KIA Read online

  Also by Thomas Holland

  One Drop of Blood

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2008 by Thomas Holland

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Simon & Schuster Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Holland, Thomas D.

  KIA / by Thomas Holland.

  p. cm.

  1. Vietnam War, 1961–1975—Missing in action—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3608.O48454K53 2008

  813'.6—dc22

  2007025434

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-3934-6

  ISBN-10: 1-4165-3934-4

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  http://www.SimonSays.com

  For JSH

  It was a Wonderful Life

  Why suffer’st thou thy sons, unburied yet,

  To hover on the dreadful shore of Styx?

  Make way to lay them by their brethren.

  There greet in silence, as the dead are wont,

  And sleep in peace, slain in your country’s wars!

  —Titus Andronicus, Act 1, Scene 1

  (William Shakespeare)

  KIA

  PROLOGUE

  The Pentagon, Washington, D.C.

  FRIDAY, MAY 4, 1984

  He didn’t have the stomach for it.

  The man who’d seen death and had touched and smelled human wreckage; the man who’d stared into the bloody maw as it devoured the youthful promise of his generation; that man didn’t have the stomach for what he had to do now.

  There was nothing in the General Order about where the Status Review Board had to meet, or where, or how long its deliberation should be—only who would sit on it: three military officers at the rank of full colonel or higher. There was nothing in the General Order that stipulated what outcome was to be reached—but they knew.

  Colonel Paul Fick, the ranking member, had secured a small meeting room off one of the long, featureless corridors in the C-ring of the Pentagon. Windowless and austere but sufficient for what had to be done. He hoped this wouldn’t take long. He didn’t have the stomach for it.

  They’d all read the file. At least they were supposed to have.

  More important, they’d all been given marching orders. The fire was lit; letters from a couple of highly energized congressmen eager to snip off the nagging national hangnail that the Vietnam War represented had seen to that, and now it was time for the board to meet and do its duty. Tie up a loose end.

  Make it happen.

  Yes, sir, yes, sir. Three bags full.

  Colonel Fick was reading through the thin file for the third time this morning when Colonels Temple and Joyner bumped in, carrying Styrofoam cups of coffee and laughing loudly. The humor of the story that dragged in with them was directed at a certain secretary whose career skills were measured more accurately by her anatomy than by the number of words per minute she could type. Both men were well junior to Fick in date of rank, and certainly in experience, and they dampened down appropriately when they saw him already seated at the conference table. He had a reputation for being totally humorless when he had work to do, especially work that he found unpleasant or that chafed the skin of his character, and it was clear that the pressure he was under now hadn’t done much to improve his frame of mind.

  Paul Fick was approaching the crest of middle age but could not yet see the horizon of his life. Physically, he was unchanged from his youth—he was still tall and spare and tempered so hard that he might as well have been constructed from lengths of welded steel rebar—but mentally his patience had been pared to a sliver. Three long tours in Vietnam had seen to that. The last had been on special assignment for the Criminal Investigative Division, but the first two had been as a dirt-eater with the Twenty-fifth Infantry. Tropic Lightning. As a platoon leader, he’d written his share of letters to stunned widows and grieving mothers and bitter fathers. He’d come home in the spring of ’69 hoping to never deal with that aspect of the military again.

  And now this.

  Of all the good men he saw die, even the not-so-good ones, now he had to deal with this. It was the price he paid for being the senior-most full colonel in the United States Army. The price for not retiring a year earlier.

  The price for not dying in Vietnam like he should have.

  By all the accounts he’d read, Master Sergeant Jimmy Lee Tenkiller was a deserter. He’d run. By all the accounts he’d read, Tenkiller had turned rabbit, and that was all there was to it. He’d run and hadn’t returned. For whatever reason, he’d done what a thousand other young men might have wanted to do, been tempted to do, what Fick himself might have thought about doing, but the difference was that they hadn’t, Fick hadn’t, and Tenkiller had. It was that simple. But now, because the country was in feel-good mode, and because there were congressmen and senators so cashed out of character and resolve that they were willing to write letters and twist the knob on the burner, and because the postwar military was so desperate to curry favor and please everyone and forget the past as if it were an unpleasant social gaffe at a cocktail party, Colonel Fick was under orders to revise history.

  Make it happen, Colonel.

  Yes, sir, General, three bags full.

  There were two types of senior officers in the army now. Those who were really, really good—men like Paul Fick—men tempered in crucibles like Cu Chi and Kontum and Pleiku, men who loved the army while hating the job it had to do, men who also understood better than anyone else that there were sometimes no alternatives. Men who valued duty and character above breath and dreams. Men who would do what they were told to do because they were told to do it. And then there were those men, and now women—men like Joyner and Temple—who opportunistically filled the vacancies left by all the good ones who hadn’t come through it, either physically or emotionally.

  Hole pluggers.

  Human caulk.

  Welcome to the New Army.

  Neither of the two junior members of the Review Board had served in Vietnam. One had made it as close as South Korea—if that could be considered close to Vietnam. The other had advanced stateside, with a couple of thick-cushioned, short postings in Germany and Italy. Both were AGs—Adjutant General Corps. Administrators.

  REMFs. Fick thought. That’s what we called them back then—Rear Echelon Mother Fuckers. Paperclip Soldiers.

  Fick didn’t even look up as his two fellow board members pulled up seats at the table and unclicked their briefcases, loudly removing their copies of the case file and slapping them down on the scratched-glass sheet covering the tabletop. Their coffee was hot and they made loud, obscene slurping sounds as they drank. It annoyed Fick beyond all possible words.

  “Gentlemen,” Fick began, struggling to curtain his disdain. Only the top of his thinning gray crewcut was visible to the other two as he spoke. That and his hands. Thin, wiry, brown hands etched with a complex mesh of hard-earned pale, cream-colored scars. And the knobs. The shiny, hardened knobs on his misshapened right hand. “I trust you have reviewed the case file on Master Sergeant Tenkiller, Jimmy L., 4219878. Discussion?”

  John Joyner shifted in his seat and shot a prodding glance at Bob Temple. It was clear that Temple wasn’t goi
ng to engage until he had to; he had no desire to “get Ficked,” as they said in the rings of the Pentagon, an extremely accurate way of describing Fick’s ability to melt junior, and occasionally senior, officers into pools of butter. Joyner slurped some more coffee, as much to stall as to clear the syrupy thickness in his throat before responding. “Not much to discuss. You know…Paul, my view from the foxhole is that this case is pretty straightforward.” He began reading from the scrub sheet clipped to the front of his copy of the file, verbally highlighting the bullets. “Let’s look at the facts. Tenkiller was a master sergeant—an E-8—with over fifteen years in, fairly cushy assignment in the supply depot near Saigon, no action other than what he could probably score with some chocolate bars…” He paused and glanced around to see who was smiling but quickly dropped his head and pushed on when he realized no one was. “Ahhh…where was I? Yeah, so, good job in Saigon, finishing up his second tour in Injun country, and on his way back to good ol’ Fortress Hood in less than two months. Signs out of his unit on the morning of 28 September for a couple of days of leave and is never seen or heard from again. Listed first as AWOL and then a month later dropped from the morning report as a deserter. Not seen since 1970. Had no reason to run…” He concluded, but began flipping through the pages of the full document, keeping his head down so that his eyes wouldn’t make contact with Fick’s should he decide to look up. “Ya gotta admit…pretty straightforward. Not the profile of your average deserter.”

  “Your average deserter?”

  “Yeah, well, you know, Paul…doesn’t seem like a deserter to me anyhow.”

  “You think not?” Fick asked. He still hadn’t raised his head.

  “Yeah, I think not. How about you, Bob?” Joyner responded, looking over to Temple, trying to prompt him for some support, even a sound. Had he been close enough, he’d have kicked him under the table.

  Temple didn’t look at all happy about being involved in the discussion. He wanted nothing more than to sign the paperwork and take the rest of the afternoon off. Eighteen holes were probably unreasonable, but nine were a solid possibility. “Yeah…well…ahhh…I guess I got to…ahhh…to agree with John. You know…ahhhh…it doesn’t make a lot of sense for someone about to punch a one-way ticket out of Vietnam to piss his life away with a desertion rap. I mean, he could be pulling a good pension right now. I mean, it just doesn’t make much sense.”

  There was no immediate response.

  “So tell me, Colonel, what do you think happened to Master Sergeant Tenkiller?” Fick asked quietly after a pause. There was a coiled spring in there, restrained by the thinnest of tethers.

  Temple didn’t answer. He puffed his cheeks like a blowfish and dropped his focus to the scratches and fingerprints on the tabletop.

  Joyner took another quick, noisy slurp of coffee to wet his tongue and bolster his courage, and then he responded. “Got whacked, would be my educated guess. Does it really matter how? He didn’t come home; we know that. Bottom line, Colonel Fick, whether the VC got him or his mama-san rolled him for his loose pocket change—he’s dead. BNR, as they say—Body Not Friggin’ Recovered.”

  In the silence that followed, Joyner and Temple could hear the constant throng of people scurrying by in the corridor. A human buzz, like a humming clothesline. Everyone always in a hurry. As the pause lengthened, they both wished they could join the scurry.

  “And so we amend his status?” Fick said at last. Quietly. “He didn’t desert. We sign the paper, and he gets added to the list of Killed In Action. Simple enough. One of the three hundred Spartans.”

  “Hooah,” John Joyner replied. He meant it lightheartedly but it came out sounding particularly ridiculous in the building tension of the small room. His smile faded quickly. “Well…why not? I mean, goddamn, what difference does it make at this point? For Christ’s sake, the war’s over, Paul. Over. Make the family happy. Give ’em a Purple Heart and make his mama smile; most important, make all the friggin’ congressmen go away—right? That’s what it’s all about.” He started to smile again.

  Fick slowly raised his head, and Joyner saw his eyes. A flat mottled gray, like a galvanized washtub. They matched the color of his hair. John Joyner briefly wondered if they had always matched his hair. Then his own eyes caught sight of the gnarled hand and the hardware above Fick’s left pocket—the purple ribbon with an oak leaf cluster that signified being wounded twice in action. Had he really just told this man, Give ’em a Purple Heart and make his mama smile? Joyner couldn’t maintain eye contact even if he’d wanted to, and he dropped his eyes to the folder in front of him. He hunkered his shoulders as if to brace for a physical blow.

  “Colonel Joyner…” Fick’s voice was edged and shivered with thin control. “This country is getting ready to put fifty-eight thousand names on a black granite memorial at the Mall. Fifty-eight thousand young men Killed In Action. Fifty-eight thousand KIAs. Fifty-eight thousand men who didn’t run away, and you’re telling me it doesn’t matter?”

  Neither of the two junior colonels answered. They felt a heavy stickiness in the air like a storm about to break overhead. Even the sounds from the corridor seemed to momentarily cease.

  “Maybe it doesn’t,” Fick said. He closed his eyes slowly as if the effort of keeping them open was more than he could manage any longer, and just that quickly the storm passed. That simply. That quickly. He sighed in a manner that exhausted them all. “Maybe it doesn’t, Colonel Joyner. Maybe it doesn’t at all. Not in this country. Not in this building. Not in your army.” He slowly pushed the change of status form across the table, his fingers barely touching the edge of the paper.

  Both Joyner and Temple signed it quickly.

  Fick didn’t have the stomach for it.

  By a two-to-one vote, Jimmy Lee Tenkiller became KIA.

  CHAPTER 1

  Baghdad, Iraq

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2007

  “Clear your weapon, sir.”

  Robert McKelvey shook loose from his heat-dulled thoughts and looked up. He saw a young staff sergeant in desert camo, his Kevlar helmet cocked at an angle in an effort to impart some style to the baggy uniform. The eye contact, even shielded as it was behind dark sunglasses, made it clear that McKelvey had missed something. “What’s that, Sergeant?” McKelvey asked. His voice broke from dry heat and disuse.

  The staff sergeant nodded at the nine-millimeter holstered on McKelvey’s hip. “Check your weapon, sir.”

  McKelvey was following the sergeant’s look to his own hip when someone slapped him on the back of his head, knocking his ball cap over his eyes. “C’mon, Doc. You been out in the desert too long.” It was Lieutenant Colonel Dennis Perkins, head of one of the ISG’s mobile task forces. “This ain’t Dodge City. You’re back in civilization now, son—if you get my meaning. Check your weapon, and let’s get us some chow. I’ve been eating goddamn MREs for the last two months.” Perkins stepped in front of McKelvey, worked the bolt on his M-16, and dry-fired into a fifty-five-gallon drum half-filled with sand.

  “Hey, bubba,” McKelvey recovered from his surprise and replied as he pushed his cap up and began fumbling with his holster flap. “Heard you were up north somewhere.” The two men had first met six months earlier when McKelvey was searching for a helicopter crash near the Kuwaiti border and the Iraq Support Group had been tapped for support. Perkins and his Mobil Task Force Sixteen had been pulled off their search for WMDs to augment the recovery team.

  “Was. Got back this morning. How ’bout you? Word was that you were out west. Any success?” He watched McKelvey struggle with his holster as long as he could before reaching out and jerking the restraining flap up. “Let me help you there, Sergeant Rock.”

  “Thanks. Velcro can be tricky.”

  “Not to a trained professional. C’mon, I hear little Styrofoam bowls of Jell-O calling my name.”

  “Shit,” McKelvey said as he removed the pistol from his holster. As the guard watched, he cocked and dry-fired it into the sand
barrel, verifying that it was unloaded. It was always unloaded. They nodded in mutual affirmation, and McKelvey secured his weapon before returning his attention to Perkins. “They got Jell-O here?”

  “You bet. Cool little squares of quivering paradise. I’m partial to the ones with banana slices in ’em. I like to suck ’em down in one gulp—kinda like oysters.” He was holding several long strips of plastic that hung in front of the door aside with his forearm, suggesting that McKelvey should go first. The cool of the air-conditioned interior filtered past the plastic strips that hung over the mess trailer’s doorway. “Unfortunately, they’re the first to go—as in you need to get there early—if you get my meaning.”

  “In that case, you best leave me behind. Every man for himself under the circumstances.”

  “Negative. Ranger rules. I will not leave a comrade behind even when the Jell-O is in sight. Nothing in the book that says I can’t kick you in the ass, though, if you don’t hurry up.”

  “Ranger rules?”

  “Ranger rules.”

  McKelvey smiled and ducked through the doorway. Actually, they were early and the dinner crowd was light. They worked their way through the food line quickly, filling their trays with slabs of grilled steak and dollops of mashed potatoes and colorful mixed vegetables, all served by somber-browed local hires that McKelvey felt sure had been asked to leave their vials of ricin at home.

  Perkins detoured past the dessert bar and arrived at the seat next to McKelvey with a tray overloaded with bowls of Jell-O. As McKelvey watched, he slurped down four lime-colored squares as if he were a finalist in a gelatin-eating contest. With a loud satisfied sigh, he looked up. “Man oh man, if that doesn’t clean out the dust. I gotta buy stock in Jell-O. Gotta.”

  “You and me both. And to think they bothered flavoring it.”

  “They flavor it?”

  McKelvey laughed and shifted gears. “So tell me, still lookin’ for WMDs?”