Robert Mason - Chickenhawk

“Are you calling them?!” Riker yelled as he struggled to get the dresser against the thudding door.

“Yeah. No answer.” I wiped sweat from my eyes. “They don’t fucking answer!”

After fifty rings I knew they would never answer. We sat across from each other on the two beds and watched the door moving with each animal thud. “Your derringer! Get out your derringer.” Riker brightened at the prospect.

“I sold it to Hall.”

“You sold it to Hall! I thought that was your fucking last-ditch weapon. Don’t you think this looks like an emergency?”

I nodded and shrugged. The gun was still sold to John Hall for twenty-five bucks.

“If that ain’t the dumbest thing I ever heard of…”

I nodded sorrowfully.

Crack! We both jumped at the new sound. They were throwing something metallic against the glass transom. Crack! Then chips of glass fell inside. The transom window had wire mesh embedded in it. At the center of the window a section the size of a fist was now bare of glass.

“Try the phone again,” said Riker.

I listened to a mechanical switch click and cycle a burst of ringing noise, then click, recycle, then noise. Riker took his bed apart. Under the mattress were hardwood bed slats. He smashed one down on my bed. It made a formidable club. I shook my head when he looked at the phone. Then I hung up. “Bastards!” Riker yelled.

At 2 A.M. the thudding stopped. Riker was asleep, proving that you can get used to anything. I sat up against my pillow with one of his bed slats on my lap. When the thudding stopped, I tried the phone again.

There was another small window near the ceiling at the other end of the room. While the phone rang, I looked up to see glass spraying in from it. Riker jumped up at the new sound.

“What the hell is going on here?” Riker pleaded.

I didn’t know. I’d been sitting on my bed for two hours, listening to the door being smashed, asking myself the same question. They are trying to kill us, aren’t they? Why didn’t they just blow up the fucking door? Or use an ax? Or fire? Or some fucking thing besides bodies? Maybe we should let them in and smash their brains in with our clubs. A quick no sounded in my head. I felt pretty brave at the controls of a helicopter while people tried to kill me, but trying to smash five darting Orientals with bed slats was just not me. I waited to see what developed. Soon the fuck-up at the desk would return from someplace and hear the ruckus and call the police There were police in Saigon, weren’t there? Or the people next door. They would get somebody. But the thudding went on and on. I wanted to scream at the utter unreality of the situation. But I could not scream, because I was a soldier. That thought made me laugh out loud. “GI Joe would’ve never let a bunch of dirty Nips get away with this,” I said. Then I visualized the myriad ways in which GI Joe would murder this mob. Of course, they were all centered around the fact that he always had a weapon stashed somewhere. I clutched my bed slat and waited. What I needed was a flamethrower.

The windowless room showed no light at dawn. My watch said it was six. The thudding had stopped. I woke Riker. We pulled the glass-covered dresser away and cautiously opened the door. There was some debris outside, but no people. Quickly we grabbed our gear and entered the hallway. All clear. As we walked toward the desk, we almost had cardiac seizures when we saw the clerk staring at us.

“Where the fuck were you last night?” we both yelled.

“Sir, I do not work at night. A man named Thieu does.”

“Well, where was he?” I said.

“He was here all night, sir. He certainly was this morning when I came to work.”

“Bullshit!” I yelled.

The clerk flinched a little but said, “Was there something wrong with your room?”

“Some people tried to break into our room all night long, you fuck!” said Riker.

“Really? That’s strange,” said the clerk. “Did you call the desk?”

“Yes. Over and over,” I said.

“Well, possibly the phone is broken.”

“Even if the phone is broken,” I explained, “our room is at the most fifty feet from here. Nobody could have not heard that commotion last night.”

“I will inform the manager of this,” said the clerk. He looked at us quietly. His eyes told us he knew exactly what had happened last night and we could yell and scream and complain until doomsday. He was never going to admit it. We hoisted our bags and left.

Phan Rang is near the coast, about 160 miles south of Qui Nhon and 160 miles northeast of Saigon, but that’s not where I went first. First I signed in at the 12th Aviation Battalion’s camp near Nha Trang. Then I waited in a bar in a sweltering sea-level village and talked to a depressing, sallow, and lumpy engineer who worked for one of the many American companies in Vietnam.

“I hate it over here,” he said.

“Why don’t you go home?”

“Money’s just too damn good.” He swilled the last of his beer. “Besides, there’s no poontang at home like the stuff that lives over here. I got a bitch waiting for me back home.”

It all fit. Anyone who lived with Mr. Darkness had to be a bitch, and the only place in the world he’d get the poontang he wanted was where he was transformed into the Rich American Engineer. I nodded, but said nothing. He told me more about his job, his hooch, his lady, his stereo, his growing bank account. I almost fainted from boredom. At a lull in the drone I announced, “Gotta go.” The engineer nodded hazily and turned his snout back toward the barkeep. He tapped the mug on the bar and pointed sternly to it. “More,” he said.

The Huey landed on the sandy patch where I waited. The crew chief ran past me carrying a sack of mail to battalion HQ. I threw my gear on board and fished out my flight helmet.

“You’re Mason?” said the pilot. I nodded.

“Good. We’ll be leaving as soon as he gets back.” He pointed to the retreating crew chief.

I climbed into the idling Huey and smoked. It felt good to be back in a helicopter after wallowing around in air-force transports.

The crew chief returned, and the pilot lifted off through the swirling sand. As we moved forward, the wind felt cool against my skin.

Cam Ranh bay was the halfway point on the flight to the company. As we flew by, I saw scores of navy PBYs (seaplanes) anchored in the harbor. For the rest of the flight I had daydreams about owning a PBY and flying cargo in the Bahamas, or running a cross-Canada, lake-to-lake touring business.

When I saw the concrete buildings at the Phan Rang air-force base, I felt a moment of happiness. I was finally going to get to live like a human. But the Huey flew by the barracks and landed on a grassy field, a mile across the runway. I saw a familiar collection of dirt-covered, sagging GPs that I immediately realized was my new home.

The sun was red in the west and the ground was soggy. We squished across the field and left our chest protectors in a tent. The two pilots, named Deacon and Red, escorted me to the club.

“Well, well!” The major grinned endearingly. “Our second Cav pilot in two days.” Tall, dark-haired, and smooth-faced, he came over to me and shook my hand. “Welcome to the Prospectors. I’m the CO, and as you’ll find out, when I’m not around the boys call me Ringknocker.” The boys, about fifteen of them, sat around some tables in the bamboo-paneled, tin-roofed bar, their company’s club, and laughed. I nodded nervously, never having met a CO who was friendly.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

“You looked me right in the eye when you said that.” He grinned. “That’s good. Shows you’re not afraid.” He turned around to the boys. “That’s good,” he said. They nodded. I wasn’t afraid, but I was suspicious. What did he want from me?