Cracker! (10 page)

Rick played it cool. Ignored ’em. That was a Scandinavian specialty. As he looked around, he saw what he’d thought was a welcoming stand: It was actually a pile of caskets lined up four high with flags draped over them. A couple of guys were already picking one up to take onto the plane that Rick had just gotten off of. U-Haul said, “Get ready to whip the world, soldier.”

Rick didn’t answer at first. But, hey, if he mouthed off, what were they going to do, send him to Vietnam? So he said to U-Haul, “Can’t they wait until we’re gone to do that stuff?” He deliberately left off the “Sergeant.” He already felt a little less like a new guy, a little more like the rude guy his grandmother had seen.

U-Haul put his face in Rick’s and said, “This. Is. A. War.” Then he shouted to the men, “Empty that plane! Double-time!” They moved fast, climbing back on board to empty out the plane and make room for the caskets.

S
O THE
67
TH
I
NFANTRY
P
LATOON
(S
COUT
Dog) loaded up the trucks for the convoy to Bien Hoa. This was it. Rick and Cracker were about to become the best scout dog team in Vietnam.

Rick gawped as the convoy rode through Saigon. He’d never seen such chaos. Men dressed in what looked like black pajamas-exactly like the kind the enemy supposedly wore—rode bicycles so rickety, Rick would have thought they’d disintegrate under the weight of riders. The bicycles darted among the army trucks and the women balancing fruit—one basket hanging on each end of some kind of stick the women carried on their backs. Market owners and customers waved their arms and shouted; Rick assumed they were bartering. He could smell fish but couldn’t see any. Kids ran barefoot alongside the truck screaming, “G.I. Joe!” He was surprised at how many Americans walked or rode through the streets. Rick and the rest of the squad sat in the back of a truck covered with their ponchos, their dogs huddled by their sides. The old-timers laughed and talked, but Rick just said over and over to himself,
I’m here.

The air smelled different, like … like, well, he guessed the only thing in the world it smelled like was Saigon. He just hadn’t expected it to smell so different in a different country. Sure, everyplace on the planet had trees, fruit, people, roads, and so on. He hadn’t expected that a collection of trees, fruit, people, and roads could seem like a completely different planet.

The temperature was in the nineties that day, but because of the rain, Rick wasn’t even sure whether he was sweating. He wiped water from his eyes and kept gawping.

As the convoy left Saigon, the guys quieted down. Rick peered at every shadow for Vietcong hiding along the road. Jungle loomed around them, palms and elephant grass and trees so thick, you couldn’t see past the first layer. Mud splattered on their faces and filled every crevice in the road and every bomb crater in the fields. Rick’s heart skipped a beat as a few old-timers suddenly pointed their rifles toward something, and then Rick saw a couple of young, crying kids run out of the jungle and away down the long, long road they’d just left behind.

The convoy rumbled through a village. Nobody spoke—it was as if they’d all realized at once that they were an open target. Anyone could be hiding anywhere and fire on them. The civilian hootches were roofed with straw, and most were small—probably only one room. There was no concrete anywhere, just some tin and yellow thatch amid the green jungle that was everywhere. Cracker was pressed between Rick and Tristie.

“Feels like Disneyland, don’t it?” a talkative black guy nicknamed “Uppy” finally said. He was an old-timer—just twenty-three years old but on his second tour of duty. His real name was Upton. He was one of the few old-timers who didn’t make fun of the new guys. He was a shortish guy but looked like he could deadlift about five hundred pounds.

“Yeah,” said Rick. “Except you don’t get killed in Disneyland.” Not that he’d ever been to Disneyland. Now he was a lot farther from home than California.

Rick didn’t see any other trucks, but he did see more men in those black pajamas riding bicycles. A couple of beautiful Vietnamese girls stood by watching Rick’s truck work its way through the mud. Uppy leaned over and waved at the girls. “
Xin chào
, girls!” he called out.

Then one of girls looked straight at Rick and said, “I like! I like you! You number one!” He stared after her. Dang, she was choice!

Then he heard laughter from Uppy and a couple of the other seasoned soldiers who were hitching a ride in their truck. Uppy leaned out of the truck and shouted at the girl, “Hey, how about liking me?”

Cracker’s head shot up. She smelled something—something important.
Chickens!
She saw chickens under a house and barked wildly, setting off a round of barking among all the dogs. The handlers pulled their leashes tight, and twenty-four voices called out at once: “No!”

Cracker gazed back longingly as the truck drove past. Those were perfectly good chickens. She looked at Rick and tried to explain: “Woof!”

Rick just shook his head. He waited for Sarge to yell at them to control their dogs, but for some reason, he didn’t.

As they left the village area, nothing but jungle surrounded them again. Sarge’s face took on falcon-like features as he peered into the jungle. “Any Vietcong around here?” Rick called out.

Sarge shook his head. “None reported. But that doesn’t mean they’re not there. We always say, ‘They’re everywhere and nowhere.’”

The convoy passed what looked like a destroyed village—a few half-standing huts in the rain—before turning down a winding road. After a few more hours of driving, Rick saw some sorry-looking buildings in the distance.

“That Bien Hoa?” he asked, disappointed.

Several times today Cracker had heard that word “Benwa.”

“We’ve been temporarily reassigned” was all Sarge said. “This used to be a temporary FSB, but they’re using it now for the 271st Airborne. We’ll be supporting their ground infantry. There’s been a lot of contact here lately.”

Rick wasn’t going to ask what the heck an “FSB” was. But he wished somebody else would. Finally, he whispered to Twenty-Twenty, “What’s FSB?”

Twenty-Twenty whispered back, “Fire support base. Temporary camp they set up that sometimes becomes permanent.”

When Rick’s truck arrived at camp, he was even more disappointed. Even Cody seemed less than his usual jovial self. Camp was basically a flat, muddy plain with a bunch of ugly buildings and about ten thousand packed sandbags lying against them. Literally about ten thousand. Rick already knew exactly who was going to fill the sandbags around
their
hootch.

The trucks moved through the gates and stopped in front of a big, empty space. The dogs and handlers got off while Sarge talked to a major who’d approached the convoy. Rick liked watching the sarge kowtow to somebody else. Then Sarge walked over to where the men waited. He swept his hand toward the empty space. “Meet your new home, gentlemen!”

Rick and Twenty-Twenty glanced at each other. Finally, Cody asked, “Where are the barracks, Sergeant?”

The old-timers burst out laughing. “Man, oh, man,” said one. “You gotta love new guys. Hey! Hey! If anyone is looking for the Holiday Inn, it’s right over there.” Then he and his buddies laughed again and walked off.

“We’re going to build barracks,” said Sarge. “That is, if we get the materials. In the meantime, we’ll use the tents.”

Rick asked, “Sarge, does that mean there are no dog kennels, either?”

“Ditto on the kennels, except for now we’ll use the crates.”

Rick watched Sarge look the platoon over. Naturally, Sarge’s eyes stopped on him. “Lanski, you can start filling sandbags.”

“Cody, you and Mason set up the tents.”

Rick didn’t listen to the rest. This was just great. His very first assignment in the Vietnam War was filling stinkin’ sandbags. One of the old guys took pity on him and handed him a shovel so he wouldn’t have to use his e-tool—the entrenching tool the men all carried. Rick stuck his shovel into the ground and lifted a load of dirt. All right, that wasn’t so bad. The second one wasn’t bad either. But by the time he’d finished just a few bags, his palms had already grown raw. He looked around the firebase at all the sandbags. On the upside, there were worse assignments—a couple of guys had been assigned to clean out the latrines.

Once in a while someone would walk by and he’d hear them say, “New guys.” Blisters bubbled on his palms. Technically, these weren’t sandbags, they were dirtbags, and right now the dirt was actually mud.

As Rick filled the bags, someone else piled them around their tents and the dog crates, but you could pile them only so high. A mortar attack from above could kill them. Someone had lined the crates up together, and Rick could see rain slanting into the crates. Rick wasn’t supposed to, but he and some of the other guys also assigned to filling sandbags let their dogs off leash while they worked.

Rick spied an old-timer walking by and called out, “Say, man!”

The guy stopped. “Yeah?”

“Are there any extra tarps around? Our dogs are gonna get soaked while they’re trying to sleep tonight.” That is, if night ever came. The time change made Rick’s head groggy. He squinted at the bright sky.

“Whatcha got to trade?”

“Aw, come on, we’re all in the same army.”

The guy shook his head and said what Rick knew he was going to say: “New guy.”

Cody walked over. “I got a watch,” he said.

Rick looked at Cody with surprise. That watch was his pride and joy.

The old-timer leaned over to study the watch. He tried to appear nonchalant, but Rick could see his eyes lighting up. Cody pulled it off his wrist. “It’s solid gold,” Cody told him. “My grandfather won it playing poker.”

The old-timer said, “I seen better.”

Rick knew a little about bargaining. Even with prices stuck to the items in the hardware store, sometimes people tried to negotiate. Now he looked nonchalant and said, “Forget it, we’ll find someone else to trade with.”

The old-timer scratched his cheek. “I’ll tell you what. I’m gonna do you a favor ’cause you’re new.”

“We’ll also want some steaks for dinner tonight,” Rick said. “That watch is worth a lot of money.”

“I’ll talk to Mike,” the old-timer said.

“Who’s Mike?”

“You don’t know Mike? Mike’s the most important guy in camp. You gotta know Mike. He’s just a spec four, but he’s more important than a general as far as you’re concerned. A general don’t care if your dogs get wet, and a general ain’t gonna get you no tarp
or
no steak. We call Mike our ’procurement specialist.’”

So later that day the dogs had their tarp stretched out on poles over their crates, Mike had the only thing of value Cody had ever owned, and the guys and their dogs ate steak for dinner. Cody was just about the most popular guy in Vietnam that night.

Rain poured for several days. After a while you accepted it, just like it was regular air. You walked through it like it was nothing. The dogs weren’t as effective in rain because it washed away the smells, but Cody got called out on a mission anyway, to take a chopper to a drier area.

Rick spent most of the first four days filling sandbags, or mudbags. He gloved his hands to protect the blisters and attacked the mud and felt the opposite of the relaxation he felt in the shop at home, working with his dad’s tools. He felt frustrated out here.

Since Cody had already gotten chosen to go out on a mission, it didn’t seem fair that Rick was still filling these dang bags. What kind of high-tech helicopter war was this, anyway?

Then on the fifth day the skies cleared. During formation Sarge yelled out at him, “Hanski, you got a search and destroy.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Now, mister.”

The crazy thing was that even though Rick had been wanting his chance to whip the world, he now realized that it was a lot safer filling sandbags. Still, he couldn’t wait to show off Cracker. As was customary with new handlers, one of the “short” handlers would accompany him. “Short” meant a soldier who had only a short time left in country, so they were called “short” or “short-timers.” By tradition, short-timers worked mostly in the rear, which meant jobs as far from combat as possible. They’d also already turned in their dogs so that the dogs could learn to work and bond with new handlers. Some handlers thought giving up their dogs was one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Rick didn’t like to think about it.

The mission was to make contact in an area where a reconnaissance team had said Charlie might be hiding. Rick heard that the team had reported some fresh bark scraped from a tree. Didn’t sound like much of a lead to him, and probably didn’t sound like much of a lead to anybody because the brass was sending out only a couple of small platoons.

Rick waited at the makeshift kennels while the short-timer sat with his former dog—a pure black German shepherd—talking to him. At one point the short-timer leaned his head into his dog’s coat. Rick turned away; it seemed like a private moment. He patted Cracker’s head. “We got a long way to go before I’m short.”

Finally, the other handler left his dog, and they walked to the helicopter pad. They had just one cigarette between them, so they shared it.