The Eighty-eighth Key Ch. 05

chapter five

The various outcomes of the so-called Tet Offensive of January 1968 will be debated by historians for as long as students gather and talk about that pivotal year in America History. What had been an at-best tepid anti-war movement in America blossomed, after Tet, into the raging inferno of anti-establishment riots that shredded American society for the next three years. North Vietnam's coordinated assaults on more than one hundred US bases, as well as command and control facilities throughout Vietnam, terrified the military and galvanized the anti-war movement into taking increasingly bold acts of civil-disobedience, and in the immediate aftermath LBJ decided not to seek reelection. Like the forks on a bolt of lightning, repercussions then spread throughout American society and, indeed, around the world. You can think of RFKs assassination as just one of those forks, and the gunning down of protestors at Kent State University another, but it takes very careful study indeed to follow all the trails to their many unhappy conclusions. Looking back on those times now, most people still around might see Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin's walk on the moon as the only bright spot in the nighttime worth remembering.

On the third day of the Tet Offensive, military planners gathered at the the White House and the Pentagon gave the go ahead to activate a desperate plan to decapitate the North's leadership with a very limited strike on a small leadership enclave northwest of Hanoi. Operation Headless Horseman would be carried out by a very specially modified Martin B-57G, one that had been modified to fly in the so-called 'night intruder' role, and it would carry a very small, very low-yield tactical nuclear device to it's intended target: a very secretive leadership compound located about fifty miles from Hanoi. Reconnaissance aircraft and radio intercepts were being used to closely monitor political movements, and the mission's timing was considered crucial to it's success.

The assigned aircraft took-off from Danang and turned to the west and then, once out of Vietnamese airspace, turned again to the north. The intended track would see the aircraft make it's attack run from the northwest and, hopefully, surprising the North's formidable air defenses, but before that could happen LBJ recalled the flight and thereby aborted the mission. While en route back to Danang, however, the aircraft encountered a SAM battery and sustained heavy damage, and before the aircraft could make it back to Vietnamese airspace it went down in the mountainous jungles of Laos, and on this event a singular part of our tale turns.

+++++

Picture if you will a shallow valley, tree-lined for the most part, and along the valley floor a small river running through low, swampy brush. To the west of the valley a more rugged landscape of foothills gives way to serious coastal mountains, while to the southeast lay the city of Hué. Located in a clearing on the valley floor, during the war, was a small facility that looked somewhat like an old fort from the days of Cowboys and Indians, and in this fort were several US Army 'Green Berets' and a few hundred infantrymen from the South Vietnamese Army. These troops were positioned to guard a forward medical facility operated by the US Army, and this little fortification went by the name of C-Med. C-Med was one of the facilities targeted during the Tet Offensive because the doctors and medics stationed there were located very close to North Vietnam, and as a result serious casualties from the 'DMZ' operating area were often carried to C-Med to be stabilized. Many of the wounded had to be treated on the spot and then transported, usually to Danang but often to an aircraft carrier offshore, and many never left C-Med alive.

Surgeons plucked out of their residencies landed at C-Med if they were considered troublemakers or rebels, because C-Med was routinely attacked by Charlie -- as the Viet Cong operating in the region were derisively called, though the origins of the name have been somewhat obscured by time and distance. As a result many physicians based at C-Med were either killed outright or went out of their minds due to the unrelenting workload -- and the insane working conditions -- but more about that in due time.

But keep in mind this unrelenting workload was the norm before the Tet Offensive began, and continued long after. C-Med was considered a true trial-by-fire, and was considered the most dangerous forward medical facility in the Southeast Asian theater of operations.

+++++

Harry Callahan's first operational assignment, after arriving at Phu Bai on 28 January 1968, was to fly a Medevac up to C-Med. Onboard with the medics was Doug Parish, MD, who Callahan had met the day before. Parish had been considered a talented young surgeon during his training; he was from Coos Bay, Oregon who now literally despised anything in green, most especially the Army's olive drab. And he hated most of all army officers wearing their own peculiar varieties of green; he variously called these creatures festering turds or rattlesnakes, depending on the current state of his inebriation -- to which he dated to his arrival in Vietnam. Parish had quickly been, as you might expect, posted to C-Med, and he had hoped to hop a ride out to C-Med that morning -- after failing to get arrested for calling a colonel a douche-bag, well, a fucking douche-bug, to his face. He had called the colonel that, and more, when the colonel had had the temerity to relieve Parish of a just-opened bottle of Johnny Walker Red -- at eight in the morning -- and when Parish spotted Callahan on the flight line he thought he might have some more fun... He climbed in Callahan's Huey and settled in behind the cockpit, and he didn't say a word until they were well on their way out to C-Med.

"Fingers still smell like Cat?" was the first thing Parish said to Callahan, and Harry turned, looked at Parish, then replied by dropping the collective and plastering Parish to the Huey's ceiling.

"I take that to be a resounding yes," Parish sighed as he pulled a flask filled with Bacardi 151 and took a long pull. "Want some more, Callahan, or is that best you got?"

Callahan dropped the collective and Parish barely grabbed a seatback in time to avoid the worst impact as he slammed into the floor.

Parish decided to drink in silence after that, though he looked past the door gunners at the passing treetops now just a few meters away. C-Med came into view above the trees a few minutes later, and Callahan circled the base once before coming in for a hard touchdown. The medics pushed Parish out the door and ran with him to one of the bunkers by the pad; the medics returned with several kids on stretchers and hung IV bottles on overhead trees while the gunners lashed the stretchers down, then one of the medics told Harry to get airborne as quickly as possible -- or words to that effect -- and by then Harry Callahan had completely forgotten about Doug Parish, MD.

He made three more flights to C-Med that first day on the flight line, and one more around midnight. Parish had his fingers in some kid's neck almost the entire trip to Danang, and he disappeared into an ambulance without saying so much as one 'fuck you' the entire trip.

And yet, when Callahan woke up and made his first flight back out to C-Med the next morning, there was Parish waiting on the flight line, waiting to catch a ride back out to the trenches.

"Hey Callahan," Parish called out as Harry walked up to his Huey, "eaten any good Cat lately?"

Harry stopped and felt for the 45 strapped to his hip; he pulled it out and walked over to Parish -- whose eyes went wide when Callahan unholstered the Colt. "You know what punk? How'd you like to eat some of this?"

"So? You headed up valley?" Parish said, quickly changing the subject as he sized up Callahan once again.

"Yeah, Meathead, I am."

"Mind if I grab a ride with you?"

"Well yes, Meathead, as a matter of fact I do."

"Okay, Callahan, you win. No more jokes."

"Get in," Harry rolled his eyes before he turned and walked out to his flutterbug, though Callahan ignored him as he and his co-pilot went through the pre-start checklist.

After they lifted-off Parish slid up close to the 'pit, his eyes scanning the countryside beyond the Huey, looking at all the foot traffic headed into the city. "Never seen so many people out here, Callahan. You hear anything yet?"

"No? Why?"

"I dunno, man. My nut sack is itching, and it usually only does that when Charlie is up to no fuckin' good..."

"Your nut sack...?" Callahan had just started to say when a volley of small arms fire slammed into the left side of the Huey, raking it from the cockpit to the tail; he heard one of the medics in back scream and saw his co-pilot slump over the controls. Parish got the other pilot out of his harness and dragged him back onto the floor while the other medic helped; the door gunners leaned out and began shooting at anything that moved. Callahan put the Huey down in the weeds, racing between trees for C-Med. He knew the approach well enough by now to slide in hard on his first attempt, which just happened to be when mortar rounds began landing inside the perimeter. A small herd of ambulatory wounded jumped in the back of the Huey and the gunners screamed "Go-go-go!" in unison; Harry lifted off and decided to head back to Phu Bai by another route -- but it was the same everywhere he tried. Streams of 'farmers' carrying AK-47s and RPGs lined all the roads and trails leading to Hué City, and many took potshots at the Huey so Callahan had his hands full all the way back to base.

Parish looked at the wounded medic while orderlies carried away his deceased co-pilot; another team hosed blood from the interior of the Huey while he looked over the damage to the 'bug with his crew chief. No engine damage, no rotor damage, so Callahan was good to go as soon as he could round up another co-pilot and get refueled.

Parish got back to the flight line just as Callahan and a new pilot, a green kid from West Texas named Don McCall, walked around the messed-up Huey.

"That don't look so good," McCall sighed after looking at the fifty or so bullet holes sprayed down the left side of the aircraft -- many through the co-pilot's blood-splattered door.

"Pretty fucked up morning all around," Parish said as he walked up to Callahan. "Can you get me up to C-Med without all the bullshit this time?"

"How's the kid," Harry asked, referring to the medic wounded earlier.

"Well, he won't be beatin' off with his right hand for a while," Parish said while beating the air, "but other than that he'll be fine."

"Jesus H Christ, Parish. Where'd you grow up? In a goddamn whorehouse?"

Parish grinned as he climbed back into the Huey, and he sat and watched as Callahan and the new kid worked the checklist and got the 'bug back in the air -- only now he observed there was literally almost no one out on the trails leading into or out of Hué City. Even the normal ebb and flow of real farmers was nowhere to be seen, and Parish started scratching between his legs the closer they got to C-Med.

The assault there had suddenly stopped too, just like somebody had decided to turn off a spigot and stop the flow of water. Parish hopped out of the flutterbug and ran off to surgery while Callahan help unload dozens of crates of supplies for the hospital, then orderlies loaded several body bags into the main cabin. Harry looked at the black bags like they were an accusation, but of what, or against who? Only a week in-country and he'd picked up on enough talk to have his doubts about what was going on over here, but this was war and war ain't too popular with men on the front lines.

He turned around and looked at the buzzing hive of activity, Vietnamese and Americans working side-by-side, but what were they fighting for? To keep the South free? If that was true why did northerners fight with such passion to unify their country? Why did the locals around the base look at all the round eyes with so much suspicion in their own? So, things just weren't adding up.

But in truth, about all Harry thought about was a little girl down in Saigon, and now, after just a few days away he positively ached to see her, and to hold her again. Yet even so another little girl was never far from mind.

But like walking inside a giant trap, the coiled spring of the Tet Offensive had gathered around Harry Callahan and his little Cat, and the trap was then just a few hours from slamming shut.

+++++

The Jetstar came in from the northwest and flew parallel to the coast for a few minutes and Harry saw the lights of a large city about ten miles away, the low skyline reflecting off still water. "That's Tel Aviv," Avi proclaimed -- and somewhat too proudly, or so Callahan thought at the time. "Your mother is down in those lights."

Harry turned and looked out the little square window, if only because for the past ten hours he had thought of little else.

The jet had left San Francisco and flown to Toronto, then Iceland and on to Zurich, refueling at each stop while Avi and Harry stepped outside to briefly stretch their legs, before this final leg into Israel. Callahan's 'interrogation' had ended as abruptly as it began, and the old man had quietly turned to focus on the pile of papers on his tray table, first studying one then annotating others, and the little he said to Harry revealed just how serious the information was. Avi was preparing the country, his country, for war, because all the numbers and information inside those reports concerned troop readiness levels in Egypt and Syria. As Harry watched, seeing the concrete reality of those preparation, had focused all his attention on his mother and the uncertain dangers she faced now.

Because suddenly another Arab-Israeli war wasn't just a distant hypothetical story on the evening news; his mother was down there somewhere in those lights, and now that fact was simply more than troubling. Harry soon found himself looking at the old man from time to time, studying his attentiveness and the way his hands moved as he wrote, and he realized quite without understanding the how or the why of it that he was beginning to respect Avi. He was, after all, his mother's husband. Her first husband.

And she had chosen this man over his father. "And me," he added.

"And you, what?" the old man asked, quietly looking up from his papers.

"Sorry. I was just thinking about something."

"And what were you thinking?"

Harry turned from the window and looked at Avi. "That she chose you over my father. And me."

Avi nodded and looked Harry in the eye. "Perhaps it feels that way to you now, but you haven't seen how much she thinks of you both. I have. Every day. Never question her love for you, Harry, or for your father. Her love is bigger than that, more encompassing, so please do not diminish what you find here."

"What does she do with her days?"

Avi leaned back and smiled at the thought: "She is back in the lab on her good days, and she still teaches when she can."

"When she can? Is she ill?"

Avi looked away, took off his reading glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose, then he rubbed the corners of his eyes. Harry saw they were rimmed with scarlet now, and that the old man was very tired. "Your mother's illness is complicated, Harald. It is emotional, an emotional calamity, and I feel it has grown worse since she arrived."

"Worse?"

"Yes. She stopped playing the piano after she left California, and with the outlet no longer available she has internalized all her anguish. All her suffering. Her demons, if you will, only now her demons come out at night, they come for her in her sleep, and she talks to them."

"Why?" Harry asked. "Why did she stop?"

"Because, Harry, without you she can not see beyond the demons. She can no longer see the notes on the page, the music of her life."

"Without me? I don't understand, Avi."

"Neither do I, my friend. Neither do I, but perhaps in time you will see for yourself."

+++++

Everything happened after darkness fell, after midnight further south.

Callahan was in his hooch trying to sleep but the incessant song of Hueys coming and going made it almost impossible. Someone was just outside the tent smoking manure, or something that smelled pretty much like burning manure, when he thought he heard thunder off over the mountains to the west -- and he turned inward on himself and groaned. He hated flying instruments at low level, really hated it, but the wounded never stopped coming into C-Med and the need was real, if a little extreme. When the Hueys stopped flying people died -- it was as simple as that -- and thunder meant rain, didn't it.

Yes...simple as that.

"That ain't thunder," someone outside the tent said -- and then it was suddenly blinding noon.

"Fuck!" someone screamed, and the sound of that man's fear struck Callahan as the most agonizingly real thing he'd ever heard in his life. He was lacing up his boots before he was upright, checking to see if a round was chambered in his 45 as he stood and reached for his flak jacket, then...

Gunfire. Close. A few shots from a 45, a longer burst from a couple of -16s, then the whomping of AK rounds whiffling through the canvas fabric just overhead. He knelt and ran outside to see dozens of flares overhead and someone was shouting "Charlie's in the wire!" -- which meant Viet Cong were inside the base perimeter -- and just then mortar rounds started falling near the parked helicopters. And the fuel bowsers...

He ran for his ship, saw McCall just ahead running in his underwear and unlaced boots...

"Get a ship up, now," Callahan said as he sprinted past. "Don't ask...just do it...!"

Callahan got to the first Huey on the line and pulled the battery umbilical free on his way to the cockpit, and he started waking up the beast by feel until he got the overhead lights on. Engine start, wake up the radios, check frequencies, call in to the tower, chaos everywhere, three guys up ahead firing into the darkness and dozens of return muzzle flashes off in some trees only a hundred yards away. Power good, torque in the green so add collective and counter with the rudder. Keep the nose down, down you stupid fucker, no lights, no lights, a little more power...watch the fucking torque...push it over some more...that's it...that's it...watch your airspeed...pull up...keep it just above the tents...better call in...

"Kilo Bravo Six, airborne," Callahan said on guard.

"-Six, C-Med calling in with major casualties."

"-Six moving," Callahan replied, telling the tower he was en route.

"-Six, this is McCall, I'm on your six with two gunners."

"Good news, kid, you take lead and lay down some fire when I go for the pad."

"Roger."

He saw McCall's Huey slip ahead passing right and even though they were just over the treetops he could see explosions and fires raging at C-Med -- and they were still five miles out. Small arms fire peppered the Huey as they got close, and he made out a few trees he had used for landmarks earlier in the day so he lined up for the approach as he heard McCall on the radio talking to controllers on the ground and requesting vectors...

Too fucking hot...too hot...nose up Meathead, get your goddamn nose up...c'mon man, let's bleed some speed...

He was about twenty feet off the ground when an RPG slammed into the Huey somewhere aft and the 'bug lurched sideways, yawed hard right and he countered with the pedals but nothing happened. 'Tail gone,' he muttered as he rolled the stick hard left.

The Huey hit hard and crunched through thick brush; he saw a fat white snake roll up the windshield and disappear aft, then heard McCall on the radio. "-Six, off to your right! Beat feet!"