Why do they look like Viet Cong? said the grizzled captain.
It was not only the guerrillas who resembled their old enemies, as we discovered when a dozen of them led us to the hut of their commander. On this hut’s thin lip of a porch stood a slim man backlit by a bare electric lightbulb. Isn’t that— said Bon, before stopping at asking the absurd. Everybody says so, said Claude. The admiral raised his hand in greeting and smiled a familiar, avuncular smile. His face was angular, gaunt, and almost handsome, the classic noble visage of a scholar or mandarin. The hair was gray but not white, thinning a little on top, and trimmed short. A goatee was his most distinctive feature, a neatly sculpted affair for the man of middle age, rather than the scraggle of youth or the long, flowing tuft of the elder. Welcome, men, the admiral said, and even in the gentle intonation of his voice I heard echoes of the newsreel on which Ho Chi Minh’s cultivated and calm voice was recorded. You have traveled a great distance, and you must be tired. Please, come in and join me.
Like Ho Chi Minh, the admiral referred to himself as uncle. Like Ho Chi Minh, he also dressed with simplicity, his black blouse and pants matching the garb of his guerrillas. And, like Ho Chi Minh, he furnished his quarters in a sparse and scholarly fashion. We sat barefoot on reed mats in the hut’s one plain room, us newcomers uneasy in the presence of this uncanny look-alike. Our apparition must have slept on the plank floor, for there was no sign of a bed. Bamboo bookshelves lined one wall, and a simple bamboo desk and chair occupied another. Over the course of dinner, as we drank the General’s whiskey, the admiral quizzed us on our years in America and we quizzed him in turn on how he had come to be shipwrecked in the forest. He smiled and tapped his ashes into an ashtray made of half a coconut shell. On the last day of the war, I was in command of a transport ship full of marines, soldiers, policemen, and civilians rescued from the piers. I could have sailed to the Seventh Fleet, like many of my fellow captains. But the Americans had betrayed us before, and there was no hope of fighting again if I fled to them. The Americans were finished. Now that their white race had failed, they were leaving Asia to the yellow race. So I sailed toward Thailand. I had Thai friends and I knew the Thai would give us asylum. They had nowhere to go, unlike the Americans. The Thai would fight communism because it was pressing up against their border with Cambodia. Laos, too, was going to fall soon. You see, I was not interested in being saved, unlike so many of our countrymen. He paused here and smiled once more, and none of us needed to be reminded that we were some of those countrymen. God had already saved me, the admiral went on. I did not need to be saved by Americans. I swore on my ship in front of my men that we would continue our fight for months, years, even decades if necessary. If we looked at our struggle from God’s eyes, this was no time at all.
So, Bon said, you think we really have a chance, Uncle? The admiral stroked his goatee before answering. My child, he said, still stroking the goatee, remember Jesus and how Christianity began with just him, his apostles, their faith, and the Word of God. We are like those true believers. We have two hundred apostles in this camp, a radio station broadcasting the word of freedom into our enslaved homeland, and guns. We have things Jesus and his apostles never had, but we have their faith, too, and not least — furthest from least — God is on our side.
Bon lit another cigarette. Jesus died, he said. So did the apostles.
So we’re going to die, said the affectless lieutenant. Despite the meaning of his words, or perhaps because of them, his manner and pronouncement remained unemotional. Not that that’s a bad thing, he said.
I am not saying you will die on this mission, the admiral said. Just eventually. But if you do die on this mission, know that those you save will be grateful to you, as those the apostles saved were grateful to them.
A lot of the people they went to save didn’t want to be saved, Uncle, Bon said. That’s why they ended up dead.
My son, the admiral said, no longer smiling, it does not sound like you are a believer.
If by that you mean a believer in religion or anticommunism or freedom or anything with a big word like that, no, I’m not. I used to believe, but not anymore. I don’t give a damn about saving anybody, including myself. I just want to kill communists. That’s why I’m the man you want.
I can live with that, the admiral said.
CHAPTER 18
We spent two weeks acclimating to the weather and our new comrades, among whom were three characters I had never expected to see again. These marine lieutenants were bearded and longer-haired than on the night Bon, Man, and I had encountered them in that Saigon alley, singing, Beautiful Saigon! Oh, Saigon! Oh, Saigon!, but they were still recognizably dumb. They had made their way to the docks on the day Saigon fell, and there had jumped on board the admiral’s ship. We’ve been in Thailand ever since, said the marine who was the leader of the three. He had been steeped in the Mekong Delta his entire life, as his comrades had been, all of them branded by a life in the sun, although in different shades. He was dark, but one of the other marines was darker, and the third was the darkest of all, black as a cup of black tea. They, Bon, and I grudgingly shook hands. We’re going with you across the border, said the dark marine. So we better get on each other’s right sides. This was the marine on whom I had drawn my pistol, but since he chose not to mention this fact, neither did I.
Altogether there were a dozen of us on the reconnaissance team that set out early one night, led by a Lao farmer and a Hmong scout. The Lao farmer had no choice in the matter. He had been kidnapped by the admiral’s men on an earlier reconnaissance, and was now being used as a guide, given his knowledge of the terrain through which we were traveling. He could not speak Vietnamese but the Hmong scout could and served as his translator. Even from a distance, one could see that the scout’s eyes were a ruin, dark and shattered as the windows of an abandoned palace. He was clad in black, as we all were, but he was unique in wearing a faded green beret a size too large, the brim resting on his ears and eyebrows. Following him were two of the marines, the dark one armed with an AK-47 and the darker one with our M79 elephant gun, its stubby grenades resembling short, metallic dildos. After the marines came the affectless lieutenant and the grizzled captain, who could not bring themselves to carry the enemy’s AK-47 and instead toted the M16. Behind them was the skinny RTO, grease gun in hand and PRC-25 radio on his back. Next was the philosophical medic, M3 medical kit hanging from one shoulder and M14 from the other, as no man on this reconnaissance could go unarmed. He and I had hit it off right away during an evening perfumed with jasmine and marijuana. Besides sadness and sorrow, he had asked me, what’s really heavy but weighs nothing at all? When he saw that I was stumped, he said, Nihilism, which was, in fact, his philosophy. Then came the hefty machine gunner, M60 in his arms, with myself and Bon next, me with an Ak-47, Bon with the M16. Bringing up the rear was the darkest marine, his weapon the B-40 rocket launcher.
For defense, in place of bulletproof vests and helmets, each of us was given a laminated, wallet-sized picture of the Virgin Mary to wear over our hearts. The admiral had blessed us with these gifts on our departure from the camp, which was, for most of us, a relief. We had spent our days discussing tactics, preparing rations, and studying the map of our route through the southern end of Laos. This was terrain probed by the marines on earlier reconnaissance, home to the Lao farmer. Smugglers, he claimed, crossed the border all the time. Periodically we listened to Radio Free Vietnam, its crew working from a bamboo shack next to the admiral’s hut. From there they broadcast the admiral’s speeches, read items translated from newspapers, and aired pop songs with reactionary sentiments, James Taylor and Donna Summer being particular favorites of the season. The communists hate love songs, said the admiral. They don’t believe in love or romance or entertainment. They believe the people should only love the revolution and the country. But the people love love songs, and we serve the people. The airwaves bore those love songs, laden with emotion, across Laos and into our homeland. In my pocket was a transistor radio with an earpiece so I could listen to the broadcast, and I valued it more than my weapon and the Virgin Mary. Claude, who did not believe in her or any god, gave us his secular blessing in the form of high fives as we left. Good luck, he said. Just in and out. Quick and quiet. Easier said than done, I thought. I kept that idea to myself, but I suspected that many of the dozen of us might have been thinking the same thing. Claude intuited my worry when he squeezed my shoulder. Take care of yourself, buddy. If anybody starts shooting, just keep your head down. Let the pros do the fighting. His estimation of my abilities was moving and most likely accurate. He wanted to keep me safe, this man who, along with Man, had taught me everything I knew about the practices of intelligence, of secrecy as a way of life. We’ll be waiting for you guys to come back, said Claude. See you soon, I said. That was all.