Ah, yes! The amorous Kikei Santos. So nimble and with dulcet passion. Lieutenant Kikei Santos, US Army Mortuary Services, Vietnam. The Florence Nightingale of corpses at the covert Da Nang morgue. Five years older than him, still girlish, so sensually enveloped in her youthful coppery skin. Raven black eyes that saw deep into his soul. Never in lack of an edgy, coquettish side glance. How could he forget the dexterous movement of limbs that always seemed to be a perpetual Polynesian fire dance?  

His Hawaiian lava goddess. Of short, embracing hirsute arms. A sea of wavy hair usually dancing to the South China Sea breeze. Hair strands hung around her lips as she talked. Feisty Kikei Santos. The bearer of his seed. The shooting star for his offspring. So far now from the fleeing vitals of his body at Bao Cat.   

By a fluke of military duty, one early May afternoon, Ulises visited the forensic laboratory. It sat cleverly camouflaged at the north end of a sandy isthmus trail from the Da Nang base. Heavy thickets hung below the western slope of the Son Tra mountain and hid the morgue from above. Known by the military as Monkey Mountain, the trite moniker seemed inadequate for the strategic radar and observation base. It amused Duquel how soldiers took to mundane poetics to assign names to places. Probably a mental ruse to keep things familiar in strange lands. Bands of rogue, golden apes roamed the Son Tra peaks. Thus, it became Monkey Mountain in military minds. At the foot of the seaside hill, Lieutenant Santos toiled quietly. An anonymous duty in an ancillary morgue of the US Army Mortuary Services-Vietnam. 

Accessible by a long, lonely road, the boxy wood and metal structure faced a lunate bay. Nondescript in design, few people in the surrounding bases knew its true purpose. The Army Special Operations Command secretly established the lab below the cliff woods to keep it out of local eyes. It was a well-guarded spot, Duquel soon discovered. A small contingent of US Marine military police guarded the place. Air Force police also functioned as sentries to the complex of radar installations atop the bluff.  

Unsuspecting of the ruthlessness of military intrigue, Ulises arrived at the morgue under the guise of a medical equipment supply run. He carried a sealed envelope with orders for Santos. The orders required the handover of documents found in the corpse of a Viet Cong political agent. This cadre had been kidnapped from the Hue University campus, where he doubled as an economics professor. A team of US Army and South Vietnamese commandos received direct capture orders from the Presidential Palace in Saigon. They interrogated and tortured the insurgent partisan to death. His corpse ended up at Lieutenant Santos’ morgue for stealthy disposition

The Military Police checkpoint guards at the northern edge of the beach examined his credentials and reluctantly let him through to the morgue location. He knocked at the only heavy metal door of the square structure. Surprisingly, it swung half open. Ulises cautiously entered a small, unattended foyer furnished only with a desk and then into an air-conditioned room through plastic curtains. The loud noise of generators outside camouflaged his heavy steps. He stopped to breathe the cool air, still sweaty from the humid tropical jungle he had just traversed.  Monkey barks echoed throughout the mountain forest.

He spotted Kikei Santos. She worked busily alone, toiling on the death mask of an officer lying on the large metal worktable in the center of the room. The body lay under light green operating room sheets, legs out and arms tucked under. He saw no blood stains, so he presumed the man died of natural causes. Since she was not aware of his presence, he noisily cleared his throat to gain her attention.

“Fuck!” The officer jumped up, startled. “What are you doing in my morgue, soldier? How did you get in?”

“The door was open.”

“No, it wasn’t. That entryway has a loaded spring to keep it closed. A latch locks it from inside.”

“The door was open. I mean, not locked. I’m delivering paperwork and equipment to this facility from the Da Nang Mortuary Services on orders from Captain Cardenas at Chu Lai, Hill 54. This is my first time here, so I may have strayed into the wrong opening. “Is this a correct foramen?”

She slowly smiled. “Oh, God, a stand-up comic in jungle fatigues. You do know your anatomy lexicon. OK, you made me laugh. Leave the papers on that table and quietly slide away. Lock the door on your way out.”

Ulises gazed at the cadaver and then at the female technician. Barely five feet tall, with short, wavy hair she stared back at him with large, dark eyes that were Polynesian in shape. Her eyebrows were thicker than those of other nurses at the compound. Five tiny natural beauty marks were located strategically on her face. The largest was almost at the center of her forehead like some Hindu bindi marriage symbol. He swiftly noted her form-fit jungle fatigues under the loose robe, so tight they drew on her hips and rounded buttocks with voluptuous contour. Best of all, highlighted her breasts. Not large, but sensually firm under the thin lab apron. He knew that only a Latina would be so coquettish with her attire at a war theater. Most likely, a seamstress in town tailored the tight, curvaceous fit of her jungle fatigues. 

“Well?” the officer snapped.

He quickly jumped out of his silent scrutiny. 

“Uuuh, listen. Although I’m not in the Medical Corps, I have been placed in charge of all the casualty reports, health records, sanitation procedures, and medicine supplies of our troop. You’ll be seeing me around here frequently. Hi. I’m Ulises Duquel, assigned to an expeditionary group at Hill 54, in Chu Lai.

He extended out his hand to shake. The technician stared at him impatiently. Her gloved hands were smeared in plaster mascara.

“Out” she added, this time with the overtones of a military order. Ulises took note of her lieutenant’s bar insignia on the front lapel.

“OK, OK, Sir. Just one more matter. Are you Hispanic? I’m from Puerto Rico and raised in New York. Sent there young after my father passed away on the island.” 

Her entire body suddenly relaxed. She turned around again to the corpse and continued her work. Two more layers of the morgue gel went on, and then she covered the face with a hot cloth napkin pulled out from a steamer autoclave. Duquel decided to stay put, stay quiet. 

“Hang on while I finish this procedure,” she finally said.

He put the papers on the table and walked closer to the grossing station.

“Don’t touch anything”, she ordered and pointed to a corner of the room. “I’m Lieutenant Kikei Santos, the officer in charge of the morgue. Put on a sterile mask and gloves. They’re over in that drawer.”

She worked in silence for a few minutes. Collected forensic instruments, placed them carefully in sterile liquids in usage sequence, washed the bowl which held leftover mascara thoroughly and methodically, under a tall sink faucet. Ulises knew in an instant she possessed a punctilious mind. 

“I’m also of Puerto Rican descent,” Santos said, her back to him. “But, born and raised in Hawaii. Never been to the land of my ancestors.” She talked over her shoulder.

He questioned about the workings at hand. “What’s with the death mask?”

Lieutenant Santos remained quiet. Ulises guessed she was still figuring out how open she would be with the sudden intruder in her morgue lab.

“What’s your rank Mr. Duquel? I see you don’t wear insignia, nor patches on your fatigues.”

“I’m in field operations. Our commanding officer wants us to disguise as much as we can. We even wear civvies sometimes when we go to town, or to Saigon.”

“Are you in military intelligence?”

“No. Not really. To be honest, I don’t know the real game at this point. Our captain Cardenas is assembling a detachment for some mission we truly know very little about.  I’m a private first class on his way to becoming a Specialist in two weeks. Field grade promotion. The captain prefers to address me as Corporal Duquel.”

“Hmmm. And do you carry classified forensic documents around all the time? That’s how you got here today? What’s in the envelope?”

“Our troop is temporarily attached to an infantry battalion at Hill 54. Cardenas is a former field officer of the 25th Infantry. We’re doing perimeter duty for a firebase on the top of the bluff. Today, I delivered to Da Nang Mortuary Services personal belongings from soldiers KIA last week during long-range patrols. I was also instructed to deliver a new autoclave to this morgue. I did not know it existed on a wooded beach. So, what’s with the mask?” 

“Insistent, aren’t you?”  The lieutenant stared at the envelope on the lab table. “OK, got it. You’re a courier for the Grim Reaper from the old Hawaiian 25^th Division. What coincidences does life contrive at war theaters? I was born and grew up in Oahu, near the division’s old headquarters at Schofield Barracks. My father owns a funeral parlor in town. That’s how I got into mortuary forensics.”

“You must then someday meet my captain. Was this man of the mask a relative of yours?” 

“Ah, yes, the corpse… Well, this man was a soldier of pedigree, West Point. High honors. A descendant of top war heroes from conflicts as far back as Pershing versus Pancho Villa and Teddy Roosevelt at Cuba’s San Juan Hill. His family made a special request that we do a mask on him before the coffin is sealed.” 

“Cool. I didn’t know such services were provided in Da Nang. Some of my ancestors also trace back to the Spanish-American War and to other US involvements but as foot soldiers.”

“A funerary mask is an extraordinary service at this morgue. Usually performed in stateside mortuary facilities. But this is a special case. That’s all I can say. So, let’s finish your business here and move on. Where is the new autoclave?”

“In the Jeep outside. I’ve been instructed not to deliver it until I get a sealed document you have in your possession.

The lieutenant stared hard at Duquel. “Show me your identification papers, soldier.” Once more, her tone became regimental.

Ulises pulled out a plastic holder that hung from his dog tag chain tucked inside the jungle fatigue shirt. From it, he pulled out a security clearance badge.

“I am chief courier for the Papa, Whiskey, Tango platoons. Our captain broke protocol and gave each of his platoons a name. Me? I conduct in-depth research and maintain company records. I…”

Santos shook her head, walked out of the room, and double-locked the metal door. She came back, gloves and forensic apron still on. 

“Chief courier, huh?” she said with a sardonic quip. “Hope your security pass is strong. Otherwise, you should not be here and will be promptly arrested. I see you carry a sidearm. Sure you’re not a commissioned officer?”  

“This is Old Big Mouth. I use the Colt pistol to guard my commander. I have a security pass as a captain’s special aide.” 

“Show that to me,” Santos said tersely. Ulises pulled out another badge from the plasticized card. She nodded and walked over to the gurney on which the colonel’s corpse lay nude and removed the blankets. Now Ulises saw the more visible wounds. They were clean and sutured. She checked the mask’s consistency.  

“Am I supposed to call you mam?”  Ulises inquired.  

“Probably. But you don’t need to. Put on these gloves and help me remove the plaster cast. My two Vietnamese assistants left early today. That’s probably why the front door was accidentally left open. Don’t pull back hard on the mask. Just follow my cue as I gently work it.” 

She motioned Ulises to stand across the cart from her. She bent down over the cadaver’s torso, placing her fingers at the sides of the cast. A formaldehyde scent in her hair wafted up to Ulises’s nostrils. The sheet slipped off the body. He saw dry, crusted circles of blood around bullet holes in the colonel’s chest. Caked-up hemorrhages circled the abrasions of the shrapnel wounds. Expertly, Santos began lifting the mask from the top down. 

 “Very slow. Lift with me so we can do a coordinated pullback,” she instructed.  In a few seconds, the mask was off.  To Ulises’s surprise, the colonel wore a soft smile on his lips.  He had expected a grimace of pain. The mortician read his thoughts.  

 “Out of compassion, we fix up the faces of certain fallen servicemen in case the kin insist on an open casket image. This is not the protocol, but who knows? Alternatively, a mask is requested, as in this case. Both instances are rare but do occur.” 

 “I wouldn’t want a false happy face, nor want my family to stare at my last agony,” Ulises commented dryly.  

“Not to worry. As a company clerk, you are theoretically out of the combat casualty statistics in Vietnam. Although in this conflict, there’s a battlefront around every corner.”  

“True,” Ulises shot back quickly.  He took a furtive glance at his watch. Captain Cardenas was probably wondering about his whereabouts. He was ready to take leave. Lieutenant Santos yawned hard, took off her lab apron, and stretched her body in a gymnastic maneuver. He caught a full breadth of her small yet sensually sigmoidal body. Her braless bosom. 

“How did this man die?” he asked, filling in the sudden silence.  

Lieutenant Santos cautiously hid the details of the grim episode as she diligently cleaned after the death mask procedure. It was only much later that Ulises found out from a helicopter pilot friend the many heartless facts about the clandestine operations that ended the life of Special Ops Colonel Stanley Cavazo.   His chopper jockey friend, Warrant Officer Armand Amador did aerial images of Bao Cat for Cardenas. He frequently inserted commandos and covert operators into Laos and Cambodia and knew the colonel’s story. 

Cavazo died during a covert operation deep in the Laotian side. His team trained local resistance fighters and conducted sabotage. They also gathered intelligence along the infamous Ho Chi Minh trail. A Green Beret squad of six fell in an upland valley ambush by Viet Cong elements. Three Montagnards were also ambushed. The team attempted to extract a downed Sky Raider pilot. The aviator had parachuted from his disabled aircraft into the Plain of Jars plateau after a bombing run over North Vietnamese infiltration routes. Soon after hitting the ground, Pathet Lao insurgents shot the aviator dead on the spot. Later, the American rescue team also succumbed after a twelve-hour standoff defending the fallen airman.  The colonel was taken, wounded but alive, to a Viet Cong command post for interrogation. He did not survive the ordeal.

But Kikei’s small hands only interested Ulises that day at the morgue. She nimbly cleaned the remaining gel on the dead officer’s face. Her lithe fingers danced deftly over the tight, pallid skin. Her lips puckered and pouted as she calibrated the depth of the mask marks.  To his shame, Ulises felt a certain arousal. Her entire demeanor captivated him. The graceful way she moved her limbs at the worktable was mesmerizing. Her intensity was palpable. The wide curves under the jungle suit drew attention. Agitated his stifled sexual yearnings. He had been without woman for so long now. 

Santos discreetly explained that her duties as the only officer overseeing the surreptitious morgue were under wraps as she worked. He was not to speak of what he saw that day. 

Count on it.” Ulises lied.  

Santos nodded complacently and cracked her knuckles. “You are now my unofficial assistant.” 

“You enjoy this type of duty?” 

“You are not to ask questions. But I can say this… We only get shadowy stiffs here. They often died in places where the US military is not politically allowed to be.”  

“What’s your charge?” Ulises queried on. “I mean, what do you do to wrap up –no pun intended– such cases?” He was feigning the utmost interest just to hear her voice, capture her vibe, her melody. Somehow, he sensed that this woman’s ghastly work created a sense of loneliness. This task invoked in her a longing for conversation.  

“These bodies, by the protocol of cloak-and-dagger operations, are to be disposed of diligently and quickly. There are to be no traces of the cause of death except in top-secret documents. There are no overt reports of time and place. It’s sad. So much bravery for so little glory,” said Santos without remorse or a single inflection.  

 She was talkative but with a certain cold detachment, like the temperature on the skin of her stiffs. The colonel’s military family from Virginia was very traditional. Santos explained that they knew some well-placed politicians in Washington and the Pentagon. Therefore, the death mask procedure was authorized. 

“The mask is to be a family heirloom,” the lieutenant said. She carefully covered it in linen. Then she packed it in a metal container after ensuring it was dry.   

 “We need to do some bartering now,” Ulises advised. “I give you the new autoclave. You give me the sealed envelope.” 

The lieutenant hesitated, walked over to the door, opened it carefully, stared at the new machine sitting in the Jeep. She returned, pulled some papers from a small armored safe, and handed Ulises a weathered leather pouch with a document.  He was about to leave as she quickly finished cleaning the last tools she had used for the funerary mask. Then, she became more talkative.  

“They don’t tell you about such things at Command Center meetings, but a little math will. Every day in Nam, over fifty good GIs die in battle or accidents. Some die even by self-inflicted wounds or varmint stings. Do your best to stay out of that statistic.”

Ulises, the relentless academic, gazed at the colonel’s corpse again. “That advice was of no help for this brave officer. Was he executed?”

She slowly rubbed hydration cream on her small hands. She went on conversing daintily. “This officer suffered torture after capture by the enemy. I found Punji stabs on his body. He succumbed to septicemia during his captivity. Terrible death.” She suddenly faced Duquel straight on. “I’m not supposed to be telling you these things, you know. I don’t know why, but I sense you’re a discreet fella.”

Ulises smirched. “The man is one of your statistical casualties now. It doesn’t matter to me where or how he died.”

“See, that’s why I’m already feeling OK with you. You don’t sugar-powder things.”

“You read me well, Lieutenant. I aim to be on the level. Hate swinging around the bullshit like some trapeze monkey.”

Kiko Santos gave Ulises a warm, short smile. He felt it as a sweet gesture of acceptance. During his agony at Bao Cat, Ulises mulled the impact of that brief, almost imperceptible grin on his soul. The smile swiftly unfurled two hearts wide open, even in that, the least romantic of settings. He shook in disbelief. Having fallen in love with a beautiful woman soldier in a remote military morgue with a corpse as a chaperone.

It could only happen in the shadowy backstage of the Vietnamese conflict.  He remembered it all well. An unusual affair, as atypical as her mortuary assignment. Undercover forensics. Hush-hush dead room services for cloak-and-dagger corpses. Cleaning up bodies of fallen commandos in sly military actions and erasing anatomical evidence of any spook captivity. Of torture marks or perhaps a sloppy prisoner tattoo. The dark fare of dark warfare.

There, lying half-conscious on Bao Cat’s stony path, Ulises called it all back to mind. At first sight, the lonely, somber morgue gave him a strange feeling of awe. A gelid cadence of raw sentiment. It was not due to it being a depot for the unglorified dead of dark warfare. Instead, he sensed that his life would be twisted in that place beyond a return to ever being his old self again. Transformed like the mutilated corpses lying on the autopsy tables. 

Twists of fate. Cardenas had tasked Ulises with the mortuary protocols of his infantry company. Lieutenant Santos’s grim routine soon became part of Duquel’s weekly rounds. Whenever he went over to retrieve documents from the bodies of top-level Viet Cong commanders, he became a mortician’s assistant by proxy. Assisting with the forensics of fallen comrades or sanitizing tortured enemy cadre.  Another fortuitous task added to his Vietnam soldier’s venture.

Soon enough, he and she were all over each other’s anatomy. Souls aflame in volcanic desire. Passions fueled by a faint, barely perceptible grin. 

♠    

NEXT CHAPTER: KISMET