Up Country by Nelson DeMille

war himself, saved the letter for almost thirty years, and then made an attempt to get the letter to Hanoi via the Vietnam Veterans of America.
    The letter, however, had been rerouted to Army CID Headquarters in Falls Church, Virginia, because of some sharp-eyed person at VVA, an army veteran, whose instinct would be to go to Army CID instead of the FBI. If the FBI had gotten it first, I knew, the CID would never have heard about it, and neither would I. But as it turned out, it was a CID case with FBI help, an arrangement that probably satisfied no one, myself included.
    I looked again at the typed translation, not quite ready to read it until I’d come to fully understand how this thing landed in my lap.
    And then there was the question of why I was doing this. Aside from Cynthia, there was duty, honor, country, not to mention boredom, curiosity, and a little macho posturing. In fact, my separation from active duty had not ended on just the right note, and this assignment would certainly be the final note, high or low.
    I looked at the letter and saw it was dated 8 February 1968. I read Tran Van Vinh’s words to his about-to-be deceased brother:
My beloved brother Lee,
     
    As I write this letter, which I hope finds you well and in good spirits, I lay wounded with several of my comrades in the city of Quang Tri. Do not worry, I am not badly injured, but have received some shrapnel wounds to my back and legs which I know will heal. We are being tended to by a captured doctor from the Catholic Hospital, and by medics of our own People’s Army.
    The battle for the city rages around us, and the American bombers come day and night, and their artillery falls without end. But we are safe in a deep cellar of the Buddhist high school outside the walls of the Citadel. We have food and water, and I hope to return to duty soon.
    I looked up from the letter and recalled those days around the city of Quang Tri. My battalion was to the west of the city, and we never saw any of the fighting within the city, but we did see North Vietnamese soldiers straggling out of Quang Tri, which they’d held for only a week or so before the South Vietnamese army rooted them out. The enemy began exfiltrating in small groups, trying to reach the relative safety of the hills and jungle to the west, and my battalion’s mission was to intercept them. We’d managed to find, kill, or capture some of them, but not all of them. Statistically, Tran Van Vinh’s chances of making it out of the city were small, and his chances of having survived the final seven years of the war were even smaller. And if he had survived, would he be alive almost thirty years later? Not likely, but this case already had a few miracles in the equation.
    I went back to the letter and read:
I must tell you of a strange and interesting
occurrence that I witnessed yesterday. I was lying on the second floor of a government
building within the Citadel, having been wounded by the shrapnel of an exploding artillery
shell which killed two comrades who were with me. There was a hole in the floor, and I
was looking down through the hole, hoping to see some of my comrades. At this moment, two
American soldiers entered the building. My first thought was to kill them with my rifle,
but I didn’t know how many others were close by, so I held my fire.
    These two Americans did not make a search of the building
that was half destroyed. Instead, they began talking. I could see from the rank insignia
on their helmets that one was a captain and the other a lieutenant—two officers!
What a good kill I could make! But I held my fire. I could also see that both men had the
shoulder insignia of the helicopter cavalry, who are numerous in this area, though I had
not seen them in the city before.
    As I watched, ready
to kill them if they saw me, they began to argue with each other. The lieutenant was being disrespectful of the higher ranking officer, and the captain was very angry with him.