Later, as the helicopter descended toward the helipad, Rye pulled Frankie close and kissed her.
Frankie unhooked his helmet and handed it back to him. With one last look that seared his smile into her memory, she grabbed her travel bag and jumped off the helicopter and stood on the helipad, looking up. “Be safe, Riot!”
Rye took a seat in the open door by the gunner, smiling at her as the helicopter lifted into the air.
He yelled something she couldn’t hear. Waved goodbye.
The helicopter veered sharply sideways, headed north, and swooped down close to the jungle canopy.
Pop-pop-pop.
She saw sparks of light hit the Huey’s broadside. The gunner shot back as the bird veered sharply away.
Another shot. Sparks. The ra-ta-ta-tat of the gunner shooting back. The Huey maneuvered swiftly. Orange bits streaked through the sky.
The shooting stopped, leaving silence in the jungle and the softening sound of the helicopter’s rotors as it flew away.
Safe.
This time.
From now on, until she and Rye both landed safely back in the U.S., she knew there would always be a piece of her that was afraid.
* * *
April 10, 1968
Dear Frankie,
I don’t know how to write this. My brother, Will, was killed by the Oakland police this week. A shoot-out with the Black Panthers. He was shot ten times, even though he’d surrendered.
I’m devastated.
Heartbroken.
Pissed off.
I need my best friend here with me to keep me steady.
Love you,
B
* * *
April 24, 1968
Dear Barb,
I know your grief. Losing a brother is losing a piece of yourself, your history.
I’m sorry is a shitty, useless, not-enough thing to say, but what else is there?
If I still believed in a benevolent God, I’d send you prayers.
Stay strong for your mom.
Find a way to honor and remember him.
Love,
F
* * *
June 16, 1968
Dear Mom and Dad,
I can’t believe that another Kennedy has been assassinated. What is wrong with the world? Things are getting worse over here, too. Morale among the troops is the worst I’ve ever seen it. Between the assassination of MLK and Robert Kennedy and the protests back home, everyone is mad as hell. If you wonder how we can lose a war, imagine how the guys fighting it feel. And LBJ just sends more and more untrained kids to fight. The ORs here are always full. The sound of Dust Offs landing is becoming constant. We used to have days off, times the OR was quiet. Not so many anymore. Don’t believe everything you read—our boys are dying every day. I see more and more soldiers stumbling in from the boonies, their minds broken, their nerves shot to hell. They walk through the bush, snipers everywhere, and step on hidden mines and blow up five feet away from their buddies. It’s awful. And yeah, a few of them are high. Heroin is its own horror. So is the way they look when they find their way to the hospital. I can’t fix them all. No one can. But I’m doing my best, I want you to know that. I am making a difference and helping to save lives.
Thanks for all the letters and for the care packages. I really needed more film. And who knew you’d miss Twinkies and Pop-Tarts in a war?
Love you,
F
* * *
On a still, sweltering evening on the Fourth of July of 1968, Frankie stood beneath the bright lights in the OR, stitching up a minor abdominal wound. Sweat dampened her mask and cap, slid down her back. The temperature today had gone past 102 degrees. When she finished, she peeled off her bloody gloves and dropped them into a garbage can.
Two soldiers stumbled into the OR on bare, bloody feet, carrying a man on a litter between them. The men looked sucked dry, hollowed-out. Sunken eyes, sunken cheeks, the thousand-mile death stare that Frankie had begun to recognize as the look of men who’d been out in the boonies too long, trekking, trying to avoid land mines, looking for Charlie in every shadow and bush. Constant fear turned a man inside out.
Frankie grabbed some masks and handed them to the men.
“We carried him thirty miles,” one of the men said. “We broke out … too late.”
So. Prisoners of war. No wonder they looked so beaten, both physically and mentally. Word was that the NVA kept American POWs in cages too small for them to stand up in. And that they tortured them. “How long were you prisoners?”
“Three months,” the other one said. He was wearing a necklace made of amputated fingers and ears strung on a leather cord. Trophies, probably, taken from their North Vietnamese captors when they escaped. It was the kind of thing she’d seen more of in the past few months, as the fighting had heated up. It was profoundly disturbing. Sickening. A terrible sign that the soldiers’ minds were being as broken by war as their bodies.