“You got it,” Egan answered.
“And his bayonet.”
“Take it.”
Numbnuts let Cherry and Egan leave the ruck before he went over and scavenged all C-rat meals that were not Ham and Lima Beans. Denhardt scavenged Brunak’s ruck.
It was after sunset, late dusk, when the medical evacuation helicopter finally found Alpha. The thick mist prevented the Dust-Off commander from seeing marking smoke and it was not dark enough to use the mini-strobes. The birds even had difficulty finding the valley for all of northern I Corps lay in thick fog and rain. The Dust-Off had first to locate Barnett, then follow a vector path 268°, almost due west.
Cherry directed the bird’s approach by ear. “You’re passing to our sierra maybe two hundred meters,” he called. Then again, “You’re approaching us. You’re passing over us right, right … now.”
The helicopter made a half-dozen passes, at first so high it could not be seen through the fog, then lower and lower. Finally it hovered 15 meters over their position. From the ground Cherry could see the crew chief standing on the left skid and the medic standing on the right. Huge red crosses were painted on white squares on the bird’s bottom and sides. The rotor wash from the bird made the rain slam down and sting on upturned faces. Escort ships could be heard circling though they could not be seen. From the right side of the helicopter stuck a three-foot arm and from that dropped a small torpedo-shaped object on a steel cable. The torpedo dropped evenly and in seconds it was on the ground. Doc Johnson, Doc McCarthy, Thomaston and Jax grabbed the torpedo and unfolded it.
“What’s that thing?” Cherry questioned.
“Jungle penetrator,” Egan answered.
The four men lifted Brunak and his gear and strapped him into a sitting position on the now unfolded, tri-pronged, anchor-like seat. They strapped his gear across from him. Thomaston stretched his arms up over his head and extended his thumbs signaling the crew chief to take him away. The hoist cranked and Brunak rose, swayed beneath the bird, and ascended. The medic reached out and pulled him in. The bird departed, circled and returned. The procedure was repeated with the body and gear of Leon Silvers. Then the medevac departed for good. No trace of the dead or the wounded remained except for blood and neck tissue in the midst of the enemy road and the blood stain on Cherry’s water blivet.
CHAPTER 24
Bug repellent was also used to repel leeches. Typically boonierats carried several plastic bottles of the fluid. By 2300 hours every soldier in Alpha had run out. That night’s position came to be known amongst them as NDP on Leech Reef. They called the night Bloodsucker’s Bitterness. The bloodsuckers were not all leeches.
It had been nearly dark when the medevac departed and Alpha had formed up again, in column again, on the road again. Brooks had opted for a quick 200-meter hump east up the roadway. He had hoped to find a passage up the cliffs to the north ridge. Tension amongst the men was high. With every step every man searched the corridor walls left and right, top and bottom. At drag Marko, Jax, Egan and Cherry walked backward. Fifty meters behind Whiteboy and his squad followed. They had dropped off in hopes of catching NVA trail watchers popping up after the column.
At point Garbageman, Pop, Smitty and Mohnsen walked a staggered lead sweep, each scrutinizing one parameter of the corridor. Innumerable sites along the road indicated signs of enemy troops moving into the elephant grass. Footprints in the mud filled with water as the point element approached. At two points where minute trails exited the road, Pop was certain the grass of the wall swayed not from wind but from having been brushed. He saw nothing. Where trails intersected with the road, riflemen stood guard for the column, 16s or 60s aimed up the secondary routes. All weapons were off safe, on automatic. This was unusual for the normal unsure footing demanded the precaution of keeping weapons on safe. An index finger was kept on the trigger and a thumb on the safety lever. The two could be squeezed simultaneously taking no more time than only squeezing the trigger. An unofficial agreement had passed through Alpha when the boonierats had moved out. That they moved out at all was a testament to the faith they had in Brooks. Brooks was aware of their faith and loyalty. He gritted his teeth and told himself it was the only way. Mohnsen had glanced conspiratorially at Smith then clicked to full automatic, Smith turned to Jones, Jones to Garbageman. In back Egan nodded to Cherry. At middle El Paso nodded to FO and FO to the L-T. The nods, glances and clicking began at numerous foci and expanded to encompass the entire column. All weapons were aimed outward from the advancing double column.
The rain had subsided, abated to a drizzlemist and the temperature had fallen from cool to cold to very cold. In the lushly vegetated mountains of the Annamite Range rainy season temperatures of 30° F were neither incongruous nor unknown and nights below 40° were common. But in August, temperatures seldom fell below 50° and the boonierats of Alpha were not dressed for the cold. Coupled with the wet, the cold chilled them to miserable teeth chattering. Being on the roads with night’s edge on the sky increased their inner trembling. Their eyes played tricks as they stared up the cliffs or up the road or into the grass. Shadows darted about, poked up in peripheral vision then vanished under direct scrutiny.
“Keep pushing,” Brooks radioed forward. “Keep it moving. Find a passage up the cliffs.”
But there was no passage. The wall to their left rose vertically as a single monolith without gully, without break. When visibility neared zero Brooks ordered the unit to halt. Whiteboy’s squad caught up, the column squeezed together, closed intervals from ten feet to three. On command the soldiers turned right 90° and dissolved into the grass. They swept in like a silent wave, breaking after 100 meters. The flanks contracted and with the instinct of well-disciplined troops the boonierats formed an irregular oval perimeter. Quietly the perimeter guards laid down and arranged guard schedules. The leech assault began immediately.
At Alpha’s center the CP formed a tight nucleus. “Don’t dig in,” Brooks whispered to El Paso. “No noise, no movement, no lights. Get that word out. We’re going to hide here. I don’t want to hear the sound of digging.” Then to El Paso Brooks said unofficially, “Every time we dig I feel like I’m digging my own grave.”
Beside the company commander FO and Brown had buried themselves beneath two ponchos. By flashlight FO studied the topo map and plotted his targets. Tonight, he thought, I’m goina bring in arty all over that road. FO called the FDC on Barnett and gave a long list of coordinates. First he called in DTs for Alpha, then he called in the road. He discussed the target with the artillery commander. Without being able to observe the impactions it would be impossible to ascertain the extent of damage the rounds were causing or, indeed, if the rounds were even hitting the target. Five meters too far to the north and the rounds would land up the cliff, perhaps caving sections of cliff in upon the road. That would be of little use. The NVA would use the loose dirt and rock to improve the road surface. Rounds landing five meters too far south would impact in the elephant grass and not affect the road at all. Only direct hits at road center would cause the NVA to slow. The craters would fill with water and vehicular traffic would bog down in the quagmire. With luck, arty would blow the ceiling off the corridor and expose the road to air attack. FO described the road in detail. And he described the cliffs. The battery commander asked FO to wait one. He checked with the forward TOC on the firebase and with the main TOC at Evans. He radioed FO back. The road would receive H & I fire, later, maybe. From Barnett he did not believe he could drop rounds onto the road. His guns were north of the cliffs and the road was protected. But possibly, the eight-inchers at Firebase Jack far to the south, if they had time and if they had no higher priority missions, might drop a few rounds in the vicinity of the road. That was the best he could do.
Cherry and Egan slithered to the CP for the nightly meeting. “Do you guys have any extra bug repellent?” Brooks asked.
“Aw fuck,” Egan growled quietly. He had soaked his fatigues with every drop of repelle
nt he had had. “I was hopin you had some. These mothafuckers are suckin me dry.”
“Doc had one in his ear,” El Paso whispered matter-of-factly.
“Numbnuts got one in his ass,” Cherry chuckled.
“Musta had ta share the space with his head,” Brown whispered laughing.
They bantered back and forth very quietly and moved closer and closer. They sat together in a cluster with Brooks at the center. There were thirteen of them, the seven from the CP, Egan, Cherry and Jax from 1st Plt, De Barti and Garbageman from 2d, and Caldwell from 3d. Each man was wrapped in a poncho liner for warmth and over that in a poncho to keep the leeches out. Had it been light enough to see, the cluster would have looked like thirteen crumpled dirty bags of trash tossed atop one another in a muck snot swamp. In the blackness they were nothing but thirteen quivering voices. Some chattered from the wet and cold. Some shivered feeling the crawling cool clamminess of endless legions of leeches inching ever closer to their flesh.
Ah, for a smoke, Egan thought. To smoke and burn the suckers off. To watch the mother whores squirm. Fucken night. Fucken light discipline. Can’t light up. Most of these assholes don’t have a goddamn dry cigarette. Assholes. How many times do ya have ta tell em to keep their smokes in their ammo cans.
Jax moaned. “Oh Man, these mothafuckas eatin me up. Up the side my head, they done whup. These mothafuckas eatin good tanight. On that road, friends, they eatin right.”
“Ssshhh,” Brooks hushed Jax. “Cahalan, report.”
Cahalan reported. He went into detail about Bravo’s action at what they now called Comeback Ridge. Then he described Recon’s skirmish. Cahalan had questioned the TOC RTOs about the various actions by US and ARVN forces in and around Khe Ta Laou. He reiterated all he had learned and then he recounted Alpha’s own day formally concluding with a Lessons Learned section based on discussions Brooks had had with FO and Thomaston and others about the river crossing and about how Silvers was killed and how it could have been avoided, and how 1st Plt adjusted rear security for the second road march.
Only now did the reality of Silvers’ death begin to hit Cherry. He had gone into shock, functioning perfectly yet not recognizing the meaning of the events about him. It was a perfect soldier’s reaction and though it made Cherry sorrowful, it also made him happy. Now, in the dark quiet, he could ponder. What’d I do with that address he gave me? Cherry asked himself. I told him I’d send his stuff to somebody. What stuff. They took it all away with his body. Cherry pondered the death itself. But it was difficult for Cherry to think about death. He did not have words and concepts to build his thoughts. There had been his Christian upbringing and his biological science courses and each had provided him with a set of theoretical constructs to frame his thoughts but he had rejected the first and tonight the second seemed inadequate. Cherry put his hand to his right calf. The new bayonet was there. It felt good. Like Egan’s, Cherry thought. He smiled. All around him the others chatted softly.
“Hey, Doc,” Brown whispered.
“Yeah,” Doc answered.
“Oooo, Doc! Lieutenant Caldwell’s got the funniest red mark on his ass.”
“What that?”
“I aint sure,” Brown chuckled. “I think maybe it’s lipstick.”
“Bullshit,” Caldwell said seriously offended. “Cut that chatter.”
Disgust with Caldwell had passed among all the EM of Alpha. “When the dinks opened up,” Brown laughed more quietly, “I saw him kiss his ass good-bye.”
Brooks stifled a snicker. “Hey,” he stopped the peripheral talk, “listen up. There are times,” he said very solemnly altering the mood, “when a man or men follow another man simply because the other man is in a position of authority. If you all followed me unquestioningly and you didn’t give me advice, we’d all be dead. I want to hear what you’re thinking. Tomorrow, we’re sending a platoon to rendezvous with Delta and the rest of us are going to probe all over this valley. Maybe we’ll cross back over to the other side.”
“We aint goin back on that road?” Garbageman asked.
“I think we ought to stay off it, Ruf,” De Barti agreed with Garbageman. “At least as much as possible.”
“GreenMan wants us to find a way up the cliff and mark it,” Brooks said. “We might need it later. Besides, we have to find it to meet with Delta.”
“This is fucked down here, Mista,” Doc said disgustedly. “We stay in this valley, we gonna rot.”
“I don’t like it either,” FO said. “That dink this afternoon. He must have counted every man in our column. I just know he did. He counted every 60, every radio. You can forget trying to keep up any illusion about two companies. They know everything about us. You can bet yer ass that dink gets a gold star for today.”
“Those fuckers,” Garbageman cursed. “Them shithead bastards. It seems like they always know where we’re at. They’re goina snipe the shit outa us.”
“They gowin suck us in,” Jax said. “They gowin leave us signs like an in-vi-tation. Then they gowin shut the door. This pig shit. This white man’s war.”
“Come on, Man,” Egan said quietly. “Haven’t we had enough of that crap.”
Before the meeting Egan had had to quiet Jax and Marko. Silvers had been Jackson’s field partner and Brunak as AG had been Marko’s. Jax and Marko buddied up as soon as the medevac bird departed. Then Egan and Thomaston had come and appointed Jackson squad leader. Marko thought the promotion should have been his.
When they moved into the new NDP the two had huddled and pointed their weapons outward. In the cold wetness Marko had asked, “Jax, you got a chick?”
“Shee-it Man,” Jax answered jiving quietly, “I got all kinda chicks. Black en white. They loves my ass.”
“Man, what I wouldn’t give to see a round-eye right now,” Marko said.
“Roun-eye!?” Jax exclaimed. This man need some educatin, he thought. “Doan give me none that roun-eye shit. Eyes aint roun. Rouneye? Ma-aann. Yo white fuckas always screamin roun-eye when yo mean white.”
“I don’t give a rat’s ass what color she is long’s she pink inside,” Marko countered. “I’d ball a black bitch ta be outta here right now.”
“Yo honkey mothafucka,” Jax seethed. “Yo mean yo’d ee-ven stick yo golden dick in black pussy. Yo’d even lower yoself that far ta get out a heah. We here cause a white fucken pigs.”
“Augh you fucken son of a nigger cunt,” Marko spun and grabbed Jackson’s shirt. “When you goina see this aint white America’s war fought by his nigger slaves. What the fuck do you think I am? White dudes like me get blown away more often than niggers like you. You fucken black bastards sold your souls. Your people sold their yellow Bros down the fucken drain, Boy, just so they could be like us whites. This aint whitey’s war, nigger. It’s our war.”
Jax was ready to kill Marko. No one called Jackson a nigger. Jax began a suffocated scream. Egan had come down and grabbed them both and had drained the fury. He had talked to them quietly and had asked them both to come to the CP meeting to bring up their debate. Jax had come alone.
“Yo ask me up here yoself,” Jax reminded Egan.
“Hey,” Brooks said. “First let’s settle the local problems. Then we can work on the world situation.” They returned to the discussion of their plans with Brooks saying, “Our ultimate objective is the high feature by the river. That knoll with the big tree. Our ultimate mission is to clear the NVA from the center of the valley. Those goals establish the parameters of our actions.”
“Our ultimate goal,” Doc said, “is ta remain alive.” Doc had been unusually quiet ever since the medevac. Silvers had not been the first dead man he had evacuated and he would not be the last. And Brunak would not be the last of the wounded. Somehow, their shootings affected Doc more deeply than any before. Perhaps it was because 1st Sqd, 1st Plt was, except for that Numbnuts character, among the best squads Doc had ever seen. They were always alert, vigilant. If they were so easily sniped wasn’t he all the more vu
lnerable?
Doc’s usual speech was a mixture of city-black street dialect and army/ boonierat jargon. Now he spoke with an almost professional eloquence. “Leon Silvers died instantly,” Doc said. “He died from the traumatic amputation of his head. That’s quick. Brunak is gonna be different. That man has a long struggle ahead of him, if he makes it. When they hoisted him this afternoon he was in deep hypovolemic shock. He was losing a lot of blood and it wasn’t coming out. That means edema, the effusion of serous fluids into intracellular space. McCarthy hadn’t inserted the IV properly and Brunak’s vascular system was draining. Dig? There won’t enough blood left in him for his heart to pump. He gone into tachycardia.”
“What’s that mean, Doc?” De Barti asked.
“His heart beating at an excessive rate,” Doc said. “It was tryin ta pump up the pressure in a system that was full a holes.”
“He’s goina make it, aint he, Doc?”
“I talked to the TOC bout an hour ago,” Doc answered. “They doan have no word yet.” No one spoke so Doc Johnson continued. “I got one question, Mista,” he said sliding to his less formal speech. “One question. How many mo mothafuckas we gonna git blown away fo we reach that ultimate objective? We got men here sufferin from immersion foot, from jungle rot. Half the company’s got colds and half gonna catch pneumonia. What the fuck fo, Mista?”
“We bein Judas Goats fo a whiteman’s operation,” Jax said. “They sendin us down here ta git slaughtered so they know right where ta drop the bombs. That way they doan have ta spend so much money on bombs cause they ken drop less.”
“No company of mine is going to be slaughtered,” Brooks said firmly. He had heard enough of their complaints. “It pisses me off to hear you guys talk like that, like …”
El Paso interrupted him. “Yes,” he said, “but we can talk about it, can’t we?”
13th Valley Page 47
