Ethel shoved Frankie forward; a soldier swung her into the chopper. Frankie scrambled for the back, took a seat, and pressed herself against the wall.
Barb and Ethel each sat in one of the open doorframes, their feet swinging over the edge, laughing as the helicopter rose into the air and shot forward, nose down, tail up.
The noise inside the chopper was earsplitting.
As they banked left, Frankie saw Vietnam through the open doorway: The flat green swath of jungle, a brown ribbon of water, dotted with boats. White sand beaches bordered the turquoise waters of the South China Sea. Verdant mountains in the distance reached up into the blue cloud-strewn sky.
There was destruction, too. Concertina wire that caught the light and sent it back in a thousand glints of color. Giant red holes in the earth, trees fallen or cut down. Scrap metal heaps strewn along roads. Helicopters swooping across the landscape, firing at the ground, being fired on. The constant whir of their rotors, the pop-pop-pop of mortar attacks. Tanks rolling on dirt roads, throwing up red clouds of dust. These days, the U.S. constantly bombed the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Up in the mountains near a village called Pleiku, there was fighting.
“That’s Long Binh,” one of the gunners yelled.
Long Binh, Frankie knew, was one of the largest bases in-country. Tens of thousands of people lived and worked there. She’d heard that the PX on base was bigger than any department store back home. From above, it was a sprawling city carved out of the jungle, built on a flat red rectangle of dirt. Bulldozers bit at the edges, constantly making more room. There wasn’t a blade of grass or a tree to be seen, nothing green, no patch of shade left from the jungle they’d torn down to build their temporary city.
They touched down on the helipad just as sunset turned the sky a brilliant, blazing red.
Frankie angled cautiously forward, edged out of the chopper, and followed Ethel and Barb, who knew exactly where they were going in the dirty, smelly confusion of roads and people and tanks and bulldozers. The place was a hive of activity; a huge hospital was being built to house the rising number of wounded.
The Officers’ Club at Long Binh was legendary. Frankie had heard stories of epic parties and fall-down-drunk fests, even of the MPs being called on occasion. Captain Smith—who’d been in Long Binh for most of his first tour—still spoke often of the club, and said he wouldn’t want a going-away party to be held anywhere else.
Barb reached the O Club first and opened the door. Frankie moved in beside her. She felt conspicuous in her ridiculously conservative blue dress, with her nails bitten down to the quick and her black pixie cut grown so shaggy she looked like one of the Beatles. The headscarf she’d tied over it did little to help. At least she had sneakers now, instead of just her boots.
The Officers’ Club was not what she’d expected. But what had she expected? White linen tablecloths and waiters in black, like the country club on Coronado Island?
In fact, it was just a dark, seedy bar. The stifling-hot air smelled of cigarette smoke and spilled booze and sweat.
A wooden bar ran the length of the building; a line of men were bellied up to it. More sat clustered around wooden tables in mismatched chairs. There weren’t many women here, but the few that were here were on the dance floor. She saw Kathy Mohr, one of the surgical nurses from the Thirty-Sixth, dancing with Captain Smith. A banner had been strung above the bar. It read BON VOYAGE, CPT SMITH.
Frankie was reminded suddenly of the catered party her parents had thrown to celebrate Finley going to war.
It felt like another world ago, another time.
Appallingly naive.
Barb dragged Frankie through the clot of men, elbowing her way. At the bar, she ordered a gin and tonic and two sodas, yelling to be heard over the din of voices and music. A soldier stood beside her, smiling wolfishly, thrilled to see two American women. Frankie saw the Big Red One patch on his sleeve, for the First Infantry.
Barb ignored the man and carried the three drinks toward an empty table. The music changed, became sexy. A song Frankie hadn’t heard before. “Come on, baby, light my fire.”
Frankie was about to make her way to the table when someone touched her arm.
Dr. Jamie Callahan stood there, smiling. She remembered how he’d helped her through her first red alert, how steadying his voice had been, the kindness he’d shown her, and the night they’d talked by the latrines. She’d seen him once or twice in the mess hall or the O Club since she’d been promoted to days, but they’d not talked much.
Tonight, in his white T-shirt and fatigues and combat boots, he was Robert Redford in This Property Is Condemned good-looking. And he knew it. Dirty-blond hair, grown longer than regulation allowed, blue eyes, square jaw. Anyone would have called him the American boy next door, and yet there was sadness in his eyes, a slight sag to his shoulders. She sensed a despair in him that lay just below the surface. Grief. Perhaps he saw it in her, too.