Conspiracy

114

Jason Richards had been a corporal in Vietnam at the time Sergeant Tolong had been killed, and was a member of the unit sent out to locate and recover the body. More than thirty-five years had passed, but his anger and frustration were still so palpable that Hernes Jackson had to hold his phone away from his ear as Richards recounted what had happened that day.

“We should’ve gone out right away. That was the first screwup,” said Richards. An air-conditioning installer, Richards had just come home for dinner when Jackson tracked him down by phone in Oklahoma. “They kept us at the base three or four days while they figured out what to do.”

“Was that normal?” asked Jackson.

“What the hell was normal?” Richards took a sip of something — beer, Jackson guessed. “But waiting three or four days — wasn’t a good thing, right?”

“Unless there was a reason.”

“No reason except incompetence, general incompetence.” Richards had more complaints about the mission, which was led by a nugget

lieutenant—“the newest one at the

base.” The intelligence was terrible, they were airlifted fifteen miles from where the grave was supposed to be, and the man who’d buried Tolong wasn’t with them.

“Wasn’t he hurt, too?” asked Jackson.

“Nah. He came through without a scratch. Maybe he lost his nerve. He was in Da Nang — he could have come out with us easy. From what I heard, he just sat in a bunker for the next month, until it was time for him to rotate back to the States.”

“Do you remember his name?”

“Nah. Wait. Maybe Gordy or something.”

“Gordon?”

“Yeah, something like that.”

“Reginald Gordon?” asked Jackson.

“Maybe. Reggie? I don’t know. Gordy, though. Definitely. How the hell do you leave your buddy? How do you do that?”

Richards continued to lace away at the mission, which was eventually cut short by a VC ambush. According to Richards, the ambush consisted of a few rounds in the distance; as soon as the lieutenant heard them, he called for an evacuation.

“Worst operation I was ever on in the Marines,” said Richards. “Maybe the Army did crap that way, but we didn’t.

And you know who I blame? Captain Gideon McSweeney.

He sent us out. He handpicked that sucker of a lieutenant and got the worst guys to go. It was his fault. You know who he is, right?”

“Senator McSweeney?”

“That’s right. Running for President. He screwed up when he picked the mission.”

“Was McSweeney a poor leader?” asked Jackson.

“No. Actually, he was pretty damn good. Usually, he was.

I’ll vote for him. I heard a lot of good stories about him, especially when he was a lieutenant. Had balls. But this time, I don’t know. He didn’t even push it when we came back empty-handed. To a man, we would have gone back out in the field. We were proud to be Marines, you know what I’m saying? We were proud. And we did a crap job here.”

“So he didn’t push?”

“No. I mean, probably there was a col o

nel above him

telling him to lay off and everything, but Tolong was one of his guys. He should’ve. You want to believe that your CO is going to come for you; you know what I mean? If he’s a Marine, he ought to.”

“How well did you know Tolong?” asked Jackson.

“I didn’t. This is just stuff I heard about him. You know, they’d been around, those guys. I was what, maybe ten days in-country? I’d just gotten there.”

“Were Tolong and McSweeney friends?”

“Friends? I don’t know, but I kind of doubt it, you know?

Even then, especially then, officers and enlisted, they didn’t really mix in a friend kind of way. Sometimes. But Tolong was in the villages program,” added Richards, using a slang term for the combined pacification program Jackson had come across earlier. “And McSweeney ran the Corps part of it.

From what I know, Tolong was a troubleshooter. The guy was pretty amazing — he’d been a sniper, but he was better than most of those guys. They used him to assassinate people.”

“That’s not in his personnel records.” Richards laughed, and took a long swig of what ever he was drinking. “There’s gonna be a lot of stuff missing from those records, Mr. Jackson, if you know what I mean.”