Finally, they came to another fence, this one topped in coils of concertina wire.
The jeep braked to a stop. The driver leaned over, shoved the door open. “Your stop, ma’am.”
Frankie frowned. It took time to maneuver out of the jeep in her tight skirt. “In that building, ma’am. Second floor, 8A.”
Behind the tall ironwork fence, she saw what looked like an abandoned prison. Windows were boarded up with plywood and big chunks of the walls were missing. Before Frankie could ask where to go, the jeep was backing up, honking at something, and speeding away.
Frankie went to the gate, which creaked loudly upon opening, and stepped into a weedy front yard, where scrawny children played with a half-deflated ball. An old Vietnamese woman squatted by the side of the fence, tending to something cooking over an open fire.
Frankie followed a broken path to the front door and entered the building. Inside, a few gas lanterns flickered light against the walls. There was a woman in fatigues waiting for her in the shadowy entry. “Lieutenant McGrath?”
Thank God. “Yes.”
“I’ll show you to your room. Follow me.” The woman led the way past a hallway filled with cots, and up a set of sagging stairs to a second-floor room—cubicle, really. A room barely big enough to hold the set of bunk beds in it, with a single dresser. Maybe the building had once been a convent or a school. “In-processing tomorrow at oh-seven-hundred hours. Report to admin.”
“But—”
The soldier walked away, shut the door behind her.
Darkness.
Frankie felt around for a light switch, found and flipped it.
Nothing.
She opened the door again, grateful for the bit of ambient light coming from gas lanterns in the hallway. She went in search of a bathroom, found one with a rust-stained sink and toilet. She turned on the faucet, got a weak flow of tepid water, and washed her face, then took a drink.
A woman in an Army-green T-shirt and shorts walked in, saw Frankie, and frowned. “You’ll be sorry about that, Lieutenant. Never drink the water.”
“Oh. I’m new … in-country.”
“Yeah,” the woman said, eyeing Frankie in her skirt uniform. “No shit.”
* * *
Frankie woke in the middle of the night with cramping in her stomach. She ran down the hall to the toilet and slammed the door shut behind her. She’d never had diarrhea like this in her life. It felt as if everything she’d eaten in the past month came rushing out of her, and when there was nothing left, the cramping went on.
Dawn brought no relief from the pain. She checked the time, rolled into a ball, and went back to sleep. At 0630 hours, she got up, stood on shaky legs, barely able to button her uniform. The panty girdle was torture.
Outside, the weedy yard was full of skinny-armed Vietnamese children, who eyed her silently. A laundry line held dozens of green fatigues.
She pushed past the gate and walked through the huge, busy base, which was a haphazard collection of buildings and tents and shacks and roads, without a tree anywhere that she could see. They’d obviously created the place with bulldozers. There were pedicycles with whole families on them, old cars pulled by water buffalo, and dozens of Army vehicles vying to get somewhere fast. A jeep splashed past her, the driver honking at the children on the side of the road, at the water buffalo roaming alongside.
No one looked twice at the woman in her Class As, walking carefully, hoping not to vomit.
It took Frankie nearly an hour to find the administration building, which was situated near Ward A of the sprawling Third Field Hospital, where nurses in starched white moved in groups, sometimes running, and announcements blared through black speakers.
She knocked on the closed admin door, heard, “Come in,” and did as she was told.
Inside the office, she saluted to the thin female colonel seated at the desk in front of her.
The woman looked up, lifted her chin in a sharp, birdlike motion that upset the perfect perch of her cat’s-eye glasses. The way she sighed at Frankie’s entrance was hardly encouraging. “And you are?”
“Second Lieutenant Frances McGrath, Colonel.”
The colonel rifled through the paperwork. “You’re assigned to the Thirty-Sixth Evac Hospital. Follow me.” She rose sharply and walked past Frankie to the door.
Frankie struggled to keep up, hoping she wasn’t going to have another bout of diarrhea.
The colonel led the way through the throng of personnel toward a round white helipad with a red cross painted on it, where a helicopter waited. The colonel gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, who immediately started the engine. The huge rotors rotated slowly, became a blur that blasted hot air at her.