“South to the river,” Egan said. “Better cover.” Doc smiled. He grabbed Egan and handed him the letter. Doc was grinning broadly, happy for Egan. The return address simply said Stephanie.
Mortar rounds began falling and exploding.
Brooks had completed the debriefing of RT Cindy and was almost finished with Suzie when the recon team took its first casualty. RT Suzie had made no contacts in the four days of hide-n-hit. They were the only team who not only had no kills but also had no sightings. Why? What had they been doing? How had they operated? The team consisted of Harley, Andrews and Hill, all good soldiers from Whiteboy’s old squad. Brooks pried. He found no irregularities. Perhaps Egan’s team, which had been to Harley’s east, had halted the traffic before it reached RT Suzie. Brooks did not push it too far. He did not reprimand, did not show disappointment. Brooks himself was critical of other commanders he called “bodycount mad.” He did not want to be categorized with them. He dropped the subject, briefed the three boonierats on the upcoming mission and dismissed them with “Good job. Thanks. Get some rest. Conserve your batteries.” He would, however, watch them more closely. Had it not been Whiteboy opening up with his machine gun on nothing who halted the move off Hill 848? The sound of mortar rounds exploding upriver halted his thoughts.
Minh was the first one hit. The first mortar rounds exploded very close and the boonierats hit the dirt. The second and third rounds exploded among them. And Minh was hit. He was hit in the back of the head and neck and up his left side. Blood gushed from his head. Doc was on him immediately. Inaccurate automatic weapons fire raked their general area from a distance.
Mortar rounds began exploding again. Metal sliced into Snell’s legs. He had been on the radio to Brooks with the first explosion. He groaned, grunted. Then it did not hurt at all. He checked his legs. He could see splinters of tangled feet but he could not believe they were his feet. Pop was next to him with his compass out. More rounds exploded on them.
“Augh fuck,” Snell moaned. “I’m sorry, Pop. Oh shit, I’m sorry.”
“Quiet Rover Four, X-ray. Over,” Pop called.
“X-ray, Four. Over.”
“We dashin november. Enemy fire coming from our sierra fifty-five degree whiskey. Range maybe five hundred meters. Over. Out.”
From Campobasso Brooks radioed the GreenMan. FO radioed Armageddon Two.
Doc tied three camouflaged battle-dressings to Minh’s head. Blood was coming from Minh’s nose and running over his face in wide bright streams. “Get em on my back,” Doc told Denhardt. He lifted the small Vietnamese scout and fell in behind McQueen. Egan was leading them due north almost at a run. They hunched low and ran through the grass and brush. Cherry and Pop helped Snell in a kind of double three-legged race. Mortar rounds continued exploding all about them.
“Fucken gooks,” Egan hissed. Fucken gooks en fucken Hellman en his fucken bird. Egan’s mind raced as he broke through the vegetation like a mad fullback. We shoulda blown the fucken thing. They’re aimin in on the extraction spot. Can’t see us. Can’t have one a their units here, right here. Egan slowed before an area of low brush. His thoughts caught up to him. They wouldn’t mortar their own people. Egan had been pumping his thighs high, breaking through brambles, leaving a mashed clearing behind him. The others had followed blindly in his wake. The NVA mortars moved east, then west. Now they were being walked north. They were falling behind the squad. Armageddon, the 105 howitzer battery on Barnett, shot out a salvo of counter-battery fire. Then another. Armageddon worked rounds quickly back and forth over the area Pop had designated to Brooks. Then the howitzers fired at coordinates FO had called in earlier. The mortars ceased with Armageddon’s third salvo.
Doc had Minh on the ground. He knelt at his side and ripped the small scout’s shirt open. Minh’s back was a blotted mass of blood. Doc put his ear to Minh’s chest. Egan rushed down to help. Cherry raised Minh’s legs. Behind them Calhoun and Pop radioed Dust-Off. Nahele and McQueen cut Snell’s pants and boots off and tied tourniquets at the tops of his thighs. Denhardt and Woods spread out for security. Doc raised up onto his knees. For half a second he stared blankly at Egan then at Minh’s tiny chest. Doc cocked his right arm and smashed Minh’s chest with his fist, smashed down hard jolting the ceased heart. He ran a finger up Minh’s abdomen to the sternum, moved up two finger widths, set the heel of his hand and compressed. “Breathe em,” Doc ordered Egan who was already around to Minh’s head. Egan checked Minh’s mouth and cleared rice vomit from the airway. Gently, trying to stay clear of the wounds, he lifted Minh’s neck and pushed his head back, then rechecked the mouth and airway. Egan covered Minh’s mouth, squeezed Minh’s nostrils, and blew quick hard breaths. He could feel the air inflate Minh’s lungs. Doc continued pumping on Minh’s chest, compressing, releasing, sixty times a minute. Egan settled down to inflating Minh’s lungs every five seconds. They got their rhythms and settled in. “Check them dressings,” Doc ordered Cherry. “Come on,” he snapped when Cherry hesitated.
The medical evacuation helicopter was in the air within three minutes of notification. It headed inland from Camp Evans and rendezvoused with two escort Cobras above the Rach Mӯ Chānh River. The artillery unit on Firebase Barnett fired half-battery harassment salvos once each minute until the Dust-Off reached the valley. Pop handled the Dust-Off systematically. He established direct radio contact with the medevac pilot and gave him an approximate 265° vector from the firebase. A firebase RTO came on the net and informed the pilot, “We have winds at 90°, five to seven knots.” Pop took over again. He briefed the pilot on the tactical situation. “There aint a friendly in a klick radius. Over.”
“Roger that,” the pilot answered. He asked several questions about the LZ and about the wounded.
“Low brush area to our november,” Pop said. “Ground fog burning off. It’s still maybe ten feet thick. When your skids hit the fog you’ll be right atop us.” Pop kept up constant directions. Nahele took Snell to the south edge of the pick-up site. McQueen, Denhardt and Woods secured the north side. Calhoun relinquished the radio to Pop and moved east. Pop moved into the low brush area. All the time Doc and Egan rhythmically worked over Minh’s body.
“You can quit,” Cherry said. “He’s dead.”
Neither answered. Neither stopped. Cherry lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and let it out. He took another drag then held the smoke for Doc. Doc scowled and shook his head.
“Doc,” Cherry said matter-of-factly. “He’s dead. I can see his brains. They spillin out all over.” Cherry reached over to Minh’s head. He flicked up the edge of the field dressings. A blood pocket beneath released. The blood flowed thickly onto the earth. A mass of bloody gray-pink-white sponge-like tissue followed it. Cherry lifted the dressing higher exposing the opened side and back of the head and neck. Egan stopped the inflations. He stared at Cherry. Cherry’s eyes were intense, crazy.
Doc continued the compressions. His eyes were shut. He was crying. Cherry looked closely at Minh’s head. He poked a finger into the cavity. “That’s the cerebrum,” he said. He leaned closer. “That’s the area of the brain stem. That there must be the medulla oblongata. And this back here is the cerebellum.”
The sound of helicopters returned to the Khe Ta Laou as it had not been since the operation’s sixth day. Charlie, Delta and Recon were all resupplying. Chinooks resupplied the firebase. The day became hot. The sky cleared. Only a vestige of ground mist remained about the valley, mostly along the river and at valley center. Alpha was together, all seventy-two boonierats at Campobasso. The last of the rover teams had arrived at noon. The recon team returned at 1230 hours. Brooks continued to tell Hellman and the GreenMan that Alpha was split up all over. “But on their way back in … right now,” he said. If they’ll just stay out of here until we debrief, he thought, then we’ll have the munition to delay resupply.
“This I want to hear step-by-step, minute-by-minute,” Brooks said when he had them together. He and FO and El Paso along with
all three platoon lieutenants debriefed the recon team. Pop looked very weary. Doc did not speak. McQueen was glassy-eyed, Cherry indifferent. He had bruises on his face, “from slamming his face into the ground when the mortars fell,” he said. Egan’s hands were bandaged. “Maybe from the cart,” he told Brooks. In his pocket was the letter from Stephanie. He wanted to get away to read it in private but Brooks wanted to debrief. At first the debriefers had to drag details from them. Slowly they all came around, came to, and began to tell and retell what they saw. Egan went into great detail about watching the changing of the guard or the observers at the knoll. He told them about the two parallel trails a meter apart and about the trench. “Before we skyed we checked out the trench,” Egan explained. “They got land-lines running up the side. That’s what the dude who pissed on McQueen was coverin.” The questions continued. Numerous inquiries were directed to the subject of the scopes. McQueen had had the best view but he still had not seen them clearly. They all speculated and FO said he was certain if the dinks had nightscopes for patrols, they would have nightscopes for the observers on the knoll.
More details. Where did the trails and trench go down to? The recondos were not sure. “We circled back goin downhill and a little farther west,” Egan explained. “Then we hit the red ball. That thing had so many cart tracks, Man, I can’t tell you. My guess is it feeds a bunker complex and my guess is the complex is at the bottom of that knoll. They aint goina have shit up top except the OP.”
More questions. The shape of the slope? The steepness of its sides? Again the team could not say for sure. “Map looks right to me,” Cherry ventured. He spoke awkwardly, working his jaw with great effort to control the words. “It’s maybe steeper than the map indicates.”
“Yeah,” Egan agreed. “The whole thing seems higher too. Map’s got its top at two hundred meters, only sixty meters higher than the river. I’d guess it’s more like a hundred. Those trails and the trench were almost exactly on a north-south line.”
Back they went to the trails, to the guards. McQueen said he guessed only half the guards changed at a time. Four came down, four went up. “Bet they had four more up there,” he said. “They changed at 0530,” he added. “If we hit em we should hit em at the end of their shift when they’re gettin ready to quit. 0500 or 0515.”
“I love it when you guys are thinking,” Brooks smiled. “They must have an incredible vantage point from up there when the valley’s clear.” He scratched his scalp. “They could see the entire valley. They could … with scopes, they could have seen us when we came off 848.”
The debriefing continued. Egan told them all the story of the cart. It had been so simple, he said, that it made him feel silly. “It was like a college prank,” he said. They had followed the first red ball away from the knoll to where it intersected a second road that seemed to head upriver. They followed the second for 400 meters and found the cart parked, just parked, at the edge of the trail.
They looked around and found four soldiers asleep nearby. Egan and Cherry watched them as McQueen pushed the cart up the trail. It rolled very easily. When he was what they estimated a hundred meters away, they left the enemy and caught up to McQueen. Then they simply rolled it to the river and Cherry had swum across with the bow rope. It had been the easiest part of the recon, the easiest mission he had ever had. They had all laughed about it until Hellman decided he wanted to extract the damned thing. “You know the story from there,” Egan said glumly.
During the afternoon Campobasso turned into a hot fetid swamp. The boonierats who had been rovers attempted to sleep. They were weary, wet, as odorous as the swamp itself. Their eyes had sunk deeper into the sallow hollow sockets of their faces. Tongues swelled in dry mouths. They were out of decent water. They were filthy. The slack period gave them the time to realize it and the heat highlighted it. CP soldiers pulled LP/OP, platoon personnel who had remained at Campobasso pulled berm guard. Mosquitos rose in swarms by early evening. The place, like the entire north valley floor, was infested with land leeches. And the insect repellent had again run out. The sleeping boonierats wrapped ponchos around their heads and over their hands. The mosquitos and the leeches found their way in. The entire company was nauseous and spent. Everyone, that is, except Egan.
Egan had his letter from Stephanie. And what a letter. He wanted to scream, to holler in joy. He took her picture from his wallet. He had not looked at the picture in months. Now he caressed it, ran a gentle finger down her cheek. The photo had cracked and faded. It had been wet for so long, mildew grew on the back and on the edges. Egan wiped the paper carefully. God, she is beautiful.
My Daniel (the letter began. It was dated August 13th, 1970. It had crossed his in the mail.) Do you know what a soul looks like? It looks like a tree with branches, a sapling but with many branches that extend throughout one’s body. To some people you show an extremity, a leaf. To others you let them lie in the branches. Well, when you came along I let you look at the whole thing. You asked me if you could take it for a day or so and examine it. You had seen the whole thing so I said, sure and you plucked my soul leaving only the roots behind. But before you returned the next day something must have happened and you did not come back. I didn’t get my soul back and I’ve been without one ever since. I thought I might grow a new one from the old roots but that takes so much time. It would be easier if you would bring my soul back. Oh Daniel, I’ve been thinking of you so much. I worry about you. Please write to me. Tell me you’re all right. I know your time there is almost over. When will you be home? Can I meet you at the airport? I’m dying to see you again.
Love,
Stephanie
At 1640 hours on the 24th of August sixteen mortar rounds landed within the perimeter of Firebase Barnett. Two American soldiers were killed and three wounded. At 1730 hours the NVA hit Delta wounding five Americans. One enemy soldier was killed. Through it all Brooks continued to be hassled by Major Hellman, then by the GreenMan. It took four calls but finally he convinced the command his plan was sound. He spoke with them only over the krypto radio and still he spoke in code.
“Red Rover, Red Rover. The game is to be played on the Ides plus ten on the home court. The spectators should arrive by five. Goodyear over the stadium standby. Left forward driving to the hoop, center feeding. Over.”
“Quiet Rover this is Red Rover,” the GreenMan answered. “The Star-Spangled Banner is over. Play ball. Over. Out.”
“L-T,” Doc whispered after the transmission.
Brooks looked at the medic. He did not look good. He looked worse than most of the others. “What’s up, Doc?” Brooks said trying to lighten his mood.
Doc shook his head slowly and said, “L-T, this a suicide mission. Aint none of us gonna come back we cross that river again.”
“Doc,” Brooks said soothingly yet with encouragement, “we’ve got Charlie Company two klicks west. They’ll move in at dawn. Bravo’s two and a half klicks east but they’re tightening down right now. They’ll NDP less than two klicks from our objective. Recon’s on the side of 606 squeezing down. They’ll be two klicks away. Those dudes in Delta are right above us, and thank God they’re going to stay there. FO’s got an arty prep lined up. We’ve got Tac Air and a pink team on call. This’ll be a piece of cake. And I’ve got really good news. We’re going to blow an LZ on the knoll and be extracted. We’re scheduled for a week of firebase duty.”
The afternoon bore on. The sun had turned the swamp to steam. The steam wilted the boonierats. There was very little to do except lie and wait and hide. Because of the knoll observers Brooks had instructed Alpha to stay beneath cover and not move. The steamy stillness was as torturous as the cold stillness. Perhaps it was worse for in the cold wet they were stalking, trapping, ambushing. They had been the hunters. In the heat they waited and hid and knew that the NVA were now hunting. There was little to do except clean weapons and sleep and read the mail Major Hellman had thrown to Doc.
El Paso received his monthly letter
from Father Raul. It contained inconsequential and insignificant news. His mother was well though worried as always. Cherry received a letter from his mother and father. His father said he wanted him to know that he was very proud of his son. There were assorted letters and small packages for twenty-eight others. There was nothing for Brooks.
El Paso confiscated the Newsweek that had come for Leon Silvers. It was the August 10th issue. He read the articles dealing with Vietnam and those about world politics. Red China, it was reported, was about to establish full diplomatic relations with Yugoslavia. The USSR had tested a Minuteman SS-11 ICBM which had decoy warheads and radar fooling metallic chaff. South Vietnam’s President Thieu had finally agreed to devalue the piaster against the dollar. Ah, here’s an interesting one, he said to himself.
HANOI TAKES NO CHANCES
Bombing raids against North Vietnam have been halted (except for a rare strike to protect scout planes) since November 1968, but Hanoi is not relaxing. It still maintains a net of 4000 Ack-Ack artillery and machine gun sites, almost 500 radar points and 40 batteries of Soviet missiles.
“Goddamn little rice-propelled bastards sure seem well equipped,” El Paso mumbled. He jumped to the sports section. Vince Lombardi, coach of the Washington Redskins, formerly of the Green Bay Packers, had been hospitalized with cancer of the colon. Mexico’s in the running in World Cup Soccer.
Jax slinked over cautiously and handed El Paso a stack of newspaper clippings he had received with a short note from his brother-in-law. “How far we from O’Reilly?” Jax asked.
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