By What is Sure to Follow Read online

  BY WHAT IS SURE TO FOLLOW

  ©2014 DONALD N. BURTON

  Published by Hellgate Press/Fiction

  (An imprint of L&R Publishing, LLC)

  All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or here-inafter invented, without the express wtitten permission of L&R Publishing, LLC. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Hellgate Press

  PO Box 3531

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.hellgatepress.com

  This book is dedicated with admiration to all Veterans from all eras–most notably Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan–who are struggling to be normal again, with psychological wounds from their war that have never healed completely. Also, to their families, friends and brothers-in-arms who help them daily to be normal Americans again–no matter how long it takes.

  I also dedicate the book to my wife, Valeri, who for nearly forty years has helped me heal and be normal again. Without her love and support, the book would have never been written.

  I would be negligent if I failed to express my sincere gratitude to the numerous Vet Centers across the nation who welcomed me into their group sessions when I was in need as I traveled for work. Thank you to all who attended those sessions for listening to my babble and for your love and support. It helped me to heal.

  I would also like to thank the many Vietnam veterans who helped me get the military details right in my head as I wrote this so long ago and for their support along the way. I am embarrassed to say that as this manuscript was intended solely as part of my healing process, I did not record names back then as I wasn’t thinking of publishing the work. To those of you who contributed, I apologize and offer my sincere thank you.

  “How can I tell that this calm around us is not just the center of the storm?” asked the young traveler, afraid to continue his journey. The old man smiled and nodded his understanding, knowing the importance his answer would have.

  In due time, he replied: “By what is sure to follow.”

  –Unknown

  1

  Winter 1989

  ELEVEN FEARLESS MEN RUSHED FRANTICALLY FROM THE SMALL meeting hall, fleeing for their lives. Until now it had been just another of the weekly self-help sessions they all had been attending at the San Diego Vet Center. Each man was a Vietnam War veteran, a requirement for joining this select group. It was the first self-help group formed at the center when it opened in 1975. In the past fourteen years since it opened every type of social and psychological condition had been represented. Some men came to put to rest a single event from the war. Others had more severe problems that spanned years of combat service for which they wanted help. Quite naturally the composition of this group had changed over time as more men came to the Vet Center. The less afflicted chose to form other groups where they had more in common. What was left attending this group attracted other hardened men of similar experience. The twelve men who attended tonight’s meeting shared one experience in common: each had been a ruthless killer in the service of his country. By virtue of training and experience each man was fearless, not the type to run from trouble. But tonight they had all run.

  Reluctantly they had attended these meetings for one reason: it was a desperate attempt to be normal citizens again. And these meetings generally helped. Tonight’s meeting had unexpectedly ripped open the painful scars of their war. The mangled and deformed past had been exposed.

  After years of near-silence at these meetings, former Force Recon Sergeant Luke Sims finally had participated in the rap session tonight. As usual, he had sat in one of the folding chairs that formed the tight circle in the center of the poorly lit room. All but one seat had been taken.

  As the evening unfolded, Luke had waited until two other men spoke of their worries and concerns and sat exhausted in chairs to his right. Then it was his turn. Massive amounts of sweat instantly soaked his clothes as he prepared himself. The heavy smell of his body odor spread across the room like the stench of death. He ignored it. Even though the sweat must have stung his eyes and blurred his vision as it flowed downward from his now wet-looking head, he continued to ignore it. His breathing increased and his chest began to heave. His rugged, good-looking features changed rapidly as stress knotted the muscles in his face and his nostrils flared. His normally intelligent eyes seemed to recede slightly into his head and glaze over. And then came the blasting fury of words; the first of these, spoken in a tone only another hardened Vet could comprehend, instantly catapulted everyone back into the perilous Vietnam of their youth.

  “Saddle up, you puke faces! Lock and load,” barked Luke as he took command. His words shook the room, bouncing off all four walls.

  Each man instantly tensed as adrenalin pumped involuntarily into his system, and without thought reflectively reached for a weapon that was not there.

  “Listen up! Tonight we’ve got a serious mission,” he said forcefully as he quickly stood and moved to the center of the circle. The eerie unearthly tone in his voice shattered their minds and images began to whirl faster and faster in their heads. All eyes remained riveted on him. Muscles in his neck and face bulged further as fury pumped blood to his brain. “Don’t doubt me!!” he said in a tone each man painfully recognized as emanating from a dealer of death. “Some of you assholes will die tonight!” He began to pace slowly back and forth in front of them, staring hard into each man’s face before he continued to the next man. Sweat pored off his face as he moved, leaving a moisture trail on the floor as he slowly moved.

  Luke’s dream world had become real for them all. Rushed breathing filled the room. Unable to move, the mesmerized men remained seated in the small circle. No one spoke. They waited, muscles pulsing, awaiting orders.

  Time slowed; their senses raced to calibrate their minds to the threat at hand. Tension mounted swiftly in the now crowded, stale room, becoming palatable at first then quickly becoming a screaming silence. One man to Luke’s left licked his lips constantly with his nervous tongue. No one noticed.

  Luke’s expression hardened further, finally matching the impaling force emanating from his heaving, muscular body. His eyes now began darting madly from man to man, piercing each completely, reaching the primal man within.

  “I see fear in your faces! Good!” he hissed, spraying saliva several feet in front of him. “You had better fear me more than Mr. Charley!” His next words started as a low rumble and quickly gained gale force: “If every one of you is not saddled up and down the fuckin’ trail in the next thirty seconds, I will end your fuckin’ fear right now. Permanently! Got that shitheads? Now move out!!”

  An explosion of movement erupted. Men shoved their way past each other as they fled out the single narrow doorway, and in a blur of motion the room was empty, except for Luke. He stood silent amid the scattered chairs, heaving to gain oxygen. Listening, he heard the door down the hall close loudly for the last time. The rancid smell of fear clung to everything. He tasted it in one long inhale of breath; he could also smell urine mixed with the fear, somewhere in front of him. His right leg began to shake involuntarily. Finally, he closed his eyes.

  Quiet. As though it had been drained through a release valve, the tension left his body. He felt weak. Slowly, almost stumbling, he took t
hree small steps to one of the folding chairs. He sat down hard, devoid now of all the power he had commanded just minutes earlier.

  Silence. Minutes passed without a sound.

  “You sure know how to end a session early, Sims.” The unmistakably strained voice came from the back of the room in a darkened corner. Luke did not move or answer.

  “I can’t believe what I just heard,” continued the voice. “I read about that look of yours–the one that got you the nickname Eyes. Now I know why you got it. You scared the shit out of me and everyone else here tonight,” said Randall Rinke, the group’s V.A. counselor, still cloaked in the shadows. “You were, we were, back in Nam with you just now. It was real. And that look in your eyes. I can’t say that in four tours in Nam I felt fear so totally as I just did. You scared everyone tonight real bad, Sims; real bad, me included. And I would have never dreamt that some of those big guys in the group would have been afraid of anything.”

  The counselor studied Luke for a moment before speaking again. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, Sims?” Perhaps a full minute passed before the reply came.

  “All I wanted to do was get some of this crap out of me, let them hear it. Isn’t that what I’m supposed to do? I mean week after week I hear them let loose with their shit,” said Luke softly, now very unsure of himself, sounding almost like a small child as he continued. “Why is it all right for them to say their piece and not me?”

  “It’s not what you said but how you said it. You were there again NOW, right NOW! And you took us all with you. The emotions, call it energy or whatever, was so strong you jolted all of us. At one point I felt certain we would all be dead in the next instant–and there was nothing any of us could do to stop you! Until tonight I would have told anybody that I could never feel like this. I’m just now getting calm after that shit. Just like you, I’m ex-Force Recon Marine.” Rinke stopped talking. He shook his head disbelievingly, slowly lit a cigarette and began studying Sims again as he took his first few drags.

  Minutes passed in silence while each man mentally regained his footing.

  Finally, Luke nervously cleared his throat.

  “Sorry,” Luke said, sounding very sincere. “I just sort of lost it a bit, I guess. I’ll try to not get so carried away next week. Right now, if it’s okay with you, I’m going home. I’m exhausted.”

  “Before you go, I’d like to ask you a few questions. Your file is a little sketchy and I’m new here.”

  “The record shows that you served with 1st Force Recon in I Corps. When?”

  “In ’67 and ‘68.”

  “What was the name of your team?”

  “The Mad Dogs,” replied Luke mechanically.

  “You were a member of the Mad Dogs?” Rinke said excitedly. “Boy! The stories I heard about you guys. You guys are a legend in the Corps. You guys had pure magic–you could walk through a forest unseen–invisible. I heard that you made it a habit of going into areas way up north where other teams had just vanished. And you came out with valuable reconnaissance–the good shit–without so much as a fuckin’ scratch. Everybody talked about you guys,” said Rinke in a rush of words. “You were fuckin’ heroes. Even in boot camp they talked about you. I was in-country from ’69 through ’71. And they were still telling the stories. Are they true?”

  “Yeah, I guess for the most part they’re true enough. We were lucky bastards,” said Luke with a weak smile.

  “You keep in touch with the rest of your team?”

  Immediately Luke’s body became rigid again. His breathing stopped for the longest time.

  Sounding like the voice of an emotionally dead man, he finally replied. “All fuckin’ dead.”

  To Luke it seemed like just yesterday his team had been killed, victims of a barbarous VC massacre that he had escaped only by a chance of fate.

  “Maybe I could have prevented it somehow.” He spoke softly, feeling the comfortable role of protector of his team surface again. He had said this to himself a thousand times, and each time it opened the same mental wound, festering, jagged and painful. Closing his eyes tightly to shut out the pain he knew would soon follow, he shivered involuntarily as his teammate’s faces emerged from his personal shadows. Each scowled at him through tortured eyes. Without understanding it, he knew he could never shut out the pain, no matter what he did. His guilt and emotions wailed up inside him.

  “I let them down. Damn it. I didn’t know it would happen,” Luke said sorrowfully. His thoughts began to spin inside his throbbing head.

  For a full minute he gave in to his emotions and cried silently. His head hung down in front of him. Then he pushed the thoughts from his mind, wiped his eyes clear of tears, sat up straight and then took a long moment to light a cigarette. The tension temporarily released, Luke was again in control.

  “What happened to them?” asked Rinke persistently. Another long pause added meaning as Luke prepared to speak.

  “VC sapper squad got them one night when I wasn’t with them.” Luke’s voice could hardly be heard as he finished. “It was routine perimeter duty.”

  “Go on,” said Rinke as Luke failed to continue. Still Luke remained silent. “I guess we’ve talked enough for tonight anyway,” said the counselor in a friendly tone. “Go get some sleep.”

  “Yeah, think I will.” Luke slowly rose and headed toward the exit.

  “See you next week, Sims.” Luke did not reply other than waive his right hand slightly as he went out of sight.

  Still seated in the deadly quiet room, an uncontrollable chill ran down Rinke’s spine. Then he quickly scrawled several notations on the clipboard in his lap. He ended with a note to schedule a psychological profile for Sims as soon as possible up at the VA Hospital in La Jolla.

  Ten minutes later, Luke, feeling strangely at peace, entered his single bedroom apartment. The tension that had been building for days had finally been released. After taking a hot shower, Luke smiled as he slid in between clean sheets, hoping to fall asleep fast. Instead, he found himself in a half sleep, tossing and turning until finally he wasn’t sure if he was asleep or awake. Then his reoccurring dream world opened up.

  2

  AS HE WATCHED THE SCENE UNFOLD, WIND WHIPPED THE TOPS of trees overhead, ferrying huge mountains of misting clouds down to ground level. Then as suddenly as it came, the wind left, leaving dense ground fog pressing hard against the hillside in which he lay concealed.

  Luke rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t shake the feeling that something didn’t fit, that something bad was about to happen in this darkened world. The feeling intensified with each minute. It began as paralyzing waves washing over him, jolting his senses, screaming for release. Now, after just a few minutes, it held him locked firmly in its devastating grasp as surely as a massive vise gripped a piece of carbon steel. Muscles used to great hardship felt numb as the pressure intensified.

  Unable to concentrate, Luke lay motionless on the moist earth, staring blankly into the near darkness from his concealed vantage point. He wondered what made this damn mission any different from all the others. Sure, it was in enemy held territory–so what. Most of his missions had been in North Vietnam. This wasn’t his first solo mission either. So what was causing this agonizing tension?

  A strange foreboding, as though he knew the tension’s cause, gnawed viciously at the back of his mind. This was turning out to be anything but a routine patrol. A physical chill washed over him. He looked down at his uniform; his faded camouflage fatigues were soaked from the waist down. He had relied on his poncho liner to keep out the light rain that had been falling all night. The poncho only covered the top half–the rest was wet. He shook his head and wondered why he should notice wet pants anyway; they were a way of life during the rainy season.

  As his mind continued to wander, he thought briefly about his camouflage; it was perfect. Everything about him blended perfectly with his surroundings. His face, thickly painted with a pattern of two shades of green, with reddish brown a
round his eyes, added the final touch to his camouflage. Anyone unfortunate enough to see it was treated to a macabre sight. Luke’s Recon team buddies had created the grease paint pattern before Luke’s first mission into North Vietnam.

  Luke glanced around the immediate area. Clumps of dense, dark-green brush covered the steep terrain. Dense foliage in front and behind him cloaked his slight silhouette–just as he had been taught in training so long ago. In preparing the site, he had scooped out the earth to make it a snug place to lie. To add comfort, he had then covered the area with soft green grasses and other material. Just in front of him a thickly leafed bush had been thinned at the base for viewing.

  As if to reassure himself, he slowly touched the equipment spread in front of him: within easy reach to his right side, his field glasses, rucksack and M-16 rifle, with several magazines of ammo, were exactly positioned for fast retrieval and use. He nodded his head, satisfied with his readiness. Places like this were a way of life for Luke since he became Recon. Once laagered like this, he could remain motionless for days, moving only occasionally to relieve himself, and then only rolling over slightly.

  “Sonofabitch,” he mumbled as he rubbed his right leg, trying in vain to massage the latest charley-horse into submission. “What’s with me tonight anyway?” he said out loud. Even after the welt subsided, no matter how hard he tried, Luke couldn’t get comfortable. A look of total repulsion covered his painted face. In a low whisper, he said, “Come on Luke. Get your act together.” After several attempts, his concentration returned. He began studying the terrain below. Seeing nothing in the mist, he decided to rest his eyes briefly.

  The images in Luke’s head began to spin wildly; his thoughts crashed into one another, leaving only half-heard echoes resounding in his mind, not enough to grasp. This had been happening more often lately. Each time it was more difficult to distinguish between the dreams and reality. Luke shook his head, rubbed his temples until the confusion seemed to pass; even then he was somewhat disoriented. Was the Vietnam War a dream, he wondered, and Stateside the reality, or was it the other way around–the war real and Stateside only a dream?