Then Comes The Dawn
The night was misty with the tears of angels. It was one of those nights along the California coast where you can feel the light mist caressing your face, your hair and your hands. The kind of mist that gradually soaks you to the bone, but so slowly that you don't notice how drenched you are until its too late and you find yourself dripping wet. Richard was laying on a chase lounge on the back deck that overlooked the Pacific Ocean. The patio umbrella provided some protection from the light falling rain. Sometimes a gust of wind would blow a spattering of rain into his face, and Richard would close his eyes and let the cold spray run down his cheeks and drip off of his chin. It was cold enough that it was not a pleasant experience but rather made him gasp and shake his head like a black lab back from the pond after retrieving a stick thrown by its owner.
He could not see the ocean, but he could smell the salty air and hear the constant roar of the waves below as they were driven ashore by an angry north wind that was marshalling its forces for the storm that was coming. He could also smell the wet cedar of the deck. He raised his wine glass, and as he gazed into the night, he could just make out the dark silhouettes of the large evergreen trees that acted as a barrier between his house and the cliff face of Castle Rock. The trees swayed and moaned in the wind and resembled lonely sentinels of the night standing watch for the coming storm but knowing that there was no stopping it. Their efforts were futile at best.
Richard had never spoken to anyone about his experiences in Viet Nam. While in the army, he had voluntarily spent two tours of duty roaming in tangled hostile jungles on dark rainy nights. When he was triggered back to those days, as he was tonight, a chasm of paralyzing depression would sweep over him. There were times in the night of late, where he would wake up out of a dream with suffocating fear and anxiety choking him. His heart would be pounding so fast that he would be gasping and could hardly catch his breath. He would be covered in sheen of cold sweat, and would sit in the darkness rocking himself and shivering as if sickened with malaria as the icy adrenalin raced through his body.
A cold spray of rain, driven by the wind, pelted Richard and brought him out of his reflections about his time in Viet Nam. He brought the glass of wine to his lips and drained it. He could see that his hand was shaking either from the cold or from the troubled memories that raced through his mind. He set down the glass and picked up the bottle of wine and walked over to the railing on his deck. He looked up and let the cold rain wash over his face. Maybe it was an attempt to cleanse him of the guilt and anguish that always followed his remembrance of his experiences in Nam. He gazed into the night and saw whitecaps frothing with a mesmerizing luminosity. The coming storm whipped them up and drove them toward the beach like a frightened herd of cattle. The cold rain, the turbulent sea, the trees dancing wildly before him and the angry wind, drew him into a whirlpool of the past. He tightened his grip on the rail with one hand, and lifted the bottle of wine to his lips with the other. He drank greedily, seeking to steady him with a counterfeit courage for what he knew was coming that he had little control over. Images of the past filled his mind once again with a swirling kaleidoscope of flickering light and painfully familiar sounds.
It was during this period of his life, while in Viet Nam, that he almost slipped over the edge of what the human mind and spirit can endure without shattering the man who was living there beneath the uniform. It happened to Richard when he was the closest to stepping between reality and insanity and finding that for a time, they had become one. For some people there was no way back. Not from this. You became a chameleon to the world of war, ever adapting, changing, and eventually became a shadow in any situation you were in. The present world back home, after Nam, could never change some veterans' back to the person they were before. For others, it became the catalyst for all that they would later become, both for good and for evil.
It was still at the edge of the monsoon season, where wind and vicious sheets of rain lashed at them and soaked the underbrush and foliage of the jungle. Distant lightening would create a strobe light effect where momentarily, amidst the sheen of the wet jungle, the shadow of imaginary garish forms with faces that looked haunted and afraid, looked out at them; demonic and evil soldiers of the dead. There was a sense that on nights like these, the jungle was a living thing, disturbed and angry at their presence. The wind made the jungle foliage whip and sway with branches twisting, in an eerie dance, creating shrieking sounds that mimicked unholy moans of pain and anguish.
There was little information available to Captain Connors, and far too much uncertainty regarding this mission. Corporal Randy Swanson was their recon who had been an engineer with the Army Corps of Engineers. He had worked with the relatively new GPS and GIS integration systems. He was planning on seeking a faculty position with Cornell University after Nam to further develop this technology. His passion was to create a curriculum for the Department of Crop and Soil Sciences where GPS technology could be honed down and taught to engineers who needed the technology but who could not access the training. He could find a spot on a map the size of a dime using a portable unit that he was not supposed to have access to. When Corporal Swanson worked his magic, the squad could save literally hours and sometimes miles, by pinpointing a location via satellite.
"Stewart, take point," whispered Richard.
His unit moved cautiously into sector along the 17th Parallel, an unknown and potentially dangerous part of the jungle. Another soldier, Eric Stewart, was one of the few Special Forces snipers to be ranked Elite Marksman.
In the last hour, after carefully trekking through rough and treacherous terrain, Swanson, who was crouching behind Stewart, was moving stealthily down the narrow path. There was no warning to protect them from danger this night, only instinct. There wasn't a metallic sound or the flash of reflected light from a rifle or knife blade that alerted Richard; some kind of animal instinct that was always there on the periphery of his psyche, screamed a warning in his mind. Suddenly, Swanson stood up slowly, turned around and stared at Richard. The GPS still in his hand. He had a look of confusion on his boyish face. Then a trickle of blood ran down the left side of his neck, and Swanson's eyes rolled back in his head and he began to crumple to the ground.
Even before Swanson hit the ground, Richard had signaled his unit to drop and take cover. Before any could respond to his order, there was a thunderous uneven roar, like the sound of a vengeful swarm of angry hornets; his unit had come under intense enemy fire. There are few experiences that are more terrifying and disorientating as a jungle firefight at close quarters, especially on a windy rain swept night in the dense jungles of Viet Nam. Everything became nightmarish and horrific, where the senses could not register clearly what was real and what was a terrifying dream.
Richard responded instinctively, dropped to the jungle floor, scrambled behind a fallen tree and rattled off a volley of short bursts from his silenced M-16. He sighted, moving his rifle decisively and smoothly, firing at any muzzle flash from the enemy. He saw several of the enemy snipers fall, but could not track any sounds of a hit amidst the vicious barrage of fire all around him. He stopped suddenly, and to his horror, he saw his men spinning like drunken marionettes, jerking spasmodically with the impact of shells riddling their bodies. It was the perfect ambush. Only a few of his men had managed to get off a few shots before they were cut down. The barrage of fire stopped as quickly as it had begun.
The muffled sobs of his men only drew more sniper fire. A single shot would ring out, and then there would be a piercing scream. More shots. Silence. Another piercing scream. Silence. He could see it in their eyes as they died.
"Was it worth it?" Jenson mouthed wordlessly.
"Did this matter at all?" Martinelli didn't speak, but his eyes, they said it all.
Richard crawled through the mud and wet tangled bushes to help any of his men who were wounded, but he had had two of his team die just as he was attempting to render aid as they were hit with more sniper fire. He himself had been wounded at least twice but could feel no pain. The discipline of a soldier was engaged and the pain centers of the brain were shut down. Then there was silence. Alpha Two was dead. All but he had been shot numerous times, and with wounds pouring out their life's blood slowly died on the rat infested jungle floor.
A cold wave of ice flowed through Richard's body. He covered his face with the wet blood stained mud and of this sacred altar. This was a holy place now, and he was the priest, only it was not absolution that he offered. Only death. He must survive. They had been set up, of this he was certain. The ambush was too perfect, the spot too isolated and the price that was paid was too great. Napalm or Agent Orange would not cleanse this atrocity from this place of death. He began to stalk his prey. He circled the Viet Cong that were surrounding his unit. He knew the enemy would plunder and mutilate the dead soldiers. It was the unspoken message of jungle warfare. The bodies of the dead soldiers would be displayed in such a horrific and grotesque way, that when a squad came upon this staged scene, minds could not comprehend, could not register what they were seeing.
Then suddenly, the realization would set in, but by then the mind had taken a toxic picture of what it had seen. It would fester, and stalk one's mind until you leap screaming from your bed, weeping like a small child. The sight of such a massacre and degradation stayed with a soldier forever. It terrified the bravest and broke the most courageous. With rain pouring down, and sporadic lightening flashing hypnotically far away, he experienced no fear as he drew near the enemy. One by one, he took them out before any of them knew that he was there. His movements were silent and his outrage was intense. Richard became the trained killer that he was fashioned to be. His knife glistened, wet with the kill. When the price was paid, he stood, covered in mud and the blood of the Viet Cong, and walked back to his men.
Tears of rage coursed down his face as he checked each one, whispered an oath and took their tags. He put the undamaged GPS in his pack, took what ammo he could carry and gave one last glance at his men. If he buried them they would never return home. He hoped one of the Special Forces scouting units would come to find out what had happened to them before the Cong found them.
One moment he was there and then he was gone. As the lightening flashed, he vanished into the writhing storm drenched jungle, a ghost in the night. The only body he had not found was Eric's. He covered his face with the sour feted mud from the pathway, and silently crawled back to where Eric was last seen, when he was at point. He flanked the position just in case there was a Viet Cong soldier still laying in wait to ambush him. After a short period of time it had become clear to Richard that he was alone. As he crouched low, he studied what little sign or tracks were left on the pathway. Of one thing he was certain; Eric was nowhere to be found. There was an inner awareness that he had either gotten away or had been captured by the Viet Cong. Richard knew that he was alive.
Already the rain had begun to wash away whatever tracks were left. Richard could see that there had been a fierce struggle and then there were the unmistakable grooves in the mud where Eric had been dragged away. Richard slipped the 45 caliber pistol from its holster, attached the silencer and began to track his prey. He would not return back along this pathway without Eric. Of this there was no doubt. He disappeared once again into the deep foliage and was gone.
Richard awoke and sat up in bed. His was shaking. There was cold sweat covering his body, leaving his hair plastered to his forehead like he had just stepped out of an icy shower. He had distinctly heard Eric call out his name,
"Captain, it's a trap, leave me and get back to recon!"
That was the night that he had rescued Eric from a rat infested bamboo trap where he was submerged to his neck in the stinking brackish river. It was rancid from the rotting animals floating nearby along with a few dead Viet Cong. Richard had broken the crude lock on his cage and together they floated with the current of the Mekong River and on toward the Delta. They were spotted the next day and rescued by an HH-3 Jolly Green Giant helicopter.
Eric had been shipped stateside and Richard had been debriefed and reassigned to Central Intelligence at HQ to finish up his tour of duty. That had been many years ago. Then he heard it again,
"Richard, Captain Connors, let this worn out soldier in out of the rain!"
He padded out of bed, and down the stairs to the front door. He listened. There was only the sound of the storm outside. Richard opened the door and stepped back with an involuntary gasp.
"Eric? Is that you? My God," he sobbed, "Eric!"
The man that stood there carried the weariness and strain of a vet who had still not come home from Viet Nam, even though he had been on American soil for over 30 years. His eyes were misted with tears and his hands were shaking as he reached out to Richard. They threw their arms around each other and both were overcome with shared joy and sorrow. It was always this way with a vet reconnecting with a member of his old unit, especially if time and circumstance had unexpectedly separated them after the war.
They sat down on the deck and chose not to talk about Nam. Conversation at times, seemed unnecessary. The sky had cleared and the wind began to settle down, allowing them to enjoy the soothing sounds of the ocean as it lazily caressed the cliff face of Castle Rock. Eric stayed a few days and then he became restless and it was clear that he had to move on. Richard had never seen him again after that day. The terrible dreams about his experiences in Viet Nam had virtually dissipated like the morning mist upon the rising of the morning sun.
A few months later, Richard tried to look Eric up and invite him back for a longer visit. After checking with military records, vital statistics and even writing his company commander, Colonial Alexander Morgan, he received notification that sergeant Eric Stewart had been killed in a skirmish in Saigon on the very day he was to return home to the states. The documentation was flawless and the information he had received about Eric had later been confirmed by Colonial Morgan. Eric had been dead for years now and yet?
That night he leaned on the deck railing and looked far out to sea. The sun had set, but the crimson traces of its presence were still painted across the horizon. He took a deep breath and said quietly,
"Thank you my friend. Go with God."
A sudden breeze swept past him and danced across the tips of the evergreens nearby and then with a sigh, all was still and peaceful once again, and so was Richard's heart and mind.