Support troops began to mortar the camp when they heard the first of the satchel charges go off, hoping that the Americans and Montagnards in the camp would think that all the explosions were mortars, hiding the fact that NVA troops were already in the camp blowing up bunkers. The assault troops moved steadily through the gaps in the perimeter wire, some carrying bamboo ladders, many of them dying from the explosions of their own mortars.
Silver was on radio watch as the sappers came through the wire, monitoring headquarters in Da Nang and listening to a football game in the States on a transistor radio. It was Saturday afternoon in the States, and the announcer’s voice was tiny and tinny as he screamed, “And it’s the twenty-five, the twenty, the fifteen, and Parker is down on their own fourteen. Yessir, folks, it’s that kind of ballgame here today.” And Silver could hear the crowd cheer, a faint wail, the sound an insect might make as it burned to death.
Then the B-40 rocket came through the teamhouse door, driving a sliver of shrapnel into the back of Silver’s head, and he fell across the bank of radios. He wasn’t dead, but he couldn’t move. He could still hear the radio, “. . . and it looks like Nebraska is really going to have to get their defensive machine moving against the Missouri Tigers if they’re going to have any chance at all…”
Quinn burst through the door, his rifle in one hand, web gear slung over his shoulder. He saw Silver and ran to him, checking for a pulse. When he found one, he laid him on the floor and discovered he was conscious.
“Hey,” he said to him. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”
Silver looked up at him as though he were a stranger.
“Can you hear me?” Quinn demanded. “Can you hear me, man? Blink your eyes if you can hear me.”
Silver fluttered his eyelids, then tried to talk, but all he could do was make senseless, guttural noises. He tried again to speak, tried harder, but the noises only grew louder, more out of control. His eyes were full of fear and confusion, like an animal hit by a car on the freeway.
Outside the first of the satchel charges went off. A few green tracers hissed through the rain.
Quinn checked Silver for wounds and found nothing but a cut on the back of his head. “You’re okay,” he told Silver. “It must be just a concussion. You’re all right.”
Grieson banged through the screen door and Quinn almost shot him. Grieson was wearing only his pants and boots. He was wild-eyed, his hair wet and matted. “What are we doing?” he yelled. “What’ll we do?”
Quinn heard the distant tonk tonktonk of mortars being fired. “Shit,” he hissed, and unconsciously began counting off the seconds—“one thousand, two thousand…”—waiting for them to hit the camp, picturing the little cast-iron bombs arcing up through the rain. “Tonk. Tonk.” Two more.
Quinn began to drag Silver across the floor toward the kitchen. “Come ’ere,” he ordered Grieson. Tonk.
“Shit, shit, shit,” Quinn said to himself.
In the kitchen he pulled open the door of one of the big floor-level cupboards and began pushing cans out of the way.
The first two mortar rounds, then the third exploded out in the wire. Short rounds. The NVA gunners would adjust their fire for the next ones. “Come ’ere!” Quinn shouted to Grieson.
“They’re in the wire, I know it,” Quinn said. “I gotta get out to the Quad-fifty. Here’s what you do. Slide Silver into the cupboard here. Get rid of these fuckin’ cans. Close the door and tip the table over in front of the cupboards. That’s all we can do. Okay? Okay, okay!”
“Okay,” Grieson said. “What then? What’re we gonna do?”
“I’m gonna kill me a bunch of slope-head motherfuckers, that’s what,” he said, starting for the door. “Take the shotgun,” he said, pointing to a .12-gauge pump hanging on the wall, a bandolier of ammo looped over the stock. He froze for an instant, glaring at Grieson. “But get Silver in there…” Two more mortar rounds exploded, inside the camp this time. “You’re responsible for him,” Quinn said, spinning and going out the door, hoping that the sandbags on top of the teamhouse would stop the mortars.
By the time Hanson was out of the ammo shed, the camp had begun to fire illumination rounds from their mortar tubes. The ilium rounds burst high overhead, hurtled earthward like shooting stars, then were pulled up short by their parachutes, pink stars swinging with the wind, dripping sparks, throwing black-green shadows.
A green fan of machine-gun tracers swept in from the west, the wedge of heavy rounds popping as they passed overhead. The rain dripped down Hanson’s face, and he tasted salt and dust on his lips.
On the top of the TOC bunker, Dawson had taken the cover off the M-60 and was looking for a target. He found one and began firing six-round bursts, the muzzle flash lighting up his cheekbones and eyes. The recoil and muzzle blast from the gun pulled at his T-shirt like a heavy wind, puffing it out at the small of his back, plastering it against his ribs.
“Get some, brother!” Hanson yelled.
Without turning his head, Dawson pumped his fist up and down.
Out on the southwest corner of the wire, a trip flare burst with silver glare and dense white smoke. Hanson thought he could hear it burning, like boiling grease, but of course it was too far away.
Then, near the point of the camp nearest the trip flare, he heard the hesitant popping of a small gasoline engine being started. The popping rose, then steadied into a cheerful flutter like a lawn mower on Saturday afternoon.
The little engine was the power source for the Quad-50 machine gun. Hanson paused, staring through the dark and rain toward the sound. It was very dark, the only light from muzzle flashes and an occasional flare. Hanson’s pupils were black and huge.
The gun showed then like a movie scene flashing suddenly on a dark screen, the sound out of control. Linked-brass rounds flickered in the muzzle flash, snaking toward the gray slab of the breech blocks of the four yoked guns. The Montagnard gun crew moved in the strobe light of the four barrels like silent comedy stars trying to do something hilarious and impossible while there was still time. They fed cans of ammo to the gun as the four barrels wove tracers smoothly crossing and recrossing the perimeter. Then one of the barrels burned out and raveled the pattern with a mad counterpoint of plunging red tracers.
Hanson crossed toward the Quad-50 position, where he knew he’d find Quinn. He moved in a heavy lope, his web gear shifting and pulling at him, a canvas bag of grenades at one hip, his weapon down at a low port arms. He saw a thin, naked man in the wire and fired at him. Pink flares, red and green tracers reflected in puddles and across tin roofs.
Quinn had on asbestos gloves and was changing the burned-out barrel when Hanson got to the gun. He heard AK-47 rounds and ducked as they popped past the gun. The old barrel still glowed faintly red in the dark as Quinn threw it down in the mud, where it hissed and steamed.
“Fire slow,” Quinn was shouting to the Montagnard gun commander. “Fire slow.”
“Hey,” Hanson shouted up at him as he jammed and twisted the new barrel into the gun, “let’s get to the TOC bunker and find out what the fuck’s happening.”
Quinn told the gun commander one more time to fire slower and save the barrels, then jumped down into the mud. “Let’s go, little buddy,” he shouted. “I got Silver stashed in the teamhouse. He got all banged to shit by a B-40. I had to leave him with Grieson to get this gun going.”
Getting back to the TOC bunker was like running through heavy traffic, across a series of freeways at night in the rain. Tracers were like taillights, flares and muzzle flashes the high beams of out-of-control head-on traffic. The enemy were everywhere, skinny, dark-faced little men, many of them naked except for loincloths, appearing, then vanishing in the shifting light. Hanson and Quinn saw three of them staggering off with a heavy machine gun and tripod, a strange tableau strobing in and out of the dark. They each lobbed a grenade at the struggling men, pitching them underhand, like softballs, then threw themselves onto the ground. Hanson felt the va
cuum in his ears, like a sudden change in altitude, the slap of an explosion, and another. One of the three was still alive, pinned by the heavy tripod, flopping in the silver flarelight like a fish in a trap, his body patterned with blood. They both shot him and ran on.
They were running in step, splashing through multicolored puddles, their eyes dilated and black, charged with something very close to joy.
In the light of a flare they saw Mr. Minh running toward one of the perimeter bunkers. He had a rope around his waist and was dragging a cluster of palm fronds behind him. The flare sputtered out, and darkness closed over him.
“I don’t know what he’s doing,” Quinn shouted, “but I hope it works. Those little fuckers are all over, the place, little buddy. If we don’t come up with something we’re gonna have to E&E out of here.”
Hanson almost stumbled over one of the bodies in front of the TOC. They emptied their weapons into the bodies, making them quiver and splash in the mud, then threw the empty clips aside and reloaded. Hanson inhaled and smelled gunpowder and sweet blood. He could taste it on the backs of his eyeballs. He felt as if he had aligned himself with the fault lines beneath the earth. He could point his finger and tracers would appear. His gestures set off explosions.
Dawson was down at the bottom of the stairs with a shotgun. “Fools won’t come in,” he shouted. “Third Mech says they won’t come in until we’ve secured the camp. Say they’re under orders from Da Nang not to come in. If they don’t, man, we’re gonna have to E&E out. I’m gonna need some help down here destroying files and equipment.”
“Fuck me,” Quinn said. “I’m gonna die in this stinking gook country because the fucking Third Mech won’t fight. We don’t need their asses if the camp’s secure. And Silver can’t E&E.”
“I better start popping thermal grenades and get ready to blow the E&E routes through the wire,” Dawson said. “Shit. It was my idea to come up here for a visit. I wouldn’t talk to anybody dumb as me.”
All the file cabinets and radios in the TOC bunker had dusty, beer-can-shaped thermal grenades set on top of them. They were crude but effective devices for destroying files. Once they started to burn, there was no way to put them out, and they would smoke and bubble through metal and classified documents until they reached the earth.
A burst of fire, then another exploded at the top of the stairs.
“Look out,” Quinn yelled. “Grenade.”
Hanson heard it bumping down the stairs. It fell into the grenade sump and went off, shaking dust from the beams and walls.
He got on the radio to the 3rd Mech, which was waiting just down the road for word that the camp was secure.
“Green Eagle, Green Eagle,” he called. “This is Strange Names, over.”
“Go ahead, Strange Names.”
“Ah, roger…” Another burst of fire from the top of the stairs interrupted him.
“Let’s get persuasive,” Quinn said. “Shit’s getting heavy.”
“Enemy units have fallen back,” Hanson continued. “The camp itself is secure, but we need some assistance to help us firm up the perimeter, over.”
“Strange Names, this is Green Eagle. I copy your transmission that the camp is secure. I still hear a large volume of automatic weapons fire your location. What is your situation? Over.”
“I say again, the camp is secure. There is still some contact beyond the wire south of camp. We need assistance in holding the perimeter until dawn, over.”
“I copy the camp is secure. What are your initials, over.”
“Initials are Charlie Kilo Hotel, over.”
“Copy Charlie Kilo Hotel. We’re coming in.”
“We better keep our asses down here,” Dawson said. “Those people are gonna be shooting anything that moves when they come in.”
“I gotta get Silver,” Quinn said, turning to the tunnel exit.
“Let’s go,” Hanson said, then to Dawson, “Can you handle the commo by yourself?”
“I got it. Go get Silver, but watch your ass,” Dawson said, sliding the tracked steel door shut on the main entrance. “Let me know on the radio when you’re coming back down. I’m gonna start blowing claymores in that stairway. Don’t want those people out there to try a shaped-charge on this door.”
As Hanson and Quinn climbed out of the tunnel behind the TOC bunker, they heard the rumble and whine of the 3rd Mech tanks moving toward the camp. They moved toward the teamhouse, crouching and freezing in the shadows, sprinting, then stopping again to listen to the squeaking tracks and the crash of the outer perimeter gate as it was flattened, engines straining against the wire.
When they kicked in the door of the teamhouse, the air inside was heavy with the smell of Vietnamese, sweat and fish sauce and wood smoke. But they were gone. Silver was lying on his back in the kitchen, where Quinn had left him with Grieson. His throat was cut clear to the spine, his own dark blood an inch deep around him, already drawing flies.
The coaxial heavy machine gun on one of the tanks in the wire was pounding.
“Grieson,” Quinn said. “He left him alone.”
Then, to Silver, “I’m sorry, man.” He turned to Hanson. “I had to leave him,” he said. “The Quad-fifty is my responsibility. They were in the wire…” He spun and went out the door, Hanson after him.
Tanks were coming through the wire on-line, 3rd Mech infantry behind them, and Quinn headed for Grieson’s bunker. A red fan of tracers from the closest tank swept past them, followed by poorly aimed M-16 fire. Quinn stopped, took a white phosphorus grenade from his web gear, and threw it at the tank. It made a metallic clang against the body of the M-60 tank as it bounced off, then exploded in a fountain of silver-white bits of phosphorus and dense smoke that hid Hanson and Quinn as they ran on. Hanson threw his own WP grenade and they ran on to find Grieson’s bunker empty.
They heard the sound of a shotgun from the radio relay unit, the green mobile home, and they ran there and rushed the door.
The relay unit had its own power source and glowed green inside from the oscilloscope screens. It stank of gunpowder inside and burned-out wiring. Grieson was standing with the shotgun at his side, his pants ripped, his legs bloody. Hose lay on the floor dead, gunned to pieces, shreds of Grieson’s pants in his jaws. The singlesideband radio barked and warbled. Quinn killed Grieson with two short bursts from his Swedish “K.”
At dawn it was like the morning after a bad fire, everything burned and sodden, the time when survivors sort through the debris for whatever might be left. Outside the wire, dead Montagnards hung on ropes from tree branches. White flare parachutes draped their bodies, and warnings were written on the chutes in Vietnamese promising death to anyone who helped the Americans.
They found the captain and two Yards in the mud at the bottom of a trench, riddled with AK rounds. One of the Yards was Rau’s son, the kid who had gone on his first operation the day Hanson had, with Lieutenant Andre. He’d turned into a good soldier.
They carried Silver’s body to the ammo shed, one at each end, pulling against each other so his back wouldn’t sag in the mud. They covered him with a poncho, very carefully, so the flies couldn’t get to him. Quinn tucked the poncho under his feet as if he were tucking a child into bed.
A pile of North Vietnamese bodies, a busload, was heaped in front of the teamhouse, arms and legs tangled, some of the limbs already stiff and sticking out from the pile. As Hanson watched, a Montagnard dragged another body to the pile, dumped it, kicked it in the face, then walked off.
“Come and take a look at something,” Quinn said to Hanson, and they walked around the teamhouse and past the TOC bunker.
“Every one of them,” Quinn said. “They got every one of those sorry fuckers.”
All five radio technicians were sprawled in the mud, spread out in a line not more than five meters apart, without weapons or boots. It was clear that they had all run out of their bunker in panic, barefoot and without weapons, with no idea of where they were going, and Charlie had
shot them down one by one.
Hanson found the one who had played the dulcimer. No boots, no weapon, no shirt, his pallid skin torn by ugly purple holes. He’d fallen face-first into the mud, and it was packed into his nose and mouth. “Aw, man,” Hanson said, looking down at him.
Two olive drab tanks were parked in front of the TOC. They had the green triangle of the 3rd Mech on their sides and smelled of electricity and mo-gas. One of them made a low grinding moan and the sullen gun turret swung the main gun in a short arc, stopped with a click, then swung back to the original position like an animal interrupted for a moment in the midst of feeding.
Naked sappers hung in the perimeter wire like dead fish. One of the tankers had put a cigarette in the mouth of one of them and had his arm around the body. Another tanker was taking his picture with an Instamatic camera.
QUANG TRI
The scrawny, dung-stained chicken squawked and shook off dust as Mr. Minh drove the long needle into its neck, then went limp as the needle severed the spinal cord. Mr. Minh split the breast, pulled the ribs open, and watched the beating heart, the blood pumping into earth-colored organs. Like everything, the chicken was part of the system of things, a model of the workings of the universe in which patterns could be seen, like the needle of a seismograph sketching a shudder deep within the earth, or a barometer moving with the first inhalation of an ocean-borne storm.
He lightly touched the heart and liver, slipped two fingers into the intestines, feeling the warmth and subtle movement of the blood. It was not magic, just knowing how to read the signs, the way sailors can look at the sky at dusk, smell the air, and tell what kind of day will follow.
All life moves with the breathing of the universe, all the way to the end of life and back to the dream time when the world was first imagined.
Now the women were weaving gunships and Phantom jets into their tapestries where birds and tigers used to be, tapestries that traditionally told of the past, present, and future of the tribe. Crops were dying in the ground, and many of the Rhade children were stillborn.
Sympathy for the Devil Page 34
