The Preserve Read online

  Lett wondered whose staff the officers in khaki were. They wore actual insignia, but Lett was too far away to make out any more than rank. He saw Jock show him a little shrug from across the way.

  Then he heard a strange thrashing sound, coming closer, underscored by a droning noise. It was coming from the sky. Coming right at them.

  Lett crouched. The rest did, too. He wondered if his friend the carabao had heard it. He must have thought it was a giant insect. It looked like a massive dragonfly.

  It was a helicopter. Lett had heard of them but had only seen a couple in pictures and a newsreel once. It was the Sikorsky model, he believed—Army olive drab with a stout nose of glass panels. The thrashing became thumping as it hovered over them, the palms and branches flapping and waving all around, the dirt and dust swirling below.

  They stayed in a crouch as it set down, hands over their eyes until those giant revolving rotors slowed and relaxed, sagging as they stopped.

  One of the officers from inside ran up crouching and set down a little stepstool before the helicopter’s side door. The door slid open. The officer gestured to help a man out but was dismissed as the man shook him off and bounded down the craft’s built-in stair, skipping over the stepstool and hitting the earth in stride. He was a tall man in all khaki: his loose wrinkled trousers pulled up high, open collar shirt, his ornately embroidered officer’s cap cocked a little, but his aviator sunglasses set straight ahead.

  General Douglas MacArthur? It had to be. The officer jogged alongside him, shaking his hand without breaking stride, and the two bounded up the stairs into the main building.

  ***

  Once the general made his entrance, Lett and half his team were assigned to watch over the building while the others got a rest. Lett patrolled closer to the building over the next couple hours. He constantly passed the half-open windows. He could see the main room. It had sofas, and all who’d arrived were gathered there, the staffers speaking to the Japanese, the Japanese speaking to MacArthur, MacArthur speaking to all.

  The next time Lett passed, he had to halt a step. He saw that the important Japanese visitor who’d disembarked in Hilo was there—he had a scar and a block of a head with dents like in an old helmet—but he also saw a man he knew. The man now wore the blue uniform of the newly independent United States Air Force and the gold oak leaf of a major.

  Lansdale. It was Edward Lansdale. It had to be him. There was that long, squared-off face and that thin mustache. Something made Lett wince, and it took him a moment to realize it. Lansdale’s smile looked more like a grimace to him now, and each time Lett passed the window it started to look more creepy-crawly in that newly created uniform. Yet it seemed to work for the men in the room, whom Lett could hear laughing at Lansdale’s every word, even the Japanese and once or twice MacArthur.

  Lett was seeing Lansdale in a new light. But it had been slowly dawning on him, he now understood, like the sun not yet up over the horizon. Now it was out in the open, casting its harsh rays. Lett’s wince became a shiver. Ever since Hilo, he had started to mistrust Lansdale.

  While Lett couldn’t make out exact conversations, he could tell the talk was turning serious and focused. This wasn’t a negotiation, but rather a hammering-out. Maps lay on a coffee table at one point. It reminded Lett of one of his many prepatrol meetings up on the line: these men had done this before and knew what did and did not work. At one point they ate, and the aromas of grilled meats and fresh fruit drilled a hole in Lett’s gut.

  On one pass, Lett saw MacArthur and Lansdale alone in a suite room. They were standing over a table, poring over another map, the general nodding, Lansdale pointing out this and that. Finally, on Lett’s last pass, Lansdale was given a hearty slap on the shoulder from the general himself.

  Lansdale, the Air Force major, wore no doctor’s insignia. Lett felt embarrassed for ever having called Lansdale “Doc” back at The Preserve. And just because he was wearing a white coat? Lansdale never said he was or wasn’t a doctor. He’d only let Lett think what he wanted to think. And yet Lett couldn’t deny it had helped with his cure.

  Lett and his group finally got to rest while others filled their boots at guard patrol. Lett smelled that food again and was amazed to find that it was theirs. He, Jock, and the others were led into one of the Quonset huts, where grilled meats and fresh fruit were laid out on a table along with a macaroni salad.

  “The leftovers—compliments of the meeting,” a young captain told them before darting out again. “He figured you deserved it and had enough Spam.”

  They dove in; their filled bellies and the coffee would get them through their next watch. But the meeting must have been coming to an end, because Filipino helpers lugged in a large metal bucket of beers on ice: San Miguels. A craps game broke out. Cards ensued.

  Lett shot up with his dose after all, huddling in a far, dark corner like a junkie hopping up, even though he could’ve just told the rest it was insulin or any matter of regular drug and no one would’ve cared, all of them having their own particular woe and fix.

  Sometime later, he and Jock sat with their second allotted beer in a corner of the hut, their feet up on folding chairs.

  “Dugout Doug, right here in the flesh, what do you make of that?” Lett said to Jock.

  Jock didn’t answer at first. His wet beer label kept sliding off, and he kept sliding it into place with a fingertip. “I ever get close enough, I’d ask him why he left us Marines in the lurch,” he said finally. “Plenty of my fellow gyrenes been visiting me at night asking why.”

  “I would not do that if I were you,” Lett said.

  Jock grunted.

  “Think about this mission,” Lett said. “Aren’t you wondering about that?”

  “In what way?”

  “Why they don’t use their own troop. They bring us all this way. Lansdale does.”

  Jock nodded. “Sure, I been wondering. I’m just trying to be on my best behavior.”

  Lett nodded in turn. “This must be real secretive.”

  Jock let his label slip off. He snatched it from his thigh and balled it up and tossed it across the floor. “You had that feeling. Before a patrol, say.”

  “Or before entering a town.”

  “Wading onto some island.”

  “Forest.”

  “Jungle.”

  “All leads to the same.”

  “We been through the grinders enough to know the bad feeling coming on.”

  “That something just ain’t right,” Lett said.

  “Yep,” Jock said. “So, why don’t neither of us have the feeling right now?”

  Lett had to shake his head. “I don’t know. I sure hope it’s not because we like this too much. That we need it back.”

  “Maybe that’s the angle, Lett. Maybe this is all we know. All that is natural to us.”

  Lett turned to Jock. “The angle?”

  Jock shrugged. “I just mean, that it’s part of the treatment they’re giving us. That we realize this is natural to us.”

  They sat a while in silence, looking inside the brown mouths of their beer bottles. Jock added another grunt. “I was thinking, as you know: I figure maybe this is our leg up. Mine, anyways. Like I was saying before. I—”

  The young captain rushed back inside, filling the doorway with alarm. Before he could get a word out a tall man pushed him aside and strode inside to them.

  They shot up saluting, their folding chairs sliding backward, one tipping over.

  “At ease, men.” Five-Star General of the Army, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, and onetime Field Marshal of the Philippine Army Douglas MacArthur stood before them, hands on his hips.

  “Do find your seats, please,” General MacArthur added in a soft voice.

  The men gathered around the man by forming a three-quarter circle of chairs without anyone prompting it, as if initiating the gesture were whispered to them all. They sat erect; hands flat on their thighs. The general found a chair, and he
pulled it around to complete the circle. Facing them, nodding, smiling faintly. Lett found himself two men away from him. MacArthur pulled off his famous stitched cap, pushed his hair down, pulled out a platinum cigarette case, and offered smokes all around. Some accepted, saying thanks.

  “Where’s the corncob pipe, General?” said one in an upbeat voice worthy of a newsreel.

  MacArthur chuckled. “That MacArthur is for the cameras, son.”

  They laughed. Some lit up, the rest intending to keep the cigs as souvenirs, Lett figured. They were Pall Malls. “This your favorite smoke, General?”

  “My preference is whatever they have in the PX, son.”

  The general was pushing seventy, with sun and age spots and visible veins to show for it, but the sparkle in his eyes was that of an Olympic athlete winning his first medal. This surprised Lett. It wasn’t like the man with the hard CO stare in the photos at all. He found all their eyes with his, one at a time, and when he found Lett’s, Lett could not look away. The gaze was too warm.

  “I just wanted to thank you men for helping out today. I wasn’t always MacArthur, you know. I was like you. I was up on the line.” He spoke, they listened. He didn’t talk of his Medal of Honor or the numerous Silver Stars, or Back to Bataan or lording it over the defeated Japs from the heart of their own capital or ruling all of Asia and probably the United States if he wanted it. He talked of being up on the line in WWI, in forests like Lett. The stench of dead in trenches, the bodies above covering no-man’s-land like so much underbrush, the cold and wet wanting to crack your bones, the horror sounds of our outgoing versus their incoming. He made mistakes, just like them. One time he couldn’t find a gap in the barbed wire for his dear men. Another he forgot to carry his gas mask and got gassed for it. As he spoke, Lett noticed a couple officers poking their heads in the windows. “I well comprehend what the experience brings to a man. What it leaves. I understand that you fine warriors are special. Handpicked. This is because you have endured the grim wonder that is modern warfare. You are never the same upon knowing it so intimately. You know something greater than yourselves. Few will know this, throughout all of man-made history. You may consider yourselves wounded. You are not. You are instilled with a gold that can never be traded or stolen. As such, you offer society a worth that is beyond the comprehension of mere civilians. But I know it, men. MacArthur sees it.”

  Lett found himself wishing the general would reach over and touch him, and later the thought would make him cringe, like a man holding a sharp kitchen knife and having the overwhelming curiosity to cut himself with it, just to see.

  “Well then,” the general added, “you good men look like you might wish to know a thing or two about MacArthur, so do feel at ease to—”

  The door flung open and Lansdale stepped in. “General, sir, you’re required urgently,” he said and glared at the men as he did so, his mustache vanishing behind his scowl.

  “Well then, duty calls,” the general said. He slapped his thighs, stood, and strode past Lansdale and out the door.

  Lansdale stood there. He wiped at his mouth and the mustache was back. He added a wide-open smile. “The great man knows no rest, and that’s why he’s the best!” he chirped and hurried out the door.

  The men ignored the Air Force major, laughing and shaking their heads and nodding and recapping the last couple minutes as if it had included a curvy dancer who’d just burst from a birthday cake. They sucked their beers. Lett too had to shake his head in wonder.

  Jock said to Lett, “I reckon the ole general ain’t half bad for an Army man. And he was a doggie, too.” Lett didn’t reply so Jock added, scratching his head, “Guess I should stop calling him Dugout Doug, at least until my new posting.”

  The door flung back open. Air Force Major Lansdale marched back in, but the men only nodded at him, still busy as they were retelling the story of the great visit. It was already gaining embellishments. MacArthur had beers with them, see. MacArthur played craps with the whole crew. Before long, this Quonset hut would become a bordello.

  “Attention!” Lansdale roared. “Snap to when I tell you.” The men came to, all in a line. The scowl was back. “Do you know who I am?” he said, and it wasn’t a question. “I’m Intelligence. So listen, and listen good: You never saw the general here. You yourselves were never here. Understand? This is top secret. You peep a word of this and you’re right back where you came from.”

  The men stared back.

  “I don’t hear you. Do you understand?”

  “Understood, sir!”

  Lansdale turned on his heels and marched back out, slamming the door behind him.

  Lett watched from a window of the Quonset hut. The Japanese men who had arrived in the Dodge trudged out of the building toward their sedan. They looked no happier than when they arrived, unlike most men after a long day of meetings. No slapping of backs, no laughing. Heads down. The sedan sped off. Then the silhouette of one General MacArthur exited through a back door surrounded by staff officers. The helicopter blades turned and whooshed, and soon the general’s flying machine was rising into the sky, a glowing light, the dragonfly turning into a firefly as it rose higher, farther, leaving only the detached fronds of palms and even more dust.

  The sun had lowered beneath the ridges, dimming all. Lett could barely see the spot where the carabao had vanished. He hoped it was watching from somewhere safe inside the surrounding jungle. What better way to avoid that giant insect?

  This is top secret, he recalled. Another top secret mission had once changed him forever, from a hopeful orphan into a paranoid killer. But now he felt something like hope again because this mission was accomplished.

  “Where’s Lett?” Lett heard. He turned around. Lansdale strode back in with that slight stoop he had, left arm hanging lower than the right, left hand with a slight twist to it. Lett turned and Lansdale found him, Lansdale smiling now.

  “You’ll come with me,” he said.

  15.

  Lett left that night. Lansdale had picked three others—but not Jock, who pulled a face like the kid not chosen for stickball. The four rode in the two empty heavy trucks that had been parked at the warehouse, two men to each cargo bed. They got a canvas cover, seat cushions, and an aluminum pot of coffee for their trouble. Lett should’ve felt the old warning signs convulsing him, riding as he was in the back of a truck to who knew where with poor bastards just as unsure as he. Carrying a weapon. Not having a clear identity or mission. And yet, he felt talkative. Maybe it was the beer or coffee or both. Maybe it was simply that stimulating effect of General Douglas MacArthur. Maybe it was that dose he’d done in the Quonset hut, forging steel inside him.

  Lett’s opposite number in the back of the truck wasn’t feeling talkative, however, and only grunted in the affirmative when Lett asked him if he wanted some joe. The man was squat with big ears and hair everywhere, even on his sinewy neck. The coffee braced him just enough for questions. He was a former Navy commando who never returned to the States and didn’t see the point, considering. “I got the goddamn malaria, besides,” he told Lett, “keeps coming back.” Then he clammed up and turned away from Lett, treating him like a new replacement.

  The truck ride, the cold shoulder, the imposed silence—it all finally brought a dark mood, becoming one with the night that was sucking all light from under the canvas. Lett lay on his back and stared at the canvas above, dark as pitch, cloaking what had to be a million stars up there, the road jostling him, working away at his back like a thousand hands poking and prodding and none of it like a massage. He was hugging his M1 carbine, he realized. He pushed it aside.

  Keep moving. Stop and you’re cornered.

  “Damn right there, doggie,” the commando replied from his dark corner, and Lett realized he’d been muttering to himself, out loud.

  They traveled south for two hours, the trucks’ headlights finding only green tropical forest, brown streams, and an unending line of steep hills and surely mountains beyo
nd. The last sign of civilization they passed was a village called San Mariel, just a junction of huts, their tires thumping on old cobbled road. They turned down a side road and the softer roll of the tires meant it was all dirt. Then Lett and the former commando were out standing guard with the other two vets. They were still in the Cagayan Valley, but the clarity of the sounds reminded Lett that this area was even more remote. He could hear an occasional wild animal rustle through bushes yards away. One palm frond brushed another—and another, and another—up the hill above. Water ran low and rough nearby, swishing around rocks.

  Two hours later, they were still there. Sporadic flashlight beams and a spotlight that was eventually brought out showed a high bank near a river, set back about ten yards, where a tall mango tree stood. Beyond its trunk, at the base of a hill, other men had erected a standard Army wall tent, normally a billet for five to ten men. But this was no billet. Lett and the other three were posted outside in case anyone approached. But no one would approach this place. Who would know how to get here? A native jungle mountain man, maybe, loin cloth and all.

  Lansdale arrived by motorcycle, riding in the sidecar. Driving the bike was the Japanese man with dents in his head—and knobby scarred knuckles from fighting, Lett now saw as he stood close, while the man steered the bike to a stop at the pointing beam of a flashlight. The Japanese goon was clearly working with the team, Lett noticed, providing them with info, pointing out this and that. Lett and the commando had been told to meet them, escort them up. Up close, the Japanese also had a blocky jaw, pockmarked cheeks, thick lips, and dark eyes Lett didn’t want to look at any longer than he did a dark well. Lansdale was back to wearing khaki without insignia. He wore a holstered pistol now, too, and had a spring in his stoop of a step and a sparkle in his eye that Lett knew all too well. He knew it from wild ones up on the line who couldn’t get enough of a firefight and the blood that came with it. He always imagined that those types ended up in a psych ward, if not the electric chair. But here this one was, his beaming mug now making Lett shudder more than the Japanese man’s brute face.