For the Sake of All Living Things (82 page)

Chhuon’s thoughts froze. Ceased. Four years had not only not erased or eased the memory but had nurtured his shame and guilt. Why? Why had he left them with Y Ksar? Why had he even taken them on the trip? Life is suffering. Life is suffering. Blood for blood. It meant nothing. It roused nothing in him anymore. It was not the fault of the Viet Namese but his own fault. He, Chhuon, their father, their earthly guardian, who had left them in the path of death. The path was there, had always been there, was as plain to see as if it were a street in Stung Treng with a hundred large trucks barreling up and down. Only he hadn’t seen it because of the
numpai.
He had let his two beautiful young children play in the road and they’d been obliterated by a death truck and for years he’d blamed the truck. He’d even, he knew now, blamed his children. Lord Buddha, he thought, when I die let my eyes close for I am ready to leave this earth. Let my youngest son not think badly of me. If it is your will, let me once more walk a forest trail and smell the orchids by my Srepok River.

Nang shifted slowly. The filth of the observation site disgusted him. His eyes darkened, sunk toward the back of his skull. In the sweet stench and predawn stillness elements of his personal inner contradictions battled for prominence. What had Ngoc Minh said, “Twice wounded makes a soldier cowardly?” Humph! But was it true? Had he lost his boyish invulnerability? No, that wasn’t it. That, he told himself, was the stamp of Ngoc Minh’s bourgeois classism shining through his thin veil of purity and brotherhood. There’s a difference between being cured of seeking impossible targets and being overly cautious.

For three weeks KT 104 soldiers had silently watched, planned, prepared the battlefield. The 81st Battalion was Nang’s reserve, reinforcement and ambush unit. Two other battalions of the KT task force were charged with regaining the village. Units from other zones had converged on the Northeast, readying a systematic, village-by-village liberation sweep. Nang’s and Von’s stragglers had been assigned the NVA headquarters camp.

Again Nang shifted. He had chosen the observation point, and since the offensive had begun across the border, the site had been deluged with tons of medical offal. Each night three stragglers slithered into the camp and rearranged the body parts so a cavern existed beneath the sheared-off legs, the amputated arms, the splintered chunks of rib cages. Then two left and one nestled down amid the waste and swill of the morbid pit behind the hospital complex.

In the predawn Nang occupied his mind alternately with a flood of thoughts and then with perfect attention to his own inner void. He listened, then fell into himself. He could barely see—occasionally a door opened and light squirted from the hospital or from the headquarters operation center up the hill. He dared not smell, feel or taste. At one point he thought about ice, huge slabs, not the blocks, he’d seen as a boy in a Stung Treng warehouse but sheets covering lakes or rivers. What a wonderful horrible thing to be able to freeze all the water, to freeze a body, to have ice for blood, to have that total control to freeze or thaw one’s own blood and that of all others. The air pulsed, vague, distant. Dossiers froze people, Nang thought. Cahuom Chhuon, village chairman. Eh? So now he’s chairman of a yuon village! He must have abandoned the people, must have abandoned the Khmer race. Ah, what could have been...The thought was vague—a pang, not words. And his wife, a resister. Ha! Sok a resister! Mama a resister! That’s crazy. Ha, the inner contradictions of the yuon apparatus—as disgusting as this hospital pit. And this Hang Tung. He lives in the chairman’s house! Beyond doubt he rubs the chairman’s wife’s parts with broken bones.

The pulsing became more distinct. Nang shifted, bringing his eyes to the arranged narrow slit between a mangled thigh and a discarded arm. There was little room to move beneath the parts, enough to hide, to blend in, when the orderlies brought new loads to the pit, then to shift, to observe when the way was clear. The sky had grayed since Nang’s last look. Now the pulsing became a loud whacking. Between the headquarters center and the hospital there was a flurry of activity. From a bunker men dragged several very old women toward the hospital surgical cavern. At a leveled area a dozen men pulled back the woven living canopy, opening a landing pad. Then the helicopter appeared. Nang recognized it from his training in China. Other yothea observers had reported the narrow, black, round-nosed ship but Nang had not believed them. Always the reports were from veterans of the Chenla II fight, “Helicopter fever,” Nang had whispered to Eng. “They see helicopters everywhere. They feel them in their sleep.” What the yotheas described, what Nang now saw, was not an American Huey or Cobra or a CH-53 but, Nang realized, a four-blade, single-rotor, grasshopper-looking Soviet Mi-4. From the pit of human sludge Nang could see soldiers, hospital porters and guards converge on the ship. The ship did not shut down, barely idled down, its tripod of tires touching the earth tentatively as if it were an insect set to jump away. High-ranking casualties, Nang thought. More vomit for my pit. They’d never bring in a soldier like that. Let them die and bury them trail-side. But the guards? He strained his eyes to ascertain the details of the picture unfolding a hundred meters away. He could see them separate the wounded, but could not tell what distinguished the groups. Then it hit him. Four were POWs.

The evening sky over Phum Sath Din was low, gray, filled with the light premonsoon haze which characterized the foothills of the Srepok Forest. From the treeline above the highest, and as yet never plowed, irrigated or planted paddy, Met Nhel and Ngoc Minh squatted amid a square of two dozen local resisters. “We all are the masters of our own destiny, eh?” Nhel said quietly to Kpa, Cahuom Sam and the others. He spoke in the idioms and accent of those with whom he sat. Cahuom Sam nodded. Sakhron grunted affirmation. Only Kpa kept his thoughts hidden.

For more than a year the local resistance had had loose contact with the Khmer Patriots via a series of small, tangential, local groups. When Ngoc Minh’s units arrived, Kpa’s locals were desperate for food, down to the last of their weapons. “With the weapons we’ve given you,” Ngoc Minh whispered, “your unit will be able to match the best yuon militia.”

“We’re grateful that the Kampuchean Patriots Liberation Front has arrived,” Sam whispered back. “We’ve had too little firepower to be effective.”

“But you’ve been very effective. The Center has depended upon you for intelligence. You’ve never let the Center down.”

Kpa flicked his little finger and tapped Sakhron. The boy, acting more the country bumpkin than he was, asked quietly, “What center?”

“It’s not important,” Ngoc Minh said. “What is important is the liberation of the people. How do you know about Colonel Nui’s request?”

“That’s not important,” Kpa said quietly. “Only that he requested a return of troops and that it was denied.”

“He wanted more troops about the village?”

“He reported to the next higher headquarters that an ‘uprising’ was possible.”

“Because of your increased activity?”

“One cannot know another’s mind,” Kpa said respectfully.

“This man Hang Tung, he...”

“He has four bodyguards,” Sam said. “He had one but he was killed by a trap set for his master. Now he has four. He’s smart, nervous.”

“Mister Kpa”—Ngoc Minh turned toward the resistance leader—“I need only one of your men for a guide. The village will be easy. But the headquarters will be difficult. Send your squads there.”

“You must”—Sam cleared his throat—“rescue my cousin.”

“It will be done.”

“When?”

“In three days,” Nhel said. “In three days the village will be liberated. Our fighters at the yuon complex will attack first.”

Quietly, almost as if he were a spirit without physical substance, Kpa walked the animal path along the river toward the village. With nightfall, mist had settled amongst the trees, between the bunkers and houses, isolating the area as much as if it had been surgically pared from the earth and set afloat in the ether. Kpa did not crawl through the minefield but walked where his feet told him he’d walked a dozen times before. He did not slither over the berm but stepped slowly through the gap the militia had left, left secure in the knowledge that no one would cross the mined belt between the river and the berm. He did not sneak along the alleyways toward the home of Cahuom Chhuon but strolled the middle of the main street as he’d done dozens of times, strolled to the turnoff, walked to the small angel house before the Cahuom home, said a silent prayer for Chhuon, then relaxed, motionless, awaiting the changing of bodyguards in the courtyard.

To the east the resistance squads had rendezvoused with elements of Von’s 81st Battalion and were being used to assist Von’s yotheas in their preparation of attack and withdrawal routes and of ambush sites in case the NVA attempted to reinforce from the east or in case the headquarters troops attempted to break out or counterattack. Farther east, across the border, the NVA had finally opened the third front of the Nguyen Hue Offensive and was fully committed to battles at Plei Ku and Kontum.

Two hours past midnight Kpa heard the familiar commotion of Hang Tung’s bodyguards. Like a cat he moved. Quickly he leaped from tree to tree within the small family orchard, then to the wall of the house where Hang Tung slept. “Get your rice-bottom up,” Kpa heard a guard grumble. “You’ve snored enough.” “Uhh. Not as much as Mister Committee Member, eh?” “I’d like one night to sleep on his mat.” Kpa glided to the window. A guard would be inside on a mat below the sill. Another across the threshold. “I’d like one night to return to my wife’s mat.”

Kpa waited. When all was again silent, he traced the jamb with his left hand, raised his right foot to the sill, his toes just reaching, then as if a helium-filled balloon, he rose effortlessly. Immediately he separated the curtain, dropped his foot, tenderly felt for the body which he had heard breathing beneath. He felt the mat, dragged his foot to its edge, stepped in. Hang Tung slept by the plaited curtain dividing the central room. His breathing was irregular, spasmodic, as if dreams haunted him. Kpa shuffled toward his symbol of evil. Slower, he cautioned himself. Quicker, his hatred ordered. Suddenly his legs felt as if they were sacks filled tight with a rush of water. He stopped. The guard across the threshold coughed, rolled, sputtered back to sleep.

From his sleeve Kpa removed a bamboo stiletto. Its tip was needle sharp, its edges like razor blades, its entire length soaked in poison made from an extract of wild raisins. Kpa listened carefully. He could not see even an outline of Hang Tung’s form. Which way were his feet? When Kpa descended upon Tung to clamp a hand over his nose and mouth, to ensure silence he needed to know whether Tung slept mouth-nose or nose-mouth from him.

Kpa slid a foot. Then another! His shin contacted the low table and he froze. Something, ajar, a lamp, wobbled. “Umph!” Hang Tung hacked, arched his neck, resettled. Kpa knew. Mouth-nose. He turned ninety degrees to the body, slowly descended, slowly passed his hand up until he felt the heat of exhausted breath. He waited. Inhale, Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Clamp. Hang Tung tried to gasp. Before he could, Kpa’s dagger found the soft tissue beneath his jaw. He drove the dagger in, down through the mouth, tongue, palate and into the brain—exactly as a butcher might kill a chicken. Hang Tung’s body shuddered, first head and shoulders, then arms, hips, legs and feet. Then all movement ceased.

“One slow, four quick! One slow, four quick!” Nang chanted as the main force concentrated on the few strong points. Their attack on the NVA headquarters east of Phum Sath Din followed classic North Viet Namese tactics. The first LP/OPs were knocked out as Hang Tung shuddered and died, two days, not three, after Ngoc Minh had met with the resisters. An hour later every KVM/NVA village in the lower Srepok Valley was under siege and Lieutenant Colonel Nui’s lightly defended headquarters (not a single artillery piece,

AA gun or even mortar had been left back) was being prepped by Krahom 61mm mortars as KK commandos penetrated the perimeter, grenading fighting positions, hitting the internal structures with 57mm recoilless rifle fire and creating general chaos amongst the defenders, POW guards, medics and porters.

“Move! Move! Move! Attack!” Adrenaline surged through every cell of Nang’s body. The rapid barking chorus of his yotheas’ AKs elevated the excitement. “Without this,” he shouted back at a cell of new yotheas as they huddled behind a large tree trunk, “without Angkar, all Khmers are doomed. The Khmer race prevails or vanishes tonight. Move!”

His troops moved. They ran into sporadic return fire, disciplined fire from those few soldiers who remained along the south berm. Within minutes, perimeter pockets of resistance fell back or were flanked and destroyed. The fighting moved deeper into the camp. From the north berm a huge explosion—a bomb to be transported, no Krahom soldier knew where—a fireball flashed, leaped skyward illuminating attackers, defenders, structures. Then blindness in blackness as the concussion blasted outward knocking troops of both armies flat, ripping eardrums, zinging stones, tree splinters, charred jeep shrapnel. Wounding. Killing. “Move!” In the second-long pause following the concussion Nang rallied his fighters. “Through the center,” he ordered. “There, there, there.” Nang pushed yotheas into the gap between the hospital and the main operations bunker. “Duch, get Thevy. Cut it in two.”

“Got it.” Duch radioed the Rabbit Platoon leader of the 2d Company. He monitored others. Nang was too excited to direct; Eng also was too deeply immersed in the direct killing of NVA resistance pockets. Duch radioed orders as if Nang had told him: 3d Company take the operations center, 1st mop up the perimeter, 2d to the hospital complex. “Met Nang!” Duch grabbed the CO’s shirt. “Met Nang. Hawk Platoon is out of ammo.”

Nang paused, looked eerily at Duch. “Have them fall back.”

“Hawk! They’re the recoilless rifle team. Rifle fire can’t penetrate the operations bunker. There’s a company of defenders there.”

“Get Von. The 81st has a recoilless platoon, eh?”