1st Plt moved out at point, 3d Sqd, 2d 1st. The company CP followed. 2d Plt washed and drank in the stream then fell in behind the CP. 3d Plt withdrew security and came at drag. The recharge from the stream lasted only moments. They now were climbing, sweating, baking in the muggy jungle oven. They struggled up vertical banks, over vine choked boulders, under resisting bamboo clusters. Thorns tore at their arms, grasses slashed their faces. Up, slowly up the side of Hill 636. Exhaustion overtook many. Fatigue in quadraceps caused legs to buckle and they fell forward, uphill to their knees. In the dips hamstring muscles gave out and they fell back onto their rucks and onto their asses. Each time they attempted to fall quietly. Muscles twitched as they climbed, crawled, scratched their way up. At one point the trail became so steep the point squad had to cut vines and jerryrig ropes for the boonierats to pull themselves up. The point squad set security at the top of the earthen bank and had each succeeding soldier hand up his weapon. Then the man grabbed the vines and clawed at the dirt and dragged himself up only to have to continue. As each man passed the bank became barer and more slippery. Each succeeding soldier took longer, often falling back to the bottom and having to drag himself back to try again.
“Aw, fuck. I can’t do it,” Numbnuts whined after falling twice.
“Come on, Man. You can do it,” Silvers encouraged him.
“How far we gotta go?”
“I don’t know. Come on, now.”
Numbnuts tried again. Bo Denhardt pushed him from below, allowed him to step on his shoulders. Numbnuts pulled feebly at the vine, his hands stiff and weak from the heat. He held on, worked his knees up, pushed his body forward, gave up and collapsed crashing down onto Denhardt.
“You motherfucker. Get the goddamn fuck up there.”
“I can’t.”
“Goddamnit, you slimy sonofabitch. Go.”
“I can’t. Leave me here.”
“Go.”
“I gotta stop. I can’t make it.”
“What the fuck’s goin on here?” Egan came back down.
“That slimy prick’s skatin on us,” Denhardt spit.
“I can’t do it,” Numbnuts began crying. He was breathing shallow quick breaths. Doc Johnson came forward from the CP.
“I’m dyin, Doc,” Numbnuts cried pathetically, miserably. “I can’t go any farther. I gotta drop out. I got heat frustration.”
“Prostration,” Doc corrected, pursing his thick lips. He looked closely at Numbnuts. The man was covered with sweat like all of them. Doc shook his head knowing Numbnuts was physically okay. Doc stepped to Numbnuts, squatted, felt his forehead. It was wet and dirty and warm. “You’re okay,” Doc said officially to Numbnuts and to Egan. Egan grabbed Numbnuts’ ruck and scampered up the bank without a word. Numbnuts tried again. Disgust saturated the air about him. He was a slacker and Alpha Company did not condone slackers. Denhardt pushed and cussed. Silvers pulled from the top. They were not gentle. They got him up. Alpha never left a man behind.
The climb continued. They humped hard, force marched. The sun bore down as if it were a weight. They stopped for five then climbed. They stopped again. “Get that raggedyass outfit movin,” the GreenMan screamed. “Move. Get them little people.” And they moved. The peak of Hill 636 was 900 map meters west of the stream, 380 meters elevation gain. The jungle closed in tighter and tighter, vines and palms and tree branches crossed the trail at every step.
The column meandered north south east west around over under obstacles. Alpha did not cut trail, not if they could avoid cutting. The sound of a single machete slashing at the jungle could be heard for hundreds of meters. It gave away position and invited enemy ambush or an enemy mortar barrage, and Alpha was on the side of the hill where aircraft from the 2d of the 17th had spotted one hundred and fifty enemy only twenty-four hours earlier. Even in their exhaustion they were aware of danger.
The 900 meters stretched to over 2000. Most of the boonierats were young men with strong bodies. Many had been athletes in high school or college or street athletes on the block. The L-T had played basketball and Egan football. Cherry had been a swimmer and had run moto-cross. Doc had played streetball every warm day. There is a pleasure that physical men derive from using their bodies, a pleasure in achievement and a pleasure from simple hard use. By noon, halfway to the summit of 636, even the physical were exhausted.
When Numbnuts had originally been assigned to Alpha he had been an assistant gunner but he had decided it was safer to carry an M-79 because as a thumperman he would always be far behind the point, behind the front of a firefight. Thumpermen pump grenades up and over the M-60s and 16s. With a 79 one could not walk point. One could not walk slack. But M-79 rounds are heavy and Numbnuts was now carrying 58 HE and three buckshot rounds, twenty-seven pounds of ammunition. “This is kickin my ass,” he whispered to himself. “I’ll die here. I’m goina die of heat frustration.” At each stop after the incident at the steep bank, Numbnuts discarded rounds of ammunition. He hid them. Two in a small crevice, three beneath a rock, six in a cathole beneath his defecation. He bailed out anything he could, discarded over half his ammunition, and he justified it telling himself, “It’s not like I’m droppin my claymore. There aint no way I’d turn over my claymore.”
Alpha continued climbing. The sun, the hot mugginess, the tremendous exertion now produced serious casualties. Larsen Catt, Catman, squad leader 3d Sqd, 2d Plt, collapsed hot, dry and twitching. Bowerman in 3d Plt, dizzy and disoriented, vomited uncontrollably. Even Egan, hardass Egan, found he was barely sweating. His burnt lips and skin were dry and cracking and bleeding. Cahalan, in the CP, retched. Still they moved. Six men collapsed. No one, not even the strongest, was immune.
Doc Johnson grabbed the L-T. He had treated three of the heat victims and he had consulted with the platoon medics via radio about the others. “We stoppin, Mista. That is it. You tell that mothafucka in that Charlie-Charlie bird fuck hisself. Let him come down here an hump. I says we stop.” And they stopped. With the point less than 50 vertical meters from the summit of 636, they stopped and hid from the sun.
During the hump that took Alpha to the side of 636 Bravo, Charlie and Recon all made contact with elements of the North Vietnamese force. At 0715 Bravo, while following blood trails left from their night-long battle, sighted, engaged and killed eight North Vietnamese soldiers. They had been working west parallel to Alpha, toward the valley. At 1030 hours Recon, moving toward Hill 848 from the north, was ambushed. Their Vietnamese scout was wounded. At 1100 hours one platoon of Charlie Company was extracted from the south escarpment ridge and was re-inserted on the valley floor 1800 meters due west of the knoll with the high tree. The insertion LZ was hot. Two GIs were wounded and medevacked. One NVA soldier was killed and one wounded and captured. The NVA evidently did not plan to evacuate the Khe Ta Laou without a fight.
When Alpha stopped the column was stretched out over 250 meters. Slowly the L-T and the platoon leaders and platoon sergeants and the boonierats themselves reorganized the sprawling ranks. The less weary soldiers were sent off to the sides as LPs and OPs. The exhausted were allowed to collapse and rest and eat. All drank heavily, replenishing their bodily fluids. Stragglers from the front platoons who had fallen back stumbled forward, back to their proper order. Silvers had given Jackson responsibility for Numbnuts and long after the column was settled Jackson was still struggling to get Numbnuts back to their squad.
“Cocksuckin cocksuck fuck chuck dude,” Jax complained after depositing his limp charge. “I’s had it. I’s had it with Mista Rude. Tell Jew-boy tell Mista Jewd, Jackson’s fuckin up that dude. Sucka’s crude.” Jax hunted up Doc Johnson. “Over heah, Black,” Jax whispered to the medic.
“What’s happenin, Bro?” Doc greeted Jax with an abbreviated field dap.
“It is oh-vah. It is oh-vah. I am no babysit-tar. I am callin this done. Throw down yo gun.” Jax spoke frantically accentuating the rhyme, punctuating the beats with flailing hands and swinging M-16.
; “Whatsamatta?” Doc asked in one word.
“We have suffered. Our people suffer. Vietnam is jest a buffer. It keep minds off revolution. But bet yo ass, Jax got the solution. They killin Brothas one two three, they gowin kill yo, they gowin kill me. Whut fo Mista Black, fo a whiteman’s money sack.”
Doc was taken aback. He had been a million miles from Jax’ thoughts. When Jax found him, Doc was checking his big black bag, counting his camouflaged field dressings and syringes of morphine, checking his supply of anti-malaria pills and checking all the other paraphernalia he had carefully packed, packed as always in the identical location in the aid bag. Doc counted his supplies by feel. If he needed the bag in the dark he was prepared. “Slow down,” Doc said sizing Jax up. “Now, whatsamatta?”
“Does yo realize,” Jax’ eyes were sizzling mad, “does yo realize whut we dowin. We sup-portin a regime. We sup-portin a gov’ment that murders. We dowin the murderin heah fo whitey so he ken do the murderin of our people there.”
“Jax, you aint makin no sense.”
“It is time fo the revolution. It is at hand. Join me, my brotha, join my stand.”
“Gainst who?” Doc whispered harshly.
“Gainst the fucka runnin this machine.”
“Gainst the L-T? He a Brotha.”
“No fuckin way. Doan feed me no shit. He a puppetman. He part a it. Dat man a Oreo. Yo got whut I mean. He killin Black men, that we all seen.”
“Man,” Doc said scrutinizing Jax, “has your brain got fried. Come here.” Doc grabbed Jax and felt his skin. It was dry. Doc broke out his own canteen and splashed Jax in the face then ordered, “Drink.”
“Yo doan understand,” Jax said suspiciously. “Yo becomin one a them. They killin my Pap. They gowin kill me. I am droppin out. Doan yo see? It oh-vah. Why should I waste my time fuckin with a dink? This jest stink.” Jax huffed, pulled out his hair pick and rammed it into his scalp, then added, “It’s time ta git oh-vah on the machine. I’s down Doc, I’s real low. Tell em I’s crazy. Send me in, Bro.”
“You know,” Doc said very slowly, rubbing his chin, “a long time ago I met a man stopped me from hustlin. Convinced me ta get off the street. Taught me stuff. Told me ta get my shit inta a tight little ball. I been down. I been all the way down. Aint nothin there. A man taught me how ta get up. Thas where I at. Man taught me ya can’t get oh-vah on nothin.”
“What man teach yo that?”
“Bad man, Bro. Baaaad. Man named Mista Jungle.”
CHAPTER 21
Whiteboy was alone on OP when he heard digging. He had concealed himself beneath a bush on a small rise, south, above the exhausted column on the trail. He glanced behind him, down, back toward the column. The sound was faint. It stopped. He looked forward. The digging began again. Whiteboy poked his head out. The sound persisted. The usual jungle sounds of helicopters and artillery masked the faint scraping. He was not certain he heard digging noises at all yet he was sure someone was digging very near him. He felt it. He looked to his right. He sat very still. The sound ceased. He looked forward. It began once more. He looked down, between his legs, under his ass. It felt as if someone were digging beneath him. He turned again, he massaged the warm metal of Lit’le Boy’s trigger mechanism. The sound stopped. He did not have the faintest idea what he was hearing. He relaxed. The sound became louder, nearer.
“Ssssst.” Whiteboy tried to get somebody’s attention. No one responded. “SSSSST,” he hissed loudly aiming his signal toward the column. Still no one responded.
In the column fifteen meters below Whiteboy, Frye and Harley were lounging back intensely studying the exposed curves of a recent Playboy centerfold. “Goddamn,” Frye sighed holding the page lengthwise, “I’d crawl through a klick a claymores pushin my ruck with my nose just ta hear her fart over the Monster net.”
Harley drooled at Frye’s shoulder. “Man, Cookie,” he whistled, “I’d go two klicks.”
“SSSSSTTT!” Whiteboy near screamed. He slipped away from his post and came charging down toward the column. “Gawd A’mighty Sweet Jesus,” Whiteboy raged at Frye and Harley, “you aint got enough brains ta plug up an ant’s ass. Caint you hear me? Go git Egan.” Whiteboy spun around and charged back up the hill. As he approached his OP he slowed. He moved Lit’le Boy’s selector from safe to fire. He walked around the position cautiously, curiously. There was a four-inch diameter hole where he had been sitting.
Egan, El Paso, the L-T, Cherry and Cahalan were sitting clustered together in a shadow cave of palm fans topped by a tall vine-clogged tree. They monitored the radios. “That shouldn’ta happened, Man,” El Paso moaned to Egan. “It shouldn’ta happened. Somebody fucked up.”
“It’s always somebody fucked up,” Cahalan said quickly, sadly. There was anger in his voice, slight, but there. He was a man who seldom showed emotion. Those that knew him, El Paso, Egan, the L-T, they could feel it. To Cherry it was undetectable. “You guys always say that. It’s not somebody fucked up. It’s this place is fucked.”
“It’s BULLSHIT!” Egan snapped. He was pissed. “It’s bullshit. Them mothafuckin dinks are bullshit. Wastin Escalato. Wastin him like that. We’ll get em. Mothafuck. Sure as I’m sittin here, we are goina get them fuckin dinks.”
Brooks was very quiet. He did not want to talk. All the old-timers knew Escalato. El Paso recalled with a sad smile, “Fucker was always smilin.” El Paso shook his head. “Dumb fucker always had a good word for everybody.” Escalato and El Paso had been closest friends outside their companies. Both were chicanos from the southwest. Both had become their company’s senior RTO. On operations where Alpha and Bravo had maneuvered together the two RTOs radioed back and forth in Spanish. They loved to do that. If the NVA were monitoring them the likelihood of being interpreted was significantly less. Besides, the colonel didn’t understand a word of Spanish and they could speak without fear of reprisal. After a pause El Paso moaned and shook his head again, “Oh Man,” he said. He threw an empty C-rat tin into the brush. “He was too good. That should never a happened.”
Egan picked at the spreading sun sores and jungle rot on his arm. He was filled with indignation and hate and he wanted action. He wanted to be moving.
Cherry was between Egan and the L-T. “What’s that matter,” he whispered flatly to Egan. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t you know, ‘War is good. It’s wonderful.’”
Egan looked at him in blank disgust. Egan rolled his tongue and jaw then spat a stream of thick saliva and C-rat juice which hit Cherry in the chin. He stared into Cherry’s face waiting for Cherry to move, to swing.
“I’m sorry,” Cherry whispered. “I guess that was a low shot. Ah, ya know, I didn’t know Escalato.”
“Aaaah, fuckit. Don’t mean nothin.” Egan jerked up quickly and walked off.
“War,” Brooks said after another pause. “War.” He was tapping his fingers on the ground. “It is important to understand how war occurs if mankind is going to avoid it in the future. If we are going to avoid having our Escalatos blown away …”
“Hey! Where’s Egan?” Harley interrupted. It had taken him six or seven minutes to find the CP. Brooks motioned with his thumb down the trail. “Whiteboy found somethin, I think,” Harley smiled.
By the time the L-T, Egan and the others reached Whiteboy the opening in the earth had increased to a foot around. Whiteboy was squatting ten feet from the crumbling edge. He held Lit’le Boy in one hand aimed at the hole and a frag in the other. As the group arrived Whiteboy held up the frag hand to slow their approach. Then he pointed to the hole.
“Whatcha got?” Harley whispered.
“What took ya so fucken long?” Whiteboy whispered back. Ignoring the others he turned to the L-T and Egan, shook his head in disbelief and said, “It just keeps a gittin bigger. Ah heard this diggin. Gawd A’mighty. Ah run down en git Harley. Tell him ta git Egan, an it sure does take that man some time.”
They all stared at the hole. The edge continued crumbling. “You frag it ye
t?” Egan gleamed. Whiteboy shrugged and shook his head. “Get security out,” Egan directed. He grabbed Whiteboy’s hand grenade, straightened the pin and clutched his hand about the tiny steel bomb. A smile came to his face. He looked at the L-T. Brooks nodded. Egan knelt and crawled quickly toward the hole. Two feet away he stopped. He could see into the hole only a yard. He lay flat, extended his arm, released the grenade spoon, counted one-two, dropped the grenade into the hole and chuckled, “Catch.” The others backed up several steps and squatted. Egan rolled to his right and stayed down. From very deep there came a muffled explosion. Egan reached into an ammo pouch on his belt, removed another grenade, straightened the pin. Then he rolled to the hole. He stuck his head over the opening then quickly snapped it back. He had not seen anything significant. Gradually he edged back over the opening and peered in. He saw nothing except the dirt insides of the shaft. He could not see the bottom. The shaft was about two feet in diameter and it dropped down, out of sight, at a 30° or 40° angle. Egan dropped the second grenade into the tunnel, this time staying over the opening for several seconds, listening to the bomb fall, before spinning away.
“Hey. We got somethin here,” Egan said getting up after the second explosion. “That fucker’s deep. I think we found the opening to a tunnel complex.”
“Well, check it out,” El Paso grinned. He walked over and inspected the hole. “This looks like the one we found by Maureen in July.”
“This one’s deep, Man,” Egan assured him. “We gotta get inta this. Nice work, Whiteboy. We gotta open this up.”
Little by little Alpha moved all its attention to what became known amongst them as Whiteboy’s Hole. Brooks directed De Barti and 2d Plt to climb up past 1st Plt and spread out in a wide perimeter. He had 1st Plt expand the perimeter south of Whiteboy’s Hole and he had 3d move up and seal off the downhill.
“Red Rover, Red Rover,” Brooks called the GreenMan. He had a controllable urge to say ‘Red Rover, Red Rover, let the GreenMan come over.’ He chuckled to himself.
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