Ulises stirred and tried to call out to Papio. He could hear short huffs and low tones. They came from where his bulky buddy lay wounded. Ulises also heard a sort of Manhattanesque subway groan, more about impatience than pain. Ulises wondered if Papio was hemorrhaging, too. 

The machine gunner seemed to hear his thoughts. “I’m okay, Duke. A bullet hit my right ankle. Waiting for our medic to climb up here. I’m so fucking short of ammo, man.” 

Papio understood that Ulises had lost his voice –he was clairvoyant, after all– and did not wait for a reply. The gunner bolted up, squeezed another short burst from The Pig, and instantly hit the ground. Ulises sensed Papio had begun a low crawl towards him. He now  understood why Captain Cardenas had recruited the impulsive Dominico-Haitian as Tango Troop gunner. He was ferocious, desperate, and unstoppable.  

“I got some bandages for you, Duke,” Papio hollered in the one-way conversation. Having finished the last word, a sniper bullet struck the gunner’s helmet, ricocheted off, and stuck itself in the ground.  

Papio froze and muttered. “Can’t move, Duke. Gotta wait for the troop to cover my ass up here. Where the fuck is everybody?” 

The back-and-forth gun battle chased some of the buzzards away. The hungrier, younger ones remained staring hard now at Moises Papio Pinay.  Ulises realized how he and Papio became easy targets for the guerrilla marksmen. He wondered why they were both still alive. The Tango Troop struggled up the steep-sided ridges in the pre-morning darkness. They avoided booby-trapped trails to reach the secluded village. The rainforest canopy darkened the landscape even more. This umbra caused the combat team to lose track of each other’s positions. Minutes into the climb, they strayed among huge boulders.  Somehow, Ulises and Papio found a shot route upwards.

Cardenas allowed for only one field radio because the operation was a first-stage probe incursion. Missouri country boy Thadeus Thibodeaux backpacked the receiver as he sneaked up the range’s eastern slope by Lieutenant Piper’s side. Now Ulises wondered where the platoon officer and his RTO might be. He also remembered how the early sun warmed the misty Annamese cliffs. Then the mountains became shrouded in a thicker morning fog. This added yet another layer of complexity to the expedition.   

Ulises glanced at the eastern horizon, far out to distant Da Nang Bay, and his mind wandered far back. He retrieved how during their first secret encounters, he and Kikei Santos moved furtively among the barbed wire areas of Da Nang base, slipping between narrow spaces along the tin-roofed huts to steal a covert kiss. The clandestine lovers sought blind spots all over the base for a long embrace, avoiding the prying eyes of the tower guards and flight line servicemen. Deftly scuttling past thickly sandbagged bunkers, smelly drainage ditches, and heavily guarded checkpoints gave them a chance for a long, passionate clinches. Finally, at the end of that June, Ulises acquired the most secretive love spot on the base. It was under a Quonset near the nurse’s quarters. It sat at the deepest end of the compound where two years before, the Marines had built their armories.

Lovemaking occurred deep inside that old Quonset hut by the edges of the Medevac airfield apron. Overground, it was used as a depot for captured Viet Cong weapons. There, they sought refuge in each other’s young, eager bodies. Duquel’s memory filled with the scents of her sweaty body. His mind still hearing their hushed moans and breathy voices as he thrust ferociously into her womanhood. Responsively, she filled his lips and ears with tongue kissing like searing magma flowing from a smoldering lava tube.

A bizarre love suite. Secluded, private, opportune, like their frantic love affair. The below-ground nest not only provided concealment, but it kept out the distracting wop-wop of the helicopters bringing to the field hospital the dead and dying. In it they felt isolated and far away from the grinding medical tragedies of gravely injured soldiers. The rattle and clatter of ambulances. Banging of gurneys, the stench of blood-stained stretchers. They were also exempt from the exhaust vapors of fighter jets and choppers that blasted into every cranny of the Da Nang base. 

To Ulises, like the undercover morgue below Monkey Mountain, the hidden Quonset basement was but another fortuitous stage prop in the bizarreness of his Vietnam drama.  He did not know it then, but the love nest would also be a symbolic burial chamber for his unrequited love affair.  Another metaphor for his Saigon Song.

Ulises shuddered at the recollection, and it began to hurt deeper than his bleeding wound. His war-torn mind quickly filled with images of necrosis, gangrened wounds, pus stains, and maggot-infected injuries. Bodies blown apart beyond recognition. The spectacle of death and mutilation as a daily fare at Lieutenant Kikei Santos’s hidden morgue. And soon to be, the memory of his broken heart by the Saigon River.

NEXT CHAPTER: LAVA BOMB