Taste of Tenderloin (2 page)

Shane thought about that
for a moment. Before this patrol, he hadn’t really been too
interested in reading maps or visualizing scale, drop points, and
such. But he conjured up the image of the big map with their
approximate base camp location on the river, the actual short
distance—as a bird flew—to the border, and the current mission’s
drop point.
Jesus Christ!
He realized it might be true. Psycho could be
right. They were most likely headed across the border into
Laos.

“
Then who are Force Recon
hitting with this shit?” he asked, tapping his pack. “They must be
doing more than just training. Are there North Vietnamese Army over
there in Laos and Cambodia? Or maybe Viet Cong? Or
what?”

“
Who knows, man?” Psycho
said, shrugging again. “Must be someone there to shoot at. They’re
using up a hell of a lot of ammo and grenades for something, or
maybe just stockpiling a shitpot of stuff for something else that’s
coming down the line.” He paused again for a moment, then added
with a grim expression, “But I’m not so sure the guys we’re
supplying are even Third Force Recon advisors, man. They never have
any Hmong tribesmen with them on the drop pickups, and—”

“
Who are they, then?” Shane
cut in.

“
You just wait and see for
yourself,” Psycho answered in a conspiratorial whisper. “Hell, I’m
not so sure these dudes are even
alive
. I think they might be elements
from that scary-ass Lost Patrol bunch. You heard ‘bout
them?”

Shane nodded and sat up,
frowning. He took a long draw from his canteen, not sure Psycho
wasn’t trying to pull his leg, take advantage of the gullible new
guy. Of course he’d heard of the legendary Lost Patrol. It was one
of the major Vietnam myths. Supposedly, they were ghostly,
zombie-like remnants of a USMC infantry platoon ambushed somewhere
farther north. Stories said they roamed the deep jungle in
tattered, rotting camouflage, striking fear into the hearts and
minds of friend and foe. There was scuttlebutt of the raggedy
ghosts everywhere across South Vietnam, distant sightings often on
the same day. Maybe there was more than one patrol. Some private on
mess duty from Third Squad had told Shane that it was true, the
dings really did believe the ghostly scuttlebutt and were scared
shitless of the Lost Patrol. Charlie prisoners often swore to
actual sightings and hostile contact.

But there? At their drop
zone? So far south up in the mountains? Shane shook his head. Man,
that was some kind of spooky, crazy shit to even remotely
consider.

Growing up, he had never
believed in ghosts or any other supernatural stuff, but he had
never thought too much about it, really—not until coming to ‘nam.
Now he wasn’t so sure. Everyone was blatantly superstitious. Half
the platoon wore St. Christopher medals, even though only a few
were actually Catholic. Others carried rabbits’ feet, lucky coins,
or different kinds of Asian good fortune charms, including magical
tattoos they brought back from R and R in Bangkok or Hong Kong.
There were more tics and odd ritualistic behaviors happening before
going on a patrol than on a baseball team coming up to bat in the
bigs—a few guys even wore their same “lucky” shorts, socks, or
whatever, regardless of whether they were clean or not. Shane
grinned sheepishly because he’d recently bought the famed Tibetan
Buddhist chant from a Navy corpsman returning
home—
om mani padme hum
—etched in elegant Sanskrit on a tiny silver medallion he wore
around his neck. He figured the good luck mantra couldn’t hurt. But
the Lost Patrol, so far out? That was just too squirrelly. Still,
he couldn’t keep himself from shuddering slightly.

“
Saddle up,” Sergeant Owens
ordered, coming down the line of resting grunts.

Reluctantly, the squad
slipped back into their heavy packs, picked up their weapons, and
began climbing the narrow trails again. Up, always uphill; the
muggy heat trapped under the low-hanging jungle canopy seemed not
to cool down even a degree after they had climbed hundreds of feet
higher in elevation. Soon, their cams were soaked, and everyone was
huffing and puffing and dying of thirst.

Late that afternoon they
made
camp and immediately set up a
defensive perimeter, a tight circle of seven two-man posts—half on
guard, half supposedly sleeping. Big O and the Navy corpsman
assigned to the patrol shared a position.

No one really slept, of
course. Shane was lucky to even doze off for a few minutes. It had
rained heavily a day before the patrol’s mission, and the dense
forest overhang was like a grand drip system, creating a kind of
clinging, thick mist that hovered near ground level around dusk.
The jungle grew dark early, and despite what he might have believed
back home about tropical forests being quiet at night, there was a
teeth-jarring cacophony of strange sounds: coughing growls,
deep-throated howling, sharp barking, high-pitched squeaks, deep
croaking and chirruping.
Beneath that, in
the distance, just at the threshold of hearing, lay a humanlike
whispering, the words indistinct, foreign. The latter sound was
perhaps only imagined, a kind of group paranoid delusion. Over it
all sounded the very real and steady resonating hum of thousands of
insects, making the hair on Shane’s neck prickle as if it were the
dry, irritating sound of a piece of chalk scratching against a
blackboard. He knew in his heart that every one of those fucking
bugs would visit him personally sometime during the night, each
heavily armed with a probe, sting, bite, poke, or scratch, some
highly venomous and others perhaps bearing some horrible exotic
disease. His helmet net provided no defense against being bit or
stung on the hands, wrists, ankles, or any other briefly exposed
skin. Shane tried to rest, keeping everything covered up as best he
could, but he was only able to lie there dozing, listening and
scratching frantically.

The risks and dangers of
meeting an enemy patrol were real enough to Shane, but he pushed
them to the back of his mind. The creepy-crawly hazards, lurking
right near them in the tropical forest, were more immediate and
attacked relentlessly throughout the early night. And they
were
noisy
. Tex,
his fire team leader and perimeter post partner, had explained to
Shane the first night out in the deep jungle that the din was a
preferable state, really their best friend. If the jungle went
suddenly quiet, that was the time to worry—abrupt silence tightened
up every experienced grunt’s sphincter muscle in a hurry. It meant
something unusual was happening out there, just beyond their view,
something—or perhaps someone—dangerous moving about quietly in the
darkness with evil intentions.

The next morning they ate
cold K-rations, no fires.

The heavily laden squad
struggled along through the thick upland forest, finally reaching
the coordinates of the meeting point in the early evening. No one
was there to meet them. Not yet.

They made camp and
waited.

At dusk, the jungle came
alive again with its grinding cacophony of sound. Second Squad ate
another cold meal and waited, nerves tight and exposed. The only
relief was when Big O moved among them, joking and cheering them up
individually.

At about six, the jungle
suddenly turned quiet.

Dead silence.

Not even one pesky mosquito
ventured forth to harass Shane or any of his buddies.

He, like most of the squad,
looked about wide-eyed, his throat tight and his stomach muscles
clenched painfully. He sweated heavily, a clammy, itching dampness
accumulating in his crotch and underarms, laden with the sour smell
of fear.

Quiet…except for the sound
of operating handles on individual M-16s sliding ominously back and
forth into place. Rounds were chambered as everyone hunkered down
into a prone firing position and waited anxiously for something to
happen.

Time crawled by
slowly.

6:01, 6:02, 6:05,
6:10…6:30.

The fog settled in,
clinging to the nearby tree limbs and vines like white gauze,
adding to the eerie mystique of the darkened, silent
jungle.

Big O crawled up and down
his line of exhausted, nervous ground-pounders, patting shoulders,
whispering encouragement, handing out sticks of Doublemint and
advising everyone to “Try to hang loose.”

Impossible.

Shane tried a trick he’d
learned back at AITR to increase hearing acuity. He pinched his
nostrils together with a thumb and forefinger, then blew hard,
making his ear canals pop. He swallowed dryly, cocked his head to
the side, and listened intently.

Still not a sound out in
the muggy night.

So it was shocking when, a
few minutes later, the strange face first appeared in the
mist.

The pale, thin, almost
skull-like shaven head stared at them with its sunken dark eyes
like an apparition in the fog. No more than ten feet away, it was a
still, macabre white portrait framed against a dark, foggy
background.

A body coalesced from misty
particles, wearing Marine cams, with arms extending an M-16 in a
neutral position overhead. Finally, the whole man stepped
cautiously forward into better view.

Shane swallowed, his throat
dry and scratchy.

The gaunt man’s uniform was
washed out and tattered, though not quite rotting off him. It no
longer bore rank, name patch, or insignia of any kind—just a faded,
colorless set of Marine cams. He approached Big O in a silent,
unnatural movement—almost catlike. They spoke only a few words,
then the strange Marine made a slow lifting signal with one
arm.

Only a few feet away from
where Second Squad lay hunkered down—so close they could have
reached out and touched the Marine—five sunken-eyed demons popped
up out of the waist-high grass. Not demons, really, but gaunt, pale
men wearing torn, faded shirts and pants that barely resembled
uniforms. They all carried M-16s slung carelessly over their
shoulders.

How long have they been
that close?
Shane asked himself, trying
again with little luck to work up a bit of moisture into his
mouth.

“
Turn over to the men in
front of you what you’re carrying in your backpacks,” Sergeant
Owens ordered hoarsely.

The grunts obeyed
immediately, relieved to be finally rid of their heavy burdens.
After taking the supplies from Second Squad, the pale-faced
phantoms gracefully slipped away, despite their bulging packs, and
disappeared silently back into the dark jungle. Soon, their bald,
gaunt leader—whomever the fuck he was—followed. A sickeningly sweet
stench hung in the damp air, even after they’d
disappeared.

“
They weren’t any Lost
Patrol, no way,” Shane murmured to himself under his breath, but he
felt no real conviction. The comfort was shallow, like whistling
while passing a graveyard at night.

On the way back out
of the mountains, the jumpy patrol bunched up too
tightly on a narrow, steep trail. Every man froze as one when they
heard the first metallic
plunk
—the characteristic echoing
sound of a mortar round being dropped into a firing
tube.

Plunk
…

Before the second echo
finished, the experienced members of the squad had hit the ground
and were digging in, jacking rounds into chambers and preparing to
return fire.

Shane remained standing in
place, even after the third
plunk
died away, finishing the unseen enemies’ first
triangulation of mortar fire. Charlie was trying to zero in on
them.

Tex finally managed to pull
Shane to the ground, a moment before the wet floor all around them
began to explode, mud and jungle debris raining down on the whole
bunched-up squad.

Ear-shattering chaos broke
loose on the patrol—more mortar rounds plunking and booming,
accompanied by small arms fire chattering
away and the pinging of grenades being armed. The latter arced
through the air and exploded with sizzling streams of white
phosphorus, audible even over the rhythmic
tat-tat-tat
of heavy machine
guns.

Dumbstruck and disoriented,
Shane’s consciousness registered none of these dangerous sounds. He
didn’t even try to return fire. Instead, he clutched his helmet and
curled into a fetal ball in the jungle mud. The cries, moaning,
death rattles, and airborne body parts made only a passing
impression on his conscious mind. Moments later, with his heart
thumping wildly, Shane felt a sharp burning sensation along his
neck, below his ear. His right shoulder simultaneously went numb,
and then a feeling like being drowned overwhelmed what was left of
his dulled sensibilities.

Blackness.

Days later, PFC Shane
McConnell
regained a drug-addled
consciousness in a receiving hospital back in California at Travis
AFB. The deep shrapnel wounds in his neck, shoulder, and back were
operated on before he was eventually transferred to the VA hospital
in the North Bay at Martinez. They did an excellent job on his
physical wounds, but not so well on his head. He experienced
horrible recurring flashback nightmares, images of disembodied
bloody heads, arms, and legs swirling about in the air around him
in the jungle. The meds and talking to doctors did nothing at all
for his permanently damaged soul.