and took the cup from her, wondering where in the hell she had gotten her energy. Before he had arrived in Vietnam, he’d been warned about the women, but it had been his impression that the warning had only encompassed prostitutes and not the common everyday women. He had thought they had been brought up to be proper, with a distaste for sex, but maybe someone had forgotten to tell Thi. She was a wildcat who tried to suck every ounce of fluid from his body.

  As he drank, he thought about the night before. They had barely gotten up the stairs and she was out of her clothes. She shed them as they walked down the hall to the bathroom and then had crouched naked to turn on the water. It was in that moment, staring at her naked flesh, that he had known he was lost. He would have done anything at that point.

  But there had been nothing to do, except take off his own clothes. Before they got into the water, she had stood and turned to face him. Raising up on tiptoes, she had tilted her head to be kissed. Reed had stepped close to do just that, but she had reached down to take him in her hand. She gently tugged, moved, and he felt himself slip inside. She had begun to rock her hips back and forth, and Reed had thought he had died and gone to heaven.

  Finally she had coaxed him down on the floor, Reed on his back. She straddled him and sat down. She then began to move, controlling the situation. She leaned back, her hands on his knees, her long hair dragging on the floor. Her movements became more rapid as she lost herself in what she was doing, her breath coming in short bursts as her excitement built.

  She screamed once, whipped her head forward and then doubled over. She hugged him and then started to move again, bringing him along slowly.

  Reed let her do it then. He lay on his back, his hands on her, cupping her and helping her as she worked on him. Slowly at first, and then faster as he began to move his hips in time to her. He closed his eyes and let her take him to the top until he exploded. Then he collapsed, the breath rasping in his throat as she moved her legs, straightening them so that she could stretch out on his body.

  That hadn’t been the end of it. They had bathed and talked about dinner, but instead had gone into the bedroom. He’d taken control that time, she under him as he braced himself on his elbows to keep his weight off her. They worked at it, slowly at first and then faster and faster until both were breathing hard and were covered with a light coating of sweat.

  It was long after midnight when they finally gave up, both of them exhausted. Reed’s body hurt, and he was sure that he was close to dying. He had been rubbed raw. But he didn’t care. Completely drained, he had fallen asleep and had not moved until he had awakened alone.

  He sipped the coffee she had brought, looking at her over the rim of the cup. She sat naked on the bed, the sunlight playing across her body, highlighting her breasts. Her nipples were erect and her lips were soft and pouting.

  “No,” said Reed. “Please. No more.”

  “Ever?”

  “I need a moment, a day to recover.” He took a long drink, draining the cup.

  “You are weak.” She grinned broadly, coyly.

  “No, not weak. Sore.”

  “So what we do now?”

  Shaking his head, Reed said, “I never thought I would say it, but you put on your robe and I’ll get dressed. I’ve got to get to work sometime this morning.”

  “But you come back.”

  “Oh yeah, baby, I’ll come back. I’ll definitely come back.”

  She got up, bent down to get the robe, but kept her legs straight, giving him an almost obscene view of her. Then, still grinning, she turned and slowly put on her robe.

  When she had finished, he asked, “Is it too late to change my mind?”

  “No.”

  He laughed. “My brain says yes but my body says no. Tonight. After we eat maybe, but definitely not now.”

  “You are the boss,” she said.

  “That’s what you think.” He threw off the sheet and stood up facing her. “A shower.”

  “Alone?”

  “We’d better make it alone. If I’m to live through the day.”

  “Then please go ahead.”

  Reed left the room and headed for the bathroom. As he entered the shower, he didn’t know that she was going through the pockets of his pants, searching for his wallet. If he had known, he would have been disappointed but not terribly upset. There wasn’t anything for her to find except some money, and he didn’t care about it. If it took money to get into her pants, then he was willing to pay the price. She was more than worth it.

  They landed at Tay Ninh in the POL point, but they didn’t shut down. The crew chief and door gunner had gotten out to refuel the aircraft, while the pilots sat up front watching the other aircraft around them.

  Kinson got out his map again, laid it on the console and shouted over the noise from the turbine, “I’ve got an LZ picked out.”

  The aircraft commander picked up the map and examined it. Kinson leaned over and pointed, “We need to touch down somewhere in this area.”

  The man turned and shouted back. “That’s a fairly rough area. Scattered LZs and trees that are two hundred feet tall.”

  “Can you get in there?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure that I want to. It’s not like the terrain to the south, which is wide open.”

  Kinson nodded but didn’t understand the pilot’s reluctance. If there were LZs, why didn’t they want to hit them?

  “We’ll have to wait a few minutes for the guns to arrive,” shouted the man, breaking into his thoughts.

  “Why gunships? We’re supposed to sneak in there, not announce our arrival.”

  The pilot shifted around so that he could face Kinson. “And I’m not going into that area without gun support. Charlie operates in there with ease, has almost every LZ ringed with bunkers, and sometimes just sits in them waiting for helicopters to land.”

  That took Kinson by surprise. He leaned over, his face closer to the pilot’s. “I wasn’t told about that in my briefings.”

  “They’re not manned all the time. But Charlie knows what we need for an LZ.”

  “Maybe there’s a place you can get a single ship into.”

  “Shit, with those trees, the first third to one half of the LZ is unusable. We have to be careful we don’t get into settling with power and crash.”

  That was also something new. Kinson had never heard of settling with power. He’d never heard about unusable portions of LZs. Suddenly the mission had taken on added danger, and they hadn’t even gotten into the field.

  “What do you recommend?”

  “Staying here,” said the aircraft commander seriously.

  “And if we can’t do that?”

  The man took the map and studied. “Where is your final destination?”

  “That’s classified,” said Kinson, feeling like an asshole. It was the sort of answer that the heroes in war movies gave to their girlfriends, not something that took place in real life.

  “Fine,” said the pilot, dropping the map.

  “Listen,” yelled Kinson, “we need to hit the ground anywhere in this general vicinity. We can get to where we’re going from there.”

  “You want to get close to the border?”

  “Why?”

  “Because the NVA have fifty-caliber and thirty-seven millimeter weapons set up all along it, waiting for aircraft to get within a klick or two.” He reached back along the console to the map case and pulled out one of the aeronautical charts. He pointed to a legend along the Cambodian border. Kinson read it.

  “Overflight requires diplomatic clearance,” it said in bold red letters.

  “Three, four klicks away will be fine.”

  “Then we’ll put you down about here.”

  Kinson looked at it and nodded. “Fine.” He picked up his map and turned around, sitting on the deck of the chopper. The door gunner finished the refueling, slid the side door back and used a cotter pin to lock it in place in the open position. Then both he and the crew chief got back in, taking their places behind the M-60s.

  They picked up to a hover, moved off to the side and set down again. A moment later two gunships hovered by, moving into a position for takeoff, and Kinson’s aircraft came back up to a hover. They lifted off over the perimeter and the wire, flying over the bunkers that protected Tay Ninh from the enemy, up over the palm trees that made the setting look almost romantic, the huge palms and flowing bushes that hid the thatch-and-mud hootches in a tropical setting.

  They climbed out to the south and then turned, heading back to the north. Out the door was Nui Ba Den, the Black Virgin Mountain. It rose from the flat landscape to dominate the surrounding area. East of it were jungles and forests, and to the south and west were rice paddies and farms.

  They left the area of rice paddies and flew over a jungle so thick there were only a few breaks in the canopy. Off to the right, three straight lines of bomb craters showed where B-52s had dropped their loads. The ground had been ripped up and turned over. The bottoms of the craters contained water that reflected the sunlight — three long red scars in an otherwise bright green landscape.

  The crew chief leaned out of his well and yelled, “We’re about three minutes out.”

  Kinson held up a thumb. He didn’t have to say a word to his men. They began to struggle into their gear, buckling the pistol belts and adjusting the straps of their rucksacks. Kinson chambered a round and flipped on the safety.

  “One minute,” yelled the crew chief.

  Kinson slipped closer to the open door. He looked down and watched the trees flash by, a blur of dark green that had no shape or definition.

  When they were just over the tops of the trees, it seemed that they had picked up speed. Ahead there was a small opening, a clearing that didn’t look to be large enough for a helicopter. But they continued toward it.

  “Thirty seconds.”

  Now they were closer to the break in the trees. The gunships were on each side of the chopper, slightly behind it. Kinson could see the pilots through the windshield, the gunners holding their weapons pointed rearward from the cargo compartment.

  “Here we go,” yelled the crew chief.

  Suddenly the nose came up and then slipped over to the left. The pilot sucked in some pitch and Kinson was forced down toward the bottom of the aircraft. They seemed to fall to the left, and then the pilot leveled the skids and they dropped through the opening in the trees, settling four or five feet above a rough LZ covered with tall grass and short, skinny trees. “Go,” yelled the crew chief. “Go!”

  Kinson climbed out on the skid, crouched and looked down into the grass. He could see the ground, the grass flattened outward by the hurricane force of the rotor wash. Loose grass, dirt, dried leaves and weeds were sucked up and swirled around.

  Kinson dropped to the ground and fell to his knees. He scrambled forward a few feet and then lay still. Off to his left dropped Hurtz and then Burgess. The others should be dropping from the other side of the helicopter, but he couldn’t see them.

  He glanced back over his shoulder as the chopper began a climb straight up. The nose dropped slightly and the aircraft moved forward. It seemed to barely clear the trees and then disappeared. They were left in the absolute quiet now that the helicopters were gone.

  Kinson hesitated, waiting for the enemy to suddenly open fire, but nothing happened. There didn’t seem to be anyone around them.

  Kinson got to his feet and waved the men forward. They ran across the LZ, toward the trees on the western end. Kinson reached them first and dropped to the ground. He turned and watched as his men joined him. They were all there, including the two Cambodians.

  As the men reached the trees, Kinson said, “Burgess, take the point. Hurtz right behind him. Set up security about five yards deep and then wait.”

  Burgess had crouched near him, no more than a foot away. Kinson could see the sweat already beaded on the other man’s face, and could smell his breath.

  “Shouldn’t the Cambodians take the point?”

  “Not until I get a look at the map. I’ll put one of them on point when we move out.”

  “Got it.” Burgess got up and moved into the trees, dodging the waist-high bushes and smaller saplings. He vanished, although Kinson could hear him moving for a couple of seconds.

  Slinging his rifle, Kinson took out his map and tried to orient himself, but found it impossible. There were no terrain features, no rises or streams or swamps. Just endless jungle. Moving off to the west was their only choice. They would have to cross a stream, and there were indications that the ground was anything but flat. A klick away, he should be able to see something that would tell him exactly where he was.

  He moved then, slipping to the right where one of the Cambodians knelt watching the LZ. “You take point. Head to the west.”

  “I know town. I go there.”

  “Fine,” said Kinson. “You go there.”

  The group moved forward, the men falling in behind without having to be told. Kinson was looking for Burgess, but it seemed the big man had vanished.

  And then a voice hissed, “Here.”

  Kinson dropped to a knee, turned to look and whispered. “Come here.”

  Burgess slipped out of hiding and asked, “Now what?”

  “Take the point with this guy. Let him lead, but use your compass so that we make sure we’re heading to the west. Keep a close watch on him.”

  “Got it.”

  “We’ll fall in behind you.”

  Burgess nodded. He tapped the Cambodian on the shoulder and said, “Lead on.”

  As the two of them moved off, Kinson turned and said, “Hurtz, bring up the rear with Tideman.”

  “Got it.”

  Kinson got to his feet and fell in behind Hernandez as the squad spread out. He ducked under a low branch, thought about how hot it was in the jungle and then forgot about it. There were too many other things he had to worry about. The heat and humidity weren’t among them.

  “Just five days,” he told himself. “One hundred and twenty hours and then back to Saigon.” He didn’t think about the enemy or ambushes. He just concentrated on the time and the jungle around him, hoping that he could survive it. That had worked for him before, and he was sure it would work again.

  CHAPTER 5

  MACV HEADQUARTERS, SAIGON

  It was the middle of the afternoon before Reed could get to MACV. He drove his jeep slowly, knowing that everyone there would be aware he was late. As he pulled into the parking lot, he rejected another excuse as being something that a college student would use when he was late with a paper. It wasn’t something that an adult would try.

  After he locked the steering wheel, he decided that maybe the best course would be to pretend he was returning from lunch. Let everyone think he’d been working somewhere else during the morning. Not apologize for being so late. Pretend that in reality he was on time.

  He hopped out of the jeep and walked up toward the double doors. Before he could reach them he was sweating heavily, and the clean clothes he’d put on only an hour earlier were soaked. Large stains under the arms and down the back turned his white shirt tan. He wiped at the sweat, wondering why he had ever been interested in Vietnam. It was his own fault that he was assigned to MACV in Vietnam.

  He opened the door, moved into the first hallway and fell back against the wall, letting the breeze from the air-conditioning blow over him. He couldn’t help smiling at the pain that seemed to radiate from his groin. Thi had given him quite a workout.

  He pushed away from the wall and walked slowly down the corridor, descended to the lower level and then stopped at the iron gate. The MP, who recognized Reed but was not the same man who had been on duty before, said, “A little late today.”

 

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