(11)
— Originally published in the Antietam Review (Spring, 1999)
Continued from page (10)
“It’s not you,” Riley said. “He hasn’t gotten no mail for two weeks.” He
kicked the sand with his good foot. “Just hate to see him come to mail call.
He gets kind of sick looking, you know?”
Carver stood before the map in the operations quonset, studying Griffin’s
squares and arrows around Tuy Thanh. Kerney sat, hang-doglike, saying
nothing. Griffin, taut, pressed his hands on the gray desk top and stared at
the reflection of the fluorescent light in his wet palm prints. The air in the
room waited, tense.
Carver shook his head. “Why should they want to launch a sapper attack
against our outpost at Tuy Thanh? There’s not one stitch of corroborating
evidence.”
Griffin tightened. “Like I said, sir, they’re handling the whole thing as top
secret. The attack command won’t be issued until the last minute. Even the
sapper unit commander hasn’t been told the target.”
“And you believe her?”
“Yes, sir. She . . . I think she’s in love with me.”
Carver looked hard at Griffin. “How would you know?”
“Sir?”
“How do you know she’s in love with you?”
“She just acts like it, I guess.”
Carver continued to watch him.
Griffin shifted. “And she says she loves me.”
Carver threw up his hands. “Any whore in Bien Hoa will tell you that.”
Griffin didn’t answer. He just sat there, head lowered, opening and
closing his hands on the desk top.
“Suppose,” Carver said, “just suppose that General Hackel buys it. And
imagine for the sake of argument that he decides to send a relief force to
Tuy Thanh. Could you find out from her the current disposition of their forces
in the area, whether they could ambush a relief column, what kind of
communications they have, whether they have the means to forewarn the
sapper unit that we’re coming? Could you ask her without letting her know
what you’re up to?”
TOM'S TALES