Baptism

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  The Green Beret captain led the ten men from the cav into the command bunker that doubled as the American sleeping quarters. Three CONEX containers had been placed side by side, and three more of the large steel shipping crates were lined up about ten feet away from the first three, with their openings facing in toward the center. Huge beams had been laid on the roofs of the containers, and the PSP laced on top of them was covered with eight layers of sandbags. The ends of the long tunnel were sealed off except for the doors at each end. It was an easy bunker to make and took only a few hard hours to assemble.

  Arnason looked around the command bunker as the captain briefed the teams. The Green Beret communications sergeant slept in the same CONEX container as his radios, and the medic had set up his medical operation out of his CONEX also. Arnason guessed that the Vietnamese Special Forces medics had done the same and that there was a dispensary setup for the commandos. The Green Beret captain’s voice caught Arnason’s attention. He noticed that the officer spoke as if he were fighting for the strength just to speak. There had been no friendly greetings when they entered the A-camp, and no offers of beer. Arnason looked at the drawn faces of the other Special Forces men and realized that the team was under a great deal of strain.

  “I’m going to send out my intelligence NCO with one of your teams and my executive officer.” The captain saw the look on Barnett’s face and added, “They’re the only two men left in this camp who can still hump the mountains. Everyone else is either sick with one kind or the other of fucking jungle rot, or has been wounded and will be flying out of here with the Chinooks.”

  The sound of the large choppers leaving the camp accented the captain’s words. A very sad look filled the officer’s eyes. He must have been in his late twenties but looked fifty. “That leaves me with three SF men still able to function.” The captain’s eyes found Woods’s. “Needless to say, we really need those seismic devices installed as soon as possible.” He inhaled a deep breath and continued. “What I recommend, Lieutenant, is that you get those things in the ground and get back here as soon as you possibly can…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  Lieutenant Reed spoke. “It sounds like there’s a lot of action around here.”

  The captain’s eyes spoke for him. The bunker became very quiet.

  “Well, we had better get our stuff together and get ready to leave tonight.” Reed looked back at the captain. “Is there going to be a moon tonight?”

  The look the captain gave the lieutenant wasn’t meant to be insulting, but it was a look of pure pity. “The fog blocks out all the light after two in the morning. You had better be where you want to go by then. My men have been to the sites before, so it shouldn’t be too difficult, except for the climb.” The captain went to the entrance and paused. He didn’t look back but spoke loud enough for everyone to hear him. “I’ve got to check my guards.”

  “That’s one weird officer!” Fitzpatrick spit a stream of tobacco juice on the PSP floor and caught a dirty glare from the SF medic, who had been watching from his hootch. “Sorry about that!” Fitzpatrick tried using his boot heel to spread out the brown stain.

  Barnett sipped from his canteen and handed it to Woods. The very last rays of sunlight were a shining sliver on the inside edge of the eastern mountain. The two recon men watched as the light slipped away; it would only be a few more minutes, and it would be dark enough to leave the camp undetected by any close-in enemy observers. The plan for the first night’s move was to get just far enough away from the camp so as not to be seen leaving it and have their direction of travel monitored by the NVA.

  Barnett didn’t look at Woods when he spoke. He didn’t trust his eyes. “David, I don’t feel good about this one….”

  “Now don’t start that shit with me! Man! I’m fucking ready to shit my pants, and you start with the weird talk!” Woods slapped Barnett’s shoulder. “Fucking fight ’em, man… that’s what Cav recon does! Fuck and fight!”

  “David, promise me that you won’t leave me alone out there alive.” Barnett didn’t have to go into detail; Woods knew exactly what his teammate was saying.

  “Only if you promise me the same thing,” Woods almost whispered. The bravado of his earlier statement was gone.

  “It’s a deal.” Barnett left Woods and moved quickly toward the gate. He wanted to be alone for a few minutes.

  The two Special Forces team members from the A Shau camp acted as the point men for the recon teams and led the way through the thick grass. The very first thing Woods noticed when they had cleared the A-camp was the smell of the valley. It was a smell that none of the team members would ever forget as long as they lived. Wet, rotting wood and damp moss was the best way to describe the odor of the thick jungle. It was not an unpleasant smell, just distinctive and unforgettable.

  Woods constantly lost sight of the reflective tape on the back of Barnett’s soft jungle cap, and a couple of times he felt a deep anxiety and panic spring up when he lost sight of the reflective tape for more than few seconds. Sinclair bumped into him once in the darkness, which reassured Woods that he wasn’t the only one having problems seeing in the dark; Sinclair was the best rear guard in the world.

  A muffled fall told Arnason’s team that Fitzpatrick was still traveling about a hundred meters away to their left flank. The teams were moving up the mountain on two separate fingers of rock and underbrush. The SF men had selected their night trails well and needed only to feel the pull of the mountain against their legs to know in which direction they were traveling on the steep slope.

  Lieutenant Reed had wanted to split the teams up, with each element taking a different side of the valley to place the sensors, but a combined effort on the part of the Special Forces men convinced him that it was dangerous enough sending twelve men out together where companies feared to tread. What made the A Shau such a difficult terrain to maneuver in was the thick jungle and the dense fog. Once a unit made contact with the NVA, they were on their own for resupplies, artillery support, and most importantly, air support. The wounded usually died in the A Shau Valley, but that went for the NVA too.

  Woods bumped into Barnett’s backpack and felt like a fool until Sinclair bumped into him. Barnett reached back, grabbed Woods, and pulled him toward the tight group. Woods reached back until he located Sinclair and pulled him into the small circle of heads. The Special Forces sergeant whispered very low but still could be heard. “We stay here tonight. Form a star.”

  Woods could feel that the ground had leveled off, and guessed that they were on the military crest of the mountain or a decent-sized ledge. He remembered the star team position from Recondo School and felt in the dark for the man on each side of him, then lay down with his legs spread apart until they touched the legs of the men next to him. The larger position was excellent for nights like this one where you couldn’t see your own hand touching your nose; it also made you feel more secure when you could touch another person.

  The fog rolled in without being seen but could be felt like a wet blanket touching bare skin. Barnett had sat Indian-style during his two hours on watch and now leaned over to wake Woods for the last shift right before dawn. He paused and sniffed the air, then shook Woods gently awake. Barnett sniffed the air again and was sure this time; someone was smoking grass. He leaned over and whispered in Woods’s ear. Woods sniffed the air and agreed; someone was smoking dope. He whispered to Barnett. “VC?”

  Barnett cupped his hands over Woods’s ear and whispered back, “Fuck, no… someone on Fitz’s team!”

  The morning light surprised everyone except the Green Beret; he’d experienced it before. The ground fog was so thick that they couldn’t see three feet away. It was as if they were floating in a cloud. Woods looked down and couldn’t see his boots. He could see a vague outline of Arnason a few feet away, then knelt down until he could see Barnett sleeping on the ground, rolled up in his poncho. Sinclair came into view, and he woke both of them and used hand signals to inform them that they
were moving out in ten minutes. Barnett rolled over on his side and unbuttoned his pants to urinate. He released his bladder lying on his side, then got up on his feet.

  Woods eased over to Arnason and whispered softly in his ear. “Did you smell someone smoking dope last night?”

  Arnason shook his head in the negative.

  “We did… between 0400 and dawn.” Woods nodded in the direction of Fitzpatrick’s team.

  Arnason flexed his jaws and glared at Woods, then he pulled his team member over so that he could whisper back. “I’ll handle it when we meet up with them the day after tomorrow.”

  David nodded and reached down for his backpack. His muscles were sore from the difficult climb and sleeping all night on the damp ground.

  The mist was scary to be walking in, but not as bad as it had been while traveling the night before. The sun burned the fog off the mountaintops early in the day, and a beautiful array of mountain vegetation replaced the prior night’s fear with wonder. Brilliant flowers and dark green plants reflected the sunlight. Woods forgot his fears of the night and actually enjoyed the patrol until they reached their first site. The task of digging holes in the rocky soil was almost impossible, and twice they had to move down the trail until they could find a suitable location. Woods noticed the weight difference in his pack as soon as he had buried his first sensor and screwed in the device’s antenna.

  The open trail was making the whole team nervous, and even though Woods couldn’t see Sergeant Arnason or the Green Beret sergeant, he knew that they were down the trail acting as guards for them. Woods took a few seconds to observe the wide path that ran along the top of the jagged mountain range. The NVA had used the trail frequently, and even artillery fires would have a difficult time scoring a direct hit because a long or a short round would miss the trail by hundreds of meters because of the razorback ridge. The NVA knew what they were doing when they had picked the A Shau Valley as a stronghold.

  Arnason and Sinclair came down the trail moving in crouches low to the trail; they signaled for the team to take cover, and instantly the recon patrol melted into the surrounding jungle. A group of five NVA walking next to modified bicycles appeared on the trail and disappeared just as suddenly. Woods had gotten a quick glimpse of the technique they were using and was impressed. The NVA had tied metal rods across the handlebars of the bikes, and the rider, rather than sitting on the seat, walked next to the bike and steered it with one hand on the rod and the other hand holding on to the bundle of supplies that was balanced where the seat used to be. The bikes could haul heavy loads over rough terrain quickly and safely.

  Arnason stepped out on the trail and listened. He waited, then signaled for the team to join him. Slowly the men emerged from the jungle and started moving down the trail in the opposite direction in which the NVA had gone. It would be almost totally impossible to travel on the side of the mountain, parallel to the trail. You either used the trail with extreme caution or you went all the way back down the side of the mountain to the valley floor and then moved down there parallel to the mountaintop, before climbing all the way back up again.

  Five more times during the day the team slipped off the trail into the jungle. The more they did the disappearing act, the better they got at it and the more confident they became. The Green Beret sergeant signaled that they had reached their last site for the sensors, and this time it was much easier digging the devices in and camouflaging them. Lieutenant Reed checked each one of the sensors before they left them to insure that they were in working condition.

  The Green Beret captain watched the digital readout panel on the seismic-intrusion detector-receiver. He punched in the code for a test, and three sets of numbers flashed on the screen. All but one set of sensors was operating. The captain checked his map and marked in grease pencil the third location in blue, which indicated that the system was up and operating. He stared at the map and wondered if any of the Cav recon men had guessed yet that they were operating in Laos.

  Barnett and Woods used the large, exposed root of a hardwood tree for a backrest and untied one of the side straps on their packs to remove the small plastic bags of indigenous rations the Special Forces team had supplied. The Vietnamese food was much better than the LRRP rations and provided a higher level of protein, especially the meal of dehydrated fish and rice. What the Cav recon teams had noticed almost immediately were the soft plastic packages the meals were packed in, which didn’t make any noise when you opened them. The American LRRP rations had been designed by a team of people who had never served in the field and most certainly not with a recon patrol. The LRRP rations were wrapped in a tinfoil-type pouch that made a lot of noise when you tried opening them. Recon teams improvised by cutting the tops off the rations before they went out on patrol, and then they added water just before they ate the food. The Special Forces teams went one step further; large combat units could get away with carrying dry rations and stopping near streams and rivers to get water, but small recon teams had to premix the dehydrated meals before they left on patrol because they couldn’t risk hunting for streams and rivers; not all of the meals were mixed with water on long patrols, but at least two packages were rehydrating at all times.

  Woods squeezed the rice-and-fish mix out of the plastic tube directly into his mouth without using a spoon. He hadn’t realized just how hungry he was until the food reached his stomach. He ate all of the first meal and was considering the second one when Arnason signaled to get ready to move out. It was Woods’s turn to carry the PRC-77 secure-voice radio, and he hurried to transfer it from Sinclair’s pack to his before the team started heading toward the preselected rendezvous site with Fitzpatrick’s team.

  The Special Forces sergeant struggled to his feet using his weapon as a cane. The man was almost totally exhausted and was functioning on sheer guts and large doses of amphetamines. He had spent seven months at the A Shau camp without ever having left it, except to go on combat patrols that averaged an eighty percent chance of making contact with the enemy and to pull twenty-hour workdays building the A-camp when he wasn’t on patrol. Barnett went over to the sergeant and used hand signals to say that he was taking over the point. The sergeant became angry and shook his head that it was too dangerous. Barnett persisted, and the sergeant finally gave in and let the young soldier take over the strenuous and nerve-racking task of breaking point.

  Lieutenant Reed hadn’t interfered during the whole patrol and had allowed for the sergeants to make the decisions, especially the Special Forces NCO, who knew the area that they were patrolling in. Reed had saved face by not making a scene over who commanded the team. Barnett’s demanding that he be allowed to take point had made the officer feel guilty, and he tried to intervene and take the point from him. It was a mistake. The young soldier absolutely refused to give the critical position of point man up to the lieutenant.

  The team stopped when the sun was halfway up the side of the mountain on the opposite side of the valley. Arnason checked his map with the SF sergeant, and they both agreed that they were very close to the meeting site. Arnason signaled that the team should stay where they were, and then he beckoned for Woods to join him for a short reconnoiter of the immediate area. He knew that he was within a couple hundred meters of the site.

  The normal jungle noises comforted Woods as the two of them moved slowly through the thick undergrowth. The jungle was triple-canopied, with huge hardwood trees poking up through the thick growth of secondary trees. Woods felt secure and moved behind the sergeant with excellent stealth. The two of them had gone less than a hundred meters when Arnason came to an abrupt halt and took a half step backward toward Woods, who instinctively flipped the safety off his CAR-15 and searched for the enemy.

  Arnason signaled with his hand for Woods to join him without looking back. The sight that met Woods’s eyes was almost unbelievable. The jungle had been leveled in an almost perfect fifty-foot circle. Every blade of grass, every bush or vine, had been torn up. The ground was bare
of even the common dark green moss. Arnason risked whispering, “What do you think did this?”

  Woods shrugged his shoulders and shook his head slowly from side to side. He had no idea. A bomb would have left a crater, and artillery would have shattered the bushes and trees, leaving scars high up on the hardwood. Everything had been leveled that was underbrush, and the large trees were untouched. The wind changed direction slightly, and both of the recon men caught a whiff of something rotting. Arnason led the way around the perimeter of the circle and stopped when he reached the decomposing male tiger.

  “Looks like something ate half of it.” Woods wrinkled his nose and tried not breathing in the obnoxious smell.

  Arnason slipped down into a battle crouch and surveyed the immediate area. “It looks like two tigers had one hell of a battle here.” He nodded back to the way they had come. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Woods took the lead, and they circled around the open area. The rendezvous site was located about a hundred meters from the tiger battleground. The two recon men rested for a few minutes and took their time checking out the jungle around the meeting place before returning to bring back the rest of their team.

  Lieutenant Reed selected the night positions for the team. He put Woods and Barnett together, and Arnason with Sinclair; the Special Forces sergeant stayed with him in the position nearest the ridge line and the NVA trail. Reed was trying to make up for not humping the point and figured he would take the night watch by himself and let the sergeant rest. He had preselected three additional sites for Fitzpatrick’s team when they arrived. The compiled teams would remain on the narrow finger of ground for the night and until the heavy fog burned off in the morning before returning to the A-camp. A day entry wouldn’t matter; their mission would be completed by then.