The one and a half pounds of plastic explosive encased in the mine detonated instantly, and a nanosecond later the seven hundred ball bearings, a blizzard of steel, arrived upon them at close to four thousand feet per second. The mine did what the mine was supposed to do: it took them out.
It literally dissolved them: their upper bodies were fragmented in one instant of maximum, total butchery. They exploded as if they’d swallowed grenades and become part of the atmosphere.
As for Bob, he saw none of this. The pillar, as planned, saved his life by blocking the force of the concussion. The earplugs saved his eardrums. But a pound and a half of plastic explosive is no small thing. He felt himself pulled out of his body, and his soul went sailing through the air until it struck something hard, and his mind filled with a bright fog, an incandescent emptiness. He blacked out for a minute or two.
No police arrived. The waterfront is a place of odd noises from unspecified localities: freighters’ horns, the rumble of trucks, backfires and an almost total night-emptiness of human life. The sound of the blast was just another unexplained aural phenomenon in a city full of unexplained aural phenomenon.
When Bob pulled himself out of his fog, he tasted blood. He smelled it too. The blood he tasted was his own: his nose bled and both his ears rang like firebells, despite the plugs. He felt pain. He thought he’d broken his arm, but he hadn’t, although he’d bruised it deeply. He picked himself up, saw flashbulbs prance through the air as his short-circuited optic nerves sputtered ineffectively. He blinked, staggered, sat, pulled himself up, blinked again and then beheld the horror.
The blood he smelled was theirs, and much of it, atomized, still floated in waves in the air, lit by flickering lights. There had been six of them: now there were three legs left standing, though no two belonged to any one of the men. What remained of Ward Bonson, deputy director of the CIA for counter-intelligence, Wall Street lawyer, three-star general in the KGB and a hero of the Soviet Union, was applied to the punctured metal of the wall behind him, mixed completely with the remains of the men who’d served him so ably over the long years. No one would have the heart — or the stomach — to separate them. It was a pure hose job.
Small fires burned everywhere in the smoky space. The sketches had been scattered about. Slowly, Bob gathered them up, then went to the largest of the fires.
He knelt, and one by one fed them into the hungry fire. It gobbled them, and he watched them seized, then curl to delicacy as they were blackened and devoured, then transfigure again into crispy ash, which fragmented and floated away in the hot current.
In the way his mind worked, he thought he saw the souls of those three lost boys, his friend Donny and Donny’s friend Trig and Trig’s victim, Ralph, somehow released to rise and float free, DEROS at last.
He picked up the fingerprinted M57 and dropped it into his pocket for later disposal, his last physical connection to the fate of Bonson and his team. Then he rose and walked out, turning for one last glimpse at the slaughterhouse he had created and the end of all complications of his violent life.
He thought: Sierra-Bravo-Four. Last transmission. Out.
He walked into the night air, sucked in its freshness, headed to his truck and, though he ached and bled, knew it would be best to start the long drive west. It was time to rotate back to the world.
DEDICATION
FOR
CPL John Burke, USMC
KIA, I Corps, RSVN, 1967
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to begin by making certain readers understand that the foregoing in no way advances a claim for his own heroism, which is, of course, nonexistent. He was not a Marine sniper nor even a Marine; he never went to Vietnam but served as the least efficient ceremonial soldier in the 1st Battalion (Reinf.), Third Infantry, in Washington, DC, 1969–1970. His own war story: he was present at the occupation of the Treasury Building. It was very boring. And once he cut his lip on some barb wire at Camp A.P. Hill in Virginia.
Readers will also recognize that I’ve seized events from Vietnam, fictionalized them and reinserted them in a bogus time frame for my own dramatic purposes. That includes inventing an extra year of Marine ground combat. Most Marine units left RSVN in 1971; I was stuck with 1972 because I chose that year without doing a lick of research when I was writing Point of Impact, the first of the Bob Lee Swagger books, many years back. In earlier books, I also set the action near An Loc, which turns out to be close to Saigon, and nowhere near I Corps, where the Marines served. So in a belated attempt at the illusion of accuracy, I’ve deemphasized An Loc and moved the location of Bob and Donny’s fight in the rain up to I Corps, near the Special Forces camp at Kham Duc.
I’ve also simplified the complicated events in Washington over the first four days of May 1971 into a single night, put the massacre of Firebase Mary Ann — my Dodge City — in a different year and ascribed it to a different service, and invented my own ’Nam jargon under the license of telling stories, not writing history. In fact, one of the few things recounted in this book that actually happened was the great catch that Donny remembered making against Gilman High School. It was made against Gilman, a prep school not in Arizona but Baltimore, by my son Jake Hunter, in Boys’ Latin’s victory over Gilman in 1995.
I should add that I’ve made a good-faith effort to reconcile events of this book with events previously referred to in Point of Impact and Black Light. Alas, far too many times events were irreconcilable, so you’ll simply have to trust my assertion that in other books things happened that way, but in this book they happen this way.
But where I’ve made up much, I’ve also talked with many people who had firsthand knowledge of the kind of events I describe. They’re all good men and deserve no blame for my inaccuracies or the ends to which I’ve put information that they earned the hard way.
Ed DeCarlo, retired Army CSGT, and Alvin Guyton, retired Gy. Sgt., USMC, both good buddies from On Target Shooting Range, where I spend vast amounts of time and money, shared Vietnam memories and data with me. Ed was a radio operator and briefed me on the intricacies of the PRC-77 and map reading; Alvin, a recon Marine, lent me tons of reference material and even loaned me copies of his orders to Vietnam on which to base my version of Donny’s, and tried to make me feel Marine culture well enough to imagine it. Two of the usual suspects, Weyman Swagger and John Feamster, offered their usual supplies of endless labor, commentary and suggestion, each reading the manuscript with a great deal of precision. Lenne Miller, another Vietnam vet and an old college friend, was equally generous with time and observation. My brother Tim Hunter sent me a terrific letter of constructive criticism. Jeff Weber not only lent me his name for one of the characters but also read the manuscript and offered good advice. Bob Lopez came up with a crucial idea at a crucial moment. J. D. Considine, the pop-music critic of The Baltimore Sun, my old paper, drew up a compilation tape of 1971 hits, to whose accompaniment this book was written. Mike Hill was very helpful. Bill Phillips, an ex-Marine officer, Vietnam vet and author of The Night of Silver Stars, read the manuscript carefully and helped me sort out Army jargon and replace it with Marine, but if I’ve called it a latrine somewhere instead of a head, it’s my fault, not Bill’s. Tim Carpenter, of Bushnell’s, explained the subtleties of infrared ranging devices to me. Dave Lauck, of D&L Sports in Gillette, Wyoming, and author of The Tactical Marksman, ran his fine professional eye over the manuscript, to my great benefit. Kathy Lally and Will England, the Sun’s Moscow correspondents, gave me tips and data on that city for a chapter that was ultimately cut. Warrant Officer Joe Boyer of the Marine Barracks took me on a prowl through that installation and patiently answered my questions. Jean Marbella, of my old paper and my new life, was her usual fabulous self and listened to me prattle on about titles and narrative issues late into the night. John Pancake, arts editor of my new paper, The Washington Post, just smiled every time I told him I was leaving early to work on the book. David Von Drehle, editor of the Post’s Style section, was equally generous in letting me disappear when I deemed it necessary. Steve Proctor, of the Sun, had instituted a similar policy in my many years there, and he too should be recognized and thanked.