Eagles Cry Blood

by Donald E. Zlotnik

  Lieutenant Bourne and Sergeant Braverman walked up to the dyad, stopping near the gate. Braverman broke the silence.

  “Good luck on patrol, sir.”

  “Uhhh . . . yes . . . thank you, Sergeant.” Hetten checked his magnetic compass as he stood next to the rows of barbed wire that covered the outward slope of the berm. “But you don’t need luck when you know what you’re doing.” The comment was directed at Paul, who was having a difficult time 147

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  controlling his urge to laugh as he watched Hetten tap the side of his compass because the needle was acting erratic.

  “Yu de bes’, Suh!” Paul mocked his subservient position. He was almost beyond caring what the captain thought of him.

  Captain Hetten turned and slid down the side of the berm without answering his lieutenant’s sarcastic remark. He edged into the ranks of the Second Company followed closely by the senior team medic.

  “Keel dem Congs, Suh!” Paul raised his voice slightly so Hetten could hear. He saw the captain’s shoulders hunch when the words reached his ears.

  “Sir, you should back off a bit on him.” Braverman was smiling.

  “Why? We both know that Lieutenant Vainbane is coming out here to take over my job as the executive officer of My An.” Paul’s voice was calm.

  “Do you know him?”

  “We’ve crossed paths a couple of times up in III Corps Mike Force. That’s where he’s coming from on loan.” Braverman’s voice took on a hardened tone.

  “Do you know that Hetten asked for him by name? He’s a bastard first class who’s after all the medals he can get and at any price. I feel sorry for you with two of those kinds of assholes in camp at the same time!” Braverman glanced over at Paul. “I hate to say this to you, Lieutenant, but I think you should get your ass out of this camp. Hetten is bringing him here as an officer witness against you.”

  “I hear what you’re saying, Top. The only problem is, I’m the only person who can keep Hetten halfway honest. I couldn’t leave here and place the other team members at his mercy.” Paul was watching the beautiful Vietnamese sunset as he spoke.

  Braverman nodded his head in agreement with what the lieutenant had said. He didn’t like it, but he agreed with the rationale.

  “I’ve got to check the guards. With only sixty men in camp tonight, we’ll have to stay up till morning.”

  Lieutenant Bourne walked slowly over to the communications bunker thinking about the day’s events and trying to mull over what Hetten’s next move would be. Paul could smell the fresh scent of brewing coffee ten feet away from the bunker. McGrath seemed to always have a fresh pot of the eye-opener brewing, even if the supply of coffee grounds was low. Paul entered the bunker and blinked as his eyes adjusted to the glowing red lightbulbs. He chuckled under his breath as he remembered when Hetten had drawn a battle plan on the map inside the bunker using a red grease pencil. It had been a rather elaborate plan, with detailed thrusts and counterattacks that covered fifteen square miles of Delta rice paddies. Hetten had left the bunker to eat chow and McGrath had changed the lightbulbs from the normal white to the red ones, so that during the night you wouldn’t lose your night vision coming 148

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  into the bunker and then leaving again to check the guards. When Hetten returned after eating supper, the red bulbs had made the battle map look as if it had been erased. Hetten had raised all kinds of hell with McGrath before the sergeant could explain that the red grease pencil and the red light cancelled each other out.

  “What’s so funny?” McGrath looked up from his code book.

  “I was just thinking about the red battle plan.” Paul was still chuckling under his breath.

  McGrath broke out in a loud laugh, “Yeah, he sure did jump all over my ass!”

  “How about letting me bum a cup of coffee?”

  “Sure, help yourself to the pot.”

  “Mac, do you know where Braverman put my model 70 rifle with the starlight scope mounted on it?”

  “Awww, shit! Sorry, Lieutenant. I was supposed to give it back to you, but forgot. It’s over there behind the table.” McGrath pointed with the lead pencil he was holding.

  Paul picked up the leather case that held the Winchester model 70 bolt-action rifle. He unzipped the butt end of the case and slid the walnut stock out from the sheepskin lining.

  “You sure do like that rifle,” McGrath said, adjusting the zero beat on his radio.

  “It took me four hours to put that starlight scope on and zero it.” Paul rubbed his hands along the smooth finish on the weapon. “Would you believe the rounds for this rifle cost three dollars each!”

  McGrath kept his attention on the waving frequency needle and answered, “Matched ammo?”

  “Yep, shipped special from the States.” Paul slid open the oiled bolt and pressed down on the ammunition spring with his thumb, turning the barrel toward his eye so that he could look down the grooves at his thumbnail shining in the glow from the lightbulb. “I think I’ll go sit up on the water tower for a couple of hours. If Charlie was watching the camp when Hetten left, he’ll be back to check us out tonight and maybe harass us a little.”

  Paul took his time finishing the thick-brewed coffee and then picked up his rifle by its leather sling and slipped a Pancho Villa–style bandoleer over his chest. “I should be back around 0300. Save me a cup of coffee.”

  “Will do, sir.” McGrath looked up from his radio panel and watched Lieutenant Bourne slip out of the bunker behind the cloth flap covering the entrance. A thin vapor of cigarette smoke followed him out into the darkness.

  Paul stopped just outside the doorway and butted his cigarette against one of the steel engineer stakes that held up the sandbags surrounding the bunker.

  Paul waited for his eyes to adjust to the moonlight that broke through the thick cloud cover in brief glimpses. He looked down at the light meter he held 149

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  in his hand, and judged that he should be able to detect a moving ant at four hundred meters with that much light for the scope. Paul walked over to the water tower and climbed the wooden ladder that was secured against the twenty-five-foot structure. He found a comfortable-looking spot next to the black rubber tank and removed the bandoleer from his chest, laying it next to his left leg.

  The water-covered rice paddies reflected the soft moonglow for hundreds of meters surrounding the camp. Paul took up a good sitting position and flicked on the starlight scope. A dim green light filled the inside of the device.

  Paul removed the protective cover from the front of the scope and raised the rifle to his shoulder, placing the soft rubber eyepiece up against his cheek.

  Everything looked light green as he slowly scanned the terrain. The scope changed the shadows and night into a detailed iridescent daylight. Ten minutes passed before Paul lowered the heavy weapon across his lap. He stretched his arms and flexed his shoulders. The biggest drawback of the special weapon was its weight. He looked around the inside of the camp from his vantage point. Everything remained quiet; even the guards moved like noise-less specters in the light ground fog coming off the canal. Paul replaced the rifle butt against his shoulder and adjusted the eye pad until he was comfortable. He aimed for the treeline that ran parallel to the camp’s north berm. The rifle moved slowly in his hands from left to right, scanning the edge of the underbrush three hundred meters away. He stopped and zeroed in on a slight movement in the rice stubble bordering the trees. He locked himself into a stable firing position and waited. The crosshairs covered the area where he thought he had seen movement.

  Five minutes passed. Paul’s arms were beginning to cramp from the statue-like position he was holding. The movement could have been an animal hunting along the treeline for food. He was about to change positions when, s
lowly, a head and then a pair of shoulders appeared. Paul waited until the man emerged from the brush and took up a crouching position. He was wearing the full battle-dress uniform of a main-force Vietcong. Paul’s right thumb crept along the smooth surface of his weapon stock and pushed against the steel safety lever. His right index finger squeezed softly against the cold trigger. He held his breath, and very gently began the final squeeze. Paul closed his left eye.

  The sound of the explosion from his rifle echoed over the placid rice paddies. Paul switched the rifle to his left shoulder, ejecting the spent cartridge in the same movement. The flash had disrupted the pattern in the starlight scope. Paul’s left eye waited for the foggy image to clear again. He could hear the camp below him start to stir as the men moved to their battle positions.

  Paul saw the dead VC lying half in the shallow water. He waited.

  Suddenly, out of the foliage appeared two more VC crawling toward their dead comrade. Paul blinked his eyes and thought how foolish he had been 150

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  not thinking about putting a flash suppressor on his rifle. He moved the crosshairs in the scope to the VC who was farthest away from the dead man and fired.

  Paul was having a turkey shoot. He fired seventeen times during the next twenty minutes, killing fourteen VC. The enemy soldiers in the dark assumed the camp guards were firing wildly into the night, failing to realize that the starlight scope revealed them despite their cloak of darkness.

  Paul smiled and whispered, “Keep coming . . . please . . . keep coming!”

  There were no more targets. A hand gently touched Paul on the shoulder and he lowered his rifle.

  “What in the hell are you shooting at?” A tinge of fear was in McGrath’s voice.

  “I think I’ve zapped seventeen gooks!”

  “What!?” McGrath scooted closer to the lieutenant to see if the man had lost his senses. Their eyes locked and the moonlight revealed to the sergeant that his lieutenant was only very excited, not crazy.

  “No joshing!” Paul’s voice wavered from the pent-up excitement that he had controlled during the firing. “They must have been a recon patrol sent out to check on us. They were moving along that treeline north of camp.”

  “Sir, the general is going to really flip!” McGrath remembered the message he had received over the radio in Morse code while Paul was shooting. “I just broke the message from headquarters alerting us that General Pick will be arriving here at My An right after first light.” McGrath shook his head.

  “What’s weird, though, is that Captain Hetten must have known about the general’s early arrival, because the message stated that he was arriving on schedule. I had to ask for the coded time.”

  “Let’s get down from the tower.” Paul stood and stretched. “It should be light in a couple of hours. You had better get back to the radios. I’m going to put on a clean uniform for the brass! Gotta play the game!” Paul slapped McGrath on the shoulder.

  “So do I,” McGrath answered, and took the lead on the ladder. The radio was broadcasting when McGrath reentered the bunker.

  “Tire Four . . . Tire Six . . . over . . .”

  McGrath picked up the handset. “Tire Four . . . over . . .”

  “Tire Six . . . we heard shooting . . . what’s going on?”

  “Tire Five has intercepted a VC patrol north of camp. He thinks he hit quite a few of them firing from the water tower with his Winchester . . . over.”

  “How many?”

  “We don’t know yet . . . It’s still dark and we haven’t had a chance to sweep the area, but he thinks he hit seventeen . . . over”

  “Did you say seventeen?”

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  “Roger . . . seventeen . . . over.” McGrath grinned as he visualized what Hetten’s face looked like. “Our visitor will arrive at ZY00 hours . . . over.”

  McGrath coded the time.

  “Roger . . . We’ll be back in camp by then . . . out.”

  “Tire Six . . . Tire Five . . . send me your present location . . . over.”

  “Forget it; by the time I code it and send it to you, we’ll be near the camp . . . out.”

  Dawn broke quickly over the flatlands of the Delta in a soft light. Water buffalo were calling to each other across the diked paddies as Paul stepped out of the entrance of his bunker dressed in his best uniform, the one with all of the patches sewn on it. McGrath and the rest of the A-Team who had remained inside the base camp had also changed into clean uniforms and shined boots for the general’s arrival.

  Paul waved for McGrath to join him. “Mac, take thirty men and check out those bodies. See if they were carrying anything that the intelligence detachment can use. You might as well bring back to camp as much gear as you can and bury the bodies before the heat gets to them. I don’t want to have to patrol that area and smell decomposing corpses.”

  “I wish you would have let me known before I changed clothes, sir,”

  McGrath grumbled under his breath.

  “Sorry, I thought about it when I was dressing,” Paul smiled. He knew McGrath didn’t like being around senior officers and would enjoy being away from the radios for a couple of hours.

  Paul and McGrath heard the main radio crackle, and then a loud voice through the static coming from a helicopter.

  “Tire Six . . . Black Dragon Six . . . over.”

  “Black Dragon Six . . . Tire Five . . . over.”

  “Dragon Six . . . We’ll be landing in one-five . . . over.”

  “Tire Five . . . roger.”

  “Dragon Six . . . out.”

  Lieutenant Bourne stepped out of the bunker and looked into the morning sky trying to detect the first sign of the aircraft. Sergeant McGrath was leading the sweep patrol toward the main gate when the guards pulled open the steel-meshed frame and allowed Hetten’s First Company to begin passing through into the camp. McGrath’s small patrol stepped aside and dropped down into squatting positions as they waited for the long line of commandos to pass through the narrow opening. Paul went over to the north berm and climbed to the top of the wedge-shaped earthen barrier. He held his hand up over his brow to shield them from the reflected light off the water in the paddies and saw a column of commandos moving toward the camp from the 152

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  northern treeline. He could just make out the VC bodies strung below bamboo poles as if they were dead tigers instead of men.

  The helicopter appeared on the horizon at the exact same time that Hetten strode through the main gate.

  “I’ll guide in the chopper!” Hetten screamed over the sound of the engine.

  Sergeant Dryman took up a squatting position next to the berm and waited for his captain.

  Paul could see that both Hetten and Dryman were covered from head to toe with a thick rice-paddy mud that hadn’t completely dried. The normally immaculately clean uniform Hetten wore was torn, and mud covered half of his face. The commandos entering through the main gate had mud on the front of their uniforms but the backs were clean. The troops wore angry expressions on their faces, daring anyone to laugh or say anything to them.

  Paul spoke to Dryman, “I thought you were going to the area south of here?” His mind was rapidly beginning to piece together what was going on around him. “How in the hell did you all get so damn muddy?”

  “We crawled for about a hundred meters.” Dryman’s face tried to take on the airs of a combat veteran, but failed as soon as Paul stared at him.

  “Crawled?” questioned Paul. “With three companies of some of the best fighting men in the Delta . . . you crawled!”

  “The commandos didn’t patrol well, so Captain Hetten had them practice low-crawling . . .”

  “Bullshit!” A slow smile spread across Paul’s face as he pieced together the charade. He
tten knew that Paul would have followed the camp policy for senior visitors and have all of the men in the base area in clean uniforms.

  Hetten and Dryman would be the only two Americans to greet the general in battle-worn fatigues. The slick bastard! Hetten had probably been waiting just outside the camp all night.

  “It should be a Hollywood production this morning in the operations center—right, Dryman?” Paul threw his head back and laughed, “You phony bastards!”

  Dryman’s only answer was the smirk spread over his face.

  Paul cupped his hands around his mouth and called across the camp to Sergeant McGrath. “Forget the patrol! Captain Hetten is bringing in the dead VC!”

  The general’s chopper landed in the center of a circle of dried mud. Captain Hetten was standing outside the sphere of the rotor blades at rigid attention.

  The captain’s CAR-15 was slung under his right arm in a combat-ready position.

  General Pick stepped out of the chopper door followed by his aide-de-camp. A lieutenant emerged alone from the left side of the idling helicopter and made a wide circle around the helipad.

  “Captain Hetten, Commander . . . Team A-477 . . . reports, sir!”

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  “At ease, Captain,” General Pick’s voice complemented the black combat camouflaged stars on his collar. “It looks as if I caught you coming off a patrol.

  We could see some commandos carrying bodies this way. Did you have a fight that I don’t know about?”

  “Yes, sir. A small fire-fight. My patrol caught a recon unit observing my camp over by that treeline.” Hetten turned and pointed.

  “Any intelligence information on them that my people can use?” the general asked as Hetten escorted him through the open gate into the camp.

  “We haven’t had time to search them thoroughly, sir, but so far it looks as if they were traveling sterile.”

  Lieutenant Bourne had the American A-Team lined up near the main gate.