The ESP screening room was small and dark. A makeshift esoteric enclosure with no windows or ventilation louvers. A small, silent fan under the tin roof kept those inside from suffocating in the late Spring Vietnam heat. Cardenas repurposed it from a portable weather station. The Third Marines Air Wing abandoned it when they left Da Nang base in the mid-sixties to move north to the DMZ.  

The hermetically shut room lay detached from the main structure of the Da Nang Deployment Station. Its design emulated a big shower stall seen all over the base living quarters. Its only distinguishing feature was a wooden bench on the shady side. Half a dozen soldiers sat there. They smoked and shot jokes. Buck Sergeant Espino loosely supervised the troop. Two of the fellas, Jairo Jaramillo and Papio Pinay, played crap on the ground, making bets with Vietnamese piasters. Petty cash for village visits.  

They all knew each other. Everyone except newcomer Ulises Duquel. He arrived at the US Army Reinforcement Depot mid-morning, summoned by First Sergeant Tobias Tabal.  

The soldiers wore battle-stained, soiled fatigues. At least one GI, Rawlings, even had old blood stains on a pant leg. In contrast, new soldiers loitering inside or around the tall metal Deployment Station sported clean jungle suits. Everyone felt tense and expected orders. They wondered what fortune befell them upon receiving the reassignment orders for in-country duty.  

On that early morning, Ulises Duquel took sight of Captain Ruddy Cardenas in command for the first time. The officer stood at the entrance to the Depot with a clipboard in hand. He called names and sent them to the back of the building towards the ESP shack. His uniform also showed battlefield wear, sleeves tightly rolled up to the mid-arm, boots ragged and worn. The captain’s sidearm quickly caught Duquel’s attention. A thick leather holster carved with Mayan war symbols held a chromed .45 caliber pistol with inlaid nacre grips.

With his low-cropped pepper-salt hair and beady eyes, Cardenas was shorter than most of his men. He had a firm military poise. His pockmarked face resembled a bombarded rice field. It must have once been a hive of adolescent pimples that became tiny scars. He stared at everyone with a dark, penetrating gaze. Despite this intensity, a slight tinge of friendliness was hidden among his many facial gestures.

Duquel showed up as the last of nine soldiers gathered at the shack by midday. as Cardenas did the paperwork. Espino ordered everyone to set up their M16s in a standing pile and to form a line.  “ Ok, guys. Make sure your weapon safety is on. No hand grenades inside the room. Fall in line next to me,” he ordered. Duquel had no weapon yet, so he was first in the row. Tabal arrived.  

“Men, we’ve been in many patrols at the Iron Triangle, fought ourselves out of ambushes. We’ve seen the ugly face of this conflict. We’re scarred and muddied. Now, our captain is searching for soldiers. These soldiers need to detect things without using the five ordinary senses,” Tabal announced in a half-Texan, half-Mexican accent. “You guys seem to fit the bill.”

The men stared at each other. No one understand the spiel.

“For what cannon fodder are we to serve now, sarge?” Rawlings inquired. 

“A special mission,” Tabal said briefly. “Captain Cardenas has selected y’all because he sees talents you don’t even know you have. But you must pass some tests.”  

The First Sergeant was short in stature, stocky, and the happy face of a bulldog puppy. A lifer infantry soldier from El Paso, Texas he had been with Cardenas at different Asian battlefields. Tabal hardly ever took off his steel pot. It concealed a scalp scar from a foxhole grenade while serving as an infantry scout at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea.  

“Will this pull me out of long-range patrol,” asked a soldier with extremely crumpled fatigue and worn-out boots. Duquel read the name Galan on the shirt label. 

“Maybe,” Tabal said with a shrug. He was the politest top sergeant Duquel would ever meet in the war zone.  

“I’ve had enough of those sweeps,” said Galan. He was 19 years old, an all-around grunt with a childish face who did not need to shave. His jet-black hair was in tiny curls, already showing bald entries at the forehead despite his youth. A native Mont Haven from the deep south of the Bronx, Galan always wore a sneering smile. He and the rest of the troop were in Cardenas’s infantry unit at Pleiku. They were stationed there for at least six months or in other nearby combat units. Most had light shrapnel or booby trap scars, leech marks, and bee stings.  

“Everything in Nam is search and destroy,” Tabal proclaimed. “I can only say that this mission is different, less tactical.”  

“I’m in,” said Galan, standing in attention, knocking his boots, one hand in the air.  

“Y’all be given a sensing test today. Don’t fake anything. That’ll piss off the captain. Do so, and you’ll be on a long-range patrol tonight in the Pineapple Forest.” 

Galan sat down. “That place is stinking with VC.” 

“Let’s begin, men,” said Tabal. He blindfolded each soldier with an olive drab cravat. Shuffled them into the shack one at a time. Ulises compared it to gas chamber training at boot camp. Cardenas ordered him not to enter the shack yet but to observe the proceedings. Several weeks later, Cardenas formally appointed Duquel as company clerk. One of his first duties was to prepare a comprehensive log of the group’s performance. He remembered how the exercise evolved.   

Once inside the three-meter by three-meter enclosure, they found its black-painted walls surrounding them. A small door with a clapboard opened from the outside. Tabal began to place esoteric objects on it. The soldiers were not allowed to touch, smell, or taste anything; to merely sense its nature, not its design. Tabal introduced the objects through a black-clothed bellow so that no exterior light filtered in. After mentally reading anything about an object, each trooper would call out his name. He then stepped out and explained to Cardenas what he had detected. 

 If the metaphysics –openly expressed gut feelings– convinced the captain, Tabal gave the soldier the afternoon off. Plus five tickets for free beer at the China Beach Tiki Bar, a kilometer’s walk away. Each soldier would go in again each time, blindfolded, until every object had been sensed.  

First Tabal placed on the clapboard an old, rusted-out Mauser Karabiner 98 from 1935. It was captured off a Viet Minh sniper who had ten American kills to his name. No one sensed anything peculiar. The old rifle lay on the table for a long while, unread by the troop. Tabal added to the mix a flask of formaldehyde. It contained the ear cut from the captured sniper while he was still alive. Rawlings snapped up and yelled his name. Tabal hid the weapon and vial, pulled him out, and took the blindfold off. 

“What did ya get?” Cardenas asked dryly.  

“Oh, man. I got a bad feeling about a body part. Visualized an old Vietnamese man in pain and agony. He was hemorrhaging to death. Don’t know where or why. I sensed a loaded weapon –not with bullets– with bad vibes.”  

Cardenas gazed at Espino. The Buck nodded.  

“Good capture, Rawlings,” said Cardenas. “You’re also a good combat medic. Too bad you’re so impulsive with the tongue. Busted from Specialist Five to Private First Class for insulting senior officers at Tay Ninh. You would have been a senior medic by now. Good thing I rescued you from Long Binh Jail where you were gonna rot, soldier.” 

“A man’s gotta say what he thinks, sir,” Rawlings replied. “Ain’t that what we fight wars for in America?” 

“You’re a good psychic and a bad asshole,” said Cardenas. “How is that possible?” 

‘I know nothing about this psychic shit and much less about being an incompetent asshole. I feel things, and I say them,” muttered Rawlings.  

“You even pissed off the saintly chaplain Santangelo with your atheism story. That’s not an easy deed,” accused Cardenas.  

Rawlings was a short-stock guy from Lake Michigan Beach, Chicago. He had been a theology student at Appalachia University. Renounced religion when his church minister messed with some of the flock’s choir girls. Joined the US Army to flee from his angst. Zane Josiah Rawlings was a black fellow with a thin nose and lips. Childlike, he still ported some kid plumpness at the cheeks and belly. Despite the lean C-ration diet in Vietnam.

Cardenas recounted how six months before Rawlings walked around LBJ Jail with a full head shave. Now in Da Nang, sported a rebellious short Afro. He stared at the world through thick, usually tarnished Army-issue glasses. He was a tenacious pothead. He once told Duquel the weed staved off his social torments. It chased away unholy visions from his mind.  

Cardenas gave Tabal a nod, then turned back to Rawlings. “Get outta my sight, soldier. Go have some beers in my name.” 

Next, Tabal inserted a Dear John letter impregnated with a soldier’s tears. Papio immediately shouted out. Once outside, he showed a sad demeanor. 

“I felt a suicide vibe, man,” he mumbled briefly. Papio was not much of a talker. Scant social vocabulary. 

“Powerful,” Cardenas commented. “No one in the troop knew the guy who got this letter a year ago from his girlfriend. He took his life by charging into a North Vietnamese Army ambush at Kon Tum. Officially, he was killed in action. Those of us who saw the incident knew little about this soldier’s mortification. Good catch, Private Pinay. You’re in on this mission. And thanks for being an excellent machine gunner.” 

Papio bowed unsmiling and stuck his hand out for the beer tickets. Cardenas ordered a smoke break so the men still in the shack could get some fresh air.

Duquel recalled how it went on for the rest of the afternoon at the ESP shack. Tabal threw in a wooden box filled with dirt and punji stakes dabbed in excrement. The clairalient Tobias “Tico” Dacosta shouted out he sensed a death instrument in the room. He did not know it was a booby trap. However, he smelled human blood. He also detected caca from a dog that died of rabies. He sensed suffering. Outside Cardenas narrated how one of his soldiers had stepped on the trap. The soldier shredded a leg. He caught a terrible infection. Lost half his extremity to amputation. 

An old metal Viet Cong metal box was used for an additional test. It contained ammunition. Inside, there was a grenade set to explode when opened. Radioman Thibodeaux sensed a dangerous object before him. He could not identify as of Chinese origin. He said the object had already detonated some time ago and killed an American soldier. Sensed a spirit imprint around the box; tears came into his eyes. Cardenas had Tabal give him some additional beer tickets.

Next, Tabal set up a display of black pajamas taken from a dead VC teenager found buried in a shallow grave. Troop scout Ferdinan Castel reacted first to the relic.  

“Hey, Sarge, all kinds of death stuff here today. I can sense a boy soldier crying. He is in panic. Fears he will be buried alive. In a coma state.”  The clairaudient Cuban babalwo was perceiving the last sobs of a dying Viet Cong soldier. Cardenas agreed. 

“Man, Castel can find a whisper in a whirlwind,” said Thibo.

Tico Dacosta yelled out . “In my mind, I smell the inside of a coffin. Rotting flesh.” 

Cardenas seemed elated by the experimental results. The sergeant finally laid a weathered, disjointed diary from the Viet Minh era on the table. It was purported to belong to Quyet Thang. He wrote it during his youthful prison days at Con Son Prison Island. All remained silent for 15 minutes inside the dark shack until Papio rapped again on the door. Outside, he said he felt letters on rough paper. Written long ago, Nothing more. Had a small vision of a woman with long hair who was writing poetry.

Cardenas shook his head in denial and carefully stashed away the diary in his leather valise. It was the most prized possession of the Thang operation so far. He ordered all the men out of the shack.  

“Good show, guys. Go have some fun at China Beach.” 

The captain finally came up to Duquel. “It’s your turn now inside the shack. As an anthropologist, you understand what we’re doing here today.” 

“Yeah,” said Duquel. “Evaluating soldiers’ reaction to eerie objects. Paranormal ability versus natural probability.” 

 “Correct, macho,” Cardenas said eagerly. “I selected the most obvious candidates. My theory is that the tension of being in a war scenario brings out ESP faculties to an optimum state. Keen awareness of men finely attuned to their reality.” 

“Something I don’t understand, Sir. These men have never been trained in parapsychology. How will they operate in the field?” 

“All this is new science. But we know that these abilities must remain in the most natural state possible. The men themselves don’t know what their paranormal faculties are about and that’s for the better.” 

“Bizarre,” said Duquel. Tabal chuckled, and Espino griped. He seemed bored and uninterested. He wanted to be at China Beach or at his favorite seedy village bar below Hill 54.  

Cardenas shoved Duquel towards the inside of the shed. “Let’s see what you got, muchacho. Earn yourself some beers this afternoon.” 

Once blindfolded and inside, Tabal pulled a small bronze cylinder from a duffel bag. He had taken it from a Buddhist temple in Tay Ninh. He hit the ritual gong hard with a mallet wrapped in taped cotton, making the sound almost inaudible. Instantly, Duquel felt harmonic vibrations somewhere deep in his brain. He quickly described the pitch and tone of the object.  

Outside, Cardenas seemed pleased again. “You’re a natural song man. We can use that ability in my troop. You won yourself some beers today.” 

 By late afternoon, the Papa, Whiskey, Tango officer had assembled his unconventional troop. Duquel recalled how, during the trials, Jaramillo, Espino, and the Spaniard Ignacio Azulia struck out. Duquel pointed it out to Cardenas.  

“I recruited those three for different skills. The Buck is the greatest point man north of Pleiku, Jaramillo a top grenadier, Azulia one deadly motherfucking sharpshooter.” 

“Quite a troop, sir. Lethality and ESP,” said Duquel. He pointed out to the captain that Moises ‘Papio’ Pinay had been the most perceptive sensor of the troop.  

“He is also the less savvy, the least aware of his faculties,” Cardenas noted.

It was true. Pinay was a rustic clairvoyant. Months later, during a village patrol, Ulises guarded the mulatto while he took a leak over a bombshell hole. When the machine gunner finished, indifferently he turned towards Duquel. 

“I just heard a baby crying at the bottom of the hole.”  

Ulises went over to the crater and looked down. Nothing but putrid, stagnant water, and fresh piss. But secretly, each time Duquel recalled such incidents with Papio, his neck hairs stood on end.  

Back at the Da Nang shack tests, Cardenas told Ulises about an upcoming set of trials. Transmission of thoughts and remote seeing. Sending and receiving mental pictures or ideas by mental effort alone. 

“Further down the road, we’ll do some telepathy experiments. We hope to rely less on walkie-talkies. Use the field radios less for inter-troop communication that Victor Charlie may intercept,” said Cardenas. He gave no other details.  

When the captain dismissed the team, eternal Private First-Class Raymond Galan took impromptu control.

“Ok, freakos, can anybody read my mind?” 

“Fuck you, Galan,” Espino teased. “No one can ‘cause you carry your brains in the canteen holster.” 

“Ah can read it” Thibo said with the Southern drawl. “Ah, see cold, sweating beers inside Galan’s mind.”  

“Correeect,” yelled Raymond. “Everybody, follow me to the Tiki Bar.” 

Duquel went with his new war comrades to China Beach. Along the way, he thought about his newfound fate. He remembered Cardenas as the officer who hand-picked him out from the Deployment Depot cue. It happened just a few days before during Acclimation Week. Cardenas had recruited him as a musician. 

Before letting him go with the troop to China Beach, Cardenas gave Duquel a new instruction.

“Pick some of these wizard soldiers and organize them into a small band of musicians. Later, I’ll explain the mission.”

Duquel barely pondered the musical angle. Surely, it sounded enticing. Yet, a perilous proposition somehow lurked underneath for the warlock troop.  

 ♠