The Last of the Dogteam Read online

  "Yes. I think you're right about that."

  Lee had been working on her mind for months, slowly poisoning her toward the Army and Terry.

  At lunch he kissed her and she did not resist. They sat in a booth, in the rear of the cafe, away from other eyes. Jill could not remove from her mind the picture of Terry making love to some small brown Vietnamese girl. The make-believe scene enraged her, and she rather enjoyed the anger: it would make what she was going to do much easier to live with.

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  She imagined them in some sort of primitive hut, sweaty and moaning as they lunged at each other.

  Jill leaned close to Lee and kissed him, pushing her tongue between his lips, her hand rubbing his leg. She was very lonely, and Lee had been very persuasive.

  His voice husky, he asked, "What do you want me to do, Jill?"

  "Make love to me," she said.

  "Goddamn, get it off me!" the American AID man shuddered. The leech on his leg had swelled to more than five inches long, puffed and swollen on his blood. *

  "Take it easy," Terry said, holding the lighted end of a cigarette to the leech. "It's no big deal. This will get it off."

  The purple creature fought the heat, then dropped to the earth, leaving an ugly mark on the main's leg. A medic wiped the leg clean and applied salve to the tenderness.

  "Why in God's name did we ever get involved in a place like this?" the AID man questioned, his remark directed at no one in particular. "Nasty, filthy, stinking place. God!"

  "You ought to pull some time down in the Panama Canal Zone," Terry grinned. "And have a three pound bumble bee land on your head."

  Sergeant Burgos smiled. "Now, Mr. Har-

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  risen, you're going to have us thinking you don't like Vietnam, with all its friendly people and quaint French-colonial charm."

  "Mere words cannot begin to express my true sentiments of this part of the world," Har-rison said, rolling down his pants leg.

  Sergeant Burgos laughed and stood up, adjusting the straps on his pack. His neck brushed against the side of a vine hanging down. The SF Sergeant screamed once and fell writhing to the ground, a snake around his neck, biting at his throat.

  Terry jabbed at the viper with the barrel of his Thompson SMG, unable to fire for fear of hitting Burgos. The snake finally ceased its biting and crawled onto the path. Terry stepped on its head, grinding it into the dirt.

  "My Godl" Harrison from AID said, unable to take his eyes from Burgos. "Do something for him."

  Captain Thornly stood up from Burgos' still form. "It's too late to do anything. He's dead. That was a seven-stepper that got him."

  "Seven-stepper?!"

  "Yeah," an SF Sergeant said. "You got time for about seven steps after you're bitten—then you fall down dead."

  Harrison from AID doubled over and vomited on the ground. "I hate this fucking place," he said, wiping his mouth.

  "Call a dust-off," Captain Thornly said to the radio man. "Tell the chopper pilot we'll smoke him in." He shook his head. "I'm not

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  looking forward to writing Carolyn."

  "Who is Carolyn?" Harrison said.

  "Burgos' wife," Terry said.

  "She ain't gonna give a big shit!" Sergeant Hamilton quietly ventured.

  "Burgos liked his pussy," Captain Thornly ended the conversation.

  Carolyn Burgos whispered obscenities to the man above her, thrusting inside her. Her legs locked around his waist, her hips meeting him with equal passion.

  When she returned home late that afternoon, several of her friends were waiting for her, Mrs. Masterson among them.

  "Colonel Jackson's been trying to get in touch with you all afternoon," the Sergeant Major's wife said, her eyes cool. "He tried this morni.ng, and last evening. I told him you were probably spending the night with a friend."

  Carolyn flushed. "What I do with my time is my business."

  Mrs. Masterson slapped the words at her. "Your husband was killed in Nam."

  Carolyn's face flushed, then went deathly white. She put out a hand to steady herself, grasping the edge of a table. "He's . . . what?"

  "Sergeant Burgos was killed in Vietnam," Mrs. Masterson repeated. "Now you can go screw your lover with a clear conscience. You're no longer a married . . . lady."

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  Carolyn collapsed on the living room floor, her head bouncing off the carpet.

  "Get me a wet cloth," Mrs. Masterson said, kneeling down. "I may not like her very much, but we're all in this together." -

  Terry escorted the body of Sergeant First Class Randolph Burgos back to Fort Bragg. For him, the orders came as a surprise, and, as it turned out, quite a surprise for Jill.

  Jill Slane Kovak's butt bounced off the floor for the second time in fifteen seconds, her mouth bleeding where Terry had slapped her. She crawled behind a sofa and Terry kicked her in the butt with a highly polished Jump Boot. She screamed out in pain and fright as the front door splintered open under the shoulder of a SF Sergeant. The Sergeant grabbed Terry—very carefully—and spun him around. He stepped back, ready to fight off Terry's attack, if one came.

  "Ease off, Terry!" he shouted. "Don't kill the bitch, she's not worth it."

  In his rage, Terry moved toward the Sergeant just as the room filled with soldiers. Several hands grabbed Terry, wrestling him to the floor, holding him hard against the carpet.

  "I CAUGHT HER FUCKIN' THE SON-OF-A-BITCH!" Terry yelled, trying to fight against the hands that pinned him to the floor. His fight proved unsuccessful, for even in his rage, he would use no killing or crippling

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  blows against these men.

  "Oh, Jesus," a Sergeant said. "Dan, go check the bedroom, Kovak may have lolled the dude."

  "Let me up," Terry said,.calming down. His voice was steady. "I didn't loll the bastard. He jumped out the window and ran off down the alley. All he's wearing is his socks and skivvies."

  "Go find the shithead," a SF man told a young Buck Sergeant. "Lean on him some. But," he warned, "do it in private. Don't kill him, just mark him some."

  "Don't you dare hurt Lee!" Jill hollered from behind the sofa. "He's a good gentle person, and I love him. I think I'm pregnant, too, and it's his baby, damn you!" She began to cry. "You had no right to go off and leave me. It wasn't fair."

  The Forcemen let Terry get to his feet—very carefully. Three Green Berets and two Rangers stood between Terry and his wife.

  Terry slowly turned to look at Jill. "Well, honey, you can damn sure have him. And I hope I never have to look at your two-timing face again."

  Jill crawled from behind the sofa to glare at her husband. Her face was ugly with rage and hate. She held an afghan, covering her nakedness. A trickle of blood leaked from a corner^of her mouth.

  Two civilian policemen jumped out of a squad car and were met by two MP's from

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  Fort Bragg. The foursome stood on the sidewalk in front of the home.

  "It's all taken care of," an MP told a cop. "We'd appreciate it if you guys let us handle this."

  "All you goddman soldiers do is fuck up!" a local cop said. "If it wasn't for you guys our jobs would be a hell of a lot easier."

  A very large MP looked at him. "How'd you like to meet me after work? Without your badge and gun. Just you and me, partner."

  The civilian cop flushed, started to speak, and his buddy stuck an elbow in his ribs. "Don't let your ass overload your mouth, Jimmy."

  The two civilian cops turned, got in their squad car, and drove away.

  In the house, Jill said, "I suppose you want me to believe you never got any of that gook pussy over there?"

  Terry's voice was calm. "No, Jill, I didn't. I wanted to, I'll admit that, and it wasn't easy for me. But I fought back, and won over my feelings."

  "Then you're a damned fooll" she shouted. "Or a damned liar!"

  "How about a person who takes his marriage vows seriously?" Terry countered, fighting to keep
his temper under control.

  "Go to hell!" she spat at him, the saliva running down his cheek.

  Jill suddenly knew she was throwing her life away, knew she was making a big mistake,

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  lousing up Terry's life, and probably her own. She began to cry, feeling sorry for herself.

  "Me?" Terry laughed. "Go to Hell? Baby, I got a room reserved."

  Three weeks later, he was back in Nam.

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  FIFTEEN TERRY

  1964

  A blue, powder puff sky floated lazily above him. The silence surrounding him was almost loud in the absence of noise. Terry knew he was hard hit and wondered if he was going to die. He couldn't make his left leg work, and the side of his face was numb and sticky with blood. His left arm wouldn't obey commands from his brain. How long had he been here? Terry remembered the brutal fire-fight with the VC: they had come at them in the night, first outside, then inside the Special Forces compound. The fight had lasted all night. But how long ago was that?

  Terry moved his head, looking around the shattered compound. Sergeant Major Master-

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  son was dead, a few feet from him, chopped to bits, half his head gone. One eye remained open in death.

  The compound was in ruins, smoking from small fires. Bodies lay all around the area. The VC must have been battalion sized when they hit them. The Cong had won the fight, but in doing so had taken a terrible toll on themselves.

  Terry moved his head in the other direction and looked into the dark eyes of a wounded VC, lying just a few feet from him. The Cong was hard hit, his black shirt stained with blood.

  "Help me," he said in English.

  Terry clawed a .45 out of his holster. "Fuck you!" he said, then blew a hole in the VC's head.

  Just before Terry slipped into blackness, he heard the sounds of in-coming helicopters, their great props battering the hot air.

  Christmas, 1964

  "It's not his physical wounds that concern me," the doctor said. "He's completely recovered from those. But ... he was Dog Team for a good many years."

  The military psychiatrist arched an eyebrow. "I thought all that was rumor?",He was very interested in speaking with Sergeant Kovak.

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  The doctor shook his head. "We wish. Thank Cod most of them are dead and the Teams disbanded. I'd hate to think we had several thousand of those people running around the country."

  "Tell me about them," the psychiatrist leaned forward, eager to learn more about this mysterious group of men and women. Twenty years in the Army and he had never met a Dog Team member.

  'Or, he thought, at least I don't believe I have.

  "We are discharging Sergeant Kovak from the hospital at Carson tomorrow. He'll be flown in here and assigned to your section. It's going to be up to you people to down-train him."

  "Is he going to level with me?"

  "I ordered him to tell the truth/* the doctor smiled,

  "What was his reply?"

  "He told me to stick it in my ear."

  All his possessions were in one foot locker and two duffle bags. In the foot locker, buried among rolled socks and shorts were the boxes that contained his tribute for the years he had served his country: several Bronze Stars with V for valor. A Silver Star with V. DSC. The Congressional Medal of Honor. Six Purple Hearts. A dozen other awards from America and Vietnam.

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  Cold by the side of the runway. Cold and lonely. The wind whistled around the dark hangers. The car that was to meet him was late. That did not surprise Terry.

  His legs still ached occasionally from the operations to remove the shrapnel and other assorted metal and lead. A scar ran down from his hairline to just below his ear. Terry reflected on his new position. He was out of the Army, with no place to go. Or rather, he would soon be out of the Army. He was to meet with the shrinks at Let term an the next morning, to begin many weeks of down-training, but technically, he was out of the Army.

  Terry chuckled, rather bitterly. He had all his medals, and if he added fifteen cents to them, he could buy a cup of coffee. Plus tax. If some civilian ever asked him about his service career, he was to lie: look the civilian square in the eyes and lie. Naturally, he had to lie. Terry had a quick mental picture of himself strolling into Snelling & Snelling and telling some nice job counselor: "What did I do in the Army? Hell, lady, I killed people! I killed lots of people who were passing secrets, acting as double agents, and doing all sorts of things you never heard of—could never even dream of in your worst nightmare. I tortured, maimed, murdered, kidnapped—you name it, I did it—all for my Uncle Sammy. Now then, what can I do in civilian life?"

  After the nice job counselor picked herself

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  up off the floor, where she would have fallen in a hot faint, slobbering and screaming on the way down, she would pick up the phone, call the cops, and they would come get him, dragging him off to the nearest nuthouse, where Terry could spend the rest of his days, making pretty little baskets and attempting to shove square pegs into round holes.

  Terry laughed at his bitterness and his loneliness. "Hell," he said aloud, "You knew what you were getting into, don't blame anyone else for it."

  He sat on his foot locker and waited for the car to come get him; to get this soldier coming home.

  Somewhere in the distance, coming from one of the hangers, whispered the muted voice of a DJ, and then the lonely sounds of Acker Bilk and Stranger On The Shore.

  "I'm going to give you a word association test, Sergeant." the psychiatrist said, when Terry was comfortable in the chair. "When I say a word, you tell me the first word that pops in your mind."

  "You may fire when ready, Gridley," Terry said, his tone that of a man about to do something he found very distasteful.

  The psychiatrist opened his notebook, clicked his ballpoint pen, and said, "Home."

  "Defend."

  The doctor's eyebrows raised a bit. "Enemy."

  "Kill."

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  "Airplane."

  "Jump."

  "Snake."

  "Eat."

  "What?"

  Terry glanced at the shrink. "Am I supposed to reply to that?"

  "What? No. Nol Why did you say eat?"

  "Because it's good to eat. I've eaten a lot of snake in the jungles and in training. Dog and cat, too. Dog is better than cat. Monkey, too. But you've really got to boil a monkey to get the worms out."

  The psychiatrsit shuddered and looked ill for a moment. "Please, Sergeant—if you don't mind? Thank you. Now, let's continue. Ready?

  "On the right."

  "What?"

  "You said ready, I said 'on the right.' "

  The psychiatrist sighed. "No, Sergeant, I meant: were you ready to continue?"

  "Oh, yeah. Sure."

  "Very well. Wife."

  "Dishonor."

  "Fight."

  "Kill."

  "Army."

  "Home."

  The psychiatrist scribbled a few sentences in his pad, paused, then wrote a few more words. He said, "Duty."

  "Country."

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  "God." "Duty." "Apple pie." "The girl next door."

  The doctor closed his notebook. "All right, Sergeant, that will be all for today."

  After two weeks of testing, Terry was called into the Chief Psychiatrist's office and was motioned to a chair.

  "Would you like to hear my doctor's reports on you, Terry?"

  Terry shrugged. He did not like this place at all. He had not been trained to cope with anything like this. "Is it going to make any difference one way or the other, Colonel?"

  The chief shrink hid a smile. He knew no amount of testing and prying would ever break down the barriers around Kovak, but it was his job to try. "It might. Everything depends on your attitude and answers."

  "Let's have it."

  "Captain Moore does not believe you should be returned to civilian status in your . . . present me
ntal state. He believes shock treatments are in order."

  "Colonel?"

  "Yes, Sergeant?"

  "Fuck you!"

  "I really don't care for your attitude, Terry. We're trying to help you here."

  "I didn't ask for any help. And I will not

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  undergo shock treatments."

  "Perhaps you don't have a choice, Terry."

  "Oh, I have a choice, Colonel," he smiled. "Believe me, I do. I don't think you're that anxious to die."

  The colonel realized he was one step away from very dark, deep waters. "What do you mean, Sergeant?"

  "You punch a button to have guys come in here after me, sir, and 111 take you out first. You'll be dead five seconds after I hear footsteps in the hall."

  The two men stared at one another for a full minute. Finally, the Colonel - nodded. "All right, Terry." He stood up, pouring them coffee from the pot on a stand by his desk. "Terry, you've got to understand something: you're dangerous; we've got to help you." He jerked his thumb toward the outside. "Those are civilians out there, Terry. They are not warriors—they won't, can't, accept you the way you are. You won't be able to relate to them, nor will they to you. You walk out of here thinking the way you do, and you'll never be able to make a living out there. I've got to make you see that."

  "In so many words, then: I'm an animal?"

  "I didn't say that. You've been highly trained, programmed to kill, to defend yourself at any cost. But civilian judges and lawyers won't accept that. Oh, it's fine in the movies, Terry. But not in real life. I've got to somehow make you see that."

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  "I see it, Colonel, I'm not stupid. And 111 work with you, but I won't accept shock treatments."

  The Colonel closed the file folder. "All right, Terry. Have it your way. You will allow us to attempt to down-train you through conversation sessions? Good."

  "Is it okay to leave here for a few days, Colonel. Just wander around the city?"

  "I don't run a prison here, Terry. Of course, you can. Yes, by all means, do just that. Mix among the hippies and the peace and love crew. It will be interesting to see your reaction."

  Terry's reaction was one of disgust. Hairy, dirty people walking around with the American flag sewn to the seat of their pants. He couldn't believe people would have so little respect for their country.