Eagles Cry Blood

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  The helicopter jerked violently to the left when the pilot tried holding it in a hover. Paul grabbed for the copilot’s safety strap and got blood on his shirt sleeve. Five feet off the ground, the engine whined loudly and stalled.

  Paul was pushed down to his knees on the steel floor with his mouth striking the back of the copilot’s armored chair. Blood seeped between Paul’s teeth.

  A jeep left the A-Camp through the main gates that faced the runway and raced down the strip with a huge cloud of red dust boiling up behind the rear wheels. There wasn’t even a faint breeze to blow the dust cloud off the runway, and it settled back down where it had been kicked up.

  Paul jumped down from the passenger compartment of the helicopter and opened MacKey’s door. A voice came from behind Paul’s back.

  “Let me help you with him.”

  Paul and the team medic unstrapped MacKey from the seat and pulled him out of the aircraft onto a waiting canvas stretcher. The medic quickly removed the aviator’s helmet and felt for a pulse on the bloody side of MacKey’s neck. Paul stared into the unseeing eyes. The young pilot’s hair was matted with splotches of red blood and looked macabrely beautiful with the sun bouncing flecks of light off the silver-blond hair that had accented the youth’s aqua-blue eyes. The medic unstrapped the chicken plate and opened MacKey’s shirt to check for wounds. He found only a large bruise and pulled the aviator’s pants down below his hips.

  “He caught one against his chest armor, but the one that killed him hit his groin and came out of his lower back.” The medic pointed to a black mark on MacKey’s chest. “That one probably knocked him out.”

  “Oh, shit! ” Tears ran down the pilot’s cheeks and appeared below the black sunshield of his helmet, still lowered, that covered the upper portion of his face. “He’s just a kid!” But death had reached out when it was ready, and the age and dreams of the youth hadn’t mattered.

  “Come on, sir.” The medic took hold of the shaking pilot’s arm. “Let’s go up to the teamhouse and have a couple shots of booze.”

  The medic supported the pilot and helped him into the vehicle, leaving Paul with MacKey and the helicopter door gunners. Reality was slowly replacing the excitement and unwrapping the protective cloak from around Paul’s emotions. The body lay on the stretcher at his feet and the helicopter with its skin punched full of bullet holes remained parked twenty feet away.

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  This wasn’t a little boy’s pretend war game, and MacKey wasn’t going to suddenly jump up to run off to hide again. Paul could hear the two door gunners talking off their excitement. He removed his tiger-striped shirt and laid it over MacKey’s face. Paul hauled his B-4 bag out of the chopper and flipped it over his head, carrying it on his back like a paratrooper carried a used parachute.

  A very beat-up three-quarter-ton truck pulled through the narrow gate and turned onto the runway, headed toward Paul who had started walking back to the camp. The truck stopped just past Paul—the driver had pressed down on the squeaky brakes but the vehicle had continued traveling past the lieutenant—and a sergeant stuck his head out of the passenger’s compartment.

  “Get in! ”

  “I’ll walk. Go pick up the door gunners and the body.” Paul used his head to point toward the helicopter and kept on walking along the edge of the runway with the barrel of his submachine gun bouncing against his leg.

  The dark green mountains in the foreground framed a multicolored sky in appropriate grandeur in front of Paul. He slowed his pace and watched a bright shaft of light escape from behind a cloud bank and send its rays through a break in the mountains.

  “Take the kid . . . God . . . Please?”

  The shaft of light blinked off behind the clouds and a film of water covered the lieutenant’s eyes.

  Lieutenant Bourne walked toward the main gate, blinking back the tears so that the Montagnard guards wouldn’t see him crying. He walked under a hand-painted sign nailed to a post next to the gate that read: HOMESTEAD

  LAND AVAILABLE—INQUIRE WITHIN. Paul continued walking along the rutted road leading through the center of the sprawling camp. He picked out an American dressed in a tiger-striped set of fatigues and standing next to a waist-high pile of sandbags, and changed his course toward him. The man had a half-smoked cigar sticking between his teeth.

  “I’m Captain Pellam . . . I run this place.” The captain nodded at Paul’s bare chest. “Are you some kind of fucking hippie? Or is it you just don’t want to bother wearing a complete military uniform?”

  Paul looked at the senior officer, allowing the disgust he felt for the man’s comment to show in his face. “I left my jacket over the copilot’s body out on the runway.”

  “I heard about the chopper taking some rounds but wasn’t informed that anyone had been zapped.” The captain shrugged his shoulders. “How does it feel being shot at?” He tried grinning around the cigar stub in his mouth.

  Paul looked slowly at Pellam, who had remained leaning up against the sandbags. Paul pressed his lips tightly together for a few seconds before he risked speaking. “Shitty, sir . . . real shitty!”

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  Captain Pellam sensed that the new lieutenant had a backbone and changed the line of conversation. “Come on, I’ll buy you a drink.” The captain led the way down the dark hallway that ran through the center of the building to the rear area set aside for a bar and recreation area. The helicopter pilot was slouched down in one of the bamboo chairs with a full glass of bourbon gripped in his fist. Pellam went behind the bar and poured Paul half a glass of Jim Beam and threw two ice cubes on top of the liquid.

  “Thanks, sir.” Paul tipped the glass toward the captain and then tilted his head back until the ice cubes clicked against his teeth.

  “Damn, man!” Pellam’s voice reflected a mild concern. “Go light with the booze! There’s a war still going on around here!” He looked hard at the lieutenant, trying to decipher from the man’s face if he had a heavy boozer on his hands.

  Paul didn’t answer the captain and poured himself another tall shot of bourbon, then sat in a chair near the pilot.

  “We’ll be eating supper soon . . .” Pellam spoke to no one in particular, then glanced at the pilot. “You’ll have to spend the night with us. We can’t find a shit-hook pilot who’ll fly in here at night to lift out the Huey.”

  The pilot failed to hear the captain as he slipped deeper into his drunken stupor, letting the glass in his hand slip down to the mat-covered floor. The booze sloshed around the edge of the glass but didn’t spill out.

  Paul left the teamhouse through the rear door in the kitchen. The sunset was gone and a very dark night had taken its place in the sky. Paul felt with one hand for the row of sandbags that surrounded the frame longhouse until he located the barrier and hopped up on top of the still-warm bags, spilling a portion of his drink in the process. The night birds and animals on the other side of the compound’s barbed-wire defensive screen called to each other as Paul sat listening to the old familiar sounds. The kitchen door opened and closed, allowing a short flash of light to escape along with a sharp smell of cooked food that lingered on the black night air for a few seconds before the breeze brushed it away. A dark figure moved toward Paul in the dim moonglow.

  “Hello, sir. I’m Sergeant Mills, the team medic. We met out on the runway earlier.”

  Lieutenant Bourne reached out in the dark and felt around until he touched the front of the sergeant’s jacket. He found the medic’s hand and shook using a firm grip.

  “I’m your new XO, I guess.”

  “Whenever you’re ready to go inside, I’ll show you to your room.”

  Sergeant Mills leaned up against the cloth sandbags and waited for the lieutenant to answer.

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  “Yeah . . . just give me a few more minutes. I’m trying to get my stuff together.”

  “Today your first time under fire?”

  “No. I spent a year running recon with the 173d just about a year ago when I was an enlisted man . . .” Paul rambled on, “. . . I forgot just how shitty this war really is . . .”

  “Gotcha covered, Lieutenant.” Mills started to go back inside the teamhouse. “You coming?”

  Paul slid off the sandbags. “Why the fuck not.”

  “Was the copilot a friend of yours?” Mills didn’t turn around when he asked the question, but continued walking down the hallway.

  “Not really. We met right before we took off from the B-Team pad.”

  Mills stopped in front of a closed door at the far-left corner of the long teamhouse. “The captain wants you at this end. He lives down by the kitchen.” Mills nodded back down the hallway. “That way there’s an officer at each end of the building just in case we get mortared—we won’t lose both of you with one round.”

  Paul’s gear had been placed on the cot in the room.

  He thanked Mills and excused himself. He wanted to be alone for awhile.

  Sergeant Mills understood. Paul stretched out on the narrow cot and laced his hands behind his head. The early morning hours arrived before he slept.

  Lieutenant Bourne awoke to the muffled sound of pots and pans rattling in the kitchen. The morning sun had not yet appeared over the eastern hills.

  Paul felt the hunger in his stomach before he opened his eyes. He stood up fully dressed from the night before and strapped his leather pistol belt around his waist. Paul walked down the hall combing his hair with his fingers. He could see the lights burning in the kitchen. A Vietnamese was setting the table from an officer’s wooden field mess kit and turned to face the lieutenant when he entered the room.

  “Ah . . . Lieu-ten-ant!” The man’s smile was more of a permanent part of his face than a genuine greeting. “I am Lu-Van-Prong. The cook. Everyone call me Mister P.”

  “Hello, Mister P. Who’s the pretty woman behind you?”

  “That Missus P.” He laughed and his wife blushed a light pink color. “You want breakfast now. Lieu-tenant?”

  “Please, lots of it. I’m starved!” Paul sat on a wooden stool near the window screen. It was still shuttered, but he could smell the fresh air seeping into the room from outside. “You have powdered eggs, Mister P?”

  “No sweat. Have plenty. You drink coffee. Me done plenty soon.” The cook shuffled out of the kitchen area back to the cooking shed attached to the side of the teamhouse.

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  Paul walked over to the big chrome coffeepot that Missus P had just placed on the counter and poured himself a metal mess cup full. The morning sun was breaking through the mist that hung over the camp during the night.

  Sergeant Mills entered the kitchen freshly shaved and showered.

  “Morning, sir.” Mills poured himself a cup of black coffee.

  “Morning, Sergeant Mills.” Paul sipped from the hot edge of the coffee cup. “Has the chopper pilot left yet?”

  “No, he’s due to leave early this morning just as soon as a rescue chopper can make it here.” Mills nodded at two more sergeants who Paul hadn’t seen before, and took a seat across from the lieutenant. “He’s taking the kid’s death real hard. He’s blaming himself for the shoot-up . . . feels that he could have avoided the trap somehow. I finally had to give him a couple of tranquilizers last night on top of the booze that he drank.”

  “It’s always harder to take it when a guy is young and has a lot to live for.”

  Mister P entered the room carrying a tray piled high with powdered eggs and thick slabs of fried Spam. Mills removed large helpings off the community tray onto his own steel plate and handed the tray over to Paul.

  Sergeant Booker, who was the A-Team’s intelligence NCO, sat next to the medic, ignoring the new lieutenant.

  “Hey, Mills,” Booker forked a large chunk of Spam into his mouth and continued talking, “I saw some bamboo birds in the draw outside of the camp late yesterday. You want to go after them this morning?”

  “Sure!” Mills laid his fork down against his plate and reached for his coffee cup. “Let’s go right after breakfast before they leave their nesting site.”

  “Bamboo birds?” Paul smiled and raised his eyebrows.

  “Yes, sir. We call them bamboo birds, but they’re more like pheasant, except the meat is sweeter. Damn fine eating.” Mills looked up from his almost-empty plate. “Care to join us?”

  “I’d like to, but I think Captain Pellam will probably want to talk to me the first thing this morning.”

  “No problem. He pulled the graveyard shift on radio watch this morning and won’t be up until this afternoon.” Mills stood up holding his coffee cup in his hand.

  “Sure, I think I’ll tag along. It’ll give me a chance to see the area defense around the camp.”

  Mills drained the last of his coffee from the cup and set the cup down on the table. “We hunt the birds with twelve-gauge shotguns, using double-ought buckshot. Regular birdshot is very hard to find in Vietnam.”

  “I like the idea of using double-ought buckshot just in case we run into some hostile natives.” Sergeant Booker pushed his chair back away from the table and grinned at the new lieutenant.

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  Sergeant Mills knocked lightly on Paul’s closed door. “Ready, sir?”

  Paul reached back from his plywood dresser and opened the door for the sergeant. “If you brought a shotgun for me. I forgot to ask you to find me one.”

  Mills held up his arm. “So happens that I do.” He handed Paul a riot shotgun with a folding bayonet attached to its barrel and a claymore-mine bag, full of loose shotgun shells.

  Paul picked his pistol belt up off the cot and pulled it around his waist, adjusting the holster that contained his prized Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol. He patted the sheath containing his custom-made Randall knife, sliding the leather case to a comfortable position on his left side.

  “Let’s go.”

  A jeep with a .30-caliber light machine gun mounted on the hood was parked in front of the teamhouse with six Montagnards dressed in full battle gear sitting on the fenders, waiting for the hunters to emerge from the teamhouse. Paul looked at Mills with his question written on his face.

  “They’re coming along for the ride.” Mills smiled. “I might end up getting my ass blown away in this fucking war, but it won’t be because I’m stupid.”

  Sergeant Mills nodded at a trail leading away from camp. “The officer that you’re replacing was killed walking down there by four NVA soldiers, not three hundred meters from the main gate. Would you believe in the middle of the afternoon?” Mills pointed toward a Montagnard village sprawled over the side of a nearby hill. “He was walking over there to talk to the village elders about damming up that stream over there and making a fish pond and a waterfall where the villagers could bathe. They caught him on the trail talking to a couple Montagnard kids who worked for us in the camp. The gooks killed all three of them.” Mills pointed up to the camp water tower. “The guard up there saw it all happen and killed two of the NVA with the .50 caliber before they could get away.”

  “Let’s go!” Sergeant Booker slammed the screen door open and interrupted the conversation. The senior NCO hopped onto the passenger seat and beckoned for the other two Americans to join him.

  Mills shook his head over the master sergeant’s disregard for the lieutenant’s rank. “Oh . . . by the way . . . We don’t have any good hunting dogs, so we all take turns being the hound.” Mills grinned. “The birds nest in the top of the bamboo, so someone has to walk through the draw to flush them out.” Mills leaned up against the hood of the jeep and drummed his fingers against the st
eel fender. “I was the dog last time, Sergeant Booker . . . It’s your turn today.”

  “Shit!” Booker glared at the lieutenant and then slapped him on his shoulder. “I guess we should let the lieutenant enjoy his first hunt.”

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  The jeep bounced along the rutted road that circled the perimeter of the large A-Camp. Sergeant Mills stopped the jeep and pointed toward a draw filled with interwoven shoots of bamboo, growing from finger-sized poles to the diameter of a grown man’s thigh.

  “There’s going to be some tough walking down there for the dawgg!”

  Mills drawled out the words, mimicking Booker’s southern accent.

  “Screw you, Buck Sergeant!” Booker retorted gruffly over his shoulder and slung his shotgun across his back, wiggling his shoulders until the weapon was centered between his shoulder blades.

  “Sir, you walk on this side of the ravine that’s closest to camp and I’ll jog over to the far side.” He pointed with the barrel of his shotgun. “Stay a little behind Booker when he gets down on the bottom; that way you can keep an eye on his location and shoot around him when we kick up the birds.”

  “Mills, if you shoot my ass . . .” Sergeant Booker started to climb down the side of the steep gorge and slipped on the thin layer of dew that covered the elephant grass. He slid down to the bottom, creating a matted chute that entered the heavy bamboo thicket.

  Paul moved to the high ground bordering the edge of the ravine and took up a Vietnamese squat. He waited for Sergeant Mills to get over to the other side of the wide ditch, at the same time watching Sergeant Booker struggle with the tangled undergrowth that snatched at the older man’s feet with every step that he took. The ravine was about two hundred meters long and thirty meters wide at its broadest point. Paul figured the bamboo stood, on average, a foot over Booker’s head with islands of fifty-foot clumps growing sporadi-cally along the length of the cut. He made a mental note to talk to Captain Pellam about placing some booby traps in the gully so that the NVA couldn’t use it to their advantage during an attack on the camp. Lieutenant Bourne looked back over his shoulder at the parked jeep. The Montagnards had dismounted and were lying in a row against the shady side of the vehicle.