Read Online Dragon Lady by Gary Alexander - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Gary Alexander
Tags: Historical
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Zig?”
“Their attitude’s probly we oughta be minding our own beeswax. Can’t blame ’em.”
I completed my calculation on paper, verifying the 3,959,970.
“No. No you certainly can’t blame them.”
He reburied himself in his magazine and said, “Don’t blame me for the shitstorm when it comes.”
“No. No I won’t.”
Ziggy had told me about the reformatory he’d been in. There’d been a disturbance. A hack had caved in the side of Ziggy’s skull with a Louisville Slugger. Ziggy boasted that he’d bounced off cell bars and dropped to a knee, but hadn’t gone down for the count. They’d put a metal plate in his noggin. Maybe or maybe not exaggerating, he said it was the size of a playing card. I would not rule him out as a walking extraterrestrial antenna, making radio contact with those Martians of his.
Our gecko was parked on the other side of the ceiling.
I reached for a book. The Tan Son Nhat library carried a fine selection, and they were accumulating in our cubbyhole, piling against and under my bed as if a berm, most overdue. Some had acquired a patina of dust.
They were an eclectic mix of esoteric subjects. None was on a waiting list. But let me be five minutes tardy with best-sellers like Kiss Me Deadly or Peyton Place, and the library Gestapo would be on me like a bad smell.
I’d been on a history jag lately, unable to get my fill. My current page-turner was on the French Indochina War (1946-1954), when the Vietnamese commies were called the Vietminh.
Once upon a time, back in 1954, the French got sick and tired of the Vietminh’s hit-and-run tactics. The war was going on and on, ever since the end of World War Two, a drain on France ’s manpower and budget. The Frogs were fidgety on the home front, anxious for results, so they laid a trap.
They set up a sprawling base at the floor of a valley out in the boonies by the Laos border, at a village named Dien Bien Phu. The valley was surrounded by forested hills. Taking the low ground was a warfare no-no, but there was no way the Vietminh could hump artillery up to the tops of those hills. The plan had been to lure the Vietminh out to engage in a conventional battle, to fight like men, a fair fight instead of sneaking in and out of the jungle like sissies. They’d slaughter the little guys.
I paged to the photograph plates. The Vietminh were building trails up the hills. They’d disassembled the heaviest guns and hauled them up piece by piece, foot by foot. A hundred men might tug a single cannon barrel along by ropes. They were like ants. They were patient and well camouflaged and team-oriented.
They attacked the French when they were ready to.
I was at the part in the book where the Vietminh were marching French troops from Dien Bien Phu to a prison camp. I read a few more pages, had a pull of Johnny Red, and stretched out. I couldn’t sleep. I got up and told Ziggy I was going out. He was too absorbed in his reading to even grunt.
Saigon streets were even more chaotic at night. City policemen dressed in white. We knew them as White Mice. They stood on intersection kiosks, signaling and whistling, risking their hides directing traffic. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. Cyclos, motorcyclos, scooters, military and civilian vehicles, pedestrians and the ubiquitous cream-and-blue Renault taxis went as they would, from Point A to Point B.
Le Loi Boulevard , the Street of Flowers, perpendicular to Tu Do, had the goods I sought. I walked into a Monet garden and a perfumery rolled into one. I picked this and that individual flower, making a rainbow of petals. I stopped when funds ran perilously low and rode a taxi to Mai and her sister’s.
The farther I walked in from the main drag, the darker and quieter it was. For all I knew I’d be walking into the weekly meeting of the local Vietcong Benevolent Society. The night throughout the land did belong to the Reds.
Nobody bothered me in the pitch blackness. A butter
“Their attitude’s probly we oughta be minding our own beeswax. Can’t blame ’em.”
I completed my calculation on paper, verifying the 3,959,970.
“No. No you certainly can’t blame them.”
He reburied himself in his magazine and said, “Don’t blame me for the shitstorm when it comes.”
“No. No I won’t.”
Ziggy had told me about the reformatory he’d been in. There’d been a disturbance. A hack had caved in the side of Ziggy’s skull with a Louisville Slugger. Ziggy boasted that he’d bounced off cell bars and dropped to a knee, but hadn’t gone down for the count. They’d put a metal plate in his noggin. Maybe or maybe not exaggerating, he said it was the size of a playing card. I would not rule him out as a walking extraterrestrial antenna, making radio contact with those Martians of his.
Our gecko was parked on the other side of the ceiling.
I reached for a book. The Tan Son Nhat library carried a fine selection, and they were accumulating in our cubbyhole, piling against and under my bed as if a berm, most overdue. Some had acquired a patina of dust.
They were an eclectic mix of esoteric subjects. None was on a waiting list. But let me be five minutes tardy with best-sellers like Kiss Me Deadly or Peyton Place, and the library Gestapo would be on me like a bad smell.
I’d been on a history jag lately, unable to get my fill. My current page-turner was on the French Indochina War (1946-1954), when the Vietnamese commies were called the Vietminh.
Once upon a time, back in 1954, the French got sick and tired of the Vietminh’s hit-and-run tactics. The war was going on and on, ever since the end of World War Two, a drain on France ’s manpower and budget. The Frogs were fidgety on the home front, anxious for results, so they laid a trap.
They set up a sprawling base at the floor of a valley out in the boonies by the Laos border, at a village named Dien Bien Phu. The valley was surrounded by forested hills. Taking the low ground was a warfare no-no, but there was no way the Vietminh could hump artillery up to the tops of those hills. The plan had been to lure the Vietminh out to engage in a conventional battle, to fight like men, a fair fight instead of sneaking in and out of the jungle like sissies. They’d slaughter the little guys.
I paged to the photograph plates. The Vietminh were building trails up the hills. They’d disassembled the heaviest guns and hauled them up piece by piece, foot by foot. A hundred men might tug a single cannon barrel along by ropes. They were like ants. They were patient and well camouflaged and team-oriented.
They attacked the French when they were ready to.
I was at the part in the book where the Vietminh were marching French troops from Dien Bien Phu to a prison camp. I read a few more pages, had a pull of Johnny Red, and stretched out. I couldn’t sleep. I got up and told Ziggy I was going out. He was too absorbed in his reading to even grunt.
Saigon streets were even more chaotic at night. City policemen dressed in white. We knew them as White Mice. They stood on intersection kiosks, signaling and whistling, risking their hides directing traffic. Nobody paid them the slightest attention. Cyclos, motorcyclos, scooters, military and civilian vehicles, pedestrians and the ubiquitous cream-and-blue Renault taxis went as they would, from Point A to Point B.
Le Loi Boulevard , the Street of Flowers, perpendicular to Tu Do, had the goods I sought. I walked into a Monet garden and a perfumery rolled into one. I picked this and that individual flower, making a rainbow of petals. I stopped when funds ran perilously low and rode a taxi to Mai and her sister’s.
The farther I walked in from the main drag, the darker and quieter it was. For all I knew I’d be walking into the weekly meeting of the local Vietcong Benevolent Society. The night throughout the land did belong to the Reds.
Nobody bothered me in the pitch blackness. A butter
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