were just . . . twin-engine crates loaded down with hardware — Gatlings, a twenty mike-mike in the nose, four fifty-caliber machine guns, cluster bombs. But we flat tore up the fucking Mekong Delta. Trouble was, everybody had a bullet with his name on it. We were flying so much, sooner or later it had to be your turn. Our losses were running sixty, sixty-five percent, about — a third of them MIA or POW. You can understand why Cody’s outfit wasn’t considered Shangri-la by the flyboys.’
A steward brought their lunch and Schwartz attacked his hamburger with animal fervor.
‘God was good to me in one respect,’ he said, his mouth half full, ‘I don’t grow any taller when I eat a lot, but I don’t get any fatter either.’ He took another bite. ‘What happened to Fraser, it gets to me a little. I’ll tell you something, I may have done four years’ hard time but I’m lucky.’
‘That’s a generous attitude,’ Hatcher whispered hoarsely.
‘Reality,’ Schwartz said.
‘What happened the day Cody bought the farm?’ Hatcher’s grinding voice asked.
Schwartz didn’t have to think about it, the scene was still fresh in his mind after all the years. It had been raining that morning and Cody was jumpy. There were reports of Charlie activity upriver and the infantry was asking for help. As soon as the weather lifted, Cody called a scramble. They went off so fast, Cody had to give them the coordinates of the ground action after they were airborne. They had made two passes, dropping cluster bombs along the river’s edge, then suddenly he heard Cody’s ‘Mayday!’
At first Cody didn’t seem to be in trouble. His De H. was a half mile in front of Schwartz. Then Schwartz saw the plane begin to weave. Its one wing dipped and began to crumble. He’s taken an RPG or some kind of rocket, Schwartz thought, and then: My God, he’s going in, as he watched the cumbersome plane begin to dive toward the green blanket below. Schwartz clipped his nose and began raking the woods in front of Cody’s plane, blasting a path with twenty millimeters and fifty calibers. Jesus, Schwartz thought, all he needs is about five hundred yards and he’s got the river and, on the other side, friendly country. Come on, come on, Schwartz repeated to himself as he continued to riddle the forest in front of the stricken plane. Then the scratchy voice over the radio, ‘ . . . I’m going in . . .‘ and suddenly the plane rolled over like a large animal dying, and almost flopped into the trees. The green carpet streaked beneath Schwartz, and as he pulled over the shattered wreck of the De Havilland and swept out over the river, he saw an SAR Huey below him heading toward the crash site, then the jungle seemed to erupt. A geyser of fire shot up from the wreckage and he felt the wave of the explosion wash over him. He banked sharply trying to circle back, then heard the voice of the Huey pilot, ‘Corkscrew, this is Rescue one . . . We lost him. . .
Anyway, I overflew him and started to peel around and I saw this SAR Huey coning up the river and then the plane blew,’ Schwartz said, finishing his story.
‘How long after he crashed?’ Hatcher asked.
‘Long enough for me to maybe do a one eighty.’
‘Long enough for him to maybe get out?’ Hatcher whispered.
‘Murph?’
‘Yeah.’
Schwartz shrugged. ‘Sure, I guess so. I disagree with Fraser — the notion Cody may have gotten out of the plane isn’t crazy.’
Hatcher nibbled at his soup, then asked, ‘How did his girlfriend take it?’ he whispered.
‘Inscrutably, the way hoochgirls always did. Hugh’s a little off-base there, too. The bottom line is, Cody didn’t like Fraser. Or maybe he sensed Fraser didn’t like him. Whatever, Fraser was never invited to join Cody.’
‘And the rest of you were?’
Schwartz nodded. ‘Hell, I’d go over there every once in a while, she’d cook up dinner for a couple of us. Viet shit, it was great.’
‘Does the expression “Thai Horse’’ mean anything to you?’ Hatcher asked.
‘You mean heroin?’
‘Does it mean anything else to you?’
‘Nope. What’s that got to—’
‘Did Cody have a drug problem?’
Schwartz looked shocked. ‘You gotta be kidding. Murph Cody? Cody didn’t even smoke. Where are you going with this?’
‘No place, just touching all the bases.’
The question about Thai Horse and dope had upset Schwartz, made him suddenly wary.
Hatcher quickly changed the subject. ‘Tell me more about the girl.’
Schwartz hesitated, still suspicious, but his obvious respect for Cody won over. He began to relax again. ‘Y’know, in a funny kind of way I think maybe Murph was in love with Pai.’
‘Pai?’
‘Yeah. I think what it was, he was kinda proud of her, was showing her off.’
He sat strangely quiet for a minute or two, sipping his beer, then he said, ‘You know, I went down three weeks later. Just — north of Binh Thuy. The first four, five months I was a prisoner, we were in transit camps. They just, like, y’know, moved us around a lot. Then finally they took us to Hanoi. Anyway, I heard rumors about this camp over in Laos. It was like a mobile unit, y’know, and they supposedly had a big shot over there.’
What kind of big shot?’
‘That’s it, a big shot. I heard everything from Westmoreland to Bob Hope. You know how rumors are. Anyway, until they took us north, I heard about this camp all the time. They called it, uh, Huie-kui, the spirit camp, I guess
