KILLING MAINE by Mike Bond

Author:Mike Bond
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mandevilla Press
Published: 2015-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

“THAT WAS MITCHELL,” I say to Pa.

“Even though I never met him I feel I know him.”

“It’s like his entire life now is protecting others. So they can have what he can’t.”

“A good life.”

“To have a good life, he says, you gotta do as much good as you can.”

Pa shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s have another hit and one more drink. There’s a story I got to tell you.”

It began to rain, tinkling on the tin roof and pattering through the palms. A softness to the air, a redolence of jungle and earth. I got the drinks and rolled another one and sat back down. “You ain’t gonna eat anything, Pa?”

“How many times,” he looked at me, “you go into combat? When a fight was coming and you knew it?”

I tried to count them. Didn’t want to. “What you getting at?”

“Remember how your gut burns? You catch yourself not breathing? You notice the skin on the back of your hand and wonder if soon you’ll never see it or think again, that hand will never move again – you know all that shit –”

“So?”

“I never told you the night that changed my life. Now I’m gonna die so I’m gonna tell you.” He grimaced from the pain, trying to hide it. “Phoenix.”

“I always figured you did that. You never said.”

“It’s not what anybody wants to talk about. Not then, not now.”

If you don’t know about the Phoenix Program just Google it. Patterned on Nazi tactics used against French Resistance networks in WWII, Phoenix was run by the CIA, Seals, and Special Forces. The idea was to use torture and widespread murder to intimidate villages from backing the Viet Cong. In the Phoenix program over fifty thousand people, mostly civilians, were tortured to death or otherwise killed between ‘65 and ’72, many shot discriminately, and another thirty thousand beaten, jailed and broken.

It was revelation of their participation in this program that later caused several presidential candidates such as Nebraska’s Bob Kerrey to drop out of contention.

“We went up the Mekong into Cambodia one night,” Pa said. “Of course we weren’t supposed to be there. So we had rubber sandals, dark plain clothes, AKs, no dog tags, nothing that could be American… A local guy was going to lead us to the hut of a Viet Cong major, some liaison with the Cambodians. The idea was cut his throat, a few others, get out silently – sowing terror – the whole Phoenix deal.

“We took Swifts then transferred to two dugouts with electric motors. The local guy’s name was Rith, I remember. Means strong in Cambodian, something like that. He spoke Vietnamese too, so I translated for us. After two hours the river narrowed and there were islands in the middle. Bao dai dai, Rith whispered. Go slow.

“We pulled ashore and Rith led us up the bank along a trail beside a little paddy that was black and glittering with stars… I remember thinking how lovely it was. The village appeared out of the darkness, a dozen huts with tall thatched roofs, the smell of smoke, shit and rotten fruit, you know the deal.

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