Red Flags

by Juris Jurjevics

  Grady eased up to the youth, making sure he was unarmed. He pointed away. We didn't linger. Cox signed to Willie, who led us silently on a southeast heading. The signs of habitation fell away. We were back under triple canopy and moving well, praying we were walking away from and not toward wherever the People's Army was having its jamboree.

  We covered a thousand meters and reached the fording point where we would lie in wait for the VC courier and his minders. They were due to pass by in the wee hours of the morning, urgency making them risk daylight travel, albeit under jungle canopy.

  The modest river, no more than the width of a road, lay at the bottom of a trough cut by past monsoons. The water was only knee high. We descended the bank and crossed quickly, one at a time.

  Grady selected a slight knoll in a grove of saplings we could exit from in any direction, and we hid out. Cox set the two Yards to provide security, and the four of us stuck our heads together under a poncho liner.

  Grady whispered, "This place is crawling with major VC."

  "Yeah," Cox whispered back, snapping on his red-lensed flashlight to study the map. "It's sure not uninhabited jungle anymore."

  "What do we do about the ambush?" Grady asked, directing the question to all of us. "If we don't do this real quiet, they'll know we're here. The odds of a chance meeting are sky-high. Even if we dust his babysitters without being detected and nab this commo guy, I don't know what we'll run into around the next bend between here and the extraction point. The VC keep their larger units spread out as a precaution. But we could be in an interval between smaller elements."

  "Or between battalions," Cox whispered.

  "You saying we should scrap it?" said Ruchevsky.

  "I'm saying it's a total gamble. They could be anyplace. How many more campsites like that one are out here? We don't know what shit we're in the middle of."

  Cox shifted the light toward the sergeant. "You're the man, Grady. It's your call."

  "Hell," he said. "It's too hinky now for me to call it by my lonesome."

  He put it to each of us in turn. No one was going to be the one to veto the thing, even as everyone prayed someone would. It was unanimous: proceed as planned, testosterone and glory. Fuck.

  "Jeez," Grady said, grinning. "You're crazier than fire ants. Okay, most likely our man will be somewhere in the middle of the line. Wherever he is, don't kill 'im. I'll wait until the radio gook is past me in the ambush before I spring it. Remember—if I fire, it's on. If I don't shoot, we pass it up and sneak the fuck home. If it's gonna happen, I set it off. No one fires unless I do."

  He looked us over. "Once it's sprung and we take 'em down, we beat feet right away and go for the landing zone. So don't miss. Check your silencers. You don't want the NVA hearin' this. We need kill shots, right between the antlers. Knock 'em down fast. We gotta be away from here quick. Fifteen seconds."

  He pointed to where we were on the map and to the landing zone.

  "It's thirty minutes to the LZ, John says. There's a narrow trail. As soon as we're on the way, Captain Rider radios for the pickup. Anybody got anything to add?"

  Ruchevsky said, "None of our long-range recon units have snuck in here. It's virgin territory. So Charlie should be feeling safe—and let's hope a little lax."

  "Amen," Cox said.

  "Okay," Grady said. "Everybody stay cool. Everybody stay lucky."

  We used the remaining daylight to set up two mines on our flanks and prepare our positions. At sunset we bedded down together on a slight slope. I radioed in for two seconds and we set the guard schedule for the night. We were exhausted but too wired to sleep. When I finally did, it was like falling into a black hole.

  We were nudged awake. Before I could rub my eyes, three VC passed our position in the dark, heading north toward the base camp. Judging from how chatty they were, they had no suspicion of our presence. Since they weren't laden down with packs and a radio, none of them was our quarry. Cox gave up on sleep and took a dex candy. Just as I radioed in at midnight, a heavily loaded raft floated by on the river, pushed along in the shallow water like a scooter. Four more bamboo rafts floated by. For an isolated region, there was an awful lot of traffic.

  Two hours before dawn, we rose from the night perimeter and shifted into our places in the one foolproof and perfect military configuration: the firing squad. Rot crossed the river in the direction they would come from to lie in wait for their rear guard, in case their last man didn't cross with the rest of the party, which was likely. Willie hid up ahead to deal with their point man once he moved away from the party on our side.

  I couldn't make out my colleagues among the fronds, and I knew where they were. Ruchevsky, the closest, unpacked his second weapon, an M-79 grenade launcher that looked like a stubby shotgun. He loaded a single fat shell, a beanbag round to knock down his target if needed but not kill him.

  I was groggy from interrupted sleep and immobility, and grew steadily unhappier with whatever bugs were sharing my fatigues. Chiggers, ants, spiders—all God's creatures taking communion on my flesh. I looped "California Dreamin'" nervously in my head to distract myself as they dined.

  The light was still vague when we heard them approaching. The song in my head switched off. Big John's intel was impressive. The silencer would slow velocity but this close that wouldn't matter. If they bunched up, I was putting all eighteen rounds in my targets in one burst.

  The Charlies' point man arrived at the river's edge and waited on one knee. The rest caught up and paused with him. The first man crossed and stopped to take in the jungle. He listened to the insects, a good sign, and signaled.

  Five more forded one at a time, a few seconds apart, not terribly alert. Three in NVA helmets and khaki, two in cao ao pajamas. After the fifth man, I raised the muzzle a quarter inch, waiting for them to advance along the trail into our kill zone. Mercifully, it was just growing light and they presented as little more than silhouettes, faceless shadows I wouldn't be disinclined to pull the trigger on.

  At that moment, on the far side, a sixth helmeted soldier stepped out of the jungle and proceeded to cross. A seventh waited on deck and then waded over. No others followed.

  Seven on our riverbank. Possibly an eighth bringing up the rear, Rot there to dispatch him with his crossbow. More than we expected. The kidnap victim for John to deal with—was he identifiable? Number four's squarish pack bulged: the radio. The stub of an antenna stuck out of it. My pulse leapt.

  Would Grady spring the ambush or give them a pass?

  Their point man didn't start out from the riverbank ahead of them as he should have. That meant six VC for three of us to take down, leaving John to wrestle the seventh. I'd have to knock out the three in front; Cox and Grady, the trio in back; John, the radioman in the middle. Three head shots seemed risky. I'd spray the torsos. Body mass. They just needed to stay close.

  They started forward, bunched. Grady fired ... then Cox and me. A muzzle flashed back.

  One burp had emptied my clip.

  With all the firing, I'd missed it, but now the unmistakable clack of a Kalashnikov echoed back to us along the valley. A shot one of them had gotten off. Fuck. We'd been announced.

  I slapped in a new magazine one-handed and advanced, eyes on the three in front. All of them were down.

  "Dung le ban," the radioman squealed. Don't shoot.

  Ruchevsky, lying on top of him, whispered for him to shut up. I covered as Cox helped strip the radio off. Big John cuffed and gagged the radio guy and bound him at the elbows. They were on their feet, the captive's eyes like silver dollars.

  I stepped toward my downed targets. The light seeping through the jungle turned faintly white. The third man I'd hit was in a black top and shorts. There was no mistaking him. His teeth were filed down like a Montagnard's. Pronounced five o'clock shadow darkened his cheeks. Wolf Man.

  I motioned Cox over to confirm his identity and tore away his rucksack. Ammunition, salt pork, a Russian Zenith camera. The canvas satchel on
his shoulder ... paper! I turned him to get it. The exit wound in his back was a bright red bowl. Ribs and a lung gone. I tossed out everything but camera, maps, and papers, and slung on the bag and his weapon.

  The next body wore a field uniform. NVA didn't wear insignia, and he wore no distinctive Commie belt buckle, like some officers. But he was armed with a pistol, an American .45, which meant he might be one. I unstrapped his ruck. Besides a Hungarian transistor radio, it was full of medicines and morphine in a nylon bag. A medic, maybe a doctor. I liberated the medicine bag and tossed the pistol and rucksack into the jungle.

  Rot was crossing the river in a hurry, exuberant with his success. Willie appeared from up the trail, looking disappointed he'd missed out. Cox, standing over one of his targets, popped a coup de grâce shot.

  I moved to the point man, sights fixed on his chest. Shit, he was breathing, still alive. A barefoot Montagnard VC in shorts, carrying nothing but ammunition and a sleeve of cooked rice. My heart sank. It was the father of the child we'd delivered, Roberta and I. He choked, grunting from pain, blood trickling from his chest. His eyes blinking, disbelieving.

  Cox came up to me, signaling to hurry, then saw his face. He recognized the dad too. In one motion he covered the man's face with his boonie hat and filled it with a muffled burst from his CAR. Gratitude and revulsion swept through me.

  Willie touched Cox on the arm. He was looking off the trail, toward Grady. We pushed through the foliage to where Sarge lay against a tree trunk, pressing a field dressing hard against his groin. The gauze and his fatigue pants were sodden.

  "How bad?" Cox said.

  "It must've hit bone and zigged everywhere. I'm cut up all over inside. Feels like a piece is comin' out my lower back. I think I'm bleeding out my ass. I'm sittin' in blood."

  Cox said, "Cut away his pants," as he sawed a strap off a rucksack and hurriedly tightened it around Grady's thigh. I exposed the wound. Cox rifled the medic's musette bag. Grady took him by the arm.

  "Don't."

  The heavy caliber had devastated the leg, split it open all the way down the back, ass to ankle. White bone shone through the filleted flesh. The tourniquet slowed the bleeding but not enough. The leg seeped steadily, a rich heavy red. An explosion that took off a leg might cauterize the wound and stop its bleeding, but nothing sealed the arteries severed by a caroming bullet. If he was medevaced to a hospital, the surgeons could use Teflon and Dacron tubes to replace them, but here we could do nothing but slow the blood loss.

  "You won't get to the bleeding," Grady said, voice hoarse. "The leg is hamburger in back. I'm leaking like a stuck pig. Just lousy luck. Wolf Man had a round in the spout and the safety off. Must've jerked the trigger when he got hit."

  Cox looked scared. "We can't get a helicopter in here. We'll have to carry you."

  Grady grimaced, teeth clamped. "In this heat, through this shit? You can't."

  "Sarge—"

  "All that jostling, I'll just bleed out faster."

  "Grady—"

  "Don't give me that nobody-left-behind crap. I don't want to be tits-up in Arlington with them ring knockers and honky fucks. I'm gonna kiss the bitch right here."

  The Montagnards had finished dragging the bodies off the trail and took up defensive positions facing the far bank of the river and up the trail.

  Cox tore the filter off a Salem, pushed it between Grady's lips, and lit it. He took short drags, sucking smoke in small increments. A shot sounded. A signal we'd been spotted.

  Grady arched his back a little from pain. "Visiting hours're over, old son."

  Cox licked his lips. He hesitated for a second, then stripped off Grady's web belt and harness, taking the grenades and ammo, and slung the sergeant's rifle across his own back.

  "I'll leave two morphines."

  "Leave me a grenade. And some tear-gas powder."

  I put a pack of dry CS in his lap, and Cox handed over a grenade. Grady held it up.

  "Pull the pin for me."

  Cox did. "If it gets too bad, use the morphine," he said.

  "No. Take it. My watch too. I don't want them to get it."

  Cox slipped off the Rolex and pocketed it.

  Grady said, "Either I nod off and the grenade does the job ... or they'll find me. I'll wait till they're close. The gas should help slow them up too. Go."

  Cox signaled Ruchevsky, and John shoved the VC prisoner past us. The captain touched Grady on the shoulder and rose.

  Grady looked gray. "See you on the other side."

  "Don't think so, Sarge," Cox said, squatting again. "I'm going to that better place, unlike some."

  Grady took small sips of air. "Sure you are. Fuck you ... sir. Get outta here."

  Cox went. I fell in behind him. Willie passed me, going forward to take the lead. Rot took up the rear as we pressed toward the rendezvous, a half an hour away, risking everything by taking an established trail, leaving Grady farther behind with each step.

  Counting strides was one of my jobs. At a hundred and four we heard the grenade.

  19

  WE HAD GONE a mile, nineteen hundred paces, dogged by two of their scouts who fired signal shots intermittently to summon the pack. We were traveling fast but their signal shots never receded: they were keeping up. Cox gestured to halt and waved us off the trail about fifteen feet. The Yards disappeared to act as our security. While we thrashed through the jungle, big and overburdened, they slipped through it like fish in water. We collapsed in a circle, facing out; Ruchevsky and I lay on either side of Cox as he consulted the map. Our objective might be obvious to the pursuers by now if they knew the area and the few open spaces. Their comrades might be on faster trails, trying to beat us to the pickup. In which case, we were done.

  Cox whispered, "We've gotta nail at least one watcher. They can't know when we turn off. Rider, take the lead. You're maybe twenty minutes from the pickup point." He showed us on the map. "You should find a stream a quarter of a mile ahead. Leave the trail there and hang a left into the stream. It will slope up toward a rise. The foliage will thin out."

  "What are you gonna do?" Ruchevsky said.

  "Hang back and try to pop a scout, then run the trail. Gotta keep them from following us long enough to make the turn at the stream without them seeing."

  "Let me hang back," I said. "I don't know if your Yards will take direction from us."

  "Negative," Cox said, and signaled us in motion.

  Just then the first scout appeared, moving warily but fast along the trail. An NVA. Cox took aim. The man staggered and clutched his throat, the shaft of an arrow protruding out the back of his neck; wound tightly around its head was the thread impregnated with poison.

  We stepped out of the bush and covered Cox as he checked the man writhing in agony. Cox raised the CAR to his shoulder to finish him but Willie trotted up, crossbow in hand.

  "What's he doing?" I whispered.

  "He wants him to suffer."

  Willie said something. I looked to Cox.

  "Says it'll be over in a second."

  It was. Willie cut off his ears and threw them away. The deformity would disorient the VC's spirit so he wouldn't reincarnate easily to avenge himself. Captain Cox booby-trapped the body. As soon as they were done, we resumed our rush. A little farther along, he propped the empty outer casing of a claymore mine on its tripod at the side of the road.

  "Something for them to mull over."

  He tossed the ends of its wires into the undergrowth.

  "Devious," Ruchevsky said, chest heaving.

  Willie took the lead and we were off again, Cox right behind him, I was relieved to see. We loped after them, practically jogging. We crossed the stream and kept going until the first patch of hard ground. Cox whistled to Willie and signaled for us to step off the trail to the left. We all stepped off simultaneously, avoiding leaving any sign, and turned around. Rot, now in front, led us back through the undergrowth in reverse order to the stream. He headed into the current, flanked by
reeds. We rushed after him, Ruchevsky in front of me with his prisoner, Cox and Willie trailing.

  The stream flowed straight and we made good progress. The reeds and foliage thinned as we ascended. After fifteen minutes it grew distinctly lighter. We'd reached a savanna of high grass towering over our heads, tall as corn and topped with silky plumes. Cox planted a second claymore—this one no dud—and unspooled the wires as he pressed straight into the dense grass. The trail we left was obvious. Thirty yards in, we made a hard right for fifteen yards. Cox wired up the clicker that would detonate the claymore.

  "Okay," he whispered, "knock down the grass," and hurled himself at the stalks, using his body to press them flat. Ruchevsky pushed the prisoner to the ground and we imitated him, opening a circle. Chaff and insects rose all around us as we crushed the blades.

  "Rider," Cox said, "go back to the elbow turn. Stay out of sight best you can. Watch for our hunters. If it's a single scout, he'll sit and wait for the rest. If it's a whole bunch, empty a magazine at them. Keep their heads down. When the bird's coming in, hightail it back before it gets too close. The downdraft will flatten all this around us. I'll blow the claymore as soon as we're on board."

  "It may get lively long before that," I said.

  "Yeah. Go."

  I got to the turn and lay down flat to stick half my face out. The heavy camouflage made me hard to spot but I still felt exposed. AKs would scythe right through the grass.

  Rotors thudded. The bird was coming. Distant shouts in the jungle: they had heard too.

  The chopper was close, dropping straight in. I listened for firing, hoping they didn't have the bird in their sights. As the tops of the grass stalks began to dance, shots clacked up at it. A door gunner's 60 answered back. The stalks bent halfway. I fired a full magazine down the alley and dashed for the circle. The grass went flat from the full blast of the downdraft, completely exposing us and the Huey. Ruchevsky threw the prisoner on board and ordered the Yards to follow. Cox knelt by the door, firing. Ruchevsky launched grenade rounds at them with his M-79.