Silent. Staring mindlessly toward the main gate. Beyond the gate, across the MSR, Tongduchon blazed. Blinking lights, flashing neon, rotating yin and yang symbols promising an endless nirvana of entertainment. Even from this distance I could hear taxi horns and the low murmur of rock music and the occasional shout from a drunken GI. Then, in counterpoint, the startled shriek of a Korean business girl.
A cold wind from the north picked up and chilled the perspiration that swathed my body. I hugged myself, staring down at the obstacle course below. The square platform I stood on was about fifteen feet across. If I stood with my back to one edge and ran full tilt to the other I could probably leap about twenty-five or thirty feet out. Just far enough to reach an obstacle on either side of me. One was a row of elevated logs, the other a sandbagged tunnel. No cement. And yet there’d been cement in Private Druwood’s head wound. I’d touched it myself, felt the dried cement crumble in my hand.
I pulled out my flashlight, knelt down, and studied the platform. Smooth as a baby’s complexion. Designed that way and kept that way by the constant rubbing of GIs in fatigues lying up here, face down, hugging the platform. Resting. Grateful to have made it safely to the top but wondering how in the hell they were going to survive the climb back down.
I clicked off the flashlight and stood. But I wasn’t seeing Camp Casey or Tongduchon or feeling the cold Manchurian wind. I was seeing the pale face of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. His corpse. And then his eyes popped open, staring at me, but although I’d never met the man I knew those eyes didn’t belong to Druwood. I’d seen them before. But where? The wind whipped up and slashed cold fingers across my face. And then I knew. Fausto. The little kid I’d left alone. The little kid I’d abandoned to his fate. Those were his eyes in that corpse.
A shot blasted and something tiny and evil whizzed past me, not ten feet away. I dropped to the platform and flattened myself. Unmoving. Hoping that by stillness I would become just a shadow and not a target. I waited ten minutes. Nothing more happened.
Quickly, I climbed down the tower.
When I reached the jeep there was just enough moonlight for me to see that Ernie was dozing. I shook him awake.
“Did you hear that shot?”
“What shot?” he asked.
“When I was on top of the tower, someone took a potshot at me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Ernie started the jeep. “How much did you drink out in the ville, Sueño?”
“Not much.”
Ernie snorted. “I’m going to have to get you into rehab.”
I didn’t answer. I was wondering who had shot at me and where the shot had come from and why they’d shot at me. From the sound of the bullet as it whizzed past, the shooter must’ve been a few hundred yards away. Rifle, almost certainly. He could’ve been firing from the shrubbery surrounding the obstacle course, or from a vehicle back on the main road, or even from one of the guard posts on the hills surrounding Camp Casey’s perimeter. If he was trying to kill me, why hadn’t he fired again? Once he’d gotten the range, the second shot would’ve been more accurate.
Our reception here at Division, so far, had been miserable. First, the atmosphere of hostility at the PMO. Then an avalanche of entrenching tools. And now this. Had the same person been behind both incidents? And if so, what was he trying to tell us?
Ernie admitted that he’d actually heard the shot but hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a late-night combat-training exercise, he presumed. Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s what it was. A bullet gone astray.
But also, maybe not.
The next morning, using the address Brandy had provided, Ernie and I located Jill Matthewson’s hooch in a back alley on the west side of East Bean River. Children ran through narrow lanes and street vendors pushed rickety wooden carts, chanting out the nature of their
A cold wind from the north picked up and chilled the perspiration that swathed my body. I hugged myself, staring down at the obstacle course below. The square platform I stood on was about fifteen feet across. If I stood with my back to one edge and ran full tilt to the other I could probably leap about twenty-five or thirty feet out. Just far enough to reach an obstacle on either side of me. One was a row of elevated logs, the other a sandbagged tunnel. No cement. And yet there’d been cement in Private Druwood’s head wound. I’d touched it myself, felt the dried cement crumble in my hand.
I pulled out my flashlight, knelt down, and studied the platform. Smooth as a baby’s complexion. Designed that way and kept that way by the constant rubbing of GIs in fatigues lying up here, face down, hugging the platform. Resting. Grateful to have made it safely to the top but wondering how in the hell they were going to survive the climb back down.
I clicked off the flashlight and stood. But I wasn’t seeing Camp Casey or Tongduchon or feeling the cold Manchurian wind. I was seeing the pale face of Private Marvin Z. Druwood. His corpse. And then his eyes popped open, staring at me, but although I’d never met the man I knew those eyes didn’t belong to Druwood. I’d seen them before. But where? The wind whipped up and slashed cold fingers across my face. And then I knew. Fausto. The little kid I’d left alone. The little kid I’d abandoned to his fate. Those were his eyes in that corpse.
A shot blasted and something tiny and evil whizzed past me, not ten feet away. I dropped to the platform and flattened myself. Unmoving. Hoping that by stillness I would become just a shadow and not a target. I waited ten minutes. Nothing more happened.
Quickly, I climbed down the tower.
When I reached the jeep there was just enough moonlight for me to see that Ernie was dozing. I shook him awake.
“Did you hear that shot?”
“What shot?” he asked.
“When I was on top of the tower, someone took a potshot at me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Ernie started the jeep. “How much did you drink out in the ville, Sueño?”
“Not much.”
Ernie snorted. “I’m going to have to get you into rehab.”
I didn’t answer. I was wondering who had shot at me and where the shot had come from and why they’d shot at me. From the sound of the bullet as it whizzed past, the shooter must’ve been a few hundred yards away. Rifle, almost certainly. He could’ve been firing from the shrubbery surrounding the obstacle course, or from a vehicle back on the main road, or even from one of the guard posts on the hills surrounding Camp Casey’s perimeter. If he was trying to kill me, why hadn’t he fired again? Once he’d gotten the range, the second shot would’ve been more accurate.
Our reception here at Division, so far, had been miserable. First, the atmosphere of hostility at the PMO. Then an avalanche of entrenching tools. And now this. Had the same person been behind both incidents? And if so, what was he trying to tell us?
Ernie admitted that he’d actually heard the shot but hadn’t thought anything of it. Just a late-night combat-training exercise, he presumed. Maybe he was right. Maybe that’s what it was. A bullet gone astray.
But also, maybe not.
The next morning, using the address Brandy had provided, Ernie and I located Jill Matthewson’s hooch in a back alley on the west side of East Bean River. Children ran through narrow lanes and street vendors pushed rickety wooden carts, chanting out the nature of their
Similar Books
