by J. M. Graham
DeLong moved in close. “Yeah, I have a watch. And the name’s DeLong.”
“Okay, Deeeee Long. Give it here.”
DeLong hesitated. Someone he didn’t know or trust was asking him for his watch, and it made him leery. It wasn’t a family heirloom or even a very expensive watch—his father had bought it for him at the Sears in Milwaukee—but it was something from home, something the Marines had not issued. It was a connection, one he did not want to lose.
“Come on,” Tanner said impatiently. “You’ll get it back when the Chief wakes you.”
DeLong reluctantly unbuckled the band and handed over the watch.
The watch face was black with white numerals and hands, and Tanner held it out and rocked the crystal in a shaft of moonlight. “This’ll work. I’ll wake the Chief in two hours. He’ll wake you in four. I would give you the second shift, but then you would have to wake the Chief, and that can be tricky. Who knows what he would do in the night to someone he didn’t recognize. Right, Chief?”
A few feet away, the Chief cleared a spot so he could stretch out. The ground was wet, and he lay back on his flak jacket and balanced his head on his upturned helmet. It wasn’t comfortable, but it would do. He didn’t answer.
DeLong spread out his flak jacket and lay down on his side. He wrapped his arms around his body, tucking his hands into his armpits, trying to stay warm. His body heat had baked some of the wet out of his clothes, but they were still damp enough to make him shiver when a breeze invaded, or when he thought of where he was. He couldn’t imagine being more miserable.
Tanner sat cross-legged against a tree with his rifle on his lap. He tilted his head back and sniffed. “Damn. It smells like something died around here,” he said.
The lieutenant reported his position to the com shack in An Hoa, calculating the distance and direction from his last thrust point and making sure the 155 batteries had 1st Platoon’s grid coordinates marked on their maps. It paid to be able to get quick fire support in case things went wrong, and in the Arizona, they tended to go wrong in a hurry.
The two M60 machine guns were in position, the watches were assigned, and claymore mines had been placed in likely approaches. More than half the platoon was now asleep. The extra radio went with the listening post on the lower slope, and Bronsky checked with them every half hour for situation reports. The radios were turned down to their lowest squelch settings, and only Bronsky spoke. “Pounder to backfield. Pounder to backfield,” Bronsky whispered. “Sit rep. If your position is secure, key your handset twice.”
A short silence was followed by two distinct bursts of static.
“Roger, backfield. Back in thirty. Out.” There would be no contact with the other LP until morning.
Though it wasn’t raining, moisture was thick in the air, a physical entity the Marines could reach out and touch. It made breathing more difficult. It clung to their skin and seeped into the fabric of their clothing. It made the air itself visible. It accumulated on the leaves and wept down from their drooping tips. It also impeded sound. Faint noises would spend all their energy fighting their way through the heavy, wet air, giving the slightest of whispers very little hang time. It made everything seem close and claustrophobic. It made the jungle feel alive and the Marines feel even more isolated than they were.
Strader sat on the side of his cot looking through the screening into the blackness west of the wire. A few Marines from 3rd Platoon were asleep at the other end of the hooch, their breathing steady and deep as though regulated by a metronome. The rest were manning the lines. The base was completely dark. Some Marines were at their watches, monitoring radio frequencies, tracking units in the bush. Some were in bunkers, watching and waiting. The rest were in their racks and grateful to be there. Strader felt he was the one Marine out of place. He slipped out the door and walked to the embankment above the runway. Cloud shadows sweeping along the dark aluminum plates gave the runway a sense of movement like a channel of running water. The illusion was only slightly spoiled by a breeze coming across one of the two-hole latrines that carried the smell of fuel oil, fried maggots, and the menu from the evening mess processed through a few dozen Marines. Strader scratched at the ground with the tread on his Ho Chi Minh sandals. In a few days he would be on his way back to the world and Vietnam would be nothing more than a year of bad memories. But as he stood looking into the endless night of the distant Arizona, he had never felt so far from home.
Nguyen and Sau crept through their unit, carefully rousing each man in turn as they went. Before long, all were up and alert, listening as Nguyen laid out their situation in detail. They would get their equipment ready to travel without making a sound, then wait in absolute silence for the order to move while Sau and a group of his choosing dealt with the problem. Whether noise would matter when the order to move came would depend on the success of the night’s work, and that could be hours away. Pham and Truong listened intently.
“I volunteer to go with Sau,” Pham said.
Nguyen pretended not to hear. He nodded to Sau, who went through the group making his selections. It was evident from the speed of his choices that Sau already knew which men he wanted.
Pham didn’t like being ignored. “I said I’ll go.”
Nguyen moved close to Pham. “This is by invitation only, and you aren’t invited.”
“I don’t care if it’s dangerous,” Pham said.
“And I don’t care that you don’t care.”
Sau whispered to Co and two others, Binh and Duong, and sent them to prepare. Another man stepped out of the shadows. His leathery skin was the color of bronze, and his unusually high cheekbones gave his face a perpetual squint.
Nguyen put a hand on his shoulder. “Vo, you make five.”
Vo nodded and followed the others into the darkness.
Nguyen turned to the remaining men. “We will have to carry their loads as well as our own.” He looked into the darkness where the five were gathering what they needed and spoke softly, almost to himself. “And we may have to carry it far because I’m afraid there is little chance that they will be returning.”
Truong seemed shocked. “There is little chance?”
“Do not feel bad for them. If they fail, we will likely share their fate.” Nguyen seemed to stare at Pham rather than Truong. “If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t wager five dong that any of us will be smiling by this time tomorrow.” He started to leave, then turned back. “Now get ready. If there is any shooting, we will have to get away from here as quickly as we can. But if our comrades are successful, we will leave slowly and quietly. Unless you are like Pham and don’t mind the danger, you should pray they are successful.” He slipped into the darkness.
Truong followed Pham back toward their sleeping area. “For a minute there I thought our noble leader didn’t like our odds,” Truong said. “But I think it’s just you he doesn’t like.” Pham didn’t answer.
The heavy weapons were still being readied for travel when Nguyen returned. The five soldiers committed to the detail filed past like condemned men en route to their execution. They had stripped to black shorts and dark headbands, and each carried at least one edged weapon. Most of these were short, deadly looking knives with the blades darkened. There were a couple of long blades, machete-like, more tool than weapon, and Co complemented his own short knife with a hammer with a heavy, square head. They padded along behind Nguyen on bare feet and dissolved into the blackness of jungle clinging to the slope of the Ong Thu.
When it was anticipated that additional firepower might be needed, Nguyen had sent another man to join the sentry at the tree. He carried a Russian PRD light machine gun, an elongated AK with a drum magazine hanging from the receiver. Another drum was slung in a canvas bag over his shoulder. A bipod hung from the end of the barrel. Nguyen knelt beside them. “If things go wrong, empty your weapons into the valley,” he said. “Rake the mountain. We’ll need time to get clear, and you must give us that time.” The two nodded a
nd Nguyen turned his attention to the others. “I’ve given them their orders should the worst happen. If you have to come back quickly, come low.” He rested a hand on Sau’s shoulder. “How long?” he asked.
A small gust of wind cooled the sweat on Sau’s body, and he shivered involuntarily. He hoped Nguyen didn’t mistake the shudder for a sign of fear. “Five hours, maybe more.”
“Chuc may man,” Nguyen said, patting Sau’s shoulder.
Sau looked at the men waiting in the shadows. They looked like a gang of cutthroat pirates from the South China Sea. “We won’t need luck,” he said.
8
Tanner was sitting in the bowl of his upturned helmet, his back against one of the trees. The helmet rim dug into his cheeks, but at least his ass was off the wet ground, and the irritation was enough to keep him from nodding off. The jungle throbbed with the squeaks and squeals of countless insects, broken occasionally by the distant screech of a predator finding prey. Tanner let the noise feed his mind. The primeval tune played over and over until he was sure that any sound that didn’t fit the natural track would draw his attention. He kept a hand on the grip of his M16 waiting for that sound.
The Chief lay a few feet away with his legs crossed and his arms folded across his chest like he was asleep at a picnic. His breathing was so shallow as to be imperceptible, and his face was a mask of serene composure. Tanner knew he wouldn’t snore or twitch or even change position until his watch.
Just beyond Tanner’s feet, DeLong lay on his side with his knees hiked up and his arms pulled inside his flak jacket in an attempt to preserve body heat. He lay still and tried to keep his eyes closed, but he couldn’t sleep. It was his first night in the bush. The end of his first day, his first long, miserable day, and it was so new and alien that he couldn’t imagine a year of days like it. His occasional glances at Tanner and the Chief weren’t meant to reassure himself that he wasn’t alone, but to have visual proof that becoming accustomed to the life of a grunt was possible. He tried not to move, so the others wouldn’t know he was awake. Spending the night on a lonely LP in a Vietnam jungle shouldn’t be something that would make a Marine lose sleep, even if it was a first night, on his first LP, in his first jungle.
The five men spaced themselves in an irregular line and, on Sau’s command, faded slowly into the undergrowth. They would feel their way with their fingers and toes, slipping through the leafy stalks and branches with no more disturbance than a slight breeze would make. Since plants were less forgiving at their bases, they would remain on their feet for as long as possible. When they were close to the enemy they would be forced to crawl, slicing the plant stalks close to the ground with their knives. It was a game of inches. The closer they got to the target, the slower they would move; in the end, their progress would barely be measurable.
Though Sau was certain how this night would unfold, he had no doubt that he had selected men who knew what to do and how to do it.
After two hours Sau’s men had covered half the estimated distance to their target, but they suddenly stopped and squatted in unison when a distant exchange of small arms fire erupted to the north. To the educated ear, the pops and cracks of the battle told the story. The gunfire echoed across the valley from some dark spot beyond the terminus of the Ong Thu. That nothing larger was introduced told Sau that the clash was taking place some distance from any American compound. He suspected that elements of the R-20th Doc Lap were plying their trade against Marines from one of the outposts at the bridge. The moisture-laden air and the thick foliage made it difficult to determine a precise distance. What sounded far away might be deceptively close. All the five could do was sit on their heels and wait for a reaction from below.
After giving the Chief a furtive nudge with the barrel of his rifle, Tanner weathered a contemptuous glare and then handed over DeLong’s watch. The two sat together listening to the gunfire.
“Sounds like Hotel Company out at Phu Loc,” Tanner whispered.
The Chief looked at the watch then stuffed it into the breast pocket on his flak jacket. “Maybe.”
Tanner leaned back against the tree and tilted his helmet down over his eyes. “Get some, Hotel,” he said to no one in particular.
DeLong thought that pretending to sleep through a firefight, even a distant one, might be a bit transparent, so he raised his head a little and looked at the Chief.
The Chief turned his head slowly. “It don’t mean nothin’ to us,” he said and turned back to the mountain.
DeLong wanted to remind the Chief to take care of his watch, but instead he lowered his head and went back to his make-believe sleep.
Bronsky sat with the radio handset to his ear monitoring the frequencies bouncing around north of their position. The sporadic chatter of gunfire interrupted the quiet slumber of the valley. The lieutenant knelt at his side.
“What’s going on?” Diehl said.
Bronsky listened intently to the handset then turned to the lieutenant. “A night ambush out of Phu Loc made contact. Sounds like a squad of Hotel’s 3rd Platoon.”
“How serious?”
“I think it’s all one-sided now. They’re on the horn to An Hoa, but they ain’t requesting any medevac.”
The distant firing petered out and was followed almost immediately by the boom of man-made thunder. A hushed swish and a loud pop left an illumination flare dangling from its parachute over the valley. The empty canister spun in whooping somersaults on its fall to earth as the harsh glare like an arc welder’s torch stabbed through the trees, pushing in piercing shafts of artificial light at oblique angles. The upper valley was a stark, gray tableau with the only movement the flare rocking peacefully under its silk canopy. Anything in the open that moved would be picked out by the eerie light and become a target for Hotel’s squad. But there was no firing. As the flare’s light began to fade, a second round sailed north from An Hoa, bathing the valley in a fresh glare, and a new parachute began its tranquil descent.
“I think the VC broke contact, sir,” Bronsky said.
The lieutenant moved back to his sleeping position and stretched out. “Switch back to our freq, and stay sharp. Our LP below may get some movement later.”
“Yes, sir,” Bronsky said, and clipped the handset to the strap ring on his helmet to keep it close to his ear.
The artillery compound at An Hoa was far enough from the barracks area that the voice alert for a fire mission wasn’t audible, but the report of the big 155-mm guns jolted the earth and the concussion shook the screening on the huts. Strader was asleep under a poncho liner on his corner cot when the first round slapped him awake. He was on his feet looking across the runway before the shot was halfway to its target. Being awakened by the muzzle blast of a 155 was akin to being struck by lightning, and Strader stood vibrating from his scalp to his toenails. When the flare burst open he could see from the distant glow that it had been called in far north of his 1st Platoon and he relaxed. There were other sleepers in the building, and a voice came out of the darkness. “Reach, you think your guys stepped in some shit?” The first flare dimmed and the second round’s shockwave swept over the building.
“No. It’s just illumes headed out toward the bridge.” He waited to see if the illumination rounds were followed by a flurry of high explosive rounds, but the base was quiet, and after a while he knew that the gun crews were standing down. Strader flopped back on the cot and pulled the poncho liner up under his chin. “I think they’re okay,” he said.
After the last flare extinguished, the five NVA waited until they were sure there would be no response from the Americans on the hill below them. Finally, they raised themselves up as one and began inching downward again. Their progress was now being determined by the density of the clouds that drifted across the face of the moon. When their surroundings were plunged into total darkness, they chanced movement. When the nimbus clouds thinned to a wispy translucency, the five stayed frozen in their spots, reluctant to even blink their eyes. They were c
lose now, and their progress was agonizingly slow. Each man fought against the adrenaline trying to gain control of his system and the searing pain from back muscles crying out for relief.
With no way to pinpoint the enemy position, their fear was that they would stumble into it without warning, so each time they stopped, they strained their ears in hope of picking up any sound that could provide direction. But each time they heard only the voices of the jungle. After a particularly long period of obstructed moonlight allowed a few tentative paces in succession, the cloud cover ended abruptly and the five turned to stone.
Perched on his upturned pack, the Chief held out the watch and waited for a break in the clouds. Finally, the moon cleared and a shaft of light touched the crystal face. Leaning over, he gave a tug on DeLong’s bloused trouser leg. When the new guy sat up, he pushed the watch into his hand. “It’s your watch,” the Chief said.
DeLong dragged a hand over his face as though he were wiping away four hours of sound sleep. He wasn’t sure if the Chief would be fooled or would even care, but he felt the subterfuge was worth the effort. “Yeah, that’s mine,” he said.
The Chief leaned in close so his face was nearly touching DeLong’s. Even in the diminished light DeLong could see the intimidating spark of intolerance in the Chief’s eyes. “It’s your turn to stand watch,” the Chief said, with emphasis.
“Oh, yeah. Okay. I’m awake, I’m awake,” DeLong said, getting onto his knees and immediately regretting the move as the soggy jungle floor soaked his legs.
The Chief turned away and stretched out in his earlier spot.
DeLong glanced at Tanner asleep against the tree. He imagined having to awaken the Chief because of some noise or movement he couldn’t identify, and he solemnly swore to himself that in that event, he would rouse Tanner first, no matter what.
