Chaingang

Daniel Bunkowski is loaded for bear. A backbreaking ruck, X'ed bandoliers of ammo, det cord, wire, and assorted gear for his precious “pies,” streaming blast-furnace sweat and killer karma, death out the bazonga.

“Chaingang” he is called—out of earshot—existing nowhere on paper, core name-taker for USMACVSAUCOG, a ghost unit created in the pages of an NSC “action memorandum” to the Joint Chiefs, a “NONSKID JACKS” in jargonspeak: the verbalization of National Security Council Directive to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It was sanctioned by a few words found amid the verbiage of the National Security Act, which mandated an outfit of its type to perform “such functions and duties affecting the national security as the National Security Council may direct."

The benign-sounding tongue twister of an acronym was said to stand for the United States Military Assistance Command Vietnam/Special Advisory Unit of the Combined Operations Group.

No Army 201. No MOS. No unit clearance. No name, rank, serial number on file. Not even the tradecraft lie of a civilian cover or private sector gig for a legend. Just this huge loose and evil cannon to pull pitch and plow any time the mood strikes.

Dr. Norman's Alpha Group II has frozen his brain. He is back in the Nam, and deep inside his own madness:

Life drips. It drips down through the tertiary foliage of the triple canopy, nourishing, feeding the teeming green. Day slowly comes with time's passage, and yesterday's heat, still trapped down in this leafy, hot world, rises to a boil as the plant life radiates intense warmth out through the stink of rotting vegetation. More warmth builds inside the moist, living greenhouse, catches, builds, cools with the coming night, but never cooling enough, layering heat upon itself, baking again, feeding, dripping, nourishing. Nightfall again, coming soon.

The spike team enters this blast furnace of green heat, moving carefully through the alien world. It reeks with rotting plants, sweltering jungle, an oppressive and stifling humidity index that cannot be described, and a thousand and one organic perils. Heat prostration and deadly dehydration are among the more benign life-threatening dangers.

They eyeball pathways and cart trails and streams, busting jungle, working their way up-country.

“Beaucoup VC,” the point man whispers. The man who walks his slack moves his index finger closer to the oily trigger of his piece, whispering to the man behind him.

“Victor Charles.” This man turns to the RTO and warns him as he points. The radioman looks.

"Charlie."

The word filters back through the spike team, but they do not tell the drag man. He is far behind, busting jungle at his own pace. Stopping now beside a cart trail where the smell of the little people fills him with thrilling anticipation. He starts moving backward, waddling away from the trail, his huge body atingle with excitement as he covers his tracks, backing into seemingly impenetrable jungle.

Invisible now, motionless, he stands and begins the slowing, stilling of his vital signs. Breathing in the killer heat like some enormous jungle plant, thriving on the suffocating humidity, drinking it in as he shifts down into an almost subhuman stillness, a wide and frightening parody of a grin distorting his features as he listens to the noisy bumblers move farther away.

The spike team breaks through the triple-canopied green, following the cart trail through truck gardens and a ruined villa, moving toward a rubber tree wood line.

“Yo, Rodriguez."

“Say?” Rodriguez is the last man.

“What happened to Chaingang?"

“Fucked if I know, Sarge.” He shrugs. “He's back there somewhere. Back in the jungle."

“Fuck,” the team leader says with disgust, spitting his chaw into the nearby foliage. They drive on.

With his vital signs slowed to a crawl, slowly he fills his immense body with teeming jungle air, holds it, wills his life support system to chill him out. Listens to the sounds of the deep green coming back to life now that the bumblers are gone. Birds. Animals. Insects. Slithery, slimy things. Creepy crawlers. The thud-bump, thud-bump of his strong heart roaring in his ears.

He is relieved they are gone. Hates their cloying, maddening proximity. Knows they will meet their doom up ahead and thinks it, precognates it in just those words, relishing the phrase: they will meet their doom. It is a pleasant thought that entertains him as he slows his vital signs in preparation for readying his ambush.

He thinks of himself as Death. Death, very still, tired and favoring his weak ankle from the insertion (but happy), lets himself envision the little people who he knows will come. With a massive effort he wills his body to move, his strange brain directing the opening of the “pie box,” which is how he thinks of his mines.