Take Back the Night: A Novel of Vietnam (The Jim Hollister Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  “No. Now go away and leave us,” Krong said, growing more angry with the soldiers.

  The Vietnamese sergeant shoved him with the heels of his hands. “Shut up! Be grateful that we don’t just kill you and tell Saigon that the Communist VC did it.”

  The sergeant spat out encouragement to the others, already dipping cups into the crock and slopping wine on themselves as they drank. He gave them permission to find the women they wanted and just take them.

  Krong protested again, but the soldiers didn’t stop. They ran to the longhouses and looked for young girls.

  One of them entered Jrae’s longhouse and looked at her standing in the doorway—her baby at one of her swollen breasts. He laughed at her fearful expression but didn’t resist the temptation to reach out to fondle her free breast. She recoiled from his grasp and threw herself off balance. She staggered and the soldier laughed at her clumsiness.

  She screamed out for him to leave them. But the soldier walked to the far end of the longhouse and found another girl, Sraang—only thirteen. He grabbed her by the wrist, held her out so he could look at her body, and grunted in approval. She was tall and dark skinned. Her hair was jet black, long and straight to her waist. The soldier looked at her naked chest and yelled out to the others that he had found a young one who was not as disgusting as the rest of them. He laughed and then dragged her out into the night.

  Sraang was Jrae’s sister. Her only sister—ten years her junior. She was born to her mother and her mother’s second husband—a Montagnard who was killed by the Viet Cong not long after Sraang was born.

  Jrae’s younger brother, Pek, had been taken a year earlier. That time they came with a recruiting pitch—explaining to the Montagnards that the Republican puppets in Saigon would eventually kill them all. Their only hope was to join the Viet Cong to fight Saigon. When the recruiting plea failed, they just took Pek. That was the first of the roundups that eventually took all the men under forty from their village.

  After the soldiers left, Jrae collapsed on the cardboard pallet and cried, remembering just such a night when other soldiers had dragged her off. She held the baby who was a memory of the soldiers who used her—drunken and insulting. They had taken turns with her and then left her on the pathway near her village for her tribe to find her. Just remembering the night brought back the pain and the embarrassment of the men handling her small body, sweating on her, grunting, pushing, and hurting her.

  She was ashamed. Though none of the elders in the village accused her of any wrongdoing, she felt as though she had betrayed her tribe by having sex with Vietnamese soldiers. But the ultimate pain came when she found that she was pregnant. Every day since the birth of her son, she had been reminded of that night.

  By dawn there was still no sign of Sraang.

  Jrae alternated between the unavoidable duties of her day and moments of fear when her mind wandered to the things that could be happening to her sister.

  She hoped that Sraang would return before the small tribe moved.

  Two weeks earlier, the South Vietnamese sent a province officer into the village to tell them that they could be relocated to a resettlement camp near Tay Ninh. They would have to give up their nomadic lifestyle and move to a government resettlement camp if they wanted to survive.

  The older men knew whatever fading authority they held in their small group would disappear the moment they arrived at a resettlement camp. Younger men and stronger men at the camp would insist that they be given the power to make decisions for Krong’s people.

  CHAPTER 3

  HOLLISTER SAT QUIETLY AT the bar in the basement of the main officers club. The Infantry Bar was filled with the after-work crowd. He sat alone and made circles on the bar top with the water on the bottom of his beer mug. At the corner of the bar, the evening news was on TV. Cronkite mixed reading the news from Saigon with lecturing his viewers about America’s inability to extract itself from the Vietnam War.

  Angered, but not sure why Cronkite angered him, Hollister signaled the bartender for a refill.

  A loud Transportation Corps captain was telling some story on the stool next to Hollister, waving his arms all around as he talked to his friend on the third stool over. Hollister was slightly bothered by the loudmouth but decided just to let it pass. All he wanted was just a quiet drink and some time to think.

  “Hey, you fuckin’ sorry-ass Ranger!”

  Hollister looked up into the bar mirror and saw the smiling face of Major Jack Stanton, his old helicopter gunship platoon leader from Hollister’s second tour in Vietnam.

  “Shit,” Hollister said without turning around. “Isn’t there anywhere on post where a guy can go to get a drink without the place filling up with assholes?”

  “This place filled up with assholes when you walked in,” Stanton said playfully.

  Stanton pulled up a stool next to Hollister and mounted it like a horse. “You buyin’?”

  “Me?” Hollister shook his head. “Seems to me that I’ve been buyin’ since the day I met you.”

  “You drinkin’ solo, pardner?”

  The animated captain next to Hollister made a wide gesture with his hand while telling his story and slammed his fist on the bar. Hollister watched his glass jump, almost spilling its contents. He waved for the bartender to bring Stanton a drink.

  “Oh, I get it. The wife?”

  “Don’t know what to do about her, Jack.”

  “She still home? In New Jersey?”

  “New York.”

  “She comin’ back?”

  “We been at this a couple a years now. She wants me out of the army, out of Benning, and God knows what else.”

  “So?”

  “So what am I gonna do? Can you see me on some campus with a bunch of long-hair hippies?”

  They both laughed at the picture of Airborne-Ranger Hollister without his close-cropped haircut.

  “I’d pay real money to see that,” Stanton said.

  “Well, wish in one hand and shit in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

  “That what you told her?”

  “In so many words.”

  “So she walked?”

  “She knew I was a soldier when she met me and when we got married.”

  “She’s tired of it, Jim.”

  “We’re all tired of it.”

  “You oughta be gettin’ short, huh?”

  The aggravating captain next to Hollister laughed loudly at something his friend had said. Hollister looked at the captain and then back to Stanton.

  “I’m real ripe for reassignment. If I don’t put in my papers to get out, and I get alerted for movement to Vietnam—I’m stuck.”

  “Yeah,” Stanton said. “I know. They’ll send your request back and tell you to reapply after you return.”

  Hollister gently tapped his glass on the counter and got the bartender’s attention. “Wanna do it again?”

  “Susan know how ripe you are?”

  “Nope. What are you gonna do, Jack?”

  “Hey. Sam’s got me. I’m in for the long haul. Five more years, and it’s rockin’ chair time. I just can’t walk away from fifteen years,” Stanton said.

  “I can’t walk away either, and I don’t know how to explain it to Susan.”

  “You better figure it out, man. She’s really gonna be pissed if she gets a letter saying, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m going back to Vietnam for my third tour.’”

  Before Hollister could reply, the bellowing captain next to him stepped off his stool, tripped on the footrail, and bounced off Hollister. With whiplike speed, Hollister reached out and grabbed the captain by the throat, his fingers on either side of his windpipe, and pulled his face close. “You’re not only a pain in the ass, but you’re a clumsy pain in the ass. Now get a grip on yourself or I’ll help you to the fuckin’ door. You got me?”

  The captain’s eyes bugged out—he was surprised at Hollister’s hostility. He nodded and tried to straighten up to avoid the pain Holl
ister’s grip was causing.

  “Hey, Jim. Lighten up,” Stanton said.

  Hollister let go of the captain but reinforced his words with a cold stare.

  The captain grabbed his change off the bar and headed for the door—encouraged to leave by his buddy.

  Neither Hollister nor Stanton said anything for quite a long time.

  “Shit,” Hollister said. “I just don’t know what’s gotten into me. I’m short fused—”

  “And a real joy to be around,” Stanton said.

  “I’m sorry, man. I’m just tired.”

  “How long I been knowin’ you?”

  “Couple a years now.”

  “I’ve watched you get froggy. When we get this in aviation units, we put guys behind a desk to take some of the weight off of them. Maybe getting out and heading for some campus somewhere will help.”

  Hollister looked up at Stanton. “You think I’m that fucked up, huh?”

  “Nope. But I think that you’ve carried your share of the war.” He jerked his thumb toward the doorway. “Give someone else like that clown a chance to prove something. Ease off.”

  Stanton left the bar around nine. Hollister stayed and had more to drink. He looked at the clock on the dash of his MG roadster. It was after eleven.

  The military policeman’s flashing red lights hardly reflected off Hollister’s rearview mirror before he checked his speedometer and started to pull over to the side of the road.

  There were few things less forgivable than getting a DUI on an army post. Hollister ran through a list of possible excuses he might be able to use on the MP. None of them seemed worthwhile, so he resigned himself to getting out his wallet and registration.

  A tall black soldier approached his car. In the backlight of the MP sedan’s headlights, all that Hollister could make out in his mirror was the sergeant’s bright sleeve chevrons.

  “Evenin’, sir,” the sergeant said.

  “Good evening,” Hollister said, trying to sound as sober as he could.

  “It’d be a damn shame to have to write a DUI on an old platoon leader of mine,” the sergeant said.

  Hollister, not sure what he was talking about, scooted down in his seat to look out and up under the low-cut canvas top on his roadster. It was then that he saw the smiling face of former Private First Class Tyrone T. Thibideaux, an MP turned long-range-patrol member in the Airborne brigade in Vietnam. “Damn you, Three-T, I thought I recognized that voice,” Hollister said, happy to see his friendly face.

  “You think you’d recognize it better if I whispered?” he said, referring to the way they normally talked in the field.

  They both laughed. Hollister remembered Thibideaux as a good soldier who went on several patrols with Hollister’s platoon until he was injured in a freak accident and evacuated to the States. “What are you doing back in an MP suit?”

  “When I screwed up my back and got bounced from the infantry, they let me fall back on my MP time.”

  “And a staff sergeant in just four years?” Hollister asked, only a little surprised.

  “Sometimes you get lucky, sir.”

  “It’s good to see you.”

  “Speaking of getting lucky, Captain, you know why I pulled you over, don’t you?”

  Hollister nodded affirmatively.

  “Well, you ’bout the luckiest captain on Fort Benning tonight ’cause the post chief of staff is on our ass to be on folk’s asses about DUIs. Now, if you just head on over to your BOQ, I’m going to follow you. You know, in case you need any help. And we’ll just call it a wash. What d’ya think, Cap’n?”

  “I think that’s a lot more slack than I got coming to me. Thank you, Sergeant T.”

  “My pleasure, Cap’n.”

  Hollister pulled into his parking space in front of the BOQ. Thibideaux turned on the interior lights in his sedan and gave Hollister another abbreviated salute before he drove off.

  Hollister sat in his car, his head still spinning from all the booze. He let it sink in—how close he had come to very real trouble. It was almost impossible to keep a DUI from ruining any career aspirations an officer might have. Once the delinquency report was submitted, wheels began to roll that ended up with at least a negative comment about drinking on an officer’s efficiency report. That alone was enough to miss the next promotion list. Miss two lists and an officer was invited to leave the service. A chill went through him as he thought of how close he had come to having his future decided for him.

  “I’ve got an appointment with the chief of staff,” Hollister said.

  “Mornin’, Captain,” the post command sergeant major said from behind his polished oak desk. “Let me see if Colonel Valentine’s free.”

  The sergeant major put his large cigar in the ashtray and stood to step across the headquarters reception area to the colonel’s office.

  The new post chief of staff had only been in the job for five weeks. Hollister had not yet met him—not face-to-face.

  Hollister’s name had first come to Valentine’s attention when the grieving mother in Calumet had called her senator. It was less than an hour later when the phone lines burned all the way down to Hollister’s level. Valentine had made it clear how unhappy he was to have received a call from the Senate Office Building on his first week in his new job. He especially didn’t like having to call his boss, the commanding general, with the news of the incident.

  Hollister stepped smartly to a point in front of Colonel Jarrold T. Valentine’s desk, stopped, and saluted. “Sir, Captain Hollister reports.”

  Colonel Valentine returned Hollister’s salute. “Pull up a chair, Hollister. We have some talking to do.”

  Hollister had heard nothing good about Valentine. His reputation was that of a hard-ass who was widely known throughout the infantry for handing out punishment like candy for the most minor infractions of military discipline. He had an especially dark reputation for being hell on company-grade officers.

  “You don’t know much about drugs, do you, Hollister?”

  The question took Hollister by surprise. “Pardon me, sir?”

  “I’ve looked at your personnel file. Doesn’t look to me that you’ve been around the kind of units that have drug problems.”

  “Well, sir. I know about them. I was an enlisted man in Germany when marijuana was getting to be a problem. I’ve seen my share of soldiers nuked by drugs.

  “And I’ve served on courts-martial. I’ve been a trial counsel on a couple of possession cases. But as far as being in units with drug problems? No, sir. I can’t say I have.”

  “Well, I’ve got a very big problem. I’ve got soldiers with serious drug problems.”

  “Sorry to hear that. I don’t see much of it in my company—”

  Valentine interrupted. “I know that, but your brigade has the most drug cases of any unit on post.”

  “Why’s that, sir?”

  Valentine pointed to an acetate-covered chart near his desk and scanned the information grease-penciled in. The chart showed rising numbers in AWOLs and courts-martial convictions. He squinted as if the chart hurt his eyes and then turned back to Hollister.

  “For one, you’re too far down in the pecking order. They arrive, and someone at main post decides that a soldier looks like he might be a problem child, and he gets turned down for assignment to the School Brigade or the Infantry School.”

  “So we get them out at the brigade,” Hollister said.

  “Right. Benning’s getting trash, and your brigade is getting the bulk of them.”

  Hollister had no idea why the chief of staff—ranking colonel at Fort Benning—would be telling him the problems that he shared with the colonel commanding his brigade.

  But it didn’t seem to apply to Hollister because all of the troops in the honor guard were not only volunteers, they were also hand-picked. He didn’t have one serious problem with drugs.

  “I know what you’re thinking, not in your company. Well, that’s why I want to talk to you.
I can take these dopers and dump them in the stockade with very little effort. It’ll clear up my drug problems, and they’ll become someone else’s problem.”

  Colonel Valentine stood and walked to the narrow window in the cinder-block post headquarters. He absentmindedly straightened his tie and looked out across the parade field in front of the Infantry School. “You see, I don’t work that way, Hollister.”

  He turned back around and picked up a set of notes from his desk. “I want you to take a look at these. I’m interested in giving these guys a chance—just one, but a chance.”

  The comment didn’t make much sense coming from a hard-ass colonel, and it showed on Hollister’s face.

  “I understand that you have the space. I want you to take a free platoon bay you have in your company and turn it into a holding tank.”

  “Holding tank?”

  “Here it is. When a battalion commander comes up on a drug user, we only have one option right now—that’s throw the book at him. To let them get by is a very bad precedent. I need another option. What I want you to do is set up a remedial training program for drug users. When we find them, I want them sent to your company. I want them stripped of every damn thing they own so they can’t possibly bring drugs into the barracks. I want someone with them during training, while they eat, sleep, and even crap.”

  “And what kind of training are you talking about, sir?”

  “Soldiering. You can see in my notes. Take them with you and let’s talk in a few days. You’ll have everything you need. I want you to keep these guys busier than they have ever been with the toughest training you can set up. Hopefully, we can break them of the drugs and give them a chance to clean up their act.”

  “And then what?”

  “If they clean up their act, they go back to their units with no stain on their records.”

  “And if they don’t?” Hollister asked.

  “Then I throw their worthless asses in the stockade.”

  There was a long pause. Neither man said anything as Hollister looked down at the notes. What he saw, he didn’t like. “Colonel, I’m not sure I’m the man for this job—”