Under Attack

by Eric Meyer

  The village had gone. Disappeared, there was just the stone and bamboo foundations and framing lying askew. A few bodies, their limbs ripped apart, and what we noticed most of all was the silence. No birds, no insects, just tendrils of mist drifting past, or maybe it was smoke. Probably both.

  “That was some explosion,” Massey murmured, still in awe of the massive destruction we’d created, “They had other explosives stored.”

  “Had, past tense. We need to get back on the road.” We emerged from the bamboo and reached the track, “Say, is this rain getting worse?”

  It had eased into a steady drizzle, but now it came back in full force, and once again we were almost submerged beneath the massive downpour. Before it got too bad, we wheeled the two motorcycles back down the track and pushed them into the shelter of the open barn, which by happy coincidence was the only building in the village to survive. We stood watching the torrents of water hammering down. I took a chance and walked outside to explore further down the track. I’d made less than one hundred meters when I found a large section of the track literally washed away, and instead of a muddy path, there was a trench with a river running down it.

  I walked back and explained what I’d seen. Massey nodded, and I was surprised the two girls weren’t around. “Where are they?”

  “Lam noticed a small path on the other side of the village, or at least where the village used to be. When the huts collapsed, she spotted it, and she wanted to see where it led. In case it could be useful.”

  We waited and waited. It was an hour before they returned, their faces increased in concern.

  “Carl, Ray, you need to see this.”

  “Trouble?”

  “No, it’s not like that. But you need to come and see.”

  We picked our way through the rubble of the demolished huts, and I tried to avoid looking down at the bodies torn apart by the explosion. I wasn’t as concerned as I may have been. After all, the explosives that destroyed them were what they intended to use against our troops. Gifts from the Soviet Union, who were always ready and willing to support those insurgent groups whose intent was to create chaos, to murder and destroy, to undermine Western democracy. Not this time.

  The track led along the top of a steep slope for about half a kilometer, and when we reached the end there was nothing. The path petered out, and there was just a hole in the side of the slope, shuttered with rough-cut timbers.

  I looked at Lam. “What is it? Some kind of store?”

  “It’s a prison. Look inside.”

  I peered through the crude and bars set into the timber, and I saw movement inside. A half-dozen men staring out at me, at least they were men once. Now they were scarecrows, scarcely recognizable as men. Their faces thick with beard growth, their hair long and lank, their eyes dulled with fatigue and starvation, and skin ingrained with dirt. Like their uniforms. American uniforms.

  “Who are you?”

  “3 rd Marine Regiment. We were captured during the early days of Khe Sanh, and they brought us here, wherever this is. Is this the real, you’re Americans? You can get us out of here?”

  “Damn right, we’ll get you out of there. Just give us a few minutes.”

  It took longer than a few minutes. They’d hammered the bolts closed over the door, and it was evident they never allowed the POWs outside. Ray ran back to the village and found a rusty hammer and pry bar that we used to beat at the bolts. Eventually, the metal split apart and the door opened. The smell was appalling. They’d pushed a tiny quantity of food and a bottle of water through the bars once a day and left them with their own wastes in an overflowing bucket. One by one we helped them out. They could hardly walk, and all six men held their faces up to the sky, reveling in the feel of the driving rain that washed some of the filth off their bodies, and the blessed fresh air.

  We half carried them back to the village and took shelter back in the barn. They were starved and dehydrated, and the two girls scouted around for food, the first priority. The six men wolfed down the remains of a meal intended for the Vietcong and drank what seemed like gallons of water. There was nothing to be done about the uniforms, which were little more than rags, but the alternative was to route around the bodies for black pajamas for them to borrow. None expressed any enthusiasm for going anywhere wearing enemy duds.

  We told them where we were headed, and they weren’t too interested. They’d arrived at Khe Sanh from Da Nang, which is where they wanted to return.

  “What happened at Khe Sanh? Did our guys manage to hold?”

  “The battle’s over, and you Marines piled up a massive body count.”

  His name was Corporal Don Kray, and he glanced at the pile of rubble a few meters away. “It looks like you guys piled up a decent body count right here.”

  I pointed to Ray. “He’s the man responsible. Army Rangers, and he saved my life at Khe Sanh.”

  The six men looked at us with a new respect. “You were at Khe Sanh?”

  “We were.”

  “Which unit are you, Mister?”

  A fair question, our ODs were in almost a bad state as theirs, covered in mud and filth. “Army CID, I was investigating a murder.”

  They chuckled. “Plenty of murders to choose from in that place.”

  Kray introduced the rest of the men. “Privates Jay Campbell, Troy Ellis, Kevin Franklin, Tommy Jones, and David Lloyd. When they captured us we had a platoon lieutenant and a sergeant, but they took them away and executed them. Now it’s just us. What’s the plan to get out of here?”

  I looked at Ray, he looked back at me, and we gave it to them straight. “There is no plan. We need to reach Dong Ha ASAP, but right now we’re not going anywhere. Not in this rain, most of the track is washed away, and the only way to get those motorcycles down there would be to carry them. All we can do is wait.”

  “Wait for what?”

  “Wait for the rain to stop, and if it doesn’t stop soon, we have a problem.” I explained about the planned assassination when the President arrived, and the connection to North Vietnam, “It’s quite simple. If they succeed there’ll be chaos in Saigon, and senior military and government figures backed by Hanoi will stage a coup. They’d take over the country, and that’s the end for South East Asia. The adjacent countries will fall to the reds, and together with their Communist pals in China and the Soviet Union, the world will change.”

  Kray stopped eating for a moment, and like the rest of them he was gobbling down every morsel of food he set his eyes on. “You’re saying they can kill one man, and it’ll cause all that?”

  “Think about it. They’ll order us to leave Vietnam, the North Vietnamese Army will take over, and this place will become a Communist slave state.”

  He shrugged. “They’re welcome to it.”

  “I agree. Except Communism is a disease, an infection, and it’ll spread to the West. The reason we’re fighting here is to stop it, to build a boardwalk against Communism. When America pulls out, the shit really hits the fan.”

  The six men nodded uncertainly. They understood the logic, but they’d seen enough, they’d taken enough, and each man had a picture in his mind. Home.

  We tried to make them as comfortable as we could, and all that remained for us to do was wait. We filled in the time by searching for what remained after the explosion. There were sufficient AK-47s to equip each of the Marines with a rifle, and there were magazines to spare. They spent the rest of the day stripping and reassembling the weapons, stripping and reloading the magazines, and the two girls hunted for more food.

  Night fell, and still the rain continued to fall. The next morning it was still torrential, and I went back down to inspect the track. More had washed away, and what had once been passable on a motorcycle would need a boat to negotiate. We spent a miserable day, conscious of the hours and days slipping away, cold and wet, and the Marines ate the last of the food. We went hungry. It was hard to see those pitiable scarecrows without wanting them to have everything poss
ible to regain their health and strength.

  That night, when we were shivering with cold, with no way to get warm, Le came to me in the corner of the barn where I lay on my own, wet and freezing. “Carl, I want to spend the night with you.”

  She was in a bad way, her teeth chattering, and her entire body shivering. It was so bad I was worried she was going down with a fever, and after the beating she taken, she may not have the strength to get over it.

  I shifted the side. “Lay next to me, and I’ll hold you close and try to keep you warm.”

  She gave me a smile of thanks, lay down on the ground with her back to me, and I put my arms around her. We lay there together, and I could swear we were both getting the benefit of our body heat, but close proximity does things to a man and to a woman. She wriggled around so she was facing me, and I felt warm as her breasts pressed against my chest. Any man would find a girl’s breasts pressing against him sufficient to raise the temperature one or two notches, and when her lips gently brushed mine, it raised at least another three degrees. I was wary about taking advantage of her in her weakened state, but her mouth clamped over mine, and I felt her tongue pushing inside. I tasted her for almost a minute before I pull back.

  “Le, are you sure about this?”

  Her lips formed a smile. “Can you think of a better way to get warm?”

  I had to admit I couldn’t, and I gave in to the inevitable. Returned the kiss, and I felt the heat of arousal take over my mind and my body. We made slight adjustments to our clothing, and we made careful, gentle love, with just the beat of the rain on the roof of the barn as an accompaniment. Astonishingly, or maybe not so astonishingly, I felt warmer. She told me she felt warmer, and we fell asleep, holding each other tight, not wanting the moment to end.

  I awoke at dawn and remembered we hadn’t posted any kind of a watch. We’d been lucky, and no VCs had arrived in the night to murder us all as we slept. The Marines were all asleep, probably the best sleep they’d had since their incarceration in that dank hole in the side of the hill. It looked like the food and water had done wonders, as had the prospect of getting out of this shithole, although there still wasn’t much prospect.

  Sure, we could hike down the track on foot and paddle through the water, but when we reached the flat ground we’d have a long way to go, around forty klicks, and on foot in the middle of a monsoon, it could take too long. We had two days left, and we discussed our chances of making it out, and reaching at least the coastal highway in time. Once we got there, we were sure to pick up a ride, but until then it was going to be hard going.

  “We don’t have a choice,” Ray said, his voice somber, “This fucking rain could last another week, the President would be dead, and it’s all over.”

  He meant we’d have failed, and he’d be right.

  Le was close to me, and she tapped me on the shoulder. “What about the Marines? I’m not sure they can manage the journey under these conditions.”

  I looked aside at Le. “Why don’t we ask them?”

  They were starting to wake, and when they’d all come to, they wore looks of bitter disappointment when we told them there was no more food. I spelt it out to them.

  “We have to leave. We’re out of time. Getting down that track and reaching the coast road is going to be hard even for someone who is fit. I’m not sure you guys can make it.”

  They all spoke at once, but Kray answered for them. “Mr. Yeager, if you think we’re staying here, you can forget it. We’ve seen enough of this place to last ten lifetimes. We’re coming with you.”

  “You could be signing your own death sentences.”

  He shook his head. “We gave up on living a long time ago. If there’s any chance of getting out of here, even if it means risking death, we’ll take it. Besides, there’s something you haven’t thought of.” I was aware there was a lot of things I hadn’t thought of, but I gestured for Kray to go on, “This is, or was, a Vietcong village, and we’re in the middle of bandit country. If you run into trouble, six Marines with AK-47s could make one hell of a difference.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, get ready to leave.”

  Lam was wiping the rain from the Degtyaryov. “We’re not leaving this behind.”

  I could hardly believe her. “We’ll be lucky to get down that track, and most of the way we’ll be wading through a stream. Any extra weight will make the going that much harder. Forget the machine gun.”

  “Like Kray said, we may run into trouble, so we’ll need a machine gun. We’re taking it with us.”

  She said in a voice that brooked no argument, and the two girls took one end of the weapon apiece. Lam had found a spare magazine, which she carried on her back in an improvised sling. I doubted she’d make more than the first few meters without over balancing, but they were welcome to try. Slowly, the Marines got to their feet and stood ready to leave. The change that had come over them was astonishing. We’d rescued six starving, dehydrated skeletons from a hole in the side of a hill, and after a small amount of food and some rest, and the prospect of getting out of this place, they’d once again become fighting men.

  Each man clutched his rifle, and the expressions on their faces were awesome to behold. They wanted payback, they were armed, and they were fucking dangerous. If I had any pity for the Vietcong, I’d have felt sorry for them if these Marines came across them. They weren’t about to take any prisoners. Nossir. The Communists had given them a hard time, had demonstrated a cold and vicious humanity that had turned the war in Vietnam into such a cruel battleground. If they came across the enemy, I felt certain they were about to show them two could play at that game.

  Ray took point, striding out into the rain, and struggling to maintain his balance on the slippery ground. The two girls followed carrying the machine gun, and I’d been wrong. The weapon was not especially heavy at around twenty pounds, and holding it between them it seemed to help their balance and keep them on their feet. Don Kray and the Marines followed, and I stayed on our six. Like the man had said, we were in enemy territory, and the chances of running into hostiles was high. I guessed even Vietcong went out in the rain. They did everything else, crawled through slimy, stinking, insect ridden tunnels, and at Khe Sanh I’d seen them charge the wire in fanatical human wave attacks. So I guessed they wouldn’t regard a rainstorm as that much of a problem.

  We completed the first part of the journey, and we reached level ground. The vast, flat plain that extended across the whole of South Vietnam as far as the coast, and now the going should be easier. We passed the first rice paddy, but it was abandoned, with a few wild shoots pushing through the water from the previous year’s crop. It was a story written across the entire country. Peasant farmers who’d tended their land for generations only to have Uncle Ho’s minions turn up and murder them when they refused to fight for the North. A depressing story, and I was still thinking about it when they almost had us.

  It was sheer coincidence. We relaxed our guard, and all we had to think about was the misery of the rain that continued to fall in sheets. The path took us past yet another abandoned rice paddy, and once again the eerie surroundings, the waste in the desolation, heaped on the misery and sheer futility of this war the North was waging, not just on the forces of the Republic, and MACV, but on its own people. Using torture and murder as their recruiting sergeant, and the impoverished peasants were caught in the middle. If they refuse to fight, the Communists killed them, and if they did fight, we killed them.

  Whether there was a difference between Soviet-made bullets and American-made bullets I wasn’t sure, but I somehow doubted it. I was looking back at Le, and things were different between us. That one night spent together, holding each other tight and enjoying the only thing we had left changed things, and she was looking at me in a different way. Like the way I was looking at her, like lovers. It was no surprise. We were both in the same line of business, her a civilian cop, or she had been, and me an Army cop. At least I was, although thi
ngs may have changed when I reported back.

  “Tell me about America, Carl.”

  I shrugged. “What’s to tell? Is a big place, much bigger than Vietnam. The North is different to the South, the East is different to the West, so it’s hard to know where to start.”

  “Do you have rain, like this?”

  I chuckled. “Not in my memory, no way. If we did, I’d go somewhere else.”

  “Mexico?”

  “I had something different in mind. Somewhere like Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii is nice?”

  “They say it’s nice.”

  “You’ve never been there?”

  I thought back to my dead wife, Gracie. Hawaii was a place we’d planned to visit. Before a Vietcong satchel bomb exploded in Saigon, and Gracie was dead. She never made it to Hawaii.

  “No, I’ve never been there.”

  She smiled. “Maybe one day.”

  “Maybe.”

  They were walking along the trail that cut across the path we were following. Because the jungle was almost opaque, and what little visibility we would normally enjoy had vanished because of the rain, we met at the intersection, the crossroads. I saw them at the last moment, around a dozen black clad figures, shoulders hunched against the rain, heads bowed staring down at the sodden ground in a misery equal to our own. They were chatting to each other from beneath lowered eyes, like me and Le, probably talking about anything except the war. Chatting about plans for the future, girlfriends, travel, the good things in life wiped out by the unending war, and we came face-to-face. And stopped.

  Ray was on point, and he should have seen them earlier, but like the rest of us he was sunk in his wet, cold misery, like the VC. Ray stopped, and we almost walked right into him. The twelve Vietcong jerked to a stop, the men at the rear colliding with those in front, and for several seconds we all stood there, wet and frozen in astonishment. Massey recovered first, brought up his M-14, and started shooting. I was at the back of the column, and I ran forward, pushing past the Marines and the girls who stood holding the Degtyaryov like it was something they’d just purchased and were carrying home from the local hardware store.