Apocalypse Now Page #4

CAPTAIN:

I didn't know we had units up

there in North Vietnam.

WILLARD:

We do.

CAPTAIN:

How long were you up there ?

WILLARD:

A long time.

CAPTAIN:

A year ? Waiter another beer.

WILLARD:

I go up on missions. Listen

Captain, buy me all the beer

you want, but you better tell

that a**hole over there you're

not going to find out anymore

about me.

Willard glances over his shoulder and indicates the

Civilian. The Civilian is given a sign by the Captain.

He rises and comes over to the bar.

WILLARD:

(continuing)

What do you want ?

CIVILIAN:

(indicating the Army jeep)

If you're B.L. Willard, 4th Recon

Group, we'd like you to come with

us.

WILLARD:

Whose orders ?

CAPTAIN:

Headquarters 11 Corps -- 405th

A.S.A Battalion -- S-2 --

Com-Sec -- Intelligence --

Nha Trang.

WILLARD:

Who are you ?

CIVILIAN:

The agency.

Willard looks at the Civilian a moment, and then walks

roght out toward the jeep without saying another word.

The Civilian follows.

8 EXT. HELICOPTER - DUSK

A darkly painted "HUEY" ROARS over low paddies and jungle

before emerging onto an open plain. It crosses a barbed

wire and sand-bagged perimeter and lands in a heavily

fortified, concealed compound.

WILLARD (V.O.)

They took me to some place outside

Nha Trang... Intelligence Headquarters

for all operations in South East Asia.

I'd worked for Intelligence before --

Armed men jump from the Huey -- among them Willard. A

large camouflaged cover is moved, revealing an underground

corridor -- they enter.

9 FULL SHOT - UNDERGROUND PLOTTING ROOM

A door swings wide -- Willard steps through and comes to

attention, blocking the view of the room. A strange

reddish light pervades. The room is covered with plastic

maps and filled with smoke.

The whole place has been hewn out of the ground itself

and there is a sense of the cut-back jungle growth slowly

reclaiming it.

WILLARD:

Captain B.L. Willard, G-4 Headquarters,

reporting as ordered, sir.

COLONEL (O.S.)

Okay, Willard, sit down.

Willard sits in a chair that is set in a center of a

bare concrete floor. Across from him, around steel desks

and tables sit several men. The nearest one, a COLONEL

puts his cigar out on the bottom of his shoe -- behind

him sits a MAJOR and a seedy-looking CIVILIAN.

COLONEL:

Have you ever seen this officer

before, Captain Willard ?

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