The Man From Saigon (8 page)

She’d run out of water and was drinking from Son’s plastic bottle, the canvas flaps jigging with the movement of the track, her sunglasses making her nose sweat. She was handing him back the bottle when she heard gunshot. The bottle dropped. She wheeled toward the sound, the air cracking around her as though blocks of wood were being exploded close by, then a huge booming explosion that made everything shake.

It was as though the world was erupting beneath them. Great spouts of earth rained down as the ground, blasted with mortars, sent mud flying as though an enormous force was kicking it straight into her face, over her head. The M60 mounted on the hull of the track burst into life; she was deafened by the gun’s noise, which soared through her, lifting her up, making her weightless as though she were floating. She had always thought she was protected if only by the firepower of the men with whom she traveled. By the guns, the boxes of ammunition, the ever-squawking radios, the sheer volume of artillery. Joining the convoy, so heavily armored, hadn’t given her any concern, not a moment of worry; they were heading for a refugee camp, not trying to take a city. And now, this.

The first few blasts destroyed the vehicles in front and the ensuing attack came straight at those who stalled. She was traveling on the open back of the APC; there was no place to take shelter, and she realized suddenly that the feeling of floating was due, in part, to how hard she had to work just to hang on to the vehicle. They were reversing now off the road, bouncing over uneven ground, churning up mud, scraping against the brush, which itself sparkled with gunfire. The track was tipping one way, then another, lunging into the jungle, then reversing up again, the men above her yelling to each other, firing madly, the spent casings dancing on the track’s deck. She saw tracers to the rear, flashes from the enemy guns. She looked at Son, indicating wildly the attack which was coming from behind, hoping he could somehow alert the gunman. Instead he grabbed her arm, pulled her down and together they jumped off the track, running, wheeling and diving, tripping, getting up again. It was a crazy thing to do, to run blindly toward the bush, away from the approaching gunfire, but there were soldiers on the ground now, too, and they didn’t know what else to do.

They survived the initial, lethal minute. That was the first
thing. They missed the ammo log that exploded, the fragments of burning metal, the small-arms fire that rang out around them. It was the right thing to run. They might have made it, too, but there was a kind of disorientation; the jungle seemed to swallow them whole. The fighting continued, went on and on. They didn’t know which way to move. They heard screaming; they heard the long cracking sound of machine guns. But they were out of voice range and never heard the call to mount up. The convoy moved on without them while they were still trying to figure out where the road was, where the shots were coming from. All around them was jungle, elephant grass and vines, the air full of carbine, the heat like someone holding a blanket over her head.

She didn’t feel frightened. When she saw the ammo log blow she imagined that the blast would roll toward her. The burning metal tumbled through the air so cleanly, she thought it would fly straight to where she was sitting on the track. One of the crew on the track had already been injured. She saw him crumple in a single, smooth motion, as though someone had suddenly removed all his bones. He fell on top of the track, amid the burning copper shell casings which would blister your skin if they touched you, then he slid toward the edge. She might have hoped the soldier wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t hold on to such a simple, humane thought. She’d seen him fall, his body halfway off the edge of the vehicle. She’d seen the people running and crouching, throwing themselves this way and that, falling, dying, all of this happening beneath the heat of a rising sun. It seemed impossible that they had been so effectively ambushed and, then, that she had survived by running toward the jungle. In the thick of the jungle, she felt amazed to be standing, to be whole, stunned so that for a minute she ran her hands over her arms, her legs, then turned to Son and did the same to him. To think that she was still alive! Even her friend, too, even him. She was not afraid, but
grateful. Grateful to every animal and bird in this harsh land, to the sun and wind and to everything she observed, suddenly free, standing, breathing, sweating, living.

Now it was only a matter of getting back to the convoy. She did not realize it was already moving. She pulled Son’s arm, told him they had better get out of there. But he stood silent and immobile, as though he’d been planted in the ground like wood. She began to grow concerned. She took his shoulders and shook him, frowning into his still, frozen face, wondering if he had some injury she could not see, a hole in his body like the holes she’d seen in bodies before, a dial of blood rimmed by charred black flesh, sometimes small enough you had to look for it, hiding an enormous, tattered exit wound. But there was no bullet and anyway, he was standing. Though his breath came in shallow gasps and his eyes stayed fixed on the air in front of him, he had no injury she could detect, and there was no explanation she could imagine.

At last she saw him move. He swallowed, sucked his lips in, and spoke in a hoarse whisper so that she had to lean toward him to hear. She realized all at once what was happening, what held him there, unmoving.

Behind us
, he said.

T
he targets were known to everyone. For example, the men who carried radios were targets. Her second month as a correspondent, a Spec-4 was killed in front of her and his radio, still squawking, was hit two more times before she had the sense to crawl back out of the way. Son was screaming at her,
Get down! Move!
The lieutenant whose radio the Spec-4 was carrying was nose down in the dirt, yelling like mad for a medic. There were more bullets; they sent up spirals of dust only a few yards from where she was, splintered the branches of nearby trees, made hard cracks in the air around her. She could hear all this, the lieutenant going crazy, his cheek to the ground, his mouth open, calling and calling for help for the dying soldier, Son shouting her name until his voice was hoarse. But she was stunned; she could not bring herself to move. She dropped on to the dirt, her eyes level with the radio operator’s shoulder. She kept staring at his chest where smoke spiraled up from two neat holes, looking at his arms stretched out casually on the ground, the plastic handset still resting in his open palm. He wore a wedding ring. She thought about it, but she did not touch her camera. Had he been a dead Vietcong she would have gotten out the camera, but this was an American. He had a letter from home folded carefully in the band of his helmet, his face toward the high, white sun, his eyes large, empty, no longer focusing, and still the smoke rising from him, his chest on fire, his heart.

There was more shouting and bullets and the
whoosh
of rockets overhead. She heard the radio calling to the dead soldier, asking his position, calling over and over, a desperate voice demanding his coordinates, until finally the next bullets came and then even the radio stopped. Suddenly, she woke up as though from a stupor, felt a rush of fear gathering inside her, the sensation so strong it was like having the wind knocked out of her. All at once she cried out, then crawled as fast as possible to a nearby anthill, a huge mound, baked hard, bigger than a rosebush. She hid there, her hands over her head, her chin in her chest, wondering what she’d been doing—what on earth—sitting in the open like that, so easy to pick off.

The lieutenants leading platoons were targets. They allowed her to tag along with her steno pad. They allowed her to ask questions, to share C-rations and cigarettes, to dig a hole at night and sleep among the men, but not to walk point with them up front. They did not want her killed. It wasn’t that a lieutenant had any reason to favor her. She was of no use to them—if she died, if she didn’t—but she would not know to be wary of dried leaves, which can sometimes be old camouflage hiding an explosive. Or that an unusual object on the ground—a VC scarf or helmet—would blow her arm off if she touched it. They protected her by keeping her among them, and she cherished that protection. The commanding officers would not say this to her face, but a dead woman was not good for morale.

Son they did not worry about. Put him up front. Put him behind, in the middle, anywhere at all. He was male, Vietnamese, a journalist—who cared?

Radar equipment was a target. Artillery pieces were targets. Anything was a target, but there were values attached. A helicopter was worth a great deal. A reporter was not worth much, possibly nothing at all. Most of the ones who died were shot by accident or tripped a mine, at least before the war moved
into Cambodia. Then it all changed. September 1970: twenty-five reporters killed that month alone. By then she was out of the war. She got a letter from a friend who was still there telling her Kupferberg was dead. Sanchez was dead. Jenkins was missing. Ngoc Kia, dead. She hung up her coat. She sat down on the steps. She thought,
Everything in my life is poisoned.
She thought,
Don’t let me go back.
But of course she wanted to go back. She would always want to.

But in 1967 she did not know any correspondents who had been killed, did not know any personally. You
could
die. Anyone could die; you didn’t even need to go out on combat assaults for that. Poisoned in a crowded street in Saigon from a hypodermic needle, or blown up while standing exposed at a bus stop waiting to board one of the military buses with steel mesh bolted over the windows to stop grenades. If you went out, or if you didn’t. Hotels were bombed. Church buildings. A secretary for the CIA heard a noise in the street, went to the window, and was killed when a car bomb exploded. Nobody meant to kill her, her specifically. There would be a lot of blood shed, then nothing for a week, a month, so that you began to relax. Then it started again. Marc’s cameraman, Locke, called it “the life cycle,” an ironic name, she thought. Marc was even more philosophic, saying “If it happens, it happens.” But one thing she thought she knew was that she herself was not a target, was never a target.

Yet here she is, with three guns trained on her.

The three Vietcong stand in a formation, one more forward than the others, rifles out, balanced in their hands so that the muzzles are aimed straight at her. She has not seen guns pointed in her direction before. She is used to seeing the sides of the barrels, the curves of the magazines, the focus of the soldiers who carry the weapons directed at some far-off target, not her. She remains completely still, as though for an X-ray, frozen in place, not sure whether to raise her hands. The soldiers must
be assessing how dangerous she and Son are, studying their belts for weapons, searching the brush behind them for soldiers, for the green army uniform, the canvas-sided boots. Suddenly, one of them lowers his weapon and comes forward under the protection of his comrades, who stand ready to fire.

The soldier who approaches them is tall for a Vietnamese, with a narrow head like a rocket. There is a ferocity to his movements so that it feels to Susan as though a wild animal is charging them. He directs his attention at Son, whom he regards as though he has been hunting him for months, for years even, as though he knows him and hates him, as though there is some dreadful business that needs settling and which gives the soldier every right at this time to knock Son hard in the chest with the butt of his rifle and send him sprawling to the ground.

She sees Son’s head rock back, his knees collapse. She watches as he goes down with a grunt, his head rolling back as he falls. Her hands fly to her mouth, her eyes stare; she wishes she could turn away. He is on the ground, on his knees. The soldier turns now to her, glaring as she reels back, her body tense, expecting a blow. But he does not hit her. He shouts at her in Vietnamese, kicks Son, and issues an instruction she doesn’t understand. Son manages a response which includes the words
bao chi
journalists. There is a pause as the soldier takes this in. He mutters a short sentence also containing the word
bao chi
, and Son responds once more, his focus still on the ground, unmoving. The others remain ready to fire.

She feels so tense she thinks she may faint, and she wonders if they will shoot her as she falls. The first soldier nudges Son with his foot. A second approaches, this one smaller with bushy hair sticking out every direction, and Susan sees that he has a sword in one hand, his rifle in the other. He starts speaking in a rapid, insistent manner, pointing to the sky with the sword, a crude weapon that looks as though it has been made from burnt metal. All around them are flying insects, the sun so
bright she squints and still cannot see. It is like being inside an overexposed photograph. Her vision fades at the edges. For a moment she thinks they are going to kill Son with the sword, bringing it down upon his head as he crouches on the ground. She cannot take this in, how they are going to kill them now as easily as if the act were a culling of stock. But the soldier seems more interested in what he sees above him, in the pale, hot sun scorching from its height above the scrub and trees. The sword does not come down on Son’s neck. Nobody is to be killed, at least for now.

Son is told to get up. He rises, his hands arranged behind his head, his neck bowed. The third of the young soldiers is with them now. He has an air of certainty about him, and circles as though assuming ownership, his weapon more loosely held than the others. They are talking, a rapid exchange that means nothing to Susan until Son speaks to her in French. His French is as good as his English, much better than hers. He does not meet her eyes.

“They want us to move fast now,” he says. “Before the air strike.”

Being captured, she discovers, is a feeling of being trapped, but worse even. Being trapped and buried alive. Son carries himself stiffly, his shoulder swollen from the earlier blow, one leg of his trousers torn at the knee with a gaping hole that seems to get larger by the hour. Her field jacket is tied around her waist, slightly damp from the morning rain and her own sweat, smelling like warm grass and mold. She has lost her hat and has only a scarf to keep her hair out of her face, the sun off her head. For now, the sun is not a problem. They walk through a dense stretch of jungle that allows in only the darkest green-hued light. The jungle has a fairytale aspect to it, with huge leaves, vines that hang like snakes, tongues of fungus that poke up from the ground. It has a smell, too. Rotting vegetation,
stagnant water, hot wet earth. Her breath feels scorched in her lungs. She takes in the air and it feels empty to her, unable to deliver the oxygen she needs. She wonders how she stays standing, walking. She thinks she can feel the gaze of the soldier behind her, his eyes on her back, his rifle close enough so that she could reach back and touch it. She listens to the sounds of the jungle, the whistles and rustles, the birds through the trees, their own footfalls on the jungle’s floor. Everything spooks her. If she thinks too much about the soldier behind her she will scream.