Even from the distance Izzy could see their destination was a long way from Nha Trang, which now compared to spending the war at the Plaza Hotel next to this place which looked like one big Fort surrounded by the jungle on the side of a blasted hill.
No wonder these guys called them Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers.
Rick issued some order to the pilot through his headset and rather than fly directly toward the ugly blasted hill, the chopper banked to the right and went in another direction.
“Where are we going?” Peck shrilly demanded. “The base is over there!”
“Hang onto your panties,” Rick shouted back. “It's a surprise, sweetheart.”
A few minutes and more than a few miles away, they circled a clearing and landed. Izzy did what everyone else did, jumping out with his own travel gear and extra Rx meds, which was no doubt different than whatever J.D. was carrying in the duffel he was the last to haul out. At Rick's wave, the chopper took off.
Two jeeps were waiting nearby, apparently part of Rick's surprise since they were parked in the middle of nowhere and he had the keys.
“Here you go, Major.” He pitched one to Peck who immediately handed it to Johnson. “Feel free to go get some lunch and set up at the clinic with your side kick while I take the rest of my guests for a little tour.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Take a look around! What you see from here is what you get in this hell hole. Where in god's name are we, anyway?”
“Have you been outside the wire?” Rick motioned the rest of them into the jeep he was commandeering.
“Outside?
Outside?
Are you crazier than you already seemâ¦what's your name again? Give me your name. I am writing you up.”
“Captain Richard Galt, Special Ops. Feel free to write away. With any luck you'll get promoted to my job. But. . .” Rick looked him over, shrugged with a “meh” kind of impression and concluded, “I wouldn't count on it.” He got behind his own wheel, cranked the engine.
“Wait! This is a war zone, people are out there wanting to kill us. You can't just leave us here.”
“Oh yes I can, and yes I will, asshole. In fact, I think it's a great idea if you just stick around right where you are while we go sight-see and may or may not come back this way. You can wait for dark and probably get to be Officer of the Guard since we're a little short in these parts and need all the help we can get.”
Rick peeled out with J.D., in the front seat next to him, laughing with glee.
Gregg chuckled, and Izzy was happy to have even some black humor to offset the earlier gunning, so he kind of chuckled, too. But he was compelled to look back anyway, guided by that part of him that he never wanted to lose touch with, but seemed to grow fainter by the day, the part of his own humanity that divided him from some gunman doing his job, and enjoying it.
Izzy noticed that Gregg glanced back, too. He was glad not to be alone in that, and Gregg nodded when their eyes caught, then shifted ahead to where J.D. and Rick sat up front, carrying on a happy conversation about something Izzy couldn't catch, but it didn't matter anyway. Those two guys were as obviously in their element as he and Gregg were not, but there they were anyway, bouncing along in the back seat as Peck and Johnson sped behind them on the crude red dirt roads, splashing through the puddles of the heavy rain that had recently fallen. The tattered base called Ban Me Thuot, so quickly left behind in the air, seemed a booming metropolis compared to the remote wilderness they were in. Izzy had grown up surrounded by streets and buildings and people. There was absolutely nothing but nothing out here except the jungle.
Izzy put his latest helicopter-Alfred Hitchcock-scenario into the section of his mind he had begun relegating all such dark things to and tried to focus on how high and green the grass was, how bright the colored flowers on the vines climbing the trees they plunged past.
Suddenly, the jeep stopped and Rick turned off the motor.
“Okay, campers, we walk from here. We'll keep it short because you have the good work to do and I'm the last person to keep you from itâtrust me, that's exactly where I want you because that's where the men need you to be. But all that will still be waiting after I show you something you'll never forget. Just bring water and cameras and of course your trusty weapons in case we are swarmed by the enemy.”
The last was clearly a dig at Peck, seething in the passenger seat of the jeep that had screeched to a halt behind them.
“I am not leaving this vehicle and entering this area,” Peck announced as Johnson revved the engine. “This is enemy territory, for Chrissakes.”
“Apparently,” J.D. concurred, stroking his chin as he put his aviator snake eyes on Peck, before politely inviting, “Sure you don't care to join us, Major? After all, the only professional who knows his way around out here is with us.”
“Just be back in an hour,” Peck snapped, conceding ground but refusing to give up the whole farm. “If you're not, then. . . then. . .”
“Then, what?” J.D. laughed. So did Rick. “Okay, mom, if we're not back in an hour, then what?”
“I will call for support.”
“Okay, fine, and do you have a secret phone in your shoe?” J.D. inquired.
“Leave me the radio,” Peck demanded.
“There is no radio, you idiot,” Rick informed him, signaling the way forward with his M16 to the guests he had on board. Then as an afterthought, threw over his shoulder, “See if you can rig up two tin cans and a string. We'll see you when we see you.”
The group left Peck and Johnson behind, arguing. Rick signaled to Gregg and was speaking to him quietly. Izzy thought he heard “Nikki” mentioned and wondered if Rick even knew about her relationship with Peck. Probably not since Rick seemed the type to confront any competition head on. As for Peck? Izzy thought about that and decided Peck would be too smart and too cowardly to confront someone physically superior to himself. Instead he would retaliate in some covert-hostile way, get some revenge that would go behind your back, not put it in your face, and be structured for maximum toxicity. That's how guys like him operated. Ugly. Sneaky. Effective.
Izzy didn't want to intrude on Gregg's and Rick's conversation, so he hung back, not too much certainly, not out here, but as he tramped along behind them he was stunned by the beauty of a kind of nature he had never thought to see.
“My god, it's like a sanctuary out here,” he exclaimed to J.D., who had fallen in step beside him. “Look at the size of that treeâand, that bird that's in it, just look! And all this bamboo, the color, the size, theâ”
“Okay, Tarzan,” J.D. cut in, his voice very quiet but not his scary quiet voice. “Orientation number two: We are in the bush, you are entering the food chain right here, and you, with your skills, are no longer the top of the food chain. Got it?”
“Got it.”
“Good. Now just remember to move a little quietly because this is not the Bronx Zoo tour, and also watch where your feet are because while you're gawking at the trees you might miss one of the twenty deadly snakes ⦠actually, Gregg? You might want to look up.”
“Holy shit!”
The snake dangling over Gregg's head was brown with black markings, with a long, bright, flicking tongue. Gregg stood paralyzed, either too terrified to move or unsure if running would incite an attack.
Izzy's heart hammered. He wanted to run back to the jeeps but didn't dare take off solo on the barely visible animal trail they were on. So he backed up, very slowly, while J.D. drew closer to the snake, tilting his head.
“It's just a reticulated python,” J.D. told them. “He's not likely to bother you unless you bother him first.”
“Good call, Doc,” Rick said, clearly impressed, “where'd you learn about snakes?”
“Herpetology 101,” J.D. said. “Snakes are cool.”
“Want me to kill it?” Rick asked. “We could have it for lunch.”
At first, Izzy thought he was kidding, but when Rick reached down to his boot and unsheathed a knife, and it sure was not a nice silver steak knife like they had at Tavern on the Green, Izzy instinctively tried to stop him with a forceful, “No!”
Rick paused, frowned. “Don't move.” Then he whipped the knife up and across so fast the next thing Izzy knew the knife was next to his boot pinning a snake's severed head to the ground, its tongue still flicking.
“Monocled cobra,” J.D. noted, “About eight feet, looks like.”
“Yep, one bite and you're good as dead.” Rick reclaimed his knife from the huge hooded cobra's head, its jaws continuing to open and close in mid-air as Rick flung it from the steel tip.
“Wow Rick that was amazing.” Gregg was absolutely agog. “Wow. I mean, wow.”
“Just a day in the life out here, pal.” Rick put a finger to his lips. “Shhh. Let's quiet down now guys and get a move on. Izzy watch your feet.”
“Trust me, I'm watching, I'm watching.”
Wake the fuck up. . .wake the fuck up. . .
Boy what he wouldn't give for some of his mother's matzo ball soup right now, made from scratch, the simplest of meals, and he didn't care how hot it was outside. Comfort food, comfort anything. Simple, normal, boring, everyday
please let me someday get back to all of that. . .a monocled cobra, what the hell am I doing here?
Gregg rearranged his position to walk right behind Izzy, like he literally had his back, and J.D. was just a few steps ahead, making it look effortless as he pushed aggressively ahead while glancing back at them every so often.
Rick moved the same way, with a lithe grace, as if he was one with the soft green of the big bamboos swaying in the wind, the high grass of the meadow they were now crossing, the songs of the birdsâ
Rick held up his hand and signed for silence. J.D. stepped back and sank down, signaling for them to do the same. Izzy knelt in the grass, Gregg beside him, both of them too awe-struck to even blink as they watched the water show from perhaps seventy-five yards away.
Just a little below them in a hollow, where a small river broadened into a wide pool, there was a small herd of elephants. What had to be a mother elephant raised her trunk and trumpeted into the air while her baby latched on beneath her girth to nurse.
“They know we're here,” J.D. whispered. His voice held the same reverence as the gaze he turned to Izzy, then back to the elephants bathing in a wide shallow pool below a picture postcard waterfall. The huge gray animals were filling their trunks and squirting water into the sunlight and making rainbows with their ponderous splashes as they rolled and played in the water.
The elephants, at some signal from the old matriarch, which J.D. pointed out to him, began to slowly move away, up the embankment and just to the right of them, and then behind the big stand of bamboo they had traversed to get here themselves.
The experience was so moving that Izzy decided it was worth it all, even the snake, to share this hallowed silence, just staring at where the elephants had passed, and then looking from one to the other, all of them understanding what such a moment meant.
Gregg was the first to break the silence and he did it gently. “Thanks,” he said to Rick. “I appreciate you doing this for us. How did you know they'd be here?”
“Didn't for sure but I've seen them in this spot, about this time of day, lots of times before.” Rick pointed his M16 back the way they had come and the elephants had gone. “We'd better get back. It's a little drive to Ban Me Thuot and I still want to get you out to my camp. The day's getting away from us and you know the rule.”
Rick plunged ahead, and Izzy caught J.D. to ask, “What rule?”
“We own the day but Charlie rules the night. Unless you have major expertise, you do not want to be out here after dark. Rick's just taking extra precautions for our safety.”
With that, J.D. caught up behind Rick and Izzy wasted no time catching up to J.D., who clearly did not need such extra precautions himself.
Gregg, however, close on Izzy's heels, was right there with him, whispering, “We came, we saw, I am so ready to go back to our nice little villa and eat a grilled cheese sandwich with some chicken noodle soup.”
“Make mine with matzo balls,” Izzy whispered back. “My mom makes the best chicken and matzo ball soup you ever ate in your life.”
“Shhh.”
J.D. didn't need to say more. The remainder of their trek through the jungle could have been five minutes or an hour. It was impossible to measure time hereâ
And then it stopped. The sound of sudden screaming and the crash of M16s on full automatic came from the direction of where they had left the jeeps.
Rick took off at what seemed super-human speed across the meadow screaming, “NO! NO! HOLD YOUR FIRE! NO, NO!” and J.D. was running right behind him, flying over the grass. Izzy didn't know he was capable of running so fast himself, with Gregg pumping full pistons right beside him, both of them bursting into the clearing andâ
And then they were all right on top of a blasted to pieces elephant calf and his mortally wounded mother. Part of her skull was shot off and blood coursed from the wound and from her mouth, but she still extended her trunk to cover and protect the body of her little calf who bleated pitifully.
“No hope.” Rick's voice caught. He shook his head. Then he fired two shots into each of the elephants. They were still now, and quiet, the blood still leaking and pooling around Izzy's feet.
“We got them!” shouted Peck as he and Johnson ran up to join them. “We got them! They were attacking us and before we could be trampled I was able to stop them both.” Peck panted with excitement.
“You fucking, stupid shit.” J.D. took a menacing step forward. “You fucking. . .piece of excrement.”
“They were attacking, they work for the VC. The VC do this all the time, they train them to. . .” Peck's eyes narrowed as he realized Rick was moving in on him.
“You murdered them,” Rick said coldly. He tossed aside his own gun, and advanced, fists clenching. “They are one hundred yards away from the jeeps and moving east, you asshole.”
“Please, can we avoid the bad language?” Peck actually smirked, self-satisfied. “Besides, they are only animals for god's sake.”
“Only animals? They're more human than you, Peck.”
“Too bad I didn't know they meant that much to you, or I would have tried to kill them all.”
“Say that again. Go ahead. Say it again.”
The warning in Rick's voice should have stopped a freight train. But not Peck.
“It was an accident, but you know, you try taking something from me, I will take something from you, Captainâ” The roll Peck had been on swerved as suddenly as the order he barked at Johnson. “Stop him, he's going to attack me!”
Foolishly, Johnson raised his arm but before he could strike, there was the distinct sound of a bone snapping and his wrist flailed impotently as Rick flipped him into the air. Before Johnson could hit ground, Rick advanced toward Peck, who dropped to his knees.
“I am an officer, you cannotâ Gregg, help me. J.D., you're a doctor, get this thug away from me, please!”
J.D. clamped a hand on Rick's shoulder. “Rick, let him go, man. He's not worth it. Let us deal with our own, okay?”
The cords stood out on Rick's neck, like the veins of a horse straining in a race for the finish line, and the finish line here was to finish off Peck as completely as he had destroyed the elephants.
For what felt like eternity, Izzy didn't dare breathe. If wanting to do murder had a smell he was smelling it now; the air was so charged with blood and the thirst for more he expected to see Peck murdered right here, right now, in front of them all, with Rick's bare hands. This was personal; a gun was not personal enough.
Then Rick's body relaxed and he nodded. “You're right,” he said. “You're right. He's not worth it. He's not even worth my spit.” He hocked one straight into Peck's face anyway, turned on his heel, and got in the jeep.
J.D. stared at Peck in a way that prickled the skin on the back of Izzy's neck. When J.D. spoke it had the effect of an ice chisel.
“It won't be here, and it won't be today. But a storm is coming, Peck. Any time it is raining, listen for the storm.”
J.D. turned away as if nothing had just transpired. “Okay, Izzy, you check Johnson's arm and get him in the jeep Major Peck will be driving now, while Gregg and I check on Rick. Five minutes and we're out of here. After all, we don't want to be trampled by VC trained elephants, do we?” A slit glance at Peck and J.D. called, “Rick, you doing okay?”
“All good,” Rick called back. “I'm cool.”
The ride to Ban Me Thuot was silent. Izzy sat with Gregg in the back of the Jeep that Rick drove, face stoic, eyes on what passed as a road. Glancing down again, Izzy saw the elephant blood on his boots. He wondered about J.D. He had seen the awe and joy in his eyes when they were watching the elephants, and then the absolute cold savagery when he spoke to Peck. Izzy wondered also at himself and cringed, because he really wanted Rick to hurt Peck, and if not Rick, then J.D. He wanted one of them to hurt him the way Izzy wanted to hurt him but knew he never would; he wanted them to hurt Peck the same way that bastard had hurt the elephants.
And that's when Izzy recognized what J.D. and Rick really were. Yes, a CIA agent and a Special Ops killer. But what they were and how they operated were not separate from him. They were
his
agents. Men who did for him what he wanted to do, without getting any of the blood on himself.
Ban Me Thuot consisted of an artillery firebase, supply base, and all the necessary military buildings like bunkered hootches, mess halls, and an air field that was not too distant from the morgue for the purposes of flying bodies in and out. The morgue and the airfield saw a lot of action. So did the extended local population of about 60,000 people in the town of Ban Me Thuot proper, with lots of prostitutes to service not only the GIs on the base itself, but the Special Forces and Special Ops Forces that spread out in every direction like a constellation of small fallen stars.
The base at Ban Me Thuot was still the muddy, red mess that Gregg remembered from his last rotation about a month ago, but lacked even a little less charm than usual as he, Izzy, and J.D. watched Peck usher Johnson into the medical clinic to get treatment, only for Peck to stop at the entrance and dramatically turn.
“You have not heard the last of this,” he informed J.D. “I will be speaking to Colonel Kellogg when we return. I'm going to tell him about Galt, I'm going to tell him about you threatening me, and I'm going to tell himâ”
“I think that's an excellent idea, Major. I would even go so far as to suggest that you leave early from here to tell the Colonel whatever you want. The weather looks like rain, if you know what I mean.”
Peck's face visibly paled. He swiftly did an about-face and disappeared into the clinic.
“Okay, he's gone, we took care of âour own' like we said. Now let's get out of here and do our scheduled meet-up with Rick.” J.D. started walking down the cat-tracks back to the jeep that Rick had left for them.
“I thought Rick was going to kill him, like, really literally kill him,” Izzy blurted. “Doesn't he even realize you probably saved his life?”
J.D. shrugged. “I was more concerned about saving Rick from the consequences. Peck would be no loss, but Galt's too good to lose.”