Tiger the Lurp Dog: A Novel (16 page)

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. “What is it?” He glanced at the gold Rolex watch for which he’d blown six months’ base pay and frowned. “It’s 0420 hours, for God’s sake! What’s up?”

“Tiger. He’s out in the wire. He just set off a trip flare.”

Cubby Cardiff was instantly alert. He kicked off his jungle blanket and leapt out of bed. He grabbed his weapon, then, barefoot and dressed only in his green Army shorts, raced for the door. “Which sector?” he bellowed. “Goddamnit! Which fuckin’ sector?”

“West. Just north of the gate.” The medic was already falling behind in the rush out of the team house. He barely had time to spin around and dodge the card table before Cubby Cardiff burst through the door, yelling for someone to turn off the current in the wire grid, screaming in Vietnamese that he’d castrate the first man to open fire.

Halfway to the gate the young medic slipped in a tire track and rolled in a mud puddle. He came up running, but Cubby Cardiff was already far ahead, clambering up the ladder to the watchtower with all the grace of an outraged honey bear.

“Outa my way! Outa my way!” He elbowed aside the Nung at the machine gun and grabbed the Starlight scope from the Vietnamese lieutenant who’d been holding it cradled against his chest.

“Give me that scope!” He jammed the Starlight to his eye without taking the normal precaution of turning it off first so that the faint green light wouldn’t fall on his face. It wasn’t necessary to waste time with dumb precautions when any fool knew there were no snipers out there—and no sappers—just that old buzzard Stagg’s scroungy little ragged-eared mutt.

The flare Tiger’d set off was still smoldering in the mud. It wasn’t putting out much light now, nothing but an ember’s glow reflecting weakly off the ground water, but it was enough to give Cubby Cardiff a reference point. He scanned left and right, looking for movement. His eyes were still adjusting to the strange, washed-out, colorless landscape in the scope, and he couldn’t pick up much detail. He fiddled with the focus and suddenly he could make out a Claymore mine attached to a gut-high wooden pole.

There was a trip wire attached to the firing device screwed into the top of the Claymore. The detail had been there all along, and now that he could recognize what he was seeing, Cubby Cardiff felt like a fool. Even if he hadn’t grown up in front of the picture tube like most of these kids, he still ought to be able to spot a trip-wired Claymore as soon as his eyes swept over it. After all these years, he should’ve been able to spot a trip-wired Claymore through a black rubber blindfold.

Muttering and cursing under his breath, he steadied his elbows on one of the sandbags next to the tower’s M-60 machine gun. He took a deep breath and let it halfway out, just like he was firing on the record range. Then he slowly followed the wire to Tiger the Lurp Dog.

“Holy Mother of God!” He exhaled and handed the Starlight scope back to the young medic. This was worse than he’d imagined.

The young medic was supposed to be back at the aid station, organizing his stretcher crews, racking up his bottles of serum albumin, and laying out his surgical gear. That was his duty whenever there was a perimeter alert. But this was different. He took the Starlight scope, bent his head to its eyepiece, and brought it up without greening his face. Having grown up with television, he had no trouble finding Tiger on the first sweep.

“Jesus H. Christ!” the medic said very softly. He handed the scope to Lieutenant Hoang, the Vietnamese team’s executive officer.

Lieutenant Hoang took the Starlight and held it a delicate two inches from his eye. He had long, gentlemanly nails on his pinkies, and because he was determined to protect this relic of his status in the Confucian world of civilized people, he held the scope with all the stiff propriety of an English matron examining a fine piece of crystal. He never found Tiger, but he handed the Starlight scope back to Cubby Cardiff and shook his head with an absolutely reverent display of sadness. He’d been the first team member—Vietnamese or American—to get to the tower when the trip flare popped, and it was he who had hollered “Ting Ho!” in Chinese to stop the Nungs from firing. He knew the Americans were very touchy about that fat little beggar dog. But he couldn’t figure out why.

He was nothing but a mongrel—a dust dog—a scavenging camp follower. His tongue was always hanging out of his mouth, dripping on things. He bit the Dai Uy—the Vietnamese team commander—on the ankle. And worst of all, he lifted his leg against the camp flagpole—he pissed against the flag of the Republic of Vietnam!

He was certainly a local dog. The Americans had poodles and St. Bernards and big, mean, guard-dog Alsatians. They would never have brought an ugly, brown and black, half-wild dust dog with them from America. He was a Vietnamese dog, all right—he even looked like a Striker’s cast-off fatigues—and he was only alive today because his ancestors were too thin and mangy for the pot. But now this dust dog, this Tiger, was too fat and too sassy for his own good. He was sassy enough to steal two baby chickens from the Vietnamese team—sassy enough to snap at the Dai Uy and piss on the camp flagpole. He’d had it soft for a while, this dust dog Tiger, but now he was standing in the mud with his tail up against a trip wire, and Lieutenant Hoang secretly prayed to see him hit the wire with his full rump and blow his ass away.

“Very terrible, I think, E-8 Cardiff.” The lieutenant had majored in French and English in college, then picked up some Chinese on his own in Cholon, and he could lie like a champ in four languages. “Very terrible, I think,” he sympathized. “Very terrible for this nice pet. Very too bad,” he said with a sad shrug of regret, thinking at the same time how much more gracefully he could’ve said it if the Americans only spoke better French.

The Nung tower guard smiled to himself and turned aloofly away from the others. He didn’t need a Starlight to see what was going on. The Americans were crazy—all of them. It would be easy to calm the dog down with a bullet and save the cost of a Claymore. A well-placed bullet’s impact would throw the dog away from the trip wire and keep the Claymore from going off and blowing a gap in the wire grid and the innermost roll of concertina wire. The Nung had a morbid fear of mines, and he didn’t like the thought of repairing that perimeter.

Even Master Sergeant Cardiff had a fear of his own riding on Tiger. “Tom Stagg is gonna skin me alive if that dog just wags his fuckin’ tail!” he whispered to the young medic. “I’ll give you three to one on your jump pay he blows his ass away.” It was always good policy to bet against sentiment and self-interest. That way, you were protected whatever happened.

Cubby Cardiff was a sharp old schemer, but the young medic wasn’t impressed. He had a B.S. in psychology in a premed concentration, and he’d been in the Army long enough to see through sour old master sergeants and their pessimistic bet hedging. He also knew enough to up the ante. “Throw in a month’s combat pay,” he said, “and I’ll take you up on it.”

Cubby Cardiff nodded in hasty assent and lifted the Starlight.

Out in the perimeter, Tiger was still growling at the sizzling stub of the trip flare. He bristled his ruff and cocked his ears to the front. He lifted his right forepaw, then put it down and lifted his left, and put it down in its original spot next to the right. He lowered his head and sniffed against the taut, unmoving wire. He tasted the ground water with his tongue, then lifted his head and pointed his nose straight into the air to sniff the last whiff of acrid smoke coming off the trip flare. For just a second he looked like he was going to throw his head back even further and give voice to a lonely wolf howl, and Cubby Cardiff shrank back behind the sandbagged tower walls to avoid the mud and dog flesh that would surely be thrown back by the Claymore’s backblast. Tiger was standing less than two meters to the side of the Claymore and would probably be blown at least three ways if it went off.

Tiger didn’t howl, but his tail moved. It slipped under the wire and stopped less than an inch from the other side. Still taut, the trip wire was now resting on the top of his tail. Cubby Cardiff peeked over the sandbags, then rose and passed the Starlight back to the young medic. He didn’t want to see things in all that unnatural, colorless, video detail anymore. A man should be able to count on his night vision.

“Poor dog’s situation ain’t no better,” whispered the young medic. He wished he’d bet base pay instead of jump and combat pay. The difference between E-5 and E-8 would really count for something that way. Jump pay was the same for all enlisted personnel, and combat pay the same for everyone. Right now it didn’t look good, and the young medic consoled himself by adding up his jump pay and combat pay, then subtracting the sum from his base pay and discovering that he’d still have enough to save for R&R. With his tail brushing that close to the trip wire, Tiger was certain to blow himself away.

Lieutenant Hoang took the Starlight scope from the medic. This time he scrunched the rubber eyepiece up against his eye and took a long, careful look. He was secretly delighted. That dust dog of the Americans sure had himself in a fix. His right rear hip was too close to the trip wire for there to be a shadow, and his tail was touching it. His tail was curving up under the wire now, and as fat and undisciplined as that tail was, any second now it was certain to blow the Claymore.

“Pitiful, I think,” he said. He handed the Starlight scope on to the American team sergeant and stepped back to stand next to the young medic, where he was less likely to end up with a mud-splattered uniform. He was wet already, but if the backblast of the Claymore happened to hit the earthen ramparts at the wrong angle he didn’t want to end up with a faceful of mud and dog blood.

Cubby Cardiff took the Starlight scope from Lieutenant Hoang and shut it off. All this modern technology was well and good, and there was no question but that it could help a good man fight a war. But it was the height of arrogant stupidity to grow dependent on it. He capped the end of the Starlight scope and put it back in its cushioned case.

“From now on,” he announced aloud, “we will watch with our own eyes.”

He hoped the medic wouldn’t try to weasel out of the bet, now that things had gone from bad to worse. That tail curling up under the trip wire didn’t bode too well for Tiger’s survival.

Suddenly there was a flash of light and a crack of thunder as the Claymore exploded. As soon as the last mud droplet from the backblast splattered against the sandbags at the tower’s base, Cubby Cardiff was up again with the Starlight scope.

He could see a huge gash in the ground where the Claymore had exploded. A swath of furrowed mud and twisted wire had been blown through the grid, but there was no sign of Tiger. For just an instant, Cubby Cardiff wondered how he was going to explain this to Pappy Stagg. Then he thought of his wager and forced himself to smile. He handed the Starlight back to the young medic.

“That’ll be a hundred-twenty dollars come payday,” he said. “There ain’t nothin’ left of old Stagg’s dog now. The poor fucker’s probably strewn all over the perimeter.”

The young medic had excellent night vision. “You better put away the Starlight scope, boss. Why don’t you turn on the searchlight, shine it on the concertina, and start kissing your payday goodbye.”

Grumbling about snipers and smartass E-5S, Cubby Cardiff switched on the searchlight and bathed the first roll of concertina wire in a harsh white light.

There was Tiger. He froze for a second, then looked over his shoulder. Hearing one of the Americans call his name, he wagged his tail once or twice, then continued picking his way through the tangles of jagged wire. His coat was caked with mud, and he was carrying his head and tail low, like a skulking coyote. But he moved easily, and there was no sign of wounds or other damage. Halfway through the wire he sat down to scratch his ear with his right rear foot.

Lieutenant Hoang tapped Cubby Cardiff on the shoulder. “Twenty dollars U.S. money,” he said, flashing a smile full of gold teeth. “I bet twenty dollars U.S. he go through punji stakes O.K.”

Cubby Cardiff nodded unhappily. The punji stakes were the easiest obstacle in the whole perimeter, but after watching Tiger use the Claymore to blow himself a path through the grid, then romp through the inner minefield and pick his way through the gap in the concertina, it would be cowardly to refuse the bet.

“You’re on, sir,” he growled from the side of his mouth. “He gets through all those sticks and the next rolls of wire, you got your twenty bucks. But I lay you both four to one he don’t make the road.”

“You’re on!” cried the young medic with an excess of enthusiasm.

“Not be easy, I think,” said Lieutenant Hoang. “But I think so. O.K.!” He was making good money now, with his share of the whorehouse profits, and he could afford the gamble. It would have been a loss of face to back down after becoming involved in the betting.

The Nung had only a few phrases of English, but he knew what was going on. Nobody ever got upset if he shot a rabbit in the perimeter, and he dearly wanted to show the American team sergeant how well he could shoot. But now that there was money riding on the dog, he too wanted to get into the game.

“Lao San!” He hollered down to one of the other Nungs lined up along the wall to watch the show. He held up five fingers. His friend, Lao San, looked up and nodded, then drew his forefinger across his throat and the bet was on.

By now, Tiger was used to the glare of the searchlight. The flare had spooked him, and then the sudden explosion of the Claymore had knocked him off his feet and sent him tumbling over a mound of mud. But except for a ringing in his ears, he hadn’t been hurt. Very cautiously, he sniffed the ground around the first cluster of punji stakes, then sniffed the tip of each stake separately. They’d been dipped in shit to ensure that any nonfatal wounds they caused would become infected, but too much rain and too much sun had washed away most of the scent. Tiger lifted his leg and pissed on first one stake, then another. He kicked a little wet soil through his rear legs, then squeezed between two stakes and paused to shake some rainwater and mud from his coat.