Scent of Death

By Bob N. Maki

The 'Scent of Death' take the reader down a trail of compassion, intrigue and suspense while a young Viet Nam veteran attempts to piece together his shattered body and soul. While in 'Nam' he meets and falls in love with a beautiful young woman who emerges from the horror of war and, as quickly fades away, as he is transported stateside with severe injuries. She mysteriously finds her way to his hometown in the midst of his recovery and becomes a player in a strange story of murder and suspense. The story is entirely set in Maki's home city of Gardner, Massachusetts, once dubbed as the 'Chair City of the World'. Those famaliar with the city will relate to many of the scenes and some of the people.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 29, 2004
• ISBN: 9781469111261

Bob N. Maki

The author, Bob N. Maki is a Professional Engineer who, following his retirement from Federal Service in 1994, has authored two previous novels of public acclaim, 'The Briefcase', which is the stirring local story of two college friends in Boston who find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time, and 'The Sea's Lament', an exciting historical 'tour de force' spanning a millenium, from the Viking era to the present day. He presently works as a Conservation Agent for several towns in north central Massachusetts, enjoys people, playing golf, keeping his fingers nimble on his piano and his lip in shape on his saxophone.

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SCENT OF DEATH

Bob N. Maki

Copyright © 2004 by Bob N. Maki.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

This novel is dedicated to veterans everywhere who served

‘in harms way’.

PROLOGUE

Some lie in resting places all over the world from Flander’s Field to Arlington National. Many lie in unmarked graves throughout the world … and others walk amongst us.

We pass them every day on the streets we walk. Some are the successful, some the homeless, but they are all the brave.

Few remain who fought in World War I, and within a few years they and their comrades at arms who fought in World War II will also be at rest … and their stories will go with them.

But many veterans who have temporarily unlocked the darkest chambers of their minds are now telling their stories in forums around their communities. They do so not for glory and praise. Their pain, sorrow and repressed fear is written on their faces as they recount their experiences to those who have never fought in a war. They tell their stories to younger generations in hopes of avoiding future wars.

The veterans of the World Wars came home to a hero’s welcome, to a country steeped in unending streams of admiration for those who sacrificed life and limbs to vanquish enemies that were approaching our shores.

The home front had also fought the wars. Women were readily and efficiently doing jobs that men had previously done. There were posters showing Rosey the Riveter. I remember the blackouts, food stamps and material drives. I sadly remember the stars hanging in the windows of my neighbors and the War Bond drives hosted by movie stars. As a youngster, I remember that my metal toy soldiers were now made from plastic.

As an eight year old boy I will never forget the unending parades of returning World War II veterans, the ceremonies, the patriotic songs and school pageants dedicated to the war effort. I will never forget how sad I was for those families of the men and women who never returned, and how proud I was of those who did. I didn’t realize it then, but many had given away four and five productive years of their lives, but nobody complained because they had fought alongside compatriots who had made the supreme sacrifice.

And what of Korea? Korea followed on the heels of World War

II. Our war machines had cooled only slightly. Many of our veterans, the same veterans who had been adoringly received, were ordered back, not to a war, but to a conflict. Should it have been a surprise to learn that they were injured and killed as easily as if it had been called a war? In fact, it was a war, and no one would ever tell them differently.

I was fourteen and just starting high school when the Korean War began to escalate, and although I had then entered my own anal adolescent world, I don’t vividly remember the veterans returning. The movies of the war were entertaining, and I knew that Ted Williams was over there, but that was it.

The prenamed ‘Conflict’ seemed to be all about facing overwhelming forces, slogging through the mud, and fighting air battles with Sabre jets. I had one hanging from my bedroom ceiling.

In the end we drew a line called the 38th Parallel through the dieing fields and mountains, and I didn’t know until years later that the living did return, because I met them in college. They said nothing of their experiences. They were merely the best students in the class.

As soon as I graduated I became what was called ‘draft bait’. I joined a Reserve Army Infantry Unit. At Fort Dix in 1961 my D.I.’s were just a few years out of the Korean War. They knew what war was all about, and they weren’t about to let us get soft on how to soldier. They kicked our asses through A.I.T. and field games with the famed 82nd Airborne.

I had just two weeks to go in my active duty commitment when President Kennedy gave us a little scare … he put us on alert. It was the spring of 1961. We had been reading of trouble in Cambodia and Viet Nam and we were sure that’s where we were headed. Two weeks to go and the dice came up ‘craps’.

We got our gear together and sweated it out. I remember thinking that I had a great squad and if we had to go, I couldn’t have picked a better bunch of guys, but we were also hoping that our cadre was going with us.

We had all developed strong friendships going through training, the kind of friendships that, for obvious reasons, were not fostered in Nam. I will never forget one person in particular. His name was Tibor, and he was Hungarian. In fact he had been a Hungarian Freedom Fighter who had chucked a few ‘Molotof Cocktails’ at some Russian tanks in Budapest a few years earlier. He was a sweet guy with an efflorescent personality. He had actually joined the Regular Army to gain his citizenship. I often wondered what became of him because he was destined to go to Germany and was more than a little worried because his name was on a few KGB lists.

Well, to make a long story short, the alert was all about the ‘Bay of Pigs’ fiasco. Not only didn’t we go, but those Cuban patriots who had been almost assured of victory never got the air support they needed, and lost their bid to democratize Cuba. Those who didn’t die were captured, and in the end it cost the United States a small fortune in ransom money to get them released.

Which gets me to another fiasco called Viet Nam, which I did participate in, to the degree that I was employed as a Naval Architect with responsibility for the repair and design of U.S. Navy ships. I was lucky not to have gotten any closer, because there were thousands of men and women who did, and many never came back.

Oh, the veterans that did come back will never forget this one, because they didn’t come back to cheers and parades, or even the apathetic crowds following the Korean War. No, they came back to get spit upon. Yes, there were those who had been drafted, those who had a real patriotic bent and idealistic values, others who had wanted to make it a career, and some who had just wanted to see what it was like.

They came. They saw. Some even won a few meaningless battles, but they all got lost in an unwinable war … and many lost their lives, their limbs, and their souls. And when they returned … they were spit upon.

This is the fictitious story of one of those men.

CHAPTER ONE

It had been a tough hump to the top of the ridge, and his exhausted men had just dropped their gear into what was to have been a secure area. They had met with little resistance on the way up, and Bravo Company had reported sweeping the ridge clean several hours before.

He remembered his point man running back toward him, and he must have hit a trip wire as a Bouncing Betty jumped up twenty meters away, chewing up half of First Squad. It was then that all hell broke loose. The blast had fixed their position, and the Viet Cong began raining everything down on them from behind a nearby hill.

Give me that goddamn radio, Corporal, and set those fucking eighty-ones up in that draw down there before we get annihilated! I’m gonna call in a fire mission, but don’t wait on it! Get those tubes pointed over there at that smoke … and get Doc over there to help those guys out!

He dug his map out from inside his helmet. Hello! Hello! Big Brother! This is Fourth Platoon, Charlie Company! We’re having a meat sale over here, and the meat is us. I need fire support on Hill 125! Negative! Behind 125 … coordinates 054301 …

The blast shook him out his makeshift birch-tree-framed rack in a fog, his troubled mind still in Nam. He wiped the perspiration from his forehead and looked at the Timex Janey had given to him before he left.

He inhaled deeply. Clean, fresh air permeated his brain, not the gagging smells of heat and death he had tasted for those miserable months in Nam.

Jesus Christ, it’s midnight! Time to get my ass in gear! Saddle up! Gotta hump a click to the east. Good thing I slept in my gear. Where’s those night vision binos? Got my sacks, my scoop, my light. Strap old ‘Betsy’ on. There!

He slipped through the logs and vines, comprising the camouflaged entrance to his side hill hooch into a dimly lit, quarter-moon night.

If I run into any gooks tonight, the slimy bastards are gonna be dead meat, he thought, as he carefully crawled up the side of the hill on his belly.

It was quiet … deathly quiet. Another few hundred yards and he would see them, but it wouldn’t be easy. Nothing in life ever was.

"At least I shouldn’t run into any of those fucking bamboo stalks or them steel wire vines. Never mind what you won’t run into. Keep a sharp eye out for them trip wires, or you might find yourself flyin’ through the air, looking for you nuts.

A few more meters, and I should see one. Yeah! There it is! Who would ever think of doing this at night? Beats being seen by the VC. Tried that … never again. Gave me the boot. Can’t have anyone gettin’ nosey.

He picked it up. Damn! Another Top Flite. Someone had to hook it bad to get it here. Most Top Flite hitters are ‘faders’. He threw it in one of his bags and quickly and quietly moved through the brush.

It was two in the morning when his bags were getting heavy. Shit! I used to hump a load ten times as heavy, five or six clicks a night, he mumbled to himself.

That’s when he heard it. Someone scrapping the ground with a metal object … like a shovel. He shut off his light, dropped, and began crawling toward the source of the sound.

There was a grove of scrub oak between the eleventh fairway and the lake, interspersed with small birches. A heavyset figure was digging. Every few shovelfuls, he would stop, listen, and wipe his brow. He had apparently been there for quite a while because the hole he was digging was waist deep, and the throw was getting more difficult for him. He staggered slightly as he dug. Not too far from the pile of excavated rock and gravel lay a bag of some kind.

"Son of a bitch! It’s a fucking body bag for sure. Saw plenty of them in Nam. Poor bastard probably got fragged. That’s why this guy is so secretive. I’ll just stay low. Make sure no VC sneak up on him.

"He sure looks familiar. Seen him out here before. Big wig of some kind. Always rides one of those ridiculous carts. Looks like he could benefit from a good twenty-click hump. Naah … wouldn’t make it. Look at that fat bastard sweat!

"I could pick him off with my night scope right here. Just like I did them NVA pricks that night outside Pleiku. What a fucking turkey shoot that was. Never knew what hit ‘em.

"Got his temple right in my cross-hairs. Take a breath. Squeeze it out. Bam! Lucky thing for him this ball scoop don’t shoot.

"Hey! He’s draggin’ that sack over to the hole. Doesn’t look all that big. Must have been a short guy. Almost put me in one of those things till I snapped out of it. Dammit! Look at me! I made it, didn’t I? Did my best. Lucky just to lose my fucking leg, and my head’s gettin’ better … I think. Lucky to get outta that inane campaign with anything left.

Last thing I remember was waking up on that ‘huey’ feeling—the pain from a leg that wasn’t there anymore. Lying there with a stinkin’ body bag on each side of me. Wondering if I was dead or alive. Sure did like those drugs. Maybe I can make a score when I get back to Beantown this winter. No way, man, you’ve been straight for a long time now.

Former sergeant Brad Winters had had a good summer, selling golf balls and cashing in on returnables found at the exclusive Gardner Country Club, where he had played to a six handicap only a few years before … before Nam, that is.

His leg had not been the only thing he had lost in Vietnam. He had also lost a piece of his mind. Six months of rehab at the VA hospital in Brockton had partially solved his leg problem, with a prosthesis affectionately named Betsy. Psychological counseling had been another matter.

The Winterses were a very prominent family in greater Gardner area, and his family had been very annoyed when their eldest son had dropped out of Brown University to become an idealistic fighter for the liberation and democratization of Vietnam. His father had virtually disowned him, and when he returned home missing his leg, he had received no consolation, only scorn. The same scorn that he and his returning comrades had been greeted with when they landed back in the United States.

He had gotten the message quickly and dropped out of his father’s miserable, capitalist society, in spite of support from his mother and sister. His family had no idea where he had gone after his release from the hospital.

If Dad only knew that I was out here shagging balls, beer cans, and bottles on his precious golf course, he have a bird, he thought. I might have been president of his grandiose company by now, instead of my sister, Janey. She was slightly closer to his personality, but not much.

He had always had his mother’s gentle demeanor, but her imposed social demands had uncovered an addictive personality, and she had spent the past ten years in and out of various treatment facilities. They could never seem to understand the hidden depression that spawned her drinking, but Brad knew … knew that it had been fueled by his father’s despotic personality.

"Hey! That fat old grunt is down a couple of meters, and he’s in the hole draggin’ the bag down with him.

"Holy shit! It knocked him over, must be on top of him. The poor bastard must be pinned. Oh … this is great! What next?

"Yeah, there he is. He’s up. Must have been scared shitless. Seems to be rubbing the back of his head. Now, he’s trying to climb out and can’t get his footing. This is definitely a bad night for Bozo, but probably a worse night for whoever was in that body bag. This is ridiculous. I gotta complete my mission. There’s balls and cans just waiting for me. I’ll