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Shadow People

By Elton Manzione

Elton Manzione
Southern regional Coordinator
Athens,GA

He sat staring through the flap of the briefing tent at the green mountains beyond. The green! How strange it was. There was no green like it anywhere in the world. Sharp, crystalline, almost painful in its intensity-it was Vietnam's green. Like a jade Buddha it was sometimes fascinating, and like an iridescent blowfly it was sometimes repulsive. Today it was merely distant.

"You will be a minimum of three clicks beyond the demarcation line at the Ben Hai River. That means North Vietnam and, gentlemen, you know what that means."

He knew, but did the briefing officer really know? Did the dumb second lieutenant drawing on in this tent really know the meaning of not resupply, no air support, no artillery, no acknowledgement? He knew and the men squatted around him on the floor knew.

"Shadow people, again," Van Lesser whispered to him.

Shadow people. It was their name for themselves. Never heard and never seen they worked in the dark and left only bodies behind to mark their passing. Their own troops rarely say them When they came into a base camp for a few days standdown their area was declared off-limits. They lived in dark bunkers and came out only at night.

"Keeps you night vision from getting fucked up." He told a curious grunt one evening. In a nine-month period it was one of the few things he said to anyone who was not one of those squatted around him.

In the official rosters they were called SEALs. In the Order of Battle they were B-53 detachment of MACV-SOG. The other troops called them crazy. The Vietnamese called them Ange d'Morte. They called themselves The Shadow People.

"...proceeding up the banks of this small stream," the officer pointed with a stick.

The officer's boyish good looks were all the more disgusting in contrast to the haggard faces and aging eyes of the men around him. How this group had ever become part of the Navy's most elite unit was a mystery to him. "Surf" Chambers wanted nothing more than to drive his souped up '56 Chevy-"fastest in Southern California"-and shoot the coral of his Hobie surfboard. "Professor" Downey loved books-damned near more than anything in the world. "Someday I'll write one of own. All of you'll be in it," he had confided one night. Kenny Van Lesser flunked out of accounting school, destroyed a family dream and got a draft notice. "The first businessman in the family was a clerk with the Dutch East India company in 1620; Wall Street, not Quang Tri, was what my father had in mind." Eddie 'Sweets" Swetz had at first been bothered by having to explain the inordinate number of perfumed letters he had received his first two months in country. Now it seemed the "first-class womanizer' was bothered by the fact they had stopped coming.

And he had always known his own rootless wanderings would put him where he didn't want to be. He had always felt like the right person in the wrong place. College was a wash. He hated manual labor. For him, Vietnam was inevitable.

"It is important that this threat to free movement in the area be..."

"Terminated!" Chambers finished the phrase for the lieutenant.

"Mr. De Gennaro, I'd appreciate it if you would persuade your men to refrain from smart-assed comments," the lieutenant shot at him. He stood, whirled his back to the lieutenant and fixed Chambers with a glare. Just as Chambers chuckled, he lifted the corner of his mouth at him and gave him a concealed thumbs-up sign. Chambers suppressed his own smile.

"Sorry sir," he mumbled, turning his back to the lieutenant.

"The gun emplacement at Loi An must be eliminated," the officer shouted "and the agitators in the village must be..."

"New-trail-eyes-d," Downey intoned.

The lieutenant stopped, glaring first at Downey and then at him.

"I'm not going to tolerate much more of this. Why can't you maintain a little discipline among these clowns?"

He tried his best to bore two holes through Downey's chest with the iciness of his stare but, knowing it wouldn't happen, turned instead to the lieutenant. "And why can't you speak fucking English..sir?"

"Come Again?"

"I just mean we get tired of it. It all sounds so clean and precise. Why don't you just say 'kill, destroy, kidnap, blow-up, waste'? I mean who the hell are we kidding?"

"De Gennaro you know as well as I do that you and your men decide the exact fashion in which these orders are carried out. How you neutralize the threat is your business."

He bit his lip. It was his mission. The war had sifted down to just him and the four others squatted on a dirt floor.

He walked to the back of the tent and faced the lieutenant, the other four still on the floor between them.

Van Lesser, the timid, raised his hand.

"Sir, how are we going to get in and out?"

"Ground insertion, gentlemen. We can't have any choppers buzzing around up these. If our presence is suspected it could cause an incident."

And out? What out out?

"Same,same. No extraction choppers."

Van Lesser shook his head.

He stared at the lieutenant whose eyes only touched his and brushed away. Inserted. Extracted and inserted again.

"Question, Mr De Gennaro,"the lieutenant asked in response to his stare.

"No sir. No questions."

"Then I guess I'm to assume you know it all. Is that correct?"

He shook his head slowly. "I don't know it all sir. This is just my 18th mission."

"I'm familiar with the record of this squad. Your methods are..Let me put it this way, in a conventional war you'd probably all have been court-martialed and shot by now."

"We get the neutralizing done."

"That's all we want on this. It's yours," the lieutenant turned on his heel and strode from the tent, tapping his pointer against his leg.

"What an asshole," Van Lesser said.

"Downey, Chambers! You tow made me look like a jerk in front of that candy assed briefing officer again: I'm going to kick ass and take names. Got that?"

"Chambers shrugged his shoulders. "Shit! I was just fooling around. Ease up D.G."

Downey just smirked and turned his hands up in a helpless gesture.

"Jesus Christ, another over the fence mission," Van Lesser grumbled, as they were leaving the tent.

Nothing new really, most were over the fence. The grumbling was just Kenny's way of getting ready.

When they got back to the compound Swetz jumped up on a table and began singing, his canary-like head bobbing and his body swaying to a Rhumba beat.

"Brassiere, I love the things you hold so dear
And when you press them in my ear
You shove my balls in second gear
Brassiere,brassiere.

Well, it sounded like "Brazil", Swetz was getting ready too.

Surf smiled at Sweets' antics and began to crack his knuckles as he walked in tighter and tighter circles-winding his mainspring he called it.

He turned from the pair toward his own hooch. Slopping into the darkened bunker, he took off the green cotton fatigues and sat naked on the dirt floor. He forced his vision into the darkest corner. Crossing his hand in his lap and straightening his back he began a slow, steady breathing. With each inward breath he inhaled a little more of the darkness, the decay, the death and the green around him. With each outward breath he forced a little more of the humanity, the tenderness, the logic and the fear from himself. He focused on, sorted, catalogued and remembered each of the myriad sounds around him; hooch furls sweeping, a peddler on a squeaky bike, a c-rating can clattering into the garbage. He breathed deeply. He listened to the murmurs of chatter coming from the regular Army compound and the clatter of pots and pans from the Mess Hall he recognized the Professor's footfalls passing the bunker. Exhaling, holding his lungs empty, he heard a dog padding and sniffing around the edges of the SEAL compound. He could hear the angry buzzing of a pair of flies somewhere in the opposite corner of the bunker. Then he heard Van Lesser's shuffle, Sweets' clearing his throat and the sound of a tape being rewound. He stood and stepped through the door.

He walked naked across the dirt compound toward the others standing in a small circle. Chambers, the mantrack, Van lesser, the demo man Swetz, their nose. Downey, the eyes. And him-their ears. He could hear a man breathing at 30 feet.

He stepped into the center of the circle, and straddling the battery powered cassette player, stood looking for a moment at each of the faces. Van Lesser's eyes reflected tension, Chambers's resignation. Swetz's amusement. Only Downey's refused to yield any clue. They remained hard, reflective.

He flipped the tape recorder on and stepped to his place on the edge of the circle. The thumping savage beat of "Sympathy for the Devil" rolled out across the compound.

"Please allow me to introduce myself I'm a man of wealth and test," Jagger sang as they slipped into black pajamas. The regular Army guys in the camp—clerks, gunners, grunts and radiomen-moved sheepishly away from the fence of the SEAL compound. Night was falling.

"...killed the Czar and his ministers. Anastasia screamed in vain." They smeared the jagged lines of camouflage paint on their faces.

Looking into the small mirror as he buried the shine of his cheekbones in a swath of dark green paint he could hear the bongos, congos and maracas pumping in savage harmony. The blood pounded in his temples. He smiled, saw a grinning apparition in the mirror, shuddered and howled with Jagger.

"I rode a tank, held a general's rank when the blitzkrieg raged and the bodies stank." Chambers snapped the bolt of his Belgian automatic rifle.

"Every cop is a criminal and all you sinners, saints..." Downey twisted his garrote around a bamboo stick, snapped it and smirked as the bamboo cracked and shattered with the blow.

"Just call me Lucifer.." He ran his thumb over the edge of his Gerber knife"..cause I'm in need of some restraint.." He plunged the point into the dirt, once, again, again, again, pulled it out with both hands and held it point up.

"So when you meet me have some courtesy, have some sympathy and taste. Use all you well-learned qualities or I'll lay your soul to waste." They shouted together now.

"Tell me baby, what's my name," he screeched along with Jagger as they walked single file toward the compound gate.

"Tell me baby, what's my name. Tell me sweetie, what's my name." He leered at the radioman standing by the fence and heard the man say under his breath. "The gooks are in for some shit tonight" as he watched their five dark shapes headed toward the jungle canopy.

"Woo hoo hoo, woo hoo hoo, aw haw hooo." Jagger's voice faded out across the compound as they disappeared into the high elephant grass.

It was dark before them, silent behind. Somebody had turned off the tape recorder. Somebody always did.

He could feel the dampness as the cool night began to distill the day's humidity out of the air around him. He could see patches of moonlight through the light jungle canopy and his eyes burned through the darkness ahead.

He checked the radio. He like carrying the radio, even though he knew it made him sure target.

They moved off the main trail and followed Downey, slithering through the brush parallel to the easier, but more dangerous, cleared trail. It was almost like when he was a kid, playing war in Independence Park.

It seemed as if each breach he brushed awakened a memory. Ludwig with the broken, bloodied nose; and his tears, the tears of a five-year-old over a hurt friend. Mary Lou in the small, white casket-drowned in a tub by an insane babysitter. "Wake up, Mary Lou," he had whispered to her. He was eight. What faith he had had then. Another branch jolted loos the memory of Maddox-the dumb kid from Mosellen, Ohio who had stepped on a mine and what was left went home in a handkerchief. The poor kid hadn't even gotten a chance to see his first sunrise in Vietnam. He had cried then. He wanted to cry now, but he couldn't-he had this switch, It kept him from hurting. He flicked it.

That's why he liked the radio. It was the other switch-a connection with reality; a way to pull him back from the jungle. He hit the button on the radio handset and listened for the click. He was always afraid it wouldn't work.

He walked up the column, touching each of the men on the shoulder and signing them to sit, he listened to the jungle. Downey's head circled and his eyes strained to pierce the darkness. Swetz sniffed the air like a dog. Only then each of them nodded was the silence broken.

"Cover leader; Raven two. Radio check," he whispered into the handset.

"Raven two; Covey leader, check, came the reply. The radio check-in-completed, they filed down the trail once again.

Every two hours they would perfume this simple check-in procedure. It would let the officers back at the base camp know the team was still alive. If they didn't check-in the PIO officers would begin to formulate the official denials. They were not supposed to be where they were.

And he wasn't there. Not anymore. He traveled down a 60,000 year-old staircase of racial memory and emerged into a primordial jungle. The soldier too young to shave was gone. He was a primitive man in black pajamas.

It was with the eyes of this primitive man that he saw the figure crouching below him on the trail. Downey saw it too and halted the group.

Downey, Chambers and himself held their positions as Swetz and Van Lesser move quietly and cautiously down hill toward the crouching figure. He drew the auto pistol from his waist band and eased the safety off.

Swetz and Van Lesser, knives drawn, moved closer to the figure. As if in silent meditation, the figure sat; unaware of the danger.

He watch this two men as they came almost to arm's reach of the figure and slowed his breathing so his aim, if needed, would be steady.

Swetz aimed his blade at the base of the figure's skull and move in for the kill. Suddenly, he turned back toward them, threw his hand up in exasperation and motioned for the others to come down. Van Lessor stood shaking his head.

He slipped the pistol back on safe and eased down the hill. Swetz pointed to the Buddha statue sitting along side the trail.

He almost wanted to laugh at their folly, but the serene face of the Buddha and the still drown knives of Swetz and Van Lesser reminded him the world was no longer humorous. He walked up to the statue and saw the can of fresh joss sticks sitting in the Buddha's lap. Little cones of piled ashes covered the area in front of the statue. He motioned Downey over and pointed to the incense container. Chambers and Van Lesser crossed to the other side of the trail. Downey gave him a thumbs up sign.

Swetz removed a grenade from his belt, pulled the pin. Downey put a few small rocks in the bottom of the can and handed it to Swetz. The Buddha's upturned palms received the grenade and the weighted can held the detonator spoon in place.

Chambers and Van Lesser strung a trip wire, ankle high, across the trail a yard or two below the small jungle alcove in which the statue sat. At one end of the wire was a stout shoot of bamboo. At the other, a white phosphorous grenade.

He motioned the other four toward him, but before they could comply, held his hand up to stop them. He could hear movement further up the trail. He put his finger to his lips commanding silence from his four comrades.

Five or seven, he figured, judging from the voices. A courier team. The men moving down the trail made not effort to move quietly. He knew they were smug, confident. This was their territory. There would be no Americans here. It was their jungle. The night belonged to them.

He motioned Downey and Swetz to either side of the trail, just above the clearing. Chambers and Van Lesser nodded and moved to similar positions below the clearing. He slipped into the brush just behind the Buddha.

He had only been squatted in the bushes a few moments when he noticed a tree spiker, nearly as large as his palm, moving slowly up his leg. He wanted to crush its repulsive hairiness, but the HNVA courier team was already within ear shot. He gently brushed the creature from his leg.

Two of the Vietnamese approached the Buddha and one reached for the container of joss sticks.

The men shared a split second of immobility, brought on by surprise, as the grenade rolled from the Buddha's palms and landed at their feet.

Suddenly the calm sing-song of the Oriental voices turned to excited chatter as the HVA tried to flee up the trail, and down the trail.

He could feel the heat and hear the blast and splattering of shrapnel and dirt as the grenade detonated. The five NVA looked like panicky revelers pushing through a crowded fire exit, as they tried to flee their god.

The two men running down the trail were blinded by the white phosphorous grenade as it detonated.

Downey and Swetz tripped the two fleeing up the trail and stabbed mercilessly at them with their knives.

The last man stumbled aimlessly into the clearing, reeling from blindness, shock and fright.

He moved swiftly from behind the Buddha, knife in hand, just as the man seemed to regain his senses, he noted the panic in the man's throat and cut short the scream before it could leave his mouth.

He began to pull the documents from the man's courier pouch as the others came into the clearing.

"Christ we made a racket," Downey said.

"No shots, and the sound of the grenade doesn't carry very far," he replied.

"D.G. I thing we've compromised our position."

"Bullshit. There's nobody out here."

"What did we do this for?" Van Lesser asked.

"Intelligence. We got maps, lists. Look at this shit," he said, proffering the documents from the pouch. "Besides, did you have any better ideas?"

"Nah, I guess not," Van Lesser sheepishly admitted.

Downey leaned against the Buddha and shook his head.

"I think we fucked up!" he spat. "and you don't get paid to think, I do," he snarled. Like a deft surgeon he manipulated his Gerber to remove the dead man's liver. Smiling at the reddish mass in his hands he lifted it and took a bit out of it spitting the raw meat at Downey's feet.

"Sin loi, No Buddha heaven for this fucker," Swetz quipped.

"Let's get the fuck out of here," he said as the first of the blowflys descended on the piece of liver at the Buddha's base.

He moved up the trail and took the slack, number two, position in the five man chain. Downey was on point. Half an hour later they reached a clearing in the jungle. The village of Loi An, just 200 yards away, slept.

He motioned Van Lesser to his right and Chambers to his left. He handed the radio to Swetz and motioned for him to squat in place. Downey, with the grenade launcher, squatted along side Swetz.

Slithering on his belly, he entered the clearing. Swetz and Downey appears as bushed behind him.

Drawing his legs up he pushed with the heels of his fee and slithered forward, moving like some perverse cross between a snake and a frog. Four and half feet, two thirds, of a body length, and he paused to listen. He could feel his heart pounding against his ribcage. The faint, whoosh, bump, whoosh of the blood pounding in his veins was the only sound he could hear. Drawing his legs up he pushed with the heels of his feet.

In the next two hours he repeated the motion more than a hundred times. The village gate was just two feet away. He pulled a long blade of grass from the ground and, like a wizard with an emerald wand, waved it in ever widening circle. About two and a half feet from the ground the blade bent slightly. He could faintly make out the trip wire in the pre-dawn darkness-booby trip. The wire was anchored to a fence just a few feet to his right. The free end, like a trail of breadcrumbs, led to a clump of bushes on his left. The halfmoon crescent of a claymore was nestled in the center of the clump. As he reached in toward the claymore something rustled in the bush, brushed his hand and scurried, or slithered away, he rolled quickly onto his back, panting. He could feel his heart pound. He listened. Nothing. It took several huffing breaths to calm his shaking hands. He reached in the claymore and carefully removed its firing mechanism, turned the mine around and replaced its detonator. The hundreds of steel balls splayed out by the mine when it went off would rapidly thin the ranks of his pursuers should anything go wrong with the mission. He wiggled through the slats in the gate. Loi An still slept.

He could see the thatched shed and camo net covering the anti-aircraft gun just ahead, right where the informant had said it would be. To the right was the hut of the cadre leader.

He watched as Van Lesser ducked behind the shed before going in to plant the demo charge. He hoped Chambers had taken up position behind the well to cover their retreat.

The door wasn't locked; they never were. It wasn't booby-trapped-they usually were. Inside he could hear the sleeping figures breathing; four of them by the sound of it. He remained motionless in the center of the room, waiting for Van Lesser's charge to go off, a dark form in the darkness. He noticed the almost imperceptible change in breathing of one of the figures. The signal that someone had crossed the threshold from sleep to wakefulness. He held his breath. The figure stirred. The sweat burned his eyes. The figure sat up. He moved. Placing his hand over the figure's mouth he slipped the 12 inch Gerber from it sheath. The figure began to struggle. He remembered the training session. Up, under the first rib. The blade went in. The figure struggled more. Turn up and push, through the heart and aorta. The figure ceased struggling.

As he withdrew the blade he heard the roar of an explosion. Van Lesser's charge on the gun. The pop, pop,pop, of rifle fire came from the direction of the well.

He pulled the pistol from his belt and leveled it at the wakening figures in the hut. In the dark he was nearly invisible-a shadow. He spoke in guttural voice.

"Didi, you hear, Outside,did," The three remaining figures placed their hands on their heads and filed sheepishly out into the dirt clearing in front of the hut. As he stepped out he saw other groups of villages huddled in front of their homes. The middle-aged man he had just pushed out the door glared at him and muttered a phrase over and over. I sounded like "Mao Li" or "Molly." He motioned for the man to squat and saw his glare had changed to tears.

He took the radio from Swetz and turned to go back into the hut. If someone in the gooch were a cadre leader, as the MI types claimed, the there should be some documents around.

"Covey leader; Raven two. Standby," he said into the handset.

"Raven, two; Covey leader. Standing by," came the reply.

Inside the hut he saw the horrible handiwork of his three minute visit. The girl lay on a pallet. An obscene red circle was spreading across the white cloth of their flowing Ao Dai dress. She looked young, maybe fourteen, but it was hard to tell. Her deep brown almond eyes looked at him accusingly, forever open in death. He walked outside.

Chambers was questioning a villager in Vietnamese. As he heard the sing-song of their voices the thought of the white Ao Dai with its spreading red spot. He though of a small white coffin and a bloody nose. The radio! Why couldn't he click the radio? He sets it down and wipes his bloody hand frantically on his pants. Van Lesser speaks to him, takes his arm, but he shrugs him off and keeps on walking. Walking toward the jungle he drops his pistol. The other stare at each other, but none move. He walks into the cool darkness of the morning jungle and the shadows fold around him. The crackle of the radio drifts on the air. "Raven two; Covey leader. Standing by. Come in, Raven two, Covey Leader, Acknowledge. Raven two..."